Peloton, Holidays, and Fake Countries on Twitter - Episode 003

Oh, man.

That'S horrible. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of what we're currently calling C Suite Unfiltered.

But I think we're the lifespan.

We're beta testing. Mike and I were on a plane and Liz, who some of you know works at Augusta with us, she asked me what the name of our podcast was and it did not test well with the people that were sitting around us.

Yeah, the guy's like, what, What? What's that? What did he say? Is that your name?

He said, does your name start with a C? I was like, no. He's like, so why is it C Suite? And I was like, well, he's not the target audience, so. But that's what the. That's the name we're going with. So how's it going, man?

Good, man.

How's your week been, dude?

I don't know how we always start recording on Fridays. There's such a low energy evening.

Trying to bring it, trying to bring it. I got a nice lavender coffee, so.

Lavender coffee. That sounds horrible.

Yeah, my wife hated it. I actually really like it. I think it's good.

Hey, eggnog. No eggnog coffee at Starbucks now.

Really?

Yeah.

Why? Because of the union or I would.

Imagine because fluctuation of cost. It's heavy, obviously, but they have cream and all sorts of things. But no eggnog. No eggnog.

Are they going to do eggnog drinks.

With four on Christmas, bro.

I guess.

What is our world coming to without eggnog?

I saw a Jimmy Fallon meme and he said. He said the Starbucks cups, it's. It's been a rough couple years when the Starbucks holiday cups are good news.

Yeah.

People were like, yeah, Starbucks cups. He's like, oof.

Every year they come out, it's just like some big political. Something pops up because of it. Now it's of course, like, what, November, the first of November. They all came out. Yeah. Right after Halloween. Here's a hot take for you.

Let's go.

Why in the world would now we just pass Halloween? What's it called? The Spirit Store.

Yeah. Spirit Halloween.

Spirit Halloween. Why would they not do a second leg of that and just call it the Spirit of Christmas?

Spirit Christmas.

Like, it's the spirit of Christmas. The Christmas spirit.

Yeah.

And then they'd be able to. Because they do pop up shops, like for two months for Halloween. Why? Just do two more months?

Stay through the holiday season.

You get better terms on your lease. I'm sure there's a reason why. Because this is not like a novel thought. I'm sure there's a reason why. I'm sure they're like, hey, there's so much other competition at like, Walmart. Why would we do that? Yeah.

I don't know though. I like that idea because I went in on Halloween because our neighbor, the neighborhood that I live in, we get a ton of kids. So, like, we had to get a ton of candy. We're not going to be that house. We get a ton. We get a ton of candy. We put orange lights out on our front porch. You know, we sit out on the front porch.

For your first Halloween as a homeowner?

Second. Second. But, yeah. But last year my wife had to work, unfortunately, on Halloween, so I just did the. Put the bowl out, you know, and take one. So this year we were like, let's sit on the porch. It's like, say hi to all the neighbors. Like, you know, the classic suburban American life.

Old dude.

Dude, I know.

But I went into a store on the way home. I was like, oh, maybe I'll see if there's any, like, fun, cheap decorations. Right. And like, everything was already Christmas. Yeah. Like, they took it all away. Whereas, like, spirit Halloween, they could have Christmas in the back. Right. And then flip it after Halloween, I'm telling you. Yeah, it's a good idea, but there's.

Got to be a reason why I have it. Yeah, like, they have figured this out. Like, this is not. It doesn't take a rocket science to try to figure that one out.

That's an interesting thought.

Apparently I'm not smart enough to figure out why you don't though. Like, anyways, yeah, interesting thought. My hot take of the day.

Hot take of the day. I love it. So I read a Business Insider article recently and it was really cool. It was like a 35,000 foot view of the rise and fall of Peloton. Well, I mean, the current falling of Peloton. Right. Because it was written last month. So they're not like out of business. They're not insolvent. Like, they're still in business, but. But, boy, are the waters shaking right now. So I wanted to kind of overview the brief history that is Peloton. Get some of your thoughts. I know you're obviously in the fitness industry, you own a gym, so you probably are pretty aware of the product. And it's just kind of interesting looking at the valuations, the stock rising and falling and then you throw Covid in there. It's kind of a wild ride. So basically, peloton started in 2012. Do you? What. What do you know about Peloton?

