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If you want a free and open web — Don't we all — We need advertising. But that advertising, and the technology that powers it, doesn't have to be evil. Our guest from last week, advertising legend Bob Hoffman, returns to finish his conversation with BJ Mendelson. Meanwhile, our host Rosie Tran provides more storytelling tips. Because without new, better stories, we're not going to change anything. Make sure you visit us at StupidSexyPrivacy.com to learn more.
Creators and Guests
Host
Rosie Tran
Rosie Tran is one of the fastest rising stars in the entertainment business! Originally from New Orleans, Louisiana, she moved to Hollywood to pursue her career as a professional entertainer. The stand up comedian, writer, podcast personality, and actress has toured internationally, at comedy clubs, colleges, and overseas for the USO in Europe and the Middle East.
Editor
Andrew
I am the Editor of all things on the Stupid Sexy Privacy Podcast.
What is Stupid Sexy Privacy?
Stupid Sexy Privacy is a miniseries about how to protect yourself from fascists and weirdos. Season 1 ran from 2022 to 2023. A revised version of Season 1 began airing in August of 2025. A second season will premier in 2026. Your host is comedian Rosie Tran, and the show is produced by author and information privacy expert B.J. Mendelson. Every episode is sponsored by our friends at DuckDuckGo. Tune in every Thursday night —or Friday morning if you're nasty — at 12 am EST to catch the next episode.
DuckDuckGo Commercial:
Commercial 1:
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If you use Google Search or Chrome, your personal info is probably exposed. Your searches, email, location, even financial or medical data, the list goes on and on. The free DuckDuckGo browser helps you protect your personal info from hackers, scammers, and data-hungry companies.
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Intro Script:
Rosie: Welcome to another edition of Stupid Sexy Privacy.
Andrew: A podcast miniseries sponsored by our friends at DuckDuckGo.
Rosie: I’m your host, Rosie Tran.
You may have seen me on ChimeTV’s A Brand New Yay!
Or on Season 2 of Peacock’s Comedy InvAsian.
Andrew: And I’m your co-producer, Andrew VanVoorhis. With us, as always, is Bonzo the Snow Monkey.
Bonzo: Monkey sound!
Rosie: I’m pretty sure that’s not what a Japanese Macaque sounds like.
Andrew: Oh it’s not. Not even close.
Rosie: Let’s hope there aren’t any zooologists listening.
Rosie: Ok. I’m ALSO pretty sure that’s not what a Snow Monkey sounds like.
*Clear hers throat*
Rosie: Over the course of this miniseries, we’re going to offer you short, actionable tips to protect your data, your privacy, and yourself from fascists and weirdos.
These tips were sourced by our fearless leader — he really hates when we call him that — BJ Mendelson.
Episodes 1 through 24 were written a couple of years ago.
But since a lot of that advice is still relevant, we thought it would be worth sharing again for those who missed it.
Andrew: And if you have heard these episodes before, you should know we’ve gone back and updated a bunch of them.
Even adding some brand new interviews and privacy tips along the way.
Rosie: That’s right. So before we get into today’s episode, make sure you visit StupidSexyPrivacy.com and subscribe to our newsletter.
Andrew: This way you can get updates on the show, and be the first to know when new episodes are released in 2026.
Rosie: And if you sign-up for the newsletter, you’ll also get a free pdf and mp3 copy of BJ and Amanda King’s new book, “How to Protect Yourself From Fascists & Weirdos.” All you have to do is visit StupidSexyPrivacy.com
Andrew: StupidSexyPrivacy.com
Rosie: That’s what I just said. StupidSexyPrivacy.com.
Andrew: I know, but repetition is the key to success. You know what else is?
Rosie: What?
Rosie: I’m really glad this show isn’t on YouTube, because they’d pull it down like, immediately.
Andrew: I know. Google sucks.
Rosie: And on that note, let’s get to today’s privacy tip!
Privacy Tip Script
Rosie: This week is part two of our interview with advertising legend, Bob Hoffman.
If you like our storytelling advice from the previous episode, you’ll like the new book, “How to Protect Yourself From Fascists & Weirdos.”
It covers 10 ways you can fight authoritarianism all over the world.
Learning how to tell a story is one of those ten.
So, if you want a copy of the .mp3 or .pdf, we’re giving them away, for free, thanks to our friends at DuckDuckGo.
