Episode 241: What is Happening to Our Country?

0:00:11.7 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.

0:00:12.3 Jordan Syatt: What’s up, Michael?

0:00:13.2 Mike Vacanti: We took last week off. We actually didn’t take last week off. We recorded an episode the morning after Charlie Kirk was assassinated and decided to can it because emotions were running high and, I don’t know.

0:00:28.9 Jordan Syatt: It was a tough morning. It’s been a tough week, it was a very tough morning, and…

0:00:35.0 Mike Vacanti: I wanted to can it, thinking that giving it five, six, seven days off would change things. But I feel exactly the same. So we might just be running it back here from my end. I’m glad you’ll have some better things to say.

0:00:50.7 Jordan Syatt: Everything exactly the same. 

0:00:52.5 Mike Vacanti: Brother, I haven’t been doing the best job of… I’ve basically been consuming content most of the day. Today’s Tuesday, September 16th, for the last five or six days.

0:01:08.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s not good.

0:01:10.3 Mike Vacanti: No, no, it’s not.

0:01:12.1 Jordan Syatt: Not good for the soul.

0:01:13.2 Mike Vacanti: It’s not good for the soul. So I should probably stop doing that. That’d be a good starting point. I’m just going through waves of sadness and anger and that’s where I’m at right now. 

0:01:30.9 Jordan Syatt: Where’s your head at in terms of what you’re seeing?

0:01:39.7 Mike Vacanti: For the bulk of the time, I’ve tried to avoid seeing the positive reactions, meaning people who are celebrating Charlie’s death and are saying he was a terrible person, he deserved to die, of which there are thousands, tens of thousands. I don’t even know how many posts, but I got into a lot of that recently. It just not good.

0:02:06.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s really, I will say I saw a stat, I don’t know if it’s accurate or not. And I don’t know how they could even get this statistic so quickly, but to the effect of it, about 1.5% of people would have this belief that he was a horrible person and that he deserved to die. And you take 1.5% of this population, and it’s a lot of people.

0:02:38.5 Mike Vacanti: That’s a lot of people.

0:02:39.8 Jordan Syatt: And the way the algorithm works is the way a post goes viral is either to make you really, really happy or to make you really, really angry. And the angry posts are the ones that generally garner more engagement, shares, comments. It’s like you could go to a restaurant and have a great meal and have an incredible experience, but you’re more likely to leave a review if you have a terrible experience. And so the videos and the posts that make you really, really angry are the ones that we’re gonna end up seeing a lot more of, which is true. Like I’ve been trying to keep track of, as I scroll, how many posts are making me angry versus how many posts are making me happy or educating me or something. Dude, it’s like 20 to 1. Just scroll, anger, anger, anger, anger. And I’m like, this is crazy, because I know all the content available online is not this, but this is just what’s being fed into my feedback. So, and again, I have no idea how to corroborate that stat, but I do believe that it’s a very, very small fringe percentage of people who are happy that he died. I think it’s a bigger percentage of people who think he was a horrible person. They might not believe that he should have died, but they think he was a horrible person. And what is difficult for me with that is, I guarantee you, none of these people have actually watched his clips in full. The long duration of these clips, they’re being fed very brief snippets that are very easy to take out of context.

0:04:19.5 Mike Vacanti: Snippets, or just quoting a piece without even showing him or misquoting him, really, on three to five specific instances.

0:04:31.4 Jordan Syatt: Correct. But if you watch the whole video it’s impossible, it’s really impossible, you know what this actually reminds me of is, I’ll never forget. I remember the whole, when Trump said, there are very fine people on both sides. I’ll never forget this because when I first saw the clip, not the whole thing, but the clip, I was furious. I was like, “How the fuck could he say that? What is wrong with him” And the way that it was being framed on the media. And I just believed it for years. I believed that that’s what he’s, for years until I was talking to a buddy and he was like, “Did you see the whole thing? It might have even been you. It might have been you.” You were like, did you see the whole thing? And I was like, “No, I just saw the clip.” I went and watched. And he went out of his way in this whole video to be like, and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis. I denounce the neo-Nazis. And keep in mind, Trump says a lot of wild shit that I very much disagree with and I don’t like. For example, post Charlie Kirk assassination, someone was like, “How do we unite the country?” And he said, “I don’t care about uniting the country.” I’m like, come on, dude, that’s just stupid. He says a lot of really stupid shit. But let’s just take this one bit for the example. He went out of his way to denounce the neo-Nazis in that speech. But the media clipped it in order to sow division. And if you’re listening right now and you haven’t seen this whole video, go look it up. If that doesn’t convince you that you’re being lied to, it shook me to my core. And I remember because my mom would reference it all the time and I sat her down, I was like, “We should watch this.” And my mom is very, very progressive liberal. And she couldn’t believe it. She was really upset because she was like, “I wish I had seen this whole clip.”

0:06:24.6 Mike Vacanti: That was last year, right?

0:06:25.7 Jordan Syatt: That was last year that I sat her down and showed her that, yeah.

0:06:28.5 Mike Vacanti: So it was eight years after he said that that she heard the full clip for the first time.

0:06:36.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. And that’s what I’m seeing with these Charlie Kirk clips, where. And I feel like anyone listening to this knows to a decent extent your character and my character and what we believe and how we’re accepting of everybody and all of that. And so if someone was against that, we wouldn’t say that they have good values and they appear to be a great person. We wouldn’t do that.

0:07:02.8 Mike Vacanti: And it wouldn’t have had the profound effect on each of us that it had.

