TikTok's Final Days and Rogan & Zuckerberg Awkwardly Bro Out
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Rise and shine, fever dreamers. Look alive, my friends. I'm V Spear. And I'm Sammy Sage. And this is American Fever Dream presented by Betches News. Where we explore the absurdities and oddities of our uniquely American experience. And it only gets more absurd, odd, American every week. It's

Sammy texted me this morning and was like, welcome to the last week of democracy. And like, I didn't even flinch. I was like, oh, yeah, it's Monday. It's the Monday before the Monday before the inauguration. Right now we're recording Monday. The audience is probably listening Tuesday or thereafter. But for us right now, we are one week from the inauguration. And I am just so disassociated. I don't even know if you could get

more than this. Yeah, I'm at a loss for words. So I keep trying to do things to anchor myself to reality. Yesterday, I spent a bunch of money to go to the Bills game so I could be in a stadium full of people who were ignorant and happy. And we won. And I had eight hours of gloriousness. But the whole time, I would look around and I'm like, oh, man, what are we going to do? Yeah.

I don't know. I just, I feel like I could feel every single cell in my body, every nerve ending. TikTok ban is getting decided this week also. So it's a big week for your old pal. It is a huge week. I've been feeling so many feelings. And if you are feeling as many feelings as I am, which it sounds like you are, but the audience, I have to recommend my co-author, Emily Amick, her Substack.

Go to Emily in your phone. Her latest Substack about why everyone is feeling so down. It was just such a great articulation of why it feels like even though everyone sort of agrees the vibes are off, why we feel so gaslit. So I highly recommend subscribing to Emily's Substack and reading this particular article. And she's just been killing it lately on there. So-

Go there to process your feelings after you're done listening to us. I have a recommendation. You do? Tell us. So y'all know that this show runs on Dunkin', not sponsored.

But it does run on Dunkin'. Listen to that joy. Dunkin' Donuts came out with a new signature latte. It's called the Lava Cake Swirl. And while taking it straight, the way they make it is way too much sugar. If you get you a little like medium cold brew with two pumps of the Lava Cake Swirl and one cream, it's a really nice treat. It's been like getting me through these days.

It's the little things. It is the little things. You gotta do little treats. I've done so many little treats that I'm now like potentially pre-diabetic. I don't know. We're getting tested. Yeah. I'm laughing, but I'm dead serious. Like I am not well in the like taking care of myself space. And I don't know if that'll get better or worse during the Trump administration. Like part of me feels like-

You know, I'm in a transition out of like having to be on the road and I can kind of just be under the desk and here on the show and tell people what's going on and sort of like hunker down. But the other side of me is like, how does it get better? What do we do?

I have a few feelings on that. For my health, I did just start taking ZepBound. I took my first shot. I posted about that on my Instagram. It's basically like a Manjaro, Wagovi, Ozempic. It's the same sort of thing. So I started that for my health. I'm glad for that. It has been making me think...

Like, okay, because you're supposed to, like, make sure that you get enough protein and water and that you do, like, weight-bearing exercise, which I was not focusing necessarily on before. But I don't know. So now I'm kind of trying to do that. I'm trying to take care of myself. I associate the Trump years with, like, extreme hard-charging work.

just existence, not necessarily always in a good way. And I'm trying to, I don't think that that's the vibe right now. I also think like the first Trump administration, it was like, okay, we're going to like resist. We're going to do all this. And my feeling is like, okay, well, what did that achieve? It didn't achieve anything. So I think we have to gather up, think about

what is actually effective in taking back institutional power. And this is something Emily talks about. And, um,

I think everyone says start small. That's what the right did to get Roe v. Wade overturned is that they started at a very base communal level. And like we've talked about before, they're very good at engaging within their own communities. And I feel that there's a sort of refusal for the Democratic establishment about doing this. And for me, it's sort of like,

History occurs in stages. We're not stopping this from happening. So my feeling is like, okay, we're going to have to let the pendulum swing, protect as many people as possible by practical, small, communal, person-to-person steps in those intervening years.

And like the millennials are going to take the leadership because we're the ones who know what to do. It's just that we do not have any sort of institutional power. And my feeling is that we are going to be the ones who are going to be called upon to rebuild something after we get out of this inevitable phase because nothing lasts forever. And I don't personally believe that the world will literally end. So it's just, you know, we're going to have to

Keep going. Readjust. People have lived through really, really hard times. Most of life has been very hard for most people on earth through most of time. And we have actually lived kind of a softer existence or a smoother existence. Even people who are not wealthy or rich have lived more comfortable existence than most of human history.

And I think that we are going to have to like buck up, figure it out and find our place in this new world order, so to speak. And there's a lot that we're going to have to grapple with and people survive really shitty things and we're just going to survive it too. And we're going to take care of each other. That's what we're deciding right now. We're going to survive it too. Yeah.

Yeah, I think, you know, I've like had different periods of my life where I've gone through like severe grief or leaving a bad relationship or abusive job or different things. And one of the things I took from therapy even back then that's been so helpful is this idea of when you are surviving, that's what you're doing. So right now I do feel like there is not one thing more I could have done in the last four years to fight the TikTok ban than I've done. I've taken it all the way to Joseph Biden himself. I've been in the hearings. I've

rallied the troops. I did everything I possibly could. And right now, I just have to survive whatever this Supreme Court decision is. We did everything we possibly could to try and avoid a Trump presidency. It didn't happen. And so we'll have to survive it the way it comes. But in doing that, sometimes you can't think about what your five-year plan is, much like Elmo.

