SvB: Taylor Swift Big Girls Moves, HBO's Fake Online Army, Crisis at Marvel Ep 140

The guys, @mrbenja and @the_real_theo_harvey, discuss about Taylor Swift Making Big Girl Moves, HBO’s Fake Online Army, Crisis at Marvel, AI Watch: White House AI Regulation, and Rant: Meta has your kids

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Show vs. Business is your weekly take on Pop Culture from two very different perspectives. Your hosts Theo and  Mr. Benja provide all the relevant info to get your week started right.

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Transcript

Theo Harvey: This is show versus business, your weekly take on pop culture from two very different perspectives with your host, the real Theo Harvey and Mr. Benja, coming up with all the relevant info about the week in pop culture. So Mr. Benja, what are we covering today? 

Mr.Benja: As always, we've got five hot ones to bring to you five different stories.

That'll make you say, Ooh, la. And this week we have upcoming first Taylor Swift. Don't usually talk about Taylor Swift. We throw her in on the side and a little angles and references, but Taylor Swift has been making enough moves where she's going to get her own story. We're going to feature her, let you know why you need to know.

Watch this woman take off. And yeah, man, Taylor Swift is doing big girl moves. No, no more little girl moves. Big girl moves. Want to talk about that? Also, HBO has an online army and they're fake. They're all up in your comments, all up in your streams, all up in your reactions, and they're fake. What is HBO doing?

Is this the only company that's doing it? Some interesting stuff going on there. Also, you've probably heard now, Variety released this article, and some people call it a hit piece, some people call it a death knell, all kinds of stuff. Some people say it's finally, ripping the covers off what's going on at Marvel.

I don't know if I'll say all that, but. It's getting a lot of play. So basically there's a crisis at Marvel and this article is having everybody talking. So guess what? We're going to talk about it too. Is there a crisis at Marvel? Is the new stuff working out? Is this phase going to be everything that we thought it was?

What's Feige up to? Is this hat on too tight? We'll see. Also, we got our AI watch. Always gotta keep up with AI because it's a thing right now. ScarJo, she basically got her likeness taken. AI's out there doing things that she doesn't like. Nothing salacious. That we know of. It's worth covering. And we've also got the White House panel on AI.

They've got 10 new standards that they want to push out and make sure that everybody's conforming to with AI. Is this going to stunt AI's growth? Maybe that's a good thing. Even if it does, maybe it's not. We'll see. And... AI copyright is also in in contention right now. So a lot of people are getting really concerned about what does this mean?

We've got all these AI tools. What does that mean for copyright? And then finally, we're going to have our, we're going to have our rant, not an AI rant, but a rant on meta because they've got your kids. It's like big tobacco all over again. And people Instagram.

Facebook threads, even if you want to bring that in, it's too controlling of your kids and there's some scientific data to back it up. So metal might have a problem on his hand. So we'll see. And those are our five stories. Theo, what do you think about those? 

Theo Harvey: Man, I'm super hype and so many different things we can cover seems like some weeks There's just a lot of news to cover.

So I know it was weird threads. We're going back in a little chat We're going back to for you sent me some stuff and then I think I sent you like five stories in a row So guys, this is one of those weeks. It's a lot of interesting things to cover. So before I get we get into that Mr. Benja man Have you ever just discovered something new and just change your life when it comes to a physical opportunity Physical, health related thing.

Mr.Benja: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to you know jump in front of your train, but Let me I have What are we talking about? So 

Theo Harvey: I experienced a cold plunge for the first time and I have saw, I saw God, man. It was

Mr.Benja: amazing. 

Theo Harvey: Amazing. I've been hearing about this, I think you've heard about this. They've been, take cold showers to, to wake you up in the morning. Pictures of people jump into the. in the arctic cold waters and swim. And then it became a thing. A lot of influencers are talking about it.

This is, it helps with blood flow, cut down inflammation, keeps you awake, all this other great things. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah. Japanese men have been doing this for a while. Is that what you're referring to? Like stuff like that? Yeah. 

Theo Harvey: Yep. Yep. Yep. All that. And obviously I'm very familiar with sauna's and doing that.

So I said yeah, I'm gonna try this man. So the local 24 hour fitness, I go to happen to have one. The guy I was talking to the owner, he said, Yeah, I'm the only one around here. I said, just try it out. So I said maybe this is, someone telling me to go, Go give it a try. So I signed up, other day.

So he said, the first time, you can probably, if you can just do a minute, then that's good. So I put my finger in it and he said, go put your finger and see what it feels like. I was like, oh, it's not that bad. I could do this. I can do this. So you put in, go ahead and put your swimsuit on everything.

So you get in and your bra is cold.

Mr.Benja: The cold plunge. Is cold. 

Theo Harvey: I got it. Insightful, right? You just, that's the first part, just that shot, but you just breathe through it again. You don't do the, the hyperventilate breathe that you do normally when it's cold, you do the deep breath. And so I did that, slid into it, and so you get used to it, but it's still cold. So it's you don't want to stay there 20, 30 minutes. That would not be good, but yeah I got up to right here yeah, pretty close to my neck and I didn't put my shoulders all the way in. So that's okay.

Okay. Admit it. I said, he said, I said, how you going? I said yeah, this is about a minute. Let's go. Let me get out of here. So I got out that first time. And, the first thing you feel is relief because you're out of cold and your body's done with it. And so you're thinking, okay, this is okay.

