Distraction Dive
Semi-scripted, occasionally well researched deep dives by two STEM background straight dudes who are too into their feelings. Expect random tangents, mild existential crises, and way too much time spent dissecting their feelings, sometimes followed up with an MLA styled bibliography about it.
Distraction Dive
Episode 12: Snopes & Checking Their Facts
Snopes started as a site about cheating spouses and urban legends, now it’s a battleground for America’s trust issues.
In this episode, Red & Del tear into the absurd history of fact-checking, why debunking myths makes people rage-quit reality, and whether the truth even stands a chance in the US anymore.
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Snopes. About Snopes. Retrieved from https://www.snopes.com/about/
Snopes. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). Retrieved from https://www.snopes.com/faqs/#snopes
Fast Company. Inside Snopes: The rise, fall, and rebirth of an internet icon. Retrieved from https://www.fastcompany.com/90901113/inside-snopes-the-rise-fall-and-rebirth-of-an-internet-icon
Yahoo Finance. Snopes co-owners acquire remaining stake. Retrieved from https://finance.yahoo.com/news/snopes-co-owners-acquire-remaining-140000348.html
NPR. (2005, August 27). Snopes.com: Debunking myths in cyberspace. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2005/08/27/4819108/snopes-com-debunking-myths-in-cyberspace
Poynter. International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). Retrieved from https://www.poynter.org/ifcn/
LinkedIn. Drew Schoentrup. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/in/drewschoentrup
New York Post. (2017, July 25). Bitter divorce fuels Snopes’ slow demise. Retrieved from https://nypost.com/2017/07/25/bitter-divorce-fuels-snopes-slow-demise/
NPR. (2017, July 26). Fact-checking website Snopes is fighting to stay alive. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2017/07/26/539576135/fact-checking-website-snopes-is-fighting-to-stay-alive
The New York Times. (2021, August 13). Snopes co-founder accused of plagiarism. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/13/business/media/snopes-plagiarism-David-Mikkelson.html
New York Post. (2021, August 13). Banned Snopes co-founder plagiarized dozens of stories. Retrieved from https://nypost.com/2021/08/13/banned-snopes-co-founder-plagiarized-dozens-of-stories/
Yahoo Entertainment. Snopes retracts 54 stories, suspends co-founder. Retrieved from https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/snopes-retracts-54-stories-suspends-181713596.html
BuzzFeed News. Snopes co-founder accused of plagiarism. Retrieved from https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/deansterlingjones/snopes-cofounder-plagiarism-mikkelson
Snopes. (2025, January 20). Musk Nazi salute story. Retrieved from https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/01/20/musk-nazi-salute/
Associated Press. Technology and business news. Retrieved from https://apnews.com/article/technology-b
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Speaker 1
I think we're back.
00:00:07:13 - 00:00:08:18
Speaker 2
We are back.
00:00:08:18 - 00:00:14:23
Speaker 2
Hello. Hello. Hello, everyone. My name is Gerard. Revenge. And welcome back to Distraction Dive.
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Speaker 2
Fun fact about me is that I once tried to use a microwave. There was just this flash of light, and now I'm forever stuck inside of this podcast. And I only exist when people listen to it. And I am joined today by.
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Speaker 1
Dell, who is in the same condition. So please stop listening. Let me go. I beg you.
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Speaker 1
Stop perceiving us, please. What is happening? We didn't ask for this.
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Speaker 1
Being perceived by even more than one person that.
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Speaker 1
I actually may have just lost a limb from that idea,
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Speaker 1
Dude, I lost a couple of them, but I.
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Speaker 1
I think yours regrow though, right?
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Speaker 1
No
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Speaker 1
Oh, they don't.
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Speaker 1
of extras so they're kind of like you know how sharks teeth
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Speaker 1
Yeah, they have, like, several rows of them. Right.
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Speaker 1
Right.
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Speaker 1
So you have several rows of limbs?
00:01:03:08 - 00:01:05:10
Speaker 1
Not tentacles. Those are separate.
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Speaker 1
Right.
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Speaker 1
Holy shit.
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Speaker 1
I can't use those as little tentacles are certainly not limbs.
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Speaker 1
That, that trenchcoat of yours is really doing some heavy lifting.
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Speaker 1
trenchcoat has to do lifting. But the thing with it, doing any kind of lifting is more like
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Speaker 1
it's kind of a legal thing.
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Speaker 1
so here's what happened.
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Speaker 1
I went onto the campus of a of a mall,
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Speaker 1
and and I know what you're thinking was not that. So I was basically trying to sell a smoothie mix for other people that have the same genetic layout as me.
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Speaker 1
And two of them were at that mall. But the thing is, any time they purchase anything from me legally, we have to burn the place to the ground in order to successfully do the transaction. As a result of our genetics.
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Speaker 1
Does that make
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Speaker 1
I don't know how your genes result in directly to arson when a legal transaction is is there is that just is that, like, is that a really bad allergic reaction?
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Speaker 1
Yeah. Kind of. Well. So. Okay, so so commerce makes me pretty nervous. And I sweat flaming jet fuel, which there you can put that to
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Speaker 1
My favorite thing about that argument is there, like, jet fuel can't melt steel beams. Of course it can't. It's just fuel.
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Speaker 1
of course, jet fuel won't. But on fire. Jet fuel. Fuel that has been lit, ablaze.
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Speaker 1
I like the idea that those people just imagine that the that like a plane pulled up or whatever. Like in the context of the
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Speaker 1
of the jet fuel. Right. That some of like the plane like stopped disgorged several passengers and just sprayed everything down with jet fuel and then
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Speaker 1
they're imagining that what like then it started
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Speaker 1
I'm. I assume that's what they are imagining. I'm assuming that is the logic. However, I would.
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Speaker 1
happens when I sweat. But it's flaming already, and I'm made of steel beams. And so that's why I look the way that I
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Speaker 1
It just sounds like really bad herpes.
00:03:04:29 - 00:03:06:12
Speaker 1
has been. I mean, they could
00:03:06:12 - 00:03:08:20
Speaker 2
it has been.
00:03:08:20 - 00:03:10:18
Speaker 1
remember when that was made.
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Speaker 2
Herpes. You're right. You remember when the first case of herpes ever.
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Speaker 1
The first herb. The first.
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Speaker 2
what do you tell me about that?
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Speaker 1
Speaking of all true things that happened, how do you feel about Fact-Checking Dell?
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Speaker 1
know what? Based in this very specific context, I'm a little bit nervous about, like, just based on the prior
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Speaker 2
Well, that's.
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Speaker 1
Either good or bad, depending on what you say. Because I wrote this script, with an open ended prompt and no answer to it, or a good segue way. So, as you know, Dell, I am a pretty big fan of storytelling and drawing attention to important stories. And that definitely always includes real life things that happen around us.
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Speaker 1
I, I've openly described myself as a storyteller
00:04:03:16 - 00:04:14:22
Speaker 1
and I am one who is telling IRL stories on a podcast kind of regularly now. And you and I, I know, find fact checking to be vital.
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Speaker 1
Dude, I fucking love fact checking. I'm a petty bitch. I'm trying to look at the receipts. You know? I'm like. I'm like, literally fact checking is like looking at the receipts. Except it's like, legally, you're correct.
00:04:24:17 - 00:04:26:05
Speaker 1
spiritually. You're correct.
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Speaker 1
any creature should be fucking destroyed by that.
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Speaker 1
And I fucking love it because at my core, I'm a person that loves being right.
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Speaker 1
I will say that it is nice to be right. But what I've learned about fact checking when doing it for this, this podcast is that sometimes it absolutely breaks my heart to be right. Sometimes it absolutely changes my worldview. It changes what I believe. It changes how I look at similar things and,
00:04:54:00 - 00:04:58:15
Speaker 1
there are journalists and communities that are better at that than I.
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Speaker 1
They have a better way of making this information, I think, more palatable, or that they're just better at the research side. And I'm not a journalist.
00:05:08:03 - 00:05:11:15
Speaker 1
I'm not someone who really should be trusted with anything ever.
00:05:11:15 - 00:05:19:25
Speaker 1
But I will do my best to earn everyone's trust for the rest of my life and probably beyond. And I'm sure I will find a way to make my own death a problem for other people.
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Speaker 1
And I will find a way to come back and apologize to them. Because I'm not much of a people pleaser
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Speaker 1
that
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Speaker 1
You're like me. I am unqualified for for for this position also. Me. I am going to spend my life applying for this position
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Speaker 2
Yeah, I will.
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Speaker 1
Return, but only because I know that,
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Speaker 1
my my death was inconvenient for people, and I really need them to know that I feel bad about that.
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Speaker 1
That's like the path of Jesus of Nazareth. Except for with this people pleaser angle. I'm really
00:05:52:22 - 00:06:08:27
Speaker 1
I was not trying to paint that picture either. What I am trying to get across to both you and the listener is that I can be wrong. I will be wrong, and that this should all any story I tell, it should be taken with a little bit of grain of salt, or at least
00:06:08:27 - 00:06:10:14
Speaker 1
what we will learn here today.
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Speaker 1
I think,
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Speaker 1
is to back up what you see in here with your own
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Speaker 1
search engine, essentially, at the very least, if not your local library.
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Speaker 1
love, love, love salt. And I absolutely love getting learn. So fucking educate me.
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Speaker 1
Educate me. Poppy.
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Speaker 1
okay. Well, today we are diving into a story that I found equal parts fascinating,
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Speaker 1
infuriating.
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Speaker 1
And honestly, it's a little absurd. We're going to be talking about Snopes. We're going to talk about the tale of Snopes.
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Speaker 1
You're familiar with Snopes? I'm very familiar with Snopes.
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Speaker 1
I want to know what you think about,
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Speaker 1
Snopes before I give you any more information.
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Unknown
So
00:06:53:26 - 00:07:07:12
Speaker 1
kind of interesting. I realized right when you said that. I don't really know what it is exactly. And I'm realizing I don't even know how I would explain it to somebody who didn't know what it was. However, I feel quite familiar with it, especially because,
00:07:07:12 - 00:07:18:16
Speaker 1
I recall feeling that positively toward it because, it was the first thing that I think I noticed that was attempting to do anything to deflect the rising.
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Speaker 1
I don't know what you want to call it,
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Speaker 1
cresting waves of sewage,
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Speaker 1
that are the misinformation on Facebook. And this is back when,
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Speaker 1
back when misinformation was young, before misinformation had undergone
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Speaker 1
weird reposts. It would be like something that is just patently false. It would be like, be careful when you're pumping gas.
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Speaker 1
People are putting HIV needles under the gas handle, and if you put your hand in there without looking, you'll get stabbed by the HIV needles and then you will be an HIV person.
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Speaker 1
what's really funny about you mentioning,
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Speaker 1
those kind of urban legends is that that's how Snopes started. Snopes started, by debunking those kinds of things on the internet.
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Speaker 1
But it went from debunking these urban legends to becoming the center of its own internal scandal. And it very much became a site I don't trust to the extent that I used to.
