Is Getting Shadowbanned REAL?!, "Mysterious" Artists, & Christmas Lights

Yeah, and that's how I got permanently banned off MySpace. Welcome back to another one more time show. Gems, takes, and bullshit. Um, all right, first gem of the or first gem, only gem, The gem, the one and only gem. Uh, it's it's like slightly a take, but like we're gonna get into it as a gem. Slightly opinionated. So yeah, I mean something in the rough. Yeah, yeah. I mean, for for for me, bro, this this is how I'll kick it off. Um, there's so many people, bro. I mean, this goes for like just normal. There's like normal people that bitch about this. So there's tons of music artists and like content creators that clearly are the ones that are like the worst, you know, complainers around this subject. Um, shadow banning, bro. Ooh. Shadow banning. The big myth. I'm shadow banned. Is it real? Why I can't get more views. Nobody's seeing my shit. Instagram's holding me back, TikTok ain't showing my shit to nobody. God damn, I'm sick of that shit, bro. Yeah. Sick of it. Well, first of all, let me ask you this.

Sick of it. Is shadow banning. Do you think shadow banning is real? Obviously not. Why would they do it? I think I think that some level of it could be real. Why? Why would they do it? What's the incentive for the social media platforms? Why would they do it? You ever type tried to type find like a page and they won't even appear in the in the results? Okay, that's okay. Okay, let me back, let me back up. Let me back up. There's profiles that have committed community guidelines issues that could be being impacted with regards to reach. Okay. Okay, so that if that's what we're calling shadow banning. Sounds like a Shit. Yeah, but what is a shadow banning? Okay, exactly. So like for me, I feel like the people that typically are complaining about shadow banning are the ones that are like conspiracy theorists about like, oh my God, why is my content that sucks ass not being showed to enough people? Yes. And for me, I think I alluded to it. It's because the content sucks ass. Yeah. Um, so I just don't fucking want to hear the word. I don't want to hear the phrase shadow banned ever again, bro.

Yeah, no, people have taken it and run with it uh way too far. Oh my God. And what another major thing that people don't realize is how TikTok changed the game. Because they were used to having this many followers before TikTok, and then maybe like maybe like 10, 20% of their followers would see their post and like their post. And that's just what you would expect. And that and that was normal. Yeah, okay. And now it's maybe like one percent, maybe see it. Um because on the flip side, it's being shown to random people fuck tons of random people potentially. This is why it used to go off of the follower graph. I don't know, Gary Vee uses these words, the social graph versus the interest graph, right? Okay. So it used to be, we used to be on the social graph before TikTok. You have your followers. When you follow someone, you see the posts from the people that you follow. Facebook world. Right. That's how Facebook worked.

Everyone's assuming that you want to see the content from the people that you hit follow on. Yep. TikTok comes around, they don't give a fuck who you follow. They want to show you the posts that they know or they have learned with their algorithm or whatever you want to call it. Algorithmic magic. Yes. The sauce. They know you are gonna spend the most time staring at because what are all these social media companies in the business of? Attention. They literally only want you to stay on their app as long as possible. As long as humanly possible. That's why, like that's why I don't believe in fucking shadow banning. Right. Because if you make. It goes against their business model. If you make the best piece of content, they're gonna show it to people. Exactly. Why would they be able to do that? Because they want people on their app. Why would that's how it works? They don't have a vendetta against you. Right. No one, no one like reported you so that you can't get your shit shown. Like, dude, give me a fucking break, bro. Yeah, so TikTok changed that, Instagram comes out with reels, and they are now following these same rules because they're realizing holy shit, like this is way better. They're better.

Realizing. Realizing. Realizing. That was a Henry joke. Double E. very well done. I'm just saying. And um couldn't unhear that one. Way to throw me off. They're realizing that this is keeping people on. We as consumers of content don't actually know what we like as well as they do, which is trippy and terrifying. You couldn't even say that without stopping. Terrifying to think. Maybe I don't know what I like. Yeah. So so as a result, here's um all these people coming in, tweeting, threading, making videos, saying like, oh, Instagram's trying, you know, coming for me, like they give a fuck who you are. Like they're not showing my shit to my followers. I used to get this, I swear I'm shadow banned. 99%, you are not shadow banned. You just your content is not keeping people on the platform, and you're being penalized for it, and you need to shake shit up.

