Vegas: Ragebait Advertising and The 'Idea' of Fun

Vegas: Ragebait Advertising and The 'Idea' of Fun

Vegas is no longer pretending to be normal.This episode starts with the Enhanced Games, Polymarket’s viral “steroid Olympics” coverage, the strange incentives around performance enhancement, and why people misunderstood what the first Enhanced Games actually proved. Then we get into the anthropology of modern Vegas: male models, status games, fake DJ sets, clubbing where nobody talks to each other, and a dating culture where the photo has replaced the actual interaction. We also cover TSA house rules, American tort law, why healthcare and contact lenses are so much more annoying in the U.S., European models reading Curtis Yarvin, the collapse of normal social scripts, and why every modern public interaction feels like five layers of game theory.Sponsored by Polymarket, Zcash, CitizenX, and Passage Press.Sponsored by: Polymarket: https://polymarket.comZcash: https://z.cashCitizenX: https://citizenx.comNetwork Press: https://network.press_______________________________Plausibly Deniable: https://plausiblydeniable.orgLukas: https://x.com/SCHIZO_FREQSaila: https://x.com/sailaunderscore 0:00 — Dating apps, girls trying men’s profiles, and A/B-tested pickup lines5:00 — Dating zones, cold approach, and clubs as “PvP zones”10:00 — The photo replacing the actual interaction15:30 — Vegas DJs, Zedd, bad drops, and fake live performance23:30 — Modern clubs as Instagram stories in person30:00 — Boomer dating advice and the post-meta dating world36:30 — Intro / welcome back / sponsors38:00 — Enhanced Games, Vegas parties, and the weird elite crowd41:00 — Gas station dick pills, sildenafil, and medical gray zones44:00 — TSA house rules and the safety razor incident48:00 — Contact lenses, U.S. healthcare friction, and tort law53:00 — Playground liability and burning down the backyard structure55:00 — Vegas clubbing, male models, and VIP gender-ratio engineering1:02:00 — Snapchat, looksmaxxing, and scripted nightclub behavior1:05:00 — European models reading Curtis Yarvin1:07:00 — Polymarket’s Enhanced Games tweets1:11:00 — Steroids, genetics, and why the Enhanced Games results were misunderstood1:16:00 — Usain Bolt, doping speculation, and the $10M bounty1:22:00 — Betting, prediction markets, and people needing skin in the game1:30:00 — Capitalism, shareholders, and weird startup/product incentives1:38:00 — Streamers, cameras, and online performance as labor1:48:00 — Rich people, models, and party status games1:56:00 — Podcast production, green screens, and making video work2:05:00 — Online mobs, being clipped, and reputational risk2:12:00 — Streamer infrastructure and jealousy over simple phone setups2:20:00 — Fame, money, and the current content economy2:30:00 — Medicine, hair-loss drugs, and information quality online2:35:00 — Dating apps return: response-rate meta and soulless optimization2:43:00 — The girl who wanted the photo, not the interaction2:50:00 — Why older people can’t understand modern clubbing2:55:00 — Zedd drops, fake DJing, and the audience losing energy3:00:00 — Vegas as fake degeneracy and the private jet analogy3:07:00 — Boomer dating advice, wax seals, and outdated social scripts3:15:00 — Approaching, shoulder-checking, and broken in-person scripts3:22:00 — Politics, media, and people not knowing other worlds exist3:30:00 — SF dinners, networking, and the awkwardness of opinion questions3:38:00 — Consensus reality, social scripts, and closing riffs

Extremely Alternative Medicine, Cooking While Homeless and The Art of Seduction via Carrier Pidgeon

