AI, Street Culture & Fatherhood Discussion | Grown Man Game Podcast Ep. 15

speaker-0: Welcome back y'all to the grown man game. I am your man, Mike Long with my co-host, my dog.

speaker-1: Rod.

speaker-0: Rod the Caust. Back again, man, to give you all some grown man game and just getting into some good grown man talk. Yeah, man. I gotta put a little more seasoning on there, but y'all know what I'm talking about. A little lorry.

speaker-1: Need some lorry. You just want salt and pepper. Damn. Pepper just so want to spike. Oh, man. I'm doing good. I just, while you was talking, I don't know why I was thinking about this. was like just the first episode in a while. I didn't have on my hat.

speaker-0: too spicy. What's good? What's going on?

speaker-1: I'm like, damn, do I need to go grab a hat? But it's like, you know, got my podcast uniform is like a hat and a shirt that says something on it. I don't feel like going to get a hat right now. So I'm just I'm doing good. Sorry, I sidetracked. It's talking about hats.

speaker-0: Very long side tracks, okay.

speaker-1: We came back though. We back on track. Yeah. we. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, but I'm doing well, man. How are you? Good. Good.

speaker-0: professional. I'm good, No complaints, man. Just living free and black in America, man. You know what saying? Going to work, doing my thing. You know what I'm saying? Dodging the assassination temps, know? Donny.

speaker-1: You better be careful talking about that. Get us both canceled for no reason. We be shadow banned from everybody. Nobody hears the podcast go dark. got to know. He's king of petty. Him 50 cent. Like one A and one B. Petty Murphy. He'll shut you down. So you got to be careful. Yeah. Tread lightly. Donny ain't to play with. Yeah. He let you know. Whatever, bro.

speaker-0: My bad.

speaker-1: All right, look, listen, if you guys have enjoyed Big Mike, this will be your last time seeing him. ⁓ You can't sacrifice my good name.

speaker-0: Keep playing man, I'm gonna move to Thailand, no problems. ⁓

speaker-1: I don't know, because obviously we went there and then we've been talking about when we retire, places we want to go. So I've been searching different places, like ⁓ expats or where black people go or whatever. And because I searched that, my timeline is full of like... Hell, what does it take to be rich in the Philippines? I'm like, I don't care. don't want to know now. It's like, damn, man, can I watch an NBA game? Can we give me some highlights or something? Can I get something besides what it's like to live in Thailand? It's like every other post. like, man, I totally messed up my timeline. Jesus.

speaker-0: The algorithm is like, okay, I got you big dog. That's exactly what happened to me. I kept seeing black and Bali. Panama, ⁓ and two old couples just talking about how the healthcare in Panama is better than America. I'm dang man.

speaker-1: Yeah, right. Yeah. How much you need to spend here, save up this amount. Like it was a dude that broke down like his whole retirement thing. And I was like, ⁓ this is actually pretty interesting. And that's how they got me. watched the whole four minute video locked in forever. He was tripping. Like, he's really interested in this. It was his fault, man. He was making it interesting. Each line caught me for the next line. They was living, living for like $2,700 a month in Panama. ⁓ had a condo. The condo was super nice too, like a high rise condo. And I think he was like in his early 50s, retired. ⁓ What was he? Not a police officer, but something like law enforcement. He think you worked at the courthouse or something like that. I guess that's technically still law enforcement. Yeah, I guess. Still a cop or something like that, but he worked at the courthouse or whatever. ⁓ A bailiff, that's what it was.

speaker-0: ⁓ there, baby. Okay, he was one of the good ones then. Sorry to you.

speaker-1: But yeah, between him and his wife, man, they was living off of their retirement and living like kings. She cook when she want to, but we go out maybe four or five nights a week. eat at the nicest places and I'm like, dang. And it's not crowded because apparently, I guess during the pandemic, Panama has started building up, expecting a lot of people coming down there. but it never happened. So they got a lot of vacancy, right? Like all these apartments and houses are empty. So that runs the prices down or ran the prices down a good amount when they got in. And I think they're starting to creep back up, but he was like, it's just not a lot of people. He was like, you know, it's me in my building and it might be two other people on our floor. And it's like, dang, they're living like ⁓ it's the post-apocalypse, right? Like it's just me, my wife and the zombies down on the ground floor.

speaker-0: Dang, man, I keep thinking about it, but I'm just, it's difficult. Yeah. Cause you know, we got children, man. And the way that things are set up right now, I don't know when this girl gonna move out. You know what saying? Not that I'm wanting her to move out, but just it's taking longer for... this next, I mean, you the generation before, I should say after us. Yeah, the generation after us to even to get a home, to have a career where you can have a breath in. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like it's tricky out there for younger folks. You know, we were even at my job. I got one of them good union jobs, y'all. And we was even talking like, man, I don't know about what the next flow of people coming in here, how it's going to look. how the contracts are gonna be. Every five years there's a new contract with the company. AI is just knocking cats off the block, man. So, I know, man. We'll see.

speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. And then you got like the traditional fields. And that's one thing I always thinking about is like in the next 10 years, even for us, right? Like when we were kids, people talked about, like you said, get a good union job, get a good government job. You know, you want to learn a trade. Then trade schools kind of disappeared. like, I mean, I guess they were still around, but then everybody's pushing, got to go to college and then get these, these careers. then them careers don't really exist no more. People got a bunch of degrees that they can't use. And now it's like, I feel like it's going backwards, right? Like it was, right, so get a degree so you can get a job. Now it's like, don't even go to college because you're not going to to even be wasting your time. there's no careers that are, and schools are not going to keep up with like AI and things. And tech just moves too fast for them to change trajectory or- To change courses and curriculum, right? To match. So by the time our girls get out of school, that four years or five years that they was in school, that job don't even exist no more. Or not in the way that it existed prior to them going in. So I'm like, man, what do I tell them? Right? Because we're saving money for college and they might not even go to college.

speaker-0: Okay.

speaker-1: You know, so what does that mean? I mean, I think in the careers that they want to go, like I got one that wants to be a psychiatrist and the other one wants to be a pediatrician or a doctor. So I think those careers are going to exist, but not in the way that they exist now. telehealth, right? My wife works for a telehealth company and she sees clients, but not in person and hasn't seen clients in person for years. So I can't imagine that my daughter's gonna have like an office with a couch where somebody comes and sits down. It's not gonna happen, right? So she's gonna have to learn how to move in telehealth versus like the actual face-to-face in building mental health space. then doctors, even the technology with doctors is vastly different. Like surgeons don't have, I mean, they do, but in some cases they don't have to actually do the surgery anymore, right? Like they're kind of. observing a piece of technology doing the actual surgery, right? With better precision, right? But I mean, you obviously have to have some kind of human oversight there, right? Somebody that knows what to do, but you don't need a lot of them anymore, right? It's funny, we were just talking about this, ⁓ because my wife was like, well, you never replace doctors. And I'm like, well, that's not true, because you've been going to WebMD for years and self-diagnosing yourself. Right? It started then. And now we go to our doctor now and before she starts seeing us, she'll ask us, is it okay if I have AI record this? So while she's talking to us, AI is taking notes and writing it down. It's basically teaching itself how a doctor would interact with a person. How would they diagnose it based on a certain amount of symptoms, what they're observing. Like they're replacing themselves. It technically, it is making it easier to take notes and the notes are more accurate and you have a better profile when the person comes back in. But eventually, right, after enough people have done this, it's got a huge database of symptoms, of suggestions, of diagnosis, of prescriptions. Pretty soon, we don't even need you in there, Dopp. Like, we might need you to just make sure that it's taking the right notes. We might need you to review the notes, maybe make some adjustments, but we don't need 10 doctors on this floor, we need two.

speaker-0: me too. I mean, even just recently, you know, I talked about, you know, my back. And that was one of the first things I did after I had talked to you. I went to AI like, Oh, I have this pain in my back. And after it asked me all these different questions, it basically was just saying like, Oh, yeah, it sounds like your L4 or your L5 is out of alignment. And this is whoopty whoop. And I'm like, And then when I went to the doctor, she was like, well, it seems like maybe your L4 or your L5 might be having issues there or you just have some inflammation that is pushing up against your nerve and yada, yada, yada. And I'm like, damn, this is kind of what AI already told me. But the thing with AI is they still have a lot of room to get stuff right because it hallucinates so much.

speaker-1: Mm-hmm.

speaker-0: And you don't know what hallucination is, it's exactly what it sounds like. Like I'll tell AI, hey, transcribe this podcast so that ⁓ I can print out and save the notes or whatever from the actual podcast. It'll transcribe maybe 30, 40 minutes of the episode and then it may take that 40 minutes and then copy it over again. And then it'll be like, I got your whole episode, you know, transcribed, it's 80 minutes. And I'll be like, no, the episode was only 40 minutes or 56 minutes. Why is it 80? ⁓ my mistake. Yes, I copied it and I doubled it. I fixed it now and there won't be any more issues, but then I'll be reading through it and be like, wait, that's not the last thing that I said on the episode. So it's like, you still gotta. I think that might be an area where, you know, ⁓ I could push, you know, Maddie or you could push the girls or everybody out there trying to find, you know, new ways to survive this AI thing, being able to oversee AI. So, you know, analyzing data of AI and learning how to prompt in a way to lessen up those hallucinations from AI. Like, I don't know, there's a lot of things we can do.

speaker-1: Yeah, but I think even that is short lived because if it's always learning, it's learning its mistakes and then it's correcting them in real time and faster than like so like right now, if you go on like Indeed or any of the like job sites, you see a bunch of like ⁓ companies like data annotation or I can't think of the other ones, but essentially it's like a AI trainer and they want people in specific fields. And then you basically talk. back and forth or texts back and forth with AI. And it asks you questions, you ask it questions, you grade the responses based on your expertise, and you're teaching it how to work in this field or that field. Exactly, exactly, right? Like, so you're an expert in, let's say you're an expert in landscaping, right? Or landscape design or something. So it's asking you questions about it. Eventually, it's getting all the information from the experts so that it doesn't make those mistakes anymore. ⁓ And because it's constantly learning and it's a singular consciousness, right? Like the large language models or certain AI's is like, it's all one place, like all learning. It's not like, you know, I know something and you know something together, we know something, but like it is the together. Right. And it's compiling all that information all at once.