All you have to do is subscribe to our newsletter at StupidSexyPrivacy.com
Now, just as a reminder, you might be wondering why we’re talking about storytelling at all.
That’s because there’s no way to get privacy legislation passed, unless we learn how to tell better stories.
Good stories get things done.
And, honestly, we found a lot of advice in most privacy books to be annoying.
Because they basically tell you how awful everything is and then say, “Well. I guess we need better legislation to fix it.”
Yeah. No kidding.
But they’re short on details, which is where our book comes in.
We’re doing this because we think you matter.
What you do right now matters.
And in some cases, you could be all that stands between your community and the fascists.
On a larger scale, we can only move the needle if we work together.
A lot of people are struggling right now. Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
And we want them to know, in the majority of cases, it’s not their fault.
It’s the system we live in and it’s time to change it.
The stories we want you to create should remind people of their inherent value.
Value they are forced to forget with the way our world operates.
Remember: Authoritarian governments thrive by keeping us busy, distracted, and divided.
But we are not divided. That’s a myth.
Most Americans, for example, want universal healthcare. It’s the oligarchs who don’t.
So, America isn’t divided. What we are is disconnected from one another, thanks in no small part to the tech companies.
What they give us is the illusion of connection.
Story creates real connection. It can bridge the gaps that do exist by building empathy.
And empathy is what gets us to accept, love, and fight for one another.
Put another way, stories bind us together.
So real quick, let’s make one final point as to why storytelling is an important skill to have:
Stories can empower us to spread the cause we want to spread.
That’s because people trust other people and don’t trust the media.
So a good story, told well, can spread from you, your families and friends, to their connections, and according to a lot of studies, to the connections of those people’s friends and family too.
If you put in the work, you can reach a lot of people.
We’ll talk about communication tactics later, but for now, the key here is to make your story repeatable.
Let’s talk about how to do that.
SFX: *monkey sound*
Obviously there are a lot of different ways to tell a story.
Here, we’re only talking about a story that can convert and convince people to join your cause.
So for that reason, there are rules you need to follow in presenting this specific kind of story.
Like that you can’t swear.
We know!
We know!
We love swearing too.
But … You’re going for the widest audience possible.
That means swearing, and stories that have questionable content, aren’t appropriate.
Basically, if you have to think twice about it? Don’t put it in your story.
And that may sound limiting, but really, you got no more than five minutes to tell this kind of story.
That’s 500 words total if you’re a slow speaker.
So, you need to make every word count.
What you also want to do is focus on structure.
Here’s a good formula we adapted from political strategist, Anat Shenker Osorio.
The first part of your story should involve a value you have, that most people probably have as well.
For example, most people want to do good in this world.
It’s just 1% of the Earth’s population that are assholes. Which, unfortunately, means there’s a whole lot of assholes.
But. It also means there’s literally billions of people who out number them. And those are the people we want to focus on.
The second part of your story is about the people standing in the way of your value.
Like that 1% of the Earth’s population that we just mentioned
The final part of the story should be about the world we can live in if we band together and overcome these people.
Once you have that structure, you can use the details of the brainstorming sessions we talked about last week to fill out your story.
Those details are what makes your story relatable.
See how everything fits together?
Now, listen, this may sound deceptively simple, like a lot of the advice we give, but it’s not.
It takes a lot of work to get a story down to 500 words, which also follows this formula.
And the truth is … As I can tell you as a professional stand-up comedian? You’re going to eat shit.
Like, a lot of shit, as you polish your story.
And that’s ok! That’s how you work out the kinks.
Not like, BJ’s superheroine-in-peril kink. That’s a kink nobody’s fixing.
But kinks like the troublespots in your story.
So, while we know it’s a cliche to tell people to embrace failure, in this specific scenario, you have to get comfortable with workshopping, tweaking, and polishing your story.
The best way to do that is not in front of a mirror.
The best way to do that is to find some friends and family.
And if you can’t, do the best you can when you get an opportunity with people to tell your story.
Lastly, we want to stress that the key to any good story is forward momentum. Especially when you only have 500 words to work with.
Each sentence should make the person listening want to hear the next sentence. That’s old advice from the world of copywriting, but it’s true today.
You’re taking people on a journey with you in five minutes. Using details from your life to explain:
This is what you value.
This is who’s in the way.
