Episode Transcription

00:00 with hands baby. This week we learn about the cult of the stonks community stonks baby. There was a if you were unfamiliar with, there was a pump and dump scheme that happened with several different stocks, including game stop AMC in twenty twenty one, but what I didn't know about was the bed bath and beyond cult. Yeah, this one's all about the beyond section and it's beyond believable. I said no jokes in the intro. Oh, that's why this is a comedy podcast. I do the joke, so they're funnier during the episode. 00:30 but we learn about a lot of whatever no, but this is a about a group on reddit that has so fully fallen into delusion about the bed bath and beyond stock that literally no longer exists, but they're still they still think they're going to get rich still in it. So it's december december third is simmer third is what today is and that means i've got a couple shows that you can't come to. I do a lot of cry private christmas parties so you know, but enjoy the time of your family. 00:59 Yeah, this this holiday, your own little private Christmas party, that's right, watch the blind day all the way or just friends or yeah, you can watch the blind date. That's free. Thanks for being here for our show. We really like this episode. Let's get into it. 01:15 Hey man. What's up? Have you ever heard of BBBY? 01:21 B B B Y. Let's see if you can guess what that stands for. B B B Y you want a hand. I can give you a hand. It's a really good hand. It started out as a super normal thing, but it turned into a cult kind of oh big brothers. 01:40 bullying you big brothers, big you sisters. What are we? What is it? B B B? Why is the ticker signal for bed bath and be on? Okay, this is this is an interesting story and it's, but we need a story of bed bath and beyond 02:10 I promise you this is an interesting story. I know it sounds like how could bed bath and beyond be interesting. Okay, but it's an interesting story to start. How many Adam Sandler click jokes are we going to make in this honestly? I wasn't planning any, but if you want me to, I can start to think about it. Okay, maybe one will come out later and think about it. So Bed Bath and Beyond started fifty years ago. You think they paid? Do you think bad? I think we're on paid 02:39 to be in the movie or do you think that Adam Sandler paid bad bath and beyond I should add to pay because it's a plot point. I was gonna say it's it's central to the plot yeah yeah it wouldn't. If it wasn't a plot point, I would think that maybe it was product placement, but because it's a plot point, I think they went and got rights to it. Okay, that's interesting. Go ahead to use the name at least sure I that or they just paid the fee, the fine right, which is what a license is. I guess 03:06 so bad bath and beyond to talk about bed bath and beyond. We need to go before this story to the invention of the bed. I'm kidding. Okay, we're going to talk about a very specific time in bed, bath and beyonds history, specific. We're very barely going to talk about bed bath and beyond, but it's what this is called before we can talk about bed bath and beyond. Now we have to talk about something that I know you're very well aware of, and that is game stop. 03:36 Oh, we're doing the pump and dump. Okay, got you, got you, got game stonks, game stonks. So everybody knows this story by now. Beam stocks. Yeah, everybody knows the story by now. If you don't in 2020 GameStop became a thing. Yeah, GameStop always was a thing. It was a failing business is falling apart because of the internet era was making the GameStop model of physical copy video games less viable. That's all they sold. They sold video games 04:03 and the reputation was going downhill. They were not. Yeah, because now you I don't remember the last time I physically bought a video game. Yeah, yeah, you don't need to. Yeah, I a lot of video game fans prefer having physical copies of the games and especially lately because a lot of those game marketplaces. Two things have been happening subscription. Yeah, well, I guess you had three things haven't happening. So one, some of them have actually been going out, so you could have bought all of these games on a specific marketplace that doesn't exist anymore, and now you don't have the game anymore. 04:33 two. There have been games where they've been taking games off marketplaces. So like a you have the game, but then the games gone and now you don't have the game anymore. Even though you paid for it, even though you bought it, yeah, you hit it's a digital copy third. Yeah, you're right. Subscription models are starting to make it to where you can't buy a game on that marketplace anymore. Well, you'll buy the game, but then you still have to keep up your monthly subscription to use the game. Yeah, so the 04:59 it's like when photoshop switch you used to buy the software of photoshop used to have her six hundred dollars and then you just had it yeah yeah and then they went to they actually made it so that those old versions don't work anymore, which is insane crazy. 05:15 I mean, to be fair, if you had the old version, like all you really could do is shop cigarettes out of Disney's hands. It wasn't very powerful. Okay, so in 2020, GameStop wasn't a very viable business. Sure. And they were struggling like just about every business in 2020 because of 2020 and being a brick and mortar store, they weren't getting a lot of business. Geez. 05:43 the amount of episodes we've got this nap flying in our faces is why I can't get it. We can't spill this mass. We cannot get this Nat to die. So there's only one of them. It's not like a lot. There's only one. We don't really one that I know you can't spell us, but I promise you we smell good. I don't promise that 06:10 That's going to be on that new tilling out of context. I know you don't smell this, but I promise we smell good. Okay, so there was this community on reddit in twenty twenty for investing. Yeah, it was the stocks community community and they all everybody would post videos about what they believed was a good stock on the reddit and they put video YouTube videos out and stuff like that and talk about the stocks that they thought were good stocks to invest in. And it was like a 06:39 just a small investing community. There's a guy by the name of roaring kitty. We've all seen him by now. He post a video had one person. We've all seen him by now. It's just he posted a video. He had one one person tuned into his stream where he made his case on why he thought GameStop was a legitimate company should be invested in. Sure he invested 07:08 a lot of money in it and he got incredibly rich off that. A lot of people followed suit also got incredibly rich off that and then more people followed suit and they were left holding the bag and got their lives ruined because of that diamond hands, diamond hands, baby diamond hands. But this created this tidal wave of retail investors, retail investors existed before this, but all of a sudden in 2020 it became a thing like everybody was trying to retail invest. 