L.O.G. 145 Antisocial Media Behavior

Hello and welcome to the video version of The Human Behavior Podcast. I'm Brian Marren, the host and creator of the show. As always, I will be joined by human behavior expert, Mr. Greg Williams, who the show is affectionately named after. On the show, we discuss different topics through the lenses of what we call Human Behavior Pattern Recognition Analysis. If you'd like to find out more about what that is, please check the links in the episode details and go to our website to learn more. Please don't forget to follow us on social media; the links are also in the episode details, and hit the like and subscribe button to help support our work. Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you enjoy the show.

Totally unprepared.

Okay, Greg. So, we are, you were just saying we're totally unprepared before I hit record. But you know why? It's absolutely true, because we're totally unprepared, because we're both angry and we're both fired up, right? And this is exactly like going shopping when you're hungry. Why did Mom always tell you not to do it?

I don't think we don't like, we have the dynamic that works. We can't do the bad cop, worse cop. But in this situation, I think so.

So, this is—we're recording this the morning of the 23rd of November, and I'm just going to release this tomorrow. I can hurry up and that's what I'm going to do today, so you get on that. But we, we got on to actually go over our work, our work that we have next week. But instead, since we're going to record, since there's so much going on, alright. So, the incident that obviously sparked this conversation was what happened in Waukesha, Wisconsin, where this guy, you know, barrels through this parade—this Christmas parade of folks.

It's terrifying for a number of reasons. One, you're in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Anyone familiar with that area—I'm very familiar with that area, I've got family not far from there, right outside of Milwaukee. Just the way it's like this is like Midwest small-town America, which is our fear of, you know, you want to go to, you live there because you don't want to live in Chicago, right? Because you don't want to get carjacked. You don't want to live in certain neighborhoods in Milwaukee, because you know, you want to be safe with your family. And you've worked your ass off and hard enough to afford a place where you can live in a town like that, and you know what? Something like this happens, so it's brutal, it's terrifying.

You know, I hate, I have to, when any of this stuff occurs. It's not unlike the last few weeks with the Rittenhouse trial stuff. You have just the worst, shittiest takes all over social media that I get angry. And I don't voice this too much on this podcast, but people need to shut the hell up and stop with this pandering to these different groups, and sharing this like clickbait, and going, "Oh, well, this was the case, and this was okay," without knowing any facts of anything that happened. And then we want to find, "Oh, why would he do something like, what's his motive? Oh, he's getting back for the verdict in the Rittenhouse trial, so he's doing this. Oh, it's because of what is—" Shut up.

This guy was a damn piece of crap criminal who's never had a critical thinking moment in his entire life, who is completely at-bang thinking, who's committed a whole bunch of crimes and never had a conscious thought about what was going on. I think that's what we got between that and the Ahmaud Arbery case. I don't even know where to start, right?

Brian, first, this is the first time I've seen you this worked up in a long time, and I like it. So, listen, for folks that are keeping notes, Christmas parade on Sunday, Waukesha, Wisconsin. Beautiful place. I used to drive my motorcycle up to Stevens Point and go to Door County and Green Bay, and Waukesha was always one of the stops. Driver kills five, injures dozens. The suspect in the caper, Daryl Brooks, a 39-year-old male. And what Brian's talking about is exactly what started spinning out of control minutes after the incident was happening, when it was still critical and coming in. Somebody said, "This is payback for Rittenhouse." And what constellation of cues came together, genius, to give you that? That's just hate speech. That's the kind of speech.

Right now, they're working to say that, "Hey, they want to outlaw being able to use speech in rap records against people when the rap record matches the homicide that they did and they're rapping about." This is free speech. What these people are doing, Brian, is not. What they're doing is they're whipping up a crowd for false testimony. So, let's talk about Brooks. And you said it: Brooks has never had, Brooks is just a "chad," he's a street guy. Okay, what Brooks did—and take race out of this—but this is a goddamn Christmas parade on Sunday in Waukesha that they have every year. People come out from everywhere, those from 90-year-olds to 9-year-olds, and everything in between out there, Brian. And everybody was loving what was going on. While that was going on, woman-slapper Daryl Brooks decides that he's having yet another argument with the female in his life that he has no control over. And what's his answer to every problem that he's ever faced in his life, Brian? Violence.

Yeah.

So, he escalates the situation of violence and turns it into a domestic and flees the domestic. Now, there is no intent between that point, when he's still functioning on rage, and he pulls up to a wooden barricade with a uniform police officer. In his mind, because everything in Daryl Brooks's life is about Daryl Brooks, Daryl looks and says, "I ain't going to jail again today." One, "I just bonded out from a domestic violence caper where I ran over a female." "I just left the scene of a domestic violence where I was slapping somebody." And this cop knows. Brian, the cop didn't know. Nobody knew. Nobody knew what was going on. Probably 9-1-1 calls are in that fog of war behind him somewhere.

Yeah.

So, what decision has he always made? "What's the skinny one?" Alright? Do you see what I'm trying to say? And barrels off, and in so doing, creates the havoc of killing five and injuring dozens. It's not unlike a drunk driver where they're not culpable because they don't understand the gravity of the situation that they're in. And I'm not saying those people deserve to die, Brian. Please make sure that's not what's going on.

