Kaspar Pavilanskas: Guerrilla Social Marketer that made Tik Tok cool and told Robin Hood to suck...

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:00:00] They see it on Facebook. Oh, man, that's, that's, that must be true. And then you don't even try to see the other side. I think that's the most dangerous mentality that we as a, as a species could have right now, is that you're close-minded and you're not even bothering to take a look behind the curtains and see, well, maybe, maybe there's something that I'm missing, like question yourself. I think that's so important to, hi, I'm Dan Crow, a small business owner living in Central Illinois,

Vance Crowe [00:00:27] And you're listening to the Vance Crowe podcast. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Today we interview Kaspar Pavilanskas. He, he is a very interesting character. He made international news just the other day for his pushback on Robinhood, and I will let you hear for yourselves exactly what his advertising campaign was. But he runs a very interesting social media advertising company where they do things that are gorilla warfare tactics out in the world that you don't even know is happening, but it actually changes the way you view things because of how they show up in social media. We had a lot to talk about because I used to be in the world of communications in this way, and we had a lot of interesting back and forth dialogue with a guy that you can't meet just every day. He's a very interesting character. We're gonna head to the interview in just a second, but there are two things I wanted to bring up with you. The first one is, we are doing the private interviews, the ones where I sit down for an hour with a parent or a grandparent of yours and talk with them about their life story, trying to capture some of the values, some of the things that happened to them along the way that you wanna make sure are preserved. One of the biggest things that people tell me after these interviews is that their parent or grandparent tells me those stories that they're prodding mom and dad to tell, but they can't ever quite get 'em to say it or they can't ever quite get it down. But because I'm a stranger and I'm deeply interested in what they have to say, people open up and I've been able to capture stories that have brought the people that have brought them to tears.

Vance Crowe [00:02:04] And it is a powerful and wonderful thing that I love doing. So if you're interested and you'd like to have me interview a loved one, go to store dot Articulate Ventures and click on the link that asks for private interviews. The other thing I wanted to bring up is at the end of February, we are reading the book A Last Babylon for the Lindy Book Club. This book is wild, and it's one of those quick fiction reads. It almost reads like a Stephen King novel, but it's a story written in 1958 about what happens if nuclear war actually hits the shores of America and people are left over to restart civilization. It's a fascinating read, but even more than that for book club, we're gonna be meeting in virtual reality again. We have a special underground bar that I built, and it's a great place to meet. So this space right now can only hold 25 people. So if you're interested in joining the Lindy Book Club and you're willing to sit down and read a last Babylon, then send me a DM on Twitter or hit me up on my emailVance@vancecrow.com 'cause I'd love to reserve a spot for you. Okay, we're gonna get to the interview with Casper. Enjoy Kaspar Pavilanskas, welcome to the podcast.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:03:21] Thank you. Thank you, van. It's nice to meet you.

Vance Crowe [00:03:24] So you hit my radar because of Robinhood. When your business, after Robinhood had started locking investors out, ran a plane around with a banner on it that said, I believe suck my nuts. Is that correct?

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:03:39] Correct, correct. Suck my nuts. Robinhood, the banner said,

Vance Crowe [00:03:43] So how in the world was that a savvy business move,

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:03:47] Man? So it, it was a funny story really. It started with just, we're always at the office. You know, we do viral marketing and kind of using memes and the internet and social media to, to put brands, messages and voices out there and kind of create conversations. So we're doing that every day and we have our finger on the pulse. So we saw what was going on with GameStop. Everyone at the office was kind of invested lightly in GameStop just kind of messing around. And really, it wasn't based on fundamentals. For us, it's memes equal conversation. So even if there's not really solid fundamentals behind something, I know that if there's a bunch of memes getting created, that means there's a lot of conversation and there's gonna be hype around it. So we all invest in GameStop.

Vance Crowe [00:04:30] Yeah. And

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:04:31] Then it kind of worked out interesting. We, you know, we, I had an idea of like, all right, we should try to, you know, I started seeing on Reddit, people were doing billboards and whatever. I was like, man, I feel like there's something here for us to kind of, you know, capture some attention. So, you know, I thought of the idea of flying a banner and at first it was gonna be something really nice, like buy a GameStop stock or like something really, really nice that wouldn't have really popped off. But I knew that with extinct, like, there's something here. So then we started flushing out all these ideas of how to, how to kind of approach it. And we were gonna fly the plane in San Diego, but the weather ended up being bad. And the lady that I was talking to who's like the, the broker basically between all these pilots and she finds you the pilot, she's like, you know what, I got a pilot actually in San Francisco that's pissed off at Robinhood and he'd love to fly it. I'm like, oh great, perfect. Let's do that. And we were, we were originally just gonna go around the bay and just chill around the bay. We're like, damn, wait a second. Like Robinhood HQ is right down south, like right there. So through through the pilots some extra money and had 'em also circle around the hq. But yeah, dude, the way that we even thought of Robinhood, like one of our, you know, content guys in here just jokingly says, you know, we're talking about this banner and we're like, man, we need something a little better than just like buy GameStop. They're just too generic. Someone jokingly goes, suck my nuts, Robinhood and everyone starts cracking up. 'cause we're all a bunch of immature kids, but we all start cracking up and then like the laughter dies down and I'm like, wait a second.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:06:08] Like, that's actually pretty good, you know? So, yeah. And you know, signing our name on it, it was kind of like a little double jab to the man. 'cause we're like, man, we can, this is legal. We can put our message out there, make people smile, give people a voice that don't have a voice. 'cause everyone's pissed off at Robinhood and on top of that it's a tax write off. Awesome. So, so yeah, we weren't ashamed to put our name on it. And it kind of just, I think it really shows like the spirit of our company. I think we're like willing to take risks. We're not really, we don't really play by the rules. You know, we're not VC funded where we have to listen to someone. And so it's just, you know, we're kind of out here having fun on the internet and I guess in a, in a non-cheesy way possible, we kind of just decided to use our powers for good.

Vance Crowe [00:06:57] Well, I mean, it was an incredible branding technique because whatever money you spent on that, there's no way you would've been able to go out and buy that in advertising. 'cause you had Barto Sports, you had news companies coming out there. So after that happened, what was the result in the office?