Thank you. Yes. Thank you. And like I don't mean for this episode to be this, like, you know, just riled up, like aggressive, like shut the fuck up. But at the same time, like, it's because I want our community to fucking win. Yes. And I'm telling you, if you take a hard look in the mirror at your content versus other people's content who is getting the reach that you think yours deserves and should be getting, I promise you, I fucking promise you, you're going to see the difference. Yes. Because I've looked into like anytime I see someone who's bitching about being shadow banned, what's the first thing I do? Groan. What? Groan? Okay. Well, yes, I do make some sort of I do make some sort of audible noise. Gesture. But no, I go straight to their profile. I go straight to the profile. Check them out. Check them out. But see, like, what's this? What's this shit about? Well, you know, what are they talking about? Like, what's going on here? And I'm telling you, there's not been one time where I've clicked through someone who's bitching about being shadow banned, and me be like, oh my God. The content's amazing.

This is the best content I've ever fucking seen. How could Instagram not want to show this to millions of people? Right. So I just feel like, look, if I'm one guy that can do that in a very like, you know, quick spot check of like you're complaining about being shadow banned, your content's not that great, like put two and two together. That's probably what's going on. I just think that we gotta just try and sharpen the sword when it comes to content creation, bro. Like that's it. Like we gotta try and get better. We gotta get we gotta get in the habit of trying a bunch of shit, always trying new shit, yep, monitoring the numbers when you see a spike in something, doubling down, tripling down on that, continuing to try new shit while tripling down on the shit that works, find another thing, boom, double triple on that, and just and playing that game and rinse and repeat, right? Bro, you actually just said something. Um, someone followed our page and DM'd us who also is in like the music marketing or content creation uh world. And they, you know, I was I was scrolling their page and I was actually getting some some pretty good tips. I can't remember who the fuck it was.

I'm I'm sorry, whoever you are. I will shout you out next time I think of you and like find out who you know who you are. Um but basically one of their posts had to do with that. Uh a recipe for content creation is exactly what you said, right? Make a bunch of new shit. Anything that works, double down on that. Anything that's in the top or sorry, in like the bottom, like five percent performance wise, or bottom, stop doing it immediately and try something else new. Right. And so then you start you start injecting like new ideas and you start rinsing and repeating the ideas that work. Yeah, and that becomes your content strategy, right? That's your ever evolving uh like content mix. And every you know, cycle you're putting out content that has more and more and more views, exactly engagement, reach. It's it's it's not that like it's not that complicated when you break it down that way, right? But sometimes I didn't even think of it this way. So like don't you know like fault yourself if you hadn't thought about it this way. But I think that we don't we don't enough analyze what's working and then also analyze what's not working, yeah, right? Like sometimes maybe I would say we maybe lean towards like you know, analyzing what is working, right?

Like because we get caught up in that whole hype and shit. But sometimes we're not really like looking and stopping the things that aren't working. So even like you and I, I feel like we could easily have pulled the like shadow banning card on TikTok because we didn't post some shit that we know works well on TikTok for a while, and we just posted interview clips that like we know don't really work well on the platform, right? So for us, we could have easily been like, oh my god, like we haven't gotten more than 2,000 views in a in two weeks, like we're shadow banned. What the fuck? Right. The second that we put something out that we would have almost bet our fucking money was gonna work, 100k, 200k, boom. Exactly, right? So for me, I just feel like we've almost been victim of it where like shit's not working, and we could have easily just pulled the like, you know, well, we're shadow banned, like why aren't they showing our shit to people? Like they hate us. Like who who at TikTok is is against us, right? now? One More Time Podcast specifically. Yeah, you don't give a fuck who you are. Yeah, yeah.