07:35 and I think there's a lot of things to blame for that. Obviously, the pandemics part of that. I think David Portnoy is a little bit to blame because he started treating those gambling well yeah, because his whole business was what's the right parlay for the sporting event? Sporting events went away and so he pivoted to investing because he's like oh, it's pretty much the same thing and so he started doing streams on investments instead of losing like tons of money yeah, but it didn't matter because he was making more money from the stream on the stream yeah and a lot of other 08:05 creators came out talking about investing. Robin Hood was positioned at the perfect point to be able to bring in the sin flex of retail investors Robin Hood referral code. By the way, some it's a lot of people who got into this investing game right and as a part of this whole thing, there's a guy by the name of Ryan Cohen. This is Ryan Cohen. He was CEO of the dog food company, Chewy 08:33 He had a very large exit of that very, very wealthy guy got into investing after that, like so many people do after they exit their successful business. Yeah, investing is when you just do, you don't want to do anything real investing is when you have a bunch of money and you're just like, I be fun to just do. Yeah, fun to have more. 08:55 What investing really is is you get a lot of money and you realize that if you put your money to work, you don't have to put your money to taxes. That's what it really is. So I don't like the system that we live in, so he that's not actually the part of the system. I don't like I'm fine with investing. I'm fine with the capitalists moving your money that way. I think that works. That makes sense. Okay, 09:25 it's people taking advantage of the tax code that I don't like yeah, so he Ryan Cohen invests in Game Stop, just based on this video, not just based on the video. Well, I don't know. Maybe it was based on this video. He was interested in it. He was a picture of him standing outside a game stop. I expected you to look at that and laugh at it. I guess I don't know, but yeah. He took this picture and he was like he's like I'm all in and so he tweets that he gets he invests in it. I don't like that that guy's rich 09:57 that is kind of one of the things that, like I, I don't like what rich people look like that. Like I have thought I was I actually it's interesting you say this because I was thinking this the other day. There are just like rich people among us sometimes and like you see them out in public and they look normal. They they like dress like a poor, but they're not and it's like you never know who they are. It's kind of like the lizard people thing like 10:25 I never know what's under that skin they're just they're just among us. So Cohen invests in Game Stop very outspokenly gets in on it. He does get in on it pretty early. I think he doubles or triples his money on Game Stop talks about it publicly and a lot of people. He has a ton of Twitter followers. So all these people fall suit start getting in on Game Stop Game Stop because of him. 10:55 As we know, as the GameStop story went, a lot of people lost everything trying to invest in GameStop because they were too late. The whole reason this worked is if you were early and you were part of the hype wave and you get out at the tip of the hype wave, hype wave then you win a lot of money. But if you're not, it sucks. You spent way too much money on something that doesn't matter. Cohen believed in it so much that he actually came in as the CEO of GameStop to try to turn it right this ship. 11:22 and so he invests it. He invests in comes in as the CEO sure, but his decision making wasn't great. His experience wasn't the same. He was working in dog food, dog food, like shipping dog food from like a tech startup for dog food, and now he's working in a brick and mortar traditional retail right, and so gamestop gets this is a what of cash. What if when they come in to the stores? 11:51 we have little jars of treats. What if what if when they come in they buy a game and we give them a little pup cup of like game boy games for what if puppies? This is something that Chewie does. What if when they cancel their subscription and the reason they give is that my pet died, we send them a coupon 12:17 for fifty percent off and next no, they send you, they send you a little letter. They send you a it's a handwritten note. That's actually nice yeah, says and it's got your pet's name on there and it's a we're sorry about your cat and then they give a coupon for when you get a new cat. Yeah for the next round of cat. Yeah 12:43 I kind of like it, but they don't update their email marketing. There was more to it is that we send a handwritten letter that apologizes for the death of your animal and then we continue to send you emails about it's time to get Lenny vaccinated. We know your furry friend loves our ladies Lenny's expiration date is passed and you're like 13:13 Yeah, his vaccines are expired anyway. Yeah, yeah, that's that's an oversight. Yeah, they should remove us in the email. Yeah, yeah, that is an oversight. Actually, they called us to they called us and they were like, hey, ready to place another order for that medication. They called you. Yeah, they do like a phone call. They go. 13:32 that's like a sweet water. I can't do sweet water whole crap. My Alex feels this pain. Do you buy one thing from sweet water? The sweet water is a place where you can buy like music equipment, you know, audio gear, all that kind of stuff. You buy one thing from them and they will send you 13:50 pictures of their kids graduating from prom dude. Yeah, they will never lose cut fully send you those send you a catalog every now and they'll say and there's emails almost every day. They'll send you stickers all the time. Yeah, what's crazy means they literally call you like I hate it when e commerce sites call my god. Yeah, you can literally burn every bridge between you and the there are the theranos. So we water headquarters 14:15 and they will still get to their like they're like that person that you get coffee with that one time because you feel bad. You ever really hung out with them all that much. You get coffee one time and then they send you memes every day. 14:27 because I hey buddy, we're not best friend. They keep inviting you to hang out and it's like this is actually why we only hung out once every quarter because you're kind of freaking weird. They call you to tell you about this thing that they saw the store today. Like hey, I saw this XLR cable just thought about you because you bought two of them like three months ago. Just wondering how those are doing. Are those still yeah? Actually I got fire one of them died 14:57 sorry we'll take you up the email sorry about your xlr cable. I'm writing you a dear jaren sorry your xl hard cable died. Here's a coupon for a chew eat dot com subscription when you're ready to feed your next one. 15:16 in the early days of this show, we did like affiliate ads where we were like a