#208 Anti Prophet - Why The Western World Lied to You

Are we living in a reality constructed by societal norms?

Or are we brave enough to challenge the status quo?

On today’s episode, we’re sitting down with Anti Prophet, a voice challenging us to confront and question the societal norms we often take for granted. 

We explore the essence of truth-telling, the necessity of discomfort for personal growth, and the crucial journey towards authenticity.

From dissecting the complexities of the Israel-Palestine conflict to scrutinising the dynamics of shaming within our communities, this conversation is an unflinching look at the realities we face and the hard truths we need to face.

This episode is a call to action for anyone seeking to live more authentically in a world that often prioritises appearances over reality.

If this episode challenges you, inspires you, or provokes thought, don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more insightful discussions.


My Socials:

Instagram: Darrenlee.ks
LinkedIn: Darren Lee
Twitter: Darren_ks

(00:00) Preview and Introduction
(00:45) Why Anti Prophet Stays Anonymous 
(05:22) The Israel-Palestine Crisis
(08:16) Why People HATE Facing The Truth 
(12:45) Anti Prophet’s Thoughts on The Matrix
(19:36) Exploring Andrew Tate’s Influence 
(23:09) Why Your Inner Circle Matters
(29:36) Anti Prophet's Advice To Turn Your Life Around 
(33:16) The Importance Of A Healthy Diet
(37:25) Is Depression Real?
(44:44) Lessons From Playing the Violin
(49:04) Does Your Upbringing Matter? 
(57:28) What Made Anti Prophet Go Viral?
(01:05:05) Decoding Anti Prophets Messaging 
(01:10:48) Anti Prophet’s Thoughts on AI
(01:18:23) What’s Next For Anti Prophet?

Transcript

Anti Prophet: 0:00

There's a lot of shaming going on in that community. If you have like a differing point of view to Tate's like, it's just immediately shut down. And on top of that, when you actually quit Hustlers University, you get this email being like you fucking bitch, you're such a loser for like actually leaving normalcy and sort of middle of the road thinking I think is very much lacking in the media landscape. There's something in our inner voice, in our programming, that is just always super critical of like who we are as people, as well as the world around us, and I think that has worked very much to our benefit.

Darren: 0:29

This. Right here is Andy Prophet. He's on a mission to challenge deeply held beliefs. You know those beliefs that you have since you were young and you don't really know why you still have them. That's what we're gonna be uncovering today. We're gonna go deep into a lot of the lies and systems that we've believed for many years to be true or to not be true. We'll go deep into different aspects of uncomfortable truths Western society, lies, alcohol, social media, building, businesses, online audience growth and even things like the changing world order. Let's get straight into it.

Darren: 0:59

Before we start this week's episode, I have one little favor to ask you. Can you please leave a five star rating below, so we can help more people every single week. Thank you, let's kick off, all right, man. Where I wanna start is so if you didn't have the mask, do you think you'd be able to have the same opinions and speak them freely?

Anti Prophet: 1:22

Yes, I think so. However, at the beginning, when I started Antiprofit, I was working for a different influencer and I was actually the COO of his company, so the mask came about as a matter of practicality, just because I knew that posting the kinds of things that I was posting and also representing that person's brand just wasn't going to mesh well. So, however, that being said, if I was just kind of operating entrepreneurially, I would be more than happy to share these opinions, with or without the mask, and that's something that I generally try and hold myself to, especially when I'm doing a spicy take, just because I never wanna be the guy that only says shit with the mask on. I want it to be consistent, with or without.

Darren: 2:08

Yeah, man, and that was a really important thing that I wanted to do for this conversation, because I wanna get your opinion on this too. I have a bit of a ripe against the Twitter community, all those anonymous accounts Like. You'll get some dude with a Brad Pitt photo from Fight Club that says you need to go to the gym at like four o'clock in the morning and do this when in reality, he doesn't stand up to that, Whereas for you, when I was going a lot deeper in your work, I was like the fact that you're saying it in person and you have a mask on. I can still see your values despite saying it. Does that make sense Versus hiding behind a fucking keyboard?

Anti Prophet: 2:43

Yeah, sure, I appreciate that.

Anti Prophet: 2:46

And again, I think the reason that comes across not just to you but to my other followers as well is just because I try and center my brand around just telling the truth.

Anti Prophet: 2:59

That's important to me just on a personal level, and I think being an influencer that kind of has that as the core of their mission statement allows people to maybe interact with my content in a different way than if I didn't center around that and I was wearing the mask. So Explain that. Well, I just think that at the moment there are a million shitty content creators who were just out to kind of scam their audiences, and some masked guy on the internet. The fact that anyone is willing to do business with me at whatsoever is like a fucking gift from God, and I think the only reason why people are willing to do that is because I try and showcase the value of telling the truth not just to other people but to yourself as well. And yeah, I think if I did not do that, I would be the equivalent to the Brad Pitt Fight Club character and no one would trust me as a result.

Darren: 3:55

Do you think, like what your opinions, that you have and we'll get into some of this stuff it's do you fear for, like your identity at times.

Anti Prophet: 4:03

Not really. I don't think I'll ever do a face reveal for anti-profit, just because I don't think that's really the point. The point is isn't personal notoriety, and I think people interact with my content for the purpose of seeing a blank face, giving them an opinion to kind of try on for a few seconds and if they don't like it they can cast it off. And that's easier to do with a blank face rather than an actual face, because then it just feels like someone's shoving an opinion down your throat. And the reason I mentioned that is, ultimately, if someone were to ever dox me and it's funny, I actually just did a video about this the other day, because someone did try to dox me a few months ago and I know who it is Like even if that were to occur, it wouldn't be like the end of anything.

Anti Prophet: 4:49

I would continue doing anti-profit. It might be the kind of thing where it's like daft punk, like does anyone know what daft punk looks like? No, but if you like, go and Google daft punk. Like you'll see their faces, but you don't really care. So that's, I think. Ultimately it wouldn't really bother me if I got doxed and then I guess on a safety level I don't know. I guess that's maybe something I think of more and more. I posted a lot about Israel and Palestine a few months ago and that got a lot of people very, very angry, being like, oh man, like it would be so easy to find you, blah, blah, blah, and I don't know. I guess maybe that's something that's on my mind, but again, I think I would share those opinions online if I wasn't working for someone anyway.

Darren: 5:33

Yeah, so what was that instance? For example, say it again, what was that instance you mentioned about, like Israel that aggravated people, or even just at a broader level, like why is some of your content divisive, perceived as divisive, about other people?

Anti Prophet: 5:48

Just because I think with something like Israel and Palestine regardless of which take you provide even if you're providing takes that criticize Israel and criticize Gaza both sides of the argument are so entrenched in their points of view that any criticism of their side of things is seen as like anti-allyship. I guess, and I understand why, especially for people who have family in the regions and even for the Muslim community as a whole. I understand why this is like such a touchy subject, and I would say the same thing for people on the Israeli side of things. I'm less sympathetic to the people criticizing the conflict on the side of, like progressives in the West as well as conservatives in the West. I think both of the arguments are complete fucking dog shit.

Darren: 6:45

Sitting on the sidelines, right. So whether it's Israel, whether it's fucking anything right, it's when people sit on the sidelines they can. Their opinions are largely like not valuable. So I give an example like it's someone who's like fat is giving you advice on fitness. It's someone who's broke giving you advice on money. Like they're not people that are like basically in the trenches that have experiences. And one of my friends, tim Stoddard. He struggled with a drug addiction and now, as he's come over and been sober for like 10, 20 years, he always says that he shares his experiences and not his advice. Some people when kind of they shit advice, they're not really in the scenario. But when you share your experiences, it's like I can't really argue with your experiences because you've gone through it yourself.

Anti Prophet: 7:30

Yeah, sure, I agree, I think. But you know, I think something that's interesting is, even in the scenario where I'm conservating, I'm conservating, I'm criticizing conservative support of Israel or I'm criticizing progressive support of Gaza, that seems to really still trigger people inside of inside of the Muslim community as well as people inside of the Jewish community, when I'm not actually criticizing like those peoples, like points of view, I'm criticizing like the points of view that happen to be on their side of things, but like it's just, I don't know, you can be on whatever side you wanna be and still have a trash take, just like you can be on whatever side you wanna be and have a fairly nuanced take.