In this episode of Plausibly Deniable, the boys investigate the greatest arbitrage in modern America: food trucks, male slop, crockpots, Discord servers, fake enterprise software, BlueAnon, healthcare middlemen, manifesto technology, European decline, and a raccoon bite story that probably should have gone to a doctor. They also get into Polymarket AI model markets, why Discord should just rebrand itself as Slack for adults, why cooking for one person is fake productivity, whether every market can be explained with rugs, and why the modern political internet keeps producing increasingly deranged mythology.Sponsored by:Polymarket: https://polymarket.comZcash: https://z.cashCitizenX: https://citizenx.comNetwork Press: https://network.press_______________________________Plausibly Deniable: https://plausiblydeniable.orgLukas: https://x.com/SCHIZO_FREQSaila: https://x.com/sailaunderscore 0:00 The Discord server1:11 Food trucks as an infinite money glitch 3:00 New York rats, mobile kitchens, and food truck hygiene 6:20 Designing the worst possible meat-and-rice truck 7:36 Taipei screen protector middlemen 9:01 Choosing how many middlemen you want 11:01 Polymarket AI model markets and betting against Google 12:35 The Chicago slop truck business plan 14:56 College students, fake poverty, and $20 cookies 17:39 Avocado toast discourse was partly right 20:03 Male slop cooking and Parmesan block meals 21:23 Gluttony, groceries, and eating two pounds of carrots 22:49 Why cooking for one person rarely makes sense 24:22 Food as the least embarrassing status purchase 25:06 Coffee optimization and grocery-store beans 26:23 Crockpots, rice cookers, and the college protein-maxxing solution 28:27 The one-item crockpot food truck 31:02 Men cooking, makeup, skin, and mustaches 34:21 Masculine vs feminine cooking 37:05 Hipster meals, soups, and paella discourse 38:58 Roadrunners, birds, and YouTube Shorts 41:10 Using ChatGPT to rebrand slop as ethnic cuisine 44:42 Low T, testosterone numbers, and androgen receptors 46:49 The Discord server bit returns 48:10 Discord has a great product and cursed branding 51:27 Chinese automaker names and “Beyond Your Dreams” branding 53:03 Current events, Reddit manifestos, and Caltech guy discourse 56:16 Meme careers and people choosing the wrong life path 57:31 Manifesto technology and Kaczynski posting 1:02:26 Kaczynski accounts, bodybuilding, and anti-tech contradictions 1:03:51 Protein myths and science-based lifting people 1:07:48 Real estate markets, boomer sellers, and “I know what I got” pricing 1:09:45 Healthcare explained through rugs and middlemen 1:13:34 Democracy, voting, and the rug analogy collapsing 1:14:54 BlueAnon and assassination-attempt denial 1:20:54 Europe being ten years behind the news cycle 1:22:35 European decline and why talent leaves for the US 1:25:00 Homelessness, food stamps, and urban dysfunction 1:35:00 Restaurant work, service labor, and strange incentive structures 1:40:00 Microplastics, gloves, and restaurant paranoia 1:45:00 The raccoon bite story 1:46:34 Antibiotic-resistant infection and improvised heat treatment 1:51:30 Rabies logic, animal control, and the raccoon test 1:55:00 Wrap-up and sponsor thanks

Enhanced Games: Bioengineered Sports, Ethical Superhumans, and Making Your First Billion w/ Christian Angermayer

