You're listening to Comedy Central when listening about it's the show. I'm Sarah Coilverman, and this is my last night hosting the show. And I'm so sad to leave because I was just getting comfortable doing that thing where you're mean to the crew guys, but like in a loving way. I'm gonna miss you, Rich, you dumb bastard. Take care of Charlie, you ugly piece of ship. See if your wife's cheating on you. We've got a great show for you tonight. So let's get into headlines that's can be getting with Kim Jonghoon, the only brutal dictator made in a build to bear workshop. This week, the North Korean leader announced a new law that no one else in the country can have the same name as his ten year old daughter Jue. And this hits me personally because I'm you're ahead of it. I'm pretty jew A. Just imagine how much this would suck for all the other Jewey's out there. You know they got to change their name. Now you've got to switch your name on your internet bill, your cable bill, your newspaper subscription. I mean they don't have those there. But still moving on to some important news from the world of science. I was listening to the radio yesterday and I heard something that stopped me. Short. Take listen. It's now five oh three and penis length is on the rise. I'm sorry, what kind of radio station is this. We've got weather on the ones and penis on the threes. But yes, according to a new study, the average erect penis length has increased over the last three decades to five point five inches. I know right. Women in the audience are going, that's it, and the men are like, oh, thank god. Now. No one is sure why this happened. My theory is that at some point around men started measuring their penises starting from their assholes. This is uh, this is not how we expected men to evolve. Over the last thirty years, women have been saying, please, we just want you to be more in touch with your emotions, and men are like, all we can give you is a longer dick, and we're like, okay, we'll take it. Well, let's move on to presidential race, where GOP candidate Nicky Haley launched her campaign with a rally that featured a very interesting opening act. This is John Hagey. He's an American pastor and a televangelist with a history of making outlandishly offensive comments. In two thousand six, he claimed that Hurricane Katrina was God's way of punishing the city for allowing a gay pride parade. He once claimed that God sent Hitler to hunt the Jewish people as part of a divine plan to drive them back to the land of Israel, and he claimed women are only meant to be mothers and bear children. But Pastor Hagey has found a presidential candidate who is willing to embrace him. Today, he gave the opening prayer for the presidential campaign kickoff for former Governor Nicky Haley. To Pastor Hagey, I still say I want to be you when I grow up, oh Pastor Haggie. I hope one day I can appreciate Hitler as much as you do. I mean, right now, my appreciation of Hitler is like here, I want to get it up, get it up to about here short and look. You know, sure this guy thinks the Holocaust is good, and that's not good. But on the bright side, he doesn't believe it happened. You know, you gotta take the double is where you can. But Perapster. Haggie wasn't the only notable person there last night. Jordan Klepper also headed down to Nicki Haley's rally for another installment of Fingers the Pulse. Check it out. Nicky Haley, the former South Carolina governor and up you an ambassador, has decided to throw her head of the ring and run against her old boss. So I went to her campaign launch in South Carolina to see if the party was really ready to turn the page. Are you excited about Nikki Haley for Presidents? Very excited. She's done great things for South Carolina. She's tough, she's a woman women role. The Republican Party needs a change if we need someone with Nikki's foreign policy expertise. I love Donald Trump, but I think that she has more of a feminine finness. You think Trump as a harder time with communicating with ladies. He has a harsher approach when it comes to women, and he sometimes has to pay for it, and he's sometimes has a hard time navigating it. Yes, I mean I think she's really rotting to get like. I don't think she'll win. Oh, I think it's her VP. So this is just sort of like batting practice. It is fun to be here. Why not VP or President? I was curious to see how Haley could win over ardent Trump supporters. I voted for Trump, but I certainly will not be doing that again. When did Trump lose your support? Now in the conference for me with Donald Trump, let me guess Charlotte spill. Nope, but okay, let me kid. You're not gonna guess it. Kids in cages Nope. The interaction January six, the nope, okay, Wait on first of truck nope, second hope okay. Uh inviting white supremacist over to morro Laga, No, but damn. I mean, you know, criticizing the Shantis before his election, wouldn't. Guest didn't. So that's the line, right, That was the nowl on the conference. I would have guess kids in cages? I told you you when the guest did. This is the way you come on and talk to people. You're constantly surprised. Haley has been either a strong Trump critic or a vocal Trump ally, depending on the time of day. Could this pose a problem? Did you feel like she sufficiently stood up to Donald Trump when she needed to? I think she has, and I think he's not afraid to stand up to any mail or female with her voice of opinion. Yes, after January six, she wasn't afraid to say this is disgusting. That's and then a couple of weeks later to say they were being too hard on him. Yes, yes, we agree. Agree. An individual respects you if you can stand up to that. So if something avil happens, like Charlotte'sville speaks her mind, Charlotteville happens, she's not afraid to criticize Trump. Walk right in there and and in her fifty two week notice, right is right. She knows right from wrong. It's a campaign that's distancing itself from the far right fringe, except if you look closely at Haley's first speaker, Pastor John Hage, who has unusual views on the weather. As a cand you have that responsibility to not get in the gutter, so hopefully we can stay in a more positive plans. Well, the first person I saw on stage was Pastor Hage, who thinks hurricanes are a punishment for k people? Is that really what he said? How long ago was that that was? That was wrong? Katrina? Yeah, Yeah, that's a that's an interesting opening act. Pastor Hagee has said that hurricanes were God's punishment for gaze. Oh no, preaches the gospel. I mean I followed him for years. But maybe if she wants to track moderates, come in with a little bit more of a moderate pastor who thinks something more acceptable, like tornadoes are caused by too much masturbation. Oh my goodness. Yeah, that's way out there. Now, that's too far. And there's that line again. All right, when we come back, I'll tell you why you're so mad, So don't go away. Welcome back to the Daily Show. Ever, notice how you hate everyone who just agrees with you. If you said yes, then you're not alone. And if you said no, then you But you're not the only one who feels this way. After two hundred