We’re All Addicted… And It’s Getting Worse

Bright: Yeah, you bring up a good point. Like, nobody's really listening, so what does it matter what we're talking about? Let's just hit record and go right into it. Right. And that'll be that. You know, he will miss out. So, you know, we took a two week hiatus. You had a golf trip, so you were out. ⁓ I had, it was a work trip, okay, a work golf trip. ⁓

Duds: and we'll talk for an hour and then that'll be it. And Greg will miss out. a work, it was a work trip. Yep.

Bright: And then we were both out, I think last week on spring break vacations. And you know, it's that time of year, people are on spring break. I think it's fine to take a two week break.

Duds: Hey, you know... I will say that I listened to an episode of you on Spring Break. So you were doing some podcasting while on Spring Break and you didn't want to do this one.

Bright: Yeah, my brother and I, well, you know, this one actually takes a lot more time, a little bit more preparation. And yeah, as opposed to just exactly. know, City SC Posse is designed for that. Just a quick 15 minute episode or two. We usually record them back to back. ⁓ But this one, you know,

Duds: as opposed to just talking about soccer for 15 minutes. A little easier. Those haven't been very exciting lately though.

Bright: Well, finally we have something to you know, we won so we'll work. Yeah now we have a bye week this week or it's an off week for international break. So ⁓ we'll only record ⁓

Duds: Did they win?

Bright: one episode. And you know what, like last week, I felt like we were both my brother and I like, retired. I was an hour ahead. Yeah. And he said he wasn't feeling well. He was actually kind of sick. And you know, I was like, these, yeah, that was like, if anybody is listening to that podcast for the first time, and I had some chatter on social media, people were like, yeah, I'm to go give it a listen. I'm like, I don't know that this is going to be the one that's going to bring the people

Duds: You sounded tired. It's like, man, they're really enthusiastic on this episode. Hahaha

Bright: in, you know, we just didn't have the energy there. And, you know, I had been out in the sun all day with the kids that, you know, and again, I was an hour ahead. Kevin was late joining the podcast. ⁓ And yeah, yeah. And then we had a technical issue where the recording stopped like halfway through the second episode we were recording and neither one of us caught it. And so I know. And then finally, I'm like, wait a minute. It's it's I know. And so I just said, you know what? Screw it. Let's just wrap it up. I hit

Duds: So it was already a later. ⁓ no. Like we don't want to repeat ourselves.

Bright: record we wrapped it up and and that was that and then ⁓ my wife went to bed and I was like alright I'm just gonna edit this real quick get it out there and then I'm done I didn't put as much work into into last week

Duds: Well you know what the best part about it is, if you half ass it and you put out something like that and it's not great, I mean it's not like you have a boss that's gonna fire you. You can cut corners on this, it's not a big deal.

Bright: No, right. Sure, sure. You know, it's for sure. Exactly. You know, well, somebody gave me a hard time on social media about the picture that I posted, you know, and it well.

Duds: What was the picture?

Bright: It was just a chat GPT generated image, but they were like, it's not an actual player. The crest on the Jersey is wrong. You know, I'm like, that's what they, that's what they called it AI slop. And I'm like, do we care? I didn't realize it was that big of a deal. And they said, they were like, well, I just assumed that that your podcast is crap. If you can't do anything with the photo. And I'm like, all right, I'll spend more time, you know, making a better image. You know, I tried to do this on vacation.

Duds: ⁓ AI Slop. Yeah. Put more time into it. Yeah. Take time away from my family.

Bright: I even wrote back I'm like Right. Yeah, I said that I was like, this is a hobby not a full-time job. Like come on like I Know I know I'm like, come on. Well, then somebody did the

Duds: You don't like that picture? Shut up. That's like one of ten people that listens. That's 10 % are pretty pissed off.

Bright: Seriously, seriously, but you know what I did get? I got engagement on the post. So you know what? They say any publicity is good publicity.

Duds: Hey, there you go. That's right, you should just try to stir some shit up. Encourage people to come listen to you.

Bright: Yep. Yep. Yep. Now, that's right. That's right. And then, you know, I figured the more people that listen to that, the more people that listen to this, you know, well.

Duds: Controversy, people love controversy. That probably ties in pretty good with our social media topic.

Bright: It does. And that is our main topic. Now, I hoped I hoped we'd have Nilla on, but after two weeks, you know, he's just like, ⁓ you know, not feeling it. So I don't know. Is this a two man show now? ⁓ Can we can we? Yeah. Can we rope him back in? You know, the old godfather? You know, we'll we'll see. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was the third one, which wasn't wasn't all that great. But

Duds: Who knows? They keep pulling me back in. That was in, that was on Seinfeld too. When George did that, every time I think about it, they pull me back in. So what I was saying before we turn, before we press play was a record was that I've been off social media for Lent. I haven't been on it at all. So I've actually had to go back to like trying to read some articles occasionally. Cause I'm like, I got to read something like there's nothing to read. And it's just like,

Bright: Yeah, yeah, yeah. think it was in a yeah. Yeah, yeah, Classic, classic. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah. Well, you go to the Guardian or something, right? That's your go-to news source. Yeah, Gateway Pundit. ⁓

Duds: It's the Gateway Pundit, which is actually St. Louis. ⁓ Is it Jim Hoff, I think, is the guy. He's from St. Louis. Yeah, so that's the Gateway. That's what in the name.

Bright: ⁓ yeah, I didn't know that. Okay. Alright. Right. Right.

Duds: But they got like a lot of flack as being like very like right wing, you know, because they were never pulling any punches like during COVID or anything. So I like them. I think they're pretty good. And then but it's still just not the same. Like it's not as fast. It's not as widespread like you on X, you just get so much more information all right at you. But on the other hand, it's kind of nice like being able to take a step back for it's been like five weeks now. And it's like

Bright: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Sure.

Duds: feel like stress levels are down a little bit, anxiety is down a little.

Bright: You know, and there's there's definitely some talk about that and how that, you know, that does help. The problem with what they say is when people do these online detoxes, that it doesn't have any benefit unless you actually quit social media altogether completely. Right. You know, so if you're like, I'm to take a five week detox, and then you go right back to what you were doing, then you know, it's kind of like being on a diet. You know, you do this crash diet, you lose a bunch of weight, and then you're just saying like, ⁓ I'm good now.

Duds: Completely. Right.

Bright: And then then all of a sudden you're right back where you were, know, you're 30 pounds heavier or you're watching Yeah, and so I thought you know, that would be a good primary topic not only because you're going through it right now But also we there was just a big court case regarding social media You know, I kind of honestly I feel politicked out right now and we were talking a little bit about that You know, we we talked about the Iran war and everything a couple weeks ago. That's still going on and I you know

Duds: Mm-hmm. And then you're right back to the addiction. Mm-hmm.

Bright: Well, I just start to think that, and I've always thought this honestly, it's just sometimes it seems more obvious, that all this politicking and cable news, I mean, none of it is real. It's all fake. It's all on agenda. Even the politics, you look at the TSA issues and the funding of the Department of Homeland Security and stuff like that. the Save America Act. These are all things that 80 to 90 % of Americans want. But yet, but the Democrats are like, No, we're not going to play along. We're not going to fund it. We're going to hammer on Trump.

Duds: Yeah. We know what I hate. Why can't they, well you know why they don't do it because it's all about the politicking. But single issue bills, that's what they need to, that should be the rule. Everything should be a single issue bill. Like voter ID is the only thing on the ballot, you know?

Bright: Yeah, right. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and so yeah, yeah. So they, you know, every now and then you hear you hear something and again, this we could this ties in a little bit to social media because you see this on social media is tough to distinguish. always what's real and what's not real. But you see things like, ⁓ you know, the Senate put forth ⁓ the Save America Act with just the voter ID aspect and the Democrats still voted it down. Or they put forth the TSA funding, you know, without the whole, you know, the whole rest of the Department of Homeland Security and the Democrats still voted it down. I mean, I agree, there's a lot of pork and a lot of bills and you know, that can lead to people being like, well, that, you know, that's not

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: this bill is really about. Rand Paul is famous for that. You know, where he was just like, I, you know, I'm for this, but I'm against all this other crap that's in the bill that they threw in there. Problem is that they can't pass any bills unless they throw that stuff in there to appease Senator one, Senator two, Senator three, right? So yeah, you went DC, which I love DC, you know, I haven't taken the kids there and you guys used to live up in the area. Is this the first time the kids have been back?

Duds: So you know where we went last week for spring break, right? Yep. So it's the first time I've actually been back and yeah, first time Jameson was born there. So he wanted to kind of go see where he was born. then, ⁓ yeah, Emerson obviously hadn't gone, but it was a lot of fun. ⁓ I think one of the best parts was going downtown and then walking.

Bright: Yeah, sure, okay. Mm-hmm.

Duds: around the mall and then we got to do a tour of the Capitol building, which I had never done before, which I thought was pretty cool. You did that. so you have, you had to sit through the theater, like the, ⁓ the video at the beginning of the Capitol tour, right? They go into, do you remember that?

Bright: Yeah, right. Okay, we did that. Yeah, we did that. And the White House. Uh-huh. ⁓ I think I think so. Yeah, I don't quite remember. Yeah. Yeah.

Duds: This about a 15 minute video. go into kind of the history of how the country was formed and what the purpose of the House of Representatives and the Senate is and how it's supposed to, the Senate is supposed to represent the states and the House of Representatives is supposed to represent the individual people as a populace. You know, it goes through all the bills that have been passed over the years and all the laws and all the great work that all these politicians have done for the people. And at the end of it, I raised my hand and I asked the guy, it didn't

Bright: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Duds: say anything in here about lobbyists and how these bills actually get passed? Could you explain that more?" And he didn't answer my question and he just said, let's start the tour.

Bright: Of course not. course not. Nobody has an answer to that, right? Yeah. Of course it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Duds: But that's how they all are passed now. It's not for the people anymore. The system is definitely broken. It's all for lobbyists. And that's why you don't see any of these bills that have 90 % of the populace supporting them getting passed, because that's not where the money is. It's not in serving the people. It's in serving their own pockets. And that is through lobbyists.

Bright: Sure. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that's 100 % it and you know, it's and it's about the the being in power. right? So, and it's probably true both sides of the aisle, but the Democrats aren't in power right now. And you know, we know they have TDS. And so it's like, hey, we're not going to go along with anything this guy's doing. Not that they always fundamentally disagree with everything, but they, cannot possibly give Trump a win. You know, it's too much of a game. Whereas it's been that way for a while now, but certainly since Trump's first term, ⁓

Duds: No. You can never let the other side have a win. Yeah.