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:07:14] Oh man, everyone was so excited. I remember that whole weekend. 'cause all we did is really just took it, put it on Twitter, you know, we sat there kind of cranking up the tweets and, and figuring out the best way to type out the tweet. And that's really, I think, the hardest part of all this, you know, viral marketing stuff that people just assume that it's like, oh, well, the idea is great and that's it. But it's so important on how you type messages out on the internet and on specific platforms that have their own like specific little caveats. You know, like on Twitter, if you're engaging with a certain demographic, you wanna purposefully misspelled the, the word U and just put a letter U. So there's like small stuff like that. So it took a little bit of tinkering to flush out the tweet and create something that we knew was gonna be easy for people to hit the retweet button on. So yeah, man, it blew up. And it was funny. It felt like 15 minutes of fame. It was crazy. Like, we tweeted it out on Thursday, the plane flew on Friday, and then it went viral on Saturday and it went viral on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. But it was funny, my two pieces of content were going viral at the same time. My a a screenshot of my tweet saying that I was gonna do it tomorrow with no date. And then there was another screen, a picture of the banner actually going viral. So it was funny, like on Saturday and Sunday, because some people only saw my screenshot saying today at three o'clock or whatever, there was groups of people lined up like live streaming the air in San Francisco thinking that the plane's gonna happen today.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:08:50] So they thought it was gonna happen today on Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So that part was pretty funny. But yeah, dude, afterwards, man, we got through the whole stunt, you know, we were getting thousands of visitors to our website, a bunch of job applications, old clients hitting us up, being like, oh, no way. I saw that. Like, that was, you guys ended up being a great case study for us. Dude, yesterday, somehow BBC news was at our office filming like a little mini documentary. And I'm sitting here, I'm like, what the hell, dude? I flew a banner that said Suck my nuts, Robinhood and all this is coming out of it. So it was totally unexpected. We had a team come in here last week and and film for like six hours. They're doing a whole documentary on it. Yeah, dude, wall Street

Vance Crowe [00:09:36] Journal interviewed

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:09:37] Me. It's interesting,

Vance Crowe [00:09:37] You know, you're, you're talking about hitting virality for yourself, but your whole business is actually about helping people figure out how can I play in the social media space so that I don't look like the, you know, 50-year-old boomer that that has no idea what they're doing. And like, I realized, this is me, my, we have a, a nanny. She came over the other day and she was like, Hey, I was looking at your Twitter feed and like all of your comments back and forth, and it's weird, I didn't know people spelled correctly on Twitter. And I was like, wait, what do you, wait, what do you mean what me? And she was like, yeah, I mean, none of my friends spell anything right on Twitter. And you're talking about like a, a a woman at an advanced university and you're like, oh fuck, I'm old. Yeah,

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:10:24] Yeah, dude, it's weird, man. There's like weird little things like that on all, on all platforms where it takes, you know, you gotta kind of hang around and kind of pick up the vibe and pick up like the little slang and stuff, you know? So I think millennials and Gen Z, they can smell a boomer on social media from a mile away, man. You know, it's just, it's, it's too easy using too many hashtags and, and kind of forcing it down people's, you know, throats. So you really have to know how to play it all correctly for it to work out. So yeah, that's, you know, that's what we do for brands and companies all the time. So it was kind of fascinating and really by accident that it happened for us. But, you know, now that I look back, I'm like, wow, this was like the perfect case study for us and, and kind of totally wraps up what we do in a, in a beautiful little package. And now I'm probably gonna be known as a suck line nuts guy,

Vance Crowe [00:11:17] Which the price you pay for fame,

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:11:20] The

Vance Crowe [00:11:21] Price as a, as a person that's, you know, done, gone viral. I think one of the challenges with it is it's not unlike a drug, right? Where all of a sudden you have this huge explosion on your social media. Like every time you look down on it, you're getting that love and that affirmation that you've done something right. A

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:11:38] Dopamine. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:11:39] Do you feel like the next hit when it's not that big is, are you gonna be like Jones in for a, for a bigger hit?

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:11:47] Probably, man, I really didn't expect it to affect me as much as I, as it, you know, it did because, 'cause it's weird working in social media for as many years as I have, I've kind of started to hate social media in a weird way. Like, I deleted my Instagram. I don't use Instagram whatsoever. I don't post anything personal anymore, anywhere. I don't use Snapchat, nothing. I've seen how social media affects my younger sister and I hated it. And how it affects society and younger people and how it just, I feel like it really fucks with your mental, especially if you're not, you know, strong mentally. So, I mean, I'll admit, dude, when I was going viral, I was fucking refreshing my phone. Every two minutes I'm waiting for that bar, still retweet, I'm, I'm waiting for someone to comment something and you're reading everything. And dude, I was obsessed all weekend. I was obsessed. My girlfriend would, I would go to breakfast with her and I'm just, she was pissed off for whole weekend. But yeah, I mean, I think, I think this definitely set the bar for us in terms of like, you know, a viral stunt that we put our name on it and we've had a couple people ask us during interviews like, are you guys gonna do something again? And it's kinda like this odd, you know, you kind of feel like you have to do something again, but once you have to follow up, you know that people are gonna be judging you based on your last thing. So it definitely, I think gets to your head and, but I don't know, at the same time I kind of look at business almost like a sport. And I think that athletes have to go through similar things and, and I think that mamba killer mentality, you know, no matter if you're in a sport or business, it's kind of, you have to have a little bit of that to kind of persevere and push through.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:13:29] So, I don't know, man. I think if, if the next idea comes up, I'm just gonna fucking execute it. If it doesn't work, you know, shooters keep shooting it is what it is, but I'd be lying to you if I said that the next time. I'm not gonna be like, man, did it do better than than to suck my nuts thing to suck? My nuts thing was just so perfect that, I don't know, it's gonna be tough.

Vance Crowe [00:13:49] So why Instagram did you, why did you leave that one of all things? Like, you're still on Twitter?

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:13:55] Yeah, Instagram, because Instagram to me is the fakest platform. To me, Instagram is just highlights only. You're only showing the highlights of your life. Everything's filtered on there. You don't know what's real, what's fake, you know, there's not really like conversation happening on, on Instagram. And I feel like Instagram's just, I don't know, man, I looked at, I've had a lot of success since I was, you know, probably like 18 or 19 years old. And I'll see some of these people that are, you know, my age and they make a little bit of money and everyone immediately is flexing. They're shown their Rolexes. And I, I did that for like, probably like six months and I started, I don't know, man, it just wasn't fulfilling to me. I just didn't, it didn't feel like me personally and I didn't feel right doing it. It just felt weird. And yeah, man, I don't know. I just didn't want to, I didn't really wanna participate in that. So Twitter I like, because Twitter's more about conversations and you can, you can engage with interesting people. I can follow you and I can learn about this, I can learn about that. I can, you know, I can have a conversation on one specific topic and I can read all about that topic. So yeah, I think, I think Twitter is just kind of more my style and more about learning and I feel like I can get more value out of, out of Twitter. And I feel like Instagram is more for, for my ego and to, to feed, you know, this, I don't know this monster. I don't want to be part

Vance Crowe [00:15:24] Of it. Yeah. Mean Instagram for me is like a visual drug, right? Because like when you go to that like explore thing, it's just gonna show you what you slowed down on, you know? So as you're scrolling even you don't even have to push a button, just the fact that like something stopped the doom strolling, they're gonna show that to you and they're gonna keep trying. And you find out like all a sudden you're heading down these like weird paths where you're like, I don't think one, I should be looking at this. And two, I really wouldn't want anybody to like, to know that I'm looking at what was in this thing. Because like, you know, this is just like, it's, it like is, it's like the path to hell. It's like the,

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:16:02] Hey,

Vance Crowe [00:16:03] That felt good. I wanna look at that again. I wanna look at that again. And it's definitely doing something weird to your brain. So like, I never really participated in Instagram. Like maybe every once in a while I'd throw up a picture, but I'm a hundred percent with you. Like, I have virtually no interest at all in Instagram.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:16:20] No, I think I can, oddly enough, I can kind of tell a little bit by just how you are. It just seems like a very big vanity play. Like Instagram's just about vanity and ego, you know, I think, and yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:16:33] So you, the suck My nuts thing is for you guys, but you've done other campaigns. The one that I found kind of interesting when I was looking into your background was Billy's Donuts. That seemed

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:16:45] To

Vance Crowe [00:16:46] Be like a story worth telling. So talk about Billy's donuts and what you guys did for their, for their launch.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:16:52] Okay, so actually Billy's Donuts wasn't us, I think you might've gotten that from me, retweeting or tweeting about Billy's donuts.