So so for me, um, it really comes down to like the analysis, bro. Like, we I don't want you to like obsess over data because data is still just data at the end of the day. But if you have 15 posts in a row that have the same amount of views and you're discouraged, it's like try something completely different. Yes. You have to. It's it's not that like it's not that like mind-blowing of a of a like thought process of strategy. You know what I mean? Like here. Yeah. This is definitely something that like we drink our own Kool-Aid with this, right? So like I promise you, it's not that time consuming to really just like do a quick spot check. check, what's worked the last week or two, what hasn't. Okay, let me try and shake shit up with the shit that hasn't worked, and let me double down and even like get even better with the shit that like showed some degree of success on a on a platform. You know what I mean? You know, it's definitely not gonna help your in overall engagement. Not posting, bitching about it. Yeah, well, okay.

Complaining. That's true. That's true nobody wants to hear that. Yeah, yeah. I I just look, man, I think we all know that this shit is hard. So just to like close the loop on the complaining aspect, like we all know this shit is hard. Yep. We don't make any money, y'all don't make any money. This shit is difficult. Like you know what I mean? Like, we're trying to figure out ways for us to like, you know, we're we're living the shit that like, yeah, we're doing a podcast and y'all do music, but I promise you there's more similarities than there are, you know, differences. I mean, I talked to uh Dame Ritter this morning, right? He he stopped managing uh, you know, hip hop artists and and musical artists in general, and he's managing a comedian right now. And he said, it's really the same shit. He's applying the same principles to that business, but that dude's slanging jokes, whereas a rapper's slanging songs, you know what I mean? Who's the comedian? Uh Big Jaw. Big Jaw. Have you heard of him? I don't think so. Yeah, apparently he's like, you know, he's he's pretty like he's done pretty well for himself or whatever. Okay. Um, so yeah, so you know, he's managing this comedian, he works at a distribution company, he has the music entrepreneur club, um, you know, podcast, and he used to manage funk volume, who was Hopsin and Dizzy Wright and uh SwizZz, Jaron Benton.

And Jaron. Yep, yep. Uh, and so like this dude has been around the block. And DJ Hoppa, shout out Hoppa. And and, yeah, I mean, you know, he he basically said, like, there's there's more similarities than there are differences. So, like, I say that all I say that to say, like, we're going through the same shit as you guys, where we're trying to refine our content strategy every day. Like, we there's not a day that goes by that we don't talk about this shit. Yes. Like, yo, why didn't that work? Yes. Like and if you can turn it into kind of that, like, if you can turn it into like a curiosity, like, and a fun game. Yeah, why did this one flop? It's like, ooh, new piece to the puzzle. Have you ever missed? Yeah. Like dude, When we watched that Jenny, um, what the fuck's her name? Jenny, whatever, the shorts girl, the YouTube shorts girl, the girl that's like crack the code shorts. She's fire. Whatever. She she's this like obsessive YouTuber, right? That has just dedicated her like heart and soul and short life. She's young. Yeah, yeah. She's dedicated her heart and soul into like cracking the code of YouTube Shorts. And she's like, every video of hers does like 10 million views plus, right?

She's just insane. Um, like try and get even like a fraction as excited as her, right? Like there's nothing more beautiful than like seeing someone who's just freakishly obsessed with like trying to figure out how these platforms work because like they're constantly evolving. You have to constantly be trying new shit, but there are recipes for like what works. And so I just, you know, don't get discouraged if your views aren't there. Just try new shit and study what does work for other people. Like I got on live stream last night, bro. Um, I told you, and and the a big thing I talked about was the whole Lil Man J thing about like stealing like an artist, like taking content ideas and content formulas from other people that are doing it successfully, and then applying your own shit. So someone commented, like, well, doesn't that tarnish your own brand? And I was like, no. If anything, you get to literally sprinkle the fuck out of that like original core idea that you got from someone else and just give it that like you just brandify it for your own thing. Like, you know, and it's almost you're almost gonna do that naturally.