I don't know. Have you seen that meme? No, but I have seen the things where Elmo asks, is everyone doing okay? And everyone's like, fuck no, Elmo. So they asked Elmo the other day, Elmo, what's your five-year plan? And he goes, five-year plan? What's my five-year plan? That's my Elmo impersonation also, which was, I think, pretty good. I don't think that's a good answer for Elmo. It sounds a little hopeless. So that's how I feel, though. I feel like five-year plan.

I don't have a – I have like a five-minute plan. I have a five-day plan. I have a like small circle who I intend to associate with over the next couple years plan. But when you're surviving, that's what you're doing. So if you don't feel good, like that's because your mind is like subconsciously or consciously focused on just getting through whatever it is that you have to get through right now.

Yeah, I find that plans are not the best way because usually things adjust too quickly. Maybe a five-year plan was a good idea for like a boomer because five-year plans were stable enough that you didn't need to constantly sort of be readjusting. But I think that a five-year plan, it's a bit of a folly in these times. Yeah.

And if anything, you could have five-year aspirations, like who you want to be values-wise and as a whole and what type of work you might want to be doing. What do you want your family and your friendship circle to look like? But I don't think that you can like, I'm going to move to this job and then I'm going to move to this city. Things could happen so differently. And I think we're all really in for it. But speaking to that point,

We are not in California. We are across the country. And we do need to shout out and speak to everyone who is going through this horrible tragedy, which is continuing to get worse this week because of the weather patterns. And I know that there are so many places within the news that they're discussing the misinformation, the disinformation. Some of the people are grappling over the causes of this, but I just...

I think that this is something that all we want to offer here is just our empathy and our sympathy. And it is so, so difficult. And I think if someone is looking for... I saw this quote posted by Sharon McMahon. I don't know if she's the originator of it, but I thought that it was a really inspiring way to approach this, which is,

Do what you wish you could do for everybody for one person. Yeah. There's a lot of really good mutual aid stuff happening. And then within mutual aid, I want to talk to you about do unto others as you would have done unto yourself. I was watching a TikTok of an organizer in Los Angeles, and there's this thing where like people,

People lost everything. So they need clothes, but they also need comfort items. Like there was a TikToker who's notorious for collecting squishmallows and he went down and he donated like hundreds of squishmallows and you see like kids picking them up. And that means that is enough. You know, he also gave money and stuff, but like the squishmallow thing was like a little bright spot for the kids who were like going through the donations. When they're going through the donations, they're also finding this is not an opportunity to like dump junks that you don't want in your house or expired things. So if you're donating stuff,

Make sure it's something that is absolutely either brand new or totally usable because a lot of the time these mutual aid volunteers are sorting through donations of like stuff that nobody can use, stuff that's super outdated, stuff that's ripped or torn or dirty. And that takes time away from them as volunteers where they could be doing something else because they're trying to like sort trash from treasure. And if you ever donate something with the idea that people should just be lucky to have anything, you're doing it wrong because –

If you can, like George Bush once said, everybody wants to send a blanket. Everybody wants to send a card. Just send your cash. That's what people are going to need right now to just get through this period. Look, if you have like a really nice blanket that's never been used, you should definitely send it. Right. But this, yeah. Don't send your used stuff. Send something that's really nice that you might want, but you have no use for. But beyond that, like this idea that, oh, it's just stuff. No, it's not just stuff. No.

Homes are the American dream. Homes represent security. Homes represent your family, your memories, your safety, your shelter, which is literally a physical need.

And the idea that people's homes burning down en masse is not one of the greatest tragedies there. And this isn't all rich people. Yes, there are lots of celebrities, but LA is not all rich celebrities or all wealthy people. It is all the people who service them, people who have lived there for generations. Those are real communities. And it's

So, so, so tragic. So anything that you can do for any one person is incredible. And think, what would you want done in this situation for you? I think it's going to be interesting. And down the line, what we can do is protect against corporate greed and all of the sort of horrible things that people are thinking like,

Well, when they rebuild it, will it actually be rebuilt for people? It will be if we make that the line in the sand. It will be if we hold that territory down and we don't allow developers to come in and just put up luxury condos. But it's going to take years. Jillian Michaels was on talking about how she had a fire or a mudslide or something in her house one time, and it took her a year to get the permit to clean up.

So a lot of what we need to be focused on right now is certainly urgency, mutual aid, help stuff, but also ensuring whoever we vote in as the next governor of California or the next senators or congresspeople for these districts has the people front of mind and will pass legislation that cuts red tape when it comes to things like cleanup, that ensures that affordable housing is re-extended to these areas.

I do want to say FEMA is doing cleanups. I don't want to be the disseminator of information because that's not what this podcast is, but FEMA is doing cleanups for people. And Governor Newsom did sign an executive order yesterday to waive some of the environmental permitting requirements so that it will be easier for people to...

So it seems that they are taking action to make it easier. And, you know, California is the now fourth largest economy in the world. So this could be very stimulating. And if they rebuild it to be like a modern...

I don't want to say just fireproof, but rebuild it to be proofed for climate change and a more sustainable city or area that, you know, I think is worth the investment. But what the fuck do I know? I'm just a dumb millennial. No, it's not our turn yet, Sammy. Like we said, we have a while to sit before they turn to the millennials for help. I know.

