I misspeak a little bit in this episode. I say Senate when I mean
House of Representatives, and I say Congress when I mean House of Representatives.
You'll see what I'm talking about. Welcome to Geek Therapy Radio. You've got
your mental curator, Johnny Hemberger. Let's talk about TikTok and the TikTok ban.
It is currently March of twenty twenty four. Normally I like to try
to keep these episodes somewhat ever green, but anyways, let's jump right into
it. So, the TikTok ban lawmakers, in a thus far Senate supported
bipartisan issue, lawmakers are saying, get that filthy word ban out of your
mouth. This isn't a ban on TikTok. We're not trying to They're saying,
we're not trying to ban TikTok. We're not trying to take away TikTok.
We're just giving them the choice. We are giving TikTok the choice to
sell to another company or sell to other companies so that it is not owned
by a company called byte Dance, which is a Chinese company and therefore falls
on the umbrella of the Chinese Communist government. But that's the guys at least,
that's that the lawmakers are projecting to us. That's the guys. We're
not trying to ban this. We just want TikTok to sell to other companies.
You know, other companies, is preferably American. So why is this
important? Why has this gotten traction? What is what is the argument here
that lawmakers are coming up with, which is why they would ban TikTok and
not Facebook or any other social media platform. Well, it's what I mentioned
before. Since the parent company that owns TikTok, it's called byte Dance byte
d a n C. Byte Dance, is owned by a Chinese company.
Therefore, under the communist umbrella of the Chinese government. They're saying that it's
risky for Americans, that that compromises our national security, that a Chinese company
have access to American users' data, that it can be used in the various
ways, or soulds iran or done this or that whatever, that it is
controlled by a quote in their terms, a foreign adversary, sorry, foreign
adversary. So it's a risk. They don't want Americans data being accessed willy
nilly by the Chinese government. That's the guys, now let me kind of
now, this is my commentary on it. Now, this is inform that's
important for me to distinguish here because you won't listen to a lot of talk
radio and hear the hosts say, you know, mention out loud that the
following is only their commentary. Now they'll preach it like the gospel truth.
And I'll get off of that sidetrack there. But here is my commentary in
the situation, and it is common commentary that is shared by lots of people
that basically, in my opinion, this is a very thinly veiled guys to
allow American companies access to billions, if not trillions of dollars worth of Yes,
American data, use it statistics and things like that, cookies and all
that whole thing about tracking Americans data, what they're looking at, what they're
buying, what they're what they're saying about, so and so, what's going
on, you know, just just access to American data. And the truth
is, again in my opinion, that access to American data one hundred over
one hundred and seventy million US TikTok users in this country, and that data
is worth billions, if not trillions, of dollars. That's what's really happening
here is that the US government and they are cronies and lobbyists and possibly people
like Mark Zuckerbert. I don't know. That's just my that's my conspiracy theory
there, that there's no way you can basically give another government, be it
the Chinese government or whatever, unrestricted access to billions, if not trillions of
dollars worth of valuable data. We want an American company. We want this
is the US government. We want an American company to have control of TikTok
and therefore have control to that just well, this never ending spring of billions
of dollars worth of US data. So it's not that the Chinese government is
selling your data. It's really that the US government is not able to sell
that data. They want access to the data. An American company should quote
unquote have access to that data. That's the real issue here. That's why
TikTok is on the chopping block. That's why it's under the umbrella of this
purported ban, even though they want don't want us to use the word ban.
It's sell to an American company or else we won't list your your app.
TikTok on American app stores, the Google Play Store, the Apple App
Store. That's all it is. It's a money play. Like anything else.
It's a money play. And it should be kind of alarming that,
at least in the Senate so far, that it's such a bipartisan issue.
Our politics in this country, in the United States, are more divided than
ever. And then lickety split, they're all agreed. Other than sixty two
of them in the about sixty of them in the House of in the Senate,
not the House of Senate. Just in the Senate, they bipartisan agreed
on this bill to passion, pass it on to Congress, and have it
voted on from there. That's kind of alarming. We can't agree on anything
but TikTok all of a sudden bipartisan support for this. Yes, that's much.