0:07:07.3 Jordan Syatt: Correct. So, I mean, watching the full context of the full. In fact, there is a very famous clip of Charlie. There was a Christian at one of the debates who was a Christian, very far conservative, who is basically hating on homosexuality. And Charlie went off on this man. He’s like, “What gives you the right to hate on them?” He’s like, “I may disagree with a lifestyle. I may disagree with that, but…” And he was referencing Jesus, and he was like, “Jesus loved everybody, every single person, and God is the only one who can judge us. And for you to take this gross stance against them, I do not stand with that.” And it’s like, it’s very disappointing to see because I think people are sharing these quotes and these snippets. I think the people who are sharing them, they’re not doing it deliberately, they’re just being fed these quotes and these snippets and they believe it. But the people who are making them, who are making these snippets, who are cutting it off exactly at that time, where he gives more context, where he goes into it, it’s demoralizing and it’s really scary. And it’s not fair to him and it’s not fair to his family, and it’s not fair to what he stood for. And it’s really demoralizing. Isn’t even, I don’t think there’s a word strong enough. It’s depressing doesn’t even begin to cover it, it’s really sad.

0:08:30.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, man. I completely agree. Man, the week off was good for you. You’ve done a great job at gaining perspective.

0:08:38.5 Jordan Syatt: Have I?

0:08:39.2 Mike Vacanti: I think so, yeah.

0:08:40.3 Jordan Syatt: You know, I took a few days off of social media completely to think about it and number one, just to spend time with my family and be with my girls and all of that. And then when I came back, it was like midnight, one in the morning. I was like, “All right, I’ve got to say something.” And so I filmed this, it was 16 minutes edited.

0:09:01.5 Mike Vacanti: It was a really good Instagram reel. 

0:09:06.7 Jordan Syatt: And that helped me a lot, even organize my own thoughts and trying to really understand. But realistically, there were issues with that video. If I wanted to give like a full on, let’s actually discuss every aspect of this. It would have been 16 hours, there’s so much nuance to discuss, but 16 minutes was the most brief I could make. And there were still even faults with it. But I think just that helped me organize my thoughts and DMing people and having conversations with people on all sides to get a better understanding.

0:09:39.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that’s a great point that you’re making, which is consuming the fire hose of rage bait content online is not a good way to develop clearer thoughts and positions, especially relative to creating. Which forces you, like writing, it forces you to think more clearly, allows you to play devil’s advocate against yourself, figure out your own positions. Yeah, yeah, man. I’m still really shook, though.

0:10:14.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, same, same.

0:10:16.8 Mike Vacanti: Not just from the reaction, but I’ve been trying to think about and I don’t have a good answer. I can only explain how I felt in the moment, which was, I told you, like, 9-11 was the feeling. My wife came downstairs, like, shouted. She was holding our daughter. They killed Charlie Kirk. There was no news framing for me. So when he was shot, you know, a lot of the initial reports weren’t that he was dead, but just, oh, he was shot. Which is like this media tactic of like basically controlling the emotional response to an extent. It’s like, all right, we’re gonna give you breadcrumbs to what’s actually happened here. Even though he was almost dead on impact. And the way that that hit me was like, this must be what the assassination of JFK felt like to people was my feeling. Now is that right or wrong, I don’t know. But there have been two times in my life that I had that feeling in my gut. And does that mean that his death is more important or that his soul was more important than a kid who dies in a school shooting? Absolutely not.

0:11:35.1 Mike Vacanti: Someone who gets hit by a bus randomly, an elderly person? Absolutely not. Any person of any gender of any skin color, equal in my eyes, equal, equally horrible. Their soul is of equal value is what I believe. But the feeling I had when I heard that was once, twice in a lifetime for me. And I’ve been trying to figure that out. I think part of that is that he actually was center right. He actually wasn’t a neo-Nazi. He was actually the, let’s talk it out and have a conversation guy on the right going to people he disagreed with very, very often having the most respectful, cordial conversations with people who supposedly live diametrically opposed lifestyles as him. If you watch him talk to a trans college student, if you watch him talk to a gay college student, if you watch him talk to a Democrat who is anti-Second Amendment, if you watch him talk to a Black student about DEI issues, these are very, like, not only nuanced, but him trying to understand and have like a good discussion with this person genuinely. And sure, are there clips where someone goes to the mic and is aggressive and he’s aggressive back? Yeah. Which I think is human nature.

0:12:56.9 Mike Vacanti: And I don’t even necessarily think is wrong. But a lot of these conversations he was having, one came from a really good place. And they weren’t the way that they’re being framed by like a Don Lemon, for example, who’s going around saying he was a terrible person. So I’ve basically been on tilt for a week, and yeah, I’m still on tilt. I don’t have anything super, like articulate or profound to say. I kind of have started to hate that. The way my mind goes is to me in situations like this, but it is for whatever reason, which is like, in the 24 hours after my… Beyond the horror of that this happened, why this happened, young kids, wife, political violence, all of the terrible, obviously terrible parts of it. The next place I went was guilt for any shortcomings I have, almost like lighting a fire to be a better person was, and I don’t know if that was unique to me or what. But anyway, go ahead.

0:14:32.4 Jordan Syatt: No, dude, I think that is a huge part of what happened. And even within the last week, we’ve seen massive upticks in people going to church after his death. I think people are like, “Hey, I need to take this more seriously.” I’ve had people asking me because he was writing a book about honoring the Sabbath.

0:14:55.3 Mike Vacanti: The Sabbath. Yeah.

