Clay Talks With Seth Dillon

This week on Wins & Losses, Clay Travis is joined by Babylon Bee owner Seth Dillon. Seth tells Clay about his upbringing growing up in several different places as the son of a preacher. Seth also details his time at Palm Beach Atlantic University, and how he has since been banned from speaking events at his alma mater. Clay asks Seth about the Babylon Bee’s battles with social media companies over the years, and specifically, about his current ongoing fight with Twitter, who has recently locked their account over a tweet that they deemed unacceptable. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome and appreciate all of you listening to us. I
am Clay Travis. This is Wins and Losses. I believe
this is number forty five or forty six of these conversations.
Been having them for a few years off and on
wanting to get the Clay and Buck show up and running.
So now that we're officially underway there and feel comfortable,
I can start some of these long form conversations again.

(00:21):
And today's guest is Seth Dylan. He is with the
Babylon b and we're gonna get into that here momentarily.
Last week we talked with Auburn men's basketball coach Bruce Pearl.
If you haven't heard that yet, I think that will
be an incredibly enjoyable conversation for you guys to check out.
We bring in Seth now. Seth is in the middle

(00:42):
of a battle with Twitter, which we are going to
eventually work our way up to where the Babylon Be
account has been locked over a refusal to delete a
to delete a tweet mocking many of the issues that
we're dealing with on a day to day basis, but
this one in particular with transgender related issues. We'll get

(01:03):
to that eventually, but let's start here. First of all,
thanks for being on seth Secondly, how in the world
have you found yourself doing what you do now? So
I'm gonna start with the most basic question, where did
you grow up? Would you ever have thought, Hey, I'm
going to end up as a sator is basically on

(01:23):
the internet. Uh? What's your background? A great question? Well,
first of all, thanks for having me on play. It's
pleasure to be on the show. Um. Yeah, I mean
my background. I grew up is someone appropriately to be
running a you know, like a Christian conservative satire said?
I grew up in the church. My dad was a pastor. Um.
I was born in d C. Of all places, but

(01:45):
I bounced around all of the place. When people ask
what my hometown is, I don't even know how to
answer that because we lived in Maryland and Jersey and
Texas and South Florida, so I was kind of moving
around a little bit. I don't really have like a hometown. Um,
but you know, my my background, my early back ground.
I love to read. Um. My parents taught me how
to think critically, and they taught me the values as well.

(02:06):
And I and as I came into like young adulthood,
young adulthood, I cared very much about, um, you know,
issues of importance, you know, cultural issues and uh in
morals and values UH and making sure that you know,
whatever whatever I was doing in terms of like supporting
and politics reflected my my values in my worldview. UM.
And so I had a good, I think good foundation

(02:28):
under me because of my parents. I'm thankful to them
for that. But when it comes to like the satire
and the humor stuff, I mean, I got into a
little bit of trouble in college writing the satire that
I sent, I distributed throughout the school. Um, I was
able to download the whole email list and like the
blast out an email to the staff and faculty and
all the students and and it was making fun of
the school and some professors, and it was it wasn't

(02:50):
super lighthearted. Some of it was even mean spirited. I
would say, there was a little bit of an edge
to it and UH, and it got me in a
bit of trouble with the with the school's administration, and
I almost got kicked out of college. So I had
I had an early start when it came to getting
in trouble with that higher and humor. UM, But I didn't.
I didn't start a career doing that because you know,
there's not really many ways to make money doing that,
and there certainly weren't back then for me. So I

(03:12):
got into the Internet marketing world and learned how to
do UH, search marketing, SEO, all of that stuff. UM.
I worked for some agencies doing that. It wasn't until
about two thousand twelves that I struck out on my
own as an entrepreneur and uh and the babylon Be
fell into my lap in eighteen when I was looking
to kind of diversify into the media space and the

(03:34):
babble Onbe was taking off like a rocket and UH
and I wanted to help it grow. Um. But the
guys who was running at adam Ford he started in
and he was looking to sell it, so we ended
up working at a deal. UM. So, long story short,
that's how I got involved in it. But it was
just kind of like a dream come true to see
something like that come across my radar. When I saw
the babble on B, I thought to myself immediately, Man,

(03:55):
I wish I had thought of that. I wish I
was running that side. I wish I was involved in
it in some way. Um, and I initially looked at
it as just an investment, like to see if I
could get involved as an investor, kind of giving us
things some fuel. And uh, never thought I'd be running it,
but that's how it worked out, all right. So I
want to go back. Your dad is a is a preacher.
What religious faith did you grow up in? What was

(04:17):
he a minister? What church affiliation? So Protestant Christianity, Evangelical church,
but not like any particular denominational affiliation, so Bible churches,
community churches, stuff like that. So I grew up in Nashville,
as most people who are listening here no, um, and
I grew up going to Baptist Church as a kid,

(04:38):
as a lot of people who grow up in the
South do. Uh. And so I experienced a lot of
different preachers and a lot of different preachers sons and daughters.
And it's a cliche that they often have issues. Did
you feel any particular pressure or any particular or find
that you had any particular issues as a preacher son?
Do you have brothers and sisters? Like? What was your

(05:00):
experience like in that respect, especially since you said you
grew up in so many different states. That's not uncommon
for those jobs either, because a preacher might constantly be
relocating and moving around to find different religious groups to
be to be preaching too. Yeah. Well, I mean, I
think I think kind of a common thing that happens

(05:21):
is you have really conservative households, a lot of really
strict rules. Um, kids end up, you know, becoming really
wanting to rebel and break away from all that. I
I grew up having a tremendous amount of respect for
my parents, and I was in a very loving home,
and so I never really felt any um strong inclination

(05:43):
to like lash out against them or defy them. Um,
you know, I never I never really struggled with that.
It never really felt like I was jaded because of
you know, things that the things that I had seen
behind the scenes in the church, or you know that
that rocked my faith to its core or anything like that.
You know, there was obviously a lot of drama that
goes on in churches, and a lot of political stuff

(06:03):
that happens behind the scenes, and a lot of fact
stabbing and and very Unchristian behavior that you end up seeing. Um,
but you know, I think my my parents really they
handled it all with a lot of grace and uh
and they really just loved on people. Um. And you know,
my my dad's job, being a pastor is like a
seven jobs. So you know, you're you're you're dealing with

(06:24):
stuff in the church, you're preparing for your sermon, but
then you're doing hospital visits and and funerals and weddings
and all kinds of stuff, just seven um, serving and
ministering to other people. So I never had anything but
tremendous respect for them. Um. And you know, I think
I think my faith only grew stronger as a results
of of my my upbringing in the church. So um, yeah,

(06:45):
I guess, I guess I might be one of the exceptions.
I don't know. I have no idea what percentage of
pastor's kids turn out normal versus uh, you know, going
the other way. So, was there, ever, when you were
a kid a move where you were just crushed that
you had to leave a particular community or a particular state.
Was there a place that you loved as a kid,

(07:05):
was one of those moves more traumatic or difficult for
you than others? Um? I do remember I grew up
in Maryland. I was in Um, we were. We lived
in Carroll County, Maryland. My dad passed through little church
called Uniontown Bible Church, and it's a really small town
and uh, small church and but very close family. The

(07:28):
church was like family to us and uh and so
those were like my kindergarten years, first second grade. I
was a little kid, and I remember when we left there,
everybody was really sad and devastated that we were leaving.
And I was sad myself because I felt like we
were leaving our family. But I was a little kid,
you know, I hadn't hadn't developed like lifelong relationships with
anyone yet at that point. But um, that sticks out

(07:50):
to me most in my memory as being one of
those times when I was really sad. I guess as
I got a little older, we moved around, you know,
four years later, we moved again. Five years later, moved again.
I kind of, I guess I got a little accustomed
to it. I think it was harder on my sister.
You know, she would she had boyfriends, and she was
a little older than me. You know, she was having
the breakup with boyfriends we moved. That was devastating for her,
But um, for me, I kind of got used to it,

(08:10):
and I found it exciting going to a new place,
meeting new people. Um, it was just that one initial
move when I was younger, the first one that I
remember where I felt like we were, you know, leaving
our home. Where did you go to college? You mentioned
that you got in trouble for what you sent out
to the school listserv. Where did you go to school?
I went to Palmbich Atlantic University. I was there from

