Tim Heidecker Irony Comedy And The Internet

TITLE: Tim Heidecker: Irony, Comedy and the Internet | Doomscroll CHANNEL: Joshua Citarella DATE: 2025-07-15 ---TRANSCRIPT--- For me personally, the rise of Donald, what’s his last name?

Making a lot of jokes. Implicit political critiques. Yes. Sometimes just a [ __ ] post to annoy people. I was in New York during 9/11. I had nothing to do with it just cuz I was there. I could name many people whose art I love who’ve done terrible things. There’s nobody in culture that mattered that was anywhere near the right. Right. Right. Nick just wasn’t. He goes, “I have a friend who’s very rich. Very rich. You know who he is, but I won’t say very fat. Very fat guy. Very neurotic.” And you’re like, “I’m in.” Like, tell me all like, “Keep going.” Welcome to Doomscroll. I’m your host Joshua Citerella. My guest is Tim H Highdecker, a comedian, writer, actor, and director. He is the host of Office Hours. Let’s talk about the beginning of your career for a little bit. Um, I promise this will link back. I have I have an idea to explore, but if you could tell me about making television, making comedy when you first started out in the, let’s say, mid as what was that environment like? How did someone make a TV show at that time? Eric and I, my partner Eric, who I made most half of my work with now these days, uh, we were just out of college and we thought of ourselves as sort of serious filmmakers or wanted to be in movies or make movies and sort of recreationally we’d make stuff just to make stuff and, you know, the technology was pretty primitive back then in the late 90s, early 2000s. So, we kind of used what we had and thought that was pretty funny. You know, there was this kind of a lowfi aesthetic to it that nicely dovetailed with the fact that we didn’t have anything hi-fi to work with. So, we were just like embracing the lowfi. And we sort of had this identity between us where we were this very self-promotional very uh in a funny way and just sort of a at the time in 2000 there was kind of the dot boom bubble right and everything was dot everything was very um technic technology and computers and internet and the interweb and we just thought that was also silly and funny also awesome, you know, but the way people talked about it was really funny and you look at like old Windows 95 launch videos and you know excitement that was kind of really funny to us and business talk and we had Tim and Eric.com that was just who we were. Okay. Okay. Okay. And that involved prank phone calls or it involved little animations and playing with media and playing with different kinds of media. And that we those became little shorts, short films, not stuff you put on uh not underwear or those kind. Are you I’m sure you’re aware, but people consider that work to be like the early agard of new media and video art. Like having taught in art schools the my stuff, our stuff. Yeah. Yeah, the degree to which your stuff is referenced is not insignificant. I I’m happy to hear it. You know, I think we we deserve all the credit we can get in the world of academia. We’re doing Yeah. Yeah. which gets us nowhere, but um it gets you a podcast eventually. It gets me lots of podcast appearances. Um no, but yes, all that stuff kind of there was no YouTube yet. We put it on our website. It’s little QuickTime videos. There were there were some sites that would pick it up. Um, you know, it would early forms of social media got spread and one of the few places that were that were really on the of Avantgard or uh on the cutting edge of weird stuff was Adult Swim. And it was really just this back office down at the Cartoon Network and a couple of sort of iconoclastic type people that were given which is the way the best things always happen. It’s sort of just like well here’s like you know middle of the night programming that you guys can play with like just do whatever you want. Um and hopefully something good comes out. We don’t spend a lot of money. you know, it’s sort of like the simplest formula for stuff to sprout. And by the grace of uh God, the one of them really saw something in in our work. Really, a lot of people didn’t. And I think that’s important to acknowledge that most people didn’t. Some people did. One person with some kind of power wanted to give us a shot at making something. That’s that’s what I’m curious about. What was the experience of making culture in an era where gatekeepers still existed when you couldn’t just directly upload your work, right? How did you navigate that type of We were We were told that we had the best deal that we’ll ever have creatively by other people like someone like Bob Odenkirk who had worked for bigger companies and he’s like you’ll never get it this good again. Because we really had one guy uh Mike Lazo who just said I don’t know if it works it works. If it doesn’t we’ll move on. You know that was pretty much it. He’s like, “If you think it’s funny,” he was from the south, as you could tell, “You think it’s funny, I think it’s funny, we’ll put it up.” You know, it was pretty much it. Okay. Uh there were nuances to that, of course. And if nobody was watching, I mean, our first cartoon that we did, Tom goes to the mayor, you know, did okay, but it wasn’t wasn’t a big hit. Um, but they thought we were funny enough to say we wanted to make a we didn’t want to just make a cartoon. We wanted to make the sketch show that we ended up making and we made it for a price that worked for them and you know um very rarely did anybody anybody say well this is too weird or this isn’t funny to me or how about trying this you know it was just I it was it really is the way I think it should work which is like he said you know um we’ll let you go try something and if it works we all win if it doesn’t we’ll move on and do something else like so this is I’m going to try and connect a few things here so excuse me if I failed to do it but I think this is why the creative life conversation is important right now because that model of essentially you’re making the argument for institutional gatekeepers that this person was an editor they had uh good taste for lack of a better term they’re like there’s something really smart here I want to amplify that and the system we have now if there was someone who was in comparable position to you. There’s like a thousand people who are trying stuff out on YouTube and whatever the attention economy dictates, that’s the thing that rises to the top, right? So, the uncomfortable position now for people who have progressive political commitments is that they have to kind of take steps back and make an argument for gatekeepers because when the floodgates were opened all of a sudden, you know what floats at the top of the newsfeed? It’s a bunch of Nazis. That is a very strange position for people with progressive political commitments to be in because you have to kind of make an argument for implicitly hierarchy and exclusion and these institutional models which I think you know coming from the art world I value curators. I value editors. I want to see an avantgard of like the next generation that does stuff that you were doing that was [ __ ] cutting edge and was like completely new like a novel aesthetic experience and now we have things that are like just endlessly derivative because people aren’t given the resources to really take risks right you know so that’s a it’s a strange place to be in but if you look at this through culture it’s happened to movies and music and comedy do you have um are you friends are you familiar with younger people who are trying to get started in comedy comedy television like what is their experience now as compared to when you were starting out? Well, you know, I watched it kind of all vanish uh for the most part. Yeah, I mean those two