Bright: But you No, right. That's the thing. You can both say, like, oh, we worked together. This was a joint bill and all that stuff. they can't give it to Trump. Even if 90 % of Americans agree with voter ID, no, it's disenfranchising Americans. And we're standing up for the people. they have their small base. But then when it comes time for midterms, they're going to hammer just the Iran war right now. going to try and hammer him on that. And we were just starting to talk about gas prices before we hit record. And I was like, I didn't, I did do a little bit of just independent research for my own knowledge because everybody's talking about gas prices. Yeah. You know, they're up. And I think that was a little bit predictable, right? And even Bobcat man said something in our chat, you know,

Duds: I know, I sold my oil stocks last year, so mean, that kinda pissed me off.

Bright: Right, I tell you. Right, right. Well, yeah, because you're like, ⁓ well, I don't know, would it be good or bad Trump's coming into office? He's pro oil. But you know, crude oil is certainly going to come down.

Duds: Well, I think I sold them in like August. it was, you know, six, six months in. And then all of sudden I sell them and then we go capture Venezuela's leader. And then I tack Iran. It was like, okay. That's nice.

Bright: Yeah, OK. Right before Venezuela. Right. Right, right, yeah, yeah, sure, yeah. That's usually how it goes, you know. ⁓ But you know, Bobcat Man's like, ⁓ everybody's throwing... ⁓ anyway, you can make money, you know, as long as it's moral, I guess. But you're not making these decisions. Right, right, yeah.

Duds: Not that I want to make money off any of that, but you know. I rolled it all into Bitcoin, so I feel much better about my moral, my moral conscious, you know.

Bright: And Bitcoin started to steady out a little bit, you know, it went up and I haven't checked it. It kind of came back down, but right around 70, it's kind of stabilized there and hopefully it'll get back to where it was. And Nilla even said he bought some Bitcoin. We probably convinced him on this podcast to buy some Bitcoin, but he's not here to talk about it, but.

Duds: It's right around 70, I think, yeah. ⁓ yeah. Yeah, he texted me and he got on ⁓ the same exchange I did and got on there. Yeah, he was talking to me about it like a couple months ago, maybe. He's probably like, fuck you.

Bright: ⁓ do you really? ⁓ nice. Right. Nice. See, that's a well, he probably hasn't lost any money yet. I don't know that he's made any, but he probably hasn't lost any. ⁓ Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Duds: Yeah, I mean, I'm down, but I'm buying, like I said, every day. So just bringing the average down. That's how, you know, I think I might have mentioned this before. When I started doing monthly investing after tax investments, I look back at the performance on that.

Bright: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah.

Duds: And this is the money that I'm rolling into Bitcoin now. I think it was about eight years or so, nine years ago that I started doing that. And for the first two, three years, it was basically down. It went up and then it actually went down to kind of the level that it started after like six to seven years. And then in the last year and a half, two years, it went up. So really it's like.

Bright: Mm-hmm. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Skyrocketed back up. Yeah.

Duds: Any investment that you start getting into and you're recurringly buying you could go almost a decade and not really see any major ground You know and then in a matter of a couple of years that it makes the whole thing worth it

Bright: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well. Sure. Well, you know, like I started doing individual stocks and Bitcoin and stuff like that, pretty much around COVID. And I don't know why a lot of people did. I don't know if it was the influx of funds from the government, discretionary funds, more time on your hands to do some research. I was absolutely going to say that Robinhood, ⁓ you know, which is what I use made it so easy. Yeah, absolutely. Very easy. ⁓ And yeah, I've certainly had my ups and downs, but I,

Duds: probably more time on their hands to research some different investments. make it easier for people.

Bright: Couple of weeks ago, I think I talked about what my ⁓ Robin Hood portfolio has done over time, you know, and it it's up down, up down. But again, you take that snapshot out and it's and it's up, you know. So, yeah, you got to invest over time and time is. Yeah.

Duds: Zoom out. Yeah. All right. Time is your friend. Yeah, as long as the investments are good.

Bright: Yeah. And you know, I think that honestly is probably true about the Iran war. You know, like, people are so quick. It's only been two weeks, three weeks, people like shut up. So gas has gone up a little bit over the course of this three week period. But under Joe Biden, the national average got as high as up to like $5 and 20 something cents in like 2022. And then I think his average over the course of his four years in office was somewhere around $3.70 per gallon, right? Trump was significantly lower than that and he's kind of right around there or maybe a little bit higher right now over the stretch of two weeks. And of course the Democrats are freaking out. They're freaking out. I got an email today, which I'm not happy about from Blue Apron. So we, Caroline and I, we use Blue Apron and they said because of rising shipping costs, they're going to raise their prices on their menu items by like 50 cents here, $1.50 there, whatever. Not on the shipping itself per se.

Duds: ⁓ yeah, okay. Mm-hmm.

Bright: because that is what freaks people out. But on the menu items to adjust for the cost of, know, transit and shipping both to receive their product and then ship it back out. And I'm like, it's been two weeks. I'm like, where, like you already did this when Biden was in office. already, no, and I understand that, but there's no real need for them to go up right now. It's been three weeks.

Duds: Sure. Prices never go down. When gas dropped to $2 a gallon, they weren't lowering the price. They didn't send you an email. Hey, we're lowering our prices for everything for you. We're passing on the savings. Do they ever pass on the savings? Does anybody ever pass on the savings?

Bright: Right, did they go down? No, of course not. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I know. Well, I sent, I sent, no, no, of course not. I sent them an email because I was not happy about it. And they sent me a reply back. So that, I mean, that's something, but they didn't read my email. I can tell because they missed a couple of clear things. It was just like this generic reply, you know.

Duds: It was an AI reply, I'm sure.

Bright: Yeah, maybe, maybe. I asked for a credit. I said, Hey, you know, this offsets because I get free shipping, free shipping. But I was like, you just sent me an email that said due to shipping costs, you're raising the prices of your menu. So yeah, okay. I still get free shipping. Yeah, I know. It makes zero sense. I said, Hey, is there, you know, is there a way to offer a credit? And I'm not asking for to complete, but just give me a little bit, you know, give me like two, three free meals or something.

Duds: Free shipping. Shipping costs are up, but I still have free shipping? This doesn't make any sense. How long you been using that?

Bright: I tell you something man. A long time. No, no, no, no. And what I like about it, honestly, and free free plug for Blue Apron. I know they do a lot and I'm sure I learned about them through podcasts, you know. ⁓ But we started using them. Yeah, hint, hint, right? Yeah. ⁓

Duds: Easy for all your meals? Hint hint, blue apron.

Bright: We started using what we were at the old house. So I mean, we're probably going back to like 2017 or something like that. And yeah, when my neighbor used them and so I was like, let's give it a try. And, know, back then we had no kids or whatever. It was very easy. It was affordable. You know, then the prices went up. I kind of got away from it. Then they introduced something kind of new. And I'm like, all right, I'll try that. And I do like it, you know, and it gives us the flexibility, the food.

Duds: Way back. You

Bright: I would cook these meals on my own, you know, they ship it right to your house and it just takes the work out of it. So it's definitely a convenience factor as far as like the shopping and the things like that. And then again, you just have more diversity in your meals. And then if I'm on the road, which I often am, I just turn it off. If I don't like the menu that week, I turn it off and they have more menu items than ever. ⁓ So it's a convenience factor. had one tonight. What did I have? Korean pork bowls with rice cake. Yeah, really good. Really good.

Duds: ⁓ Jenny made some ⁓ turkey zucchini meatloafs that she made in the air fryer. She made her own ketchup and Worcestershire sauce and mustard, Dijon mustard. ⁓ so good.

Bright: Mm. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. I do that a lot now. ⁓ Turkey, beef, pork. I've done all that meatloaf ⁓ in the air fried the last time I did it. Yeah, it's easy. And I made too many meatloafs last time. So I made one for Caroline and one for me. ⁓ You know, so you don't have one. Yeah.

Duds: I love meatloaf. It's like my favorite. Yeah. She made a whole tray of them. I think she had like nine of them or something. Ten of them. Like pretty good size. Like almost looked like a filet. ⁓ yeah. Like three. Everybody, kids ate like two. I ate two. Yeah, they were big. And of course we had mac and cheese. Gotta have mac and cheese.

Bright: Okay, ⁓ yeah. Right. Yeah, so you got some leftovers and lunch tomorrow or something like that. Kids ate them. All right, well, that's good. Yeah, yeah, that's good. Yeah. Air fryer is the way to go. Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah. Well, I'm off the carbs, you know, I even had to cut out the rice cakes today. There's too many carbs in the rice cakes. And I will say, and we are, mean, we're not even close to being on topic tonight, which is fine, but, you know, I went on vacation after being on this diet, you know, I'm down 30 pounds. know, which I think I brought up before. know. And now I'm lifting and I, you know, I'm studying out and so I'm hoping to kind of keep all that. But I'm like, ⁓ I'm to go on vacation and it's going to be all this bad food and drinking beer. And it was, don't get me wrong, you know, lot of French fries and, ⁓ burgers. did have a lot of fish, you know, fried fish sometimes. but I came back

Duds: You're wasting away.

Bright: I didn't weigh in at all on vacation and I took the two days. So Tuesday, Wednesday, I'm like, all right, I'm gonna get right back to it. No carbs, high protein, working out and weighed myself today. New low. I shocked, flabbergasted. I thought I was gonna come in, know, like, ⁓ man, I can't believe I'm seven pounds up, you know. No, all time low.

Duds: Yeah. way high, right? Gained it all back. So how long have you been doing your diet and exercise now?

Bright: ⁓ give or take December 15th. And I didn't start exercising right away. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Probably.

Duds: Okay. So three months, three and a half months almost. So here's the, from what I found is like, if you actually make a lifestyle type change, right? If you, in your, if you mentally tell yourself, I'm not going on a diet and I'm not going to the gym to try to try to get, you know, healthy for, you know, the spring break or, the summer. Right.

Bright: Yeah. And that's what it is now. Yeah. Right, it started as a diet and now I think it's a lifestyle change.