Christian Angermeyer joins Plausibly Deniable to discuss the Enhanced Games, performance-enhancing drugs, psychedelic medicine, longevity, telehealth, ambition, and building companies around controversial ideas before they become mainstream. Christian argues that the debate around performance enhancement is stuck in moral panic, bad incentives, and missing data. He explains why the Enhanced Games are designed not just as a sports spectacle, but as a research and media platform: athletes competing with medically supervised enhancement, data being collected at scale, and a broader business built around health, recovery, and human performance. We also get into the ethics of PEDs, whether banning enhancement actually harms athletes, why recovery may be the real performance unlock, how psychedelics went from fringe to medical legitimacy, what founders misunderstand about ambition, and Christian’s path from European finance to building and selling a major African banking group. Absolutely none of this is medical, financial, or spiritual advice https://www.enhanced.com/games Sponsored by: Polymarket: https://polymarket.com Zcash: https://z.cashCitizenX: https://citizenx.com Network Press: https://network.press _______________________________ Plausibly Deniable: https://plausiblydeniable.org Lukas: https://x.com/SCHIZO_FREQ Saila: https://x.com/sailaunderscore Christian: https://x.com/C_Angermayer 00:00 — The moral case for performance enhancement 02:52 — Intro: Christian Angermeyer 03:26 — What are the Enhanced Games? 06:01 — PEDs, medical supervision, and building the first real data set 09:09 — Biohacking, looksmaxing, and body autonomy 14:40 — The Enhanced Games pitch: approved drugs, doctors, and athlete choice 17:14 — Why recovery may matter more than strength 21:09 — Psychedelics, stigma, and using data to change public opinion 22:42 — Which world records could the Enhanced Games break? 24:49 — Are elite athletes already using PEDs? 30:22 — Clean Olympics vs enhanced competition 32:17 — Enhanced Games as a viral sports business 38:12 — Future events: older athletes, celebrities, robots, and combat sports 41:00 — Telehealth, supplements, peptides, and the Red Bull model 47:45 — The data business behind human enhancement 48:47 — Christian’s personal health philosophy and stack 01:00:04 — Can retail investors get exposure to the Enhanced Games? 01:03:00 — Europe, America, ambition, and risk-taking 01:10:00 — Christian’s early career in finance 01:30:35 — Building and selling an African banking group 01:43:00 — Consent, alcohol, drugs, and personal choice 01:50:00 — Christian’s five-point self-improvement framework 02:00:00 — Coming out, identity, and personal narrative 02:15:04 — Psychedelics, therapy, religion, and founders 02:30:32 — What psychedelics actually reveal 02:33:11 — Closing thoughts

The Conservative case for the Machine God - w/ Lomez

Lomez joins Plausibly Deniable for a long conversation on the old internet, the rise of online politics, academia, Gamergate, Twitter, AI, prediction markets, publishing, and the strange incentives of modern work. We talk about Lomez’s path from an early remote job at Google to academia, how 2014-era campus politics pushed him online, the evolution of the dissident right, the social justice warrior era, the shifting meaning of “woke is over,” and how internet subcultures moved from fringe jokes to real political force. We also get into Passage Press, Lomez’s publishing company, including its role in preserving online writing, publishing controversial or neglected work, and building something closer to the “real economy” than most internet projects. Check out Passage Press and use promo code PD10. Later, the conversation turns to AI, Claude vs ChatGPT, the tech right, Bannon-style anti-tech populism, X vs YouTube, bot accusations, gender war discourse, office jobs, girlboss marketing, and whether the “normie job” fantasy is actually just another internet mirage. REMEMBER to purchase all books from sponsor Passage Press: https://passage.press Promo code PD10 gets you 10% off Sponsored by: Polymarket: https://polymarket.com Zcash: https://z.cash CitizenX: https://citizenx.com Network Press: https://network.press _______________________________ Plausibly Deniable: https://plausiblydeniable.org Lukas: https://x.com/SCHIZO_FREQ Saila: https://x.com/sailaunderscore Lomez: https://x.com/L0m3z 0:02:17 — Fake jobs, make-work, and being too close to the real economy0:03:48 — Introducing Lomez0:04:30 — Lomez’s early life and getting a remote job at Google0:06:00 — Human search ranking, porn SEO, and “artisanal Google”0:10:19 — Leaving tech, traveling, and deciding to become an English professor0:11:55 — UC Irvine, academia, and the politics of 20140:13:02 — Charlie Hebdo, free speech, and campus liberalism0:15:36 — Why online transgression felt politically meaningful0:17:21 — Gamergate, gamers, and the online right0:21:02 — Is woke actually over?0:24:42 — Early Lomez internet lore: forums, Twitter, sports, and betting0:30:43 — The old alt-right, Breitbart, Spencer, and Charlottesville0:34:35 — Passage Press, Scott Greer, and White Pill0:35:00 — Social justice warriors, Tumblr, and naming the enemy0:40:00 — Trump, Kavanaugh, liberal coalition discipline, and political hysteria0:43:19 — Male feminists, the cuttlefish strategy, and dating discourse0:48:56 — The gender war escalates0:56:15 — Wirejacking, welfare, work, and the broken social contract1:05:32 — Passage Press books, QR codes, and preserving internet archives1:10:11 — Digital censorship, stealth edits, and why print still matters1:15:05 — Lomez’s doxxing and public-interest journalism1:25:38 — Polymarket, betting markets, and “selling dollars for 50 cents”1:30:14 — Scale, inefficiency, local culture, and AI1:34:00 — Hard takeoff AI and whether acceleration is inevitable1:45:18 — Nick Land, nation-states, and machine intelligence1:55:01 — Who fears AI more: the left or the right?2:08:21 — Sam Altman, OpenAI, Claude, and AI politics2:13:15 — The tech right, the administration, and institutional conservatism2:16:20 — Policy battles, post-humanism, Bannon, and anti-tech populism2:25:00 — San Francisco, crime, tech elites, and urban decline2:35:00 — Online discourse, media narratives, and AI acceleration2:50:00 — Political aesthetics, millennial posting, and internet memory3:06:14 — Bots, real people, hate-farming, and X engagement3:10:15 — YouTube vs X: analytics, algorithms, and distribution3:15:00 — The return of the gender war meta3:25:00 — The normie office fantasy, PF Chang’s, and work wives3:28:52 — Mega-corporation incentives and fake corporate jobs3:34:27 — Escape hatches, mortgages, and the terror of being stuck3:35:47 — Closing thoughts and subscribe