Darren: 8:16

Well, again, it's like if you speak about an anti lens, it's gonna piss people off in some regard, as in like people are just gonna be triggered. So I'll give you an example. I interviewed Peter Schiff and me and Peter were talking about her from like a commodity price perspective, as in like when it happened, it was literally very, very topical. It was the same time roughly, and he was just saying, basically, impact on oil and inflation and so on. But because we were just talking about it adjacently, that like caused a lot of controversy, but it's just. But there wasn't an opinion on it, it was just sort of a fact on like an economic impact from the markets. Does that make sense? So take an example of what you were doing. We were talking from that, from that, but also your other opinions, like why do you think revealing like the truth about stuff at a deeper level pisses people off? Cause it's almost like as if people don't want to admit the truth, that they have a problem or that there's a possible solution out there.

Anti Prophet: 9:06

Well, I think most of the time, people don't want to look for the solution. They want to project their problems onto a scapegoat, outside of their control, outside in the world, so that they can say hey, look like this is why all of the problems in my life exist, instead of being like, oh, okay, well, I can probably change this, I can probably change this, I can probably change this. I can move to a different city that's cheaper, so I can get more money and like save up my money and then, you know, change my life. But instead people want to say, oh, like the WEF and the Illuminati have me down, and like Andrew Tate is right and the matrix is real, and like all this fucking bullshit, so I don't know. I just think it's more convenient for people to have a scapegoat that they can project their problems onto, rather than say okay, what do I need to do tomorrow in order to make my life better?

Darren: 9:49

So with your content and that's split and divisive. What's the other side of it? Is there people that, when you speak about different aspects of, let's say, the Western world which we get into and so on, and are people that are really behind your mission?

Anti Prophet: 10:05

Sure, yeah, there are a lot of people in my audience that are behind my mission and the thing that I really appreciate is there are a lot of people that are that really like my mission but also provide very nuanced critiques of some of the opinions that I share on social media and they share that in my comments.

Anti Prophet: 10:20

And I actually really appreciate when I see that type of thing because it allows me to kind of examine things from a different point of view that I hadn't considered. And I think those are the people that I am happiest about the follow me just because, like I don't know, I think anti-profit exists to sort of challenge sacred cows, not in the sense of like just some edgy edge lord just trying to be like to generate conflict or anything like that, but just to try and find some sort of semblance of truth. And when somebody can take an argument that I'm presenting in good faith and present their own argument that's nuanced, that is presented in good faith, that to me is more to the mission statement of anti-profit than if everyone were to just blindly follow me. If I wanted that, I would have called myself the profit, not anti-profit.

Darren: 11:11

What were some of the things that you rose as like an issue or concern that other people are behind, like what are some of the biggest things that you think that you're alluding to, that really kind of getting their head around?

Anti Prophet: 11:24

Okay, sure. Well, just the other day again, I actually made a video entitled why you think Jews control the world, and I did a part one and part two, and something that I appreciated in the comments section is the central argument that I was making is like, even if the WF or the Illuminaudia or whatever control the world, there's nothing you're gonna do about it. 100% Like. If you're not gonna go out and like violently protest and like overthrow your government or just get involved with the boring day-to-day minutiae of like trying to change things at a local government level, you're not gonna do either of those things. You're just sitting around complaining.

Anti Prophet: 11:59

And the thing that I appreciated in the comments is there were a lot of people who came in and said, dude, this is like 100% like, regardless of the economic structures of oppression that may or may not affect our lives, like ultimately, like we have the choice to go and make something up our lives. And obviously there were a lot of people in the comments that were basically saying like, oh, this guy is obviously a Jew, or like, oh, george Soros has found dirt on him or he has to like report to his handlers in Israel, and that kind of thing which I don't really take seriously. But again, I think there are enough people in my audience that can sort of parse out what it is that I'm trying to say and are behind the idea of taking responsibility for your life, which I think is another central tenet of the stuff that I'm trying to post online.

Darren: 12:45

Yeah, and the more examples you're bringing up, the more that becomes applicable in this scenario, because your current scenario you can just get up and leave right. And of course you need to put a plan to get it right and there needs to be a strategy. There needs to be an example. And even for me, like I was, as I mentioned before, I was working in finance, I was working in tech, I was doing pretty well like university graduate, so on, but it wasn't what I wanted to do. So to kind of map out what I wanted to do long-term and what's aligned to my values took so long.

Darren: 13:11

I took so much pain, right, internal pain, and when I get into Woo-Woo it's like the internal state is the external reality, right. So the more work that I was doing on that but I could have complained and just bitch and moaned and whatever. But you have to do the work to do it right. And there's that kind of like element that people don't want to admit to, right? You mentioned some good points there about like, like taste, the matrix and so on, like. What's your take on that kind of movement in terms of like? Basically, there's a system, we're in the system and how do we basically break free from the system.

Anti Prophet: 13:46

Sure well, I think it's okay to be able to look at your society and understand that things aren't working and to have problems with that. I think right now, the main direction that I see young men going is especially if they're on the conservative side of things is they're going in the direction of saying, hey, like, these are the problems. Like these are the problems that I'm seeing with my society, and the problem with the government is not so much that they're not doing anything about it, it's that they're hiding the truth from us and that I know the truth about what's going on. And the fact of the matter is this like if you're 21 and you're like watching content on Instagram, you don't have a fucking clue about how anything in the world works and you know like I would say that about myself Like I'm no expert in geopolitics and I'm no expert in crypto. I'm no expert in like any of these things. Ultimately, I'm just some guy talking shit on the internet. But I think the problem that arises when you go around thinking that you have the truth is you end up behaving in the world in such a way where, again, the first thing you do is you scapegoat that ultimate problem that you can't actually solve and you do that because you don't want to go through the pain that is necessary in order to actually fix your life. You talk about that pain that you had to endure to go from your finance work into the life that you have now, and you know I also had that period.

Anti Prophet: 15:12

It was a period of about two and a half, three years of just the most excruciating, day in, day out, emotional pain that I had to deal with, and it's not pleasant.

Anti Prophet: 15:24

It's honestly not something that I would wish on my worst enemy, but it is something that I would wish on my best friend, because if you wish it on someone, knowing that they have the ability to get through it, the place, the person that they will become on the other side of it, is something that will better serve them in the long run. And, as a result, you know, I would never wish that kind of needless pain on someone who couldn't learn from it. But I would wish it on someone that I care about if I knew that they had the ability to get through it. But you know, most people, honestly speaking, I don't think have the ability to get through that type of pain. And on top of that. I don't think most people have like an inter compass or inner voice that really guides their day to day For sure. So, 100%, I'd say that that's what I think about the matrix and it's an annotates follows.

Darren: 16:12

I think just in general, like rough, rough roads and smooth, smooth roads and rough. So if you live a life of comfort, right, Like at the end it's going to end in some sort of catastrophe. I'll give you an example like you know people who, like, go through life and, just you know, cope with drinking and bad food and not taking care of themselves and whatever, at the end they have like health problems, right, and the opposite is also true. The pain that you endured very similar to me.

Darren: 16:36

I relate a lot with that man because you have to go through those instances of, like extreme anxiety waking up at like six o'clock in the morning, wake up in the middle of the night with anxiety of like what you need to get done the next day. They progress and move forward. You know, things like blowing up in your face, basically that you can keep on working through. On the other end of it is the life you want to live. Now again, what's funny here is that, speaking to somebody this yesterday, you could do all those things and still not win True true.

Darren: 17:00

But it's just part of playing right, but you prefer to play that game than end up nowhere versus on Twitter. Now you mentioned a good point about you know people saying that they know the answers. That's part of marketing. The more I learn about marketing is that people want to create an enemy and then throw stones at the enemy and say there were inside there. If you ever read 48 Laws of Power or how to build a cult, yes, the number one instance of building a cult is we define an enemy, we put everyone else in that group and then only us that are in here with these beliefs are correct and that's actually a big problem I have with a lot of private communities in general and I spoke with this a lot is the fact that I do feel like that. If they're helping young men live a life of like independence and personal responsibility, it's helpful, but again, like the red pill in the community that just comes, this like fucking inflection point or by everything else powered from that small but you got is meaningless.

Anti Prophet: 17:55

Yeah, true, and honestly, this is something, truthfully speaking, that I that I struggled with with my brand at the beginning, when I start first started monetizing. You know I have a program that that I have that I teach people to grow their own personal brands and that kind of thing. And I, in going into this, I knew that if I just confirmed people's preexisting beliefs with my content, that I would get a lot more eyeballs in front of the videos that I put out. And the more eyeballs that I get in front of my videos, the more people see my offer. And I don't know.

