Bernie At Coachella, Luxury Good Chinese Propaganda, And Talking Gen Z with Rachel Janfaza
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Rise and shine, fever dreamers. Look alive, my friends. I'm V Spear. And I'm Sammy Sage. And this is American Fever Dream presented by Betches News. Where we explore the absurdities and oddities of our uniquely American experience. We're changing that tagline, I've decided. It's so beyond absurd and odd. Ha ha.

Although the things we will discuss will be absurd and odd, we assure you. But it's so beyond that at this point. It's spooky out there, for sure. I mean, even as we're trying to record this, just so you guys know, there's just so much going on that we just had to pick like two topics and stick to them. This could be a 24-hour live stream of chaos. First of all, these episodes are now on YouTube. So if you want to see facial expressions and all, and also we may have a little visual surprise at the end of this episode, sort of like a consolation prize for everything that's going on.

And if you'd like to see that, please refer to our YouTube channel. And yeah, this could be an entire, entire crazy episode that we could just be live streaming the craziness. Right now we're recording. It's Monday at noon. And I was just tuning in to the Trump Bukele meeting in the Oval Office, which is...

gilded, one might say. I'm very worried about what this week will bring because, you know, we've sort of danced around, are we in a constitutional crisis or not? We are, we have been, but certainly the direct defiance of the executive branch against the legislative branch or the judicial branch, Trump defying the Supreme Court on bringing that Maryland father back from the El Salvador prison is like, you can't get around that. That is a constitutional crisis that

just by the letter. And it's really scary, uh, that he's now sitting in the Oval Office saying Bukele is going to build more of these prison centers to send our most horrible criminals, uh,

who are here illegally too, even though an immigration court had actually ruled that Garcia was in the United States legally. I was also, I was at this, the International Journalism Festival this past weekend in Italy and

And I was talking to – this is like deep trad legacy media. This is not creators. I was like me and Johnny Harris were the only non-super serious media people there. We're talking like academics, very high level, a lot of nonprofit newsrooms and international media again. And a lot of these international media like Pulitzer Prize winners that typically go to this –

this festival go with the intent of talking about democracy around the world, free speech. And the three takeaways that I had were, one, not-for-profit newsrooms are in extreme trouble because people are having difficulty funding them. And a lot of the money that was going towards some journalistic efforts across the world was funded by USAID, and they can no longer do that. Some of the journalists specifically cover like

violence against women in emergency in emerging countries and whatnot. And that had to be cut. But the thing that really spooked me, I know I was saying before, like I'm a U.S. citizen, but I'm also a journalist. I'm also a high profile figure when it comes to like social media. And if Trump was going to start messing with creators, he's you know, it's going to be someone like me or Harry Sisson or something. Right.

And so I was worried about coming back in through border control, even though I have a U.S. passport and I'm an American citizen. I didn't want to be questioned or scared or anything else. And when I was talking to other folks there who are professors or working professionals in traditional serious, serious media in the United States, they had said that many of their colleagues –

did not come to the festival this year because their immigration lawyers advised them that it wouldn't be a good idea, that they can't promise that something bad would happen to them. But the sheer fact that they report on the Trump administration and atrocities thereof and maybe hold a British passport or an Indian passport, but they're like a tenured professor at Columbia type thing for journalism, that very well could have become an issue for them at the border. So many of these voices were not represented.

because they were too afraid to deal with border patrol at this point, even though they don't have a criminal history, they're just journalists.

And I think that really gave me a lot of pause just thinking about there are journalists at this event who are truly journalists in exile from their countries, their home countries where they could no longer live because of political persecution. Some of them got exile and asylum in America. And now they could potentially be deported again back to the country they were exiled from because of the reporting that they do. And so I think –

You know, we say it's a fever dream and we try to make it light here, but I left that conference feeling very like stoic and very like I want to spend some time reflecting on what does it mean to be a journalist in exile? What does it mean to be a part of a country that is silencing voices and that is, you know, destroying storytelling and truth telling? Yeah, I think it's it's really scary. I mean, I'm really happy that you have made it back to.

into the country. Well, I came in through Philly because I was like, okay, well, I have a good relationship with the governor of Philadelphia. So if anything happened, maybe I could text his office and be like, I'm being detained at the Philadelphia airport. And then,

Luckily, I didn't have any problems, but he did. Somebody broke into the governor's house and lit his home on fire yesterday. I mean, so it's just horrific everywhere. Everywhere. It's craziness. It is a right wing extremist, according to this person's social media posts. And Shapiro came out and gave, you know, a really.

rousing speech saying, you know, condemning the violence. Do you want to call out that he and his family had just celebrated Passover in that room that you can now see photos of that was totally burnt out? You know, I think it's going to feel like this for a while. It has felt like this for a while that there is some sort of breaking point that we're at with, you know, what's happening with the courts. And, you know, to your point about the

about running a nonprofit or even a for-profit media enterprise. Part of this is it's not just expensive to do reporting, but it's also expensive to defend your reporting legally. And I think that was part of why when CBS settled

and ABC settled, why people were so upset because part of having these bigger institutions that have access to huge budgets for legal defenses, it's like they are sort of supposed to be the bulwark for the smaller publishers against

you know, interference by the government or infringement on First Amendment rights. Think about them as like super precedents in this context. And when you have a lot of big law marginalized by these agreements, and not to mention they're quite expensive anyway, it's really another, it's just another major ding

to the industry and to the process of Americans getting information, true information. They were talking about that at the conference too. There was one panel I attended where the woman was giving a sort of warning saying, you know, as a journalist, oftentimes you're a big picture thinker. You're able to take in like the total landscape and then sort of compartmentalize the different pieces of it. But the purpose is to tell a broad story for this particular journalist.

