Challenge Total Madness Interview: Swaggy C
I was lucky enough to have a 20–30 minute interview with Christopher “Swaggy C” Williams last Saturday. The guy was an awesome interview as he answered tons of questions thoughtfully and rapidly. What you are going to read is a Transcript of our conversation with the only edits being for grammatical/written flow. Also, I did cut out an off the rails conversation about basketball that didn’t really go with the flow with the rest of the article. However, if you want to know the big details: Swaggy C is riding with the Lakers, didn’t actually start formally playing basketball till he was 15, and gave up playing in college to focus on Day Trading.
Also, this interview was before him announcing he was done with reality television, and before the Bayleigh/Kaycee stuff from this week’s episode.
THE INTERVIEW
Q: So you recently moved to Los Angeles, then a few months later, the world completely shuts down due to the Pandemic. How has the quarantine affected life for you? I have to think that getting forced to stay in might have given you more time to focus on your Day Trading.
Swaggy: Yeah, quarantine absolutely helped me personally, financial-wise, trading-wise, and life-wise because I had time to sit down and work on my trading or run my business. It’s unfortunate the circumstances that have affected the world shut down, but it did help me focus and lock in on my work. Had the world been open, I probably would have gotten distracted a lot more.
Q: How is Bayleigh doing?
Swaggy: (laughs) Bayleigh is miserable. She’s a very social person and likes to be around her friends. Right now, it’s starting to open up a bit, with restaurants beginning to allow people to sit down in Downtown LA. She is able to go to her friend’s house in groups of 3 of 4. It’s getting better. During prime quarantine, it was rough because she HAD to stay in the house.
Q: As a whole, did you prefer the more straight-up style of the Challenge? In Big Brother, you got eliminated via backdoor, and in that game, you don’t have to confront someone when taking them out sometimes. Whereas in the Challenge, if someone throws you or Bayleigh in, you guys are tall athletes who can come back and gun for them.
Swaggy: I definitely prefer the Challenge format in terms of competitions. In Big Brother, you can really be someone’s best friend, backdoor them, then hide in a room for 3–4 days until eviction a night like a coward.
Whereas in the Challenge, I don’t care about being thrown in because you still have to beat me to send me home. I would rather take my chances in elimination. If I lose something physically, I can still be happy and proud, as opposed to backdoored, where there’s nothing I could have done.
Q: I have to say, one of the impressive transitions for you and Bayleigh was the fact you guys were rookies and didn’t feel like it. You guys held yourselves like you had been there for years. How did you guys transition so easily?
Swaggy: We had a plan going in. I was very crazy and loud on Big Brother, got into confrontations, got into people’s faces, and it got me voted out second. I made a plan to shut up on the Challenge, and I don’t care how it comes off because I’m going to see how far it takes me. We never felt like rookies aside from the first week when Jay and Asaf got thrown in against one another. After that, me, Bayleigh, and Wes were really close. I was never worried about getting thrown in early because I was a rookie when I started winning tribunals. Then when you win tribunals, other people look out for you when they win tribunals
Q: The way you went out was very respectable. You understood time was ticking, saw a solid but beatable competitor, and then lost because sometimes the other player is better on that day. I know Jay was one of your best friends in the house, but you could have theoretically thrown yourself down for the Balls In elimination against him, and that probably would have been a Free Red Skull for you. Do you regret throwing not throwing yourself in then?
Swaggy: I believe that could have been a Skull for me as well. I would prefer loyalty over a Skull, though. Grappling Jay, throwing him to the ground, and putting a ball in a basket would have done nothing for me. Yeah, I would have gotten a Skull, but who’s to say I wouldn’t have gotten thrown in again the next day? On top of that, I want to keep my friendship with Jay alive. I’d rather take my chances and win another elimination where my boy isn’t down there.
Q: You and Bayleigh post a lot on social media and have done a lot of good work with your posts and branding. At the same time, you guys get inundated with massive amounts of hate regardless of what you post, whether uplifting, negative, or random. What’s your overall relationship with social media?
Swaggy: To me, social media is a tool to reach a broader audience for what you want. I think reality stars get mixed up with it sometimes. Some of these people post about the show they are on 24/7, and their focus on social media is the show. Then they get all this hate because reality fans and Stan accounts are so into the shows. Whereas, if you look at my Instagram, I don’t have any Challenge posts on there. I don’t talk about the Challenge too much. I’ll tweet about it here and there. Not because I don’t like the show, but more so that I’m protective about my stress level and don’t need unnecessary hate from fans. All I post is what I want fans to see: the market, day trading, and business.
You can’t come on my posts when I’m trying to motivate people and teach them about a new skill and be like “HAHAHA. YOU CAN’T SWIM.” You look stupid when you are trying post hate from a TV show on a motivation post. If I do post about the Challenge, and then they throw stuff in my face from weeks ago, then they get leeway. However, if I’m posting about my business, hating on things from the show makes you look stupid because I got people I’m trying to motivate who are hyping me up.
Q: I’ve always been bothered by some of the hate you get. People might have a reason for disliking you, but to me, the amount of hate you get is somewhat random and doesn’t correlate.
Swaggy: It doesn’t correlate at all. I’m one of the few people across both shows where I haven’t gotten caught saying anything derogatory or cheat on a spouse. I never made TMZ for a horrible thing I did, I’ve just been myself. That’s my biggest confusion when it comes to all the hate I receive.
Q: Also, I wanted to commend you for all the donations you’ve been doing lately. Whether it be paying for random fans bills on social media or to many of the causes in need currently. You’ve been dropping real money to help people, and yet, people are still complaining.
