• 5 hours ago
Asmongold Reacts to: How Scientology Destroyed A Popular Skateboarding Channel
by @SunnyV2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEk_pc0xVYc
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Transcript
00:00How Scientology destroyed- wait, what does Scientology have to do with skateboarding?
00:05Braille Skateboarding paid his employees roughly 20 bucks per hour.
00:09That's pretty good.
00:10We're basically minimum wage employees.
00:11But donated over a million to the Church of Scientology.
00:15Wow.
00:15He'd gone to spend so much time with the strange organization
00:18that Braille was neglected until it died completely
00:22in what is quite possibly YouTube's strangest ever downfall.
00:25So he- so he got it- oh no.
00:28The channel's owned by Aaron Cairo, a pro skateboarder from San Francisco.
00:32Okay.
00:32My name's Aaron Cairo and I run this channel, Braille Skateboarding.
00:36He started Braille Skateboarding just 12 days after YouTube's launch.
00:40Wow.
00:40Uploading the clips that he'd used to gain his sponsors.
00:43Okay.
00:43But when a simple video titled How to Push on a Skateboard
00:47gained more views than every other upload, Aaron Cairo saw an opportunity.
00:51He'd upload How to Ollie, then How to Nose Manual.
00:54Smart.
00:54This led to How to-
00:55Yeah, this is a really good idea.
00:57And most notably, How to Kickflip,
00:59each gaining massive view counts for the early days of YouTube.
01:03Braille made-
01:03That was- that was where I got skill capped with skateboarding.
01:06I could do all the other stuff, I could not kickflip.
01:10Yep.
01:10Tutorials on every possible trick,
01:13giving the channel purpose and an obvious direction
01:16to help everyone learn how to skateboard.
01:18The whole purpose of Braille Skateboarding,
01:21to teach you guys to progress on your boards,
01:23so you're having more fun on your boards.
01:26These videos carried the channel to over 200,000 subscribers,
01:29but as Aaron Cairo became more known,
01:32so did another completely unrelated video.
01:35I am a Scientologist, Aaron Skateboarder.
01:38My name is Aaron, I'm a skateboarder, and I'm also a Scientologist.
01:42During a vulnerable period in Aaron's life,
01:45Scientology offered him a free personality test.
01:48Oh boy.
01:49In just one hour, you can test the key-
01:54the- the 10 key personality traits
01:57that determine your future success and happiness
01:59and figure out how to improve them.
02:01Guys, should I take a Scientology test?
02:06Test.
02:07And on my personality test, my communication was really low.
02:10And then they suggested you should do a communication course.
02:13Aaron took the course and saw significant improvements.
02:16Wow.
02:16And it totally helped me communicate, helped me a lot.
02:19And from that point forward, I just had this ability to communicate.
02:22It helped me a lot.
02:23Getting him hooked on the church of Scientology.
02:26So then I did more courses from there and learned more.
02:28He'd argue it helped him improve his skateboarding.
02:31The thing that happened before Scientology and after was
02:35I was learning tricks a lot easier.
02:37Things were just coming to me a lot easier with less effort.
02:40And that's the Tower of Xenu.
02:43Scientology gave him his career.
02:45And now I built an entire career on communicating.
02:48Yet all of his success could have easily been explained
02:51by simple repetition, practice, and wake-on-wake improvement.
02:55Between 2013 and 2014...
02:57If he feels more confident in communicating, then it's working.
03:03Yeah, I mean, I feel like it kind of did work.
03:06If he thinks it worked, then it worked.
03:10He was uploading twice a day, every day,
03:12which guaranteed improvement regardless of Scientology.
03:15We now have 400,000 subscribers.
03:18It's a pretty big deal.
03:19With the channel growing rapidly, Aaron hired Lance Silbar,
03:22who also happened to be a Scientologist himself.
03:26Lance became Braille's main filmer and editor,
03:28as well as the channel's guinea pig who was learning how to skate.
03:32Videos of Aaron teaching Lance basic tricks did surprisingly well despite their simplicity.
03:37Yeah, that's nuts, man.
03:38Like, 600k nine years ago, ten years ago, one...