You're not gonna make the exact same video because you are you. Exactly. So it's gonna be different. You can change it more if that makes you feel better, but like it's already gonna have you on it because you made it. Exactly. Not caring about that, not thinking and realizing like what is working on TikTok? Trends. What is a trend? Someone does something and then everyone copies it. That's what a trend is. Like that's how it works. And you know why trends work? Because they're proven. People liked it. It wouldn't become a trend if a bunch of fucking people in the world who you arguably are trying to, you know, deliver your art to, or like you're trying to have your art be heard by. Like it worked for other people. So, like, why wouldn't you? You'd almost, I literally said it this last night. I don't mean to be rude, but it's like you'd almost be a fool not to. Yeah. Like, why? It makes your life easier. It's so much easier. It's that mental roadblock. And I gotta get past. Yeah, man. So I just I encourage y'all to please try your hardest to get over that hurdle of like, oh, I just want to be so original that I can't even look at what other people are doing successfully. Like, I don't know.

I just don't obsess over it. And if you have plenty of ideas, by all means, like try and do your own thing. But if you're struggling, which I know a lot of you are because you hit us up saying that you're struggling with content creation ideas, please, for the love of God, just like look out on the internet and see what's working and maybe try and apply some version of that to you and what you do. And I promise it'll be a lot easier than beating your head against the wall. So final answer is shadow banning a real thing. Absolutely fucking not. Maybe. Can I do the my final answer? Oh, I was I was giving mine. Maybe, but you are not shadow banned. Okay. All right. So in the same vein, this is gonna be the take of the episode. Okay. Uh, there's a bunch of there's a bunch of artists, man, who are out there who whether it's just like a random Tuesday or whether they're gearing up for a new release, I don't really care what the what the use case is. Maybe you do. Uh, but they're they're wiping their social media posts. Classic. Zero posts. They love that.

I got nothing. Mysterious. Got nothing for you. I'm a mysterious artist. Yeah, and uh, well, who was it? Was it Metro Boomin who recently like shit on all artists that are trying to be mysterious? Yeah, so like uh I'm I'm with Metro, bro. I stand with Metro. We always stand with Metro wiping your social media posts is the lamest fucking thing known to man. I don't stand behind it. I fucking hate it. Yeah, you're literally giving every opportunity to have someone discover you and become a fan of you for however long you have this mysterious shit going, you're literally gaining zero new fans and followers. No one's gonna take time out of their day to be like, why does he have zero posts? Oh my god, I want to do it. I'm intrigued. Nothing here. I want to learn more. I'm gonna I'm gonna take my time to click all around the fucking internet, yeah, find out who this guy is. Oh my god, it's so fucking cool. Yeah, it's lame as fuck, bro. It's lame. I get it.

I'm kind of on the fence on this one. I agree mostly. I love like why do you agree? Let's start with why you agree and then yeah. I I I love like Mr. Beast, who has videos that he made when he was 13 playing Minecraft that are cringy, and who would ever watch this? But like when I was getting big on Mr. Beast and you know, seeing how he was like cracking the code and why is he so big and why is he so good at what he does? Going back to those videos, you know, and I ended up watching a couple of those, like, oh my god, like this is how he started. Wait, who's Mr. Beast? Yeah, right. And if you if you keep watching, you can see like the progression. You can you can almost watch it from like season one, you know, all the way through and say, oh, he started, then he did, then he gave a homeless person a thousand dollars in this video, and shit started to get kind of crazy. And that's like the beginning of him now giving away like millions of dollars to random people for doing random shit. So it's a fun, it's a storyline. It's like you your story needs to be there for people to get on your storyline. It's like you you need every season of your TV show on Netflix for people to become fans and binge it all, right?

