Current Events with Taylor Lorenz

[00:00:02] They showed up in force for a fiery face-off in the heart of Hollywood. Two opposing groups of demonstrators, pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel, disrupted a star presentation ceremony on the Hollywood Walk of Fame this Tuesday. That's because the recipient was Wonder Woman herself, Israeli actress Gal Gadot. It takes Wonder Woman to help us get through this, so please come up onto the stage.

[00:00:33] Gadot also stars as the evil queen in the newly released version of Snow White. You know, I really don't remember you being this opinionated. In her speech, she avoided politics and did not acknowledge the commotion outside the tent, which shielded her somewhat from the growing tension around her. Standing here today on this street, Iran, 15 years ago, we came here and we were driving by this boulevard.

[00:01:03] Who would have ever thought we would get such an honor? The long-awaited honor, tarnished to a degree. Gadot has been an outspoken advocate for her native country, denouncing the deadly Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th of 2023. Now, escalating conflict in the Middle East is leading to growing confrontations here in Southern California.

[00:01:42] Welcome to Struggle Session. On today's episode, superstar journalist Taylor Lorenz joins us to discuss current events, Gal Gadot's acting, League of Wars, insecure group chats, all that and more on today's Struggle Session. Taylor, tell me about Usermag. Yeah, so Usermag is my substack. It's usermag.co.

[00:02:09] And it comes out usually two to three times a week, unless it's busy, in which case it comes out more. It's a newsletter about sort of everything happening on the internet. It's about how the internet is affecting politics, business, and culture. Positively is mostly how it's affecting everything, right? Yeah, it's so great. Yeah, it's not super dark. I write a lot about like internet cultures and communities. And so a lot of it is about like weird internet phenomena.

[00:02:36] But then a lot of it ends up being politics too, which is the more dark stuff, I guess, lately. Because the internet has not been so great for our political system in some ways. In other ways, it has been. I write a lot about free speech and free speech issues related to free speech and the need to preserve free speech online. So I care a lot about that topic. Yeah, so the topics we're talking about today, some hot topics in the news that deal with all those issues, you know, free speech, the internet, what's hot on the internet.

[00:03:05] One thing that a lot of people are talking about, and it is right up the struggle session alley, something that we've been talking about for a while. There's been a brand new hit piece put out on a young actor who has upset some executives in Variety magazine. And we've covered this topic a few times when it happened to Ray Fisher and a couple other people.

[00:03:30] But it's this recurring pattern and it's usually involved as journalists named Tatiana Siegel, who wrote this article titled, Inside Disney's Snow White Fiasco, Death Threats, Beefed Up Security, and a Social Media Guru for Rachel Ziegler.

[00:03:46] Now, from that title, you think it might be about how Rachel Ziegler had to deal with, you know, death threats and had needed beefed up security because of her outspokenness, relatively speaking, about Palestine. But no, no, that's not what the article is at all. Yeah, the article is hit piece is a great word for it. And I don't use that word lightly because I hate when people call things hit pieces where it's just critical reporting. But this article just attacks Rachel Ziegler.

[00:04:16] As you mentioned, it's written by this journalist who has a history of carrying water for bad people. She has basically lambasted others for speaking out against Palestine. She's run cover for a lot of sort of like Zionist propaganda, frankly, in the media. And now this article there. Yeah, they're they're basically trying to make make a example of Rachel Ziegler and sort of chastise her for speaking out. They talk about how she's like unhinged online and had the gall to say free Palestine. And, you know, that would be faster. Yeah. And literally like that.

[00:04:45] Like literally I'll read from the article. So to lay out the context a little bit, Snow White is the latest big flop in Hollywood. It cost a bunch of money. It ended up not making that money back. And the blame game starts. And this one in particular is focused on this. The one actor in this movie. And it's a ridiculous attempt to blame her.

[00:05:08] One or two tweets mentioning Palestine for this movie not being popular and successful when there's plenty of other reasons why it wouldn't be. And I had literally not heard of this at all until after the movie came out. It's framed as is she's the problem because she called attention to a free Palestine in a single tweet. Never mind that Gal Gadot co-stars in the movie, who is very vocal Zionist. She's an Israeli actress, you know, served in IDF.

