Matt McCusker | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #652

TL;DR

Theo Von and comedian Matt McCusker riff on gardening, rat extermination, social media addiction, old internet culture, and looks-maxing trends.

Key Points

• 1.Matt McCusker is a stand-up comedian and co-host of Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast. He is currently on tour with upcoming dates in St. Paul, Des Moines, Phoenix, Tucson, Toronto, and Chicago, with Phoenix historically being a tough ticket market for him.
• 2.McCusker runs a ruthless totalitarian garden in his backyard. He has attempted to grow blackberries, raspberries, garlic, blueberries, and radishes, but a hail storm destroyed most of his plants; his family once split a single blueberry four ways.
• 3.Cotton rats invaded McCusker's garden and moved into his grill, forcing him to hire a professional exterminator. The exterminator used fiberglass-laced rat poison that cuts the animals' lungs, causing them to drown in their own blood; McCusker accidentally described this process in graphic detail in front of his young daughters.
• 4.Home remedies like cayenne pepper and DIY deterrents were completely ineffective against the rats. McCusker dumped four pounds of red pepper flakes around the garden and the rats sat comfortably inside the pile.
• 5.McCusker's wife was a Philadelphia police officer for five years, working foot patrol in a rough South Philly neighborhood. McCusker had considered becoming a cop himself but was selling weed at the time, making him ineligible.
• 6.Both hosts discussed how X (formerly Twitter) has devolved into race-baiting propaganda and graphic violence. McCusker's algorithmic feed serves him white supremacist content, which is especially jarring because he has a Black wife; both agreed the platform has lost its appeal.
• 7.A jury ordered Meta and Google to pay $3 million to a 20-year-old woman who became addicted to Instagram and YouTube as a child. The case is described as a bellwether for thousands of similar lawsuits; the platforms allegedly used slot-machine design mechanics, including pull-to-refresh, to maximize addictiveness.
• 8.Both hosts lamented the loss of boredom and daydreaming in the pre-smartphone era. They noted that phone use floods the brain's short-term memory bucket, preventing information retention, and that sitting in a restaurant alone without a phone now feels socially impossible.
• 9.Chick-fil-A ran a promotion at select locations offering free ice cream to families who put their phones away during meals. The initiative originated in 2016 from a Georgia operator and has been revived locally, though it is not a companywide program.
• 10.Early internet culture, including sites like totalcreeper.com, mullet.com, cameltoe.org, and Tumblr, was a major nostalgic topic. Comedian Ari Shaffir ran a site called buffhomos.com where he traded stage time for modeling photos from comedian friends; his management eventually shut the project down.
• 11.Both hosts reflected on pre-internet adolescent sexuality, including using Kohl's catalog underwear sections. McCusker admitted to rubbing catalog photos under his arms to add a scent dimension, joking that the habit could create confused Pavlovian responses during workouts.
• 12.The hosts discussed the 'looks maxing' subculture and a dangerous trend called 'bone smashing.' Young men on TikTok and in looks-maxing communities are reportedly hitting their facial bones with hammers, falsely believing micro-fractures will heal into a more chiseled masculine structure; Theo compared it to residents of Stockton, California, where face injuries are common but beauty is not the result.