Vance Crowe [00:17:01] So what I'm always doing

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:17:02] Is I'm, I'm always looking at social media and to me just amazing how certain stuff organically goes viral. So in the terms of Billy's donuts for the viewers at home, it was basically a, a donut shop. I forgot where they were that was going out of business. The, the son of the owner tweeted something out, like my dad needed help with his shop. And the tweet went absolutely bonkers. And now there's lot lines

Vance Crowe [00:17:23] Up. It was something like, my dad's really sad, nobody showed up for our grand opening and it really was, it was like the saddest peu looked

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:17:31] Sad. Yeah. And, and I, you know, actually I want to get back to that sad part right after this. But yeah, that tweet went viral. The guy's donut shop's doing great. And I remember seeing that and I'm like, oh my gosh, man, like this just, the kid tweeted something out on social media and now his whole family's, I mean, it went from going like this. Now their sales are skyrocketing. And to me that's the interesting part about social media because if it, that can happen organically, I've always thought like, man, how much would brands pay for that? I'm not saying Billy's donuts, but imagine if Dunking Donuts you offered that type of virality, dunking Donuts would pay millions of dollars for that. So I've always wanted to, I've always studied those organic viral moments and I tried to, you know, figure out like what made that thing viral. So when I tweeted about Billy's donuts, I remember it was, it was something like, you know, we spent like a week looking through that and really analyzing it, seeing who retweeted it, where did the source come from, what kind of emotions were pulled out of it and et cetera. So yeah, you know, Billy's donut was, donuts was one of many organic viral things that I saw online and that I have to kind of figure out like, what the hell happened here? And you kind of nailed it. Like it was sad. And that's the biggest thing to, you know, that I've learned about virality is, you know, whether you're doing it for a brand, a product, an app, whatever it is, or Robinhood, you have to look at the underlying feelings that are gonna get people to engage with that content.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:19:05] So in terms of Robin Hood, people are pissed off and they're pissed off at Robin Hood in terms of the donuts. My dad's sad. And people have a very big soft spot for that, especially if there's an image attached to it and you can kind of see his face and you feel a little personal connection like, you know, the guy now. So yeah man, I'm not gonna take credit for the Billy's donuts thing. I wish I made that go viral, but I did.

Vance Crowe [00:19:24] Well take credit for something like, tell me more about projects that nowadays is, is proud you show when somebody's looking into hiring you guys for viral campaigns.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:19:34] Yeah, so our biggest thing is definitely the thing that I hang my hat on the most is TikTok. We started working with TikTok right when they bought Musically. So Bite Dance is the parent company of TikTok and an app called Musically used to exist where it was literally just for teenagers to do lip syncing videos. And they were known as just kind of a cringey app that just strictly lip syncing Bite dance had a version of musically that was for, for Chinese, so it was called TikTok. They wanted to expand into the US market. So they bought musically and combined forces, we saw that they bought musically and we knew that they were, you know, a company that didn't really understand Western culture and how to penetrate that. So we, we reached out to 'em and man, we, we ran, we advertised their first ever filter. It was like a water reflection filter. And that was our first step off the ground on, on kind of working with them. And man, that relationship, you know, it's still going to this day, but basically we've delivered them something over 350 million views on platforms outside of, of, of TikTok. So what we did for them was basically, you know, they were really cringey when they came out and they needed to establish some type of cultural relevance. You know, it's, it's kind of that you have enough money to put ads everywhere, but just 'cause you have ads everywhere doesn't mean that people are gonna love you. So for example, quibi, I think most people have heard of Quibi 'cause it was, it was a short form app and they had millions of dollars of investment and they had all these amazing people on their board and everyone saw their ad on TV or wherever, but it totally flopped because they couldn't become part of pop culture.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:21:18] So that's kind of the predicament that TikTok was in when they came out. So what we started doing is we would go and look through all the TikTok videos that we can, I mean we've looked through thousands. We pick out the needle in the haystack of good content that we know is gonna hit on Western culture that American people are gonna find funny. And we'd download that content off of TikTok, put it onto Twitter or Instagram, and we would make those videos go viral on those specific platforms. So eventually what started happening is, you know, if you imagine you're someone on Twitter, you're scrolling through your timeline and once a day you see a funny video that has a TikTok watermark on the bottom that has millions of views and you think it's hilarious. And every day you just keep on seeing a TikTok video. Eventually your brain goes, okay man, maybe TikTok iss actually not that bad. Like maybe it's not that cringey like I thought it was, I'm gonna go download it. I keep on seeing hilarious videos from TikTok, let me go install it. And you know, we kind of, on our website we have something trademark called, called social scripting. So that's essentially like hurting people into a specific conversation. So for TikTok in the beginning it started off as, you know, wanting to get rid of that cringe message around TikTok. So we would post these videos and have the caption be something like, man, I didn't know TikTok was actually this cool. So then people watch the video, they see my caption, they think, oh wow, that guy's actually kind of right. TikTok is a little bit cool and they're just constantly repetitively doing that. So, you know, that was kinda the start of our relationship with TikTok.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:22:51] And dude, I'll be honest, that was like for about a year and a half I kind of learned a business lesson too. I strictly only focused on TikTok as a client. And you know, have I, had I been a little bit older and with more experience, I probably would've been building out a separate team on the side to kind of be working on other stuff outside of TikTok. But they were just spending so much money that we were just balls in on TikTok. So we did so many cool things for 'em, man. Like they did a, a, a concert with the weekend that performed live on the TikTok app and they call us and this is about, you know, a year and a half into our relationship. So they kind of already know how we work and, and how to, how to work with us. So they call us and like, look, we wanna make this, we wanna create some buzz around this, this concert that's coming out, but we can't use pr. I can't really, you know, use traditional methods to market this. So they sent us a little 15 second clip of this concert, like a little sneak peek. We edited it and we put on the top, we had, you know, like a timestamp that ran from zero to 15 seconds. And on the bottom we had all these little colored squares that look made it look like we're, it's still like raw footage that we're editing. And then we came up with this elaborate idea to say that someone at TikTok got hacked. We got this leaked footage of this, this concert. And then we went to a couple big Instagram accounts that have like millions of followers that talk about rap and hip hop, et cetera. And we had them exclusively leak this concert that the weekend's gonna do on TikTok. And then we amplified the shit out of that.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:24:23] And basically, I mean, that was a really fun one 'cause it organically kind of started going wild and all the weekend fans picked it up and shared it across their Facebook groups and on Reddit, et cetera. But it was really a, a fabricated thing. So that was the nice one.

Vance Crowe [00:24:39] So it's interesting, right? Like if you go look up the, the definition of propaganda, it is not like it necessarily has to be nefarious content. It just has to be content that you are intentionally showing people again and again and again until they get the sense that this is what everyone else believes. You must have a deep insight into the world of modern day propaganda in terms of like how it shapes the culture's understanding of the world. Yeah. What do you, like when you looked at the election, what did you see that other people didn't see?