It's nothing, but man, you feel it for like several hours after that, your body still feels cold. You still feel energized. You don't feel any pain. If you have knee injuries, like I have a little lower back issues. I didn't feel that. It was just like, wow. I was like, the picture of the guy walking and kicks his heels in the air, to the side, I was like So, so I did that then the second time I did by myself, I stood in there for two minutes. But even better. So I was trying to do it today, but I didn't get a chance to get over there in time. They only had certain periods of time. So I've tried to do tomorrow, but I'm gonna try at least do it like every other day and kind of, after I work out to see how that can help with a lot of inflammation and stuff I'm dealing with right now.

Yeah, so that's one of the things I'm, yeah I'm super excited about. Yeah that, that is my story from the week. Mr. So go try it out if you haven't tried a cold plunge before. Oh, that 

Mr.Benja: is, that is cool. I haven't done a cold plunge per se. I've done a I've done the sensory deprivation chamber and my version of a cold plunge, and this has got me taking cold showers, by the way.

I don't know if you heard my, on a Instagram, I posted my Wakanda forever story, but basically our gym, the hot water. Went out and I was like, okay, it'll just be lukewarm water. I don't know where they were getting this water from dog. But when I say ice cold, I was like, yo that's really cold. So the first time I was like, man, screw this.

That is like cold. Yeah. I just drove home funky. I didn't want to do that, but that's what happened. And then I'm in like the grocery store and everything. Cause I go to the grocery store after the gym. I was like, man, this isn't the business. I just need to get in the shower.

Let me stop being a punk because I saw this other kid go in the shower. I was like, let me do it, man. That ice cold water just hitting you and you can't escape it. And the gym that I had small showers. So the water's bouncing all off the side and it's not like submersion. The interesting thing was I kept doing cold showers after that because even though I was angry man, this gym sucks, man.

Why don't they fix the water? While I was in there, I could do nothing but meditate and focus on. Keeping my mind together because it was so dang cold. And that was an interesting thing. I didn't expect where now it's I go in, I smacked the the handle for the water across my fist over my chest.

It just look up in the sky and it's like a good two seconds before the water comes, but it feels like about a minute. I'm like, here comes Wakanda forever. Boosh. And then that cold water hits you. I just, no matter what's on my mind, dawg, I can always clear my mind during that little time where the water hit me.

I loved it. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah, you know what? That's a good point. I think that's the other thing. It's just that one minute, two minutes or whatever that you're doing, these cold plunges, your body, your mind, no matter how bad your crap of your day is going or how good it is, your mind is just there, present. And so to your point, that is something refreshing.

Typically, I stay in the past or the future. And so just being present. And aware that is awesome because you, your body's this ain't normal son. Get out of this. Get out of this water. What are you doing fool? 

Mr.Benja: You're not thinking about anything else. I just want you to think happy thoughts.

All right. 

Theo Harvey: I want you to get out of the water. That's the only thing I concerned about who cares about, you're trying to close a contract or, what happened 20 years ago, best friend, you get out of the water. Anyway oh, man, thanks for saying your story. Mr. Benjamin. The other thing I want to highlight to as we get off the health tip is yeah, just finished Gen V.

Yeah. So very interesting. Amazon. I know you have Amazon, Mr. Benji. I know you're not, you can't cancel that. You just don't watch it. Interesting. Like I said, I wasn't, I talked about the beginning, how, liked it at first, then became not no longer a fan. Just interesting what they're doing.

They're doing the opposite of, and then also Invincible just came out, and so Amazon is doing the opposite of what Marvel is doing. And with this hardcore, hero versions that they're doing very bloody and gory. So it's interesting lane that they're taking with with comic book.

Movies and style storytelling. So it'd be interesting to see it. It looks like this is getting more traction than maybe the Marvel stuff, which we'll talk about later. But so anyway, Gen V is as bloody as you can imagine. And then some, so But, without spoiling too much, it's basically The Boys 3.

5, right? To get into the next season of The Boys Season 4. So it's gonna be interesting to see the storylines that come out of Gen V that connect to them. The boys. So yeah. So do I recommend people watching it? Sure. But just know what you get into. It's it's a weird kind of mix because it's got that teenage and sting angst thing where they go on.

It's I don't want to be like my dad. Oh, I love you, but I can't be with you. That kind of thing, that storytelling that you Sabrina, all that stuff that you watched, the CW shows, but then is mixed with super heroic. Genre storytelling and gore and just I don't know if that pop mixes well.

So it's interesting, I want to be with you, but I need to blow up this person's head first, so anyway yeah, so that's my take on it. We'll see where it goes, people are loving it. So it looks like they're here for a while. They got season two announced.

We'll see what happens. 

Mr.Benja: My little caveat, I got thrown in there with that. Sabrina and Riverdale don't fit the rest of the CW there. They're wholly different and fall more into the supernatural category. So I just want to make that little 

Theo Harvey: distinction. And I think I told you years ago the guy who created the chilling adventures of Sabrina, uh, he's a writer, for those shows, but he used to write a comic books and. Man, I can't remember his name right now. But he wrote this great, fantastic four comic book, man. And I was like, who is this guy, man? And he just went off and did his first, he did the comic book version of Sabrina. And like you said, that went a real supernatural.

I dropped off. I couldn't be watching stuff about the devil. It was, they say it was, they got really hardcore. I was like, yeah, but she's literally like the devil's bride or something. I was like, okay, I'm good.

I was like, Hey, this is, Carissa Springs at all. This is a teenage 

Mr.Benja: witch, it's 

Theo Harvey: like the nose. But. It was hardcore. 

Mr.Benja: It's like that Winnie the Pooh, blood and honey slept up on you. Hey, this ain't Winnie the

Theo Harvey: Pooh. So anyway that's my my. week so far. 

Mr.Benja: All right. So let you know my action in terms of the week haven't changed too much because I'm focusing on that 20%. Like we talked about before Dr. Benjamin Hardy's book 10x is greater than 2x plug. That is What I'm on right now, and it's led me down some interesting paths.