And she was saying the thing that if you study history and the ways that democracies are taken down, certainly capturing the law is the first part. And then once you have the law, you can get the journalist. So she was saying, you know, once he goes through all these law firms and has them all acquiesced to him and sort of like

capitulate. Then the next thing we've gotten some of the big, you know, CBS, ABC, these different ones, MSNBC is maybe getting sold. There's some, you know, talk about why the shakeups at NBC. Totally different. No, that's a totally different situation. You don't think it has anything to do with the people who were super hypercritical of Trump? I don't think that this is only about that. Oh, no,

Not only, but it's a contributing factor to the talent mix-up, let's say, or to the way that they are dealing with different things. Complicating factor. But once they go through that, I am telling you, it is only a matter of time before it comes to the creator universe. He's very aware of the creator universe. He knows if – and Trump doesn't have to actually know because Charlie Kirk –

And Ben Shapiro and all of them know who their competitors are. They look at the same list that everybody does, right? And they're going to see things like Betches, things like Under the Desk News, things like David Pakman Show, Brian Tyler Cohen, all of that kind of stuff. And what will be next when it comes to covering him? Will parody and satire be censored in some ways? There are a lot of people who do parodies of Caroline Leavitt or Trump administration figures that don't.

They could say our defamation. How would a creator ever have the money to defend themselves? And we saw and for folks who are like, oh, he's not going to do that. He already did. Peter Thiel destroyed Gawker by using a Hulk Cogan sex tape lawsuit against Gawker to take out Gawker, which had exposed Peter Thiel as a queer man before he was ready to come out as gay or whatever.

They have destroyed media companies before, and they do it in the courts with these extremely expensive lawsuits. And to say as a creator that it doesn't affect the things that you'll say or you'll do is a lie. It absolutely affects the entire industry of journalism and content creation. Yeah. I mean, I think that on some level, like I personally am very careful with what I will say in terms of just –

I try not to be flippant, but that was also something I was trying to do just as a person who's maturing and wants to take, you know, takes, takes the words out of their mouth more seriously. But, you know, what's being reported is being reported. I'm not going to say the sky is blue.

Although sometimes it is yellow, I suppose, during the sunrise and the sunset. Whatever. That's not really a good example. Say that my shirt is white. Well, I can't come out here and say, right, I can't come out here and be like, Trump is a fascist, right? Because if I were to say that, then potentially they could say, well, that's defamation. That's libel. That's whatever. How have you proven that and put you in a lawsuit forever? So it's like I find when I cover anything Trump administration, I'm covering what happened that day.

And I'm covering things that are either from WhiteHouse.gov or have been widely reported already where it's not like me coming. I do find myself not being super comfortable just popping off with some opinion or comment about the things going on in this administration. One, because of the threat of lawsuit. And two, because the stakes are so incredibly serious that it does feel different than when I would be like, I don't know, maybe Joe Biden is getting a little sleepy. Maybe there is a little bit of sundowners going on here. I would not do that now.

Right. And right. I don't feel comfortable just kind of saying stuff the way I used to. And not even not just for like liability reasons for their lives at stake. And we're serious. No, no jokes anymore. That's why we're going to talk about Bernie at Coachella. Yeah.

Oh my gosh. Good. First of all, Coachella in itself. What a fever dream. I'm too old for Coachella and I'm not going to knock the kids and everything they do. But I was watching on TikTok, like the tent setups, the aesthetics, the outfits. I can't quite figure out, like, does anybody pay to go to Coachella or is it all influencers? Oh yeah. I've been. Yes. You've been? Okay. I've been to Coachella, but

For work. Okay. I have not paid to go to Coachella. There's more people probably who pay to go to Coachella as like attendees than influencers. But you see the influencers because... That's all I see. Those people, those brands are paying to be marketed. So they're going to come up...

That's why they're doing it so that you can see the influencers. Like you're not going to see the random attendee who just has their Instagram on private and they're posting their friends or they're not posting because like who cares because they're doing acid, like whatever. So, you know, I really – I'm going to give a compliment sandwich.

So much respect for Bernie Sanders that he went out there, talks like this on the Coachella stage and that he was able to be received and not boot off the stage or meme to the high heavens as cringe. However, what does it say that he,

An 83-year-old man is the one doing this. I know. What does that say for the type of voices we have? On some level, it's like kind of funnier than if AOC had done it. Like the Bernie at Coachella is more interesting than AOC at Coachella because like she could be in the audience. Yeah, she's cool. But yeah, I think that this is the kind of

creativity and action and bringing the message into culture that I always talk about. Like on the right part, lifestyle, culture, politics are all one thing. Right. On the left, it's like, Ooh, yeah, multiple. Or it's my whole personality. Right. And if it's not yours, you're problematic. Right. So,

I think this was like a good mix. I do feel bad for anyone who might have been sent into an acid spiral, let's say, because all of a sudden Bernie Sanders is talking about the end of democracy and like, I don't know, that might not have been the best. I'm just trying to watch Lady Gaga confront her past, guys. I'm a home person, right? So I like watching the music performances through the phone. That's plenty for me. It was quite enjoyable.

But I'm old now. I remember like music festivals were like 15 bucks to go to Radio 104 Fest in Connecticut. And it was like every cool band or like Warped Tour. Warped Tour was like a very accessible, cool thing. And then it got to a point where it was like too much and it was just too expensive. I don't know who we blame for this. Maybe we blame Live Nation for the way that –

No, I mean for how expensive stuff has gotten. I wish that there was a little bit more, you know, where you could like for 20 bucks, you know, go see a couple bands and it was like, you know, a little bit more democratized. It was a little easier to access music back then, I guess.

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But speaking of costs of things, we got to talk about something that I find quite interesting on a bunch of levels, which is the...

Chinese blowing up luxury production on TikTok. There's a new trend. Take it away. Here's the thing. I have spent the last five or six years saying that TikTok is not a Chinese propaganda tool and there is no Chinese propaganda on there and that people are smart and they wouldn't fall for it. And what did I say? Let me tell you, I don't feel that way today. After this past weekend, I was like, well, I'm not going to do it.

The shoe has dropped and I suppose perhaps there's a little Chinese propaganda. A little. Oh, yes. As I've said many times, Gen Z was just extremely interested in Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan three years ago. I know. They were just naturally outraged by that. So here's what's going on on TikTok if you're not over there.