Reasonable Political Centrism w/ The Most Normal Man Alive - Howling Mutant

Internet comedian Howling Mutant joins Plausibly Deniable to talk about getting doxxed, becoming an accidental Goodreads influencer, the strange sociology of right-wing Twitter, journalism, media trust, AI art, gym culture, looksmaxxing, and why the internet turns every private embarrassment into public lore. The conversation starts with the story of how Howling’s personal information was dug up and spread online, then veers into Goodreads power rankings, the decline of nerd culture, media narratives, “fell for it again” politics, Iran war arguments, anime pronunciation scandals, AI-generated comedy, recycling scams, posture, lifting, and bone-smashing aesthetics.Sponsored by: Polymarket https://polymarket.com Zcash https://z.cash CitizenX https://citizenx.com Network Press https://network.press _______________________________ Plausibly Deniable https://plausiblydeniable.org Lukas https://x.com/SCHIZO_FREQ Saila https://x.com/sailaunderscore Howling Mutant https://x.com/Howlingmutant0 00:00 Howling Mutant gets doxxed 02:00 The Goodreads scandal begins 06:29 Face reveals, internet expectations, and nerd culture winning 10:08 Gay culture, repression, and mainstreaming 11:41 The media lie that broke Lukas’s brain 13:20 “Fell for it again” politics 16:07 Iran discourse and losing internet arguments 18:47 The Asuka pronunciation scandal 20:43 Frazier Payne, AI animation, and right-wing creativity 23:35 Censorship, bleeping, and edgy comedy 26:02 Sponsors and monetizing Goodreads influence 28:19 Book ratings, Karl Marx, and 800 reviews 29:59 AI art, anti-tech politics, and environmental objections 32:06 Ferry work, old coworkers, and online personas 34:46 How the doxxing happened 38:21 Contacting an ex through her workplace 39:34 How doxxing spreads when people “defend” you 41:53 Posture, camera presence, and gym culture 45:05 Forum experts, deadlifts, and niche knowledge 47:01 Looksmaxxing, bone-smashing, and viral advice 48:46 Closing chaos