So I remember when it was going public, which is prior to Covid by a year or two.

Yeah.

And being afraid as a gym owner, because now all of a sudden you had. When they came out, the valuation was still high, maybe 10, 20 billion. I forget. But it was a lot of money. And I was like, okay, are we going to be needed if everyone just going to work out from home?

Right.

The only hope that I had was the fact that I actually believed it's harder to work out at home than it is going the the gym, because you're surrounded by all these things that say do not work out, whereas when you go to the gym, you are forced mentally to work out.

Yep.

It's very like you have a 99 chance of going to the gym and working out compared to, like, a very low percentage chance of getting out of bed and working out.

Oh, yeah.

So that was my. My, my solace. However, I was afraid. And I know we're gonna beg on peloton, but during 2020, in 2021, every gym owner is freaked out. Yeah. Nobody thought Peloton was going to do poorly and it was going to be the thing that took over the world.

Yeah.

Let's just be honest. They went out and bought one of the largest manufacturers of gym equipment for us as owners.

What was the brand?

Oh, man, I forget.

I mean, I wouldn't know any names.

On top of that. It's like one of the major ones. It's not Norictrack or anything like that, but it's not. And it's not like fitness. It's just one of the most. Most snaps right on the edge of my tongue. I should know this because we have their equipment, but when they bought them out, everyone freaked out in the gym community because we all buy their equipment.

Totally.

And so it's like, okay, now you're buying for your competition who's taking away members from your club. But furthermore, what their success had been in 2020 with their bike now could be replicated in rowing machines, weights, every other machine that we use in the gym. And it's like, oh, my word, they could just take everything away from us. Yeah. So I know we're gonna bag on them.

Yeah.

But I, along with every other gym owner, was pretty afraid in 2020 when we saw what their stock was doing, the amount of capital they had, and when they made an acquisition for 400 million of the piece of equipment, the pre core. There you go.

There you go. Okay. Yep.

The. The. All of us buy them. Yeah. And so when they did that, it was just people freaking out of their mind.

Yeah.

And that acquisition of Precor is, in my opinion, what's going to be the saving grace of Peloton because they bought an actual company, had manufacturing down, had machining down, already built treadmills and all the rest of it to a very high level, high quality standard. That will be their saving grace. They bought for 400 million, which in my opinion is a steal of a deal.

Well.

And they.

They have a customer base that. That trust them.

Exactly. Proven product and something that they do actually have longevity outside of a bike without that acquisition. That stock that currently is six bucks or whatever is probably a $4 stock or a $3 stock, which is billions of dollars. Like, I truly believe that acquisition was so smart on their part. Yeah.

Yeah. See, I didn't even know that they. I didn't know they bought that. So that's interesting.

Yeah. Like, that it literally, like they were a fad and they bought out something that gave them some validity to what they did and it could give them something outside the bike. Yep. And so I know you're going to go on add on about their stock and everything else, but I had to stick up for Peloton for a second.

No, I like that.

I did buy their stock. Yeah. At 48. Sold at 130.

Nice.

Before it went to 170 something. Yeah, yeah. And then crashed down. It felt very good. Very good. But yeah. Anyways, go ahead.

Yeah. It's a. From a consumer's perspective, you know, not in the fitness industry like yourself. It's a very sleek product. Like, I remember the first time I saw it, I was like, oh, that's different. Like their. Their marketing was different. It wasn't.

Marketing is different.

It was not a traditional, like infomercial Bowflex commercial. You know what I mean? Where they're like, do this and look at this. Before and after. It was like they were selling what a lot of people like really good salespeople are good at is like a lifestyle. They were selling the dream. They were selling the lifestyle. Look how cool you'd be on a peloton. And I was like, those are kind of sweet.

It works as long as everyone's staying at home.

Right.

That's why it took off in 2020.

Exactly.

It's fantastic to work out at home when you have to work out at home, because that's the only option that you have.

