Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we discuss the public reaction to the Sydney Sweeney jeans ads and consider what it means if stirring up controversy and creating outrage are becoming the primary levers to money and power in the attention economy.
Hello, welcome to the Call Like I See it podcast.
I'm James Keys, and joining me today is a man who, not to toot his own horn, is known for taking some giant steps. Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde, you ready to pipe up today and take us through a few of your favorite things?
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Yes, sir, I will be. Sasquatch. Stepping all over stuff, making a big mess like I normally do.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: Here we go. Now, before we get started, if you enjoy the show, I ask that you subscribe and like the show on YouTube or your podcast app, doing so really helps the show out.
Now recording on August 12, 2025 in Tunde. A few weeks ago, we saw American Eagle come out with an ad campaign featuring Sydney Sweeney, which presents Sweeney in suggestive ways while she's wearing their jeans. And also makes a direct play on the word jeans and the idea of genetics, you know, culminating in the quote, sydney Sweeney has great jeans while they're wearing. While she's wearing their jeans.
And since there's been. We've seen people object to this based on like the sexual, sexualized nature of the ads, but also we've seen people object to the use of the play on genes and genetics and so forth, talking about that. It harkens back to eugenics and all this other stuff. Then we've seen a backlash to that outrage or to those people that objected. And then we've seen people hop in to defend against the backlash around about the. Defending the initial outrage, you know, and so it's, we've just, it's kind of one of the 21st century media story where, you know, there's people just throwing, shooting arrows from all different directions and everybody's jumping in or many people are jumping in. So, you know, now about to add, you know, I think we should acknowledge that the definition or the point of advertisements and commercials and things like that is to get attention. So, you know, on one level, this thing is working to the extent that they want it to, but the way it's kind of devolved the conversation in our conversation in society is kind of either an effect of that or an intended effect of that or whatever. But I want to start really just discussing with you what stood out most to you in the ad, and then we can get to more of the larger concerns. So what stood out to you with the ad and the Controversy also, I.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: Would say what stood out to me was the controversy. To your point, the ad was the ad, and it worked to your point. I mean, it got everyone's attention.
And yeah, there aren't many shows that.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: People do podcasts on about commercials.
[00:02:59] Speaker B: There's a lot of commercials, especially just like denim jeans commercials. Right. Like, that's what I'm saying is we're not talking about super bowl commercials or things that traditionally people would pay a little bit more attention to. And I think so. I think your point is well taken. The advert. The ad worked. The ad campaign has worked. People know who American Eagle is much more than they did, and they know who Sydney Sweeney is much more than they did. So, you know, success in that level.
But I would say, I think my bigger thing. I've got no comment about the commercial itself. I did take the time, which I would suggest everyone listening or watching us does. Go to YouTube and type in the Brooke Shields Calvin klein gnat from 40 years ago from the 1980s, and you'll see this. Did you know American Eagle did a nice play on an old commercial?
[00:03:47] Speaker A: And what I find interesting about that was a commercial from. From back then. Yeah.
[00:03:53] Speaker B: Yeah. So what I. What I find what the reason why I suggest everyone go look at that commercial is for several reasons. One is, you know, it's just interesting to see the kind of arc of culture. Some things are similar, some things are different. But then the bigger thing is, number one, you know, to see Brooke Shields in that ad. It's an interesting ad for the time, how we dealt with teenage actors, things like that. But more importantly, I think for this conversation, Brooke Shields, her comments in the ad are very similar to Sydney Sweeney's. I would say even maybe more down the road of kind of quasi eugenics stuff than what Sydney Sweeney said. So it's a good reminder is my point of bringing that up, that this issue of eugenics, this issue of certain groups of people feeling a little bit insecure about their genetics versus others, all this is nothing new.
And it's interesting to live through. Just like the 1930s, it kind of like reliving this public conversation, which I, when I was a kid, I thought was settled already. So that, to me, is what makes this.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: What do you mean by people feeling insecure about their genetics?
