- 'Sup, you beautiful bastards?
Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco show.
Hit that like button if you want me
to punch you in the throat
and or just to feed those algorithm gods,
to get these videos in front of more people.
And while you do that, I'm just going to jump into it.
You know, the first stories and news that we have
to talk about today involves the Met Gala,
which I get that it's for charity,
but it always is such a weird thing.
Like it always just comes off to me as this, look at me,
look at me, elitist bullshittery parade where people
dressed up like citizens of Pan-Am and the Capitol.
But actually one of the stories that blew up the most
regarding the Met Gala involves someone that did not go,
with a lot of the focus being on Nicki Minaj.
She put out a barrage of tweets
and regarding the Met Gala, she wrote,
"they want you to get vaccinated for the Met.
If I get vaccinated, it won't be for the Met.
It'll be once I feel I've done enough research.
I'm working on that now."
To which we saw the likes of Hasan Piker responding,
"the world awaits your wonderful contribution
to the scientific community."
And possibly in response to that, just minutes later,
we saw Nicki sharing a rather remarkable story, writing,
"my cousin in Trinidad won't get the vaccine
'cause his friend got it and became impotent.
His testicles became swollen.
His friend was weeks away from getting married,
now the girl called off the wedding.
So just pray on it and make sure you're comfortable
with your decision, not bullied."
We ended up seeing a whole slew of dismissive responses
to both this and the previous tweets,
including YouTube's own Ethan Klein, tweeting,
"eagerly awaiting Nicki's peer reviewed study
on the various vaccines' efficacy."
And you know, I try to keep my emotions
out of stories most of the time,
but I want to say something to Ethan Klein and Hasan Piker.
You disgusting libtards, you Fauci fuckboys,
leave Nicki Minaj alone.
If you actually tried the bare minimum,
you did just an inkling of research,
you would know that Nicki is trying her best.
And I know this firsthand because Nicki, I,
and an elite team of barbs have been working
countless hours over the last six months
trying to figure this shit out.
Running the numbers, following the leads,
checking the balls.
You dismiss her story,
you dismiss her truth as probably
some guy in Trinidad cheating on his girlfriend,
getting an STI, and trying to explain it away.
Does that make more sense than Nicki's version of events?
Sure.
And is that probably what actually happened?
Fine, but I don't know how to end this bit.
It's so stupid. This is such a weird,
stupid story that has resulted in Nicki Minaj
misleading and misinforming millions of people.
Though, if you were a person that Nicki Minaj's opinion
was a thing that, like, knocked you off the fence, like,
I don't know if there's much hope for you.
But really, isn't that the most American
and patriotic thing that Nicki Minaj could do right now?
Using a weird anecdotal story that's gone through
several rounds of a game of telephone
as equal to or greater than scientific research
and Googling and texting until you find things that validate
how you feel rather than caring about the actual facts
and reality of the situation.
Oh, it's so stupid.
But like I just had to watch Dr. Fauci on national TV
be questioned about this and his response, I'm paraphrasing,
there's no evidence that COVID vaccines
cause reproductive issues.
And this is the dumbest bullshit.
And also it's kind of fun with this sort of misinformation,
is it's not the kind of stuff that gets
removed from social media.
With a Twitter spokesperson telling the Verge
that her posts are not in violation of the Twitter rules,
which is most likely because Twitter
doesn't actually know if some random dude
in Trinidad has giant balls.
And if he does, how he got them.
But yeah, that's that story.
You have any thoughts?
Also in addition to the Nicki Minaj focus,
there was a lot of attention on people that went
and the controversies or backlash associated with that.
With representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
definitely at the center of a lot of stories,
wearing a dress that said tax the rich.
With a number of people mocking her attendance and outfit,
including the likes of Ted Cruz
and Barstool Sports' Dave Portnoy, who tweeted,
"tax the rich, but first I'm gonna go
have the time of my life, partying with them all
at the most extravagant, over the top party of the year
that is essentially a celebration of richness."
Though, on the other side of this,
you had AOC describing the story behind this dress
on Instagram saying, "the medium is the message",
adding that she worked with Aurora James,
who is a black woman, immigrant designer,
who focuses on sustainability and saying,
"the time is now for childcare, healthcare,
and climate action for all. Tax the rich.