sign up for grammarly and use code till and and we got like fifteen cents and now we just do patreon. It's a much better way. It's better for us as creators. It's better for you as listeners and it's a much more fun way for us to interact. We do monthly hangouts like on zoom. We just hang out and play games online and and get to know each other. It's a really fun time. So 15:43 but still use our code till in at grammerly dot com because I think it's still. I might get like a couple cents from that, but join us on patreon because we're having a great time. If you don't, we're going to have to start doing mobile game ads. 16:00 So Cohen, invest, not a good CEO, they've got this influx of cash and so he can use this influx of cash to help turn the business around and help modernize its model sure, and this is what everyone expects him to do, but he doesn't. He doesn't do any of that. What about what if we did hot dog and free to make it worse and does just this horrible job managing this company? Here's what I last very long. 16:25 they would get better at as like at Christmas time when people are buying up all the consoles. You know there's got to be a way to stop that it. That's the most when people like as soon as the Xbox, you know, oh that they like buy a whole bunch of a new series yeah and they got to listen on face a place for you for three times the price on Amazon puts a limit on how many you can buy yeah and I'm thinking like I got really mad when I had to buy eight for Christmas at Summit Park. Yeah 16:55 but walmart, long as the church was on. It's okay. I've been gone. It was a summit part. My NDA is expired. Oh yeah man, they have twenty thousand people now so gonna so the stuff that I never had an NDA with them. I knew that I I was before they tried to book me for an event. We sent back the rates and they offered literally 17:23 three percent of the rate. Okay, so so here's what I usually make yeah, but we're friends. We got coffee one time memes. 17:39 So Cohen gets ousted by the board. So here's the thing, what everybody expected him to do and start catching up with the times. to try to get them to bring more people in, And I think he also just didn't understand 18:05 traditional retail, so he was trying to do things that you would do for like an online retail store and it just didn't translate. Well, game stop could be is really getting into the e sports kind of stuff. Yeah, facilitating those things and basically should be your local gaming club. Yeah, I think that would be and yeah and like you could you could set up like subscription based things where people are like members of this club and you know 18:34 they did just get into retro gaming because they for a long time they would only do like the current console and the console before right generation before, but now they got into retro and so now that's a little bit more viable because you can't really find retro games. Most places are more. I mean like I mean like arcades really do work yeah. They're sweet yeah and so yeah having a place you can go play, but yeah he started trying to do nfts with them so 19:01 brick and you could buy NFTs out of brick and mortar. Yeah, I think, but he had like a reddit rotten brain. Yeah, yeah, a hundred sent it he a hundred for sure and so because he gets in there and his brain is so rotten from reddit threads that he people really. I mean how much money was lost on NFTs? I've never I haven't heard people mention it. I have tea since twenty one millions yeah millions, but he was the whatever. Oh, it was a grift. It was a hundred percent of grift yeah for sure. 19:28 there's a bunch of people who knew they could make a million dollars off of it and they paid influencers and celebrities to act like they were a part like a fan of it, yeah, because they knew a bunch of other people would be done, but Cohen is known for his Twitter account and so he's constantly this game stop do like trading cards. They might now they didn't back in the day. They might now I don't know when they started to try to think of where you would do. Where do you do like you go trading cards, Pokemon cards was like board game shops or 19:57 card shops, but see game stop should be in that yeah. They should. They sell like collectibles. They've always sold collectible stuff anyways, so he's big on he's big on Twitter. This is what I'm saying to why are we letting dumb people? Why are we letting? Why can't there's no reason we you know? Here's the deal. Here's the deal you get. I've said get into a CEO role 20:18 and by the end of day one you're like oh, this is what a job is like bro. I really feels like a job yesterday. We did a trade show where we were there from like eight thirty to four thirty five o'clock like a regular nine to five as the worst day of my life. I was in there. I was like wait people do this every day. You just five times a week to be fair. That was a trade show, so it's a little different yeah beat all day. I'm talking to a lot of people like small talking a lot, but 20:48 Yeah, but I'm saying like I used to. I remember like it was a it wasn't against the rules. I it was kind of it was against the rules. We couldn't sit down at subway like we were on our feet the whole shift yeah. I used to work like seven hour shifts and be fine yeah and I just leave yeah and I did that yesterday and I was like this is the worst day of my life. I just want to go have lunch and then and then what are you shaking your head? I'm not saying anything 21:19 all I'm saying is that I just don't think I could do a normal job. I work harder what I do, but I like that I get to work really intensely for like three hours and then take a quick break and then work really intensely for another couple hours, but I also this is another thing. I don't ever get to like go home like and just quit working because I'm working at a P M. You know I'll do another two hours of work at night. Yeah, your job isn't your job doesn't really have a set schedule right now. 21:48 I was going to be on a plane for a long time and that was a different kind of suck. Yeah anyway, I'm not. I'm just trying to be like. I'm very grateful for my life. I know that I have a privilege, but there's elements of it that are fun. Okay, so he's got he's got a big Twitter following and this Twitter fall, his Twitter followers like follow what he says on Twitter. So here's an example of one of his tweets. He decided between two options for my G M E shares hold or hold hot. 22:18 hodl, which h o d l, which is diamond hand yeah that's reddit brain speak. Yes and hodl hodl is an acronym. I don't think it is. Yes, it is. It's an acronym. It says hold on for dear life, okay, which I didn't know that when I found this tweet. I was like hold or a hold spelled wrong. I thought it was hold held spelled wrong just because they're like we're dumb. We're dumb. This is so dumb to do this yeah, which is also valid. 