[00:05:04] Speaker B: The need to separate and act like one group of humans has superior genetics to others in a certain way.
So that's what I mean.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: So they're saying that that insecurity breeds this need to try to say, my genes are Better or whatever.
[00:05:21] Speaker B: Yes. And what I'm saying is by going back and looking at a commercial from 80, sorry, not 80, but 40 years ago, one can see that this, this theme or this feeling is nothing new, let's put it that way. People slip that into other parts of our culture and our society through advertisements back then as well.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. I would say that the commercial today is tame compared to the 1,800. So I recommend people watching on several different levels also. Like this is at least as a grown woman versus a 15 year old.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: That's what I was saying, like a 14.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: And then just the wording and so forth. I mean, to me, yeah, I mean like the, the. I think that considering, you know, we've seen genocides and all this other stuff and you know, within the last hundred years over the idea of purifying genetics and cleaning up genetics and you know, and all this other stuff, I can understand why there's a sensitivity to people kind of hack tipping to, to, to that or to, you know, this idea genetic. Like I didn't watch that commercial and think my mind didn't jump to eugenics for me personally.
[00:06:25] Speaker B: Me too.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: But I can see how there's a sensitivity there. It's like, hey, you know, like we've had tens of millions of people killed in the last hundred, you know, 100 years or so over people having these ideas of, hey, we got to do this with the genetics and filter out these other gen, get these other genetics out of here and so forth. So the sensitivity I get what really though, to me, the controversy, it really feels like people are puppets on a string. I mean it like this seems like something you can engineer if you are an ad person. Like, okay, I'm going to say something that's going to get certain group of people mad. And then by them getting mad, this other group of people is going to jump into the ring, you know, WWE style, jump into the ring, come in from the crowd, their music's going to play, they're going to run under the ropes and start, you know, hitting people with chairs and stuff like that. Like that's going to happen. And then once that happens, a larger group of people who then the people that were originally upset are going to jump in to try to defend the people that are getting attacked by the guy who ran in under the ropes with the chair, you know, and so it's like this seems like, you know, the arc that I would watch with, you know, pro wrestling, you know, in the 1990s and so forth. So I mean, it's like that I would, I would think that American Eagle kind of knew that this would stir up some stuff. I mean, I think, and I think that that's kind of, again, that was the point here is that they get everybody talking about their genes and you know, attention is, has value. So whether or not their sales directly go up or whatever, more people know about them, they are a brand in people's minds now. And that's gonna be something that hopefully in their mind they can leverage. So but to me, the way that this almost plays out in a scripted way and, and really one of the things you sent me that was very interesting to me on this was you were talking about how I think Media Matters noted that the coverage spent like in right wing media over the Sydney Sweeney, like seven times as much coverage as the Epstein thing. And what that really illustrated to me though was it's actually like the way that you can manipulate this. It's not that you can manipulate it in any particular way. Like certain people seem to have certain roles that they like to play. So you find the people that understandably and justifiably would be, or have a sensitivity to the idea of eugenics, or have a sensitivity to the eye of the, to the idea of any type of historic atrocity which, you know, again, there's people out there like that, that's fine. But you find those people, you trigger them. And then it seems like there is like in the, in the right wing ecosystem there is a, hey, we like to be the victim. We like that people when people not like, like, but we're turned on by the idea of this, this attack that's coming from these group of people and people being overly sensitive so they can be sprung into action. This is like fits a narrative that they really can grab onto and run with. And then once they jump in, then there may people who come back and say, oh, you guys are going too far, you guys being too mean and everything else. And there's people that are comfortable playing that role. So it's almost like everybody has a particular role that they're most comfortable in in this controversy, backlash, all this other stuff. And so to me, like I said, I walk away from this and looking like, well, it seems like anybody could do this at any given moment. Just by triggering a certain group of people then making this other group of people feel like they're, they're under attack and their values are under attack and then having them lash out and it's going to trigger other people and it's like, oh, man, this is, you know, this, this, this could be scripted. This could be.