Duds: If you can mentally change yourself and have a lifestyle change where, okay, this is what I do. Like I, this is the normal food that I eat. I eat healthy and then I exercise and I try to go three or four or five days a week to the gym. And I, if I can't do that, that's okay. But like that's my goal. And then you come up to a time where you go on vacation and you take a week off and you, when you first are into it, you have the same thinking that you do. Like, ⁓ man, I just blew up my whole thing and I

Bright: Yeah. ⁓ huh. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Duds: back into the gym and I'm going to weigh more. But in reality, it's just it works the same way as the person who you can't just go work out and diet for a week and expect to be in shape. Well, if you're normally exercising and eating healthy, if you go off that for a week, it's not going to revert you back to what you were. So as long as you you take a break and you come back and you get back into it, it's that that's what is always hardest for everybody.

Bright: Right. Sure. Right. One week's not going to blow it up. Yeah. Yeah.

Duds: is coming back and getting back into the routine. if you can do that, if you can do that, you'll be just fine.

Bright: Right. Yeah, well that was the first thing I did. Yeah, yeah. And you know, and I think at some point it's gonna be like, okay, we don't need to be as hardcore about it. But my goal is especially during the week, you know, you eat healthy, ⁓ you stick to that routine. And then at the weekends, you know, gives you a little bit more flexibility when you're going out and stuff like that. Now the big thing for me, is now I've been on a little bit of a hiatus traveling. This is my slow season when it comes to travel, but that's about to change. So once I hit the road again, and it's, you know, it's harder sometimes to maintain that when I'm traveling and you can't be making home cooked meals. Who's coming down? Somebody coming down to eavesdrop? The dog. Yeah. All right.

Duds: Right. No, it's the dog. He's scratching at the floor, making himself comfortable. Now he's licking himself. Char.

Bright: Now, what do you say we get into the main story here? And we could just kind of chit chat and run through. This'll be a faster episode, I'm sure. Although we've been just bullshitting for 24 minutes. But there was the social media trial, and I'm not gonna get into the weeds on that. But the ruling went against. Yes, yes.

Duds: I didn't even know that they were having a trial on this. think I might have heard it a while back.

Bright: Yeah, and you know, it's been a couple of times where ⁓ Zuckerberg and some of the other social media CEOs have had to go testify and do things like that. ⁓ So that's happened and this has been in the news, but this is a very specific case. ⁓ you know, and they, the plaintiff, you know, which I don't know that we have the actual full name on the plaintiff, if her identity was being masked or what, cause she was, I don't know if she still is, but she was a minor, you know, when she filed this lawsuit or when she had these issues. And so she sued Google or, or. or alphabet or whatever the parent company of YouTube and Metta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, mainly about her anxiety and depression and all this stuff that she has from the algorithm of social media. And the whole thing was, is that this, this could set the precedent, which is a little bit of, you know, I'm concerned that one, the plaintiff one, the social media giants lost, and it was like a $3 million settlement or or settlements the wrong word, ⁓ I mean, $3 billion is a lot of money. It's nothing to the social media companies. It's a lot of money for the, for the plaintiff.

Duds: Yeah, wasn't very much. So these damages though that she got, like I would say a lot of people could sue for the same thing.

Bright: Well, that's that's what I mean. So does this set the precedent for lawsuits coming out of the woodwork? ⁓ Well, sure, that too. know, have a billion. exactly. A billion. You're right.

Duds: like a class action lawsuit. Every user. Billion users. Pay every billion, pay every billion one million dollars.

Bright: Yeah. So, ⁓ so I, know, that's, that's the thing I worry about. ⁓ but, but, you know, I guess we'll see maybe laws, maybe the U S will have to look at this and pass some laws, you know, the Facebook and Google, they all say that they have stuff for minors and, know, they have limitations, they have parental controls, but the problem is that there's all there's ways around that.

Duds: I think they just groom miners on there.

Bright: Well, and that's the bigger argument is that they say that they're doing these things, but they're actually relying heavily on young people to fuel their platforms. And that's more or less what I have my breakdown on. We could go dissect the trial and the lawsuit and all that, but I think the stats that I've got here is pretty good. And it's all about the different generations and how social media is rewiring.

Duds: Sure. Alright, give me the breakdown and I'm going to grab a beer.

Bright: every generation and nobody is safe. So we can start with Gen Z. And the fact of the matter is Gen Z is essentially living online. So you're talking about going through, you know, a little bit of a social media detox, but how much were you, how much time were you really spending online?

Duds: computer.

Bright: Well, yeah, that doesn't count. mean, work is work. I'm talking to like social media, scrolling X, Facebook, TikTok, you know, I don't think it was really that much.

Duds: So how much or what platforms do you have? Because the only thing I was ever on was X, recently.

Bright: Yeah, ⁓ right. I have Facebook and I do scroll Facebook sometimes. ⁓ I have X and that's probably the one that I look at the most now. I only got TikTok to support this podcast. I do. I never look at it. So I don't scroll TikTok. I know. Yeah. So I post some of our stuff on TikTok. Not much.

Duds: Do you have Instagram? That's like the most popular one though too, right? How is that one even set up? like continuous new videos coming at you or what?

Bright: Yeah, it's just videos and you know, and I have some stuff on that too. It's just these short form videos. And that's what I think is really addicting people now. And the same is true with Instagram. It's yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so nothing is right.

Duds: 20 second clips, yeah. feeds that focus, that attention deficit disorder that everybody has. Everybody needs.

Bright: Yes. Anything longer than 30 seconds is a documentary now. know, nobody, nobody wants to listen to anything, you know, a minute long or, or anything like that. It's they give it 10 seconds. And if they're not hooked in 10 seconds, they scroll because it's endless. It's just

Duds: Ha What was the movie I was looking at the other day? It was like, think it was Casablanca. It was like three and a half hours or something like that.

Bright: ⁓ well, not Casablanca, although not that one short. You're probably thinking of Citizen Kane or or Gone With the Wind. Both of those are very long, I think. Mm Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I tried watching Citizen Kane one time because it's it's consistent. Number one, you can't you can't get through it. You can't do it.

Duds: Citizen Kane, that's what it was. Yeah, I think both of those were shown up on HBO or Netflix or something. was like, oh my gosh, this thing's like three and a half, four hours long. Who's gonna watch that? It's supposed to be like the top movie of all time. Yeah. Now is it tough?

Bright: Now Casablanca I liked I remember watching that in film studies in high school and I'm like, all right. Yeah. Yeah. This is good. Gone with the wind. I can't do it. No. I, you know, I've seen that one. I've seen that one. ⁓ what's the, yeah. Yeah. I haven't seen the remake. What's the bridge? I liked that one, but it's been a long time. Full metal jacket. ⁓ I don't know about that. Eighth grade.

Duds: I remember watching that in school, yeah. All quiet on the Western Front. that? Yeah, they have a remake of that. One flew over the cuckoo's nest. that one? I think we watched that in eighth grade. Didn't we? I don't know, maybe I'm thinking of something else.

Bright: It was probably high school. Yeah. Eighth grade's probably probably ain't ready for the Kubrick films. You know, 2001, a space odyssey. Do you remember watching that with Nate Dogg? You know, it was me. Yeah, it me, you and him. I think we watched it at his house. We watched 2001, a space odyssey. Then we tried to watch the ⁓ follow ups and we couldn't do it. 2001 was good, but not the sequels. No, but.

Duds: I am thinking of something else. I don't know, maybe. I watched... Nothing was good after that. I think the TV show was pretty good. Didn't they have that? I thought they had that on Netflix. I am. Yeah. That's a different thing, isn't it?

Bright: There was a TV show? Hell? You're not thinking of like Lost in Space or something, are ya? You are lost in space. Yeah, that's different thing. 2001 of Space Odyssey is it starts. like the first 20 minutes is the monkeys. Remember? And then the one monkey discovers that the bone. Yeah. Uh huh. And then all of a sudden it goes, it goes to space. But the first like 20 minutes of the movie, you're like, what the hell is going on? You know? Yeah. Yeah. That's a good one. But all right.

Duds: Oh, dun dun dun, yeah. Dun dun. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Okay, now I remember that one. Okay, little tangent there. Back to it. So you... Hold on, hold on. So you don't have Instagram?

Bright: back to social media. So Gen Z, yeah, okay, yeah. ⁓ no. I guess.

Duds: Is that considered social media? Okay, Snapchat is that also? Okay. Yeah, so we had Facebook back in college, right? So I would say that was 2002 that it really started, we probably started getting onto Facebook.

Bright: Yes, I did not have that either. Yeah. Sure, right. It was actually it was like 2006 I think is when it came out ⁓ Yeah, yeah

Duds: Was it that late? I thought we had it in like a long time in school.

Bright: No, it was like right when we were graduating, I think. I remember it started going school to school. So like we didn't have it. I remember Justin. Yeah, look it up. I'm pretty sure it's 2006. Maybe it started in 2004, but yeah, I remember Justin had it down at CMO and like it wasn't available to me yet. It wasn't at my college. So like I couldn't be on it.

Duds: Hold on, we're gonna have to look this up. When was? I looked this up not that long ago. I thought it was earlier than that. Let's see. OK. February 4th 2004. You're right. That was when it was at Harvard.

Bright: Yeah, so came out no four, but.

Duds: By June of 2004, it was available at 34 schools. I think Rolla was one of them.

Bright: In 2004, Rolla was one of them.

Duds: So I remember being down there and it was probably 2004, 2005. I thought it was way earlier. I thought it was my freshman year down there, but I guess not. isn't that funny how time just kind of gets smashed together? Like I feel like I was like a brand new freshman and they're like, hey, check out this Facebook thing. But I guess that was three or four years in.

Bright: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, nah, nah, nah, Of course, the older you get, that's what happens. Yeah. All right. Right. Yeah. Sure.

Duds: You couldn't even log in with our RALA, our UMR ⁓ email. You had to use missouri.edu because Mizzou, I guess, was on it. And for some reason, that worked for our emails as well. And then, yeah, it took like another six months or a year before RALA was on there. Those were the early days, though, and there was no other people, just university students.

Bright: Right. Okay, okay, right Right. Interesting. All right. Well, it's a Missouri school. Yeah. Right. Sure. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Well, see now and this I have this in here. It definitely was better. I would agree. And, know, then they open it up to everybody. Yeah, I know. But the problem is that. Right.

Duds: It was so much better. I think they should have kept it school-based. Well, but from a business aspect, they're not going to do that.