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So should we talk about the TikTok ban before we get into the conversation of the day, which is Meta's transition? I know.

Yeah. So here's, you know, we're recording this on Monday. What we know about the TikTok ban is we did everything we can to possibly fight it. The story that I have tried for four years to get out there was the way that your Congress and your government lied to you to put this legislation forward, couched what we know as the TikTok ban, that bill, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversaries Act. It was never voted on standalone. It was couched in a must-pass budget reconciliation bill that gave $10 billion in the

The whole entire thing is ugly, but a wonderful textbook example of how government –

can be so wildly dysfunctional and ignorant to the point of the detriment of the people. So I'm working on like the TikTok ban grand history, including like every time I appeared in front of Congress or even behind closed doors, because like, what do I have to lose now? Meetings I took with Gillibrand's office, ways in which I was on podcasts debating Mark Warner and the Restrict Act. This has been a long time thing going, even though for a lot of people, it feels like it came upon them like all of a sudden.

I have hope that the Supreme Court punts and just kicks the decision on whether or not to enforce the ban.

to the Trump administration. But we truly do not know. So at this point, we're kind of holding on. But what remains, even if TikTok is banned, people need to know the ways in which the government manipulated this legislation to do something that I find to be very unconstitutional. Now, whether the Supreme Court agrees with me or not will be a different story. But I think that people have a right to know the moves that they made to get it where it is. So

So this is one of those things where I still refuse to believe it is happening until it has happened. I know. It's really tough. My feeling for a few weeks now has been that Donald Trump will either stop working

uh, stop this from going into effect using some sort of executive order or from pulling strings at the Supreme court, but that his ultimate goal is not to prevent it from being sold so that we can just continue using it as is so that he can create a pretext to sell it to Elon Musk and, or a group of his supporters so that he can maybe roll up X tick the new tick tock,

truth social under his own state media. I mean, that's what I'd do if I were him. That's what I would call like part two. Like right now, I'm like, if we're in the TikTok war, right, you get to be like in the Air Force doing the academic, look back at what comes next. And I'm like on the front line of the infantry, okay? I'm just like with a gun trying to hold back the enemy right now. My grandfather was a cryptographer in the Korean War, so it makes sense. Yeah, that's where you're at. Yeah, and we

I'm reading the signs. I'm in the damn trench, okay? I'm like right at the edge here. And I'm hopeful that the guys in the suits up there figure it out before I have to pull this gun out again, but I don't know what's going to happen. And do you want those guys in the suits figuring it out? Which people do you want figuring it out? If it was you, I would. So the thing we need to remember is that

This TikTok is an American-owned app in many ways when you talk about the capital and who owns the stock of American version of TikTok. You have Jeffrey Yass, the richest man in Philadelphia who owns 60% of TikTok is owned by global investors. He owns the most. Jeffrey Yass's.

Sesquihana International Group was the one who invested $5 million in ByteDance back in 2012 when it first started before TikTok or anything happened. He has been riding with Chinese tech companies since even before this, since 2008, 2009. So Jeffrey Yass had his mitts into ByteDance and helped make it what it was. Sequoia Capital, also an American company, invested $100 million later in 2012 and

really got this going. They had a Disney executive as CEO for a part of the time to try and like make American relations nicer. This is a capitalistic American enterprise. Now, the same people who were early funders in ByteDance also funded the transition and the merger between Digital World Acquisitions. Remember that shell company they made to merge with Trump Media to make Truth Social the billion dollar company it is now?

The money in digital world acquisitions was Chinese money. Okay. So we had a Chinese company create a shell company with Jeffrey. Yes. To acquire and merge with Trump media to bolster truth social. Now, if you think when we talk about the American businessman who might buy a tick tock or whatever, people think it's Elon Musk. They think it's Zuckerberg. That would, they can't, they already know because the antitrust laws, they can't, what they can do is,

is this shell company, Jeffrey Yes, Susquehanna International situation. Now, would they merge it with Trump media? I think Trump would love that. I certainly don't know if that's true. When I mourn TikTok, I mourn the loss of not just like if they uphold whatever this ban is now, but what does come next in the Trump era, how he would turn it back on and the

people and the maneuvers that are behind that, because these are the same people who want to defund the Department of Education because they think that they could create charter schools and online schools that would replace the Department of Education. And these are the same people who want to control narrative when it comes to, you know, the masculinization of the internet or the re-masculinization of narrative.

Absolutely. I don't see Trump doing any favors to keep TikTok around if he's not going to personally benefit and control the benefit of it. So that's just, and again, I don't see it going away. I will be pretty shocked because wouldn't he love to bring it back? Like, I saved TikTok, the young people, that would become the narrative. Well, it would. I think the problem is the

The functionality and the way he can bring it back, it does require an American – TikTok themselves have told me the only escape hatch is an American buyer, truly, from the way that this is like all structured out. So what does that American buyer look like? How does that change the way that people want to interact on it? And I'm going to tell you, like I only break up once, right? There are a lot of people who have already gone through the grief cycle over the years.