No, and real quick, because you said, you know, take race and all this stuff out of it. And here's all you have to do: if you're listening to this, take all these shitty takes from these people who have zero experience, but are somehow on the news or are—or even worse—social media influencers who know absolutely nothing, but have an even bigger audience than vitriol. And then the expert on the news who we already bash on. But the idea is, take any of these shitty takes, their shitty hypothesis, and just do one thing: the second you change their race, or you change their age, or you change their political affiliation, your hypothesis goes out the window, which means it precisely sucks and it doesn't work. It's unscientific, it's one-dimensional, and it's crap.

Okay, what you just brought up was his past behavior, right? And then his likely future behavior, right? Every single time. Which doesn't matter about race. It doesn't matter about the religion. It doesn't matter about any of that junk crap.

You think this guy works too?

Exactly. Right? No, that's it. It works anywhere in the world. So, the idea is, you based on what would likely occurred, based on the situation that he's in and his intent, right? Because we've talked about this on numerous podcasts before. He's in that moment, he has that fit of rage, he speeds off and there's a cop. Uh-oh. Since my whole world—if I put myself in the mind of Daryl Brooks—my whole world is about me, it revolves around me and me only, and my survival and what I'm doing. So, as soon as I see a cop, what do I think? "Oh, crap, here we go. This is it, they're on to me." Okay, that's how these people think. And what I mean people, I mean the absolute criminals in our society, right? The people who are just at-bang thinking, never had a critical thinking moment in their life, and played the "what if" game, which we're supposed to be airing today, but it's this one instead, right? Right, but he's never done that before in his entire life. I don't care what color skinny is, or whatever he worships, or any of that crap. None of that matters. None of it matters.

And Brian, I'll tell you this, one of the things the prosecutors on the TV and people are trying to say, "Why? Why? Why?" Stop for a minute and back up. First of all, they said, "Well, the bond that he was given on the week-ago case during the domestic was a thousand dollars. That was too low." One. Okay, don't give a damn about that. You know why? He never intended to go to court. Yeah. Okay, so no matter what the bond was, unless he kept him in jail, it didn't matter. The other thing is there are people out there that need the Interim Bond Act, right? People make mistakes, we're fragile people when we're in love and we have an argument with our loved ones, that's called domestic violence, right? If it turns into abuse where, yeah, if it gets, you know, broke a window, you broke a lamp, you shook somebody because you're mad. Look, we're humans, we make mistakes. That's why those laws are on the books, and it's not right to do it, but you know what? If we're truly penitent and we go in and we go, "I did this," you can't believe that someone, people deserve a second chance, and then believe, "Oh, you didn't do it." You could not give him one. Like this is ridiculous. You can't have it. Okay?

So, a thousand dollars from that standpoint, Brian, if you ask a lot of money, that's a lot of money for me. Yeah, I honestly don't know what I would do right now if you said I would need somebody to get—let's shift the responsibility to, "Oh, it's the judge." How about it's the asshole that drove through the crowd and killed everyone? How about we just start there? What are you saying? What are you saying? Are you telling me that the problem here started with and ended with Daryl Brooks and the choices or lack thereof that he made? So, that should be, that should be the headline in every statement.

I don't understand social media, like tweets and Instagram and stuff, and it's crazy. So bad. Okay? But I do understand this: it's all wrong, because every time I get one, I look at it and I go, "Okay, it's one of two things: it's a platitude." And platitudes blow, people. I'm telling you right now. A platitude posts another Hallmark card.

Yeah, yeah. And it's not even your quote, you know what I'm trying to say? Hey, I actually do appreciate those people who post their own quotes, I actually do appreciate that. Okay?

And then the second part of it is that when you put something out there, you play armchair quarterback without ever putting any thought into the entire matter. One, intent matters. Daryl Brooks never said, "I see a parade now. Now you're going to pay!" and drove through the parade. Why? Evidenced by what? What does he do after he does it? Does he get out of his car and look around and go, "Oh my God, what have I done? Officer, I had no intention of doing this, I was merely fleeing from a crime that I just committed," right, Brian? I would applaud him for that. Okay? The people's families would understand that he made a mistake, too. But what does he do? He continues to try to flee. So what did society come up inside—just a line here—what did society come up with? Society comes up with, "Well, he must have been fleeing from the cops. 9-1-1 call hadn't been called center." Why do we do that? Right, because it's a race to the bottom now, right? Instead of going and saying, "I need to take a few minutes and do the facts," it's, "Who is putting a post out before I do?"

Yes. And how can I, how do I get that video out? Yeah. How do I get that video out? What sharing the video of the car barreling through the crowd does, nothing! Oh my God.

And Brian, what does ours say? You and I have said this, you, Shelly, and I are the key proponents of the theory that if you can film it, you can stop it. You get what I'm trying to say? There's something else you can do about it. This standing like a zombie and just filming a man's inhumanity to man, what does it do? What function does it serve in our society to just watch it ritually over and over and over and go, "Oh my God, that's terrible." Yeah.