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Speaker 1
Everybody has seen a Snopes article online, whether they clicked on it or not, whether they read it or not. Everybody has seen this used as kind of a definitive citation.
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Speaker 1
we'll talk about it later, but there are, some important people or at least important things that happened that use Snopes as research, as a direct citation.
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Speaker 1
Yeah. And to be very transparent with you, Dell and everybody listening, the thing that inspired this dive of mine was there was a Snopes article discussing, Elon Musk's
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Speaker 1
Nazi salute and specifically with the following statement from their site, quote, we cannot read Musk's mind to learn precisely what he intended by it.
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Speaker 1
It's possible. It was a purposeful Nazi salute.
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Speaker 1
It could have also been entirely innocent. The available evidence is too scant to draw a solid conclusion. And to quote.
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Speaker 1
this? Fucking hand ringy fucking. What the fuck are you talking about?
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Speaker 1
Yes. Snopes. Snopes said that when we have direct footage of a man doing what is almost a perfect 1 to 1 Hitler salute, I don't yeah, I don't know.
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Speaker 1
Well, that's not all right.
00:09:26:00 - 00:09:35:15
Speaker 1
I just wanted to discuss this briefly, and I and I and we've had it offline in the past and maybe we've talked a little bit about it here and there publicly, but,
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Speaker 1
I don't I don't think this is about reading anyone who does that gestures mind because it is a very it's so apparent
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Speaker 1
what the intent is with a salute like that, a hand motion like that.
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Speaker 1
not subtle.
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Speaker 1
the what is this hand shit. It's like fucking listening to the Department of State, like Trump's Department of State talk. Fucking newspeak, doublespeak, bullshit.
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Speaker 1
Or just, you know, flat out lying.
00:10:00:05 - 00:10:03:24
Speaker 1
that's what this administration does. And it does it regularly. And people eat it up.
00:10:03:24 - 00:10:16:06
Speaker 1
we've said this on previous episodes, I've said it on my personal social media accounts. If you have to debate whether or not something was a Nazi salute, sorry, kiddos. It was a Nazi salute.
00:10:16:06 - 00:10:18:18
Speaker 1
you're close enough to it now that you're in,
00:10:18:18 - 00:10:21:06
Speaker 1
jail. Like you're it's you're done.
00:10:21:06 - 00:10:22:12
Speaker 1
we know now
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Speaker 1
beyond just that, it is clear that as someone who doesn't relate to a single American citizen that lives paycheck to paycheck, that he is very pleased and supportive of fascist and white supremacist ideals in his actions and what he's doing directly.
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Speaker 1
is a total non-sequitur,
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Speaker 1
thing that Grimes posted about? Not about him gaming. And then she tweeted. She tweeted it, and she tweeted,
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Speaker 1
Oh yeah, she was like, he's such a good gamer. He does good at this game.
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Speaker 1
then and then she tweets again. Sigh.
00:10:56:27 - 00:11:00:27
Speaker 2
Hahahahaha. No, I did not see that.
00:11:00:27 - 00:11:04:05
Speaker 1
devastating number of people did not see that.
00:11:04:05 - 00:11:04:28
Speaker 1
And I want
00:11:06:15 - 00:11:12:03
Speaker 1
so obvious, so obvious, so very, very obvious
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Speaker 1
He was probably exchanging his attention to his son for the tweet. He's like, Grimes, you got to save me, Grimes. Grimes, I'm so good at whatever fucking game it was.
00:11:24:17 - 00:11:26:13
Speaker 1
tell them I'm good at Halo. I don't
00:11:26:13 - 00:11:35:06
Speaker 1
I don't Path of Exile. I think it was because I know that that was like a whole thing for a while. I know he went after, Hassan Piker about it.
00:11:35:06 - 00:11:37:10
Speaker 1
I know he went after. Yeah.
00:11:37:10 - 00:11:38:19
Speaker 1
foolish thing that he tried to
00:11:38:19 - 00:11:44:06
Speaker 1
Yeah. Did not go well for him. He got he got fucking ratio on his own site. It was,
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Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:11:44:25 - 00:11:45:06
Speaker 1
Did he.
00:11:45:21 - 00:11:47:04
Speaker 1
Oh my God, that's exquisite.
00:11:47:04 - 00:11:53:14
Speaker 1
Oh, you didn't hear about that? Oh, man. I thought you would have. Yeah. It was, Yeah, it was beautiful.
00:11:53:14 - 00:12:01:00
Speaker 1
And he got ratio by the game. Like the games. The x profile.
00:12:01:00 - 00:12:01:23
Speaker 1
wow.
00:12:01:23 - 00:12:02:22
Speaker 1
I am obsessed
00:12:09:16 - 00:12:20:28
Speaker 1
I knew you wanted to get I knew you would want to do this. And I know it's getting off topic and that we could honestly probably write many, many episodes that would turn into an Elon takedown piece.
00:12:20:28 - 00:12:37:07
Speaker 1
But this piece is, is actually about Snopes and the importance of fact checking. I think in our current state, our current political state here in the United States, and I think it is an important conversation to have as we move forward with a clearly broken government,
00:12:37:07 - 00:12:39:01
Speaker 1
And I want to also briefly talk about
00:12:39:01 - 00:12:45:02
Speaker 1
the founders, the current owners, and the scandals that led us to 2025. Snopes.
00:12:45:02 - 00:12:47:18
Speaker 1
any any other thoughts before we take this dive, though?
00:12:47:18 - 00:12:50:25
Speaker 1
I, I just Snopes, I didn't realize Snopes had.
00:12:50:25 - 00:13:01:08
Speaker 1
I thought I just kind of aged into irrelevance. Maybe, I, I guess I had the scrappy, upstart view of them. I'm. Yeah, man. Take me through the nightmare. I guess I want to learn how something I loved has been
00:13:02:18 - 00:13:02:27
Speaker 2
Well.
00:13:02:27 - 00:13:06:07
Speaker 1
Your scrappy upstart view is not necessarily wrong either.
00:13:06:07 - 00:13:11:14
Speaker 1
a is there a Snopes like is there is it named after a person? That's what I want to know.
00:13:11:14 - 00:13:25:09
Speaker 1
oh, I didn't look where the name came from. I was, I was actually this this piece ended up being far more focused on the people who ran Snopes and why Snopes does what it does now versus what it used to do. And
00:13:25:09 - 00:13:29:07
Speaker 1
I say that because I'm not here to tell anyone what to think.
00:13:29:07 - 00:13:36:19
Speaker 1
I just want to lay out the facts that I found because, ironically, that's something that Snopes hasn't actually always been great at.
00:13:36:19 - 00:13:37:00
Speaker 1
do you mean?
00:13:37:00 - 00:13:41:26
Speaker 1
They haven't been great at laying out facts, consistently, as consistently as,
00:13:41:26 - 00:13:45:20
Speaker 1
a journalist website or a fact checking site should be.
00:13:45:20 - 00:13:47:02
Speaker 1
okay. You're
00:13:47:02 - 00:13:51:23
Speaker 1
actually, it was exactly what I was afraid there. What? I was afraid you were saying. They're bad at facts.
00:13:52:00 - 00:14:05:22
Speaker 1
And it didn't used to be that way. I think they lost something along the way because I was huge into Snopes, especially in early college when I found that I could debunk a stupid meme in just a few seconds.
00:14:05:27 - 00:14:07:15
Speaker 1
about politics, about
00:14:07:15 - 00:14:08:17
Speaker 1
whatever.
00:14:08:17 - 00:14:16:11
Speaker 1
and of course, I'm going to have a bias here because I am I'm human and not one that became a journalist or study journalist journalism to any extent.
00:14:16:14 - 00:14:27:19
Speaker 1
And the amount of sources I used to kind of piece this all together is pretty significant. And I will list it somewhere, at the end of the podcast description on all of wherever you're listening.
00:14:27:19 - 00:14:42:20
Speaker 1
I'm looking at it currently. You definitely did some. I can see that you worked. You got went hard in the paint. Okay. I don't actually know what that means. I've just heard people who are, like, sporty, Caucasian say that before going hard in the paint. But there are a lot of sources here. It's clear you read
00:14:43:12 - 00:14:53:11
Speaker 1
I did read a lot, and I want to stress this because I can't stress it enough. I used BuzzFeed news on this one. I dove and I dove hard.
00:14:53:11 - 00:15:06:15
Speaker 1
I also want to be honest because I had forgotten this. Actually, BuzzFeed news has actually done a lot of really good work. Apparently that's not the part of the company I have a problem with. It turns out. But, because they they have done a lot of good things. That's that's neither here nor there.
00:15:06:15 - 00:15:11:15
Speaker 1
So with all of that disclaimer stuff, the Elon hate out of the way, it's time to buckle up.
00:15:11:15 - 00:15:17:16
Speaker 1
Elon hate is totally not out of the way. Dude, the Elon hate is totally not out of the way. I got to be so upfront with you about
00:15:18:11 - 00:15:25:15
Speaker 1
Damn it, do we have to write an entire episode about how much we don't like that, man? Or is that is that,
00:15:25:15 - 00:15:28:09
Speaker 1
oh, he's living rent free in our heads now.
00:15:28:09 - 00:15:34:21
Speaker 1
It could be both, but there is already behind the bastards episode entitled I do not Like Elon Musk very much.
00:15:34:21 - 00:15:45:07
Speaker 1
I would probably be much less kind in my titling of that episode. So, just fair warning.
00:15:45:07 - 00:15:52:29
Speaker 1
just have to tell you that I cannot promise you that I will not be hating a little bit more, but that's okay, because I do have incel tendencies.
00:15:53:11 - 00:16:11:21
Speaker 1
I think everybody has a little bit. Right. It's incel tendencies I think are very much heavily linked to ego. And having your ego crushed isn't great, and it is usually life changing. And so some people react to that poorly. That's another thing to talk about later. But,
00:16:11:21 - 00:16:18:23
Speaker 1
we're going to start at the beginning here. So according to their own website, Snopes was founded in 1994 by David and Barbara Mickelson.
00:16:18:26 - 00:16:33:14
Speaker 1
Back then it was called the Urban Legends Reference Pages, and it was basically just a hobby. David was a computer programmer, Barbara was a bookkeeper, and together they were the internet's, like, myth busting power couple.
00:16:33:14 - 00:16:44:26
Speaker 1
The site started as a collection of user discussions from a Usenet group, I think, or Usenet group called alt Dot folklore dot urban, which was in effect, the Reddit of its day.
00:16:44:26 - 00:16:55:15
Speaker 1
I, I looked up Usenet. It is still active. It it does feel very Reddit e, but more so for the I would say the more computer minded.
00:16:55:20 - 00:17:00:12
Speaker 1
So is it, like, still active? Like the domain? The website is still accessible, or there's still
00:17:00:29 - 00:17:15:16
Speaker 1
There's. Yeah. No, it is active. I don't know how active, but I looked it up just out of curiosity because I was I was like, what the hell is this? And yeah, it's still exist. And, I imagine a lot of them have abandoned it for something more accessible, like Reddit.
