Bitches!
You’re a bunch of bitches, nymphomaniacs!
Get out of our neighborhoods, faggots!
A christian Spain, not a muslim one!
You’re not Spanish cause you’re not white, asshole!
This is the worst government in 100 years!
Heil Franco!
Heil!
I’m a nazi!
Iglesias, Galapagar doesn’t want you!
Get out now, ‘pigtails’!
Sánchez, go to jail!
Pedro Sánchez,
son of a bitch!
Pedro Sánchez,
son of a bitch!
Go!
How did we get there?
A black period begins in Spain’s history.
The only merit you have is having a deep study
of Pablo Iglesias.
Sánchez is the best fellow
of the assassins.
How did we give the power
to this gang of crazy
and psychopath women who are willing
to destroy every trace of masculinity
on Earth?
The putschists who PSOE and Junts are.
Taxes are stealing.
And that’s a fact.
To the useless
and arrogant Minister of Equality.
They are unable to find any man
who wants to get close to them
less than 500 meters,
or even touch them with a stick.
This fucking shitty retarded girl, frustrated and bitter.
With that face.
No wonder, with that face!!
And what do you think about feminism?
A disgrace.
A guy gets himself a doll, or says a chick is hot,
and he’s a disgusting lovestruck.
Motherfuckers!
You’ve taken everything away from us!
Everything!
A group of hags
who will end up surrounded by cats,
which are the only living beings
that are able to stand their delirium.
Delirium that has a name:
feminism.
Let’s start!
Without mediatic power
we won’t be able to do anything,
never.
Or we will always be a marginal
and residual force, a very poor one.
The media creates a common sense
which will be key when it’s voting time.
That common sense
is manipulated by the media.
I think that, when Abascal
goes to the Parliament and says
that Pedro Sánchez is worse than Franco,
who was a dictator,
there have been some youtubers who said that before,
because that’s the way to normalize hate speech.
So, when he gets to the chamber,
the speech is not so crazy to us,
it doesn’t concern us so much. Why?
Because we’ve heard it many times
on the Internet and in the media.
That bullshit about the media being just the messengers…
The messengers my foot!
The media are the main political and ideological actor
and that’s why rich people buy the media.
I believe that much of the challenge
we as left or leftist content creators have
is to make those contents attractive,
not so much in substance
- cause we have a lot of points -
but in form, which has to be attractive.
I mean, you can’t give a talk at 10 am on a Saturday
with a PowerPoint presentation
because young people are not going to attend.
To me, the key is knowing how to summarize,
and make very bright people
give their speech in a minute.
Because we all know leftist people
talk too much.
There are men with a YouTube channel
and they make a living of it.
Just like that.
And maybe, I don’t want to compare,
but maybe they are worse than us.
Only in Spain, if we talk about Europe,
this situation is happening:
The most leftist of all TV channels
has always had as its only referents
in its political talk shows these three people:
Marhuenda, María Claver and Eduardo Inda.
I can’t find the words,
it’s something surreal.
The “progressivist” media has done a lot of harm.
We’ve been in the dark
for a really long time.
In absolute darkness.
The media’s tale.
Meet Little Susan!
Where is she going?
I’m going to interview my grandma!
Oh no, grandma…
What happened?
Oh dear! You wouldn’t believe it!
I went to the groceries and when I came back…
Oh my God,
an evil wolf had broken into my house!!
That’s awful, grandma!
But don’t you worry:
everybody’s going to know this.
I went to the groceries and when I came back…
Oh my God,
an evil wolf had broken into my house!!
Oh boy, this is a tall tale!
You were saying that Inda and company are media squatters,
but no, they’re not squatters: they’re the owners.
The owners are criminals. They are the owners,
therefore they are in charge.
It’s scandalous having this country’s political talk shows
ruled by criminals.
And sometimes we are naive when we say
“they should be fired from the media”
because they own the media!
The way we can hit from the left,
I think it’s unifying the little narrative
and the little mediatic force that we have.
#FerrerasGate was an example
of leftist narrative unification.
Shortly,
but for two months, we did a lot of harm.
We put him between a rock and a hard place.
Their ratings fell down, like two or three points.
Ferreras had to say live:
“No, I didn’t know a thing,
I was unaware…”
The fact that he had to publicly say all of that
was thanks to 1) those audio files
gave us the legitimacy
to say what we already knew:
they confirmed our points about the media.
There we had a narrative unification.
We all were against them,
from different positions
inside the left,
we united in different
campaigns in Twitter, Instagram,
YouTube, Facebook.
and that created a bubble,
a narrative unification that put
Ferreras between a rock and a hard place.
Eduardo, this is very serious. I go with it
but this is very delicate and it’s too crude.
After he said that was very crude but he went with that,
the very next week they had another hoax,
and the next one, another,
and so on for several years.
The only people who repeated
in every La Sexta Noche political talk show
for six years in a row
were Eduardo Inda, Marhuenda and María Claver.
Two people from OK Diario
and the guy from La Razón
who had also been a congressman
for the Popular Party, and whose work
was to misinform or to repeat mantras.
For instance, the one about
Podemos being funded by Venezuela and Iran.
Basically, these campaigns,
which have three layers, develop at the same time
in the media, the social media
and in a public, social or political environment.
What I call the Banon method,
or the LHB method: lies, hate and bots.
And the fourth element, which makes this efficient,
is impunity, a total impunity.
I do believe
that hoaxes should be penalized.
It’s super important, and at this point,
I don’t know what body could do it,
maybe an observatory or…
I don’t know. But not Ana Pastor.
No, please.
Nor Ferreras.
But spreading hoaxes should have consequences.