(08:30):
two thousand and two thousand four. I studied UH. I
studied business management. While I was there, I minored in
English and and I recently actually got canceled from speaking there.
That's another story, but um, I guess that's going on
two years now. I was supposed to go speak at
the chapel, and the Twitter mob formed to assemble to
to to UH to say that to the administration that

(08:54):
they shouldn't have someone like me on their campus. You know,
I'm full of full of hatred and all this stuff. Um,
so you know I ended up I ended up getting
denied from speaking in the chapel because that's a sacred place.
Can you believe that I actually attended that school. I've
never even I've never even heard of the school Palm
Beach Atlantic. You said, what is Palm Beach Atlantic known for? Uh,

(09:20):
beautiful women the beach. I don't know, I mean, is
it a big school like I mean, I don't know
sports context, so I can't even like how many people
would go there. Roughly a few thousands. So yeah, it's
not they're not They're not on the map when it
comes to like, uh sports, UM, so you know they're not.
They're not a highly competitive athletic department. UM. But there

(09:43):
are there are a Christian school. It's a private Christian university, UM.
So you know, you have a lot of there's a
big draw to come down to Florida be be neither
near the beach, and so you know, as an alternative
as some of the other Christian universities that are not
in awesome locations. I think Palm each Atlantic has a
has a great draw for that. They do have some
good programs there though, and and UH I recently just

(10:04):
I actually invested in and and made it a large,
large UH donation to their new Philosophy of Religion UM
program that they launched a master's and Philosophy Religion. I
have a strong interest in like apologetics and philosophy and
and arguing for the faith using reason. Uh. And so
that they're they're launching a program with someone I really respect,

(10:26):
Paul Cope, is running that program and uh, and I
think it's gonna be very fruitful training up a younger
generation of of Christians who can actually defend intellectually their beliefs. So, um,
that's really cool that they're getting into that. So that
you made a large donation to the school and they
still canceled your speech, yeah the next year. Yeah, So,

(10:46):
I mean it seems to me that the Religious School
would not necessarily be offended by you, particularly because you're
an alarm Were you surprised that they they decided to
try to cancel your speech? Yes, and no. I mean
you don't really see much backbone and institutions these days.

(11:08):
The the squeaky wheel gets the grease, you get these
Twitter mobs that form, and they're the really loud, really obnoxious,
really angry people that everybody wants to appease. And I
think the administration found themselves in a position where, you know,
they didn't want to have a they didn't want to
have an event on their campus that was attracting any
media attention with protests or anything like that. So they
just wanted to appease the mob and do what the

(11:31):
mob wanted and say, Okay, we're not going to have
him in the chapel if you guys don't think that's appropriate. Um,
instead of coming and standing by me and saying, there's
nothing wrong with this guy. He attended this school, his
he he doesn't have, um, you know, terrible values. He
doesn't hate people. We stand by him. We want him
to speak here. No one. They didn't have my back
like that or stand up these kids. And the thing

(11:51):
that to me it was it's crazy. It's like, is
the administration running the school or are these angry students
running the schools? The same thing with Disney? Is the
CEO really in charge? And it doesn't really seem that way.
It seems like the tail is wagging the dog. There's
no doubt we're talking to Seth Dylan. He is the
he runs the Babylon b I'll ask him an official title. Uh,

(12:12):
since two thousand and eighteen, I believe uh, And I
am Clay Travis. This is wins and losses, all right?
So you go to college. I'm actually curious about this.
You said you were there two thousand to two thousand four.
Do you remember the first time you ever got on
the internet. You're around my age, so you probably do.
Do you remember like the first time you got on
the internet and what you did when you got on there?

(12:34):
Was it with a O L? Like those discs? What
what do you remember about the Internet as a kid
growing up? Man, it wasn't it the rich kid that
had a O L. I don't even know if I
had a well, I think we had like like net
zero or something like that. I didn't have. So so yeah,
I mean to answer your question, by the way, I
didn't even have the Internet at my house. So when
I'm a little bit older than you, I'm nineties seven

(12:55):
to two thousand one was the time I was at
George Washington, But when I went away to college. The
first time I ever got an email address was when
I got to college, and we didn't have, to my knowledge,
the internet at our house. Now, when I came back
home in the summers, by that point, we had the internet,
but I didn't have the internet at home. My my

(13:15):
uncle next door had Prodigy dial up internet, but I
never had the Internet at my house. So so you
do you remember the first time. I remember the first
time I got on. I was with my friend Greg Schamberg,
who I don't even know where Greg lives now, but um,
he had a O L those free discs that they
sent out. Remember, like you used to get so many

(13:35):
hours to get on for the Internet. It was dial up,
And I remember he and I got on. That was
the very first I was at his house. I was
probably you know, ninth or tenth grade. That was the
very first time I ever got on the Internet. You
had to get like a CD ROM add on for
your computers. Yeah, that's right, disc and if you didn't,
if you didn't already have one, yeah, I was. I
remember my my granddad on my mom's side was really

(13:59):
into like playing bridge and stuff on the Internet and
so and that was like a big thing early on.
And and he was really excited about being able to
set us set us up on the internet so that
he could chat with us remotely. He lived in Virginia
and uh, and so he helped us get on the internet.
We got like I c Q and a O L
A Messenger and started chatting with friends. I think I

(14:19):
was probably fourteen or fifteen around that. Time when we
first did you recognize hey, yeah, but did you reckon
by the time you get to college two thousand and four,
did you recognize even as a young kid, oh, this
internet thing is going to be big? Or like I
remember getting my email address at GW freshman year, and
I remember the guy saying, Hey, this is gonna be
one of your favorite things that you ever have in

(14:40):
the internet, you know, in college, it's gonna be a
big deal. And I remember kind of rolling my eyes
like yeah, whatever, and then almost immediately being like, oh,
this is kind of amazing to be able to email
with everybody and to be able to have an email address. Again,
I was eighteen before I had an email address. Did
you think back then, oh, this is gonna be a
big deal in some ways? I mean we had, uh,

(15:00):
we had all kinds of ideas. Um, you know, my
brother and I we we secured PlayStation two dot com
before PlayStation have been announced and uh, and so we
were playing around doing stuff like that, like buying domains
and stuff. So what happened with PlayStation two dot com?
Did you end up selling it or did they like
that was called back in the day, right, like you

(15:20):
would just try to think about the web addresses. Oh yeah,
that's started be coming. That was before it was even
like a super popular thing. I guess, I don't know.
I mean, no one had thought of that one yet.
And UH and Sony sent us a letter demanding that
we released it to them, and my parents freaked out
and made us do it, and so we didn't even
get any money for it. You would have been how

(15:41):
old when you had PlayStation two dot com? I don't
even remember a teenager somewhere. I don't know, four teams,
fifteen six. I'm not sure. This letter just arrives at
your house. Your parents opened it up and they're like,
I can imagine being a parent and being like pretty
upset about Yeah, yeah, it's an official it's official letter
ahead from from Sony and UH, and they're sending us

(16:03):
as a demand letter. Basically was a demand letter saying
that they had the rights to that domain. Um, you know,
it was very aggressive in its language, and so they
were they didn't have any money for like a legal
battle or anything, and they thought we were going to
get in trouble for for squatting on it. So they
didn't understand that, you know, he bought it it was ours.
But yeah, they they they they were pretty pretty serious

(16:25):
about making sure that we did whatever we could get
Sony Offera backs there. So when you're at college in
two thousand to two thousand four, obviously you're in a
religious school. Did you think to yourself, Hey, I'm going
to have some sort of life. I'm gonna you mentioned
you got into s c e e O. How did that happen?
So you graduate in two thousand four from Palm Beach

(16:46):
Atlantic and you go and take one job. Um, my
first job, well, actually my first job before I before
I got into like the internet marketing stuff directly with
like agencies, was an enterprise Rennetal and I just didn't
even know where I was going to work and they
were hiring. So you were two and you work at enterprise.