[00:05:37] Like so many people didn't want to see the movie because of that and didn't want to support the movie because of Gal Gadot's open support for Israel. Yeah, on August 12th, 2024, three days after Rachel Ziegler hit the stage at Disney's D23 fan event to introduce the first official official trailer of Snow White. She thanked supporters effusively in an ex post for driving the teaser to 120 million views in 24 hours.

[00:06:06] One minute later, she added an afterthought in the same thread. And always remember, free Palestine. That addendum, which amassed 8.8 million views, which is like not that which is much, much less than, you know, people who saw the trailer. Yeah. Quickly made the rounds. And the Disney executives, the story continues, were completely upset about it. Mark Platt, who we can talk a little bit about him. He's a producer of this film.

[00:06:34] He's a longtime Disney producer. Disney executive raised the studio's concerns with Ziegler's team while the film's producer, Mark Platt, flew to New York to speak directly with her over just the tweet. But she apparently did not back down and she did not delete the tweet, which is awesome. I love that. But it's so bizarre, like this one little line when at when we've talked about on the show before.

[00:07:01] Once October 7 happened, dozens and dozens of celebrities making these explicitly like genocidal comments and posts, you know, completely would have been completely beyond the pill before then. None of them basically none of them face any sort of repercussions. In fact, their careers have improved. I think Jenny Nicholson, the guy, the woman who's married to the guy who fucked the pie in American Pie, like they have like a like a movie, like a TV movie show on TBS now.

[00:07:31] Like after her making like like you never get punished on that side. But this one little tweet prompted Mark Platt. And this is not the first time this producer has done something like this. He tried to get Boots Riley fired from his agency because Boots Riley is outspoken about Palestine. He he did.

[00:07:52] He's he gone on his son's podcast and talked about the fact that he goes and like confronts actors on like on the set of Wicked if they were tweeting about free Palestine and explaining to them why actually that's you know, you're you don't have the full context and you don't understand. Several members of the Wicked cast, including Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Bowen Yang have been active at least online in their opposition to Israel artists for a ceasefire.

[00:08:21] As someone who cares so much about your professional relationships and the the product you're making on set, how do you navigate that? I talk to people and and and I think particularly in those instances, people are told that something is about something in a very reductive way. And it feels like who doesn't care about innocent. Right. Tragedy. Innocent civilians.

[00:08:48] Nobody wants no decent human being wants any suffering in humanity from decent people. What happens in instances as individuals ascribe their names to something where they're not being completely informed and the messaging to them is they're suffering here. Right. We have to speak out for suffering.

[00:09:09] The message doesn't include there's also suffering over here or there's suffering that was prompted or instigated by an act of terror or an act of evil. Or there's a terrorist group in place that wishes for the annihilation of a whole group of people that gets left out of the conversation. And so my way of dealing is to is when the moment is right is to have that conversation.

[00:09:35] So this is like a producer who goes around, places his foot on a scale. But that's not the story in Variety. The story is that he was forced to do this. You know, he had to go out of his way because he just hates. And it frames it like Ziegler is the one who's politicizing this while every all the politics that everybody else is doing is just how it's supposed to be. Exactly. Yeah. And that's what makes it such an incredibly biased article.

[00:10:02] And it's just been so disturbing also just to see the reaction to it and the way that the right has really come for her. I mean, this, as you mentioned, the headline is talking about death threats. It doesn't talk about the hate and abuse and targeted harassment that Rachel has received for speaking out. It actually frames Gal Gadot as a victim, as if Gal Gadot is a victim at all. Gal Gadot is the one pushing this genocidal rhetoric against Palestinians. She was an IDF soldier. I think it's fair game for her to be criticized.

[00:10:32] But the article says behind the scenes death threats towards Ziegler's co-star Gal Gadot, who is Israeli, I guess, which is a protected class now, spite. And Disney had to pay for additional security for the mother of four. She didn't. This is a quote. She, she being Ziegler, didn't understand the repercussions of her actions as far as what that meant for the film, for Gal, for anyone, says one insider. Again. I love how it's an anonymous.