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:25:13] I saw that, you know, I was, every time, I think because of my career, I take everything on the internet with 10 grains of salt. Like I don't know if it's real or not. And during the election I was like, man, you know, are these memes about Biden created by someone that's paid off by by Trump or are these, are these Trump memes paid off by someone on Biden's team? Like you never know. I, I feel like just on the internet, you know, I'm just scared of everything to me just seems fake. Like I just don't know if anything's real, you know? And that goes from my sister seeing some models on Instagram that look like they're super sexy and have big pits and there's chilling in Bali, but really everything's photoshopped and there's just a green screen behind them, but no one else knows all the way into, you know, memes that are getting shared about the election. So yeah, to me, man, just the internet is an awesome, beautiful place, but it's also created this weird thing where people just take everything at face value. And I think we saw a lot of that during these elections where a lot of people would just be like, yeah, I saw that on Facebook. It's like, man, do you understand that there's thousands of companies on Facebook that just create random shit just to get clicks? And it doesn't have to be any, I mean, it just, it could be total bullshit and they can write a nice tagline, headline, throw it out there. And it oddly enough, you know, I was talking to, we had BBC here yesterday and we were talking about this and it was like, it's almost oddly enough like the older generation that really falls for it a lot easier because they're used to taking media at face value.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:26:53] Like back in their day there's one channel, everyone gets the same news and it's, you know, facts are facts. And especially if there's like a decent production value behind it, it's just they eat it right up. So, you know, I, I think, and that's kind of, I think, you know, going to show like at this, the Capitol riots, I don't think you saw many younger kids there. I think you saw a lot of older people there and it just, you know, I'm not generalizing totally, but it does feel like older people are more, you know, they're easier I guess to trick and they're, they're, they're, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:27:28] That's like, that is a very interesting observation, right? Because most of the people when they're looking around at the world, they're saying, oh, the reason we're going to hell in a hand basket is because all these young people are, you know, they need their safe spaces and they're, they're getting so upset about the most minor things, but I've never heard anybody say, well, we've got a problem. And that's that the old people are so gullible because they'll believe anything they put you put on the, the radar screen in front of 'em. Yeah,

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:27:54] I mean I, I have this one meme that I love, it's like, it's like a picture of Abraham Lincoln and I'm like, some stupid quote that's obviously not by Abraham Lincoln. And it's like, that's the perfect example. Like as long as there's decent editing and you have a picture or a video and some text over a picture in a video, boomers take it for facts and face value. They don't even fact check it. They don't go and Google it, nothing. And yeah, I think in terms of that, like Facebook is, is is dangerous because I think when you're younger and you grow up with the internet, you kind of start to learn, you know, to, to keep an eye on certain stuff and, and you know, maybe fact check it or kind of, you kind of have a, a better feeling for it 'cause you're so around it. But yeah, I think for the older generation it's hard, you know, and it makes sense. Like they're not, they're not used to this type of media, so,

Vance Crowe [00:28:45] Well, so, you know, one of the books that I read, so I used to work for Monsanto and I was the director of millennial engagement. So my job was to represent, you know, one of the most hated companies in the world and saying like, how do you get people to stop what they already believe just to give you enough time to be able to say anything that would alter their opinion about things. And so this gave me a very like, hypothetical understanding of the world as well as like a very pragmatic, practical standing up in front of people that have been told you represent evil. Yeah. And one of the experiences that I had was, was generating outrage, right? Like you can find people that will agree with you, you can point somebody out and you can generate that energy. And once I saw, once I actually felt how you could do that, man, it felt like a, like a villain's superpower that's incredibly dangerous, right? Because yes, you can do that and yes, you can vanquish your enemies for a little while, but then you, you've put this darkness into the world that eventually comes for you. The mob always comes for you. Yeah. Do you feel

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:29:56] That

Vance Crowe [00:29:56] Way as well?

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:29:58] Yeah, I mean I think it's, I think it, there's, it's how do I, it's interesting 'cause you have this power and, and people are, I guess are greedy, you know, just selfish and that's just how it is. So yeah, I think you use this power and you kind of don't fully think through what's gonna happen at the end of it, and you just want the immediate quick results. So yeah, I mean like I think that in five years there's gonna be a lot of people that were involved in this previous election and with memes and influencing and swaying stuff, it's gonna catch up to people and you know, they're gonna, there's gonna be a price to pay. But it's also, I think right now people are more okay with doing it because it's so, it's so new that there's really not rules set for it yet. There's no like crazy repercussions for it yet. Like there's no one's really been made an example out of this stuff, so,

Vance Crowe [00:30:50] Oh, I definitely think people have been made an exam. I mean like, so

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:30:53] I

Vance Crowe [00:30:53] Actually, the thing that really shocked me was I read ro Ryan holiday's book, trust me, I'm Lying.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:31:00] Oh, I love that book. I read that in Mexico a couple years ago.

Vance Crowe [00:31:03] Yeah, that's what I think of with you and, and to some extent my background. Like, you read that book and like you get to the last couple of pages and you're like, this thing's a little bit radioactive because this is for telling the future that happens if I continue to use the evil dark power. And I remember being in the airport when I was finishing reading this book being like, should I throw this away? 'cause I don't want people to know the superpower or should I give it to people? Like, I don't know what to do with this book.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:31:32] Yeah, and I mean it's all, it's all part of the Cogo, right? Like in that book, the journalists, they just want a story 'cause they just want clicks. So then if you're Ryan Holiday, you can feed them some story that pushes your narrative and it just, it's like a self, you know, feeding machine monster that just needs to kept, kept getting fed. So yeah, that book was so interesting, man. I, I read that too and I was like, wow. It kind of went more into my belief of I'm not a conspiracy theorist guy, I don't listen or read conspiracy theories, but I don't know, it just made me even more be like, man, is everything a lie? Like the stuff that you read, is it really, is it that or is it someone behind the door that needed that article to go out for some specific reason? So it's kind of scary, but you don't know what's gonna happen with it. You know, like where is this gonna end up in 10 years? Like

Vance Crowe [00:32:23] I, I agree a hundred percent. Like, so the experience for me just going to Monsanto, so when I interviewed for, to work at Monsanto, like I imagine if you know anything at all about Monsanto, you're like, man, that place is North Korea, why the fuck would you go work there? But the only reason I took the job interview is 'cause I was like, I'm gonna be able to write a sweet blog about going and visiting North Korea. This is gonna be awesome. And then I got in there and I did this interview, and when I got done I realized, wait a second, if you get this job, if they give it to you, then you get to run around and find out if they're as evil as everybody says that they are. You can go write the greatest tell all book of all time, but if you're wrong, well then that's actually the greatest like mind loop you've ever gone through in your life because you went from thinking these people are pure evil and they're not from what I see. So why is it before I came in here that I deeply believed with everything that I had that they were, and that's when you start saying like, what other things do I know with a hundred percent certainty like I did with this about the rest of the world? And I don't think my view has ever come back from that about like how wrong I was before I walked in for that job interview.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:33:33] So you would say that it, your, your mindset changed obviously after you got that job. You don't think that it's like oh,

Vance Crowe [00:33:40] 180 degrees? Yeah, I mean, like, I realized really how rapidly thin my understanding was. I was like, my understanding of Mons Montana was the Sioux Farm. I mean, I went in and did the interview and like it was seven hours of interview. So the whole time I just, if you, the best job interview you will ever do is a job you don't want because you say whatever you want, right? So I'm sitting there being like, yeah, so why are you suing farmers to death? Oh, why are you spreading chemicals that are killing everyone? But I had never actually been in a position to hear the other perspective. I had watched documentaries where they kind of showed the other perspective,

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:34:14] But they don't want to, they still have an agenda obviously.