And they need to sell to another company. There's no way that the
Chinese should that the information, that user data should be streaming to somebody else
without going through our hands first, without us profiting on it first. That's
the real play here. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook meta, a lot of y'all
around meta. They sell your data to other companies. It doesn't have to
just be American companies selling your data to companies around the world. What's the
difference, Oh, one is the Chinese government. That's not that's the scare
tactic. That's that's the play. They're hoping that it catches on as a
national security issue. But it's not an issue. It's a money issue.
Only American companies should have access to those billions and tillions dollars worth of user
data AI. The amount of material you can feed into American AI companies with
you should with with user data from TikTok alone is worth billions, if not
trillions of dollars. That is the reason behind this bill it is. It
is not some national security issue. It's just that the US government wants to
make sure that only US companies can sell your data to other people. That's
what's already happening with Facebook and all the other meta based American companies. They're
already selling your data to the Chinese. They can't just allow the data to
have allow the Chinese to have unrestricted access to that data without paying the US
government first. That's what this is all about. That's the only thing that
this is all about. So it's not some virtuous national security issue and oh,
or it's the Chinese government and everything like that, and they're just propagating
propaganda and all sorts of things. Not for one thing, there's TikTok whatever.
I won't get into it. It's just it's not that it's simply about
the money. It's simply about TikTok sitting on billions, if not chillions of
dollars worth the user data that the American company should have access to selling.
It can't go. It has to go through us. We the middleman.
First. More Geek they p Radio, don't go anywhere. Welcome back to
Geek Therapy Radio. You've got your mental curator Johnny Hamburger and segment one.
The previous segment, I was talking about the actual truth in my opinion and
many many other people's opinions because about TikTok. The TikTok ban, the proposed
legislation that's now going to move on to Congress eventually and be voted on.
It moved out of the Senate full bipartisan support. About sixty senators, didn't
you know it, did not agree. They voted in nay, But the
vast majority got of senators bipartisan voted to move this proposed TikTok ban quote unquote
to Congress to be voted on further and made a law. In my opinion
and in many other people's opinion, it's not about it's not a national security
issue. They towed it as a national security issue so that the Chinese want
to have access to American data. But what it's really about is that the
user data on TikTok is worth billions, if not trillions of dollars, and
the US needs their cutup it first. It can't be that the Chinese sell
your data to other companies. American companies have to sell American data to other
companies, and they're just going to sell it right back to China. That's
already what Meta does. That's already what Facebook does. They're not going after
meta Facebook. They're not going after Instagram, which is under the umbrella of
Meta. They're only going after TikTok because it has one hundred and seventy American
users, one hundred and seventy million American users and user data of over half
of about half of the population of the United States. That's billions and trillions
of dollars worth of data that they can feed into American AI companies to track
your usage to see what they can sell you, to see how much quickly,
or they can suggest to you things on Jeff Bezos, part of Amazon
and everything. It's just that TikTok has user data for one hundred and seventy
million Americans and nobody is paying the American government or an American company for that
user data. Yet this is all the TikTok proposed TikTok ban is. It's
not about somebody please think about the children. It's not about that. It's
about the money grab. If American data is going to be sold, American
companies need to be the ones selling that American data. So the ban on
TikTok, to propose ban of TikTok is not really a ban. They don't
want you to say that. The lawmakers don't want you to use that quote
unquote filthy word. It's not a ban. We're just saying that TikTok has
to sell to an American company or another company that's not owned by the communist
Chinese government or another quote unquote foreign adversary. That's not what it is.
It's a money grab. Billions and jillions of dollars worth of American userser data
up for grabs, and they don't want it funneling just to the Chinese.
They need to tap into that first to feed their AI algorithms and everything like
that. One hundred and seventy million American users on TikTok, that's what it's
about. That's all it's about. It's nothing virtuous. It's not about American
safety. It's about money, honey, as it always is. Let's move
on to another topic that's been I've been all. I've been very hot under
the collar about the TikTok thing because I don't have a huge TikTok following.
I mean on my personal account. Yeah, it is my personal account geek
Therapy Radio. I do have a TikTok. I have a one hundred or
so followers. I don't even known. I don't put a whole lot of
effort into TikTok, and maybe I should, so I don't have any sort
of like vested interest in the success of TikTok, you know, necessarily.