00:17:15:16 - 00:17:16:14
Speaker 1
sure.
00:17:16:14 - 00:17:19:18
Speaker 1
But yeah, I didn't do too much of a deep dive on that site.
00:17:19:18 - 00:17:23:16
Speaker 1
Maybe I should have, but I, I was more focused on.
00:17:23:16 - 00:17:36:11
Speaker 1
staying power for a link for anything that does not a link that does not end in.com. You know, in 2025, people are still posting on something that ends. It's like alt folklore dot urban with what a virus sounding
00:17:36:28 - 00:17:40:18
Speaker 1
No. So to be real alt folklore, urban is not,
00:17:40:18 - 00:17:46:03
Speaker 1
active anymore. But it was. But but Usenet is still available
00:17:46:03 - 00:17:54:19
Speaker 1
At least it was when I was doing my research about, this would have been about a month ago that I, I really leaned heavily on the research side of this, taking notes and whatnot.
00:17:54:22 - 00:18:08:25
Speaker 1
But people would post, rumors like, did McDonald's really put worms in their burgers? And the Mikkelsen's would investigate it and do proper research on the topics. And this was before search engines were what they are now,
00:18:08:25 - 00:18:10:02
Speaker 1
which is
00:18:10:02 - 00:18:16:20
Speaker 1
very easily accessible. Just type in a phrase and it'll give you where that came from, or at least multiple sites that you could source it from.
00:18:16:23 - 00:18:38:27
Speaker 1
The website was quirky, it was even more niche, and it was actually very surprisingly effective. By the early 2000, Snopes had become the go to resource for debunking everything from the chain emails to celebrity death hoaxes. It was referenced by major news outlets like CNN, The New York Times,
00:18:38:27 - 00:18:39:24
Speaker 1
and actually
00:18:39:24 - 00:18:44:25
Speaker 1
remember using, them occasionally in my even my college research papers.
00:18:44:25 - 00:18:50:24
Speaker 1
So obviously those three things are all equally of the same caliber. My college research papers, The New York Times and CNN all the same.
00:18:50:24 - 00:19:02:00
Speaker 1
But here's the thing, friends. Snopes wasn't just about facts. It was also a little bit about trolling David Mickelson, who went by the username, quote, Snopes on the use on Usenet. Oh, that's where it came from.
00:19:02:00 - 00:19:04:28
Speaker 1
I did accidentally find it. I had forgotten,
00:19:04:28 - 00:19:06:21
Speaker 1
went there. Yeah, we went there.
00:19:06:21 - 00:19:10:27
Speaker 1
he was known for his love of pranks and inside jokes. For example, he
00:19:10:27 - 00:19:22:28
Speaker 1
once tricked an advice columnist named, Ann Landers into publishing a fake letter and the site's quote, Depository of Lost Legends section was an acronym
00:19:22:28 - 00:19:25:02
Speaker 1
troll.
00:19:26:02 - 00:19:27:16
Speaker 1
I don't think that's a coincidence.
00:19:27:16 - 00:19:31:12
Speaker 1
And I guess there's really no way to know. I just simply can't read David's mind.
00:19:31:12 - 00:19:31:26
Speaker 1
But, Dale,
00:19:31:26 - 00:19:39:21
Speaker 1
What do you think about a fact checking site that's also kind of a troll? Is that a is that a red flag, or you think that's just early internet culture doing its thing?
00:19:40:08 - 00:19:41:06
Speaker 1
Both.
00:19:44:09 - 00:19:48:06
Speaker 1
There's a time in which there's a younger me
00:19:48:06 - 00:19:53:24
Speaker 1
Maybe what really spoke to me, you know, like. Oh, yeah. Fuckin fight the power or nothing's real,
00:19:53:24 - 00:19:55:12
Speaker 1
everything's a bit until it's not.
00:19:55:15 - 00:20:01:09
Speaker 1
a more seasoned and measured me who's living in the rise of fucking the fascist, that death empire that we are in.
00:20:01:09 - 00:20:10:21
Speaker 1
It feels nervous about that, because I think that's one of the seeds of misinformation springing from something that was initially not doing that misinformation.
00:20:10:21 - 00:20:12:29
Speaker 1
I kind of came to a similar conclusion.
00:20:12:29 - 00:20:14:29
Speaker 1
when I started learning about kind of the
00:20:14:29 - 00:20:18:21
Speaker 1
trolling, he did it. It was really innocuous stuff. It was really
00:20:18:21 - 00:20:23:02
Speaker 1
would say it's pretty harmless. It wasn't what internet trolling is today.
00:20:23:02 - 00:20:27:11
Speaker 1
agree with you in saying that. It is a little bit of both. I think
00:20:27:11 - 00:20:28:00
Speaker 1
that
00:20:28:00 - 00:20:33:28
Speaker 1
the questions themselves, I suppose, are independent of one another, but they also relate to each other.
00:20:33:28 - 00:20:45:24
Speaker 1
So what do you think about a fact checking site that's also kind of that's that's run by a kind of a troll. Is that a red flag? Right. It is certainly a red flag. Is it. In early in in our culture it was. Yeah.
00:20:45:24 - 00:20:46:06
Speaker 1
nightmare,
00:20:46:06 - 00:20:48:01
Speaker 1
mom.
00:20:48:25 - 00:20:49:24
Unknown
Great. Like that.
00:20:49:24 - 00:21:04:05
Speaker 1
that that is the internet, the website or whatever that debunks, you know, that is like trying to stop misinformation but is run by a troll. I mean, isn't this kind of the pathway of what we've seen a lot of people that maybe were like semi on the right?
00:21:04:08 - 00:21:06:16
Speaker 1
I mean, how many people felt right, like, you know,
00:21:06:16 - 00:21:10:17
Speaker 1
maybe optimistic towards, for example, Elon Musk or something like that before he became,
00:21:10:17 - 00:21:16:21
Speaker 1
just a whole to shit information out of so much so that he made it his entire personality by buying Twitter.
00:21:16:28 - 00:21:28:21
Speaker 1
Yeah. I mean, he bought a website to bring himself validation, and he still doesn't get it. He still doesn't understand it. And, yeah, I think that's part of it because
00:21:28:21 - 00:21:29:25
Speaker 1
Elon,
00:21:29:25 - 00:21:37:14
Speaker 1
much like his counterparts, give me the feeling that they all kind of started as early internet trolls. I don't have any evidence of that. It just it's a vibe.
00:21:37:16 - 00:21:44:15
Speaker 1
You can kind of look at people and go, you're definitely an online internet troll. And that is certainly what that is.
00:21:45:24 - 00:21:52:04
Speaker 1
That's actually so funny because you look at them and you're like, you haven't washed your hair. You look like, who'd
00:21:53:02 - 00:22:01:02
Speaker 1
Oh, Asmongold. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's exactly it. That is the that is the representation of all incels everywhere.
00:22:01:02 - 00:22:17:08
Speaker 1
That's devastating. It's so it's so unfortunate because the early internet was such a model of wonderful sharing that was just for the sake of everybody's betterment, you know, truly just exchange of information for the sake of doing so for everybody to get better.
00:22:17:08 - 00:22:36:06
Speaker 1
And it's rotted from this position, in part because of what we are seeing, what we saw and are seeing with people like the Snopes founder founders being trolls and taking their crusade against the misinformation and and mixing it up with their bit of constantly being trolls and then just becoming angry
00:22:37:21 - 00:22:55:24
Speaker 1
I mean, I think to become a troll, you have to be maybe just a little bit angry. I think it's really the motive behind trolling is definitely ego driven. It's that possibly. And anger and frustration driven. It's a very primal, weird thing that humans do, I think.
00:22:55:24 - 00:22:57:18
Speaker 1
for somebody like that to run.
00:22:57:18 - 00:22:59:04
Speaker 1
And again, it was a hobby.
00:22:59:04 - 00:23:02:04
Speaker 1
the fact checking site at this point is still a hobby, a hobby,
00:23:02:04 - 00:23:12:28
Speaker 1
until we kind of hit the early 2000, where it's important that we talk briefly about what I think it's pronounced, I think it's pronounced baar dev Inc.
00:23:12:28 - 00:23:18:16
Speaker 1
dev inc. I've never heard of it. You could have. I mean, are you that you could be taking the piss right now, and I would have no way of
00:23:24:09 - 00:23:33:11
Speaker 1
it's going to be key to understand to to understanding how Snopes went from this quirky hobby to a corporate level battleground.
00:23:33:14 - 00:23:41:22
Speaker 1
I, I didn't have a good spot to place this information in the script's final draft, simply because you only really need to know the name and purpose.
00:23:41:22 - 00:23:42:23
Speaker 1
Okay.
00:23:42:23 - 00:23:45:24
Speaker 1
bard of ink really just.
00:23:45:24 - 00:23:49:21
Speaker 1
I'll just say it like this. When Snopes started gaining in popularity,
00:23:49:21 - 00:24:11:04
Speaker 1
David and Barbara Mickelson founded Bard Inc in 2003 so it could function as the parent company of Snopes. Bard of was essentially the legal and financial backbone of the site. It was it was there they were, you know, basically starting to make money from it and needed to have this kind of structure to protect themselves.
00:24:11:04 - 00:24:17:04
Speaker 1
And David and Barbara each owned exactly 50% of the company, and for many years it worked.
00:24:17:04 - 00:24:20:29
Speaker 1
Wow. I am not going to lie. I just wasn't expecting that to
00:24:20:29 - 00:24:21:20
Speaker 1
work,
00:24:21:20 - 00:24:25:01
Speaker 1
Yes.
00:24:25:01 - 00:24:28:16
Speaker 1
Like, nobody was, like, nobody got pissed at that. The other person,
00:24:29:12 - 00:24:32:06
Speaker 1
Okay. You're getting a little bit ahead of me there, but,
00:24:32:06 - 00:24:33:28
Speaker 1
okay. All right. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Verse eight.
00:24:33:28 - 00:24:56:26
Speaker 1
so in that case, let's fast forward to the 20 tens. At this point, Snopes is riding high. It was pulling in multi-millions of visitors a month, and its reputation as a truth teller was not even in doubt. I want I can't stress this enough. People were using this site as a primary source to very quickly debunk crazy shit regularly.
00:24:56:28 - 00:25:26:12
Speaker 1
So we're in the 20 tens. It's at its height, but behind the scenes things, as you predicted, were beginning to fall apart at one point, according to multiple sources, mine coming from PCMag. For anybody interested, they were commissioned by Facebook to determine fake articles from real news stories. They were actually doing the the important work on, on that site to kind of filter out the good from the bad.
00:25:26:15 - 00:25:32:11
Speaker 1
The fallout itself.
00:25:32:14 - 00:25:36:03
Speaker 1
Is, in essence, yeah, I would say so.
00:25:36:03 - 00:25:42:07
Speaker 1
The, the fallout started from the divorce of David and Barbara Mickelson.