Swaggy: I try to help my best. I gave away 5000 Dollars a week or two weeks ago to fans. I get hate because instead of it being looked at as nice, I get viewed as “bragging.” Or they say you don’t have to do it publicly; you can do it privately. You can’t win with these reality Stan people. They are going to hate you regardless. However, if their favorite donates a little bit, then they are going to get commended. They decided they don’t like Swaggy C and are never going to recognize anything I do as being good.
Q: People might be hating, but I want to say, seeing you pay off a 60k dollar college loan in one payment was pretty fucking cool.
Swaggy: (Laughs hard) That was actually just one. I had 60k in Sallie Mae and the 40k in bank loans. When I posted the Sallie Mae one, I got tons of hate, so I went damn, guess I’m not posting the other. I paid 104k dollars of debt, and now I’m debt-free.
Q: When I make my monthly loan payment and drop a little extra, I feel like a complete badass. Watching you drop that much in one payment blew my mind.
Swaggy: It’s a different feeling. I remember four of five years ago when I was really broke; I literally couldn’t make the payments. So to pay it all off, I felt like “F U, don’t ever message me again, we’re done with.”
Q: That’s awesome. So how did you get into day trading? Do you have any tips for anyone interested in getting started?
Swaggy: I started about five or six years ago when I was broke in college. I was watching a Battle Rap YouTube video, and an ad about day trading came up. Normally, you skip ads on YouTube, but the first five seconds of this video got me to watch the full 2 minutes, then click on the link and take their free trial class. Since then, it’s been a learning journey. I dropped out of college the next year to focus on it full-time. Years later, I am now successful with day trading.
My suggestion for people starting up is they need to understand this isn’t a get rich quick scheme. This isn’t something where in five months, you’ll be debt-free. If you’re serious about day trading, it’s going to take a few years until you start making money. Yeah, in the first 7–8 months you might make five hundred, eight hundred, maybe even a thousand dollars here and there. You won’t be making tens of thousands of dollars in a month because there’s so much to learn when starting out. Don’t think about the immediate results. Had I made good money when I was 19, I wouldn’t be where I am now at 25.
(A link to Swaggy’s Day Trading lessons)
Q: Moving back to the Challenge, who are the people you are closest to from the show (not counting Bayleigh)?
Swaggy: Wes is the person I’m closest to probably. Jay is my guy as well.
Q: A question I’ve been asking everyone, who is the most underrated and most overrated player?
Swaggy: Most underrated is probably Jay. I’d also say Nelson. Some think he’s just a crazy hothead, and he is, but he backs it up in the elimination ring. People think Nelson is some slack and is stupid, and yeah, he does put his foot in his mouth sometimes. Put him in elimination, and he’s scary.
For overrated… I don’t watch the Challenge enough to figure out who is overrated. I knew of the Challenge because Paulie, Natalie, and DaVonne were on. I tried to watch War of the Worlds 1 before I went on. I just don’t know the history of the show.
Q: Last focused question: If you ever came back on the show, what would you try to improve on?
Swaggy: I haven’t thought about going back or what I would do if I did. My strategy would probably be the same. In terms of alliances, I had Wes and Bayleigh closest to me, had Big Brother allies I was working with, and then also made sure I was good with Bananas and Kyle’s side of the house. Swimming is the thing I need to improve on and hindered me the most this season.
I want to note that while I made tribunals, the one I should have won was the foam pit challenge. I decided to team up with Mattie and Cory, and we called for check 10–15 times and kept being wrong because of others mistakes. Wes checked once and was right. I should have trusted myself because that challenge wasn’t seven minutes; it took a long time. I know next time to do it myself.
Q: Alright, now if you want to plug anything or if there’s anything you want the fans to know, go for it.
Swaggy: I want people to know I’m an entrepreneur first and a reality star second. People might think I don’t like reality TV. It causes a lot of stress, so I wouldn’t say I’d never do it again. I just know right now that where I am, my business and following my dreams is my focus and what’s best for me. What I did like from the Challenge experience is the production. The producers were amazing; the crew was amazing; the only problem was some of the people there and the bunker.
I do want to say something about the Dee situation. If you saw Twitter, it was never me or Bayleigh’s intention to get her kicked off the Challenge. It was a matter of cutting it close so many times. She’d say stuff about us on the show, and then we’d see her in person, and it would be “all good.” When we got off the show, Stan and Spoiler accounts would send us screenshots of her talking shit about us. Not like “oh they suck” or calling us out for our games, but calling us “Bitch” and “Pussy.” Then we are here like, what did we do to you? When we would check her on it, she would cry on the phone and say she was going through a lot and didn’t mean to take it out on us.
There were a lot of behind the scenes moments like this. When I went off on her, it was an accumulation of several times where she crossed the line. We tried to check her privately. She didn’t learn. We decided to check her publicly, see how she reacts, and go from there. Then she obviously reacted the way she did. She texted Bayleigh a bunch of stuff, saying she’d donate a hundred dollars to whatever charity she wants if she could make it go away. We had to ignore it. We weren’t going backtrack in order to her feel okay. Our goal was not to get her off TV. It wasn’t even a thought until MTV posted the tweet saying she was banned. Our goal was to make her stop being ignorant and stop using the Black Lives Matter hashtag for clout. I wouldn’t say it’s unfortunate, but I will say, I really do hope she gets the help that she needs because it’s much bigger than tweets.
Q: It was super ignorant, and not only did she get herself banned, but she affected an entire season for a bunch of fans and cast members.
Swaggy: I just hope she learns from it all. I want her to understand nobody is untouchable. It felt like she thought she was untouchable because she won a season and thought she was going nowhere. That night, she tried to tweet about people not getting callbacks and then got kicked off the show the same day. That’s karma.
*Exchange goodbyes*
*End Transcript*