03:42Dude, these guys were huge.
03:44I never even heard of this before.
03:47As skaters could watch and learn something new themselves,
03:50this seemed to tell Aaron that he should hire more skaters,
03:53and would therefore introduce Gabe Cruz,
03:55who'd suggest a slightly unconventional upload.
03:58A game of skate, but on Walmart boards.
04:01Aaron thought the video...
04:01That's such a good idea.
04:03That is a great fucking idea.
04:06...would make him a joke amongst pro skaters.
04:08No, no, this is such a good idea.
04:11I think even...
04:12Didn't Tony Hawk do something like this?
04:14...but rather did the opposite as everybody loved it.
04:17Yeah.
04:17They'd therefore do the same thing with mini boards and longboards,
04:21turning it into a series called Stupid Skate,
04:24playing the game with crazy modified skateboards.
04:27It was a skateboard with suspension,
04:29one with ten sets of trucks,
04:30and one you could ride on either side.
04:33It seemed the crazier the board, the more views they'd gain,
04:36leading things to be...
04:37I could see you could criticize this for being unsafe, right?
04:41Sure, but it's good clickbait, definitely.
05:12...brutal for people not to click.
05:14I'm gonna feel so bad.
05:15It's so funny.
05:16This is so funny.
05:20To drill a hole in this...
05:21Yeah, this...
05:22I want to make this video, it's all Lance's fault.
05:24Blame Lance.
05:24When the video attracted a whole new audience...
05:27Yeah.
05:27...and gained three million views in under...
05:29Yeah, bro, this is great clickbait.
05:32...a month, Aaron knew he'd found the perfect series.
05:35Absolutely.
05:35He'd repeat the idea with a MacBook, then a keyboard...
05:38Yeah.
05:39...then with a flat screen TV.
05:41When they ran out of electronics,
05:43they'd skate a full-size bedroom door, a surfboard, and a skate shoe,
05:47generating so much channel interest,
05:49they'd gain almost 600,000 subscribers over a two-month period in 2016.
05:55Yeah, it's a really good idea.
05:58It is, that's smart.
06:01You guys are the best, the absolute best,
06:03because we just hit three million subscribers.
06:07In fact, braille skateboarding became so popular,
06:10they'd build their own skate park called Braille House,
06:13which acted as their own personal filming studio.
06:16I found myself running an actual company, says Cairo,
06:19who had three full-time professionals running the video editing,
06:22merchandising, and finance departments.
06:24That's awesome.
06:24He'd also hire another three on-screen skaters,
06:28Fetty Potter, Carlos Lastra, and Nigel Jones.
06:31But this wasn't only where Braille's money went.
06:34Between 2015 and 2017, Aaron Cairo did 16...
06:41Oh no, he's leveling up.
06:48...in Scientology courses, many of which were incredibly expensive.
06:53The L10 rundown, for example, has an estimated cost of roughly $72,000,
06:59and this doesn't include the L11 and L12,
07:02both of which Aaron completed at the same time.
07:05Additionally, Aaron completed something called OT3,
07:08which, according to Reddit,
07:09the running tally to complete OT3 would be $278,000.
07:15I was gonna say, why would people join a religion that's pay-to-win?
07:20But then I remembered history.
07:25So that's something I actually know, it makes perfect sense to me.
07:30But still, like, this does seem like it's really pay-to-win, man.
07:35Like, oh god.
07:37Oh, wow.
07:42This ignores that he eventually went up to OT6,
07:45presumably costing even more,
07:47yet Aaron believed that all of this was worth it.
07:50An article on his training wrote,
07:52L10 was a particularly relevatory experience for him.
07:55The gains in abilities are so high,
07:57I could not even dream they would be available.
08:00Am I crazy for thinking that I don't care about this
08:03as long as the skateboarding channel is fun
08:05and it's not talking about Scientology?
08:08Like, I don't care if this guy's some weird, stupid Scientologist.
08:11It's the same thing as Tom Cruise.
08:13Like, Tom Cruise is a Scientology nutball or John Travolta.