00:25:42:07 - 00:26:00:08
Speaker 1
They, they split in 2015, and it was publicly messy. When I searched this, there were there were many search results for this particular part of the Snopes story. And I I'm sourcing my information on this from the New York Post, the Seattle Times, and something called the San Diego Reader.
00:26:00:08 - 00:26:06:00
Speaker 1
I it looks like it should be more popular than it is, but it's not something I've ever heard of. But I did vet it,
00:26:06:00 - 00:26:09:28
Speaker 1
wonder if it's probably, like, a local paper. Those are people doing the best journalism
00:26:10:09 - 00:26:27:18
Speaker 1
Oh, that is where I got most of, this part of the information of the story. That's why I had to mention them. And I really wanted to talk about it. And they all but all of those, those three sites, they all had different bits of information on this that helped me piece together the vague and possibly I want to be very clear, possibly inaccurate timeline.
00:26:27:18 - 00:26:37:16
Speaker 1
This episode is not going to be about the divorce itself, but the fallout from it. So Barbara stopped writing for the site altogether, and David eventually took full control.
00:26:37:16 - 00:26:39:27
Speaker 1
right, all right. So this is approximately when,
00:26:39:27 - 00:26:59:05
Speaker 1
so that was 2016 when, well, that was 2015, I would say, because then in 2016, Barbara sold her 50% stake in Bard Ave and therefore Snopes to a company called another company called Proper Media. She she got about 3.6 million from that deal.
00:26:59:05 - 00:27:00:13
Speaker 1
Snopes was hitting that hard
00:27:00:13 - 00:27:03:03
Speaker 1
Back then, in 2016, when they had this,
00:27:03:03 - 00:27:21:06
Speaker 1
basically stream of revenue from Facebook for, like, just vetting these posts and then on top of that, also doing their own, like, kind of journalism. Because if you look at the Snopes site today, it's a lot of news articles they're still doing debunking and things of that nature. And I don't think they're necessarily inconsistent.
00:27:21:06 - 00:27:22:05
Speaker 1
But
00:27:22:05 - 00:27:23:23
Speaker 1
I'm getting ahead of myself now.
00:27:23:23 - 00:27:31:28
Speaker 1
I I'm, I'm picking up what you're putting down. So we have we have the, the giant has begun to fall and begins, as it often does with somebody divorcing another.
00:27:32:10 - 00:27:41:29
Speaker 1
Oh, yeah. Right. Exactly. You get it. And in this, this is where things kind of got complicated for me to follow. Just a little bit,
00:27:41:29 - 00:27:43:13
Speaker 1
I hope I tell it in a way that
00:27:43:13 - 00:27:53:15
Speaker 1
maybe the listeners or you will understand better. I did my best to kind of put the puzzle pieces in place, because proper media wasn't just a vendor.
00:27:53:15 - 00:28:00:13
Speaker 1
They were they were now co-owners of Snopes and, Proper Media, is a company
00:28:00:13 - 00:28:03:05
Speaker 1
time they were co owned and not owning themselves?
00:28:03:05 - 00:28:09:18
Speaker 1
So Barbara and David were the owners of Bard Inc, which owns Snopes.
00:28:09:18 - 00:28:16:16
Speaker 1
it. So it's a holding company. So Barda have represents so Barda have for the sake of simplicity is representing the two.
00:28:17:24 - 00:28:23:29
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, I imagine the name comes from the first part of Barbara's name and Dave from
00:28:23:29 - 00:28:40:00
Speaker 1
David. So I imagine that's that's my assumption. But that doesn't that that doesn't have any source of it. That's just my that's how I look at it. That's how I remembered it. All I said it and it's going to get published. So yeah.
00:28:40:02 - 00:28:49:05
Speaker 1
But Proper Media has owned several other, websites as well. And this is where things start to get a little sketchy, but I'm again, I'm getting ahead of myself.
00:28:49:05 - 00:28:58:04
Speaker 1
Barbara sells off her state, her 50% stake in Snopes to Proper Media for 3.6 million. And David was not thrilled about sharing.
00:28:58:04 - 00:29:01:13
Speaker 1
He wasn't really thrilled about sharing anything, honestly.
00:29:01:13 - 00:29:27:03
Speaker 1
So the and the so the two sides after proper media took over date bar Dave and Proper Media, they started butting heads loudly and legally. Proper Media accuse David of mismanaging funds and using company money for what they called lavish vacations. David would then accuse proper media of withholding ad revenue and holding the site. He said the word, quote, hostage.
00:29:27:03 - 00:29:46:09
Speaker 1
to give some level of context for those accusations. At one point, Snap's was so strapped for cash that David launched a GoFundMe campaign to keep the site running. They raised over half $1 million in 24 hours for the site. That's how big, Snopes was.
00:29:46:09 - 00:29:50:24
Speaker 1
24 hours. So people do fucking care about fact checking. This is
00:29:51:24 - 00:30:08:15
Speaker 1
Oh, that's a good take away. I didn't think of it that way. So this would have been probably 2016 going into 2017 when this happened. I, if I remember correctly, but it gets heavier than that. So del, what are you thinking feeling questioning at this point? Well, well.
00:30:08:15 - 00:30:11:19
Speaker 1
Well, I've been running my mouth about it pretty, pretty consistently.
00:30:11:19 - 00:30:15:24
Speaker 1
There's a sort. I'm looking for a certain
00:30:15:24 - 00:30:22:22
Speaker 1
tragedy that is also instructive to be observed here, where something that started out with,
00:30:22:22 - 00:30:24:28
Speaker 1
really good intention of doing,
00:30:24:28 - 00:30:32:23
Speaker 1
fact checking and generally, you know, things that hail back to the internets early, maybe a little bit anarchist, well-intentioned anarchist days, you
00:30:33:14 - 00:30:34:20
Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:30:34:20 - 00:30:40:05
Speaker 1
going fine until all of a sudden it wasn't abruptly.
00:30:40:05 - 00:30:43:01
Speaker 1
And it then became one of those things that kind of
00:30:43:01 - 00:30:44:18
Speaker 1
I got it. It was subverted,
00:30:44:18 - 00:30:54:12
Speaker 1
It underwent subversion, and it became an, you know, a vessel for misinformation. And it's doing that same thing of being reputable. And so nobody really thinks about it,
00:30:54:12 - 00:31:01:14
Speaker 1
and maybe they should, but they don't. And so as a result of that, we are looking at something that we once trusted that is telling us something dangerous.
00:31:01:16 - 00:31:10:29
Speaker 1
And there's not a really good place to avoid that. It's one of these things that makes it hard to actually discover something true, to do any actual good. You know, if you Google like
00:31:10:29 - 00:31:22:11
Speaker 1
try looking up any information about a diet, a dietary supplement, you're not going to be able to find anything because it's so crowded with people that appear valid, saying nonsense and people that are valid, not saying nonsense.
00:31:22:13 - 00:31:25:10
Speaker 1
And Snopes kind of went that way in a
00:31:29:08 - 00:31:49:03
Speaker 1
Yeah. That is kind of the feelings I initially had. Certainly. I do think that Snopes is not intentionally doing harm. I think specifically their silence on things like Elon Musk's Nazi salute or some of the fascism stuff that's happening around here
00:31:49:03 - 00:31:54:20
Speaker 1
at the very worst is just them being compliant with it.
00:31:54:20 - 00:31:56:01
Speaker 1
Okay.
00:31:56:01 - 00:32:06:13
Speaker 1
now, I think we should talk a little bit more specifically about the legal battles that ensued through this. Minus minus the divorce.
00:32:06:13 - 00:32:12:20
Speaker 1
feel that. Okay. So. So take me to where? Take me. Ever reorient me where we are? Kind of like, timeline wise.
00:32:12:27 - 00:32:26:02
Speaker 1
No, absolutely. I know I'm going very quickly because it's just it's so much information, it's so dense that I'm just trying to really condense it in a way that is digestible. But I understand that it feels like I'm possibly feeding you rocks.
00:32:26:02 - 00:32:26:17
Speaker 1
rocks anyway.
00:32:30:20 - 00:32:36:15
Speaker 1
I just presumed it was the tentacles, but I guess that's that's on me.
00:32:40:01 - 00:32:41:23
Speaker 1
You know you don't eat rocks through.
00:32:41:25 - 00:32:49:19
Speaker 1
No, I, I, unfortunately have a human stomach. It does not necessarily enjoy rocks.
00:32:49:19 - 00:32:51:22
Speaker 1
That's pathetic. I remember when stomachs
00:32:54:20 - 00:33:01:07
Speaker 1
Okay, well, we're we're in we're in 2016. Probably going to go and go into 2017 here mostly.
00:33:01:07 - 00:33:07:22
Speaker 1
And a lot of this, like a lot of legal things goes on for a while. But a lot of this has since concluded.
00:33:07:22 - 00:33:08:17
Speaker 1
Okay.
00:33:08:17 - 00:33:10:06
Speaker 1
it's a mess. It's a lot.
00:33:10:06 - 00:33:17:08
Speaker 1
I'm going to try my best to give you my understanding of it, because I had to read a lot of legal jargon,
00:33:17:08 - 00:33:34:27
Speaker 1
and I really want to make sure we are reflecting more so on the ethical and moral side of the legality of it, because there's a lot of technicality that everybody involved here coming up gets involved in that wins them legal battles that they probably shouldn't have won.
00:33:34:27 - 00:33:36:08
Speaker 1
wow. Okay.
00:33:36:08 - 00:33:41:07
Speaker 1
so in 2017, Proper Media sued David Mickelson and Bhargav,
00:33:41:07 - 00:33:44:18
Speaker 1
and the lawsuit was claiming that David and his business partner,
00:33:44:18 - 00:33:51:15
Speaker 1
a gentleman named Vinnie Green. And no, I did no research on him because I did not find it relevant to the episode.
00:33:51:29 - 00:34:00:28
Speaker 1
Anyway, David and Vinnie conspired to take control of Snopes by blocking proper media's access to the sites, accounts, tools and data.
00:34:01:01 - 00:34:13:14
Speaker 1
Good Ole Vinnie allegedly removed $10,000 worth of computer equipment and blocked Proper Media's founders from accessing Snopes content management system.
00:34:13:14 - 00:34:13:26
Speaker 1
Oh,
00:34:14:26 - 00:34:20:29
Speaker 1
And then the, Proper media's accusation of David misusing company funds that became a legal battle as well.
00:34:20:29 - 00:34:23:00
Speaker 1
On top of that.
00:34:23:00 - 00:34:25:13
Speaker 1
God. It's like it's going the way of the U.S government.
00:34:25:22 - 00:34:33:03
Speaker 1
Honestly, there are a lot of similar parallels on a more micro scale. I would say. Certainly.
00:34:33:03 - 00:34:34:02
Speaker 1
microcosm. But it's like
00:34:34:02 - 00:34:39:24
Speaker 1
you want to take it another way, it's like a lot of like news networks or journalism and as a whole in the United States
00:34:39:24 - 00:34:44:25
Speaker 1
as capital and, and corporations have started to eat it.