So.

So they basically had a monopoly on the fact that they were ahead of the curve of all these other products like Tonal Mirror, all these other products that were smart devices. And again, in 2020, you just throw a sensor, call it smart, and say it's a home product of any sort, and you made millions of dollars. Let's just be honest. Yeah, but yeah, go ahead and, go ahead and rat on Peloton.

No, we're good. So I just want to get into guess like a little bit of the history. So we already kind of dove into some numbers, but I want to get like the specifics from this article. So they started in 2012, started selling bikes in 2014. Took them about two years to get a good product out there. Their first runs were very rickety. People didn't feel safe on them. Obviously they have to go through certain testing and safety standards to be used in the home. So it doesn't, you know, randomly fall over, break apart, whatever. They raised 550 million in original funding. Their valuation at that point in 2014 was 4.1 billion. So their valuation was like through the roof within two years. Right. Very, very rapid evaluation. 2019, they sold over half a million bikes and then they started making treadmills a couple years before that. So somewhere between 2012 and 2019, started doing treadmills. They want to get into the runner's market and they were able to say, hey, we have over half a million units sold this year and we also have half a million subscribers because that's when they started rolling out their online studios with their trainers and their classes, things of that nature. So they were able to really tout these high sales numbers and subscription numbers, which once, once again going into like lockdowns. Right? Subscriptions are gold for these companies. Right. People are locked in these contracts. They have to use the product, right? So they go public in 2019, IPO, 29 bucks. Like you said, it peaked at 171. So you're pretty close there. Peaked at 171. Most recent low as of right now, October 2022. This one, this article was written was 6 bucks. So very, very low. So May of 2022, what percentage of their sales increased? Like, what was the total sales increase?

Wait, in May 2022.

So right after COVID lockdowns or in the middle 2020 or, sorry, 2020. Yeah, you're right. May 2020.

Well, I, I've seen, I've seen the notes for the show. So it's 66%.

So yeah, they have a massive spike, right?

Yeah, huge.

I think. You know anyone that's used a peloton. It's a nice product. It is a high level. It's a great product. But I've also been on a lot of other commercial bikes.

Yeah.

And they're just as good. And so when I use the product, prior to Covid, I already knew this was. This was a marketing play, and they did a great job at it. But the product itself was not any better. It just wasn't like you get on a Nordic track, that's a $600 commercial bike, or like the ones we have at the gym that are about 7, $800. They are. They feel better. And they're. They're. The materials are more commercially rated. So the product itself was not innovative. The marketing, they were geniuses at.

Yeah.

And I think what people fail to realize is the valuation of a business is not based upon sales, and it's not based upon how well it's marketed. It's not based on anything other than the expectation of future returns. Right. How. How much confidence do you have that they're going to return money back on this capital and eventually do distributions, stock buybacks, or the growth and the revenue of the company is going up. So when you lose out on revenue growth, they lost that in the past year.

Right.

And then there's no expectation of any profits in the future because they're losing money hand over fist. Oh, yeah, that's gone.

Yep.

And then now it's brought into question whether or not their product is worth anything. There's nothing for that valuation to stand on. That's why investors just jump ship. And it was like, oh, it must be a great deal. It's 95% down. It's like, no, no, no. If revenues are declining, there's no expectation of profits ever showing up because they're losing money. Like, for every dollar they get, they're spending A$40. There's no value to this thing. Yeah.

So, yeah, well, their subscription numbers went off when they laid off all those people, though, because they all got free subscriptions. So, I mean, they could tell that number. Yeah. So that's what the article started with. The whole reason this, I guess the. The writer of this article was like, they literally just announced another 500 layoffs, like, as of October 2022. So they were like, all right, like, we got to do the deep dive, and I'll do the total number of layoffs this year at the end. So, you know, be thinking of that number if you haven't seen it. So. May 2020, 66% increase in sales year over year. Yeah.

Okay.

So late 2020, their market valuation was 34 billion.

Yeah, I know. I remember seeing this.

Big, crazy big. So then 2021, the stock crashes 34%.

