- 2 months ago
Ex-Navy SEAL turned content creator MrBallen visits WIRED to answer his most searched questions on Google.
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00:00I'm Mr. Bollin, and this is the Wired Autocomplete Interview.
00:06I was like, dude, flannels. You just rotate the color, and then you have a new outfit every day.
00:13All right. How did Mr. Bollin get started? It was sort of accidental. I got out of the military
00:21in 2017. I was a Navy SEAL. I tried my hand in social media. Nothing worked,
00:26but then sort of on a whim, in 2020, I told a story on this new platform, TikTok,
00:34about these missing hikers, and it went super viral, and I thought it was really cool. I love
00:38telling stories. The rest is history, I guess. How did Mr. Bollin get his name? There is a story,
00:45but it's just sort of random. There's like this almost hidden community of aspiring Navy SEALs,
00:51like civilians that want to be Navy SEALs, and they're all pretty acutely aware
00:55aware of who has gotten out of the SEAL teams, like who has an Instagram account that was a
01:00former Navy SEAL, and these aspiring Navy SEALs will often send messages to those folks,
01:06and my username at the time when I had just got out of the military was John B. Allen 416,
01:13but there was no punctuation in my name, and if you didn't know me, it would look like my name
01:17is John Bollin 416, and all these kids who were very respectfully asking me questions, like,
01:23excuse me, Mr. Bollin, I have a question about becoming a Navy SEAL. They're very proper in
01:28their DMs to me, and then I took the username and ran with it. How does Mr. Bollin find stories?
01:35I just Googled. I mean, really, it's that simple. I spent a lot of time looking for stories that way,
01:41but now we have a whole team dedicated to several series that do lots of Googling themselves and
01:46original research, but it started with just thinking of a cool idea and Googling it. Next,
01:51how does Mr. Bollin go viral? I don't know. How does Wired go viral? I mean, this thing goes viral
01:56all the time, I think, in part because the format's really, like, simple to understand, right? Like,
02:00the reason this interview style works so well is you see an image. Before you've even watched the video,
02:05you know what it is. And then if the format delivers in quality, people stick around. And so
02:11going viral on the internet is as much about getting people's attention long enough to get
02:15them to click something as it is about making good content. It's an imprecise science, but that's the
02:20gist. Done. All right, next board. Where did Mr. Bollin grow up? I grew up in Quincy, Massachusetts,
02:28not to be confused with Quincy, sports-centric town, like Red Sox was a religion. Lots of street fighting,
02:35that was a big part of growing up. I'll tell a quick little story. When I was a sophomore in
02:41high
02:41school, I made the mistake of being in the same study hall as a girl whose boyfriend was the captain
02:47of the hockey team. I sat next to her in the study hall. Big mistake, okay? And I was called
02:52over the
02:53weekend by representatives for the hockey player and said, hey, Paul wants to fight you. And I,
02:59knowing the culture of Quincy, Massachusetts, knew that this was not the time to say, I have no idea why
03:04you're upset with me. I didn't do anything. Instead, you immediately accept the fight. And so we set
03:09the fight. It's not going to happen right away. It's like in three weeks, we're going to fight. So
03:12we'd pass each other in the halls at school. I thought I was like really tough. And so I remember
03:17I was like talking, talking a big game. And Paul wasn't. Paul, you know, despite calling me out,
03:21was sort of nonchalant about it. And we go out to this field and there's literally hundreds of kids
03:25that have gone to this fight. And Paul's late. Like he doesn't show up on time. And I'm like,
03:29this guy's scared of me. It's pathetic. And then Paul rolls up like 20 minutes later,
03:33calm as can be. And I had this line and I throw my dukes up and I'm like, whoa, we're
03:38young,
03:38motherfucker. And then he gets up to me and proceeds to beat the living crap out of me
03:44in front of everyone. Didn't get a punch off, nothing. But everybody heard my big line. And
03:48it was so egregious that my teachers made fun of me for that line the next day. Where is Mr.
03:55Ballin
03:56Studios? We're in the New York City area. It's sort of like a hole in the wall spot. All right,
04:03next, where did Mr. Ballin serve? So as soon as I graduated, I enlisted in the Navy. And then the
04:09training takes two years to get through and become a Navy SEAL if you're successful. Wouldn't say I was
04:14the best in the class, but I was good enough. And so 2012, I checked into my team in Virginia
04:18and then
04:19I went to Afghanistan in 2013. And then I was in South America in 2015. And then I was medically
04:25retired shortly after that. Last question to the board. Where does Mr. Ballin get his flannels?