Vance Crowe [00:34:17] Exactly, yeah. And so that was when you start realizing like, wait a second, are all of these documentaries bullshit? And by the way, they all are, every single one of them, all of them are. People tell me they, they watch documentaries instead of reading books. And I'm like, that's the dumbest thing I

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:34:34] Ever go to reading books, man. Yeah, dude, it's, it's really like that now. And people, people just, you know, they'll read something, you, they see it on Facebook. Oh man, that's, that's, that must be true. And then you don't even try to see the other side. I think that's the most dangerous mentality that we as a, as a species could have right now, is that you're close-minded and you're not even bothering to take a look behind the curtains and see, well maybe, maybe there's something that I'm missing, like question yourself. I think that's so important to, to constantly be asking, why do I fully believe this? Why did, like constantly questioning stuff and I don't feel like enough people do that. They, you know, especially these people on Facebook, you just see it, you see a headline, you know, I, I know people that will come up to me say that they saw something, or I'll see them share something on, on Facebook. I'll read the actual article and be like, Hey, did you know that that article was about that? No. What do you mean? I, I find out that they didn't even read the fucking article, they just shared it on Facebook. And I think that's dangerous. Like, you know, I think we should like your experience, like we should try to look at the other side and then we can form our whole opinion. But it's interesting thinking like with this thing like, all right, maybe they're Mondo's competitors or something started this smear campaign, or I don't know. Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:35:54] A hundred percent. Man, people don't even, I'll I'll I'll blow your mind. So when, when Roundup came out, so Roundup is, is actually a really innocuous chemical. People in the state of California believe it causes cancer. But if we were to actually go look at the chemical structure, and I have sat down and had people draw it out and show how it works when water hits it and how it breaks apart, just assume for one second that I'm correct, Roundup is, is relatively safe When they started doing that, now all of a sudden the way that you tackle weeds out in your field radically changes. So instead of going out and taking a steel spike that you have to slam into the ground and drag all the way across your field with a giant tractor that requires diesel and huge engines and that steel that has to be replaced, now you've put on a chemical that you can drive over the field and just, it, they, the, the weeds just die. Well, who does this hurt? Well, it hurts everybody making steel plows, everybody making giant engines and it doesn't just like kind of hurt their bottom line. It radically changes the entire way that the agricultural system in the western world works. So there is now billions of dollars at stake. And so they start playing the game where they say, well, it's not us, but we did happen to fund a group of people that really hate your way of doing things. And so you're playing this mimetic warfare and I think that's why I'm so interested in what you do because I got to see mimetic warfare from after the cities have been bombed, right?

Vance Crowe [00:37:26] Like after you've had a, a company be completely annihilated by the meme war and try and like come back that it was, it was an interesting place to be and Dresden after the firebombing or something. You know what's

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:37:39] Interesting to me too is that like, I think this has been going on this warfare for so goddamn long. We've always been doing it, it's just now what happens on the internet. Like as soon as you started talking about that story with the weeds, I started thinking about how, how weed got, how weed became illegal. I don't know the exact details of it, but I know that it's what they, the tree farmer guys hated that hemp was gonna be replacing trees. So they lobby and petition and basically just get rid of the whole weed plant even though it was hemp that they were worried about. So it's like even before the internet, this type of stuff was always going on. I feel like now the internet just made, made it easier to spread those messages and it made the warfare even more intense. But really as, as a society, we've been doing shit like this since the beginning, you know?

Vance Crowe [00:38:28] Oh yeah. There's no doubt if you, so in Springfield, Illinois, there's the Abraham Lincoln Museum and you go to that and you think, well this is gonna be kind of boring. Like what are they gonna show me? But they have this hall that you can go through and it's all the political comics about Abraham Lincoln while he was president before he was shot. And you see that the newspapers were every bit as vitriolic back in that time in the 18 hundreds than they are right now. Like they were vicious about the way he looked, about the way he sounded about the words he was using, they hated him. And you realize like we didn't leave some golden age of the newspapers behind people were printing newspapers and selling them at maybe at cost because they were trying to get their ideas propagated. It was more valuable for them to have their ideas replicated than it was for them to, to to, you know, spread the news and let people pay for it.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:39:21] Yeah, no, exactly. The only thing that really changes the medium that that propaganda or that message gets put out on, you know, so, and I think now it's just more dangerous, right? Like there used to just be newspapers, but now there's a million places to get your news, you know? Now I can go to, and it's, so I think it's also, you know, kind of a little bit of an issue because like you were saying earlier, I can believe the craziest shit and I can find someone on the internet that's gonna be like, yep, that's right man. Like, totally agree with my point. And if I want to seek people out like that, that fit my narrative, I can totally find those people on the internet. So I think, you know, I don't know how it's gonna unfold, but that has to, that's, that's, I don't know, to me it sounds like a ticking time bomb or like something is gonna, I don't know, it just doesn't sound good on paper that you, but it's like, how do you stop it? The fucking genie's outta the bottle. Like, what are you gonna do now? Like

Vance Crowe [00:40:17] Yeah, I mean, and that's the question, right? Because you know, you can, you can imagine any one person leaving the game doesn't actually stop the problem, but you know, you like, so how does, how do you feel like as you're going forward and you're thinking maybe not about the next five years or 10 years while you're still cool, but eventually you will be the age of the boomers or eventually how do you, how do you predict that you will both maintain relevance and sanity along the way if you keep, if you stay in your business?

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:40:47] I don't know, man, I, I don't know. I really don't know. I'm hoping that, I'm hoping that at least my, the, you know, my life events and stuff will at least teach me on how to handle that better when it, when it comes, you know, time for me to kind of, kind of hang up the cleats and, and and live in that society. But yeah, dude, I know that eventually, right, we're all gonna be the, we're all gonna be these boomers that we talk and laugh about. It's just the cycle of life. And it's like, and even now I'm looking at the generation before, you know, younger than me, I'm like, God, you fucking kids are idiots. Like with the Instagrams and the selfies and the TikTok dances. So I can already sense like, you know, you get older and it's like, okay, now I see that this just happens with every generation that you think the generation after you is kind of so, man, I don't know, I'm, I'm, I've kind of learned to, I I've tried to predict the internet a bunch of times and now I just don't even try to predict anymore. 'cause it's, it's unpredictable from what I gather. Like, I don't know, we'll see, man, I think there's gonna be a lot of fucking crazy people in 15, 20 years. It's gonna be even worse than it is now. Health, mental health crisis is just gonna keep on increasing. So, I don't know, I think I'm just gonna keep meditating, keep using a life coach and, and, and try to do yoga or something.