speaker-0: This sounds like a good movie, a good horror movie, they're together.

speaker-1: Right. But in a matter of a few years, it won't need people to give input anymore. Right. Like it's going to have like even even prompt engineering, which was a big deal two or three years ago. And people still make really good money prompt engineering. But now you can go into chat GBT, which is not like a super, super intense one in terms of large language models. It's the most popular, but it's not. probably the most in depth. It's like Apple and Android, right? Like it's the most popular, but it's probably not the best. ⁓ Claude is probably a little better at this point, but you can go into it and tell it what you want and then ask it to provide you a better prompt and then use that prompt in a different chat and get a better result. Like it's already knowing like what a good prompt for itself is. So it really doesn't need you. Like it doesn't need the oversight anymore from somebody else because it can create its own prompt.

speaker-0: That was quick.

speaker-1: Which is like, okay, so we're afraid that we're going to lose jobs from AI, but people are saying, well, it's going to create new jobs or new types of jobs. But even those jobs are getting replaced just as fast as we're losing the other ones. It's just crazy.

speaker-0: Yeah, we'll see man, we'll see.

speaker-1: And we got to, what was it, 2030? ⁓ Terminator came out. So, you guys better be nice to AI and say please and thank you. Stop playing games. Also, we ain't gonna have no water. Like all of it, all of it, right? Like the Matrix, like we don't know who struck first, but we know we scorched the sky. Like all this stuff is coming, man. I don't know, we had some prophets writing those books and movies.

speaker-0: You know what, it was supposed to be the same black woman that came up with the idea for a book. guess Terminator was a prequel to Matrix.

speaker-1: Pre- Yeah. Or vice versa. One of the two. think, I think, yeah, I can't remember which one came first, but, but yeah, it's the same, same lady, same idea. It was ⁓ her, her concept that was adapted or taken, right? Sure. got paid something at some point, but not right away, right? They definitely stole it from her and kept it, kept it pushing. yeah, man, some of that stuff is like,

speaker-0: They had to fire full.

speaker-1: It's worrisome because like, especially with the girls, like, cause I, you know, I want to make sure that they are, are set up. I'm not trying to support them their whole lives. Crazy. You need them to be able to do what they want to do and do it, you know, get paid. But, ⁓ but I do worry like, you know, what's, what's happening is happening too fast for us to adapt to and trying to make sure that they are able to adapt with it. Cause they're kids, right? And they don't really understand it. As far as they know.

speaker-0: Yeah, yeah.

speaker-1: because teachers have villainized it, AI is bad, right? Until they don't, they shy away from using it. Like it's cheating to use chat GBT. And I'd be trying to tell them like, yo, it's cheating if you use it to give you the answers. It's not cheating if you use it like a writing coach, right? Like you write your whole paper and then put it in and ask it to critique it, right? Like give you some pointers and then you go back and make those adjustments. ⁓ But.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: They're like, no, our teacher said that we can't use it and they can't tell. There's a way to tell. ⁓ they don't. There's a way to make it so that it won't give out those markers. So it's super interesting. Anything that people use to try to determine that it's not AI, there's an AI that can make sure that you don't know.

speaker-0: Who's there? There was a kid, and basically he was just talking about, you know, ⁓ prompting. So he just basically prompted his AI to write a paper for him, but he prompted it. And he said, listen, I want you to write this paper for me. I need you to come from the perspective of a 10th grader, make the mistakes that a 10th grader would make when writing their paper, make it human so that it comes from my voice. And know, as you're using the AI, it learns you. So it's like come from my perspective and just, I don't know, you know, I don't know how I went for them, but I'm just like to say, make the mistakes that a 10th grader would make on this paper is something that I'm like, damn, it's getting tricky.

speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, I was looking at something in a former CEO or something. He was this C level guy with Google. He was talking about how fast things are going to be and how terrible things will be. was like, there's going to be like, because of AI, there's going to be like 10, 10 to 12 years of pain of people losing jobs and career shifting and the world kind of going into this really dark place. but all of that's going to be followed up by like a euphoric state because AI and technology and robotics will basically take away all the things that we struggle with. And it's like, so if we can figure out a way to navigate those 10 to 12 years, and he's like, it's inevitable, there's no way to stop it. was like, AI is already moving faster than we can keep up with. There's ⁓ laws and rules and stuff like that that people are putting in place, but he was like, It's just like anything else. People are doing it illegally, right? And so that technology once is accepted, it's going to blow up. And he was like, everything's going to be terrible for like 10 to 12 years. And then it'll be like a utopia and everything will be amazing. We'll have flying cars and all this stuff. He like, we'll get through all the pain and life will be great. But if you can't survive that part, he was like, you'll never get to see the other end of it. I was like, dang.

speaker-0: We'll see,

speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll see. And nervous. And nervous.

speaker-0: I'm excited. What's crack-a-lacking in the in the group chat man what we got going on?