Bright: Of course, right. So they needed to get bigger. They eventually needed to get advertisers. You go watch the movie. It's great. And I guess they're making a second social network movie that's going to take place, you know, after the fact at some point. Well, maybe, maybe exactly. And they're recasting Zuckerberg. So it's not going to be the same guy or whatever. ⁓ But now you look at Facebook. Good.

Duds: ⁓ yeah? Showing how it destroyed humanity? So if we had that in. I was gonna say if we had that in 2005, I think we got rid of it in 2011. Maybe 12 timeframe, something like that. So probably about five or seven, seven-ish years maybe being on it. And I remember exactly what it was that turned us off on it was the invention of the timeline, that feed. So it used to be at the beginning where you'd actually have to...

Bright: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Caroline got rid of it too. She doesn't have one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You had to go to people's pages. Yeah, right. It would be more like MySpace. Yeah.

Duds: go to people's pages and you'd leave them a message and they would go to your page. Exactly. And then you could add photos and you could tag people and that would show up on their on their page, right? In their photos. And that was really cool. Like that a lot. And then when the feed came out, I was like, this is going to be the downfall of this whole thing, which obviously it wasn't from a company aspect, but it in my mind, it wasn't social media anymore at that. It was now it's something completely different. And what that showed me. We, yeah.

Bright: Yep. Yeah, ⁓ huh. Right. Yeah, sure. ⁓ ugh. Right. Right. Yeah. Well, it's turned into entertainment. That's what it is. It's people now look at it as a form of entertainment and it's the guy can't stop scrolling. Yeah. Yeah.

Duds: I would say that is what has become. Yeah, it's more entertainment and not communicating and with other people that you know. But the reason we got rid of it was because these were at the beginning it was still people that were all your friends. Like you didn't really have any friends that you didn't know on there. Right. Everybody was on there. You knew like it wasn't millions of followers. Right. You couldn't just follow anybody. You had to be friended and

Bright: No. Right. Right. Right. Everybody on your feed was still your friends. Yeah. Right.

Duds: you would see your friends or your acquaintances from, you know, might've seen, them three or four times, or you might've hang out with them a lot, but you don't know their politics and you don't know anything like.

Bright: Sure. Yeah. Right. Right. Well, it certainly changed. Yes. Right.

Duds: Right, so this person you would think of as your friend and you had a good relationship with then all of sudden you see on the computer screen that they're posting stuff about whatever politics that you completely disagree with and they're just kind of like Right stuff that you probably would never even talk to them about in person and then now you have this, you know

Bright: Mm. Yeah, they voted for the other guy or they have the opposite opinion of abortion and you know, yeah Sure, right? All right. Yeah

Duds: ⁓ opinion of them and hatred of them and it's like was that worth it that doesn't help anybody by doing that and then the other part of that is and it's really not like somebody trying to be mean but like when you go on vacation you post all your vacation pictures right

Bright: Hatred. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah, and that's almost all I post on Facebook at all anymore is or concert videos or something, but that's about it. Never. Yeah. Yeah.

Duds: Well, you don't ever post... You don't ever post about, like, bad stuff going on. So it's all... It's all good, like in your feed, like you're posting stuff and it's all good stuff. Well, now you extrapolate that to all of your friends and they're all only posting the good stuff. And if you're going through your life and you're not having like great times all the time, but on your feed, everybody's having a great time all the time. And you are wondering, you know, what's the deal with that? And that's causing anxiety and stress on people too, I think.

Bright: Sure. It's not real. Yeah. Right. Right. Yes. So I had a stat. Yeah, I had a stat in here or something about this and we're way off. We're way out of the order, but no longer is keeping up with the Joneses. It used to be about your neighbor, right? Your neighbor gets a new outdoor pizza oven and you're like, ⁓ I got to get a new outdoor pizza over. Well, now it's all about social media and especially on Instagram, I think, and maybe stories and, and Tik TOK to, to an extent, but you see acquaintances or ⁓ or friends of friends, whatever it may be, you're scrolling through and they're always on vacation or they're always out to eat. And that's what you think. You're like, ⁓ well, these people are going out all the time or they're going on all these vacations. I need to do that too. Well, then you start spending

Duds: Yeah, but you have a thousand friends.

Bright: Well, right, exactly. You know, and you don't realize that the times that they're not on vacation, you know, they're actually miserable or whatever, you know, they're they're only. Yes, exactly. Whatever. They just it glorifies the amazing things that, you know, hopefully we all get to do at some some form or another. But then you start thinking that that you're. Yes. Yeah.

Duds: They're not posting stuff about it. Alright. I've been sick for three weeks. but you start to see it all the time. And it's not happening for you all the time. It's not happening for anybody all the time, but in your feed, it looks like it's just happening all the time.

Bright: No, right, right, sure, yeah, yeah. Well, people people think that with my job and we don't necessarily I don't want to get into the weeds on my job. We don't have to tell everybody what it is. But a lot of people think that like, oh, he's got the best job. All he does is go have fun and go to these cool places and eat great food and drink great drinks. And like, yeah, there's the right. What does this guy do? You know, I thought he was a full time radio host or something, right? Yeah. Yeah. You know, and

Duds: Man, people are gonna wonder, like, what's this guy's job? He goes to exotic places and drinks and eats amazing food.

Bright: it is it is awesome don't get me wrong it's a lot of great things but they don't see the the working 16 hour days or getting stuck at the airport or not eating for 12 hours you know leading up to that one meal or right yeah the water yeah now people are really wondering you know yeah CIA bright over here that's my yeah duds is actually my handler this is all a gimmick

Duds: the waterboarding, you know? Alright. This is our cover.

Bright: Mmm. This is our cover. Yeah, but I think I think that Keeping Up With The Joneses 100 % has turned into the social media. And again, it glorifies things and you're not seeing real life. You know, and then yeah, I think think part of the reason we have the divide that we do. That's part of the reason that I like this podcast. Yeah, you might be able to tell where our politics lie, especially if you go back and listen to the past episodes. But we're pretty friendly guys. I like to think think so, right? Like, we're friends with, we're friends with Democrats, we're friends with Republicans, we're friends with independents, we're friends with people that don't follow politics. We're friends with gay people, we're friends with straight people, we're friends with black people, we're friends with white people. Honestly, I don't know that we really care all that much. But some people would see one post that we make on social media and be like, I can't be friends with them.

Duds: I'm everybody's friend. Though, for sure. Racist MAGA.

Bright: But we would be friends with them. Right. Well, right. Yeah, that's that's probably what they think. Right. Like, so I think there is something to be said about that. And I think there's something, you know. Well, sure. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's true. You would think so. Right. But that's that ain't true. That's not the way it works.

Duds: Be friendly till it's time not to be friendly. Everybody should be at least cordial with one another. Yeah. I got a lot of fraternity brothers, know, and like all different walks of life, different political, you know, some are more liberal and conservative than others. And I've got a couple that talked to me about like, ⁓ did you see what this guy posted on Facebook? It's like, well, no, because I don't have Facebook. And they'll say, and they'll show me. And I'm like, yeah, you know, it's like,

Bright: Right. No, because I don't have it, right.

Duds: people post that stupid stuff. Like, I'm glad I don't have it because I know the guy and when I see him in person and we hang out, it's fine to hang out with him.

Bright: to each their own, right. Right. It's fine. Yeah. ⁓

Duds: And we understand that our politics don't match, but he never would say that kind of stuff in person, which is, it's bad on him, but it's also just the platform itself. Like if it doesn't exist, if you're not on it, then you're not exposed to that. It's not a really good look for people, I don't think, you know?

Bright: Right. Sure. Right. Right. Yeah, it is. It's the plan. Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah for sure and then you know people just I mean the internet in general people say things on the internet that they would never say in person or or in another format Well, right. That's that is true, you know and that and again Yeah Yeah, yeah. Yeah

Duds: Right. It's because you can't get punched in the face through a computer screen. As soon as that starts happening, people wouldn't say anything. Like if you, you know, had to put your address above like a shit post or whatever, I don't think people would do it. Or you have to post your actual face, you know, with where you live. Hey, you want to talk shit? That's fine. You can do that.

Bright: Yeah, yeah. No, no. And maybe that should be the new law, right? Maybe. Yeah. Yes. Everybody gets doxxed. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. For sure. And yeah. All right. All right. Yeah. Until your house gets TP'd or egged or worse. Of course not. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right.

Duds: And I don't think people should have to do that. You you shouldn't, you should be able to be private online. It's a digital world, right? You shouldn't have to broadcast where you live and all that stuff. But you also shouldn't be an asshole. So, I mean, don't do that. Don't be a troll.

Bright: Yeah, agreed. Yes, don't don't exactly don't be a troll. And that's the thing who has the time. So this is our first stat. I don't know that we ever got to it. Gen Z is spending five hours a day on social media. That's a long freaking time five hours. Imagine if you took that into and took that time to learn a language or read a book or

Duds: That's too much. That's too much to basically do anything. learn the piano, practice basketball, anything.

Bright: learned that I mean, there's so many things that if you took that time and actually invested it. Now, if you're an influencer, and you're making a bunch of money, okay, one thing, but if you're just a regular Joe Schmoe, Jen Zier, and you're spending five.

Duds: Five hours a day? Just scrolling. That's a whole nother level. Like I didn't think people were on it that much.

Bright: No, no, no, no. And, you know, some some people would argue be like, ⁓ well, you watch five hours of TV. I don't, first of all. But but okay, if you watch five hours, I actually think TV is a much less. Maybe, you know, but I actually I think TV teaches you more than social media teaches you. And like my kids, of course, they're too young to really have social media. But I don't even let them watch YouTube.

Duds: My kids do.

Bright: You know, I know some kids their age are watching YouTube and they're watching these crazy videos and they're scrolling and they're going from one video to the next video. They're short videos. My kids are watching shows. They're watching shows that teach lessons. ⁓ you know, shows. That's how I learned some things. ⁓ I mean a lot of things, but really I learned

Duds: Yeah, we don't. We don't allow that. Blue's Clues?

Bright: No, not even that. Like even growing up, I learned how stories are structured. ⁓ Themes, you know, I know they try and teach that in school with books, but that never clicked with me. It didn't click with me until I found a really good TV show that I was into that was really good about doing that stuff. And I was like, ⁓ that you want to the show that it really was? No.

Duds: Sesame Street. What was that? Is it Barney?