And an obligation
to retract in the same media.
Because if Vicente Vallés
spreads hoaxes in the news
and then he doesn’t retract, then it’s useless.
If they only retract with a tweet,
it will probably reach just a few people.
So lying should have consequences.
Which is the way to fight this?
Maybe it’s not to refute hoaxes
- although I find essential
what Bake said about penalizing
the media
that generate fake news - but maybe we need to copy
that model but in a positive way.
To broadcast the news in a quick way.
More news. The good ones, you know, the positive ones, the real ones.
But having that level.
Instead of saying something happened, and this is the truth
and we’re going to tell it for three fucking months
and again and again… No, no! I’m not giving you the time.
Did you assimilate it? Perfect, next!
And maybe this way works.
Making things much more direct, because
people don’t often have the time to… It seems
that the one who offers a sensational headline which you keep in mind,
is the cool guy,
and the person who has a deep analysis
is a bore.
So it’s like “what a drag,
I prefer the fantasy story
of a squatter
and the hero who knocks on the door and…”
Because it’s also told that way:
a super normative narrative
with the good guys, the bad ones,
the hero, the villain and so on.
And people don’t reconsider things. It’s like a party pooper.
You say: “Hey, but this…” and they go: “Fuck off, this story is cool”.
Maybe we should appropriate that.
Yes, I think we need to use the way to tell things,
without the hoaxes,
but presenting things in a way… Just the model, not the lie.
At least in certain cases.
Well, we can sometimes lie a bit. No, no, no! You shouldn’t lie,
it’s not right. Cut, cut!
I think to refute the big media narratives,
we need to start pointing out their flaws,
and this is something we already do.
Julián Macías does it very well, and dedicates a lot of time.
But it’s true that
pointing out those flaws of the media,
more than flaws,
deliberated flaws that the media
sometimes make.
I think the media
get harmed, for example,
every time they don’t mention
somebody who attends an act.
They are pointed for that, right?
Or every time don’t inform you
about a topic they clearly
should have in their agenda, and they are pointed.
And that,
little by little, undermines the power of those media.
And I also think that - and this is something that we,
as content creators, should do -
we need to create more content,
to value it more,
and also ask the people who watch us
for support and funding.
And above all, let them see
that if they don’t support us, that way of information,
that podcast, that YouTube channel,
that Twitch channel, won’t no longer exist.
So I think we need to start raising awareness from there,
and hey, somebody will suddenly say
“I’m going to invest in you. Instead of a 4 euros
subscription I’m going to donate
2000 euros so you can do better things.”
If people want different information,
and they want it, because we’re seeing
how big networks are falling down on ratings,
they have to know it’s necessary to invest and support
in social media, sure.
Why do you think that people believe fake news so easily?
Because they don’t have the time to check them.
I try a lot to see all of this
in that person’s shoes.
Suddenly, for any reason,
there’s a lady with squatters in her building,
and they are conflictive in the neighborhood.
This case is an isolated case,
but then the TV networks tell
the story, constantly.
People you know
wreck your head about it.
They tell you:
“You asked for a grant for your son and it was denied.”
Maybe because you didn’t meet the requirements,
but whatever!
“Your grant was denied, but look at these people coming here,
with benefits, blah blah.” That person doesn’t have the time
or doesn’t feel like checking all the media
and all the info.
So they are going to keep that speech of
“My mother has a shitty pension
and has to deal with squatters in her building
who are conflictive, and those people get social benefits.”
But it’s not like that:
the reality says there’s not such a squatters problem,
the facts say there’s not such a problem in Spain,
but a giant business
with security companies.
That's it. This to summarize.
And responsibilities should be clarified at the board,
because it often happens, and I know
cause I’ve worked in TV networks,
that decisions
are made in a very intentional way, in my opinion.
A very liquid and obtuse way.
I mean, what you see in the news
has passed through many hands and you don’t know who made the decision.
And when at 7 in the morning
you start to receive teletypes,
the rundown starts to be made
and those decisions
don’t only come from every section boss:
they come from the news direction,
they also come from the people
who put money on the news,
they come from the political parties…
Because a lot of people don’t know it,
but as a worker of some TV news
I can tell some people pay a quantity,
other people pay less,
then at the end of reports
the face of the PP guy gets 7 more screen seconds
than the face of the PSOE guy.
It’s an example but it’s true.
So they are not only the hoaxes,
we also swallow a lot of information
which is subliminal.
I always remember when people used to say
- I don’t know if it was a myth or it was true -
about Coca-Cola ads.
People said they went to the movies
and suddenly they watched some frames of Coca-Cola
that made them Coke-thirsty!
Well, with the Popular Party,
for example, it’s the same, ok?
But this is real:
you see more seconds of them in Antena 3.
If you don’t believe me,
go get in front of your TV
watch it and count the seconds of the images.
They are more screened.
So it’s not just some things are invented,
it’s that there is today’s rundown
with a 25 minute news without the sports section,
and 15 minutes are about squatters,
then you become obsessed about squatters.
At a family dinner
when your cousins say:
“What do you think about squatters?”
They are already creating the frame
of the debate to have while having dinner.
You are going to talk about squatters,
not evictions.
You’re going to talk about squatters
from a permanent defense position,
to counter-inform, to counter those arguments.
Because if you talked about evictions,
like after 15M
and all that wave,
the moment you talk about evictions
you go to the origin of them and who commits the eviction.
Now, when you talk about who,
you realize you’re messing with the economic power.
You’re questioning that structure.
However, by talking about squatters,
you’re pointing at the weak ones
who are at the bottom of the ladder, the ones “who don’t want to work”,
“who take advantage of social benefits”...
