- What's up, you beautiful bastards?
Welcome back to the "Philip DeFranco Show".
I have a fantastic Sunday community show for you today.
We're gonna talk about the stories
that mattered most to y'all this week,
the reactions, the takeaways, all the fallout.
But, first, to get you a little back up to speed,
I have our frustrated news recap correspondent, Zaid Tabani.
♪ What's up ♪
- Zaid?
♪ I hope ya'll had a good vacation ♪
♪ Your uncle still mad racist ♪
♪ And Twitter's still all haters ♪
♪ Who wish they Elon famous ♪
♪ Your family hare rap music ♪
♪ They like that new Kanye shit ♪
♪ I'm on your best friend's playlist ♪
♪ How was your weekend? ♪
♪ Ay yo, this that fuck around and find out ♪
♪ Leave a voting sign out ♪
♪ Hanging out in Georgia near the door ♪
♪ Where all the lines out ♪
♪ Over till it's over everybody hate the culture ♪
♪ You ain't being real enough so I'm on hive now ♪
♪ Do better, double check on that campaign ♪
♪ Teddy bears kinda look strange ♪
♪ Balenciaga, pairing kids in bondage ♪
♪ With a weird page from a court case ♪
♪ About what now? ♪
♪ Ye-Dolf gotta double down ♪
♪ Triple now ♪
♪ Saying he love Nazi's ♪
♪ Who's suits feel like some white sheets ♪
♪ Till GOP delete Tweets ♪
♪ so now it's not about free speech ♪
♪ Now Elon had some big beef ♪
♪ With Apple on their store fees ♪
♪ Xi been cracking down on the protests for zero COVID ♪
♪ Until he partially folded exclaiming ♪
♪ Oh bother ♪
♪ Here we go ♪
♪ They oughta know ♪
♪ This Mario ♪
♪ Mexico ♪
♪ What? ♪
♪ This Nintendo ♪
♪ Your tourney closed ♪
♪ Or is it Panda? ♪
♪ We fucking know what's up Alan. ♪
- Nintendo cares about Super Smash Bros fans,
can we just have our freaking tournament, please?
Can we stop this?
♪ The word of the year is "Gaslighting" ♪
♪ Like saying "for the community" that you outpricing ♪
♪ Like using the only license to get your brand climbing ♪
♪ All I know is ♪
♪ The community works harder and events keep dying, like ♪
♪ Railroaders getting railroaded by housing voting ♪
♪ When talks broken and they might strike ♪
♪ Scared the economy might die from a rail closure ♪
♪ Spotify with Rogan and oath keepers just lost Odin ♪
♪ And Weill Smith is so fucking sorry ♪
♪ We want the drama like Maury ♪
♪ No Jerry Jones in your question but POC tension ♪
♪ You look at Jascinda ♪
♪ Ya'll shawty's swap stories like what ♪
♪ I don't really get it like they never get the message ♪
♪ Walmart warned about the shooter ♪
♪ But they kept him on the ledger ♪
♪ After everyone he threatened ♪
♪ Just a thought and prayers statement ♪
♪ and another bad lesson ♪
♪ It it bad times ♪
♪ Qatar killing to build a fucking sport live ♪
♪ Texas better boil water or you might die ♪
♪ Arizona got elections that aint certified ♪
♪ For you get that life line ♪
♪ Maybe there's a bright side ♪
♪ Marriage equality passed in the senate ♪
♪ Cure for Alzheimer's seeing some modest progression ♪
♪ 50m for tribal land from Biden and Harris ♪
♪ And Will Smith is so fucking sorry ♪
♪ Check on the story we back on the glory ♪
♪ It's Philly D birthday he say that he 40 ♪
♪ But I don't believe him it's cold out this season ♪
♪ I'll buy him some sneakers ♪
♪ to burn like these Yeesy's I hold ♪
♪ They're for you ♪
♪ Let's burn them through ♪
♪ They'll smell like glue ♪
- Zaid, I missed you for that week.
♪ To soon ♪
♪ My bad ♪
♪ - No, glad you're back where you need to be. ♪
Also, very cool news
for those of you that like Zaid freestyle in the news,
this week's track as well as everything that came before,
now available on Spotify and Apple,
and those links down below.