and forty four years together as a nation, we seem to be growing apart. Americans are fiercely split, not only about policy but on the basic decency of the other side. Growing shares in each party now describe those in the other party as more closed minded, dishonest, immoral, and unintelligent. According to an NBC poll, six of college Democrats say they would not dorm with a Republican of Americans now have few or no friends across the aisle. In a poll before the last election, percent of Republicans and twenty of Democrats agreed that the country would be better off if large numbers of the opposing party just died. We'd be better off off the other side just died. What that's crazy? Please think about it. The entire country would be haunted by the ghosts of your enemies. Enemies who, by the way, cannon will watch you master be And why can't you share a dorm room with someone you disagree with politically? It's it's a difference of opinion, not airborne chlamydia. Also, it would be great to dorm with a Republican. Do you know how fun it would be to sexile someone who doesn't even believe in pre marital sex. Sorry, don't come in, we're drying our wet spot with your all Lives Matter shirt. Sure. So the question is how did we as a country become this divided? Let's talk about it in our latest installment of Long Story Short m Outrage in America isn't new. It's one of our oldest pastimes, right behind baseball and racism. But what is new is just how much money entire industries are making off our outrage, starting with social media. Their entire business model depends on keeping your eyeballs on the screen until your tokes gets numb on the toilet seed, and nothing does that better than anger. I've actually been on the toilet with my phone so long that I p again. In eighteen, and internal Facebook report showed that their algorithm purposely feeds users divisive content and ordered it increased time on their platform. We've all experienced this. I mean, personally, I am way more likely to click on some dudes transphobic ramps than another picture of my cousin twins. I mean, don't get me wrong, both those kids are step in their own truly fascinating way. They're not keeping me scrolling till two a m. And once the algorithm figures out what pisces you off, it runs with it right off a cliff. In the summer of two thousand and nineteen, Facebook ran an experiment. It created a fake account for a forty one year old mom living in North Carolina. They called her Carol Smith. Carol started off by liking a few popular conservative Facebook pages like Fox News, Donald Trump, and Milannia Trump, but quickly, Facebook began dragging her down a rabbit hole of misinformation after only two days. Two days, Facebook recommended Carol follow a q and on page, and a few days later it suggested she follow another. By week three of the experiment, Carol's feed had become quote a constant flow of misleading and polarizing content, and so Facebook began sending push notifications. One notification was actually to a Facebook post claiming Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Wow. Facebook radicalized the person in just three weeks. Even Isis was like, why can't we get numbers like that? And that's just one example. Everything on the internet is so sweaty. I bought one credenza from west Selman sixteen and ever since then they've been emailing me like five times a day, and by the fifth one, they're so desperate. They're like, if you check out our new throw pillows, we'll suck your But as bad as the Internet is, studies show that it's nothing compared to how cable news increases polarization, because at least on the Internet, different viewpoints sneak their way into your feeds, But nobody on Earth is flipping back and forth between MSNBC and Fox News except for me because I like to break out of my bubble and watch the reverse mortgage commercials from both sides. Now, all the major cable news networks rile you up, but no one is better at it than Fox News. They've become the top cable news network by making their viewers livid, and they're not subtle about it either. This story will have you fired up. This morning, US soldiers now learning about the dangers of white privilege. We have a story that will make your blood boil. Infamous social justice warrior calling Kaepernick is now the brand new face of a Nike ad campaign. If you just paid your taxes, this next story will piss you off. This is going to enrage you. You're going to be outraged when we tell you what happened. Prepared to be outraged, Get ready to be angry. The story is gonna make you sick. This story will make you want to throw your newspaper. Make your blood boiled. This next news story is going to make you so mad you'll want to punch yourself in the butthole. You'll be so manuell puke on your nana. You'll be so outraged by this next story, You'll rip out all your pubes in one poll. Thank you, cable News. Now at the top of the anger food chain are the politicians who benefit the most from our outrage. Because politicians know that rage equals donations. That's why they're constantly pushing stupid culture war issues on us, whether they're real or completely made up. This morning, a new warning about the dangers of misinformation spreading online and making its way into political races, and this latest claim that some school districts are providing cat litter boxes for students who identify as cats. The first sign of the rumor in the US appears to have been at this Michigan school board meeting last December, where it was discussed by a parent without crue, then shared on Facebook by a chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party referring to furies. The false story sneaking its way across the country and now into Republican stump speeches. Have you heard about the litter boxes stuff? If we don't push back on a cat, they put tails on and they demand that they have a litter box in the school, not because there's actual cats in the room, but because there's kids going around licking themselves as though they're cats. We've literally got kids who think they're cats and dogs using litter boxes in classrooms. No, you don't, You literally don't. Kids are not trying to ship in litter boxes in the school or at all. I mean, most kids won't ship in toilets in school, Are you kidding me? Other kids might't know that you ship and that's a secret. This is how I know it's a lie because they don't have one exam full of it happening, not one. But that didn't stop them from spreading it because it benefits them. So long story short, if you're wondering why you're so angry all the time, it's not a coincidence. The system is designed to provoke you. And politicians like this system because they profit from it, they survive from it. They can say anything as long as it's what their audience wants to believe. That's why when there was a bill that would have required fundraising emails to be fact checked, Marjorie Taylor Green blocked it. Now, that was a lie I just made up. But you're like, get up, don't you. We're so ready to donate to my campaign, And once you notice how much this system profits off your anger. It's not surprising