[00:11:01] It's always the anonymous insider. Who the heck is the insider? Some random person that Tatiana called up? Yes. There's no attribution. Yeah. And this is the hallmark, by the way, of bad reporting and what so many bad reporters do. Like so many of these bad, lazy media reporters, especially entertainment reporters, they know. I mean, David Fulkenflick at NPR is a perfect example of this. Same with Dylan Byers at Puck. You know, these are people that make a living publishing false information and lies and framing stories and manufacturing controversy.

[00:11:31] And what they do is they sort of rely on these anonymous sources and, you know, insiders say da, da, da. Of course, it's never attribution. There's no attribution. It's like, OK, well, if you're an insider, say it. And why are you granting these people anonymity to shit talk their colleagues? You grant people anonymity when they're in danger, when they are revealing state secrets or something. You don't just grant anonymity because you want to anonymously allow somebody's colleague to shit talk them. But that's the standards today in journalism.

[00:12:01] I mean, that's unfortunately what these outlets accept as journalism because it's not about journalism. It's not about reporting. It's about pushing a narrative at all costs. And it's about punishing anybody that speaks truth to power, which is what Rachel did. Yeah, absolutely. Like, I love that you mentioned, like, the standards for when you provide anonymity and how this does not apply at all. Like, like Tatiana Siegel specifically will say, like, an anonymous executive.

[00:12:28] Why would you grant an executive from any sort of anonymity? He's not under threat, you know. Right. And they're usually talking about, like, complaining about, like, actors like Ray Fisher or Michelle Barrera or, you know, all actors and workers are all crashed in these media hit pieces that don't seem to serve any news purpose other than it pleases the sources of Tatiana Siegel.

[00:12:53] And obviously, these are important sources to have if they're literally top executives in Hollywood. Well, yeah, but it's also like she doesn't care about the top executives in Hollywood that are going to speak out on behalf of Rachel. It's just about pushing a narrative. And again, that's what these lazy entertainment journalists and media journalists do. They have a narrative in their head. They want to manufacture controversy and they want to punish and stigmatize anybody that speaks out.

[00:13:19] And so they will make these unsourced sort of stories, basically, that grant people anonymity. Now, by the way, what they say, like an insider or an executive, it's probably not even what you and I think of as when we think of as an insider and executive. This could literally be an executive, you know, in the entertainment industry that has absolutely no knowledge that has never even worked in the movie business.

[00:13:42] But as an entertainment executive and they have thoughts to share, we don't know anything, again, because they are not explaining or not giving any context. But I think the lack of that context is very telling, because if this was an executive that was directly involved with the project, they would say that. Or if this was an executive that had knowledge of the project, they'll say that. But like, I just think they use all of these like terms that make you think that it's they've spoken to somebody that actually has knowledge of a situation when they haven't.

[00:14:08] Yeah. And one other thing I want to mention before we move on from this about Gal Gadot, because we've kind of covered her. But in this article, she's described as this for her part. Gadot kept her comments on geopolitics limited to offering support for the civilian hostages taken during the October 7th Hamas attack and did not mix that message with the promotion of the film.

[00:14:34] What? First of all, Palestinians are innocent, like these innocent Palestinians that are being slaughtered. They're they're innocent. I don't know where this is coming from that, like, only the Israeli hostages are innocent. What about the thousands of innocent Palestinians that Israel has captured even before October 7th? Like Israel has been committing genocide against the Palestinians for a long time repeatedly. And so it's just the framing is absurd. Yeah. And absurd for another reason, because that article came out yesterday, March 25th.

[00:15:04] So it says Gadot kept her comments on geopolitics limited. But on March 10th, also in Variety, an article by Capsi Stefan called Gal Gadot's Walk of Fame ceremony about how it was disrupted by protesters. This is how Variety again described Gadot.