08:17Dude, if they're gonna be in a movie,
08:19I wanna watch it because I think they're great actors.
08:22Like, I don't give a fuck about this.
08:23Like, yeah, you do this on your own free time.
08:26But like, you know, if you're putting it,
08:29a guy got taken advantage of, yeah, that's fair.
08:31Yeah, that's just the way that I feel about it.
08:33And I'm just being honest about it.
08:35Like, I really just don't have,
08:37like, this is his personal life and I think it's weird.
08:40I think a lot of religious fundamentalism is weird.
08:43I think this is just another brand of being weird.
08:45I think Scientology is, you know, it's like a new religion.
08:49And so like, people take it less seriously.
08:52But if Scientology was invented, you know, 2000 years ago,
08:58I don't think people would really think
08:59it's that much different than Christianity or Islam
09:02or any of the other Abrahamic religions
09:04or other like ancient religions.
09:06I do, I think it'd be about the same.
09:09No, it's a scam.
09:11Yeah, but you wanna know what my opinion is
09:13about the other religions?
09:18What do you think I think about that?
09:21This is so big and so clean and my flows are wide open.
09:25I got rid of masses that had been in my space
09:27for trillions of years.
09:29I truly uncovered my basic goodness and rightness as a being.
09:33He's still having daily cognitions directly related to L10
09:37and his online traction has seen a noticeable uptick,
09:40which to be fair was certainly true.
09:42The channel was gaining so many views
09:44and all of the members were having so much fun
09:47that the massive amounts being spent on Scientology
09:50simply weren't a major concern.
09:52They continue to ride different exotic skateboards
09:55and allow the audience to send in their own,
09:57resulting in some of the channel's highest viewed videos.
10:00That's so good.
10:01The Lego skateboard gained-
10:02Yeah, bro, this is, these video ideas are fucking amazing.
10:08Like honestly, like this is making me wanna join Scientology.
10:13Like it had better start getting bad quick
10:16because I'm almost sold.
10:17I'm about to order Dianetics right now.
10:20Like this, yeah, this is working.
10:238 million views, the heaviest skateboards gained 11 million
10:26whilst the glass board with glass wheels gained 28 million views.
10:30But the trend of wacky skateboards was slowly getting stale.
10:34Yeah.
10:34Viewers knew what to expect in every single upload
10:37and after over 200 episodes,
10:39each variation was becoming less interesting.
10:42Sure.
10:42To make matters worse at around the same time,
10:45Lance announced that he'd be leaving
10:47which added to the channel's slow viewership decline.
10:50In Dumb Dada's video about Braille,
10:52it's shown that from 2016 to 2019,
10:55Braille's views fell by almost 60%.
10:57Total views per year, that's a lot.
11:01I mean, five, 465 million views is fucking insane.
11:10At which point things began to get weird.
11:13At this point, Aaron's involvement in Scientology wasn't super mainstream
11:17until an article was published titled,
11:19The Donors Keeping Scientology Afloat in 2019
11:23with Aaron Cairo being pictured at the top.
11:25It explained that he'd earned what's called gold meritorious
11:28given the people who donated more than a million to Scientology.
11:32On a podcast, Aaron tried to play this down.
11:35Don't you need to give the church a certain amount of money each year to be a part or?
11:39No.
11:40You don't have to give them any money?
11:42No.
11:42Courses cost a fee.
11:44So the communication course that I did was $100
11:47and the books are like range from $25 to like $30.
11:51But his extensive involvement was documented everywhere.
11:55It appeared in yet another Scientology promo video
11:58for which he was heavily roasted in the comments beneath.
12:01But negative audience feedback didn't change his feelings.
12:05Somebody said something bad about that so I'm just gonna stop.
12:08Like no way.
12:08And to be honest, again at this point,
12:11his involvement in Scientology wasn't really hurting anyone.
12:14However, this was about to change.
12:16Yeah, I mean, it's silly
12:19but like I don't think it's really a big deal so far.
12:23Yeah, it's not weird.
12:25Yeah, it's really not that weird.
12:27Yeah.
12:28In January 2020, Braille uploaded a video titled...
