Nothing But Anarchy
"Nothing But Anarchy" hosted by Chad Sanders explores and subverts sports, media, Hollywood, and culture. Chad's vulnerable and raw commentary creates a fresh podcast experience you don't want to miss. Tune in Tuesdays and Thursdays at 12PM ET on Youtube Live.
Subscribe to the "Nothing But Anarchy" Youtube channel for full interviews and more anarchy!
Game analysis, social commentary, and music.
Instagram: @chadsand
Executive Producer: Chad Sanders
Producer: Morgan Williams
Music: Marcus Williams
Nothing But Anarchy
Eps. #93 Dissecting "Poor Things" & Feminist Cinema Made By a Man, Kate Middleton & Trusting the Internet, and Liking Yourself Before You Self Promote
In this episode, Chad recaps his thoughts on the Oscar nominated "Poor Things" and his feelings on it being a powerful feminist movie that was directed by a man, then he talks about how the craze over the edited picture of Kate Middleton and her family is what the future holds for us in the age of AI, and lastly discusses his realizations on how liking yourself is an important feeling to have before you start self promoting.
Tune in Tuesdays and Thursdays at 12PM ET to watch the show live on Youtube. Follow @chadsand on Instagram and subscribe to the Nothing But Anarchy Youtube channel for full interviews and more anarchy!
Executive Produced by: Chad Sanders
Produced by: Morgan Williams
Alright, welcome to nothing. Band or key. All right, let's get right into it. So let's start here. Morgan Sean is your mic on.
Speaker 2:Hear me.
Speaker 1:Yes, okay, morgan Trons voice is raspy. She was in Austin for the last how many days. I was there for two days she was in Austin for South by Southwest. Okay, let's start with Morgan. How was South by Southwest? Do not say anything boring. Tell me how many drinks you consumed, how late were you up each night and are you tired?
Speaker 2:I'm very tired. It was really fun. It was my first South by. I worked the entire day on Sunday and then consumed drinks, so there's not really much to say there. I was just at this like tech thing and then on Saturday I flew in. I was too early to check into my hotel so I looked at what was happening and I saw that the hacks screening for season three premiere was like happening in perfect timing. I had enough time to like get there. I was like, oh sick Cause. Like have you watched hacks?
Speaker 1:I have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that show.
Speaker 1:Word.
Speaker 2:And I, so I got there. The whole cast was there. They did like a little panel afterwards and I don't know it was fun. It's weird to watch a comedy in a crowd yeah, because people laugh for a long time. Then you miss the dialogue. I hated that. I actually was really irritated at one point and I wanted to like not watch it in this large group of people because you were missing the dialogue. But then after that I got food. Yeah, it was, it was a, it was a work trip, but like Saturday or Sunday was really fun. After I consumed drinks.
Speaker 1:Okay, um, what kind of drinks did you consume?
Speaker 2:Um, I had a Yeager bomb.
Speaker 1:Oh my God. Okay, here we go. This is, this is what we were looking for.
Speaker 2:Morgan, I've had a really long time. Um, and it's so disgusting. Who bought a Yeager? Did you order your own Yeager bomb? No because the videographers I work with. Like one of them loves Yeager, for whatever reason. Okay, so it was his idea, but um, but yeah, and then, oh, okay, sorry, I also went to this thing called Black Future House, which they had a bunch of panels, okay, it was pretty like was it fun. It was really fun, but it was like it was a lot of like standing.
Speaker 2:I was standing for I felt like 48 hours.
Speaker 1:Okay, scale of one to 10. How much fun was it. 10 is the time of your life.
Speaker 2:I would say like a seven.
Speaker 1:Okay, six or seven.
Speaker 2:Um, I think like if I had an extra day there where I wasn't working, it could have been like more fun, but it was pretty quick.
Speaker 1:All right, okay, thank you, morgan. That was our uh South by Southwest correspondent Morgatron. So, um, all right, let's talk about. There's some things to talk about here, but actually one just came up. So, before we even get into the docket here, we've changed the structure of the show a little bit to make the show, uh, to give the show a little bit more air space for us to um, explore topics and and like not have to rush through to the next bullet item. So just give me some space here.