Yeah. What was that? There was something they missed a quarter. Right. Do you remember what it was? They missed quarter numbers.

Yeah, I don't remember exactly off top of my head what that was, but this is more just. I want to show kind of the bumps in the road. So I don't remember the specifics of that one, but the stock crashes 34%. Then shortly after, a couple of months later, Amazon and Nike both show interest to buy it.

Oh. Then it spiked back up.

Stock jumps 25%. So people are like, oh, okay, when was it?

What month was this?

This was just 2021.

So late 2021, I think so, yeah. They had already declined a lot in price though, right? They. They had already dropped like, 70%. But I remember this too, and I think they eventually will be bought by an Apple or Nike.

So, like, you know, the. You know, the general reaction in the stock market was, okay, a big player like Amazon or Nike partnering with them, buying them out, partnering, you know, putting their label on it. Like, people had faith in that. Obviously, the stock jumped 25% in a couple days when those rumors started circulating. Then three days after that, the CEO resigns. Yeah, I said stock falls 20%.

Yeah. Dude, let's go.

So we're just doing this in 2021. You have this booming year in 2020.

Right.

You can't keep up with demand. You're having shipping issues. Just everyone had shipping issues. Right. And during COVID they have shipping issues, they have quality issues, but they're just. Sales are through the roof. And then they just start doing this in 2021. Yeah. Then after the CEO resigns, three other top execs leave. And in the last year, 2022, 5200 people have been laid off.

Let's go.

But none of their trainers because of the subscription. So the training staff hasn't been touched because of the subscription, because they're actually getting some money from the subscription. So their training staff, people do. The virtual classes are still there, but in production. And actually, the most recent large layoff has been mostly marketing teams trying to cut costs, essentially.

They have to cut them. Cut their way to profitability.

Right.

Otherwise Wall street will have nothing to do with them.

Yeah, yeah. So this. This is a direct quote from the article. So experts. Experts told Insider that the company fell prey to the bullwhip effect, sending big spending big on Logistics while expecting that demand would remain high. When demand cooled, peloton was left with costly supply chain operations that now require a major overhaul. So essentially, quality control issues were just abysmal. They weren't getting the product to people on time and the stock was going like this. Demand was going like this and they couldn't keep up with it and then started tanking. So it was a. This is a wild article, man. Yeah, like, it was just really cool to see the whole, the whole picture of it laid out. The interesting thing is losing all those marketing people. You know, the branding is a big portion of what everyone. If you had Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, you probably saw like, I'm like, that's intriguing. Like, if they can do kind of that almost grassroots like marketing like, you know, you do on YouTube, right? Like podcasting, you know, I, I thought that was really interesting. But there was one funny thing I did note about some of the stock prices. So most of us remember Mike doesn't watch a lot of TV. You don't watch a lot of TV. But in 2019, they did the Peloton Wife. Did you ever see that ad?

I did, yeah. Because of the craziness, right?

Yeah, because of the craziness. So if you don't know what the Peloton wife is, essentially it's like the sad, melodramatic tone and like the wife's all sad and then like, she's like clearly, like very fit, like totally fine, whatever. And on Christmas Day, she like unwraps the box and like her husband bought her a peloton and like her whole life changes. So then of course, the general political backlash was, you know, like, she was perfectly fine the way she was. Why is her husband trying to change her? Like, that's not going to make her mental health better. Blah, blah, blah. Right. So stock price fell. I'm not going to tell you the percent.

When they released the treadmills, they had a malfunction and a small child actually was killed. Unfortunately, on the treadmills, stock price also fell. Which stock price fall do you think was higher?

Oh, the life one.

Yeah, 9%. After that, immediately after that ad was released, their stock price fell 9%. When the news of a child being killed by a defective treadmill, their stock price only fell 4%. That was kind of a big yikes, I thought. Just kind of sad. Like, that's the outrage.

There's a lot you could say unpack about just overall cultural.

Right.

You know, tendencies, even about the wife thing. And like, honestly, we've just we have demonized the desire to become a better version of ourselves because we've just fell in love with the fact that we should accept everyone for who they are. And although I appreciate and would.