In response to Trump's tariff war that we will lose with China, Chinese TikTok has kicked into action. This is very much like the first time they were going to truly ban- I thought they're not allowed on TikTok, V. Oh, you know what? I didn't even think of that. Explain that. They are now. Well-

I will. Let's get to that. So just like the first time that Trump – they were going to ban TikTok and it was going through there. And we started to see everybody jump to the Chinese app Red Note and people were joking about how they were like learning Chinese. And the Chinese people on Red Note were being so welcoming to Americans and so kind. And like the Americans were super falling for it because as every study in the world –

ever has shown Americans are extremely easily manipulated by flattery and they are extremely manipulated by the idea of friendship. Like the idea that like this person wants to be my friend or that I'm like somehow connecting with people. We are much more willing to fall for that propaganda than hard propaganda. We can identify things that are hard propaganda, but when it comes to like friendly, happy stuff, that's,

We fall for it every frigging time. So back then, everybody, all the kids were jumping on Red Note. So it's like that meme where it's like Republicans. Yeah. All lives matter. Democrats, Black lives matter. Heart. Yes. So we fall for everything all the time. And this is no different. So if you compare this to the number of Americans who jumped to go beyond Red Note, which involved downloading a new social media platform –

whose terms of service were only in Mandarin Chinese. And people were just, yep, sure, saying except to these. You just sold your organs. You probably did. You definitely sold all your data. And you were definitely only interacting with a certain part

part of Chinese culture that you were allowed to, because folks need to remember, no matter how nice you think everybody's being on TikTok and Red Note, this is the PRC, okay? This is a communist country that does not allow general Chinese folks to interact with the outside public, especially European and Western cultures, okay? There is an iron curtain. There is a wall between what the government of China allows its people to see and what actually exists.

So exactly how are these Chinese people on TikTok when TikTok is banned in China? Potentially, allegedly, possibly they're a part of the tens of millions of dollars campaign that China has admitted to putting forward that involves –

them allowing certain Chinese people to tell the truth about Chinese culture and the factories and the warehouses and that they all make great money. And it's not a slumlord place and it's not a sweatshop. And they're just these, you know, sweet people who don't want the American public and Europeans to get duped into buying a $40,000 bag that they make for $3. The part where I was like, okay, how will I fact check this? Because people don't like

when you correct them on something that they were having a lot of fun with. And I think a lot of the US-based TikTok is having a blast watching these Chinese creators take them through the Hermes factory, the Nike factory, the alleged Hermes and Nike factory, the alleged furniture factories, and then telling them, we're going to give you a

pass to shop for free for 280 hours and I'll ship it directly to you and all this kind of stuff. None of that will happen. And also in that particular case, there is no 280 hour delivery.

Shop free visa available. That is, uh, we, me and Jed spent the weekend fact checking that both the person who is the creator in that video that has gone massively viral with something like 500 million views across how many times it got reposted is not a real person. AI. It is an AI person. Um,

Oh, so it isn't even like a real person, a real Chinese person on TikTok. And this one happens – the person in this particular video, and we'll show you when we edit this because I have the links to the different things. The person in this particular video, when you go to the profile, you will see that thousands of profiles are posting her video. Right.

When you go to the profile, there's no other account there. They're like a freebooting account, some of them, which is like where they just scrape content from everywhere, change the background of the video to make it appear that that person is somewhere else, change the voice, change the mouth, all of that.

So this person might be based on a real person, but this is not her real content. And it is not true. There is no 280-hour free pass to shop in China, wholesale prices for – and that's just a straight-up not true thing. Well, there are some true things about what they're saying, which is always successful propaganda, a mix of truth and lie.

Right.

They are becoming increasingly cheaply manufactured. I will say that. There's an amazing count. I've talked about them a lot. It's...

at Tanner Leatherstein and he goes through, he's like a leather expert and he takes apart various bags of different price points. And he tells you like how much the material should cost and how much it costs in terms of the labor. Yeah. And here's the thing. It is true. You can get like restoration hardware dupes for way cheaper. Like I have a friend who was trying to, you do have to order like a lot.

I have a friend who was trying to get a bunch of my friends to do a dupe order for outdoor furniture because that shit's really expensive. And ultimately we didn't do it because I'm like, I'll just get the real furniture. I don't know if this is going to be real. So it is possible. It's not like these are total lies in terms of how things are constructed and how much they really cost. Sure.

For something to be, and this is where like the luxury status symbol comes in, and I have extensive thoughts on this. For something to be authentic, it has to go through those manufacturers' licensed production runs. So they don't have to use like the same quality. It doesn't get the same quality checks. They can have, you know, scratchy.

screw-ups, defects or something on the goods. So it's like, yes, they can create the same good, quote-unquote, but

But it's not actually going to be the real one. Now, if you don't care about that and some people don't, sure, then go get your replica. However, I argue that someone who buys a replica bag of a designer actually cares more about the designer than the person who buys the real one. And I'm not saying that because like, oh, like it's in a – like I don't care if anyone –

If anyone gets a replica bag. But if you could just spend that amount on like a nice, well-made, non-fake Dior bag, then you actually do care about the label more. And that's what I think is like so...

Interesting is that people are like, oh, this is the end of luxury. And I do feel like part of this could be some sort of like psyop to make people more angry at the elites and make people –

feel like we're just being ripped off. Like there were people who were, who I saw saying like, I didn't know that like the guy who runs LVMH is one of the richest people in the world. I'm like, LVMH is a very stable company. Right. I mean, who knows what the tariffs, but like, how did people not know this? So my feeling is that it's like, it feels like it's being pushed to

to create like an anger and a change in the way people are thinking about consumption and who gets to take advantage of the spending. The reason is that this is so ripe for propagandizing because there's already so much anger at the income inequality and rightfully so. Well, that's what I want to remind people of is that you are not speaking to the

Right.