speaker-1: ⁓ man, so a couple things. ⁓ I don't know if we get into it. Maybe we just kind of touched this briefly, right? ⁓ And only because it is something that I sent you last week. It's kind of talking about like people, it's black culture in general, but black peoples in specific, right? There's levels in any society, in any... community, any culture, there's levels of people, right? And so this video, particularly was talking about like, why is it that the higher levels of our culture are concerned with the quote unquote, lower levels of our culture, the things that are least important? So he was specifically talking about a couple of weeks ago, there was like Pooch Icedy, who was a rapper, ⁓ robbed Gucci Mane. who was also a rapper. Kidnapped him and robbed him for some chains or whatever. Did it all on camera. It's all s***. But his point was, like, that was, when that happened, that was the only thing trending in black culture, that's specifically black culture. He was like, it was everywhere. He was like, you had celebrities talking about it. You had media outlets talking about it. He was like, who cares? He was like, a thug robbed another thug. Like it doesn't, like who cares? Why are we talking about that? There's so many other things that are more important, but we...

speaker-0: to aisle.

speaker-1: He was like, the squares are so concerned with trying to keep up the appearances for hood people. was like, we, you know, the whole snitch campaign and like, he's like, that's no concern to you. He's like, you don't, you don't commit crimes. Like, why does that even matter to you? Why are you so, because people are writing whole dissertations on, on social media about why Gucci man was a snitch and how that's not accepted in culture. he's like, bro, you're a doctor. Like you, you are all the way square. Why are you even talking about that? Why does that matter to you? And the reason I bring that up is because similarly, Klay Thompson and Megan Thee Stallion broke up. Apparently Klay cheated on her or something. don't know. I'm not really into it either, but I keep seeing it on my timeline. I keep seeing Klay pop up talking about whatever he talking about. I keep seeing, I don't know why I have a timer. I'm going watch. I keep seeing, I keep seeing Meg pop up and I'm like, I don't care. I don't care about the relationship. And I don't understand why so many people are so invested in and two people they don't know. You don't know Clay. You don't know me. I don't care how many songs you've done sung. I don't care how many basketball games you watched Clay play in. You don't know him at all. know what saying? Yeah. People is all in their feelings about it and you can't trust him and he's dead to me. I'm like, why? You don't know her. You don't know him.

speaker-0: Yeah. You a dirty dog, man.

speaker-1: It's somebody next door to you right now cheating on their wife. it's somebody, your homeboy is cheating on his wife. Like your girl is cheating on her husband. Like you know this stuff is happening around you and you don't have the same disdain for them, but you wrap yourself up so much in these other people. It's like, it just don't make sense. Like we're so many other things that we can be focused on. So much other stuff we could put our energy in, in your own circle. Why are we so concerned with the circle that don't have nothing to do with us?

speaker-0: think it's two things, man. think it is, I don't want to say that it's an American thing, but we're from America. But I remember in the 80s, it was National Enquirer. 90s, was Us Weekly. They're just like us. And it was literal pictures of celebrities taking their mail or getting the trash. And it was...

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: It was a big thing, you know what saying? And now we have the internet where you see so much more celebrities all the time. TMZ. Yeah, TMZ. You know, they're making all kinds of money. know, hundreds of millions, I believe. I don't know. But, um, I don't know, people worship celebrity. And I feel like maybe throughout the ages, it's always been that way. don't know why, but. It is what it is. It's the same way, like if LeBron James said something about, ⁓

speaker-1: when he said, he said something about Memphis. Memphis wasn't like his favorite, one of his favorite places to go and people lost it. Like you have so much, ⁓ you got to understand how important your voice is in the black community. You're talking about Memphis and it's a largely black city. And so it looks bad when a black man talks bad about a black city. I'm like, yeah, I, I get it. For the same reasons that I get what we talked about in the last podcast about Madea and all that, like I get it. on that level, right? I understand, I feel it, big groove, all right? I feel it. But come on, y'all. Like, who cares if LeBron likes Memphis or not? Like, don't make that a big deal. So what? You said it and keep moving.

speaker-0: Come on, y'all. Keep it pushing. I don't care what whatever star thinks about Trump. I don't care whatever great actor thinks about vaccines. I'm cool like that. Cool. Everybody has their opinion. Everybody also has to use the bathroom and eat and drink water. I'm cool. I think on the other side of it is our culture. Sometimes we are a little bit obsessed with keeping it real. And I remember, you know, I grew up in the suburbs, you know, on the first episode, I think we talked about how we grew up and whatnot. man grew up in the suburbs. A lot of my family in Watts, not the suburbs.

