Episode 36 · The GaS Digital / Ray Kump Era
Second Life (with Alex Steinberg)
with Alex Steinberg
Mar 14, 2017 · 1:04:04 · 14 segments, 116 moments indexed
- 1 min
Opening music, applause, and the GaS Digital Network intro framing the show's premise about examining society's villains.
2moments
- 0:10Tim introduces the show's premise: taking a hard critical look at society's hated figures like billionaires, dictators, and CEOs.
- 0:20The show airs on GaS Digital Network, and Tim notes they acknowledge these people are bad but then thank God for them anyway.
- 2 min
The Cancelled Dark Web Hacker and the Myth of Red Rooms
#Tim explains that a scheduled dark web hacker guest cancelled, then riffs on how 'red rooms' where you can order torture and murder online turn out to be fake, along with creepypasta scammers lying for clicks.
9moments
- 0:42Tim on the guest who was supposed to discuss dark web red rooms but got high watching snuff films instead.
- 0:53Red rooms: supposedly places where you can order murder and torture of a person online on the dark web.
- 1:10Tim found articles claiming red rooms don't actually exist and are fake.
- 1:37Hitmen on the dark web turn out to be scams—they're not real either.
- 1:49Tim wonders if the oxycontin sold on the dark web is actually just M&Ms.
- 2:04The really good stuff—murder, torture, theatrical performances—isn't even real on the dark web.
- 2:15People claiming they encountered disturbing things on the dark web are lying for views, likes, and clicks.
- 2:29Tim still holds out hope that those torture rooms exist deep in the dark web somewhere.
- 2:42Tim planned to have the guest explain everything about dark web red rooms, but doesn't know where he is now.
- 1 min
- 3 min
Denied Advil Cold and Sinus at Duane Reade
#Tim rants about a CVS/Duane Reade pharmacist refusing to sell him Advil Cold and Sinus because his driver's license expired a week ago, spiraling into a bit about Orwellian meth-tracking systems and his inaccurate Long Island address.
6moments
- 3:20Tim has a cold and a Duane Reade pharmacist refused to sell him Advil Cold and Sinus because his driver's license expired a week ago.
- 3:38The store requires entering the license date into their system, supposedly to prevent meth production, though Tim questions the logic of this tracking requirement.
- 4:11Even if you know a customer for twenty years and they're your neighbor, the computer system won't override the license date requirement to sell the medication.
- 4:42Tim questions whether there's actually an epidemic of people manufacturing meth from Advil Cold and Sinus that would justify such restrictions.
- 5:18His license has an inaccurate address from Long Island that he's kept for a decade despite living in Queens, so the tracking system doesn't even work properly.
- 5:50Tim blames the police state for his inability to get medicated, then jokes about buying artillery on the dark web.
- 10 min
Don't Order Seamless: The Death of Delivery Food
#A long rant about being fed up with food delivery apps like Seamless, Uber Eats, Postmates, and the high-end app Caviar, including a story about a friend's cold $50 ribeye and spilled shrimp cocktail delivered to a fancy Midtown apartment, plus riffs on cold Taco Bell and lazy breakfast orders.
17moments
- 6:09Tim refuses to eat seamless delivery at someone's home, saying he doesn't want to eat out of a box like a dog.
- 6:24He's over food delivery unless it's pizza or Chinese food, rejecting the post-apocalyptic nightmare of eating everything from plastic boxes.
- 7:08Ordering from expensive restaurants on Uber Eats delivers cold food an hour later—he once received cold octopus.
- 7:20Tim proposes Uber Eats Pool, where everyone in a car takes a bite of your food before it reaches you.
- 7:37Breakfast delivery arrives as soggy, disintegrating toast and cold pancakes sopped in butter.
- 8:29Luxury delivery apps like Caviar exist to rob rich people of what makes them special—being different from regular people.
- 9:40His friend ordered a $70 ribeye steak via Caviar delivery service, arriving cold in a plastic container.
- 10:41Shrimp cocktail shouldn't be eaten on a couch—the environment matters to the dining experience.