And then that, that's a whole other topic of just blatant disregard for other human beings, you know, when that occurs. And that's, you know, you want to be a bystander rather than an active participant. And don't tell me that that's, "Oh, that's how humans are." That's not true, actually. All that stuff has been disproven. And once someone does something, everyone's more likely to get in and help out. So I don't, that into, like we, I know we get real dumb in groups of people. But, right, it's a different case, though.

Right. Because we're assuming that other people are taking action on that, and that's when we're removed from the case. But, Brian, when we're in the center of the case like this—this is a parade where it's in progress, and things are happening, and people are looking over there. Look, first of all, it's never okay to make another person afraid. That's not okay. And so, Brooks isn't an urban terrorist, he's just an asshole. Okay, that doesn't have control of his emotions. But I feel bad for the kids and the people. There's going to be long-lasting PTSD-related things. They'll never have a parade like this again. This is now what we will remember Waukesha as.

You're exactly right. And around Christmas, it's another. There'll be a black flag flying rather than it's the Christmas flag. Yeah, it's now, you know, Newtown, Connecticut. It's now, you know, Marjory Stoneman Douglas. It's now that this is now what it's remembered for, which is, it's not fair. No, it's not. It's not fair to people that live there, and to the rest of us, and everything. And I, I think this, there's no way to stop the shitty commentary, Yep. Other than if you're listening to this, it's individual on you to not share that junk when something breaks right away. What happens when the story breaks right away? You don't. There's, it's so chaotic. You know, and the news media folks are just trying to put out anything. You hear these, "Oh, we have reports coming in." That's it. Which allows them to do what? Put out completely anything they want, say whatever they want that's not going to be corroborated. And it works up. And now, you have police departments who are trying really hard, "Okay, we've got to get out there. We've got to give information as soon as we can. We've got to be open and everything." And what happens in those cases? It's like the one in Houston, from that from the concert, where they go on, they're like, "A security guard was stabbed in the neck with a needle!" Like, what kind of freaking movie is this? Like, and it was all junk. The guy was like, "No man, I got punched." Like, what are you talking about? Like, you, like I, I, it's this, "We've got to get it out there, we've got to get it out." And, no, we don't. Figure out what the hell happened.

You're exactly right. Mine has to be unique enough that somebody's going to glom onto it and go, "That's interesting." You get what I'm saying? So, like the fact that Daryl Brooks is fleeing from the cops, or the fact that Daryl Brooks at one time said, "Kiss my ass, Thanksgiving Parade," or something, right? None of that has to be true, because the idea is if I put it out there and I get a million hits on it, I'm a hero anyway. So, it's just like these—and don't get me wrong, whatever you've got to do to raise money for your sister with cancer, do it. But some of these challenges that we see out there, it's the same pandering. And you use terms—and I'm going to steal it—the clickbait. I understand clickbait, and I'm probably falling for it. But let's talk about Pete the Pandering Panda. Pete the Pandering Panda now is an icon, just like they have the Olympics and a mascot for a company. And what it means is that if you pander to enough of the populist that's reading social media, you're going to be a hero no matter what you print. And that, that's fundamentally wrong, Brian. This is a situation which is very clear-cut. What can we glean from this? So, let's go scientifically, okay?

One, did Waukesha ever assume that somebody was going to use a vehicle ramming attack? The answer is clearly no. Why? Because they didn't take the appropriate steps to protect all the parade goers. Why? Because they've never had a significant attack like that on U.S. soil and specifically not for this parade. Do you see where I'm going? So it was determined so unlikely that, yes, and guess what? So, you're not going to spend money on unlikely uses of different devices to stop that. Now, let's roll that back a little bit. So, what would scientists do? A scientist would come out and say, "Hey, folks, going into a parade. Do you know what a vehicle ramming attack is? Here's a quick primer on how to do that. It's on our website at WaukeshaPD.com," or whatever, just to give you some insight. You know, you see this happening, be prepared to take cover. Where are you? Listen, that's called preparatory planning. I do that with the kids—my kids are 35 and 40 now—and I still do that when we're going to the tree lighting ceremony in gun events. No.

And this is, this is, I mean, there's always a debate between, you know, your security versus freedom, right there, right? They can't go hand in hand all the time. The more freedom you want, the less security you have. The more security you have, the less freedom you have. Right? So, yeah, and you get into what the town can allocate resources to and all this, and it is so rare that something like this would occur, that it's difficult for people to see something like that happen. And I know there's some places that do that where they'll, you know, put the fire trucks at those intersections, and people think it's part of the show, when it's really, no, that's a security barrier.

Exactly.

Exactly that, right? I mean, there's different things that you can do. But, you know, it will cause intervention. That'll all come out in an after-action and even to touch on that stuff. But this is typically, this happened on Sunday, it's now Tuesday morning, right, when we're recording this. Yes. And that's usually much, much, much faster than we comment on things, because typically, we wait for more of the facts to come out. But this one was clearly evident as the reports came out of what he was. And I saw, even that night, I think on Sunday night, where an article popped up or someone shared, like, "Oh, he had already run someone over before." And I was like, and that's all I need to read. That, I mean, meaning, I now have a pattern of behavior. This is not something targeted, there's, this is something he's done before and been successful at, so he's likely to do again. And I know that seems like it's oversimplified, but it's really not. Like, this is how you think in a very primal fashion, right?