Just to hide
who’s behind all those evictions
and the housing structure.
Of course, fear moves much more than other feelings.
And also, and this is a different thing in Atresmedia and Telecinco:
the important role that security alarms ads had played.
For example, in the TV case,
I think a lot of these men
that talk against squatters, and say that
if you go to the groceries they will break into your house,
and they tell stories which later are
shown as lies but they don’t care,
they are doing this because it’s politically effective,
and because of advertising,
the big media probably started doing it
because of this.
So in this sense I do believe there are
different motivations.
On one hand, I think in Twitch, YouTube,
Telecinco and Atresmedia, the same topic is addressed
but for different reasons,
and I also think fear has become
a key factor for politicians
and they are using it very well.
For something to work,
communicatively,
it needs a narrative that causes an emotion,
that activates one of your emotions,
whether it’s a positive or a negative one.
Then normally the strategy
is to make a narrative that pisses you off,
for you to mobilize
and share that content, even with
some insults thrown to the people,
organizations or ideas behind.
So, protected by that impunity,
there are several levels of manipulation.
One of them is writing a headline with a clickbait,
another is a manipulated video,
cutting something, or an image.
You have these different levels but the thing is:
it needs to piss you off so it can be viral.
The difference between truth and lies
is that truth can be verified.
And lying is a speech that can work
for a long time but it’s seldom verified.
That’s why truth has this extra power
that lies don’t have.
At the end, you can verify it, and people say
“damn, it’s true”.
And also, people are not stupid.
I mean, do you really believe there is a media owner,
and probably that media generates economic loss,
and he’s going to tolerate that a business
of his own doesn't defend his interests?
Are we nuts?
Please.
The thing is: to counteract something
we normally consume in 10 seconds,
for example a headline and an image,
although the whole news may be a little more clean,
the 95% of people doesn’t read the news, just the headline
with an eye-catching image, and shares it.
To counteract this,
we normally need to be very well documented,
to have an explanation that shows it’s a lie.
For instance, in my case,
I sometimes need a 25 or 30 tweets thread
that takes me one, two or three days to collect
all the information to totally refute it.
But of course the attention economy,
the communication engineering,
in a 95%,
and actually we are having new formats like TikTok and etc.,
that make us spend less and less time,
we have less and less patience to consume content,
and you need to be quick.
Disinformation.
Illegal immigrants attacking the Police! Watch this video.
It's the police running.
Fuck off!
Really??
I’m not a racist but...
80% of Spanish people
have ever heard
some hoax about migrants,
according to Oxfam Intermon.
Of course:
they are quick, simple and outrageous.
Hoaxes are a powerful tool,
and they only were the prelude to something bigger.
Journalism has been replaced by opinions
and gimmicks with a clear objective:
to constantly appeal to emotions.
Traditional and digital media
have become experts
on creating sensationalist stories
which, brought to real life,
are either ultra-minimum cases or directly a lie.
Lies that can always
be unmasked by facts.
There are almost 26 million houses.
These are the denounces:
this last year we had around 17000,
so just the 0,07% of houses
are squatted ones.
Is that a problem? Yes it is. An occasional one? Yes indeed.
A generalization and a common issue?
Economy and data say: no way.
The cases are not increasing.
In fact, they are decreasing.
And then you have that story
about this poor grandma who goes to the groceries
and when she’s back home,
squatters have taken over it.
This is a complete lie.
This is completely hysterical.
But the most important part here
is what the Penal Code says:
that felony is set forth in Article 202.1,
and can be punished with 6 months to 2 years of imprisonment.
So it’s not true that squatters can take over your house
and you have to wait…
No: if somebody breaks into your house,
the Police, with the Penal Code
on their side,
can kick the door down
and take off the intruders.
So the economic facts say
there is not such a big alarm;
the Law says
there is no impunity.
Are there some cases?
There’s no way to deny it.
But is there a general alarm?
There’s no way to claim it.
But facts or documentation
are useless a lot of times,
especially with
professional fake news spreaders.
How do these people work?
“Let’s see it, it’s unbelievable”
One: They are moved by their anti-feminism,
racism,
LGBTQphobia…
To attack everything
that they consider as ‘woke’.
They attack the collectives’ rights
because they believe that hetero,
cis, white and right-winged men
are losing their privileges.
They appeal to a fake discrimination
to have a perfect niche of audience.
“You may not believe me,
but I’m gonna try to convince you
in the next 4 minutes”
Two: They search for easy targets to attack
and humiliate them
from their YouTube or Twitch channels.
They prey on women
who are taking their first steps on the communication field,
or with queer people, activists
and left-winged politicians.
"I'm going to watch more things
cause this is great video material."
Three:
They ridicule their victims.
They are experts on using
the straw man fallacy.
We want legal and safe abortion!
You enjoy killing babies!
Four:
They feed their communities to become stronger.
We already lived this back in the 90s with the neonazis:
one of them is a coward when alone,
but things are different while herding.
And five:
They forge the argument of a “cancellation”.
Meaning:
crying at prime time.
Now we know their modus operandi.
They say they’re winning the cultural battle.
But here we’ve played enough video games
to know that losing is never an option.
Shall we play a new one?
The Words World is under a spell.
Communication has been replaced by snake oil.
Manipulation took over the world and with its minions, the Bigot-tubers, get to have all the souls under its control.
“To fucking defend Spain!”
“Where's Men's day, uh?”
“Terrorists, immigrants, coupsters, the Constitution!”
“Communism or Freedom”
But maybe not all souls are under its control.
“The opposite to the Bigot-tubers”
Cheers, Wokie, and thank you for embarking on this adventure!
It’s up to you to break the spell.