12:37I gotta cancel the Amazon order now.
12:40I got, yeah, I'm about to send Dianetics back.
12:43Yeah.
12:44...need help requesting that viewers donate to him to save his hometown skate park.
12:51Anything that you guys can give would be incredible.
12:54We're trying to raise $200,000.
12:57Anything that you can give would be so, so, so, so, so amazing.
13:01This led to videos such as Aaron Cairo gives Scientology $750,000
13:06but begs fans for donations whilst people on Reddit wrote,
13:10maybe just funnel the massive donations made to Scientology
13:14rather than using your viewer base of children to recreate your park.
13:19Yeah, yeah, I think that people generally have a dislike when you have content creators
13:25that make a call to action for people to make money or to donate money
13:29and the only exceptions are when something is a charity.
13:33So, for example, or a legal fund for something that's viewed as bad,
13:39like, you know, the H3H3 lawsuit or like, I think Chibi Reviews did that as well.
13:44But for the most part, quote charity?
13:47Yeah, I mean, there are some good charities like St. Jude's, things like that.
13:50I support that, absolutely.
13:52And so, but like, if you're just donating money for like some random cause that's not a charity,
13:57then yeah, I think you're going to have a lot of people that are feeling this way.
14:03Scientology is massively worse than other religions.
14:07I don't know enough about it.
14:08I'm mainly joking around.
14:10Like, I've heard that Scientology is very corrosive.
14:12I've watched a few videos about it and about how like, you know,
14:16some of the people that are running it are weird guys.
14:19But I'm just saying that like, I don't know everything about it.
14:25It's very bad.
14:26Yeah, I have no idea.
14:26It's a cult.
14:27Yeah, I mean, there's a lot.
14:28I don't know.
14:28Like, I think there's a lot of cults.
14:30But either way, yeah, this whole thing is,
14:35I think that's what really rubs people the wrong way
14:38is you have a person who's making, you know, theoretically millions of dollars
14:41doing this and this happens.
15:08And then like, we gain nothing from the brand deal.
15:11Like, we have sponsors of our own as well.
15:13We have sponsors that-
15:14He's fucking right, man.
15:17This is absolutely true.
15:20Yeah.
15:22Conflict with this brand deal that you're going to try to make us go and do on our own.
15:26And we are getting nothing but our normal low wage.
15:29And even built ramps for the channel without compensation.
15:33They asked me to build it and I built it the day of.
15:35Scratch.
15:36From scratch.
15:36And it didn't even drop a penny.
15:38Imagine working for someone, carrying the channel for $20 an hour.
15:42Then you hear that your boss donated $1 million to Scientology.
15:46In the process-
15:47Yeah, of course this is going to piss people off.
15:50That's it.
15:51Like, yeah, 100% they're going to get mad about this shit.
15:54Absolutely.
15:55Fetty and Carlos, two of Braille's most beloved members,
15:59left the team under sketchy circumstances.
16:01Nigel also announced that he'd be leaving
16:04but would still be in the videos, just not as an employee.
16:07He'd later explain the shocking reason for this.
16:10I left because I was making more off of unemployment than I was filming full-time.
16:16With pay rise-
16:17Based.
16:19Fucking based, yep, smart.
16:22As being few and far between.
16:24How many raises did you get?
16:25In 10 years?
16:26One.
16:27But in case conditions couldn't get any worse for the skaters-
16:30Yeah, it makes them look really bad.
16:33Skating in general is kind of like a-
16:38It's like kind of a underclass activity.
16:40It's kind of like a-
16:43I'm trying to think of the word for it.
16:47It's like not a high-level activity.
16:49Underground, that's the word I was thinking of.
16:50Yes, underground counterculture type thing.
16:53Skating is coded that way.
16:56Because of that, a lot of the people that follow skating stuff,
17:00they're going to have a huge problem with these guys that they know are making the money,
17:08not getting paid a lot of money,
17:09and then all of this money going to the Scientology church.
17:15Of course they're going to get mad about this.
17:19Yeah, LMFAO, Asmon calling skaters poor?
17:24Yeah.
17:25Yeah, most skaters are teenagers to college guys, right?