over many years of almost TikTok bans. And I would say with the goodbye videos I'm seeing this week, people are either closing up shop on their dream of being a content creator, or they have migrated their audience to YouTube or somewhere else already. There is a erosion,

of the app, of the security we have, of the time that we spent and of the dreams that people had. So I don't know. Yeah, sure, it could get shut off and turned back on. But it's like when somebody cheats in a relationship, can you ever really trust them again? When it gets shut off once, can you ever really trust it again? Like myself, I've grown exponentially on Meta and Reels and on YouTube and I've hired people

editors and I bought new equipment because I thought I was going to have to go fully to YouTube. Well, I'm not going to waste that investment and just keep making TikToks wondering if Donald Trump is going to somehow jump in here and merge it with True Social or whatever the case may be. I think people have grieved it, mourned it. I think they're getting sick of hearing about it, honestly. And they're going to just go to another platform that is more comfortable for them. I see that that's possible. But I also think that if it were to

Become a new platform. Like it would recover. Maybe it wouldn't be its former glory. I mean, some people always look back on like the days of yore of any app and are like, why can't it be like it used to be? Buy space. And to some ways they're right.

It's – I honestly like we're going to see. We're going to know within the next week or two. I mean I'm playing violin on the Titanic here. I'm going down with the ship. I'll be there forever and always. That's my number one baby girl. I love her the best. But I also – we now have a sub stack. I have this podcast. We have YouTube. It's important to diversify everything.

Honestly, I think that is a good thing. I think all of that is a good thing independent of the TikTok ban, that you keep your brand as a creator and as a voice, that that can't be replicated.

until AI comes along. Oh my gosh. I'm off the TikTok Titanic. Let the lifeboats be seated according to follower count. That's what I'm going to say. Wait, wait, V, I do just want to say something interesting about Jeff Yass' firm that I've learned since we've been talking about him. So he founded Susquehanna with his friends and they bonded over playing cards and

Basically now what they do anytime they want to hire someone or see if they're going to fit into the culture is that they play cards with them. And that's like a very big part of the culture because the way that they trade is like micro trades. They're basically day traders, like really good day traders. So to see if someone has kind of like the chops for it, that's how they bring people in. Look, I propose that Betches should have people making memes in a circle to see if people can – no, that's too much work. Cards are different. Right.

We can play something else. We can play Never Have I Ever. Yeah. Stiff as a board, light as a feather. It's got to be like a sleepover game to be a betch. Speaking of sleepovers, if anyone listened to Mark Zuckerberg on Joe Rogan's podcast, got such strong energy of the girl who gets invited to a sleepover with the cool girls group that she never got invited to before and she wants to impress them.

And at the end, before the end of this sleepover, she's going to go into the bathroom and she's going to emerge and she's going to hear Rizzo and the Pink Ladies singing, look at me, I'm Sandra Dee, making fun of her. That is the energy of Mark Zuckerberg on Joe Rogan's podcast. It is absolutely that. And I wonder, to keep the Grease analogy going,

If Mark Zuckerberg is the Sandy D in this story, will she become cool bad Sandy after she helps Rizzo get an abortion? I mean, if Mark Zuckerberg could save abortion access and women's reproductive health and be a girl's girl someday, maybe she will get to be cool. But she'll have to reject those girls at the sleepover. I don't know if the metaphor holds because she went along with the girls at the sleepover, so it would be about getting rid of abortion access.

Look, I felt, and we're going to go through kind of everything he said, but to me, I felt that there was a strong undercurrent of him not even really totally buying some of the things he was saying, particularly around the vaccine. And I'll get into more of those details in a second, but it felt like he was happy to have a place to air some of his less politically correct opinions, but that

Some of the other stuff, he doesn't necessarily really feel deep down. And you kind of just saw, I don't know, I almost would feel bad for him if he didn't have so much power over our lives. But come on, Mark, you're better than this. You have leverage here. Mark, through this experience, I feel like I learned a lot about him as a person that I didn't know before.

Like the fact that he has three sisters and three daughters, no brothers, no sons, and that he really didn't have a lot of men in his life until he started doing jujitsu. So I think he's like learning how to be a man, but he –

is learning it in a way that I think he knows certain things are wrong. Like there were some things that Joe Rogan would say where he was like, no, well, I really want my daughters to be able to hunt also. Well, I really want my daughters to feel empowered in business also. Like he pushed back enough, but he...

I get it. It was awkward. Even when he was talking about some of the DEI stuff, he was like, I get that this is about people wanting to feel included and that women should be able to come to work and feel like their full selves. Like he was citing DEI points, but then his, his,

point and his actual policy in action was that Meta cut their DEI programs and rolled back their major DEI policies last week. So he goes on Rogan and he simultaneously is making an announcement that he made last Monday, shortly after we recorded our episode, where he talks about sort

sweeping changes in Mehta's policies. The one that got the most play is around the fact-checking. He says that Mehta had, the fact-checkers had become too biased. They went too far, especially too far past where the public, where public opinion is.

on transgenderism and immigration. They're now going to be replacing fact-checking with community notes. They have not explained how they're going to roll that out yet, but they are going to move what remains, I guess, of the trust and safety teams from California to Texas. So this is really about a cultural shift.

And not only that, but he says that they are eager to work with the Trump administration. Well, yeah. I mean, he's got to say that kind of stuff. Yeah. Trump wanted to put him in jail. I think he's also doing a little self-preservation. Well, when Trump was asked, do you think he's changing his policies because you threatened to jail him? Trump was like, probably.