I realized I had to get my sleep together. So I had to focus a hundred percent. I had to put all my focus into that. I was like, huh, if I don't have my sleep together, it affects this. It affects that. It affects that. So randomly, like doing my sleep became the thing. I was like, Nope, I can't do this.

I'm going to take a nap. Nope. Can't do that. Got to get up. Can't do this. I can't have an alarm. It's going to mess up, mess me up when I wake up too early. I don't, I try not to rock with the alarm because it takes me out of my sleep at the wrong time. And I, it just, so yeah, there was a whole bunch of stuff to it.

But basically I found that was my 20 percent focus that I needed to do. I needed to just get to sleep properly and have enough of it. And it changed everything. So my next 20 percent has become. Threads. So I went from, since the last time we talked, I've gone from 200 followers to 650. So congratulations, I'm over there making threads a thing.

I'm pulling old 2010 strategies from Gary V. I'm pulling 2009 strategies from what was that website? I forgot that website's name, but bringing back follow Friday and people were like, what is this follow Friday? I don't believe you're bringing this back. I'm bringing it back, son. So yeah it's fun, but I'm trying to get that.

Interaction before meta, which we'll talk about later before they turn on the switch. Because once they turn the switch on, the algorithm is going to be all effed up. 

Theo Harvey: Nah, kudos man. Congratulations. How long are you on this? You said 20%. You said last week you did this week you did that. Are you doing it by weekly?

Timelines for the 20 percent or you just trying to hit some targets 

Mr.Benja: where I'm looking at my focus going and the results I'm getting. So right now I wanted to push, I want to focus my attention, getting where I was getting the most attention, the most consistent and the most engaging attention.

So I was looking at I have a good number on Instagram. I have. A good number on Facebook. I have a really, I have really good traction on email, although it's not as big and here comes this threads thing. I'm like, okay, let me throw that in the mix and instead of using my own links like I normally do, I started using some bitly links just to track it a little better, a little easier.

And I'm like, huh, all my click throughs are coming through um, are coming through threads a lot higher. I'm Interesting. So I just started pumping on threads and really getting in there and gauging and doing that consistent kind of hitting people up. Hey, how you doing? I really like this post. I did that search for video games.

Anybody talking about video games, jump up on the comments. Hey, what's up? I like that game. Press a to start boy. Ha, LOL, and Yeah, it just became enough of an engagement factor where I came up with a plan to make do the opposite of Gary Vee's pillar content. So instead of doing. Like these big, huge pieces of content, like a speech a two hour podcast or whatever, and then break that up into chunks.

I'm throwing little chunks out there. And as those chunks get engagement, I make them bigger and post them out there again. So something comes out as one little tweet, gets a bunch of a thread, gets a bunch of replies. Now that it's gotten a bunch of replies, I'm like okay, I'll make a multi part thread about it.

Five, six, seven, eight parts about it. Post that out there. It gets a whole bunch of feedback. Then I take that whole thing, turn it into a blog post, post it again. As a blog post, say, Hey, I wrote a blog post about this whole thing I was talking about last week. That blog post can go to my email.

Then that I take that blog post and the next time a recording session comes up, I record a quick little reel for Instagram, Tik TOK on there, push that out. It's starting from these little bits and slowly building up into these bigger things. And if something keeps getting enough talk, enough feedback, enough momentum, that snowball keeps rolling, then I'll turn it into a full on course.

I'll make a shirt out of it. I'll keep on building it that way. I just thought it was very interesting to start from threads, this micro blogging platform, and have that be the top of this waterfall process I'm developing. 

Theo Harvey: Just FYI though, I think I like Samosi. Yeah. He talked about that, right?

He would use the Twitter content and then using that for his shorts. Now, I don't know if you build off the shorts to your point, but which is what you're trying to get to. Yeah. You're trying to build off of the shorts, which, it's going to be, yeah, I'd be love to see how you do that.

I'm finding out I've been doing these lives now, these Thursday night lives for the last, what, almost a year. Two months now with folks and I'm realizing, I asked similar questions, but I'm starting to build frameworks into, my, my conversations and trying to see how that resonates.

And as I talked to folks, and so that's 1 of the things I'm trying to harp on just building out my, you don't know frameworks are just ways you thinking of how you explain a topic and giving it to your audience. And so to make it clear, and so I'm using the interviews to bring out my frameworks to understand that better. And then I use that as content. So I'm starting to use that too. But, so and then also talk to my team about are we going? Am I think I'm thinking about doing an in person podcast? I know enough entrepreneurs here in Tampa area, just give him in a room and just doing the The ryan panetta thing and then cutting that up.

So so yeah, i'm evaluating the content, you know It's a content game man. It's a lot, it's if you do enough reading talking to folks and stuff like that You can start, you can start generating, unlimited content. It's just Who 

Mr.Benja: are your top three? Runners in the game people.

You mean people you follow listen to think about in terms of content. Oh, yeah I got 

Theo Harvey: my three. Yeah her mosey, he's definitely, top notch. And just how he's grown with it Let's see, that's the only one really I Oh Myron G I hear Myron golden every so often.

I just like how he tells his stories, and he, but he was a preacher, so he knows how to weave those stories in. So let's, that's the top two. Is there a third person? I just said, 

Mr.Benja: I 

Theo Harvey: don't really, he's not, I talked to my, my, my marketing person about this.

He doesn't really he's got some interesting thoughts, but he doesn't, he's not really a deep thinker. So it's he'll tell you his little framework, but it's that's pretty much it. His content is really built around his, his story and then also his interviews, right?