places, comedy, Adult Swim, uh I I think they uh they had a huge hit with Rick and Morty, and that sucked up all the oxygen into that show, as far as I understand, and it became very hard to really focus on anything else for the people that worked there. Yeah. When when people were not paying attention, that’s when all the good stuff was happening, right? Um, but when people start paying attention, people get nervous and executives start wanting to get another one of those shows going and ro success. Um, I don’t know. That’s that’s one little thing that happened. I think in general, the media companies got way more conservative, not in a political sense, but in a what’s going to appeal to the most Yeah. people possible. The the only thing I would add to that is that we have these big streaming platforms now and so in an environment where people are making generally like less money from their uh film and TV investments they’ve got all this data and when they become riskaverse they’re like well this is performing well I’m going to invest in that and only in that and that forever because otherwise just like most things lose money. Well, I’ll tell you another thing that we heard years ago when we were we were pitching another show to one of the big streamers and they were like, “Well, we already have your audience.” Really? Like they’re already signed up, so we don’t need your stuff. Wow. Because they’re we got them. We’re looking for people that are looking for new markets. Yeah. Yeah. And interesting. So, and our audience isn’t that big anyway, but it was like Yeah. Yeah, we’re grow. We’re trying to grow and we feel like the people that like your stuff already they’re already here and they’re probably not going to Without giving any names, what stuff did they greenlight after they said no to you? Oh, it was like big broad sitcoms that were like you couldn’t believe were making a comeback. And this was a streaming site. It wasn’t a network. It was like network sitcom like Ashton Kutcher or something like had a had a sitcom. Okay. I think we just uh uh doxed the streamer. Oops. But that’s okay. [ __ ] them. They said no. They’re lost. But yeah, I mean I know a lot back to your question of I know a lot of young people who were like, you know, for a little while I was we had a production company and we’re going out and make and trying to sell shows and the shows I wanted to watch would just not get very far in the process. You know, they just wouldn’t. I found some very talented young people who are doing really weird things who are very young and would probably not make a very uh popular show, you know, but they might but you’re developing like a generation of or you’re you’re like developing talent that hopefully will go on for many years, right? Right. And will go on to potentially do bigger shows or more, you know, sprout their own little community or something. So, I sort of like pulled back from that and in the past since the pandemic really just been doing most of my stuff independently like most interesting people are doing through Patreon and on my on cinema show we just do it entirely subscriptionbased but these um these younger comedians you were saying. Yeah. Is their material political or political adjacent at all? Not really. Not really. I’m trying to think of people I I would put in that category. No, I mean some of it’s I mean somebody I love who’s I think doing very well on his own. Uh Conro Mi and his films. I mean they’re they’re the most interesting and funny. He’s a little political adjacent, but it’s very political. It is it is political. But I would say like all of our stuff was political, but it wasn’t necessarily topical. wasn’t like, you know, it was Tim and Eric awesome show was very much about the absurdity of of the capitalist system and marketing and uh consumerism and you know like we definitely were we were our minds were there. We just weren’t calling out you know Dick Durban. Yeah. Yeah. Still implicit perhaps at that. We were talking before we started rolling here. Um, this is a good I think generative question that there’s uh people in the comments that maybe want you to do comedy and perhaps not talk about politics. I assume stick to comedy is the line. Yeah. That we a lot of us get a lot. Why do people feel that way? Do they they feel like politics has pushed itself into the sphere of comedy? Like why isn’t this material welcome? I don’t know. I mean that’s a good question. And why do people say anything in the comments? I’m fascinated by that. you know, it’s I I don’t want to restrict what people say and it does feel like it’s an outlet for people to communicate how they feel, but um it’s just a silly idea, but I guess there are people that probably disagree with me politically, but have some kind of a affinity with my work, my comedy at least, and are disappointed when we enter into this gray area of social media where I am a professional actor, comedian, maker of things, but I also find those platforms to be a place to share my values. Yeah. And or laugh at or make fun of things in the world and talk about things in the world. And I think there’s certain people that prefer those things remain separated in my audience at least. Yeah. Yeah. Why don’t people say that to Rogan, for example? Like every comedian is somehow also a political commentator now. Yeah, that well they’ve become just overtly political. It feels like that’s their prime mode and the comedy seems like it’s something they talk about but not Yeah. Yeah. not actually deliver on. But I mean they all put out comedy specials. I haven’t seen that many of them. But the ones I do don’t seem to be very for me. I mean, it’s an occupational hazard where when you talk about the craft, uh, you tend to talk about it more than you actually do it. That comes with the territory. I’ve been thinking about this though, uh, in the last few years. It seems like every comedian has somehow just magnetically, gravitationally been pulled into doing political commentary. And I’m wondering where that comes from. There’s a few different uh, few different thesis we could examine here. one, the attention economy of social media just drove those things to the top of the newsfeed, or two, things are actually getting worse. Probably both. But um I mean, for me personally, the rise of Donald, what’s his last name? Trump. Uh he’s such a ridiculous character, such a buffoon and such a com a comic uh personality, such a comic archetype really that uh and I do believe he’s very funny and not and most of the time not sort of an intentional way, but oftentimes he is kind of intentionally funny, I think. But he’s made he’s made everything just a lot more ridiculous, you know, and um I think that’s caught up a lot of people that in my field who feel, you know, it’s hard to not talk about right at the moment or and and has not and has been hard to talk hard to not talk about for a long time. for are there people that maybe this certainly happened with my peer group that you kind of assume that you’re on the same general camp the same side of things and then there’s this like wedge that opens up where when there’s a real political crisis you kind of need to choose one side or the other. Yeah. I mean it’s interesting. I’m a a Gen Xer. I’m 49 years old and I grew up there was it was pretty clear where where me and my friends were going to be politically um in general terms. It was also something we didn’t pay that much attention to. Yeah. But you know my friends were generally people in in the arts or musicians. Yeah. Uh and the stakes were were pretty low. I mean, you could, you know, I was just thinking this morning, you know, we had environmentalism and that was kind of represented in Michael Stipe being on MTV and you were kind of like, you know, Michael Stip is doing some