Speaker 1:So I finished watching poor things last night and several people have recommended poor things to me as a movie that they thought I mean first, just as a movie that they loved on their own, and then also as a movie that they thought I specifically would like. Um, people who are close to me are aware of my persnickety, uh consume media consumption habits. Like if something looks bad to me or like I'm not interested in it, from a trailer, from the marketing, from whatever, like I will not even go near it. Uh, like American fiction. But Morgan has given me strict laws around what I how much time I can spend talking about American fiction today, so I will not say anything else about that. The point is just this when people tell me you must watch this, I take that seriously because, um, because they know if, if they tell me to watch something and I don't like it, I will be annoyed by that and I will like someone, um, who I'm quite close to recently said to me that she was surprised I don't know if the word is surprised and I don't want to paraphrase, I don't want to fuck it up but basically she was saying for somebody who is who I think of as having good taste in movies um, you don't watch a lot of movies. Good taste in television you don't watch a lot of television, and I think that. I think that there is a part of acquiring taste that is trying a lot of things and figuring out what you like and what's good. But I also think there's a part of acquiring taste that is not overly exposing yourself to too much stuff that's not that good, that is to say, and I think that goes for music, I think it goes for design, I think it goes for movies, I think it goes for people, I think it goes for pretty much everything, and we're going to get into this a little more throughout this episode, like, if you will accept mediocrity as something to give two hours of your time to. That is going to affect your palette for what you will consume. Um, more on that. But first, poor things. Here's what I think the movie was about.
Speaker 1:Sorry, there's going to be hella spoilers in this. Yeah, morgan, it's a show. Okay, oh, my God, it's a show. The movie came out like three months ago. Like Morgan, I'm sorry. Okay, you want to cover your ears, morgan?
Speaker 2:No, it's fine, so I'm going to spoil part of it.
Speaker 1:I mean, here's the thing about it, and this is this movie is special in this way, no matter what I tell you about this move. And, by the way, for the people who recommended that I watch this movie, I thought it was. I'm glad I watched it. That's the best way for me to describe it. I'm glad I watched it. It showed me something new, something fresh, something interesting. Set design incredible.
Speaker 1:Emma Stone's performance really interesting, really good, although I will say I heard this on someone else's show, so I don't want to pretend like I came up with this. Take, um, when we say somebody was brave in their performance, did I already say this last episode, which is what people are calling Emma Stone's performance in that movie, that it was brave? That is coding, for this person got butt, ass naked 100 times in the movie. That's all. That's all it means, like. That's what it means. She got naked, she had a lot of sex, it was convincing, you believed it. It was also like, um, it was unpolished sex, which is to say it wasn't like a uh, it wasn't like some overly done trying to be artistic version of sex. It was like raw, grunting fucking, like that's what it was. So, and I do think it was a brave performance. But I just want that. I just want to point out that when we say someone was brave in their performance, that's what we mean Male or female or otherwise. Like that they showed their genitals.
Speaker 1:Other things about the movie premise I'm giving like, if you all don't want to hear this, I'm sorry. Like the movies out, it won an Oscar already, like it happened. Okay, it's on Hulu. Here's the premise. And again, no matter what I tell you about this movie, you're still like the way that it looks and it moves and the pace and the shots. There's some really crazy shots, like through keyholes and like just you don't know what's around the corner in this movie at all and that's that's what makes it very, very cool and very special.
Speaker 1:But the premise is that a woman has an adult woman has the brain of a baby implanted into her skull. She has a it's like a full on brain switch, like, and the reason why is because that woman committed suicide and we don't know why. And the movie, and as the movie plays out in a stone, this woman, we watch her evolve from having the brain of a baby into having the brain of an adult woman, as she comes to learn how people, and specifically women, are treated in society and she approaches each one of those interactions, each one of those moments of learning, with childlike naivety, which also means she has childlike wisdom, which is to say she's like she's not in an overly reactive way, but like she's just curious and perplexed how it can be that this is how we treat women. Basically, that's the movie. Okay, and I think what the movie is meaning to say is that the way that we treat women is unprincipled and it is restrictive of the human spirit and in that restriction, it is also causing damage to men. Now, I think, keeping it a bucko, I think most of the people who recommended this movie to me, in fact maybe all of the people who recommended this movie to me. That concludes my summary of the movie.
Speaker 1:Now begins my take. I think everyone who recommended that I watch this film was a woman. And as I watched the film because this is how art works and there's no fucking way around it as I watched, it took me like four sittings to watch this movie. Okay, and that's just because of my own limitations of attention span in this moment in my life right now Got a lot of shit going on and I gotta watch a lot of basketball games, okay. So I finished the movie last night in my bed and I literally couldn't even like I didn't even want to try to like have an immediate take. I needed to process.