0:14:56.6 Jordan Syatt: And I’ve had Christians reaching out, being like, “Can you tell me about Shabbat? I want to learn how to do it.” I think his death, in many people has said, what can I do to be better? Because whether you agreed with him or not, on any number of topics, what he was doing that, number one, I don’t see anyone on the left doing, and very few on the right doing, is going out of his way to have these conversations. Who is going to campuses? Who is going out in public and saying, “Let’s talk”? Now, one of the common things that I see people are like, “Why is he going to college kids? Why is he going to college campuses?” You mean, why is he going to talk to American voters? You mean, why is he going to talk to people who could enlist in the military? He’s talking to voters. 

0:15:58.9 Mike Vacanti: At the institutions where they are…

0:16:00.4 Jordan Syatt: Learning.

0:16:01.5 Mike Vacanti: Exactly.

0:16:02.9 Jordan Syatt: Where else in society do you want him to go to have these open conversations? To the grocery store? Where else in society do large amounts of people congregate to learn and study? And by the way, many times professors would come up and debate him. It wasn’t just the students. And he was like, “Professors, come, let’s talk.” Who else is doing that? It takes a very brave individual to go out in public, not just because of your safety, but because of, and not to try and prove people wrong, but to have these conversations. I would love to see someone on the left do this. I would love to see someone on the left going to college campuses and saying, “Here’s my thoughts, let’s debate.” And I think that, frankly, would be great for the left, like, to pretend Charlie Kirk didn’t play a huge role in this 2024 election is outrageous. He played a huge role in it. And that might be one of the reasons why it felt like a JFK assassination. Because even though he wasn’t holding office, and even though he… He was a political player, a massive political player, and he influenced many, many people to think, and so, yeah.

0:17:17.5 Mike Vacanti: Probably the most influential for under 35 in the most recent election.

0:17:24.8 Jordan Syatt: Yes, 100%.

0:17:28.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. That, and again, back to my original point, that all human life is equal. There is a desensitization. Desensitization, is that a word? 

0:17:43.6 Jordan Syatt: Desensitization, yeah.

0:17:45.2 Mike Vacanti: Desensitization of when we see repeated events, right? There’s a reason why Columbine is like top five on that list of monument, like gut wrenching, like, just feeling broken inside afterwards. Because, I don’t think it was, I don’t know off the top of my head if it was the first school shooting, but it was the first in my lifetime that was so massive, right?

0:18:18.4 Jordan Syatt: Yes. Huge casualty numbers and… Yes.

0:18:20.9 Mike Vacanti: And then when that happens dozens and dozens of times and it’s definitely not a good thing that there’s desensitization, but when it’s happened that many times, it becomes like another news story, sadly.

0:18:35.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. And similar to how, like we’re not supposed to be able to watch someone die and not feel anything. Meanwhile on social media, you can literally watch someone die and then scroll to the next post and laugh. We’re not supposed to do that. It’s really, it’s very bad. It’s very dangerous. It’s not good for us mentally and emotionally. And so we see this desensitization all over the place, being able to watch someone’s life fall apart. Next post.

0:19:05.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yep. And the fact that it was public, the fact that he was a huge… Someone who had millions of followers, and who leading up to the ’24 election, like, I just saw a lot of his content in my algorithm. People will say, “Well, where was this outcry of support for…” I think her name was Melissa. I don’t even know Melissa.

0:19:32.1 Jordan Syatt: Hortman, Melissa Hortman.

0:19:33.5 Mike Vacanti: Melissa Hortman?

0:19:34.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:19:34.4 Mike Vacanti: Who was…

0:19:34.8 Jordan Syatt: And her husband and dog.

0:19:37.3 Mike Vacanti: And I’m just being 100% honest when I say this, when she died, when those three died, I didn’t know who she was, maybe that’s awful. She was in the House of Representatives, right? In Minnesota.

0:19:53.8 Jordan Syatt: In Minnesota, yeah.

0:19:54.8 Mike Vacanti: There’s 435-ish people in the House of Representatives. I don’t know almost all of them. It doesn’t make it any lesser, but I don’t know. I’m beat up.

0:20:12.1 Jordan Syatt: No, you do know… It’s a valid, the point is that I’ll frame it this way for people listening. If you or I died, the people who listen to us a lot would feel very differently than if a personal trainer died that they never listened to, that they never knew their opinions on, they didn’t know anything about them. Life equally valid. Both of our lives, whether it’s me or you or a personal trainer who died that they don’t know, that they’ve never heard of. We all could be helping people in the exact same way we could all be wonderful humans. But if you have a connection to someone and you see them and you hear them and you have this connection, it’s obviously going to impact you more. It doesn’t mean Melissa Hortman’s life was less valuable. Her life was equally as valuable as Charlie. Her husband’s was equally as valuable. The difference is Charlie was more well known, like it or not. That’s it. That’s it. And in terms of school shootings, the gross, disgusting, horrific reality is that, and this is a problem, that we have become desensitized to school shootings because they happen all the fucking time, which is a problem which needs to be addressed. 

0:21:32.8 Mike Vacanti: Correct. 

0:21:33.5 Jordan Syatt: Which is why I fucking stand outside my daughter’s school to protect them. God forbid, because I’m not trusting the school to do it. I’m not trusting the government to do it, that’s why I’m there. That’s why I’m training and I’m there several days a week. It’s a horrific reality that haunts me day in and day out and it should haunt everybody. But the truth is, we become desensitized to it. Like it or not, it’s the truth.

0:21:59.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Thank you for making my point for me. Yeah, man.