Probably, yeah. And then the other thing is that they're basically allowing hate speech of any kind, things such as referring to women as property. I've been referred to as worse. Trans people as mentally ill, as freaks, as immoral. But this is going to become a cesspool, I'm guessing, because that's what happened to Twitter recently.

And then it seems like, in addition to rolling back the DEI policies, small things like that would just...

feel very reactionary. They got rid of the LGBTQ and non-binary message backgrounds. I didn't even know you could really change your message background, but they did that. They got rid of tampons in the men's bathrooms. I'm sure Fox News will love to talk about that. And it just seems like all of these things were

Yeah.

Dana White, who there is famously footage of him, it looks like, punching his wife. So that is the actual backdrop against which Mark Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan last week and spoke to him for two hours about how there is not enough masculinity in corporate culture and they bonded over jujitsu and fighting and hunting, archery. Let me give you the potentially, maybe I'm super Pollyanna, maybe this is a bad take, zoom out.

One, fact-checkers versus community notes. I think the fact-checking was bad on Facebook. Obviously, Facebook is rampant with misinformation. And as he clarified on the Joe Rogan show, the fact-checkers were only really fact-checking things like Joe Biden is the president of the United States or like the sky is blue, like these major things. They weren't fact-checking like your everyday posts. They were only fact-checking like

the absolute most highest things. So to me, they weren't doing enough fact-checking anyway for losing fact-checkers to potentially be as noticeable as we fear that it will be. I don't think they were doing nearly enough fact-checking. It obviously wasn't going well. I think introducing community notes potentially gives us even more ability to fact-check because we are going to peer police other people in a way that didn't exist at all in the first place, right? So like if your Aunt Linda posts

the vaccine will give you mad cow disease, you could make a community note now on her post that says this is factually inaccurate, right? Whereas you couldn't do that at all before. You could just get in comment wars before. So in a best case scenario, we don't know until it rolls out if it's going to actually work that way. I think introducing community notes potentially introduces more opportunity for the truth

It might not, but I'm, you know, in my hopefulness, I'm thinking that could be a benefit. We are ever so optimistic on this show. It really, like you said, it depends how they roll it out, but my hopes are not high. So I'm not, my hopes aren't high, but I'm also sort of, I guess, like a cautiously optimistic about being able to leverage this new tool to, you

I think that's good. We're going to see.

Point number two, there is a lot of conversation right now about McDonald's, Walmart, Facebook, all these people rolling back their DEI programs. And I think this is a slight miscommunication on the part of the media and in an attempt to like inflame and enrage so many people. In doing so, it does make people look at the content and whatnot, but it is also causing a lot of despair in my community. So I want to sort of like clear it up.

A lot of the companies have to. A lot of your schools have to because back in June of 2023, the Supreme Court decided this case called Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard University, which effectively banned the use of race in college admissions. This was the tip of the iceberg on the total opinion though, okay? So we heard it as, can't use race in college admissions, but that wasn't actually the end of the repercussions of that legislation.

After that ruling, a wave of state laws were passed citing that you can't use race in college admissions to limit or end campus DEI efforts. Because if we can't use race in admissions, then how could we have the Black Students Association? How could we have the Latino Students Association? So they started to wipe all of that away, claiming that DEI.

The Supreme Court gave them the power to wipe that away or forced them in many cases to wipe it away. There were also private sector DEI initiatives that were separately litigated by the same group, this Americans for Liberties, you know, the federalist people. Yeah, yeah. One of the federalist society people. They also did a shit ton of things. So folks like publicly traded companies, Walmart, McDonald's, all these different places, Facebook, Meta.

cannot include DEI because they literally are proving that reverse racism is a thing and thereby you can't do it. So that is a big issue. And then there were corporate changes. People made changes to their DEI work, including eliminating representation goals, which was partially, again, based on the Supreme Court decision that you can't use race for college admissions. And all

all the wave of litigation that we haven't talked about that followed it up and saying you can't use it on job applications. You can't use it on ERGs, employee resource groups. Can't do this, can't do that. So while it looks like Mark Zuckerberg or McDonald's or Walmart or whoever just decided, hey, I hate DEI,

What that's actually doing is hurting marginalized communities who now feel like, well, I shouldn't apply for a job there. Well, I used to shop there, but I can't anymore. Now I got to try and go out of my way. A lot of this is coming from the top down, and a lot of it is that federalist, deeply Republican, Christian nationalist, awful legislation. Well, it is worth noting that both Apple and Costco's boards voted to keep their DEI policies in place.

I also think like this idea of DEI as being like one thing is really, really frustrating to me to hear because what I think when I hear DEI is probably very different than what a lot of other people think when they hear DEI. And I think that this cultural sort of weaponization of this concept, which they did very effectively.

Let's be honest. They have spent the past four years weaponizing anything from BLM to CRT to DEI. They hate your fucking acronyms. And this is where it has led. And they were successful. Now, I want to also touch on some of the, like, hot-button cultural issues, right, that they were also putting in. Like you had mentioned, they took tampons out of the men's bathrooms in the meta offices, right? Like, what?

All right. I mean, there was, I think, some of these initiatives that really empowered people. We will keep, if they benefit at the company, the culture at that community, the retention rate for employees, all that kind of stuff. I always think of it like this. I was a chef, so I put everything back to the restaurant, right? You have four desserts on the menu and you fucking hate making the cheesecake one because it takes forever and it's expensive and you feel like nobody orders it. And so you take it off the menu and everybody flips out.