22:48 So this is the kind of stuff he tweets. He also though, so he'll tweet like investing tweets and people will care a lot about that, but he also tweets stuff like this. You e lambs. If I have a small we yeah, so it says, oh lambs, I ever I if backwards, it's yeah 23:12 this is the kind of stuff he tweets, so he's just a nine year old Twitter, yeah, and they were like when we were backwards. What if like you look at this tweet to the rear view mirror? What have you like right in it into a calculator and hold it upside down and put it on? Oh yeah, my wife's a fifth grade teacher and she says that like the across the room. She'll see the kids putting their there. She made a mistake. This is a rookie mistake on her part. She says is that she saw one of the kids flip us calculator upside down yeah 23:39 and she was. Do you want to share that with the class and he's like yeah a hundred percent? Look what it says no, no, no, no, never mind. Stop you don't have to share that the class. Yeah, so just childish dumb stuff yeah, so this whole thing happens. Yeah, it explodes. Some people got super rich off of it. Some people didn't a lot of hate that. I fully read it. I didn't even like I read that thing backwards earnestly and I know when I have a small we 24:09 so this whole thing happens. He's also the CEO and he's rich. I hate that. Yeah, you know what? Most of it is should people be always just jealous. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, 24:35 extremely annoyed that people like that are in people are in positions of power where it's just like dude, whatever, whatever it gets me. It gives me worked up yeah, so this whole thing. A lot of people got caught, held holding the bag and but there was a lot of people too who didn't invest in game stop. They got they didn't get caught, but they were just they were like oh, I missed the wave yeah, and so then after that there was kind of this like 25:02 these follow-up waves of different businesses AMC was one that was really quick. I didn't know that happened. was in financial trouble a few years ago, 25:27 starting in twenty, twenty good reason though, get so many of these stores. When you went inside, you're like this is sad. Well, well in bed, but Beth and beyond was an interesting case because in they were expanding bed. I think the gun was kind of like the story of a lot of big box retail stores where they kind of they drink their own kool aid like bed, Beth and beyond. I think believed they were the biggest in the space and so they took on a lot of debt to 25:56 open up more stores, stock the shelves on those stores, but they overextended themselves and then all of a sudden they did not recognize that. Oh, we're going into all these new markets where we're not the leader in that market. We're stop. We're opening a new store, stocking the shelves and we're getting beaten out by competitors in that market. It's the same thing that happened to Circuit City. Circuit City thought they were the biggest one in every market. They expanded. They overexpanded stock the shelves, went to the markets where best buy was the best 26:24 and then they couldn't smooth their stock and it ended up putting them in financial ruin. So I think Bed, Bath and Be-Alm was in a similar situation, but they also were in the issue of they were in the internet era and they didn't become an internet era company. Right. So I think there was a handful of things. And then the pandemic, I think they had- It's very interesting to me how Target and Walmart have navigated that. Well, they have the online source. They diversified into online. But I think they also like- 26:53 I think I think Target and Walmart had. I think Target and Wal-Mart have different strategies, but I'm saying like the fact that I know what Targets threshold brand is yeah, you know for their home products is like it's interesting to me. Yeah, that is interesting. I was they branded it off the experience target is like it's a good experience. You get your starbucks, you go around the sort, you find the nice stuffed Walmart, you get in fights with children yeah. 27:22 Walmart was like Wal was really focused on trying to get the deal, but you can get everything there yeah. You know I think though I think more than anything. I think Target and Wal-Mart just they had a strong strong foundation for sure, and I think that they had a much, much longer runway yeah than any of these and they don't carry as much inventory yeah as bad. I think beyond was trying to better the arm literally extended to the ceilings with their stuff. That was like their whole thing. It's true yeah 27:52 and the casualty in all of this is the wedding registry business, the fun, the fun of going to all the different stores and doing the we literally went to target and then we did and they gave us a little basically a phone that we just scan stuff with. It was fun. We had a great time yeah, but it's like I didn't think about I be a run around bed bath and beyond and doing the whole that you know it was kind of a man. Yeah, we did it at target. We did a bath and beyond if you are engaged and you're doing the red the wedding registry thing. 28:21 go to the physical store and like go pick out the stuff and then go home and pick out some other things on the internet. Don't just sit on your couch and do the whole registry online. That's not your that's not fun. Yeah, it is more fun than that beyond that. You just let people do what they want to do. Shut up, shut up, shut up, go, go, experience part of a cultural understanding of what it means to be engaged in preparing for a wedding. 28:46 here's the thing you should want to do the things I want to do you joy being outside. Now I the bed bath and beyond did it better. They made it an experience. They had a special room you went into and they threw a big old deal. That was a thing when you were yeah. Mary, you did the drinks like I'm saying they gave you like champagne and then they gave you the gun and you went around like it was. It was an ordeal. It was pretty. We showed the targets do ours and they were like oh you weren't yeah yeah. 29:14 I had this thing they pulled open and they were like this one's not charged. Oh here you go. There's only one of them charged out okay, so I actually take a legal pad yeah. Why don't you just write down this stuff? Congrats though yeah we're happy for you. I guess we're like okay yeah it was fun yeah. Do you do you like each other? Is this like a like a marriage or like a marriage? You know yeah so yeah bed, Beth and beyond. I think 29:43 they, but also I realized that target doesn't ask for proof that the wedding exists or anything. So like you could sign up for the registry and then once the wedding date passes, then you get like fifty percent off on most of that stuff. Yeah, I don't think that bath did either. Yeah, I think you could just yeah, it is a one time code though. Just so you know, it is not you can't use it multiple times. You get a one time 30:13 pretty big discount on all that stuff. Yeah, just so you know, yeah, so the clutch thing to do is if you get cash from a bunch of people, schedule a time to go and just buy the left over the stuff. Yeah right anyways, but