04:30So I wear flannels in every single video. Something I hadn't really thought about is like,
04:35well, what do I wear? I'm like putting myself on camera multiple times a week. I can't wear the
04:39same outfit every day. But I was like, dude, flannels, you just rotate the color. And then you
04:43have a new outfit every day. I think my wife was just getting them at like Target. And then fans
04:49began
04:49sending me flannels, like homemade flannels. Some were pretty incredible. There you go.
04:54All right. Next board. Here we go. What's in the basement, Mr. Ballin? I told four stories on our
05:02tour in 2024. And the final story, it is called What's in the Basement. It's about Daniel LaPlante.
05:08Basically, this family in Massachusetts began hearing all these strange sounds coming from their
05:14basement. They couldn't pinpoint what it was. There was a recent death in the family. The kids
05:19believed it was like their mom, their deceased mom, like being in touch with them or something.
05:23Over the course of weeks and months, the tapping sounds, they just persist, ultimately culminating
05:29in the girls telling their dad that like, no, we think someone's down there. He thinks the kids are
05:34doing it, that they're playing up this ruse that their mother is like coming back from the dead.
05:39Well, lo and behold, when police get involved, when there was like what appeared to be a break-in
05:43in the house, they discovered a hole in the wall in the basement behind the washing machine.
05:49And there was a tunnel in the wall that led to this back corner and huddled in the corner,
05:54the end. Gotcha. And huddled in the corner was the 16-year-old kid named Daniel LaPlante. He was
06:01wearing a dress. He had clown makeup painted to his face. He had a hatchet. And he had been living
06:05in
06:06the family's walls for upwards of a year because he believed one of the daughters had spurned his
06:11advances. And so his retaliation was to sneak into their house and live in their walls. He would be
06:15pulled out. Luckily, no one got hurt in that family, but he's let out. And while he's out on
06:20bail, essentially, he breaks into another family's home, but he kills the entire family. So Daniel
06:26LaPlante is in the basement. What is Mr. Ballin's favorite story? One of the stories that really
06:31stands out to me is the Ellie Lobel story. So there's this woman, she's got this dream life.
06:36She's a lawyer. She lives in Connecticut. This is like in the early 90s. But one day she starts
06:41feeling sick and she can't tell what's making her sick. She goes to the doctor. They're like,
06:45oh, you're overworking yourself. Over several weeks and months, when it starts affecting her
06:49ability to be a mom, her ability to be a wife, she's not able to go to work. People began
06:53to
06:53believe she was lying, like her own husband believed she was lying and her kids as well. And it created
06:59real
06:59tension in her family. She gets divorced. And then at about the 15-year mark, whatever this mystery
07:04illness was, it began to progress. So she went in to see the doctor one time and they actually said,
07:09look, we don't know what's doing this, but we think you're going to die. And Ellie was actually
07:12relieved. She actually doesn't tell her ex-husband. She doesn't even tell her kids. She hires an end
07:16of life care person and she goes to Southern California, a place that was a big part of her
07:21childhood. She lays in bed for three days and she doesn't die. And so she says to her end of
07:25life
07:25care person, you know, why don't we just go outside for a walk and take a little break and then
07:30I'll come
07:31back and die. And they eventually turn onto the street that had this wooden fence that lined up
07:35against this beautiful field full of flowers and tall grass. She tells the care person, like,
07:40I just want to stay here for a second and just take this all in. She hears buzzing over her
07:43head
07:44and she looks up and she sees there's a bee. But then a moment later, the buzzing that she heard
07:48gets a lot louder. And she looks up and she sees there's now a swarm of not just bees, but
07:53African killer
07:54bees. And the bees just like came down. They descended and began stinging Ellie Lobel in her face
08:00over and over and over again. She can't really run away. And the end of life care person scoops
08:05her up and he's running with her. She's still getting stung and she's screaming at him,
08:08don't bring me to the hospital. So he runs her back to the house. He puts her back in her
08:12bed
08:12and she's covered in bee stings. And she's just like, at least this way, this should, this should,
08:16you know, expedite my, my demise. But for the next three days, so these three subsequent days,
08:21she doesn't die. In fact, she begins to feel like the chronic joint pain and some of the other just
08:26chronic issues she's had now for 15 years are starting to fade. And so she began doing some
08:31research and she discovered that there was this, this study that was done in the nineties in Australia
08:37where these scientists believed patients with Lyme disease could be cured if they were stung by
08:44certain bees. It would turn out 15 years earlier, she, Ellie was bitten by a tick. Somehow nobody caught
08:51it. She had Lyme disease and was in the terminal stage and then basically accidentally conducted
08:56this experiment with bees on herself. And now Ellie Lobel tours the country advocating for bee stings.
09:03What is Mr. Bolin's scariest video? There's this one video, do you know how to get to Bell's Canyon?