You know, when you, when you fall into that rage category, when those catecholamines are kicking, you are 100% (operating on instinct). And so, therefore, there goes all critical thinking out the window. This guy in his case, and you fall back on what you know. Well, he successfully ran someone over before, so why won't he think it's going to use it? It's that simple. And I know people don't want to accept that or understand that, but there's no, this is, if you're, if you have a hard time understanding, then stop trying to attribute it to something else, right? What I don't like is when someone says, "Hey, I can never understand why someone would do this. It must be because," it's like, "Stop. Stop." You're pleading ignorance. I appreciate the first line, "is fine," stop there. Stop there. Put a period. "I don't understand why someone would do that." You don't get to then jump to, "So it must be this. My kid would never do this. I would never do this." Shut up.

And listen, there's another caper, and I apologize for being ignorant when it comes to capers that spontaneously come up. Folks, do your weapon (look it up). Yeah, there's a caper that's out there that's in the final throes. And it's a young Black female that shot the guy that had been convicted of sex crimes before, shot him in the head, burned his house down with him in it, took the car. And I apologize, folks, enter any of that, you'll see it. So, I'm just scanning headlines going, "Okay, interesting, interesting, interesting." What caught me on that one is the prosecution in the defense. That caper is not unlike this caper. So, she has been—and of course it's an allegation, but trust me that there's some truth to it or we wouldn't be in this part of the caper—there's evidence to believe that she's been sexually abused by this person before. So, just like The Burning Bed, which is a case that's 55 years old, yeah, okay, she says, "You know what? Self-defense. I'm not doing this anymore." And instead of doing what some people would do and killing herself to get out of that situation, she shoots him. Okay, burns down the house because, "I'm never coming back here." Do you understand what I'm saying? The burning bridges, right? Then steals his car and says, "I'm going into the night."

Okay, what happens is you reach a threshold, and at that threshold, you don't understand that there are other novel opportunities, you don't understand that there's other inputs. What happens is your stress chemistry of your limbic system says, "Act!" And so when Brooks had situations in his life that turned bad, he always reacted with violence, and he always fled. This female, she reached a threshold and she said, "No more. I can take no more." So, what did she do? What do we do when we don't have the choices and we're not using critical thinking? We act out very violently. So once she shot the person in the head and she looks around, goes, "Well, I can't unring this bell now." "We burn the house down." Well, it's not only an example to this person, "Hey, don't touch me again," but it's also my very rudimentary, my very primitive, again, way of destroying evidence. "I don't know what to do." Do you see what I'm saying? "Well, I can't let this stay here, so I'm going to burn it down." And we don't think, "Hey, wait a minute, that's kind of a big signal, you know, a big fire at a house is going to bring the police." Why? Because we're not critically thinking. Okay.

So, I would put myself in Daryl Brooks in that car at that time, and he turns a corner and he's racing through side streets, you know, or early on a Sunday morning. And all of a sudden, comes up to a wooden barricade that's probably got some sort of evidence tape or some reflective tape on it. Yeah, yeah, wooden barricade means that you're going to comply, because it's not—it's just not there to stop you, right? And here's a uniform copper. So, the uniform itself now represents chemically in his brain, "Boom, boom, boom!" All of the things that have always stopped him. It's an authority. "Him in jail. You don't get to go." He could have been a crossing guard, it might not even be a police officer.

I, I, I see, I feel the same way. And so, the reason I brought up the other case is it was inevitable that female inevitably was going to act out violently against the person that was abusing her. Here, Brooks was going to act out violently. Why? Because he feels that everybody else is wrong. "You're all abusing me. Why can't you just do what I tell you to do?" Do you see what I'm trying to say?

So, yes. So, stop for a minute trying to say, "I can't understand this," and walk around in Daryl Brooks's shoes for a minute. Well, what's the best evidence? We've got to be Daryl Brooks for a day, Brian. We've got his history. Because we can't impeach his history because all of it's laid out there for us. Look what he did here. Look what he did here. Look what he did here. And that's all I'm saying. This caper, and see, this could happen in anywhere America. Yeah, not just, and we both have skin in the game with Waukesha, too. Alright.

You said we kind of had some lag, but I think it caught up. Hey, I'm still there. Are you there, buddy? Yeah. Yeah.

You even know.