But it's just when they say it's not a ban, it's basically just sell
it to another company or else we will ban it. That's like and has
such bipartisans support. There's lobbyists on all sides and benefactors to these lawmakers on
all sides that are going to profit richly off of the treasure trove of billions
and two millions of dollars worth of of tiktoks. I'm American user data next
object for real though, as you can see, not that you would know
necessarily, but I'm holding my Samsung Galaxy S twenty four Ultra right here,
my z fold four. I mailed that off to Samsung to get an estimate
on fixing its issues. I've talked about, you know, on the past
episode or two of Geek Therapy Radio that my z fold four had developed this
malfunction where the spen could only be detected sometimes under the middle part of the
right side of the screen, and as soon as you go past that to
the left side of the screen, the cursor will disappear. That the cursor
for the spen will only appear under the middle of the right side of the
screen, and that the screen rotation wouldn't work anymore. You turn on the
phone, screen rotation would work for a minute, not even for a minute,
a couple of rotates, and then it would stop working. So there
was something wrong with that chip, that processor which also controls the s pen
and all sorts of other orientation features of the phone. So I sent it
off to z to Samsung, and I'm hoping still that it's kind of maybe
a firmware update like the new UI six point one might come to the z
Fold four. I haven't heard officially that it will come to the z Fold
four, but I'm kind of hoping that a firmware update will will fix these
issues. I sent it to Samsung anyways, because the last few little security
patches didn't fix anything. Not that I really thought they would, but the
way the sensor's throwing false I'd be you know, I'd be I'd be pleasantly
surprised if it was just a firmware update. But everything told me also,
I was fifty to fifty on this. I was like, well, maybe
the sensor is throwing airs. It is displaying like malfunctions that are consistent with
an actual air on the chip. So let me just send to Samsung and
see what they say. Well, they got back to me and they said,
hey, your warranty expired on the z Fold four on January of twenty
twenty four, which is very convenient for problems to be showing up right after
the warranty expires. So I sent it in and from their description they said
you needed a new screen, like a new motherboard. A knew this and
that, and their estimate was drum roll, da da da da da da
da da eleven hundred dollars one thy one hundred and six dollars or whatever it
was going to be to repair a phone that I did not spend that much
money the repair. I didn't spend eleven hundred dollars on the Z fold four.
I think I spent just under that, like around one thousand dollars for
it. Maybe it was eleven hundred, But the fact is like either way,
it wasn't eleven hundred dollars to repair a phone that's not worth eleven hundred
dollars anymore, and that I probably only spent eleven hundred dollars on in the
first place. I responded with, cancel, send it back to me.
I am not spending that much money. Again, if you caught what I
said earlier, I'm on the S twenty four Ultra right now, my Note
nine, which I do still have in front of me right here was for
the kind of work that I do on it. It was getting long in
the tooth and in the battery issues. It was getting hot all the time,
just running constantly all the time, just getting warm. Had to constantly
keep my Note nine on the charger. My wife's Note nine is just fine.
She's not having any issues with it. But again, I think my
use case scenario is a bit different. I'm editing videos a lot of times.
I'm working with a lot of video footage. I am constantly on Microsoft
teams. It's constantly going, constantly getting push up. It's constantly da da
da da noe. And I wasn't hacking it. My z fold four was
broken. So I said, you know, I'm just gonna upgrade a year
earlier, six months earlier than I typically even consider phone upgrading. Upgraded to
the twenty four Ultra. I do a lot of video work, record a
lot of video. I wanted to have the best kind of mainstream camera available
right now on my phone, and it is wonderful. I'm not really if
you're watching this on YouTube right now, I'm obviously not using my smartphone to
record this. There's too much background, blur, narrow depth of field here.
Actually, I want to say so, I'm the camera you're looking at
right Here is the first generation Panasonic Lumix S five and I have the fifty
millimeter one point eight Lumix S lens on it, and it's a very nice
looking lens and I'm just using natural lighting there is. I'm upstairs in the
new Geek Therapy radio studios. Since I'm expecting baby boy number two this spring,
i have given up that room to be my oldest son's new room.