what we did with the cash from our wedding was invested in G. So that method beyond was 30:41 yes, the problem was a lot of different things that put them in a tough position and then Ryan Cohen started tweeting about them. It was like what if I became the CEO of Bed Bath and Beyond? Yeah, he was basically like I'm really interested in this and so he invests in it. He invests millions in it. Okay, starts tweeting about how much he thinks they're a great company. He calls them. He realizes this is going to just come to a point where he's legally held accountable for this because 31:10 he's realizing that he has influence and can get people to he's influencing pumping dobs will get there. He calls them okay, and he's like a bath and beyond yeah. He calls him. He records his call. He's like he's like hey, I've got a lot of ideas of how you guys could turn this company around and they were like this is the one on Prairie V road in Kansas City. I can connect you to my district manager. I guess they were like honestly, sir, I scan the orders at the checkout. I don't think I can do like this. They're like, but I got time to chat. No one's here yeah, 31:39 I have been wanting to talk to somebody for a while. Oh, the sound of a human voice. Are you the guy who right wrote me that card with my pet died? He talking and so he starts posting all this stuff about it. He invests millions of dollars into into bed bath and beyond okay, and so then this community sees it and they're like oh, this is his next thing. This is our next is big break. That's a bad and okay. 32:07 Yeah, so they all start to invest in it right and then this community starts on reddit call the way the shares work. If there's ten shares there's not, but if there's ten and you buy three of them and then you get other people to buy, you know, for like one to then you get six other people to buy one share each yeah now. You know you're getting more and more people interested. You can sell your three shares for way more than you bought them for 32:32 Yes, and then when the share value plummets, you've already sold out. You've made your money. Someone else bought your you bought your three shares for a dollar each. Someone else bought them for ten dollars each, so you made twenty seven dollars on that sale. Yes, you had to keep it twenty seven dollars. They're now thirty dollars in and then because each shares were ten dollars, but then when it goes down to being worth two dollars, yes, then they are stuck with a hefty loss. Yes, yeah and 33:01 you don't feel bad about that somehow you're rolling in your twenty seven dollars. You feel fine. I mean I think I think it's. I think you don't understand you. You either don't understand this is all thing you don't understand. He understands he knows what he's doing by the time he gets to bed bath and beyond 33:22 he understands yeah. I can see him fully going in on Game Stop and just being like Game Stonk gonna go gonna raise Game Stop. There's actually a good business. I'm fully bought into the fact that this could survive. You know, obviously it won't. You're like I can you know whatever I can see that, but then you see the AMC thing happen and you're like huh and then you go to bed, bath and beyond. Yeah, you know what you're doing at this point. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, most likely and so a community is formed around this on reddit called BBB Y, which 33:51 is the ticker symbol for bit bath and beyond and this whole group of people starts congregating on this reddit forum. There's a red it for every ticker by the way yeah yeah and on this sub reddit everybody is congregating here talking about bed bath and beyond and they're doing what in the stonks community and I need to be clear that this is there's a strong difference between the investing community and the stonks community. They are doing what they call due diligence, which due diligence is an actual term in 34:21 You go look at a company's balance sheet. and you do your research on the people in charge and do due diligence. In the Stonks community, due diligence is conspiracy theories. I mean, this is why I think it's going to go to the moon. 34:51 and then a few interesting figures start to pop up in this world. What of my favorite is a guy that goes by the name of P P seeds and he runs a show called the P P show, and so this is him doing a live stream debating with another guy by the name of Moran's and so Moran's disagrees. Which one is which guess top guy is P P seeds. 35:21 bottom guy is Moran's now you got that I got the backwards yeah bottom guys, PPC top guys, Marance, okay, Moran's doesn't buy into the here's the thing about PPC. Is that one out of context to yeah, here's the thing about PPC. Is my wife teachers at a private school yeah, there's a lot of rich parents at the school, and so she gets on parent teacher conferences. Go back to this graphic if you can yeah. You see 35:49 the blinds that people. Those are the same blinds we have in our house. My wife will set the laptop up facing the blinds and she's on a call and I'll go down. I'll recognize the voice. I'm like oh, that's a famous person. Move the computer, don't let them don't let them see our blinds. Rich people don't have those rich people have blinds. I haven't seen a blind in decades 36:15 Yeah, because Moran's has a whole set up. I guess I thought that the top one was that because PPC has a channel. I'd assume yeah, they both have channels. They both have gaming chairs. That's how you know that none of their opinions should be taken seriously. If you're seeing a video, someone's sitting at a gaming chair, they're trying to give you political ideas or financial advice. You should skip past that. That's a gaming chair. Skip past the video. Your life will be ruined by someone in a gaming chair. 36:46 Thanks for checking out this episode. In that mailing list, we give updates on past episodes. and every week things are changing. So if you want to keep learning stuff, that's happening in the Tillon verse. 