0:22:08.9 Jordan Syatt: And to the point of, I wanted to say this a little bit ago for people who are like, “No, he was a horrible person. I’ve seen the clips,” in the same way that it’s easy for anybody to watch the people dancing on his grave, the people celebrating his death, and for someone to think, well, that’s what all the other side thinks. And you’d be like, well, I don’t think that. I don’t think that. But someone else could think that because that’s all they’ve seen. If you believe he was a horrible person based on the clips you’ve seen, go to his YouTube channel if you really want to. If you’re really open minded, go to his YouTube channel and watch several hours of his debates. Just no clips, no short form. Go watch several hours of his debates. No logical person can watch that and say he was a horrible person. He spoke with everyone. Gays, trans, Blacks, Whites, Asians. He spoke with kids whose parents were illegal immigrants. He spoke with everybody and treated every single person with the equal amount of respect. And if you have not been shown that there is a reason why, and it’s scary and it’s disappointing and it’s discouraging.

0:23:27.5 Jordan Syatt: And keep in mind, I didn’t agree with everything Charlie said. I did not agree with every single thing he said. But that doesn’t take away… It doesn’t make me think he’s a horrible person. Certainly not a fascist. I hate when people, it’s like, get the fuck out of here. And to the point you’re making around like, well, why don’t you talk about this? Why don’t you talk about that? This is something I find very interesting. And I know you know where I’m gonna go with this. The main one that I’ve seen and there were comments on my post, but many other posts is people being like, “Really? You’re going to talk about this, but you’re not going to talk about Gaza, you’re not going to talk about Israel, Palestine?” It’s like, well, number one, I’ve spoken about it a lot. But if we’re going to have that conversation, the people who are most to talk about what’s going on in Gaza, what’s going on in Palestine, if you want to talk about, like, well, why aren’t you talking about this? If you’ve spoken about Gaza and Palestine, but you haven’t spoken about the legitimate famine in Yemen, 2 million children starving in Yemen.

0:24:35.1 Jordan Syatt: If you haven’t spoken about the nearly 600,000 innocents who’ve been slaughtered under Bashar al-Assad over the last decade, if you haven’t spoken about the legitimate genocide in Sudan, Congo, the Uyghurs in concentration camps in China. Both sides play this game. If you’re saying, well, why don’t you talk about Gaza, Why don’t you talk about Yemen, Sudan, Congo, why don’t you talk. If you want to talk about Palestinians specifically, why don’t you talk about how Palestinians don’t have rights in Lebanon, Jordan? Why don’t you talk about how Egypt doesn’t open the border, let them in. Why don’t you talk about any of that? If you want to talk about, if you want to stand on your moral high ground and say, “Well, why aren’t you talking about this?” I’ll throw that right back so fucking fast. Get off your pedestal. 

0:25:24.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yep, it’s a great point.

0:25:25.5 Jordan Syatt: I will say… And you brought this up on the pod, We Canned, but you saw the immediate blame on Israel after, and it’s picking up because I’m getting messages about it. But what’s interesting is since 10-7-23, I’ve always gotten anti-Semitic stuff. But like since October 7th, like way more like every week, numerous, numerous, numerous messages, DMs, blah, blah, blah. Well, over 95% since October 7th has been from the far left, like well over 95% in the last couple weeks and really since Charlie was murdered. But in the last couple weeks, a lot more starting to come from the far right. A lot more starting to come from that, which is, this is why Jews are scared. Because this is the horseshoe theory playing out, where the far, far left and the far, far right are the same, and it’s not complete opposite sides of the spectrum, they actually meet. And the fear is that, you know the phrase the enemy of my enemy is my friend? It’s where, okay, well, the far left and the far right, the extreme fringes, they both have a common enemy, which is Jews in Israel. And it’s been very worrisome to see. Now, I’ve gotten used to the far left anti-Semitism attacks the far right now, and now they’re coming out, and it’s scary.

0:26:58.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. The point I made, and again, we recorded less than 24 hours after Charlie was assassinated, was that it really pissed me off to see the usual suspects on Twitter using it as an opportunity to push their conspiracy theory. The Jews, the tiny hats, control the world theory. That we had absolutely zero evidence to believe that. And that was immediately where they took this. We knew nothing. We didn’t know who Tyler Robinson was at this time. We didn’t know about the relationship that he was in. We didn’t know about his family. We didn’t know about his background. We didn’t know about his discord. We didn’t have any of this information. There were posts from probably several, but one to two main ones that I know who I’m not even gonna name, but big names on X who are Jews, control the world conspiracy theory, immediately pinning this on Israel, on Netanyahu, on the Jews with no evidence to support it whatsoever. Which, yeah, pissed me off, which is why I brought that up.

0:28:19.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Which is just ironic because Charlie’s been the loudest proponent and supporter of Israel. I had one person in particular, I’ve had numerous of these messages, but one in particular who was like, Israel was undeniably involved. That was the word they used, undeniably. And I was like, can you give me any evidence? And they didn’t give me anything. Literally nothing. That was actually the end of the conversation. They stopped replying at that. But then they were like, “Yeah, Charlie’s been speaking out recently about Israel.” And I was like, “Can you send me anything that he said that is either against Israel or anything?” And he sent me a video from 2023, soon after October 7, where Charlie was like, “You gotta wonder, like, how did this happen? Israel’s got incredible security, the best in the world.” And I said, I was like, “That’s a valid question.”

0:29:02.8 Mike Vacanti: Which were conversations you and I had?

0:29:06.4 Jordan Syatt: Yes, that’s a valid question that every Israeli wants to know. If you’re going to talk about people with huge audiences and platforms that are anti Israel, like there are many other people Israel could take out, why would they go after their biggest supporter? It just makes no sense.

0:29:24.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, it’s this like brain rot obsession that people fall into and then any event that happens, they have to morph to fit their worldview.

0:29:39.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah.

0:29:41.9 Mike Vacanti: Sad, man. Sad and scary times.

0:29:44.2 Jordan Syatt: What do you think going forward?