Anti Prophet: 18:32

That was something that I thought about doing and may have subconsciously done in a few posts at the beginning of my monetization process. But pretty quickly I just I realized that that was not what I wanted to do. It didn't feel good and it actually kind of worked against the like mission statements of of anti profit, which is, again, not I'm not here to confirm anyone's preexisting beliefs. If anything, I'm here to have you question your sacred cows because even if you don't end up going away from that sacred cow, the fact that you just sat down and tried to pose some questions to it to see if it would actually stand the test of your criticism. It means that it's a good sacred cow to stand by because you were willing to poke, try and poke holes in it. So but again, I understand the desire on the side of marketers and people like Andrew Tate to have like an us and them mentality in order to sell more products. It's it's a very alluring proposition for people.

Darren: 19:36

Why do you think those kind of private communities have grown so much amongst like young men?

Anti Prophet: 19:43

Because I think and I wouldn't just say this about young men, I would say this about young people in general is just, people are feeling very identity less. I think people don't really feel like they have a tribe in the same way that they may have felt like back in the 90s. Back in the 90s, like people went to parties to talk to people, people went to church to have like a strong sense of community. People would go to clubs, people would do like just normally go to to bars, it's, it's it's kind of strange. It seems to be the case that more and more young people are like even avoiding going to the bar and like intermingling with other people they might go with, like their guys, but like and women aren't really talking at the bars in the same way that they were in the 90s and as a result of that, you know, it's like we're social creatures.

Anti Prophet: 20:28

Again, I'm no expert on like the evolutionary psychology behind like how people evolved, but it's, it's very obvious that we need other people to survive and I think if you can figure out a way to stoke the worst fears in a demographic of people in this case young men and say, hey, not only do I have an answer for you in terms of, like, why your life is such like a fucking ball of shit as it is, but I also have a group of people that understand exactly what you're going through and want to see you succeed. All you have to do is pay me $50 a month in order to be friends with these people. Like done you basically give people the solution for their most burning questions and fears, and you also provide them with that sense of community that they've been longing for for the better part of a decade.

Darren: 21:25

Is that positive or negative though?

Anti Prophet: 21:28

I could be a little bit of both. I could be a little bit of both. I think having some sort of tribe and some sort of community is always going to be beneficial, regardless of honestly, this is kind of a radical idea, but honestly, I think having some sort of tribe, regardless of how radical their ideas are, there's going to be an element of positive stuff that comes along with that. However, something that I would say with like the war room or Hustlers University or whatever it's called, the real world, I think is with these. I actually joined the real world just because I was curious to see how they structured their sales funnel, because I was thinking about building out my own product, that kind of mimicked, that kind of thing, and I wanted to see how they did it.

Anti Prophet: 22:10

And there's a lot of shaming going on in that community.

Anti Prophet: 22:13

Like if you have like a differing point of view to Tates, like it's just immediately shut down. And on top of that, when you actually quit Hustlers University, you get this email being like you fucking bitch, like you're such a loser for like actually leaving, like this is your last chance, like that we're going to give you to like change your mind, to come back in and actually change your life, otherwise you're just a bot. I'm paraphrasing, but it was so crazy that I actually took a screenshot of it and I was like damn, this is our core. And it just gets worse in the war room, like, if you like, speak out against Tate inside of the war room. It's been well documented that not only will you be kicked out of the war room but like members of the war room will actually like kind of digitally, come after you and you know, I just I just don't think that all I would say there is like whether or not there are positive things to be had out of having a tribe. There are better tribes to be a part of.

Darren: 23:09

Hmm, so interesting. I'm just even sit on that idea because like you only want to be part of a tribe that wants to be there with you in the opposite of downs right, and not even like looking at that in isolation, but like that's what a tribe is Like. When you're you know, when you said you struggle with like alcohol and you got divorced, I imagine the people do you want to be your friend or the people that are there to help you during that period, not just be at the altar when you were getting married. Does that make sense? And then you want people that are there on both sides not to shame you when you want to take it, when you want to leave right, because what's interesting here is like people will evolve and they'll move on to the next thing and you shouldn't be shamed for that.

Anti Prophet: 23:49

Sure. Well, that is the case, unless moving on to the next thing involves not paying your $50 a month to certain marketers. And the thing that I'll say to kind of to speak to your point, is, when I made that transition from, you know, being married and to being divorced and also starting to drink heavily, the people that I was surrounding myself with while I was drinking heavily served the exact purpose that I wanted them to serve at that time. They were my tribe, and that tribe was to get fucked up seven nights a week because I didn't want to, like there was. It's not that I didn't want to deal with my problems, it's just there was no meaningful way for me to deal with my problems at that time, like I wasn't making money. I was a violinist at the time. There was no, there were no concerts going on because of because of COVID.

Anti Prophet: 24:31

I guess I could have started sitting in the room by myself and dealing with my own problems, but I just I just wasn't there yet, and I think that kind of speaks to why people are like gravitate to these tribes that may offer some positive things but aren't really exactly setting you up for success in the long term Just because in the moment. You're not looking for success in the long term. You're looking to fix your problems now, and you know that's the same reason I surrounded myself with with alcoholics for for two years, because that's the problem that I wanted to solve now, and I had to require an internal change within me that took a lot of pain to for me to even want, in order for me to start surrounding myself with a different tribe that gave me different and better results.

Darren: 25:10

So how did you change?

Anti Prophet: 25:13

Bro, I don't know to this day, to this day, I don't know. Honestly, I think time does a really good job of healing for sure, like traumatic situations, and I think you know I this, this marriage that I was in wasn't simply difficult for the just because we got divorced. It was. It was difficult for the four and a half years that I was a part of it. Like there was a lot of verbal abuse coming my way, physical abuse coming my way, sexual abuse coming my way and like what was happening. I just didn't really know that any of it was like unacceptable.

Anti Prophet: 25:49

And when you exit that you would think that it's a big relief that you're getting away from all these things. But the question that you're left with is why did I let this happen to me over like four and a half years and not do anything about it until fucking now? And that's that's a that's a tricky question to to pull apart and it was a question that I really did not want to pull apart and, as a result, I kept drinking and partying and doing drugs for, you know, a couple of years to try and deal with it as time went on, the Whether or not this was going on subconsciously or through my conscious efforts, I started to just be able to have a specific answer for why I let these things happen to me, and that answer was just you know, it was due to my upbringing. It was due to me not really having, like, stronger boundaries. But, on top of having this realization, I was starting to develop stronger boundaries and I was seeing people interact with me in such a way that I didn't like and I would say, hey, I don't like this.

Anti Prophet: 26:48

And I think, by simply demonstrating to myself that I had the ability to have those boundaries between myself and others, it's almost like the alert mechanisms inside of my head started to come down and allowed me to kind of just see the world again in such a way where I could be like Okay, well, I'm still going out seven nights a week. Two and a half years later, theoretically in my mind, I want to be someone who, like, helps people on social media or not. I want to make more money. I want to. I'm starting to entertain this idea of having, like, a monogamous relationship with someone who really cares about me again, because not only am I starting to trust the world, but I'm starting to trust myself in terms of like judging the quality of someone's character, and I think all of these just kind of came together in the time that they did to allow me to be like Okay, maybe I should stop going out seven nights a week.

Darren: 27:39

Well, it's like you crawl before you go and walk and then you walk before you can run. So it's like it's not like well, actually it's interesting Sometimes if you wake up and you're like, okay, I'm finished drinking, I'm not going out, I'm not per day, I'm not hanging out with these losers anymore, that's actually going to blow back in your face much more. It's kind of like when you walk and slowly, you slowly kind of get out of it. It's nearly better for you, right? So even with the relationship, when you're coming out of the relationship, slowly coming out of the divorce, I can imagine maybe how it may be easier on your body, just reaction wise versus like shutting down. And even when I knew it with alcohol myself, as I took a month away from it, I was like, oh, I feel great. And then one, two, one, three, just snowballs.

Darren: 28:16

So I think you mentioned time and I analyzed time very closely and time is super interesting.

Darren: 28:20

So you know everyone thinks that like, well, a lot of people realize that there is a cause and effect, but they don't realize that the biggest variable is time.