That is part of the propaganda. And we do that here, right? There are people – the Tenet Media thing that happened where the Canadian company Tenet Media was getting tens of millions of dollars from Russia to buy –

content from people and the right-wing influencer media sphere. Now those people say they didn't know it was Russian money, whatever. It is the same thing. We do it. Everybody does it. So what I want folks to just take away from this, and we did this deep dive on the sub stack because USAID was this. That's what USAID was.

hesitated even to do this because when folks are having fun with something, I will become the bad guy for this. But this is just, we have to tell the truth even when it's not fun. What China is doing is incredibly impactful because their promise is not actually to help you as an American buy knockoff luxury goods for cheap. The purpose was to make you further distrust your government and

the, it make you feel like people in China who the American public has been taught to feel above now pity them and feel bad for them because you guys are so lied to you live horrible lives. Um,

We don't have these problems here. One of the things in the propaganda videos I noticed is that they continue to say we have a 5000 year continuous tradition of our Chinese ways and the Americas can't even hold it together for 250 years. Well, I do want to actually say that is a great point that they're making that I do think our government.

or our president should heed in concocting this policy because what they're saying, look, obviously it hasn't been the same. They were like, who's more willing to suffer for their nation than us? The Chinese will. And the thing is, they are right. I,

I made a video like a week ago with my best friend whose family owns a manufacturing business. She does a lot of work in China. And this is what she said. She's like, they don't give a fuck. Right. They do not give a fuck. And this has come to pass because you see our president negotiating against himself. Right. When China has made no concessions, they've only increased the tariffs on U.S. exports. They've wiped out the U.S. soybean import trade from their country. And now they're buying from Brazil.

The other thing is, so we have the videos that are like so fun of us all feeling like our Chinese spy is also because they start some of the videos by using that TikTok language again. Hi, it's your Chinese spy. Actually, I work as a warehouse distributor and I want to help you. Ah, they're so good. We're so good. They're so good. Next to those is a bunch of AI slop.

being produced by China that show when manufacturing comes back to America. Have you seen it? And it's like an Elon Musk kind of character as a janitor. It's Donald Trump picking fruit, looking sad. It's like very overweight, stereotypical, MAGA people. Yeah, sewing. It's like a finance guy in a Patagonia vest, like assembling an iPhone because Howard Lutnick did indeed say. Right.

going to bring back the iPhone manufacturing here. We're going to be high school graduates ruining the screws. No, we are never going to bring manufacturing back to the United States, not in the next hundred years. And that is because China... We have some manufacturing. But not on this level. We have some manufacturing here. China's manufacturing...

far exceeds the abilities of truly us right now, right? They have the factories, they have the dyes, they have the robots, they have the space in rural China where they've like set up these factories and they have structures of forced labor.

that hold a lot of this together. And they also have some sort of craftsmanship that has been passed down, not just in China. You have this in Vietnam. Another thing my friend was saying, like she, one of the things she makes is hampers, like woven hampers. There are factories and families, like big families that pass down like this trade of basket weaving. Does anyone in America weave baskets? No. I'd like to find that. Are you going to do it at scale? No.

Like there is a reason that it's there and not here. Right. And I would say that we as a country, especially the people who are driving this administration to wherever it's going, those are some of the people who have benefited the most from this arrangement. So how is it that we are here now?

Chipping away at it day by day. At any rate, I think China is certainly winning the propaganda war. It's been very impactful. It's certainly widening the distrust with both what we consider to be a high quality product, what we value as wealth or goods.

and certainly with our government. And that is, you've got the propaganda happening online and then you've got president Xi going to Vietnam and Cambodia in places today to say that he would like to rebroker trade and friendship with these countries because his goal is to wipe the United States out as a superpower. And certainly Trump could not be running us faster to that end. If he tried, I mean, it's,

Not great. Well, at least he gets a lot of compliments. How about that? I know. So. Flattering. He says he's waiting for.

President Cheetah, call him. He ain't calling you. You're going to be waiting. You'll be waiting by the phone like that girl who doesn't get asked to prom. He's just forever like you're like we knew. I know we said we weren't going to talk shit or defamatory things. This is my personal opinion. These people are such fucking losers, Sammy. Like and that is what makes me more mad than anything. Like being ignorant, being dumb, being all these other things that was bad enough. But that

But the absolute like incel, desperate loser fucking energy is like maddening. And I just we have to break this fever at some point. I don't know when it's going to happen, but I saw a really funny AI slot meme of Donald Trump waiting like on his bed, like the phone for me to call. It was it's never going to happen. You're a joke.

Meanwhile, he's like, like the movie Idiocracy could not be more true to life right now. I almost think we're getting played by this. He's at the UFC this past weekend walking in like the president from that movie Idiocracy walks in and is like flexing on people. And it was like,

And it costs us millions. So far, we've paid $26 million in just three months for Trump to golf. It costs $20 million for him to go to the Super Bowl with all the security required. I cannot imagine what it costs for him to go to a UFC fight with fucking Marco Rubio, Tulsi Gabbard, who that's a whole other story. Do you live in Hawaii or Texas? Hawaii or Texas, Tulsi? Like, and then you're sitting there doing this is nuts. The New York buried in New York Times report was the fact that the White House,

is considering taking Andrew Yang's idea for universal basic income and applying it to Greenland, where they would give everyone in Greenland $10,000 a year. And that is something that they would like to do as part of their quest to make Greenland America again, or for the first time. Yo, you can't be giving out...

to Greenland and not to the people here who wanted it. Also, $10,000 a year is not that much money in Greenland. The average salary is something like four grand a month. So $10,000 a year, I mean, it's not nothing. I'm not saying it's not nothing.

I would if I had to be – if I had to give up all of my governing autonomy to Donald Trump, I certainly would and essentially make my country a military base that would be under infinite attack all the time because that's where they want to centralize shit. Also, when we think of Greenland, we always think of Greenland as like being a territory of Denmark because it has been since 1380. There is some tradition here. It is 88 percent Inuit population.