You need to defeat the Bigot-tubers to end Manipulation for good.
Don’t worry.
Our friends Reinas & Repollos will explain to you how to do it.
The cultural battle we must deal with
is just a smokescreen.
A spell which Manipulation and its minions defend
to control the narrative framework
where this so-called battle is going to be fought.
But it turns out this battle doesn’t exist.
Better said: it’s loaded,
because there is no guarantee of a fair cultural battle.
We are at our opponent’s field,
with their fans in the stands, the streets and the minds.
This context gives them a comfortable atmosphere.
This and the fact that they have no scruples,
give them a free highway for their attacks
to go straight to the heart of Humanity,
with their speeches going deeper.
Sometimes, when their points
don’t hold up,
or when we face them, they dip into their favorite spell:
the "We can’t say anything nowadays”.
They victimize themselves
and they start fighting in the stage
they best control: social media.
They do it in a couple of seconds
and use a violence that they wouldn’t use face to face,
but this stage empowers them.
Why? Because their ideas become
organic through algorithms,
24/7, daily and reaching audiences
that wouldn’t contact them by other ways.
Our past stages
were spontaneous social outbursts
to denounce injustice, abuse and violence.
They used to propose, not destroy,
and that was the way to make
every progress to build a better society.
But now that Manipulation has casted
the Submission Shadow spell, in a mind flayer style,
people who are bewitched, or asleep,
are seeing progress as danger or imposition.
That’s what the Bigot-tubers have made them believe.
While awake people
have escaped from the cavern shadows,
and they know everything is actually a spell.
Wokie knows that talking about “war”
is part of Manipulation’s plan.
Liberals are burning traditional
and social media down, using lip service.
And awake people must free the minds
that have been spelled.
This hive mind
talks about freedom while it’s depriving us of it,
because it steals from us the capacity
of living together with different ideas.
This spell will only be undone
when awake people
stop accepting
Manipulation and its minions’ narrative framework.
And when it’s undermined with a travel to another level.
This travel will free
their minds and souls from domination,
allowing communication to be fluent again.
The cultural battle will then be defeated
and it will be replaced
by cultural enrichment.
That’s what ChatGPT has recommended to us
when we have asked it
for a good substitute for this battle.
You have broken the Submission Shadow spell.
But… Watch out!
The mind flayer will come back stronger and deadlier to get the wayward souls back.
Now, Wokie, you must defeat more Bigot-tubers to end Manipulation for good,
replacing the cultural battle by cultural enrichment.
Bigot-tubers
are an ideological phenomenon
penetrating in young people above all.
There are already a lot of initiatives,
the key are
new figures to emerge and fight,
but not doing the same things they do.
When society
starts approving of certain
social advances and certain rights, for example,
for the LGBTQ community, for the migrants,
always with a little part of resistance,
the rebel thing is going against all that.
And when we have a progressivist government,
whether we like that progressivism more or less,
you will always have right winged people
playing against you. And in this case,
rebellion has been very focused
against feminism, one of the things
that have advanced more for these last years.
So I think they have found there,
on one hand, some content creators
who have been supported by the far right.
And this wasn’t a sudden idea
in Spain like “hey, let’s support
these bigot content creators guys”.
No, this actually comes
from the USA and from Trump,
when they start creating
platforms or Facebook groups
to spread fake news,
and when they start supporting
and funding content creators
because they know
it’s important to reach a young audience
who wasn’t interested in politics.
Then is when they start funding
a bunch of men,
because most people,
YouTube and Twitch users are men.
I haven’t checked the last numbers,
but when I joined Twitch,
I think it was 75% vs 25%
When we made our first podcast episode,
I posted the first clip
which got viral on TikTok, because
I knew they were going to absolutely harass us.
Because we were talking about
a very concrete topic and you could tell
that bigot men were going to flood
against us.
And in the first seasons,
I made very concrete clips because
I knew they were coming for us, to attack us.
It’s also a part
of our success,
which is not provoking, on the contrary:
are you annoyed?
Ok, you will see.
So if this video has
200k comments
of bullying about ours mums,
I’m going to post 20 videos this week.
Seriously, I’m fascinated,
I’m having a ball.
It’s quite interesting, right? I like it, yeah.
The left said: “No, we are going to focus
on other things.
We already control social media.
There are enough leftist people
in social media who are battling.
We don’t need anything else.” A mistake: we have those
far right people
eating us in the field.
This, on one hand.
On the other, they obviously have their audience,
and that’s an audience who are actually
unhappy with the system,
young men above all,
who are unhappy with the system,
unhappy because they can’t leave
their parents’ house, like most of the Z generation;
unhappy because they can’t afford their own house,
like most of millennials;
or unhappy with all those problems they have: precarious jobs,
a salary that
doesn’t let them afford anything…
Where are they seeking shelter?
To these young men,
and some of them not so young,
by the way,
who tell them that feminazis
are the problem,
because we have advanced so much
that they don’t have anything left.
Because it’s always easier
to point out other people
or other communities
than saying
the problem is the system,
and we have to wreck the system
and to turn it upside down
if we want things to change,
and we have to go against the powerful people.
There you really have
a peculiar thing: these people,
these thousands and millions of people
who support these men,
they are actually supporting the system,
they are not fighting against the system.
They don’t know it but
those people actually work
for the top
of the system,
and they are trying to bolster it.
What they always do: locking women inside their houses,
using migrants only for the most precarious jobs
and of course
paying them under the counter
and not having any consequences,
abusing them all the way,
etc etc…
So, at the end of the day, all those viewers
are supporting the same system
that made them deeply unhappy
and deeply precarious.