[00:09:47] Speaker B: I mean, jump on that.
[00:09:48] Speaker A: Straight out the line of Vince McMahon.
[00:09:50] Speaker B: Well, you, you, you. Well, you're right, it is very Vince McMahon ish. And it's kind of, I would say this. I'm kind of saddened by what you're saying, honestly, hearing it, because what, what it tells me is that there's some actors who are in positions of authority, leadership and, or power behind the scenes in terms of media people like Vince McMahon or Rupert Murdoch. Right. That they, they, they have understood that. I guess they looked in the 1980s and say, hold on, there's all this money being made on this thing called pro wrestling. WWE and the adults that believe this stuff, man, we could, we could, we can make money a lot of ways and translate this into everything else. And I feel like now here we are, 40, 50 years later, and it's our actual serious stuff has become wwe. And so. But I also think this is a reflection of some.
[00:10:42] Speaker A: Using ourselves to death.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: Yeah, but this goes back into something you bring up a lot, which is the economic imbalances and disparities. And I would say even greater than that, maybe where society has gone in the last 20, 30 years with the Internet and technology, which is.
And we've heard of these things in different pockets of our cultural conversations, like the epidemic of loneliness or why the concept of incels, you know, these lonely guys out there. And so what I think is part of what's happening, James, is we're having this. There's like this battleground in the virtual world now where people don't really have purpose walking around all day. People work nine to five jobs a lot of times, or they're not really that happy, honestly. They don't feel fulfilled going into work every day. A lot of people since COVID still this quasi staying at home, work from home versus going somewhere, blah, blah, blah. So what I think what you're alluding to, I'm thinking about. And I'm like, both sides have a sense of purpose when given these arguments. Right. Like you're saying, for some. For you.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: And they also tend to. Just real quick, I'm sorry, they tend to want to play certain roles in the argument too.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: Well, that's where the purpose comes in. And that's what I'm going at with your point of view. For you and I personally, we could watch a commercial like that and actually see it for what it was in a sense. Right. Like, I don't know what the Real intent people intended when they made the commercial. But I looked at it as. It's kind of. It's a funny thing. It's ingest, right? Like you're saying the word genes from genetics and then blue jeans. And then Sydney Sweeney's good looking and she's got blue jeans on, but she's also got blue eyes. So she's talking about genetics. I wasn't offended by that. But like you said, I recognize how somebody can.
Someone else can be offended by that. So when they saw that close to.
[00:12:24] Speaker A: They're playing. They're playing with fire there, you know, like why it wasn't personally offended is another issue.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And so that person, though, that is their, their. They get a triggering of like their sense of purpose. Oh, they're talking about eugenics and that. I got to defend against that. And then like you said, certain media ecosystems are very good at turning on their viewers and the people. Their audience.
So then they spend a lot of time saying, hey, look, all these people over here, they think that it's wrong that she's did this and they're talking about you because that means you're wrong.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: No, they activate. They intend to activate grievance. And that seems to be like that once. And that. Yeah, they want to be. Yeah.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: All the people that think they're being replaced and all this stuff, right. They have a sense of purpose now and they're like, well, I got to defend myself and my tribe, right. My rights. And this is my country. And these people, you know, these people on the other side, they keep, they keep, you know, damaging our culture and all this stuff. And so you have again, this artificial kind of civil war going on virtually. And it's. And I agree with you, James, you brought up something very important.
Before the Sydney Sweeney ad, Fox News was like paying seven times more attention to Joe Biden's auto pen than to the Epstein story. So this part of this, to me is also the ability to distract a large part of the public from things that otherwise were putting certain people in positions of leadership under public scrutiny.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: I'll tell you this, I'll add to this because, yes, I think distract is a part of it, but the other part of it is that the Epstein thing doesn't ignite grievance and victimization within their audience. And their audience wants to feel grievance and victimization. And so it's like, oh, well, you guys, we can't point to some exterior person as a, as a villain here that's trying to, to undermine you or Replace you and all this other stuff. So it didn't resonate with their audience as well, you know. And so, like, they're playing this game where they're trying to give the audience and almost in an entertainment sense and in a WWE sense, trying to give the people what they, quote, unquote, want, you know, and so it's interesting, man. What's that?