Vance Crowe [00:42:02] Yeah. So let's talk about your community. Where, where do you live and, and how do you participate in your community now in the midst of coronavirus and weird social media?

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:42:12] Yeah, so I'm originally from Chicago and I moved there when I was five from Lithuania and from Chicago. I moved to Long Beach about two years ago. Stayed in Long Beach for six months. We just wanted to be closer to the TikTok office and then decided to move to San Diego just 'cause the quality of life is so much better. So I moved to San Diego just actually about a year ago. We have, our office is in Little Italy, which is a really cool, vibrant neighborhood. You know, just a lot of bars, restaurants, very creative, like, it kind of matches this office, like super just cool creative vibes and feels. And then I have a house in South Park San Diego. So yeah, it's been kind of interesting man. I, I moved here right when all the lockdowns happened, so I haven't really gotten a chance to, to make like a bunch of friends or go to gatherings or bars or whatever. So it's tough man. Like I haven't been, I think the most involved in my community is I know the guy who owns the liquor store by my house and I, and I know like the, the, the little, you know, food truck people that work work in that same parking lot and I see him all the time and I say hi to 'em. But that's pretty much, that's pretty much the extent of that right now. I don't know, I go to the dog park, see people that I know there, but yeah, it's been a little tough right now, man. I think, you know, I'm not alone. I'm definitely not alone. I just, you know, it, it's, it's tough. Like I wish I would've moved a little bit before Corona so I could just at least establish like a friend group or something, but fuck man, it's been hard, you know, especially when you don't have a job that, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:43:51] Mixes you with other people. Yeah,

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:43:52] Exactly. Yeah. You know, or I'm, I'm not in school here, so it's tough. I didn't realize how tough it was to make friends as an adult if you don't have kids and if you don't work a conventional job.

Vance Crowe [00:44:04] Yeah, I, I, I did a bunch of different jobs, but the hardest job, the most lonely I ever was, including living in like Africa was when I bought a house and renovated it in Denver, Colorado. And it was there that I realized that no matter how outgoing you are, no matter like how, how much you like being around people, you need some mechanism to bring you into the fold. You need something that says, Hey, my family is having a family gathering, come do this, or our neighborhood's getting together and without the on-ramp it, you, you just, you can walk past people having parties, you can go past bars where things are going on, but you don't have an on-ramp to it. And I remember really learning quite deeply that loneliness is not actually the sadness of being alone. It's the fear that it will go on indefinitely. And that was the thing that was really hard for me. So when I am, when I'm imagining like your position, that would be really, really tough for me to reenter that because you'd be like, I don't know when I'm gonna get to find an on-ramp or when I'm gonna get to be able to be around people in the future.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:45:12] Yeah, no, that's a good point. You know, I, I don't know, I guess I try to have a, a positive mindset on it, honestly. It's, it's, it's a lot easier when you're really busy and I, I have a awesome, beautiful girlfriend that I, you know, I, I've been dating for a while, so I think without her I probably would've been way lonelier. But I don't know, I think, I think once stuff starts, stuff's slowly opening up here. So, but I think

Vance Crowe [00:45:38] You're

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:45:38] So right, it's

Vance Crowe [00:45:39] California. Like when I, to hear, to hear on the news or to hear on like Joe Rogan and all these things, like people are jumping ship, there's nobody left in California. I feel like the continent may flip over because it's just so, like, is it really that way? Are people really leaving so quickly?

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:45:53] I don't know. I feel the same kind of worry 'cause I just bought a house here a year ago and then I'm reading Twitter and Elon Musk is leaving, this person's leaving, but then my house value is going up. The market's super hot, there's no homeless for sale anywhere. A home gets put on the market, it's sold within a couple days. I don't know. You know, what I'm learning too is, is especially with this like wall streete bets thing and this Reddit thing that just happened, the internet is an echo chamber and you only, you have to be really careful to not get sucked into opinions and mindsets of the people that are talking. So when you see, you know, the people that are moving California, they're fucking screaming from the mountaintops 'cause they're pissed off and they have a business here, Elon Mosque, whoever, and they're tired of the income tax and they're fucking letting everyone know about it. But the people that are staying, they're not on the internet saying, I'm fucking staying here. Like, I'm not going. So

Vance Crowe [00:46:48] You

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:46:48] Kind of end up in this echo chamber where like, oh my god, everyone's moving account, everyone's leaving. So it's, and you know, it's a really, that's the internet. It just, you have to be, you have to step back a lot of times and think like, okay, is this problem actually way smaller than it seems? I don't know. So I see where you're coming from. I'm with, I had that same worry, you know, I had that same worry. I'm,

Vance Crowe [00:47:13] I'm with you completely on that. Like, that's actually the biggest benefit of the podcast is that I've been able to ask people like, Hey man, I hear this thing is going on in California, for example. And then you get to hear these other opinions. And in fact, I oftentimes try to take whatever everybody knows is true and find the person that's willing to be like, no, I don't, I don't agree with that at all. Like right now, I am, I am trying very hard to find somebody that does coal mining because I like, I'm, I like, if you try and think about like what is the cultural thing that everybody agrees, nobody wants, it's coal, but there's a lot of people that need energy. So I wanna find somebody that's willing to be like, look, you've been misled about coal or this is what you don't understand about it. Because right now could you, do you know anybody that supports coal?

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:48:03] No, no I don't. But I'm sure there's like a little pocket of people somewhere on the internet that exist that support coal, you know?

Vance Crowe [00:48:10] Yeah, I actually, probably my listeners will let me know about that. So one of my favorite questions to ask people that, and I don't ask everybody, you gotta be able to get up on the, on the wave and surf a little bit on the edge of chaos, is what I call the Peter Teel paradox. And the Peter Teal paradox is, what is one thing that you think is true that almost no one agrees with you on? And the reason it's a paradox is that if you say something people already agree with, you failed. And if you say something that people don't agree with, now you've gotta talk your way out of this. So what do you think? What's your Peter Teal paradox?

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:48:44] So something that I believe is true that no one else believes is true. You're putting me on the spot here. Lemme see.

Vance Crowe [00:48:52] You're the guy that put suck my nuts up on a, on an airplane banner. So I'm, I'm quite confident that you believe things that other people do.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:49:04] Hmm. I'm trying to think of a way to frame it here. I believe that I, people are putting on a, everyone, I'm trying to think of how to, how to say this the right way, but basically I think we're all living in a fucking fairytale where we, everyone thinks they're, everyone thinks they're kind of put on this, ah, man, see, I can't figure out how to really dissect this idea, but it, it, I've been thinking about it for the last couple days where people will basically come into the office and they're saying like, you know, I wish I could be like this or I wish I could be like that. And there's this, you know, or, or how things should operate and work. And like our business, for example, is totally not corporate. I swear I've put sucked my nuts, Robinhood on banners. And a lot of people think that that's what, that's impossible. How can you run a real fucking business when you put, suck my nuts on Robinhood on a banner. So I don't think I'm really answering your question now. Right. But let think

Vance Crowe [00:50:23] It's okay. It's like I I, this it's a, it's one of those questions that

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:50:26] It's a tough one dude.