So these people do not – they just started getting like what's called home rule autonomy when it comes to governing in 2009. Ten grand a year extra is like $200 a month extra or whatever. I'm not saying it's not nothing, but it's not enough to buy a country. It's more than $200 a month extra. Well, with their takeover. The thing is I think that – It's just not enough to buy a country. I don't think there is a number. I don't think there's a number that you could really put on it because –

It's more fundamental than that. It's not like they are really psyched to be part of America and they get this bonus. No. They do not want to be part of America or part of Denmark even really. No. And they were starting to get away from Denmark. Denmark was starting to give them some autonomy. Also, Greenland only has 57,000 people. It is the least densely populated place. So it only costs 570,000 people.

The number one employer there is the government. So if we were to replace the government of Greenland with the government of the United States and we say, okay, we're just going to give everybody $10,000 a month, that is less than they make working their government jobs at $3,000, $4,000 a month or $10,000 a year. And they were making $4,000 a month at their government jobs. Like-

It's not going to... It doesn't equal out. It doesn't make any sense. And that was just the Google searching I did for 15 minutes on Greenland. Never mind J.D. Vance calling everybody in China a peasant and calling everybody in Greenland, like, ready to sign up for MAGA. Like, they are not. The Chinese peasants thing was just so embarrassing. You went to Yale? He's so blinded by his theology and the Curtis Yarvin stuff. And I think he thinks it makes him sound tough. This is a man who got...

writing a book called Hillbilly Elegy and talking about growing up poor, now being like we borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy products that Chinese peasants make. Like he thought he fucking ate with that. He thought that was like the greatest clap back in the world. Nobody – it doesn't even make sense. But the Greenland stuff –

It's very ugly and it's, again, very stupid. We already have a military base there. In World War II, we defended Greenland from German occupation because we recognized back then they shouldn't be occupied. They should be their own thing. It's like best that they're their own thing. They let us have the space base there. 200 troops are there. Like, leave it alone. It's good. We had a good thing going with Greenland. On top of that, when J.D. Vance leaves, the commander for space base is...

in Greenland got fired because she sent out an email to everyone being like, Hey, look,

I know that the vice president was here. He said some really aggressive things that's not in line with our friendship and our partnership. And I just want you to know I'm still as commander of this base. We want to maintain the relationships and the friendships that we have with the locals here because the troops that live there, the 200 troops that live there with their families rely on the locals for being able to go to the market, child care, schools. They have to function in the society of Greenland. And now J.D. Vance just offended everyone. So she tries to kind of smooth it over.

And they fired her for insubordination to the administration, saying that she no longer was able to be a trusted voice to carry out Trump's agenda in Greenland because she tried to like not have them all hate the soldiers that are stationed there. So.

That's just the direction we're going in. When we get back from the break, I'm going to be joined by Rachel Gianfassa. She's the founder of The Up and Up. She runs focus groups and opinion surveys, basically mines data from Gen Z on their opinions. So she has started this organization and we are going to talk about what is Gen Z thinking and why?

I know. Why are they so right-wingy as of late? I suppose it's because the right wing promises them, you know, a family and a house and a life and to get to use the R slur. And who knew that that would be such a thing?

Such a draw for so many people. So tempting. Here we are. Well, we're going to get to the bottom of this. You get to the bottom of it. I won't be there because I got a new puppy today, which is not here. We thought she was going to be able to be in the shot, but I'll put up a picture. When we edit, you'll see Miss Rita Elizabeth Spear is born unto me and my wife, Natalie. Our third dog. Gorgeous name. Rita Elizabeth Spear. She is...

She is a black and tan long-haired dachshund, and we love her. She's the most sweetest little thing, so she should be here any minute. She'll be in a future episode.

Welcome to the fever dream fam, Rita, Elizabeth Spear. Yes. Which we had to get because Dottie Ginger snap spear. Our other dachshund is a weirdo and she needs like a friend. So we had to like get, apparently dachshunds need to be, if you are a dachshund owner, write in and let me know if I'm right on this or if my wife just duped me into getting a second dog, but apparently they need a

I think they do better in pairs. I've only ever seen people have like two to five dachshunds at a time. So we'll see. Well, now you're going to be one of them. I'm going to be next. My goal is to get to be like the Instagram and YouTube account Eight Weans. Have you seen them? If you're sad, go check this out. The Eight Weans. She has eight dachshunds that she dresses up like children. And the entire house and their pool and everything is like just for them. It's amazing. It's amazing.

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Welcome to American Fever Dream, Rachel. Thank you so much for having me, Sammy. I'm excited to be here. Of course. I'm very excited to chat with you. We've already chatted offline. I think what you're doing is so interesting. So basically, I guess maybe it's easier for you to tell everyone what you're doing, and then we can talk through some of your findings. And people are always wanting to demystify the youths, and you are there to do that for us. Right.

I try to. So, hi, everyone. I'm Rachel Janfaza. I started The Up and Up, which is both a newsletter and media firm and strategies firm focused on youth culture and politics. So I hold regular conversations and listening sessions with young people across the country, taking the pulse on a myriad of issues from politics to dating, culture, and everything in between. And

And then I write about the takeaways and help any organization, brand or individual who wants to best connect with Gen Z do so.

Okay, so tell us, you know, we're mostly talking politics here, but I think we all know that a lot of that extends into the social, the cultural, the relational. Are there any sort of interesting correlations that you found between your political findings, between the way, you know, certain people within Gen Z are viewing, you know,

let's call it like the, you know, just the political sphere, the candidates viewed the election versus like how they're interpreting culture, like what kind of media they're watching, what type of people they're looking at, what lifestyles they aspire to, who they'll date, all those things. A hundred percent. There's so much there in that question alone. I think kind of zooming out when you look at this generation of young people, I,

What they're craving across the board, whether it's from politics to culture, everything in between, they want transparency. They want authenticity and they want it delivered directly to them in real time.

And so we see that in the political sense, young people are really craving personality driven politicians. And it's not really about age. It's more about personality and policy, the issues that they care about. Do they align with where what young people are focused on and what's top of mind in their daily lives? And are they communicating in a way that feels authentic and real and not scripted and staged? So, yeah.