that people would like the other side to just die. It's not surprised that people are afraid to dorm with the monsters who believe different lies than us. It's not even surprising when a mob of people believing they are righteous storm the capital, an event where ironically, a bunch of furries used Nancy Pelosi's office as a little boy. All right, thank you, because when we come back, we'll talk more about this with New Yorker writer g Show. My guest tonight as a staff writer at The New Yorker and author of the bestseller Trick Mirror Reflections on Self Delusion. She's here to talk about social media companies monetizing hate and how we can use the Internet as a force for good. Please welcome Ga Tolentino. So you've written about social media companies and how they monetize rage. Is there any way too, Is there any way that they could be incentivized to stop this. One way that I think about it is like, did corporations all throughout, like the last century until the seventies have any incentive to stop like poisoning rivers and dumping their waste all over the place. They didn't. It's like cheaper to be shitty, right like they like it is it is in their financial best interest to just keep poisoning the river until someone makes them stop, which we could, but like, you know, it's in their best and just for us to feel bad, right like you never hear someone being like I had an amazing day. I I just sat and I scrolled for six hours, right Like, it's like you only do that when you feel You only scroll that long when you feel bad. And when you do that, when you scroll for that long, you feel even worse, and then you do it more, and that cycle is the primary ways. Like cocaine, it is like, right, I was chasing that first one. It's just not going to come back. Yeah, exactly. But um, it's interesting because I see stories pop up that give me outrage, and I realized that they're designed to do it. Like it took me a second. A friend of mine whose leans a little right, texted me this story about how the LGBT community wants to uh ban natural you know, you make me feel like a natural or Aretha Franklin and I did like two cliques of research, and of course it was from a parody account, but picked up from papers. And then the parody account even said afterwards, like nobody called us for a comment, right, right, and then on no one check the about page on the website. Yeah. And then on the left, you know, I read an article about the Missouri Senate making women's senators they couldn't worse sleeveless shirts, and I was about to go ape ship, and then I went, oh, but the men afterwards ties in suits. It's just a dress code, but it was designed to make me go bananas, and it did, right, I mean everything, like if you are on a social media platform, that what you see is governed by an algorithm, which is basically all the major ones. It's all designed to make you feel like the best person possible and that everyone else is a dumb piece of ship. Like that's that is, that is what gets us to spend as much time on there as possible. Yeah. I used to go that righteousness porn. Yeah yeah, And then you realize you don't actually want to see these male law wakers wearing tank tops anyway, you know what I'm saying, Maybe we don't want see anyone'sup our arms, so I just want to be able to say point to someone I was wrong and he is right, and then you get off on it. And it's also like there's so many things to actually be mad about, and a lot of the stuff that's you know, it's like some celebrities sets something done. It's like do do we care? Does does this matter? Does? Like? I think one of the things that drives me personally nuts about all of it is that there's no sense of scale. It's like everything is presented as equally and maximally enraging, when actually there are some things that matter a lot, most things matter very little or nothing at all, and we're taught that, you know, we should all be as mad as possible about all of it all the time. Right Well, yeah, I mean, like you went off Twitter a few years ago, congratulation, thank you so much, thank you grank here, I'm so much. I thought it would turned me into like a genius and like a like a great happy person, and it, you know, just I'm wasting just a little less time, right right. But I mean, like I definitely like I'm kind of exit only on there now and all right, I just like we'll post stuff I need to post fort or something but that has made my life a little definitely a little bit you realize that Twitter or is not the world right right, And I mean I got off because, like, I don't know if you had this experience, but it was like, as soon as the pandemic started, you know, and my my life shrank to you know, one room and a weekly trip to the grocery store and the internet balloon to fill the rest of my existence. And I was like this, this sucks, you know, like the Internet is never supposed to be bigger than your life, and when the pandemic made it bigger than actual physical life, I was like, I gotta, I gotta get out of here. Twitter is such a cesspool now, it's so negative. How do there's is there any way to unravel this? Well? I think that as long as these companies, the primary way they make their money is for us to spend as much time as possible on them. And the best way, as you were saying in that segment, for us for them to ensure that we spend as much time on them as possible is through all of the emotions that make us feel as bad as possible, self righteousness and anger and you know, everyone getting as mad as possible as a group about something you're gonna forget about the next day. As long as that is the economic model, there is no hope. But I think, you know, again, as with the corporations that were you know, making all the fish die in the rivers, you can you can make them change. We could regulate this, right if we put pressure on our government or yeah, I mean I think our government is like how does also nursing at the teet of big tech? I think like one, I think one thing that's necessary is for people to remember that we can you know, we don't have to feel like yeah, yeah, like the internet. We all feel insane on the internet. We all feel so bad all the time. And that's just the way it is, right. I think that I think that we it is we are capable of getting as mad about this as people did about in the environmental move in the seventies, right, like we're we're capable of generating pressure and putting it on lawmakers. And there you know, there are things like you could end automated recommendations, right. Automated recommendations are the reasons that you know, a mom of two in Cleveland, you know, starts looking up smoothie recipes for her two year old and ends up believing that wayfare is shipping, you know, like orphans in their things. And you know the while I designed too radical exactly right, and and and so much of that, so much of that is automated recommendations because that um and and people have been recommending for years for for that, you know, simply ending those Those are one of the biggest reasons that the Internet has gotten so much worse, so much less fun so much less surprising, is because these