Speaker 1:But while I watched the movie, I watched it through a lens of. I mean, it's right there in the movie, it's right in your face. There is a feminist point of view in the movie, but I also watched it through the lens of. This is a feminist point of view that has been approved, as I see it, by women who I believe to be feminists like, by women who I believe to be, like, real feminists, not performative feminists, and by women who I believe have points of view that are refined. So I'm watching it and I'm seeing it through that lens, but within the first sitting, voice crack.
Speaker 1:Within the first sitting, I had to know did a man or a woman make this movie? And in coming to know that information, I learned that a man made it, which was also evident at the Oscars because he was there. And when I say make it, who was the filmmaker, director? There was also a message that was pushed out in the marketing of this film, which was that Emma Stone had, you know, script approvals and or and or feedback and input, whatever, whatever, whatever. But like it's my take, this is how. This is how I receive the world. I could not a know that, despite the message of femininity, feminism, feminism in the film, a dude made this film, and this is just me. I like to eat Jamaican food made by Jamaicans. I like to eat Italian food made by Italians. I cannot feel completely aligned in how I receive this movie and its message, while knowing that a man stood behind the pin Every frame, every editing decision, every choice of dialogue, every movement and, ultimately, the sequence and the finality of how it ends and what is said in its ending.
Speaker 1:I can't saw another movie that was way worse than this movie a few years ago, literally called Men okay, and it was supposed to be this. Like it was actually supposed to be what this movie was. It was supposed to be like this surrealist, interesting shot in the British countryside movie about a woman who is stuck alone in a town that basically just only has men in it and it turns out and it becomes creepy and gross and murderous and just like it's just a terrible fucking movie. But it was supposed to be saying something profound about the dirtiness of men and the society that men have basically ruled over. This movie did so much better than that movie, with subtlety and poetry and visuals and the spirit and like enormity of the protagonist woman, which was Emma Stone, but I just couldn't get that shit out of my head. And I can't get that out of my head. And while watching Emma Stone go and take her Oscar for her performance in this movie and thanking that dude for the character that she portrayed in the movie the best gift she's ever received, as she put it I couldn't. I still to this moment and hopefully actually maybe somebody who has a point of view on this who can tell me how to reconcile these things. And I can't really fall in love with any movie about black people made by a white person. I restrict my love. It will not have it and, yeah, I think I feel the same right here, but I really liked it. It's really cool.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's play music, and that was not even on the docket, so when we come back, we will begin with the show's programming. All right, morgan had takes on that. There's no backtracking, and so we will move along, but I'm glad that there were takes out of that segment, because that means there will be takes in the audience, takes online, okay. So after I turned off the movie last night, I was, I was lounging and I have become, in my grizzled age, quite good at lounging. That is like one of my core skill sets right now. I had a candle, I had the temperature in my room, just perfect. My dog was away in her pen sleeping she is very additive to the lounging experience and I was laying around watching basketball game Celtics, trailblazers maybe and I was perusing the internet.
Speaker 1:I was perusing when I said perusing internet. All right, this is where I go for show ideas, unless they come to me, as they often do, via like clips and shares from my friends and other people, whatever, who send them. Funny that, like I've said this before, but like people start, people like to send them on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, which I appreciate I will go to Reddit and I will just see what's on the front page of Reddit. I will go to Reddit, mba, and I'll see what's going on there. And then I will go to Twitter and just I can't, I cannot bear to read y'all's tweets, so I just click the the little search thing, not y'all specifically, but the tweets. I click the search thing and it tells me what's trending in my algorithm and last night what I saw there was Kate Middleton was trending. There was like 100,000 tweets in my tweetosphere and how I process that information was Kate Middleton. Okay, I know that name, but who is that?
Speaker 2:You told me previously you're like not into the Royals.
Speaker 1:I am not into the Royals and that's where I'm going there. Okay, kate Middleton, is that Kate Upton? And then I thought, no, that's not Kate Upton. Kate Middleton, is it Kate Hudson? No, it's not Kate Hudson. But I kind of got stuck in the Kate Hudson ish face of it all, because I do think there's a Kate Hudson ish face here, like a sort of plain, pointy white woman. Vibe, I'm not, you're not so missing any of it ish variants.