At the beginning,
a lot of these youtubers
used to make other kinds of content,
but they have found in anti-feminism
a big goldmine.
I mean,
with their content, they make a lot of money.
I think feminism
is a transforming force
in both ways,
from the left and to the right.
It queries a lot… It’s transversal.
It queries a lot of structures
and the hegemonic thinking, the patriarchy.
I think progress is unstoppable, meaning
we have already advanced some of the way,
and unless there is some zombie apocalypse
that destroys everything,
it’s impossible to…
Because when you open your mind,
you unblock it and nobody
can take it away from you.
So the fact we already
know bisexual people exist,
trans people exist, lesbian women, gay men,
all of gender identity and gender expression,
and the fact we are talking about it,
it’s a step you can’t forget,
like “Oh I will forget feminism exists!”
No, we can’t fight reactionaries,
but people already know what this means.
Yes.
I was recently watching this documentary
on the Alcasser girls crime.
And when you see that perspective you think:
Wow, how could they address crime like that?
How could the media act like that?
How the whole crime was used to create fear?
All the hoaxes and everything…
There is a part I believe
is now overcome, and we are making real progress.
But what happens is
that we always want more and we are very ambitious.
But we have some things that have changed
and that we are not seeing anymore.
For example, that 90s late night show, Mississippi.
Nowadays on TV
it’s very odd
to have a show with a man
on a desk
surrounded by naked girls,
and people being ok with that.
The one who really should
stop certain behaviors is the law.
I think that some atrocities
are being committed
in the name of freedom of speech,
which shouldn’t be approved in any cases.
I mean, people are being slurred,
constantly and consciously.
People are lying
about our colleagues.
People are harassing our colleagues
and some politicians
on the first line, obviously,
but also content creators
like any of us,
even girls who dare
to give an opinion via Twitter,
and people are suddenly exposing them,
as if they were part of the power.
So I think something
needs to be done,
and I think if this can be stopped
in some way,
not the youtubers, just the hate,
I believe they can generate
other kinds of content.
Because it happens to me:
they make videos of me every week,
and I have never talked about any of them.
This surprises me,
because if there was a game of
“one says something, the other replies”
-a very macho thing, by the way-
and “I’m going to curse him”...
I would say, ok,
you can’t complain about it if you
are doing the same thing to make money with your channel.
But this is not a two-way case,
it’s a one-way case, all the time.
Besides, they have
a lot more resources,
and they have a legion of asshole followers
who are going to send you death threats,
pictures,
facts about your life
so you can see they control you
and they can attack you anytime.
And the reality is that
you go to the police
and they tell you there's nothing they can do.
It’s the way it is:
all of us have gone to the police
in some total crisis moment, and they have told us:
“No, look, we can’t do this.
If at all,
you can ask him to remove the picture.
And you could sue him alleging
data security
but with all the process you’re going to pay a lot of legal costs
and eventually he will only be sentenced to remove the picture.”
And you think: “Oh, thank you very much, officer.”
I think police training
should be stricter
in this sense, because when
we talk to lawyers they told us
there are ways,
but they seldom know them,
due to being something
in constant change.
And it’s so new
that sometimes they don’t know
that things against this kind of bullying
can be done.
What’s Memecracy?
Since the Internet and social media appeared,
there have come up some communication methods,
increasingly user friendly and open to everybody.
One of them is the meme,
with a universal character and totally democratized.
Everyone can make an idea universal with them:
they are useful for all kind of topics
and, in politics,
both left and right use them.
Political parties use them,
influencers and content creators too,
and also the audience who consume them.
With memes you use humor,
sarcasm and irony,
and with just a glimpse
we can explain a more complex idea
which would be longer to elaborate on.
To give decent working conditions to your women employees.
Turn your company logo purple once a year.
Memes can have a positive goal,
to generate sympathy
towards the point or person you’re talking about;
or a negative one,
to generate humiliation or mocking.
Let’s set two examples of positive memes
which have also been
the posts with the greatest acceptance
of two political leaders’ social media:
Both knew how to reappropriate these narratives
to make them coherent with their storytelling,
meaning with the things people told about them,
and then empathize with their voters.
*Looked at my kingdom, I was finally there,
to sit on my throne
as the Prince of Bel-Air,
huh!*
But not everything around the meme is positive.
Just remember:
make memes, but don’t become one.
Tell Albert Rivera about it:
he concatenated some memes back in 2019
which made him become one, after a catastrophic campaign.
The important thing in social media communication
is to become viral,
because that expands
your audience to people
who you couldn’t reach in normal conditions.
That new audience
will start seeing your next posts
and then you can have the chance
of offering the content you want to show
these people who you couldn’t reach by other ways.
And here the question everyone has:
What does a good meme need?
There are people who say they need to be ugly on purpose,
and there’s even a style for that,
named shitposting.
But if they become viral being ugly,
people may think they are viral just because of that,
though it’s not true, because the important part is the content,
the idea,
beyond the communicative code
you use.
To me,
it’s essential to have a flawless idea
that can’t be refutable.
Like everything in life,
substance over form.
So my preaching about memecracy is over!
Thank you for listening and see you in the media…
Well, in these ones that haven’t censored me yet.
I have to go now. My planet needs me.
What do you think
the new media need to attract
a general audience
to leftist ideas,
and not only the people who already like them?
Money.
That’s what they need. Resources.
Resources to hire many people,
good people,
to make quality products,
to understand the ideological codes
which are working now,
that are not so simple.
Many times, we the leftist people
while doing journalism have been pretty lame.
We have been pamphleteers.
This is an ugly word,
though a pamphlet
is a beautiful thing.
It’s like we’re accepting advertising
while the word pamphlet scares us.