(17:06):
What where was the enterprise location in Palm Beach West,
Palm Beach West, Palm Beach, Florida. Was it a good
location for enterprise or was it like a because you know,
there's big differences between where you could be located better
than me. No, not a great neighborhood. It was in
a trailer. It wasn't even a structure like an actual building.
It was it was a trailer on stilts and tiny

(17:28):
little trailer, uh dingy little office, flickering lights, dirty carpet,
and you know you're out there washing cars wearing a
shirt and tie and slacks in the Florida heat. It's
just it was. It was pretty rough. But I met
my wife there. My wife got in a car accident,
needed a rental, comes into the office. I rent her car.
Later on that evening, she calls the office and asked
me out to dinner. So, I mean, how old? Wait,

(17:50):
so how old was your wife when she came in?
How old? How old you were? Twenty two? She was?
How old? I was twenty one? I graduated a year early,
so I was twenty one. She was nineteen. All right,
So what percentage of people that came into your enterprise
office were datable? Like like one in one in fifty,
Like it's gonna be a pretty low percentage, I would think,

(18:11):
especially again, because you're not at the good enterprise. I
always say, like, when I wrote my first book, I
got sent to a bunch of not even the good
Walmarts to do book signings. And by the way, Walmart
not an ideal place to do a book signing, but
when you're not even at the good walmart in a town,
it's a much better it's a much worse dynamic. Trust me,
I would say a very small percentage, more like one

(18:34):
in a hundred. I don't know. It was not It
was not a frequent thing. So when she when she
came in, it was like she grabbed everybody's attention. You know,
this other young guy that I was working with was
hitting on her. He tried to get her number because
he was going out with some friends later and he
wanted to see if she and her friends wanted to
join him, and she blew him off and took off,
And then when she called back and asked for me,
he was like, he was so upset. It was pretty

(18:54):
It was pretty hysterical. So what did you do on
the first date after you met at the car rental place? Um,
we went out to We went out to dinner that night.
We actually went out that night. She asked me out
that night. I said yes, So we went to dinner
that the first day that we met. Um. I think
it was this restaurant called Bruisy. Bruisy's not even open anymore.

(19:16):
It was in Uh, it was in a city place
in West Palm, which it's not even called city place anymore.
This is you know, this is how old we are.
The places that we used to go and hang out
are all clothes and renamed now. So um yeah, those
those things don't even exist anymore. But but yeah, I
mean that was my that was my first job, though
my first job, like out of school. I was twenty one. Um,
I ended up getting into, uh, I end up getting

(19:38):
into like that internet marketing team because while I was
in college, I had a business online actually started. You know,
the internet always interested me, It always interested me, so
I knew there were ways to make money online selling
stuff on eBay or Craigslist or or you know, just
creating a website and finding some kind of product or
service that you can offer. And and while I was
in school, I was doing this thing where I had
all these like English as a second language students that

(20:00):
were struggling to to write properly in English. I was
doing editing work for them on the side and helping
them with their grammar everything. I wasn't writing their papers
for them, but I was helping edit their papers and
like fixed up their English. So feared completely towards the
self students, and I started a whole business doing that.
And so I was connecting editors, like English English speaking
and writing editors with English's second language students to help

(20:22):
them with their English and help them get better grades.
And so I had a website that I was marketing
for that when I was in school. And then that's
kind of how I learned the ind and outs of
like paid search marketing on Google and Yahoo, um, and
you know, so I had experience with that before there
were even degrees for that that you could that you
could get from the university. And so when I when
I started applying for jobs doing that at these agencies

(20:43):
that do that do search marketing, they once they knew
that I had some experience, They're like, oh wait, you've
already done this on your own. You're hired. So it
was very easy to get a job. So you basically
taught yourself internet marketing based on having a business like that.
What kind of dollar for dollar return did you get
back in those days with Google search results? Oh? Man,

(21:05):
I mean clicks were pretty cheap early on. You know,
I was able to I was the middleman, right, So
I was linking editors together with like students basically, and
so I would take like a percentage and pay the editors,
you know, I pay the editors, and I would take
some off the top. And so I was in the
middle of that, I was. I made like I made
like thirty or forty tho dollars the first year I

(21:26):
was doing that, I was still a college student. I
was vacationing to the Bahamas, going to like Paradise Island
and stuff, you know, like I was living it up.
I thought I was rich. I mean, that's a lot
of money for a college kid, right, I mean, if
you were making thirty or uh, and how many hours
were you having to work to do that? I was.
I was working quite a bit because, you know, just

(21:48):
facilitating the whole thing. I didn't have any programmers, like
to automate anything. It was all manual communication between people
and sending invoices and all this stuff. So it was
it was time consuming. I was working almost, you know,
like almost at a full time clip, even as I
was finishing school. And then when I got out of school,
you know, I wanted to go get a real job
and get some real world experience. But I had in
my back pocket that I knew how to do the

(22:09):
internet marketing stuff. So that's what kind of kicked me
off on that path. I started working for like in
search marketing agencies, one of them in Boca called more
Visibility UM, another one called Beyond Our ali uh, and started,
you know, doing that whole thing and learning the ins
and outs of that. And that's fascinating because you end
up people with clients who are running businesses in a
in a bunch of different industries. Like you could be

(22:29):
running campaigns for people who are selling Vegas show tickets
or steel toe shoes, or a law firm that's looking
for leads, or some company that organizes garages, you know,
And so you learn, like you learn how to run campaigns,
you learn the ins and out to how much the
clicks cost and what kind of return on investment you
can get in a wide variety of industries. And with
that knowledge, it sets you up to be able to
go out there and start your own business. You know

(22:50):
where the opportunities are. No, that's fascinating. Was there, by
the way, a straw that broke the camel's back moment
as it pertained to working in the car rent holes?
Was there like a I'm done with this forever moment
for you. I don't remember if there was one specific moment.
I will tell you though, that it is pretty like
soul crushing to be outside in nine degree heat, like

(23:12):
washing a car while wearing a suit. I mean, you're like,
and then you and then you run inside the office
a little trailer and there's a line of people. They're
all mad because there's no cars available. You know how
Enterprise is, right, they they did a sign Feld episode
about this whole thing. But you know, you have a
reservation and then you show up and there's no car,
and they're like, well, what's the point of the reservation.
It's supposed to hold a car. Well, the Enterprise model

(23:34):
was to stay rented completely out the whole time. You
wanted no cars on your lot. But then people would
walk in needing a car or having reserved car, and
you don't have any for them. So then you're scrambling
kind of barter with another agency to try to get
a car from them to bring to your people. Had
It's very stressful. The phone's ringing the whole time, and
you gotta run outside and wash another car in the heat.
So I was like, I did that for six months.

(23:55):
I was like, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta be
done with this. I also would imagine I I worked
in tail for a while, and um and so forward facing.
A lot of people probably listening to us worked in
restaurants or whatever else. But I would imagine probably the
anger level of car rental is one of the highest
of all professions forward facing, right, because nobody's ever in

(24:17):
that good of a mood. It doesn't ever feel like
you get the car that you're expecting to get. The
line always takes longer than you anticipate, there's some issue
with the car. When you get in, you always gotta
worry about refueling it. Like I find the whole car
rental process to be frankly pretty awful. Yeah. Well, and
then as a as a guy that's renting you the car,

(24:39):
like there's pressure on you to try to sell the damage,
waiver the personal injury. Of course, that's a great point.
All these upsells. You know, you want to sell them
the prepaid gas, you want to sell them the coverage.
And if you don't hit certain sales metrics, you know
you you you you don't, you don't excel, you don't
get you don't rank up. You don't get to be
an assistant branch manager and then a branch manager and
then an area manager. So in order to work your
way up, you've got to be an outstand salesperson. So

(25:00):
you're on top of people being miserable for all those
reasons you just mentioned, you're also trying to sell them stuff. Yeah.
And by the way, I also mentioned that you have
kids now, right, you have too boys, two boys ye
eight and six. Yeah. So the only it's bad enough
when you're single and you're trying to get a rental
car or you're married and it's just you and your wife.
But getting a car seat, first of all, to have

(25:23):
the car seat be there, secondly getting it installed in
a rental car, all of this is just a miserable process, right,
Like it gets worse when you have to have the
rental car for the kids and you try and reserve
the car seat and then it's not there, and then
your wife blames you for that, and then I just
I think it's becoming quite clear that I hate the
rental car process. Basically I would rather uber everywhere. Yeah,