Oops!

How many of the tampons or feminine products in the men's room were actually used? Was it a waste? Was it sort of just like extra? Did it not make a difference? And is it a big nothing burger because they still have access to, you know, free whatever in the supply, wherever it needs to be? And so sometimes, you know, I worry about how deep we get into culture wars with stuff and how much something was a big deal versus it wasn't.

Yeah, I mean, I think this is more just suggestive of what's going on in general. And now let's talk about what Zuckerberg was talking about on Rogan, because I think the part that made people...

The angriest was when they're talking about the masculinization of the company and how they want to bring masculinity back into corporate culture. Do you think that's him just saying telling white men to shut up and men are trash for the last 20 years didn't work? Yeah.

Yeah, basically. Because he said Facebook was made by women. Sheryl Sandberg steered that ship. Like he said, he's got three sisters, three daughters. She gilded that ship. She gilded that ship. Mark has been surrounded by women who have protected him, advanced him, that he has obviously worked well. I've never heard of Mark Zuckerberg being a creep to women. I don't know who he is. I have not either, other than FaceMash.

Yeah. I mean, but he was a 19-year-old Harvard student. He was a jerk. He did hot or not on, you know, whatever. That was stupid. But I also did a lot of stupid shit when I was 19 too and I was gross to women when I was 19 too. So like not in a bad way, but like I think probably in a, you're not hot enough to date way or whatever. So he, but he and the longevity of his career for being as public and powerful and rich as the man is, I have not heard him being a creep

to women. There has not been a whistleblower that said that Facebook provided an unfair working environment or hostile work environment to women. So I think he has benefited greatly by having women and diversity in his company, obviously. And he kind of says that a couple times, but then he says, but there has to be a place for the masculine. This, to me, is Mark Zuckerberg trying to find his mooring and his anchors and

trying to grow a business that may have maxed out on how much it can grow and without Sheryl Sandberg now, right? Like she's moved on many years ago to do different things.

He's having a midlife crisis in many ways. And he's like, no, men are important. I'm important. I'm OK. It's almost like he's telling himself these things because every time Joe Rogan would come with something sort of toxic, he would sort of like gently defend the women. And then he'd be like, but yeah, but men are good, too.

But I don't think this is because of his own feelings. I think it's because of the election and now what is like the mainstream direction. Oh, he's an opportunist and a fair weather friend. He puts his finger in the air and he goes in the way the wind is blowing, which is why we have this dynamic of him kind of at the sleepover where he's trying to prove himself. Look, Trump lost and he banned him on Facebook, right? Now Trump's in and he's going to be good. This is this is

how the man goes, you know? He thinks he's a badass because of the assassination. The most interesting section I thought was about, it started with being about Dana White and who is now joining the Facebook board. Yeah. And he seems to have been this bridge between Zuckerberg and this sort of bro world. Yes. And they're talking about MMA and jujitsu and how he and Dana White bonded over fighting. And...

Joe Rogan's saying it gets the aggression out of your systems. And Rogan said, it's great to know you can kill someone. And Zook is like... Mark looks scared then. Yeah. Zook is like, he feels like he can really express himself and be ruthless in a way that he can't while running his company, which is kind of a healthy form of aggression. Right.

But I don't know. I thought it was so weird how they were like talking about this community like it's super intellectual and it's not jock and it's the kindest community. It's like they make them sound like flower children. The thing is that was coming from – wait. That was coming from Rogan though. Rogan was like this is an intellectual academic. This is a survivalist – whatever. And Mark was like – Mark thinks Joe Rogan is dumb. That was very clear to me the entire time because every time Rogan would say something like – he kept talking about Hunter Biden's laptop and Mark wasn't taking

Yeah, Mark's like, I'm not getting into that. I don't care about that. He kept saying stuff about the vaccine. He was like, yeah, okay, I don't care about that. He would say rotten things about women. Mark was like, uh-huh. Then they start talking about jiu-jitsu. Then he's talking about hunting, and Mark's talking about how he trained with a bow hunter because he runs a ranch, and he's teaching his daughters about proper ranching and respecting animals. And how you make you... Logan's like, did you see the kill in my front lawn when you walked in? And Mark's not impressed. I actually think this is a little bit more like...

Mark's a little more cosmopolitan than this. He's more cosmopolitan. And I promise you, the left is better company for Mark Zuckerberg than visiting with the MAGA bros has been. And I do wonder how much longer people like Mark Zuckerberg, billionaires with actual power and whatnot, will hang with the MAGA crew when they don't have to pretend anymore, right? Like he's got Dana White, UFC. He trains with the best people. Mark was talking at a point how he got an

injury and how he had like analytically really noticed the changes in his body and made it like an experience to understand technology in his tendons and whatnot. And Rogan's like, did you take peptides? He's like, no, I took the advice of my doctor, which Joe Rogan says to him, well, you won't do that again next time. There's better people to talk to. Zuck sits there just quietly and is like, what

Well, I don't know about that. It was the weirdest shit. A lot of people took away from this interview that Zuck was bro-ing out with Rogan. I think Zuck was deeply uncomfortable, and I'm not saying he's on our side by any means, but I don't think that he was – I think he was playing the game. It was weird to watch.