17:30I mean, yeah, there's guys that skate, but I think that a lot of them are young guys.
17:34It's mainly young guys.
17:35And you know what, young guys?
17:36If you're 17, do you know what you probably don't have?
17:39Money.
17:40You probably don't have money.
17:42And so when they see that these guys are working,
17:45and they're not getting-
17:46Like when I was into skating, I was 15, okay?
17:49Like that was the pinnacle of like 14 to 16
17:52is whenever like we were really into skating, everything like that, right?
17:57I didn't have any fucking money, okay?
17:59So if I saw this, I would be like, bro, this guy's a bitch, bro.
18:02Like he should be paying these guys the money
18:04because they're the ones that are making the videos.
18:07Absolutely.
18:08A hundred percent, that's what I would think.
18:12LMFAO still did.
18:14As in 2021, Aaron came to the team with another wild announcement.
18:19He goes, in one week from now, I'm going to business school for five months,
18:22and I'll be back.
18:22And then we're like, whoa, like what?
18:24Business school.
18:25As a result, Gabe became responsible for running Braille completely
18:28as Aaron disappeared to focus on business school.
18:32No one has talked to Aaron at all.
18:34It's like, it's not like he's on the phone going,
18:36hey guys, how's it going?
18:38Oh, the videos have been good.
18:38Like, oh, you're doing really good.
18:40Nothing.
18:40It was just silence, like legit like silence.
18:43This disappearance lasted longer than expected.
18:46The five months, it ends up being like,
18:48I want to say like eight or nine months.
18:50Then he goes away again.
18:51He's like, oh, I got to go back.
18:52I didn't finish.
18:53It was it was not long.
18:54And then he was gone for again.
18:56Like, I want to say like four or five months, maybe even more.
18:58Then he come back for like one week or something.
19:00Then he was gone again.
19:01And I want to say the total time was about like two years, I think.
19:03After two whole years of barely being on the channel,
19:06Aaron returned with a video titled, I'm sorry.
19:09Initially acknowledging his disappearance.
19:11I've been absent from the videos.
19:13I know you guys know that I'm back.
19:15We're getting back on track.
19:16Before again, claiming to be learning about business.
19:20I did take some time for myself
19:21and I did learn as much as I could about business.
19:25However, conveniently upon his return,
19:28another video was gaining some traction.
19:35Everybody knew this was coming.
19:39Everybody knew this is what was going to happen, right?
19:42We all knew this was what was going to happen.
19:45And you're just waiting for it to obviously be the thing.
19:49There we go.
19:53Pyro is the new leader of Scientology in San Francisco.
19:57Aaron had joined Scientology's executive team
20:00as the time he'd supposedly spent in business school
20:03was actually him just completing more Scientology coursework.
20:06This in combination with his absence
20:09put immense pressure on everyone else at Braille.
20:11And I'm sorry for being gone for so long.
20:14I know it's really hard on my team here.
20:17So my first guess of my life.
20:19Yes, so easy.
20:21They all began to quit.
20:32As mentioned, this included Gabe
20:34who at this point was completely running everything.
20:37For the past seven years,
20:38I've been doing all the behind the scenes stuff
20:40for the main Braille YouTube channel.
20:42Comments read, well, there goes the guy
20:43that's been carrying this channel for years.
20:45Honestly, Gabe was running the channel.
20:47Gabe was doing like literally 99.9% of the channel.
20:53Forcing Aaron to take back over
20:55who by this point seemed to be completely clueless.
20:58Now we no longer have Gabe to plan, film
21:00and make all those videos.
21:02The content is-
21:03I think that if you take Scientology out of the equation here
21:07there would have been a similar drop-off
21:09because if this guy was gone collectively
21:12for two years from the channel
21:14and then he comes back,
21:17the entire audience gets changed.
21:20Like and people might not really understand this
21:22but like there are always going to be
21:24like your longtime viewers
21:26but people really underestimate
21:28the amount of viewer churn that you have
21:30especially when you're making content
21:32that is for a very-
21:34Like again, like skateboarding videos are popular
21:37for I think young boys between the ages of 12 and 30, right?
