r/itcouldhappenhere • u/SpoofedFinger • 2d ago
Coolzone Getting ads for racist chud vetbro gear
IDK if there's a point of contact or if we just tag Robert or whatever but I'm getting ads during ICHH for a company called Zero Foxtrot that sells some problematic stuff. IDK if anybody else is getting these ads or if I got targeted specifically because I'm a veteran. They don't say anything outright shitty in the ad but as I suspected some of the shirts are pretty shitty. There's a pro-Rhodesia one, an anti-communist one, and even some weird crusader shit like Hegseth has tats of. I'm sure there's other bad shit there but I feel like the Rhodesia one is a deal breaker for the CZM crew. It should honestly be a dealbreaker for iHeart too but IDK how that works. Listening to CZM stuff is the only interaction I have with them at all.
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u/alriclofgar 2d ago
I would love listening to an episode about tactical gear grifters, with James and Margaret. Especially if they could get someone from the social media gun world (like Yellow Peril Tactical) to guest with them.
There’s so much self-defense and preparedness garbage bring pushed through sponsored reviews, especially on YouTube, and it’s equal parts funny, useless, dangerous, and politically sketch.
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u/SpoofedFinger 2d ago
That sounds great. Honestly, that scene and the whole vet bro ecosystem is probably rife with weird little guys.
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u/SpoofedFinger 2d ago
The dude from inrange TV would probably be good for that kind of episode too.
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u/NotTodayGlowies 1d ago
Karl and Tacticool Girlfriend or The Range Bunny would awesome to have for this kind of episode.
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u/dharmabird67 1d ago
Reminds me of this great piece from 5 years ago: https://popula.com/2019/02/24/about-face/
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u/SpoofedFinger 2d ago
The specific episode I heard them in was James' episode talking to the Irish soldier about the UN mission in Lebanon. I've been listening to Cool People/Cool Stuff all day and don't think I got any there. I don't think I got any during today's BtB episode but I'm not 100% certain on either of those because I skip the hell out of some ads.
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u/Jamesstout_ichh Podcast Host 1d ago
I’ll pass this along. But for future reference what really helps us is a screen recording of the episode with the advert. You can dm me here if it comes up again. Amusingly, I wrote about rhodie grifters in my Patreon a few years ago and have an episode about it sketched out for next year.
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u/SpoofedFinger 1d ago
I'm not sure what you mean by screen recording. I still have the episode downloaded so I might be able to provide whatever would help you guys out. I use podcast addict and get them from an rss feed. I'm working 12s til monday but I can mess with it then.
Looking forward to the rhodesia grifter episode. Keep up the great work.
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u/SpoofedFinger 2d ago
Feels more like a thing Sophie would deal with but I don't know her username on reddit so I'm going to tag u/probablyrobertevans
sorry dude, I know you're on vacation
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u/Fun-Double5936 1d ago
As a vet who was never really a bro, I can’t shake this shit to save my life. It’s fucking everywhere and it is all stupid as shit. I love seeing assholes in their grunt style crap, it’s a red flag for me to stay away from the idiots.
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u/anacondra 1d ago
I love seeing assholes in their grunt style crap, it’s a red flag for me to stay away from the idiots.
Gotta say I do appreciate it for that. Reminds me of that great Demitri Martin joke.
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u/Bagheera383 1d ago
Yup. Same. Quite often the guys who go hardest with the bro-vet gear are the office drones and fobbits. It's hilarious.
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u/gushi380 1d ago
There is so much of this crap. I don’t know how any of them survive since they pander to one unique group and there’s so much competition in that market.
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u/Boowray 1d ago
It’s because there’s almost zero overhead and the designs are easy to crank out, most are plain text or already existing military iconography just plastered across the front. Same reason so many companies can pump out shitty t-shirts to advertise on Facebook that say “Don’t mess with a man who’s 5’5, from Ohio, that was born in December!” and still turn a profit.