(25:46):
And adding to that is usually like you're getting a
rental car for your family when you're on a trip somewhere,
maybe you're somewhere cold and it's snowing, and you're standing
outside preasing waiting for them to get that. Yeah, just
to add all that, that's exactly right. All right, So
you have this knowledge with s e O, how long
do you work in sort of the S e O
field for? For several years? I mean for probably like

(26:07):
six seven years something like that. So I ended up
branching out to do that on my own too, And
I had a bunch of clients, and I was I
was doing pretty well with that. But you know, when
you have when you have a bunch of client accounts
that you're managing your it's like having a bunch of bosses.
You work for each of your clients. And um, and
I was, for whatever reason the way that I was wired,
I was I never really wanted to be working for

(26:28):
somebody else. I wanted to be doing things on my
own terms, working for myself. And so even though it
was my own business, having clients, felt like I was
working for somebody else all the time. Um, I always
had to do what they wanted me to do, and
they were always waiting on me for something, and and
uh and I wanted to do things more on my term,
and so I was always looking for an out from there.
So at some point I decided, you know, I'd rather

(26:49):
just strike out on my own entirely and run my
own businesses that aren't client based businesses. You know, um
things that I can I can automate and offer services online,
uh and not have to deal with clients. And and
I knew how to do that, just because I don't
have to spent so many years in the internet marketing world.
So um, you know, eventually I struck out to do that.

(27:10):
My brother and I teamed up. He's my brother was
an engineer, aeronautical engineer, but had a knack for like
computer programming and web development stuff. And so I told him, look,
I've got some ideas. If you can build some things,
I can market them and we'll see if they do well,
and if they do, we quit our jobs and we'll
do this whole time. He said sure, and uh, the
next thing, you know, we were out on our own

(27:30):
all right. So were you active on social media? You
said you first noticed I think the Babylon be online yourself,
and we're interested in it as a business opportunity. Were
you active in any other media based entities. Prior to
noticing the Babylon b No, I had never And this

(27:51):
is the thing, this is why when I was interested
in investing in the B I really just wanted to
invest in it. I did not want to buy it
because they didn't know the first thing about running a
meet a site. Like I knew how to like sell products,
generate leads, turned clicks into cash, you know, like I
knew how to I knew how to monetize websites, but
I didn't know how to monetize like a media site.
That's just like where you're not selling a product, you're

(28:12):
just publishing articles. I didn't know the first thing about
running a media site. So um, I was really just
interested in investing in it and letting the guy who
knows what he's doing run it and produce the content
and manage all of that. Um. But he was more
interested in selling it. In fact, he was talking to
the Daily Wire at the time back in and they
had worked out a deal and they were about to

(28:32):
sign on the dotted line, and then Daily Wire backed out.
Facebook had changed their algorithm and around that time, and
they got kind of cold feet about whether or not.
They wanted to be, you know, running another property that
was really almost entirely dependent on Facebook for traffic and everything.
So when they backed out, Adam called me back and said, hey,
if you're still interested, I don't I don't want an investor.
I want to sell it. So if you want to

(28:52):
have a serious talk about buying it, you know, fly
to Michigan and let's meet and let's talk about it.
So so that's when I flew up there to meet him. So,
so you buy the company in two tho. Um, how
what was the size of the company. How nervous were
you to be buying it? Walked me through the decision

(29:13):
by which you come to purchase the company and enter
the media business. Well, it wasn't it wasn't super expensive,
It wasn't millions of dollars. So I didn't feel like
I was taking a huge financial risk. Um, but I was.
I was a little nervous about taking on a property
that I didn't know how to manage. It was going
to be a learning curve and I had a very
full plate doing. You know, we're running a bunch of

(29:35):
several other online businesses and so um. You know this
idea that I would be taking on something that it
was foreign to me. Was a little bit nerve wracking. Um.
But the upside, the exciting part about it was it
was fun. It was satire. It was what I was
doing when I was in college and getting in trouble.
I saw the opportunity to have all kinds of fun
and getting all kinds of new trouble. And he was
worried about this whole fight with censorship and Facebook kicking

(29:56):
him off for for misinformation or whatever. They were starting
to fact check around that time, and I welcomed that fight.
I was like, I want to be on the suntlines
of that fight. That that sounds like fun. Let him
try to check me off, you know, Let's let's take
him to court. Let's fight that battle. Let's fight for
free speech. So I thought, as this really exciting thing,
and he was like, I want to pull the ripcord
and get out. So um, and ended up working out.

(30:17):
We when we sat down and talked, you know, we
really liked each other. We got along really well, um,
and it sounded like I could really bring something to it.
So um, you know, I was excited about the opportunity
to get involved with something that would be like really fun,
you know, rather than just a business where you're selling
Like I mean, we were selling all kinds of stuff
we're selling like insulated water bottles and slutting sunglasses and
and iPhone bumpers and stuff like that. But that wasn't

(30:39):
like exciting to me. It wasn't fun. I didn't feel
like it was impactful and meaningful. But the bee had
something special to be had. It was speaking truth. The
culture was dealing with the preservation of freedom and the
restoration of sanity, and in all of that through humor.
And that was just right at my alley. All right,
I'm gonna get to that in a second. What was
the craziest thing you sold that you couldn't believe there

(31:00):
was as much demand for it? Like, in other words,
if you had to go back and only sell one product,
what would it be and or what surprised you the
most that people were willing to buy? Uh? You know, honestly,
probably probably floated Like I don't know, maybe it's it's
not it's not that weird of a product in your mind,

(31:20):
but I had no idea all the demand that there
was for floating sunglasses. Did you know that was even
a thing. I didn't even sunglasses were a thing. This
is like, so if they fall off your face, they
don't sink. Yeah, they thought. Yeah. I always thought if
you lose your sunglasses and the water you lost them,
they're gone. They think for the bottom. You know, I
didn't realize there was even the things such as floating sunglasses.
But I actually am now thinking I didn't know they existed,

(31:42):
But now I'm like, you know what, floating sunglasses does
make a lot of sense. So you guys would sell
tons of floating sunglasses. Yeah, we had a business called
waves Gear and uh and yeah, we would sell microfiber
towels and water bottles, all kind of like beach stuff
and uh and floating sunglasses was the top seller. Um,
it was was. It was big on Amazon. Um. We

(32:02):
ended up transitioning away from that and and uh and
and moving on to other things. But for quite some
time before there was a lot more competition. Um, that's
pretty pretty profitable business. Um. How did you, by the way,
get your stuff shipped? So the reason why I'm asking is,
we obviously have sold a lot of out kick gear
over the years, and I before I started selling gear,

(32:24):
I had no idea how complicated shipping was, how expensive
it was, how often things got lost, how often things
went awry. People think, oh, I'm just gonna sell something
on the internet, and they don't really work through all
of the complexities associated with it. Uh, that is pretty overwhelming, right,
So you have to learn. I mean, like you're making

(32:44):
it sound fairly simple, right, but there's actually a lot
of complexities involved in selling product on the internet. It
depends on how much margin you want, how much work
you want to put it. I mean, there's so many
opportunities to do, like drop shipping stuff, you can print
on demand stuff. Now there's there's companies that have made
it so easy to just like put your design on
a T shirt and they print it for you on

(33:04):
demand and ship it all. And you have to charge
quite a bit for it because it costs so much
to have them do all that for you. Um. But
you know, if you if you're able to pass some
of that costs onto the consumer, you can still make
a little bit of a margin on it and you
don't have to handle any of that stuff, which is
pretty cool. Um. But we had a warehouse, I mean
we ran the operation out of Actually I partnered with

(33:24):
a guy out Utah that had a warehouse, uh and
and and did some distribution and fulfillment stuff. And so
we worked together on on that whole process and he
and he managed that whole thing. So we would we
would bring in the shipments and and palates and stock
and store them in the warehouse and he would handle
all the fulfillment and and ship everything out. And so
we had a system. We had a system. But but

(33:46):
for for the B right now, we do a lot
of prinn demand stuff. Um. We take advantage of a
lot of that. But we are we are transitioning now
that we're doing bigger volume. We're growing. There's a lot
more volume. We can make a lot more money if
we actually handle a lot of the fulfillment stuff ourselves.
Um or you know, at least not do it print
on demand, but by it in bulk at lower rage.
All right. So I don't remember when I first became