Bright: I was much older. It was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which we have talked about on this podcast before, but

Duds: ⁓ okay. So that show taught you how a story is structured.

Bright: taught me how good stories are structured and how character development happens how ⁓ themes work all kinds of different stuff. I remember one specific episode I was watching when I was younger. My mom was watching with me and she thought it was dumb. She was like, what are you watching? know, and it was this episode. ⁓ No, I love I'm watching them with the kids right now. You know, my kids seven and four.

Duds: Yeah. Have you gone back and watched them? They probably are dumb. Are you really? That's funny.

Bright: love Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Love it. They ask every night if they can watch it. And I'm like, tonight's not a night, you know, and I have to cherry pick. I can't watch every episode. ⁓ Mainly the episodes with the sex, you know, the there's not like that much of the good episodes. Yeah. There's not actually that much violence, really, not by today's standards by any means. And it's all pretty hokey. ⁓ And really, it's the episodes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I actually had that on the wheel today because ⁓ Hulu just canceled

Duds: Yeah. The good episodes. Was that Sarah Michelle Geller?

Bright: the Buffy reboot that they were going to make. So I was all excited about that and they filmed the pilot and then Hulu pulled the plug on it, ⁓ which I know, which I'm really bummed about actually. ⁓

Duds: Dang. Did you ⁓ like the Buffy movie? that with Luke Perry? Was he in that?

Bright: Luke Perry, Christy Swanson, um, Pee Wee Herman, uh, uh huh, yeah, uh, Donald Sutherland, uh, is actually yeah yeah yeah yeah well and there's a really good story behind it the movie was good when you're a kid it's not good now uh i still think the tv show the tv show is way better the movie is hokey but it's the same writer that wrote the movie and wrote the tv show Joss Whedon and

Duds: Peewee Herman was in that? ⁓ I didn't realize that. That's got a pretty good cast. ⁓ yeah, it's one of those.

Bright: he wrote the movie to be more serious and more in line with the TV show. But then the studio went and just completely changed it all up. didn't like it then they made it more of like a hokey comedy. ⁓ And then so then when he went to make the TV show, of course they were like, are you know,

Duds: Right. Yeah, don't you love when studios get involved with like writers and like the writers, the creators?

Bright: ⁓ yeah, well, you know, they screw it up so many. Yeah, they screw it up so many times. And so, ⁓ man, I mean, this episode is all over the place. So another part onto that. they canceled the Buffy reboot, which is a Joss Whedon show, and they are bringing back Firefly, which is another Joss Whedon show. Did you ever watch that one? So good. So this is the one of the most infamous shows out there where the studio fucked it up big time. So Joss Whedon, he's at the height of his career at the time. Now he's since been castrated from the from the industry for all kinds of different reasons we won't get into but he's at the height of his career. He has Buffy, he has Angel, they're both immensely popular shows in the early 2000s. He comes out with Firefly Next and it's a space cowboy western and it's phenomenal and It got canceled after season one, 13 episodes. They didn't air all the episodes, but Fox aired them out of order, which threw people, yeah, right off the bat. They skipped the first two episodes, started with like episode three. Nobody knew what the hell was going on. I don't know. They're like, who are these characters?

Duds: Out of order? How do you do that? Somebody doesn't say like, hey guys, that's episode three. Somebody knew that.

Bright: Right. And you're not going to and Josh Whedon at the time had the track record of clear success. You know, you would think he would have an open runway for at least a little while before the studio was like, this ain't working. Well, then they canceled it. And then somehow he went and made a movie. a up movie called Serenity, is also phenomenal, which you can watch even if you haven't seen the show, you can go watch the movie and be like, this is a great movie. highly recommend it. And so he took Buffy, which was a failed movie and turned it into a successful TV show. Then he took Firefly, a failed TV show and turned it into a, I wouldn't call it a successful movie by box office standpoints. It was a great movie and it broke even, I think. I think it had like a

Duds: but good.

Bright: or $40 million budget and it made 20 or $40 million. Right. So it wasn't a failure. Um, and now they're bringing, now they're bringing firefly back because it is the most cult TV show, sci-fi show out there. Period. People love this show and they're flabbergasted that it got canceled. And of course time has gone on and they're streaming and there's all this stuff that is, that has made it popular, but

Duds: Space Cowboys.

Bright: Yeah. ⁓ my God. It's great. Yeah, I would. It's such a good show. I'm so excited. So they're bringing it back where they're bringing it back in a, in a animated form for right now. Hopefully, hopefully I know, I know, but it's all voiced. It's all voiced by the, I know, tell me about it, but it's voiced by the same character. So they got all the original actors.

Duds: not... I watch enough animated stuff.

Bright: with the exception of one, excuse me, that passed away. They're gonna come back and voice the show. So I think that gives it a little bit more credence. It's not like they're just, you know. ⁓ making up a new show and getting all new people and that kind of a thing. So at least the original actors are are going to be involved. So ⁓ but anyway, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, if you want to teach your kids about all that literary stuff without them having to read books, that's the way to do it. Not this not the social media crap. Well, we were talking about how social media has turned into entertainment, constant scrolling, kids watching YouTube and ⁓

Duds: Right, right. All right, now, how did we get on Buffy here? I forgot what we were talking about. Yes.

Bright: And I, know, right. Spending five, five hours a day watching, on social media. But I'm saying that's a little bit different than even five hours a day watching TV. The other thing is that people can't even watch TV without being on their phone. So they're sitting there on their phone, watching TV. They're not paying attention. They're well, we're probably all guilty to it to an extent.

Duds: And there we went. ⁓ yeah, another double one up. I'm guilty, guilty.

Bright: But I really try and make a conscious effort. I might if it's a really boring port part I might hop on and see what's going on, but I'm not doom-scrolling while I'm also watching a movie that I want to watch

Duds: I've heard that they've had to start making movies dumber because of that reason. I think that's... Yeah. Like, no, it's too complicated of a movie. Like, people aren't going to be able to follow it while they're scrolling on their phone.

Bright: Yes. So Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were on Joe Rogan and they talked about how the studios and Netflix are forcing them. Yeah. So they're making them do two things. They have to one, put an action sequence at the beginning, if it's an action movie, they put an action sequence in the middle of the beginning of the movie, right? To draw you in. If you wait, if you spend all your money on the big action sequence at the end of the movie, well, it's too late. The people aren't sticking around to watch it. So you gotta do the big action sequence at the beginning. And then you have to restate the plot like four or five times throughout the movie because people have missed it because yes, right?

Duds: Draw ya. Do more Zoned Out. You So he's the bad guy, right?

Bright: exactly it. That's what they're doing. so Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, it went viral on Joe Rogan because they're like Netflix is making us do it this way. So and it's all it's all because of social media.

Duds: Wow. And you remember when you used to have to actually watch a movie and if you missed a part, you could miss the whole reason why something was going on.

Bright: ⁓ okay. So another tangent, I'm going to a movie tomorrow night. And I also had this on the on the wheel, I think, going to see Project Hail Mary, which I'm very, very excited about. Right of review. I'll put it posted on the blog even.

Duds: Okay good, you're gonna have to let me know how it is. I don't want any spoilers though. Read the book so you already, yeah. I already kinda know what happens.

Bright: No spoilers, no spoilers. You read the book, right? You read the book. So I read the book, right? So I've been looking forward to that. Caroline's reading the book right now. She's probably not gonna finish it by the time we go see the movie, but I wanna go see it. So we're gonna go and we're going to a nice theater where they have drinks and food and all that stuff. And when I go to the theater, I hate to run to the bathroom for two minutes. I hate it. I try and avoid it at all costs. Well, now this movie is a two and a half hour movie and I'm gonna be

Duds: Mmm, I never go.

Bright: and beer. I know, know that's tough but that's the thing if I'm in the theater I usually never go because I don't want to miss anything right?

Duds: ⁓ that's tough. What do do? You can't go two and a half hours without drinking a beer.

Bright: No, it's a Friday night. It's a date night. We're going to go out and have a drink of beers. It's one. It's a fancy theater. They're bringing the beer to your seats.

Duds: Okay. Why don't you bring a flask and then if you drink hard liquor, you won't have to pay so much. Problem solved. Lawyered.

Bright: That's true problem solved. I don't know. We'll see now at home you of course you can just go back you're streaming it you're like, maybe I you know No, I Not really Yes, and then after Yeah Yeah, yeah. Well, I'll put that I know I'll try it

Duds: Man, I don't think I've ever left a movie theater to go pee. I pee before I go in, you know? So that way you can make it. Even if you drink a big soda, it's not... You should be fine for two hours. Just don't break the seal beforehand.

Bright: Yeah, know. That's the that is the key. I will keep you you guys posted. I'll put it in the blog how many times I had run to the restroom. Hopefully it's I mean, it should be one or less. And that's the thing. Even if even though I know maybe what's going on. Yeah, I don't think they're gonna do that. I don't think they're gonna do that.

Duds: That would've ruined the movie. Excuse me, can you please pause it? I don't want to miss this part. We ⁓ got tickets to the new Mario movie.

Bright: Yeah, that was the other one. was like, didn't even know that that was out because I was like, ⁓ the kids will love that. They love the first one. I like the first one. ⁓ and, and I, I don't know if it's being over.

Duds: ⁓ yeah, the first one was good. Well, this most recent first one, you mean? Not the first first one, like the first Mario movie back from the 90s. With John Lagoosma or whatever.

Bright: ⁓ no, no, no. Right. Yeah. Right. The one from like three years ago or something. I couldn't even tell you, man. ⁓ No, but I think it's being it's being overshadowed by Project Hail Mary, not only because they've been doing all the marketing. So that's the only commercials I'm seeing for movies right now. But also, I mean, Project Hail Mary is doing great in the box office. They did 80 million, I think, domestically their opening weekend. Yeah, did really good. Yeah. Now it was like a 200 million dollar budget. So they still got a ways to go. But I think I think they're going to do just fine. There's a lot of hype.

Duds: This is not good. Probably. ⁓ really? Killing it. Is that Ryan Gosling in it? Is that right? Yeah.

Bright: Ryan Gosling, the the critic reviews are good. The audience reviews are good. So. Well, I mean, CGI, there is there has to be a voice, but it could be like a computer voice the way that it works, right? Like, you know, simulate. So I don't know. Right.

Duds: Who plays the alien? Is there a voice? Yeah, that's why I was wondering how they do it, if there was an actor that was doing that.