- 11:39Breakfast delivery is ultimate laziness: people order cold, soggy bagels instead of walking a block to get fresh ones.
- 12:03Breakfast isn't hard to cook, and people aren't realizing the delivered food is actually worse than what they'd make themselves.
- 12:56Delivery drivers carry nine bags of full Thanksgiving dinners up multiple flights of stairs because customers won't leave their apartments.
- 13:34Living in New York City isn't about having a nice apartment—it's about leaving your house and meeting people, not ordering delivery.
- 14:09Postmates delivering Taco Bell ruins the food; it's inedible unless eaten immediately after purchase, with cheese reverting to plastic when cold.
- 15:10Delivery fees stack to $30 for a Taco Bell order that could feed someone for a month, driven by pure laziness.
- 15:20A weird collusion between laziness and the economy is ruining food quality and all dining experiences.
- 15:41Instead of delivery, hire a chef or get a catered meal, but don't make him wait for Uber Eats.
- 16:00Tim concludes his rant by stating the entire delivery situation is simply not right.
- 7 min
The Death of Casual Chain Restaurants: Fridays, Ruby Tuesday, and Olive Garden's Survival
#Tim discusses an article on the decline of casual chains like TGI Fridays, Applebee's, Ruby Tuesday, and Carrabba's, riffing on Chili's Southwestern Egg Roll, the fake-nice server culture, Ruby Tuesday's sad salad bar clientele, and why Olive Garden somehow still thrives on cold 'glop' and refrigerated salad.
13moments
- 16:07Casual chain restaurants like Fridays, Applebee's, and Ruby Tuesday are on the edge of destruction—part of Tim's childhood dying out.
- 16:34These chains served dog shit in a fun environment for years before people figured it out.
- 16:48Tim defends Chili's Southwestern Egg Roll as probably the greatest casual chain restaurant appetizer of all time.
- 17:07These restaurants are too chipper—Applebee's cheerfulness clashes with the reality of civil war and CIA infighting.
- 17:49Friday has lost its meaning; most people work on Saturday to avoid homelessness, and God probably isn't real anyway.
- 18:10Ruby Tuesday is where divorced substitute teachers shuffle in around 12:30 PM to get drunk on white zin and eat a salad bar of fingernails and dandruff.
- 19:00Tim thinks Fridays still turns out good food, but the price point doesn't justify going out when people just want to eat on their toilet at home.
- 19:28People don't want servers kneeling down in their face with pins, asking how they are—nobody wants that fake nice shit anymore.
- 20:57Olive Garden inexplicably keeps thriving despite other chains collapsing.
- 21:24Olive Garden works because it focuses on one thing: comforting glop—you pick white glop or red glop, plus salad and breadsticks.
- 21:51The real appeal of Olive Garden salad is that it's the only thing provably refrigerated, making it taste cold and safely edible.
- 22:29Tim once got pasta e fagiole at Olive Garden with hair in it; when offered another, he joked he wanted something more filling with more hair.
- 22:52Fridays is still making money in other countries because American theme restaurant nostalgia is still sellable overseas.
Ruby TuesdayApplebee'sFriday'sChili'sOlive GardenRed Lobster
- 1 min
Nostalgia for Getting High and Driving to Chili's
#A short personal aside about smoking weed with friends and speeding down the parkway to go to Chili's happy hour as teenagers.
3moments
- 23:29Friday's is decent food depending on where you live—might be your dressing-up option versus bowling alley casual.
- 23:54Tim used to drive to Chili's with friends after smoking a lot of weed and blast rap music at high speed on the parkway.
- 24:06Now that weed's legal, those restaurant experiences have lost their appeal.
- 6 min
Tim brings on returning guest Alex, a documentary filmmaker whose Pokemon Go unity project fizzled out, then discusses a Massachusetts governor being shouted down at Tufts over sanctuary state comments and the tiny, embattled Tufts Republican club.
9moments
- 24:40Alex made a documentary about Pokemon Go that was supposed to unite the world and it failed completely.