Either way, Daddy doesn't have an office anymore. I'm out here in the
play area upstairs, the upstairs living in whatever you want to call. It's
not very big. It is pretty tight around here, but I'm using natural
lighting. This is the lighting coming out of the windows downstairs in the living
room. So anyways, LUMIXS five, that's the camera I'm using with the
one point eight fifty millimeter Lumix S lens on it. And this is kind
of the first video that I'm uploading using this lens, and I'm only recording
ten ADP right now, so it still should look pretty good if you're noticing
any focusing issues. And this is kind of even for radio listener, podcast
listener. The first generation Samsung Lumox AS five does not have the betest does
not have a class leading auto focus. So if you're watching this right now
twenty four frames a second, ten ADP, the autofocus isn't probably going to
be as perfect as the new s Mark two or s Mark two X,
or any Cannon cameras or Sony Camera first generation Pantys five. More Geek Therapy
Radio coming up, don't go anywhere. Welcome to the third segment of Geek
Therapy Radio. You've got your mental curator, Johnny Hamburger, and I guess
now I'll do the plugs geek Therapy Radio dot com. You can visit there
chat with me there. You can also email me directly Johnny j O h
n n y at geek Therapy radio dot com. Follow me across all the
socials. I was talking about TikToker earlier. I do have Geek Therapy Radio
on TikTok, so you can follow me there. I have bload videos from
time to time. I don't I should pay, I should do more work
on my Geek Therapy Radio TikTok account. But yeah, I've got a geek
Thera Paradio on TikTok and of course YouTube. If you're watching this already on
YouTube, that's a little redundant. But for those of you driving around listening
on the radio or listening to the podcast, Geek Therapy Radio podcast on YouTube
and of course Instagram and x and Facebook, it's all geek Therapy Radio.
If you're just listening to this broadcast on the am radio or on the radio
right now, you can download the podcast. Of course, the iHeartRadio app,
Pocket Casts, i Eate, the Apple Podcasts app, Spotify, all
the good stuff. Just search for geek Therapy Radio podcast and that's me.
It should come up pretty quick. But just in case it's me, you're
seeing me and somebody else on there or whatever. I'm the red, white
and black color scheme. So if you type in geek Therapy Radio podcast into
anything, I'm the red and white black color scheme. You know, in
the Geek Therapy Radio logo and whatnot. That's just the scheme of Geek Therapy
Radio is red and black. Really, that's when people ask me, oh,
what's your favorite color? I remember Riiker, my three year old son,
as what's your favorite color? Daddy is like complicated because I don't know
if I have a single favorite color, but my favorite color scheme is red
and black and for some reason, for some reason, I completely did not
plan on going off on this tangent. But let's talk cars for a second.
So back in twenty twenty, me and sorry, I keep bumping the
microphone er me and the high tech Texan. A fellow host here on KPRC
nine to fifty am, my home radio station for geek Therapy Radio, he
got access to the twenty twenty corvette the news at the time. C eight
corvette has a blue stingray. It was awesome and I went on a ride
along with him. I even made a video for geek Therapy Radio on YouTube
about my kind of impressions of the C twenty twenty twenty Corvette. The C
eight Sorry, the C eight twenty twenty corvettech DEW stands for Corvette eight.
It's the eighth generation of corvette. My nephew, by the way, speaking
and we're talking about corvettes a little bit here, and red and black color
scheme is what reminded me of it. My nephew, Spencer. We'll have
to talk to him. I have to get Spencer on the show and talk
to him about it. His first car he just bought. He just bought
his first car. He was driving around in his grandma's pt Cruiser for a
while and he had that thing pipped out. Pretty cool. But nah,
he's finally got his first like a cool car. It's his DeLorean moment.
I like to call it, like when I got my DeLorean. Bought my
DeLorean. He got a Corvette. He got a C four Corvette, which
is cool. I think it's an eighty I want to say it's an eighty
six or an eighty five. I'll at the double chap. I'll have to
get them on the show. But it's red red with black trim and everything.
That's my color scheme. It's awesome. He's going to fix it up
a little bit. That's the rule is that he's not allowed to drive it
until he's I think eighteen years old, which I kind of that's probably okay.
You know, there's a reason why to kids. First cars aren't sports
cars. They aren't typically a sports car. You gotta you need to learn,
you need to get comfortable with just the safe operation. It would be
a cool period first in respect for engine power and fuel wheels slipping. If
you can drive a PT Cruiser Cruiser pretty safely, you know if you are
if you've spun the wheels in a PT Cruiser, you're gonna spin the wheels
in an old Corvette. Just what's gonna happen. So it's good to have
a few years of PT Cruiser under the belt before you step up to basically
any generation of a Corvette, especially older generations of Corvette that don't have the
anti lock breaks. I'm not saying the c Ford doesn't have anti lock brakes.