[00:14:38] Speaker B: I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. Cause I don't want to.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: No, no, please.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: You said something. I got to jump in. Because as you said, what you just said, accurate and appropriate, it made me realize this is where the opposition party to this energy fails. Because like you said about the kind of. The ecosystem on right leaning media is so good at creating the feeling of victimhood for their audience.
But what the opposition party could have done is taken a story like Jeffrey Epstein and shown America that that actually is also a story that all of us can feel like victims because Epstein.
[00:15:17] Speaker A: To frame it as a. And to give them their victimization fit through a different story.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: Because what the opposition party looks like is that Epstein is some kind of weird, murky conspiracy story about this pedophile stuff. But then, yeah, there's some people that really were involved with it, like Epstein and Maxwell and other people, right, that appears that are trying to, you know, people are trying to hide, you know, the elite stuff going on with that. But what it really is is if the opposition party would frame it differently, you could frame this as class warfare. Why are the elites getting away with so much and the little guys getting, you know, always has to take it on the chin. And I think that's where the ability for right leaning media, they figured out how to get to an audience and say, look at how you're getting constantly disrespected, derided and all that. And that creates this solidarity and that sense.
[00:16:08] Speaker A: No, I mean, it's an interesting point because what you'll see, whether it's the opposition party or whether it's a centrist or mainstream media, what they'll do instead is try to present this to an audience in a way that they think it should be presented, you know, in a way that it's like, oh, this is what the way. This is what it means to me. This is why it matters to me. Not trying to say, okay, what's going to get these people's attention? How am I going to present this in order to get these people's attention? And that may be different, and it would be different for different audiences, you know, and so like, like the, the Audience of the, the right leaning media tends to, at least based on how the right wing media treats them, we can surmise that they like to be, they like, they, they're turned on by the idea of them being in embattled or in be under siege and being attacked by some outside group that causes, that gives them purpose like you said earlier, that gives the cause, forces them to cause ranks. So if you want to reach them with a story like the Epstein thing, which you're going to have to do because the right leaning media is not, then you're going to have to present that in a way that, that allows them to feel that they're embattled, they're under siege and that they're the victim or the, you know, and so forth that they have a grievance there. And so that's an interesting point. And I wanted to ask you. I mean that kind of gets to the second question I wanted to ask you about this because I want to know, you know, from a fair minded standpoint, what you're saying sounds kind of manipulative, you know, like. And so my question to you is so what is, I mean, and maybe you've already given your answer, but what should fair minded people, how should fair minded people. Not necessarily, again, I'm not saying partisans, but just fair minded people who, I think a lot of times fair minded people get left out of these discussions because they're not walking around figuring out how to, trying to figure out how to manipulate everybody all the time. They're trying to give people information and let them make their own decisions and all this other stuff which you know, that's cool if everybody's doing that, but if everybody's not doing that, you might run into a problem with that. So.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: How do you think, do you think that this is what we're seeing here? You know, this, this kind of, you know, like cycle that is like a very profitable cycle for the media. And you know, it could work for American Eagle in this sense. Like is this something that, that fair minded people should be trying to adapt to or to, to have a reverse, you know, or is that ship already sailed or kind of just how, how does a fair minded person interact in this environment? And again, not some of the family.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: But just that's, that's. So here's the thing. It's, it's a very interesting question. Now number one, I'll acknowledge that maybe we sound arrogant or biased calling ourselves fair minded.