Vance Crowe [00:50:26] Yeah, yeah. And I, it's

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:50:28] A tough one because either you gotta pull yourself out of it or you gotta defend it too, so.

Vance Crowe [00:50:31] Right. And I think that one of the challenges is if you're the type of person that's actually really persuasive, you don't think in terms of what is it that people will disagree with, you think about things and frame them. So, so sometimes you have things that people would disagree with, but you would frame it in such a way that they would come to the conclusion that you've already reached

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:50:50] Neighbor.

Vance Crowe [00:50:50] So sometimes it's hard to backwards walk those out. But I think it's an interesting thing because it often tests how deep is your gravity. Well, and since you've been talking about like the echo chambers and, and you like successfully getting out of it, at least in, in like the Instagrams and things like that, I think you're a good person to ask because those are the people that have ideas that are, that are not, they're not received wisdom. They're earned wisdom.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:51:15] Yeah. And I mean, my, my first answer was gonna be something related to that, but I kind of felt it was a little bit of a cop out just 'cause we've been talking about it. But yeah, I mean if I really quick, I would say that my thing that I believe that other people don't believe is that every, most stuff on the internet is fucking fake and it's manipulated and it's, so, I guess some people would argue against that up

Vance Crowe [00:51:36] No thought was, I think your boomer concept was exactly right too. Like your idea about like, hey, you, everybody thinks it's the young people that are ruining it, but it may just be that the older people have not adapted to this new technology

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:51:49] Yet. That's interesting. Like, you know, I kind of just, I haven't, I've, I've thought that, but I haven't really communicated that out loud until just now and I'm like, damn, that is kind of an interesting idea. Like, 'cause I feel like millennials and Gen Z they always get flack for from, from, you know, older people. And yeah, this is kind of an uncommon belief, right, where I'm like flipping the script and it's like, 'cause honestly, I, I really do believe that a lot of these people that are screaming fake news and fucking sharing dumb shit on Facebook, it's older people.

Vance Crowe [00:52:24] My, my latest Peter Teel paradox, or my Peter Teel answer is, I think religion is coming back in a big, big way. And I think really it will be, I think it will be stone churches with all sorts of iconoclastic, like very deep in religious symbolism because I think that the speed with which things have been changing is so deeply unsettling to people that eventually they hit a point where they say, I am either gonna give myself over to nihilism, which ultimately leads to just depression, or I'm going to knowingly go towards something I don't believe. But the structure itself will make me feel like I'm headed towards meaning. And I think that right now there's this huge meaning debt that people need to pay. And, and I think that religion in the past has been the one that's given it to 'em. I don't know that religion will look the same as it did in the past, but I think that we're gonna see a massive resurgence of religion.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:53:27] Well so that's interesting. 'cause at first when you first started talking, I was like, no, I don't, I don't agree with you. Like I don't think that religion is gonna, is gonna come back. 'cause I don't know I'm seeing it, you know, at least in my demographic. Like people just don't, you know, Christianity is, is all these religion are kind of going, going down a little bit. But then once you set that point of like, people need meaning of why and, and when you think, you know, I'm kind of under the impression this might offend some people, but of, you know, religion was created to kind of tell people why, why is it raining? Well 'cause God, you know, like why is the sun not shining today 'cause of that and kind of a, it's almost like a, a guidebook for human life. So when you said that, I was like wow, okay, I can totally see where you're coming from with people needing to why, what's going on and searching for meaning but not searching for meaning about why it's raining. 'cause we know that, but totally different meanings, you know? So yeah, with that basis actually I kind of see where you're coming from. I'm not religious myself, but I dunno, I've always thought of of sometimes to me, you know, I grew up actually I got my first communion. I went to private school, I did all that. And then, I don't know, I just, some, some parts of religion to me felt like a little bit of not a cop out, but kind of, I hate thinking that my destiny is in someone else's hands and I love to create my own destiny. I love to prove people wrong. I, if I failed, I wanna believe that it's because of me.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:55:00] If I succeeded, I wanna believe that it's because of me. And I don't believe that luck is a real thing. I think you create your own luck. So I've always had this weird relationship with, with religion where like my grandma was super religious. I had to pray every time before eating dinner at her house and stuff. And I don't know, I just started questioning it, you know, just so that's a tough one. I feel like I might be

Vance Crowe [00:55:23] Be canceled for that. Yeah, I think that the, the I, I'm in the same boat man. I mean like in a lot of ways religion is broken and in the past we didn't have a way to look at the hypocrisy of the larger system and say, ah, I'm gonna throw that out because if you threw out the larger system, you were dropped from your community, you were dropped from the social ethnic, you know, situation. But since it has fallen away, you know, starting with the age of the enlightenment on, on down, people were able to like throw those things out. But what I think we're eventually finding is, okay, let's say you loose yourself from all the binds that hold you back with religion, the things that it tells you to do that we know, ah, you can do this. You're not gonna be struck dead by God or Thor or anybody else. Do you still have the problem of I'm suffering and I don't know how to make the suffering something I'm willing to endure unless I have a larger purpose. And I think that that's one of those things that when we think about religion coming back, it's probably like, 'cause I don't know, if you grew up and you did first communion in Catholicism, like Catholics are not gonna be able to go to the Fisher-Price like new age Christian churches. You're gonna look around, you're gonna be like, this looks like Fisher-Price to me. This does not seem like you, you guys are gonna get in trouble. You're playing pretend and you're not supposed to do this. But I also think the idea that you're gonna be able to take the western priest that is generally way aged out, I think a lot of the people that used to go into the priesthood, people that I think before we had the openness of people saying, Hey, you can be gay and be in our popular culture and it's fine and you can get married and you can be accepted.

Vance Crowe [00:57:04] I think in the past those people knew they would be rejected from society. So they went towards the, the priesthood. They found a place where they could live a celibate life, be safe. And now you don't have that. And so you don't have the group of people that were fundamental in making the Catholic church stay young and fresh and vibrant. That's all gone now. So I think religion will be something different. It may incorporate stoicism, it may incorporate mytho like Greek mythology or Roman mythology. But I

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:57:35] Was just gonna ask you like, how do you think it's gonna, you know, come into play? Because I feel like a lot of this stuff like, you know, Christianity so old and then people kind of, I'm seeing like, at least people that I know, they pick and choose which parts they like about it. You know, like so oftentimes like, well I'm, I'm a Christian but I still have sex with my girlfriend. Like it's fine. And things of that nature where it's like you kind of pick and choose which parts you like and which parts you don't like. And I'm just really curious like, you know, in 50, a hundred years, what are we gonna base, you know, there's gotta be a a, a template that we follow from thousands of years ago. Some, I'm super curious how it's gonna unfold. 'cause yeah, I mean I think there's gonna be a lot of people that are gonna be looking for, they're gonna need something like you said to, to believe in and kind of get 'em through a lot of the tough times. And I mean, you're right though, maybe it ends up being something that we don't even you and I can't even put our finger on it right now. Like maybe it's some, some club or something like a that talks about, you know, who knows.