But this word, pamphleteer,
meaning
we use to express things in a way
nobody understands.
We the leftist people
love philosophy, digressing,
having very deep thoughts…
Class struggle,
social justice
and everything that is very fine,
but I think we need to start
leaving that framework.
For instance, everybody talks about Ibai,
this super famous streamer.
And we say that Ibai is able to
convince a lot of people, by occasionally saying
some leftist things,
such as “in this chat we are not tolerating transphobia”,
“taxes are good”.
And he’s a guy who can entertain.
His work is to entertain,
and it takes him lots of hours
to make that kind of content.
But every now and then
he says something that can influence
his community.
So I think we could
learn from people like Ibai,
or maybe explore other frameworks.
Why not do a football show?
We can talk about football,
and don’t strictly about
its political aspect,
but to have the will to entertain
and every now and then to have an editorial line.
So I think we have a lack of entertainment,
here in the leftist media,
the ones who want to
take political action from a mediatic place.
I would aim for that: entertainment.
I find very interesting
what Rubén has said
about entertainment,
because at the end of the day everything is political:
getting on a bus
and giving up your seat to an old person
is a political act,
or walking in the street holding hands
with your girlfriend, that’s political.
There is this thing
we need to let the people get,
about everything being political.
And from there we can start
But in a safe space. Entertainment formats
that ensure you won’t be hearing
racist comments, nor homophobic, nor fascist,
with no jokes about black people
or fat people
or queer people.
I don’t know if it should be something
specific or with the goal
of having all the leftist content
meet certain basic standards.
I also get bored of
always interviewing politicians
and the same people.
There are people
from a cultural or entertainment environment
who can perfectly have a leftist speech
and who can spice things up.
Carlota Corredera came to my show not so long ago,
and she had an incredible feminist speech.
So I think we need to
open more doors.
We mustn’t be old-fashioned,
because traditionally we leftist people
have been like “no, we don’t like the yellow press,
nor Telecinco talk shows,
nor entertainment shows…”
All that smells like famous people's lives:
singers, actresses
or historical Spanish women…
We don’t like it.
And I think this is a mistake,
we must be there,
increasingly,
and shake
a lot of complexes off.
complexes about that.
I believe
a leftist content can be made
attractive to the new generations.
I do believe young people
are politicized and they have concerns
and curiosity about things
such as the environment,
climate change, the future…
And about the gender question,
and I’m pretty optimistic.
But I also think
that from the left
we need to change
the way we present things.
I mean
a big part
of right winged people’s success
is because of their very basic
and very shallow content,
which is very appropriate for social media.
They just bring up a few numbers,
like Vox does: “your grandma has a shitty pension,
and the migrants have these benefits.”
And who cares if it’s a lie?
They give you the headline
and people consume it quickly,
like it was fast food.
We need young people.
I’m perfectly aware
of the audience I can reach,
I’m not going to be a referent
to teenagers or to 20-somethings.
We need people that age
who know how to work with those cultural codes,
and who outstrip us too.
It’s true that those keys
have to come from empathy.
Communication equals empathy.
You can’t copy the system
or model made
by Antena 3,
OK Diario
or even Público.
Now the communication model
has totally changed.
I’m going to share a story
if I can empathize with it.
Just like the movies:
why is cinema universal?
Because each person can or can’t empathize.
I like this movie or I don’t like it.
Same with the music: does it make me feel something? I will share it.
The media need to copy this.
I think this happens in every country,
but in Spain it’s crystal clear: most people
don’t give a damn about politics, they loathe it.
So of course
if you make a very political content,
I think you will basically attract people
who are already activists and things like that.
I think there is a problem
because normally the people who make
this content, denouncing certain kinds of topics,
have a political component,
or are very focused on those topics.
It eventually has
a political content that many people
don’t care about.
Then, obviously, the way to reach those people
who are not already supporters,
has to do with offering
contents like the big media do:
entertainment contents,
but they also put
politics on them,
there are a lot of examples.
I want to believe that there is
a group of people
who can react to certain information
like “ok, I will listen to you”
and explain to them that Spain is not going to crash down,
that this country is not on its way to ruin
just because there is a progressive government.
Because we come from a progressive government
and we have some very,
very good economic numbers
and they are real.
Or that nobody’s going to break into your house,
or that your brother in law’s business
is not going to go bankrupt.
I want to believe that if we change
that way of presenting that information a little bit,
and that if we try to reach people,
we will be able to win a group of people over.
But it’s true that there are
a lot of people who can’t be saved.
I mean, if you go to Ferraz to pray to the Angelus
it’s like “girl, I surrender,
I can’t do anything else
than turn you into a meme
and make fun of you.
Because what can we do?
There is this point of no return
which is a red flag.
If someone tells me they have been at Ferraz street
in a Hernán Cortés costume, I will say
“oh boy, that’s all”.
Girl, I think there is
a part of responsibility of,
to start with,
a left that hasn’t known to say
“we need to be here pointing out these things”,
and also of a lot of people
who maybe didn’t know,
or nobody had told us, that being there
was important, and we have come late.
The truth is that
five or six years ago you watched YouTube
and there were those kinds of contents.
And you could watch a video,
and another, and another, and everything looked exactly the same.
There is this book,
‘Men who hate women’, written by Laura Bates.
She makes an experiment
taking a brand new computer,
with no logged YouTube or similar accounts,
and she plays a YouTube video,
one with a woman giving a speech.
When it ends, the shuffle mode is on,
so let’s see where it gets me.
Three videos later, YouTube plays
a Jordan Peterson’s video.
So it’s obvious that there is an algorithm
which is in powerful people’s hands.