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u/SpoofedFinger 1d ago
I just grabbed the worst ones I saw. Most of the stuff they sold was pretty run of the mill fake tough guy shit. I think they would appeal to suburban office workers with a masculinity crisis. The kind of dude who works in finance or engineering, has never lived outside of a metro area yet has an enormous pickup truck and is really into Jason Aldean.
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u/BadKarma043 1d ago
LMAO, the reviews for the Rhodesia shirt are truly awful. Some high ranking meal team six operators in there.
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u/fkntripz 1d ago
Pro-Rhodesia made me laugh so hard. What the fuck.
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u/BennificentKen 1d ago
The Afrikaner racism is a special kind, including all of this Boomer-style fantasizing about Zimbabwe during the colonial period when it was Rhodesia (up to 1980) and then all the "good times" before Robert Mugabe expropriated farm land from white farmers back to the people that had lived there all along. That was in the 90's, and because the tightly controlled economy collapsed as a result, the racists love pointing to this as an example of white economic supremacy because they are economically illiterate asshats that can get fucked.
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u/Zestyclose-Algae-542 1d ago
Thanks for explaining this, because I was completely lost. I was like what, Rhodesia the country? what a bunch of slavering morons
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u/Menkau-re 1d ago
Unfortunately, the way the add algorithms work make it difficult to sort them out. They literally misidenyify themselves on purpose in order to avoid being filtered out for whatever various podcasts will select to opt out of and I'm sure it applies basically everywhere from YouTube to Spotify. I don't know the specifics because I don't run a podcast myself, of course, but I've heard this exact issue explained in another of the pods I listen to. It's genuinely insidious stuff.
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u/oldfuturemonkey 1d ago
I would be very interested in an episode about how podcast advertising works.
These days, I get ads for Cook Children's Healthcare System, some dubious horny pills aimed at women (with a warning/disclaimer section that runs as long as the actual ad), some completely unnecessary "bartender" device that will mix your drinks for you if you're too stupid to dump straight tequila into an unrinsed coffee cup at 9:00AM, and JIM ADLER, THE TEXAS HAMMER: a personal injury lawyer who has been putting out insane TV and radio adverts since the 90s.
And I get these ads on damn near every podcast that runs ads (not including ads read by the podcast host(s).
Edit: I've never once heard any of the ads OP is talking about, even though I listen to a couple of pro-2A podcasts that I could understand attracting that sort of thing.
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u/SpoofedFinger 1d ago
I get the lame bartender machine one too. Is the lawyer the one who's GRANDMA WAS A QUEEN TO US or some other one?
I've only got the vetbro shit this one time but I wasn't looking forward to it becoming a staple like the online casinos.
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u/oldfuturemonkey 1d ago
The lawyer ad starts out with a person telling the tale of how they were rear-ended in traffic or something similar.
Then, like the fucking Kool-Aid Man, JIM ADLER THE TEXAS HAMMER bursts in and sounds like this:
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u/Shadowfalx 1d ago
Eh, let them pay to advertise to a bunch of people who didn't want their crap. It's a self correcting problem I think.
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u/SpoofedFinger 1d ago
That's basically where I'm at. I just wanted to make sure they knew in case it was a matter of principle to have zero ties to fascists, even if it's just taking their money indirectly.
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u/SuddenlySilva 20h ago
THat shit's adorable. I didn't know fascism had a clothing line.
Being a dumpy old white guy with a ruck, i may get some of that shit if i need a disguise.
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u/Sine_Fine_Belli 10h ago
Same here, I hate getting ads from chud bro vet bro gear too
It’s just grifting with gear that sucks
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u/Lance_pearson 1d ago
Wow, I've heard this ad quite a few times, but never looked into them. I kinda assumed they were like some of those chud coffee brands, but this seems more explicitly bigoted.
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u/jayphailey 2d ago
"Zero FOxtrot"
My ass, it's all Bravo Sierra