kind of pitch for you to be more environmentally aware or Bono or somebody like that like that’s who we had and you’re like, “Okay, I’m with them. I’m not with Jerry Farwell or Jim Baker or you know the the moral majority. It was pretty clear that like oh I guess I’m a liberal. I’m a left left of center type cuz uh I want a cleaner environment. I would like less war. I don’t believe I trust the Bushes. Um I don’t really care that Bill Clinton got a [ __ ] that whole thing seems [ __ ] up that it’s it’s we’re being manipulated into caring about these things. So, those were kind of the political issues that I grew up in. Um, and now it’s just become much more complicated and layered and full of um, you can be, you know, you can be leftwing but kind of suspect of the pharmaceutical industry which can lead you into a sure antivax rabbit hole, you know, and or you can be leftleaning and anti-war and that puts you into this weird alignment with the Russians. And so there’s just a million different strains you can go down, right? And that’s partly, I would assume, because there’s tremendous amount of fraction fracturous information coming from through social media and we’re not getting stuff doing this through this big Yes. thick, you know, open pipeline. Yeah. And so you can be kind of caught between certain things. But the society we live in is has a you you have major powers at the top dictating how most of us kind of live our lives. So you do have to choose a big chunk of one side to support if you choose to get involved, right? And and a lot of those a lot of times you’re not going to agree with 40% of of that side, right? This is I mean this is why I think it’s interesting to talk to people who make culture, right? Making TV, music, comedy. saying I make culture. I make so much culture. You are a cultural producer is the technical term I believe. Um when I was growing up, I think when you were growing up, we have a few years between us, but there were these implicit assumptions about your politics if you were in this countercultural progressive anti-establishment type of scene. And those things seem to have flipped now where there’s a conservative counterculture that’s very edgy and is kind of uh has taken oppositionality from left politics seemingly. How do you understand that flip? Yeah. I don’t know. I mean the right wing is in charge of everything now, right? They’re they’re the establishment for what I in government. Yeah. In government. So, but also in culture somehow. Well, uh, give me an example of that. Uh, quantitatively the largest podcast. Joel Rogan. Joel Ro. Is it Joel? My joke today is going to be not knowing basic names of Joel Rogan. Um, yes. So, people like that. I know you’re a big Tim Pool guy, also. Huge fan. Love the show. Um, these guys are, you know, maybe were countercultural in like a millennial Gen X cusp, but now they’re like on the right of certain issues and that is like countercultural, oppositional in a way that being punk and rebellious and leftwing was when I was growing up and how did this transformation happen? Again, I think they are aligned with the establishment and and have been in a in a lot of ways, even though uh who’s in charge of the establishment kind of goes back and forth, but at the moment they are politically aligned with the right. Um, I guess in some parts of culture there has been a a correction or some would say an overcorrection towards, you know, diversity and uh, DEI and stuff like that that I suppose you could say people like Rogan and Tim P um, pushed back against. And so that makes them countercultural because the culture was moving in a more equitable, right, open-minded place, which is crazy to me that uh we all aren’t just trying to move in that same direction. Mhm. And I would say people like these people we keep talking about are re are essentially conservative and reactionary and are trying to move backwards. To watch part two of this episode, you can support the show on Patreon. What do you think was the first piece of political media that you put out? That’s a good question. I mean, I think Twitter explicit political media. Yeah, I think I would say on Twitter, I became more open in 2007 and 200 Yeah. around like as Obama was probably running for president. I might have dropped for the first five or ten years of or definitely the first five years of Eric and I making stuff, we were pretty much behind the wall of our characters. Um yeah, and didn’t really do any press or anything that wasn’t really kind of a bit or wasn’t kind of um sarcastic or satirical. So, I really didn’t have an identity that was me, you know, it was kind of this Yeah. identity as a as a duo. On Twitter, I found a voice and I found a way to like kind of talk about things or comment about the world. Um, and and then in 2012, I think I did a couple things. One, I put out this album called Canthology. Yes. Which was about Herman Kaine. And if you remember Herman Kaine, he you do if your audience doesn’t, he was a the CEO of Godfather Pizza. And he was kind of like a proto Trumpumpian personality. He was very much kind of a I’m just an average guy. I have my ideas on how to run government. You want He ran for president. Mhm. And there was a commercial that his team put out that was his campaign manager that it was almost it was like shot on an iPhone and it was very silly and lowfi. It was not meant to be silly but it was like I can’t believe they put this out and it was this, you know, it was very tough. I mean, a lot of my stuff certainly starting at this point is dealing with the idea of manhood or dealing with like what it means to be a guy, what it means to be a white guy in this crazy world of blue-haired, you know, me too types and that whole you most of my stuff is looking at those guys in a s in a satirical way. But this commercial ended with this guy, the campaign manager, who’s got this kind of attitude about how we’re gonna take bring the take this country back. And at the end of the commercial, he takes out a cigarette and blows her right in the camera and I’m like, “Wow, what the [ __ ] is that?” And I just got right to work making these songs about like a lunatic who was really into Herman Kaine. And the the was mostly word play and sort of me pretend figuring out how to make music at home. But I think that was sort of like making a satirical record about a a political figure in that’s that’s current at the moment felt that was probably the first time I really did something like that. Sure. Irony and satire has played a huge role in politicizing people in the last few years. It can be very difficult to tell what is a joke, what is meant for real. Has the left somehow lost this power of irony and satire? Well, broadly speaking, I I don’t know. I definitely see evidence of that. I I think there’s a couple things. One is I’m like I’ve been noticing Jordan Peterson does this thing where he closes his eyes when he’s trying to get into He’s another one that like what am I going to not talk about that guy? Guy’s the greatest cartoon character since, you know, Goofy or Homer Simpson or something. like he’s just a total character that you got to goof around goof around with. Now, does he say some things that may check out at the end of the day? Probably. But so do we all. But um anyways, yeah, I think the internet makes it very hard to know what’s real and what’s not real and where somebody’s coming from. The tendency of social media is I think a very uh unfortunate side effect is the the feeling that people need to chime in as soon as they possibly can about things. And those people get a lot of attention. And so I’ve noticed if we do something satirical and we do it well that it it it should be kind of a little confusing and it should be a little hard to discern where we’re coming