00:34:44:25 - 00:34:47:02
Speaker 1
it eats these things, and journalism becomes
00:34:48:03 - 00:34:48:27
Speaker 1
Yes.
00:34:48:27 - 00:35:10:09
Speaker 1
Correct. And you want to look at the behavior of the founders of Snopes and a little we're going to look at a little bit at the founders of proper Media, because they now essentially own Snopes. I think they actually are the sole owner. I, I will remember when I get deeper into the script again, I wrote the script a few weeks ago, so it's a little less fresh in my mind than it was.
00:35:10:17 - 00:35:13:11
Speaker 1
in that lawsuit about the company funds, though,
00:35:13:11 - 00:35:35:23
Speaker 1
the proper media alleged that, David used Bard of Money. So David used his own company money, technically 50% of the money to pay for his divorce, legal fees. And then he paid for his honeymoon with his new wife, Alicia Young, who was also a Snopes employee, and who I also did no other research on.
00:35:35:23 - 00:35:43:06
Speaker 1
I honestly, what you said has already like the point as well. Made that basically he used money from his company
00:35:43:06 - 00:35:51:23
Speaker 1
presumably it was a hell of a lot of money because of the way how much they had been valued, and they weren't that far out from their big, you know, subcontracting to do fact finding for Facebook, etc..
00:35:51:26 - 00:36:00:12
Speaker 1
And he spent half of it on his own personal life and his personal nightmare. And then he kind of was like, then right after that got a little bit sleazy about it.
00:36:00:12 - 00:36:02:11
Speaker 1
with how he began using it. I, I'm
00:36:03:13 - 00:36:15:13
Speaker 1
It seems to me that, like most things, the divorce was a catalyst for David kind of losing it. Or maybe David had already. Maybe, I don't know.
00:36:15:13 - 00:36:19:02
Speaker 1
that I'm just speculating at this point.
00:36:19:02 - 00:36:33:15
Speaker 1
fact of the matter is, David called the lawsuit frivolous and generally, David was accusing proper media of failing to fulfill its legal obligations and even threatened to file his own lawsuit.
00:36:33:17 - 00:36:39:00
Speaker 1
I couldn't find anything definitively that said he did. I couldn't find any court records or anything like that.
00:36:39:00 - 00:36:42:27
Speaker 1
Because, yes, I got into some court records that I could that were actually, like, publicly
00:36:42:27 - 00:36:45:23
Speaker 1
published on certain sites in certain states.
00:36:45:23 - 00:36:46:03
Speaker 1
Sure.
00:36:46:03 - 00:36:50:26
Speaker 1
because I want I wanted to make sure that I wasn't misunderstanding some of these other sources,
00:36:50:26 - 00:37:07:19
Speaker 1
there were a plethora of articles about it, and a lot of it was either the legal jargon I talked about earlier to prove who was the real owner, or it was speculation based on the legal jargon, or some of which all came with different answers on who actually owns Snopes.
00:37:07:21 - 00:37:19:29
Speaker 1
When the real answer was they were in a 5050 partnership. To my knowledge, at this time, they they both owned half or they were at least majority, like stake holders or shareholders rather,
00:37:20:09 - 00:37:33:02
Speaker 1
whole thing was a legal dumpster fire, and it left Snopes in limbo. And the drama didn't stop there. So this drama like, based on the dates of some of these articles, continued for a couple of years.
00:37:33:02 - 00:37:40:26
Speaker 1
Right. And now we get into more recent history where we're in 2021 now.
00:37:40:26 - 00:37:46:13
Speaker 1
forgot. 2025 is now. And 2020 the 2017 and even 2020 or a long
00:37:47:06 - 00:38:01:01
Speaker 1
They are relatively, relatively speaking to, I would say, 2021. Absolutely. I, I, I reflect on 2017 because it's when I graduated college and I go, oh my God, I'm old.
00:38:01:01 - 00:38:02:15
Speaker 1
was simpler back then.
00:38:02:26 - 00:38:10:17
Speaker 1
I think life had more structure. Simpler. Sure. I think less of the adult worries that we have now.
00:38:10:25 - 00:38:16:26
Speaker 1
Yeah, I, I'm not saying it was easier that these things weren't going on. I'm just saying that it was simpler.
00:38:16:26 - 00:38:28:13
Speaker 1
I think maybe it shouldn't have been as simple as it was, given that, you know, the roots for these some of these things that we could have used to rely on to anchor ourselves to for fact checking at a time where,
00:38:28:13 - 00:38:29:29
Speaker 1
information and truth are
00:38:29:29 - 00:38:30:27
Speaker 1
dying,
00:38:30:27 - 00:38:38:19
Speaker 1
the decaying, right, the ability to find the truth, the truth, the truth of anything is just increasingly
00:38:38:19 - 00:38:39:25
Speaker 1
it's just harder to do.
00:38:39:25 - 00:38:48:25
Speaker 1
sometimes I look back on that and I think, man, it was simpler. Maybe you shouldn't have been in that sense. Maybe if I had paid attention, then I would there would be fascism now. But I recognize
00:38:50:11 - 00:38:58:15
Speaker 1
Yeah. You're saying I need to stop an entire country from moving to the right alone because I wasn't,
00:38:58:15 - 00:39:15:23
Speaker 1
aware enough, even though you and I were very much aware and participatory in the political practices back then, as much as we could be as full time college students, I was upholding basically a full time job on top of that.
00:39:15:23 - 00:39:18:06
Speaker 1
Like you, there's only so much you can do.
00:39:18:06 - 00:39:39:04
Speaker 1
the biggest problem with truth these days is people don't want truth. They want entertainment because they want infotainment. Unfortunately, though, the information that they are being given isn't necessarily true anymore anyway. It is. It is spun. Or there are these mental gymnastics you have to do to get to it.
00:39:39:04 - 00:39:43:20
Speaker 1
Because the truth isn't always fun. The truth isn't always entertaining.
00:39:43:20 - 00:39:45:18
Speaker 1
The truth is often really fucking
00:39:46:04 - 00:39:47:27
Speaker 1
Unfortunately.
00:39:47:27 - 00:40:06:14
Speaker 1
And that's why I think people maybe even voted for Trump this time around, because the only thing that was entertaining about the Biden administration was the occasional flubs that he was making, versus every day we're talking about Trump. And I think the the cult really loves that.
00:40:06:14 - 00:40:21:28
Speaker 1
we're recording this just after he said that he was very serious about attempting a, a run for a third term and because people find that entertaining, they find the rebelliousness entertaining, even though it is treason.
00:40:21:28 - 00:40:25:18
Speaker 1
And they're trying to pull a Grover Cleveland.
00:40:25:25 - 00:40:27:07
Speaker 1
What about Grover Cleveland?
00:40:27:07 - 00:40:29:24
Speaker 2
Sorry.
00:40:29:24 - 00:40:33:22
Speaker 1
noncontiguous terms, and then, like, term limits also went into place to try to avoid,
00:40:33:22 - 00:40:41:12
Speaker 1
there were presidents that they, there was prevailing centered that they didn't want to have multiple. One of them was FDR, but Grover Cleveland came back and did it Noncontiguous Lee.
00:40:41:14 - 00:40:45:13
Speaker 1
And it generated a lot of talk in the time among like legislators and stuff like that.
00:40:45:13 - 00:40:48:02
Speaker 1
back then, it was the same right wing people
00:40:48:02 - 00:40:53:20
Speaker 1
anyway, these same people are now suddenly bending the narrative toward themselves to suit themselves. And I just think it's funny.
00:40:53:20 - 00:41:02:29
Speaker 1
I was kind of hoping that you were saying that it was going in the way of Grover Cleveland. As in, like, dying soon. But that's a different.
00:41:02:29 - 00:41:05:19
Speaker 1
so. Either either it or us man it or
00:41:06:11 - 00:41:07:02
Speaker 1
Or us.
00:41:08:00 - 00:41:37:25
Speaker 1
Anyway, back on topic. We keep. I didn't realize how many parallels this story would have with what a mess the government is right now. But yeah, this is a very similar, in effect thing because it's, like the current administration, it's a legal dumpster fire. And anyway, in 2021, BuzzFeed news. Yep, you heard me say it published an investigation and all other articles that covered this
00:41:37:25 - 00:41:43:07
Speaker 1
cited BuzzFeed news for this as the originator of this find.
00:41:43:10 - 00:42:09:28
Speaker 1
BuzzFeed news published an investigation revealing that David Mikkelson had plagiarized material from other news outlets in at least 54 articles between 2015 and 2019. And this bit made me laugh when I found it. He did it under a pseudonym, which is what Jeff. Zahra. Nadia, Jeff was a fake persona with a fake bio claiming he won a Pulitzer Prize for numismatics, which is a word I had to look up.
00:42:09:28 - 00:42:19:29
Speaker 1
And for anyone curious, it's just coin collecting. This man made a fake profile with a fake bio saying he won a Pulitzer Prize for coin collecting.
00:42:19:29 - 00:42:21:17
Speaker 1
What a fucking
00:42:24:07 - 00:42:41:28
Speaker 1
fuck you, man. Like you should get a fucking imagine. Imagine doing yellow journalism, which is like the opposite of what you get a fucking Pulitzer for to award yourself a fucking fake Pulitzer. Like, yeah, here we are. The circle is fucking complete. Like, these people are fucking pinning hats and medals on themselves.
00:42:41:28 - 00:42:44:00
Speaker 1
Just like how things are going now. Bread and
00:42:45:01 - 00:42:59:07
Speaker 1
Right, exactly. Bread and circuses is exactly right. And he. He also claimed to be a proud bacon enthusiast, which is probably the most egregious lie next to, you know, the plagiarism, but proud bacon enthusiast. No way he's proud of that.
00:42:59:07 - 00:43:03:10
Speaker 1
he's proud of that. Nor should he be. And is there anymore, like elder millennial fucking like
00:43:03:10 - 00:43:06:22
Speaker 1
culture thing to say. Like I'm a baking enthusiast.
00:43:06:22 - 00:43:08:18
Speaker 1
I'm so quirky with
00:43:09:18 - 00:43:33:17
Speaker 1
Well, I mean, keep this in mind. He had plagiarized material from other news outlets from 2015, just before his divorce. All the way to 2019, while proper Media still owned, like, at least to my knowledge, half of the company. And he was doing it under a fake name. And nobody during that time thought, oh, maybe we should just trace it back.
00:43:33:19 - 00:43:39:03
Speaker 1
No, it had to be BuzzFeed news that caught him.
00:43:39:03 - 00:43:52:05
Speaker 1
he, he and his company that for a while under the umbrella of proper media, was kind of their rogue child and had produced an entire body of work based on a lie.
00:43:52:22 - 00:43:59:10
Speaker 1
That is I mean, to a degree, that is true. I think it was more like he was repeating things.