And so it's it's interesting to listen to other people he's interviewing sometimes, those long form kind of interviews, I'm okay with them. I just sometimes I just don't, yeah, I just don't want to get into deep dive with just the interview kind of conversations every once in a while.

So that's just me, but who's the 3rd person? I guess it would have to be Mr Benja. Yeah, I think that's it.

Mr.Benja: John, follow me on threads, baby. Hormoza is the newest one because he just came out of the blue and was like banging, hitting it. So he's definitely a breath of fresh air, clearly knows how to game the system. But I go back to my two classics Grant Cardone and Gary Vee. Those, I'm still learning from him.

I go back and watch him and I'm like no, he was right on that one. And no, he's actually doing the thing, not just talking about it. And he can break down. It's no, you don't want to do it in this case. You want to do it in this case. And it's oh yeah. He actually knows because he does that all the time.

He's not just parroting, he's in there. So those are my three. Okay. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah. Gary Vee, like I said, he says the same stuff over and over again, but you're right. He does have he does that mean to a video thing. And I told my team let's do that and see how that works for us.

And then uncle G, I haven't heard from him in a minute, but I'll go check them out. I'm just, I just get too many emails from Pete all the time. So I'm like, I guess uncle G is done. Pete Vargas is the man now. So anyway, so yeah, but thanks for that. Look, yeah. Yeah, he's the original man. And he's just out there still pumping content, man.

He's still doing it thing. That's awesome. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah. Yeah. All right. You ready to get into these stories? Yeah, let's get to it. All right. Story number one, Taylor Swift is making big girl moves and that's not to diminish anything that this lady is doing. She's a fabulous business person in her own right. She's.

Done massive numbers. I don't listen to much of her stuff, but lately everywhere you go, you hear about her you, you learn about some new thing that she's done. She's taking over theater. She's messing with the numbers over in the masters masters and publishing world. She's at NFL games, all this kind of stuff.

And Theo speaking to NFL games, you said that you saw her recently and you were just like tired of it. How. I want this from your point of view. How has Taylor Swift come in and put the elbow drop in your sphere of media intake? 

Theo Harvey: I just think back to how you just introduced to the artists.

And for me, the first time I even heard of Taylor Swift is when Kanye. inTerrupted her speech and talked about Beyonce. And so that's always been my anchor with her because I didn't know who she was, and she was already extremely popular then. But I do feel that put on another atmosphere, right?

When that happened, in my opinion, and into the form when she released her next album, it went to the stratosphere, Lamar on it. She had all kinds of stuff going on. So which I don't think that was happening before. So yeah, so to me, she has decent music. It's okay. Something to say, but man, it's just the depths of the just her omnipresence.

We talk about this in marketing. She has mastered that at the celebrity level, unlike any other. One thing to dominate. Okay. She, she has fans. A lot of people have fans, the Swifties, we talked about the Navy with Brianna and the beehive Beyonce.

Okay. Okay. And the barbs, but with Nicki Minaj, but it's like to another level with these folks and it's so much that, anytime she has a relationship and she breaks up with that person is now the enemy to her millions of fans. And it's just crazy how this works out.

And so one thing, so she has a fan base. She's mobilized. She went against, we talked about her earlier. So she was, went against her old producer. To get her masters back. So her fan base hate the original versions of that. And they're actually actively not trying to even buy the original versions of her original album.

So that's one of the reasons why she, when she got her masters back, she rerecorded everything, which is another cash grab, but all that goes back to her, thanks to the help of her fans. 

Mr.Benja: So I actually want to, I actually want to reiterate that point to people. So usually we're not an artist every so often we'll do a re release of their old material Hey, here's my old hits or Hey, here's a compilation or Hey, re release and whatever.

And we see, okay, sure. That's fine. When Taylor Swift bought her masters from back from the publishers and the label heads, it was a long drawn out fight. It's Hey, I made this music. Let me get my masters back. And yeah, she definitely used her fans to help make that happen because everybody started thumbs downing on the labels to the point where they bowed to the pressure.

After she gets her masters back, she's like, all right, these are my masters now. My mind. These are mine now. Okay. We're going to. Pre release all that old music now that I own the masters all the money is going to come to me and Usually that wouldn't be the case because you just have the old masters The old copies of the thing still out there and people would buy that and say okay sure whatever But now that she's re recorded now, not just like repackaged or whatever, re recorded, they're technically new songs, so all the money comes back to her now.

So that's, it's really interesting how she did that. She's y'all gonna give me all my money. I'm just gonna re release. Give me that. Give me that. And yeah, it's gotten to, it got to the point where they started, they're trying to make laws now where you can't do 

Theo Harvey: that. Oh yeah. Yeah, purposely. And yeah, so that was one angle, but you forget about the whole ticket master fiasco, right?

Where she basically sued on behalf of her fans that, ticket master was encouraging ticket gouging where they would put the tickets out there and people would, scalp them and charge abnormal. Absorbent feeds for her concerts. And so she was going against ticket master to remove that process.

So she just, picking fights at the fights with she's weaponized. Let's be honest. She's weaponized her fan base to go after these pillars of the music business industry, right? The masters, the concert theater. And then she went after the theaters. And so obviously she has, she had a re release.

That was huge. Got all the money back for that and people are actively not buy her old stuff. Then she came out with a concert series called The Errors where she's literally just basically singing her hits over and over again and having and taking over cities. She'll stay at a city for three days and then everybody will come in Tampa.

She was here for three days in LA. She was down there for six days. People come in, listen to the songs, get hype and everything. Then she so she concert that, she's, they said this is probably going to be a billion dollar concert, right? If that's his us base worldwide. And then she said, okay, I want to make more money.