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: to say, but having seen both sides of it and whatnot and understanding, you know, where my parents met and where my pops is from, Gary, Indiana. Shout out to Michael Jackson just saw the movie last weekend. It was fire. Forget y'all if you don't like it. It's not my problem. But them going from Gary, very real, real place.

speaker-1: Mm-hmm.

speaker-0: to Watts, to finally moving up enough and moving to Rialto, California and me getting a brand new house built in Rialto and then they get divorced and we end up moving to Rancho and then Rancho becomes what it is now. But I'll be damned if I'm about to disrespect my parents' hard work to act like I'm the most gangsters. dude in the world. I was gonna say Nick, but it was gonna mess up my message. You know what saying? But, you know, it may be like a little jokey joke. You better see careful, cause like even when Rod sent me the text, I was like, you know, see careful on that homies, man. If I see you at the Victoria Gardens on site, homie, it's on site. It's on site. Catching fades. It's a joke. You know what saying? But I don't play... with the real ones who really lived that life. There's ⁓ a certain boundary of ha ha, dokey doke, okay, the doke stops. It's not that people really die behind this. And I'm not the one with the bandana wrapped around my hand or my face or on the left side or right side, whatever, whatever. No, big Mike, maybe nice Mike. I have a family, before I had a family. I'm chilling, I'm not stilling, I'm not, you know what saying? I'm not trying to, my parents gave up too much for me to be here and I'm going to jump on their shoulders and I'm gonna try to keep going up and then now my daughter gonna be on me and my wife's shoulders and I'm gonna try and push her up and I'll be damned if she come home one day. We literally had this discussion last night. Tiff was like, so what if Maddie came home with a YN? I said, absolutely not. I said, just cause he dressed a certain way. I'm not gonna trip, but if he, you know what I'm saying? Looking real shitey. We're gonna snatch that up. We're gonna take care of that. But hold on, man, how do you see it?

speaker-1: Yeah, that's different Yeah, so while you was talking, I was thinking like, so I, from the majority of my childhood lived in, my childhood lived in the wild hood. But then in high school, we moved away, right? We moved to a nicer area, not necessarily suburbs. There was still some people doing some things in that city as well. But I went to a school in the city over, brand new school, mostly white school. Damn. But one of the things I remember is like, So for the black students, like if you were from Oakland or Richmond or San Francisco, like it gave you a certain amount of credibility just instantly, right? Like you ain't had to be a, you ain't had to be nobody, but like you could have been a nerd. I remember to this day, my boy, rest in peace. ⁓ He was a super square in, in middle school. Like, I mean, he was like a nerd, right? He was cool with all of us. I'm not nobody. was a nerd too. I was a blurt though. Nobody really knew. ⁓ But he was a square, like L7 super square. He moved out there before I did. So when I got to the school, I saw him and I'm like, yo, what happened to you? He had transformed. it's okay. this has happened a couple of times in my life. Right?

speaker-0: You

speaker-1: In elementary school, was this dude that came, he moved, it was two of them actually. Elementary school is one dude that moved from Arkansas or Alabama or something like that. And another dude moved from Jamaica. Around the same time, they both moved to our neighborhood and they went to school with me. So the dude from Jamaica obviously has a heavy, heavy, accent. The dude from Arkansas also had a heavy, heavy accent. But they was cool, right? One of them was really good in football, one of was good in basketball, so they fit in, right? Like if you can play sports, we don't care where you from. You the man, you cool. ⁓ We all end up at the same, part ways in middle school, they go to different middle school, because my mom wouldn't let me go to the same thing with elementary school. I couldn't go to elementary school in my neighborhood, couldn't go to the middle school in my neighborhood, so we went somewhere else. We all end up at different middle schools. Get back together in high school, country is a super thug at this point. Dang, super. And my man, his name was Mike, my man, Mike from Jamaica is also slugged up full, full grill. I'm like, what happened to like, what happened in middle school where y'all just flipped and became complete criminals? either way, they ended up, both of them kind of getting kicked out of school for whatever reason. And then funny enough, they hung out together because they came around the same time. Anyway, going back to high school. So.

speaker-0: these too.

speaker-1: there was like the instant credibility from being from what people consider to be a black neighborhood or a hood versus like the kids who grew up in Antioch or grew up in Pittsburgh, grew up in the suburbs, like they were still cool, but it was like, it was different. And for whatever reason, it felt like you gave a certain amount of respect. You gained a certain amount of like attention from being from somewhere else. So there is this like, in our,

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: community, there is this certain amount of praise that is lauded upon people that have been through the struggle. You know what I mean? Because it's what we see in music. It's what we see in movies. It's been glorified. Even though it's not necessarily glorified, it's probably more glorified in music than it is in movies. there's this keeping it real idea, as you mentioned, where real is like real struggle. You had to have real struggle. If you grew up in a five bedroom home, I used to say all the time for the dudes that were from the area, from Antioch or from Pittsburgh, you bro, you grew up in a five bedroom home with both your parents, how are you a thug? Like how are you going to be tough in a five bedroom home? You know, like that don't make sense. Like y'all got a two car garage, you got upstairs, downstairs, and why are you out here fighting? Like how you, it don't make sense to me. But I guess that's just kind of like always been around. There's always been that kind of allure to criminality or to like the bad guy or whatever. Right. And so I think now that with social media, we get to see it so often. Right. Like we are so in tune with everybody. Right. I don't know. So along with this is funny, along with ⁓ Southeast Asia being on my timeline, I got a bunch of like gang gang interviews.