Bright: Yeah, I don't know could could be a voice actor could be a voice actor and you know who does a lot of these this voice actor tie into ⁓ Firefly Alan Tudyk ⁓ look him up man he was in Firefly he's ⁓ Steve the pirate from dodgeball so it's him he's he's ⁓ wash and Firefly and ⁓ my god he's in everything so when you start to look at you're like this this has got to be the most prolific voice actor of all time yeah

Duds: ⁓ okay. That's him. He's like a voice actor, Yeah. R.C. Bray is good too and I think he's in a lot of the books. And then there's another guy, can't remember what his name is, that does...

Bright: Mark Hamill, ⁓ Luke Skywalker, he does all kinds of voice acting.

Duds: Yeah, there's a lot of good ones.

Bright: No. All right. I'm rolling right along here and we're gonna have to go faster, skip some stuff. So five plus hours a day on Gen Z, 41%. I don't know, an hour, maybe hour and a half and that's...

Duds: So how much do you spend on it? Is that accurate though or is that what you think?

Bright: I think it's probably less than that. I think, but I figured I'm putting in a buffer because I kind of thought like, it's probably more than I think it is. So I probably think it's an hour. It's probably more like 90 minutes or something like that. I don't know. Most of my scrolling probably happens right before bed. No, actually, no, it's usually right before bed because I want to see if I missed anything.

Duds: Think it's less? Right. Yeah. On the John.

Bright: before I go to sleep any major news. And it's usually news related. I'm not looking for, you know, now if I'm, if I'm away on travel, especially in another country where I don't have great TV.

Duds: Right.

Bright: then I'm ⁓ it's way worse I come back it's late at night it's like 11 o'clock at night you know and I'll like I'll scroll until I literally fall asleep at like one in the morning because there's nothing on TV it's all Spanish channels or whatever you know

Duds: You could be scrolling a lot. Yeah. Yep. And it's amazing how hours can fly by on there. And that's how you can see how five hours could add up. Right?

Bright: ⁓ it's crazy. And I'm like, what am I doing? I was like, I got to be up at seven o'clock in the morning. And yeah, so I think that's I think that's where that doom scrolling really kicks in. Now, millennials, here's the average is two and a half hours a day. So we're half of Gen Z. Yeah, yes, Gen Z is younger. Now, boomers, I don't have how long they spend, but 80.

Duds: Better. So Gen Z's younger, I bet they're on there a lot.

Bright: eight I think so and 88 % of them are heavy Facebook users. Yes, and the biggest problem with them is that they are trusting of social media. Like they think anything that's on social media is real. Right? Because they grew up trusting newspapers, TV, they think that social media has some kind of authority, which it doesn't. So they're passing along this and how

Duds: ⁓ yeah. ⁓ Nice. It's on the internet, it must be real. This podcast ain't even real. Don't take any of this information and broadcast it.

Bright: Exactly. I mean, you could probably say you could probably say it about your parents or how many times do you get something forwarded to you from from a boomer, whether it's your parents or somebody else. And you're like, Dad, like I did. I shut up. I put that I know. And I was like, ⁓ I got got. You know, I don't think that's real.

Duds: Somebody told me Ozzie Smith had cancer and I was like telling everybody.

Bright: So that's really that's really about it. Kids don't stand a chance. ⁓ Although. Yeah, 100 %

Duds: So have you heard of wait till eight? ⁓ So Jenny, was actually to her credit, like years ago, was already talking about this social media stuff, social media and cell phones, like devices at school. And.

Bright: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's no way that my that that my oldest is having a cell phone or being on social media until ⁓ yeah.

Duds: right. So she was actually into this like when she started school board three years ago. She's almost done like she's almost done with her little term. So three years ago she got on it with this intention of bringing this stuff up and now luckily it's gotten a lot more traction like people are finally aware but she was at the forefront of it for sure and bringing it up like

Bright: Right, right. Yeah. Well now, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I think Missouri has a new law. You cannot have cell phones in class. Yeah.

Duds: Right. Yep. And we've had speakers and stuff come to the school and talk about how bad it is. Like you guys, need, and a lot of the, like the biggest barrier is the parents that want to have constant contact with their kids.

Bright: Yeah. Sure. They will. Yeah, right, right. Which a little like helicopter parenting, right? Like, yes. Right. Now that's the thing. Yes, I would agree. Like.

Duds: A little... Like let him go to school without a phone.

Bright: things have changed, right? Like we were like, you go, you leave the house and that was that, right? That's it. I saw this thing. I saw this thing and it was on social media and I did think it was funny. And it's somebody like, why were you drinking from the hose? Like the faucet wasn't an option. And then this, this lady jumps in, you know, that's like our age and she's like, no, the faucet was not an option because you were literally kicked out of the house. Your parents were like, go outside.

Duds: You're on your own. You're out in the wilderness. You didn't have cups? Yes.

Bright: Have fun be back at bedtime and they didn't know where you were doing what you were doing No, you drank from the hose, you know, and you were out there having fun

Duds: You weren't coming in for a glass of water. You know what else? And this is something I'm trying to institute now because I have to be out doing yard work or something, right? Is if the kids are around, you put them to work. So kids in our day...

Bright: Yeah. Sure. You texted that the other day. Yeah.

Duds: they learn to not be around because if they were around, they would be put to work. Yes. So that's also the other thing is people need to start doing more work and having their kids do more chores and work when they're around. Okay. If you want to stay in the house, you need to start cleaning stuff up. Like turn the TV off, turn the tablet off and go clean the bathroom.

Bright: Right. They're doing work. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's I it was funny today. Kat was complaining about her, like we had Frankie's TV show on and Kat was complaining about it. And Caroline's like, all right, come up here and do your homework. And Kat's like, ⁓ you know, through a big fit. And she was like, well then stop whining. Like we're trying to eat dinner, but you're bugging us during dinner about a TV show. Well, now you're doing homework. next time. Yeah. Yeah. Now.

Duds: Yeah. I turned the TV off. My kids hate it. I grabbed the remote as soon as I walk in the house, I turn the TV off. It's like, you're done.

Bright: I had the Cardinals game on when the kids got home and they were not happy about it and I said sorry tough luck I'm watching the Cardinals game yeah like I'll I told them I was like after the game I will turn on your show and you can you can watch your show at you know during dinnertime or whatever and hey

Duds: Sorry, I don't know where the remote is. Shout out to the Cardinals, win an opening day.

Bright: it yeah it ended up being our local in the loose segment that was my plan i did not expect us to have a win i mean i don't i don't think we're really looking at this to be a phenomenal year i wouldn't go that far but ⁓ talk about a good game and a roller coaster game i don't know if you had the chance to watch it okay yes yeah first first hit debut home run always cool

Duds: Could be the only one all year. Alright, I did not, but I looked at the highlights. Saw the J.J. Weatherholt's home run. His debut. Yep. Saw that sixth inning was crazy. ⁓ huh.

Bright: on both sides. So we went, we gave up six runs and then in the bottom we ended up scoring eight. So pivotal, pivotal inning for sure. ⁓ And here's what I have to say. I tried to turn it on opening day. I'm like, I want to watch the ceremony. Even if it was like while I'm working and you got it up, the blues speaking of which are in overtime right now, one one ⁓ and MLB TV down.

Duds: Yeah. ⁓ no kidding.

Bright: crashed. I know. And it's crazy because you can see it as you know, a couple of reports down detector, a couple of reports and then at three o'clock right when the Cardinals game starts, boom, big spike. So I'm like, I'm like, what? Like, I don't know. I'm like, that's what it was. I'm like, is it all the Cardinals fans? Now what I don't know, so we talked about this in an earlier episode, you know, the Cardinals switched their broadcasting. They're now being managed by the by MLB, right? And they have their partnership with DirecTV and Spectrum.

Duds: All the Cardinals fans.

Bright: ⁓ And so my question is was it down for that was the feed down for them? I'm assuming no I'm assuming this was an MLB app issue And so I wasn't actually able to turn on the game until that sixth inning, you know And at least it started working at that point Well, sure and it's frustrating now. I'm kind of gaming the system a little bit. I'm using my VPN I get a free MLB subscription through T-Mobile so

Duds: Sure. So you pay for something like that and then it doesn't work. So that's, I signed up for that too. So you, why do you have to go through the VPN?

Bright: Nice. Well, because it's still not, you're still getting blacked out for local market on MLB TV. Well, if you go through the Cardinals app and you pay the 20 bucks a month or $100 a year,

Duds: Well, what's the point of having it then? So the free MLB TV through T-Mobile doesn't get you the Cardinals games? That's so stupid. Who would pay for that? Well, I know, but who would pay for that? Who's gonna do that?

Bright: You need to use the VPN. if you... But you have the VPN, you can do it. You can do it. Well, that's the thing. I'm not because I have I already have a VPN and I have MLB TV. So I'm good.

Duds: So if you go through the Cardinals app, it's $20 a month.

Bright: $20 a month or $100 for the season, yes.

Duds: And that's just the Cardinals games.

Bright: Yes, just the Cardinals games. Yeah, so we'll see what happens with the Blues. Correct. Yeah.

Duds: No other baseball. So that would be like, it was at five months, so a hundred bucks.

Bright: Yep, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's not a terrible price, but you know, when you talk about all the other streaming apps, you know, then you're just like, and you know, para...

Duds: And like how many games am I gonna watch and

Bright: Well, that you know, that's the thing, especially as we get older, we don't have as much time back in the day. I would just turn it on in the background when I didn't have kids, you know, and I'd be doing other things with baseball. You could you could do that. But, ⁓ Frankie was complaining so much. I'm like, I thought you like baseball. He's like, I do, but I don't want to watch it. Yeah. You know, and I get it. You know, baseball is is a little slower. Yeah. That's that honestly, that is what they thought. That is what they thought. So.

Duds: Right. Yeah, the kids don't want that on in the background. This is the worst thing in the world! This is the worst day ever. Dad is torturing us. They really do think that.

Bright: Yeah, yeah, but then you know that it kind of got exciting and he pretends he was like we won I'm like, yeah, we won. He's like, yeah He's like, I watch my show? You know? Yeah, we've been ⁓ know both of them a couple of times You know, but it was when they were younger. I don't think we went last year. So we're probably talking two years ago frankie was a ⁓ wee little one

Duds: Have you taken him? Taken him to the game? Yeah. We always seem to go when it's like 99 degrees, you know.

