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what was your red pill moment was there one specific thing or was it more of a trickle of things it was both right it's
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like it starts the wall starts crumbling and then it comes down all at once so for me it really
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started early in 2013 I started reading pirate wires and Mike salana and I thought he was a little crazy at first
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because he would write these articles one he wrote was about how the Ukrainian soldiers had swastikas on their helmets
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and the New York times photographers would ask them to take the swasa off for photos and I said that can't be right
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that can't be true and then four months later it was in the New York Times buried in the middle of the paper and I
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kept seeing stories like that that that he would be early on and so I just started feeling uncomfortable and Queasy
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about what was going on with mainstream media and then in May of last year of 24
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I read some article that talked about Trump's speech in Charlottesville and this has been well covered but but where
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he said there was good people on both sides and the article said it was completely you know propaganda and not
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what he actually not accurately reflecting what he said that uh that he denounced the Nazis a bunch of times in
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his speech and so then I went and watched that video and that was my red pill moment I think it was for a lot of
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people because it wasn't just the media spinning it or politicians spinning it that was like one of the pillars of why
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you were supposed to hate Trump was that speech and and then you see Biden say that's why he had to run a
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second time and you see Obama go to you even see Biden bring it up again in the beginning of the DNC and it's one of
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their pillars and they clearly know that they're misrepresenting things so for me
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that was just that was beyond uncomfortable I was just like okay now I got to go back to First principles and
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look at the primary data and listen only to original speeches by people and I just realized I couldn't trust
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mainstream media so I was I became I started questioning the Democrats as soon as I started questioning the
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Democrats I started getting a lot of Shame and anger and hatred oh the other thing that happened that was part of
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this journey is that my chief of staff parted ways with me after nine years in April of last year and he was the main
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person protecting me from myself on Twitter and he was the one who would say stay in your lane nobody wants to hear
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what you think about politics or San Francisco or anything other than you know your area of products and investing
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and with him gone I just started tweeting whatever I felt and thought and sometimes I got it wrong or it was a
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little too emotional but first of all it was really fun and then second of all I
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found I got connected to this whole new audience of people people who are these kind of techno optimists I think you
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guys probably talked about it and that just brought me down this path that eventually I came out two days
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before the election publicly for Trump um and it was only because that's when I completely got there and I was trying to
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just be completely honest and authentic with myself and on Twitter at the same time and my daughters turned to me that
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Sunday and they said you're you're going to vote for Trump we know it and I said
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yeah you're probably right and they said well then you have to go say it on Twitter and my daughter's like really in
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this with me yeah so anyway and then it was on the front page of the New York Post on the day of the election that I
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was uh this not that I'm such news but maybe it was just was their news Peg um that I was coming out for Trump and but
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I'll get back to your re question but what I love about my New York Times about my New York friends is that they
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did not give a f they were all pro comma and they texted me and they're just like
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oh that's kind of funny but it's one thing I kind of love about New York they didn't care back to your question on
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Reed what I love about Reed was he was already getting pings from people saying what's going on with pinkis he's going
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off the rails he's becoming a Trumper you know it's you guys I'm sure have gone down got a little bit of that too
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about shamas in freeberg yeah so like what's wrong with him we got to bring him back into the
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fold you know he's he's should we lock him up is he crazy um and so Reed was already getting these I had a lot of
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anxiety about talking to Reed about it and finally Reed and I got on FaceTime and he just said I just want to
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start by saying I'm team Mark and I said I'm team Reed and it gets out a little you know a but
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well no Americans can get along even if they disagree politically about a candidate it's probably where we need to
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get to especially you know now that Trump's going to be in office in a couple of days what was it like when for
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Biden yeah okay well just to finish the read part sorry but what what I love about Reed is that we followed that with
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a 4our dinner and he said I never questioned your principles he said I know you're a highly principled person
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and I just want to understand which principles it is and I'd like to convince you to change your mind but
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anyway so hold on one second so I you said something almost in passing but I just want to double click
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I think part of what Silicon Valley actually gets wrong is that we don't embrace the tism and what I mean by that
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is everybody we're all a little socially uncomfortable we awkward I wouldn't say
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that we were the coolest people growing up and there's this virent form of blockers you called it Chief of Staff I
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think that these folks can be very detrimental which almost represent this filter between your true self and
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everybody else and there is this game that's played about being a gatekeeper I do think that executive
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assistants are val valuable administrative assistance are valuable the reason I can say this is that my EA
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went on maternity leave I had and I experimented with a chief of staff Etc and now I use Jason
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service called Athena and I have a guy that works with me in the Philippines and it's about 3,000 a month
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and I can honestly tell you this guy is the single most effective administrative
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support I've ever had and what there is is all these opinions on what I can say or do and I think that when you look at
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a lot of these big companies if you look at zuck's current transformation or what
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you just spoke about there are all these Interlopers that seem to get in the middle of you and people's perception of
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you I don't know if you have any comments or reactions to that idea yeah it's part of where I know you guys have
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talked about Zuck coming out as Lisa's based or his seemingly more authentic self or sharing more about himself
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and I can relate to it because I think we all go through this this struggle as you start to be more of a known person
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inside your company outside your company and you have people around you taking the edges off and I think that we're now
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in this time that I think we're having authenticity is having a moment now which is great for me because Reed said
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to me I I've if you Google me you'll see that there's lots and lots of bad things
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written about me and a lot of it is my high school quote was some people have tacked and others tell the truth and
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I've always been kind of just committed to being honest even if it's nuanced and
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it's not an easy sound bite and Reed said to me early on you need to pick what the easy narrative is or the Press
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is going to make it up for you and he was right and they did or my competitors did so I think that now with long form
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podcasts and there's just more and the fact that we can kind of directly in a lot of ways Elon was the first one to
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directly defend himself you remember when well he fired his do you remember when he fired his whole PR team he fired
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all those people there's just like there's none of that infrastructure between him and and everybody else but
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do you remember when he would be on Twitter all the time post PayPal trying to correct the story
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and just write long long diet tribes and then and then when a New York Times Reporter said something negative about a
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Tesla he just went off for weeks about them and and it seemed a little crazy and deranged and then you started to see
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that it worked like he actually and we were told don't defend yourself if something bad is written about you
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you're going to prolong the press cycle you're going to make the journalist angry and so we've we're now Unshackled
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I teach this class at Stanford and I taught two backtack on Monday and I looked around and I saw half the plard
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said you know she her you know he him his and I got a little Pang of like oh do I have to watch one I'm say I'm like
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no I don't I'm Unshackled I'm just gonna this is just me and I'm gonna be Mark unfiltered and it's the better version
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of our so anyway I I'm glad that Zuck feels like he can be he can present more of his complete self out there now and I
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think we can get into it later but I have a lot of thoughts on how the culture is going to kind of move more
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towards base