companies just identify the kind of person you are and then funnel you towards you know, whatever the worst version of that person is. YouTube is bizarre. You know. One time I made the mistake of going like, what is this globalization? Like global lists? What do they mean my global lists? And uh I became an anti Semite in like fifteen. Yeah, it's it's amazing how well it works. You know that there there are things like you know, you could end legal immunity for these companies if violence is caused by something that was generated on these platforms. The worst that actual offline life is the more people spend on the internet, right, and we just have really done very little in terms of public policy, to make actual life better for people, right, to give people more money and more freedom, and to give people free public spaces to hang out. So the only place, so it's not like the only place they hang out is the internet. You know, we've done so little to improve actual life that I think is one of the things that drives people over and over to just be like, you know, like for there hours at a time. And I mean I feel like a boomer saying that, but I feel like that that would help a lot. Well. Yeah. Also, it's like I feel like social media originally was designed or its intention was to connect right, to connect people, but instead I think it's kind of put us in silos and it's given us this existential like do I exist? You know? I mean, you're gonna selfies. I feel like our are just a constant question of do I exist? I exist? Right? And uh, you know, it's interesting, but there's anger. You know, people make money from our anger, they clicks from anger. But there's some good anger on the internet where people are organizing, right, you know, so how do you not how do you differentiate, but how do you keep the good anger and get us away from the the shitty anger what you were saying about connection, It's like we the version of connection that is generated through hate is not a kind of connection that makes sense in real life. It's not. It's only a kind of connection that is incentivized and sounds good on the internet, right like in real life, or we actually like, oh, I want to spend six hours like phase deep in, you know, in the business of someone I hate. No, right, like we form we we do our business based on like affinity and the things that we care about and the things that we like positively want. And I think about you know, as much as I think the Internet as it's structured right now is kind of inevitably an existential and civic that negative that there are still these things. I mean, you think about the protest summer. They wouldn't have turned into what they became, right with like a quarter of Americans, you know, hitting the streets at some point if it wasn't for like a continual stream of videos on Twitter of police brutalizing the protesters at the police brutality protests, right like like these, there is still like radical potential. You think about what people are doing with abortion access right now on the Internet, you know, forming these underground networks and getting people to travel across state lines and making sure anyone can get pills who needs them. You know, I try to remember that, you know, we still can and will try to be human on you know, within a mechanism that wants us to be less so and we can keep doing it. Well, let's se Yeah, it's like the Wild West, but the the leaders are billionaires. And I mean everything, I feel like, every single thing, every conversation I've had here, I feel like boils down to Citizens United because as long as people can line politicians pockets, they're buying policy and our votes don't I mean, your vote counts, and don't vote, just simply don't count. Yeah, but it's it's very frustrating. It doesn't it's clearly not right, like you know, but of course they name its Citizens Unit. It sounds beautiful. Let's hold for the siren. I'm just getting fun to show that I'm in show business and I know how things work. Well. Yeah, and I think part of it, I mean, we see this pushback now right there, there is a fomenting sort of push back and a dissatisfaction, and you know, the hope is that it bubbles over into actual pressure on lawmakers to to do something. But you know, for a long time, we accepted the general model of Silicon Valley that move fast, break things sort of move faster than regulation could ever get you. We accepted that it's like, oh, that's amazing, we could you know that that will result in us pressing a button and getting like you know, a car, our doorstep, and you know, and any kind of food we want. Like we've we for a really long time accepted the conveniences that the internet economy provides us. Such little thoughts are convenience, and then they just and then they just snap those little handcuffs of anger and yeah, you go, like iPhones are made by child labor. I'm gonna, well, yeah, that seemless click to or Amazon, you know, I'm gonna you know, I was like, no, no one's boycotting Amazon. It's too convenient. Yeah, But the thing is you can And I think that like, like the real first step in all of this is remembering like we I mean, I have to have it's very orwelly and I have a program called self control on my computer and a program called freedom on my phone and those things because I have neither and both, and both of those things lock me off of social media for like fifteen hours a day. And I have needed to do that because I'm such a little slut for all the things that makes me mad. And and it does work, like you can just refuse to participate in little little bits until maybe suddenly your life has changed a little. And I and I would, I would recommend you know it's it's it's worth a dry Yeah, definitely. I mean they say, like, of course nobody can sleep because you're on your phones. You're got to turn the screens off. And I'm like, yeah, but also no, but I prefer to drop my phone on my phone times and that is when I go to Okay, how do we fix the Internet? Um? Is there any hope in all of this? Yeah? Yeah, I think I think in regulation, and I think in public pushback, and I think in all of us spending less time on our phone. Whether that means refusing convenience, you know, certain things that are convenience, I think it means I think all of these things are possible, but we have to maybe accept that in order to resist social media, in order for to resist the constant surveillance that's hitting us on our phone, that all these companies are like tracking and reselling to other companies to make money off of everything we do. We have to maybe we have to maybe refuse a little bit of the cheap pleasure and the convenience that the phone gives us. But I think we can, all right, yea, the definition of trick mirror is available. Now check this out. Okay, I'm here a quickly. That's night and that's my time for this week. But come back again because your next host is Hassan Minage and if you love me, come out and come see me on tour. Check out the link of the QR code below for dates. Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show wherever you get your podcast. Watch The Daily Show weeknights at eleven ten Central on Comedy Central and stream full episodes anytime on Fairmount Plus. This has been a Comedy Central podcast

