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Jho Low – The Greatest White Collar Fraud Ever
Episode Transcription
Made by robots, for robots. Only read if you're weird.
Hey, man, what's going on? Have you ever heard of Joe Lo? Joe Lo? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, it's um. He's pronounced j lo, but you you want to call her just yeah, it came out that way. Oh, you're right. It's j Lo Oka, no Joel. It's spelled j h o l w joe Loo pretty close actually j j h o j hlo w Joelo. Know what we're talking about? Uh? So this is a guy UM from Malaysia. He's approximately fourty years old. By approximately he's actually fourty years old. Who is um? The mastermind behind um one of the largest white collar crimes in recent history. Uh, the McDonald's monopoly scam. Yes, not quite that big. No, he's uh he pulled uh four point five billion dollars. Uh and he's still had large in real money or like any Eve online moneyline dollars, No, real dollars four point five dollars four point five he pulled, pulled. We needed to hold on. I need to set the story. Well, let's set the stage. Let's get to this because it takes a second ticket stage. Let me set the stage. J Low was He grew up in a in a Malaysian town called Georgetown, which was named after George Washington. That's not true. I don't know why. Why did you say that and then go bail on it? So funny to be but yeah, no one else anyway, It's okay, cool, cut out, leave it in our it out, cut it out, to cut it out. Which was named after George Washington. Georgetown George Washington for George Washington, cut out, leave it in our cut it out, to cut it out, bailed it so much funny to be, but which was named after George Washington. Things I learned last night. His parents, he was, he was, his upbringing was we really jumped straight into it? I was. I don't think I was prepared to be honest, he was. Normally we have a little bit more banter in the beginning. Yeah, but we gonna go for it. Maybe we should, you know, I don't think I have. Do you have a story you don't about the midst? Yeah? The commercials came on. I watched the commercial and the next morning my computer said, kill Josh. I left the mist I know he's going to kill everything. Oh man, he's still alive. You know what a missed opportunity. All right, that's enough. J Loss you really do a story that story about was joking. Okay, So why I don't know this is I don't know why. I never saw the movie, but for some reason, the concept was very interesting to me. Sure, and so whenever your brain that there's this miss that rolls into town, there's monsters in the mist. Okay, you got it, the whole movie. And so movie came out around the same time I was trying to learn three D animation. What was that middle school or high school? I don't know when did that come? Did you try to learn three D animation? I don't remember. There was a lot a lot of like random hobbies like that. I tried to coach. Tycoon is a full grown adult, so you know who knows when that was for you? So this came out in middle school? You can tell me you spent all of last week learning three D animation. I would believe you. I was trying to learn it. Um and I'm gonna make some missed moss perfect. Yeah, So that came seven. Oh are you gonna show us one of your creations? No? No, no no. But I was trying to learn how to animate stuff, and so I Google had a free animation platform and they still have called sketch Up. You could like sketch up animations. Um. And so I was learning how to build buildings and stuff like that, and they had a feature where you could create this the fog, but it looked like the mist then, um and in my I built this world. I built this like mythical world for myself with the town where whatever, and I made a backstory. Uh. And the backstory was a missed type backstory. But also around that time, How to Train Your Dragon came out, So in my version it was the how to change your Track and dragons in them is in the midst. So like friendly little Dragon, a little dragons are company with the Mist and the grocery store. Oh my gosh. Okay, so the miss has been out for a while. I don't care about ruining the ending. Spoiler alert if you haven't seen, if you wanta watching, just go ahead and skip ahead for a second. Uh, and also skip ahead of the movie. It's two hours. The real payoff is the last five minutes where they get into the car. They get to the car, they drive through the mist, they drive for as long as they can. Car runs out of gas, you know, and they're still in the mist. Oh no, there's five of them in the car. They got a gun with four bullets. Oh no. So he kills everyone in the car except for except for himself. And then he gets out of the car and he's like, take me, monsters, and you hear the things and it's a military tank rolling up on him because they have saved everyone. Oh no, and he killed kid. Oh isn't that gruesome? It was like it was an ending. Yeah, so let me tell you how mine ended. So I up an astrod. They had to fly to where the drags were treading, and Toothless was captured. Are like google day, Oh my gosh, so Joel he that was embarrassing. I'm glad that you brought that up. How to train your dragon, Dreg. I started telling you that earlier and I was like, you know what, No, you're gonna want to public ual me for this one. Yeah. Oh man, guys, I don't know if we should go out there. I will be the brave one to go out there and get hugged by a care bear. You know, you get out there and freaking grimace from McDonald and like you was a happy meal wherever. He sounds like, no, this is a total sidebar. Did you know that? In I think it's China. Ronald McDonald for some reason, is named donald McDonald donald McDonald, don mcdone. So Joe Low he came up in a pretty wealthy family, like ran an investment fund. Um. But they weren't like in like, they weren't like top tier. They weren't one percent. They were like ten percent you know. Um. So like they were rich. They were very much, very rich, but not like rich you know, poor rich poor. Yeah, they're like rich poor people. Yeah, they're like, uh, poor rich people. So he went to a boarding school in London called the Harrow School. UM. And this school is where Winston Churchhill went to school. UM and another notable name, Neru, who was the first Prime Minister of India. Not sure if I pronounced the first name right, but the people also pronounces called prime minister like some kind of Midwest guy. Anyways, So uh at this school, yeah, he was poor, dirt poor compared to everybody else in that school. They were like you were open an audie. They were literal royalty. And he was desperate to fit in. And so he figured out Yeah, he figured out, hey, pretty quickly, he figured out it doesn't matter if I have money, he said, it matters if people think I have money. And so he got really good. I dislike the the what's that Netflix series something Anna Inventing Anna? Yeah? Is it like that kind of concept where she just pretends she pretends she's very rich, and she racks up all these bills and all that stuff, and she's like, oh, starts that way from boarding school. He's like, hey, I'm rich. Yeah. So he negotiates all these deals somehow um to like get a day on this hundred million already yacht somehow. So he's like the YouTube entrepreneurs. Yeah, but and like and like negotiates this deal that he's never going to pay back, but manages to land and invite all these kids at his party and they're like, oh, this guy is like one of us. Yeah, he's got a hundred million dollars yacht. And then like he would throw these exclusive parties at these clubs, at these nightclubs a crazy bill, yeah, and then just never and never pay him back or like negotiate it down after the fact to of whatever it was. You know, it's like, sure, just got really good at faking his way through stuff while he was there. He managed to work his way into kind of the in crowd of the school, the popular kids, the cheerleaders, you know, Yeah, were the cheerleaders cool at your school? No? They were not? A mom, dude, who are the cool Who are the cool people at your school? Football players were cool? Still, Football players were cool. Basketball was cool. Basketball players were the cool list. Um, yeah, baseball had a crossover. There was a handful that. It was kind of the multi sport kids. Yeah, they were the kids who did Who were the cool girls our school? It was the volleyball girls. Yeah, vou basketball basketballs out there for sure. Soccer was kind of cool. Yeah for us. In the athletes, Mount Vernon just had, you know, they were like, man, these kids are cool. We looked at the mathletes to steer our culture. Hanging out at Red Robin, this convertible rolls up. It's like, oh my god, it's the athletes. Oh my gosh. Yeah, you're inside Red Robin with your unlimited fries and you're like, is that Priscilla, Oh my gosh, she's got a four point two. She's a ten or a four point two, Priscilla? How many French fries are in my basket? Right now. She's crazy, dude, twenty three of them. I wish I was cool. Yeah, she counts so good, she can count crazy, dude, you can count on me. That was actually what her problem posal said, Priscilla, Can you count on me for prom? Yeah? My school was weird, you know, the nerds were. But that did all change when the uh the star of our basketball team auditioned to be in the musical. And he wouldn't believe the shake up to the status quo you know I'm talking about, and we that wasn't tough. A miss rolled then Troy Bolton took such a turn. I was gonna love that. And get you get your head in the missed? Get you get your head in the missed? What is going on in this town? Yeah? Okay, the closest monster, she's freaking that's so weird. She was homemade sweaters. I can tell you how many threads in the sweater cause I made it and I remember. Okay, okay, So Joe Joel uh So he just kind of figured out like the cool kids were the rich kids. So he became one of the cool kids, but pretend to be rich by pretending to be rich, and he got really close with a guy named Resa Aziz, who is the stepson of the Prime Minister of Malaysia, not Gibrazaka, and that relationship would become a very important relationship in the life of Jolo in the future. And so he graduates from high school, goes moves to the US and starts trying to build a career for himself. We're at in the US. Let me see New York. And so he started working with some investment firms in New York and is a part of a couple fairly large like real estate transactions. He didn't himself purchase those, but he was like, he's in the financial deal, involved in the process. Um. All the while very conscious of the relationships he was forming with people who were like the it makers. And so he was still doing this game where he would pretend he was super wealthy, figure out how to throw this party for basically come to my New York high rise apartment. Yeah, but he was like, really it was an open house, pretended people losing on TikTok all the time. Yeah, So I saw a TikTok the other day that was like, just got the keys to my seven thousand dollar New York apartment. And then another TikTok or was like, yeah, like called the owner of that building because I recognized that building, and I called the owner and asked if that unit was even for sale, if people could buy units there, and they said no. Okay, So I like that there's a version that like, there's there's people who are dedicated to being the anti Joe Lowes. Now yeah, that's that's we were like, yeah, like somebody was posting like just got the keys to my three million dollar apartment or whatever, and like, no, you're you're just lying. That's rough. Um, we have a lot of Patreon supporters. Yes, no one's listening to this podcast. These guys don't exist. Okay. So he's scheming. He's scheming, and he ends up architecting his first major deal of um purchasing this or selling this high rise apartment UM and Kuala Lumpur uh kay right, So confidently I was gonna let you do it, uh for eight seven million dollars, and he was, well, that was his commission. His commission was eighty seven million dollars. So he took all the bat check of change and he dude, why are we podcasting? Wait? What was the property price? A few hundred million, Alex, I don't need you to second guess me. Right now. This is the middle like that's a half billion dollar house if you're doing it was it was a high rise apartment building. So I don't know exactly the exact value of it. It doesn't matter. All I know is he took eighty seven million, two thousand six so right before we blew up the market. Um, this could be part of it. Okay, anyways, the numbers don't matter. All that matters, don't matter. I'm not one of the athletes. Got a good deal on it, dude. He he ended up getting eighty seven million dollars out of this deal. I don't know how he did it. He took eight seven millions. He made eight seven million sellion dollars Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday, that's right. That's when new episodes drop on Patreon. Patreons a way to get early access to episodes and other content and exclusive merchandise. And we're not gonna stop there because we've got a private discord with our hosts and producers in it. For less than seventeen cents a day, that's right, that's five dollars a month. You two can be a Patreon supporter and not here advertisements in his freaking podcast anymore. Text till into six six six six. Otherwise I'll come to your house. I will find you. I will destroy everything that's good in your life until we're the only thing left. Anyway, here's another advertisement. And he started making some investments and doing by Grant Cardon. I'm Grant Cardon. And so he took over seven billion dollars off this uh and he started investing that money into a handful of different opportunities. Okay, all the while getting really close to the Prime Minister of Malaysia. Yeah, his friend's dad. Yes, his friend's dad. And so he tells him. He says, corn hole in the backyard. He says, hey, friend's dad, Hey, friend's dad, please, hi, Mr Prime Minister, my friend's dad, Hey will you throw on my name? Places? Sure will my friend's son. And he just goes around telling me my friend's son, Well, my just getting my son's friend, my son's friends, my son's friend. So this department building for an undescript amount of money, and somehow he got eighty seven million dollars of it. I don't understand the math. Don't make sense, but I think that's the point he could sell your building, yeah, for the same amount or more. So he gets in with the Prime Prime Minister UM and his name is Najib, and Najib and him UH they start to kind of put together this this dream of putting together a investment fund for Malaysia that would invest into infrastructure in Malaysia to help make Malaysia like a superpower UM. And the idea was, will sell bonds to Malaysians and people outside Malaysia who believe in Malaysia. I guess UM too further that that economic growth. So Joe Low has this relationship with someone from Abu Dhabi in the government, and Joe says, I think we can also do this to leverage that relationship to create a stronger bond between Malaysia and and UH, the United Arab Emirates UM. And so basically they were able through the United Arab Emirates and through UH the Malaysian government to create this investment fund UM that they ended up calling the One Malaysia Development Burr HOAD, which they called the one MDB to put it all together. But these organizations, together with just the two of them, had a hard time generating. So he's living in New York. Sorry, he's living in New York. Yeah, and he is basically broker a deal between the Malaysians and the Arabs. He's kind of, why don't we invest together here? Yeah, why don't we make a fund together? And that fund would be cell bonds. Those bonds would go into our governments to help strengthen infrastructure in our nations. The issue is, because it was a new fund, a lot of people who would typically buy bonds had a hard time trusting them. Yeah, you got no track record. So they went and they found Goldman Sachs and they said, hey, do you want to be a part of this? And hey, we know you guys aren't doing anything sketchy in two thousand and six. Uh, and we know you guys will be around for a long time. We're just wondering if you guys want to invest in us. And they said yes, Yeah. Golden Sacks said, let us check with our accountants, who don't exist. Look over, it's just the Toothless Dragon from How to Train Your Dragon just sitting over there. You know. I was like, yeah, they said we can do it. You know who cares? Six baby, We're on top of the world. Yeah, money's fake. Uh yeah, so yeah, Goldman Sax did it. And then when they did that, people were like, oh, it's legit. A ton of people know bought these bonds. Man to be alive in two thousand and six would have been great, to the tune of around a billion dollars worth of bonds. Uh, I purchased and you just blew past to me not being alive in twousens six, I said it, and you were like to the two of a billion dollars dramatic, okay, billion dollars. So they sold a billion dollars of banks to Golden Sacks, putting their name on being like, hey, okay, we're a part of this, Joel. And so the idea and and it's unclear at this point who knew what was going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The idea was this is going to go to infrastructure, right Joel. Meanwhile set up a Swiss bank account under an LC. Um. That was how easy is it to do this stuff? Because I hear about people doing this stuff all the time. Uh, what do you mean, like set up Swiss accounts? I guess kind of easy. I don't know. Um, he sets up a company that's owned by a bearer bond. Heard of this? This is uh pretty sketchy. A bond bearer a bear or bond um bond bearer bearer bond. Yeah. A bond bearer is the person in the wedding ceremony who walks down the aisle with the pre nup in hand and makes each couple of sign it in front of all their family and friends. Here's what happens if this doesn't work out and he has to read the whole thing. Yeah, and he's like seven, so it's pretty difficult. There's some big words in there, you know. Looky, he's visiting his two front teams. He's got this weird list article one sect and the specified in the following prenuptial agreement. Excuse me, thought, what's this world? What's this word? So? So so Joe? He sets uh this this Elsie the Swiss bank