09:09And it's about this guy, this, this banker who goes every year out to Washington state to go hiking
09:14by himself. The first night he's, he's made his campfire. He's got his tent made and he hears like
09:19movement in the woods behind him. He's looking around him. He can't see anyone. There's nobody
09:23out here. He hears a voice and the voice just calls out, Hey, do you know how to get to
09:27Bell's
09:28Canyon? And he turns and this man wanders out of the woods and he's illuminated by the little
09:33firelight that he's got before he can really even react to the sky. The guy just turns and runs off
09:38into the woods. He goes deeper into the woods. So farther away from his car, he's now like two days
09:43in
09:43and that night he's sitting around his campfire and what is he here? Do you know how to get to
09:47Bell's
09:47Canyon? It's the same dude. Dude, I was zigzagging through the woods. Like there's, you had to be
09:52following me. The next morning he gets up and he's running through the woods. He's panicking
09:56and he's trying to get back to his car, but it takes days to get there. And on his return,
10:01he like would periodically look over and he sees this dude like running in the woods, keeping track.
10:06And then finally, Mark finally runs out. He gets in his car and he's fine. But the magic of that
10:10story
10:11is that really nothing happens, but it's like the theater of the mind. The idea that there could be like
10:16crazy people out there that are watching us. Like that alone is such psychological torture for most
10:21people that it just plays, it plays with your mind. Not really the most scary, but perhaps the most
10:25memorable and certainly the most memed amongst the, the Mr. Ballin community. What won't Mr. Ballin
10:30cover? The magic of Mr. Ballin in some ways rests on these stories are crazy, but, but they happened.
10:37Like that's really important. And then secondarily, um, I'm a father of three kids. I cover lots of horrible
10:43stories, but I just can't cover like harm to kids too difficult for me. What will Mr. Ballin cover
10:49next? We have a, a new graphic novel coming out at the end of the year in October called the
10:55terror
10:55within that has nine stories in there. That's going to be great. And that's that one. How are we doing
11:00for time? Am I going too slow? Not for me. Okay. Does Mr. Ballin believe in the paranormal? I've
11:06certainly come across, let's call it like accounts of things that have happened that make you question
11:12what's out there. However, I've also come across an ungodly number of, of uncredible stories of
11:18people purporting that this really happened and this is paranormal and it like definitely didn't.
11:23And so I am more skeptical in some ways now than I was before I started. Does Mr. Ballin investigate?
11:29We do our own original investigation, not a ton of it, but we do. We have people going out to
11:33courthouses and getting, you know, court dockets and doing some original research. But do I literally go out
11:38out and literally investigate? I don't know. Maybe I do. Maybe I don't. I'll leave it to your
11:42imagination. Does Mr. Ballin have a podcast? I do. So this, this whole thing began on TikTok.
11:48And then we also developed a podcast back in, I think it was 2022 on what we call Ballentine's
11:55Day in the strange, dark, and mysterious community. It was just Valentine's Day,
11:58but we made it Ballentine's Day. And here you go. I'm going to toss the board.
12:03Why does Mr. Ballin hate the like button? In the beginning of making YouTube videos,
12:08I used to think it was so goofy is the video starts and they give you like a little hook,
12:12like today we're going to do this, or I'm going to tell you about this. And then there's always
12:15like a little pause and it's like, but before we do, go ahead and smash that like button and
12:19subscribe to the channel. And then they're like, boom, onto the content. And I remember thinking like
12:22how silly that was. What I learned from talking to some of these creators is that even though it seems
12:27sort of odd to be telling people to do that, it actually disproportionately makes people like
12:33and subscribe to your channel. But I was like, ah, it's kind of cheesy. Like how could I do this
12:38in a
12:38way that is both accomplishing the goal of getting people to like and subscribe and also be sort of
12:43memorable in and of itself. And I began coming up with these weird, like no context, bizarre scenarios
12:50for the like button. Like before we get into the story, go ahead and give the like button a nice
12:55brand new cone of cotton candy. But before they take a bite, knock it into a puddle. But it's like,
13:01there's no context. If you've arrived on the channel, this is on podcast and on YouTube,
13:05everywhere you see Mr. Ballin content, you'll always get like a new, totally unhinged, random
13:10thing we're going to do to the like button that ranges from nuisance stuff to full blown, just like
13:15violence towards the like button. Mr. Ballin, Harrison Ford. This probably is like the other story I could
13:21have said was my favorite. This kid, it was hiking with his boy scouts. This is like in the 90s.
13:26The storm rolled in, an unexpected storm. This is out, I think in Washington state. They decide to
13:31ride it out and stay out in the woods. They're pretty far out there, but it turned into like a
13:35blizzard. One of the kids got separated from the group and he couldn't find his way back.