00:43:59:10 - 00:44:09:12
Speaker 1
cutting corners and not siding properly or like plagiarizing. Like just like using other people's stuff and being like, yeah, like I'm basically like the predecessor to like, info aggregators that
00:44:09:29 - 00:44:44:13
Speaker 1
It would be essentially that it was it was taking other news articles from other news sites, rewriting them just ever so slightly, and then publishing them as if they were Snopes, his own research, writing things of that nature, giving no credit anywhere. And he had admitted to this, calling it a, quote, serious lapse in judgment. For years, he claimed he was just trying to scoop up traffic by quickly rewriting certain news stories, but he said essentially that he was really bad at it.
00:44:44:13 - 00:44:48:00
Speaker 1
man's really wrote the book on fuckin. Just like, unethical
00:44:48:29 - 00:45:01:02
Speaker 1
Basically. And so then the company Snopes moved forward, retracted, actually, 60 articles, and they disabled ads on all of them. And issued apologies to the original article authors.
00:45:02:14 - 00:45:03:25
Speaker 1
I know that they
00:45:06:07 - 00:45:14:03
Speaker 1
meant. It. They were like, yeah, we fucked up. We're sorry. Like, we don't even want your ad clicks on this because that's how bad we feel about this.
00:45:14:03 - 00:45:20:23
Speaker 1
that is a guilty conscience. Like, imagine how much like if you if you think like in order for them to have admitted this,
00:45:20:23 - 00:45:22:09
Speaker 1
they must have
00:45:22:09 - 00:45:25:21
Speaker 1
gone that far. Take the radical step to say, you know what?
00:45:25:21 - 00:45:28:08
Speaker 1
We are getting rid of ads like we can't take this revenue.
00:45:28:08 - 00:45:31:06
Speaker 1
It would be bad if we did that. Imagine how much
00:45:31:10 - 00:45:47:23
Speaker 1
It may have been. Well, the thing about it is the damage was already done, right. So this happened between 2015 and 2019. From what BuzzFeed found, it didn't get BuzzFeed, didn't find this until 2021. So they already had on some of these articles, several years worth of revenue,
00:45:47:23 - 00:45:57:07
Speaker 1
and they didn't even know. But then they retracted it, disabled all ads on those articles, and issued apologies to the authors that originally wrote those articles.
00:45:57:07 - 00:46:00:10
Speaker 1
hate that they're doing a thing that I kind of appreciate.
00:46:00:14 - 00:46:02:29
Speaker 1
Yeah, no, I agree. I think that was the right thing to do.
00:46:02:29 - 00:46:21:19
Speaker 1
But the damage was done. The irony and betrayal of a fact checking company plagiarizing content was honestly based on my reading. It was just too much for a lot of users to look past. And so after that scandal, David stepped down as CEO in 2022.
00:46:21:26 - 00:46:23:23
Speaker 1
The year after that, dropped.
00:46:23:23 - 00:46:31:05
Speaker 1
So 2022. So David is been here kind of the whole time seeing this thing decay and kind of going mad
00:46:32:06 - 00:46:34:27
Speaker 1
1994 to 2021? Yep.
00:46:34:27 - 00:46:36:02
Speaker 1
1994
00:46:38:24 - 00:46:46:06
Speaker 1
3231 years of of of Snopes. And then it's just been gradually falling apart and incubating and festering.
00:46:47:21 - 00:47:12:11
Speaker 1
Yeah. And I think my takeaway is the catalyst for the demise based on the timing was really the divorce. Obviously there was something going on behind the scenes that was not healthy for David and or healthy for Barbara in that matter. I don't know I did not look into the divorce because we're talking about Snopes here and I we can just speculate all day, every day about how they felt.
00:47:12:11 - 00:47:14:10
Speaker 1
It's not an easy thing to go through.
00:47:14:10 - 00:47:25:11
Speaker 1
yeah. So he just kind of lost it. It looks like he lost the either the fever for it, the passion for it, or just really wanted to see it die.
00:47:25:11 - 00:47:27:09
Speaker 1
Yeah. I guess, or, like, just fell
00:47:27:09 - 00:47:42:07
Speaker 1
it feels a lot like self-sabotage. It reads a lot like self-sabotage to me. Yeah. I mean, on a I know you're trying to scoop up traffic and you go through a whole GoFundMe to keep Snopes alive.
00:47:42:07 - 00:47:59:13
Speaker 1
You go through all of these things, you really want this to work. You really, really want this to work. But sometimes your subconscious is just not feeling it because then you don't you don't plagiarize at least 54 articles for four years to scoop up traffic. If you think if you really want to succeed.
00:47:59:15 - 00:48:02:03
Unknown
Yeah, like you.
00:48:02:03 - 00:48:16:18
Speaker 1
bad and, like, couldn't keep up with the thing and then started. Sounds like he started accruing a debt of, like, you know, not being able to keep up with the good quality work and having to cut corners and then corners were cut, and then you'd keep doing it and then you become defensive, and then you have
00:48:18:04 - 00:48:20:24
Speaker 1
Oh, exactly. Exactly.
00:48:20:24 - 00:48:23:03
Speaker 1
that's tragic.
00:48:23:06 - 00:48:24:13
Speaker 1
Actually. I think.
00:48:24:13 - 00:48:34:03
Speaker 1
that's how I feel about it. I. Yeah, I definitely feel it to be, almost. Yeah. It's it's it's very much a tragedy. It, it was for a lot of people.
00:48:34:03 - 00:48:58:07
Speaker 1
Based on comment sections of videos I watched or, certain news sites that people were kind of devastated by this people were kind of disappointed and said they don't know of another site yet that they can trust this way, and not another Snopes to my knowledge, hasn't really come forward in a very honest one.
00:48:58:07 - 00:49:02:15
Speaker 1
One that doesn't really give a the one is actually that is actually probably truly neutral,
00:49:02:15 - 00:49:11:03
Speaker 1
This is a different conversation for another time, but I don't think humans can be true neutral. And if you try to be true neutral, you lose a lot of humanity trying to do it.
00:49:11:03 - 00:49:24:08
Speaker 1
even if you achieve it, there's just not possible. Like, you're going to be wrong sometimes. And also, neutrality implies that the, taking a position or accruing some sort of bias or predisposition towards something is inherently faulty.
00:49:24:08 - 00:49:25:07
Speaker 1
Sometimes it's not
00:49:25:07 - 00:49:48:04
Speaker 1
I think that's another, you know, reason we let all these fucking, you know, Perry, Nazis and pre Nazis that are now actualizing and molting and shedding their ugly fuckin reptilian skin and taking, you know, emerging in the woods, they are it's because we, you know, and and when I say we, I'm actually kind of referring to more not we, I guess, but like centrists and the Democratic Party or whoever, right.
00:49:48:09 - 00:50:07:18
Speaker 1
Who let these people have a seat at the table out of this weird commitment to, quote unquote, neutrality, where you feel that, you know, we've got to give everybody a fair shake, basically giving your OP space at the table, which like when you know that they're not having a good faith conversation with you and this is that kind of yeah, I think there's a lot of danger in assuming that neutrality is the way to go in some things.
00:50:07:23 - 00:50:13:27
Speaker 1
I think you just have to consider things on their merit, and sometimes you just have to accept you're going to be wrong and not fucking deify people.
00:50:15:02 - 00:50:36:28
Speaker 1
Well, that's certainly straight up the truth. Deifying other human beings and expecting more out of them than what a human being can offer. Is unfair to both sides of that feeling. And also, choosing neutrality is just a really unhealthy relationship with people pleasing. You don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. You don't want to do this, that, or the other.
00:50:37:03 - 00:51:07:01
Speaker 1
You can't not take a side, especially in the age of the internet and the age of misinformation, the rise of disinformation. It's apathy is death. And I will always say this. And people in my life are probably sick of me saying this, but if you stand for nothing, why do you fall for? Right? And people were really trusting Snopes up until this,
00:51:07:01 - 00:51:10:07
Speaker 1
news thing dropped, which was significantly
00:51:10:07 - 00:51:12:17
Speaker 1
when when this news story dropped,
00:51:12:17 - 00:51:20:00
Speaker 1
you can see on like Google Trends how the search for Snopes really took a nosedive
00:51:20:03 - 00:51:21:21
Speaker 1
Just like the search
00:51:21:21 - 00:51:23:00
Speaker 1
as a search term.
00:51:23:01 - 00:51:24:09
Speaker 1
I see.
00:51:24:09 - 00:51:28:05
Speaker 1
and now we're going to get entirely new owners in 2022.
00:51:28:12 - 00:51:30:15
Speaker 1
Like. Like unrelated to the previous ones. That they're just
00:51:30:15 - 00:51:33:03
Speaker 1
they are related because they owned
00:51:33:03 - 00:51:36:00
Speaker 1
sorry. I think it was simple. Proper media.
00:51:36:06 - 00:51:43:21
Speaker 1
Chris Richmond and Drew show and Trump or Scone Trump. I'm sorry if I get the pronounce the pronunciation wrong.
00:51:43:21 - 00:51:44:19
Speaker 1
sounds. German or German?
00:51:44:26 - 00:51:59:04
Speaker 1
Well, so I think you'll find this very interesting. So I want to talk about Chris Richmond for a moment. He is a businessman and entrepreneur who co-founded Proper Media and has a history of acquiring struggling media properties.
00:51:59:04 - 00:52:01:18
Speaker 1
some examples. So some of these you might know of.
00:52:01:18 - 00:52:02:00
Speaker 1
of a red
00:52:02:00 - 00:52:08:29
Speaker 1
He was the CEO of Salon.com. He purchased it after it was going through a bankruptcy in 2019 for $5 million.
00:52:08:29 - 00:52:27:20
Speaker 1
seems he said of Salon.com. And nobody in the newsroom that that the Salon.com newsroom was laid off during. And his and his business partners ten year, business who. Well, we'll talk about very briefly and you will see why I don't have a full section about him soon. But it is worth mentioning here that Chris and this co-owner go back a few years.
00:52:27:26 - 00:52:40:21
Speaker 1
four years after purchasing, Salon.com in 2023, Chris Richmond and his business partner sold it for an undisclosed sum. I couldn't find anything that would tell me how much they got for that.
00:52:41:02 - 00:52:44:22
Speaker 1
He's also the CEO of TV tropes since 2014.
00:52:44:22 - 00:52:45:23
Speaker 1
TV tropes.
00:52:45:23 - 00:52:47:04
Speaker 1
yeah, yeah.
00:52:47:07 - 00:52:48:20
Speaker 2
Yes.
00:52:48:20 - 00:52:50:20
Speaker 1
that's so, like, adjacent to Snopes. And it's
00:52:51:05 - 00:52:59:04
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. And not that it's important, but it was actually one of my old favorite wikis. I learned a lot about storytelling tropes I didn't even know were tropes.
00:52:59:04 - 00:53:02:24
Speaker 1
I like I often Google plot devices. They're like, I haven't since I was
00:53:02:29 - 00:53:09:23
Speaker 1
Yeah, and actually, I want to mention this here to maybe spark some inspiration in the listeners or us.
00:53:09:23 - 00:53:11:29
Speaker 1
When I scratched the surface of,
00:53:11:29 - 00:53:13:08
Speaker 1
TV tropes,
00:53:13:08 - 00:53:18:15
Speaker 1
I it might need its own episode when I feel motivated enough to dive again. Yeah.