And whom do powerful people benefit?
The people that support their system,
as we were saying before.
Therefore,
this is a tainted algorithm.
There is a left that wasn’t there,
and there is a right that noticed things much earlier
and was there, so they offered all the content
that was wanted to be listened to.
And then we have
the people who believe their speeches.
They believe that speech about the progressivist dictatorship
that can take everything away from me,
while they are not realizing
that they have absolutely nothing.
And that the cause of that
is the system.
We’re seeing it
in Argentina, with Milei’s victory.
He won because he talked about conspiracies,
about those “leftist who are crashing everything down”
but who is he ruining?
Those same poor people who have supported him.
Those same poor people
who have believed all his conspiracy theories
and who have given him the power.
Because without them,
without the common people, without the working class
who are actually all of us, and we are the vast majority,
a leader couldn’t be chosen.
If he was only voted by rich people,
or people of his class,
he wouldn’t govern, ever.
But of course they have their minions
who tell people
“yes, voting him will be very good for you,
he’s from high caste
but don’t worry, high caste is going to end with high caste.”
So that’s the situation we’re living in now.
I think we need to try
and take advantage of the Internet.
It offers a lot of possibilities
to produce a radio show.
A Prisa executive told me that 25%
of Cadena Ser listeners
listen to the station via the Internet.
Well, we will have to work there,
and raise awareness
about being a militant means to pay.
As customers, although the easy thing to do
is turning the TV on
and having it like background noise,
it’s important to,
as customers, be responsible.
I know it’s complicated,
it’s like consuming food and etcetera:
it’s more expensive,
it’s more difficult,
but I think it’s the ethical thing to do.
As an Internet user you have the responsibility
of not feeding
those people whose behavior
is not ethical or doesn’t correspond
to the role they play in society.
So there is a call for people to not visit
places where they lie,
and to try to support the media
that try
to do a more
journalistic work.
Who’s behind Ferreras,
Ana Rosa Quintana, Susanna Griso,
or Vicente Vallés?
These are some
of the most well-known faces
from the most important Spanish media.
However, we all know they are
just the spearhead
of big companies and clusters.
A media is a tool,
such an ax.
An ax can be used to cut down a tree,
or to attack somebody.
It depends on what hand is holding
that ax, it can be used for very different things.
Therefore:
in what hands are the media?
Mediaset, the cluster
where Cuatro or Telecinco belong,
is mostly controlled by vulture funds
and the successors of Italy’s controversial
ex-president Silvio Berlusconi.
While Atresmedia,
where Antena 3 TV or La Sexta TV belong,
is controlled by Planeta Group
and the German
communication’s giant UFA/RTL.
Besides, in its board
we have found executives
who come from banks such as JP Morgan
or, check this out, insurance brokerages.
And we can’t forget about Mauricio Casals,
president of the newspaper La Razón,
and Atresmedia’s deputy chairman.
A personality directly linked
to the political power
who convinced the PSOE
to retire advertising from public TV
to benefit private ones.
He was the one who acted as
an intermediary between Mariano Rajoy
and the Police’s ex chief Villarejo.
Furthermore, Prisa Group,
with media such as the newspaper El País and Cadena Ser radio
is in Amber Capital Group’s hands,
an investment fund that is controlled
from Cayman Islands’ tax haven,
where big European fortunes
are hiding dirty money.
Santander Bank owns some shares too.
Another big group
in our country
is Vocento,
where we can find media such as the newspaper ABC
or COPE radio.
Its main stakeholders
are the investment fund
Cobas Asset Management
and the Ybarra family,
whose father was also BBVA Bank’s president.
Besides the stakeholders,
nowadays it’s very important
to have brands’ ads on those media,
because in the Internet and digital platforms’ era,
these media are living
in a true advertising crisis.
The insurance company Securitas Direct
has been a leader in the ranking
of advertising pressure in most of the media,
coinciding with the anti-squatters campaign
that every summer floods the TVs,
radios and newspapers all across the country.
Banks,
investment funds, vulture funds,
billionaires, multinationals…
This is just a snippet
from the power’s big picture
behind the big media.
Let’s remember that information is a right
included in the Spanish Constitution.
And within the Rule of Law,
free citizens
must be well-informed
to be able to control the power.
But if the power itself
is behind the information we consume every day,
how will we be able to control it?
It’s essential to bet
on independent media,
not funded
by the way we have just watched.
And it’s also essential
to think about achieving a media law
that forbids or punishes malpractice,
both when funding and executing.
A media law would be,
for me, something we should
reconsider, from the left.
Something we need
to fight for.
Because, in all our manifestos,
we talk about climate change,
feminism, racism,
economic structure…
But we often forget to talk about the media.
And with no media,
we won’t be able to do anything at all.
We won’t have any chances.
How come a narco’s friend,
from the most corrupt
political party in our democracy,
is the most voted one in this country?
There’s no explanation,
unless you have the collaboration,
besides the judicial power and all,
of the mediatic power.
The mediatic power
is able to create that consensus
of people voting the right.
When they talk about squatters,
they generate fear.
And fear leads to voting the right.
Why? Because it doesn’t allow us to talk
from the left, from hope,
from transformation.
And they will never permit this.
But a media law would be… I hope we see it.
The three thirds system.
A third of public media,
not dependent on the Government
but dependent on the Parliament,
dependent on the expression,
on the plurality of what citizens vote.
A third of private media
but, of course, with a limit to oligopolistic
practices or to the presence of multinationals,
investment funds and banks.
And also
a third of communal media,
with a good funding
to allow the civil society to express itself.
This is easy to say,
but taken to practice
is not easy at all,
and anyone who wanted to carry this forward,
would front a whole media army
with putschist journalists willing
to whatever.