So what do I need to do? Let me create a concert movie. Now, mind you, there's been constant moves before Jason Bieber's done one. What's it called? BTS. Yeah. My kids love BTS. They had one, no concert movies. They always did, anywhere, what, a couple of 30 mils or something like that.

And 

Mr.Benja: for those of you who aren't familiar, you go to a theater and it's a specified date where the concert's playing at that movie theater. It might be live, might be delayed, but it's always just an event. 

Theo Harvey: I would say some cases not, I think some of them were just rerecorded because there was, didn't Michael Jackson have a concert.

I think it was like recorded, session and they kind of spice it together with some editing packages and stuff like that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But what she did was she didn't go to a studio. Typically you go to a studio, you go to a Paramount or, Warner Brothers. Hey, help me get this.

And then they would distributed through a theater, right? She said, bump all that son. Yeah. Just going straight to AMC, get going to a studio as you went to AMC and she said, Hey, y'all want some money. How about this? You do you distribute this, I get my people coming in cause the studio is really supposed to help get the people to come in.

I know how to get my people to come in. You just get it out and you give me what I think it was like 50, 60 percent something big, of all the proceeds. And, so she just made another close to bill for that deal because she basically made 100 the weekend it was launched in a movie theaters.

She made a hundred million dollars for a concert film. And I think the last number I heard was around over 200 million for our concept million, mind you, this is stuff she already did from a concert. So I told my marketing person today, basically Taylor Swift is the. Predator of a content creator.

She is, she's repurposing her content and that's all you do as a content creator. She rewrote her songs, created a concert saying the same songs, and then had the distribution strategy doing the same song. Nothing she did was different. It was just. The different channels she went down to get it out to her fans.

Mr.Benja: And then she comes in and stays top of mind by showing up at 

Theo Harvey: NFL games. I don't get me started on that. And I think that's what, just a, why are you here? And it's every two seconds, she's showing up on camera. She's got this relationship, with Travis Kelsey, who is a tight end for the Kansas city chiefs.

He's pretty good football player, one Superbowl rings and all that, but he's a fame. whOre for lack of a better word himself. And so if you didn't know, he had his own reality show a couple of years back called Jason Kelsey. So he wants fame. And so him hooking up with the most famous pop star, I think is a win for both parties.

We'll see how long this relationship lasts and maybe true love. I don't want to disparage that, but so for people in me says no, he says no, but go ahead. For people not in the 

Mr.Benja: know, the business relationship is of a thing. It's a valid Hey, I'm doing this thing. I'm trying to get some shine.

You're doing this thing. You're trying to get some shine. Let's hang out together and share each other's shine. And it's Okay, cool. Suddenly, you have this cross pollination it's like the Marvel DC crossover every once in a while. You just get two of these camps coming in, and it's NFL, Taylor Swift, what the hell?

And, yeah, it's it's a whole thing. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah, say anyway, man, I don't want to belabor the point. Look, I can't be mad at the game. The game is a game where I can be slightly mad at the player. And I would say, for the, Hey, Swifties don't get, don't at me, but I do feel like, definitely she is apex predator when it comes to how the market itself and get her name out there.

And then we always know that any relationship is she's in, she's going to write a song about it. Yeah. So that's the other thing. 

Mr.Benja: Check this out. Taylordal. You know that? There's a Taylor Swift version of Wordle. And a lot of the words are like Taylor Swift related. The first week this came out, I decided to play it, right?

So it was like, the first day, it was like, swift, that was the word. You guess the word in the first one, it's just swift. It's yay, that was the first wordle. I was there when this happened, this was comedy. anD I forgot, like the, there were two others that were like, the name of a song, or the name of an album, or something like that.

And it was like, yeah, you got the guess, you got the guess, dude. It went viral on Twitter. And I said, I'm going to go play this today. And I decided to type in Kanye. And that was the word. Oh, man. I was like five letters. She's just Kanye. Yeah, you got the word of the day for Taylor. And I'm like, yo, this girl is tripping.

She's out there. 

Theo Harvey: So kudos to her. She comes by the honest, I think her mom was an ex marketing executive her dad was a stockbroker chorus. So she's, even though she's been on his music, she came from upper middle class, got all the lessons and everything she needed to get to the next level.

And so that's ingrained in her, whether it do. And I think her dad is her agent still. That's the other thing too. So there we go. So anyway it's, it doesn't fall far from the 

Mr.Benja: tree. She has definitely got a strong online army. You all should be trying to build your own strong online army.

And that leads us into story number two, HBO has a fake online army. And it's out there, in your comments, giving you dislikes, punching you in the mouth, correcting you, fact checking you, and making sure that you're all hyped about HBO. This stuff is comedy. It's coming from Rolling Stones article.

Yeah, Theo, you want to break this one down? 

Theo Harvey: Yeah, sometimes we go in here and talk about executives at these companies. And so this is a new is that executive called named Casey Bloys. If you never heard of him, he's the HBO president, but he came up to HBO and became. over their programming.

So he's very influential guy, right? I think, he had a hand in greenlighting the latest Game of Thrones, not the old one, but the House of the Dragon, Hot D as we call it here. He's also instrumental in The Last of Us. Euphoria. So definitely, a king maker if you will.

When it comes to HBO quality content, this dude has it all right. Top streamer, top content, loved by stars, beloved by folks, admired by his peers. But he's just got one problem, man. He hates trolls. He hate them trolls on the Internet, man. And so he got to be in these streets with a fake account.

Talking it ish, man. This reminds me of do you remember Kevin Durant? There was a story that he has. He had a fake Twitter account going after small users talking bad about him on Twitter. I don't know if you heard that story. Kevin Durant, the basketball player for the sons, top five basketball player NBA right now when he's not hurt.