0:29:45.5 Mike Vacanti: Can you be more specific?

0:29:46.9 Jordan Syatt: I almost want to keep it vague just to see like, where your thoughts take you with that question.

0:29:51.8 Mike Vacanti: I’m starting to understand when it’s vague. I just think about myself.

0:29:54.6 Jordan Syatt: That’s okay. Sour podcast.

0:30:02.6 Mike Vacanti: I don’t know yet. Maybe next week we talk about going forward, I’m not quite there yet.

0:30:08.7 Jordan Syatt: I have to say, you and I spoke about it a little bit, but my wife and I watched Erica Kirk’s speech in full. Man, that woman talk about strength and resilience and poise to stand right next to her husband’s chair and be holding it and touching it and speak with such strength, force and passion and strength and just, oh, my wife was sobbing as we watched that. It was just like, it was really incredible.

0:30:43.8 Mike Vacanti: That was like 48 hours post. The fact that she even said anything, let alone gave a 20 minute speech with the composure that she did was… When I first saw it, I didn’t catch it live, I caught it within an hour of it going up of it being posted. I was shocked. Almost remember the people after the attempted assassination on President Trump who thought it was staged because he stood up and said, “Fight, fight, fight.” And they couldn’t compromise, comprehend the courage it would take to do that. So it had to be fake. I felt a similar level of shock that she was giving that speech 48 hours post because I couldn’t comprehend that level of strength.

0:31:39.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, that’s a great way to put it. Unbelievable.

0:31:45.2 Mike Vacanti: Really cool to see a lot of people’s positive responses to try and take it in a different direction.

0:31:54.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:31:57.2 Mike Vacanti: Tributes, I saw an Instagram video that you had liked of. It was like this, this like Southern dude. I don’t want to generalize too much, but I’m going to just to…

0:32:09.5 Jordan Syatt: Dude, I love this video.

0:32:11.2 Mike Vacanti: Do you want to talk about it, then?

0:32:12.9 Jordan Syatt: No, you say it. I love this video.

0:32:16.0 Mike Vacanti: You know, kind of… I’m gonna be very blunt.

0:32:21.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:32:21.5 Mike Vacanti: Just to give people an idea, but kind of a hillbilly, kind of like, people would call him a hick. It seemed like a poor White guy from the south who was saying that him and his wife didn’t have anything, didn’t come from anything, but they had started to get a little bit of money. And he was wearing a suit, and he said, so I bought this suit and it was for, I think, their anniversary, but he was gonna wear the suit, the $300 suit. And he was really proud. This is a $300 suit, said, “I’m gonna wear this suit and I’m gonna go to church for the first time.” And just a really wholesome guy. And then his phone fell, which was kind of funny just because it was a one take thing. And then he’s like, “Oh, fuck.” And he’s like, “Oh, shoot,” like he shouldn’t have said the F word. He’s like, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.” It was unbelievably wholesome.

0:33:16.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it was absolutely wholesome. And he was like, “And my wife, she made me feel good in this suit.” And it was also wholesome because it was a little bit oversized, and it was just like, it was amazing. It was really, really, really amazing. And, yeah, I mean, it’s been cool to see, even overseas, people internationally. People in Korea. People all over the world.

0:33:45.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Like, all of Europe.

0:33:47.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. It’s been… The one in Korea took me, I was like, that’s… Like signs in Korean, in Korean being like, I am Charlie Kirk.

0:33:57.3 Mike Vacanti: Like, enchanting. Yeah.

0:33:58.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, Dude. Just like, talk about impact.

0:34:04.1 Mike Vacanti: The group of African men. I don’t know what country in Africa they were in, but…

0:34:09.3 Jordan Syatt: I didn’t see that. 

0:34:10.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that one was really cool.

0:34:11.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah, it’s really. It’s made me think a lot. It’s made me be grateful for a lot. It’s made me be scared for a lot. There’s been, the range of emotions has been dramatic and intense. I’ve seen a lot of people being more brave with their beliefs, saying, like, “I’m gonna say the truth. I’m gonna tell you what I really believe right now,” which is, like, just separate that from anything else. Just, like, to inspire someone to be who they are and to say, “this is what I believe.” I mean, that’s the greatest thing you can give someone the confidence to be who they are.

0:35:03.2 Mike Vacanti: I think that’s one thing that Charlie did unbelievably well, was regardless of whether you agreed or disagreed with his positions, he was telling you what he truly believed. He wasn’t grifting. He wasn’t saying what he thought people wanted to hear. He was saying what he had conviction of across, whether it was religion or politics or whatever he was discussing and was prioritizing truth above wanting a specific outcome, which is something that I think basically everyone struggles with. Every content creator, every person. But when you’re putting something on the Internet, if you never have, there is like, you think about what the reaction is going to be and what you want to accomplish with specific posts. And something I’ve felt shame about in the past was not saying things I believed to be true because I was afraid that that would lose me a client or lose me money or make people like me less.

0:36:14.1 Mike Vacanti: And by the way, I think I did, I was posting selfies with Jordan Peterson in 2017. Like, I’m not even the worst at this, but I countless, countless times have shied away from saying what I believe to be true and easily able to rationalize it, well, I need to support my family. Well, this is for my business, social media. And like you said, the number of people I have seen yourself included with that post, and I called you immediately after or texted you and said that was an unbelievable reel. It is inspiring and it is impressive. Daniel Yores in the mentorship had a cool post on his story that you and I talked about that we was showed courage in his conviction over wanting money, and yeah.

0:37:18.5 Jordan Syatt: I asked you, like, what do you think moving forward? And there are so many ways to take that and think about it. But I had said earlier, very few people on the right do it, and I haven’t seen anyone on the left do it. In terms of going out in public and debating, I don’t see anyone who can take Charlie’s place.