from. M uh you know I remember growing I remember growing up and friends of mine thinking Spinal Tap was just a real band you know like and they weren’t sure and why would they because they do it very why wouldn’t they because they do it very well and only when you get sort of a few keys to what is funny about this can you then enter into the wonderful world of what they’re doing. But on the surface, if you’re just from, you know, 200 yards away, you’re like, I don’t know. I guess that’s just a shitty metal band. Mhm. And the reward is getting close and finding how funny it is. And I think now what’s happening is if I do something online that’s confusing intentionally or playing a character, you know, I mean, the classic case is I do a standup character who’s very kind of the person I make fun of a lot. He’s kind of a traditional right-wing reactionary guy’s guy and he’s an idiot, you know, and and if I put a clip of that guy on the internet and that for some reason goes a little viral or go gets picked up outside of my cozy little bubble of people that are already in on the joke, you’ll see just comments like, “What is this? This isn’t funny. This guy’s an asshole.” Usually you don’t see people that are like I I agree with this guy because I’m not that it’s not that cloaked where it appears to be polished in a way that should be that might actually pick up steam on that side. But it’s the left going I don’t agree with this and this guy sucks and this guy shouldn’t be you know and I’m like guys I’m joking right we’re playing I’m making fun of the people that you’re all upset about. And so there’s this sense of like if it’s online, it is what it’s saying it is, which is annoying cuz that’s pretty boring. You know, I don’t mind, you know, John Stewart or John, what’s the other John on HBO? Tell me. Oliver. Oliver. John Oliver. I was right. I don’t mind those guys, but they’re very much like very clear about what they’re trying to communicate, right? Very literal about it. Me and my friends, we were often not very clear about it. We’re creating, you know, we’re being using satire, which often involves cloaking in the thing you’re against. Yeah. And I think when that gets taken out of context and put up in a little clip, it can confuse people. And again, I think it’s just a case of people wanting to be heard as soon as possible and without being interested in doing a little research or doing a little checking with your friend. I always say like if you’re there’s a thing online where I notice people go, I don’t even know who this is. Somebody might type that. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It happens all the time. It blows me away. Who is this is the question I see. Or what is this? like this is a comment. This is not the Google search bar like like or or text a friend. Yeah. Like to publicly state ignorance is very interesting to me. And uh it’s just a strange new human characteristic that I don’t think like back in the day it seems like it would be weird to be out in public going I don’t know what is this? What? Who are you? You know, like don’t tell people that. Your music is quite sincere. Can be. Can be. That’s a very Jordan Peterson reaction, by the way. I When I say can be Oh, yeah. He’s getting clarify this. Yeah. He’s not a Christian. Now, did you see they changed the title of the video? I’m not. Why would I Why would I be like I’d like to do a parody. Now, this is how I think I see stuff like that. It’s like I want to try to emulate that energy. You’re gonna have to get a few suits, I think. Yeah. Well, maybe not. See, like I could do this with you. It would be a fun exercise. Okay, Jeff. I like ask me anything and I will try to not answer it in a helpful way. Is there a general progression of your creative career where you were ironic starting out and have become sincere? You say sincere, I won’t do the voice, but you say sincere, but but then what do you mean by that? Because I could say sincere is in the eye of the beholder. Okay. So, yeah, it’s just like, well, what are we doing? Why are we talking to each other, you know? But no, okay, forget that. I will get back to re reality here. But I I mean, okay, so I was a I was a [ __ ] poster on Tumblr. Um myself, uh my friend Brad, like we made all of these memes. Some of them still circulate. I get Google alerts for these things, making a lot of jokes, implicit political critiques. Yes. Sometimes just a [ __ ] post to annoy people. Yeah. And then now as more of an adult, um I have real political commitments. I know what I think about certain issues. And so I think there’s a general kind of maturation in people’s creative careers. Combine that with okay, things are actually like measurably getting worse now. I have like a dog in the fight. Before it was kind of just like whatever. Like nihilism doesn’t matter. And then it’s like, wait, you could go to the doctor. Like you could actually go to the doctor. Um, oh, I’d like to do that, right? I would I don’t want to I don’t want to tell jokes to the expense where I never get to go to the doctor. Like all of a sudden it’s like all right. Um you know those implicit politics that were part of like punk music or counterculture. Now they’re like this is what I actually want to do. Like I meant this stuff when I was doing it before. Yes. Well, yes. I mean, you get older and I got I got older and I’m almost 50 and I have children and I have values that extend beyond my love of irony, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And uh sometimes that overshadows my, you know, my love of irony, my values or my concern for other people or empathy or whatever. Um, you know, it made me think that like definitely growing up and in my younger days, the idea of [ __ ] posting or um irony was very strong and often, you know, expressed itself in extremely offensive ways, you know, in extremely boundary pushing ways. But it was always from what I remember it was always coming from a a place of absurdity or a place of right shock for the sake of stupidity you know for the sake of uh ridiculousness or you know that’s like there would been there would have been um a lot of pedophile jokes back then and and and a lot of and really not really from the place of I don’t know anybody in a billion years who has any interest in that, you know what I mean? Like it is it is about as sick as you can think of. And therefore, the only way to shock you is to tell a joke about like a clown raping a kid or something. Nor McDonald did did a lot of that. And that was a way to determine boundaries or to be ridiculous or be offensive. Um, and now it feels like I don’t know. It feels like there’s a from the left that people got very um u that’s there the the boundaries of what you can say got much smaller I think. Um, but the intention of the people from the ship posting side now has become a little more like, oh no, I think you’re actually when you’re sending me animations of me going into the the ovens at Awitz, which was happening to me in 2016, you know, memes of Pepe, all that stuff. It’s like, no, that’s not just to shock. That’s like there’s a political ideology behind that. Right. Right. Yeah. So irony uh gets kind of got co-opted and and and sort of aligned with an ideology. When should we separate the art and the artist? When should we not? H well it’s u it’s probably uh personal to you. um on a larger scale, companies, big studios or whoever is make paying for things is going to have their own set of priorities. They’ve always had their own set of priorities. People are in favor and out of favor for all kinds of reasons. Um everybody I can name a hund I could name many people whose art I love who’ve done terrible things, right? I am the biggest Beatles fan that you can find. John Lennon very clearly did terrible things to the