- 26:10Tim asks Alex how the uniting actually worked out for Pokemon Go.
- 26:26Alex admits the documentary didn't have lasting impact and nothing does.
- 27:18Massachusetts governor visited Tufts to speak about not making the state a sanctuary for illegal immigration.
- 27:42Students interrupted the speaker mid-talk because he's Republican, which they equate with evil.
- 28:35Tim describes the pattern across colleges where opposing viewpoints are shouted down and labeled dangerous.
- 28:51Calling someone racist invalidates their opinion and prevents actual debate.
- 29:05Tim argues that preventing opposing viewpoints is fascism, the very thing they claim to oppose.
- 29:36Tufts has a Republican club with about thirty members who likely need protection.
- 6 min
Alex describes Tufts allowing mixed-gender dorm rooms for the first time and a bizarre orientation panel where a white girl claimed to feel oppressed on campus, prompting Tim's mockery.
10moments
- 29:56Tufts is allowing coed dorms for the first time, letting guys room with girls.
- 30:34Tim predicts couples will room together, which defeats the purpose of college being about grades and learning skills.
- 31:26A white girl on an orientation panel claimed she felt oppressed at Tufts.
- 31:46Tim on white women: they've successfully divorced white men and weren't standing next to them during their historical wrongdoings.
- 32:13If you're getting oppressed at Tufts, maybe the real world isn't for you.
- 32:42A high school girl in LA severed her finger jumping a fence to ditch class, ring caught in the chain link.
- 33:40Instead of calling an ambulance, the girl Snapchatted her severed finger with the bone sticking out.
- 34:30She texted a friend in class asking them to retrieve her finger, and the friend said no because they didn't want to leave class.
- 35:05After waiting 30 minutes for the friend to get off class, she had them hand the finger through the chain link fence to her.
- 35:26The girl and her friend drove to the friend's house without putting the finger on ice, wasting more crucial time before seeking medical help.
- 4 min
Alex recounts a high schooler who ripped her finger off jumping a fence, then spent nearly an hour Snapchatting and texting about it, waiting for a friend, and taking an Uber to the hospital instead of calling an ambulance, losing the finger permanently.
10moments
- 35:50Girl documented her severed finger on social media while getting to the hospital.
- 36:10Tim describes photo of her disembodied finger sitting on her leg inside the Uber.
- 36:20Social media has become a disease and is legitimately hazardous to people's health.
- 36:58The need to Snapchat and photograph yourself in an Uber represents a genuine sickness.
- 37:11Hospital told her she waited way too long—should have called an ambulance instead of Ubering.
- 37:35Her tweet caption reads 'what if advice don't hop a fence with a ring on' and got thousands of likes.
- 37:57She doesn't seem upset about losing her finger and got social media engagement out of it.
- 38:29Tim sees this as indicative of kids grown up in social media culture with a genuine illness.
- 39:17Every kid has been sold the idea that they're interesting and important, and they're not.
- 39:42She probably took an Uber Eats, meaning someone might get a finger in their food.
- 10 min
Discussion of writer Andrew Sullivan's internet rehab leads into Alex's story about a wealthy pre-med friend who became addicted to online gaming and forums, inverted his sleep schedule, and was eventually found using a street Wi-Fi kiosk in the cold, prompting his parents to send him to a multi-month 'Restart' program with no phones, books, or computers.
14moments
- 40:19Alex describes his friend who went to internet rehab and is still there.
- 40:33Tim notes Alex has a patrician way of speaking, like a young version of Lois Griffin's father from Family Guy.
- 41:12Upper East Side Manhattan kids have crazy names, which Tim used to make up funny ones like Leopold, Barnabas, and Stanton when talking to Alex.
- 41:41The internet rehab kid is another rich person, but most people go to rehab for synthetic heroin, not internet addiction.
- 42:21Stanton played video games all day after college started, struggling to make friends despite being pre-med at a good school.
- 42:56When Stanton couldn't make real friends, he turned to internet forums, 4chan, and online gaming where he met people from around the world.