0:37:44.6 Mike Vacanti: No.

0:37:45.8 Jordan Syatt: I just don’t see anybody who is, I don’t see anybody. And obviously, if we’re gonna separate it into sides, there’s no one on the right as of right now that can fill his shoes. Nobody. I would be very interested to see if the left starts to, “Hey, let’s do this.” Because especially if we’re looking at winning, whether it’s midterms, election, whatever it is, it plays a huge role in influencing people and to pick your champion, if you will, or to have a champion rise up and to go out and to put it on the line and to have these difficult conversations, that’s what I think could win elections. That’s what I think could really make a big difference. I don’t see anyone on the right who could come close to doing what Charlie did. Not Ben Shapiro, and I agree with a lot of what Ben Shapiro says, and I think he’s brilliant, but I don’t think he could do it. I don’t think there’s anyone who… I mean, dude, the recall that Charlie had, it was just unbelievable if you haven’t watched hours of him do it. And again, I didn’t agree with everything he said, but it’s hard not to be impressed by the way that this guy spoke. And he wasn’t college educated, and a lot of people would use that against him. And people would be like, “Isn’t it ironic? You’re on a college campus and you didn’t even go to college.” He’s like, “You’re right. So you should be able to beat me. You have more of a college education than I do,” and these are college kids who are like, “You didn’t even go to college.” And he’s like, “Yeah, great. So you are more formally educated than I am, now beat my points.” And I don’t see anyone on the right yet who could do that. And I would be very interested to see who the left, if everyone on the left does it. And obviously it’s not like a vote. All right, you’re the champion. You go do it. Someone’s gotta have the chutzpah to fucking go do it.

0:39:51.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. It’s that combination of courage, intelligence, wisdom, ability to communicate, willingness, and desire to hear opposing views. He talked about, like, practice debating and how he would… His goal was to understand his opponent’s arguments better than they understood it. So he would argue against his team internally, and he would be the opponent and win the debate. But knowing that if I know their argument better than they do. And he attributed a lot of that to just reading. Reading tons and tons and tons of books, which anyone who’s been listening to this podcast for a while knows Jordan and I joke all the time about neither of us having an attention span or being able to read, myself especially. But that’s like, okay, maybe I should fix my brain and not be Consuming so much crap, just short form crap, and actually discipline myself to be able to read again and write. And these are things that I’ve been thinking about over the past several days. That TikTok was hilarious.

0:41:12.8 Jordan Syatt: I almost just brought that up. Just now. You sent me the funniest video. You want to explain it?

0:41:18.8 Mike Vacanti: So there’s a tweet of a screenshot from TikTok, and the tweet says, “The kids are reinventing meditative practices from first principles.” And it’s a picture of this kid sitting outside. He’s got a clock out there, and he’s just staring at, like, the side of a house. And it says, “Raw dogging for one hour to fix my attention span. Day three.” Just calling meditation raw dogging to fix his attention span. Hilarious and also so relatable.

0:41:57.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah, it really is.

0:41:59.8 Mike Vacanti: Calling meditation raw dogging and just sitting out there staring at the side of a house for an hour.

0:42:07.3 Jordan Syatt: It’s the term raw dogging for meditation is just so funny.

0:42:12.4 Mike Vacanti: Anything else that we missed that we…

0:42:15.1 Jordan Syatt: I was saying I went through so many the ranges of emotion, and I said, you know, I found out because I was recording a podcast with Dr. Danielle Belardo. And then as soon as we got off the podcast, Mitch was like, “Hey, just so you guys know, Charlie Kirk was assassinated.” And that’s how I felt, I almost dropped to my knees when I heard it. And at first it was, like, disbelief and sadness, and then there was anger when I saw all the celebrations. And now I’m at a point, what, five days later or so, where I think fear, which is not surprising given my fear and uncertainty, not for me per se, as much as it is for the country. I’m very worried for our country, both internally, domestically, us as a people, as a nation, but also internationally. I think that our enemies are very happy right now, when you are divided, it’s much easier to conquer. And I would imagine our enemies are playing a role in it, whether it’s through bot social media accounts or whatever. But I am, from an internal, domestic, national perspective, I think we are more divided now than we were during the Civil War.

0:44:00.2 Jordan Syatt: And I don’t say that lightly. And the reason I say that is because during the Civil War, number one, it was much easier logistically to fight a Civil war then because it was North versus South. It was very simple. You’re on the north, you’re fighting. You’re on the south, you’re fighting. And they had the line, that’s it and we’re going to fight. Now, you can’t do that. And that’s literally the only reason I think we haven’t devolved into a legitimate war is because logistically it just doesn’t make sense. And I don’t think that it would be feasible to have a legitimate war that way. But I think during the time of the Civil War, I actually think there was a lot of agreement among the majority of civilians and there wasn’t social media. And I think a lot of people were just talking in person. And yes, there was obviously disagreement, but I don’t think it was anywhere near as what it is now. And I think social media makes it, just amplifies the worst of the worst of the worst of the worst of the worst. And I don’t think that during the Civil War, most Americans, north or south, thought the other side was evil.