[00:15:25] Gadot, who is Israeli, has been an outspoken supporter of Israel on social media, as well as in a passionate speech she delivered on March 4th when she was honored at the Anti-Defamation League's annual summit in New York City. Never did I imagine that on the streets of the United States and different cities around the world who see people not condemning Hamas, but celebrating, justifying and cheering on a massacre of Jews, she said in part.

[00:15:53] So when they want to portray her as the Israeli Wonder Woman, she's an outspoken critic. But when they want to bash Rachel Ziegler and blame the failure of the movie explicitly on her political comments and not Gadot's, you know, she's just barely said anything, which is absurd. Like even a Gadot doing like the Imagine video, right? Like you could just blame the bad box office for Snow White on that.

[00:16:20] And Gadot has been kind of like a laughingstock since that video. And people just constantly talk about how she's maybe the worst actress. She's a terrible actress. She's terrible. She's awful. That's the other fundamental issue here is that she's an atrocious actress. And that's what the review said. So even if you were writing a autopsy of this film, maybe you could mention the Ziegler aspect as part of it, right? Part of the controversy around it. But the Gadot stuff was fairly large as well.

[00:16:50] And the fact that she's an awful actress. Now, she's not the worst actress. The actress, I think, and we'll talk about this on our next episode where we talk about Captain America Brave New World. They actually found an Israeli actress even worse than Gadot in Captain America. And she plays an Israeli secret agent in this movie. And she's probably she's even worse than Gadot. And she's not even like tall or, you know, looks like a superhero. So even like they're just I don't know. I don't know.

[00:17:18] And she is an outspoken supporter of the IDF. And the I don't see an article about her being blamed for the somewhat middling box office of that film. Right. Exactly. It's just totally asymmetrical. All right. So moving on to talking a bit more about some bad journalists. And this is a huge news story. Everybody's talking about this one in the most useless way, I think, generally speaking.

[00:17:45] But old Jeffrey Goldberg, who I have unfortunately have not gotten the chance to talk about on the show as much. But I love to remind people that Jeffrey Goldberg, who is the editor in chief of the Atlantic, long time editor in chief there, friend of Ta-Nehisi Coates and also former IDF concentration camp guard. Jeffrey Goldberg, who is American, left college to serve in the IDF.

[00:18:11] He was guard at the Kizat detention camp during the first Antifada. It was infamous for the torture, rape and murder of Palestinians. Goldberg described his time as exotic and exciting. And that is so disturbing. Yes. And that's who Jeffrey Goldberg is. And it's not a surprise to anyone who's read the Atlantic coverage of the genocide in Palestine. He has his hand on the scale.

[00:18:41] And he, of all journalists, quote, in the world, was invited to. Well, I guess maybe it's not a coincidence. He was invited to a group chat, a signal chat, I believe, with, I think, Huxeth, Vance, and other people.

[00:19:00] Well, they were talking about planning bombings of the Houthis as part of revenge for the Houthis fulfilling their international obligations to try to stop the genocide from happening. I think somebody tweeted something funny that was like they must have had multiple Jeffrey IDFs in their phone.

[00:19:20] I think what's, I mean, look, I'm glad that the Atlantic published these texts so that we can see just how cavalierly these people talk about killing innocent civilians. Like there's one point where they acknowledge the innocent civilians will be killed and they're sort of celebrating these killings. So I think it's like a very interesting window into what happened. I do also think that the criticism is very valid of like why was this framed in this way?

[00:19:47] I mean, unfortunately, the Atlantic, like they do publish amazing work in like tech and actually their tech coverage is incredibly good. But when it comes to like war, yeah, it's like neocons. Like, I mean, they're just like war hungry type of that's the editorial outlook there. And that's unfortunately, that's the editorial outlook for most of mainstream media. Like, I don't think that they're unique in that. I worked at the New York Times for years as well. And like, that's very much as well that the editorial outlook at the New York Times.

[00:20:17] I mean, they famously cheered on the Iraq war. Like, there's nothing that a lot of these mainstream media outlets want more, whether they'll admit it or not, is war. Because it provides a steady stream of content. It gives reader interest. Like it and a lot of these people that run the media are, yeah, like former military people, former, I guess, IDF soldiers, like people that have been involved in the military industrial complex in some way. And they're certainly not anti-war activists.