That's, you know, one bucket. And then you see that playing out in culture, too. You know, there is a study from Deloitte, I think it was last week or the week before, that was about the way that young people are consuming entertainment media. And it kind of was a warning for Hollywood because a lot of the data points were focused on social media first content and young people wanting entertainment through entertainment.

And we see that in politics, too. So, yes, there is definitely a correlation there. And when it comes to the dating sense, 100 percent. I mean, I've been really, really focused on the youth partisan gender gap and the way that young men and young women have not just a different view of the world, but different

different priorities and also are consuming really different content through their social media feeds. As a result, there's issues when it comes to dating because if their priorities and if their policy stances don't align, that makes for a really complicated conversation on a date.

Right. Can you talk a little bit more about the youth gender gap? So basically, over the past few years, there's been this split in how young men and young women view the world. And that played out in the 2024 election. So you had young men backing President Trump, young women backing Harris, and there was a stark divide in between. And

And I've really seen this playing out most the younger that the Gen Zer is. So this is pretty stark on high school campuses. I've heard high schoolers explain that it can create really tense situations in classroom settings, certainly on college campuses.

I think in the political sense, it kind of was about issues. So in the election, reproductive health care access was a huge top of mind issue for young women. But young men didn't really see it as top of a priority as the young women that I spoke to did, which, you know, obviously, you know, it takes both genders to get to the point where you need that in the first place. So it really is an issue that affects everyone. But

A lot of the young men that I spoke to in the lead up to the election kept saying things along the line of, you know, it's not my body. It doesn't personally affect me. It was almost as if they felt like they weren't allowed to care about it as much as women because they felt like it was something that they shouldn't speak to because they don't have the lived experience of it.

It's been really interesting to see this playing out because young men oftentimes have described it almost as though they feel like they're not allowed to talk about this issue in the way that young women are because they don't have the lived experience with it. And it's not their body. So they don't want to speak for women. That was something that I heard a lot. But in turn, they ended up just not prioritizing the issue as an electoral issue. Interesting. Do you think there could be

a reason that lower Gen Z, as you call it, is going much more conservative than upper Gen Z. Because I seem to remember a period where Gen Z was going to like change the world. They're so socially conscious and,

And even though I do feel like there is still a big strain of that, it feels like not driven by the values as much as it's driven by like the in-group inclusion that is gained from it. In large part, I think that younger Gen Z's shift to the right is because of this anti-authority sentiment that was cultivated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

And if you think about the youngest eligible voters in 2024, they were either in really elementary school, middle school during the time of the pandemic when it first started. And

They were isolated in their homes. They couldn't socialize. They couldn't be a part of the traditional, you know, adolescent experiences, let alone like flirt while they were going through puberty. But they missed high school proms and they missed, you know, whether it was a soccer game, a football game, whatever it was, they missed something. And who are they going to blame for that at that time?

Certainly, Trump was in office at the start of the pandemic, but then Biden took office and a lot of the COVID protocols that lingered on were seen as liberal policies that Democrats were in charge of. And so if you were going to be frustrated that your experiences were taken away from you and there was someone to blame,

It became that Democrats were the ones to blame. And I think that's part of why we saw young people moving to the right. I'm on the oldest cusp of Gen Z. I was born in 1997. My four years of college were the four years of President Trump's first term. And that was ripe with every social movement you could think of. And it was really in the zeitgeist to be a part of those social movements.

And a lot of it was anti-Trump. And he was the one in office. He was the one in charge. And it was at the time it was seen as anti-authority to be a part of the anti-Trump resistance. Fast forward, you then have four years of Biden in office where that same sort of ethos of like,

against the system, anti the one who's in office, who was the one in office? It was Biden. So it was kind of a mix of both, I think, COVID, but also this lingering sentiment of like,

it's necessary to fight against someone. It's just a matter of who that person is. Do you think that streak against authority, does that come from somewhere that sort of like prioritization? Because I think you see this on the right and the left. I mean, I even feel this way. Like I it's I'm not like an anti-establishment person by nature. Like I'm a little bit

idiosyncratic, I'll go against the grain. But right now I find myself exceedingly frustrated by anything institutionalist. I understand that the institutions are really important, but right now they have failed. And I think maybe what Gen Z saw earlier, because it was more reflected in their lives, is that those institutions were failing. The failure hit them fast.

Is there like a common thread that that you think binds this like anti-authority hopelessness and sense of like, well, fuck that? Yeah. So part of why I think this is so pervasive for our generation is because of social media, because it's.

It gives you an in real time sort of display of all of the problems that exist around the world. And you can see the failure of government or any other institution in a myriad of ways at any given point in time, because you're watching people's experiences of their own suffering and all of the problems.

horribleness that goes on in the world. At the same time, social media also breaks down this wall where you feel like you have more proximity to people in positions of power. And so I think it creates a fertile ground for criticism that was much harder in the past. Like in the past, in order to complain about something that an elected official was doing, you had to call their office or write a letter or

maybe in years prior, send an email. But now you can just literally go on social media and scream into the void about all of the problems that you are seeing unfold. And you can also directly message them or comment on their posts. I mean, that all makes sense. I think that

It could be a good thing, but the ways that the platforms have incentivized and monetized and the way that people, I think, use them is quite concerning to me. And there was something you said just a second ago about

younger people perceiving Biden as the one to put these onerous limitations on them during COVID. And while the Biden administration, I think, did take COVID pretty seriously, there are some who would say they didn't. The Trump administration was when all of those

Actual restrictions when the world quote unquote was shut down and he it was that rebellion began while he was in office. And I just think that there's this sort of rewriting that happened. And it makes me think that like it reminds me of this.

resistance to like facts in some ways. Like if people are not really reading, they're not fact checking, they don't trust sources. Like you mentioned this, that people really blamed Biden for shutting the world down. Do you find that there's sort of a resistance to

being corrected on a fact that might be driving someone's opinion? Like, or are people super dug in because of where they're getting their information that like you can't deconstruct the whole worldview with one person?