Bright: I know and that's so that's the other thing about the game today. I mean freaking March 26th it was 94 degrees The average temperature for today is like 56 to 59 Normally crazy and you know what? No, this probably beats we we have a lot of sucky opening days where it's rainy and gloomy and cold So yeah, so this is probably better but Unexpected like where is that 70 degree day that we all are really hoping?

Duds: Yeah, it's like summertime baseball. Isn't that crazy? been there. St. Louis, baby. You know, you just get the extremes.

Bright: that only only in st louis and tomorrow tomorrow's i think a high of 50 or something like that so you know we're we're right back at it so i don't know i don't know yeah right it yeah yeah sure i don't know well at least we get all four seasons even if it's in one week yeah but what do you think we think the cardinals are going to be okay i think vegas has them at around 75 wins which would not be a playoff team but

Duds: I always wondered why people want to live in St. Louis, you know, it's because of the beautiful weather we have. Yep, sometimes in the same day. I mean, I don't know. Anything can happen.

Bright: Yeah, anything can happen. And you know, sometimes you get these young teams and it clicks and right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. And we don't have the one thing is, is I don't know about our pitching. It might be a little bit soft, but we don't have really any star player.

Duds: Sometimes you get the young, the prospects come up and they light the world on fire, especially like in their first year when the pitchers can't figure them out, you know. Right. Not like a big name. Yeah.

Bright: At least not yet. Burleson crushes a big home run today. ⁓ Mason Wynn won the gold glove, so he might be our shortstop. He might kind of like that next Ozzie Smith. ⁓ He might be somebody. I don't know. I don't know. I guess we'll see.

Duds: That's sometimes nice, you you don't have the big egos. Hopefully just people fighting for position and they play good, you know, you got nothing to lose guys. You go out there and do your best to try and earn a position, right? So at least they should all be playing hard. You know, you just wonder how the clubhouse is, you know.

Bright: Sure, exactly. Yeah, right, yep. That's right. No. Yep. Yep. Yep. You had a good spring. Well, and that's something everybody raves about. Ali Marble and his young. He's got the clubhouse, you know, so and maybe some of the guys that were gone. I don't want to say that they were toxic, but maybe they were a. ⁓

Duds: Maybe this just kind of didn't fit. Yeah.

Bright: The distraction. Yeah, maybe just not the right fit. Aaron Otto, Goldschmidt, know, Brendan Donovan, a great player. We're getting a lot of good. We got a lot of good returns. So we got these young guys and it's the first time we've had a retool or a rebuild for the Cardinals in a very long time. ⁓ know, the same is really true for the Blues, which I think we just won. We did. We just won an OT. I got a.

Duds: Nice.

Bright: Gotta rewind it. So, you know, the blues have been pretty good since the Olympic break here. Too little, too late. You we did this last year too. We went on a big run and made it into the playoffs. And of course we did that in 2019. But I think it's, yeah, little, too little, too late. But I'll take the win. Some people are like, ⁓ let them tank. We'll get a better draft pick. I don't know.

Duds: Have they? I was wondering if they were going to turn it around. Just enough to get you excited.

Bright: I'm not a yeah, I agree. I'm not one to tank like let's go for the wins Let's have some fun make it good for the crowd and you know something to be said about the Blues is We have we have not had like a top five draft pick like really over the length of the career of our team We've always been either a good team or a middle-of-the-road team You know, I think you'd have to go all the way back to never bottom of the barrel. No never

Duds: That never works out for you. ⁓ yeah? never a bad, never a bottom of the barrel. It's kind of like the Cardinals, you know, they're not typically a bottom of the barrel type team.

Bright: You're right, exactly. No, well, I think I think if you look there's that one stat and it shows like the last year that everybody came in last place in the National League and like the Dodgers like the last time they came in last place. I don't know 1986 or so I'm making this up and and they're they're the last one. So like you have like the Giants and the Rockies and you know, they're all in the 2000s the 2010s and then you got the Dodgers whatever it is and then you got the Cardinals. You got to go like all the way back to like

Duds: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bright: 1808 or something like that. That is right. It's crazy when they were when they were finished last in the National League Like you you got a yes. Oh, yeah, it is a crazy crazy stat cardinals have a couple of those you know, you look at like Yadi or Molina and People talk about him like is he gonna be a Hall of Fame catcher? Well, there's this one crazy stat you look over Yadi or Molina's career with the Cardinals and Stolen bases against a team. Well the second to

Duds: Is that right? Where they were last? That's pretty nuts, I didn't know that. ⁓ 100 %

Bright: last place team had like 1400 stolen bases over the over Yadier Molina's career and Yadier Molina had like 900 stolen bases against him. Like it is just such a drastic difference. And you're like, right, not even close. And you're like, clearly this guy was the best. Whether people didn't steal against him or he threw him out. It doesn't matter. He clearly did something, right?

Duds: Mm-hmm. Not even close. Yeah. He prevented people from even attempting. That changes the whole game. Takes a big aspect out of the game.

Bright: Exactly. That is exactly it. know, so yeah, yeah. Yep. They have the second second most World Series wins most in the National League, you know, only behind the Yankees and ahead of the Dodgers.

Duds: He was probably one of the reasons why it was so fun to watch Cardinals baseball for such a long time is because he always made it exciting because if there was runners on first or third he would pick them off. Yeah, hilarious.

Bright: ⁓ yeah. Yeah. When he would pick people off on first base, that was the best. Him and Pools, yeah, yeah. They had a system and it was, it was hilarious. And the other guy's just like, well, I got got, you know, what just happened? So, right. Yeah. all right. What do you say? So we went, you know, just the two of us, I think it's the first time we've only had just two of us ⁓ went an hour and 12 minutes.

Duds: What? Yeah. Haven't gotten done since like I was in grade school, but... Got me. Did we hit up all your topics? Hit up all your topics?

Bright: ⁓ yeah, yeah, I mean we talked about the Cardinals, ⁓ you know, we, were a pretty good tangent with the social media. I wouldn't say it was our most, ⁓

Duds: Concise topic.

Bright: the clearest path. Yeah, most concise topic. But we covered a lot of ground, I think. ⁓ And then by default, we did the the wheel. I talked about Buffy, Firefly. The only other aspect of that was X-Files. So we're really going going back to the 90s. The X-Files reboot is in motion. They've got the the two main characters cast. Jillian Anderson said she read the pilot and loved it. Now she's not a part of it. It's not a Mulder

Duds: I can't imagine anybody's gonna be watching this show.

Bright: scully thing. So I guess we'll see, you know, it's Ryan Coogler, who he's the back Black Panther guy and he just won the awards. What was that movie that just he just won all the awards for that movie with Michael B. Jordan. It's like that horror. I did not like it. Actually, I couldn't even get through it. Yeah.

Duds: Okay, yeah the name sounds familiar. horror movie?

Bright: If you just Google it, it would pop right up. just came out. Michael B. Jordan plays a twin, so he plays both characters. It just won the Oscar or whatever.

Duds: Let's see. Sinners.

Bright: Yeah, Sinners. Well, it's like the number one number one movie last year. But yeah, but I struggled with it. I tried to watch it. And honestly, I couldn't do it. It just it wasn't my cup of tea. It was slow. I couldn't really couldn't really get into it. But everybody and maybe I just didn't give it long enough. I gave it like halfway and I don't turn movies off very often.

Duds: I haven't heard of it. ⁓ really? Never heard of it. Oh, I know. Usually you're like, if I turn them off, it's like maybe five minutes in, 10 minutes in. I'm like, okay, can't do it.

Bright: But I did, yeah. I write them out. Yeah, yeah. You're like, well, they they didn't do the big budget action scene. And so I'm done. Right. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's yeah. That's maybe how I was with Sinners. But

Duds: They didn't pull me in, so I've been scrolling on this and I'm bored. Have you ever walked out of a movie theater though? That's big time. I mean, if you paid for a movie, I think if you walk out, they should give you your money back though. If you're willing to leave a movie because it's that bad, you should be refunded your money.

Bright: Never. Never. If I'm paying for the movie... Yeah. I'm sure it's happened and I'm sure there have been theaters that have refunded them, know, with certain, yeah, yeah. There are movies out there, there's no doubt, you know, where you watch it, like if I saw this in the movie theater, I may have walked out. There are some bad ones, but.

Duds: And this movie sucks. Give me my money back. I remember seeing Anaconda in the movie theater and that was one that my dad was like, we should leave. It's like, this is bad. Yeah, I know, think they made a bunch of them. But they are dumb movies. I was like...

Bright: Yeah. There's a new anaconda i think ⁓ coming out or something ⁓ i don't know we snuck into more movies than i've ever left you know

Duds: Do you know what was your first movie you snuck into there?

Bright: I don't know if I can remember the first movie, but I definitely remember two very distinctly. One was The Exorcist. ⁓ and think it was just me and Nate Dogg, we snuck in and we thought for sure we were getting busted because we ended up meeting up with these two gals, these two girls and they were probably like a year younger than us. So we probably would have been like 16 or 17. They were 15 or 16 and they also snuck in. So that's how we kind of met and they ended up, we didn't sit together. They sat in front of us and the people started coming through with a flashlight and they busted them and not Nate. We thought we were c...

Duds: ⁓ yeah? Hahaha.

Bright: booked. You know, and they never came for us. So that was like the anniversary. And then the other one, and this is an out there movie where we snuck in, we didn't know what we were seeing or we had to jump into a theater. I don't remember what it was. And we didn't know what we didn't know the movie. And I don't know if you were there. I think you were. And that was the movie whipped. Do you remember that movie? It's a man.

Duds: Felt like such lawbreakers, didn't you? What was it about?

Bright: Amanda peat and it is a very sexual movie. It's about the three best friends that all fall in love with Amanda peat and it's it's

Duds: Yeah, I think I do remember that.

Bright: Yeah, it's overtly crude. That is the comedy. And the theater was not very busy. And all the people that were there were old, like, like, like white hair old. Yeah. And we didn't know what we were getting ourselves. And no, there were there were women like married couples, but they were all white haired. And we were like, what movie we had no clue. And we thought it was the funniest movie that we've seen in a very long time. I still think it's a great movie.

Duds: Okay. Old man. ⁓ okay. What are we watching? So I remember the first movie I snuck into, and I think it was just me and Nate, and it was Ronnie's. And we we bought tickets for another movie, but then we snuck into the theater for American Pie. And that was, it wasn't the first R-rated movie, but it was definitely the first R-rated movie I snuck into.