Darren: 28:29

So if you make a decision today, like, let's say, you take a load of drugs, you can be okay in a couple of days, but if you keep taking drugs in your 30s and 40s, you'll have an asymmetrical negative return and the same as what work right. When you are working on your content and the strategy and the science behind how you're creating content, you don't see that impact. Now you're still getting a couple of thousand views, but then over the course of a year or two it asymmetrically positively returns. I think people don't realize that especially that's where people stop. They stop stop drinking, they go back to drinking or they go back to bad habits and that's quite interesting to observe. For you, like over four years, the real impact has happened now and now you know you're in a better position. Obviously, every day is imperfect, right, but you're in a better position than you were four years ago because you kept at that?

Anti Prophet: 29:13

Sure, I definitely agree with that. You know Gary Vee is as mildly cringe as Gary Vee is at this point, but you know he has. He has a really good saying which is basically along the lines of you it's very common for people to overestimate how much they can accomplish in a year, and it's very common. It's just as common for them to underestimate how much they can accomplish in a decade, and I think it speaks to that point completely.

Darren: 29:36

So what would be your advice for someone who's trying to, like, change your rounds their life? They're based in the US. They're in a kind of or Ireland, where I'm from. They're like broke fat, unhappy. What's that step that you would encourage them to do? Do you want to launch a podcast for your business, but you don't know where to start? Remove the stress, pressure and all the overwhelm that comes with it by working with podcast university. If you're an ambitious individual who wants to build your influence online, grow your own podcast and also stand out from the crowd, Podcast university is for you. We help you with the strategy, equipment, the content, your guests, everything you need to create a top tier podcast. If you want to learn more, check out podcast university and start your podcast journey today.

Anti Prophet: 30:22

Don't open your mouth unless you're telling the truth. That's the first thing. That may seem like it's not super related, but I think with whether it's debt, whether it's obesity, whether it's alcoholism, whether it's drug addiction, any of these things it usually comes from some needs to quell internal pain. I think any addiction can basically be. All the addictions come from that place. You could probably poke holes in that argument fairly easily, but that's just generally the way that I view addiction.

Anti Prophet: 31:03

I think the moment that you start to get real with other people and you start to be self-critical of the stuff that's coming out of your mouth is the moment that you start to be critical of your inner dialogue as well. I really don't think it can happen the other way around. I don't know why. It's just when I tried to do it, starting with critiquing my inner dialogue, but I was still lying to other people. It just doesn't really line up. The lying to other people is the action in the outer world that you have control over, and making changes through your actions first, which in this case is a little bit weird because your actions are your words A hundred percent.

Darren: 31:42

But always don't, right. I mean it dropped you, but you can tell we're in Bali, right? You can tell when you meet someone really where they're at sometimes maturity, mental maturity, business maturity, fitness and health because of the actions that they took, not the words that they tell you right? I had a post-it today, but I can judge a man by his outcomes, not by what he says, right? Obviously you can do a lot of work and not get the result you want, but at a general level that's. A good way to monitor your own progress is by what you fucking do versus what you're saying.

Anti Prophet: 32:15

Yeah, exactly, and I think, again, just monitoring what you say. If that's your first course of action, because you're 300 pounds start with that and then you can start to be critical of your inner dialogue, which I guarantee you, if you actually sit down and listen to it honestly and engage with it honestly, it's going to say, hey, maybe don't eat that other bag of cheez-its. Or hey, maybe don't go out. It's Tuesday night. Like, hey, maybe don't turn on the third porn video for today, like it's just again. If you start modifying your speech, which is like that first action that you can do, then you start to modify what's going on in here and that allows you to engage with yourself in a more honest way. And I think once you do that, that is the thing that actually spurs you into action out in the real world. So, as counterintuitive as it is, start by telling other people the truth, because it will allow you to be self-critical in a way that's actually positive and not in a way that shames you into doing more of the same.

Darren: 33:16

So interesting, man, when you were going through that evolution, what was like your health, like physical health, food, whatever thing, because you look really fit. You look fit, dude, you're probably in your turkeys or whatever, and you look really fit right now. So what was that like for you?

Anti Prophet: 33:32

I mean, through the transition, it was really bad. Again, I was probably drinking seven to 10 cocktails a day every day. How are you getting the money for it? I'm doing some work Also, I mean during COVID sorry US government, but I was using your government assistance to buy myself alcohol during that period of time. But yeah, through when I came to Bali again, I had solid income so I was able to utilize that. Prior to that, it really was the government assistance. But yeah, I mean, I was drinking a lot.

Anti Prophet: 34:09

I had never been someone to really think about what I was eating, and that remained the case until probably four months ago, when I started working with a trainer four or five months ago. That was the moment where I really started working out in a real way four times a week and I started actually looking at what I eat and, on top of that, actually trying to keep a check of how much water I drink. That's never been something that I've really thought about, and now that I at least kind of focus on that, I feel a million times better and I feel like I look younger as well, so that I wish I could say that I started doing this earlier and it's been a big thing that supported me changing my life but honestly, this is probably the last piece of the puzzle that's come into place for me.

Darren: 34:58

But it's interesting, right, because you started doing the right habits, like a year, two years ago. Now it's like oh, let's get a coach. Okay, now I'm a bit more accountable. Now, because I'm more accountable, I want to take care of the food aspect. Oh, not only food, there's also water to think about, and hydration to think about, and being dehydrated and being burned and so on. Right, there's multiple different factors with it, but what's interesting there is I'd like to see, I'd like to understand, like, how is it changed your mental framework, the food you consume?

Anti Prophet: 35:26

Yeah, that has changed a lot. I feel like I have a lot more energy. Before I started working out and before I started eating, well, I was just getting so tired during the days and, on top of that, when I was not working out, my sleep schedule was just ridiculous. I was going to bed at like four and waking up at two and still getting a good amount of work done. But, man, there is just something that is just devastating by living that way, even if you're not drinking alcohol and not drinking caffeine and technically doing all the things you're supposed to, you feel like shit and I think, as a result of me starting to work out, starting to monitor my food and water intake, I just feel a lot better and that allows me to commit a lot more positive energy into my business, a lot more positive energy into my relationship with my girlfriend, and it just it helps me focus in on even coming up with concepts for videos on a daily basis.

Darren: 36:19

A hundred percent. If you've ever read Rick Rubin's book like the Creative.

Anti Prophet: 36:24

Act? No, I haven't.

Darren: 36:26

but yeah, as a musician, I think it would actually be very, very useful for me to take with that You'd love that, because he talks about like, basically how like inspiration comes from, like other elements, versus sitting down and trying to write the notes for a song, right.

Darren: 36:39

So he talks about, like you know, washing, like the dishes, or going for a walk or whatever, and I remember hearing him speak with Andrew Huberman and they talk about you know, you can do mind active, body active, so you're like going out and going for a walk, and then the next stage, which Rick Rubin focuses on, is body still, mind active, which again people sit with their thoughts. Right, and, like Henry Ford said, like the hardest job in the world to do is to think, and so most people don't do it because, like, when you're sitting there and you're trying to think, it's fucking difficult to see what comes true to the stream of consciousness.

Anti Prophet: 37:10

True, yeah, especially if you're at the beginning of that process of just starting to do that. Yeah, most of the time you won't actually like what comes out the other side, but if you can get through that painful process, you start to, you know, get some good stuff as a result of sitting and thinking.

Darren: 37:25

For sure, so do you think you were depressed during that period?

Anti Prophet: 37:29

Yeah, absolutely. I think that there's definitely a difference between situational depression and, you know, chemical imbalances. I think chemical imbalance depression exists, though I think it's probably less common than we like to think that it is. But in terms of situational depression, yeah, I was devastated because, again, it wasn't just my relationship with my wife that I lost. Like I lost my marriage, I lost my house, I lost my dog, like my income. I lost my friendship with my best man at my wedding. I lost my next best friendship after that, a few months later, because of a business falling out, and you know, I had lost my dad like a year and a half earlier as well. So there was definitely stuff to be depressed about and that definitely manifested in my life as a result.

Darren: 38:22

What do you think depression is?

Anti Prophet: 38:25

Hmm, that's a good question.

Anti Prophet: 38:29

For me, it was just being so sad to the point that it manifested itself physically that I, like I could feel like a physical pain, like in my chest and my hands, from just this I don't know the sense of loss, the sense of grief of having lost the life that I had known and that I was comfortable with and, as a result, completely losing my identity, like all of these things were what constituted my identity, because I didn't really have a strong identity at the time and that was a big reason why I let a lot of bad stuff happen to me, just because I didn't have an identity and, as a result, I didn't have strong boundaries. So I think, for me, the depression was just this inconsolable sadness that I couldn't really do anything with and just maybe super awkward in social situations, even just because, like, if I was going to be a psycho and try and like hide that from people and like actually convince them, like it really would require me being like a complete psycho because of how like fucking devastated I was and, as a result, when I interacted with people during that period of time, I think it was very clear that I was not doing well. So I don't know. I don't know if that answers your question. That's a good question. I've never really thought of that.