This is what we can accomplish by defeating them.
Now, let’s get to the last half of our interview with Bob Hoffman.
Part 2 of our Interview With Bob Hoffman
You can listen to Part 1 here.
BJ: Yeah, look, I mean, I've seen it firsthand with startups I've consulted with where the people making the advertising and marketing decisions are MBAs. Yeah. Yeah, and they have no clue. They just want to know what the ROI is and they can't realize if the ad's effective.
Bob: Yeah, the electricians are doing the plumbing.
15:25
BJ: You know, Let me ask you, so we'll get back to that point in a second, but something I'm seeing percolating, you know, given what's happening with the use of social media and online advertising by bad actors, know, whether it's Russia or whether it's Trump administration, there's sort of this bubbling movement of people saying we should just ban advertising entirely. And I'm curious just to get your opinion on that.
15:55
Bob: Yeah, that's really a terrible idea. uh Most everything we enjoy about watching TV, listening to music, communicating with friends online, would suddenly cost us thousands of dollars instead of little or nothing. The companies that provide these media services to us have to make money somehow. And if they don't make it from advertisers, they'll have to make it from us. And advertising is a trillion dollar business. So all of a sudden we're going to be on the hook for a trillion dollars of income to these people that advertisers are not providing. And you know, let's be fair to them. In some cases they're awful companies, but they provide us with services we like. And they have to make money to stay in business or they disappear. you know, people would be shocked if all the stuff that advertising pays for would suddenly disappear. So I think that's a terrible idea. And also, by the way, the First Amendment protects free speech, including commercial speech. So banning advertising altogether is, you know, it's silly. It's not going to happen. And it will be terrible for the average person who is now struggling to keep things together, to keep their uh personal economy together, to now have enormous costs of media to deal with. So it's a bad idea. Yeah, go ahead.
BJ: Yeah, no, I've seen this with my adjacent industry of journalism, right? Everyone is running to...platform like Ghost or Substack and you can only subscribe to so many newsletters. Right? Bob: Right.
BJ: Before you just go broke.
Bob: You know, that's absolutely true. And that's uh that's one of the things that's so horrible about what's happening with journalism now is that, you know, it's expensive to produce a newspaper every day. And, you know, I think traditionally advertising provided about 75 % of revenue to journalistic enterprises. And now that 75 % is dwindling terribly as the ad tech platforms are sucking up all that money.
BJ: Right. And so that kind of goes to the next thing I want to ask you about, which is, kind of feel like the tech companies are very well scrutinized with good reason, but I sometimes feel like the ad conglomerates themselves escape scrutiny. Like we don't, we don't talk a lot about the revolving door between like a Facebook and Google or, you know, I lost track of all the mergers.
So I keep saying WPP even though that might be dated. *Bob laughs*
BJ: But you know what I'm saying, we don't talk about these large mammoths. And so I'm curious, just as a former advertising professional, how much blame do they deserve?
Bob: A lot. um The holding companies that now control the advertising industry are not advertising agencies. They are financial institutions that buy advertising agencies and milk them. And they are totally irresponsible. And so are the trade organizations like the ANA and the 4As who have fought every serious attempt to regulate tracking. And by the way, it's not just the holding companies and the ad tech big guys. oh
It's also the rank and file people in advertising and marketing who go into work every day or from their homes, they do their work every day and they collect this information or they ignore the ramifications of it and there are a whole lot of people to blame for the current situation.
Book Commercial:
Hello Everyone, this is BJ Mendelson, and I am the writer and co-producer of Stupid Sexy Privacy.
When I’m not working on the show, I’m usually yelling at my television because of the New York Mets.
I want to take a moment to tell you about a book I co-authored with Amanda King.
It’s called “How to Protect Yourself From Fascists & Weirdos,” and the title tells you everything you need to know about what’s inside.
Thanks to our friends at DuckDuckGo, Amanda and I are releasing this book, for free, in early 2026.
If you want a DRM free .pdf copy? You can have one.
If you want a DRM free .mp3 of the audiobook? You can have that too.
All you need to do is visit StupidSexyPrivacy.com and subscribe to our newsletter.
That website again is StupidSexyPrivacy.com, and we’ll send you both the PDF and the MP3, as soon they’re ready.
Now, I gotta get out of here before Bonzo shows up.