0:45:28.4 Jordan Syatt: I don’t think that was a huge thought among Americans. I don’t think they’re like, “They’re evil people.” I don’t believe that. And there may have been some, but I don’t believe large scale. It was like, they’re evil. But now the other side, whatever side you’re on, is always painted as evil. If you voted for this person, you are evil. If you voted for this person, you are a fascist. It’s just these words that are thrown around. I legitimately believe with my whole heart and soul that we are more divided and more angry than we were during the Civil War. And I have no idea how we fix it. I have no clue. And someone asked me in my DMs, they were like, “If you could flip a switch and remove social media, what do you do?” And I said, “Immediately.” immediately, because even if that meant losing my whole business, because for the country, for all of our lives, it would be better. And my whole career I’ve been like, listen, there are pros and cons of social media, but net net is positive. For the first time in my career since social media has come out, I think it is net net and negative.

0:46:43.2 Mike Vacanti: Is that because you think the way the algorithms work lead to so much polarization?

0:46:51.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. I mean, going through my feed, 20 to 1 angry versus either an educational or happy post, like 20 to 1, dude.

0:47:01.5 Mike Vacanti: Let me play devil’s advocate, even though I agree with you. What if somebody said the algorithm just shows you what you want to see and humans have always been this way.

0:47:13.6 Jordan Syatt: I agree, that is a fair argument. My thing was, like…

0:47:17.3 Mike Vacanti: I don’t know if I agree with that, by the way, but.

0:47:19.2 Jordan Syatt: Well, my thought would be, do we want an algorithm that shows us only what we want to see over and over and over again? Is that good for us? Are we supposed to only see what we want to see? Is that good? Because I don’t think that’s good. I don’t think that we’re supposed to just be shown over and over and over again necessarily what we want to see. I think we should be having discussion about what we need about, like, it’s being shown constantly what you want it. It’s not normal to not have other opinions. It’s not normal to not to just be in this echo chamber of, like, let me just show you the things that your emotional brain wants to see, because this is only gonna further reinforce this horrible, horrible idea. We need to be out in public speaking with people again, what Charlie did. But we need to be out having these conversations. And it would not be good from a business perspective, but from what we need as, like, we need to get off social media. It is net net horrible for us. 

0:48:25.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I mean, you know where I stand on that one.

0:48:32.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. And it’s not a realistic. It’s not realistic. It’s the most addictive thing in the world. I think it is the most addictive thing in the world.

0:48:40.3 Mike Vacanti: Especially with how easily accessible it is and how many people use it.

0:48:50.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s right in your pocket all the time. It’s funny, when I was 18, I was living in Israel. My buddy Sam picked up smoking cigarettes in Israel, just at 18, he was like, “I’m gonna start…” It was just like, “What are you doing, dude?” And we would work out, and then he would go smoke a cigarette, I’m like, “Come on, dude. What are you doing?” But I remember asking because I was really interested, because he was like, “I’m addicted now.” He was fully addicted. I think he still is to this day. And he’s actually an EMT at this point. But I remember asking because I wanted to understand what the addiction felt like. And I said, “What is it like, when you start to feel like you need it? What does it feel like?” He said something that I remember at the time thinking was very poetic. He said, “It feels like there’s a hole in my chest, and the only thing that can fill that hole is a cigarette.” He was like, “There is something that is deeply missing from my chest and I need it in order to fill that hole.”

0:49:55.1 Jordan Syatt: And sometimes I feel that way with social media where I could just be around and I’ll be like, I need that hit. I need that, the only thing that can fill that hole, to fill that is just open up Instagram. And I need that hit. And I don’t get that hit from anything else. I don’t get it from a podcast, I don’t get it from a long form YouTube video. I don’t get it from. And so I’ve never felt that more than with social media. And sometimes my phone will be in my pocket and I’ll be like, I’ll feel like I want to reach for it, I want to reach for it. It’s like that is addictive, it’s addictive. And I am addicted to it and I’m working to stop it. And Shabbat has helped tremendously with that. And ironically, even all this whole situation has helped with that because it’s almost been like that, I don’t even want that hit anymore because I know as soon as I open it it’s like, oh, bad. It’s gonna be bad. It’s almost been a deterrent for me, which is interesting.

0:51:01.6 Mike Vacanti: Good for you. Because I’ve… Good for you. I might start carrying a book around with me.

0:51:07.7 Jordan Syatt: Like a real book. Not on your phone.

0:51:09.8 Mike Vacanti: No, yeah, it’s just too dangerous. It’s too easy to go from one app to the other. But having the option, if you are bored, let’s say to consume something that is better for you in any given moment, standing in line at the DMV phone just comes out. Well, what if I have this other thing I can look at? I don’t know. I’m fully with you though, on social media and on your theory about the polarization that the algorithms are causing. And it wasn’t always this way, we used to just get chronological of the people we follow and…

0:51:53.4 Jordan Syatt: Fitness infographics and shit.

0:51:56.3 Mike Vacanti: Well, no, that was even algorithm like, because that was explore page. But that was the early, that wasn’t a For You page, that was the explore on Instagram. But even before that it was literally just people you follow.

0:52:12.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, posted a picture of their dog.

0:52:14.1 Mike Vacanti: In timeline order of when it was posted. Yeah, man.

0:52:21.0 Jordan Syatt: They’d be like, you’re all caught up now. You’re all caught up on post.

0:52:24.4 Mike Vacanti: And I’m like, wait a minute, we don’t want them to get caught up. We want them to consume, which is just a financial incentive buy these companies maximize time on app, which maximizes dollars, which maximizes revenue for the company, which is the goal of a company. It’s leading me down a very anti capitalistic path, but yeah, it’s interesting

0:52:48.7 Jordan Syatt: I’m interested to see because lawmakers are so far behind and social media is not only still so new, but it’s changing rapidly. And the people who are making the laws don’t really probably use social media. A lot of these older people, they have no clue what they’re doing. And you’ll even hear in some of these congressional hearings they’ll be like, “So there was a post,” and you can hear they don’t know, they don’t use social media. But it’s like these lawmakers are so far behind. It’s going to be very interesting to see what laws come out regarding social media. I’m very interested in laws that come out in regard to misinformation because that’s what I think really needs to be addressed immediately, because the misinformation campaigns are real. The misinformation campaigns are what, so, so much division. And this is really going to be crossing a line into potential free speech violations. But if you take a clip of someone and you make it appear as though they’re saying something they’re not based on just the, like for example, you know, like this happened with Stephen King. Do you see the Stephen King tweets? After Charlie.