He was literally creating fake Twitter accounts going after people. So it's just amazing, man. How cool. I guess that's why you're a big time, man. You just have so much pettiness in you that you have to, you just can't let any slights slide. If you do. Nah, man, I got to go after him.

I got to go after them.

Yeah. I show him.

What's that? There's someone said that Twitter fingers turned to Trigger fingers or something like that. I forgot what you said. Yeah. It's just like everybody just using it as an excuse. So it's just hilarious. 

Mr.Benja: So this opens the door to, and this idea, I don't know if a lot of people are familiar with it.

There's it's not, and they put. The article put secret in quotes because everybody does it. We just decided to focus on this guy right now. Basically, when you've got your reputation out there, somebody's going to put out people to push your brand like Taylor Swift. Doesn't need to have anybody's secret.

She's just got all her people. She'll go on her message board. She'll go on her private channels She'll go wherever she needs to go and tell her people. Hey, listen, this is what's happening And when those people see tweets and everything that go against it, they'll get in the comments and jump them You get jumped in the comments I don't know if you've ever been jumped in the comments, but you're like, where are these people coming from?

A lot of people Pay for this. You get a room of people. They'll create a bunch of accounts and say, Hey, listen, we need to defend. We need to defend this movie. I don't know if Ryan Johnson did that with last Jedi or whatever, but it's like, Hey, we need to defend this movie. Talk it up. And they'll keep the discussion going.

It's an old political thing. It goes back to politics and I'm talking back in the, like the, any level of politics, you want to talk back to the Roman civilization, they would put out people and have them in the street saying what the real story is, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And putting these stories in everybody's ear and they're getting paid off.

So now advanced to the future, we've got Twitter bots. We've got, online army accounts where. People will make these accounts and put Bob Jones, seven, seven, five, Florida, that's his username. You're like, Bob Jones, seven, seven, five, Florida. You gotta be kidding me. That's a real username.

He's got like 17 posts in the last two days and that's it talking about whatever topic. So this is true. This is real. And now HBO is getting called out for it. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah, I think, and that's to your point. I think the story here is that he got caught. But everybody does it. And so he just got caught for what he was doing.

But it's just, it's funny to see that people at that level, have their hands on something as such. It's almost the mob movies right? They don't touch the gun. That's what the enforcers do, right? Don't give me the gun, son. So why is his hands all on this?

It's almost like you always have to, as someone who is, not saying such a higher up, I have my own company. I have people under me. There's certain things. I'm like, man, I need to have. What's it called? Plausible deniability. Yeah, plausible deniability. Don't tell me all that son.

I don't know. Let me get off this call. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah, there was a scene in the Sopranos where where Tony was like, yeah, I don't like that guy. And then He got up and left and then they all turned around and started looking at each other and it's do you like that guy? It's no, I don't like that guy either.

It's like I really hate that guy and they all turned to that guy It's like you really hate that guy. He's can't stand that guy. He's I don't know Maybe you should tell somebody about it. He's I think you're right that guy goes to talks to another guy And he's hey, this guy's really causing problems I would pay a lot of money if that problem just went away.

I just, and nobody actually said anything, but the guy ended up getting offed, and that was basically how you hide a hit. It was just like so many layers of plausible deniability. I say, Hey, I never said hurt the guy. I said, I didn't like, that's all I said. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah. Just like a few good men. Jack Nicholson. He's on the state on the stand and he says, No, I just gave it. I just said, leave that guy alone. You don't will not haze him, but everybody knew what that meant. So it was like at the end, Tom Cruise go to him, but he just said, you're damn right. I do. 

Mr.Benja: I will do it again.

Theo Harvey: So it's just that the air, anyway, so I think it's just funny and I'm glad we could comment on this and talk about it a little bit. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah, and don't come for us at Show vs. Business, the SVB crew will be out there jumping you in the comments. Speaking of comments, a lot of comments going on in story number three.

There's a crisis going on at Marvel. New article came out from Variety. com, some people are calling it a hit piece as we mentioned before, some people are calling it a smear piece, some people are calling it finally the truth is being out, it's called Crisis at Marvel, Jonathan Major backup plans, the Marvels reshoots, reviving original Avengers, and more issues revealed, by Tatiana Siegel, I don't keep up with these people, but her name's getting thrown around a lot, and basically, It's looking that everybody is reeling from a series of disappointments in Marvel.

I've had my disappointments with Marvel. I'm currently having them with Loki, which was my favorite show. So I've got a lot of problems with what's going on and people are flaming me in the comments. I haven't fought back too much, but I'm just saying they got issues and they need to get fixed. Do they have issues there?

Theo Harvey: Absolutely. I think, look, we've been talking about this for what, man, since maybe even last year, a little bit. We talked about internals and what was going on there. The, there's a lot of different parts. If you go read the story, we're not going to go into the deep that maybe we'll do a whole marvel show.

Just go deep dive into marvel. Maybe at the end of the year and see where they are. Ways we can fix marvel or MCU thoughts on that. But so I think this coincided with a book that the ringer the podcaster at the Ringer Joanna Robinson, she wrote a book, the MCU, the reign of Marvel Studios, right?

And so this book just came out and so just like the history of Marvel and she did a lot of interviews and out of that book came a lot of revelations about stuff that we know about, right? It's the shoddy effects work, right? Some of the things that's going on with John, the major behind the scene, the need for the original Avengers to come back, right?

And so it's just all these things that. They're coming to the forefront now because of that book. And so this article is just an outlay of that and it's stuff we already talked about, right? The glut of content is not compelling anymore. They're blaming on. They were mandated to create more content for the streaming service.