He’s been trying to sell me tickets to see the White Sox play the Rockies.
And I don’t have time to explain to him how Interleague Baseball is a sin against God.
I’ve got a book to finish.
Bob Hoffman Interview Continued
BJ: Yeah, and I just feel like it doesn't, it's probably
a function of, well, the media that does exist is funded by advertisers, right? So they're not going to turn around and suddenly start talking about the ad conglomerates who are part of the problem. So let me ask you, before we get into just this last section here, I'm a little curious about your opinion on economic boycotts of companies and whether or not something like the Tesla takedown is
effective for people who are unhappy with some of these companies?
Bob: When it comes to this issue of tracking and privacy, for some reason, the public does not seem to be motivated to undertake any kind of resistance to the abuse of its privacy. Like I said, I've been writing about this for over 10 years, and it seems to have no traction with the public.
I can't understand this, but I have to acknowledge that it's a fact. And maybe the public has just gotten used to this and think it's normal everyday business. so, do I think resistance tactics uh can be effective? Sure, I do. But in this case, I don't know. I haven't seen any indication that it would be.
BJ: And let me ask you my last point here, which is about basically what I, after reading your books for so many years in newsletters, and I think we're kind of on the same page in that advertising as industry is just devoid of imagination and creativity. And so what we did was listeners who are hearing this interview are going to actually hear a section that's going to run before about imagination and creativity. And so I was kind of hoping you might have a couple of pointers of things you'd like to share with people just to spur their own imagination and creativity just from your experience working in advertising.
Bob: My experience working in advertising is one of the great myths of the advertising industry that I used to hear all the time inside of agencies was that everyone is creative. We're all creative and we just have to, you know, as John Lennon said, free our minds instead. And to me, that's complete bullshit. There are some people who are unusually creative and those people, for a long time, did a lot of great work in the advertising business. you know, advertising was always about 85 % crappy and 15 % good. Now it's about 95 % crappy and 5%. So the amount of good advertising is one third of what it once was when it was really pretty good. Is there a method to becoming creative? If there is, God, I wish I knew what it was because I could have used it. um I just think Creativity is about connecting things that nobody else sees are connected somehow. uh That's what most humor is and that's what a lot of creativity is. I wish I could answer that question in a more uh positive way, but it's just trying to be creative. doesn't make you creative. Somehow you have to think about things in different ways than average people think about them. when I see really great creative people doing things, I am amazed and astounded because they come up with connections that I never thought were connected. And it's very… It ain't easy being creative, I'll tell you that. mean, you know, everyone thinks that advertising is, uh most of advertising is crappy because people don't really try to be creative. I found that that's not really true. know, everyone's trying to do good work. It just somehow comes out crappy. And it's much harder to do good creative work. then it appears to be on the surface. It's really, really hard. That's why there are so many crappy books and crappy movies and crappy TV shows and crappy songs. Why? Because doing good stuff is really, really hard and there are very few people who can do it. So that's my thinking on that subject.
BJ: Yeah, and I think it's important to stress how hard it actually is because I think now with AI people just think...
BOb: Oh press a few buttons and I'll get something great. No, you won't. You'll get average. That's what you'll get.
BJ: Yeah, that's what I see is it's a mediocrity machine.
BJ: Is there anything I didn't ask you that you thought on this subject is worth bringing up?
BJ: You didn't ask me how I became so handsome and sexy, but I don't think anyone's too interested in that. No, I think you did a good job and I hope it's uh informative or least entertaining. to your listeners and thanks for having me on. Of course. I have no doubt this will be.
Outro script:
Rosie: This episode of Stupid Sexy Privacy was recorded in Hollywood, California.
It was written by BJ Mendelson, produced by Andrew VanVoorhis, and hosted by me, Rosie Tran.
And of course, our program is sponsored by our friends at DuckDuckGo.
If you enjoy the show, I hope you’ll take a moment to leave us a review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you may be listening.
This won’t take more than two minutes of your time, and leaving us a review will help other people find us.
We have a crazy goal of helping five percent of Americans get 1% better at protecting themselves from Fascists and Weirdos.
Your reviews can help us reach that goal, since leaving one makes our show easier to find.
So, please take a moment to leave us a review, and I’ll see you right back here next Thursday at midnight.
Right after you watch my episode of Comedy InVASIAN on Peacock, right?