I agree. It was like somebody being polite to their drunk uncle at Thanksgiving where you're like, okay, Uncle Roddy, yeah, that sounds great. But Joe Rogan was doing the same to him. He was trying to make it him. Because they're just not – they didn't really have chemistry. No. But they were trying to connect like on – again, like around this fighting, which I think – remember Mark Zuckerberg declared like he's going to learn a new thing every year. Yeah. That's how he got into jujitsu and martial arts.

hydrofoiling or whatever fucking thing he does. And he, and like, I think he then fell into this because of the timing with the election. He, and, and Rogan at one point goes, nothing turns you into a libertarian faster than jujitsu. He's like, cause there's no excuses, no bullshit. And Zuckerberg, this is the part where he's like, where he says that the, um, the, the

corporate world and things have been culturally neutered because he's trying to get on board with like, oh yeah, we need to be tougher. I want to have some masculine energy. And it's like Zuckerberg's like, you know, I like having a thing I can do with my guy friends and we can just beat up on each other a bit. I think Zuckerberg through this, I was like, oh,

Oh, I bet you always wanted a brother. I bet you always wanted a brother. But he had three sisters, three daughters. It just didn't shake out for him that way. I don't know that his guy friends are like that. I think he entered a masculine space to explore what that might be, especially after Sheryl Sandberg and all of the, you know, it sort of moved on from what Facebook was. And I think he's struggling to fit in with the boys in some ways. And, you know, that's okay. It'll only last so long before he comes back this way.

There was one point in the conversation where Joe Rogan casually is like, you know, we were just having a conversation yesterday, Mel Gibson and I, or maybe it was Theo. And I'm thinking like, Mark Zuckerberg definitely remembers the passion of the Christ. He's a Jew. And there's no way that's not like going through his head right now.

And you could just see how kind of like energetically far apart they were, despite now finding themselves on the same side of things. But there were a few things I did want to call out. There were a few things that really bothered me. And one example of this is when Rogan opens up the conversation, like, what was it like when the government was coming after you? Because they were talking about like Biden and COVID and how the administration was trying to basically –

get them to correct disinformation on Facebook, on their sites about around the vaccine. And you know, Rogan just doesn't believe any of this around the vaccine. And Zuck at one point says like, overall, I think it'd be better if people got the vaccine. So it's clear they don't align on that.

One thing that they did seem to sort of align on was when Mark Zuckerberg makes what I think was such a careless comment. He's saying that he doesn't know what the CFPB is, but they were coming after Meta for things that were unrelated to them. And he says, he's like, it's the thing Elizabeth Warren set up, and it's supposed to be for regulating banks and financial institutions.

And he's like, well, what does tech have to do with it? And he's counting on the stupidity of this audience because you as the CEO of one of the biggest companies in America should know that it stands for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, meaning the protection of consumers' finances. You have the biggest consumer company in America, arguably. And-

The CFPB very much does concern you. I am convinced that you know this already. And that he was just counting on Rogan's listeners to be ignorant and throw like a little cultural thing, you know, throw Elizabeth Warren on Elizabeth Warren's thing. It's like she doesn't even run.

even run this shit now. Well, he threw out a couple buzzword things like that, right? Like the masculinization of the corporate world, culturally neutered, Elizabeth Warren. Hunter Biden's laptop got thrown out a bunch. He didn't take the bait on that because I don't think he really gives a shit about that. No. But I mean, he runs a social media platform. The most powerful social media platforms are... He's probably trying to get some of the Magabros back on Facebook or whatever. I don't know what he's trying to do, but it was a very strange conversation. I did like when Zuck admitted...

that the courts favor business, and so he's done pretty well defending himself. It was...

I learned a lot. There were a few bullshit things where it was like he – where he was talking about how he wants Metta to be the most aligned with parents to decide what they want for their kids because that's now a trend now. And in Australia, I believe it is, they changed the age for social media to 16. And that's – not just – right. It sounds like parental rights, but it –

is not actually going to help the children because that would involve them not becoming customers for longer. Also, his attempts to throw Apple under the bus, saying that they don't invent anything. It's like all of the features of Metaproducts are just other companies that you're using. On the topic of terms that jumped out to me, there was a term that Joe Rogan used that...

Zach kind of, I think, understood maybe it's a UFC term. Maybe we need to start watching that. Rogan was like, yeah, you have to engage in voluntary adversity.

and that to become a good jujitsu fighter, to become a good UFC fighter, you are engaging in volunteer adversity. And I think that's a lot of what the debate bros do on TikTok or on X, where they volunteer to create conflicts, to have a sparring match, to get some sort of aggression or some sort of whatever out. And that was a term that I was like, ooh, I'm going to

be listening for this term voluntary adversity because I think that puts in my mind like that to me is like a bad faith fight or a bad faith actor. Like I wouldn't engage in voluntary adversity. Well, that also is when you think about who is engaging in voluntary adversity, it's people who know that they can win.

And it's basically people who are saying, fight me because I know I can win. You're not going to have someone engaging in voluntary adversity that they know is going to hurt them. So it's kind of like a dominance play. That's what it sounds like to me. That makes sense. Unless it comes from this sort of like strain of...

like health where it's like make yourselves uncomfortable by going in like cold plunges and saunas like that might be what they mean to extend longevity. But I imagine maybe it has different connotations possibly. I found the conversation interesting. I've not listened to a lot of Joe Rogan, but I do think people are like he does it for two or three hours. And I've always said I

It's because he wants to monopolize your attention, right? If he could make you sit for three hours, sure. They talked about jujitsu for like an hour and 15 minutes. That's not something Mark Zuckerberg would normally get asked about. I think that does make for interesting content. It also personalizes, humanizes that guest.