37:13 I like 37:38 that's actually that's a pretty big red flag. So my wife's a twitch streamer and she refuses to get a gaming chair. I said do you want us by and she goes? No, I do not want to be one of those people, whatever that means. So Moran's the guy at the top gaming chair at the top. He does not buy into any of the BBY stuff. He actually thinks it's really dumb, and so he does a whole channel. He does a game stop stuff. He did. He was a game stop guy and he did 38:08 He did cash out, he did cash out, he did well on GameStop, but he thinks BBB Y is stupid, and so he's constantly does content saying how does PP seeds think he sees PPCS analysis on the financial situation of the bed bath and beyond stock market position loves bed bath and of course PPC and so this this this thumbnail is actually from a debate that they did on a live stream between the two of them. PPC does the PP show 38:37 and here's a here's a screen grab from an episode of the P P show. He brings these guests on. Oh my God, white or marker board that it says the P P show. Is that him? No, that's not him. That's another guest. Those are two other random guests that he had on the P P show will talk about bed bath and beyond, but primarily what they will do is they will 38:58 dissect Ryan Cohen's tweets to try to figure out his hidden message that he has for them about what's going on. What is that you went on for Ryan Cohen? Yeah exactly, and so he's like here's what he means and here's what this has to do with bed beyond and why we should take the position we're taking and why we should invest more in bed bath and beyond or whatever bed bath and beyond is real money. Yes, and so bad bath and beyond is falling apart. PPC is blowing up 39:25 Every day there's worse and worse news about Bed Bath & Beyond. And Cohen pulls his money from Bed Bath & Beyond. The PPC's community loses their mind. They're like, oh, he's pulled all his money. What should we do? And they look at all of his tweets. They look at the action of him pulling his money. He wants us to buy more. That's pretty much exactly what they conclude. They say he's trying to tell us to hold. He's doing this to tell us, hey, I'm doing something really big. 39:55 this is the message I'm trying to show you, but if no one will buy your shares, you know at a certain point there's no that's what the whole thing is. Is you can't sell them because no one will buy them yeah, yeah, so what I should say if you're able to sell that share, that means somebody bought it for that price yeah in at the height of bed bath and beyond and like the early twenty two thousands or something like that twenty tens. I don't know what the height was for them, but I do know that they peaked at seventy seven dollars a share 40:23 in twenty twenty when this community started to form, they were at three dollars a share, so a lot of people started buying into this and a lot of people were investing large sums of money, their life savings. A lot of people were taking out loans to invest in this because they were like. Oh, it'll be worth it. I'll be able to pay it off so dumb because they believed that Cohen was sending them messages to invest in through his Twitter is there is cryptic Twitter posts, which again 40:52 was immature sentences backwards. Yes, yes and then he Cohen they somebody discovers that Cohen had registered for a trademark after selling all of his shares in bed bath and beyond and he trademarked the word Teddy and so then the theory became. Oh, he is taking that money out to then go by 41:18 bed, bath and beyond and take him over and rebrand it as Teddy and then it's going to be the new bed bath and beyond is going to be Teddy. What Teddy ended up being a few months later was he was working on a children's book and he published this children's book called Teddy. Words can never hurt you and he starts putting out a series of these children's books. Imagine dumping your life savings 41:44 Okay, okay, okay worse, so they start reading his children's book on stream for messages, he shows and they start yeah, dice, de, dissecting it and they're looking at it and there's literally a and at a certain point. Does Ryan knows is happening 42:00 he's never acknowledged if I found out that there was some weird group on reddit dissecting our podcast in this way. That was like here's the secret messages. Here's what they actually mean. Here's what they want us to do. I would put a stop to that yeah yeah you'd be like hey guys, I really guys. I really don't mean anything and they're like and that's what he see. I told you he would say this. I told you he was going to say this 42:27 He's two steps ahead of him. And so on stream they're looking at this and there's literally a three hour stream where they're analyzing the colors of the viewers. So I don't know where it was at the height, but I can say now PPC has 19,000 subscribers and so it's a fairly large community of people that are involved in this and the reddit for this community. 42:56 gosh, I wish I knew how to use, has 70,000 members. So it's a large group. That's what I'm saying. I mean, he's doing a three hour live stream. I want to know how many people are tuned in. Yeah. And so they're going through and they're looking at the color of the socks on every page of his children's book and saying, okay, because of, and then they're listing them all out and they're doing an analysis of the colors and they're saying, okay, based on these colors, we can draw conclusions about what's going to happen next with Bed Bath and Beyond. 43:31 So the situation at bed, free on is happening to me. So lots of these Teddy books start coming out. More and more Teddy books are coming out and they're reading every single one. They're analyzing every single tweet he puts out. There's a handful of other people in the community that are saying stuff about Bed, Beth and Beyond that have a little bit of influence, but not really anyone like Cohen. Cohen has become honestly God to these people. Everything he says has a hidden meaning. Right. Everything he says is law and they're going to follow him to the ends of the earth. 44:01 And so in a weird way, they are like worshiping Cohen. And meanwhile, the situation at Bed Bath & Beyond is getting worse and worse. The financial situation, they're closing stores left and right. Every month it's, we're closing 50 more stores. We're closing 70 more stores. And then it culminates in a moment where their CFO, they announce the company announces that they're in a really bad situation. Their CFO, 44:31 they basically say hey, we're, we're coming out with an intent to declare bankruptcy. We haven't declared it yet, but we're beginning the process to file for it and then later that night the CFO jumps from his window and takes his own life and so the situation for bad bath and beyond yeah yeah and so the situation is spiraling for bed bath and beyond right like completely falling apart. This community, there's a member in this community 45:00 I think his name was his name is Kinsta. He was known for being really sucky. To find the right way to say that he would dox people constantly that disagree with them. This guy Marantz, he found his address and he posted a picture online of his wife and said I'm home alone. Come visit me with the address. This is the kind of stuff that this can stack. I was doing this kids. The guy shows up at the apartment. 45:30 of the CFO of Bed, Bath and Beyond try and he's like, he's like, hey, I'm trying to visit him. I know he didn't actually die. And the doorman, this is New York, the doorman is like, he doesn't live here anymore. And the guy's like, I know, I know he didn't, I know he didn't kill himself. I know he's still here. I know they're hiding him. And the guy's like, bro, you need to get off the internet. That's how the doorman responds to him. He's like, the guy doesn't live here anymore. He doesn't live anywhere anymore. He's like, you need to go. And so this guy, this community is like, 46:00 The picture I'm trying to pay is a very toxic community that's starting to form, that's not believing anything anyone's saying. And the situation at Bed, About, The Beyond is getting worse and worse and worse. They're declaring bankruptcy. It looks like it's going to fall apart. So what the PPCs stream is now starting to advertise is that, okay, hey, what's going to happen is it's going to go bankrupt. We're going to get your assets. We're going to all have the shares and our shares are going to turn into Teddy shares and we're going to find out, oh, hey, we do own this company that Cohen. 