And yes, before anybody starts wilding out,
New York city elected officials
are regularly invited to and attend the Met
due to our responsibilities in overseeing
our city's cultural institutions that serve the public."
Regarding whether or not the medium
was effective in communicating her message,
you had AOC sharing a story showing
searches for people looking up tax the rich skyrocketed
and noting that this surge leads to more discussion
about America's tax code and how to fix it.
But still very much so, you had people very split on this.
Some saying that her reasoning here
was bullshit, saying that she's a hypocrite.
Others saying, no, she's great, she's driving
the conversation and awareness on important issues.
AOC ended up responding to this herself on Instagram,
writing that she thought about the criticism
she might receive as she has faced it since her election.
But saying she decided that,
even though some people would hate it,
the important thing was that, quote,
"we all had a conversation about taxing the rich in front
of the very people who lobby against it
and punctured the fourth wall of excess and spectacle."
And so, what I'd love to do with this story
is pass the question off to you.
What are your thoughts here?
Let me know what you're thinking
and why regarding this AOC situation.
Then, in news that has me thinking, I am a boss.
I'm a team lead.
There've been numerous times
in meetings that I've said the phrase,
y'all, there's no such thing as a bad idea.
And today I, Philip DeFranco,
would like to denounce that sentiment.
I would like to retroactively take that statement back
because of this news coming out of Porter County, Indiana
that's making headlines.
If you haven't seen yet,
they had their 40th annual Popcorn Festival.
It landed on September 11.
For this, the Valparaiso City Republicans
decided to sponsor a float that they said
was intended to show love, respect, and sorrow
for all the 9/11 victims,
the soldiers who died in Afghanistan,
and our first responders.
But they and their float ended up receiving
a ton of backlash because this is the float.
- [Man] It's a little (bleep) up.
What the?
Are you?
- Because, you know, the best way to honor murder victims
is to recreate the murder.
While, yes, there were people in person
and online that applauded the memorial effort,
many called it tasteless, watching in disbelief
and leaving some not too happy comments,
which resulted in the Republican group
limiting comments on its social media posts.
We also saw the county's GOP chairman eventually saying
that they wish no disrespect
and regret that the tribute was perceived in bad taste.
Yeah, I guess the two main points of this story,
one, there is such a thing as a bad idea,
if no one calls out the bad idea.
And two, that stupid thing you did in the last week,
not the dumbest thing that someone's done in the last week.
So, that's a positive.
From that, I'm gonna take a second
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And then let's definitely talk about
the ongoing job crunch happening here in the states
over these last few months.
We've talked about how it's hit
sectors like food and hospitality,
as well as retail, teaching,
and even the medical field.
But it's not just them.
Another massive shortage that we're seeing
is with bus drivers.
And in fact, the problem is so pronounced
that in places like Massachusetts
yesterday, we saw Governor Charlie Baker
calling in the National Guard.
Calling in 250 National Guard members
to fill in those positions.
And according to him, starting today,
90 Guard members will be dispatched
to four different cities where they will undergo training
to drive children to school in 10-person passenger vans.
The superintendent of one district saying that he expects
the program up and running by
the end of the week and adding,
"this relationship will continue until we can fill
all our buses and vans with permanent school bus drivers."
And actually looking into the situation further,
it turns out that school districts all across the country
have struggled for years to maintain
their bus driver populations.
But now with the coronavirus, it's accelerated
and exacerbated those problems like never before.
Turns out they are a particularly easy group to lose.
Many are retirees, putting them in an age bracket
that's more vulnerable to COVID.
And on top of that, there's still no vaccine approved
for kids under the age of 12,
so many bus drivers are like, fuck that.
Even if the kids are most likely to be fine,
they can spread it, I'm a very vulnerable person.
Which is also why we're seeing in states,
such as Montana and Michigan,
they're actually offering signing bonuses
of up to $4,000 to be a bus driver.
With one charter school in Delaware, in particular,
even promising to give parents $700
for each of their children that they can
drive to school for the entire year.
And so this is really gonna be an interesting
one to watch both in Massachusetts,
as well as other states, right?
Do they deploy National Guards?
Do we see monetary incentives?
Then, in one of my favorite kinds of news,
let's talk about the dangers of social media
while on social media.
And this because internal Facebook documents obtained
and published this morning by the Wall Street Journal
show exactly how toxic platforms
like Instagram can be for teens' mental health.