Anti Prophet: 39:50

What is depression?

Darren: 39:51

What do you think about like medication, like depression medication and pills and stuff.

Anti Prophet: 39:57

Sure, I think for people it could be a good thing to do for like a couple of months, while you kind of get a leg up. I think you can act as a useful step on a ladder to get you to where you're needing to go. But you know, I have my own podcast that I run with a psychologist by the name of Dr Katie Sterling. She's really, really great, and something that she said the other day was that medication is good to get that leg up but ultimately, if you never learn the coping skills to deal with whatever you need to deal with on your own, medication more times than not will become less and less useful to you unless you up and up the dose, which will also cause it to become less and less useful to you over time.

Anti Prophet: 40:45

So again, I really don't have any problem with medication. I've never taken SSRIs or anything like that myself, luckily, because I just didn't feel like I needed to, because I knew that what I was going through was just totally valid for me to feel the way that I did and I figured if I could get through that situation then I wouldn't need SSRIs and luckily I was right. All I needed was alcohol. Oh yeah.

Darren: 41:12

It sounds quite similar to therapy, right, because I saw a psychologist or therapist or whatever you want to call it before and I was like at the end of the day, you need to learn the tools and the frameworks that they give you. They literally give you frameworks. She's like when you're feeling I was really anxious and really stressed from work at the time I was working like 80 hours a week and it was like okay, when you feel agitated and when you feel crumpy or you might like fucking blow off the edge. This is how you approach it, this is your breathing techniques, this is how you document this and what you do. And then when I left those sessions, it was like okay, now you have two weeks to go and actually execute on it and if you need another meeting, set up another meeting If you don't move on.

Darren: 41:53

I think in the whole I did four sessions In. I think it's like eight weeks, four sessions. I actually remember distinctly because better help, actually you pay in that in those increments, and I was like all right, I'm not fucking cured, but at least I have some tools and frameworks, right, and I was always thinking about that and that's the kind of benefit of it. Whereas, like again, we go back to the voice of marketing. Voice of marketing will say depression is not real, medication doesn't work and therapy is not real. Right, because they're trying to get you into our fucking program.

Anti Prophet: 42:21

Yeah, sure, well, you know, I think the way that I approached therapy and I went to therapy for God, like probably four years or so same therapist, really great guy, really awesome guy. But I think at a certain point I started to have to treat it similar to how I treated violin lessons back in the day, which is, you know, if you're either teaching violin lessons or you're getting violin lessons, like just because you show up to your lesson once a week, doesn't mean that you're going to learn how to play the violin. Like you got to practice, you got to put in like two or three hours a day to like actually get really fucking good. And you know, if I'm showing up to my lessons with my teacher who's teaching me and I have to practice, like it's kind of like taking the SSRIs and doing no work or going to therapy and not doing any work, like it's just not, that's not how it works, that's not how you build the mental muscle that you need to build. And you know, I think the last thing that I'll say with that is, when it comes to professional violin, there always comes a point, I think, for most professionals, where having consistent lessons no longer becomes useful, because you kind of have to be your own artist. You have to be the person to choose your own fingerings, to choose the bowings that you're going to do in a certain passage, to like make your own decisions in terms of, like how to interpret a certain passage of what it is that you're trying to learn to perform in a few months. And that isn't to say that you never, that isn't to say that you stop learning, but that learning starts to come, like, from what you've built internally with all the tools that you've picked up from your teacher.

Anti Prophet: 44:00

And I think therapy is very, very similar, like, for me, for example, the last therapy session that I had. I just sat there kind of talking about that for an hour, how good my life was, and that was nice. But do I need to pay $140 to continue doing that? No, probably not. I think at this point I've probably developed enough muscles to get me to the next life crisis where I might be able to use some support from that same person. But if I was still religiously going to that same therapist, either once a week or once every two weeks or whatever, even if I didn't have problems, it would be an indication to me that I was holding on to something as more of like a safety blanket, rather than something to help me take a step up to get to the next place that I'm trying to go.

Darren: 44:44

You have to connect the safety wheels off at some point, right. And again it all goes back to personal responsibility. Like even in that instance where you were getting external help, you need to take more responsibility at some point. Just be like, all right, let's just go off and do this for myself, right? And it's low, diminishing margin returns. At a certain point you get negative returns from no matter what you're doing, basically Like training, for instance, like a backer in a bodybuilding, and like there's a lot of evidence to say that like you don't actually need to train six days a week. You could actually do five, even do four, and actually be as effective, if not more, because you're effective and you're efficient and not just volume oriented, right. So my backer was a bodybuilding, your backer was in violin. What lessons did you take from playing the violin that have benefited you in life?

Anti Prophet: 45:28

My ability to sit and do one thing and just do it without any signs of hope over the course of months and years. Fuck man. I was very much developed and sharpened as a result of violin. When it comes to learning the violin, violin is kind of a unique instrument because with piano you can sit down at a keyboard and press a note and it sounds pretty good, whereas with violin the first sound that you make on violin sounds like for about like three or four months.

Anti Prophet: 46:03

So there is a lot of discipline and kind of hoping to God that things will work out with violin. And for me, I started at age four and I didn't really get serious about the violin until I was 17. And especially when I started practicing three or four, sometimes eight hours a day at the age of 17, there's a lot of just being like, okay, I'm going to put in the work today, because even though I have no idea if this is going to pay off and I'm going to be able to play this piece of music in the next couple of months, because this piece of music is fucking hard I'm going to put in the work and I'm going to hope to God that this works, because if you just put in the work, everyone else seems to say that like shit works out. So I'm just going to kind of blindly put my faith in that, and violin was the first thing where I actually did that and it paid off and as a result of that, I was able to take that lesson into something like social media with anti-profit I mean again with anti-profit.

Anti Prophet: 46:58

For the first five or six months on YouTube I was like at 1300 followers I was getting like no results whatsoever and then all of a sudden it went from 1300 followers up to 300,000 in the course of a week and I think for a lot of people like getting that, they're like just so little results. While creating 14 videos a week that you release, a lot of people would do that over the course of five months and be like, okay, well, this isn't going to work, I should probably give up, but I think it's just because, like, I can show up and do the work and know that it's going to work out in the long run, even if I'm not seeing direct results today. That's the main thing that I learned from the violin.

Darren: 47:41

And man, five months is nothing if you think about it. Like we should be thinking on decade, long time, periods of time. With the violin, you started at a four. I know you took it seriously at 17, but at the end of the day you were playing it at somewhat throughout that period. So you're always like learning it's the gym right. When you get into a young. You're not a fucking bodybuilder when you're young, you just get into it and develop the skill and then it's just interesting when we observe it.

Darren: 48:03

Because you're saying like five months, I agree for most people they give up. But like, what do you plan to achieve in five months? Like genuinely like this, like of course a lot can change in that period of time. You can completely change your entire life but at the same time, like 10 to five months and extrapolate the five years, I think of where you can truly be like where you're going to be in a couple of years time.

Darren: 48:22

So my podcast has been around for nearly four years. First again year and a half, two years. I was super early in the content game, had like a thousand subscribers I just remembered this recently went from like 1000 to 10,000, about three months, and now we're at like I don't know, like 65 K or something, when we're not over the course of three and a half years. So it's not the fact that things change, it's the fact that you just get better at doing it and you understand the process more. But it's interesting like you had violin as a proxy to how difficult things can be. You think people don't have a reference point to how much you need to work.

Anti Prophet: 48:53

Yeah, absolutely. I think most people I mean most people as kids don't really have something that their parents are like no, motherfucker, you're going to do this and you're going to do it for like a decade and you're not going to stop.

Darren: 49:04

So why do you think that is? Because when I was younger I was into sport and my parents pushed me quite hard at it because I was fucking good at it and they were like this is something you could reliably do and I was doing it at a very high level. When I was a kid you had violin. But do you think now like fucking walk agenda, like participation trophies, is diluting that work ethic at a young age?

Anti Prophet: 49:26

It could be. I would say it has more to do with the fact that, you know, in Western society we think that the main goal of life is to be happy, and what usually comes immediately after being happy is like being comfortable and having pleasure in the moment. And when those two things start kind of being conflated together, it's very easy to look at your young child's taking up Muay Thai or taking up violin or taking up painting lessons and they're a year in and they're like mom, I hate this and being like well, you know, the goal of life is to be happy and he's clearly not happy doing these lessons. I should probably just take him out and you know, I just ultimately this is me talking is not having a child. So like what the fuck do I know about? Like parenting?