46:29 we're in at the ground level at Cohen's company. That's what's going to happen. And so they all believe because they don't understand what happens when a company goes out of business that, oh, hey, the shares are still going to be in my account. And so in April of 2023, Bed Bath & Beyond officially declares bankruptcy and they go through all the paperwork throughout the summer. In September, it finally goes through on all the stock market exchanges. 46:57 And those shares just disappear from everyone's account because that's what happens when you own a company that doesn't exist anymore. And everybody freaks out. They're like, Oh, my shares are gone. I didn't know my shares were going to go away. What happened to all my shares? These people had their life savings, loan money invested in it and it just disappeared. And PPC seeds continues on a stream and the Reddit, the whole Reddit community continues. 47:25 to look at tweets from Cohen to look at this Teddy book and try to rationalize how this is going to turn around and they end up doing it. They end up putting together this whole theory that oh what's going to happen is Teddy's going to launch and we're just going to have these shares and our account when it launches and like they still to this day believe. I don't know if you can see I'm physically stressed right now that this somehow is all going to come together for them. What is perhaps the wildest part of this story? 47:54 Well, I don't know if I would say the wildest start, the dirtiest part of this story, the grossest part of this story. Obviously it does seem like Cohen pump and dumped this stock, right? So he made these tweets, he went in and he got in and out and he doubled his money on Beth Bed Bath and Beyond. Right. He, I think he invested thirty five million. He came out with sixty and so he made a lot of money off of it, but PPC, and a handful of other 48:23 creators in this space that are doing are not going to be held accountable for that. Well, they all operate twist streams and they do the donations and they all have patreons and so they're all having people support them. So not only are these people investing their money in a stock that's worthless, but they're also investing their money to be on a patreon and to gift twitch streamers in their time yeah to get to give information about stuff that's useless and so I did see a reddit still to this day he's going 48:53 still to this day. There's a reddit community called GME meltdown and it's just a bunch of people, especially making fun of everyone who got into all this stuff. Yeah, and there's a post that I found that is pretty accurate. And so this guy says, okay, some quick math here. PPC show has 40. This was seven months ago. He said PPC seed show has 41 episodes and then there's a comment that says, hey, 41 episodes is just as public. He constantly deletes episodes when there's information that contradicts what's in them. 49:23 And so 41 is just what's currently public. And so he says there's hundreds more that are have since been deleted. There are an average three hours per episode. There's one hundred twenty three total hours. Typically there's four adults on the episode. So that's four hundred ninety two human hours. He says the average cost to mobile on in the U.S. is 30. The average time on long is 30 minutes. 49:47 and he says it nine hundred and eighty four lawns could have been mowed at an average of a hundred dollars each. He said they could have made ninety eight thousand dollars just mowing lawns. He said double it for show prep. That's a hundred ninety six thousand dollars. He said they have a hundred ninety six thousand dollar opportunity on their hands. If they were just mow lawns instead of doing this garbage, which is a whole areas to be, but I want that person to do the math on our show. 50:10 Yeah, yeah, yeah, how much somebody honestly Daniel Daniel will do it Daniel. We just mode yards instead of doing this for seven years, so but here's the thing P P probably is making a lot more money. 50:29 people is probably making a lot more money off of patreon and off of stream gifts and off of they do like these telethons where this is. You think that he's actually got money in this though and he's lost it to or you think he's just I kind of think he doesn't have a dollar where I joke about like if I became a grifter who like did this stuff, but then I just have a conscience. Yeah, I honestly I don't know if he has a dollar. It's either he's just as delusional ever as everyone else or he doesn't have a dollar in and he's just 50:58 But he does this. This is this screenshot is actually from like one of these telephon telephon type events where they're saying like, hey, one more hour that guy on the right in this. His name is actually Bill Pulte. He's another name in this community. This is Bill Pulte. Both of these guys are Bill Pulte. That's Bill Pulte Jr. and senior senior started a real estate company. 51:27 That's incredibly successful. They are the legacy that Bill Poulty Jr. is coming into is a eight or nine figure legacy. It's a very, very wealthy situation. Bill has gotten into philanthropy now that he's an adult, has gotten into some politics stuff, and into grifting on the internet. And he came on this stream, and the stream was a donation stream. You're donating to PPC, it's to keep the show running. 51:54 and the donation, the price of the donation was getting to meet Bill Poulty. Oh wow. So, oh shoot. So what he was saying was nothing. I want more and so it was a very I get to meet Bill Poulty. It was a very oh junior. I hate that guy. 52:14 It was a very cringey stream because he was like, he's like, just $50. He's like, if you do it in the next 10 minutes, you get to meet me. All you got to do is $50 the next 10 minutes, like that type of thing over and over again. And he said, you know what, you know what, you know what, the 15 minutes is up. He's like, I'm going to give you 20 more minutes, but you got to do $500. $500 the next 20 minutes, you can meet me. And like they raised, I think it was like seven or $8,000 on that stream alone, just from doing this thing. And then after that, Bill became a mainstay on the show and became one of the people that was like in this conspiracy circle. 52:44 And this all culminated for an event shortly after all their stocks went away. When the stock disappeared, they had a special live stream where they're making a special announcement. PPC was going to make a special announcement. They said, Hey, new information has come to light. We're making a special announcement, special stream tune in live. Don't miss this. Advertise it. Big event. The stream starts and it's like outdoors. It's a different setting than normal and it's just a shot outdoors. There's like a live audience. 