You're listening to Comedy Central when listening about it's the show. I'm Sarah Coilverman, and this is my last night hosting the show. And I'm so sad to leave because I was just getting comfortable doing that thing where you're mean to the crew guys, but like in a loving way. I'm gonna miss you, Rich, you dumb bastard. Take care of Charlie, you ugly piece of ship. See if your wife's cheating on you. We've got a great show for you tonight. So let's get into headlines that's can be getting with Kim Jonghoon, the only brutal dictator made in a build to bear workshop. This week, the North Korean leader announced a new law that no one else in the country can have the same name as his ten year old daughter Jue. And this hits me personally because I'm you're ahead of it. I'm pretty jew A. Just imagine how much this would suck for all the other Jewey's out there. You know they got to change their name. Now you've got to switch your name on your internet bill, your cable bill, your newspaper subscription. I mean they don't have those there. But still moving on to some important news from the world of science. I was listening to the radio yesterday and I heard something that stopped me. Short. Take listen. It's now five oh three and penis length is on the rise. I'm sorry, what kind of radio station is this. We've got weather on the ones and penis on the threes. But yes, according to a new study, the average erect penis length has increased over the last three decades to five point five inches. I know right. Women in the audience are going, that's it, and the men are like, oh, thank god. Now. No one is sure why this happened. My theory is that at some point around men started measuring their penises starting from their assholes. This is uh, this is not how we expected men to evolve. Over the last thirty years, women have been saying, please, we just want you to be more in touch with your emotions, and men are like, all we can give you is a longer dick, and we're like, okay, we'll take it. Well, let's move on to presidential race, where GOP candidate Nicky Haley launched her campaign with a rally that featured a very interesting opening act. This is John Hagey. He's an American pastor and a televangelist with a history of making outlandishly offensive comments. In two thousand six, he claimed that Hurricane Katrina was God's way of punishing the city for allowing a gay pride parade. He once claimed that God sent Hitler to hunt the Jewish people as part of a divine plan to drive them back to the land of Israel, and he claimed women are only meant to be mothers and bear children. But Pastor Hagey has found a presidential candidate who is willing to embrace him. Today, he gave the opening prayer for the presidential campaign kickoff for former Governor Nicky Haley. To Pastor Hagey, I still say I want to be you when I grow up, oh Pastor Haggie. I hope one day I can appreciate Hitler as much as you do. I mean, right now, my appreciation of Hitler is like here, I want to get it up, get it up to about here short and look. You know, sure this guy thinks the Holocaust is good, and that's not good. But on the bright side, he doesn't believe it happened. You know, you gotta take the double is where you can. But Perapster. Haggie wasn't the only notable person there last night. Jordan Klepper also headed down to Nicki Haley's rally for another installment of Fingers the Pulse. Check it out. Nicky Haley, the former South Carolina governor and up you an ambassador, has decided to throw her head of the ring and run against her old boss. So I went to her campaign launch in South Carolina to see if the party was really ready to turn the page. Are you excited about Nikki Haley for Presidents? Very excited. She's done great things for South Carolina. She's tough, she's a woman women role. The Republican Party needs a change if we need someone with Nikki's foreign policy expertise. I love Donald Trump, but I think that she has more of a feminine finness. You think Trump as a harder time with communicating with ladies. He has a harsher approach when it comes to women, and he sometimes has to pay for it, and he's sometimes has a hard time navigating it. Yes, I mean I think she's really rotting to get like. I don't think she'll win. Oh, I think it's her VP. So this is just sort of like batting practice. It is fun to be here. Why not VP or President? I was curious to see how Haley could win over ardent Trump supporters. I voted for Trump, but I certainly will not be doing that again. When did Trump lose your support? Now in the conference for me with Donald Trump, let me guess Charlotte spill. Nope, but okay, let me kid. You're not gonna guess it. Kids in cages Nope. The interaction January six, the nope, okay, Wait on first of truck nope, second hope okay. Uh inviting white supremacist over to morro Laga, No, but damn. I mean, you know, criticizing the Shantis before his election, wouldn't. Guest didn't. So that's the line, right, That was the nowl on the conference. I would have guess kids in cages? I told you you when the guest did. This is the way you come on and talk to people. You're constantly surprised. Haley has been either a strong Trump critic or a vocal Trump ally, depending on the time of day. Could this pose a problem? Did you feel like she sufficiently stood up to Donald Trump when she needed to? I think she has, and I think he's not afraid to stand up to any mail or female with her voice of opinion. Yes, after January six, she wasn't afraid to say this is disgusting. That's and then a couple of weeks later to say they were being too hard on him. Yes, yes, we agree. Agree. An individual respects you if you can stand up to that. So if something avil happens, like Charlotte'sville speaks her mind, Charlotteville happens, she's not afraid to criticize Trump. Walk right in there and and in her fifty two week notice, right is right. She knows right from wrong. It's a campaign that's distancing itself from the far right fringe, except if you look closely at Haley's first speaker, Pastor John Hage, who has unusual views on the weather. As a cand you have that responsibility to not get in the gutter, so hopefully we can stay in a more positive plans. Well, the first person I saw on stage was Pastor Hage, who thinks hurricanes are a punishment for k people? Is that really what he said? How long ago was that that was? That was wrong? Katrina? Yeah, Yeah, that's a that's an interesting opening act. Pastor Hagee has said that hurricanes were God's punishment for gaze. Oh no, preaches the gospel. I mean I followed him for years. But maybe if she wants to track moderates, come in with a little bit more of a moderate pastor who thinks something more acceptable, like tornadoes are caused by too much masturbation. Oh my goodness. Yeah, that's way out there. Now, that's too far. And there's that line again. All right, when we come back, I'll tell you why you're so mad, So don't go away. Welcome back to the Daily Show. Ever, notice how you hate everyone who just agrees with you. If you