I know y'all been asking for it so now you have it,
but with that set, let's just jump into Monday.
And on Monday I'll say we were very relieved,
we didn't know how y'all were gonna receive
The Magic, The Gathering piece we received,
that's obviously very niche.
There's always a risk there
but we always think like if it's interesting it can live,
so it was awesome to see people
both in the community and out of the community
happy we spoke with the professor.
Long time Magic players also having plenty to say
in the comments, especially about your own experiences
at local game stores with comments like,
"As a player I remember being so excited
for the new sets to be released
and planning new ways to play.
going to your LGS and having a community there.
Sadly, now LGS's are having to close
and there's just so much product.
You can't enjoy what you just bought
'cause there's another set coming out
and your cards are just worthless then."
What was really interesting
was the fact that many of these factors
weren't just limited to Magic.
Bruce Wayne here gave us an extremely detailed outline
of how Hasbro was essentially killing
their Marvel Legends game the exact same way.
Oversaturation online, over retail,
exclusive items that game stores can't get
alongside picking and choosing
which stores do actually get products,
price gouging, quality issues, and a ton of other factors.
It's a really interesting read
and I'll make it available as a Google doc
in the description below.
And you had others pointing out
that everything from makeup to bookstores
are also in the same boat.
Also another big topic
where people sharing their Black Friday experiences,
which by the way the last,
the Beautiful Bastard mystery drop sale
where stuff's like 50% off, that should be done by today.
So get on on that, get a present for yourself.
Regarding Black Friday, you had Cara making a great point
about how inflation actually affects buying habits.
Saying, "Every year we get my husband
a new pair of Converse shoes to replace his old ones.
On Black Friday the shoes are always 45 to 50.
This year the sale price was $60
so we didn't get any extras.
Inflation makes it so those last minute thoughts of,
"I'll grab two,"
or adding a few extras to the cart doesn't happen.
If stores wanna see turnout
they need to offer us good deals."
While others who are on the opposite side of the equation,
the workers on Black Friday saying,
"I've worked retail Black Friday five years now,
I can say this one was so easy
it didn't even feel like Black Friday.
And I noticed a couple things different this year,
one, no door busters like companies used to have,
I couldn't find anything good
and my friends who work retail as well
had nobody lined up in the morning.
Two, deals weren't that great,
seriously, not many places had that many good deals.
Three, inflation caused the prices to go up so high
that the "deal" was the normal price
two to three months ago.
And the combination of people not having money,
myself included,
and the fact that prices were still up there
made me and I feel like many others
just not even bother this year."
And to end Monday
you had people speaking on the Balenciaga scandal
that got that video suppressed by YouTube,
so I'm gonna try to be careful how we talk about it.
Y'all were saying things like,
"The whole Balenciaga thing is insane to me
'cause this had to go through multiple people
before it was published online,
and not one of them went, 'Hey, this might get us sued.'"
And then Tuesday was wild,
I'm also glad to see that despite all the bad news
all of you aren't completely jaded and numb.
And that Melissa's story
and your reaction to it I think really proved that,
but of course the biggest story was the rail strike
where nearly everyone was supporting
the rail workers with comments like,
"If a group is so necessary that them deciding to strike
would essentially destroy the economy,
maybe they should be allowed to have sick leave
and vacation days."
And, "The fact that these railroad companies
won't give people paid sick leave and weekends
to avoid an economic catastrophe is wild to me."
While others we're just wondering
why the rules seem so stacked against them,
"On the rail strike, why the hell is the nuclear option
to force the rail workers back to their shifts
and not force the rail companies to meet demands?
Like those attendance policies and sick day restrictions
effectively force you to be on call
and ready to work whenever."
And if I can interject here, the answer is capitalism.
And don't get it confused, I'm not a Socialist Sandy
but my experience as I look out into what I see today
and looking back is that
capitalism doesn't work unless people get fucked.
Also, do not confuse that with me saying, "Yay."
That is just me describing the situation at hand.
I mean, it's literally why you have people saying,
"The economy is going to stay fucked
unless more people get fired."
The fact that that is the conversation
that experts are having,
I think it shows you like what our system is about.
Shifting to the Ye, Tim Pool disaster,
a lot of y'all figured that Ye needs help.