According to the outlet, for three years now,
Facebook's been conducting studies into how Instagram,
which it owns, affects minors saying,
"repeatedly, the company's researchers found
that Instagram is harmful for a sizeable percentage of them,
most notably teenage girls."
In fact, one slide from a 2019 presentation
even reportedly flat-out says,
"we make body issues worse for one in three teen girls."
With another reading,
"teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate
of anxiety and depression.
This reaction was unprompted
and consistent across all groups."
On top of that 13% of British users
and 6% of American users who said
that they've had suicidal thoughts
directly trace their reasoning back to Instagram,
with many reporting that they feel like they aren't
attractive or don't have enough money
or friends after scrolling through the app.
Related to that,
teens specifically called out
pressure to conform to stereotypes and to match the money
and body shapes of influencers with others setting the need
for validation through views, likes and follows.
There's also the bullying, hate speech,
the over sexualization of girls,
and inappropriate advertisements, right?
And so with this, you have a lot of people going,
wow, how interesting,
these internal documents appear to be
very, very different when you compare them
to Facebook's public messaging.
For example, back in May,
Instagram head, Adam Mosseri saying that the research
he'd seen showed that the app's effects
on teens' mental health were quite small.
And while we don't know what specific research
he's claiming to have seen or had,
these internal documents show one in five teens
outright claiming that Instagram
makes them feel worse about themselves.
And yes, that's technically a minority,
but that's still an incredibly significant number of people.
I mean, you're talking about tens of millions of teens.
Also, notably in direct response to this article,
Instagram's head of public policy,
Karina Newton said this morning,
"while the story focuses on a limited set of findings
and casts them in a negative light,
we stand by this research."
And claiming, "it demonstrates our commitment
to understanding complex and difficult issues
young people may struggle with
and informs all the work we do
to help those experiencing these issues."
With that, saying that Instagram is considering,
quote, "finding opportunities to jump in
if we see people dwelling on certain types of content."
But in the end, a lot of this comes down to you.
What's your opinion?
Do you trust Instagram and Facebook to develop features
that meaningfully create a positive shift?
Is this just lip service?
Do you land somewhere in the middle?
Do you think that any attempt
is really gonna be largely be futile?
Or is this just gonna be an aspect of social media
no matter what you try and do
when people are sharing and consuming?
But also that was just one of the pieces of news
stemming from these internal documents.
Right, the rules for me, but not for thee aspect
with Axios explaining,
"the internal documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal
paint a picture of a company
that allowed millions of politicians, celebrities,
and other high profile users
to break rules without consequence."
Right, this 'cause by Facebook,
for the most part saying publicly,
that they apply the same rules to all posts.
With Axios explaining,
"Facebook's XCheck program, established to make sure
that content reviews of posts by high profile users
were handled with extra care,
often gave VIP's a free pass
to violate the company's rules."
Saying, "some were whitelisted
and allowed to post whatever they want.
For others, content issues were passed
along to separate teams,
which often failed to take action
or sometimes even follow up on reports."
Reportedly, it wasn't just a few people.
By 2020, there were 5.8 million
accounts included in this program.
And according to the Journal,
Facebook was aware that this was a problem,
with a confidential internal review in 2019
finding that the practice was both widespread
and not publicly defensible.
Reportedly Facebook's response to all of this
was that assessment is kind of fair,
but also not fair,
claiming that a lot of the internal material
is outdated information stitched together
to create a narrative that glosses over
the most important fact, that Facebook itself
identified the issues with crosscheck
and have been working to address them.
Saying that the company
is phasing out the practice of whitelisting.
And then finally, today is the day, the California recall.
Today we will see if California decides
if Governor Gavin Newsome keeps or loses his job.
With right now, two of the most likely outcomes
being either Gavin Newsome maintains his job
or he gets recalled and he ends up,
because of the state's bizarre recall system,
losing to someone who got a fraction of the vote.
With the top polling challenger by far
being conservative talk radio host, Larry Elder,
who prior to this recall,
maybe you've seen him pop up in the news.
It's usually connected to his,
let's call it special opinions and points of view.
- When you mentioned that the UK was ahead of us, they were.
Do you know that the slave owners were compensated?
After they lost their quote unquote "property",
the government compensated slave owners.
- I didn't know that. - Yeah.
And so, - [Host] Interesting.