[00:20:46] So it's disturbing. Yeah. So Goldberg, what he did with this story was he basically, he saw plans for like when and where bombing was going to happen. And there was this bizarre discussion where they were basically saying most of the people in the chat were saying, we should probably delay this for a month. Because I forget what reason, like, because they kind of didn't know what they were fucking doing. Maybe we should probably just put this off for a month. And then they get word that Trump says, no, no, it's green light.

[00:21:15] So like, all right, well, I guess we're doing this. And Jeffrey Goldberg is reading all this. And this is real talk about real people about being about to be killed. And he sits on it, does nothing with it. And just like, I'm just trying to imagine what would the biopic of this person be? Like, when you imagine a journalist, right, being given this information that the United States. My favorite part is that he removed himself. Yes. Why would you remove yourself from that chat?

[00:21:45] Why would you do that? The only thing that I will say, because I was talking to other journalists about it, is because we were like, why? Why would you ever do that? Like, it just, it shows this obsession with like decorum and all this DC insider shit that is so stupid. The only thing that I think could have been a concern is like, there are all these like, like national security espionage, like rules and stuff. And like, I, not to give him too much of the benefit of the doubt, because I do think he should have at least say something before you leave.

[00:22:13] At least ask for comment in the chat or say something. Like, I don't know. But it was like, there could be like legal, like, you know, just he was nervous about being like arrested. He's afraid of going to jail. The former prison guard is afraid to maybe. I know, I know. It's rich. It's rich. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. I, I just cannot imagine any like journalists, other journalists, serious journalists. No, no, no, no. They wouldn't. Like the idea of what we think of a journalist should be, right? Of course not.

[00:22:41] Like you're giving information about what the United States is about to do some, which is surely illegal bombing. Like you would expose this. Oh my God, you would post it immediately. You would like, that would be a huge story that you would want to break immediately. You don't want to wait for it to happen and then be like, he, he, I knew all along. No, of course not. But, you know, unfortunately the way that it's positioned now is it sort of allows them to seem like these bold truth tellers because they revealed the text after it happened. Yeah. That's what I mean by the framing.

[00:23:08] If I didn't explain it earlier, the framing discussion is about how the Hulk Sith and all these guys are just sloppy, like unprofessional. And that's the problem. Like they were, they just kind of, they added the wrong guy to a group text and this is embarrassing for them. And like, they are trying, I guess there is talk about getting someone fired, but that's like kind of the smallest issue of all these stuff.

[00:23:33] Like people are very concerned, like, well, when we have to bomb someone else, will we accidentally leak it out? Like maybe we should just not be bombing. Exactly. Like at all. And we know that these people didn't even think it was necessary. Like we're being told. Yeah. They're not even talking about the fact that publicly we're told that these bombings are necessary for national security to protect Americans. While most of these people in this group chat wanted to delay it for a month. Like, yes. Yeah.

[00:24:02] Because it's just, I mean, again, it just shows like the war machine in action and how cavalierly they bomb people. I mean, this is America. All we do is go around the world bombing and killing people. It's like a deeply evil country in that way. And so I think, I mean, unfortunately, so much of mainstream journalism is deferential to the military world and to the government world. And they don't have that antagonistic relationship with power.

[00:24:30] This little talk of the fact that this attack killed 53 people, as we mentioned, including women and children, the civilian toll of these American strikes. Are we burying the lead here? Well, unfortunately, those aren't confirmed numbers. Those are provided by the Houthis and the Houthi Health Ministry, I guess. So we don't know that for sure. Yeah. I mean, obviously, we're well, I don't know if we're burying the lead because obviously huge breaches in national security and safety of information. That's a very, very important story.

[00:24:59] Obviously, people are cheering on like Jeffrey Goldberg now, like he's a hero for exposing this chat room after he left it and sat on the information. It's just the standards, they can't get any lower. No, you'd have to drag me out of that chat. I would never leave that chat. All right. And one more topic we can talk about before we go.