(34:07):
aware of the Babylon B. I'm obviously hyper online. That's
what I have to do. I was running out kicks,
so I understand the media space, developing audience, all of
those different things. What surprised you the most about running
a media business that you didn't anticipate before you did,

(34:28):
And when did you start to feel Maybe the answer
is you still don't, but when did you start to feel? Okay,
I'm comfortable. I kind of understand the business aspects associated
with running a site like the Babylon b Well. I
mean when I first took it over, you you asked
some questions earlier that didn't even answer. Uh, I guess
I got distractive with other things, but like how big

(34:50):
is the opera? How big was the operation? Who was involved?
I mean when I when I took it over, this
was it. This was a one and a half man show.
I mean it was Adam and in a one part
time writer. That's it. It was two guys and uh
and the part time guy was submitting some ideas and
Adam was running the site. And they had some Google
ads on their that was. That was all they did
for monetization, UM and some some T shirt sales through

(35:12):
t spring that they were doing here and there, But
it wasn't really generating a lot of revenue. Um. There
wasn't really a model in place for that. So all
of it was a learning curve for me. I had
to figure out, you know, how do we how do
we maximize our RPM, our revenue per thousand impressions, and
actually turn us into a business, and then you know,
obviously hiring talent, trying to find writers and all of that.
So we did. We went through a bunch of stuff,

(35:33):
we figured out, we we launched the store, so now
we have merchandise, We started publishing books, we launched a
subscription platform. All of this Clay was geared towards making
sure we had diversification of revenue sources in the event
that we got the platforms. We were working on the
whole potential d platforming problem right from the beginning, because
we knew that we had all our eggs and Facebook's

(35:54):
basket to drive traffic, and all our eggs and Google's
basket to generate revenue. Either one of them shut us
off at any time and we have to close our doors,
there's nothing we can do. So we wanted to make
sure that we had multiple traffic sources and multiple streams
of revenue coming in just to diversify and keep the
business on its feet in the event of those d
platforming events. So um, that was that was what I

(36:15):
was trying to figure out from the beginning, and all
of it was you know, kind of a learning curve
since I've never never run a media set before. But um,
we've got we've got our feet under this now, I think.
And uh, you know, the Twitter thing that just happened
is a big deal, but it's not going to sink
us because of all that effort we put in diverse fight. Okay.
So one of the things that I noticed, and I
testified under oath about this, so this is no great surprise,

(36:38):
was Facebook could throw off tremendous amounts of traffic. Social
media could in general, but if you did something to
upset the gatekeepers, almost immediately, they could flip a switch
and your traffic would disappear. I imagine that didn't happen
very often to you in the selling the floating sunglasses business.

(36:58):
It was pretty pretty hard. I would imagine. Maybe I'm
wrong to super offend the floating sun girl. I although
I guess Amazon could change their dynamics in terms of
costs and things like that. When was the first time
you realize the power of the big tech platforms in
terms of their ability to allow you to have traffic
or disallow you to have traffic? Um, probably the first

(37:22):
time was when we had you know, like even before
all of the media site stuff, like, you know, have
just having issues where you know, Google would suspend your
ads for policy violation and you've got to try to
figure out why and try to appeal and get back on,
and you would just all of a sudden your traffic
would dry up. Well, well you're in the middle of
dealing with that, and you realize it's like you're completely

(37:44):
at Google's mercy. You cannot drive traffic. You know the
way Google, Google changed everything when it came to advertising.
You know, it used to be that you know, there
was this big concern where you know, Walmart or Barnes
and Noble would come into a town and all the
small businesses would suffer because you have these big you know,
these big brick and mortars that offered so many products,
they dominated, and no one could could generate any business

(38:06):
anymore in that area. Well, the Internet, to some extent,
put you know, fix that problem, or at least address
part of that problem by making it possible to have
small businesses put your ads right next to the big companies,
the big brands, and be competitive with them. You know,
like we ran like in the self help legal filing space,
we ran ads right next to legal zoom, and people
clicked on our ads just as much as they clicked

(38:28):
on legal zooms ads. And so you can put your
ads right there next to them. But then, but then
that can all just go away if if Google decides
that one of your ads violates the policy, you know,
they can suspend your account and then all of a
sudden you're dead in the water and you can't generate
any traffic anymore. And that can't happen with a brick
and mortar. Your your store is still there. You know,
no one's shutting your store down, So you know that
was dealing with issues like that make it feel all

(38:51):
very uncertain and and always like you know, you need
to have you need to have multiple things going at
all times, because if any one thing topples, you know,
you don't you want to you don't want to be
in a situation where all your eggs in one basket. Um.
So I learned very early on that the importance of
making sure that you know you've got you've got multiple
things going on so that you're not you're not you're

(39:11):
not in such a precarious position. I think what was
the yeah with the with the B. You know, it's
when we first started getting back checked and we first
started getting threatened with demonetization and uh in our platform
being removed, like basically saying, look, we will we will
demonetize or de platform you if we feel it's necessary
if you continue to share fake news. Um, you know,

(39:33):
those kinds of threats coming from the social media, there's
no alternative for site like ours to get traffics on,
especially at that time when they hadn't even created a
lot of these like uh you know, third tier kind
of social networks. So one of the challenges that you
have and you've dealt with. And I'm curious how this
is played out. And we're talking with Seth Dylan, he
is the owner of the Babylon B. We are talking

(39:56):
on wins and losses I of course, and Clay Travis,
you're a satirical site and you are constantly poking fun
at a variety of different issues. Yet many people don't
seem to understand the concept of you being a satirical site.
And I know this is by the way, not just
unique to you. The Onion back in the day used

(40:18):
to often be considered a serious news site as well.
Sometimes in the stories that they were sharing. How often
are you getting caught up in those kind of disputes
And do you think people use it as an excuse
because of your bent, Like there's this idea that Republicans

(40:39):
can't be funny, that a conservative site could not be funny,
and you guys fly in the face of that and
are pretty consistently hysterical at ridiculing many of the issues
that are out there. Well, it's funny, I'll tell you this.
I don't think much of it is honest. I think
a lot of it is disingtenuous. It's an effort to
silence and suppress us by pretending that we're something that

(41:00):
they know that we're not. You know, like when when
The New York Times calls us a far right misinformation
site that traffics and misinformation under the guise of satire,
and those are exact words when they do that. They
know what they're doing. You know, they are in fact
using misinformation to smear us as being a source of it.
And it's very deliberate. It's it's conniving, it's it's wrong.

(41:21):
I mean, they're not they're not laboring under they're not
they're not confused about who we are and what we do.
You know, it's obvious that we're actually a satirical publication.
They just they just don't like the fact that we're effective,
and so they find these ways, these creative ways to
come after you, and so they pretend to be really
bothered by it. Oh, your jokes are too believable. Too
many people think that your satire is true. You must

(41:42):
have some ill motives. You must be trying to uh
confuse people and spread disinformation, you know, um, and it's
it's just absurd. I mean when you think, when you
really think about it's like satire needs to have an
element of truth to it in order for the joke
to land, in order for the joke to make sense,
the point that you're making. All that satire does is
exaggerate the truth to make its points. And so if

(42:04):
you're not if you're not closely writing on the back
of the truth, your jokes aren't gonna land. And this
idea of this expectation that our jokes should be so
divorced from reality that no one could possibly believe they
were true, is to say that we're supposed to be
doing something other than satire altogether, you know, like We're
supposed to just be making absurd, silly statements that that
that are just dumb and have no point. Um, And

(42:25):
that's just not how satire works, and they know that,
but it's not. It's one of the arguments that they
used to try to shut us down, along with you know,
the hate speech, to punching down and all of that nonsense.
So you got your account locked recently on Twitter, and
I'm gonna get to that in a moment. The first
thing I want to say is, so you took over
in Obviously election was massive for you guys. When was

(42:48):
the first time that you felt, hey, we're having a
significant influence at least in the online discourse and we've
got a lot of fans out there. Was there a
moment in time or some body that responded and you thought, oh, wow,
we're really having an impact. Do you recall having a
moment like that, Uh, when we started to get a