Speaker 1:I clicked one of the tweets and it said something like you know what, I can't even the tweets about this person who I hadn't yet put together who it was. They were so confusing and like postmodern that I couldn't my brain couldn't, even it still couldn't calculate who is Kate Middleton. So I stopped looking cause I was like this is fake If meaning, like I can't feign to have interest in this, but I don't even know who this person is and I don't understand these tweets. So I moved on, go to sleep. Wake up, me and Morgan are trying to. We're texting back and forth, trying to figure out what's gonna go on today's docket. My sister G chats me and she says are you something like? Are you aware of what's going on with the princess, and it still doesn't click. I'm like the princess, the princess. I'm like, first of all, this is my American sister, my actual sister, telling me about something going on with a princess. And I'm like, who is the princess? Is it a Disney princess? Is there a controversy around like is there gonna be a new Disney movie with a princess in it? And people are mad about what race the princess is Like. I don't know what she means, but then it clicks and I'm like, oh, kate Middleton the princess. Like these two things go together. So Kate Middleton for anyone who doesn't know, which is probably nobody is the wife of the prince in England.
Speaker 1:This sounds, by the way, this sounds so stupid. This sounds so stupid Like she's the wife of a prince. What year is it? Okay, but that's fine. She's the wife of a prince, which makes her a princess. A fucking princess, guys. This is ridiculous. A princess, okay. So this is always not funny, okay, but the premise is absurd. But there's a fucking princess, okay, but a real one. Not like a movie one, but like a real one. So this part's not funny. So let me look very solemn.
Speaker 3:The princess is gone. The princess is gone.
Speaker 1:The princess is gone, missing Literally. I don't know if she's missing.
Speaker 2:Well, okay, you're right, you're right, you're right.
Speaker 1:Okay so, morgan is going to hold me accountable to the journalistic integrity here. I'm gonna say what I think has happened, just based on the news. Okay, so she was missing. Right, she was missing. I don't think people had seen her in the public eye.
Speaker 2:They hadn't seen her in the public eye.
Speaker 1:Okay, which I translate as she's missing. Then the people wanted to see her in the public eye and so what was rolled out was a photo of her with her three children. These people look so beautiful. These people look so profoundly white that it looks like this photo was taken on another planet. They're clear, no, but that's fine. You guys, you know what I'm saying. I'm just pointing out, I'm telling you all what the photo looks like, and she is wrapped around her three children.
Speaker 1:But, as it was shown and brought to my attention, it appears that there has been some technological doctoring to the photo.
Speaker 1:She was basically like photo shopped into the photo, or that photo was generated with some sort of artificial intelligence. It's what it looks like. You can tell by the sort of coiled, twisted up fingers on the hand of one of the children, even though, as I looked at that part of the photo, like kids do weird stuff with their hands and shit like that, whatever. But if you're facing the photo, that's for the kid on your far left, the little boy, but also the daughter in the photo. If you zoom in closely to one of her hands, you will see that the sleeve on her shirt is a skew or a shoe, whatever, a skew. A skew In a way that portrays that this photo was somehow doctored, like who's to say exactly how, only so many people probably even know, but it suggests that, like something was amiss here and then, and then the family took account I'm sorry, not the family, but in a written statement, right, kate Middleton you guys, not Kate Upton confirmed and apologized for putting out this doctored photo.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she was like I was messing around with editing, which, yeah, a lot of people were like that sounds sus, yeah.
Speaker 1:The princess guys was messing around with editing. The princess y'all. If I were a princess, you would never see me touching any sort of thing that regards editing. But that's fine, a princess. So all right. Here are the questions that this brings to mind for me. For me started off here. One, there's two, there's two, and I'm going to tell you what they both are, and then I would get into each one of them. One is and I don't mean this in a judgmental way I'm really going to explore it, okay, so give me some leeway here. Why do we care about this? That's number one. What's in there? Morgan? Morgan just held the whole of her coffee up to her eye.
Speaker 3:What's going on with it?
Speaker 1:I can't see how much, you're left, okay, like a pirate looking down the tube of a telescope. Okay, and two, what? And this one is really what's bubbling around this conversation and around this, like this news item. What does this mean for the future of the internet? This is a big one, apparently, y'all. This is like if the royal family is putting out doctored photos that we can tell are doctored, because not only because our eye is looking for it, but also because there are technological, you know, detectives, so to speak, who are aware of how to look for these things. This could change a lot for how we receive the internet. So that's the second one. I think it's more important, so I'll get to it.
Speaker 1:Let me start with the first one. I'm going to point out an irony here and it again is non-judgmental, because I fall into this same bracket For a society ours, that spends as much time as it does complaining about how overworked and tired and lacking of time as we are. Let me say it differently as much as we complain about being overworked and not having time, we always find time for something like this. We always have time to make a trending. Kate Middleton, the princess, has put out a doctored photo which, to my eye. I cannot understand the real-life implications outside of what we're going to get into an item too, but let's just the social, emotional, familial implications. I cannot make that what's happened there connect to my actual life, as I am here all the way over, here in this other country where I don't care about, like the monarch, the monarchy I also want to say this is not for lack of proximity or worldliness on my part. I'm just going to be honest with you guys. I used to live a 10-minute walk from Buckingham Palace. Okay, when I was there, I couldn't find a way to get myself to care about a figurehead monarchy. That is just something that I cannot wrap myself around. I'm not able to. I can tell you where every single player in the NBA went to college. So I'm not saying I'm above it, okay. I'm just saying I can't make it make sense for me.