21:43Like that's a very, very narrow audience of people
21:46and so a lot of them grow out of it.
21:48Like for me, like I was into skating
21:49for three or four years, right?
21:51So inside of that three or four years
21:53I'm already out of it at that point
21:56so you lose your audience
21:58and if you're gone for that long
22:01you're going to come back.
22:01They're going to say, who the fuck is this guy, right?
22:04Look at Smosh?
22:05Yeah, yeah, no this is-
22:06and I think that this would have happened
22:08regardless of Scientology.
22:10I think that Scientology was the cause
22:12but if he had taken a break for any other reason
22:15I think that a similar thing would have had the same effect.
22:20Does that make sense?
22:25Definitely going to be changing
22:27and what you're going to get
22:28I actually have no idea
22:29but it's going to go back to the roots of this company
22:33teaching tutorials.
22:34Yes, we are going to make weird boards, weird videos.
22:36This was far from an innovative strategy
22:39with the lack of fresh skilled content being obvious to all.
22:42You look at the videos now
22:43you look at the thumbnails now
22:44you look at the ideas now
22:46terrible, right?
22:46On Braille's channel.
22:48Much worse than when we and Gabe were doing it
22:50and that truly shows how much work we were doing.
22:53This dropped the channel's views to just a couple mil per month
22:56forcing Aaron to destroy their skate park.
22:59I was trying to negotiate with the landlords
23:01to get a break on the rent.
23:03This is a huge overhead
23:04it's tons of money to have a warehouse
23:06and we just could not come to an agreement
23:09and then I got a letter from their lawyer
23:11that basically just said
23:13you have got to be out by July 5th.
23:15Unsurprisingly, the audience offered no sympathy.
23:18Damn.
23:18That's $750,000 you spent
23:20to go up in a spaceship to hea-
23:27Oh god.
23:31Man.
23:33Yeah?
23:35Heaven could have been spent better
23:37but in true Braille fashion
23:38it was even worse than this.
23:40Ricky Glazer, one of the last remaining members
23:43wasn't even told that the skate park was being destroyed.
23:46I knew Braille was struggling but man
23:49I didn't know the park was literally getting destroyed right now
23:52no one told Rick anything
23:54and it's like man I really would have loved to know that
23:56get one last touch
23:57like I poured all this blood sweat
23:59and tears literally into that place.
24:01He was saddened by the sight of everything being discarded
24:04which somehow offended Aaron to such an extent
24:07that Ricky was promptly fired.
24:09Braille skateboarding and Aaron Cairo
24:11both blocked me, Ricky Glazer, on Instagram.
24:14Nigel decided to leave himself.
24:16I will no longer be at Braille doing videos
24:19won't be doing lessons with them anymore
24:21obviously because there is no location.
24:22Pissed off by Braille's blatant lack of care.
24:25No goodbye session, no nothing.
24:2710 years of your life.
24:29I haven't even gotten like a thank you
24:32for all of the years of dedicating myself to the channel.
24:34That's weird.
24:35Aaron responded with a video of his own
24:38claiming he tried to save the skate park.
24:40You guys must know that I did everything I could
24:42to save the Braille house.
24:44I literally took out a loan on my house.
24:46But with over 50,000 dislikes.
24:49The thing is that like nobody know
24:52again young guy they're gonna see you
24:54spending this money on this bullshit fucking religion.
24:58Yeah what is this?
25:00Like what what what is this shit?
25:02Dude can do two things, donate to Scientology and be a snake.
25:05Yeah I guess so.
25:06Like really like it's a bit much.
25:08Yeah it's much like what is this?
25:13Seems he missed the point completely.
25:15Aaron no one is worried about the warehouse.
25:17They're worried about the crew you ghosted.
25:19Yeah treating them bad doesn't like
25:21there's no justification for that.
25:24Yeah like there's no reason that's okay.
25:28Womp womp you screwed the crew
25:29and that's who we cared about.
25:31He's legit more upset about what he did to the building
25:34than what he did to all of the people that made it what it was.
25:37That's a good point.