account the other scene see is owned by a bearer bond. And the way bearer bonds work if you don't know um is it's a single owner of an else. But if you look on the documentation, it's owned by this bond, not by an individual, not like by a person. Is this bond account holds this company. And the way a bearer bond works is there owns the bond owns this company. Yes, bond, a bearer bond doesn't have to disclose the order the owner of that bond in any documentation. Whoever literally physically holds that bond owns a bearer bond. So it's incredibly easy to hide your ownership of a company if you own it through a bearer bond. What you mean physically holds you get printed our it's yeah, it's a it's a certificate like you got for graduating kindergarten. Uh. And if you your possession, yeah, then you know the owner of the company. And for some reason your house burns down or you lose that then and someone finds it, then they own the company. Because there's no documentation anywhere. It's literally honestly, it's literally designed for taxivation. Like there's no other Yeah, it's only designed for thieven. Yeah, there's no there's no purpose for this other than if your pa sketching. It sounds like it was made up for a director who wrote a really good movie. And someone's like, but it wouldn't work because like you could just people would steal the paper, they don't actually own the company. And he's like, yeah, well, we'll make up a thing called a bearer bond where they steal a paper and that means they own the company. Now, so you're saying, you're saying, this dude made a movie with a big plot hole. Yeah, real life had to figure out how to make it work. Yeah, because I mean otherwise or signed, Nick Cage is on set. Okay, Nick Cage can't just steal the deed to Dairy Queen all right? In uh are you kidding? Trying to like explain it in a sequel, Yes, he says, let's pass some legislation. Yeah, let's make it. That makes sense. I I should do that with my version of the mist Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's where he had a whole thing out. You know, Nick Catres already on set trying to steal the deed Dairy Queen, all right, And then you should have seen his face whenever King of Queens was already taken. He about lost his mind. Man, you're talking about wow, oh my gosh. Okay, anyways, is Kevin James the whole time Kevin James was in the midst the whole time. Queens said, in the same universe is the mids, and that explains everything. I mean, they're stacking stuffing doors. We're gonna keep this monster out. And from the mist comes Paul board Segue and all right out of there. Hey, I'm here to open Oh my gosh, okay, um where are we jolo um? So okay, so a bearer bond? So what's he doing with the bearer bond? Then? Oh, he just takes the billion dollars that word they made off selling the bonds and puts it in that Swiss bank account and then goes and tells tells all the other people are part of this. He's like, hey, we invested it in infrastructure. And this guy goes he's just siphoning money. Yeah, like literally all of it. Yeah. Um, And this dude goes freaking ham. He moves to l A and he starts going on these how do you spend bearer bond? You can't just show up to freaking know he put he put the money in the Swiss bank account. The LLC that owned the bank account was owned by a bearer bond, which he owned the bear bond. Okay, but you can't trace it. Back to him and got it. And so then he was just pulling money out cleaning. So he's just pulling money out cleaning it, and then and her bonds and five one see three. Okay, so he so serious, dude, People people gonna there's the minimum requirements to become a church are so little that we we could set up like a little close enough, were close enough, you and I this what this show what we do. We're close enough we could pull it off. We already have a set of parts space, We've already got like a regular meeting time we do, we record eachweak We're already counseling people. Yeah, I'm already a Christian. I mean we've all been on staff at churches count we have credentials. I have a lot of head knowledge. What do you have heart knowledge? Okay, So I'm saying a lot of people, you know, there's there's it's right there. We're closed. Uh cool, So join our church. Um text till into six six A six six, So the uh he goes to l A. He moves to l A, and he goes on an eight month bender. Um. And they estimate that in those eight months he spent eighty five million dollars. Uh ten million, yeah, ten million a month, and he was buying yachts, he was going to part throwing these huge parties where he was having and these parties he would literally um he would. So here's what he decided. Uh, when he moved to l A pretty quickly. In l A, he became enamored with the film scene and he wanted to be a part of it. And so he knew, the way I become a part of it is if I become friends with the people in the film scene. And so he's already got Golden Saxon's in his pocket. Yeah, he's like, you know who also hard and he's getting to know all these people. He's like, you know, everything's going to age. So well that's who ran. You're right, You're right. So he he said, the way I get close to everybody in Hollywood is if I throw parties that people in Hollywood are a party and so what he does, So what he did was he literally started calling agents of celebrities and saying, hey, I'll pay He said, I'll pay your talent a hundred thousand dollars to come to this party. Oh my, and the talent was like sure, and so he has all these pictures of him at parties. This is Joe Lo by the way, on the right with Leonardo DiCaprio, which, um, is this a younger picture of him? Why is this picture? I don't know what the deal is with that picture? Is a younger picture? I'm not sure? And it's you know that Leonardo DiCaprio was making money to get to be there. Yeah, and then like on the left, Yeah, that's a really bad picture of Paris Hilton, a really bad picture of Paris Hilton. And then he also clearly hung out with pit Bull the week before. It was like, I like that, look, I like that. Look, we're going with that. We're sticking with that. This guy this is him right yeah, on the right. Yeah, for context, And I don't mean this is an insult in anyway. Okay, his friends called him Flippy Panta, Okay, that was the nickname. He looks like the kid from Up. Oh, he actually really does. Look that's what I'm saying. Yeah, he looks like the up Yeah is this a you're a picture of him? It might be. I'm not sure what that picture is. Ok. I just found this Uncle Goal, but yeah, that's one of his parties with a bunch of celebrities that he paid to be there. What's this lady doing that's partying? Huh? I don't know. I've never been to a Hollywood party, even the bathing parties. Who's play his elbow because it kind of looks a little bit like Obama doesn't. That is an Obama hand for sure. All we can see is a hand. If you're listening, all you can see is a hand. But I'm not gonna lie. Obama got paid to be there. Huh. Oh my god. Oh? Speaking of getting, how do I get? How do I get to that level to where someone calls you and I wants to pay you a hund of thousand dollars just show up to your party? I think you just start emailing like venture capitalists, like, hey, I can show up at your event and here's my rate and what is that venture capitals at gmail dot com and just see what happens it. Talk to your agents, say give me some parties that I can get paid to go to. I was gonna say that we can getting paid. I mean to show you this. You've been on the road, Um, check out this on the road getting paid? Yeah, check out this load I found outstairs and this freaking sick look at that he's you pitched. I want to be very clear what you did, because that's hilarious that you did. That. Be clear. I'm crying, So to be clear. That's such an expensive drow you put on the space t Cord paid for. I have cru Okay, my mic is all messed up. Okay, so hold on. Two months ago, I lose my wallet and there was a wallet that was gifted to me by a company who makes pretty expensive wallets and they're really nice. And then you bought, paid for like a hundred dollar wallet identical to the one that I lost, just to pull it out and see ground this. Yeah, here's the thing. The first thing you did was a use me of stealing the first thing you did, and so when we left that day, I ordered it, shut up, and it came while we were in Orlando, and then you went on tour. It really is a great wallet, though I'm pretty stumped about it. Did you at least use my promo code? I did it, but I got one if you need it. When you that was a really funny bit. I hate that you spent a hunter hours than that. I've been waiting a long time for that duty to order another one. Delta, Delta, shut up. I have a promo code. I have a commission code. I could have made ten dollars on yours. Yeah, me too. Oh that hurt. Please give every affiliate code. When I'm on they're like, hey, here's an affiliate code. Well, they give me mine for free. For a while, I lost it. You don't take care of Actually that's a great segue. Um. Have you read of a Tilling podcast March? That's right. We have a merch store full of Tilling bread and tease hoodies, mugs, and so much more. We also make new designs for every single episode, but those are only available for a limited time, so get them while they're hot. Text Till into six six six to get your Tilling merch today. So, Joelo, that's what I said when I saw Kevin James come out of the midst. What a great SEGMENTE So Joe Low, it worked, It worked for him. Um, he had been throwing these parties trying to meet people in Hollywood, and he became friends with Leonardo DiCaprio. Yeah, probably not, Um, And I'm afraid of he's a picture with Leado DiCaprio, and you say he's friends with Leonardo DiCaprio. Listen to the rest of the story. Um So, Leo and his friend Martin Scorsese for a couple of years had been working on this film that they really wanted to produce, and they were struggling to get and he wanted to pay for it because it's a movie. It was going to be an our rated film, and it was gonna cost a hundred million dollars and so they knew in our rated film was already going to have a smaller audience at that time in industry. He was like, he was like, yeah, it's gonna be it's going to be impossible to fund it. So they're having a really tough time, and Leo met this dude who's throwing these gigantic, super expensive parties with a guy who's desperate to be involved in Hollywood, and managed to broken deal to have Joe Low produce The Wolf of Wall Street, which is the most poetic thing. So The Wolf of Wall Street, for the people who have not watched it, myself included, I'm only going off the plug in review right now. Is is a story of a huckster, a guy who was His name is Jordan Belfort, Yes name was selling penny stocks over inflating the price was kind of you know, taking money here, paying it off with another person living on like kind of the run of money. And that movie is produced by someone who is also doing that. That'd be like if you made a movie about me losing my wallet. That's so beautiful. Um. And here's the he's the best part of the irony of it is he credited in it. Yeah, he's in the credits as the producer. In Leo's speech at the Oscars that he got for it, he thanked Joe Lo. Uh. The best part about uh yeah, yeah, somewhere around there early the best part about it is Jordan Belfort, the guy that the Wolf of Wash Street is bates off of, who actually went to Yeah, he went to prison for two years, paid like a hundred million dollar fine. Um, he's obviously out of prison now. It's a motivational speaker. He is. Um. He got invited to one of Joel's parties and Belfort, the scammer said, this guy is not legit. I don't want anything to do with him. And the reason he cited as he said, nobody spends money, they earned it that way interesting, and he's like, this guy's not someone I want to be around. And uh, he was right, because Joe Low was stealing all that money and blowing the heck out of it and throwing these lavish parties and the scale of the parties he was throwing. Here's another another like famous story of a party through Uh one year for New Year's he said, how cool would be to do New Year's twice? And so he with all of his hired celebrity friends, rents a seven New York and then you fly and beat New Years. So he they did New Year's in Sydney, and they did the New Year's and he loaded all his celebrity friends in the seven forty seven, flew to Vegas and did New Year's in Vegas a few hours later. Um, that's the level of just crazy that this guy was. In the level of extreme agance that he went to his birthday party like rival Coachella, like that kind of stuff was what he was just known for being that. And so then in the midst of all of this, there probably should have been some red flags among some people that maybe this guy isn't using this the bond money. Well yeah, so he goes back to the Malaysian government and the Saudi Arabian government and Goldman sacks and says, hey, there's a lot more infrastructure that Malaysia still needs. Should we sell more bonds? And they're always yes, we should sell more bonds. So they did another round and they raised four billion dollars, of which he took the vast majority of it um once again funneling it through these Swiss bank companies. What he was doing though this time around was very clever because what he set up is he set up again Bearer bond owned companies, but he named the companies things like five done or TIMS don't LLC is pretty wid uh No. He would name the companies like black Rock Commodities Corporation, and so it's not the black Rock. But to us doing what I just joked about, to someone who's auditing you, they're like, oh, that's black Rock, like the big black Rock. Like okay, that's just probably one of the subsidiaries and they're not looking into it. And so he was literally doing that with massive corporations just naming something their name and commodities Blank Asian Real Estate Ventures or something like that. So it's like it's like, oh, yeah, that's a sub company of this major company, is what. Thanks for thinking when they were looking at it. So they thought these were legitimate transactions when he was just embattling funds. So very clever. Uh well, uh and uh the ls someone at I don't let me make sure I get this. This is he doing this all by himself? Like does he have a cheam of people? Well, an office that he goes to. Uh so who do you work for there? I don't really know. I can't put my finger on it. Last week, we spent an hour in our staff meaning debating why they called it donald McDonald. We came to a conclusion, um, and we made seven million dollars from that meeting. Somehow we each got paid seven million dollars being there. I'm not sure what you know. I don't really ask a lot of questions. It works out pretty well for me. Yeah, yeah, so we're going anyways. I'll see in Sydney, mate. So, uh, the Wall Street Journal uh wrote an article about it. They started looking into it and they found, oh, hey, all this money is going all over the place in weird ways, and if you followed it long enough down these trails, it would go through all these legitimate companies and then end up as a donation to the CEO of Goldman Sachs, to the campaign party, the campaign of the Prime Minister of Malaysia, to Abu Dhabi's like whatever fund, and all these were coming back to donations of these dollar donations. So this guy very clearly it was the plan from the beginning. And he said, Hey, I'm going to pay you a bunch of money, like and we're all gonna get super rich off this, and they were all like thumbs up. Yeah, And he masterminded the whole thing, was like yes, like yeah, we like that. We're all about that stuff. Um, we've got some other schemes that you might want to know about. Actually, would you like to be a part of another scheme? What do you think about some i mean some legitimate buying. Yeah, we've got great business opportunities for you if you want to be a part of them. Mortgages yeah, and also uh, donating to charity, doing these things, donating also um, getting ridiculous gifts for celebrities and famous people. He was dating a Victoria's Secret Fashion Show model, um, and so like he at one point, she was getting paid to date him. Yes. At one point, he bought a three hundred thousand dollar ferrari for Kim Kardashian for her as a wedding gift. Um, he's Kim Kardashian to who oh, I don't know whoever she was marrying at the time. And then uh uh a two million dollar ring for that girl he was dating. Uh he did, He proposed and gave it to her. Yeah, will you marry me? Here's two million dollars? And did they break up? Uh? Yeah, they didn't end up breaking up. Did she got to keep the ring? Um? Well, I was going to get to that, but yet no, Uh, all of these gifts. He didn't give it a Christmas time, just so you know, don't propose at Christma time if you don't think it's gonna work out, Because I you propose a Christmas time and her birthday, that rings a gift and it's no longer able to get back. So like right now, um, right now, if Reagan wanted to get out, then she's gotta give me that back because I had proposed an all, even even the month before July four. It's a rule. July fourth gift you can't do it anywhere here on holiday. Look what Jerry gobby for the fourth She could argue that in court, she really could. Yeah, I had a buddy who proposed a Christmas It did not work out because he proposed on December twenty three. She got to keep the ring because that was a gift because it was technically a Christmas gi. Yeah. He took her to chord over that. Well it was in their divorce stuff. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fair. Um, and so he took a court over that we broke up, and I want to so. And then he gifted Leonardo DiCaprio, Um, like some Picasso paintings and stuff like that. You didn't hear my joke about other celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio just gets gifted. Jonah Hill, he I bought own a Hill for you. Well thanks six Now he's in all your movies, you know, from Moneyball. Gave him back because I gave it to gave it. Well, actually, Jonah Hill, you belong to me now, Yeah, because what dud does Mark seventeen? That St Patrick's Day? So yeah, there's always a holiday glisten up. Okay, So yeah, he gave Leo a bunch of picassos and whenever everything blew up, um, the d o J started trying to get restitution for all the money that all the bondholders lost, to give the money back to the bond holders. So they actually went back to Kim Kardashi and his girlfriend to things, and they took that stuff from the celebrities, all the gifts that they received from this guy they took back. What sucks? That does suck? Yeah, Like look it's like it's like all that Kim to do with me. Yeah, yeah, it really sucks that they took that stuff from them. Kim Kardashi doesn't need a three right, but it's still it's frustrating. She doesn't still done because he didn't. And if you support on patron, we'll give her another ring to make up for it. You know, sorry, sorry for your last We're gonna send her a three dollars fer. It just says sorry about that first one. Don't scratch this. The the I R S might want this in a couple of years. Give it a few years. You have to keep him back. It's just a long term lease that we're not going to pay. Uh So, yeah, that would imagine he gives you a house though, Yeah, he gives you something, and at the time you think this is just a rich dude. Who's really Here's my other question. What if she sells the ring two million dollars right she had the money, would she would she? I don't know. Would she be on the hook for it not knowing that? Yeah, I don't know they would. It came from criminality. I don't know how they would handle that. And that's the thing that that's the thing that's tough with with this is honestly, like because of the way he lived during the height of this period, he was blowing millions of dollars a day, which means there's honestly a very high chance that all of us in the US at some point came in contact with Joe Low dollars um, Joe Lodo. We all earned a Joe Lodo at one point. That I hate that just because he had he had put so much of that end of the economy, um, because he was legitimately buying stuff, like he's supporting twenty different accounts, and I was like, well, that's crazy. Black Rock Commodities supports us on Patreon. I mean, I guess it's legit. We did do an episode. They were fans. Yeah, cool supports. He bought us Alex two years ago. We've been trying to give him t It's gonna be a rough day when the deal jacobs and takes out Alex. Oh yeah, she's right here on the shelf if you want her. That goes all right, Okay. So it feels like we've been talking too long. Yeah, okay, whatever, bro So as long astory short, um. This article came out that Chase the funds, and everybody was thin and everybody was like, oh, especially the people in Malaysia who bought the bonds. And it became a massive political issue because the Prime Minister was Yea and so this was in the middle of a campaign year because it was he was up for reelection and he expected the whole thing to just kind of blow over, so he never acknowledged it. Uh come the election, he lost the action. And this was crazy because it was actually the first time in sixty five years in Malaysia that uh, the other party, not the party that this guy was a part of, one an election and the first time in their history that an imposing party party one um an election. And so this this created a major shift in Malaysian politics. Um, because it was everybody was mad at this guy. Um. So he a week after the election, tried to flee the country. The prime minister, the former prime minister, and a mob stopped him at the airport and one of let him getting on the and he was like, I'm just going golf. I'm just going to listen, I gotta get to Sydney. Give me New Year's. I can't do one place. Yeah, I know, one of you. Now that I've tasted two New Year's, now that I've put the New Year's, I can't go back. What am I supposed to do one New year? What am I supposed to one year? No, I'm shooting for two years, two year New Year's. Oh my gosh. Okay. So he, uh, the government ends up raiding his house. Um a couple of weeks later and they find, uh, just a lot of money all over the house. They found like twenty million dollars in his house. Yeah, like twenty million dollars cash in his house and just hanging out. Yeah, he's He's like, it's my going to launch that one day and I was my backpack and the Tory R Bill fell out. I was like a hundred R bill fell out, and I was like, whoa whoosh that was in there. Ye maybe that was one of those moments where I felt much better than you. You know this guy, this guy's like he's like fluffing his cushions and millions just trying to fit his sheet over him. You know what the biggest struggle is, never fits over my two hundred twenty million dollars. You know, I don't know how to fold it. I can't get it around here. Oh my gosh. You know I I pulled some jeans out of the dryer the other day, realized that I washed a freaking Bearer bond in there. Lost a whole company. It's like it's that thing where he's trying to unfold it off flaky. Oh no, my chip clips hanging in his on his bathroom sink. Giant, honey, did you see my bear? I told you check the pockets for bear bonds. Never know where the ponds are your ring? Right now? I think that t J is gonna want that back. No, they ended up actually finding a bunch of jewelry. All these just like designer goods. They valued two million dollars worth of stuff in this Prime Minister's house and he was like he was like his campaign donations. It was a gistically leg that's what was supposed to speak on stage without a crisp par of sneakers. That's exactly what he tried to say. Oh is this case? Um? And uh so he goes he gets indicted and he starts going to the stigation. Interesting thing about Malaysian law though, he was still allowed to be a part of the parliament and so for four years, like not guilty for four years. He's like, next case. Oh, yes, I'm very familiar with this one. Um, should we read it out or should I just make my proclamation of what the verdict is? We'll read it out. We'll read it out. On December I made two I mean, defendant received two seventy four million dollars. Now, as we all know, that's Christmas time in Vegas, it's Christmas Eve and that's where I was, and that's where I was until later that day in Sydney, Australia it was also Christmas Eve. Time zones are weird, they're weird. I don't know. Set him up. Um so yeah, so he uh, he ends up still being a part of the part of the parliament voting on laws, being a part of everything until last year he did get convicted and got twelve years in prison for it. Um and uh, the director of Goldman Sachs. This was a part of his trial when I mean he went down for eight but he also went down for this. This was a part of his charge. Was this whole scandal because he was a big part of it. Joel on the other hand, when everything broke, Uh, he disappeared. Uh, and he's been gone ever since again. So he disappeared. He obviously had the means to flee the country. Yeah, and so he he's been spotted. Um, so we know he has a passport from Cyprus. Um. He's been spotted a lot in China all over like the towns and China at parties and Victoria's Secret fashion show. Seems to have not got it over the breakup. Um. Yea, let's just follow her around for a while. But he hasn't Uh, he has. He's not living the same lifestyle he was before. He's very much clearly hiding, but he hasn't been caught. He's charged in Malaysia, the US, I think in Switzerland where his tax saving stuff was and then all the sun in United whatever money he had, he probably pulled it out. Yeah, and he's somewhere. Yeah, I'm sorry, that's just my bed. Can I put this scarry on your bad? Was more comfortable last week when I was here? Oh yeah, I had to buy some stuff. It's a little uneven right now. Yeah, I gotta make some deposits in my flipping up a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, he's still at large. The United States really wants him. Um, they've so far recovered through restitution or three sixty million dollars um, but he's still like four billions so not even um and uh it probably never will. Uh. He's probably gonna live out the rest of his days in China, um, paying celebrities to hang out with him. So that's Joe low Man. Wow. So but hey, if you want to support us on Patreon, you can use your Joe low dough. It really helps. Oh wait, what we have to give that back? Yeah, eventually, but for now we can fiddle off things of him. Last Night is a production of Space tim Media produced by Christian Taylor. Audio is edited by Alice Garnett, Video by Connor Betts. Social media is run by Caleb Walker and graphic designed by Caleb Goldberg. Our host or Jarren Meyers and Tim Stone. Please follow us on social media at tilling podcast. That's t I l o in Podcast, Leave a review, comment, subscribe wherever you are. Thank you for listening to Things on the Last Night. H
In the shadow of the 2008 housing crisis, one Malaysian businessman was building staggering wealth. It was an era wrought with financial fraud, and he was no different. Jho Low has become infamous for his lavish lifestyle and multi-million dollar benders. One of his most significant claims to fame was a new years eve event that he celebrated in Sydney, … Read More
Eve Online – The Video Game With a Better Economy Than Us
Episode Transcription
Made by robots, for robots. Only read if you're weird.
Hey man, what's up? Oh wow, hey, have you ever heard of eve online? Eve online? Eve online? Eve online? You know what it sounds like? Even, No, it's eve online. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, Eve is that what you're saying. That's exactly what I'm saying. Eve Online. It sounds like at the Pyramid Scheme website, or um a adult relationship or uh no, actually not even close. Neither of those. Well, actually the first one maybe kind of like a pyramid scheme kind of a wait, before we go too far into this, we have a third microphone set up. Now, we've got something exciting today. So whose voice are we about to hear? Alex say something? Something? That's enough of that anyway, eve online. As soon as we set it up. As soon as we set it up, I'm gonna le him say one one. I mean, yeah, you literally only got me this. You can shut me down right away. Alright, alright, Connor, edit that part out where he's saying more stuff. I'm only sending that to con that one word. I will only send Connor the part where you try to shut me down. It's incredible. Yeah, it says, wow, I hate it already. Look what you a theme song. What are you giving me that? Facebook? I don't know, don't give me that face left for thousands from the one. It's great for referencing this really niche joke, king niche podcast Managin getting fired by somebody and then they leave to do all work things I learned last night. Okay, Eve online is a man simply multiplayer online while playing game. Okay, is everyone named Eve? Yeah? Every character is named Eve. No, it's actually a space game. This is an alien episode. Um no, it's a space game. Uh that takes place like years in the future and like the fictional Eden galaxy. Okay, and so it's name because it's long gone. Yeah, we've destroyed that a long time ago. Um. What tier in the Karna Chief scale are they on? I don't know. Actually, that'd be a fun, fun little exercise. It's worth going to the video just to see whatever weird thing Tim Shoulders just did. Fun little excerci little exercise. It's being a fun little exercises. Oh my gosh, I was gonna bring up what we did last week. Okay, cool, Yeah, that's good. We had a good time. If you're listening to this, this happened like a month and a half ago now, but because we record so far in the future, but well in the past past. Um no, but we just did a thing for Google. Yah, man, I hope we don't screw this up by the time this comes out, because what if, like Google hates us by the time this comes out, We're not allowed to say their name anymore. Yeah, we did a thing for and uh no, they we got down there and did this eight hour live stream. If you have not watched it yet, it was Honestly, I had a lot of fun. Yeah, you can Google Google Play and uh look, you go to Yahoo, you type in Google. You know. I'll be honest. When I was in college and I would be I would got friends zoned, you know, and girls would then ask me for a relationship advice. And I felt the way that Yahoo must feel when someone uses their search bar to type in Google, or when you install Safar or you go to Safari to install Chrome. It's the same thing. That's how it felt to be darn in high school. This is a fun bit. I'm glad we gave Alex. I'm like, um, okay, is it back to eve online? So Evonline? Uh didn't even you just wrapped up the Google thing that fast? Oh, did you have something else you wanted to say about it? You didn't want to say anything that fun about it? Oh, it was a lot of fun whatever. You can go watch it as what I'm saying it was. It was genuinely a FUNI My favorite part about it is it was at a oh we can't say that word. It was a park, uh that that also took over a city park? Was that a park that also has film studios on it? And they gave a couple of tours while they're there, and we're walking around with like the security detail everywhere we got. We were looking thought we were famous. I saw them looking at us, and I'm like, little, do you know Instagram followers? I saw an autograph? Yeah, so I was like James and it was just great. Okay, so eve Online, Uh, this game is interesting. I'll give you a little bit of synopsis and then we'll get into why we're really talking about it. Because the year is twenty one, two thousand two. Yeah, I guess that's two years in the future. How are they going to do that? That's not our problem. But how are they gonna tell? How are the gonna say time? They'll probably just have another christ that they start time probably, I guess every time it's getting too high to keep track, like's what easier to start a new Christianity every time. There's a reason why this game is significant. We'll get to that in a second, but I'm gonna give you a very brief synopsis of what it is. Okay, it's it's a space age simulator. Really. Um So, the the idea is you get dropped into this universe where there's a ton of stuff going on and you kind of have to pick a career and live in this world. And so there's a bunch of options. You can be like a minor. You can be a merchant, you can be a shipper, you can be a soldier. Like there's choose this though when you sign up for it. I mean, it's not like it's like pick your option. It's as you get going, like you're creating your path. It's a lot like real life, like nobody tells you, like nobody getting when they were forming me in the womb. They weren't like a podcaster, you know, there was a perfect words. It was a bunch of options. It was you walking what would you like to play? Choose my outfits podcaster comedian Oh my gosh, Uber Driver, that was the past. Yeah, but we're recording in the past. Okay, Uh so I hate you for that. Um yeah, so you you're you basically are. It's kind of like the SIMS, but if the SIMS took place years from now in a different galaxy, um, and you're just trying to live your life. Uh. What's interesting about it is that it's it's pretty big. They've got nine million players. Yeah, they've got nine million players. Were saying, that's happening now. Yes, the game came out in two three. It's still active. There's still nine million players play. Many people are actively playing RuneScape. Well, let's find out google it. Let's let's can't use it as a verb. Let's being that you just did. You just did the worst RuneScape. Now their player counts fifty seven thousand. Really, what was just a peak? Much more than that? That's so little? All right, Let's see the peak. M M. I don't know this number. This is giving the paying subscribers. At one point one million was the peak, and it says in addition to many millions. That's what I'm saying to access. Yeah, that's what I'm saying, so they only have fifty thousand players now, which doesn't surprise me a lot. I mean, we're scape kind of thought out a favorite years ago. Really, yeah, you're the only person I know who's still interested in I don't still play it. I'm not still interested. I don't think I've logged in and probably six seven years. I mean I logged in like last year or maybe to be like look at my Yeah, sometimes I log in and remember my achievements of the past. But um, that sounds crazy because yeah, there was millions of people who played it. Yeah, there was at a time I was a paying subscriber. Were you really Yeah, you're one of the one million for one point one first of all, and I was the point. Congratulations you're the point. Yeah, so that's interesting. Okay, So there are nine million players current, nine million players currently. Um, it's a modern day Rainscape kind of is um, and it's always in the headlines. I gotta start playing again, then, god one, you know, okay? Cool? Uh? Eve is always in the headlines. What do you give me that faceboo? I don't know, don't give me that phase. King left for seven thousands from the one that was my user name and RuneScape and Subway uh. And my mom texts me when we were doing the Renaissance outfits on the Google Play live stream, and she said, if only Subway King could see you. Now, that's hillarious. I love that your mom knew you're using him. I don't think my mom knew my She paid for the subscription, so I was a sixth rater a credit card and said, congrat Subway King on you. It was too Yeah, that's funny. Um. I wasn't a paying subscriber, so I tried to sign up for one of these games Way to play as Subway King, and the user name was taken and I was like, there's an impostor someone's out there. They're the real Subway King. And I someone someone saw that scar Subway King the RuneScape character at gmail dot com. And it's not them, it's not me. It's someone saw Subway King on Escape and they're like, oh, that's a cool name. And then they went and they set up a Subway King from then on, I guess. Anyways, so this game is always in the headlines for a few reasons. I've never heard of it. Yeah, well you're not looking okay, it's the headlines for a few reasons. One, Um, there's a lot of scams that happen in it too. There, it's in the headlines for in game scams both and too because it's economy is uh basically real Like it's basically the same as our economy. And there there's like a second life situation where kinda um but a little different. But the economy is so realistic that economists will look to decisions that are made in the game to forecast what will