To kick off yet another eternity-spanning week in noted crumbling empire America, Kick streamer Adin Ross turned over his broadcast to Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate who almost got assassinated a few weeks ago, but in a way that caused pretty much everyone to immediately forget. Antics of debatable legality ensued. On this week’s Aftermath Hours, we talk about that.
We begin the show by reflecting on the legacy of Game Informer, a magazine whose 33-year run unexpectedly came to an end late last week when GameStop unceremoniously laid off its entire staff and took down its website’s archive. GI’s own staff eulogized it better than we ever could, but there’s no harm in adding a few more fond memories to the pile.
Then we discuss the parasocial pivots of both the Trump and Harris campaigns, with the former appearing on the broadcast of the aforementioned sycophantic Kick streamer – who gifted Trump an expensive watch and a Cybertruck with his near-death experience emblazoned on it – and the latter embracing Brat Summer, a social media phenomenon born of resurgent pop star Charli XCX. Also, people apparently want vice presidential candidate Tim Walz to be their dad. Everyone’s being super normal about this! I’m sure it will definitely not hamper their ability to criticize and pressure their aspiring presidential pals when the time comes!
After that, we welcome Borderlands into the pantheon of bafflingly bad video game movies by talking about all the other ones, of which there have been approximately one million. Paradoxically, though, there has been one good Borderlands movie: Tales from the Borderlands, a cinematic narrative game that came out years ago. Go watch/play that instead.
You can find this week's episode below and on Spotify, Apple, or wherever else you prefer to listen to podcasts. If you like what you hear, make sure to leave a review so that we can someday stream with every currently-living president – and also some of the dead ones.
Here’s an excerpt from our conversation:
Gita: It’s the only thing that’s convinced me that Trump might be cooked. Once you’re on Adin Ross’ stream, you are slotted into a particular genre of human being, and you can’t escape. Because he’s just a butt sniffer. He was doing that on the stream [with Andrew Tate]. He’ll suck up to anybody. If you allow that into your circle, you’ve conceded that you let people suck up to you. And that’s disgusting.
Nathan: Yeah, although at the same time, I feel like far-right figures love that shit. That’s the whole thing: You’re an authoritarian, and you surround yourself with suck ups.
Gita: Yeah, but the quality of suck up matters, right? Adin Ross is not a pedigreed suck up. It’s not like hanging out with Ye, who’s still a celebrity even though he’s an insane person. If you hang out with Ye, you’re hanging out with someone who has at one point in time been culturally significant. That is not something you can say about Adin Ross. He’s been a loser the whole time. He just had a lot of Twitch followers, which is not that cool.
Riley: Is this the first time that a politician has been on Kick?
Nathan: In terms of big names, definitely. Aside from Trump’s own channel, he never appeared on Twitch. I can’t really think of another instance like this [on Kick or Twitch]. The best point of comparison – a politician appearing on a livestreaming platform with a content creator – is probably when AOC streamed Among Us with a bunch of people from the Twitch and YouTube ecosystems, including Hasan Piker, Pokimane, and others who are generally left leaning.
Gita: That was explicitly not an interview, also. That was her playing a game on Twitch. This was different in that it was framed as an interview, even though it’s definitely hilariously not an interview at all. It’s just pathetic stuff. It’s sad to watch. It doesn’t make him look powerful. That’s what I mean when I say that Adin Ross is the wrong pedigree of suck up. It makes Trump look pathetic because he’s glomming onto the energy of this pathetic little worm. He’s like Grima Wormtongue in Lord of the Rings, which I recently rewatched. But that’s what it feels like!
Nathan: Also, Trump is doing it seemingly because his son, Barron, was like “Hey dad, there’s this guy. You should go on his stream.” And Trump was like “Well OK, if you think so, because I guess I have to beat Brat Summer now.”
Gita: Just the idea of Barron Trump knowing who Adin Ross is, that’s the most loser-y loser shit I could possibly think of. You are taking advice from a teenager, my man. Come on. … Just seeing him on the stream, and when they gave him the wrapped Cybertruck, it’s like, god, you guys look like losers.
Nathan: Adin Ross gifted two different things to Donald Trump: a very expensive watch – which I’ve seen people estimate cost between $50,000 and over $100,000 – and a Cybertruck emblazoned with the moment right after Trump got shot, where he’s raising his fist in the air. This reeks of desperation in so many different directions: both Adin Ross being like “Notice me, daddy! Look at how much thought I put into your presents” and then also Trump being like “I’ve gotta get the youths more interested in me because that’s a way to maybe shift this from being a deadlock.”
But I still find it telling in terms of how all of this works in that Trump is massively wealthy. Why would you get him presents? But again, Adin Ross is a born suck up. That’s what he does. And authoritarian figures love suck ups. They love people who will not question them in any way and who will instead be like “I’ll get you everything you could possibly want and even things you didn’t know you wanted.”
I feel like, in that way, Adin Ross is the perfect kind of useful idiot for the moment. He is somebody who’s not typically a political streamer – although he’s flirted with far-right ideologies in the past – but he has an audience of viewers who probably wouldn’t describe themselves as political. But if somebody like Trump goes on his stream, he models being a suck up to a powerful figure. These people who are young and uninitiated to the world of politics, they look at Adin Ross and say “Well I think he’s cool. I like him.” He’s somebody who’s palled around with all these famous people. He’s hung out with LeBron James’ son. He’s friends with all these rappers. And now he’s hanging out with Donald Trump and sucking up to him and demonstrating that that’s a cool and good and alright thing to do. Viewers might start to think “Alright, maybe that’s what I’ll start to do in my own life, too.”
Despite how fumbling and flailing all of this appears, it does give this impression to the audience that in the face of fascism, what you should do is kneel down and kiss the ring.
Gita: Yeah, it does also suck. Ultimately, it’s on Kick for allowing people like Adin Ross to stream. I don’t think we need edgy Twitch. It’s also clear that this website only exists as a front to get people to gamble. It’s built by gambling money and sustains itself on gambling money. It sucks, and I don’t think it should exist, and part of the reason I don’t think it should exist is that they don’t seem to have a problem with this stream that happened where crimes may have occurred.