[00:25:23] Something else that the media is doing an awful job of framing when it deigns to mention it. Long COVID. Taylor, apparently COVID is over again. It's done. They can't shut up about it. It's over. It's just been revealed that a spokesperson from the HHS, right? All right.

[00:25:46] So as people who have been paying attention now with Doge, they're just getting this government so efficient that it won't be able to do a single goddamn thing. The Department of Health and Human Services sent to Science Magazine a statement announcing that the COVID pandemic is over again, I guess, because Biden declared it over a few months before. They've declared it over a million times and they just continue to ignore that people are still dying and it's not over.

[00:26:14] And the World Health Organization is the only one that has the authority to declare it over. And they have repeatedly not declared it over. And actually just last year affirmed that it was still going on. Yeah. Pandemic. Check. Check the prefix. Look up what that means. Pan. It's not just one country can declare it over. But it's been declared over again.

[00:26:33] And because of that, HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago. Meaning that the NHS is beginning to cut funding of COVID-19 research even as the pandemic continues. And we're only seeing the beginnings of what's going on with long COVID. Yeah.

[00:27:02] I don't love the phrase long COVID, to be honest, because I feel like it really makes people think. And I know it's a patient-derived term and it's whatever it is what it is by now. But I think a lot of people still somehow don't realize that long COVID is just COVID. It means that you have something from COVID. It means long-term damage from COVID. And so all of these people will be like, well, I've gotten COVID five times and I've never gotten long COVID. It's like long COVID is not a distinct thing that you get.

[00:27:29] It just speaks to the damage that your body has incurred from COVID. And yeah, COVID is still circulating. I mean, we don't move on. We haven't moved on from like rabies or like measles or like I don't know what this is even talking about. Like 2025, you're still talking about measles and rabies? What? Oh my God. Like it's just stupid because it's like, yeah, these are ongoing like issues. This is infectious disease. We need to care about infectious disease.

[00:27:56] But of course, we know that people like RFK don't care about infectious disease. They go out talking about chronic disease. What's the number one driver of chronic disease? Infectious disease that causes chronic health issues. Like, and I mean, among environmental factors, which he also doesn't want to deal with, aside from selling people water filters or whatever, like he's not regulating any of these chemical companies or regulating anything to make us safer and healthier. And neither are the Democrats, by the way. They're also trying to ban masks.

[00:28:23] Like, we've just seen the complete dismantling of public health. And it's only possible because liberals and leftists have gotten completely on board. Like what it's ironic that literally word for word with the Trump administration is saying is also what all these quote unquote leftists on Twitter say every single week. They're it's just they're parroting this far right eugenics talking points and they refuse to acknowledge it. And it's it's terrifying. It's denialism.

[00:28:52] I've covered anti-vax stuff for years. And even before the pandemic, I covered anti-vax misinformation online. And the fundamental belief in anti-vax ideology is that disease is good for you. And your immune system is this muscle where you have to keep getting infected. And that's what keeps you healthy is constant infection. That is the bedrock of anti-vax ideology is that disease is good for you. And that is now what all of these people on the left and right believe. It's a conspiracy theory.

[00:29:19] And Julia Doubleday wrote about this really well, actually, in a post on her sub stack. But it's terrifying. And that's also why you're seeing the dismantling of public health across the board. It's because it's it's the right has been on that, right? Like the right has always been about this type of stuff. But the left is the people that are enabling it and facilitating it and carrying it out. So I just want to be careful because I don't want people to think, oh, Trump came in and destroyed public health. No, the Democrats also are destroying public health. The left, the socialists that refuse to mask.

[00:29:47] OK, these people that call themselves communists and won't even put a fucking mask on so that they don't kill their neighbor. Like Taylor, you're just saying that because you don't have friends. Yeah, right. I have a lot of friends. And guess what? They wear masks. It's like these people are such losers and they never want to acknowledge people like myself and others. Like I am a high, relatively high profile media figure. Like I travel constantly. I do speaking things constantly. Like I take a lot of steps because I'm severely immunocompromised. Like I can't mess around with health.