Though you had A. Mariani asking
what a lot of people were thinking, saying,
"I have a very big problem with the "I understand" at 2:24."
- In Ye's circumstance they're coming after him,
they're trying to take away his stuff,
they're threatening him with institutionalization
and I understand all of that.
- And continuing, "Where the hell was this mentality
when this was done to Britney Spears,
and to a lesser extent, Amanda Bynes, Lindsay Lohan,
and other high profile female celebrities.
If Ye were a woman,
he would've been forced into a conservatorship years ago.
If not after his first incident, 100% after the second.
The double standard just absolutely infuriates me."
Then of course there were just a lot of people
that were shocked that Tim Pool
was the sane person in the room.
Then moving on, there was also a discussion about
Will Smith's apology,
and there there were a lot of people
that were cynical about it,
saying things like,
"Will Smith isn't doing this to apologize.
He's doing it to bring good press to his new project,
was probably told to do so by the studio
when signing the contract,
and is doing it for promotion of said movie."
Which I will say I don't doubt that the studio
or certain people at a studio where like,
"This is gonna give us even more good press."
Or even though he issued an apology before,
this is him doing his first rounds.
There's to be more attention
more, technically, than free promotion for the movie.
But also, I did see a lot of people
kind of agreeing with my take,
people saying things like,
"Phil nailed exactly what I was thinking.
It's not for me to forgive or condemn Will Smith
because I'm not the person he slapped."
You know, I agree with that and I guess myself,
(laughs)
but I also understand it's a feeling thing,
like I feel that Will Smith is
probably generally a decent human being
that did a fucked up thing in a moment.
I think there should be accountability there,
if he fucking slapped me
there would've been assault charges,
but I do think that it was an outlier for him.
Whereas, and I saw people saying like Chris Brown's name,
what's the difference there?
My feelings, and I think it's backed up
by history and reality,
is that he's just genuinely a bad person,
a very violent individual with a track record.
And you can call it hypocrisy
but I think what happened between Will Smith and Chris Rock,
and what happened with Chris Brown and Rihanna,
drastically different situations.
And I'm drawing that comparison
because it's literally an argument I saw some people making.
But, hey, that's a story, some of our back and forth,
and whether you agree or disagree with me
I'd love to know your thoughts on those comments down below.
And then already online banner ads,
sidebars and popups are everywhere,
especially with the holidays here.
Whether it be a mainstream news site
or less than legal torn hubs,
and most are colorful distractions
but some are malvertising ads created to infect your device
with malware and viruses.
And if you're asking,
"Phil, how can I block these dangerous sites?
How can I have peace of mind
for this problem that you just told me I have?"
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And then, Wednesday I'll say definitely I notice a trend
whenever we cover community-based stories,
'cause you had the SMASH community coming out in droves
to talk about their frustrations With Nintendo.
Watchie had easily one of the most popular comments
by simply saying,
"Nintendo somehow simultaneously
makes some of the greatest games to this day,
while also acting as a perpetual enemy
of freely enjoying video games
and the advancement of them as a medium."
And there were also plenty of takes
that range from disappointment to confusion,
but one of the biggest takeaways
was that a lot of people wanted us to be sure
that the head of Panda was sufficiently blamed.
And actually on that note,
Nintendo has come out and issued a statement
about the entire situation.
In it they tried to clarify that they issued licenses
solely based on the merits of the proposals they received,
but with that also reiterating that organizers like Panda
need to adhere to high standards of conduct and adding.
It is also important that a partner adheres
to brand and IP guidelines and conducts itself
according to professional and organizational best practices.
We use the same approach
to independently assess all partners.
If we discover
that a partner is doing something inappropriate,
we will work to correct it.
So, who knows, if large groups
that were threatened by Panda come out with proof,
it's possible that Nintendo will do something about it.
Although, I don't know if there's a world
where they're willing to risk an entire licensing deal
this late into the year.
Also, for its part, Panda largely denied any wrongdoing
in a new statement on Friday,
which, side note, if there are updates to this story
do we film these on Friday?
But they're saying they were clarifying
that it essentially removed its controversial CEO
from working directly with other tournament organizers
to avoid miscommunications.