I does it. I don't know off the top of my head here,
but uh, the DeLorean doesn't have anti lock breaks, although it's not
a powerful car. I remember a story my friend told me at the time.
I'm gonna throw them under the bus here a little bit, Corbin.
He told me back when we were in high school, he used to go
through cars like trade through cars. He would have a new car every two
weeks. It seemed like he just keep trading around, trading up, trading
down for other cars. And at this particular moment in time, he had
what was it, It was like a seventy something Camaro, Chevy Camaro that
was completely geared for drag racing. Had like I swear it had slicks on
the back. It was had the roll bars underneath that the cage built into
the chassis. I think the passenger's seat didn't exist, and so he has
that. He's traded his way. I think previously had a Nissan to forty
SX, which he should have kept. I told him at the time in
the late nineties, like, dude, keep this Nissan. This is gonna
be worth something one day. This is it's already an excellent car. It's
a five speed manual Nissan two forty SX. It was just awesome. It
was like, Corbyn, stay with this one, keep this one for a
long time. He didn't. So after that Nissan too forty, he got
that nineteen seventy whatever Camaro that was geared for drag racing, had the cage
built in on the inside was prime had red primer paint orange. It was
dingy and whatever, had some patina. And he pulled it up to the
house and I was like, oh, sweet man, it was really stupidly
loud. I was like, yeah, can I take it around the block?
Like I was eighteen years old seventeen eighteen years old at the time.
Maybe we were a little younger sixteen, I had been my dad had taught
me manual transmission. I had a year or two under the belt of driving
manual transmission and everything like that. It's like, yeah, let me let
me drive this old Camaro Corman. He push his arm over the wheels like
he's a I'll just say bad ass, and he's like, you couldn't handle
the torque, bro, And I laughed, I'm gonna say ass again.
I laughed my ass off because you couldn't handle the torqu where. I was
like, okay, dude, all right, whatever, love your man,
have fun. He drove away. Next day, he wrapped it around a
tree. He's fine, he's okay. He did not get seriously injured in
that accident, if I recall, I think he hurt his leg, but
he yeah, he wrapped it around the tree, like less than a mile
from our house, from my house at least. And I just he called
me the next day, I saw him the next day or Whatever's like,
glad, you're okay, but UH couldn't handle the torque, bro, could
you? So I don't know. So back to the black and white,
black and red color scheme being my scheme and why reminded me of corvettes.
And I was riding around in the year twenty twenty with Michael Garfield had to
text in a blue Sting Ray Corvette, Sea Corvette I have, I said
back then, you know, in twenty twenty, I was like, if
I if the if I had this kind of money to spend and the Corvette
was really gonna be sixty two sixty three thousand dollars for the base model,
if that was ever gonna be true, then I would and I could afford
it. Then I want a Corvette. This would be the first Corvette I
want. Mid engine looks fantastic. It still looks fantastic. But here's a
weird thing that I've kind of noticed now. I no longer am interested in
a sea Corvette, like even if I had the space in the driveway and
the money for it, Like my my zest for the C eight Corvette has
has dwindled a little bit. Now. If someone came along CA Corvette thirty
thousand miles, uh, and I saw it on there on Auto Trader for
like thirty five grand forty something like that, you know, there may be
some increased sleepless nights where I'm scrolling through auto Trader, like doing the mental
math, like how can I make this work? How financially could I What
would I have to sell? How could I could this be the Daddy Cruiser?
How many child seats could I put it? It would be would I
be willing to put a child seat in? And now like I'd be,
There'd be several sleepless nights of that. If it was at a low enough
price point, I'd at least go through that phase of kind of scrolling through
auto Trader, in Facebook, Marketplace and all that if there was a C
eight Corvette for between thirty and forty grand. But right now I'm not.
I don't my zeal, my my interest in the Cia Corvette has come and
gone because there's just flat out there's just too many of them now, I
see them all over the place. It's not it's no longer kind of a
unique thing, a cool thing to see a Cate Corvette, because I don't
know where you know, wherever you're listening to this in the world. I
live in Missouri City, outskirts of Houston, Texas, and just driving around
Houston, driving around the Galleria, driving around Montros, driving around Kingwood,
driving around Humble, driving around sugar Land, everywhere they're CATE Corvettes. They're
no longer kind of like this unique rare thing to have. They certainly don't
justify the price tag anymore. It is asinine, asinine that anyone would pay
twenty thirty thousand dollars over sticker for a C eight Corvette for twenty twenty,
twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two, twenty three, twenty four Ate corvette.