[00:18:35] Speaker A: Well, no, it's just the goal. I'm not saying you, I Get it? I'm just joking. But no, let me know. It's a good point. Let me clarify that. I'm not saying you succeed in being fair and unbiased all the time. It's just that that's the overriding goal that you're trying to, to do like you're still a human being. You're still going to have your biases, your blind spots.
[00:18:52] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good point.
Yeah, I think that's, that's a very good statement. Meaning we all have to first recognize we're human. We do have biases, me and you included. You know, we do suffer from conditions like confirmation bias and all that. The ability, the reality is the ability to spot it and just like you said, try and be fair minded versus trying to be manipulative. So I would say this as I'm thinking about it, because I think it's very difficult in a country like ours that traditionally has had freedom of speech right in the first embedded in the first amendment of its constitution. So for example, how do you take someone who may not be fair minded? And I'm thinking of, let's say a cable news guy who turned into a podcaster after he got fired for text messages that came up in a lawsuit, who went to Russia a year or two ago and spent time trying to tell Americans how much better their subways and their grocery stores than they are in America. Right? Meaning an American that goes to basically a third world country that has a GDP 30 times less than ours and he's over there telling Americans and manipulating their perception that our country is not as good as this downtrodden country over here. So I don't know what you do with that, because with a country of freedom of speech, you can't put a guy like that in jail. You can't tell him he can't talk like that. So that's where I just feel like people that are fair minded. I think the problem is that when you get into the idea of things like persuasion or trying to form perceptions in the public, a lot of fair minded people do feel like, hey, I don't want to manipulate. That sounds like I'm going to be trying to change someone's mind to a psychological thing and all that. But I think the reality is you made a great point. The opposition to some of this energy, like you said, the people throwing the chair under the ropes on the wrestling ring and coming in, you know, the opposition to that should recognize that we're all human beings, we all have psychology and we all need to be persuaded. We all need to be herded into some sort of thought process or we're going to just be rogue on our own mindset, which is kind of where the country's going. Like everyone's just this hyper individualism has its consequences as well. I guess that's my point. And what I'm learning, James, is that even something, when you think about myths and things like eugenics that, that unite some people, those things are very divisive for a large pluralistic society. So we need to, you know, the people that oppose this need to get back to trying to figure out how to deliver messages and give people a purpose and like a critical mass that is something other than these divisive issues.
And I'm not sure the opposition party is there yet.
[00:21:47] Speaker A: I mean, again, I don't even speak of this in terms of parties and so forth because to me, I think that there's like, when I, and I'll say a little bit more on the fair minded thing, like you can be fair minded or you can be agenda driven, you know, like, and I would say like when you're agenda driven, the ends are the goal, you know, and how you get there, the means, you know, that doesn't really matter. When you are, you know, let's say you are fair minded, so to speak, then you may have thoughts or opinions and everything like that. But the means, how you get there really matters to you because you're trying to be, quote unquote, fair minded. You're trying to rule of law. If something applies to you, it should apply to me. That is, that's a fair minded approach versus, hey, I should be able to do what I want to do. But if you do stuff, you shouldn't be able to do it. That would not be a fair minded approach. So I think you actually anticipated this question before we got there. Maybe I shouldn't have showed you the outline in advance of the show, but I think what you were saying is in terms of meeting people on their own terms is where we're kind of like, it's not all of that. It's not always manipulative. You know, if you're saying, hey, you care about things from this framework, let me explain to you how what's happening now fits into the framework of things you care about. And so there's a, you know, like an arrogance. A lot of times I think with fair minded people that they're saying, hey, this is the reason why you should care about this. And it's like, well, you should probably start With a, with listening on that to people and understand what they care about. Like I think if you look at even the last election, there's an example of this in that people were talking the whole time about hey, you should care about blank because of democracy and this and that. And it's like, well, why don't you ask people first why they care about or you know, do you care about, you know, the democratic elections or do