speaker-0: you

speaker-1: Right, it's like go to Cambodia or ⁓ talk to ⁓ a faux extra. Like, I don't care about that. I don't really want to know about that. Yeah, but it's like, that has become popular. Like, what's the dude, the white dude's name, Adam something. They got a whole podcast, no jumper. Like a whole podcast full of gang members. And that's all they talk about is gang activity. then so gang members have become celebrities. They're making money off of being gang.

speaker-0: you

speaker-1: Come on, man. That's not ideal. Like Vlad and dudes like that have made tons of money off of making these dudes celebrities. And I think that has a large part to play in it because we already gave them a little bit, right? Like you already gave them a little bit of like extra respect or whatever. ⁓ But now we get to see him up close and now it's like, ⁓ man, maybe he deserved a little bit more. Like we wasting our time. don't know what we talking about. The hell with them. The hell with Meg and Clay. Yeah, both of them. Kick rocks. All them dudes. Adam and 22 and the whole podcast kick rocks in the most respectful way.

speaker-0: respectful for 55 55 the fifth I forgot boy's name. Crip Mac there we go.

speaker-1: like Crip Mac. Yeah, like respectfully, bruh. Like you gotta do what you gotta do and I fully understand it. You know, I know people who are and family members and all that and you gotta do what you gotta do to survive. But like at a certain point, like you know better, right? You know, you know, you don't want little kids to come up and have to live the life that you live. Granted, you lived it and you struggled and you overcame and that makes you who you are. And I'm all for you being. tough as nails and surviving in the jungle, but stop promoting that to these little kids. Nobody want that life. You don't even want that life. That's why you on the podcast trying to make money. You trying to get out of that life. You don't want your kids to grow up the way you had to grow up. As much as you glorify it to everybody else, you don't want that.

speaker-0: Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, I think it's a moneymaker. You can exploit, like you said, Vlad, Adam 22 or whoever else. There's one thing for you to have lived that life and now you're telling your story as cautionary or MC and you rapping about it or whatever and you just telling your story, making money through your struggle and helping your community, you know what saying? But there's another thing for someone to just... be able to take your story, exploit you, pay you a little something while they're getting the lion's share of what's going on. Meanwhile, like I remember my boy, used to stay in, he always be like, don't be saying this stuff, man, cause he's very successful now, but he was homeless for a very long time. So he was living in his homeless shelter and, like right off the one time, it was like off of Hoover. So was like Hoover's hood. So when I go over there to pick him up, You you get to learning people and, you know, seeing people's faces. And when I tell you there was a summer, like every time I go there, what's up, Hoov? Little young dudes. What's up, man? How y'all doing? Oh, good, good. All right, Hoov, all right, Hoov. Oh, you're here to see yo? KB? Oh, okay, cool, cool. One summer, it was just young kids dropping like flies, like flies. Nothing cool about it at all. It was not cool. You come back, where, uh, little woo, do, oh, he got killed. Where, woo, woo, oh, they got killed. Both of them? Yeah, they dead. Dude, like it was just week after week. Two people, three people, one person, two people. That's crazy. That's crazy. And I don't want to ignore it and be like, pretend like we never went through that or there's no one going through the struggle. Right. Because that's what this administration is trying to do to our struggle as black people in this country. Let's erase it. It never happened. It doesn't make people feel good. Right? No, we can't do that. But we also can't sit back and think, OK, this is what we need to be. And this is what I want.

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: my children to look up to. Don't snitch. Gucci ain't snitching because Gucci ain't in the streets. Yeah, came home, lost weight, stopped using drugs, healthy, married, running a business, several businesses. If you kidnapped me, I'm not sending shooters to come get you, I'm sending the police. And that's what he should have done. Because he not in the streets. him being black don't make him the streets. I think there's a difference between black culture and street culture. Stop confusing it too. That's my problem.

speaker-1: 100%. ⁓ man gang. there. That's it, right there. They're not the same. I know there's a lot of crossover and there's definitely shared space, right? But street culture. I'm a civilian, snitching is not safe. If you rob me, like if you break in my house, like I'm calling the police. That's the first person I'm calling. Like I'm not finna call my cousins. Like it's just, you know what I mean? they, yeah, no. So, okay, the difference, let's say the difference, Because I snitching and just being a civilian. If me and you do a crime together, we break in a house, right? Let's flip it. We break in somebody's house, you take off, I get caught. Now, they don't know you was there, but if I'm like volunteering information or like, who helped you? Mike, Mike did it. Mike helped me.

speaker-0: Mm-hmm. Be care. Be care.

speaker-1: ⁓ He was about 6'4, ball head.

speaker-0: That's disrespectful because first of all I'm sick

speaker-1: ⁓ my bad. I said about. You know, they ain't gonna get you everybody black. Everybody black. He fit the description. When they do the lineup, it's gonna look like this. But anyway, that's snitching, right? Like we both guilty, right? And then I say, I give information on purpose to make my situation less or to help me out anyway. That's snitching, right? What's similar to, but is not snitching.

speaker-0: 5'2 dude Right?