Support someone saying that you should accept people for who they are, I also think that there is nothing wrong with also pushing somebody and saying you can become a better version of you. And the moment we lose that and somehow think that just whatever we are today is the best version of ourselves, we become complacent and we will get beat and is a country. And so we then we wonder why, like, someone like China just comes. Comes roaring along because they're not okay with that. And they're like, no, we're gonna put our kids through like 10 hours of math, like, because they're not okay learning just their Alphabet. We're gonna make them learn algebra. Yeah, like, someone's gonna beat you. And this is true in business or whatever it is. As soon as you start demonizing anybody that wants to become a better version of themselves or demonizing an individual that puts pressure on someone else to become better. And that's different than like, stigmatization of around weight or race or anything like that. It's very different. Right, right. And so I just think that's a little point there.

Yeah, it's interesting you bring that up. There's a great YouTube video, Ray Dalio Principles, if you've ever read his book or listen to his book. But his YouTube channel is phenomenal. They do great. Like, he does voiceovers, and then he has, like, this amazing media team that does graphics. But he essentially did a study on the rise and fall of the major empires. Post, like, BC essentially, or. Yeah, post BC essentially. So he's looking at the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire, and then the US Empire. He just basically looks at those four. Obviously there are other smaller empires. But he said the commonality, the first thing that starts the cause of the fall of an empire is like, lack of education. And I just thought that was interesting because when you look at, like, the outrage of, like, it's just a woman on a bike, but, like, a kid died and people are more mad about, like, a woman on a bike. I'm like, are we even, like, thinking clearly? Like, are we even educating our to like, think critically? Like, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I know you have a lot. You could say maybe one day it's.

Okay, just as long as it makes them mad. And they come to the gym where we have a ton of weights and Equipment they can also get hurt on. We're totally fine with that. Just sign up for the membership today.

Here it is.

24 months.

Let's go. Lock it in, baby. Cancellation fees. I don't think I got a cancellation fee when I canceled my Anytime Fitness membership.

Did you cancel? How long do you have the membership for? A year and a half.

I don't remember.

It would have been over 12 months.

Yeah, yeah, it was over 12 months.

After 12 months, there's no cancellation.

Good. Fantastic.

We're good people.

We love Anytime Fitness. Cool. Switch it up. Geography. How. How up to date are you on your geography? How many countries there in the world?

Horrible. Like, I have no idea.

I think it's like 206.

Is it really? I think I have no idea.

That's just a guess. I don't have that written down, dude.

I don't even know the states. The U.S. i don't know, like, capitals. I'm horrible at stuff.

I was actually. It was really funny because I've been helping the team in Augusta. We're predetermining, like, territories and everything. And so we just sold another territory that has the same name as an.

Existing territory of a Bloomingdale One.

Yeah. So there's two Bloomingdale's now. Bloomingdale, New Jersey. Bloomingdale, Florida.

Oh, I knew that was familiar. Yeah.

Yeah. So. So Command center is like, hey, what are we gonna do about that? Like, what's gonna make it less confusing? And I was like, well, so essentially we're gonna do. We're just gonna put the state abbreviation at the end.

And J.

Well, they're the original. So do they get.

Oh, yeah, no, they kind of claim it.

The new one is fl. Bloomingdale Fl. At is their email and then their backslash. Bloomingdale Fl.

Interesting.

Okay, so that's what we're doing. I talked to our web design team. We're getting down the rabbit hole here. Sorry. But I talked to the web design team. They said it's the best option moving forward. Yeah, but I was like, you know, the folks, the great folks over at Command center were just, like, asking me, like, how do we do this? What's a better way to do it? And I was like, well, this is what the web team said. I think it's the most basic, simple way to do it from the consumer's perspective. They want their, you know, local provider to be using their local name.

Their email is going to be.

Long. It is long. Well, we want. North Pensacola is probably the longest, I think. I think he owns it, but I looked it up. We have two locations that already have top 10 most common city names in the U.S. oh, really? You want to try to guess?

Oh, man. Like other people that are.