You wouldn't wipe your discography, would you? Some do. That's crazy. That's for sure. but some do, but that's pretty crazy. Some do. For me, like you know what's crazy is I actually don't think that's as lame as wiping your social media posts. So much lame. I don't know why. You're crazy. I don't think it's that lame. So much lame. That I like could kind of get behind. What about deleting posts that didn't perform well? Oh my god, you know how I feel about this. You like that. I would be fine with it. That's okay. I'd be fine with it. Okay. You're teetering now. I'm not, bro. My biggest point of like my biggest problem with the whole wiping the social media post is that I think you're just missing out on anyone that comes into your world for that time period. Yeah. And and even if you have one, like some people have like the one post or the two posts. And I'm like, that's still not enough to give anyone an idea of actually like the full perspective and the full scope of like who you are as an artist. You're robbing people the chance to become super fans of you. Yes, exactly.

So that that's my starts with content. That's my biggest problem. So my biggest, my biggest problem isn't around like if something doesn't perform well and you don't really stand behind that like piece of content and you're pumping out so much content that you still have that storyline that you love. I still think that's okay. Yeah. For me. Same thing with like the same thing with the discography. It's like if it doesn't like, you know, vibe with like the story that you're trying to tell, then like deleting the old music, like I kind of can get it. I don't really still like it. I would I would say don't. I don't think there's a point to it. I don't think anyone to it at the time. Exactly. If you put it out, it's a part of your story. Yeah. And I don't think anyone's gonna be like, oh my God, I love his new shit, but holy fuck, I'm gonna stop listening to anything new that I loved because I didn't like the old shit. No one does that. His first project was trash. I don't care how good this one is. I'll never listen to him again. Exactly. No one does that, bro. If anything, to your point, people love the growth, bro. Um, this goes back to what Dina Marto said on her interview. Um, a big tip for like independent artists that she had was stop uh acting like you've already made it.

Yeah. She said, like, stop pretending like you've already got put on. Document the glow up. Document the glow up, bro. And like rappers specifically are the worst about this, right? And like we're a rap podcast, so unfortunately a lot of y'all are guilty of this, where it's like you already got the expensive ass chain that you spent every last dollar on. You've got the the car in your videos and like this, that, and the third. And like, we get it. There's like this thing about hip-hop that like sometimes commands this like lifestyle and this image or whatever, right? But at the same time, bro, like that's kind of dead. Like, that's kind of dead now. It's it's not as important as it used to be. It's not as important as it used to be. People like human connection. People like relating to people, and it's hard to relate to a Lambo and 20 naked girls. Like exactly. Oh, or they would love to have like seen you continuously level up, I think. Right. Like proud of you. They become happy with themselves for being fans early. Like, oh my God, I remember when he just had an Acura in the fucking video. Now he's got the bins.

Now he's got the beamer. Now he's got the Lambo, like whatever. Oh shit, his first video was just like a run and gun this, and now it's this type of video, and like that sort of thing, right? So you know, I think the deleting posts on a deeper level, and a lot of this shit boils down to this, honestly, in this game, is caring about what other people think. Oh my god, ego, bro. Insecurity, ego. I don't know. I mean, maybe it's ego, but I want to say it's insecurity, man. Which is which is directly directly related to ego. You have to not give a fuck what people think about you. Yeah. That's hard. That's hard. So that's hard. How do you do that? Like, but it's but they, you know, everyone's opinion of you is skewed. They don't know your story. They're basing it off of one, two, three posts. If that's all you have on your page or whatever, even if it's a million posts, they don't know you, they haven't lived your life. So we gotta like just on a deeper level, stop giving a fuck what other people think about us and not let it affect our business, our career, our art. You know what I mean?

Like that is so personal to you. And one bad comment affecting that, man, that's just tragic, you know, or one st one person like just bashing you. It's just doesn't matter, man. Yeah. So in summary, wiping them, cool or lame. If you're building a brand, you need to have a story that people can fall in love with. And I think you need as much content, whether it's music, videos, tweets, X's, it's the resume. It's the resume, bro. It is. Uh, don't do it. Don't wipe it. Don't fucking wipe it. Don't wipe it. All right. Moving on to the bullshit. So we are in the holiday season right now. By the time this comes out, Christmas will be upon us, I feel like. I believe so. Right around the corner at this point. That's right. So, you know, your boy did something he never, he's never done. Bought Christmas presents for other people. Thought about others. I didn't do that this year, actually. So still on that selfish train.