25:38Without a skate park or skate crew
25:40the state of Braille is worse than ever.
25:42Aaron recently uploaded a video titled thank you
25:45just reading positive comments from-
25:47Two months ago with 19k views.
25:52Man.
25:56That sucks.
25:59That sucks man damn.
26:04A year prior seemingly to convince himself to keep uploading videos.
26:09I continue going because of comments like this.
26:12I absolutely love this.
26:13Braille's viewership has fallen to roughly-
26:153,000 views a video.
26:23Man.
26:265k per upload.
26:28Every comment section is filled with negativity
26:31which Aaron tries his hardest to defend himself against.
26:37Here's another part of it that I think does matter
26:40and it might be kind of a black pill thing to say.
26:43But at this point this is like a 40 something year old man
26:49and whenever you first started skating
26:52and you were getting into this stuff
26:54you were basically the same demographic of the audience
26:58that you're trying to relate to.
27:01It's much easier for a young guy to relate to this guy
27:05than to relate to this guy.
27:09It is.
27:10Yeah he's an old man now.
27:12And skateboarding is a young man's sport.
27:15That's really it and it's got a young men audience
27:18and it's not even men it's boys too.
27:22They're not going to want to listen to somebody
27:24that's the same age as their dad
27:26unless it's somebody like Tony fucking Hawk, right?
27:29And that's a totally different thing.
27:31It's a whippersnapper sport.
27:32It is.
27:33So I think this isn't really just because of Scientology
27:36and I know this might sound crazy
27:38but this is my evaluation as somebody
27:40who does YouTube etc.
27:42I think this would have happened
27:43if Scientology wasn't even picture at all.
27:46I think the fact is that
27:47the way he treated his employees was rat behavior.
27:50The fact that he basically aged out of it
27:53in a way that he's not relatable
27:55to his original audience anymore.
27:57He already played out all the ideas that he had
28:01and then on top of that
28:02you take a break from your channel for two years
28:05you let other people develop it
28:07you come back
28:08and a lot of these people don't even know who you are.
28:12That's it.
28:13Asthma in five years?
28:14Well the thing is that like
28:15I've changed my content a lot.
28:16I have.
28:17And because I know about this, right?
28:20And not this though.
28:223k views is bad.
28:23Yeah it's real bad.
28:24Absolutely.
28:25Skateboarding is kind of dying
28:27Well I don't know about that.
28:28I don't know if skateboarding is dying or not.
28:31So a dude tried to copy Rob Dyrdek.
28:35Yeah but like that guy was a pro skater.
28:37Like when I was into skating
28:39I'm pretty sure he was a pro skater, wasn't he?
28:42Like I mean this is going like way back into my memory
28:45so I'm trying to remember whether this is true or not
28:48but I believe he was.
28:50Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.
28:51Yeah it was way like I was a
28:53like this is 20 years ago
28:54something like that, right?
28:55And so all those Xenu books couldn't fix shit.
28:58Well I mean it helped him at the beginning
29:00and then and this is the way I think a lot of
29:04groups like this get you
29:05is that I bet
29:08and don't crucify me for saying this
29:09but I bet some of those entry-level Scientology courses
29:13probably do have a lot of good advice in them.
29:16I bet they do.
29:17And I think that there's a lot of things like that
29:19that probably have very, very entry-level
29:23reasonable good advice.
29:25But the problem is that when you have
29:28a lot of these like types of like extreme ideologies
29:31there's a point where you cross over the threshold
29:35where you now accept their reality over your own.
29:39That's how they get you.
29:40Yeah, exactly.
29:42Like yeah, if the advice was bad
29:44you'd never see these people that get
29:47captured by this stuff.
29:49Buy some and do them on stream
29:51they'd probably fucking DMCA me or something like that.
29:54I bet.
29:55So I don't know, man.
29:58Look at Twitter Explorer.
29:59Crazy news.
30:00Yeah, I'll see if there's anything that happened
30:02but it seems like no
30:04there's nothing else really that happened at all.
30:07But anyway, Scientology started as a self-help program.
30:11Yeah, I think that's the case.
30:13Yeah.