speaker-1: is if me and you, like, okay, we both criminals, right? Like I'm a criminal, you're a criminal. You come pick me up. You just did a crime, right? You robbed somebody at the liquor store, you smacked somebody, whatever, right? Police is looking for you. I have no idea. You come pick me up, because we just going ride around. When they pull us over, you better give up all information. They not looking for me. They looking for you. I didn't do nothing. I was at home, bro. If you don't wear that charge, like don't.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: or you pick me up, you got a gun in the car. ⁓ That's on you. Don't let me go to jail too. Look, if you don't tell them it's your gun, I'm telling them, right? That's not snitching because we didn't do it together. We did the crime together. yeah, okay, all right, now I'm snitching if I'm telling on you. If you enact a crime on me, I'm telling on you, bruh. I'm sorry, I hate to do it to you, but listen, man, I ain't doing it to you. This God doing it to you. You shouldn't have been there.

speaker-0: You You did it. You did it. What gun is this?

speaker-1: It's unfortunate. gotta tell you what, Mr. Officer, it ain't

speaker-0: It's not my car officer. That's all I know. That's all I know.

speaker-1: I ten of these, you can check all of them. It's not going to be on there. So you do what you got to do after that. Listen, I can't do no time, bruh. I got a family, I got a wife, I built this whole life together. Crazy. Yeah, you crazy.

speaker-0: Can you imagine? You're with somebody and they just got a shotgun in the trunk. It's just, if no one's gonna take this gun, then you're both. Officer, I've seen him download movies. I've seen him do all kinds of stuff.

speaker-1: O'Connor! Listen. Just telling those stuff that don't have nothing to do with it. ⁓ Officer, I'm glad you're here. He just ⁓ he's a Hollywood stop He's he's read a ran a red light a few blights back He's been driving really reckless and I'm pretty sure he's under the influence like Jeff Beard you going to jail Get me out of here. I got to go back to my family man And then I think the other thing too about that is is I was talking to Police officer the other day on the podcast

speaker-0: Where?

speaker-1: ⁓ He was at UC for a long time and I was telling him something that my dad had said to me a long time ago when I was young. It's like real gangsters understand their role, right? Like they know their role and they understand police's role, right? Like it's police's job to catch them, it's their job not to get caught. But if they do get caught, they know police is just doing their job. Like they're doing what they're supposed to do. So listen man, if you a criminal, you eventually gonna get caught. Don't bring me in with you. You knew what you signed up for. Like we don't need to share the charge, sir. No. You knew what you signed up for.

speaker-0: Chuck it up. You know what it was. Chuck it up.

speaker-1: It's all good. just I just wanted to go to the store. I just need a ride. I call an Uber. You right. I knew what I signed up for. I shouldn't have been with you. And that's what you said. Be careful who you're around.

speaker-0: Careful who you around.

speaker-1: Especially as an adult. Because I know as a kid and as a teenager and even as a young man, like I used to be around and hang out with people that I knew was... I remember one time, I ain't saying no names. I remember one time we... Absolutely not gonna say no names. No, no, no. We didn't do nothing criminal, but... There's no need to say the name. But this is what I'll say is that he used to call him Rallo.

speaker-0: Go on say thanks, man. You ain't You see, this is, we see the problem. So say the names. Kid, I'm kidding.

speaker-1: And Rallo is a slang term for pistol.

speaker-0: I'm about to say 1972.

speaker-1: Nah, nah, nah. He used have, he used call him biscuit because he used to a biscuit on him. So we're going to the club. He come pick up me and my boy and we're going to the club. We're going to San Jose. He's like, yeah, I'll come get y'all. And he had like a Tahoe or something. We 19. He got a brand new Tahoe on 24 inch rim. He come pick us up and we get in and he's driving, but he's like, he keep like fidgeting. Like I'm thinking he's trying to like bucket, buckle the seatbelt or something. What's bothering him? And eventually he get to a light and he just pull out like a desert. It's like the biggest handgun I've ever seen. He takes it out and he puts it in the cup holder. And I was like, hey man, I felt like I felt.

speaker-0: You look like Trey, I already know what you're talking about.

speaker-1: Take me home, don't let me Let me out. It was too late. We was already on the freeway on the way, man. I was stuck. We was already on 80, or 880, something like that. We was way out the way. There was no letting me out the car. I'm like, oh my God, please Lord, don't let nothing happen tonight, because this nigga is going shoot somebody and we all going to to jail.

speaker-0: Don't let me out, don't. Sit man.

speaker-1: Oh my God, I was like, man, never again. I had never hung out with him again, never rode with him again. He was cool. He was my boy. if I saw him today, we'd still be like high fives and handshakes. But if he asked me to go somewhere with him, I am never getting in the car. Man. Sorry, we got side track. We all over the.

speaker-0: Thank you. No, thank you. Hey, well listen, man, I mean, it is what it is. Yeah. Because that's, it's a lot of game in this conversation right there, you know what saying? Even as a 40, a man in his 40, 45 year old man, there's still choices of who I can and can't hang out with. Yeah. Even, you know, it was years and years ago, but I had a friend who was stepping down on his wife on a regular. That was his norm, you know? And it was just, I can't hang with you, bruh. I can't hang with you. ⁓ man, wait, I can't hang with you. One thing that was cool, he didn't trip out on it. I think he pretty much understood. But it was just one of those things where I can't be around you. You gonna let that, that's gonna start sticking to me at one point. If I gotta sit there and cover for you, ⁓ hey man, I just need you to run interference for me right quick. Now I'm over here at this club talking to this girl and whoop whoop, nah.