happen in the real world when those decisions are made, because that's how realistic it is. But it's only realistic. Yea, it's super easy to be like, yeah, I mean, whenever we're get to a time in the world, this is what's going to happen to the economy. Yeah, I want anybody to think about the economy. Uh. And Third, because they have these um the thing with how is the economy realistic? I guess what will be doing a more definitely okay. Um. And then the other thing is like talking about Rindscape. Rin Escape there was a couple hundred people in a server at a time, which was a lot for the time. That's what I'm saying there's one point one million people. That's what would be like one server, well in a specific server back back then, because they had separate servers a max limit, so you could have what a few hundred in the specific we had a couple of thousands, you know, um, but there was a limit. Eve there's theoretically no limit to how many people can be in a single server at once. So the wars that they have are huge, are gigantic, and so they're constantly in the because they're here. Let me show you actually have a screenshot. This is actual gameplay footage of a war. All these are players in game. I thought you me a dead guy, fully expected it, and so it's just it's absolute insanity because there's those are literally thousands of I guess I don't understand where the players the players are the ships, so they are all the spaceships are controlled by an actual player. So these are a bunch of ships or is this one ship? No, that's a bunch of ships that have amassed and no one to mak a ship. Is that It's like it's like powering, that's what you're saying. They come together. Well, yeah, it's not intentional. They're just flying so close together. They've morphed into a blob of and then this one guy at the end is taking on the blob. It's like, I kind of I could to handle them. This looks like it would be a Nerds desktop background. It's got the color makeup and all that stuff, you know, all it's missing as the little weirdly placed files. Yeah yeah, um yeah. So they literally will have thousands of players in these battles. And the reason why it's making headlines though, is because of the cost of these battles because the economy. So that cost well yeah and no, uh so let's take a look at the economy will come back. Here's the cost of these battles. Many young men aren't getting married anymore. Look at the social cost. That's the true cost of video games is the young uns aren't reproducing anymore and there are a thousand years you know. Okay, so the economy, this is the economy. And this is crazy because the whole thing is played a run. So most games you play, if you wanted to do anything, you're engaging with other with like NPCs that which are not player controlled. Um, and it's like non player characters. I'm not an idiot. Yeah, you're good. Uh, and it's stuff where the developers had set specific prices for items, created quests that you're supposed to go on and mission doesn't happen. Yeah, all this stuff is because it's it's pre assigned. Well, in this every step of the road is done by players through the economy down to the entire supply chain. So there are people who their job is to go out and mind the materials who then they sell it to or they ship it somewhere. That's their whole job. Yeah, what do you do? Every day? I go mind things so that my friend can go to war. Yeah, every day I mind stuff and I go back to my computer wife, Um, who's actually my real wife and real life she's upstairs. That's my wife. That's my life wife. And then my Yeah we're married in the game too. And uh what I would I have chosen something different shirt? You know, but I didn't know when my characters run at the beginning, I was gonna be stuff like this forever. Yeah, I mean like when I got a college, sure, I got a lot of MYSTA made a lot of mistakes. You know that everyone's born rich, Like my buddy who was able to start, he selected rich. What would you like to do? Would you like to be a potter? Do you want to be a woodcutter? Or do you want to be rich? And I chose rich. You know who's gonna fop me for that? And now the porores want to say I didn't earn it? You know, what do you mean? There's people who mind there is there's a job where they go to the asteroids and they mind stuff off the asteroids and then they pass us off to shippers who ship it off to a marketplace where people who run What if shipper people are no? What if no one wanted to be wanting they are? Well, actually there was an issue. There was an issue about this firing signs within the game. We could actually touch on that in a second, but let's go through the full supply chain first. Hey, thanks for checking out this episode. If you like this podcast you want more of it, please leave a review. That's super helpful to let others know who are searching for a podcast. And if you're new around here, we've been doing this for several years and there's plenty of episodes to check out. One of my personal favorites is Agent garbo Is a guy who went to the government during World War Two and was like, hey, let me be a double agent and they were like no, and then he was like, well, I'm gonna and so he kind of went off on his own did the thing. And it's also got some crazy details about World War Two about how the US used inflatable tanks to trick Germany. All kinds of fun stuff. But if you want to go check that out, you can. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. So they actually have there's a full on supply chain. Yeah. There, you're cruise ships too, they've traveled, they get stuck in the canal, let's space canal. They really do? You have people who are mining stuff off the and then shipping it to a marketplace where the marketplace is selling those goods to refinement companies that are refining those minor materials companies. Yeah, and those they refine the stuff ship it off to a marketplace where it's purchased by a CEO refinement company. Yeah, oh really, like you guys, it's it's an e commerce, it's an eve commerce thing commerce and and then they the refiners ship it off to a marketplace. The marketplace then sells it to manufacturers. You manufacture goods for end users, and then that gets ships to actual marketplaces where people purchase all sorts of different goods their bots in this game. No, it's all player. It's all there should be. There should be. There should be bought miners who pass it off to boss shippers. So all this stuff is not player. That's what I'm saying. There's no way someone logs in every day and it's I got a mine so my friends can go to war to work, Cutty, I played a crucial role in the war. Really, what you do? I made the materials, I refined it. We're talking about I mean logically with that, that means someone plays this game and chooses to be a mid level HR executive that just makes decisions on like payroll. Yeah, somebody plays the game and chooses to sit there at a table and mix a podcast and then chime out every once in a while. That was their choice at the beginning. That's somebody's life choice. This is really far down in the street, like drop down then, and they don't get paid for it. I mean they have paid, but not alone, not enough just to his life life life life. So there is that's got to be an hr. There is someone just literally pushing paper in a what is the thing? Because there's full nations that have boundaries of and they call them alliances, and they have boundaries of their territory inside this universe and within yeah, and within those they have elected officials, they have laws, they have leaders through a text based game. I think there's Mike's there's Mike. You think someone is just powerful enough they're like, hello, I will lead you. And there's a bunch of twelve year olds, you know, they're like, okay, like my mom cuts my steak, you know whatever they say. Twelve year olds roll. They're out there like I guess this guy will lead us because he's old. Sir, can you cut your own steak? Yeah? Wow? But it's just it's just a it's another twelve year old going yeah, this is what I sound like because I'm an old man. Yeah, I got my stick all the time. Uh. And so these nations is so stupid, and inside them our corporations that live within these nations, and those corporations have specific tasks like refining materials and manufacturing slowly over time. So what the game developers did is they built this universe with all these kind of parameters around it and then just let the players run wild and do whatever they did. And this is of future second life similar, I guess, but it's much more it's much more realistic. Their full time job is to be in this game now. So that's that's the issue. Which, uh, that's the issue. The issue is that some of these people are devoting fifty hours a week to this and then they have another job and then they're like, oh my gosh, me and my job is just not fulfilling cause I'm a minor. There are people who are to stick at it for another fifteen years. I'll get my pension. The problem is, I don't know if you're making this joke about the person's real life or the game. It's both great. Every day was that every day on mine? And then I go home and mine, Um yeah, so to a wife that's mine and then in my dreams. I that's what I meant when I signed up. But the M and the IN are too close to each other. I said, I don't want to be a mine. I want to be a Space five so bad? Where would it be? We should we should do a mind podcast where we just released a forty minute blocker silence every week the mind gast. I mean, it wouldn't go on Spotify because they check for that. Now, someone released an album that was like an hour of silence and they just told all their fans like, hey, listen to this while you sleep, and it paid royalties and Spotify got mad. Well, we would we would do all the hand motions. Yeah we could. He yes, my mar Wow, that killed me. That was like wheezing over here. I can't breathe. Okay, okay, So where was I your lungs away from the mind, from the So there's a whole I mean. So it got set up slowly over time, slowly over time. Um, and it's it's similar to Second Life, but a little different because of a couple of things. The biggest one being is you can spend real life dollars to get game dollars. They they're called issk, and the exchange rate is uh. It's about six U S dollars for one billion esk. Uh. So geez. So I mean that they're spending the buying power isn't great, so six six dollars gets you a billion ESK. The problem is you can't go from in the game out where a second life you could in this well you can go from in the game out, but not by the rules. Yeah, there are like um like yeah, websites where you can there's paces for rinscape where you could buy a hundred thousand gold coins for or whatever, but they exchange rate is not as good. Like if you're gonna sell on those and you're selling a billion disk, you're not gonna get six dollars back for it. You're gonna get like two or three. Okay, So the exchange rates not the same when you're if you're trying to go from game to real life money. Um, but it's possible. Game doesn't want you to do it. They've talked about maybe doing that in the future, but it's a gray area. But it would just make our economy too shaky. Well, they're they're concerned is that there's I mean, the game has been around since two, doesn't three, and so there's some people who earned a lot of money in this game, and if they all just mad rush to get rid of all their money to get real money. That one, there's the logistical issue of the the publisher having to try to pay out that money. There's a lot, but also, yeah, there's no economy. What about the economy. It's a it's a real thing. Um. And so a few things have happened in this game that are very unique. The first one was casinos, uh space casinos. So a few of these corporations got together and they opened up casinos which worked exactly like casinos. You go in there, you gamble. You maybe making money made the mechanics the games to gamble, while gambling was a mechanic in the game. These people were like, we're corporatizing it, making a casino making a big thing. Hey, but as you know, the house always wins. And so these people made a stupid load of money off of them, um, and a lot of them. By the way, a video game casino a river over here with a speakeasy inside the speakeasy Cassini pouring out cocktails every night. Did you see it was I can't remember what the context of it was, but I texted you and I texted the pouring out drink, pouring out drink, and I don't texted me something. It was an emoji, but it was a drink getting poured out, and there was that reference. And I was like, how is there an emoji for this? There's there's an emojis search emojis poured out. There's one, and it's it's great for referencing this really niche joke in this niche podcast. If you ever need it, it's there. So there's all your friends thanks to the drink. No. So, the casinos were huge profitable, and the casino owners they some of them were getting into that underground a stage world, like taking real money out. Um, because they're making millions of dollars a day this game, this game, the game developer said, right now they are processing within the game's marketplaces over million transactions a day. Uh. It's a massive economy of just stuff getting around currently a million a day. Um. And where is the game based on the internet space? Um, I don't know, let me look, Uh Iceland? Oh Iceland. Yeah, yeah, they're from Uh don't don't don't do this to yourself, Ricky Vick. I gave you the outvick Iceland. Um. Yeah, so yeah, I vacation there last year. I'm very rich. I chose rich at birth. Uh. And so the the casino operators they started actually money laundering within the game. Uh. And so they shut it down. They were like, no more casino casinos aren't allowed. How are they money laundering? I think I think it was legitimate money laundering where they were putting taxes in the game. What do you mean they were money laundering? No, no, no, no, I think it was legitimate money laundering. They were taking real life money, dropping it in the game, cleaning it the casinos in the game, and then pulling it back out and selling it out and pull the money out. So it's like legitimate and Mondey laundering. Not we mean pulling it back out and selling the same thing where we talked about a second ago, where you could you can sell the disk and then get the money out. So they were putting it in to buy disk in the game, cleaning it in the casino, and then pulling that clean cash out back out by selling it in another marketplace. Okay, which is just I don't start a real casino man. And so the game company, you only got six dollars. I need the launder these six dollars. Hey, you're a guy, can help me a laundry six six million, six hundred thousand. So I need the launders seven dollars. Since I think at that point the guy just walks over to a vending machine, puts a dollar and hits coin return and clean the money. That's clean. You just throw that zip lock bag of quarters. Now. Yeah. So it's the some people started buddy lundering and they were like, yeah, we need to shut this down. Casinos all got shut down, and that led to a bunch of issues. Riots in the streets where the casinos in the space streets. Uh so, uh so, here's here's the issue. Number one was the casinos died. Issue Number two that started forming in the game was the game does have taxes. Um, there's a couple. There's a couple of forms of taxes in the game. One there is like a state tax for whatever nation or they call alliance you're a part of, uh and so you pay like a one person tax of your income to these alliances. How do they know to these alliances? They operate these taxes, And what they do is with when you're within their borders. They have their military, which is just other players that friskers. They protect anything that happens within their boundaries. So if you're running a company, if you're mining, they're protecting your company. They're protecting Yeah, it's just like in the other country. Sure, but how do they know how much money you're making? I don't know. They can just r s they have. I don't know. They don't know who the profit is on your corporation. I think they do. I think there is you have to. I think all that stuff gets reported in game, just like it doesn't realize. Again, someone shows middle management for their online game, I guess someone's just a real rule follower. I mean they've got them, They've got the rules in it. I'm a miner. Do you hear my voice crack? It wasn't because it's because I didn't mean like a minor. There are children in the game. So the uh, the tax to the alliances is not that big of a deal for the players. It's like one percent. It's not a huge deal. The sales tax, on the other hand, was a big deal. If you selling it within our alliance would tax you. Yeah, So there was, and when the game first started, there was you could go approach any other player and sell to another player just like, hey, you want to buy this thing? Like you can't? Now, there was this thing do you need invented trade? Like there's this thing where like you could just go up to somebody and be like, hey, you want to buy something, and it's like totally revolutionized the way the real economy works. You can't do that real life. You can't just walk up to someone like, hey, you want to buy something? No one, No one will say yes, they will be They will be like, which one of those you steal it? You steal that? Where did you get it? Should I buy that? Sorry? Do you take cards? Which one of those? Do you think? It's sells things better if we had if we had square card readers, maybe card readers selling the card reader? What are you talking about? What carries cash anymore? Sure? Yeah? I mean yeah, so we would need a card reader agree to buy something without actually selling it. Also, your car today, whether you like it or not, I don't think you you you know I could? Yeah, you can't even open the door. You wanna for a test drive? Yeah? You get to crawl on the passengers? Oh, give me one second, hold on, hold on, reach over there. I'm doing the thing where I'm putting my foot on the door and trying to pull the door, trying to pry it open. Yeah, nick open? Okay, So no that originally you could sell player to player anywhere just by striking a conversation and