said yes, then you're not alone. And if you said no, then you But you're not the only one who feels this way. After two hundred and forty four years together as a nation, we seem to be growing apart. Americans are fiercely split, not only about policy but on the basic decency of the other side. Growing shares in each party now describe those in the other party as more closed minded, dishonest, immoral, and unintelligent. According to an NBC poll, six of college Democrats say they would not dorm with a Republican of Americans now have few or no friends across the aisle. In a poll before the last election, percent of Republicans and twenty of Democrats agreed that the country would be better off if large numbers of the opposing party just died. We'd be better off off the other side just died. What that's crazy? Please think about it. The entire country would be haunted by the ghosts of your enemies. Enemies who, by the way, cannon will watch you master be And why can't you share a dorm room with someone you disagree with politically? It's it's a difference of opinion, not airborne chlamydia. Also, it would be great to dorm with a Republican. Do you know how fun it would be to sexile someone who doesn't even believe in pre marital sex. Sorry, don't come in, we're drying our wet spot with your all Lives Matter shirt. Sure. So the question is how did we as a country become this divided? Let's talk about it in our latest installment of Long Story Short m Outrage in America isn't new. It's one of our oldest pastimes, right behind baseball and racism. But what is new is just how much money entire industries are making off our outrage, starting with social media. Their entire business model depends on keeping your eyeballs on the screen until your tokes gets numb on the toilet seed, and nothing does that better than anger. I've actually been on the toilet with my phone so long that I p again. In eighteen, and internal Facebook report showed that their algorithm purposely feeds users divisive content and ordered it increased time on their platform. We've all experienced this. I mean, personally, I am way more likely to click on some dudes transphobic ramps than another picture of my cousin twins. I mean, don't get me wrong, both those kids are step in their own truly fascinating way. They're not keeping me scrolling till two a m. And once the algorithm figures out what pisces you off, it runs with it right off a cliff. In the summer of two thousand and nineteen, Facebook ran an experiment. It created a fake account for a forty one year old mom living in North Carolina. They called her Carol Smith. Carol started off by liking a few popular conservative Facebook pages like Fox News, Donald Trump, and Milannia Trump, but quickly, Facebook began dragging her down a rabbit hole of misinformation after only two days. Two days, Facebook recommended Carol follow a q and on page, and a few days later it suggested she follow another. By week three of the experiment, Carol's feed had become quote a constant flow of misleading and polarizing content, and so Facebook began sending push notifications. One notification was actually to a Facebook post claiming Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Wow. Facebook radicalized the person in just three weeks. Even Isis was like, why can't we get numbers like that? And that's just one example. Everything on the internet is so sweaty. I bought one credenza from west Selman sixteen and ever since then they've been emailing me like five times a day, and by the fifth one, they're so desperate. They're like, if you check out our new throw pillows, we'll suck your But as bad as the Internet is, studies show that it's nothing compared to how cable news increases polarization, because at least on the Internet, different viewpoints sneak their way into your feeds, But nobody on Earth is flipping back and forth between MSNBC and Fox News except for me because I like to break out of my bubble and watch the reverse mortgage commercials from both sides. Now, all the major cable news networks rile you up, but no one is better at it than Fox News. They've become the top cable news network by making their viewers livid, and they're not subtle about it either. This story will have you fired up. This morning, US soldiers now learning about the dangers of white privilege. We have a story that will make your blood boil. Infamous social justice warrior calling Kaepernick is now the brand new face of a Nike ad campaign. If you just paid your taxes, this next story will piss you off. This is going to enrage you. You're going to be outraged when we tell you what happened. Prepared to be outraged, Get ready to be angry. The story is gonna make you sick. This story will make you want to throw your newspaper. Make your blood boiled. This next news story is going to make you so mad you'll want to punch yourself in the butthole. You'll be so manuell puke on your nana. You'll be so outraged by this next story, You'll rip out all your pubes in one poll. Thank you, cable News. Now at the top of the anger food chain are the politicians who benefit the most from our outrage. Because politicians know that rage equals donations. That's why they're constantly pushing stupid culture war issues on us, whether they're real or completely made up. This morning, a new warning about the dangers of misinformation spreading online and making its way into political races, and this latest claim that some school districts are providing cat litter boxes for students who identify as cats. The first sign of the rumor in the US appears to have been at this Michigan school board meeting last December, where it was discussed by a parent without crue, then shared on Facebook by a chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party referring to furies. The false story sneaking its way across the country and now into Republican stump speeches. Have you heard about the litter boxes stuff? If we don't push back on a cat, they put tails on and they demand that they have a litter box in the school, not because there's actual cats in the room, but because there's kids going around licking themselves as though they're cats. We've literally got kids who think they're cats and dogs using litter boxes in classrooms. No, you don't, You literally don't. Kids are not trying to ship in litter boxes in the school or at all. I mean, most kids won't ship in toilets in school, Are you kidding me? Other kids might't know that you ship and that's a secret. This is how I know it's a lie because they don't have one exam full of it happening, not one. But that didn't stop them from spreading it because it benefits them. So long story short, if you're wondering why you're so angry all the time, it's not a coincidence. The system is designed to provoke you. And politicians like this system because they profit from it, they survive from it. They can say anything as long as it's what their audience wants to believe. That's why when there was a bill that would have required fundraising emails to be fact checked, Marjorie Taylor Green blocked it. Now, that was a lie I just made up. But you're like, get up, don't