30:15And yeah, at first Scientology seems like expensive college
30:18with some connections
30:19but the further in you go
30:21it reeks of some scam.
30:23I mean, I don't know enough about
30:24like I've watched a few documentaries about Scientology
30:27and I mean, obviously like all of them are like super negative
30:30definitely
30:31but like my point is that
30:33when I'm looking at something like this
30:35I think about it from the perspective of like
30:38five different directions, right?
30:39Not just one thing
30:41but like three or four different things that come together
30:43and I think that aging out of the sport
30:46is a real legitimate thing that happens
30:48and I think it happens with gaming as well.
30:51I think it happens with streaming as well.
30:53Like for me, I'm kind of lucky
30:55because I basically, you know, I'm 34
30:57I pretty much look the exact same as I do when I was 20, right?
31:00But a lot of other people and like friends of mine
31:02you know, they have like all gray hair now
31:04and they're old and you know, they have an age of it.
31:07No, I haven't really.
31:08And at least not, no, I don't think so, right?
31:11I mean, my hair, that's the one thing, right?
31:14Is my hair has...
31:16You know, it's not perfect, okay?
31:18You look 50, I do not look 50, okay?
31:20And if I look 50 now, I looked 50 then.
31:23So that's it.
31:25Solentology seems to be a blackmailing scheme
31:27for the rich and famous.
31:29I don't know really, I don't know.
31:32Like I have no idea.
31:34Regardless of the religion,
31:35you can take a spiritual journey
31:36at the literal expense of your co-workers and friends.
31:39Yeah, and I think that's basically what happened
31:41is that this guy left his channel
31:44he aged out of the sport, he lost his relevance
31:47and then he betrayed the people
31:50that helped him build his career.
31:52And you do all three of those things
31:54and people aren't going to like you.
31:56You don't need to be a fucking Scientologist
32:01to come to that conclusion, right?
32:02That's it.
32:05You can't age out of content creation, right?
32:08Plenty of old guys are still doing their thing.
32:09So can you age out of content creation?
32:12So can you age out of content creation?
32:14Personally, I think you absolutely can.
32:19I do.
32:20I think that you absolutely can age out of it.
32:22And I think that some streamers like,
32:25especially like having like gray hair and stuff.
32:27I think that the audience for streaming
32:29is aging in a general sense.
32:32Like, and yeah, yeah, you guys are right.
32:34It is especially true with girls, okay?
32:37And we all know why.
32:38But I think even with guys, it's true
32:41because you think about it like this, right?
32:44So if you're a young guy, if you're like,
32:46imagine yourself, think back to yourself
32:48when you were 17, right?
32:50Was it easy for you to relate to somebody that was 40?
32:54No, or 35?
32:55Absolutely not.
32:56It's a completely different life orientation.
32:59So, and you, but you could relate to somebody
33:01that's like, maybe like, I don't know,
33:02even the difference between like 16 and 20 is huge.
33:07Like it's massive.
33:08But like, if you're 20,
33:09you can relate to a guy that's 25 to 30.
33:12But like, it's going to be hard for you
33:13to relate to a guy that's 40.
33:15And so, and you guys know this is growing up, right?
33:18This is how it is.
33:20Yeah, it really is.
33:20And so when you become an older guy,
33:22it's harder for you to relate to people in the same way.
33:26Were there even streamers that old 20 years ago?
33:29No, the fact is that if you look at all streamers
33:32from back in the day,
33:33almost all of them were all young guys.
33:36And the reason why is because that's the audience.
33:39That's the audience.
33:40And people watch streamers for relatability.
33:42The future only young kids won't be watching.
33:44Yeah, and I think that that's how things have,
33:47like, in a big sense, things have aged up.
33:50But right now, whenever you see a lot of the really big guys
33:53and like the new streamers that are coming up,
33:55you want to know who they are?
33:57Keso, Kai, Jinxie, Aiden,
34:00all of these guys, young guys, much younger guys.
34:06That's a big difference.
34:08And I think it's the same thing.
34:10It's young blood.
34:10Yeah, exactly.
34:11Because that's where a lot of those audiences come in from, right?