53:14 But the live audience isn't mic'd. That is important. But there's like a live audience there. And the stream's like from the live audience. And then all of a sudden, this helicopter flies in and lands in the field. And Bill and PP, and one of the other guys that comes on the show a lot, get out of this helicopter and greets this crowd. And they do the live stream from the side of this helicopter on like this airfield. And. 53:44 they do like almost like this political vibe type press conference being like here's what's happened. We I know we all just lost all of our stocks. The next hill in live episode show open a just land the helicopter there. That is crazy. They land the hell that is insane to bring people who have lost their entire life savings yeah and then to well that's a good evening. Welcome 54:14 welcome. I think that's that's. This is the thing that kind of like cements in my mind that this is a grift for them because here's the thing what they're selling. They're selling hope that they're going to be rich one day that everyone's going to be rich one day. It's a say it's a prosperity. They're capitalizing on yeah and so what they need to do is they need to look rich. It's like you'll be like me and so like this is just part of the grift. You can't do a whole thing where we're all going to be rich one day. You got to do a thing where you could be rich like me yeah 54:39 Yeah, exactly. And so they land and they say, hey, look, we know what happened. This is a terrible, this seems terrible. But trust in Teddy. Yeah, here's how we know, here's what's going to happen. And then at the end of this whole event, they did this big old thing about how Teddy's still going to happen. Cohen's on our side. Here's how we know it. Everything's okay. Don't freak out. Donate more to PPseeds. Also, Bill Pulte has something he wants to say. Bill takes the podium and Bill says, guys, 55:06 I'm very excited to announce this. His dad passed away years ago. He said, I'm very excited to announce this. He said, my dad's company has been a privately owned company for decades. And he said, but I want to open this up to investors one night only to investors to come invest in my father's company. He says, so tonight only I'm selling shares for Pulte Realty. You can get in on the ground floor, get in today, make your investment. I think he priced it at like $500 a share. 55:33 You can come in, buy your shares in Pulte Realty. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Only the people who are here tonight and are watching with the stream live have this opportunity to get in and invest today and be a part of what's happening here. And just got a bunch of people to invest in this real estate company that he inherited that since he's inherited is not doing well because he doesn't really know what he's doing in the real estate world. 55:58 very, very, very sketchy and a bunch of people do it. A bunch of people are like oh yeah. I just lost everything listening to these people. Let me give you five. Let me give you a bunch of money so that way I can be invested in on the ground floor on your real estate company okay ground floor of your already established and decade old yeah falling apart, actually falling apart real estate company since you took it over. So 56:24 This community is still active and this community still is dissecting Cohen's tweets stresses me out so much. Yeah, these people are so dumb. Yeah. Still reading the news and trying to figure out how it's good for them and how things are going to work out for them. A lot of these people I watched like a mini YouTube documentary about it and the people that were interviewed. Most of them asked for their face to be blurred out because they didn't want to be on the internet, but a lot of them were like, yeah, like I took out loans. I quit my job. 56:53 there are people. There was a one guy who said yeah, I actually got laid off, but he's like I'm so confident that this is going to come around like I'm just not going. I'm not looking for a new job and he's like so I'm just just been pretending to go to work every day. Like I'm just my wife thinks I'm going to work. I'm not and he's like I just I know this is going to work out that I'm expecting at a minimum already living in your unrealized games like yeah, just like yeah. I mean I mean he said he said he said I'm confident that I think I stand to make at least three million off of this and he said so I don't need to work another day in my life. 57:22 And it's just like these people are so like the cognitive they're not. in April of 2023 and August of 2023, someone bought the trademark to Bed Bath and Beyond. Overstock.com. 57:53 right, so bad, bad, the bad dot com still exists and still runs. It's just overstock and overstock said yeah, bed bath and beyond has a stronger brand than we do, and so they just rebranded the bed bath and beyond when they realized they could and now that still exists, but about thing I mean on technically which is crazy and that's got me wondering. Can we do that? Are there any businesses that we can just go 58:21 get. Thank you for listening to the Circuit City Pod, like honestly, I don't think we should be the C C P. 58:36 Yeah, I don't know how many blockbuster. 58:42 toys are us, toys are us is back. I know that's that makes me sad, but on that note, if you want to buy a share of tillin, you can support us on patreon. That support will buy us a helicopter yeah wow fiddle off, huh? Yeah, that's brutal. 59:11 Hey, thanks for checking out that episode of things. I learned last night. If you like that we've done actually several episodes about Ponzi scheme type things literally one about Ponzi, but what I wanted to highlight was to look mania, which was like the original pump and dump where people were literally buying tulips for way more than they were like the flower way more than they were worth, and then people were left holding the bag on that and so that's available. You can go check that out and if you cannot wait for a new episode and you can buy some tulips at tillin dot com slash support. We've got tools for sale. 59:40 and they're only two. Why are you interrupting my outro? I will the outro. We only one of us. I was just trying to sell some of our tulips. The end of the day, I tell them about patriot. You just did oh yeah till the dot com slash support. You can get next week's episode ad free right now and you can meet our host and producers in discord. We have a monthly call that we do a lot of other great perks. 01:00:05 it's totally worth it. Till and dot com slash support and you might be selling high, jacks, I think ending of this episode. That's crazy. Yeah, it was. It was a pleasure. Thanks for watching things. I learned last night. We'll see you next week. What the heck just happened?