you. We're so ready to donate to my campaign, And once you notice how much this system profits off your anger. It's not surprising that people would like the other side to just die. It's not surprised that people are afraid to dorm with the monsters who believe different lies than us. It's not even surprising when a mob of people believing they are righteous storm the capital, an event where ironically, a bunch of furries used Nancy Pelosi's office as a little boy. All right, thank you, because when we come back, we'll talk more about this with New Yorker writer g Show. My guest tonight as a staff writer at The New Yorker and author of the bestseller Trick Mirror Reflections on Self Delusion. She's here to talk about social media companies monetizing hate and how we can use the Internet as a force for good. Please welcome Ga Tolentino. So you've written about social media companies and how they monetize rage. Is there any way too, Is there any way that they could be incentivized to stop this. One way that I think about it is like, did corporations all throughout, like the last century until the seventies have any incentive to stop like poisoning rivers and dumping their waste all over the place. They didn't. It's like cheaper to be shitty, right like they like it is it is in their financial best interest to just keep poisoning the river until someone makes them stop, which we could, but like, you know, it's in their best and just for us to feel bad, right like you never hear someone being like I had an amazing day. I I just sat and I scrolled for six hours, right Like, it's like you only do that when you feel You only scroll that long when you feel bad. And when you do that, when you scroll for that long, you feel even worse, and then you do it more, and that cycle is the primary ways. Like cocaine, it is like, right, I was chasing that first one. It's just not going to come back. Yeah, exactly. But um, it's interesting because I see stories pop up that give me outrage, and I realized that they're designed to do it. Like it took me a second. A friend of mine whose leans a little right, texted me this story about how the LGBT community wants to uh ban natural you know, you make me feel like a natural or Aretha Franklin and I did like two cliques of research, and of course it was from a parody account, but picked up from papers. And then the parody account even said afterwards, like nobody called us for a comment, right, right, and then on no one check the about page on the website. Yeah. And then on the left, you know, I read an article about the Missouri Senate making women's senators they couldn't worse sleeveless shirts, and I was about to go ape ship, and then I went, oh, but the men afterwards ties in suits. It's just a dress code, but it was designed to make me go bananas, and it did, right, I mean everything, like if you are on a social media platform, that what you see is governed by an algorithm, which is basically all the major ones. It's all designed to make you feel like the best person possible and that everyone else is a dumb piece of ship. Like that's that is, that is what gets us to spend as much time on there as possible. Yeah. I used to go that righteousness porn. Yeah yeah, And then you realize you don't actually want to see these male law wakers wearing tank tops anyway, you know what I'm saying, Maybe we don't want see anyone'sup our arms, so I just want to be able to say point to someone I was wrong and he is right, and then you get off on it. And it's also like there's so many things to actually be mad about, and a lot of the stuff that's you know, it's like some celebrities sets something done. It's like do do we care? Does does this matter? Does? Like? I think one of the things that drives me personally nuts about all of it is that there's no sense of scale. It's like everything is presented as equally and maximally enraging, when actually there are some things that matter a lot, most things matter very little or nothing at all, and we're taught that, you know, we should all be as mad as possible about all of it all the time. Right Well, yeah, I mean, like you went off Twitter a few years ago, congratulation, thank you so much, thank you grank here, I'm so much. I thought it would turned me into like a genius and like a like a great happy person, and it, you know, just I'm wasting just a little less time, right right. But I mean, like I definitely like I'm kind of exit only on there now and all right, I just like we'll post stuff I need to post fort or something but that has made my life a little definitely a little bit you realize that Twitter or is not the world right right, And I mean I got off because, like, I don't know if you had this experience, but it was like, as soon as the pandemic started, you know, and my my life shrank to you know, one room and a weekly trip to the grocery store and the internet balloon to fill the rest of my existence. And I was like this, this sucks, you know, like the Internet is never supposed to be bigger than your life, and when the pandemic made it bigger than actual physical life, I was like, I gotta, I gotta get out of here. Twitter is such a cesspool now, it's so negative. How do there's is there any way to unravel this? Well? I think that as long as these companies, the primary way they make their money is for us to spend as much time as possible on them. And the best way, as you were saying in that segment, for us for them to ensure that we spend as much time on them as possible is through all of the emotions that make us feel as bad as possible, self righteousness and anger and you know, everyone getting as mad as possible as a group about something you're gonna forget about the next day. As long as that is the economic model, there is no hope. But I think, you know, again, as with the corporations that were you know, making all the fish die in the rivers, you can you can make them change. We could regulate this, right if we put pressure on our government or yeah, I mean I think our government is like how does also nursing at the teet of big tech? I think like one, I think one thing that's necessary is for people to remember that we can you know, we don't have to feel like yeah, yeah, like the internet. We all feel insane on the internet. We all feel so bad all the time. And that's just the way it is, right. I think that I think that we it is we are capable of getting as mad about this as people did about in the environmental move in the seventies, right, like we're we're capable of generating pressure and putting it on lawmakers. And there you know, there are things like you could end automated recommendations, right. Automated recommendations are the reasons that you know, a mom of two in Cleveland, you know, starts looking up smoothie recipes for her two year old and ends up believing that wayfare is shipping, you know, like orphans in their things. And you know the while I designed too radical exactly right, and and and so much of that, so much of that is automated recommendations because that um and and people have been recommending for years for for that, you know, simply ending those Those are one of