saying, do you want to buy something? Um, But there were specified market places built by the game within specific locations where you could go there was a major marketplace. Yeah. Within those there was a five percent sales tax. And there's a few reasons the game did that. The biggest one was to take money out of circulation to keep things from getting yea um. But obviously if you're selling a billion dollars for six dollars, so the obviously the ultra rich in the game, we're like, I gotta find a way to get out of this, and so they did. They started building these tax havens, which were marketplaces that these players built inside the bounds of their own nation where they could set the sales tax rate because it was their own marketplace, and then they could with them and all their players and allies, they could come there and do their their business there and get the one percent sales tax instead of the five percent sales tax. Uh. This became a very uh interesting event in the game because once this was figured out, a bunch of people started trying to do it, and then there was this huge competition for these marketplaces, which sparked a lot of war because there were certain marketplaces that were more valuable than others, that either had better tax rates or more customers than others, and everybody wanted to be able to sell their product from there. And so so what product, I don't know, that's their minds. Just like Etsy, you want to buy like Disney ears for your character, we mean their product. It's still part of the game. Yeah, they're just making something up. Yeah, I guess I'm selling this bronze sword that I found and I want to make sure I get the best tax break on it. Were you talking about? And it probably these huge wars UM, Where can you show me a picture of what just gameplay looks like? Yeah, so I can get a better better idea of what this is. Not that picture, tim oh. I also I do have this is UM. In the main markets in the game, they have logs of pricing for everything UM, and so it keeps track of uh, real time prices. So this is a medium, and so it keeps shock of what is happening in the economy and how valuable the goods that you have are. And so it was almost like a stock market where you could get goods escape had the grand Yeah, so yeah, they had the same thing. Great, it's the same game Escape, except run Escape was set in BC. I was gonna set in medieval times, which, depending on what you think about history, may or may not have happened. Let's see here. Um, I don't think history happened, man, you don't know. The more I think about it, I go before I was here, nothing was here, you know, that was none of this existed. There's no way any of this was real before me. So here's here's someone flying through space in the game. Oh, this is like pretty huh. Yeah, it's like good graphics and there this server is big enough to handle all this. Yeah, it's kind of insane. Um okay, yeah, so it's a it's a big game, man, big game. It's crazy. Some people are wanting to fly through space and other people are just sell eliminated on the side of the space rock. There's gonna be someone who's cleaning up the space rock. There's gonna be a janitor. Yeah, there are there are somebody's gonna do it. I was listening to it, and there is. Uh. There was a common tactic in Battle where they would blow up entire moons to create an artificial asteroid belt, so that way reinforcements would have a harder time getting into the combat. That though, it's kind of cool, so, but then the man ensure that moon, my moon, my moon, my space moon. One of the moon is there, Tim, go ahead, Okay, so they're all space moons. I know that's jokey. Hey, thanks again for listening to this episode. If you like our show, make sure you follow us on social at Tilling podcast, or subscribe anywhere where you're listening to right now, whether that's YouTube, Spotify, or Apple podcast, whatever it is. And if you want more, we do have a Patreon you can support us on. In there, you get all sorts of perks like add three episodes, early access to our content, and even a discord with our hosts and producers. So we'd love for you to check that out. All you gotta do is text till into six six six. That's Till into six six six six. But thanks again for checking us out. So these tax havens pop up and these special wars, and what happened was there wasn't specific before the tax havens, the five nations lived at the peace. Is that what you're saying? Kind of there was these specific tax havens. It was safe nations alliances. Are there dozens but the most prominent ones. There's about eight prominent ones. But it really does reflects the world. Yeah yeah, um. But it got to the point where with these tax havens where marketplaces. Um, these wars uh made it to where it was only safe or profitable to use specific ones. So a bunch of other ones they couldn't afford the upkeep, and they fell into disrepair and basically disappeared. Um. I mean they're still floating through space. But how do you how do you fire something in this world? There you go? Hey man, I know, I know this is what you chose at the start. Hey man. Sorry, UM, I asked my mom how to run this business and she said that our revenue is too low and will you you are I'm really sorry about this. To protect the company, and it's just I think that you're fired. They'm ruth sorry about it. What are I supposed to do? I got an eve life? I'm sorry, I'm twelve. I don't have a life. Wife alred eve wife. I don't even know if I want one. Last last time this happened, I applied for the deployment that they didn't grant it. Well, did you? You don't know what unemployment is. My mom's calling. I gotta go. I got homework, managin getting fired by somebody and then they leave to do homework. Hey, lawyers, I know you did accounting for our alliance real quick? Could you help me with my math homework? Are you lead this? Yeah? I am the leader who needs help with thisth homework. This is stupid. Yeah, so so yeah, so that was a big deal, right, the tax havens. And then there was this season in the game where there was just this over abundance of goods because players were playing a lot and then a bunch of goods entered into the economy. But there was more than purchased um and pop yes, shut. And so what was happening was there was just so much out there that it kind of became there was no point to the game because anybody could go get whatever good they wanted. They could mind it, they could get it, and then they could go upgrade shipping within the game. What's the point of it? Got kind of boring, and so what the I'm so rich, you know, and I sit here and like, you know, and now my goal was kind of shifted. I want to give that money back. You know, I would love to. I would love for you to be rich one day. It's very far in the future, so I have you can watch my course yeah on how I got very rich. You can also buy my protein powder mix, rich mix, ch mix. Drink it once a day and you'll get rich one scoopid day. It's more about the mindset of the rich. Yeah, you'll get rich and jacked. Uh So, the developers created an artificial recession. And the way they did that was one they crunched the supply of goods in the universe. So they took how much you could get from mining, and they crunched it down a lot. And so that was it was not as easy to get materials, which over time shrunk the amount of goods in the universe. They also increased the amount of materials you needed to produce anything. Uh so, for whether that was ships or weapons or make a bigger Yeah, yea, I get you. And this created this big recession in the game. Uh And so these three factors, the casinos getting crushed, the tax havens becoming this kind of choke point, and then this artificial recession sparked this massive war in the game where there was now specific regions in the universe where they see each other out in public. That space Imperium one too, and he's like, I should slap that guy. Yeah he's a mom um. This man's being mean to me in the store. Brian, this is awkward. I fired you last week. Visit me alone. I gotta go to practice. Yeah you did. It's a twelve year old, that's what idiot. So I like the idea that was a grown man showing up to a middle school with the stand outside and confront confront the kid. Fired. Honey, I gotta go to Indiana. You know, it looks like I go to Indiana. It's just you know, one time when my spats out, there was a guy this is my my town was there was a guy with a monkey outside our middle school. Just was there a reason or yeah, he's picking up his kid and had a monkey, and all the kids were coming over and like they're like, oh my gosh, she's a cute little monkey, right and uh and then someone called the cops and they were like, this guy is trying to lure Well it's Mount Vernon, dude. Yeah, everyone knew who this guy was. He knows all the teachers. He's not. He's like, he's the guy that owns half the town. Someone was like, oh, that's creepy. He took an ad out in the paper. It was like, hey, guys, that was just me. Sorry that for all the confusion. Did he take an ad out to say? Sorry? That was me? Yes, because he just tell someone? What do you mean tell someone? He told them when the police showed up, they were like, oh yeah, but you said, there's what like, how many people were in your town, like four thousand people? Sure that he could have just talked to everyone individually. Sorry, that was me. Yeah, he's been doing that every day since. He has a coffee with one person a day, you know, someone whom died for ever. That time ten years ago, there was a guy outside the middle school really fast too that time, Remercible, the marketing and that's called the const paper. I was like, hey, that was me. That was me. I'm sorry about it, Like, okay, all right, I'm twelve. I was too a time. Thanks for telling me. He took an ad out on the paper because it's it's a well known person in our town, and anybody in the town knows who it is, but one parent didn't know and made this whole fiasco. Yeah, so then he took on the paper. It was like it was just me and my monkey. I'm safe. So this recession prompted a massive war where you might call it a world war or a universe war, um, where all the alliances in the game started vying for these areas. They have uniforms, colors like how do you know when when you're seeing somebody who's in your alliance, Well, I mean you've got your ships all have like their insignia and stuff like that. Um. And they would have those massive battles like the one that I showed you, and that's where they were getting the screenshots because these were getting financed by in game players who are obviously like they earn a lot of their money and game they probably did put some real money towards it, but the value, like an exchange rate of these battles was in the millions of US dollars, but it was game dollars, you know. So there were these massive because because in the game, like if you die or your ship gets destroyed, it's gone, like you don't get it back and you don't get your life back. Well, I don't know if you get your life back. I'm not sure about that, but I do know any good that you use is gone. So your amm o, your shields, your ship, your citadel's, your marketplaces, like if they get destroyed, they're gone for good. Um and so you're totally out that investment. And so these were massive people were losing a lot of money. They're losing a lot and it's not that that matters a time because there's not a good way to pull that money out. Yet there could be in the future talks of that, but there's peoples have been ruined by this thing, right probably, I would think. So. I mean, there are there are people in here who are like political figures, like they know who they are. There's one nation in there where they have their leader of their nation is like a um hm, like a celebrity because he'll do I mean they all all of the leaders will do speeches and they will have like big like press conferences where they meet with the people in the nation. Because these nations are these alliances, some of them have in for a couple of days. Everyone's like, what happens if the leader dies in real life? Yeah, I don't know, and the word just has to my sudden. One day they will get a message that's like, hey, guys, he wanted me to get on his computer and let you guys know that this was his passion in his life. What it's like an encrypted message on his website. That's what I'm saying. That was the joke. Yeah, that's what I was hoping you were doing. Didn't There wasn't a clear hook, so I wasn't. I was supposed to be good enough that only the real listeners got it. But then you were like, oh, it's like a callback told me quiet pills. So, uh these trying to do art over here, dude, Oh, it's like a colla. Uh So, because these these nations, they are made up of literally thousands, you could have stopped. You could have stopped thousands of people. Um, and they all have roles. So there's been nations who are just gonna obliterated. They're just done. Yeah, they get wiped out pretty quickly because I mean there's a few thousand versus tens of thousands, a bunch more money. Honest, what do you do? Do you just join one of the other ones if your nation dies? I don't know, I don't know. It's probably pretty similar to whatever happens in the real world. You just kind of get assimilated. I guess, um, your culture gets taken over. Uh. But the I watched a gameplay video. Actually it's interesting, like some of the players who've been in the game longer are like the commanders of armies now, and it's very interesting watching it because they I don't know, I feel like you get in most video games and you hear people on the chat and it's just kind of absurd. But in this one, like the yeah, the commander and they know that country, they I know, they're fighting style. Yeah, the commander was on there and he's like he's like, all right, recycle hypercanons one, two, six on this target and then like naming it. And then he's like he's like fire, fire, fire, and he's like hold, He's like all right, and then what a recycling? Just one fire? And yeah, It's like it was very Do you think they practice they have to, because it was like watching it was it was honestly like it was methodical. It was very smooth. Um, do you recruit do you have to try out? You start as a minor and then you get in there where they go to the high school, the space high schools. How many push ups can you do? Run the forty? You know, they do typing tests well to all the characters run the same speed. It's like, well, if you have that mentality, you're not fit for our military. Uh yeah, it looks like you're gonna be a miner. Uh yeah. So it's a studying school. Kids work hard. Otherwise you'd be a miner for your whole life. Um yeah. So it's it's a wild game with an economy that's ridiculously accurate to the real world. They modeled it off the after the NASDAC and it's economists. There's a lot of economists who look at it because that's what's interesting is you'll see these headlines pop up in gaming like websites. But you'll also see these headlines pop up in these like economy and uh yeah about like this economy in this video game is so it goes Nasdack Dow Jones. Let's see what's going on in this Um. Yeah, they're having these recessions and these crashes and the havings. You know, I guess since ever since the war, Oh honey, I haven't been the same since Castle fired me yesterday. That's his real name. Um. They they even Imperium is one of the nations, is the biggest one in the game. During that big war, they even sold war bonds to their people to finance the war. What are you spending on your money on war bonds? Virtual war bonds? Hey, do your thing man? Whatever? Yeah, So, I mean it's a super realistic game. There's a possibility in the future that they opened it up where there's an exchange taking your money out of there. And if there is, there's some people who are very, very rich from the amount of hours that they put into this game. Um, but I guess I should go see if Rinscape has a trade out. I put a lot of time into that game. How much money do you think you could have earned, like you ballpark through the lifetime or how much are I have in my account right now? Yeah? How much? How much money if you could go pull it out right now? How much money do you think you could get? What is the what is I don't know what the question is the money that how many old pieces do I have in my account versus like and then what do I think the exchange rate is? What look up, look up RuneScape GP to U S dollars. Let's see what it is right now? I have probably six point two mill six point two million, Yeah it says right now it is about thirty six U S. Dollars per one hundred million. Don't you got a few bucks to one? Wait? Wait? Wait, wait? Can you buy hard million dollars? There's just a couple of things that I've wanted to buy in the game. And if it's six bucks, man, you're gonna be rolling. I'm gonna drop two hundred dollars rolling. I'm gonna roll into RuneScape with six hundred million dollars. Make a four. Just be a billionaire. I've always wanted to be an Escape billionaire. Well, there's just a couple of items that I've always wanted that has just been out of reach. You know, let me let's do this later. I'm might row I'm might log into all right, Yeah we can, I mean we can fiddle this off. You can go to some pounder Escape a l No, that's okay. Things on the Last Night is a production of Space tim Media produced by Christian Taylor. Audio is edited by Alas Garnett, Video by Connor Bets. Social media is run by Caleb Walker and graphic designed by Caleb Goldberg. Our host or Jarren Meyers and Tim Stone. Please follow us on social media at tilling podcast. That's t I l o in podcast, Leave a review, comment, subscribe wherever you are. Thank you for listening to Things on the Last Night
Eve Online is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG for short [MMO for shorter {M for shortest}]). This game has repeatedly found itself in the headlines of more than just gaming magazines. Due to the ultra-realistic in-game economy, the game has often landed articles discussing the complexities of the in-game economic system in finance magazines. More than that, the … Read More
DashCon – The Tumblr Conference That Ended In A Sad Ball Pit
Episode Transcription
Made by robots, for robots. Only read if you're weird.