So we have two franchise locations? No, no, we have two franchise locations. Each of their territory names are in the top 10 most used city names.

In the US is Bloomingdale 1 of them?

Nope.

Man. I have.

You probably won't guess. Madison.

Okay.

Is you.

Alabama is what we currently.

Madison, Alabama. But most people think of Madison, Wisconsin is the capital of Wisconsin. So Madison, you got that first. And then Franklin, Tennessee, there are. I think it's 42 Franklins in the U.S. what? Yeah. Wow.

Yeah. Like Main Street.

The number one, though. The number one's easy. What do you think about it? Think about like, the United States.

Yeah. Washington.

Really?

That's the most used city name in the United.

Really? Washington. How many?

I was like 80, I think.

What?

Yeah, it was crazy. So this is like one article.

Like Lincoln is probably another. Like LinkedIn.

I don't. I don't remember.

I just.

I just look for our franchise location names. Crazy.

There's that many Washingtons.

Yeah, dude, I know that think about. And you. Here's the funny thing. If there's like 80 Washingtons, there's only 50 states.

So there's like multiple.

Washington state abbreviation number two. And Augusta longer services.

Yeah. Maybe we should ask the postal service how they do it and then we could do that for our franchisees.

These zip code.

Yeah, well, that's not the geography I wanted to talk about. Have you ever heard. We're going. We're going across the pond. All right. To Europe. Have you ever heard of Listenberg? Not prior to you sending me the country of Listenberg.

No, I haven't.

So this is very interesting. It was hilarious. It was trending on Twitter a couple days ago.

I don't know if we can have you show. Share me the topics before I know.

Because I like to quiz you.

Yeah, because then it's like, do you know? I'm like, well, yeah, I got to do.

Yeah, fair enough. So a Twitter user, a French Twitter user. Gotta love Twitter. Shout out Twitter.

Twitter's free now, Elon.

Yeah, Twitter, we're free. What did he say?

Like, let that sink in.

Yeah. Oh, that was good. That was wild. I'll talk about firings with peloton people off. Same thing over at Twitter.

But anyways, they all need to be fired. You know what I would have done? This is my hot take. It's gonna be super Controversial. Let's go. No one will like me after this. Okay, so this is what I would do. So all of the staff, or not all of the staff, portions of the staff came forward and wrote a letter to Elon.

Oh, we've gotten one of those before.

Yeah, I know. Yeah, similar. So what I would have done in his case is I would have had an all hands meeting. I said, or like, done it virtually and just had a poll and, like, who supports this letter and who does not. I just want to have an understanding of where everyone's at. I was been trying to. I try to, like, flow, fly on the radar. And then what I've done is he would just put all their names like, I'm just polling. Yeah, just polling. And then I showed the results that everyone that put yes, you're fucking fired on the spot. That's what I would have done. That was such an entitled letter. Oh, my word. It was anti capitalism. It was ant. Oh, it was anti American, that letter.

Yeah, I saw some of the snippets.

Yeah, dude.

There was a hilarious edit someone did because Elon has obviously been on the Joe Rogan podcast. And then the one of the chief Twitter folks who's like, she's like, queen of censorship, basically, she got fired. She was like the first person Elon fired, but she was also on Joe Rogan. And someone did a stitching of Elon firing her live on Joe Rogan. And it was hilarious. It got me for a second. I was real.

I would have paid to see him read that letter for the first time. I guarantee you he just laughed.

Oh, yeah.

The guy's got all the money in the world. He could have bought Twitter three times over. Oh, yeah, like, and here these people are going to come to you. Like, we demand this. We demand severance. We demand that everyone have their same hours. We will not bend the billionaires. It's like, dude, go fly kite.

Yeah.

So back to a user of Twitter.

Oh, it's all good.

Hey, that's good. I like this. So Gas Pardo at Gaspardo. He's a French Twitter user.

Oh, man.