[00:30:16] And so I take a lot of these steps and they love to call like immunocompromised and disabled people like shut ins. And it's like, what are you talking about? Like, first of all, the people that are homebound or bed bound, they don't want to be that way. They want to participate in the world, but you've made it so that they can't safely participate in the world. And thankfully, I live in L.A. So everything is indoor, outdoor. I have a great group of friends. There's a lot of people here that care about COVID. Like it's totally normal to see masking in my neighborhood, like just in general.

[00:30:42] So I live in like a really great place, but most people don't. And think about this for two seconds. Like how does how how is what you're doing right now aligned with your ideology? Because you care. You claim to care about marginalized groups. You claim to care about all this stuff. And yet and yet during an ongoing pandemic, you won't take the most basic public health mitigation protection to ensure that you aren't actively killing someone. I just don't understand it. I can never understand it. Yeah. Tom Holland, even Spider-Man himself.

[00:31:12] He's going around in a mask on. Let me tell you something. I was on a shoot just this past weekend. And unfortunately, a lot of protections have been dismantled for shoots. But because I'm immune compromised, like any set that I set foot on, everyone's an N95. It's not even a question. And I shoot things constantly. Like I've been I mean, I'm on multiple Netflix documentaries right now. Like every single one of those, every single person is masked, tested for even setting foot on set. So it's it's very doable.

[00:31:38] It's just that these leftists on Twitter that want to cosplay as communists and don't understand the most basic. Like, I don't know, they have no concept of community or community care or just like literally just not harming people around you. I cannot imagine being so morally depraved that you don't care if you kill or disable someone. If I I'm still now that I know about like immune damage and stuff.

[00:32:01] And now that I know how susceptible people like me are to viruses, I always wear a mask, even if I was perfectly healthy, because God forbid I infect an immunocompromised person with some other disease that I don't know I have because I'm asymptomatic. Like, it's just the most basic thing. And it's completely normalized in other countries. In Asia, I was recently in India where the air quality is so bad and everyone's wearing masks. It's totally normalized. So we could have it normalized here. But people on the left don't want to normalize it. They want to go along with Trump. Sad to see. Hate to see it.

[00:32:31] But Taylor, tell me some good news. What can be where what can people read on UserMag? What's coming up? You can read my online culture analysis and roundups. I do a lot of like, honestly, just like rundowns of everything that you might have missed on the Internet. So if you want to feel like you're up to date with Internet culture and online culture, definitely subscribe.

[00:32:53] I usually write like one piece on top and then I have like a list of news stories and recommendations for articles to read on all of these topics that we've talked about and more. Like I said, it's all about sort of like how the Internet is reshaping politics and culture and business. So I cover a lot of this stuff. And I also have a YouTube channel. So subscribe to my YouTube channel. All right, folks, that was Struggle Session. Taylor, thank you so much. Great episode. Great talking with you. Sorry we had to cut it a little bit short, but I'm so glad to have happy to finally have you on. And I hope to have you on again. Thanks for having me.

[00:33:24] All right, y'all. Thank you so much for listening today. Thank you so much for Taylor for coming on the show. Thank you to our new assistant producer, Chase. Struggle Session is brought to you by Spreaker and patrons like you, including our new patrons.

[00:33:42] Spore Mound, Bloody Brad, Jerry Danton, Stephen Wilson, Dustin Destruction, Jezza D, Nathan, Anthony Flood, Timothy, Peter M.

[00:33:55] Thank you all so much for supporting the show, for subscribing at patreon.com slash struggle session, where you can get hundreds of bonus episodes as well as, hey, brand new episodes in video format when they come out. We got them suckers coming in HD, 1080p, struggle session vision. You can get all of that on patreon.com slash struggle session.

[00:34:23] The website is sesh.show. Hit us up on email, thestrugglesessionatgmail.com. On our next episode, we'll be talking about Captain America, Brave New World, and Black Superheroes with Trevor Beaulieu of Champagne Sharks, one of my favorite guests to have on. It's a great episode. Can't wait till y'all hear it. Till next time. Peace.