Speaker 1:I asked my sister who would be the analogy, who would be like, who's our version of the royal family? And the first thing she said was well, joe Biden and the Bidens. And I said, well, no, because, like they have a prime minister, there are prime minister, you know. And then she said, well, then you know what? You're right, it would actually probably be like Jay-Z and Beyonce, something like that, and that was a little easier for me to connect to. The most important thing that Jay-Z and Beyonce do for us outside of their artistry is that give us a way to see and talk about ourselves, and so I will take that from this, which is that this story gives us a way to talk about being trapped in marriage and in parenthood, especially for women, which is also what poor thing is about. It gives us a way to talk about the nefariousness of big entities, like a monarchy or a corporation, that have to keep so many people under the control of their public image that they have to do stuff like this, like who knows who wrote this photo out, who knows who wrote her written statement? Like we will never know. And so, in that way, I can understand why we talk about these things, because it's easier to talk about other people's shit than it is to talk about our own shit.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let me move on to number two, the internet, because this is where I'm really interested, because this is where the artificial intelligence of it all is involved. At some point, I would venture to guess, nobody in this room is ever gonna meet Kate Middleton. That would be where they think the odds are. It's possible, but unlikely, is what I would say If you are of the bracket that believes Kate Middleton is actually missing or worse. I'm just gonna put it like that. I asked my sister this as well what would you need to see? Because we're not gonna meet her, she's not gonna walk in here. What would you need to see, considering what you know is the power of the internet right now? What would you need to see to believe that she is alive and well?
Speaker 3:To believe that she's alive and well.
Speaker 1:Or let's just say what would you need to see? There are people who are theorizing that she is either just missing or possibly gone. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:You know she's not gone or like severely ill.
Speaker 1:Or severely ill. Right, what would you need to like what? What would you need to see to make you believe that she's good?
Speaker 2:I feel like like a banquet or something.
Speaker 1:Something with other people at it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And is that because you would believe then in the voucher of the collective that there are other people here witnessing her. So I believe that through their eyes I can know that she's okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I feel like with, like you know, spotted at a restaurant or whatever, like with her head down, like that's like very easy to like do like a stand-in or like whatever. Like I feel like a banquet, like if I was concerned about someone's like wellbeing, I feel like seeing them at a banquet speaking, yeah, as them, then I would believe it. Like even the other day, joe Biden was on late night and I was like, oh okay, he's functioning.
Speaker 2:Like, you like literally I was like, okay, like I know he had to have been there because like said talking to him like you know, so that was like that's honestly. That brought to mind is I was like, oh, joe, joe's speaking and talking.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, josh, does that hold up for you as well?
Speaker 3:I wouldn't need much to be honest with you. I would just need a photograph from, I guess, just like a media outlet that is like reputable. That's pretty much all I would need If I was one of these Truth or People, I guess, because I'm assuming there are Truth or People out here that are trying to say that like she's like not well, or something like that.
Speaker 1:Well, they gave us a fake photo, oh yeah, and then they owned it, Like whoever is they? It's like I wouldn't even call them conspiracy theorists. It's like if you check, if you look at the photo right, You're gonna see it.
Speaker 3:I mean I'm sure it's. I mean I'm not denying that it's doctored or anything like that. It's really about my level of caring Cause I'm just like, oh, like if someone was just like, oh, here's a photo of Kate. I was about to call Kate, kate Middleton, and so I go, here's a photo of Kate Middleton. She was out last night. I'm just like, yeah sure.
Speaker 1:Like you know, okay, so you would accept a low bar.
Speaker 3:Yeah, For me it's not a very high bar to clear.
Speaker 1:So, okay, let me make it a little bit more, let me make it less about how we care about this particular person, and just let me let me land the plane here which is there are so many. I mean, we already know this and we've already accepted it. Right, there's almost every photo that you see on the internet is doctored in some way A filter applied, skin tone change, body features, you know, moved around, whatever, whatever, whatever. Now, this, to me, goes to another level, because this is not just fooling you to get you to buy in on a product or think somebody is handsome or pretty. This is like this was to like move culture. This was to like make the people that this family resides over believe that this person is, is, is looked like, it's a happy woman holding her children, like to just make you believe everything is okay.