(43:08):
lot of media attention. Um, I think that was one thing,
you know, that was one of the unexpected things that
I never really thought I would be doing, is like
going on uh, you know, Shannon Bream and Tucker Carlson
and whatever and talking about about being fact checked and
being labeled hate speech and all these things. You know.
The media attention was one thing where it was clear
that that people were paying attention to us and what

(43:30):
was happening to us and how we were being characterized
or mischaracterized. Um. But then there was also this stuff
like uh, congressmen and women, the President of the United
States retweeting our stuff, engaging with it, you know, from
Ted Cruise to Donald Trump or whoever it is, Elon
musk um with with people with massive audiences, uh, you know,

(43:52):
sharing our stuff. It was clear that we were starting
to kind of break out beyond where we were. Where
we started out as this kind of like niche Christian
community site that was reaching you know, doing a lot
of like church humor and jokes about worship pastor skinny
jeans and stuff like that. Um. Going beyond that's actually
reaching a broader community and the culture at large and

(44:13):
being engaged in this much broader discussion. UM. I think
I think some of those things were kind of obviously
the telling factors that we were And I'm obviously you know,
our our traffic was exploding and our audience was growing
really quickly too, So it was bearing out in the
metrics as well. What what's the best month you've ever
had in the history of the Babylon b uh. Honestly, well,

(44:37):
which tend which metric you look at? If you want
to go strictly on revenue, March of March two because
of the Twitter attention and banning or locking of your account,
I probably should say that also then drove a lot
of people probably to want to spend money with you, right,

(44:57):
so they come on, they sign up or your platform
because they want to support what you're doing and basically
stick up a middle finger or thumb in the eye.
However you want to convey that towards the big tech
companies for what they're doing to you, right, Yes, we
get we get a lot of support, and we ask
for it. You know, it's a situation where it's a
very it's a very real threat to the business these

(45:19):
these big tech companies and uh and there you know
their heavy handed censorship um and their uneven enforcement of
their of their policies and there and their biased policies
themselves that have their own ideology baked into it that
you have to agree with their ideology in order to
even be compliant with their policies. Um, you know, that's

(45:39):
that that puts us in a position where when when
something like this happens, you know, we have to appeal
to our audience and say, hey, look we need your support. So, um, yeah,
we know we will have these spikes and growth, punctuated
spikes and growth that that go along with some of
these attacks on on the site. And it's a very
fortunate thing that we get that we get a response.
You know, we have an audience that really loves us,

(46:00):
that really values the content that we're putting out there.
They don't want to see us go away because Facebook
and Twitter decide that we're too dangerous, were too hateful
for you to see our content. Um. So we're really
thankful to our audience. Our readers are subscribers or listeners
who who have propped us up and have decided that
they're going to come alongside us and make sure that
we stick around no matter who tries to show us up.

(46:22):
What's the most successful headline that you guys have ever had,
do you know? Uh, most successful in terms of shares.
There's a couple that come to mind. There's one about
how motorcyclist identifies as a bicyclist instead of world record. Um.
That one did like probably like six or seven million

(46:43):
shares something like that. Um. There's been a few that
just attracted a ton of media attention, like some silly ones,
like it's not the best headline ever, but we did
we were we were a joke about how had purchased
an industrial sized washing machine to spin the news and
before publishing it, and it's just a silly a joke.
It's like ridiculous, it's not believable or anything. But it
got fact checked and reading false by snops and so

(47:05):
we end u getting all this media attention because because
we're like fighting for our lives to stay on Facebook
because snokes is reading our jokes fault. Um. So you know,
there's it depends on how you how you want to
try to judge it in terms of like how monumental
was it in our history? You know, there's a few
that really stand out that weren't necessarily our funniest for
most shared headlines. So okay, let's go into what happens

(47:26):
with Twitter had you had the Babylon be account locked
before what we're what's your deal? And by the way,
people may be listening to this months from now, years
from now, even we're talking in early April of two.
Right now, the Babylon b account is locked because you
won't take down a tweet, which I'll get to in

(47:47):
a sect. But had your account been locked before this occurred?
There was one time when our account got suspended, like
entirely suspended. What was that suspended for? Well, a mistake,
of course, right, It's always a mistake. Um. We were suspended,
um and and we asked Twitter why um and because

(48:10):
we didn't even get an answer. Just one day we
woke up and the account was suspended um and their explanation.
They actually did apologize and reinstate the account a couple
of days later, after we got a ton of media
attention going out there talking about how Twitter had just
suspended us for no apparent reason. Um and it was
like it was a mistake. They said there was some
spam crackdown that they were doing, and our account got

(48:33):
flagged as being like a bot or something like that
and was taken down by in error. So but that
was the only time that we ever really got fully suspended,
and they apologized that it was an error and we
got back on. But they only did that after we
made a ton of noise in the media and we're
going all over talking on on news shows and whoever
would have us to talk about how Twitter had just
suspended us out of nowhere and then all of a sudden,

(48:55):
they're sorry and they made a mistake and now out
of your account right now, What has what occurred? What
has happened, and what is the future as you know
it right now likely to look like for people who
don't know, the bablon b account was suspended and or
locked however you want to classify it for tweeting out one.

(49:19):
So there was a there was an article published in
USA Today naming Rachel Levine a transgender Health Department official, UM,
naming Rachel Levine one of their Women of the Year.
They had nominated several women for Women of the Year,
and Rachel Levine was named as one of them. UM.
And you know, we we did a parody version of

(49:40):
that where we named Rachel Levine as the babble on b.
The babble Wobe picked Rachel Levin as our pick for
Man of the Year. So it was us like pushing
back on this idea that Rachel Levine is really a
woman and that runs a foul of Twitter tapeful conduct
policy because it involves miss gendering, according to them. Now,

(50:01):
we disagree that it involves miss gendering. I think it's
mis gendering. You call Rachel Lavine a woman. Um, but
they think it's mis gendering the other way. And so
they have this policy, this hateful conduct policy that has
their their progressive gender ideology baked into it. Uh, And
they want us to delete the tweet and affirm that
we did violate this policy and and that we did

(50:22):
engage in hateful conduct and in lessen. Until we do that,
we can't unlock the account. And to me, it's just crazy.
It's like, Okay, if you don't want this content on
your platform, you can take it down. If you want
to delete it, delete our tweet for us. You have
that power, you have that right. Um, take it down
and tell us that you think we engage in hateful conduct,
but don't make us delete it and admit that we

(50:43):
engage in hateful conduct when we don't think that we did.
So there it's basically they're pretty in a situation where
they want us to bend the knee, kiss the ring, whatever,
and we're like, no, we're not we're not doing that.
We disagree that this is hateful conduct in the first place.
You know, we disagree with the ideology that you've baked
into your terms of service. So you know, it's one
of these situations where we're just at this stalemate. So
how does this resolve itself? Then? Yeah, you're at you're

(51:06):
at a Yeah, that's exactly right, You're at a standoff.
So how does this resolve itself? In your opinion? And
does Elon Musk having bought nine two of Twitter, does
that have any impact in the way that they adjust
their editorial standards? Like, what do you anticipate might happen

(51:27):
right now going forward? I don't know. I mean, I
wasn't expecting that there might be a possible solution to
this that involves someone like Elon Musk getting involved. You know, Initially,
my whole thinking was one day, Uh, Congress is going
to have to deal with this problem. The courts are
going to have to do with this problem. There's been
so much talk about Section to thirty and the rights

(51:50):
that these companies have versus the rights of the people
to speak and and and be heard, And where do
you where do you draw these lines and how do
we work all this out. Well, something's got to be
done here, because, as musknoted himself on Twitter before this
was all announced, he was saying, you know, Twitter is
like the de facto town square at this point. This
is where the vast majority of public discourse happens. It's

(52:11):
the vast majority of discourse between citizens, but also between
government officials and private citizens. And so you know, when
you have platforms like that cracking down hard on certain
views and certain people and allowing all kinds of other
misinformation and hate speech to be you know, proliferate and
be pervasive on the platform that is that they approve of,

(52:32):
you end up with a really unbalanced, uh situation. That's
not good for discourse, and it's not good for democracy,
it's not good for society. Must cares about that very deeply.
I love that he cares about that deeply. You know,
he really does want to preserve freedom and make sure
that that Twitter remains a free platform for pre expression, which,
by the way, they have a ringing tribute to in
their terms of service. Their mission statement is that they're

(52:52):
all about free expression and representing a diverse range of
perspectives on their platform. Um, but you know, what they
give with one hand, they take away with the other
by having these policies that that have their ideology backed
into it, and you have to conform with it or
else you can't be on a platform. So I always
expected that there would hopefully one day be some solution
that either comes from the courts or from Congress to

(53:14):
deal with this problem, or maybe even like at at
the state level, some of these laws at the state
level of being passed to prevent these companies from engaging
in viewpoint discrimination. You know, maybe maybe the answer is
we make uh we we amend the Civil Rights Act
to say that political belief is a protected class and
you can't discriminate on that basis, you know, because you
can't discriminate based on race or gender or religion or whatever.