That's why people want to go on the show because they get to like talk about their interests or be seen as a real person. Joe Rogan gets to pretend he's super smart and interesting when in fact he's just like oftentimes regurgitating stuff that does not make sense. But they have a collective agreement that what Rogan says is true so he could say anything he wants.

But I wonder what Mark Zuckerberg's call to his wife after this taping was to be like, girl, you're not going to believe it. Yeah, I made it through, but here's what I said. Like, the man obviously loves his wife and his daughters. He talked about it very authentically. I learned that about him in a way that I thought was interesting. What does he really think about it? Yeah.

I don't know, but it wasn't the content of the conversation, but the energy of it that made me so disappointed that these are the two most influential people. And like, there's so not a...

Aristotle and Socrates, they are not. Let's just say that. They're based in insecurity, both of them in many ways. Another thing I thought was interesting Zuck said was that he's really good at coding, but he's not good at TV. And he recognizes that throughout the many years he's been the CEO of Facebook, he's had to go on TV. He's had to be in front of Congress. He's had to do different things. He's like, and I don't like going on TV because you go on and they cut you to sound like an idiot. And that is true. I also hate going on TV because they cut you to sound like however they want you to. And so-

Yes.

I believe he would. Was constantly attacking him all the time, obviously, like pushed him to feel like he needed to start UFC fighting and like find himself, get a new haircut. He has a little uniform for himself now with like the Zuck shirts and the little medallion he wears and stuff. And I'm like, oh my God, you are, you are a person, more a person than Elon Musk is, I think. And you, you could potentially come back from the brink of fascism and

more than any other major CEO I've seen. But I also think that you're a fair weather friend and I don't trust you, but I understand you differently, maybe. Look, when you think about Mark Zuckerberg, he has been...

like rich and famous and in control of so much since he was so young. And that is stunting of your growth. And he has been asked to make ethical and business decisions that are so vast. And I can't imagine that it's easy to be in his position. But at the same time, I do wish he would grow like a set of consistent values that he feels attached to, that he wants to enforce and that he feels responsible for.

I wish she knew that in the conversation with Rogan, he was the cool one with the power and not Rogan because it – Yes, exactly. You're the smart one. I wonder at what point because it was clear that like –

Zuck is a nerd and Rogan's a Neanderthal. At what point will people like Mark Zuckerberg or whoever decide that they just like cannot fucking tolerate the Neanderthal shit anymore? And I think with Dana White leveling up and now having Zuck on his team, does he need a lot of the sort of lower level grunt workers that he had before? Is he sort of socially climbing in some ways as well? I think traditionally.

Trump's a super social climber. So we see Trump as he got close to someone like an Elon Musk, he's turning his back on MAGA because Musk wants H-1B visas and he wants to be with Musk on the yacht. And so he's kind of willing to like tell MAGA, oh, I kind of outgrew you, you know?

I think they'll self-destruct. I hope. I mean, that's what we could hope for. Look, I think, I don't remember if I said this here, but I have said that what they can or can't do is going to come down to what they...

Right.

Steve Bannon is not giving it up to Elon Musk and the techies. He said the other day, quote, I will have Elon Musk run out of here by inauguration day. You got six days, buddy. You have 30 minutes. Do you know? He will not have a blue pass to the White House. He will not have full access to the White House. He will be like any other person. And then he continues, Peter Thiel, David Sachs, Elon Musk are all white South Africans. He should go back to South Africa.

why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth? Says, when do you care, Steve? White South Africans. We have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States. He has a point. This is clearly still about the H-1B visas, but...

Elon and Vivek are the ones in charge right now because Doge has already hired 100 people and they've started going into government agencies. They're working out of SpaceX offices. And incoming senior Trump administration officials have begun questioning career civil servants who work at the NSC, the National Security Council, about who they voted for in the 2024 election, about their political contributions, and about their social media posts regarding Donald Trump.

So this is happening. Steve Bannon thinks he's winning this war, but I don't see it. That's what I'm saying. We're going to see. Do they implode like the billionaires on the ocean gate? Or do they somehow take us all down with them? We'll find out. Go to Mars. Leave us alone. We're right behind you. Yeah, we'll be there in a few minutes. But, well, I mean, that's our show for this week. Next week we'll be back. It'll be the day after inauguration when we come to you next. And,

Like I said, you know, I hope this is a place that we can keep each other company, be in community, keep each other updated, be honest with each other and kind of like enjoy ourself. Maybe have a little laugh. That's all we can hope to do. Yes. Much fun. Just like Joe Rogan and Mark Zuckerberg. I can't believe we listened to that whole show. That was something else. Until next time, I'm V Spear. And I'm Sammy Sage. And this is American Fever Dream. Good night.

American Fever Dream is produced and edited by Samantha Gatzik. Social media by Candice Monega and Bridget Schwartz. Be sure to follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Betches News and follow me, Sammy Sage at Sammy and V at Under the Desk News. And of course, send us your emails to AmericanFeverDream at Betches.com.