Anti Prophet: 50:18

But I think it's just people's tolerance in general for going through difficult experiences and putting their children through difficult experiences, because they know that those lessons will pay dividends in the future, even if the child does not become a violinist or a Muay Thai fighter their ability to put in that daily work and see how what did you call it? The asymmetric returns, asymmetrical Asymmetrical returns pay off over a long period of time. That, in and of itself, is one of the most valuable lessons that you can learn as a child and, as a result, I think that when I have a child, that is going to be one of the biggest things that I try and instill in them and, as a result, I'm going to push them to do something that's, even if they don't like it, on a week to week basis. That's, you know, by the end of it they'll be like damn. I'm really glad I did that.

Darren: 51:04

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Darren: 51:22

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Darren: 52:38

So I was a hundred meter sprinter as a kid as well and I didn't like it. I was really good at it, but I didn't like it as much as physical sport or when I was playing bodybuilding. But because I didn't like it, that doesn't mean that it wasn't beneficial. So I remember my mom in particular. She was like you're good at this, you got to keep doing it right and you get a lot of life lessons. I'll give you a good example.

Darren: 53:01

Like the winner is the person that comes first, not second, third and fourth right, and it's pretty fucking clear who the winner is. So when you win, you take responsibility. This was great. Now, when you lose which is most important you also take responsibility. It wasn't the coach, it wasn't your team, it wasn't the fucking crowd chanting, it's you. And that was something very hard to wrestle at at 14 years old. But then, as I got older, and especially in the online world, like you, can be pretty fucking ruthless. Right, there's winners and losers. As much as you want in a minute or not. That became a very valuable lesson for me, and I think a lot of people just don't have those instances. And when I see other guys one of my mates is here at the moment. He was semi-professional table tennis and he has a job, but I can see his work ethic from when he plays fucking table tennis as a kid. I don't know, it's interesting.

Anti Prophet: 53:49

Yeah, well, I think when you're in that situation where, even if you don't like something, you're good at it, it sets you up to actually identify when you are good at things in the future, because I think a lot of people just don't know how to identify whether or not they're competent at something.

Anti Prophet: 54:05

Because I think our inner machinery of our mindset is just always telling us that we fucking suck, which is just like it seems to be a human element to a certain degree. And when you're able to identify that and later on in life, when you have a better vocabulary about identifying what it is that you like to do, then you can take those two circles and find that third circle, which is what people are willing to pay you to do. And once you do that, that's the moment that your life actually starts to come together. But if you don't know how to identify whether or not you are competent at something, it doesn't matter what you like to do or what people are willing to pay you to do. It's just like you're probably going to remain incompetent, because that inner machinery is like oh dude, you fucking suck, and you're never able to get past it.

Darren: 54:48

And what's funny here is like that's kind of what the Western world, especially like in Ireland put you through the school system for it, right, it's like you have. They don't ask you, what do you want to do with your life. They ask you, what job do you want? Right, and they'll put you into university in America. We can talk about the school system in America, the way they pigeonize people in.

Darren: 55:04

So I did a variation of software engineering and I'm just lexic, right. So I didn't fucking clue what I was doing, obviously, and I just didn't enjoy it. It wasn't great. One of the tech companies and even though I was product focused, I just it didn't like fit. Well, it was a square picture of a circle hole and I was forcing that for so long, not because it was because I didn't have my own path. I was given a path and I took the path because I didn't think about it critically. A lot of people won't think about things critically like that and end up in those scenarios and then see your videos and fucking start putting hey, comments on it, right, versus taking responsibility for what they can control, right. So it's a full circle.

Anti Prophet: 55:43

I can empathize with them because, I mean, I was very much like you. I went into violin not liking the violin, but I was 10 years into trying to make this my career and before my marriage fell apart, all based on the direction life was going. I was going to continue being a violinist for a very, very long time, but I was trying to do so because, if I really look back at it, when I was 17 and made the choice that I wanted to be a violinist, it was a 180 degree turn from what I felt before. I fucking hated the violin before the age of 17. But then I went to a music festival by the name of the Aspen Music Festival in school, which was the first place where I went, and I really saw what young violinists who sound fucking dope sound like and how they were treated by their peers and treated by audiences. And I saw that and I was like, damn, I want that for myself. But I didn't want violin playing, I wanted the adoration and respect.

Anti Prophet: 56:36

And because I had spent so much time being a violinist, I think subconsciously my mind was just like, hey, this is the thing that's gonna get you the thing, even though you don't like it like do it and you'll get the stuff that you want. And as time went on, even though I was pretty good at it, I was never good enough compared to the other people that I was trying to really compete with. And on top of that, I didn't like it and, as a result, I looked at my income at the time I was probably making I think my best year was $52,000 in income. That was my best year as a violinist who had practiced for 25 years. That was my best year. And but is it any surprise? Like I didn't like the thing, I wasn't good enough compared to like everyone else and people don't want to fucking pay for violin because nobody cares, so like it seems like a lot to be honest, you didn't give it a chance.

Darren: 57:28

Yeah, yeah, Not even seem like a lot of you compared to, but again, you don't do it. You're not playing violin for the money, right? It's like I don't know. It's like running an ultramarathon to put on muscle. It's like that's not the reason why you fucking do it. It's not almost counterintuitive, right? Obviously there's the elite of the elite that make a lot of money, but that's the same in any industry, right? Do you get me? Yeah, yeah, no for sure. There's so much interesting places like this, so I want to maybe go into the content side of this. So you've, you know, you had an eye for attention, being able to grab attention through violin and what worked and whatnot. Why do you think what you've done in the content space works so well?

Anti Prophet: 58:09

Because I don't give people the product that they've been trained to want, which is polarization. I give people what it is that I think they're yearning for, which is a semblance of normalcy and sort of middle of the road thinking that, I think, is very much lacking in the media landscape at this point. I think people are tired of polarization, but they don't know how to get away from it. I think that's a big reason. Why moderate content is doing as well as it is on YouTube is because people are getting tired of the Mr Beastification where you do one thing at literally the craziest level that you can possibly do it in order to get eyeballs in front of it. It's becoming tired, it's becoming trite. People want something that, at the very least, seems to be more authentic and more of a reflection of how human beings actually think.

Darren: 59:15

That's why podcasting works so well, because you can't have a charade for 90 minutes right, it has to be ebb and flow, a push and pull Even speaking with the guys here I own a podcast company as well To grow in it is a reflection of what people are yearning for to your point. I think that, as the world has become automated and AI driven and whatnot, this human connection that people lack, and those are people who don't have right. This is why those groups were growing really well, because people are growing towards it. This long form stuff is like we can pretty much tell if someone's full of shit or not by the end of it, which is very interesting to observe. Now, of course, there's different ways to slice and dice it in a short form as a result of it, but it's a very interesting observation that that's a big part of my belief system is, as mornings become outsourced and whatnot, it'll be more time for artistic activities like this.

Anti Prophet: 1:00:10

Yeah, yeah, it could be. I think I don't know if I maybe had to add one additional thing to what I was saying earlier. I think I'll never say that my brand espouses the truth about anything. I think the biggest reason people gravitate towards my content is not because I have the truth and I'm giving them the truth. It's because I'm demonstrating the messiness of trying to pursue the truth as well.

Anti Prophet: 1:00:41

A number of my opinions flip flop from week to week, month to month, once I find new information about a certain thing. I was more protate at the beginning of me posting than I have become recently because I was just sitting down and going through the court documents and the evidence that is there to support the case that he is infected Human trafficker seems to be there, seems to exist. If I came across that evidence and still doubled down being like oh, tate is innocent, like 100% this is what I believe. Anyone who believes otherwise is a bot. Because I was worried about being inconsistent and being viewed as someone who flip flops their arguments, then I don't know. I think people would immediately be able to suss that out and be like, oh, this guy's kind of full of shit, whereas I think the willingness to kind of demonstrate the messiness of trying to pursue truth as much as you can, even if you get it wrong. I think that's maybe the only other thing that I would add to what it is that people appreciate my content for.