Leading to a general frustration for many creators,
big and small, people like MoistCr1TiKaL,
'cause right before this statement
he actually put out a video where he said...
- Still nothing from them,
I feel like they should address it as quickly as possible
but I believe I heard from hBOX
that they're getting a very serious statement prepared
with a legal team and everything.
- And then after reading Panda's statement he tweeted out,
"Yucky response, actually just dropped
a nothing sandwich after two days.
Don't really see how Panda moves on from this."
And they're also hints from popular players
signed with the group that they might leave.
Also, a story that really connected with a lot of y'all
was that Walmart situation.
And if I had to guess, that's because nearly everyone
at some point in their life spent time in purgatory,
I mean, working retail, which can be a soul suck in general
but especially when management doesn't support you.
With people like Mary Jane giving her experience,
and I'll just use her words,
"As a Walmart employee,
I hope this lawsuit makes them do more
and reevaluate as a company.
This isn't an isolated incident,
there is a guy at my store
who threatened gun violence against two of our coworkers
and all they did was move his shifts
to the opposite time of day.
And I feel like I'm working with a time bomb
that Walmart could have diffused for us,
and have no recourse for that until it's too late
and then they shrug it off
because they've "trained" us to be in a shooting."
Which I'll say it's hard to read or hear that I not go,
"What the fuck?"
I just can't imagine a world where higher ups are like,
"You know what, moving shifts around,
that's an acceptable solution
to someone threatening to shoot employees."
Although Collin may have gotten to the bottom
of why Walmart doesn't take threats of violence seriously,
like with this most recent shooting, writing,
"The fact that Walmart called that a complaint
tells you everything you need to know
about how seriously they're taking it."
Yeah, I mean the general sentiment
was that Walmart doesn't care about their employees.
"I have worked for Walmart for 10 years.
They have never taken ethics report seriously
and, even worse, if you do report there is a likely chance
management could retaliate against you in some way."
And then, finally, on Wednesday I asked y'all
who you would want for a game of the year,
specifically Elden Ring or God of War, Ragnarok.
And as suspected, when I lit that fuse
there were many strong opinions on both sides.
Elden Ring was praised for its open world design
and accessibility for a souls born game,
and for some of you
the game literally cured your burnout of open world games.
Although, I think this comment
kind of points to why Elden Ring
seemed to be so much more popular,
saying, "Being someone who has played
and enjoyed both games,
I can just tell from the online presence
that Elden Ring has had a huge impact.
God of War had a whimper and has seemingly been relegated
to little clips on YouTube shorts,
meanwhile, ER smashed into the culture
and popped off everywhere."
But at the same time it felt like
there was almost just as many people
who thought God of War deserved it,
but there seemed to be a nostalgia factor for many of you
alongside the game's storytelling,
which really, I mean, seems to have
fundamentally changed a character into someone
with far more depth.
With one of you saying, "It was just so touching
to see someone try to better themselves for their child."
As well as other comments like,
"It was simply like a love letter
to all the growing and aging fans of the franchise.
Had such deep roots in the message no matter what you did
or how life has treated you, you can change for the better."
But, either the way,
there is one thing for sure with this story,
and that is that half of you are wrong.
I just won't say which half,
because I'd like you guys fighting amongst yourselves
and not with me.
And then we've got Thursday,
and there we talked about the ongoing Adderall shortage.
And there we saw a number of responses,
like there were a lot of people
that didn't even know that this was going on,
which not to pat ourselves on the back too much,
that's one of my joys when we're able to do
an in-depth interview and bring light to something
that's not getting a ton of coverage.
We had people like Eddie who's telling us
about their experience navigating the shortage
as someone newly diagnosed with ADHD,
really just highlighting how much it affected their life,
saying, "I got diagnosed at 20 with ADHD
and the Adderall shortage was hugely debilitating
for the past two months.
I'm in university and working full time
so my general productivity was a lot lower than usual.
In order to combat this
I drank extremely high amounts of caffeine, but to no avail.
Just got my prescription back this last two weeks
and I'm finally catching back up on schoolwork,
but it's really eye-opening to see
how much it's positively affected my life."
And, "The medication shortage is super frustrating.