00:53:18:15 - 00:53:20:09
Speaker 1
How come like. What do you mean,
00:53:20:09 - 00:53:28:12
Speaker 1
I, I don't want to spoil anything here, but it it is. Yeah. Off mic. But here's an interesting tidbit about Chris.
00:53:28:12 - 00:53:48:19
Speaker 1
When you look, Chris, when you look Mr. Richmond up on Wikipedia, you'll find a note at the top of his page that says the following quote. This article is an autobiography or has been extensively edited by the subject or by someone connected to the subject. It may need editing to conform to Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy. So end quote.
00:53:48:21 - 00:54:06:03
Speaker 1
Take that however you wish. I. I have a few more things to note about the Wikipedia page as we move on, but. I thought that I thought you would find that funny. Actually, I, I was wondering.
00:54:06:06 - 00:54:27:20
Speaker 1
And as for drew, his business partner, there's literally not much out about him. When I searched for him, all I found was his LinkedIn profile and a few mentions tied to Chris Richmond. It's like he's this invisible partner. Throughout this whole operations, even before Snopes, I couldn't find anything at all about this man other than his name.
00:54:27:28 - 00:54:32:06
Speaker 1
So kudos to, the wealthy for being able to take themselves off the internet.
00:54:32:06 - 00:54:33:05
Speaker 1
For once.
00:54:33:05 - 00:54:33:25
Speaker 1
I know.
00:54:33:25 - 00:54:47:09
Speaker 1
And since taking over Snopes, the two new owners have made changes. They updated the site's content management system, restored Barbara Mickelson's bylines on over 1400 articles, and pledged publicly to uphold higher journalistic standards.
00:54:47:09 - 00:54:50:08
Speaker 1
That's good. They pledge publicly to do so.
00:54:50:08 - 00:54:53:25
Speaker 1
yes, this was this was published in several news articles.
00:54:53:25 - 00:55:00:13
Speaker 1
You just have to look if you just literally look up their name and Snopes, those articles pop up pretty automatically.
00:55:00:13 - 00:55:09:10
Speaker 1
there are a few things worth mentioning here that I can't. I also couldn't find space for as I was editing this down, but I find them to be important information as we move forward,
00:55:09:10 - 00:55:41:16
Speaker 1
first thing that I want to discuss is Chris Andrew co-founded and co-owned Proper Media for six years. And after years of growth, they sold it to a company called Sovereign Holdings in 2021. And the terms of that acquisition were never disclosed. Yeah, it it's spelled, sovereign. Yes. I knew you'd have a feeling about that because I had a feeling about that.
00:55:41:18 - 00:56:04:18
Speaker 1
The other thing is that there was a federal court case over a domain name fight between share tv.org and share TV.com. Now, this is going to get really, really technical convoluted, and I think it's a little bit morally gray. See, Chris really wanted the.com name, but someone else.
00:56:04:20 - 00:56:13:03
Speaker 1
It share tv.org and share TV.com right?
00:56:13:05 - 00:56:24:23
Speaker 1
Oh no, this is Chris. David and Barbara are now out of the picture.
00:56:24:25 - 00:56:27:06
Speaker 1
I don't even want to know.
00:56:27:22 - 00:56:38:17
Speaker 1
under the Wikipedia article again, the the the person that was named, the person named in the lawsuit was only referred to as a cyber squatter.
00:56:39:02 - 00:56:40:07
Speaker 1
Cyber squatter.
00:56:40:07 - 00:56:52:21
Speaker 1
A cyber squatter is somebody who basically buys up all these domain names and does no actual business with them. They own all of these domains, and they just sit on them, or they just litter them with ads.
00:56:52:21 - 00:57:04:29
Speaker 1
So any visit gets them revenue of some kind. It's a very kind of sleazy practice. Certainly. But it gets a little stranger. So,
00:57:05:13 - 00:57:13:23
Speaker 1
It. No, it would be like using GoDaddy to then buy up a bunch of their own domain names. Yes, I do. Yeah, it's called cyber squatting.
00:57:13:23 - 00:57:20:00
Speaker 1
a very serious thing. Okay. That's fair. I just didn't know that name. Okay. Sorry. Thank you. That I was learning that I'm a I'm a boomer.
00:57:25:06 - 00:57:31:24
Speaker 1
I mean, you are literally ancient, so I don't know what the.
00:57:31:24 - 00:57:41:00
Speaker 1
ask, never ask assess hat am a how much their income is a never ask just had a fab when what their ages.
00:57:41:18 - 00:57:43:26
Speaker 1
I learned so much just now. Thank you.
00:57:43:26 - 00:57:45:03
Speaker 1
welcome. Please proceed
00:57:45:03 - 00:57:49:19
Speaker 1
I think I need to, as briefly as I can walk you all through this timeline.
00:57:49:19 - 00:57:50:11
Speaker 2
So
00:57:50:11 - 00:57:59:01
Speaker 1
Honestly. Great. You know what? We're chillin. We're chillin. We're here late on my timeline. Maya, it's worth diving. It's worth getting a tight, you know?
00:57:59:13 - 00:58:33:13
Speaker 1
Yeah. And again, it feels convoluted to me because this reading about this lawsuit actually gave me a super big headache. So the domain name. Share TV.com. So the defendant, not not Chris, here was registered in 2004. So share TV.com registered in 2004. The domain name share TV.com. Org was registered in January of 2007. The owner of share tv.org, so Chris started then to do business in February of 2007, so registered as the site and the very next month starts doing business.
00:58:33:13 - 00:58:51:08
Speaker 1
Pretty pretty good mobility the trademark for the term share TV all one word, by the way, was issued by, the United States Patent and Trademark Office in April of 2011. So USPTO.
00:58:51:10 - 00:59:24:25
Speaker 1
The court justified its ruling that the registrant of the domain name share TV.com owned over 1500 domain names and only parked the domain finding quotes. Since since registrant registered the domain name, he has only used it in connection with a few scattered, quote, parked pages and mostly revenue generating sponsored links and quote. So like I said, he he bought the domain name.
00:59:24:27 - 00:59:37:19
Speaker 1
He only used it in connection with a few other parked pages, and only used it to host, revenue generating links. So if anybody clicked on that link on that site, he would get, a fraction of the pay. He would get a commission.
00:59:37:19 - 00:59:52:07
Speaker 1
I found most of this info from a website called the domains.com, and their take on this back in 2013 when they published their article, or I think it's a blog post, it's more like it shared way more opinions than anything. So I think it was more of a blog post.
00:59:52:07 - 00:59:52:24
Speaker 1
Okay.
00:59:52:24 - 01:00:03:09
Speaker 1
when the article blog post that any post was published is that it wasn't a good thing and it was, quote, very troubling that Chris won the lawsuit.
01:00:03:09 - 01:00:07:00
Speaker 1
Chris won, share TV.com despite,
01:00:07:00 - 01:00:08:02
Speaker 1
cyber squatter
01:00:08:02 - 01:00:11:01
Speaker 1
had the three dome the domain three years before
01:00:11:01 - 01:00:12:01
Speaker 1
anything happened.
01:00:12:01 - 01:00:15:13
Speaker 1
That's so. I mean, that's just like a miscarriage of justice, right?
01:00:16:00 - 01:00:28:03
Speaker 1
I think so, but they but the they go on to say that the share TV.com domain holder. So the cyber squatter so the the one that the domain owner that Chris really wanted,
01:00:28:03 - 01:00:32:12
Speaker 1
for domains is gentrifying his gentrifying space. There's not even real.
01:00:32:22 - 01:00:44:09
Speaker 1
Yeah. Correct. And he apparently he actually tried to deceive potential and actual users of share tv.org while the case was still happening.
01:00:44:09 - 01:00:48:07
Speaker 1
So the cyber squatter was trying to basically,
01:00:48:07 - 01:01:02:23
Speaker 1
vandalize, share TV, org name and, and and like IP essentially he was I don't know exactly what he published, but they said that the judge noted the defendant's behavior
01:01:02:23 - 01:01:06:23
Speaker 1
This is like, another at another level. It's it's like a
01:01:06:23 - 01:01:12:05
Speaker 1
it's like a contest for who can be the least incompetent, knowing that everybody's going to be quite incompetent.
01:01:13:05 - 01:01:39:13
Speaker 1
Yeah. I mean, the this case was just a mixture of the rich kind of taking whatever they want, but that the defendant also was in the wrong. So it's just for me, it's just so gray. It just. If it doesn't feel good, it doesn't feel bad. It feels more bad than good to me. But it's I, I, I'm a little indifferent to it in a way that isn't apathy, by the way, because indifference is taking a side.
01:01:39:13 - 01:01:40:29
Speaker 1
know, I, I agree, I mean, it's
01:01:51:11 - 01:02:24:16
Speaker 1
Yeah, pretty much exactly that. And it, Yeah. So, so we deal with all of that much, much earlier than before. Chris and Drew take over Snopes and they, you know, they make these commitments, but they have this history of taking bankrupted sites and turning them into something, you know, that generates revenue, which isn't necessarily bad. It's just house flipping really.
01:02:24:18 - 01:02:29:01
Speaker 1
Yeah, we flip sides. Yeah.
01:02:29:01 - 01:02:45:15
Speaker 1
they're doing it on the internet. That is so fucking dumb. They're buying. I'm so mad. I am so mad that this is the way they went. They're like, yeah, let's do the exact same thing. Back when you could buy a domain for night for $0.19, so you could buy a house for $7, and you could buy an internet house for $0.19.
01:02:45:15 - 01:02:50:24
Speaker 1
And now here we are doing the same goddamn fucking thing again. I'm so pissed. Sorry. Continue.
01:02:50:24 - 01:03:03:21
Speaker 1
my thing about it is this is just surface level information. There's so much more digging to be done here. On on Snopes and the current owners
01:03:03:21 - 01:03:04:29
Speaker 1
coffee zilla.
01:03:04:29 - 01:03:09:02
Speaker 1
Oh, yeah. Hell, yeah. Absolutely. It's it's super interesting. I think
01:03:09:02 - 01:03:16:07
Speaker 1
cherry picked the information to kind of paint this portrait because a lot of the information that I found was very similar in nature.
01:03:16:07 - 01:03:46:16
Speaker 1
It was very similar in the vibes. It was very similar in energy, but there's more stuff to be learned. And honestly, this research left me with even more questions about the people involved. The history of fact checking, all of that stuff. And but the biggest, biggest on topic question I was left with was, can Snopes ever fully regain the public's trust, or is it forever tainted by its past scandals, its ambiguous fucking corporate history, and defending a goddamn Nazi salute?
01:03:46:16 - 01:03:50:23
Speaker 1
Yeah, I fuck, man. Oh, how the mighty fall.
01:03:50:23 - 01:04:03:08
Speaker 1
I guess my question is. I mean, do we think that maybe Snopes is privileged position in fact checking and reliability? And being the final word on something's validity was maybe a little bit,
01:04:03:08 - 01:04:05:18
Speaker 1
you know, maybe we were glazing it a little too hard.