So what, he decided he was just gonna, you know, do a meme, right? He didn't know. Yeah, he did. He wasn't gonna do it. He was just gonna do a meme, right? You know, maybe his friends will like it. You know, maybe he'll show his mom, right? His tweet blows up within a couple days. He gets 113,000 likes. He gets tens of thousands of shares. He's getting big European News. News broadcasters, like, sharing the tweet. The picture. It's hilarious. So he tweets out a picture, and it's a map of countries that are part of the eu and if they're green, if the country's green in color, they're part of the eu. So he basically takes a shape and just slaps it onto the side of.

Spain and Portugal, where this actually an ocean, right? Yeah. So it doesn't exist.

So it does not exist. So, like, the Spain and Portugal coast, like, Atlantic.

Let's go.

So he just slaps it on there, Made it happen. He just goes. So he just throws it up there. He puts a red arrow pointing to it and he says he tweets. He tweets with the caption. I'm sure Americans don't even know the name of this country. Right. So he's just throwing a dig at Americans, which, hey, I'll take it. That's hilarious. I think that stereotype is totally true. If we have any European listeners, most Americans do not know geography. Like, we have 50 states to remember. We don't remember all your countries and 80 Washington. 80 Washington.

Remember what your country names are. Totally.

So he tweets this out, blows up overnight. Like, major news media is taking it over and, like, sharing it. And it's hilarious. It goes across, you know, American media, like I saw, and it was just hilarious. So within three days, this is the power of Twitter and the Internet. The country has a national anthem created. Like someone who wrote a score for the country of Lichtenborg. They have a crest, they have a flag. Someone then goes and creates a ministry of the interior, Twitter, and then begin tweeting about. You can get. Update your passport. And it's all. Like, it looks so legit. Like, all the screenshots look so legit. Even the way he made the map. Like, when I first saw it, I'll hand up, hand up. When I first saw it, I was like, nothing looks off about that.

It's jagged.

It looks a little like. I was like, I think that's Spain. Like, Like, I knew where Spain was. Like, I knew, you know, So I just thought it was hilarious. Like, I love, like, I love a good, like, clean, poking, fun meme. Like this great joke, bunch of people rally behind it. Like, no one's feelings are hurt. Like, Americans. Take one on the chin, whatever. Like, I think it's hilarious. But it did give me thinking, especially now that we have Elon, who just bought Twitter, and he's going to essentially, like, open it up. He's like, hey, Twitter is a platform for free speech, right? That's a big thing that he, he preaches and that he holds do. So it's just funny when you look at like the power of social media, the ability to deceive. And within three days, if you took someone who you know was on a camping trip for like on a, on a self quest, right, and they were on like a camp trip in the woods for like two months and you showed them all that activity on Twitter, they believe that's a real country, like 100% they would, right? That's how legit it was. So the ability to deceive at such a quick pace. And then I was starting to think about, okay, well you have Twitter, you have the metaverse, right? And then you know, we talk about like, well, we don't want like, you know, state media, police, right? Because then we start talking about, you know, the H man, if you will, and you know, 1940s Europe, right? So it's just interesting. What are your thoughts on like policing media, policing the metaverse. And like just, I hate using the word disinformation, but like something like that, all in good fun, but then it gets you thinking, like you could really spread something very fast, right?

I don't know. I think just social media has like put fuel to the fire of how humans communicate. Like back in the day, there would have just been a map that was written and it would have been shared around and copied and that, that European country would have became a country in a lot of books and textbooks and everything. It would have still happened that way. I think the beautiful thing about the Internet is good information and the correct information is just as readily available as the disinformation. So what that creates is a, a democracy of information, but it not necessarily the right information that gets the loudest voice, right? We hear is the loudest voice. And that's what the algorithm is going to going to push the one with the most likes and the most shares. And that's why it just blows up because it's just whatever gets the most eyeballs. So that's where it gets weird because then it just becomes the more outlandish your story and the crazier it is, the more likes and shares you get. So I think I don't really have an opinion on this disinformation thing because I really believe it's just the way that humans communicate. And social media has just been fueled to the fire of the way that we tell stories. And he told a story. It was a good story and people believed it. And fortunately, we have a map that we can also search on Google and say it's not there and figure that out. Right. And so I think with any.