0:54:17.0 Mike Vacanti: That he said that Charlie believed that gays should be stoned to death?

0:54:23.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Stephen King had tweeted that and then he had seen a clip that someone had clipped and it turned. When you actually look at the nuance, it’s like, oh no, he was quoting something that he did not believe in whatsoever. And then Stephen King came out and was like, “I apologize, that’s not what he said. He was quoting something,” but the damage had already been done. Yeah.

0:54:45.3 Mike Vacanti: The retraction doesn’t get as much top as the, yeah.

0:54:48.8 Jordan Syatt: Their attraction never gets as much ever, ever. And we see this all the time. It’s like, okay, so the person who made that clip, who put out this misinformation to make people believe, is there a case for… And I don’t even know what the law would be called, I don’t know. But is there a case for this is a crime to deliberately mislead people? To deliberately… Is that defamation? Is that libel? And maybe this stuff does already exist, but it’s happening in such large quantities with so much happening, I don’t know but that I think there has to be something in which we deter people from deliberately defaming and lying about them.

0:55:41.6 Mike Vacanti: I like the way that your brain works because it goes to a much more practical solution which is fixing some of the problems with social media. Whereas I immediately think how can I stop as the consumer using it and potentially help others stop using it? Which I don’t, I mean for myself, sure it is “realistic”, but I don’t know how much any of us can move the needle on helping hundreds of millions of people stop over consuming on something that’s bad for them.

0:56:15.3 Jordan Syatt: How do you help hundreds of millions of people get unaddicted?

0:56:17.8 Mike Vacanti: Or even how many of those hundreds of million even believe that it’s a problem?

0:56:21.5 Jordan Syatt: I mean, cigarettes, skull and crossbones on the box, they cause cancer and we’ve seen cigarette smoking decline, but not so much because people are quitting, more so because the education or around how horrible they are, so less people are picking it up, which is why my buddy Sam picked it up at 18. I was like, “Dude, what are you doing? Don’t do that.” But there has to be some real deterrence. And for example, we even see, and we did see this by the way, and we know they have the capacity because during COVID we started to see, hey, this post is lacking context. This post is, whatever, we saw that. But on posts regarding individuals, we’re not seeing that. We don’t see a heck, hey, this post was clipped, this is not the full context of the video. To watch the full the video, you should click here so you can actually see the full context for yourself like that from a platform perspective. I don’t know.

0:57:25.2 Mike Vacanti: Is it too expensive for these companies to implement that? Will AI help them better implement that?

0:57:31.6 Jordan Syatt: AI could absolutely better help implement it without question.

0:57:34.8 Mike Vacanti: I feel like this was kind of the goal of community notes, right?

0:57:38.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:57:38.7 Mike Vacanti: On X, I see fewer community notes than I used to see.

0:57:42.9 Jordan Syatt: Me as well. 

0:57:46.2 Mike Vacanti: I don’t know why, but.

0:57:47.0 Jordan Syatt: Probably because it slows people down from scrolling.

0:57:48.8 Mike Vacanti: Perhaps the pure volume of posts is too much to have, I don’t know how community notes work. I don’t know if there’s individuals who work for Twitter who are sifting through or how much AI they’re using, but maybe there’s just too much volume of posts for them to be on top of everything, I don’t know. But yeah, I like the way your brain works in like it’s going to be, you know, cigarettes cost money and it’s more obvious the negative effects they have. Social media is free, accessible and newer. So the negative effects of social media on human physical and mental health are still more unknown, I think than cigarettes are. So maybe it’s coming meaning a decline in consumption and usage, I don’t know. I know that I’ve wanted to use it less for many, many years. 

0:58:45.6 Jordan Syatt: Many years, 8.

0:58:48.3 Mike Vacanti: Maybe you might be right. And on the whole I do a decent job for periods of time, but then there’s periods of time where I don’t at all. I don’t know. I don’t know what the way forward is.

0:59:08.4 Jordan Syatt: Me either.

0:59:09.5 Mike Vacanti: This was a better conversation than the episode we canned.

0:59:13.2 Jordan Syatt: Much better. Much better. I’m happy we canned that one and had this one instead.

0:59:19.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And for the record, Jordan actually said some pretty good stuff in that episode. I think I was probably just unhinged a little bit in terms of…

0:59:30.4 Jordan Syatt: It was just more, listen, it wasn’t even 24 hours. It wasn’t even 24 hours.

0:59:36.6 Mike Vacanti: I was heated.

0:59:37.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:59:38.3 Mike Vacanti: And not like we were heated against each other, just that I said things publicly that I woke up the next day not even sure I agreed with myself.

0:59:48.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. It’s like the whole write the email but don’t send it.

0:59:52.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that’s right.

0:59:55.5 Jordan Syatt: Thank you to everyone for listening. Hopefully this was helpful or encouraging or insightful in some way. I’m sure some people are going to be upset about it, but thank you very much. Wish you and your families and loved ones the best. Stay off social media. It’s not real life. Please leave a five star view on iTunes, Spotify, wherever you’re listening, join the mentorship and that’s it. Have a wonderful week.

1:00:23.5 Mike Vacanti: Bye everyone. See you next week.