(53:36):
Why not make political belief one of those things that's protected.
Or maybe we just make it unlawful for these companies
because they're so large. You know, if you have more
than fifty million daily active users, you can't engage in
viewpoint discrimination. You know. Maybe those are the answers. I
don't know, but must keep getting involved. Is very interesting
because his commitment is to free speech, and he seems
to be wanting to get influential by getting on the board.

(53:57):
I have no idea what will actually resulting down the road,
or whether or not he'll be able to exert any
influence over them. I know that they're going to be
very resistant internally at that company. I mean, you can
see it already. You've seen some of the reactions to
his appointments to board. So I'm really fascinated. This is,
you know, me putting on my lawyer hat and analyzing this.

(54:18):
Have you thought about filing a lawsuit? One question? And
second part of that question, you can clearly show damages
because I know based on the the impact that that
has had on out Kicks business. When suddenly you weren't
able to share headlines and articles from the Babylon B,
I'm sure that your website traffic goes down, which creates

(54:40):
a substantial impact on your overall revenue. Now you mentioned
people can respond to that by going to Babylon B
and spending money that they might not have spent otherwise
to support your fight. But over time, the impact of Twitter,
I imagine on your traffic was substantial. Have you thought
about a loss too, And what kind of damages from

(55:01):
a traffic perspective which leads to dollars are you seeing
in your business. I'd take it beyond traffic too. I
mean when you talk about the damage of being removed
from from public discourse, I mean just being sidelined from
the conversation if you want, if you want your brand
to be relevant, if you you know, like when we're
out there, we're talking about you must you know, Elon

(55:22):
must interacts with our content on a regular basis. There's
lots of people with very large following to interact with
our content, who shared, who talked about it. If we're
sidelined and remove from that conversation, we become less and
less relevant every day. Um, you almost become forgotten when
you're not out there where the conversation is happening. So
there's there's a cost that's not even like monetary that
you can't quantify. It's very difficult to quantify um. But

(55:44):
then yes, again, the traffic that you lose um over
the course of time, all the media attention and and
the people signing up and subscribing and getting really fired up.
That last for a matter of days, and then it
subsides and it goes away and life goes back to normal.
People get mad about other things and get worked up
about other things and stop thinking about you, and the

(56:05):
traffic is still gone. The problem still remains. You're still
off the platform. And so long term, you're right, it does.
It does have an effect in terms of like an
actual lawsuit, like what you would sue them for. That's
very difficult. You know. There have been suits that there
have been challenges that have been brought that try to
argue that you know, these companies, uh, you know are

(56:26):
for example, um, the modern public square, um, and that
you have a right to be there whatever, and some
of these illegal efforts that people have launched against them
have failed spectacularly in the courts. UM. And you know,
there's been some a lot of commentary on that. Justice
Thomas on the Supreme Court weighed in recently UM to

(56:47):
talk about how, UM, the section to thirty immunity that
these companies have been have been given by the lower
courts where they it's been interpreted so extravagantly to basically
they can moderate however they want to, and whether the
tension was really for them to be able to do that, Um,
is in question, and maybe there is an answer to
that by applying like common terrier doctrine. You know, where

(57:08):
they're based. These companies, these they're trying to have their
taking eat it too, These these big tech companies, they
want to be they want to be able to um
uh basically have complete immunity for what's on their platform
by saying, we're just a conduit. We're just a conduit.
We're not responsible for whatever said here. But then when
there's a message that they don't like, they say, oh,
we don't want to be the speaker of that message.
We want to we don't want your we don't want

(57:29):
that to be our voice. Well, it's not your voice.
You're just a conduit. It's not your speech. Are you
the speaker or aren't you the speaker? You know, if
you treat them like common terriers and apply that kind
of regulatory uh, you know, restrictions on them that common
carriers have, there's there's precedent for that happening without it
being a First Amendment issue, where these companies don't have
speech rights anymore. You know, they can still say whatever

(57:50):
they want, there's just limits on how much they can
restrict other people's right to say what they want because
they're just conduits for other people's information and speech. So
there's an interesting conversation to be had there. I think
that before we could actually bring an action, the law
would need to be changed to be more favorable to us,
or you know, the courts are gonna have to weigh

(58:10):
in on us and say, up to this point, it's
been they've gotten it wrong, it's been interpreted incorrectly. Seth,
what do you wish The last couple of questions for
you here, what do you wish you had known about
the media business that you know now that you didn't
know when you started? Because this is wins and losses.
We talk with a large audience out there about the
wins and losses of everyday life. It can be in sports,
it can be in politics, it can be in business.

(58:32):
What do you wish you had known that you didn't
know about the media business? What do you wish you
maybe had changed? As everybody who runs a business learns
and makes mistakes along the way, what would you say
to people out there listening in that respect? Such a
good question. Um, I haven't had time to give that
a lot of thought, but I mean, just off the
top of my head. Uh, you know, I didn't know

(58:55):
going into all this, And maybe it's just the type
of site that we're running, you know, like on the
one hand, it's like we're making jokes, we're trying to
make people laugh, you know, but at the same time,
we're also trying to make them think. And I think
it's I didn't know how rewarding it would be to
be out there with a voice in the in the
in the public, in the conversation, where you know, you're

(59:15):
dealing with really important issues and there's really bad ideas
out there and in some cases, you know, some of
the when you have somebody that's when you have people
who have abandoned reason altogether and they're irrational on purpose,
Arguing with them is not very effective because you're using
reason and they've abandoned reason. So the best thing that
you can do is to mock and ridicule them, and

(59:36):
that's what the Babylon b does. And I had I
had no idea how rewarding, how mission based, it would
be to go beyond just simply running a media company
that's focused on like making money, to being running a
median media company that's speaking truth to culture, ridiculing bad ideas,
which I think is a moral good um, and and
trying to preserve freedom and restore sanity in an age

(59:56):
where both are under assault every day and like crazy
ridiculou with ways and so just being on the front
lines of that battle and fighting back against the censorship
and the effort to you know, shove ideology and downward
throats that that that we don't want um, and the
effort to silence and suppress our voices. Being involved in
that is extremely rewarding, far beyond you know, whatever whatever

(01:00:18):
financial reward there is. And running a popular media company
that's you know, it's got a lot of eyeballs and
was generating a lot of traffic UM. So I didn't
know that. I didn't know what I was getting into
with that. But with that also comes the weight of
a lot of responsibility. You know, everything you say is scrutinized,
everything you do is scrutinized. Um. But you know, we're
very fortunate to have a ton of support, a lot

(01:00:39):
of people in our corner, and I think we're fighting
a fight that's worth fighting. So it doesn't have to
just be about the business. For me, what I learned
is it's this goes way beyond business. You know, there's
a lot of things here that are really of value
and that are rewarding and being involved. Uh. You know,
in these discussions, the right is used to being attacked
and ridiculed and the left is not. That makes that

(01:01:05):
a very fertile area to be able to puncture that
that that sort of illusion. And what I have found
is disagreement doesn't really bother people on the far left wing.
Ridicule uh, and satire and humor really genuinely bother them

(01:01:26):
in a way that disagreement does not. Uh why do
you think? And and I'm I'm just curious big picture
for you. You're around the same age as me. We
grew up when David Letterman or Jay Leno or whoever,
Conan O'Brien, they tended to take even handed shots. Whether
it was Bill Clinton got made fun of like crazy, right.