I haven't been on my medication
and it's affected all aspects of my life,
especially close to big end of the year deadlines,
my mental health is now suffering
at levels I haven't in a long time."
And then I think James started a really good conversation
when he said, "The Adderall situation is absolute insanity.
You can literally be scrolling through TikTok
and constantly see ads that encourage
getting a prescription for ADHD,
while they're paid actor gives
extremely generic reasoning like "getting distracted".
It's blatant predatory marketing,
and the fact that the end result
is millions of people getting prescribed
a schedule two substance is just mental.
The DEA needs to step in and crack down
on these predatory companies
who mass advertise ADHD with predatory tactics.
They're getting millions of people
who don't need the medication addicted to amphetamines."
And below that,
while you know the majority of the audience is US based,
this is an international show.
One of the most common responses was
shock that people in the US
get direct-to-consumer medical marketing,
which, in case you don't know,
is a very uniquely American thing.
But there we also saw a lot of people pushing back,
pointing out that the schedule of a drug
doesn't always correspond with how dangerous it is,
you look at marijuana,
although I think amphetamines are more likely
to be abused than weed.
But if there was a large scale crackdown
it could actually end up hurting people
who need Adderall the most.
Then moving on to the Twitch Shield story,
the situation where Twitch gave a tool
to creators to try and stop hate raids.
There the general sentiment
was that it seems to be a viable solution
that creators have control over.
With Mario saying, "I feel like it's a great idea
to be able to quickly toggle on sub only chat
or quickly ban based on a phrase
could be hugely effective for raids like that.
They don't have to limit the regular day-to-day streams
in one way or another in fear of hate raids,
and limit their growth/exposure."
With GamerSaps adding, "On the Twitch thing,
I don't get people going, 'You gid the bare minimum.'
This seems to be a very good tool
and we've already had tools
to deal with them to a certain extent before,
they just weren't ideal or as well made like this.
Yes, ask for them to make better tools like they have
but when they have already made these tools,
give actual complaints about the tool
if it isn't working as it's intended,
not just dismiss the effort outright."
And then, of course, finally we had
just the disgusting, hateful, rhetoric from Kanye,
him talking about how he loves Nazis and Hitler
while speaking to Alex Jones.
And there, just like me, most of you were shocked
that Jones ended up looking like
the fucking normal one in that interview.
Also, do not let that wash away
how much of an insane asshole he is,
not jumping on the "I also love Hitler and Nazis bandwagon",
very fucking low bar, like under the ground low.
But, yeah, he was a fucking deer in headlights
while Kanye was just saying ridiculous things.
So, also, I don't know what he expected,
he's hanging out with a Nick Nazi Fuentes.
One of the main comments was just having more questions.
Someone writing, "I got so many of 'em.
Why is Kanye wearing a mask?
Is that really him saying it?
If so, who found out it was him?
That story happened so fast, I need the source."
Which, hey, I'm all for fact checking
but it sounds like you are going to need to be in the room
and directly talk to everyone involved in a story
to believe something,
even when everyone involved in the story
says that it happened.
Stay skeptical, but not everything's a conspiracy theory.
And something that I heard recently that I really loved was,
"Be open-minded, but not so much that your brain falls out."
That's how you get the Kanye-itis,
which, by the way, I don't know if it's gonna change
by the time this video goes up.
Kanye has been booted off of Twitter again,
with Elon promising
it's not because he posted a photo of him looking overweight
but rather the everything else that's been happening.
But then, finally,
the last thing I wanna mention in today's show,
earlier this week I joked about turning 43.
I'm actually 37, which also means that some of you
have watched me for almost half of my life.
Started a version of this show back in college,
have done a decent version of it for the past four years.
I just wanted to genuinely take a second to say,
whether you've been with me for the long haul
or you knew here
and, hopefully, you'll be in the long haul from here,
thanks for being a part of this.
It started as an experiment by a lazy lost boy,
and it is an honor and a privilege
not only to be in your phone, in your home,
wherever you're watching, but for us to have turned into
the men and women we are today together;
and I'd like to think we're both better for it.
So, that's where I'm gonna leave you.
I'll be right back here on this channel tomorrow,
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
with your regular "Philip DeFranco Show".
But until then, I love yo faces, you doing a good job,
and I'll see you tomorrow.