speaker-1: Yeah, nah, nah, I can't be your wingman player. I can't. I can't. Because I don't need nobody being like, ⁓ I saw Rod talking to something. No, you didn't. That's what you didn't see. Not I said the cat.

speaker-0: ride at Misty's. ⁓

speaker-1: ⁓ Hey, yeah, absolutely not. That's what you're not going to see. It ain't going to be no two man and none of that, bro. I want nothing to do with it.

speaker-0: No. If you don't understand, that's fine. You know what saying? yeah, certain people, I'm not jumping in the car with you because you get road rage too easy and I can't be in the car with you.

speaker-1: Yeah, he can get both of us shot. You can't have rum rage out here. No. Because you don't know what people got in their car. That's one thing as I've gotten older ⁓ that I've, think maturity is realizing that ⁓ you don't know what other people been through. You don't know what they going through at that moment. Like it could be anything. so anytime something happens, it's typically spontaneous, right? There's a lot, I mean, there's obviously premeditated situations where people are planning on doing something, but a lot of stuff, a lot of like dangerous stuff happens just on the fly, on the spur of the moment, like something just happened. And it's usually because somebody dealing with something that they haven't talked about, they haven't discussed or they just, they don't know how to handle it. And then you become the straw that broke the camel's back. Like, yeah, nah, nah. I got too much to lose, man. My mortality is in my face. Like I know I ain't got a whole lot of time left and I can't afford losing it, messing around with you. Yeah.

speaker-0: It's crazy, I got quick story, ⁓ two quick stories. One quick little whoop-de-whoop is just Tiff and Maddie love to watch this show and it's about people getting in car accidents and road rage and whatnot. So this dude is rolling with his friend on the freeway, he's driving. This civic is cutting him off and flips this dude off and it looks like he... raises a gun up like, yeah, and I got a gun, what you gonna do? Puts it back down, he starts driving on. The dude that's driving, this is in Florida, y'all, Florida man, you can tell that the passenger, you couldn't see him, but you can hear him, was a black dude. The dude that's driving is a white dude. White dude pulls out the Glock, points it straight through his windshield and just let loose.

speaker-1: Florida, man

speaker-0: So soon as he pulls it out, Black dude's like, come on man, we don't gotta do all that, baby, come on. And he just, right through the windshield. And I mean, I guess no one got charged with anything, but don't be that Black dude. I'm gonna kill us all, man. And then, know, quick story.

speaker-1: He's like, I'm gonna kill us all.

speaker-0: I just remember eighth grade, graduating eighth grade, my buddy's ⁓ older brother and sister's dropping us off at the eighth grade party. I'm like, come on, we outta here, baby, let's go party in the high school after the summer. It's great. His older brother is from this gang, whatever, whatever, SA, in a nice area, like you said, gang banging in a nice area. It's very, I don't know, it's very confusing for me, but anyways. Ro-Ray Jackson, happens. They follow the people that cut them off and they're angry about him. He was his girl. It was his older brother and his girlfriend follows him for miles. And I felt like, you know, just let me out, dawg. Just I want to go to this party. Just let me out. They followed him. They, hey man, any bottles back there? say, any bottles back there? All kind of bottles. We like, nah, ain't nothing back there, man. Ain't nothing back there. Just take me to the party, man. That's all I want. They follow the people to their house. We'll be back. said, we'll be back. Just drop me off, bro. Like it's, I don't know, man. But anyway, that culture, that culture has to die. It has to die for black folks. It has to die for brown folks. It has to die for white folks. It has to die for all of us. That street culture is not for us. It's not.

speaker-1: Yeah. ⁓ the unfortunate part is it's always going to be around, right? Like there's no way around it at this point. Ten to twelve years and it'll be gone. You're right. You're right. You're right. Because it'll be like, dang, one of the movies like ⁓ Minority Report or one of them things where, hey, they know you're going to commit the crime. They're just going to scoop you up and they'll clean the streets and everything will be peaceful, right? ⁓

speaker-0: We got 10 to 12.

speaker-1: But my biggest takeaway is what you said earlier, is like there's a difference between black culture and street culture and never the two shall mix. Right? Like we just gotta let that go. Right? I love y'all like play cousins, but I like to love y'all from a distance. Right? I can't constantly engage myself in things that are going on with you because those things are not important to what I got going.

speaker-0: Right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, man. With that being said...

speaker-1: Let's get up on up here. Let's get up on out of here, All right, y'all. So listen, ⁓ as always, we appreciate you joining us. We appreciate you sharing your time because we know how important time is. Hopefully you were able to gain something from this podcast, take away some grown man game to step up your day-to-day life. Be careful who you surround yourself with. ⁓ Don't mistake street code for black culture and ⁓ be great, man. Go out there and be great. Whatever it is that you do, go be great. Figure out AI. Survive the 12 years and we'll see you on the other side.

speaker-0: What's up? ⁓ you