Hey Man, oh, nothing much. God, I hate it when you do that. Well I do too. Uh have you ever heard of DASHCN DASHCN DASHCAN are you just saying Dash Cam wrong? Oh? Yeah. All of my Tiktok is just Dash Cam car accidents. I don't know how I got on that, but they are progressively worse. It started with like, you know, a little bumper things, and people have been like Oh and now it's like full on, like pretty bad accidents, you know, like I don't want to watch this stuff that or I started getting my pilots license, and then all of a sudden it was just footage of plane crashes. Yis they're like you you fly alive? Well, and like yeah, not even small planes, like like all the airline incidents. It's like the Microsoft flight simulator, like they're recreating recreating the crash. Yeah, it's terrible. It's like, Oh, yeah, why why is this what you want to do with you spent three hours making his video making this crash, you've spent three hours flying to the location where this crash happened just in anticipation, just just what do you say that again? What in anticipation? Like they flew there, well, they had to because if they're in Microsoft flight simulator, you can't just spawn at some random point. You have to take off, fly, so they took the three hour trip to where that crash happened. You can't just choose which airport you start at. I mean you can I guess, I guess you could choose a closer airport. That's true, you could choose a closer airport. Okay, that's what I was thinking. Simulator. You think they're like, no, well, where are my schools to set up my my grain? This grain? I got six trailers outside. I got a grain train in the parking lot. You're right down. It's funny, and it's like, Oh yeah, they are not qualified to run this conference. Things I learned last night. Have we haven't told this story about the time I raised your flight on this podcast? No? I think we told the story about the time you tried to hijack my flight. That was interesting. We were on the same southwest airlines flight and Tim's nott allowed to fly Ahmore. That's why he uses flight SIMULA. I popped in and you're like, what are you doing on this? He was in my car. I was like, how do you get there? And he was like, I'm taking over. It's a stick up. Uh No. I did fly to Atlanta once and you were like what times you're flight? You were texting me like twelve times. You're like, what time do you guys have? Okay, what kind of flight are you? And I was like, I'm gonna southwest seven forty seven. I guess okay, I'm gonna race you. It was like text me when you started taxiing and we raced and uh you beat me by about twenty minutes to southwest. Pilots beat you. I didn't do anything. I also I also crashed on the landing and you're violet slanted right. It was raining that day. I hadn't done a rain landing yet. That was my first brain landing. It was also my first I fr landing. I've been doing a lot of VFR flights. Did you it was the video on Tiktok because I might have seen it. Okay, let me tell you about dash cod. I've maybe this is the benefit of what we're doing right now because I haven't had a chance for my day to start. So we're shooting this early in the morning right now, which we've never done. We've done some late nights pretty early. You know, Tim just woke up. But like, my brain isn't confused yet, so I think right now, like it's every day around noone. My brain just it's like seven Bro, every day I have that at two o'clock, two PM. My brain is just like we're done. It is true, yeah, because it's all the carbs in lunch. Right, well, I haven't carbs in eight years, so I don't know. Okay, so before we get going, this was recommended by a couple of patrons. Actually two different patrons had recommended this, and both of them when they recommended, a bunch of other patrons were like, Oh yeah, we need to do this. And so those two are Bo Dalla was first, treg was t came in second, and then Bodalla came back and was like, oh I second this, but I also first did this first. That that's what your dad. So, okay, dash conduct it's a conference. I'm guessing yes, no, it's a it's a con is it though? No? Well it kind of actually yeah, actually it's both. Okay, there's a ven diagram, it's a convention. It's a convention and Chicago, Illinois. Um, you can't even fault the people who put it together, like guys, con is in the name, in the name, what did you expect? Yeah, what did you expect? What? A friend gave you a card and was like can you keep a secret, and you're like, yeah, you know what, this is going to be totally legal, legit. Oh my gosh, so this this uh we need to start at the birth of DASHCN UH oh. So there was a movement called Tumbler. I don't know if you've heard of it, um, but in the early days of Tumbler, Tumbler was a different world than seven like two thousand, two thousand, tens ish, early twos. In the early days, it was different than what it is now. Um, is it now? Is it still? Is it still now? Is what I'm saying. I'm pretty sure that it is now. I thought it died. I'm pretty sure it's still around. I thought Tumbler and vine were casualties of two thousand fourteen. Yeah they're still around. I mean they definitely were casualties. But what it is now is it's it's kind of almost like a four Chan now, like it's just a mess just land of Internet. But but in its early days, it was a like your stereotypical social media platform. But for some reason, and I don't really know exactly what about it made this happen, but in those early days, it was a place where if you really liked something, Tumbler was where you went to talk about it all the time and find out also really like I've never got into Tumbler. All I think of it is like the tumbler girls, right, that became a stereotype thing. And it's like those emo kids and the yes the pop punk subculture was thriving on Tumbler. Honestly, I would say, because there was kind of like your first wave think about a lot, but I think about this a lot, like you know, like I know, I say that about a lot of things, but this is probably one that consumes me a lot. Is like the romance on a rocket ship guy, you know, roar romance the rocket ship right near a rocket ship, like was a musician for those weird kids. Okay, I've never heard of that, or like the yeah, like that scene kind of like they had the checkered belt and they were not in the belt loops. You just you know, put it over your and hope it doesn't slid. Yeah, and like the you know, always wear the converse and all that stuff. It made sense to me that like thirteen and fourteen year olds were doing that, but they were doing that emulating the grown adults doing that's what I'm saying, like, you are you with me now? Like there was romance on a rocket ship if you spell it out. Roar was this dude's band's name, and he's like thirty making music and it's like, came from you. No, you're thinking raw, which is r a W R, which is a little dinosaur drawing kind of thing. This is like deep tumbler dive right now. But I'm saying I only know this much about this because there were plenty of them at my high school. Yeah and so, and like not that they were weird kids. Hey, if you're into it, you're into it. I think it's weirder that there were adults. That's where I'm trying to see, yeah, you're not weird for being a weird fourteen year old, weird thirty year old who's WHO's leading the culture creating content. And I guess I say that as a person who does youth conferences and stuff, and you should start wearing those belts. I'm having an existential crisis. As I'm doing this episode right now, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Like that never shot Never Guy Christopher drew was you know, at least he was at least he was like nineteen doing it. Yeah, I mean that's a good point. This is an interesting point anyway. So that's what was on tumbler was there was some yeah, they were huge fandoms and like and for some reason that I've never quite understood. Um Well, I mean, I guess it does make a little bit of sense. But if you like something like a lot, it gets really weird. Maybe it's that obsession factor. Unless you're like one of our Patriot supporters. That's totally is so normal. That is, that's the most normal thing you could do. But it is kind of it is kind of strange that loving something so much makes you weird. You have to like something just the appropriate amount to not be weird. But once you start being like, Oh, yeah, I love this, like, I love this a lot. I love this so much that I dressed up like it and I've got tattoos of this thing and I post about it on this obscure website with no vowels, then people are like, that's weird, that's weird that you like this. I don't know. Anyways, a bunch of people would retreat to this place because they make it their personality. Yeah, and and because of that factor, it did attract a lot of people who didn't have a ton of friends in real life, but they had these relationships in the tumble verse. Um, do you think there's a link between Tumbler people and like conspiracy people? This is kind of a real munder because like that obsession factor, that part of you, that's just like the desire for online community, that's what drives things like human it could have been anyway, um anyway, so that's that's the stage of what Tumbler look like in that era, um a little a little different than it does now. Um. And there was a community in there that was so excited and invested in the Tumbler community that they would always talk about like two like trending things on Tumbler all the time, pretty much where Tumbler University and Tumbler Island, which were these mythical experiences where all these tumbler kids could come together and go to school together in their own university or live on an island together and just exists together with all their tumbler friends. Um, they had virtual versions of it club peg. I was gonna say tuned town. So we had the same thought on that that was good. I like that. I like that. That was good. Uh So uh, everybody just kind of dreamed about it and we post about it like yeah, we'll do this on tumbler island. Um. But it was like, this is never gonna happen until one fifteen year old girl was like, I'm gonna make it happen. Uh, and so she started like putting these plants together on facebook marketplace for islands. You know, she started kind of dreaming. She's like, she's like, okay, we probably couldn't put together university can afford an island, but a conference that seems easy and doable. Um, fifteen year old girls planning this, yeah and so and she's out here like okay, so because they all have the hair over their one eye, like they're freaking like Emo pirates. Yeah, she wipes it in like her hands pink after movings. Many of these girls, do you have crushes? Oh? All of them? But I was one of these girls. Would you let me ask you this way if one of these girls were to paint an elephant on a sweater, would you you? Would you buy that? And then excitedly UNWRAPID and noticed the card and it says, Tim Norris, is that is that real? I'm sorry that happened to you? headsucks? I was like, okay, cool whatever. I guess for people who don't know. Tim had this big crush on the weird scene girl that came to college dress like that, and she leveled that she became normal. Yeah, but yeah, but I was too nervous to talk to her. I never never. She did these sweaters where she painted an elephant for her fundraisers for her trip to Africa, and he bought one and was like, she's going to notice that I bought it, and then we're gonna well. It was. It was more just an end. It was like, this gives me a chance to talk to her about something. And then he wore it every day and then I really, honestly do like the way that I wear my like hope Hoodie that I've got. I wear it too much, honestly, like it's cool, it's it's a cool switcher. It was. It was that moment when I unwrapped it and saw the wrong name on the car, and I was like, Oh, this isn't gonna happen. But the Sucher was cool, so I wore a lot. I like it anyway. Anyway, so she was we're gonna make this happen. And so she starts putting all these planes together and for some reason, like twenty I believe Um for some reason, and I don't understand why. Actually I can't understand why it's tumbler. Uh. This all of her plans attract the attention of three grown adults, uh by the name of Meg with two g's Um obvious, rock, sane, and a guy goes roxy, a guy that goes by Kane, but his name is locane and has spelled L O C H I a n Uh and he for a while was trying to convince everyone his birth name is Loki. Uh. So, yeah, I think you have an idea of how this is going to go. He's a tumbler guy. And so they she attracts the attention to these adults, and these adults are like, great, idea, we're going to help make this possible because you're fifteen, um, and so yeah, we're kind of well, here's the thing. Uh, Meg and Kine were thirty, rock sand was nineteen. For some reason, rock sand was friends with meg and Kane because a tumbler adults had weird boundary. Yeah true. Uh, and so they reached out and they were like, Hey, you want to be the Admin. will put this together as like an actual company and build this tump our conference. Okay, and they called the tumble con Um and Tumbler was like, you can't call it that. And then they were like, we'll call it DASHCN and name it after the dashboard because that's what they call it. It's like it would be like calling it your timeline connor feed con or something like that, because that was what they called that, the dashboard Um feed con feed. It was like a bunch of farmers who show up and like, well, what I'm looking for grain? It's just a guy's got a sack of grain. He's like, well, where am I supposed to set up my my grain to sell this grain? I got six trailers outside, I got a grain train in the parking lot. You need to get this somehow of your brain. I'm trying to sound great, well, what am I gonna do? I got a big online following. They bought tickets to the wheat and green it. I was trying to get that joke out when you did it. That's a good one. Wheat Great Um so Kane and Roxanne and meg they go and they organize as an actual company an L LP NOT ENOUGH L C, but they and they say, okay, we're gonna build this conference. They started indiego go uh to fundraise for it, where they raised six thousand dollars uh to kind of get the ball for yeah, not even close to enough, but they did say that that wasn't going to that was just gonna get the ball rolling. Help them build a website, start selling tickets and things like that and get in the door. And they reached their goal. Tumbler was hyped about it. They got all these three blogs. Where were they trying to do it? CHICAGO, right? Yeah, Chicago, hamping in like where were no? It was this convention center. Yeah, it was an actual hotel and it's like a hotel and convention center. How many did they hope we're going to show up to this thing? Well, based on the engagement on Tumbler, they expected to have around seven thousand people show up because that was how many people like, there was a people are under sixteen? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay, so I know where the story goes in. Yeah Great. Uh so they expected out with Loki in Chicago and FREAKING HOLLY XX is like, well, you know, Hollis, what is this? Yeah? What what am I supposed to call you? Now? Uh so they put together this website. They started selling tickets. It was sixty five dollars for the weekend. It's really cheap. Yeah, uh six dollars for the weekend. You can pay in additional twenty dollars to get access to this concert um or you can pay just twenty dollars to just go to the concert Um. But that did not include it was steam powered giraffe. Have you ever heard of them? No, apparently you could have made you could have made that up and looked me straight in the face and said steam powered GIRAFFE. It sounds like I made it up. That's what I was thinking. I was. I thought I was gonna be like, you've heard of him? Oh, it's kind of I made it up. It was would have been funny. It was backstreet plays, steam power ser draft. I was kind of impressed when I looked it up there decently large. They've got they have a quarter million month of listeners, Um and like twenty million listens. I'm their songs on spotify. I checked them out. So they seem like I listened to a bunch of tracks in the way here, Um, not my cup of tea? Uh? Is it like pop punk with but I was gonna say, like with like a techno element in it, like not even it's kind of like, uh, it feels like you're listening we play five seconds without ginding in trouble. I want to his eyes got so big on that, like like you you looked like I asked if we can get away with murder for a second. Here's the thing, playing five seconds of a song does not give you a good picture on these guys, because it's it felt like I was listening to the like I listened to one of their albums and it felt like I was listening to the soundtrack of the musical because every track was a totally different style. All right, I'll check it out. And they but they were all kind of like yeah, they were all like that kind of stuff. Though it was like like saloon music or like wild west or like ragtime like it was all like over the place, but all like older like Elvis Rock, older styles, and like it all told the story of the steam powered Giraffe. Who did what? Who did the original? When I say the original Tiktok Song? Do you know what I'm talking about? Do you know what I'm talking about? The like when Tiktok was musically uh, and there was these weird kids on on that APP doing the ladies. I know what you're talking about, know what you're talking about? What the crap was that? Um? Yeah, I haven't got no idea. I don't think it was them, because I would expect that would be the number one song, and I listened to the number one the number one song was actually kind of good, like the rest of their stuff. Not A fan. Their number one song was kind of like an acoustic like Indie rock song, and it's actually kind of good. Um, the rest of it I wasn't a fan of. But steam powered Um uh but yeah, so so they were gonna headline this concert. They were going to headline the