the biggest reasons that the Internet has gotten so much worse, so much less fun so much less surprising, is because these companies just identify the kind of person you are and then funnel you towards you know, whatever the worst version of that person is. YouTube is bizarre. You know. One time I made the mistake of going like, what is this globalization? Like global lists? What do they mean my global lists? And uh I became an anti Semite in like fifteen. Yeah, it's it's amazing how well it works. You know that there there are things like you know, you could end legal immunity for these companies if violence is caused by something that was generated on these platforms. The worst that actual offline life is the more people spend on the internet, right, and we just have really done very little in terms of public policy, to make actual life better for people, right, to give people more money and more freedom, and to give people free public spaces to hang out. So the only place, so it's not like the only place they hang out is the internet. You know, we've done so little to improve actual life that I think is one of the things that drives people over and over to just be like, you know, like for there hours at a time. And I mean I feel like a boomer saying that, but I feel like that that would help a lot. Well. Yeah. Also, it's like I feel like social media originally was designed or its intention was to connect right, to connect people, but instead I think it's kind of put us in silos and it's given us this existential like do I exist? You know? I mean, you're gonna selfies. I feel like our are just a constant question of do I exist? I exist? Right? And uh, you know, it's interesting, but there's anger. You know, people make money from our anger, they clicks from anger. But there's some good anger on the internet where people are organizing, right, you know, so how do you not how do you differentiate, but how do you keep the good anger and get us away from the the shitty anger what you were saying about connection, It's like we the version of connection that is generated through hate is not a kind of connection that makes sense in real life. It's not. It's only a kind of connection that is incentivized and sounds good on the internet, right like in real life, or we actually like, oh, I want to spend six hours like phase deep in, you know, in the business of someone I hate. No, right, like we form we we do our business based on like affinity and the things that we care about and the things that we like positively want. And I think about you know, as much as I think the Internet as it's structured right now is kind of inevitably an existential and civic that negative that there are still these things. I mean, you think about the protest summer. They wouldn't have turned into what they became, right with like a quarter of Americans, you know, hitting the streets at some point if it wasn't for like a continual stream of videos on Twitter of police brutalizing the protesters at the police brutality protests, right like like these, there is still like radical potential. You think about what people are doing with abortion access right now on the Internet, you know, forming these underground networks and getting people to travel across state lines and making sure anyone can get pills who needs them. You know, I try to remember that, you know, we still can and will try to be human on you know, within a mechanism that wants us to be less so and we can keep doing it. Well, let's se Yeah, it's like the Wild West, but the the leaders are billionaires. And I mean everything, I feel like, every single thing, every conversation I've had here, I feel like boils down to Citizens United because as long as people can line politicians pockets, they're buying policy and our votes don't I mean, your vote counts, and don't vote, just simply don't count. Yeah, but it's it's very frustrating. It doesn't it's clearly not right, like you know, but of course they name its Citizens Unit. It sounds beautiful. Let's hold for the siren. I'm just getting fun to show that I'm in show business and I know how things work. Well. Yeah, and I think part of it, I mean, we see this pushback now right there, there is a fomenting sort of push back and a dissatisfaction, and you know, the hope is that it bubbles over into actual pressure on lawmakers to to do something. But you know, for a long time, we accepted the general model of Silicon Valley that move fast, break things sort of move faster than regulation could ever get you. We accepted that it's like, oh, that's amazing, we could you know that that will result in us pressing a button and getting like you know, a car, our doorstep, and you know, and any kind of food we want. Like we've we for a really long time accepted the conveniences that the internet economy provides us. Such little thoughts are convenience, and then they just and then they just snap those little handcuffs of anger and yeah, you go, like iPhones are made by child labor. I'm gonna, well, yeah, that seemless click to or Amazon, you know, I'm gonna you know, I was like, no, no one's boycotting Amazon. It's too convenient. Yeah, But the thing is you can And I think that like, like the real first step in all of this is remembering like we I mean, I have to have it's very orwelly and I have a program called self control on my computer and a program called freedom on my phone and those things because I have neither and both, and both of those things lock me off of social media for like fifteen hours a day. And I have needed to do that because I'm such a little slut for all the things that makes me mad. And and it does work, like you can just refuse to participate in little little bits until maybe suddenly your life has changed a little. And I and I would, I would recommend you know it's it's it's worth a dry Yeah, definitely. I mean they say, like, of course nobody can sleep because you're on your phones. You're got to turn the screens off. And I'm like, yeah, but also no, but I prefer to drop my phone on my phone times and that is when I go to Okay, how do we fix the Internet? Um? Is there any hope in all of this? Yeah? Yeah, I think I think in regulation, and I think in public pushback, and I think in all of us spending less time on our phone. Whether that means refusing convenience, you know, certain things that are convenience, I think it means I think all of these things are possible, but we have to maybe accept that in order to resist social media, in order for to resist the constant surveillance that's hitting us on our phone, that all these companies are like tracking and reselling to other companies to make money off of everything we do. We have to maybe we have to maybe refuse a little bit of the cheap pleasure and the convenience that the phone gives us. But I think we can, all right, yea, the definition of trick mirror is available. Now check this out. Okay, I'm here a quickly. That's night and that's my time for this week. But come back again because your next host is Hassan Minage and if you love me, come out and come see me on tour. 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