Bright: in. Yeah, that's where it always was. rated movie or something okay sure yeah yeah Yeah. Yeah, sure. Well, you know, and that's the that's the old way to do it. The classic way was you buy tickets for one movie and then you sneak into the other one. ⁓ Right. Yeah. Who cares what movie you're seeing? Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Duds: Yeah, which is really like you're paying money, you're just, that's like what a kid does, you know, because they can't get into that movie.

Bright: But we, yeah, we would sneak in through the side doors. didn't, you had to wait for somebody to leave and then you sneak in and then we'd run into the bathroom and then we'd just wait a couple of minutes and then you'd stroll out and you'd pick a theater or whatever. I also remember ⁓ we went and we saw the per...

Duds: You know the funny thing is if you do that and it's a theater and they have empty seats, the theater's not really losing any money. It's a victimless crime.

Bright: No, well exactly. And it is a victimless crime. And back then seats weren't assigned so you just sat anywhere. But now they're assigned so you could like get bounced around a lot, you know, if you sneak in and you're just guessing.

Duds: If there's no such thing as a victimless crime, know that? Because if there is no victim, there is no crime. So obviously, if nobody was hurt by somebody watching a movie in a theater, then there was no victim. So there was no crime. That's how you can justify it.

Bright: Nah, nah, yeah, well... Huh? Yeah, if you say so. It's still stealing. So we're hopefully the statute of limitations on on sneaking into movie theaters has expired.

Duds: Who says? It's what the law man says. You know, I don't let the government tell me how to be morally good or bad. I see what they do and I know that they are not. So I don't think the laws that they have in place.

Bright: That's right. That's right. and That is the theme of NFNP pod, right? Don't trust the government.

Duds: I heard we got some new listeners. I hope they're enjoying the show.

Bright: Well, you know, so the app that I use now has more more capabilities, we could stream live on social media at the same time we could go right on X and stream live. Facebook. Yeah, we're going live. Now you could always you could always do it through the app. But now you can just stream it right live on on all your connected social media apps. So, you know, if we really wanted to try and get some more viewers that yeah, that might be the way to do it.

Duds: That'd be awesome. Send your parents an email, hey we're getting ready to start up. Going live. Can chat with us. blast it out to all the social media.

Bright: I don't know. But yeah, so my parents did find out. I don't know. They're probably going to listen to this one. Yeah, I'm gonna get grounded. Yeah. Well, you know, they just don't like me talking about my politics. And, you know, they're worried that there's going to be I'm gonna get canceled or something like that, you know, and I

Duds: Gonna get grounded. Don't you have to be somebody to be canceled?

Bright: That's I mean, that's what I said first off. I'm like, who cares? I was like, we got 30 listeners at best at best, you know, and that's that's our best weeks, you know. But I'm like, you know what? I very clearly label it as satire and comedy, not news. Oh, it's true. It's a comedic take. It's it's sad. It's definitely satire. You know, you might get I don't know, you might get some of our real opinions, but.

Duds: I might lose them all. But we know that's not true. You This is the most serious podcast on the internet.

Bright: Totally. Totally. That's not satire right there. But, ⁓ yeah, sarcasm. But somebody did a family member found the podcast ⁓ randomly. ⁓ A family member. I'm not gonna. Yeah. Yeah. And they called up my parents and they're like, what's this about? My parents like

Duds: sarcasm. Who's that? A family member of yours. Like not somebody, like not your brothers. If I can tell them.

Bright: No, no, no, my brothers know about it. Obviously. I mean, Kevin does, uh, city SC posse with me, but yeah, like correct. Unaware of it. Discovered it through, uh, through social media. But what is strange is it is actually working because my social media accounts for NFMP pod and city SC posse are separated from my personal accounts. So

Duds: So this was a relative, just somebody that didn't, was unaware of it otherwise. How'd they come across it? So the reach is actually working. Yeah, gotta have a firewall there.

Bright: I have no overlap. Zero. So and so it's either one or two things. It's either.

Duds: Interesting how that worked out. Are they city soccer fans?

Bright: Well, yes. So it could, but that's not the podcast that they discovered. They discovered NFMP pod. So I don't, they're right. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. And of course my family, I'm sure like any other family is very divided on politics, right? So we try and let bygones be bygones for the most part, but.

Duds: The controversial one. I don't think that this is a controversial podcast anyway. This is kind of a middle of the road. This is the everyday man's take on what's going on.

Bright: Well, that is certainly how we promote this podcast or how, you know, you know, it's on the website, all that stuff. It we. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Right. Right.

Duds: Sure. We're working people, have families, we go to church and school and whatever. We're just normal middle class talking about what's going on in Iran and Venezuela.

Bright: Yeah, we might lean right certainly but ⁓ but yeah, we're not crazy right wingers. We're not crazy left wingers. We are probably pretty centrist leaning right and normal people ⁓ mortgage we all Fiscally exactly. Yeah that kind of a thing. Yeah. Yeah, we're we're Yeah millennials,

Duds: fiscally conservative socially liberal you know the old libertarian motto

Bright: Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Yes, yeah, we're in our 40s. I advertise it as 40-year-old perspectives, 20-year-old humor. That might be true, might not be true, I don't know. But that's how I promote it.

Duds: Been through 9-11, you know, been through the Iraq and Afghanistan war. Maybe. or the last group of people that was born before a time where you were always on the internet.

Bright: Yeah, you know, and that was originally before I kind of pivoted to the social media stuff. I was just going to do a little bit of a review of all the different generations. And, you know, I think that is what makes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I. I did not. ⁓ I read some excerpts and did a. Yeah.

Duds: I told you about that book that I read, Yeah, did you read that too? The fourth turning? It's a little tough to get through, but it is interesting. It's very interesting. Summarize. Give me the Cliff Notes.

Bright: Yeah, did a chat chippy tea kind of a recap of it when you when you brought it up to that's what it was. But you know what? And that's a good point. We grew up with CliffsNotes, you know, so that's that's who we are. The actual actual books, you know. So we have a really unique perspective, I think of the world. ⁓ So do the boomers and then Gen Z. And I don't even know what the next one is. Well, yeah, Gen X.

Duds: Yeah. The actual books. Yeah. Gen X is below Millennials, yeah.

Bright: is very similar. Well, we're we're geriatric millennials or whatever they call it. You know, we kind of bridge the gap between true millennials and the Gen Xers, you know, Zennials. Yeah, maybe there's different words for it. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Duds: thought they were the Xenials. Like the Xenials. Yeah. There's like a span, I think it was like 79 to 85 that they say are kind of like that gap range.

Bright: Yeah, I yeah, 81 is the start of the millennials. But you're right. I think like the the Zennials is like 79 to 85 and the geriatric millennials. So your older millennials are 81 to 85 or 81 to 87 something something along those lines. You know, we grew up we didn't. Yeah, we didn't have the internet until we were really in high school. Right? Like that that was right. Sure.

Duds: Same kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah, like my youngest brother, you know, he's 10 years younger than me and he's a millennial too. But like we were raised completely differently, you know. So it's. ⁓ yeah, he doesn't remember a time without it. Yeah.

Bright: Sure, yeah, yeah. Well, he always had internet, right? And you guys were early adopters. Exactly. Yeah. Well, I remember begging my dad, think somewhere around like seventh or eighth grade to get AOL, right? Like begging him. ⁓ Because I just because I was I'm still this way. You know, I'm a front runner and technology and, you know, early adopter. But back then I was I was all into that early stuff. And he wasn't he wasn't buying it. Of course, you had to pay for it. It was extra. This was a fad.

Duds: Mm-hmm. You get 500 free hours.

Bright: Yeah, right. Exactly. Well, finally, once I got to high school, they bought into AOL. But then you guys all had DSL by that point. So, right. ⁓ yeah. My very first computer was my dad's computer was a Packard Bell, a Packard Bell. It was it was a great computer.

Duds: Yeah, Southwestern Bell, remember? Hmm remember the gateways

Bright: I do remember the gateways. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I remember talking floppy disks. Like, obviously, you got the hard organ trail. mean, I remember playing game. I'm like, where? ⁓ great. Great game. Caroline and I dressed up for Halloween years ago. She was pregnant. She was wearing the world was carbon San Diego. And she had the globe. That was a TV show. Yeah. I think it's still a TV show. I think they brought it back. Yeah, yeah, I think so.

Duds: Yeah. Oregon Trail, yeah. Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? Do remember that game? That was a TV show too, remember? ⁓ really? That was a pretty decent show I remember.

Bright: Well, and it's good geography, good for the kids, better than social media, right? But yeah, so she was Carmen Sandiego with the globe as her belly. And then I dressed up as Oregon Trail. And I died of dysentery. Yeah, exactly. And I had the grave and then I did the makeup and did the, it's one of my favorite Halloween costumes that we ever did.

Duds: Mm-hmm. Okay. Died of dysentery, of course. That's pretty good.

Bright: So yeah, yeah, pretty good. Pretty good. All right. What do you say we end it there? Uh, somehow I was like, oh, this won't be so long. We're at about an hour and a half now. Yeah. That's a good amount of time. Moir never, uh, I had just said his last name. Maybe I should edit that out. Yeah. Yeah. You, you texted them and he said, well, you

Duds: Yeah, that's a good amount of time. Couldn't guilt him in. No, you can... What do call that? You can dox him now. ⁓

Bright: I could dock some. I could dock some now. Oops. Yeah. He was, you said we're waiting on you, Greg. And he said, well, you might be waiting a while. And I said, well, we're still on if you want to hop on, you know, like I'm sure his shower is over with, but no, I don't know. Maybe he'll listen to this episode and he'll, he'll be back in next week. I, know, I don't know. Maybe, I don't know, but do we need, I feel like we need, we need.

Duds: Maybe he'll just want to be a listener now. He'll come back. We'll bring him back as a guest.

Bright: as a guest. You know, that's really what we need to do. We need to start getting guests. That's how you expand your reach. You know, you get guests. So we got to start reaching out. I got one or two people in mind that could be good guests.

Duds: Yeah. I'd like to get your studio all set up there and have an in-person broadcast. It'd be fun.

Bright: Yeah, yeah, we we can figure that out one day too. That's for sure. All right. Well, for another day signing off, we'll see you next week. Bye.

Duds: Alright, later.