Yep. Okay. Now it's back. That's fine. It actually cut kind of when you said that at a natural point, it just didn't get a little, so I can, I can smooth that out. But alright. So, the other, the other big one that's kind of got us amped up is the Ahmaud Arbery case and some of the closing arguments and some of the stuff that they're bringing in. Now, of course, everyone has a right to due process in a fair trial, and you are presumed innocent until proven guilty. But the facts of the case, as they've been laid out, are very obvious what occurred and what happened in the decision these guys made. And what their attorney has been doing throughout this trial, painting Ahmaud Arbery in this light, that is just sickening and it's ridiculous. And I don't even think it's a good defensive strategy based on what they're saying. I would have come up with a different strategy. I would have, I would have said, "Hey, this is what they were thinking. They are, you know, this was a huge misunderstanding, a mistake. This is why they thought that way. It's nothing about him." I wouldn't have made it about Ahmaud Arbery, I would have made it about their decisions and what was going on in their head. Not so much, you know, and then them thinking this is a different situation than it was and it was more. But either way, the stuff that they're coming out and it's just, again, it's such a clear-cut case of what occurred. Ahmaud Arbery, regardless of what he was doing at that given place in time, did not deserve what happened to him. And his rights were violated. His due process rights were violated. And that should anger every single American who says that they, you know, support and defend the Constitution, because he didn't get his constitutional rights. And the same thing what they're talking about with him is just, it's infuriating. You're reading this stuff, I'm reading some of the transcripts. You're sending it to me when I'm reading people even on Twitter are posting some of those comments. And I just, I'm appalled by it. Because this guy, again, it's such a clear-cut case. I wish this one was in the news rather than that Rittenhouse trial. But, you know, this is just not, it's not clickbaity enough, maybe, for some people.

Let me throw this at you. So, you and I are in a high school class or a grade school class and we look and we go, "Hey, you've got red hair. You've got dirty fingernails. Look at what you're wearing. Can't you wear shoes? You've got to wear sandals and shorts. It's cold outside." We would be accused of bullying, and people would put a stop to it. There'd be an after-school special, and everyone has been trained to intervene in that situation, right? Yet, in this situation, the exact same things were true, talking about what Arbery was wearing, that his toenails weren't cut. Yeah, Arbery's in the morgue for nothing. Okay? Listen, you can't kill people for shoplifting. You can't kill people for stealing a car and then falling asleep in the car and then wanting to drive off. That's human nature. Humans need to do that when you come up and you go, "Freeze!" Do people freeze? Almost ever? Because they're like, "Yeah," and they want to get the hell out of there. So, here's a situation where she uses this horrible bullying tactic to demean the memory of a man that may or may not have committed a low-level crime in an area that's seen crime before, but by no means does that justify her bashing. Look, you want to bring somebody in and go, "Yeah, he was always a thief and I heard him saying he was setting up the house." Okay, that's a form of testimony. I wouldn't agree with it, but it's a form of testimony to say that Ahmaud Arbery had done something wrong. But we know now from the trial that he did nothing wrong, and we know that he was unjustly detained. Do you get what I'm trying to say?

Right.

And now we know that that escalated into a violent encounter. Three-on-one is never good odds. The three all had guns, he didn't. The three had a vehicle, he didn't. Brian, I want to take you back to that school and us being on the playground. If three people came up and beat up another kid, what would we have said then? So why do we change now? Why all of a sudden that we're older do we not apply that, right?

Outstanding. The same exact, the same exact standard, but now it's in a courtroom setting from adults, when it literally sounds like it would come out of a child's mouth. And that's what I felt when I, when I read it.

And Brian, folks, just so you know, Brian has a feel for the social media and he handles all that. I have none. Still trying to fight my way through LinkedIn. Sometimes get knocked off because I log in wrong. But what I'll do is I'll read articles and I'll send excerpts of articles to Brian. And then I'm guilty, your Honor, of piling on. What I'll do is when I find a really saucy one, a really stupid one, I'll just keep hitting the send button until Brian literally sends me a message and says, "I'll kill you." So, I've reached his threshold sometimes, too. How, how horrible is the fact that Ahmaud Arbery is on trial, and Ahmaud Arbery was never arrested for a crime? I mean, in this incident, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah. And I think this is an important trial for the country, more so than the Rittenhouse one. You know, as far as I'm concerned with Rittenhouse, I think that no one involved in that entire situation should have been doing what they were doing. And so, you reap the whirlwind. And, you know, he had a legitimate self-defense case. I'm not, not, not knocking the judgment or the case or what the jury came back with at all. It's, I wouldn't agree because it was shitty prosecution and shitty paper all the way around. But all of those people involved that night in Kenosha, Wisconsin, deserve what they got, as far as I'm concerned. You know what I mean? It's defense.

Brian, you're spot on. Do you remember in Ghostbusters, where Rick Moranis's apartment gets torn up and the top of the building gets blown up? And the guy looks at a fireman or something, I haven't seen the movie in years, and he says something like, "Hey, what happened?" A guy goes, "Somebody brought a cougar to a party, and the damn thing went nuts!" You bring a damn cougar to a party, you reap the whirlwind, right? Do you not—look, let's juxtapose that for a minute. Let's set it side by side with the shooting in Las Vegas. Those people were going to a concert, they were having a good time, they flew there, they did all the wonderful things, right? And you had an asshole that shoots into the crowd from an elevated position and then commits suicide. Okay, those people didn't have it coming, Brian. They, they had every right to enjoy that concert. Right? But you're in a riot, you're tipping over cars and lighting stuff on fire. Do you get what I'm saying? There's people running around with guns, and you don't go home? You reap the whirlwind. That's a trick bag you can't close.