you care about, you know, like what do you care about? And then say, okay, well here's what's happening, here's how that fits into what you're talking about as opposed to just saying to everyone, hey, if you care about this, then you have to vote this way or if you care about the democracy, then, then you know, this is what it means and yada, yada, yada. And it's like, well, you know, some people might, might value other things more so than in democracy. So in, at least in the conception that you are looking at it in. And if that's the case, then being in a democracy, that means you need to talk to them on their terms and not talk to them and force them into your terms. And so I think that's what we see a lot of times. And it's a relic of the kind of top down media from 50 years ago or whatever, where the three big networks did get to tell everybody what was important and what they got to know about. It was like, hey, this is what's important. When, you know, when Nixon gets impeached, so to speak, all three networks are, that's all pretty much, you know, like you got newspapers, you got networks and that's it. They're all saying, hey, this is important, this is why. And they're saying it every day to people right now. That's not how the media works. Like if you sit around and say, hey, this is important, this is what you need, this is why you need to listen to this. Or you know, this is why you need to care about this. If somebody, if you're not meeting them on their terms, they'll just go somewhere else and like, all right, well somebody else will have to tell me what's going on because you're trying to tell me all this stuff's important to me. I'm not a captive audience anymore. So I think that meeting people where they are, finding about what they care about first and then presenting information to them in ways that, that, that overlap or comport with what it is that they care about is the way that a fair minded person have to deal with the modern kind of information world because it doesn't have to be manipulative. It can be, you can be manipulative in that way when you start not telling people certain things or hiding things from people, or telling people things that just aren't true. You know, like I look at even very recently where, you know, we're going to put troops on the ground in D.C. and federalize the D.C. police. And the basis for this is saying, oh, crime is out of control in dc Whereas like what the facts are that crime isn't out of control, crime is down, you know, but it's like, well, if the, the, the ends or the goal, the ends are we want to federalize this law enforcement in this place, then you say whatever you need to. That's, that's manipulative. But there are other ways to, to, to use actual reality to touch, to touch people where they are, to meet people where they are. And so that I think is the answer to that.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: Well, let me jump in on that because you know, you make a great point about how fair minded people should approach this, the idea of manipulation, so on and so forth. But I also can't get around the fact that this is also a business, this media thing. Yeah. And the kind of right leaning media has done a great job investing in itself, meaning, you know, going and courting capital and then the capital wanting to go invest in it for, for the reasons that those investors have. You know, and my point is, I started, I wrote down a little bit, you know, people made fun of Elon Musk when he bought Twitter and turned it into X and you know, seemed like a kind of ham fisted way he did it, went about acquiring it. But at the end of the day, he's the one that had the last laugh because he invested $44 billion into one of the largest media platforms in the world. And not only did that allow him to buy his way into a US administration and he got to go in and you know, do a wrecking job with his chainsaw and all that for the first six months of this year, but he's also been able to allegedly.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: Get all investigations against his companies knocked out too. Exactly.
[00:26:48] Speaker B: That's what I mean. Like we laugh. You know, a lot of people laughed at the $44 billion spend and all that. I don't say we, we didn't, but I'm just saying like a lot of people did. And then looking at now he's, he's the one laughing at everybody because he's also influencing the world now you know, he's influencing elections in other countries, all that kind of stuff. So, and then I thought about things like Charlie Kirk with Turning Point usa, Ben Shapiro with the Daily Wire with Jeremy Boring, Fox News with Rupert Murdoch. And it's a publicly traded company with shareholders. All of these people didn't start from zero. There was capital that went in and invested. And there was a gentleman recently who's a right leaning guy who's got a big YouTube following and it was, he was his name, Benny Johnson in the news recently because he just got 2 million new subscribers like this. And so the speculation was on YouTube and the speculation was you don't, that doesn't happen overnight. So clearly he or somebody paid for those.
[00:27:41] Speaker A: I think was it like the viewers didn't go up but the subs went up?