Darren: 1:01:49

Very interesting man, because the way you're quite fluid with your thoughts and your ideas. So actually people are one of the high way interviewers as well, because I don't have a hard stance like a real set and so on. Hard stance on a lot of things. It's like for one reason I don't live in the West, because I'm not heard this or heard that. I'd like to be quite fluid and I like the interview to get people's opinions as a result. This should be evident in how many interviews I've done. But why do you think that people are entrenched in those views? Because the criticism is that the left are super on the left in America and the walk ideology and the right then are entrenched in their right. They apparently understand some on the left side. It's what I hear. But why do you think people are not willing to change? And also, why the fuck is this even going on? I always think about this stuff. Why is this even a thing? Surely we should be focusing on bigger issues versus who's right.

Anti Prophet: 1:02:44

I would say because people have realized that polarization pays and, unfortunately, anyone who creates any news whatsoever is incentivized to create content for the purpose of making money. There's no way for anyone to disseminate information in any meaningful way unless they are incentivized to do so through money. If money is your main motivation to do so, then it pays a lot more for you to go and do that in the flashiest way possible, because you get more eyeballs in front of what it is that you're doing, because you're making a splash as a result that attracts more investors and more ad dollars that people can spend in front of your content because they know you have the eyeballs. As a result, again, it's almost the Mr Beastification of news. It pays to be polarizing.

Darren: 1:03:33

How come yours has grown so much as a result? What's the trigger? There Is it. Are you also polarizing, maybe in your titles and whatnot that bring in the attention, but not actually delivering on that message I'm trying to say.

Anti Prophet: 1:03:48

Yeah, I think part of the reason why people click on my content in the first place is because I pull a bait and switch on people a lot of the time. For example, I have a video that's literally entitled women are full of shit. Obviously, you come across that title or you hear me say the first sentence of that video and you're like what the fuck? You might be like what the fuck? This guy is the greatest thing I've ever heard. Or you might say what the fuck? This is like the most sexist thing I've ever heard.

Anti Prophet: 1:04:16

But then the second sentence that comes out of my mouth is I think the script was women are full of shit. But the truth is men are just as full of shit as women. Then the whole point of the video is basically like hey, we're both equally full of shit. The whole idea is basically to learn how to work together and create a better future for the next generation. That's kind of what I mean by bait and switch. I know how to present things in a polarizing way at the beginning to get you really fucking angry with me and then give you a more moderated message that you have been kind of yearning for in the media landscape, because it just doesn't really exist, because that's not the game people are playing. I use a little bit of the marketing tactics that everyone else uses, but I try and give something to people that they miss.

Darren: 1:05:05

That's very interesting. So you just understand the frameworks and tools and tactics basically to get people in, but then you are very careful with your messaging, deliberately, because you're often just more highlighting stuff. Is that correct Versus like really saying this is my opinion.

Anti Prophet: 1:05:19

Sure, yeah, I very rarely go down the opinion hall. I do it every so often, but most of the time I try and leave people with an interesting question that they can ask themselves. I don't care how they answer the question, it's kind of beside the point. I just want them to ask the question of themselves, to critique whatever it is that they either believe about the worldview not either believe but for them to question the thing that they believe about the worldview so that if they poke holes in it and they realize that it doesn't hold water, they can move on to something else that serves them better, or they try and poke holes in it and they find that it serves them pretty well. As a result, they keep it around. That's what I want to do for people.

Darren: 1:06:00

It kind of goes back to the comfort element, because there are a lot of people in the West don't have anything better to be doing because they do have a pretty decent standard of living. Then they're looking at this stuff and they're literally looking to be pissed off. Versus in the East. Here there's none of that shit going on. There's not the same level of intensity, whether it's around being like woke or anything. That's very controversial in the West, it just doesn't show up here as much yeah.

Anti Prophet: 1:06:25

What do you think that is, though? I think most of the problems that we have in the West are issues of affluence. I think if you're out in the rice field harvesting your rice eight hours a day, you don't have time to think about whether or not a guy cutting off his dick actually counts as a girl. You have real problems that you're trying to deal with on a daily basis, whereas in the no-transcript, we've automated so much of our lives that we have basically solved all of our problems to a certain extent, and as a result of that, we've gotten so bored that we've created problems for ourselves.

Anti Prophet: 1:07:01

Dostoevsky has a really great line from notes from underground, which is one of his novels, and I'm going to bastardize the quote, but it's essentially that man will burn down his entire world, even if everything is working well, simply because he doesn't want to sit in silence, something like that, and I think there's a lot of truth to that.

Anti Prophet: 1:07:21

I think that there's something in our inner voice, in our programming, that is just always super critical of who we are as people, as well as the world around us, and I think that has worked very much to our benefit. It's the reason why we have looked into the outer world and been like this is not exactly the way that I want things to be. So let me create the outer world in my image, which has created modern civilization and brought us from killing each other with animal bones to putting neural link in the back of our head, all within a few thousand years. That's fucking insane. But there's another side to that, which is we've solved all of the problems that meaningfully affect us in terms of our life expectancy, our ability to be happy if we want to. But because we've solved all of these things, we're going to create problems for ourselves and again have a major debate with billions and billions and billions of dollars spent on whether or not, like a guy, cutting off his dick counts as a woman. Like who cares, Literally.

Darren: 1:08:25

Literally. It's just the fact that you can't even say anymore that, oh, we have other problems to focus on because they're all been solved. It's just creating problems around. It's funny you mentioned that because I want to reference a person. But a pretty famous guy online was saying that he's family struggled with money when they're growing up, whatever. And then when he became very wealthy early in his twenties, he was able to solve a lot of the problems that his mother had. So yet she got her house, she got her home and they ended up having a very fractured relationship because before, when she used to blame not having money, now she has access to money and it's all the. Everything else has left. Money solves many problems and then everything else is left.

Anti Prophet: 1:09:04

This is Eman Gatsi yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember him talking about this piece of short form that I came across.

Darren: 1:09:10

Yeah, I thought it was very interesting to observe. Right, when you give someone everything, they just focus on some other stuff, and I see that even myself. Right, it's like when you, even when you're in Bali, a lot of your problems are people, people, a lot of people come to Bali to solve their problems, right, and I've had crazy discussions with people on this is that they think, coming, that this is going to be the solution to their problems, the external world. Then you come here and like your food is cheap, it's sunny, it's a great place to be, but then you're still sitting with all the other problems you have, which is very interesting to observe, and I actually even noticed that myself, like in the very early days. Like a lot of people are lost, including myself, and you have to figure out what you want, then for some people it's a driving factor to go and solve it, but for some other people then it's a coping mechanism.

Anti Prophet: 1:09:54

Yeah, sure, I think Bali is a magnet for the mentally ill. For sure it's like a lot of fucking crazy people coming here thinking that it's going to solve their problems, because I think a lot of people saw Epray Love and they were like that could be me. But again, I say that jokingly because I can empathize with it. I think coming to Bali solved a lot of problems that I had in my life.

Anti Prophet: 1:10:14

At that time I wasn't making money in any reasonable way. I wanted to be able to travel the world and kind of, in a certain way, like live remotely or at least leave the United States because of, like, what I thought that would do for my reputation with my friend, grew back at home and once I got the job here to come and do both of those things, I was like life is solved. This is fucking great and I continue to be an alcoholic and it's kind of to your point. It's just regardless of whether or not you get the money or the status. If you haven't dealt with the shit in here that you need to deal with, the same problems are going to manifest in your life in different ways.

Darren: 1:10:48

I love that. So you mentioned about automation. I saw some videos you've recorded on AI. What's your take on that from even like an like let's say like an ethics perspective? So these companies using it like. What's your view on that going forward and how it's going to be used?

Anti Prophet: 1:11:05

I almost have like an, an, a ethical take on it. It's just it's going to happen. So, you know, I came across a pretty interesting video the other day from a member of parliament in Singapore I think that's the correct term. I don't know if they have a parliament, I don't know what their governmental body is, but one of their members of government got up and made a speech and was just like hey, like AI is coming. Everyone knows AI is coming. As a result, like the majority of like the workforce is going to be like jobless within you know, 15 years or so. So what we're going to do is we're going to create a government program that allows people 40 years and older to become reeducated free of charge by giving them basically free access to like another four year degree and something that's more profitable. I think that's certainly a useful proposition for a government like Singapore, who has like a very small populace. Very wealthy country is able to do that. Do I think that something like that is going to work in China or work in the United States? It's like 300, 400 million people, probably not.