concert. Um, and they were a big selling factor of the conference. Hey, thanks for checking out this episode. If you liked it would really help us out if you leave a review or a comment on Youtube if that's what you're watching on and if you want to check out another episode, I recommend Julianne Kopki. That was an episode all about a woman who survived a ten thousand footfall from a plane without a parachute, landed in the Amazon absolutely bonker's story. Uh, and it was pretty fun. We had a lot of fun jared and I in that episode. Uh. So you should check it out. It's one of my favorites right now. But thanks so much for being here. That a few things scheduled for this that we're actually like, Hey, you guys did a pretty good job like booking this, like this is someone interesting, like the same para of the draft. That was a pretty big band to bring in for your first year. Uh. They also alright, they also had Doug Jones, who was one of the doctor who's Alex's brother. Okay, we can get out my brother, hug, you're going to these fruit fruit conventions. Uh No, Doug Jones. He was one of the doctors on doctor who, which is a pretty big name. They also had the podcast welcome to Night Vale, which I don't know if you've heard of that they were one of the biggest podcasts in very early podcasts. And I hope we get booked for a weird convention that if you're putting together a weird convention that you think is gonna Collapse, call us. We want to be a part of it. Tilling live. We do podcast conventions, ministry conventions, reptile conventions was surreptiles. I'll tell you about that. The so my agency also reps a BMX group that you know when they you know, they go to churches and they rap over cars and they do all this stuff and at the end they're like, you could do this with the Lord or whatever. Um. They're actually really good guys. I love them all. But we're at this convention and apparently next door there was a reptile convention happening, and one of those BMX guys went next door and bought an alligator. And then it was just sitting underneath our table in a tub, but like not an alligator tub, like in a clear just bought from Walmart, you know Tub. There's just an alligator underneath our convention table. And they drove they drove eight hours to get to that convention, which means they had to drive eight hours back. What if you were in a van with a group of friends going to a convention and then someone at that convention buys an alligator, and then you now have to drive eight hours back with an allegat alligator. And it's like, Hey, man, I'm gonna running side of the bathroom at this gas station. Will you walk my gator? Can You keep an eye on my gator? Like well, can you imagine a guy at the pump just be like, Hey, can you watch my gator while I'm in the bathroom for me if he gets a little anty? Sure? Anyway, so they built a real convention, that's what you're saying. Kind Yeah. The podcast welcome to Night Vale was was early podcast. It was actually ranked one on apple podcasts for a little while. Um. Um, it's still active today. There's actually a TV series being like made in honor of it. The show was here. Let me show I actually pulled this down for you. You've probably recognized the logo. Oh Yeah, I've seen this around. Um. They were pretty big. They at that time they were pulling about half a million downloads a month, so a pretty big podcast. Um. And then they uh they had this other podcast. UH, the Baker Street Babes, which was a podcast about Um the street that they left Sherlock coms Um. And then they had like all these like Comic Book Authors and like Book Authors and Artists. They had like this, they're gonna have this whole vendor section where you could get art from you could do art if you and so like they actually and they had all these different Um panels that they put together that we're honestly the type of stuff that people were talking about having happened at Tumbler University. And so they it was kind of clever, like they did their research, they're like, what do the people want? And then they made panels about that stuff. And so they kind of went back to all that stuff and did that Um. And so they expected that this was gonna go pretty well. They had some pretty decent name people. They had um a great venue for this Um and then they went and they got a bunch of volunteers there. They had their team of three, they had an Admin, they hired a couple of people for like staff, and then they had on their website a volunteer page where you could volunteer and get perks for volunteering Um and the request on the website. So if you volunteer for one to eleven hours, you receive our undying gratitude. So Red Flag Number One. Volunteer for twelve to nine teams, if you'vevolunteer for one to eleven years, you get our undying gratitude, and some free shirts along the way, actually not discounted shirts. Shirts five percent off and it really aren't that they don't give you a margin on it. Um. If you're twelve the nineteen, you will see the refund for your badge cost, which is like your ticket. Um Twenty plus hours, you received the refund for your badge and your hotel room will be camped for Friday and Saturday night. Um, so it's just a weekend. Friday, Saturday, Sunday was event. So it was a pretty good deal to to volunteer this thing. And a bunch of kids who were like all my parents, they don't they're not gonna buy my ticket. But I can go volunteer for this event. If I volunteer twenty hours, I can go for free. Uh so a bunch of kids volunteer is what happened. Um, I've been to a wedding like this where the groom was like, I bet I can get a bunch of middle school wers to do all this stuff for me. You know. Uh, so, are you gonna like hire a catering company. No, I'm a youth pastor. I was gonna have a bunch of middle schoolers hand out food on my wedding. I'll just have a make sandwiches. That's gonna know. Well, yeah, there's a kid in my scroupoo knows how to make Spaghetti. I'll just have he says. He says, I'm at Grace Spaghetti. Everybody just gets these kids noodles and noodles. Halfway there's still kind of crunchy here. That's the day. And he's just going table to table spaghetti forgets the sauce. He's like, oh shoot, I forgot the sauce. Oh we got catch up in the D he's like, well, my mom says that I can come to your wedding, but I can't pay to come to your wedding. But she said I can't bring, but I'll volunteer. She said, I can't bring seven gallons of face fasta kid. You got a kid that is uh it's Dj and the wedding got a little child Dj over there. He's playing the kids Bob version of everything. I want to have a kid's both wedding. They'd sponsor it. I mean, Bro, what if my wedding if I had like Celsius, get them as a sponsor. I hate you because this is literally my idea, what to get Celsius to sponsor my wedding. Not Celsius, but I told you this. At my wedding, pretty shot it down so hard to try to get bang energy drinks. So I was gonna get sponsors for my wedding. I was gonna, literally I said. I was like. I was like, I'll get sponsors and don't have like title sponsors. They could get big chest, like we'll sew it on my suits. I wanted to know the arm. I got an email from a streaming company that was like, sell tickets to your wedding, like they and I emailed back and I said, this is the grossest thing I've ever seen in my life. Who would do this, sell live stream tickets to my wedding? I mean the Queen? UH, the Queen? All Right? So uh here's the thing about Tash Com and this was Alex wrote it down. I was waiting, I was waiting at the corner of my eye. I was like, he's gonna write it down. Our lawyer told us to say, we have nothing to do with it and hasn't happened. Please help me find the death threats I sent to her, though, oh no, I just said her like two emails that say to you, Miss Diana the Queen Gmail Dot Com. She didn't get it my emails Queen Elizabeth. She emailed Queen Elizabeth, the Queen, Queen, Queen Lizzie. That's terrible. So the thing about dash con and the people who were running dash con is they had literally zero experiences. How many signed up? You're saying like a bunch of kids signed up. How many volunteers they have signed up? I don't know an exact number. I asked. I would estimate a couple of dozen just based on the stories. Um Uh, but yeah, these people they had no experience running conferences. Um The experience we do not that they had. Well I shouldn't say, do know the experience that is rumored that they had. Um Is Roxanne just graduated from High School. That's her experience. Uh. Meg and Kane had been working like minimum wage jobs. Meg Actually UH, applied for bankruptcy like three years before this. Um, so a lot of probably good experience with handling major events like this. Ah Uh. So the deal that they had arranged with UH everybody was payment after the event, and I know how that goes. And so because they genuinely anticipated, based on Internet, seven thousand people and a ticket. Yeah, so, I mean it was you know, they're looking at three and what they arranged with the hotel. The hotel was like, no, we're not going to do that. But what they got a a verbal agreement with the hotel Um to do a UM basically like a payment every hour as the conferdence went on, so that way, as more people were checking in, they'd have more cash to give hotel Um. And part of the deal with the hotel was, hey, we're giving we're bringing in seven thousand guests, so we're basically filling your hotel for the weekend, and so is there a way we can get it give everyone off everyone a discount of the rooms, and the hotel was like sure, yeah, yeah, Um. And so all these arrangements were made. The conference begins and day one, everyone shows up um at like five o'clock in the evening on Friday. The first events were supposed to happen that night, Um, and everyone just kind of stood around for a few hours. Everyone how many people showed up? Oh about okay, which you know, not terrible, not not terrible, but when you're expecting seven thousand, yeah, everyone's kind of stowed around. Yeah, because there wasn't a thing to do. This is a lot like I did an event like this in two thousand seventeen. Um where I booked it. It was a winter conference, three day winter conference. Yeah. Uh. He booked lacre and for King and country, so he was gonna do an arena, you know. Uh, and so all these youth groups started buying tickets and then uh, it ended up being it was in San Antonio at the Weirdest Hotel I've ever been to my entire life, in their weird conference room, a conference room with a low ceiling. Right. Obviously lucre and for King country had backed out at this point, and there ended up being three fifty people there and there was me, there was brock Gil who was a Christian illusionist who was pretty big in two thousand seven, and then being in Bailey, who is like Cheesy Dad Comedians who are pretty decent for adult crowds, horrible for youth audiences. And then the speaker didn't get paid. I don't think he spoke the whole sessions. And then they had a weird wolt international guy who came out and was like sponsored kids, but it's like it's like youth groups, and so these kids were expecting lacree and for King and country. Food was terrible. It really was. The it was the holy firefest holy fireft. It was terrible. That is really rough. You hate to see it. Um, I don't think I got paid for that. Oh I did get paid for that, but I got paid two thirds of what I was supposed to get played. He was like, he was like, Hey, I'll pay you this amount, which was not a lot. And then that that, you know, the night after the second day he was like, Hey, you know, like can I can I give you this now and I'll give you this later. And I don't think I ever got the thing later. I don't know what that guy's doing now, but probably not that. Yeah. So yeah, kind of a similar situation. They at least were in the same venue they planned, Um, but uh, seven show up. They didn't have a plan for what they were going to do in the beginning of this event until like eight o'clock. So everyone's just kind of here and there, just like what do we do now, and just kind of like hanging around this conference room, and so people are sitting in there for hours. Meanwhile, one of the managers of the Brank Bank Bank hotel, bake manager was there. The hotel manager, there's not seven thousand people here. Well, the hotel manager pulls aside their admin. Who was this now sixteen year old girl who, by the way, this is a really weird side to this story. Um Uh no, she's seventeen at this point. Um. She actually graduated early because she was able to claim credits for her work on Dash Kn uh as like like job experience type stuff. Apparently you can do I didn't know those an options. So she graduated early for this, which in Chester they will probably like, you know, we see what you did, and like that was really bad. Yeah, you did not pass. So the manager of this hotel of this convention center holds the seventeen year old admin aside it was poor high schooler and says, Hey, you guys are us seventeen thousand dollars and she's like what and he's like, you guys always sear. The contract was you pay seventeen up front so that way you can get this block rate and use the convention center the room that you're using. And then she goes, she goes, I have thirteen dollars in a big macket. Well, she says, she says, I thought they arranged with you to do like this payment terms and he was like, no, they didn't. She he was like, look at the contract, like you o Seventeen Tho up front and so then she breaks down and they're like, they're like, your your whole. You have until ten PM tonight to come up with the money or were kicking everybody out. And people have traveled for this. There are people who came from Australia for this, which is absurd Um. And so she goes back to the team and they say, well, Hey, figuring out. Yeah, they tell her, hey figure out se so her and roxand the seventeen year old in the nineteen year old, they're like, okay, guys, listen, we need a lot of money from all of you. They said. They put a thing up on the website and on Tumblr and they posted it and basically, they said, Hey, uh, the hotel decided they don't like us. They want to kick us out unless we give them seventeen thousand dollars. The hotel decided they don't. What did it actually say? That's exactly what they said. No, did not. That's not word for war. But the premise was they don't. You've been informed by the hotel that they don't like our crowd and they us to go or unless we give them put this donate button up on the website. Guys, I showed up here and they were like, we don't like you. All right. Here's the thing. I booked this hotel room. I showed up, didn't pay for it yet, right, and when they were like you have a card for incidentals, I was like, why don't you like me? And they were like, well, you gotta pay for the room. You don't like me. I'M gonna blast you on the Internet, like can you believe that this hotel doesn't like me? This persecution? Okay, and I'M gonna put a donate on my website. In you do, you should see the yelper view. I'M gonna leave. Wow, you don't like me. I don't like you either, what they don't like our crowd, so tumbler because there's a bunch of they don't like our rout and they're charging us all inconvenience fee for having to put up with these weird kids, which also makes sense that yeah, they do suck. I agree with this. So they put the bust up on Tumbler and there's all these people who wanted to go but like didn't and they're like, oh no, the hotel doesn't like our friends at Dash Con, and so they do. So they donated and then they went. They gathered everybody in the main conference hall and this teenager goes up on stage to say, Hey, so we've just been informed that unless we can raise seventeen thousand dollars to give to the hotel, they're going to kick us out because they don't like any of us. And some adults in the crowd were like, that's extortion. They can't do that. Uh, and she was like, I have this paper bag. Well that's extortion, they can't do that. And you're like, where are you from? Like I traveled to be here, actually, dude, no, no, no, no, tumbler adults pretend to be from somewhere. Yeah, that's pretty fair. Yeah, they're from just like four minutes. They can't do that. You're like, what do you hey, thank you again for listening to this episode. Making sure that you don't miss one in the future. Go ahead and subscribe to this podcast, whether that be on apple podcasts, spotify youtube. You'll get it alert when we drop a new episode. And if you want more, if you want something a week early, you want to be part of our discord more access to us as creators. You can support this show on patreon. It helps us go a long way. Nothing that we're doing is possible without our patreon supporters. If you want more information about that, please text tilling to six six eight six six. Thank you so much for being here. Dude, that's you. You Hunter knew a kid in your high school who thought their accent was good. Yeah, like they thought. They're like I go places and people ask me where I'm from. I talked to servers like this, Goly Dude, I'm so afraid of having a weird kid like that. They're like, we go out to dinner and I'm like, yeah, you know, we just want this and this and then whatever and rigging orders her stuff and then our kid is just like haddy chicken strips. Then they look at us and I'm like, yeah, that's our foreign exchange student who is I don't know, definitely looks just like us. But you know, we wanted it that way. We got to shoot, here's a picture for me, find a kid in your country. It didn't even sign up for the program. I'll take a foreign exchange, but I'm not gonna ruin my Christmas pictures over it. All right. They're locking around the wall with the polaroid of you, like, looking at kids, and they're like, Hey, you want to make seven fifty seven? Even it makes seven dollars seven? All Right? Then stupid. So the adults are like, well hold on, yeah, they're like that. And she's like, I'm missing prom for this, you know or whatever. Her seventeen year old self says. Uh. But the crowd bands together and