Yeah. So I think a lot of this boils down to the way that people are consuming information. And this is part of the frustration writ large with the system is because it's kind of this self-fulfilling prophecy. And also when your entire newsfeed is

is saying the same things that you are. It just sort of is a cycle or you start to believe or espouse a certain worldview because that's the information that you're consuming. And so it just sort of starts to make sense when it's the only perspective you're hearing. So, you know, I do think

a large part of the frustration that young people feel is because they're getting the same information distributed to them over and over again on social media. And, you know, you mentioned this question about facts. And I know you did the interview with Chris Hayes last week that touched on this too. But I think that when it comes to

facts. Young people are very agency driven these days. And I hear a lot of wanting to do my own research. When I ask people, where do you get your news and information? I oftentimes hear they'll say, I have to check out a lot of different sources in order to

Decipher what I think is the truth, and there are different truths for different people. And when there's just so much information available and accessible and so much distrust in traditional news, but also just distrust.

It's really it's really a pervasive distrust. I think that they are resistant to believing any one single thing as fact and rely on like a body of information in order to make a decision. I also don't think this is to say that facts are obsolete because.

I do hear a lot of young people who rely on hard reporting and then base their opinions off of it or will listen to any given podcaster with a political perspective and say that they really appreciate hearing the analysis. But at the end of the day, they'll go read a news story in order to see what actually happened. And it goes back to the fact that the...

that the conversation is constant. And so they're seeing these events play out in real time. They're also seeing it posted by real people, not just journalists. And I know that the term citizen journalist has kind of been co-opted. At the end of the day, we're all citizen journalists. We all have the ability to capture something in real time and document it online. And that has changed the calculus of sort of who gets to deliver the news.

And facts. I totally take the point about citizen journalists. And I think you can obviously see things that are shared. And that's a good thing, you know, that George Floyd's video was able to be shared, just like kind of the classic example. Is there any point at which people acknowledge, like, there could be manipulation here? Not with something like that, but like that casually, like there could be casual manipulation and manipulation.

propaganda strategies or greater, you know, I do feel like people are aware of psyops, but they're not, you know, it's at the end of the day, it sounds like what you're saying is that people kind of decide for themselves and you don't know where people are going to come out with that decision of what the truth is because you don't know what they're going to read.

And what has been implanted in their brain by RFK Jr., whoever the hell is talking to them. So are people really equipped to be judging this? I mean, the other thing that your question just made me think of is there's just so much skepticism, too. And.

When anyone sees, not anyone, but I've heard of many people when they see an image, they'll go, is that really real? Because we've kind of been conditioned to not believe the things that we see because there's just so much mis- and disinformation.

And also now AI generated images where it's like, it might actually not be real. Do you see around North Carolina, like when the Hurricane Helene happened in North Carolina, there was like that image of someone on a boat, like a kid holding like a stuffed animal and it wasn't real. And people knew it wasn't real. And they were saying like, I don't care that it's not real. Like this is how I feel. It's expressing something for me. Yeah. I didn't see that exact example, but I can see where you're coming from with that. And yeah,

I think that it goes back to the earlier point we were discussing where people believe what they want to believe and kind of discard things that don't confirm their bias. I will say that, you know, I have to give the young people I speak to credit where credit is due, which is.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone say to me that they are trying to fact check the stories that they read and do their own research because there's just so much skepticism and they want, they do want facts. They do want traditional reported pieces of information. And so I think really, and I've actually spoken to this a lot with V about this is we did a sub stack live on this where

They said that it's not the message that's broken, it's the messenger. And so people at the end of the day still need facts and reported content, but the delivery of the information is what needed or needs to be changed.

And when you start having super opinionated people delivering the quote unquote facts, I think it kind of, you know, is potentially ripe for the start of mis and disinformation in a way that changes young people's perspective of the truth writ large. What you listen to on your run, on your road trip, your kid's graduation song, their wedding dance.

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On TikTok, let's say, or just quote unquote citizen journalists who maybe people don't know, but they come up in your feed. Isn't there more of a risk that they would be biased or have an agenda than, let's say, I don't want to even like defend mainstream media. I think that they miss the disc, you know, I think they miss the forest for the trees a lot of the time. But there is something to the fact that they can't say things on air legally that aren't like meeting some standard of reality.

So, you know, V and I both use real quote unquote mainstream reporting because we know that they're standing on some sort of legal standard and they have liability and they're going to be careful about that. My question, I guess, is like it depends. Obviously, everything, you know, every type of article or piece is different. But are people aware that the person who's talking to you online can also be just as biased? And I'm not saying like I'm not either like I'm one of those people also. Yeah.

Definitely. I think people are really aware of individual personalities' biases, but I think where they... I think the sort of distinction is that they also believe that the traditional journalists are just as biased, even if they try to not disclose that bias or even if they try to hide it or ask to hide it because they work at a company that is supposed to be straight down the middle. And so because there's...

There's this new world understanding, I guess, that everyone has their own perspective and everyone has their own sort of, you know, lens with which they view the world. It's almost like the act of trying to stay down the middle just feels so impossible to a young news consumer that they're more open to hearing from someone who just states their bias straight up. Question for you personally, as the one speaking to you.

your peers in a lot of cases or near peers, how do you check your own biases when you're surveying people or speaking to them or

How do you, I guess, decide how to foster conversation while not taking it in a particular direction? Yeah, it's such a good question. It's hard. I think that the best skill that I've learned in order to try to do this is, A, I crowdsource questions a lot. So I'll ask other people, what do you want to know? And that helps me get a range of questions that I wouldn't have maybe have come up with myself.

to try to see what people are most curious about so I can really be serving people with the information I receive. The other thing is that when I hold listening sessions, I don't interject at all, which if you ask anyone in my life, including my siblings, they'll tell you that that is hard to believe because I am a very opinionated and passionate person. But when I do these listening sessions, I really just like the point is to listen. It's not for me to

Try to drive the conversation in one direction or another. I also will say to the people I'm talking to, do you guys have questions for each other or questions for me? Because I think it's important to allow them to be in conversation with one another, especially because a lot of the times these are groups of people who don't know each other, who don't come from the same background, and who...

wouldn't necessarily have the opportunity to be in conversation with other people like the ones that are a part of the conversation. So I really try to foster a dynamic between them because I think it's important. But I'm obviously not perfect at this. And

I think certainly I have my own biases with which I see the world, as I mentioned, we all do. But I really try my hardest just to listen and not share where I stand. And I think as a result of that, and this started when I was at CNN, which is where I started my career when I graduated from college, as a result of trying to remove myself from the conversation, I feel like

my own perspective has really evolved to where I don't necessarily take things in the political sense as personally as I used to. And I...

