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Friday Fun Thread for June 20, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Culture war - bro podcast edition.

Sam Hyde was recently on Bradley Marty's podcast where he brought former mma fighter Jason Mayhem Muller. Two whacko wierdos I love who fell off came together after a new resurgence, Mayhem has a history of drugs and likely has severe adhd like me because he wouldn't stop interrupting.

Sam Hyde accepted the anti semite, admitted he was a Christian for the first time and started the podcast with jokes like "Bradley was telling us about 14 this, 88 that". Miller acted like a total dunce, a ie collar democrat stuck in the early 2000s. I was surprised that the podcaster got a quarter million views. Recently Joe Rogan acknowledged his existence after having denied it for close to a decade.

It's nice seeing Sam be famous. He seems a little bitter, yet he was one of the only ones who didn't cuck out back when his show got canceled. Just surprised to find him on a popular podcast. This was unthinkable 4 years ago. He gets Moores Law wrong but hey, Scott and lesswrong gets tech wrong too so won't say much.

The interesting thing about Sam's resurgence is how, simultaneously, a number of people who were opposed to him are crashing and burning, notably IDubbbz, where Sam legitimately tried to pull him off the path he was on during their dueling documentaries (goddamn that was 3 years ago).

Despite how he portrays himself in his comedy and public persona, he's clearly got his life far more put-together and on a better trajectory than most influencers/youtube celebs.

Sam was willing to stand for something, it did burn him for a little but ensured that long term, he has better odds. I saw the preview for extreme peace and wish to watch all of it soon.

YouTube is worse now than it was in 2010, Sam is a throwback to back when the internet was not the normie saturated place it is now.

Yep.

I've always loved edgy subversive humor... that wasn't entirely built on malicious intent. Check out Doug Stanhope for the purest example.

Early 2010s was a mecca for that, from Newgrounds to early Youtube to 4chan's heyday. Although 4chan went way too malicious, imho. SomethingAwful was never my jam BECAUSE it thrived on the malice.

Sam is like a fucking Coelacanth from that era. Just perfectly preserved and managed to 'come back' from near extinction.

SomethingAwful was never my jam BECAUSE it thrived on the malice.

It's also why I can't tolerate Kiwifarms or rdrama (or Tumblr, or to a point Twitter); those places don't function without it. Honestly I don't find 4chan to have really gone hard over (though that's arguably true of /pol/ and... was probably the reason moot came down on the anti-Gamergate side, though it would cost him everything); what I think happened is that the population declined and you don't have as many teens and twentysomethings to attract in the first place (and media standards rose- it's hard to rip something off when you don't have effective tools to produce that thing at scale). That, and the Moral Majority (which was in significant part a SomethingAwful creation) hadn't evolved into its present state yet, so being a moralfag wasn't as attractive a thing for the teens yet.

I've always loved edgy subversive humor... that wasn't entirely built on malicious intent.

Well... it's childish. To be adult is to know that speaking about sacred topic X is always and definitionally bad, and to ensure that anyone who does is cancelled. People can be childish in some ways but adult in others. When you have an adult that's basically just a big child things get a bit more interesting.

You have to do it completely earnestly [again, like a child would, but by no means their exclusive domain]. Gamejolt is a good place to find games like this (if you're really bored, try out Five Night's at Fuckboys for that mid-2000s Newgrounds feel- there are 3 of them, and they are legitimately very good) that speak to this particular style.

That whole "unburdened by what has been" thing is a right the moralfags claim from time to time, but because at the end of the day they are people of malice, it's not theirs to exercise. (That is why they are called 'moralfags' in the first place.)


I think a factor in depression comes from having a soul like this but not being able to express it for some or other reason, but that's unique to people like this in the first place and not generally applicable.

I’m increasingly convinced Sam is a The Boys from Brazil-style clone of Leon Trotsky.

The combined DNA of Trotsky, Hitler, and Benito Mussolini.

You know, that is true, but also, when you watch Sam & IDubbz competing documentaries, one of the things that jumps out in IDubbz trying to encourage Sam to be more genuine and less of a character. Sam, understandably, believes if he ever did that he'd get deleted off the internet and unpersoned entirely.

One 'uge election victory later, and Sam does appear to be letting his true self come out at least a little bit more. His open letter to Elon was probably as close to an unironic manifesto for what he actually believes as we've ever seen, and is arguably responsible for his resurgence in fame/notoriety/attention.

So, not only did Sam try to pull IDubbz off the path, and IDubbz has proceeded to ignore all his advice and ruin his life, but Sam may have taken IDubbz advice and prospered enormously?

He and Fishtank got mentioned on Rogan recently which probably helped too.

I do think Sam wants to be perceived as this inscrutable, unpredictable character, rather than his true self. I think he lets his true convictions come out and play pretty often (like the Elon vid), but he's made it effectively impossible to know what his 'authentic' personality is. This is what I believe the closest example is, that I've seen.

Then there's the interesting theory that he may literally be a cryptid.

Is it unfair to describe Fishtank as a sort of lolcow humiliation show ?

Nope. But its definitely authentic about it, it doesn't hate the contestants.

So it's a show that selects for lolcows and then allows them to humiliate themselves by their unwise actions?

They add increasingly absurd, uncomfortable and intense scenarios to make them crack, too.

And the audience is able to interact with the contestants directly.