And so that made the content not as special. I sure one of those things, like just make a good TV show. It don't matter, and they don't have to keep putting out stuff that just telling pieces of a story to get people into another story. Just tell a complete story, which, I don't think Marvel ever mastered because they were rewarded for doing that in movies.

They never told a complete story. Endgame after 22 

Mr.Benja: movies. They started with two relatively complete stories, which are Captain America when, and Iron Man. And then after I say, after that, they started really, 

Theo Harvey: eVen with those, they had those little teasers right at the end, but.

To the point though, with those 

Mr.Benja: movies, you didn't have the teaser taking over the talk of the story. So when people talked about Iron Man, they weren't like, Hey, at the end, do you remember this? And it's no, you talked about Iron Man. 

Theo Harvey: So yeah. And Avengers two was terrible, right? Age of Ultron, but they absolutely the teaser was for, other stuff.

And so yeah, so I think those are things that they you know, and then, so is Feige. Like you said, is he nervous, Mr. Benja? I think that's what's happening is he going to pull the, pull some tricks. So what are your sense? Maybe we'll do a deeper dive later of all the different problems, what do you think he's trying to, cause we know.

The next movie that got coming out is the marvels, right? This month in november track is not good. I don't think two people are excited about it. We're not expecting to make, I think the last one made like a billion dollars. This will not get close to a billion dollars. It just, it is what it is.

Mr.Benja: So here's the thing. It's weird because you've got a movie that stars Brie Larson, who Nobody has really, nobody's really championing Brie and Captain Marvel as characters. She just shows up on the screen and people are like, Oh, okay, blah. Then you've got, Photon who got beat up by Wanda in Wanda Dream and you're like.

Oh, okay, that side character that got beat up, and then you've got Ms. Marvel, who's like this young, teeny bop, whatever. And, which is, and she's a cool character, but not compelling enough for me to go get up and lead this movie, or co lead in this movie. So it's I'm just looking at this movie, and I can do this for any of the things they've got coming out.

It's not, this is not picking on Marvel's I can do this with Loki or any of the new things. And, 

Theo Harvey: Mr. Benja, do you not like diverse storytelling? Do you not like women led stories? 

Mr.Benja: Apparently I'm sweet. I'm sleeping, man, because I don't like the woke. No. Okay, 

Theo Harvey: Ben Shapiro. Okay, Ben Shapiro, slow down.

Mr.Benja: What's funny is, I'm on the side of woke, but then when I see what they actually do with the content, I'm like, okay, I like woke. I don't like this shit.

Theo Harvey: Yeah, it's almost pander. It's pandering, 

Mr.Benja: to the wokeness, right? I think we're getting a lot of pandering. Listen we're talking about numbers and everything. The show Kenobi had a 90 million dollar budget. She Hulk comes out and has a 250 million dollar budget.

Yeah, I get that there's a lot of CG involved, but if I'm over there running things, I'm like, there is no way this show is gonna get more money, or that much more, than Kenobi. And, it just talks to hey, we can get a cash grab for this guy that everybody likes and not really put too much into it.

We can play off easy tropes that we already know the quote unquote fans love and just throw it out there. And it did what it did. And then it's hey we really got to try hard with She Hulk and let's put these other characters into it, make new characters, a new style of writing. Just crazy. So yeah, I got issues with that.

I got so many issues I don't want to talk about anymore. 

Theo Harvey: I would just say this. I'm probably one of the few folks that thought She Hulk wasn't that bad. But, I liked it, but I get the knock against it. But I was just thinking, they were, one of the things was like, they were forced Disney, our MC was forced to put so much content out.

But I'm like, What choice did Disney have? They were trying to go against Netflix. They needed content. They had two great IPs in star Wars and in Mar MCU. Why not put quality content out? I think the problem was their process was that messed up. They just brought movie people into TV.

And that's why the TV shows, they would try to make these six hour, 10 hour long. Movies and that's not how tv should be run. So and they've shown that where they scrap all of daredevil I think they filmed three half three fourths of the whole show already filmed it and everything Get all this and they're going back to the drawing board to a traditional showrunner type process So anyway, so we'll maybe we'll do a deeper dive on this because I think there's some more discussion 

Mr.Benja: here Yeah, I don't want to, I don't want to come off as a hater.

I am, but I don't want to come off as one. I do actually enjoy watching these things. It's just that when I go back and I see mistakes, I'm like, why would you try to do that? What was the reasoning behind? And when I see too many of these things happening, I get frustrated. It's Oh, I see what you're trying to do.

Not that's a bad thing. It's just not the best thing. And it's not the thing I would have suggested you do. In this case, I'm not running things, but I'm a fan of these characters. And dog, I'm not the guy putting king pin in a Hawaiian shirt. I'm just like,

Theo Harvey: yeah, that was, yeah. Hey man, it was some, I just some distractors, but I like black American. Falcon 

Mr.Benja: captain black captain. Falcon American. What's it? Yeah, black Falcon captain.

They changed everybody's costume to be more realistic and real world except for his. Now he's got to come out looking like the star spangled pigeon, just, I don't even know what to call 

Theo Harvey: him. Anyway so yeah, so more to come and Marvel can it write this ship? I don't know. It's going to be interesting to see, it's fatigue set in.

Yes. Can they write the ship? Possibly, they just got to tell better stories, man. Be intentional about the stories you tell. And if it's a meeting for TV, be TV is movies, be movies, and then but the rumor is just putting out there, they're going to do a secret wars. And they're probably going to have Dr.

Doom come in and that's when they're going to introduce X Men. I'm just speculation X Men and Fantastic Four and, probably bring back the original folks, which they believe that's going to help get people back on board. But we'll see. 

Mr.Benja: And depending on what's happening in Loki. There could be another thing going on too.