Anti Prophet: 1:12:06

I think Andrew Yang had a pretty interesting take on this, you know, a couple of years ago when he was harping about this. He was like a couple of years ago when he was harping about this in the 2016 campaign, talking about the automation of trucks and the loss of truck driver jobs. Like you can't really go to like a 45 year old truck driver and be like, oh well, it's going to be fine, you can just learn to code. 100% Not really how it works. So I don't really have much many thoughts around whether or not it's ethical. It's just going to happen and it's going to displace a lot of people out of their jobs, potentially even me, who knows.

Darren: 1:12:41

Well, but the thing is that you will pivot and you will take the lessons and bring it elsewhere or incorporate it into your business, like we've incorporated a ton into our business. So we're a small team. That is actually kind of when we say we're like we only have like five full time now and people are like oh, I thought you have a lot more employees, but it's like no, like we're able to use automation and AI to improve a lot of our processes and systems and we were just very focal in that right, being like okay, we need to use this and operate within it and use their assistance and, as a result, obviously things can change in a life edge, but you just take the lessons and keep on moving forward. Now, funny, you mentioned Andrew Nyang, because my company works closely with him in an indirect way, but I've had a lot of interactions with his work as a result. Cool, and I think what's interesting here is just the fact that there's always going to be a populace of people like hopefully, like you and me that will want to learn and move forward with the times, with it Right, and then, while this is happening because it is obviously happening you have the other population of people who are ignorant or just don't give a fuck, right, and they're going to end up in that bracket of, just like I didn't give a fuck, gave me the stimulus check, I have my hand out, why is no one helping me?

Darren: 1:13:48

And I just see that with all different instances. Right, it doesn't have to be with AI. Just COVID was a great example of that. Right, there was some people who capitalized on it, built businesses, like you know, killed in the e-commerce space because everything was, you know, being delivered. I didn't, but I know my people that did. But I just think there's always going to be those people that rise to the top during these instances and just care enough to move with the times.

Anti Prophet: 1:14:12

Right, yeah, well, you know, this conversation is actually scaring me into using more AI. I'm like fuck, I should probably do more research on AI, for sure. But you know, because, again, I think, based on my past track record, I've demonstrated to myself that I do a pretty good job of adapting to whatever you know is happening in life and being a realist around things, rather than trying to avoid things or just ignore things altogether. But yeah, having this conversation is making me think that I want to integrate more AI into my business model.

Darren: 1:14:44

It's just interesting, right, because, like you know, you mentioned like it depends where you are right. So, if you're, again, let's use a fair, amazing example of people that are farming like rice, right, like rice in rice fields, like they don't have access to the same harvesters that you do in the US, so on and so forth. So they're at that kind of stage whereby it's manual labor as a result, but when you're able to replace one with the tractor, it's much more effective. And then, with you know, different types of machines or whatever you're going to use. So I kind of like view it from that kind of lens. And then there's also ways to like improve where you currently are with what you have and make it better, right, and I know some guys that are very extreme with it.

Darren: 1:15:20

Like I met Arlen more recently. He spent a bit of time here and you know he got rid of like a 17 man team and he's like fully solar panel now and just using AI and automation for everything, and I'm like that's great for you, it works for your business model and so on, but for us it didn't work as effective. But it's like there's lessons in all of it, you know, and you know you may have seen Sora or Sora sort of called recently. People are like, oh, it's going to completely transform like complete media, but I'm like we still need to integrate it and then roll it out Like. I'll give you an example for you your scripts, right? You mentioned about how you write your scripts and so on. It can obviously help you and assist you in the script, but it won't replace your creative act and doing it and putting it up and recording it and so on and so forth. So everything is more of an efficient way to view a lot of aspects of life, right.

Anti Prophet: 1:16:04

Yeah, certainly right now.

Anti Prophet: 1:16:06

You know, I think the thing that I've noticed with AI or anything like software related is this is not how my brain works and it's not what I'm interested in, so learning how to do these things is going to be like almost a waste of time for me.

Anti Prophet: 1:16:21

However, I understand that I need to integrate some elements into what it is that I'm doing, and the thing that I am good at is identifying talent around me that can then utilize the existing systems inside of AI in order to expedite my workflow, and then being willing to pay them what they're worth in order for them to implement these aspects into my business, and that's something that I've been doing. It's a major project that I've hired a consultant and freelancer to come in and do over the last couple of months with my current sales funnel building out a CRM that integrates a lot of AI into it and that type of thing. So I think, if you're the type of person who is seeing the AI wave coming and it stresses you out and you don't really know much about software, like me, just get good at identifying talent to people who know about AI and can implement it into your life in a way that saves you from the wave.

Darren: 1:17:17

And again, you pay with your timer. You pay with your water at the end of the day, but what's it? Why has it been booming? So much, though, is this the fact that it's for anyone to use, right? If you compared it to crypto and blockchain and shit, which I was back in like 2015, 24, even it was really kicking up. It was just so difficult to use that that's why no one was really using it, because it just even to this day, a lot of the wallet stuff is just not really related on a very normal language, whereas, like an open AI, just where anyone can type, like fucking Google into this and get the answer that they want and that's when it made it basically anyone could use it, so that was kind of like.

Darren: 1:17:54

The difference was the fact that, like, anyone can use AI, but even if you compare it still to some blockchain applications, people just can't use them, and it's just so nerdy and geeky, right, whereas going zero to one is often going to get you the most adoption. That's why people can watch your videos and instantly learn, right, because it's fucking right in front of them. I think it's digging us. Look at it. It's super simple. Very interesting, man. So what's your roadmap for next? Like 12, 24 months.

Anti Prophet: 1:18:23

So, again, one of my big critiques of the creator economy is that there are a lot of shady people doing a bunch of shady shit in terms of taking advantage of their audiences. So something that I've wanted to do and I'm currently developing, is a community that teaches you how to make money online, but specifically in the thing that I am good at, which is social media, and it's projected right now that the creator economy is going to triple between now and the year 2030, I think somewhere like that and as a result of that, I think the people who are going to make the most money from that are not, in terms of like, the majority of people who are going to make the most money from that are not going to be able to make money from that, are not going to be the content creators themselves. It's going to be the people who sell them the shovels. So if you are someone who can utilize AI to expedite a creator's content creation or sales funnel, you're going to make money. If you're someone who is really great at video editing, you're going to make money. If you're someone who is really good at hiring talent and managing high ticket sales for content creators when they build out their own offers, you're going to make money and I think, as a result, these are the things that we're going to be teaching inside of this community. But the thing that I want to integrate into this, more than just teaching people how to make money, is, in my mind, if enough people join this type of thing and with this wave of incoming creators that are going to turn 18 and fulfill their lifelong dream of being an influencer rather than being a doctor because it seems like most kids want to be influencers at this point rather than doctors If the wave of people who are going to be supporting these creators hold themselves to an ethical standard where they don't allow the creators to create these shitty products that scam people, because they literally won't build out the infrastructure necessary that allows them to scam people, that, in my mind, is something that would make the influencer and creator economy a place where people like to do business again, like they did five or six years ago, whereas now everyone is so skeptical of buying any products from any influencers because and rightfully so because they've been fucking burned.

Anti Prophet: 1:20:47

And I think if 100,000 people were supporting these creators and being like no, I'm not going to build out this product, that isn't going to work, because it's obvious that it's not going to work because you don't have the expertise to actually give these people the desired outcome that they want. If everyone is operating at that ethical standard, I think that's the way that trust can be brought back into the creator economy. So it's going to teach people how to make money in the areas that I'm actually skilled in. It's going to teach them to behave professionally and ethically in order to support the economy as a whole, and then there's also going to be a workout module, as well as dating and relationships module as well. So it's going to be pretty cool. That's going to be the main thing that I'm trying to get off the ground in the next couple of months. Cool man, I love that.

Darren: 1:21:34

Yeah, just from my experience as well, the amount of shit that I see online is actually worrying like that, like the products that we've been built. I met someone recently who's basically faking supplements like fake supplements and selling them to red pill community people to increase your testosterone, and it's all fake. Yeah, it's completely fake.

Anti Prophet: 1:21:52

That's really sad.

Darren: 1:21:53

And it is sad, and the fact that people are doing it to prey on people who they call soy boys. Right, it's just like it's where the world is going to go to. So I think, even like the way you're describing it, a platform that regulated the products in the back end. It sounds like a good idea. Right, it's what you mean a platform that was able to understand what is absolutely faking bullshit or not, right? But, man, I want to say a massive thank you. I really appreciate it. I hope you enjoyed the session too. It was a different style I definitely did.

Anti Prophet: 1:22:20

Thanks for having me Pleasure man.