women in his life. Right? That’s the most to me that’s like the biggest example of like here’s pop culture. Here’s a piece of art that is undisputably great. People that make it made mistakes, right? We could say even go further and say not they didn’t make mistakes. They were they had you know uh immoral or bad uh tendencies. I can still enjoy their music uh and find lot of great uh of goodness and greatness in that even even in that person. So um I don’t know. I don’t know. I mean we’re this past 10 years we’re learning how to deal with all this stuff kind of for the first time. Right. Right. Um, I mean there are there are people in power that it’s there’s very there’s many many clear good examples of like I don’t know Harvey Weinstein that’s probably the biggest one, right? where it’s like this person was clearly abusing his power and hurting people and whatever we can do through the through law enforcement, through legal system, through their the power of our purse to stop encouraging uh a punishing that person, keeping him away from other people, but also trying to change the culture in which that can’t fester anymore. Uh that’s a clear example of like I’m all for it. Now there’s just a gradation throughout the rest of culture where you know it becomes a personal thing where it’s like well I don’t agree with that. I don’t agree with the way that person lives their life but their art is really important to me or this person seems like a really nice person but the art they make is making the world a worse place. you know, interesting. I don’t I can’t honestly think of an example of that, but I’m sure it’s out there. So, I’m not um I’m trying not to be wishy-washy about it, but I don’t think I’m also a zealot about it, you know, like I I I can’t there’s always if you name any of these people that you could easily name. I could tell you um where I’m at with them, I guess, but what I don’t know what good it does, you know? I think it’s um if you’re if that person is um continuing to use their power to abuse people, I would say that’s a great place to jump off board and do what you can to fix that. If it’s people in the past and you can still watch so and so’s movies or listen to their records, you know, I mean, they’re still playing Michael Jackson records at the bowling alley, you know. I don’t my my and my kids are singing along to him. Did he molest children? Looks like it from what I can tell. But so I don’t know. You know, there’s I mean I hope we don’t start like just like it’s going to be you’re going to have to start erasing a lot of stuff from the hard drives. Yeah. If we go down that path. So I don’t know where you I don’t know. It’s it’s a messy thing. up. I re I realize that I am too far too much of a [ __ ] academic. But if you’ll indulge me, the rules of society no longer make sense right now. There’s a kind of break between what is happening in reality and the stories that we’re telling ourselves. There’s a permissioned space in society in which you can break the rules. That’s art and that’s comedy. And I think that’s why it’s become so generative in the last few years is that it’s a sanctioned space. it’s allowed to break the codes, right? And so new codes are kind of coming out of that like permissions to like use slurs in some cases like you know um to take a position that would have been off limits previously both right and left all over the spectrum. Did jokes help to put Trump in office? He would be the greatest if he was if he was a true populist and if he was a, you know, he would say something like, you know, get these insurance companies the hell out of here. you know, if he if he shifted 45 degrees and but you still used that that sort of dumbass working man’s language that he uses to to be more like Bernie Sanders, I’d be all for it because he’s just a ridiculous clown cartoon character. But see, but but demands our attention. Uh we can’t resist watching. I love watching him. I think he’s hilarious to watch it because you just don’t know where it’s going to go. He z what does he say? Ziggs and zags. What’s the weave? The weave. Yeah. And that’s from just a pure out not if I didn’t have to live in this world, it would be a blast, you know. But um so jokes I mean I think probably Elon Musk’s billions of dollars got him elected and the failure of the Democratic party to abort on Joe Biden a year earlier is probably the two things most likely to that got him elected. Um, but there’s a reason why he’s so car so uh, you know, charismatically or he’s there’s a reason why he’s so uh, you know, popular is because he’s a very entertaining guy. Yeah. I mean, when are you going to get to watch in the middle of the day the president of the United States talk about his his pal who is this rich, fat, neurotic guy? Did you see that clip? He goes, “I have a friend who’s very rich. Very rich. You know who he is, but I won’t say very fat. Very fat guy. Very neurotic.” And you’re like, “I’m in.” Like, “Tell me all like keep going.” Yes. Yeah. Finish your hour cuz I’m here for it, you know? But I mean, he’s obviously doing tremendous damage. And I mean, and I started talking like him because I start singing tremendous all the time now. And you know it’s a funny it’s a fun there’s certain like when you use words and language like I do like it’s fun to talk certain ways you know it’s like fun to talk like him and you could see that he enjoys being him you know he’s gotten more like him over time too yeah he’s doing an impression of himself right yes exactly yeah so uh but he also there’s I could spend an equal amount of time saying all the dangerous terrible disrup corruptive um you know uh mulching social security for example yeah I mean just arresting people just taking abusing people’s civil rights defunding public institutions uh you know the parts private yeah just dismantling the civil services uh you know the budget they’re proposing which is going to raise the debt the tariffs you name it do you think he’s going to do price freezes on the drugs though. No, I don’t think anything he says he posted about this, but like I think they’re going to he’s going to ask those people to do it and they’re going to say sure and then it won’t happen. Mhm. You know, I don’t I don’t see any of this stuff h happening. When you were coming up, were there certain comedians or figures that you respected, aspired to model your career after? I mean, when I was really young, I’d say like Woody Allen was somebody I wanted to that was that was the ideal. It was like this guy just goes and makes a movie every year. He’s in them. It’s very much a vision of a world that ma that you know he didn’t really compromise any kind of way musician also and he was a very bad musician like myself. Um but yeah, I mean I think Andy Kaufman was a very big influence for me. Um Kurt Vonagget as a writer like yeah I mean I think any way you can try to maintain your independence and Albert Brooks loved Albert Brooks very much. Um how many of those people were explicitly political? I think Vonagut maybe is the easiest example, but um what was the political subtext I think of um Woody Allen like the what’s the Banana Republic movie? There’s some of them which are kind of out with it. Yeah. Well, that was I mean Woody Allen I think was sort of your classic liberal New York Jewish uh aligned with the Democratic Party and was not even it was what didn’t need to be spoken about. It was just that’s who that character was in his in his all his work and a distrust of of uh Republicans or the conservative moral majority types and open-minded. So yeah, it was probably you know I mean again as a big music fan as well all the music I liked was from a place of uh counterculture or distrust of establishment. um at the same time like hoping for a better world, the Beatles, you