they all start donating. I'd be so annoyed. And Kane comes out. He takes the bag. It was literally a paperback. He takes the bag and he looks in the bag and uh, he says, we did it. We beat him, and like the crowd just abrupts. Everybody's cheering, like they start singing we are the champions. Um. Honestly, the vibe in this room during this whole event here, I need to show you a picture. This is probably my favorite part of this whole conference. Someone in solidarity before they figured out that they were going to raise enough money, uh to fight back against the Mean Hotel Hotel manager, Dude, hold on Wa wait wait, hold on it, can I do it real quick thing? Yeah? Bank of America says, I owe thirteen thousand dollars on my Honda Civic. And I think that that's they don't like me. They just don't like and can you believe that it's absurd? Would you please donate? We can do this, we can fight back against the man. Yeah. You can't let them belittle you. You can't let it. I mean, is it extortion? I don't know, but listen, Bank of America's bullying me right now. They're like, well, you agreed to pay it, and I'm like, well, I thought Joey B was gonna do that, you know, and so I elected a president that would make me not pay for anything, and here we are, like America still be jerks about it. Yeah, so donate now, donate today, donate now, don't send you holy water. This is the K love pledge drive, and the pledge goes to paying off my vehicle. Um. So in this room, I don't know who does it, who starts this, but someone in solidarity to the moment and to fight back against the man in the situation. I'll show that holiday in manager, they're like counting the money. He's just laying in the old Bernie's dead four rooms please. I know, someone does the hunger games thing and everybody joins, and you just have this whole conference room full of kids doing the hunger games little whistle. Look that blue dress there, you know I'm talking about like the Tumbler kids of the boots on the girl next to her, yeah, it's yeah. So they all do the like they get on stage like we gotta get seventeen thousand dollars to pay off our debts, and someone goes exactly, and the guy's up there like he's going to pay her bag and he's like that's great, but we still did seventeen thousand dollars and they go, Um. And so I watched I watched a story or a video from the admin girl and she said that, uh, do we have a picture of the admin girl. She look like what I think she looks like probably yeah, Um. And so she said that Um Kane, when he got that bag, he didn't count it. Uh, he just said we did it. We beat them. And then she said after the fact she counted that, and she said they brought in about three thousand dollars and she said the website brought him maybe fift and so it wasn't even close. And so what she things happen is later that night everybody went back to the rooms and was locked out of their rooms. And so what they did is they negotiated with the hotel and said, okay, get rid of the block, right, Um, all of the rooms that we comped for, all of our panel speakers, all of our volunteers, all of our talent, all of our vendors, get rid of the camp. Make them pay for the room. But they didn't notify it. And so all these people had a room with all their stuff in it, and they got locked out because the old keycards. Because the managers were like, Hey, here's three grand, how do we make up the other fourteen? And he didn't even care. He hands a bag of CRUMB, this should be enough. Take that Brian, you should have you should have allowed to because one of them said, uh that when they had that bag with three grand, they're like, this is more money than I've ever handled in my life, and it's like, Oh yeah, they are not qualified to run this conference, and so they gave that three grand shut down everybody's room. Um, and then from this point on it was just dumpster fire after dumpster fire after dumpster fire of Um the uh the band dropped out. The band was like, Oh, yeah, you're never gonna pay us, so we're not Um. The pop ball podcast, steamboat orchestra or whatever they were called. You know, they were at least good business people. Both the podcast dropped out, and then what happened on Saturday is all the vendors started leaving because they realized, Oh, all these guests spent all their money on that donation yesterday. They keep this event open, we're not making any money. And so as the vendors started pulling out, it became this snowball effect because the more vendors that left, the less interest. There wasn't going down where they were selling anything, and so nobody was selling anything. All the artists, all the vendors started pulling out until eventually this conference ended up having like four panels the whole event, and the panels that they did have they had tables that weren't long enough for all the panelists. They forgot to get chairs for some of the panelists, and like just absolute insanity, to the point where the last panel there was like thirteen people in the audience. Two days before the thing, they were like, let's do a podcast table. Yeah, pretty much. Um. But probably the best part about the story is after Um the big PODCAST UH canceled what we they're called, Um the welcome to Night Vale. That was like kind of the big everybody wanted to see them, so they came in at the panel room where that was supposed to happen. They're waiting for an hour and a half. Nobody shows up until eventually the organizers come out and they say, Hey, they go guys, the podcast host decided they don't like us, and it's probably because you're weird, and it's definitely your fault and you should probably go home and think about what you've done. What you've done, and they said that, uh, we owe them seventeen dollars to so you dig deep in your pockets step. That's just the amount of two lattes for each of you. So have you buy two lattes a week? You as? Uh? So No, they the lady comes out. This was Roxanne. At this point, there was some internal strife between Roxanne and Kane and meg because can and they had done basically think they weren't saying solidarity thing like these hold hands and they go, you have to weather the stones is going to work. Cane and meg had done basically nothing for this event. Roxanne like months before, I was like, okay, these people aren't doing anything. So she kind of just stepped at the plate and tried to pull it off. But she's nineteen. She doesn't know what she's doing. Yeah, and so uh and it got so bad to where cane and meg or Canan Meg and this is this is kind of a rabbit trail with this funny can and Meg. They before the event, they they planned on paying for everything after the event, after everybody paid them, which is never gonna work. And so what they did is they went and they got a lawyer, and the lawyer dropped them because he's like, you're not paying me, and so then they went and you're trying to get out of paying other people. Okay, I hear what you're trying to do. And for that reason, I uh yeah. So the lawyer dropped them. And so what they did is they like for things. Their privacy policy on the website is an exact copy of legal legends privacy policy. What it's a word for words? What stuff like that is happening. And so the day of the event, the day of the day, the day it was supposed to start, meg and kine show up to the event with a document and they started pressuring Roxanne to sign it. And what it was was this poorly word worded legal agreement that pushed her out of the company and made her the secretary. And she was like, I'm not gonna sign that, and they got real mad that she wanted to sign it because they were like, don't read it, just sign it. Like, is it just something no that's gonna put all on me right, well, no, it's they were trying to kick her out of it so she couldn't get any money because she was a part owner. Kane actually wasn't in a y. It was Megan and Roxanne at first. Kane was meg's boyfriend and said they tried to push her out and have kane take her spot as an owner. Um. And she was like no. And so then they were super distant. They weren't involved in much until the money was happening, and then they would show up when the money was happening and disappear again. Um. And so Roxanne comes out to this, to this crowd that's expecting to watch the welcome to night veil like live session or whatever, with two hidets. She's like, hey kids, hey man, what's up? Oh? Nothing much? Can we get puppets of us? Puppets of yourself? Probably decent bit to get puppets, not much, but to get puppets of yourself. There is a place in town that does that. I'm looking to the way you ended that sentence was there is a place in town that doesn't. I've looked into it. Okay, no, no, so Roxy Meg, and you know know why did you look into it? For you? And No? I was a kid's past you. Counseling's like, what if you guys spoke to each other with puppets instead speak for you? I feel he has a life size puppet. He's a puppet. Your counselor is brief, he's laid down in the couch and he's like rustled his couch. He reaches up in this puppet so we can't see him but his feet. This is what connects with people. And he's like, but he noticed that people can't really hear well, so he cut a mouth hole out of the couch and to see his mouth. So I hit my mouth really hard with the MIC. Just now, I'm not bleeding. We're fine. So you're saying that he cut a hole where his mouth is so you can see his mouth moving in the couch. But it's like by the puppets feet. Understand that he's in the chair. Yeah, I understand that he has built a custom puppets puppet puppet couch. That's great. Uh So don't you want the puppets to look like at your church? Well No, I was going to get just puppets in general for an event. And then I was like, I like toward the facility and they're like, yeah, we can do custom stuff, and I was like, I need to file that away. You do need to file that away. I know exactly where it is. Um. So there's a puppet tier, a puppet tier on Patreon, pay fire puppets a puppet tier. Yeah, I got it. That was good. It was good. It was clever. I laughed. Okay. So Roxanne, uh, she comes out, and she was like, where are you going? He said, if you're listening, jared's just crawled under the table and stuck his hand up to the MIC. Can you say something? Yeah, such a dumb bit, yeah, pull the MIC down. So anyway, all right, so rock she walks out this crowd of people who's been waiting for like an hour and a half of this yeah, and they she comes out. She says, Um, so, I'm sorry to tell you guys this, but Night Vale just dropped. Uh. And she said, I know, it's really sad. She said, I've been sighing backstage a lot about this, sighing. Yes. So she's I've been backstage, guys. I've I've done all I can. I've walked around back there. Just it's just a really funny bit. Dude, I thought you were gonna Fizzy sit down there. So she says, she says, I think it would be appropriate if we all just side together to get it out. And she said on three one three, no, this is serious. Is One to three, and most of the crowd joins her, and they're all just like Ah, and one guy is like, I want my money back. In this room full of people just side this is a joke though this is isn't this suck? It looks like a moment and just sigh and they all went, I can't do the whistle. I was gonna do that with you. Um Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what happened. So then she says, to make it up to you, because I know this is a pretty big inconvenience, we're gonna give we're gonna give you ten of your hotel room, she said. She said, uh, we're gonna give you. I think they did, say, like a five percent refund for the value of whatever this part of the event was going to be. And an extra hour in the ball pit, which is a part of this event I haven't told you about yet. One of the biggest dreams for this event. From the very beginning, this admin who was fifteen dreamed about a giant ball pit, like a giant conference hall size ball pit, and it was one of the main attractions. Everyone was so excited for the ball pit. Well Day of the event. Wrong, I'm not making any noise because my mouth is just my jaws on the floor right now. Day of the event, the company that they rented, giant, showed up and they're all right, we got this ball pitture and they were like, yeah, we'll pay you after. And they're like, no, you gotta pass before. And they're like, what, we'll pay you after. They're like, well, if you're gonna pass after, we've got a different ball pit for you. And so this was the ball pit for this event. For those listening, it looks like a life raft like it in it's in a gigantic room. It was so bad that the event actually went and they rented another bounce house to put in the room. There are kids in the ball pit still. That's what's amazing that they still used it. Yeah, and she's wearing what is going on with this picture. The thing about this is that Haley Williams. The thing about this is there wasn't a time limit on the ball pit. She said, an extra hour. Look at someone. It's a cardboard cut out that they put in there. Shut up, yeah, that's a cardboard cut out they put up in there. No it's not, yeah it is. That's a cardboard cut out. No it's not. It is it is a cardboard cut out they put up in there, UM and so. And the thing is, there wasn't a time that cat years that makes sense. It wasn't like you had to go like rent time and you got an hour in it, like she said, you have an extra hour. It's like, well, yeah it is. What do you mean with an extra hour? We have unlimited hours in there? Until you guys take it away, like what are you talking about? But it's it. It looks like and this is not a joke. It's like the size of my inflatable hot it really is that amazing. And so the event ends, they had like four or five different panels. Um, we're going to sigh in the ball pit if you want to sigh in the proof side, which is also what Kansas City we did as a city after the super bowl loss. Was Patrick Mahomes came back. was like, guys, that was a big bomber. Well gathered in their own headed side the loudest signed history. I mean for a sigh, I mean not a lot of deciples, but for a side, it sounded like a real strong wind, you know, just like a people walking by were like, well that was quite the gust. I heard that gust yeah, so to the event ended. Um. Afterwards, uh, Meg had the audacity to put up an article on the website about how none of it was really her fault, but she apologized anyways, and actually everyone who came it turned out didn't like us. And she said, and this was on July eighth, she posted this, and she said, if you want to refund, you haven't till to claim your refund. In the middle of the event, they did go and change too that there was uh no refunds for cancelations of talent and a thing like League of legends is not responsible for responsible for uh yeah, so uh and then uh, rumors after the event say that Meg uh just went and got another job. Roxane apparently is pretty successful, UM, which I don't know if that's true. Apparently low ki or Kane uh he got arrested for shoplifting out of Walmart. And so yeah, they did promise to do it again the next year, and then that didn't happen. They started because everyone was like, no, we're not going to come to that. They fart of the seventeen year old girl they put together in a moticon that was supposed to happen the next year. Um, and it was the same. It was Megan Kane together. Um what happened to the thing that never happened? She just went on with her life. She went to college, Um, got a job, she went to trump university, and she fell for scheme after scheme after scheme for as long as she's currently an airborne salesman. But she uh. But Um, some people say that this was the shifted tumbler that made everyone better because during that whole thing, tumbler was a part of it, and they were just making fun of it like crazy and like memes of that. UH, like one next hour in the ball pit became like a huge me with the picture and it would say, what do you think that Z? It could have I doubt it, but it could have. It could be a contributing factor. Um, that just made him really negative. So would you say, this is Gen z's Pearl Harbor right down? It's funny. Oh my God, sneak that in there. Well, mom looks like I'm going to war. That's what I'm saying though, is that like Pearl Harbor changed the you know, the greatest generation whatever. That's hilarious. So yeah, it was a massive disaster. Everything fell apart in the end. Um. Very few people actually got a refund. No one really knows what they did with the money, a bunch of people trying to I think that they I think they maxed out and paid everyone that they could. Well what it does sound like there is a rumor that to cover some of that cost whenever the hotel was coming after them, that they they had all their volunteers Max other credit cards to pay for it. Because these people that have credit. Um, so it is just a disaster all around. Um, but made for some funny content. Imagine that some of those kids that Max other credit card are like making monthly payments on that still. Yeah, and they're like, yeah, it's like, freaking I got a lot of old navy points once I got some sweet jeans out of desk. You gotta Spencer's Gifts Credit Card that you're freaking charging. I don't know, Work Tumbler kids shop. Um. Yeah. So anyways, at the end of the event, they said, hey, we need a good way to wrap this up. Uh so what if we hire a puppeteer, a very talented puppeteer from Kansas City before we leave. I think we should all, I'm in backstage signing a lot. MM HMM. Everyone gets one hour and forever allowed. Two things that the last night is a production of space tim media, produced by Christian Taylor, audio by Alice Garnett, video by Connor Betts, our graphics and our logo by Kleb Goldberg, and our social media is run by Kayla Barker. Our host are jereed meyers and Tim Stone fallow. US on your favorite social media platform at tilling PODCAST IS T I L L and podcast. Remember to tell all your friends about us and we'll see you next to day for another episode of things I have bearned last night. m
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