Vance Crowe [00:58:41] Yeah. I think, you know, you, you said it when you were talking about, you know, your mother was, your grandmother was religious and you had to pray. So you actually got pulled into that culture, you know, bible stories, right? Yeah. You know what, maybe 20 generations from now will view the same way that we view Greek mythology. You have those stories. The question becomes, will you, if you have children find value in teaching them Bible stories despite the fact that you don't think there's divinity in those stories because it's not ordained by God necessarily. But those mythological stories all have a lesson in them or probably multiple lessons in them. So I think that it, it probably will have to, to be somewhere along the lines of which stories are we going to tell? Because everybody's religious, you just maybe don't admit it. If you're not worshiping God, you're worshiping money or fame or something. And I think that what stories you tell is going to be the mythology you pass on and whichever one is memetically able to be replicated the fastest and gives people the greatest advantage will be the religion that will win.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [00:59:46] That's a really interesting thought. You know, I've always kind of, you're totally right on that, where in my eyes religion has been, it's not like I, I'm not like a hater of religion, but I, I think that it's, it, it's, it's been a great guidebook for people. It really is so full of lessons. Like the Bible is full of amazing lessons. Like those lessons should stay forever, don't cheat, don't lie, don't kill people. Like things like that. That totally makes sense. And I think that, you know, my theory is that back, you know, back in the days when religion was created, you needed some type of a way to govern people. And if you can't, you know, if, if I don't have cops everywhere, what's the one way that I can govern you, even though when you're not, when you're not even being watched, is if you think that another person's watching you from above. So I think that the lessons in there are amazing. So I could totally see something happening in, you know, whatever, 50 years or something where it's, we're still taking those same lessons. 'cause those lessons I think I've never met personally and a bad like, you know, mean hateful Christian or like religious person like me personally, I haven't met that. They've always been awesome super kind people that you can hang out with and they're super nice and friendly and et cetera, et cetera. So I think we can still, you know, raise people like that and, and kind of develop those qualities in people without, you know, without having to kind of, you know, what you were saying where we don't have to have this, this mythical energy, possibly mythical energy kind of surrounding it.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [01:01:22] It could be, you know, like the human handbook and everyone should just follow this type of thing.

Vance Crowe [01:01:27] It's gonna be an interesting thing. I know that the, the story that rocked my world was, you know, the one that we all know the most clearly the Adam and Eve story, right? And I was listening to this kind of internet philosopher, Yosha Bach talk about it. And he said, imagine that the Garden of Eden is actually describing something that we still have today. It's childhood. And a parent decides that they don't want their child to be scandalized by the things that they should be afraid of. The things that could get them the all the bad things. You keep them in this space and you're teaching them to name the animals so that that way they know their place in the world and that, and that when you, when when God cast Adam and Eve out of the, out of the garden of Eden, what you're really doing is you've lost your childhood, you've lost your innocence, and now you have to face the rough world. And I heard that and I was like, what the fuck?

Kaspar Pavilanskas [01:02:20] Yeah, right. Yeah. I'm sitting here like, whoa,

Vance Crowe [01:02:23] I like, how could I have heard that story a million times, millions of times and never took that meaning away from it. But as soon as you say it, I realize that is exactly what I'm trying to create for my daughter. So there's something about those stories that will live on beyond us. And, and so that's my Peter Thiel paradox. I I believe religion is coming back in a big, big way.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [01:02:46] That's a big one, man. That's a, I think that's a really great, great argument for it. 'cause I, I gotta admit, when you first said it, I was on the opposing factor and I'm like, alright, I can see it because I think I was looking at it with a different lens of like, looking at it like how religion is today. But you're totally right that, you know, religion is just right, what you strongly believe in and, and kind of like what you base your, your life around. So that could be I some religion of money. I mean now there's like weed churches in California. Have you heard about that?

Vance Crowe [01:03:16] No.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [01:03:17] There's churches, there's churches in California where you just, you just smoke a bunch of weed basically, and you're like, your, your religion is is tied in with, with the, with the plant and hemp and, and yeah dude, I mean your your your priest is like just a fucking dude just smoking a joint and that exists out here. So it's, I mean it is interesting how with religion, right, if you can, there's all these different churches and really, like, even if you look at the definition of religion by governments, I don't know what the exact definition is, but it's not about, you know, anything can be your belief weed or maybe Scientology or whatever. So yeah, it's gonna be a interesting one. You know, I think especially with, especially how all these like thought leaders and stuff are coming out now, I think we're gonna see a, a couple of interesting cults come come out of like the next like 20 years.

Vance Crowe [01:04:16] No doubt about that. There's no doubt. And I think the tech oligopolies are making it much more likely that we're gonna see bad cults come because as you start saying, hey, you're not allowed to talk about these things in public, that doesn't mean people aren't gonna talk about it. It just means they're not gonna talk about it in front of you. Yeah. And so that makes it so there's like no, there's nobody being like, hey, the crazy person. I don't think that's exactly right. And instead you get clusters of people. So Yeah, cults are coming too, man. Well,

Kaspar Pavilanskas [01:04:48] Religions

Vance Crowe [01:04:48] Are cults anyway. Like all of them are, they just like, when you, when you transcend from being a cult to a religion is when you become, you're so big that you become accepted.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [01:04:58] Wow, that's, I guess I didn't know if that was like PC enough to say something like that on your podcast, but I'm glad you said it 'cause I agree with you. I do think I, I totally agree that, you know, religions are a little bit like cults. So, and I think that's kind of been, you know, my personal, my, my 2 cents. I've kind of always, I think that's why I'm, I do what I, I do and that's why I'm, I'm kind of the way that I am. I don't like to be, I like to go against the grain. I never really liked, for example, everyone would skateboard when I was younger. I wanted a roller blade at the skate park, you know, like I wanted to get my hair spiked. I'm not, I don't know, I just, I always want to go against the grain and I don't wanna just be like another sheep. So I think that's oddly enough how I've shaped some of my life, like religion, everyone around my life, like religion, I'm like, well fuck that. I'm gonna do the exact opposite. I don't wanna do that. Everyone went to college and got a degree, I'm like, fuck that. I'm dropping out. I'm gonna start some social media company. So I think that just kind of how I lived my life where I like to, you know, it's probably gonna get me into trouble sometime along, along the way and I'm sure it already has. But yeah, I think I have this little knack for like wanting to go against the grain and kind of, I don't know, be different, you know, so,

Vance Crowe [01:06:11] Well you're going against the grain is what brought us together and I had a really fun time talking with you, Casper. So if people wanted to learn more about nowadays or, or check you out, how would they go about finding you?

Kaspar Pavilanskas [01:06:24] Yeah, our website is nowadays.media. So there's no.com It's just.media. And I guess really that's the best way to check us out, man. You know, you can follow me on Twitter, K-A-S-P-A-R-C-M-S, but like I said earlier, I don't really tweet too much. So kind of stay, stay off of those. But no man, I had a blast man. Thanks for having me on and thanks for reaching out. You know, I, I always like these enlightening conversations where we kind of go back and forth and kind of, you know, explore, explore different possibilities and different thoughts that I probably wouldn't have thought of. So now I'm, I'm gonna go and think about what you told me about religion and kind of dive into it more. So, no man, that was great. This

Vance Crowe [01:07:04] Is a lot of fun, man. Thanks Casper.

Kaspar Pavilanskas [01:07:06] Yeah, nice meeting you.