Well, I know that. And that's what my friends out here, we were talking about the recent, there was just on the interstate, on the I-5, right by me, right near where I live in San Diego, there was, and something happened. I still gotta figure out what exactly happened with an armored truck, and it started dumping money all over the freeway. Oh my God, you sent that to me a couple days ago. Stopped. People got out and were just grabbing the cash. And people were recording themselves, of course, and putting it out there and all the stuff. And then, you know, my friends were talking about like, "Oh my," and someone's like, "You know, hey Brian, you didn't run down there? That's literally like right by your exit off the 5. You didn't run down there and start grabbing some cash?" And I made the joke—and this was a joke, everyone listening—I said, "You know what you do in those situations is you sit back and you watch, and whoever collects the most money, you follow them home and then you rob them. What are they gonna do? Call the police? 'It's stolen, they stole my cash!'" So, you steal it from them. And they were like, I was like, "Well, that, that, it's a victimless crime in that point, right? You're, everyone, if we're all doing something illegal, sorry buddy, you don't get to then say, 'Well, I don't like where this is going now.'" No, no, no, no. You, you, you, whether you knew, you knew or should have known that what you were doing was wrong. That didn't belong to you. So, guess what? I can come and take it now.

And I don't know, that's a bit of a great parallel. But yeah. But this is what I'm saying is, if you knowingly do that, that is not your money. You knew that was not your money, so you're going to get out and take it? Well, guess what? That's not, it's not, "Oh, I found this." It's not walking down the street in your neighborhood, there's a $20 bill sitting on the ground, you pick it up. That's a different case, right? There is no, there is no Supreme Court ruling of "finders keepers, losers weepers," no. That's, that's not.

So, why do certain things evoke certain chemical reactions? Let's go back to the science. In the late 70s, I was in Frankfurt Airport. I remember feeling a great deal of unease at the airport. And there were a patrol outside, the police officers that were walking around. And one of them had a bike dog, a German Shepherd—it wouldn't be a French poodle. And the other one had a machine gun—and I don't know the type right now, if I put my brain to it, it looked like a Schmeiser. But they were walking around in the airport in groups of two like that, and I felt very uneasy. Why did I feel uneasy? Because those items aren't regularly seen in and around where I am. So, now if I'm in an environment where even the cops are carrying different weapons, long guns, shotguns, those type of things, I should cue in on that and go, "Time to go home."

And you're going, "Yeah, but it's Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Christmas Eve, Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year's." Somebody's going to say, "Yeah, but I want to celebrate. I want to go to that place and celebrate." Okay, well then you have to do a cost-benefit analysis and you have to understand if these folks who are professionals are at a heightened awareness level, maybe that means that things could happen here and not at the local whatever. You know, like, I've yet to be in a bowling alley—Nico and Bailey love bowling—I've yet to be in a bowling alley where I've seen the same type of security response. You get what I'm trying to say?

And, and Brian, I, I think we've always, we've always said certain things in the environment should trigger your immediate attention. People leaving suitcases or bags or suitcase being out of character for the environment that you're in, incongruent signals. A person parking a vehicle, leaving the door open, and walking away, and this ain't a valet situation. Those type of things should have me. And we've got, Brian, we've got hundreds of podcasts that talk about different triggers, let's say, in the environment. So, one, don't get me wrong, Waukesha, I am praying for the souls of the departed and for the people to get well. That's not what this is about. This is not about you or about Waukesha or calling.

No, it's about everyone, it's about one guy.

Yeah, what I'm trying to say. And the social media crap. But I'm telling you, use incidents like this. Get your, get your Moleskine, Brian. Get your, like, for example, I have the latest incident book, happens to be orange, and I write these incidents down and I write next to them on the page, right next to them, "Lessons Learned." What have I learned from this? What, what do I know from this incident that I can pay forward? Do you get what I'm trying to say? So, I'm a mom or a dad and I got a couple of kids, you know what I'm saying? And I look and I go, "Well, the view isn't as good from this vehicle being parked here, but that vehicle and that fireplug may afford me the defense that I need, or the protection I need in a situation."

And you're going, "You really size up an environment like you do?" Exactly. I do, and you do, too. And a lot of the people we know do. Yeah.

And that's, the lessons learned here, there's a lot of lessons learned here. But, you know, and the fear factor is, is what I, I hate, because, you know, that's what does the damage now. Everyone's scared to go to some other holiday parade, or they're scared to have gatherings, or scared. And because, you know, how do I, how do I make sense of the situation in general? And I thought, we know, I know we covered that with how Daryl Brooks thinks specifically in that situation. And I think that that's hard for people to grasp how simple it is. And it really is, it's very much about survival. But, you know, when you're talking about going out there with your family, it's, yeah, you, you do have to take those things into consideration. And, you know, it's not about being out of fear, or about, "Well, there's," or it's, "Or this is likely going to happen," or, "I need to be very security aware." Like the same things, you precautions and the same planning measures you take to help be more secure, also help you have a better time and help you plan out the day better, and also allow you to actually enjoy the event because you've taken all these things into consideration and you're at the best, most safest spot. And you have a plan with your family.