Uh no, man. I I put up Christmas lights. Oh wow. I did it. Wow. They look fucking beautiful. Do they actually? Oh my God. Are you they all white? No, no, no. Cool blue and cool white. So it's kind of got the Jew, like the Hanukkah like, you know, kind of thing. Yeah, but they're Christmas lights. You called them Christmas lights. Oh, yeah, they're Christmas lights. But no, they're Christmas lights. They're not Hanukkah lights. No, they're fucking Christmas lights, bro. So what's the what's the layout look like? Uh I mean, dude, I just it's hard, man. It's really hard to do. Yeah. It takes a lot of work. Like I understand now why there's companies that do it for people that can afford that. Yeah. So yeah, if you guys want to donate to the podcast, uh, there's a donation link in our bio. We will hire Ben decorators next year. Yeah, exactly. Next year, because I I I uh dude, I was sore. Did you go around like the edge of the roof. Oh my god, I almost fell off the roof probably five times. Up and down the door. Oh, yeah. Windows. Oh, dude. Everywhere? The whole front porch, like wrapped in shit around the columns and the stair handrails and the and the porch uh rails. Nice.

Uh the fucking all the way the route, you know, all the way around the roof, bro. I mean, dude, it's it looks good. But I I like got the I got like a taste of it, bro. Now I want like next year. This is how it starts. This is how it starts, bro. My money is gonna be drained next year. Because it's like, you got to. Dude, it's because the shout out Vic Economy, who has is known for his lights in this neighborhood. It's addicting, bro. He adds every year. Dude, you gotta add something every year. It's addicting, bro. You're not gonna have the same lights as last year. No, boring, bro. I'm already sick of it. I already was about to buy more. It's in year one. After I put them up, I was like, it's not enough. Settle down. It's not enough. You're good. No, bro. You've never felt this feeling, bro. Oh my god. If you're like, is there a group that's anonymous to talk about Christmas lights? There's an anonymous. Anonymous, yeah, CLA. CLA. I've already been in one meeting. yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm going next week. I should call my sponsor after this. I'm getting a little bit of the like. Listen, Admittance is the first step.

Yeah. All right. What's been going on in your world in your mind? Ben, I bought an air fryer. You did? I bought an air fryer. What? And I know I'm late on it. For what Yeah, I mean, I don't have one still. I'm just sick of hearing about them and how great they are. Why are they talked about so much? I mean, I know people that have had them for they're like at least a decade old. Have you used it? I feel like I've used it once and I fucked up, apparently. Oh, really? Once so far, I like overcooked some shit. I did it exactly as the instructions said. I don't know if the instructions were bad, but yeah, I probably user error. I'm 0 for 1. But um, yeah, no, so I'm like team air fryer now. I get it, like it's good for like heating stuff up quicker and and meats can go in. You can reheat shit. Fries like are never ever good when unless you eat them immediately. But the best you can get them is like out of the air fryer. So wow. Um, this is me calling upon the One More Time podcast to send me some stuff that you make in your air fryers and get me on the team. I want to know your secrets and your hacks.

Team air fryer, huh? Do you have one? No. You're still not on Team Air Fryer. I'm not, bro. Crazy. It's team oven, man. You have a whole house with a kitchen, a full kitchen. Yeah. A half kitchen. I'm like really adulting around my place. Listen, real adulting means having an air fryer now. Apparently I'm changed. That's the final piece to my adulting puzzle. It's an important piece. All right. I'm buying one after this podcast. There you go. All right. All right. As always, please follow us on uh Spotify Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, and whatever podcast platform that you use. This is an audio only experience. We're not even, we're not even gonna put out actual clips from this shit, y'all. We don't even have cameras. I'm naked right now. He's not, thank the Lord. But it is actually pretty dark in the studio right now. We've got the one more time sign lit up. We've got the outcast bobblehead by our side. We've got a candle lit to set the fucking mood. I don't know why, but that's okay. Set the mood, you said it. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But uh until next time, Henry, what are you doing? We're getting out here.