[00:27:44] Speaker B: Me like, yeah. And so what I'm saying is so the people that want to counter this kind of stuff, stuff and, and get different kind of narratives and messaging other than us being bombarded by people being upset at Bud Light or American Eagle or whatever the company is or, or Dr. Seuss or saying that, you know, the bridge in Baltimore came down because of dei, whatever the case is, if you don't like that, then we need to figure out where's the capital that would support other types of information being put out there and go court that capital and go put it in their self interest why it's important to save the democracy by using your leverage through the media, blah, blah, blah. Because right now we've got people dividing the democracy through using their capital in the media.
[00:28:30] Speaker A: And yeah, I mean, and I still look at it more broadly though and like again, and I'm glad you didn't reference that in a partisan way because I don't even think that's a partisan concern. Like, and I think actually we, we go into peril when the idea of being fair or being consistent, if those become partisan issues where it's like oh well on this team we care about that and on this team we don't, you're going to lose people. Because people are, generally speaking, we've seen people are pretty good team players.
So it's like, well if you try to say oh well, the only people that are going to care about accurate information are going to be partisan, it's going to be a partisan issue. Then like we've seen this with the gun debate already over the last 30 years where it's like now all of a sudden, well, not all of a sudden, but now it's like, well the Idea of having a society with reasonable gun laws is a partisan issue. It's like, oh, well, no, we need to have people walking around with AK47s. Well, why? It's like, oh, because that's my group. My group says that and it's like, well, hold up that. But that's the risk you run when you try to make issues like, hey, let's, let's have fair minded, let's have debates where we try to apply consistent standards or let's have information that reflects what's actually happening and not just made up stuff that supports some agenda that I'm driving. Those issues don't have to be and shouldn't be partisan. That should be stuff that we keep out of the, to the extent we can keep it out of the partisan realm. Because otherwise, like I said, you'll have people lining up against those things not because they disagree with you, but because that just their partisan identity is tied to the idea of, well, no, no, my partisan identity is that, well, you know, like we should be, we should got to say whatever we need to say in order to make this happen, so to speak. So that's a risk you run. So I'm glad you didn't put that in a partisan lens. But yes, I think you're right.
And part of that also is being able to deliver a return on investment too. You know, like you, you, you get the investment. Now obviously some of it can be higher minded, you know, in terms of, hey, we think this is the way society should be, so we want to counterbalance this and that. But you know, also you got to understand how you can make an impact from a financial standpoint in the modern media ecosystem. And that's just gonna be very interesting because the modern media ecosystem, because there's so competition and this is kind of circling back to where we started because there's so much information and so much competition out there. People will do a lot of things in order to break through. Which we saw with American Eagle right here, you know. And so anything though that we, you know, kind of, we the people, so to speak, can do to kind of pull ourselves out of the manipulated the puppet strings piece and at least play an active role in this, I think would be helpful because in this instance, the Sydney Sweeney thing, the biggest takeaway I had, like I said, is that we were the puppets here, we as the public, you know, like, hey, you, you get set up to play this role, then you get set up to play this role, and then you over here get to support them once these people jump in and then. And that. Like, again, we've seen that play out before, and we get to see it play out again. You know, it was like, okay, wow. We're just gonna, you know, like, this was the same kind of cycle that we saw with Haitians. With Haitians eating pets, you know, kind of thing. We're gonna set up these people to be mad, then these people are going to defend it, and then this is like, oh, my gosh. You know, this. This is the same thing. So, final question.
[00:31:38] Speaker B: And your Haitian neighbor, you know, looks like he's licking his chops.
[00:31:42] Speaker A: You know, that.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: That is an issue. So right now, everybody. I mean.
[00:31:49] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's for sure.
[00:31:51] Speaker B: I guess it's time to go.
[00:31:53] Speaker A: But no, but we appreciate Bradford for joining us on this episode of Call. I can see it, subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think, send it to a friend. Until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:32:02] Speaker B: I am Tunde Ogundlana.
[00:32:04] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk soon.