13:40He winds up taking shelter in a cave, this 12 year old kid. And he's like pretty much thinks he's
13:44going
13:44to die and no one can find him. The storm had cleared up, but it was still quite a bit
13:48of snow on the
13:48ground. And at some point he hears a helicopter and it's, you know, flying up ahead. And he said,
13:52oh, there, there's the search party. They've come to find me. And he runs out into the, into the woods
13:56and he looks up, there's a clearing and he sees this helicopter and he's waving. And so the helicopter
14:00lands over in the, in the field. And you can imagine who's flying that helicopter. It's Harrison Ford in
14:07his private helicopter. And he's, hey kid, are you all right back there? And he flies him off to the
14:12hospital and saves his life. Mr. Ballen approach to storytelling. So much of the story like hinges
14:20on the delivery of the story. Realistically, I could tell a terribly written story and make you think it
14:26was a great story just because I'm going to sound convinced it's good. And I'm going to be fully
14:30committed to the story. Next, Mr. Ballen scoops. We were researching a case about a potential serial
14:37killer in New Bedford, Massachusetts. And it was this long unsolved case. And we got access to this
14:42box of evidence that actually the families of the victims had held onto because police had stopped
14:47investigating it. There was like this, this brief release program in New Bedford for prisoners.
14:52Really high level offenders got to go home for the weekend with virtually no oversight. And during that
14:57time, a lot of people over the weekends would get murdered. It turned out there was this one guy
15:02who kept going out on this break every time somebody got killed. And the family's like,
15:09no, like that's got to be him. But he's living his best life. He's like, nah, I didn't do that.
15:13But remains to be seen if that's true. Mr. Ballen untold stories. I'd say most times if we've decided
15:20on a story, we're going to tell it. But the one I always come back to is about Ernest Shackleton.
15:26The late 1800s, he was an explorer. If you were a known explorer at this time,
15:31you were like a big celebrity. He was notorious for being both an incredible leader of men,
15:35but he also was just always screwing up. Like he's like, oh, we're going to go to Antarctica.
15:41And they're like, you better bring a lot of food for all these people. Ah, I got it covered.
15:45And then they like get halfway on their dog sled journey to where they're going. Ah, we ran out of
15:49food. But then he was so good at leading, at leading his men that they would come back, you know,
15:54nearly starved to death. So he decides to go to the South Pole to be the first one to do
15:57a dog sled
15:59to the South Pole, except he mistimes the ice flows. The boat gets frozen in the ice before
16:04they reach land. And he kept his crew alive for like two years. All of them survived. And every
16:10day he had them, they had to shave, they had to like polish their boots. They had to do all
16:13the
16:13stuff to like keep them sane. But they loved Shackleton for it. He kept them in line. But
16:17famously, nobody was coming to rescue them. They didn't have a way out. And so eventually,
16:22Shackleton's like, well, we've survived this long, but unless we find a way to leave,
16:25we're not going to, we're going to die out here. And so he and like half the men took one
16:29of these
16:29big rowboats and they overland carried like on their heads, like 15, 20 miles to the coast.
16:35I just picture like rolling waves, like treacherous. There was a whaling station out on this island off
16:40in the distance. And he's like, if we can just get there, there's going to be people at this whaling
16:45station. But it was like a, you know, multi-day journey, even with a compass and everything.
16:49And they all pile into this boat, like 20 of them. They have no idea where they're going.
16:54I think it's this way. But they land on the wrong side of the island. They're like,
16:58all right, well, the whaling station's on the other side of the island. We just have to hike this
17:02mountain, a mountain that by the way, no one had ever successfully climbed. Everybody who had tried
17:06climbing it had died. And they're like, well, we have no supplies, no food. We've been on the water for
17:11two weeks. We're basically nearly dead. We're just going to hike this mountain with no supplies. And so up the
17:16mountain, they hike with like bare feet in some cases. And they get to the top, unbelievably.
17:21And they realize this is so steep that we actually can't even really properly down climb. We have to
17:26sled down on our butts. And so Ernest Shackleton and his men with their huge beards and their ragged
17:32clothes sledded down the backside of this mountain. And this whaling station is not far from the base of
17:38this mountain. And there's a family that lived there. There was this mother and father and their young
17:41daughter. And suddenly out of out of the mist comes these bedraggled men who were limping towards
17:46them. And she thought they were monsters and they walk up. And then suddenly the lead guy goes,
17:51I'm Ernest Shackleton and I need your help. And they all lived. So it's one of the greatest survival
17:57stories of all time. And you just got the version I apparently have never told. There we go. Boom,
18:02all done. I hope I didn't ramble for too long. Hope you enjoyed it. Thank you very much. See ya.
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