(01:01:48):
I mean, he obviously get left a lot of a
lot of material out there, but so did George W. Bush.
And it felt fairly even handed. And now, basically in
the wake of the Cold Air report becoming a default
you know, uh, news news show that now is in
humor and then you've got Saturday Night Live, they started

(01:02:09):
to all pull their punches on the left wing, and
certainly I think it had started to happen before Trump,
but Trump put it on steroids. Why do you think
that is? And and how much opening do they leave
for you? Because there's almost nobody else out there throwing
these kind of humor and satire punches. I think there's

(01:02:29):
a lot of desire on the right, um, amongst conservatives
oftentimes very very often times in like the Christian community
that I've been a part of in my early life.
In adult life, you know this this desire to be
at peace and to plain ice and try to get
alone and you know, reach across the aisle and find

(01:02:51):
common ground and all of these things. There's there's a
lot of desire to do that. Um, there's a lot
of desire to avoid um the can pentiousness of of
being really confrontational are engaging in those fights. And I
think that you know, it's it's tricky too when you
when you start talking about ridicule and mockery, those things
sound very negative, They sound like like personal attacks, right,

(01:03:14):
And what I think that the beatas very effectively and
what I when I when I summarize our our mission
statement if we have one. We don't technically have one.
But when I summarize, what we're trying to do is
we're trying to we're trying to make people laugh but
also think. But in that process, we're trying to ridicule
bad ideas. You know, ridicule bad ideas, And that's it's
the ideas themselves that are the target's, the ideas that

(01:03:34):
are harmful as, the ideas that you need to mock
and tear down and make fun of before young people
start to think they're good ideas and grow up thinking
they're great ideas and put them into policy and into practice,
and in society as a whole suffers for it. And
so I think there's a there's a moral necessity to
ridiculing and mocking um bad ideas. And and if you know,
if people can understand that that it's actually a good thing,

(01:03:56):
then maybe they'd be more emboldened to do it without
feeling bad about it, like they're doing something wrong. You're
not doing anything wrong by ridiculing and mocking bad ideas.
You're helping people, um, and you're standing up for the
truth UM, And you're cutting through all the noise and
pushing back on the insanity. But like I said, that's
one of the only ways you can even deal with
insanity when people have abandoned rationality. It's not like you
can just have a conversation with them and reason with

(01:04:18):
them because they've abandoned reason. So ridiculing mockery are really
your only choice, and they're the most effective in that
in that context. So um, I think, you know, I
think that there's a lot of fertile ground. There's a
lot of opportunity for people to come in and make
the jokes that you're not supposed to make and do
these kinds of things, because look, the left has given
this up. They were so good at comedy and they

(01:04:39):
were so good at ridicule. Right now, comedians are being
so careful. The comedians on the left. You watch these
late night shows, they're going for applause, not amusements. They
want the crowd to affirm them and clap for them
rather than laugh. Like they're not even really concerned with
hitting laughs. They're just preaching and in the in the
choir is applauding them. And it's crazy to see that
happening because comedians satirist humorous. Our job is the poke

(01:05:02):
holes in the popular narrative, not promoted, not push it
on everyone. And when comedians have started to go this
direction of trying to promote it so that you know,
they're getting virtue points, whether up there preaching instead of
actually doing comedy and making people laugh. You know, comedy
by its nature's offensive. It's not a safe space being
at a comedy show. You're gonna get made fun of.
There's gonna be things that are uncomfortable and they make
you squirm, and that's good. It's confronting us with uncomfortable truths,

(01:05:26):
and that's how you grow, That's how you become more resilient.
And so I think that anybody who goes in there
and who's willing to make the jokes that you're not
supposed to make anymore and push back on that stuff,
they're going to try to silence them. But look what
happened with Dave Chappelle, Look what's happening with Joe Rogan.
These guys aren't losing. You know, we're not losing right now.
I think all of us are winning. The effort to
silence us is only amplifying our voices. Last question for you,

(01:05:51):
have there been comedians who are known are thought to
be a left wing that have interacted with the Babylon
b have come along and said, you know what, you
guys are pretty funny that have surprised you. It kind
of builds out of what you were just saying. Comedy
that is designed to uh, to uplift people in positions

(01:06:12):
of power is propaganda. It's not actually comedy. Um, have
you seen and received positive feedback from people that might
have been perceived to be of a different political bent,
just because the great thing about comedy is it should
work no matter what your political beliefs are. If you

(01:06:33):
have to sit around and think, hey, is this funny
for a women's studies professor at Amherst, Well, that's not
exactly the you know, the the faculty lounge there. That's
the exact absence of comedy. Comedy is reacting immediately and
instantaneously smiling before you have time to think about the underlying, uh,
you know, root causes of the humor itself. Yeah. And

(01:06:56):
there's a good point. And I kind of reject this
idea that there's like there's we should think in terms
of like right wing comedians and left wing comedians if
you're a right wing if you're a strictly right wing comedian,
is like pushing a narrative yourself. You know that, then
you're you're not doing it right either. Um. I think
that there should be you know you, you should be
joking about whatever deserves the mockery, joking about whatever deserves

(01:07:19):
to be joked about, and that then that involves examining
your own side, your own motives and inclinations, your own practices,
your own hypocrisy. We try to do that ourselves quite
a bit. Um. But in terms of like somebody from
the left like coming alongside us and saying, hey, you know,
I really appreciate I can't think of a single example
of that happening, Like somebody like who comes who had
just has a totally different world view than us. There

(01:07:40):
may be a couple, but nothing that really jumps to
mind I can think of, Like some comedians like Bill Maher,
for example, who I disagree with on many, many, many things,
but who thinks who thinks cancel culture is a problematic.
He thinks the woke stuff has gone crazy and over
the top and is saying, um, he thinks that speech

(01:08:02):
suppression is bad and that you shouldn't be trying to
silence people who disagree with you. Um, you know, he's
he's more of like an old school liberal that way,
and has very has been very vocal about those things.
And I respect that that even though I disagree with
him on a lot of things, he's he gets that
and and understands that. You know, comedy is about, um,
you know, sometimes making making you a little bit uncomfortable,

(01:08:24):
making you squirm a little bit. It's not just about
you know, reaffirming you and and not stepping on anybody's toes. Um,
and anybody who does should be silence outstanding stuff. He
is Seth Dylan with the Babylon Be. Encourage you to
follow Seth online while you still can. Hopefully the Babylon
Be will be back on Twitter in the meantime. UH

(01:08:45):
and people can obviously go to your website and see
all the content that you guys are putting up on
a day to day basis. I know you've been crazy busy.
I appreciate the time. What else do you want people
to know that I didn't give you an opportunity to
tell them to close out here? I don't know. I
mean when people people ask for how they can support us,
and I tell them there's a couple of ways, And

(01:09:06):
the first one is not like by setting us money.
The first one is the a bold defender of the truth.
When when, when Twitter, when Facebook, when YouTube, when, whoever
it is tries to get you to say that two
and two make five, tell them, no, two and two
make four. And I'm not budging on that. Insist on
recognizing reality for what it is. Speak the truth boldly,
even it means, even if it means you pay a

(01:09:26):
penalty for it. You know, like I've said before, like
from the stage at these events, I'm talking about this stuff.
I'm like, before this ever happened, by the way, before
we ever got banned on Twitter. I'm like, the greatest
achievement on Twitter is not going viral or getting verified,
it's getting banned for saying something true. You know, paying
paying a price for the truth is an achievement. There
are people who have been willing to write down their
lives for for freedom and for the truth, and we're

(01:09:49):
not willing to give up our Twitter accounts. I mean,
it's a it's a big deal with's at stake right now,
and so the best way to support us is for
us to rally together. We should all be telling the
truth boldly and not backing down on that, and eventually
things will swing back in our direction. They're going to
have to make changes. They can't ban millions of us,
tens of millions of us, or they will ban themselves
into a relevance to make them do that. But beyond that, Yeah,

(01:10:11):
go to our website subscribe. That helps too, he set Dylan.
I'm Clay Travis. This has been Wins and Losses. Subscribed
to this as well forty five long form interviews. I
think you will love them. If this is your first
thanks for checking them out. Go check out more in
the past, and we'll be back sooner rather than later.
This has been Wins and Losses.