Because this will be, basically,
to force them to say goodbye to the goose that lays golden eggs.
Just imagine if you tell one of these guys
“I’m going to take the power away from you,
because I’m going to democratize it.”
They would hang their mothers, if necessary,
to prevent this from happening,
but that’s how politics have always been.
The same way laws for a lot of things
have been made,
at the end of the day the laws are frameworks
where our daily behavior operates.
I find it
an essential thing,
not only for the citizens,
but also for the media.
This will be a way to have a framework
and not a free-for-all situation.
I think it would go in favor of the truth.
But it turns out that a media law
is probably seen by many people
as censorship and blah blah,
but it’s actually like we simply want some standards
to control veracity a little bit.
Because a lot of things
can be knocked down by giving facts.
It’s like: you must prove this information.
And we need some organism to control it,
because if not, what’s the difference between
Instagram and Antena 3, Telecinco
or public TV?
Although in social media this is happening
right now, for example in X:
this new verification that says something
has no context, sorry but this is so.
But it turns out that our country is traumatized
when talking about freedom of speech,
and we use it as a weapon
like “this goes
against freedom of speech!!”
and well, one thing
is freedom of speech,
and a different one is lying to our faces.
But what happens is that people are scared because
“oh no, there won’t be freedom of speech,
they won’t be able to say anything.”
Well, maybe the truth doesn’t have so many versions
that anything could be said.
But as we have that trauma, I think,
which comes from the dictatorship era, and etc,
like “freedom, freedom,
and freedom of speech”
but maybe what we really need is to re-educate people
on what freedom of speech means.
Because many people think
that freedom of speech
means to say anything,
whatever, anything,
whatever the hell I want.
Insulting you,
otherwise there is a limit to humor.
Yes: humor has its limits,
information has its limits,
hoaxes have their limits,
and there is this important thing too which is
educating in informative responsibility.
When we talk about things that happen to us,
we use to feel
the responsibility of saying
“not all lesbians”.
Not everything I say
here represents every lesbian.
This is my experience, what happens to me,
and maybe I go to Valladolid
and there are people who spit in my face,
but not every citizen of Valladolid
is homophobic, you know?
As in the news you don’t have that contrast,
we need an organism to prosecute things.
I think it would be awesome.
It would be terrific to have a media law,
I think it’s possible
but we are being
distracted by other things.
It must happen though,
and I believe it will.
And we will die
having seen this regulated,
because the situation gets out of hand.
This is their shield, isn’t it?
They use freedom of speech,
press freedom,
but actually, if you take any professional field,
there is a minimum of regulation to practice
their profession in an ethical way,
or according to people’s interests.
An architect who builds a building wrong
and it falls down,
will obviously have to pay
the damages caused.
A regulation, for example, to professional drivers:
truck drivers, besides having a limited speed
with a tachometer, etc, if you exceed that speed,
you get a fine. The same
when you drink and drive
and you exceed the alcohol rate.
I mean, there is a regulation
for well-done work.
Here we see professionals
who are taking over almost every space.
These media have been created to misinform.
OK Diario is the key piece,
the Spanish epitome,
the 0 mile, and then we had it
in every political talk show. It’s the media
that is probably seen by Spanish people
as the worst of all, the one that misinforms the most.
But then we see
it is ten times more present than any other media,
even than El País, the most widely-read daily.
There is a whole network of media,
in TV it’s impregnable,
it’s taken over
by an oligopoly of two companies
that own every channel.
And the free market is a joke,
because they have the same employees:
Eduardo Inda is in both companies,
Carlos Cuesta too,
María Jamardo too…
They are the same figures,
in every TV channel,
spreading the same shit.
What are they talking
about freedom of speech?
What attacks freedom of speech the most is having banks
and big multinationals
and investment funds as owners of the media.
And this is true.
And when someone tells you
“no, Amber Capital is not
telling me what I have to write”,
it’s a lie. It’s a lie:
write three stories in El País
against Amber Capital.
Write them.
It’s like, I’ve been there,
I know how it works.
Why am I not there anymore? In Cadena Ser radio,
after being in the station’s
most successful show, Aimar (Bretos, talk show host)
told me “everybody listens to this show every night,
you can’t imagine the messages
I get from super important people,
everyone is listening to this talk show.”
Please, come on!
So I think we must shake our complexes off,
and say that a media
which a bank or a big company owns,
is the opposite of press freedom.
Until we don’t understand
that information is a social good
that needs to be protected,
we can’t talk about democracy,
because if the ones
who control that public opinion
are those big companies,
those big businessmen,
those investment funds,
information is not free,
it’s totally conditioned.
I think that in the media law issue it’s also essential
to explain to people
where the funding comes from.
This is an utopia but it would be great
to know, for example,
if there are political parties that put money
on certain media,
or if they pay them trips, or caterings, or other things,
just for knowing it.
I think that the left situated at PSOE’s left
claims journalism as the fourth power,
and as one of the players
to analyze, when we talk
about electoral or social movements.
This left always denounced
the mediatic sewers and the pseudo-media
that appeared with public funding,
because those guys Alvise
and Javier Negre, and others like them,
have had Popular Party’s advertising campaigns, for example,
this is more than obvious.
So they have had public funding
for what? For spreading fake news.
It’s very difficult to have a Parliamentary correlation
that facilitates this,
basically because PSOE doesn’t want to.
PSOE’s strategy
is being an ally of the current media,
not changing that structure.
This is something destructive,
they should talk to their psychoanalysts,
because it’s like “if you think that you are going to
be freed from the firing squad,
you don’t know Spanish history.”