Chapter 1: What is the fake tip line set up by Ben Palmer about?
Recently, we had the luck of talking to another Ben, Ben Palmer.
Ben Palmer has a tip line for reporting people in the United States without legal status.
It was a young Spanish woman who couldn't speak English. It's just sad for them to even be here. Three customers in front of us also did not speak English. All I was trying to do was find out how to deal with these people.
The Trump administration has made immigration enforcement a priority. And at first blush, Ben Palmer is just doing his part to help other people do their part. He got this tip from a woman who was suspicious of her neighbors.
You said they're side-eyeing you? Yeah, like, you know, giving you dirty looks whenever you walk by with your garbage or whatever, like, just trying to make you feel uncomfortable. I don't know how many of them are actually illegal, but I would say probably about half of them because they never leave home. They're always, always here.
They're homebodies. Yeah.
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Chapter 2: How does Ben Palmer handle uncomfortable conversations during his calls?
Ben took the neighbor's report, said he'd look into it, and then he called her back. Okay, yeah, so we were able to look into those individuals that you had reported, and yeah, we were able to find you some help on that.
Oh, really? Okay.
Yeah, so this is from a clinical psychologist. It says that your brain often misinterprets dirty looks due to negativity bias and personalization.
Okay, you're not talking about psychological help because I know what side-eyeing is, and I'm not imagining things.
If you're not familiar with Ben Palmer, you might have felt discomfort listening to that call. And then maybe it dawned on you.
I like pretending to be things that I'm not and inserting myself in situations where I don't necessarily belong for fun and entertainment.
This tip line is a bit. This Ben is a comedian.
How dare you? OK, yes, he is a real comedian. It is true. How did Ben, a kind of quiet millennial brown haired dude from Nashville, get to be a comedian? Practice. Practicing jokes, but also life experience that has informed his jokes.
Ben is a United States Air Force veteran. He also drove for Uber. He worked at a car emissions testing company. And his comedy often leans into the banality and the brutality of customer service.
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Chapter 3: What inspired Ben Palmer to transition from stand-up comedy to viral social commentary?
It just started with another stand-up comedian friend of mine. Ben's friend proposes that they submit lawsuits to court TV shows. You can just go to the TV show's websites and fill out a form with your case. You don't even always have to file with a real court first.
Ben's friend tells him that if they're chosen, they'll get flown out to L.A. and then they can split the winnings 50-50.
And I'm like, all right, let's do it.
So Ben and his friends come up with a fake dispute. A comedian who walked off stage because he was getting heckled and was now in breach of contract for not completing his set.
And we already had some show flyers, so it wasn't really hard to, you know, come up with that or, you know, lie about that.
Promoter Ben Palmer is suing a performer for breach of contract.
They got picked and flown out to a Hollywood studio for the taping, where Ben told the judge that his friend, the comedian, was heckled because he wasn't very funny.
So you say he was laughing at his own jokes before he told. Laughing at his own jokes.
That's not good. I did it once. Joining him in court is his witness and fellow comedian, Ben Palmer. I did it twice. Michael Albanese is suing Benjamin Phil Palmer for $4,000 for a refund.
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Chapter 4: How did Ben Palmer's early jobs influence his comedy style?
Yeah, I just had a bunch of weird ideas that I prepared for a long time and went up and did it, and it didn't go as great as I thought it was going to go. You don't say. It probably was a bomb, but in my head, I heard maybe one or two laughs, and they probably were awkward laughs, but that was enough for me to keep trying.
Was it political in any way? What was the?
No, not at all. It's very weird, absurd.
So Ben was doing straight up stand up, just him and a mic. And then he started experimenting with new places to try out his absurd style of comedy.
Like on Facebook. None of the corporations of the companies were on there. And it was just like a fun thing to do with your friends. And then the corporations went on there and it was like, oh, great. Back around 2015, corporations like Uber were making Facebook pages, but they weren't responding to comments left by customers.
Their page was just filled with complaints and issues people were having, and nobody was responding to them. So I was like, well, I'm going to respond then. And so that's where it started.
At first, Ben would just use his personal Facebook account to respond to these consumer complaints. He'd sign his posts, Ben Palmer, freelance customer service representative.
Ben started to make videos narrating his Facebook exploits. Over on Walmart's Facebook page, Gina is talking about how she went to the store in Arizona and saw several employees wearing BLM masks. She used to love shopping at Walmart, but then they started supporting BLM. She will no longer shop there.
Ben replied to Gina, posing as a Walmart employee.
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Chapter 5: What was the reaction to Ben Palmer's immigration tip line videos?