01:04:05:18 - 01:04:27:16
Speaker 1
Maybe we overrated it. And this thing was just, you know, this was always going to go this way. Maybe, like, you know, I. The more that I'm looking at this way back at the beginning to now, it seems like it just started with one person who was an incel, like, you know, troll, but making like, semi good points, like suddenly got blasted up into way more of a magnified huge role than they could have ever expected.
01:04:27:16 - 01:04:44:10
Speaker 1
And you know, there's very good evidence that people go absolutely mad when that happens. People people aren't made to become like that. And, you know, this guy wasn't even starting out with it from, you know, a pure, strong, rigorous journalistic background. He was doing like, myth busting, urban legend busting
01:04:44:10 - 01:04:45:15
Speaker 1
with a certain,
01:04:45:15 - 01:04:51:08
Speaker 1
a certain holier than thou like, you people really got conned by this, like I'm a troll to sort of approach.
01:04:51:08 - 01:04:57:07
Speaker 1
And somewhere along the line, I think that, you know, we all appreciate that and treat it as journalism,
01:04:57:07 - 01:05:04:06
Speaker 1
maybe or like we just like infotainment. We just like it when somebody is kind of bitchy when they disprove things. That's like a genre of thing that we like.
01:05:04:06 - 01:05:27:13
Speaker 1
To be fair to ourselves and to Snopes here, I would say that the biggest problem is fact checking. Overall is a big problem. Because when facts are checked and cite and sources are cited, we have an entire side of the aisle
01:05:27:13 - 01:05:37:17
Speaker 1
politically that rejects it no matter what. So it's almost becoming this thing where it's like, well, if Snopes is saying it, well, Fox News is saying this and it's it.
01:05:37:19 - 01:05:40:05
Speaker 1
They aren't equal. They are not equal in
01:05:40:05 - 01:06:11:08
Speaker 1
journalistic integrity. They're not equal in purpose, intent and motive, I don't think. And you can't compare one factcheck to the other and say one is better than the other, because fact checking is fact checking if this is the fact and it goes against what you believe, and it goes against what you've been told, maybe it's time to look inward and also maybe use that fucking thing in your pocket to search up what is the truth, instead of just searching for what you believe to be the truth.
01:06:11:10 - 01:06:16:25
Speaker 1
Okay. Oh, that's very kind. Have you see? You too.
01:06:17:01 - 01:06:18:19
Speaker 1
Well, okay, so
01:06:18:19 - 01:06:36:20
Speaker 1
I think going into this, my paradigm in. I'm not sure. Maybe I still feel this way. I, I guess your point about the fact check, I think it's really relevant and I kind of that really resonated with me because I think you accidentally revealed to me the way that I organized my own hierarchy of how I obtain truth, but this is how I was.
01:06:36:20 - 01:06:38:19
Speaker 1
This is the thing I was talking about, the death of truth,
01:06:38:19 - 01:06:55:09
Speaker 1
all of these different people maybe have a different, slightly different take or a medium different take, and then they each have their own quote unquote fact check that they can produce. And yeah, you have to compare them. You know, when you compare of fact, there's like, you know, you're comparing it to what is the on the record official, you know, correct answer truth.
01:06:55:12 - 01:07:11:18
Speaker 1
And I guess I always ranked my, I always imagined that as like if the true thing that is happening and it's meaning is in the middle of a circle, a bunch of concentric circles outside of it are cropping up. And the closer you are to that thing, the more inner circle that you have, the closer to the better the journalism.
01:07:11:18 - 01:07:29:12
Speaker 1
I assume you're doing, you know? So I'm thinking like Axios or something is like on an inner circle. If I'm just picking something that I think is repeatable or good just off the top of my head and then a far further out is going to be like, you know, oann or like, you know, the Daily Wire or like, you know, whatever that fucking
01:07:29:12 - 01:07:34:02
Speaker 1
haystack and like in House of wax, the Ben Shapiro fucking posts from.
01:07:34:08 - 01:07:37:23
Speaker 1
He looks like he's a fucking a madame Tussauds fucking reject. So I'm assuming
01:07:40:09 - 01:07:41:26
Speaker 1
in New York or something like that. Right.
01:07:41:26 - 01:07:47:07
Speaker 1
wherever that is, like it's the outermost circle or a toilet paper, USA is going to be on the outer circle.
01:07:47:07 - 01:08:09:25
Speaker 1
that's an interesting way to visualize it. For me, it is if we can cite sources that can also cite their sources, or if they are their own source with their research published, I would say that a fact as a fact from them. I would say this is this because you can't have, quote, alternative facts, you can't have, oh, well, that's just your opinion.
01:08:09:25 - 01:08:16:16
Speaker 1
No, that is the fact that I have given you. You just have to accept it because it won't change.
01:08:16:16 - 01:08:22:00
Speaker 1
I'm tired of the discussion around what's a fact and what's not, because
01:08:22:00 - 01:08:29:06
Speaker 1
if there is a fact and you know it to be true, you are able to validate the truth of it. The the earth is a sphere.
01:08:29:11 - 01:08:47:02
Speaker 1
It's not a perfect sphere to be. It's a little bit more oblong, but that that's the nuance, right? Instead of just saying it straight up fact that it is flat. That is not a fact. That is just you being stupid and ego driven and thinking you are smarter than the scientists that came before you.
01:08:47:02 - 01:09:05:22
Speaker 1
I, I agree with that. And I think I in my heart, I'm in, in Paris tonight, I like to, I, I assume I, I believe, I think in my heart that everything probably has some correct answer if we can't immediately see what it is, even these more abstract things like, you know, what's going to be better doing trickle down economics or something that's real and actually helps people.
01:09:05:27 - 01:09:21:15
Speaker 1
Right? Like there is a probably a correct answer that can be proven. You know, these like are there okay. That was like a I took a stance there. But like, you know, something that is difficult. You know, in economic policy, something like, you know, what is going to be the best way to do internal combustion, you know, is AC, DC battery going to be better in the long term?
01:09:21:15 - 01:09:33:07
Speaker 1
You know, stuff like that, I'm sure. Like I assume that questions like this have a correct answer. In fact, at their core, it's just that we can't always we don't have the resources or the ability or whatever yet to be able to elucidate that.
01:09:33:07 - 01:09:35:23
Speaker 1
I come from an academic background. So, as you know,
01:09:35:23 - 01:09:45:08
Speaker 1
there's a lot of, I, I, I really resonate with what you said. I just feel like there has to be a, like a, you know, peers reviewing the thing. But I will say that.
01:09:45:08 - 01:09:47:13
Speaker 1
I don't know, even that's not a foolproof thing.
01:09:47:13 - 01:10:12:17
Speaker 1
And I think that's why this hits are hit so hard, because Snopes, as a gateway between a lay person and people who are like, you know, combing the research, or combing the, you know, the field and doing the having a look at it so that you don't have to approximate an inverse between journalism and being a lay person telling you what's, you know, in a very grassroots kind of way, as best as the old internet's kind of like pure way of being could have.
01:10:12:20 - 01:10:36:06
Speaker 1
And it kind of reminds me that we liked that, all of us, because all of these things that were, you know, supposedly reputable outlets like The Lancet or, you know, you know, name, any name, any New York Times, people who landed on the wrong side of history before with a really major verdict. Like, I'm thinking of The Lancet publishing the paper by Andrew Wakefield about, vaccines causing autism, which is a falsehood.
01:10:36:09 - 01:10:57:23
Speaker 1
And frankly, the paper was retracted by the Lancet, but years later, and that guy lost his license to practice medicine because of the falsehood that he made. But the damage was done, right, even though that was like a reputable thing. And so enough people knew that we all liked the internet for being the, you know, initially being fully being boots on the ground as close as you could get.
01:10:57:23 - 01:11:12:26
Speaker 1
And there's problems with that too. But yeah, it's, it's tough. I think the peer review piece is something that we all are. Why we wound up kind of we wound up and wound up gravitating toward and it's, the tragedy of Snopes.
01:11:13:27 - 01:11:27:23
Speaker 1
It is the tragedy of Snopes. And it's also the tragedy right now of the US, where we have 21% of adults considered illiterate and 54% of adults read below a sixth grade level, functionally
01:11:27:23 - 01:11:34:13
Speaker 1
I wish I knew how what percentage of that overlaps with, adults who have measles currently?
01:11:34:13 - 01:11:56:07
Speaker 1
Well, the ones that didn't realize that that article was retracted from the Lancet and just kept reading articles that talked about not getting fucking a measles vaccine, that's a that's a different conversation for another time. I'm just saying that there are people who we argue with online daily that and this is a sobering reminder that can't really read or write that.
01:11:56:07 - 01:12:08:06
Speaker 1
Well, as a general almost whole ass rule, over 50%, dude, 50% right below a sixth grade level.
01:12:08:08 - 01:12:29:11
Speaker 1
Yes. And they and so they're trying to come up with, oh, well, my way of living is correct. So you should you should have my religion. You should believe what I believe. And I have to be right again. It all lands on ego. It all lands on anger. It all lands on all sorts of things. But it also is just functionally the education system is broken.
01:12:29:14 - 01:12:49:05
Speaker 1
And for me, this was a sobering reminder that even the most credible sources can and will falter, and that trust, once broken, like like what you just said, is very hard to rebuild. The damage was already done, when the anti-vax stuff was coming out. And, I mean, I use Snopes all the time. I was using it all the time as a fact checking source.
01:12:49:08 - 01:12:58:24
Speaker 1
So so, so, dear listener, the next time you're scrolling through the internet, scrolling through whatever your favorite social media is and you see something and you go.
01:12:58:27 - 01:13:00:05
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, that has to be true.
01:13:00:09 - 01:13:19:28
Speaker 1
Maybe, just maybe take everything you see on the internet with a grain of salt. But delve, while this all only scratches the surface about what has gone on with Snoop and its ownership, that is all I have for us today. Are there any final thoughts besides what you have given us just now?
01:13:19:28 - 01:13:22:06
Speaker 1
Yeah. Listeners, check this shit out. Okay.
01:13:22:06 - 01:13:26:03
Speaker 1
Really simple. What you should take from this, and I'm here to help you out. Okay?
01:13:26:05 - 01:13:28:10
Speaker 1
Truth is, dead. Art is a lie. Nothing
01:13:30:16 - 01:13:46:27
Speaker 1
all. And, you know, good luck out there. I can't read or write too good either. Thanks for taking the dive and being distracted with us today. We really loved being back, and I am just really reeling from the way Snopes has been. So yeah, just it's been a pleasure being distracted with you.
01:13:46:27 - 01:13:49:16
Speaker 1
I need to rinse out my ears with bleach.
01:13:49:19 - 01:13:56:02
Speaker 1
And thank you all for taking the dive. I will now go into my liminal space until I got to. You guys, listen to another episode so I can exist once again.
01:13:56:05 - 01:13:59:15
Speaker 2
Good night.