- when people talk about reparations,
do they really want to have that conversation?
Because, like it or not, slavery was legal.
And so their property,
their legal property was taken away
from them after the Civil War.
So, you could make an argument that the people
that are owed reparations are not only just black people,
but also the people whose, quote, "property",
close quote was taken away after the end of the Civil War.
- Cool, reparations for slave owners.
And there's a whole fun montage of Elder
I could include here, but for the sake of time.
What I mentioned is most recently
and really very, very expectedly,
like it's Trump's playbook verbatim,
is Elder is pushing baseless voter fraud claims.
Claiming last week,
Democrats are going to cheat, we know that.
And around the same time saying that he believed
that there might very well be shenanigans,
as there were in the 2020 election.
And yesterday we saw his campaign launch a new website,
encouraging his supporters to report voter fraud,
urging them to sign a petition,
calling on the state legislature to investigate
the twisted results of the recall and adding,
"statistical analyses used to detect fraud in elections
held in third world nations,
such as Russia, Venezuela, and Iran
have detected fraud in California,
resulting in Governor Gavin Newsome
being reinstated as governor.
But understand, one, we have no results yet.
And two, there's been no evidence
of voter fraud in the California recall.
You do have Republicans pointing to an incident
in a Woodland Hills neighborhood last week
where some people who came up to vote were told
that they had already cast their ballots.
But, despite attempts to politicize that,
the Los Angeles County Registrar's Office
said that there was a very simple explanation.
It was an error caused by settings
on their computer systems used to check in voters.
With the office also saying that all the people affected
were allowed to cast provisional ballots
until their eligibility is determined.
But also understand it's not just Elder sowing mistrust
and misinformation while simultaneously
telling their voter base to go vote in the recall,
you also got California Republican party officials trying
to spread this narrative that the state's election security
cannot be trusted.
With this, including Harmeet Dhillon,
the Republican National Committee woman for California,
who, when asked by reporters, refused to say
whether California election will be safe and secure
and adding, "there will be a lot of questions
and potentially litigation after this election
about this sloppy at best treatment of people's ballots
and their right to vote."
With her continuing,
"rumors spread like wildfires based on facts.
Those facts are there are errors
in voting in Los Angeles County.
People see that online and decide it's not worth it to vote.
Also, beyond California officials, we saw Trump,
who never misses an opportunity
to spread misinformation about elections,
chiming in and saying,
"does anybody really believe
the California recall election isn't rigged?
Millions and millions of mail-in ballots
will make this just another giant election scam,
no different, but less blatant,
than the 2020 presidential election scam."
And right now the strategy very much appears to be
a short-term loss with a long-term win.
What I mean by that is a point that was hit on,
when you have people saying that the election is rigged,
most likely you get people to not show up and vote.
I think that's something we saw
with the Georgia special election,
where all of a sudden you got two Democrats voted in,
or when you had Trump, as president,
saying the whole thing's rigged,
why would you go out there and vote?
So it was widely believed that
he actually diminished Republican turnout.
So, as far as why Republicans would do it
in this election, according to new polls,
it shows that Newsome is very likely going to keep his seat.
There was definitely a time in the state
where recall yes or no polling was very, very, close,
but as more and more Democrats became aware
of this recall election, the efforts being made,
the polling is really now favoring Newsome, right?
And so if you're going to lose anyway,
why not continue the big lie, right?
Preemptively undermine the democratic results
of a free and fair election.
And it gives you a riled up base
feeling like they're wronged,
thus more and more people are going to support
when Republicans limit voter rights.
And not if but rather when Republicans take back Congress,
maybe they get back the White House,
whether it be in 2024 or 2028 or so on,
you then have all this political will
and this political capital to crack down on people
that you have, even though the facts are not there,
people that you have deemed cheaters.
It's really unfortunate. It's very scary,
especially in a world where you can do your own research
until you find something that emotionally
feels like it validates what you think is happening.
Yeah, I guess the main point is I think in a few years,
maybe I should move to Norway. (laughs)
Norway, can I come?
Can we be best friends?
You know, ultimately with this story or honestly,
anything else that really stood out to you today,
I'd love to know your thoughts in those comments down below.
Of course, as always, thank you for watching,
like and subscribing to the videos, joining the family.
My name's Philip DeFranco. You've just been filled in.
I love your faces and I'll see you tomorrow.