know. I rewatched Sleeper recently. Um and there’s a a time capsule of like the whatever period he was in, like 1970s ’ 80s in New York and he wakes up a 100 years later and they’re like, “What is this?” And it’s a Playboy and what is this? It’s a newspaper. They ask him what the NRA was and he’s like, “Oh yeah, it was an organization that helped to get guns to criminals.” like he just gives all of this kind of like political feedback uh looking at the period that he came from 100 years later. But there’s some wild [ __ ] in the outfits of the future, the fashion sense, there’s a guy who walks into a party. I think it’s a black guy and he’s wearing a swatstika on a silver shirt. I was like, “Holy [ __ ] shit.” Yeah. Yeah. It was just a real um skewed a lot of the codes from today that film. But it I mean yeah, tremendously. Well, they also think like he was good at I think like also establishing the Democrats or the left as being sort of weak and feckless and you know especially as into the 80s that weak I grew up in a era when the Democrats were they have they were in charge of Congress from what I can remember for a lot of the 80s but you had Michael Dukakus and there was a weakling kind of mentality about it that you were not you were kind of like you were good you’re well-meaning and you were empathetic headache and your bleeding heart, right? And all this stuff. But um and that’s that’s good for the girls, but if you want to be a man, you had to be kind of G.I. Joe, you know? So, those were sort of the uh archetypes. Was there like an underdog ethic to it? I mean, yeah. I think this you could we could talk forever about sort of right-wing 80s uh culture and of of what what what men were men were you know going to make a lot of money and there was a lot there’s a you were strong you were Rambo you were a wrestler you know those were those were in not counterculture that was that was what was in pop culture that was what it that was sort of when I you know earlier we’re talking about there wasn’t really any uh right-wing culture. There was almost all of the of the popular culture was kind of coded right-wing culture. Yeah. Yeah. And if you were a creative, you were kind of implicitly anti that stuff. Yes. You know, like I remember in high school like the screo scene, it was cool to wear like girls jeans, you know? There’s just like you were coding yourself in a way that was like I’m not that type of typical macho character, right? And that was I think implicit in a lot of the culture that either of us might even like Kurt Cobain or something would wear kind of dresses occasionally and there would be this flirting with feminine uh identity from men and that would be a way to say I don’t I’m not I’m counterculture. Yeah. Is it possible now to posit a type of progressive masculine identity? Like how do we start to approach that topic? Well, I try to be that person. I think you had I guess you had Hassan on. There are guys out there shorter than me, by the way. Is he really? Just to be clear. Yeah. Yeah. He did something for us years ago before he was talk of the town. But um I mean there are there are models out there I think that are like you know um I find I’m a pretty average um above average in terms of appearance I would think for my age but um you know there’s a I’m a a dad white heterosexual cis male I identify as I mean I don’t think about this kind of on a day-to-day basis. But if I analyze it, I’m like I grew up I could easily be uh on the other side of this, you know, I could easily identify with all kinds of Trumpian MAGA kind of things. Uh and I just don’t for whatever reason a series of we just kind of analyzed why. I guess I hope it when I do speak politically or or or you know acknowledge my trans friends and speak out for trans rights or I talk about the uh genocide in Gaza or I any any of my leftleaning uh positions or things I care about Medicare for all you name it. I hope it’s coming to it’s it’s being received as sort of uh permission or make it easier for people like me to feel that way or feel commonality and also that the people that don’t identify the way I identify if you are trans or you are uh you know seemingly different than me that you see some kind of an ally in and I’m using my platform form. It’s all seeming very like, you know, scripted language, but I it’s the words we have to choose from. I’m using my platform hopefully to support those people or those those uh th those um their interests. So there’s a world there’s a world where there are I think progressive guys like me who are just trying to hope for a to go back to the future just like to try to push things in a better in a better direction in a more interesting place more interesting world. It’s interesting because at you know generations eras in the past one could imagine like United States has what the historic high of like 31% union density that was a masculine identity to be in your workplace but to be organized and that was leftwing right that’s a labor as your political priority but it’s it’s difficult now um and it’s it’s something that is I think very much uh unsolved is like the kind of product of debate it’s very easy to posit a kind of libertarian or right-wing uh masculine identity, but I think the closest that I can get to it is a kind of heroic uh selfless sacrifice of like, you know, I think of like a good dad as being somebody who’s like tough for the family and the kids to lean on. Like those things are um meritable, uh honorable even, you know, they’re they’re conventionally masculine, but they’re not selfish. in the way like I feel like a lot of these edgy countercultural identities people are generally encouraged to like demean over someone else for their own selfish benefit. Yeah. I mean, I remember in college going to a I think it was 2000 or Yeah, it must have been 99 or 2000. Uh um uh a politician um William Bradley. Bill Bradley. You know what I’m talking about? He was the basketball player who was a senator from New York or New Jersey. Wait, no, I don’t know this actually. Bill Bradley. Does anyone know Bill Bradley? Come on, guys. Uh he was running for president. He was he was a our fact checker can look up Bill Bradley here. Is that an airport also? That’s the airport here. That’s Tom Bradley. Bill Bradley. You’re making that up. Tom Bradley. Tom Bradley International Airport. Los Angeles. He was the mayor of Los Angeles. All right. Okay, that’s Anyways, Bill Bradley gave this speech about civics and about being ai being and I never heard that word before this way which was you are we are civilians of a community and it is our job and our duty to do well in and to to to make this a better place. Civic virtue. Civic virtue. Yeah. And it was like, oh, all this talk of I’ve been brainwashed into thinking that government is this bad word is this is this, you know, uh, big government, the era of big government is over. Big government is ruining people’s lives and welfare is destroying people, you know. It’s like, no, all it’s very simple. We’re just here to try to uh get through the day and not make someone else’s life worse, you know, as but however we can, however we can try to help out. And and we all benefit the idea of humanism being like I’m not a Christian. I grew up as a Catholic, but very simple like if I’m if I’m if I make your life a little easier, it’s probably going to benefit me in some kind of some way. Like if I’m going to if my in the where I grew up, if the unions were overpaid or if the unions were getting too much dental insurance, which was a big problem for some people, okay, uh I thought, well, another way to look at that is if they’re they’re getting too much money to use for their dental work, they’re going to the dentist in town who’s then buying a car from my dad’s dealership. Do you see what I mean? this is all going to we’re all going to rise up if it’s everyone’s just doing better. And um even the capitalists used to think like that of having like the distribution of resources that like if people had the famous like um Ford quote that like you would pay people who worked in the factory enough to buy the things that the factory made. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. I mean, and that going back to masculinity, it feels like if there were more men talking like that, that’s a that’s a courageous or that’s like a altruistically beneficial way of looking at the world instead of being small and uh backwards looking and looking at anybody that doesn’t look like you and and being and if you’re trans, you’re like you’re scared. And it’s just like what I try to do is make fun of those people and say, “What are you so scared? You’re so scared. You’re a little baby when it comes to trans people.” Like, “What’s the matter with you? Why don’t you think beyond your little perception of how things are supposed to be and be excited and curious about how somebody could maybe live a different way than you?” Like that’s a strong that’s strength is to be is to be confident in who you’re who you are and not be scared of everybody that’s different than you. They’re scared of immigrants and they’re scared of crime and of course you know I’m scared of all kinds of things and I you try to keep yourself protected and safe and s protect your family. I mean try having you don’t have kids. No. try having kids and just thinking about all the terrible things that could happen to them every second of the day. And of course, we’re scared, but the way that somebody like Tim P or whoever it is that’s online every day jinning people up, making people scared instead of saying like, “Oh, wow. You’re you’re non-binary. That’s so interesting. I don’t know if I understand that, but I’m curious about it.” And that’s uh tell me more. And at the end of the day, boy, my life hasn’t changed in any way except I have a broader understanding of a different of a different way to be. Remind us again. Um, how much were you getting per episode from the Russian billionaires? Is it 100 200k? I have not gotten this thing. I love it because for you every time I get political, the other word people use is shill. That I am a shill for the Democratic party. Yes. Paid shill. And I I would love to receive some kind of financial uh backing from Chuck Schumer, you know, but it’s has the fall phone calls haven’t haven’t showed up. I’ve done benefits for various left-wing causes, you know, but uh I was never paid for those either. We’ve talked for a while about the conventional institutional model of investment, production, TV shows, the world of gatekeepers and culture. We’re now in this weird situation where alternative media, so to speak, is larger than legacy media. Yes. Yes. Yes. How do we understand this phenomena? When did that start to flip? What is now the establishment or mainstream? Well, I don’t know, but I’m very First of all, um, the the traditional media companies, I think, did a terrible, terrible job the past 20 years of handling digital rights, uh, distribution. It made it very annoying and hard to engage with their content and share content. Okay. Uh, I mean I was there from the beginning of Napster and uh and saw our work early on get just widely distributed illegally and pirated and bit torrented and all that stuff. And it’s because people were like and I was against it. I was like, I’m we’re not we’re losing control over over this and the networks can’t determine how many people are actually watching this and everything was you’re trying to catch up to all that stuff and they’ve gotten better at it, of course, but it took forever and and uh and I understand how this stuff kind of rose, but the tech companies uh were just smarter and better at it and but I am very dubious when I see the numbers that some of these places get And I just think that a lot of that stuff can be manipulated and bought and uh you know you can buy what the whatever the numbers are for a fairly low amount of money you can buy a tremendous amount of views right off the bat and then that throws you up into the algorithm. It’s you know and there are people that that have gotten better at manipulating the algorithm and uh and the tech companies I think reward that. it becomes this self-fulfilling thing, this cycle that some of the some of the worst stuff rises to the top. But that’s not to say that those things aren’t actually popular. I also think like some of those shows I think people are generally kind of lonely out there and there’s a whole all kinds of stuff about that out there. A lot of those shows are have a sort of parasocial element to them. There’s a feeling of I know these people. I’m spending time with them and uh there’s stuff you don’t have to you can engage in in a very casual way. You can you it’s back almost background. You know, music in the 70s was very popular. I I mean I don’t think anyone can make it through a whole Joe Rogan episode fully engaged. You know, you drift off. Terrence Howard one actually had me. Oh, really? I was riveted. I have to go back to that one. But in general, there are things you can have on the background. There’s things I think you fall asleep to. I think it’s a lot of passive experience, a passive viewing experience is my opinion. But um yeah, I mean that’s where my stuff is now. Like I office hours, the podcast I do is just on YouTube. We use Patreon. Uh I feel it’s very connect. My audience is not as big as those shows, but very communityoriented. There’s callers that are just I would if I saw them at a show, I would probably talk to them for five or 10 minutes in a way that I would talk to a a friend or an associate, you know, like I like it and I I think it’s it’s fun to break down the barriers of like we are the entertainers, you are the audience. M um sometimes that gets out of hand of course, but uh you know I’m sure it’s why you guys you guys get good numbers uh on this podcast or this video surprised by it and I know how much you’re buying them for and but I think people are interested in long form conversation because I mean you I mean the Tonight Show model is toast I think. I mean, it seems insane. Yeah. That you would want to watch uh like a fiveminute interview with, you know, whoever’s on this latest season of CSI or something. Yeah. Yeah. The why why would you what’s what’s there? What’s that for? I think that now Okay, this is going to be far too academic, but you know what? It’s the end of the episode, so academics. It’s my [ __ ] show. I’ll indulge myself in it. Okay. The legacy media now is behaving like financial institutions in that presence in those scarce page numbers or scarce media spots is a stamp about the value of this media entity. Mhm. So, um what that means essentially is that for investors to greenlight money to those things, there’s a certain amount where you can have crowdfunding, you can have engagement and show big numbers, but unless it’s stamped by these financial institutions, they are basically securing the floor of the asset price and investors will not release the funds unless it makes an appearance in those uh you know New York Times, late night TV shows, whatever talk circuit. So this has become again very interesting because there are certain political positions that are gatekept from that narrow media channel that then cannot get green lit for the funds and so they have to go to to crowd sourcing or um crowdfunding. Yeah. Additionally, I’m going to try and tie a few things together here, but um you mentioned Napster before. What started to happen around that era is that the abundance, the kind of opening of the gates, the ability to share from peer-to-peer