Podcasts are "Simulated Friendship" and Tim Dillon is the Simulated "Establishment?"
Tim Dillon on CNN, what a wonderful world.
I believe that analysis is spot on, and that is what makes me love this Substack so much. A podcast is getting to sit as a 3rd — sometimes 4th — man listening to a conversation. This Substack is my chance to talk back.
Although it proved me wrong, I couldn’t help but love to see Tim Dillon’s interview with CNN finally get aired.
Tim Dillon vs. CNN; Donald Trump vs. Himself; Louis Theroux "Settles" in for a Long Day;
CNN will never air this Tim Dillon interview.
Quite honestly, if they air interviews like this more often, I’ll become a CNN Stan. Okay, maybe not that far, but I’ll at least view it un-begrudgingly. This was a good interview, the girl conducting the interview was, shall I say, spacey, enough, that she didn’t seem like a stuck-up branch on a windless night. No, she was kind of loose, asking kinda hard, in a silly way questions.
But, early on she asked a question that provoked a memory in my mind. “podcasts” as “simulated friends”, ah. Now that’s a real possibility.
So, I should preface this by saying, when Spotify does their year-in-review thing and gives you the stats of how much Spotify you’ve listened to for the year, who was your top, according to their numbers I spent 144,195 min on Spotify, listening to podcasts. My #1 was the Joe Rogan Experience, then Dave Smith at Part of the Problem, Lex, and Breaking Points. That equals out to a hundred 24-hour days. So, yea, I’d say they are my friends.
So, growing up, being a teenager were the best days of my life. My last home, as a teenager, was in a project housing complex called Landmark Apartments.
According to the indictment I received for drug trafficking when I was 18 it said the high school was 296 yds from my front door.
We had so much traffic running in and out of my apartment we would constantly get accused of selling drugs. We were always so broke. We lived off dad’s $634/month SSI check and it was never enough. We eventually decided if they were gonna accuse us anyways, we might as well start selling so we, at least wouldn’t be so broke. We started selling pot, but that’s a story for another day.
When school let out all my friends would walk home, and my place was always on the way to wherever they lived. So, after school there would always be 40 teenagers in and out of my place.
I had more friends than I could count. My Dad was the coolest dad. Everybody loved him and he loved them. He loved that all my friends called him “Daddy Wayne.” When he passed away the outpouring from my class in high school was unbelievable.
It's strange, I always considered myself an introvert. I spent months in jail not speaking, literally, not saying a word to anyone. Getting up to eat, then back to my bed to read.
I read my time away in there and I believe it is benefitting me now, but that time with a room of 15 people gathered around me playing a tune on my guitar that I’d just learned, passing a joint around, were the happiest days I can remember. I had hundreds of friends if you asked me back then.
Then those friends moved on with their lives and so did I. There was no school for them to meet up after every day. No Daddy Wayne to offer them his spaghetti he took so much pride in.
It’s the most unfortunate part of life. The best of times never remain the best, and you spend the rest of time trying to recreate those times or make new ones.
Sometimes you do, sometimes they become better than they’ve ever been.
We chase these times that have long since passed, like a junkie chases his first hit. Trying new methods to get that feeling one more time, maybe we’ll use two lighters this time, or dip a Q-Tip in pure grain alcohol and light it and use that flame to take our hit? (Maybe that one was just me.) But never truly succeeding.
No. Friends move on with their lives, as do you, as did I. The friends I replaced them with turned out, one after another, after another, to not have my best interest at heart, or their own.
The new friends I’d made thought being a friend was calling you to “come try this ice they got”, or to let me know “their dealer had Roxy 30’s in,” / with the M Box.
Or ask if “you had a bump?” They’d “get you back on the first” — or “third.”
100% transactional. The few times I tried to get clean, I would tell them, and it would go in one ear and out the other. They’d still call the day before payday to get me high so they already had me when my paycheck rolled in.
I had to get out! In the most radical way. I moved, changed my phone number, and stayed inside. I got clean by isolation.
I’d still run into people from time to time in passing, who’d see me as a quick $50. So, I would rehearse what I would say in my head. I found that a stiff “No!” Could sometimes lead to problems. There are ways to say no that cause an escalatory response. Especially when you’re dealing with crazies who live in tents, also you don’t always know whether you are talking to a crazy drug dealer or just a normal one trying to push a few packs. :-) I tried a few different replies before I found my universal-drug-dealer-avoidance-statements.
It was, “No, I’m straight.” And if they persisted, as they do, I say, “I can’t. I’m on paper (probation or parole). I got a drug test coming up.” That usually worked because every drug dealer understands that shit.
It’s partly my fault. I kinda still have that junkie look. Teeth messed up, hair disheveled, always in the wrong part of town, so it’s hard to avoid those interactions. So, for me, rehearsal is a must!
I isolated. Very funny, I’m an “isolationist” in politics and life. To work, back home. Kept to myself at work. Ear buds in. Started listening to podcasts, and I’d never thought about it, but I enjoy them so much. They are simulating friendship for me. I used to have hundreds of friends, now I have hundreds of podcasts to listen to.
These are the friends I’ve been looking for since I left Landmark apartments. The worst thing they’ve ever got me into was maybe Curtis Yarvin or questioning WW2 =-).
I believe that analysis is spot on, and that is what makes me love this Substack so much. A podcast is getting to sit as a 3rd — sometimes 4th — man listening to a conversation. This Substack is my chance to talk back. It takes me from being a spectator to actually being a part of the conversation, whether they know it or not.
Thank you for reading.
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