I guess I'm able to more sort of see where different people are coming from on any range of a topic, just because I've tried so hard to not bring my own view into it. I think what you're doing is really productive. And when you first explained, shared what exactly you're doing and how you gather this information and the ways that you had sort of gotten background on how to run these groups from people who are really experienced with them,

And I think something that you said that was really interesting is that it's like, you're not trying to create...

like replicate an empirical study, you're trying to, I don't know if that's actually the right term. Like, you know, you're not trying to do the scientific method, so to speak. You're trying to get a range of opinions, not say like this is the full range of opinions that exist, but this is how people are thinking about it. And I have this from a number of people in this demographic who,

And I think that that's like around the election, everyone's talking of the Democrats are so data driven. And I do think that they were not qualitatively data driven enough like this, because I had many conversations with people around the campaign in the campaign who were resistant to to be sort of.

soft analyses about the way people are feeling. And I think that they have come to be really important in getting a message out there that is not like feeling so focus grouped, if you will. Yeah. I mean, look, like there's certainly a role for polls to play and science and data obviously matter. But I think part of where I developed this

in the importance of these this type of qualitative listening is when I was at CNN and I would go to parking lots at different supermarkets across the country and I would just talk to people as they were putting food in their car and I would just ask them how are you feeling about the issues in your community how are you feeling about the election that's coming up whether it was tomorrow or next week and

And you learn so much by just being there in someone's community, asking them these questions that I think, you know, these people aren't necessarily answering the phone for a poll. If you're a young person, you don't even have a landline phone to answer. So it takes going to college campuses.

all types of college campuses, not just a select few, and going to community centers and going to bars and waiting online at concerts and things like that to try to really get a range of perspectives. And again, like you said, Sammy, I'm not trying to get every single young person's

perspective. Or people always ask me, how is this representative of the full youth electorate? And it's not. But it provides a window into the sentiment that is pervasive online and offline. Yeah. I think what you're saying about going into people's communities and places that are not, they're not going to pick up for a pollster. They're not going to be like

the exit poll, something I think is really that I find when I speak to anyone who's not like Beltway adjacent, which is most of the electorate, most people who are going to make a difference in the electorate. Those you realize that people's viewpoints are not as linear as those who are in this

in Beltway Insider. Like you could probably list out like what would someone's politics be? Because they would have pretty set, a set set of views or like a predictable set of views. And I think what you find when you get outside of that is that they don't necessarily make sense. They're much more informed by people's lived experiences. They're unfortunately much more informed by like cliches and kind of like BS messaging that might not be true. And so I think that's

And that also people are a lot smarter. And I don't want to say they're not necessarily, they're usually not as well informed, but they are much savvier when it comes to having a sense of the way things are working. And I think that's where a lot of this discontent comes from. Like they don't buy what the Democrats are selling because the Democrats are also sort of bought into this system that allowed this, that they wanted to blow up.

So it's really just a crazy, crazy time. And I'm curious, is there anything that you found, any sort of sentiment or really anything that has like shocked you that you were like, I never saw that coming?

I will say that I was really surprised by the appetite for deportations that I heard from young people around the election in terms of Trump's rhetoric. Like that really surprised me. I wasn't expecting that. I think it's counterintuitive to a lot of the values that this generation espouses. And yet it came up in my conversations and it's,

Still, to this day, some of the people who voted for Trump that I speak to say that they are frustrated that it has not played out as they had thought it would because that was something that they wanted. So, yes, that was shocking to me. Why are they so hyped on deportations? Yeah, so I think it comes from fear and from a feeling of fear.

If this generation feels like everything is stacked against them and they've grown up in amid one crisis to the next, and it just feels like there's no forgiveness there, like it's just one bad thing after another.

I think, A, people might be looking for a scapegoat. But B, I think that the idea of sort of getting back to this time of American prosperity was really central to President Trump's messaging, but also really resonates with young people who are really nostalgic for a time period that they never experienced. And so this sort of like glory day conversation is,

Of getting back to this American prosperity, I think, is part of what's driving that. And then also false messaging around, I think, jobs and and not even just false messaging. Sometimes it's real in terms of the the job market.

market feeling bleak and wanting there to be more jobs for them and feeling like this may help with that. Wow. And that's understandable. Do they know that there were, that there were immigrants like always? I mean, of course there's always been immigrants. And, and I think, and, and,

I think, I don't know. You don't have to answer that. No. Again, I always, I really, like, my work is totally nonpartisan and I really do say, you know, but I have heard this and it has been surprising because it's not something I heard from young Republicans in the last election cycle. Yeah, I've honestly, that is, I guess the mass deportation now signs worked, you could say. Okay. Well, yeah.

That's pretty interesting to say the least. Sorry. All right. Well, thank you so much, Rachel. This has been so enlightening and I would love to have you back to talk about things. Anytime you have really interesting findings or you complete a new group and there's something that you think would be interesting to this audience, we would love to hear about it because I

I think you are just doing some really, really interesting and important work and appreciate you sharing it with us. Thank you, Sammy. Thank you for having me. I always love listening. And if any of your listeners have questions they want to know about Gen Z too, they can definitely let you know and I'll try to look into that. And everyone should subscribe to the Up and Up newsletter. It's on Substack, easy to find, and you won't regret that. So thank you so much, Rachel. Thank you. Thank you.

Betches.