It's ridiculous, Like, yeah, they should be around fifty grand right
now all day long. But even still, like it's the fact that there's
even a is there still a waiting list for CA Corvettes for new ones?
Maybe think? I think there? Last I heard there was the last I
heard. I went to Elite Chevy here in sugar Land fifty nine in Highway
ninety. I got that battery replacement in my bolt, and I just talking
about CA corvettes. And at that time, this was just a few months
ago, there were still waiting lists on CA corvettes. The service guy was
telling me, Yeah, there's probably a handful of few Stonians here that could
just call us up right now and get a Corvette. They would still have
to pay, you know, well over the sticker and talk to the previous
person in line about buying their spot. Whatever that was a few months ago.
I don't know if there's a waiting list for CA Corvettes now, but
I see them everywhere. I see them often enough now that I'm just like,
it's not unique anymore. It's not I'd be driving it around and see
two or three or four just on that drive within five miles. So whatever,
I'm kind of off the CA Corvette. Kick more Geek Therapy Radio coming
up. Don't go anywhere, all right, and welcome back to geek Therapy
Radio. You've got your mental curator, Johnny Hamburger. We are now in
the fourth segments of Geek Therapy Radio, and I spent the bulk of the
show already talking about the proposed TikTok ban. What it really means, in
my opinion, what the real motivation behind it is that it's not about protecting
your American data from foreign adversaries. It's about letting American companies tap into the
user data of one hundred and seventy million Americans so that they can sell it
to the Chinese so that at least American companies are the ones able to sell
your data to the Chinese and to other people, just like Zuck does.
That's the real motive behind it, and it's so thinly veiled. And then
just how kind of shocking putting on a conspiracy hat for a second, how
kind of very eye opening it is that it has such bipartisan support in our
country, in our divice political landscape, that this proposed TikTok band has by
part overwhelming bipartisan support so far, Yet in the in the Senate, is
it past the Senate? Uh? That should be an eyebrow raiser. I
don't care where you are on the political spectrum, whether you are conservative or
liberal or any sort of mix. I think most Americans actually, if you
were just sit around a barbecue and eating chicken and steak and throwing water balloons
and whatever, you'd find that most Americans are pretty center. They just kind
of tip a little bit this way or that on on specific subjects. This
narrative that basically that we're so divided that it's just it's your it's your Trumpken
neighbor versus your your let's go Brandon neighbor, and against your Joe Biden supporting
and Trump supporting a da da da da just old old men, basically old
men running our government. Don't get me started that it's not so divided that
this narrative in the media I call it mainstream mst are, mainstream talk radio,
and Fox News and all sorts is basically and on the liberal channels too.
C Span, I almost said, c Span, MSNBC, DA da
da d the liberal outlets kind of keep driving this narrative that we're so divided
that we just we Americans don't agree on anything, We are at each other's
throats, we hate each other. That the reality is that most of us
are just kind of in the middle, that we even the most conservative person
labeled person actually has a few a lot of socialist ideas or things that they
actually agree with, And a lot of liberals actually are very much more conservative
than you might think, too. And the only way you find out about
that is bonding over hobbies. That's why geek Therapy Radio exists, so that
we can come together all different spectrums of life and politics and religion and whatever
and just bond over star wars and star trek and acting figures and legos and
video games and computers and audio engineers. That that's what most of Americans are.
That's where most Americans exist, is that we are pretty pretty moderate in
our political views one way or the other. We're just we just don't have
anybody representing us like that. We don't have anybody who's like, yeah,
this, but also this we can have both things here, Like yeah we
could. I don't. I'm not trying to get super duper political on here,
but it's like, yeah, we can keep our guns but also do
better things to make sure that children can come home from school. You know,
Like that's where American why can't we do? But like, most liberals
own guns. That's just a straight up fact in the United States. You
would think that it's the people who don't own guns being the biggest lobbyist to
be anti gun, take the guns away, whatever, Like that's not true.