Speaker 1:Obey, that's a little more nefarious, but I guess where I'm going if, like, if the most powerful people step in it a couple more times like this with things that are of this magnitude and things that look this creepy, cause we still are like, well, where is she and can we just see her? And I, I mean, I didn't feel this way until literally this morning, cause now I'm talking about it. But like, can we just see her talking and being normal? Can we just see something that makes this feel okay again? I think we are entering a place where we could push our distrust of the internet. We already distrust the institutions. We already distrust, like, the powerful people that's dead, like that's gone. We still obey them but we don't trust them. I think we're about to enter a place where we have such a strong distrust. Like Morgan, you said this is scary because where our artificial intelligence is going is it's going to make it really hard for us to decipher what's real and what's not on the internet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's also just going to be exhausting to have to analyze every single thing that like comes out, because we can't just trust our eyes anymore and and, and so what I think could be the ricochet positive outcome here is the internet's been lying to our eyes for the last two decades and we and we've known it subconsciously, but we've sort of like pushed it down because it's such a part of society we could get to a point where we all are so aware that, like this is this, everything happening on this screen, is a video game that we find a place of a more healthy and reasonable detachment from what we see going on there on the screens. And maybe, hopefully then and I don't know if we're smart enough to do this collectively, but like, maybe, hopefully then we will go back to putting our trust into things like human voucher Like did somebody talk to her? Who I believe is like if one of us walks in here and says, hey, I saw Kate Middleton, she's okay, then it's like, yeah, okay, now I believe that. Or reputable publications Like maybe we'll go back to and some people have never left it, but like maybe we'll go back to being like okay, I trust, and I'm not going to choose one because someone else there will be. Like you can't trust the New York Times, but like I trust so-and-so whatever. And like, just like, give ourselves a little bit of space from letting this Game Boy dictate our reality. All right, fair enough, who cares? Okay, I love man.
Speaker 1:I almost made it through this whole show without talking about the Oscars, but then we did the thing at the beginning. I'm not, I mean, and I'm not going to do it. Oh, you know what happened, though this is funny. It was probably like 10 o'clock when it occurred to me that the iHeart podcast awards were on and I watched the end of it live. I missed all of. I saw the very, very last one, where Adam Devine won something for Best Comedy Podcast or whatever. I saw that Shannon Sharp was there. I saw that Guy Raz won the category that I was up for for direct deposit. So congratulations to Guy Raz, who I actually think is dope. Yeah, but we lost again. So we are now over to on podcasting awards, which means pretty soon we'll be due. Okay, that concludes our coverage of the iHeart podcast awards.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about self promotion. All right, I had a conversation yesterday, so there's a few things going on right now. I Okay, this is what's happening I have written a let's call it 15 page or so manifesto on personal branding and self promotion for real people basically, which I think is most of us people who are, who feel uncomfortable, cringy and scared of the idea of self promotion. And it'll be. I'll put it out probably. It's a it's. I'll put it out. Probably in the next 48 hours or so I will charge money for it, partially because I'm doing this guys, I'm doing this, I'm getting away from HBO Max writes your checks and going over to Archer media, which is my company, writes your checks. That's what's happening here. So, partially for that, partially charging, because it took me at least I'm going to say seven, but possibly closer to 10 years to get as comfortable as I am right this second, with being like I have something good, here it is, I want to give it to you. Let's, let's hear it's here. Look at this, I want to give it to you. I will even pay money to have an opportunity to tell you that I have that. That's what paid.
Speaker 1:Marketing is right and it's my belief, it's my thesis this is why I'm doing this thing that there are a lot of people out there who want to turn the corner on how they think about promoting themselves, who want to be able to do it without feeling that feeling like one, it makes them a worse person. And two, that they're going to be laughed at and judged. So the second part is a guarantee you will be laughed at and judged. But the first part I in my, in my personal belief, doesn't have to be so. But as I have been okay. So I've been writing, writing, writing right.
Speaker 1:I've been having you know, when I get into a mode of writing, when I'm feeling inspired by something. It's like wake up, feed dog, make coffee, sit in front of that computer, and time disappears. Like I might look up and it'll be 2.30. I might look up and it'll be four o'clock, time to feed the dog again. And I don't even know it's time to feed the dog until the dog comes and puts her face right here in my lap and is like you will not work anymore until I have been fed.