- 43:31He inverted his sleep schedule because his online friends were Australian and all over the world, leading him to fail all his classes.
- 44:23After dropping out and coming home, things got worse, leading to his parents sending him to rehab.
- 45:17Rich kid Stanton started scouring the streets like a meth addict looking for public Wi-Fi kiosks to play League of Legends in December.
- 46:47His parents found him sitting on the street next to a filthy Wi-Fi kiosk with his laptop, which became the last straw for internet rehab.
- 47:33It's harder to explain to people that your rich kid is addicted to Reddit than to say he got involved with drugs.
- 48:33The program is called Restart, a multi-month facility with no electronics or books allowed, focusing on building social skills through talking to people.
- 49:08Stanton wasn't allowed to contact Alex for the first months, eventually earning the privilege to exchange written messages like Abigail Adams.
- 49:45After several months in rehab, the next phase involves getting a flip phone and a job in Seattle to learn real-world interaction and responsibility.
Restartinternet addictionLeague of LegendsRedditSeattleWorld of Warcraft
- 4 min
Alex tells the story of another friend with an abusive home life who slashed her wrists after her parents tried to limit her internet use, only to be found back on her laptop playing video games immediately after being rescued.
7moments
- 50:35A girl from the guest's high school slashed her wrists after her parents restricted her internet access and gaming.
- 51:12Tim recounts accidentally kicking a toddler at a food market after the child had struck him multiple times.
- 51:50Tim says he would also threaten his kid with a knife if they became addicted to the internet like this girl was.
- 52:04The guest received a text photo of the girl's cut wrists with a plea for help, then coordinated a friend to pick her up from her house.
- 52:46The friend's mother called the girl's mother to report where she was, and the mother revealed she'd only set an 11 p.m. bedtime for excessive internet use.
- 53:33The girl brought her laptop to her friend's house and continued playing video games even after cutting her wrists.
- 54:12Virtual reality and Oculus Rift technology will make this problem worse for people unable to handle living in fake digital worlds.
video gamesinternet addictionvirtual reality
- 8 min
Tim and Alex discuss the BBC documentary HyperNormalisation's idea of a fake world versus the real world, comparing 1960s LSD escapism to modern virtual worlds like Second Life, then Alex explains the Counter-Strike skin gambling scandal where YouTubers secretly owned rigged gambling sites.
10moments
- 54:34Tim explains the BBC's Hypernormalization documentary, which argues the world is run by tech titans and bankers rather than through politics.
- 55:01The distinction between fake worlds—social media, the internet, platforms—and the real world where actual violence occurs.
- 55:29Technology and social media compared to 1960s acid use: both offer escape into a different realm.
- 55:57Video games create vast online worlds with their own currency, stores, and property where people prefer to live out their lives.
- 56:51Second Life is an actual game where people dress up characters, sink real money into clothes and property.
- 57:22Tim describes the Counter-Strike gambling scandal involving weapon skins, rare digital items with manufactured value.
- 58:03YouTubers secretly owned gambling websites for skins, rigged the outcomes, and promoted them as legitimate casinos to exploit viewers.
- 59:00People exploit those trying to acquire rare virtual objects, creating an illegal economy within games.
- 59:46When the fake world collides with the real world, people end up harming themselves or sitting on street corners.
- 1:00:56The danger is that someone will choose their parallel digital life over a real apartment because the internet provides what reality doesn't.
Second LifeHypernormalizationCounter-StrikeBBCFacebook
- 2 min
Closing Riff and Sign-Off
#Tim wraps up the conversation with Alex, gives a final summation about kids and screens, plugs rating and reviewing the show, and signs off noting Ray will return next week.
4moments
- 1:02:25Tim admits he used to do blow in crack houses as a teenager, so he's not claiming to have been perfect.
- 1:02:50The internet is infinite while movies only last two hours, so kids can get lost online forever instead of watching something contained.
- 1:03:01Tim says when you give kids a platform they don't stop—they just keep going like they're Neil deGrasse Tyson.
- 1:03:26Tim tells parents to watch what their kids are doing and keep them away from stupid games.