Democrats have guns. Liberals have tons of guns. They don't wear on
their sleeve like you know, I think like most gunner, even if you're
conservative gun or most gun owners, don't wear their gun politics on their sleeves
or the fact that they have guns on their sleeves. There's most Democrats own
guns. Most liberals for in the United States own guns. Straight up fact,
most liberals own guns. So it's not about taking guns away. It's
like, hey, can we you will? Y'all were so bipartisan on the
TikTok thing, just out of nowhere, like whoa, we got everyone almost
everybody in government agreed, crumbing across the aisle to agree to sell TikTok to
an American company so the Americans can tap into that money well of American user
data. Y'all agreed on that, really real licketty split. But like you
know, twenty kids don't come home from school there. I don't want to
get too graphic with it, but they are at rest in a school room
right there. Somebody blew them all away. We can get pipe partisan on
that that. Like dead, y'all can't come together three hundred and sixty or
whatever to sixty or whatever the I don't know the full full count here,
but y'all can't come together that unanimously to make sure that kids don't have to
uh die in the classroom. Really, like TikTok is the thing that that
you got y'all together lickety split to agree on something TikTok did TikTok like craziness,
absolute craziness. But again I say, it's just follow the money.
That's the real answer there. But uh, anyways, we are not We're
just not that divided. This narrative that we are so divided. It's just
it's just not true. Most of us are we We we agree on ninety
nine percent of things in our life. I've mentioned this on Geek Therapy Radio
before, that each human being is a totem pole. You know, a
total pole has different figures and different kind of depicted animals, and different scenes
and things like that, and very complicated, very ornate. That each person
is an individual kind of totem pole. What makes them them, their family,
their job, their ethnicity, their culture, whatever. We have all
this, We have all these differing totem poles of people, and then only
one of the totems, only one of Let's say we're each person is a
totem pole of one hundred different tiles, or a hundred different segments of a
tone pole. One of those segments. Only one of those one hundred segments
is our political identity. Only one. The other ninety nine of those segments
are things that we both have in common that we celebrate about each other is
some people have the tone pole, Star Wars Geek and a lot of other
people have on the tone pole, Star Wars Geek and all the other pieces
of the totem pole, that they just want safety for their family. They
just want to be able to provide for their family, provide for the children,
provide for themselves. That they just they're these very basic human desires that
it does that are that we have regardless of politics. We want the same
thing, we want a lot of the same thing. Some argue that that's
why I don't. I think the real reason TikTok is being you know,
the discussion of banning it is is so unanimously supported within our government. One
reason is that TikTok was broadly appealing to a very wide group of people.
You could fall you could see somebody with a million views talking about pro conservative
values. You could see somebody with a million views that are talking pro liberal
values or whatever. There's this kind of equal melting pot, and you saw
people of all ages. They're elderly people that are very popular in TikTok.
Younger people are popular in TikTok. It's the tailor swift of social media.
It appeals to just every generation, and every generation is on TikTok, and
every walk of life is on TikTok. Every ethnicity, every race, every
religion, every sexual identity, whatever or our contrary to to those things that
are also on TikTok. Like it's it's truly a platform where it doesn't seem
to be squashing anybody over somebody else. It's basically if you're if you meet
the algorithm right as far as having a hook and happy the watch time I
can do. Y'all want me to tell you in a separate episode kind of
how the algorithm works. And it's not just the TikTok algorithm, it's it's
Instagram reels algorithm and it's YouTube shorts algorithm. You could say whatever you want
as long as it kind of hits the algorithm right as in watch time and
people swiping away versus how many people have viewed it, like, it doesn't
matter what you're saying. The algorithm will pick you up despite what you were
saying, as long as it's you're keeping people watching and listening to it.
So you saw at least I do on TikTok, a very wide ranging different
views and opinions and things coming from all different walks of life. I don't
see one thing getting squashed over the other thing. And basically, as one
TikToker put it again, I put that caveat TikTok or on TikTok put it
is that the government is also afraid. It's not just a money grab,
but the government is afraid because they're seeing people, Americans bonding on TikTok.
They're seeing Americans from all different walks of life coming to TikTok and bonding and
having discussions, and they're kind of realizing the common enemy. It's not each
other, it's the people trying to control us. You are worthy of love
this and every show of geek, Derrick Prido. You are worthy of love.
You're worthy of giving love, you are worthy of receiving love, and
you're worthy of your own self respect. Thank you for spending some time with
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