We hope you change your mind and shop at Walmart again. As a customer service agent on Facebook, Ben's tone always comes off as, matter of fact, dutiful. He's just getting the job done. He's walking a line where we, his audience, can see he's kidding. But the person he's trolling... often can't.
At first, he was just playing this character behind a keyboard. But then he started to up the ante, doing this bit on video, where he has to keep a straight face to sell his deadpan delivery. Like in a Zoom interview for a job with a multi-level marketing company.
What stood out to you on the company overview? Well, I did see that on Glassdoor, you guys had half a star, and... You know, that's something that I always look at when I'm looking at prospective companies. I do have a zero star standard and you guys had half. So you definitely met my standards there as far as that goes.
I can tell you my experience as a viewer, which is like, I am wanting the person to believe you for as long as possible.
Why do you want that?
Because... I'm trying to delay the moment of realization that something is up. I don't want the jig to be up too soon because I'm so uncomfortable when it is.
I usually try to go as long as I can, but there gets a point where I start to get tired of the person.
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Chapter 6: How does Ben Palmer maintain his deadpan delivery while trolling callers?
Do you have a record? Yeah, I went three months with a politician who thought I was somebody I wasn't.
This was Ted Yoho, a former Republican congressman from Florida.
He's the congressman who called AOC an F&B.
That's Ben politely avoiding what Yoho really called Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2020, a fucking bitch. At the time, Yoho told Congress that AOC had misheard him.
A couple of years later, Yoho stumbled onto a website Ben's friend had made. Parlor Social was the name of it.
Parler is the social network that was launched as a free speech alternative to Facebook and Twitter in 2018 and is mostly associated with conservative or right-wing users.
Parler Social was a parody of that site. And even on the website, it said, this is a joke. But he left his phone number. And so I called him. And yeah, we became like friends almost. Ben told Yoho that his name was Eric and that he worked for Parler Social. And he offered to help Yoho start a podcast.
Ben contacted the lawyer for Sasha Baron Cohen, the comedian who plays Borat. That lawyer provided Ben with a release form that Baron Cohen gets people to sign when he's interviewing them in character.
In these recordings, Yoho told Ben that he had a name for the podcast that he wanted to make. God, Country, Family.
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Chapter 7: What ethical considerations does Ben Palmer have regarding his comedy?
Maybe if there were more shooting ranges.
inside the schools, you know, with all that aggression, you know, you skip right past the lunchroom, you know, right to the shooting range and get some target practice in. Even if the targets were, you know, six-year-old boys and girls as the targets, you know, if that saves a life, then, hey.
Well, have the parents come out with you.
Yoho trusted Ben. He even told Ben that he had, in fact, called AOC an effing day.
A reporter heard me say something. He said, what was that about? I said, no comment. Well, you guys are in the media business, and, you know, when somebody says no comment, it's kind of off the record. You know, you don't go after that. Right. And he said, did you call her an F&B? And I said, no comment. But truth is, as I walked away by myself, I said, what an F&B.
Yoho didn't catch on to any funny business until Ben agreed to help him record a God Family Country interview with former Republican presidential candidate and representative from Minnesota, Michelle Bachman, in person at Liberty University in Virginia.
Ben brought some gifts to the taping, including child-shaped Target cutouts.
And that's when he realized, okay, yeah, this isn't right. But he had to really put it in his face. How did he react? Angrily.
Did you ever see the documentary Free Solo?
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Chapter 8: How has Ben Palmer's view on comedy evolved over the years?
I never thought about that. I'm not trying to embarrass people. And a lot of times I feel for the people and I have empathy for them and I'm not trying to, I don't want to be, it's hard for me to be mean to people, even if I disagree with them or they're saying something ridiculous. But yeah, like, you know, the only time my amygdala goes off is when I'm wondering if they know who I am.
And that's, that's where I get a little, sometimes like every time I talk to him on the phone, I go, is this the call where he's going to go, Hey, I found out who you really are, you know? And then I'm like, Oh damn it. Because that happened to me at the court shows once actually. I got all the way to the finish line.
I got picked up at the airport in a car and they drove me to the studio and we're going to film the next day. And right before... That happened. They picked me up. I get out of the car and the producer goes, she goes, Ben, you're a comedian and you live in Atlanta. And I was like, yeah, because at the time I told her, I told her my name was Phil.
I used my middle name so I could still submit my driver's license when they buy you a flight. And I wasn't lying. You can't see this, Ben, but Emery had a physical reaction to what you just described. She was trying to crawl into a hole in the studio. The amygdala is firing off. And so I felt that way. I was like, oh, no, she's about to tell me I have to go all the way back home.
I just flew across the country for this. And then all she said was, you better be funny.
Today, Judge Alex wonders how one litigant made it this far.
More investigating Ben's brain after a break.
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