Speaker 1:That is what I believe is flow state. It's like it's like it's so fun. It's like there's no, I mean it's fun Remove that. It's like it's like the feeling of being weightless. It's like something else has taken you over and is holding you like a marionette and is just like making you do your clickety clacks and you're just like I put on my little beat book music on repeat and I just feel like I'm just like swimming through a tunnel because I know it and I have it and it's like it's stuff that I have spent so long processing. I can actually see and feel other writers like nodding their head along here I see Leon's face. It's stuff that I've spent so long processing that there's no difficulty in processing it. Now it's literally I just have to do the action of pouring it out into the computer and in the middle of that process. So I've been doing that for the last I don't know week with this thing. Yesterday I had to take a moment to stop. Thankfully Destiny reminded me I had this because I would have completely skipped right over it.
Speaker 1:I had a meeting at one o'clock yesterday with a guy who works in Hollywood. He's in his mid 30s. He's been working in Hollywood for about 10 to 12 years. He runs a production company and, without giving too many descriptors because I don't want to reveal his identity, he wants to do this and I mean the grand this. You know what I'm saying. He wants to be a one person creative factory and not to say that I am that like. I'm actually very much, not that because of these two Negroes and a couple other people, but, like, you know what I'm saying, though, but you guys know what I mean right.
Speaker 2:Are you not Negroes? No, my dad loves calling us Negroes.
Speaker 3:I've been referenced like that, since my dad has been upset with me over something.
Speaker 1:Well, you are Negroes, in fact, and so am I, but, garland, this is not about Negroes. This is about he wants to do this job right. But and this is to me there are like technological hurdles to clear and you got to learn how to write shit and you got to learn how to do this. This is about the most important hurdle clear, and he said it outright. He said I'm scared. I am scared of self promotion, morgan, you can't even stood in front of this camera, right, you were in front of this camera for 30 seconds and when you were done, you were like wait, so you just like talk to the camera and I'm like, yes, morgan, that's why I need you to sit there and affirm me as I do this, because that is, that thing is scary. That thing is scary. I hate it every second of it. It's not a person like it doesn't laugh, it doesn't cry, it doesn't respond. You don't know what's going to happen once you give yourself to it Like it goes in there and then like that shit is scary. So, anyway.
Speaker 1:So we had a conversation about his fear around self promotion and a lot of what his fear was. This part's important to me is like, as he put it, and I laugh at this because someone asked me to do this and I was like I cannot do that. Like he was like you know, I don't want to be doing a TikTok where there's, like these image bubbles, you know, bouncing around my head and I'm like doing this dance and I'm and I somebody literally wanted me to do that and I was like I'm sorry, I can't do it. But he was basically saying, like it was funny, because he was trying to. It was it was a complex conversation because he's trying to tell me I want to do what you do, so I admire you, but I want to do it without being an asshole, and so he was trying to make sure I didn't feel like he was calling me an asshole and that and that's the thing about it is that what is, in my opinion, what is underneath our fear of cringiness and self promotion.
Speaker 1:A lot of it is our own judgment of other people who are doing it, turned back on ourselves, and that is, to me, why the game here, if you want to beat the thing, is like, it is completely internal, like, like, and I'm still working on it, very much, still working on it, like you know, as I'm sitting here writing out this manifesto, I'm like I keep finding myself going back to the same message over and over and over again, which is like before you amplify your personality and your interest and your ideas for other people to see, make sure you like yourself first. Make sure you think what you have to say is interesting before you just start spewing it out to people. Make sure you think your ideas are cool for you start offering them to others, because you are going to have to stand behind them until other people think the same thing that you do, or you're going to have to find people who naturally think the same thing that you do or want what you are offering them. And that brought me to at like. This is. This is why this is why I love writing, because 60% of what I have written out in this document is stuff that I knew. I knew, and 40% of it is stuff that I didn't even realize. I knew. You know what I mean. Like it's it was like it is revealing itself to me. I found this might be the most poignant thing of the whole shit for me.
Speaker 1:I realized I started promoting myself before I liked myself and that was a dangerous place to be because I started selling an image of a person, I started selling a concept of a person, and sometimes in sales you can sell something before you make it and that's okay. You sell merch before the merch is produced, that's fine, as long as you make good on the sale. As a human being probably shouldn't do that. I was selling the idea of me as some sort of genius, some sort of like wonderkin prodigy thing in my barber. I was selling it, selling it, sold it so hard because Hollywood is all sales, but I didn't have like the underlying asset to back that up, like I didn't have like the the.