 We shall see. And here's the thing, the fact that we're talking about the behind the scenes being the story instead of the actual story being the story, that's all I'm saying about that. Story number four. This is our AI Watch. Every week we come to you with a little bit of AI news and what's going on with the, in the world of artificial intelligence, large language models, and Skynet and the robots taking over.

And this week we got a couple for you. ScarJo! Scarlett Johansson just recently got, well, she got ripped off basically. They took her likeness just like they did Tom Hanks and started doing stuff and put her in an ad and she's Hey, that's not me, but it looks like me, talks like me, sounds like me.

What the hell? That's not me. It's AI. So they got Scar Jo in there too. And now she's trying to sue and bring light to this problem. Theo does she have a chance? What's going on? Scar, 

Theo Harvey: Scar Jo loves to sue boys. She was suing Disney. Now she's suing AI. Yeah, man. She's suing little sister, man. Go ahead, girl.

Yeah. Yeah, it's good. They need to, I think Tom Hanks is doing something like that too. So images and likeness. This is going to be key battleground for the future. So more to come, but I think they're probably going to win this battle. Because they're getting in early. But there's just so much money going to AI.

And, they're going to find ways around it where even the actor is going to be like, ah, did I do that? It's going to be so real. I guess I did do that. Or they're going to find arrangements where they're going to pay them for licensing their image. I think that's going to be the workaround. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah, that's what they do for a lot of music where they come find out, hey, you didn't license this music properly.

And you're right. All right, here's 20, 000. Yeah, I'll be back next year for the other 20, it's yeah, 

Theo Harvey: no work, no, nothing. And they just use the image, and then they get the approval on how the image is used. And it's a no brainer. That's what this is going to end up. Yeah, 

Mr.Benja: it's a good thing we have the the U.

S. Government on on task. They have a new I don't call it task force, but they have uh, according to Mashable, White House drops an AI regulation bombshell, 10 new mandates that will shake up the industry. And this is targeting Open AI, Google, Microsoft and the other prominent AI players. And they're saying they must adhere to this new legislation.

Sounds good, right? 

Theo Harvey: Yeah, I would think so. I don't know, man. I'm just one of those persons that anything that government's into is shaky. I'm not saying that I'm anti government, it's just. Sometimes a lot of stuff they put together is not thought through thoroughly. And so one of the things is they developers are powerful.

AI systems must share the results of their safety tests with the federal government. Sure. What is that? Just like here's my homework is one piece of paper. All the tests I did. Okay, here's a, how the government just doesn't have the resources to really dig in deep and figure out what they're doing.

And so that would be my concern. They're saying things like AI generated content must be watermarked. Sure. There's probably going to be ways around that. It's a start. I get that point, you can't regulate, it's very hard to regulate commerce.

And if you don't put incentives, economic incentives, I sound like a free marketer, right? It's not like a I sound like a what's it called? I can't remember the name right now. A libertarian, it's but it's true. It's People only going to be do what they leverage to do it to do right.

So if they you can put all these regulations and all this stuff, but you can't stop progress the Pandora's box out. So they got to put more guardrails around incentives and maybe give people rights to sue AI companies. And I think they would slow down a lot more if there was a financial, a heartache financial, say for instance, if Chad GPT stole your image, you could get all their revenue from your image into perpetuity.

Something like that without, yeah. So that's not my thoughts on it. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah. Put it on the blockchain. It'll be great. It'll be fine. All right. So we're going to round this one out with story number five. We got a little rant here. A lot of us use Instagram. A lot of us use Facebook. More of us starting to use threads and their messaging service.

That's WhatsApp, right? Yeah. This, these are all owned by Meta and Zuckerberg is doing this thing. Reports come out, Meta has your kids. Basically, the government realized, or not the government realized, but a lot of people realized that there was undue influence on kids with Instagram. pEople like me, you, we use Instagram, and we get caught up, and we're like, man, we're using this thing all the time.

And, it's oh, too bad. But, with Instagram, And kids is a different thing. So it's not that it's not that this stuff is addictive. It's not that this stuff is possibly harmful. It's that Metta actually knew about it. Metta knew about this stuff, knew that it was harming kids, knew that it was leading them into more troublesome behaviors and they kept doing it anyway.

So now they've got issues, Theo. 

Theo Harvey: They got problems. Yeah, man. The thing, this is the basis of the lawsuit that they put out there. And so the reason why this came to light, there was an article, I think I sent to you in the wall street journal where the consultant who was part of that project just basically flat out said, I told him about this problem years ago because he saw it.

He used to work at Facebook and then he saw it when he came back to help them with their content moderation that he saw these creepers out here targeting his 16 year old daughter. And so he said, this is on Facebook and Instagram. What's going on? They said, he said, among users under the age of 16, 26 percent recalled having a bad experience in the last week.

Due to witnessing hostile hostility against someone based on a race, religion, or identity. And it said more than a fifth felt worse about themselves after viewing others posts. And 13 percent had experienced unwanted sexual advances in the past seven days. I'm not talking about for a whole year. We're talking in a week.

13 percent of kids experiencing this under 16. As a parent, this is deeply disconcerting. And I think this lawsuit may have some legs that we're going to experience over the next couple of weeks with Facebook. 

Mr.Benja: So it's going to be the big tobacco of our era. I think. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah, I do too. Mr. Benja, man, we covered it.

We did it, Mr. Benja. So I love it how we get it in Mr. Benja, man. I think we're going to end it today. Hey everyone. If you'd like this content, please subscribe, comment at show versus business on X known as Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. Listen to iTunes, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to learn more about us, check out our website at show versus business.

All right, Mr. Benja, have a good one. Peace.