Well, guess what? Then you start to notice things that are out of place, or that they aren't out of place, that everything is fine right there. And I think that's the biggest thing is that the planning process before, and taking those things into consideration, like you just said, is, "Is this the most, alright, I want my family to see the parade. But if I go right five (feet), if I go 15 feet this way and I'm behind that fireplug, and I find a balustrade end of this, this is 50% more safer." Well, guess what? That's how, that's how security works. That's how likelihood is. It's all likelihood. So, it's, you're less likely to get hurt there than you are 10 feet over, then you win. You know what I mean? It doesn't mean that someone's not going to come and attack your parade. It means you're going to fare better if it does happen. And that's all. If everyone did that, we would have a collective security posture that would make these things more difficult to happen.

So, your buddy, Gonzalo Sension, aka Father Matiel, he wrote a thing on LinkedIn. And so apparently I'm roped in because of whatever algorithm, because I liked one of the things he does, now I get everything he does. You get what I'm saying? And so, this one, uncharacteristically good, Gonzalo, was the one about the ATM. I don't know if you've seen it yet, but poor old dudes at the ATM, they've got a couple of people that are doing the shocking jive. And what happens is as he's there, standing in front of the ATM, a person comes up and goes, "Hey, did you drop that?" The guy looks. The guy gets his PIN. They let him go on him again. And another guy comes up and goes, "Hey, do this." They grab his card, go to another ATM, and before he can respond, they're already withdrawn money. And you go, "Okay, what do I need to make that happen?" The first and the foremost is the guy we're talking about in Waukesha, the first and foremost is the ATM. He's the ATM. Everything that's going to happen wrong is going to be around him. So, now you've got people that are willing to take an old man like me that can be easily distracted at that ATM, do you get what I'm trying to say? And work in concert to do something about it. So, everything relies on everything else, Brian. Everything is a house of cards that leans on it. And if you take away a couple of those things in the environment, like, what am I saying? I'm saying, go to your bank instead of going to the ATM, it's a lot safer. Do you get what I'm trying to say? Inside your bank, unless you're there at the specific time the bank is being robbed, you'll probably do okay. Your money is federally protected there, not so much at the ATM. The other thing is that people don't have to be that sophisticated. They can wait 'til you're done with the ATM and do the Brian Marren (meaning to rob them) and go up and go, "Give up the cheese."

So, the idea is to look around your situation and play the "what-if game." It'll be on next Wednesday, folks, and anticipate the likelihood of certain things happening. Now, I feel bad because I think what they should do with our offender in Waukesha is they should say, "Daryl, here's part of your plea agreement. I need you to get on and tell everybody what you were thinking that morning." Yeah, all it'll take is five minutes of him standing up, and it won't even take five minutes, do you understand what I'm saying? And you'll get it right away. You ever want to go, "Oh, wow, this person didn't have a single thought in their mind!" Because everything will be about what he'll be about, "Well, I got up and, of course, she did this, or he did this, and that just, you know, I was expecting this." And then, and you just watch him get into the rage, and you go, "I get it." There are broken humans around you right now. Some of those broken humans will spin out of control and go into rage-ville. And when they do, it's going to be a dangerous place for anybody that's in front of their headlights.

And it's, you know, one of the categories of thinking of that is, you know, "It's all about me," right? Or, "How do I make this about me?" That, and that's what he thinks, right? That's what he's in those situations, right? I mean, his whole life. And so, I always tell people, look for that in posts on social media. You'll see people that will post about things and somehow make a situation all about them. So, that's another way of looking at it. And those are people that you should not be following or should not listen to their advice, as far as I'm concerned. But it's not going to take that same. You get what I'm saying is, I don't know, I, I just don't know how he stopped that other than vocally and vociferously saying that we're against all of that stuff. Why? Look, okay, we're, we're not whatever the social media giant guy is that has the podcast that everybody tunes into. And I've never written a goddamn thing where I see a million responses. I see some of the dumbest things. And Brian, behind it is all the claps and all that other crap. Newman's grateful. Newman says, "Tried a new toilet paper today." And a million people respond to Newman. You know, "effin Newman." But my thing is that listen, whatever you do, if it's for general amusement or entertainment, I'm all for it. But this isn't, Brian. This has a sinister after-effect that's no good for anybody. We don't learn from it. We don't know. It's just people aren't, we're not, we're listening people who are not serious people and that are not taking things seriously, or they're just making flippant comments and/or memes, which I'm okay if you're a meme account and that's what you do. But if you're not and you're trying to be taken seriously, then don't post that crap. I'm sorry. It's just like this, this, this, it's, you're, you're blurring the lines. It's like when you'll have like a comedian come out and then go, "Well, no, you can't talk about this or that, or you can't say these things, or that's hurtful." It's like, "You're a damn comedian. Screw you! You don't get what you get! You don't get to do that! These jokes are funny! You're the one who should be saying, 'Anything goes!'" You know what I'm saying?