networks crashed the rates that creatives would get paid for anything. Right. Right. So for journalists, for musicians, for filmmakers. Absolutely. There’s a friend of mine, Carly Buster from the New Models podcast. She uh famously cites this statistic that in the 1970s the big publications like you know when when someone’s getting paid like a commission for Vanity Fair for example right they got paid an average adjusted for inflation $10 a word. Wow. Today you know I’ve gotten $150 for an article from like the Guardian or Spike Art or whatever. That’s just like standard honorarium. Yeah. But you know double check my math but that is a 99% pay cut. And so what starts to happen when you take away the ability of anyone to earn a living from media or culture, they have to produce the incentive structure drives them to produce the most insane, outrageous, inflammatory [ __ ] possible because they’re struggling to stay alive. Sure. And that I think everywhere you can find that in in the world in in criticism. you can find in, you know, movie reviews, right, where it’s like, my incentive is to either destroy this movie as hard as I can because that’s going to get people passing it around, um, or to play nice and and support the current big big movie structure out there. The the problem is that even now, like we like to think of markets as a cyclical process, like, oh, it crashed and it’ll come back. Like, it hasn’t come back. Like, Patreon is good. Substack is good. that allows people to like ek out a living. But the the problem is that like the price points on those I’m going to get very market analytical for a second here, but the price points the compensation that creators get is determined by um there’s a famous article in Wired magazine from Chris Anderson I think it’s 2004 called the long tale and basically when everything is available for free like the convenience of paying the original innovation uh pivoting from Napster was Apple Music where you would pay a dollar per song. It wasn’t that the song was worth a dollar, but that the song um it was annoying to search on Napster and get a bunch of lowquality or fake [ __ ] and people would pay for the convenience of just knowing that the thing was the actual song they were trying to download. Right. So that like novelty basically paying for the inconvenience of having to ask your friend to send you the episode from the RSS feed. That’s worth $5. Right. Right. Right. But the value of our content is basically nothing. And it’s like irreparable. It crashed. Culture is worth nothing. the convenience fee of asking your friend to send you an episode. And now it’s novel to support something financially. Like I mean I I went to go I went and took my kid to Mission Impossible the other day because I think those movies are worth seeing in the movie theater. They’re really fun to see in in on a big screen. Um, so there I do think people are going come out of the the come out of their holes to support things for various reasons financially because it’s the best way to do the thing. But it’s not the way it used to be. I I have this theory that’s like I came the other night. I was at the show music friend of mine. They’re playing in a in a kind of uncomfortable uh venue. The sound wasn’t very good. I was standing and I hate standing. Who likes to stand, right? and standing and the music is great and it’s like these people are so talented and but I’m in this shitty venue sounds bad not the food’s bad or whatever and I was like there used to be this is very sort of a messy uh theory but there used to be just arts and entertainment and it was like and good stuff you’d go and see and some not all of it was great but it was generally really good and it was kind of available and affordable and plentiful and where they did it was set up to have those things there. Yeah. Yeah. Now there’s the good stuff is stuck in shitty places without good sound with basement or DIY setups. And that’s where like what I would say is like the most interesting arts and entertainment going on and most sort of enriching and valuable entertainment going on and all the stuff where the environment in which it’s performed and the technology in which it exists is as good as it can get is where all the slop is, right? And it’s and there’s varying degrees of slop, but it’s the mass-produced stuff is also where you get um the best pretzels and the seats are good and the lights are good, right? Yeah. But but I mean time was just like there was just entertainment, right? And it was kind of leveled out and there wasn’t It’s the same way with just wealth inequality. There’s just there’s there’s a artistic inequality out there in terms of how it’s presented. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that’s um to kind of summarize all of this like we’ve kind of gone through a few different uh eras of creative life right and the one thing that is I think often assumed to be the stable ground was that you know you’re Patty Smith you come to New York in the 1970s the rent is low the cost of living is low you can afford to work part-time in the service industry like there’s I mean interviews with canonized artists that they’re like yeah I came to New York in the ’ 70s I waited tables 3 days a I paid rent in a apartment and a separate studio and made experimental unsellable video work. That doesn’t [ __ ] exist anymore. Everyone I know like they live with three roommates. They work six days a week. They can’t afford to make anything that’s not on a laptop. Like the conditions for making creative work have just become prohibitive because of political issues because the cost of living has exploded. And so there’s no solve within the creative market or anything like that. and you start to take a step back of like what was the indirect subsidy that allowed good culture to happen. It was social democracy. It was New Deal liberalism. It was the uh compromise between labor and capital that basically was broken in the 1980s with Reagan and Thatcher. And that’s why we’re in the situation that we’re at today. So, you can’t really find any solution in terms of like institutional funding or creative market like Patreon stuff. It’s like this is actually at the end of the day a political struggle and what we’re observing in culture is kind of the uh indirect casualties of a war on behalf of the capitalist class against working people and and the these shows that we’re on right now and the the very popular ones. You can see how it’s like these are very affordable to do. You just like you mean the podcast hemorrhaging money less right. Yeah. But still, I mean, you I mean, compared to making a a you know, a Wes Anderson movie or something or going out there and making something, you know, that with with sets and and props and costumes and various locations like Joe Rogan, whether it’s this show or Theo Vaughn or Tim, these are all the same formats in a way. They’re people talking into microphones. It’s very should be you should be I should look at your books but you should not be spending a lot of money making this show and I guarantee you those people aren’t either. They’re taking as much of that money home as possible and spending very little on on infrastructure or production. Um and it’s that’s that’s kind of a shame. I mean, it’s good to talk to you and I’m glad this show exists, but um it would be cool if there were just more Conor Malies who are like going out and making stuff. And I wish I could make more stuff in that way. I think I do, but uh not as much as I mean, I do office hours because it’s fun and we can goof around, but it’s pretty cheap to do, you know. Sure. Sure. Um anyways, Tim Haidker, thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for listening. To watch part two of this episode, you can support the show on Patreon.