Speaker 1:I'm just a person, like I'm not. I'm not something different from that, I'm not something bigger than that, I'm not something like it's like the Wizard of Oz shit. And then I and then once I had made the sale and doubled down on the sale and doubled down on it again, I my whole life became for years until recently, became playing catch up on the sale that I had made. I was just trying to play catch up on the checks that I had written, and so my solution to the fear of self promotion is just like make sure you have the thing to sell before you start selling. That's it. I thought it was pretty good. That's all I got. That's all I got on that. I mean I have much more on it, but you have to pay for it.
Speaker 2:Where can people find it?
Speaker 1:Very soon they'll be able to find it at a Stan shop, in my bio. So this is what's going to happen. You know what Fuck it? Let's just use these seven minutes I want to show because there are people who listen to this show and who follow, who want to know these processes. I just want to tell y'all what I'm about to do.
Speaker 1:I wrote this thing. The biggest hurdle for me to clear on this thing, similar to what I just said, was that no-transcript. Someone is coaching me through how to do this process, but I knew I couldn't take any further steps on it until I wrote something that I believed in. That's it Like. Other people do it different and they move faster than me and they're richer than me. I'm sorry I cannot go to the lemonade stand with lemonade. That is bullshit. I just can't do it. So I have spent and I'm not done yet. I gotta write it. I gotta write this thing out, design it. I'm gonna ask Morgan if I may use the Canva template to put it into because it looks so pretty, but in any case, I'm making.
Speaker 1:So this is guys. I'm letting y'all in on some shit. Okay, josh, you're already here. Yeah, this is going to be a document, a PDF, just information. I will then go make a stand shop STAN. I will drop this thing into the stand shop. It'll be the only thing you can buy on that stand shop.
Speaker 1:I will then make a carousel that has probably three or four slides. Titular slide will have the title in big, bold font. It's gonna be something like a guide to personal branding for real people. Nobody take that title. That's probably gonna be my title. Don't take my title. I mean, you know what I'm gonna actually try, it's fine, I don't care, good luck. Good luck, like let's see who you know what I'm saying. Let's see who can do this better. Then the following slides are gonna be like what I think are perhaps the most poignant elements of the writing.
Speaker 1:Right, maybe a personal story like the one I just told, maybe something that is something people don't know about, using social media as an example. Something people don't know is that you, as a human being, are probably literally incapable of posting so much that the algorithm deprioritizes your content. A computer could do it. You probably can't do it, unless you are posting a hundred things a day. You probably cannot reach a volume that's gonna make the thing deprioritize your content. That's in there. I'll make three or four slides like that Titular slide, carousel, boom Copy.
Speaker 1:Something personal but straightforward about exactly what this thing is, because this is not about me now. This is about I talk to my audience all day, also in the manifesto Talk to your audience all day. I talk to my audience all day, every day. I know what you all are into. I know what you guys like. I know what's blocking you.
Speaker 1:I'm going to use your own words and put them back into this copy to let you know. This is the thing that y'all have been looking for. This is what you've been asking me for. This is what I'm charging people to sit one on one with me to discuss. But if you don't want to spend two or $400 to sit with me one on one, then, like here, it is for X amount of dollars.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna say links in my bio.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna post it.
Speaker 1:There'll be some organic traffic from my following to that link.
Speaker 1:Hopefully some percentage of those people will buy the thing and it's theirs. But also I am going to then pay the algorithm to put that thing in front of as many people as I can afford from my audience such that or sorry, that are like my audience such that that traffic moves from my page or from that ad straight to that website. And then some of the people buy the thing. And then I'm going to watch it the way that the way that a preng mantis watches a fly walking across the window sill I'm going to watch it as though it is the last food I could ever possibly eat and I'm going to tinker with it meticulously until it returns exactly what I needed to give me back to make this a worthwhile endeavor. And then, if it works, I'm gonna go make another one for the other thing somebody wants. And then I'm gonna go make another one, and then I'm going to get out of this stupid ass Hollywood rat race and I'm gonna go make nice things that I love and make them available to the world, and that's it.
Speaker 2:That's it. I was hoping there would be a bug segment today.
Speaker 1:There's the bug segment. I will be a preng mantis watching. You know how a preng mantis watches, right?
Speaker 2:No, I don't. That's why it was interesting.
Speaker 1:Oh a preng mantis, just like it, just like you know, has like big eyes, big bubbly eyes, and like a fly, is like walking across the thing and it's like watching it with its little mantis hooks, and then it's like you know, Okay, this has been nothing but anarchy. Thank you for joining us today. We're gonna be outside on Thursday. It's so beautiful out, it's getting beautiful, so we'll see y'all then.