So, I, I don't know. But listen, somebody will say right now that that's the economist. You're saying that now. What you're saying is that there are people out there that are going to make money on taking the dark side of this humor and going for it. And there'll be jokes on late night thing about, "Hey, you don't want to do this, or you'll be in a parade," you know, you know how those people are this. Yeah. But that's not what we're talking about.

No, I don't care about that. Yeah. We're talking about misrepresenting the truth and taking a literary advantage of facts that aren't on record, that shouldn't be surmised. And it shouldn't be the first place you go. I think that did a disservice to everybody, because now there's a lot of people that aren't going to show up for the local parade. "Wait a minute, that's not what this is about. Showing up for the parade shows that you will not tolerate this kind of behavior." And sometimes people have to die to demonstrate that we're willful enough that we'll endure, we will endure, we will come back. Yeah. No.

And I, it's that, that's a, it's a good point. And, you know, I think what happens a lot of times with so-called experts or people who become popular in certain areas, is they have a certain perspective that's unique or certain area of expertise in one area, right? And then what I see happen is they start kind of getting a little bit of mission creep. They start stepping outside of what they do. And then you're like, "Dude, this isn't what, no, you don't get to comment on this," or, "Wait a minute, why, why is your thoughts on this weighted more than anyone else?" Like, "You don't, this isn't your area of expertise." So, I always, why do we do that? Fundamental Attribution. Everyone starts going, "Oh, well, you had a really good comment on this case. What do you think about doing this?" It's like, it's exactly, "Dude, I don't," because people don't want to say, "That's not my, that's not my bailiwick, man. That's not what I, what I do." Everyone wants to have a flippant comment, so.

Well, a perfect example of that, Brian, is we haven't commented about this U.S. Supreme Court in Roe. We haven't talked about Texas abortion rights. One, it's out of our milieu. I'm not a woman, I don't have a uterus. Second thing is, I've done none of the research. But both of those are a great example. I start with, "Well, this is never going to affect me," so it's hard for me to have a perspective. Also, it's a very unique kind of area that the Supreme Court is in. Like it's kind of outside of our typical stuff, so, you know what? I'm not even going to go there. Yep.

But it's the same thing. I, I don't go, "Listen, we're in Mexico. I, I've never had a Tequila to this day. Wouldn't even know what it was about." Okay, so I'm not going to go, "Hey, just got back from Mexico and tell you one thing, that three fingers Tequila, that was the bomb!" I'm not going to endorse crap I don't know. And that, you know, that would be a good point of order for you, that if you're just about to hit send, take a step back for a minute and go, "Why am I doing this?" Because, Brian, I came from an era—and this is very different from most people—I came from an era where you were supposed to shut up. Kids were to be seen and not heard. You weren't supposed to post and tell everything about that. Yeah, you know, there was something about not sharing every detail about your life with everyone that people appreciated and allowed you to have, you know, good conversations with people without bringing in your own baggage. But that seems to be the opposite right now. The more I share, the better it is. And it's like, well, not all the time. Some, some things are better left unsaid, or, you know, I don't need to know all that about you.

I agree.

So, but that, that's kind of getting in. Well, I, I think I've, I've calmed down a little bit. But we, we don't typically do the bad cop, worse cop on this. But, you know, but it was a good event. And, you know what, look, Thanksgiving's coming up tomorrow, if you're watching this podcast today. You've got Shelly's birthday coming up on Friday. You've got Black Friday coming up. You, you've got Christmas Eve, Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year's. Look, you can endeavor to be safer by anticipating those threats that you'll likely encounter and increase in your security posture commensurate to the likely threat. And don't think that this one douchebag and his actions should change the way you perceive, yeah, your holidays coming up. One has nothing to do with the other. Don't believe the pundits, just click them off. Click them off, man.

Yeah, I agree.

Focus on what you can control in your life, which is you and the people immediately surrounding you. If we all just did that, we wouldn't have most of these problems. But...

So true. So cliché, but great. So cliché, but so true.

It's easier to blame it on other people, you know. But anyway, I appreciate everyone tuning in. I know we kind of just jumped on this one real quick, so not all the facts of the case are even out yet, which we typically don't comment on until they are. But this one was enough at least to determine likely intent from this, specifically the Waukesha case with Daryl Brooks. And then everything about the Ahmaud Arbery case has been out, and we've been, we did it when we did a whole podcast just on that when it initially came out a year and a half ago, was it?

At least. Don't think that, don't think that they're pushing to come up against Thanksgiving was accidental prosecution. Everybody, defense, they all know what they're doing down there. And the thing is, just think about Ahmaud, just like Waukesha, think about the victims there. Yeah, and, you know, don't, don't turn this into something it's not. Yeah.

Alright. Well, please folks, thanks for tuning in. Always reach out to us, humanbehaviorpodcast@gmail.com, if you've got any questions or anything. If you enjoyed the episode, share it with your friends. If you hated the episode, share it with your friends. So, I don't know, very uncharacteristic of us to get this angry this early in the morning. Oh, man, good thing, good thing I didn't have any bourbon in me, it would have been even worse. So, that's for the next broadcast. Alright, thanks everyone for tuning in. Don't forget, the training changes behavior.