Parasites Making Money Off Meme Culture | Joe Rogan

So tell me more about your book. Why are you breaking these buildings? So that's a dog whistle. That's a dog whistle. The cover. So there's a guy named Ben Garrison and he was a regular conservative artist, right? And he would have drawings about like Ben Bernanke or Hillary or whatever. The Nazis took his art, replaced all of his drawings with Jews. So instead of the great wizard of debt being the Fed, it was a Jewish caricature and they did it perfectly. And they also invented this whole backstory about him that he was this classic Nazi and this poor guy in Montana, if you Google him, it's like Nazi. And he's like, why is this happening to me? And the Photoshop work is perfect. So eventually they calmed down and now he's kind of like a regular cartoonist and the story got out, but that's his artwork. So the people, this poor guy who was talking about a victim of Nazis, it's very rare nowadays to have a new victim of Nazis and he's actually one of them. Well, meme culture is very strange. Right. Yes. And those little humorous images that get chucked around. Oh yeah. There's a lot of dirt bags that have really profited off of other people's meme work too. Oh my, like my friend Don, he's terrible. He works for a meme site. Yeah. Oh, those sites are bad, man. Some of them just flat out steal and some of them steal and then they'll attribute you somewhere. Like they'll just say your name and sometimes they don't even say your name. They say a name of like a fake account that doesn't even, they just attribute it to someone. Oh, we thought we got it from that person because they know that it's at a hundred different accounts. Yeah. Because a bunch of people have, this guy's like you, you'll find something. You're like, oh, this is funny. And you put it up, but then there's people that they make these giant sites with all other people's work and they curate them and they make millions. Yep. Like fat Jewish. Yeah. Oh yeah. Everyone hates him. This is one of your big issues with like people who will like take content and basically be appropriate for themselves. Well, first for sure with standup comedy. But the thing that's happening with memes is like you're, if someone sends you something, like there's a bunch of things that my, like Eddie Bravo sends me hilarious ones all the time. He'll send me a funny meme and then I'll send it to Brendan shop and like, I'm not asking who made that meme. Right. It's a joke. Brendan doesn't think that I made it myself. So it's not like I'm stealing a joke, but I'm definitely not crediting the original creator because I don't know who the fuck it is. Right. They fly around. They fly around. So, but that's all with in good faith. The person with in bad faith curates a website and then starts profiting off of it. They find a loophole and then they make deals with comedy central. And then they also have people who actually steal standups, bits and turn those bits in the memes and they put those bits on their, their meme pages and they do the same shit. They'll do it. They just, their content needers. They need content. Their whores. Yeah. So they just, they'll hire people to do it. They, in the people that they hire, they'll, they'll steal people's jokes and turn them into memes. I mean, it's a real, it's a real problem. That's that's, that's, I mean, that's become a joke because people are like, Oh, this is a rare Pepe, right? As because like, please save it. It's just like, you know, even though you can replicate it. You know, the Pepe lawsuit is going on. I talked about that in there. No, the new one that's happening right now, Alex Jones refused to, he refused to settle out of court. So they're going to go to court. They're going to figure out whether or not Pepe, you can use Pepe the frog. But I mean, I talk about this in the context of it's like if can Andy Warhol uses Campbell's soup can it's the same thing. It's like, if yes, someone creates it, but if someone is using it in a kind of a broader satirical context, but it doesn't though, because Andy probably couldn't do that today. Yes, he could. I think they assume if we tried to make a lot of money off of Campbell's hands. had more power back then and less accountability because now with social media, everyone lose their minds on Campbell's. Right. That's true. That's a good point. I think that, do you know what they did with Campbell's did when he did this? He paints all 40 flavors of soup cans, right? Puts them up in a gallery. Campbell's is like, what the fuck is this? Like they didn't know what to do, right? And they didn't know who to call this is unprecedented. So they had a storefront and they had the cans at the window. They go, why pay a hundred grand? You could get it here for a dollar. So they tried to own it in their own way. That's smart. Great advertising for that. Yeah. I mean, gigantic advertising. But that's the other thing is like with this meme culture of people like, oh, Pepe means white supremacy. It's like you can't, Campbell's doesn't say what a Campbell's soup can means. Different things mean, this is not news, different things mean different things to different people. And if you're using it in one context, that doesn't mean other contexts aren't legitimate. That's how art and images work. Yeah. I mean, that's almost like what happened with the guy in Montana, right? Yes. Somebody takes his work and then turns it into Nazi stuff. And then all of a sudden he becomes a Nazi. Right. And he's like, oh, I'm with it. With Pepe the frog. Cause that guy who made, he's so upset. I know. Cause he had this frog. Do you know what they did to him? Do you know what they did to him? He had a cartoon where he killed Pepe. So all the trolls are like, oh, that's interesting. So they took all his other characters and made them full blown Nazis. So Heinrich, who's the wolf, instead of having reflections in his sunglasses, had the SS. Oh my God. They're like, Oh, you want to, you want to throw down? We'll throw down asshole. And that's what ended up happening to him. The wolf has a Nazi name already. Now they gave him the last name. It's like Heinrich something else. But that name, I'll tell you what. Oh my God. I know. No, no. This is not C. What do they call it? That's a Nazi wolf. Yeah. Sounds like a Nazi wolf. Maybe they, what was the, that's hilarious. And he thought he could just kill it off. That's like deplatforming. He thought he was going to deplatform Pepe. It's also like, let's suppose I decided to kill off Paul Bunyan. What the fuck are you, how it can. What does that mean? It doesn't mean anything. Like the idea that he's going to kill it off and they're going to say, Oh, well, we killed it all. His name was originally Landwolf. So they said, Oh, his first name's Heinrich Landwolf. And the song, you can pull it up in the glasses. Well, maybe we shouldn't have that image right here, but Landwolf as opposed to what Skywolf. The fuck does that mean? The funny thing is about Pepe was it was always so bland and lame. Well, I think. Before it was adopted as a meme. Like when you say like feels bad, man. Like it was like, this is so low blood sugar. It bothers me.