Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio and Unbust Creative. I'm Bridge Tad and this
Speaker 1: is There Are No Girls on the Internet. Welcome to
Speaker 1: another edition of our weekly news roundup where we get
Speaker 1: into all the stories from the Internet that y'all might
Speaker 1: have missed so you don't have to. And I am
Speaker 1: so thrilled to be joined by honestly one of my
Speaker 1: favorite podcasters out there, Ed Zechran of the Better Offline podcast,
Speaker 1: where you've just started a three part series on business idiots.
Speaker 1: Tell me about this series.
Speaker 2: Well, I've noticed throughout my whole life that there have
Speaker 2: been these people throughout the rungs of power who don't
Speaker 2: seem to do jobs, and on top of that, don't
Speaker 2: seem to understand jobs. And it's all come to a head.
Speaker 2: It's taken a few years. It's started with remote work,
Speaker 2: it went to crypto, the metaverse AI, all these people
Speaker 2: with all of this money who don't seem to know
Speaker 2: a single fucking thing about anything. And then I went
Speaker 2: and looked back and I kind of went, oh, it
Speaker 2: traces directly to neoliberal thinking. Milton Friedman, Thatcher, Reagan and
Speaker 2: all that good stuff. So it's a three part saga.
Speaker 2: It's the longest series I've done in the show. People
Speaker 2: seem to really like it. I wasn't sure how they'd
Speaker 2: take it, and I just built a studio out in
Speaker 2: my place in Vegas and I recorded it there. So
Speaker 2: it's a bit totally different people used to because before
Speaker 2: this point I had this sound chamber thingy where I
Speaker 2: just stood in it and I just yelled for an hour.
Speaker 2: This is much more chilled out me speaking like an
Speaker 2: almost like sitting by a campfire or a dumpster fire
Speaker 2: in this case.
Speaker 1: That's something that I've always liked about your podcast is
Speaker 1: that you can often hear the passion in your in
Speaker 1: what you're saying, and so I'll be interested. This is
Speaker 1: this will be an interesting change. I also record from
Speaker 1: a I used to record from a soundproofed little box
Speaker 1: in my apartment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's exactly.
Speaker 1: It can really let loose in those little boxes.
Speaker 2: But I quite like the city. I'm just as pissy.
Speaker 2: It's not like I'm any It's not like I'm any
Speaker 2: less angry, but I'm a lot more comfortable. I think
Speaker 2: that's what it is like. I don't have to stand up,
Speaker 2: which I actually like for diction reasons, like for projection,
Speaker 2: but I can handle it sing down. It's just it
Speaker 2: is more relaxed and more I really like it, and
Speaker 2: people seem really happy with it, which is good because
Speaker 2: usually they just send me pictures of knives.
Speaker 1: Okay, I have to ask you about this piece in
Speaker 1: your newsletter, which is terrific. Where's ther ed at? You
Speaker 1: write so beautifully about what the Internet and technology has
Speaker 1: meant for you personally and how you really would not
Speaker 1: be the person that you are today if not for
Speaker 1: technology in the Internet. And that's kind of one of
Speaker 1: the guiding principles of our show too, is that the
Speaker 1: Internet has really been at the forefront of who I am,
Speaker 1: how my younger self sort of learned how to show
Speaker 1: up in the world and become a self actualized person.
Speaker 1: But do we still have an Internet landscape where that
Speaker 1: kind of self discovery and self actualization is genuinely possible.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's just that their land minds everywhere now there
Speaker 2: are Before what it was was when I think, I
Speaker 2: think with similar ages. So it was before a little
Speaker 2: more open and a little more disconnected. It was just
Speaker 2: it was more randomized and it didn't feel like there
Speaker 2: were so many warring incentives other than those of just
Speaker 2: individual users or admins on forums. Now you have every
Speaker 2: step of the way a different incentive, or multiple ones
Speaker 2: just bashing into each other or trying to have sex
Speaker 2: on your computer. Like you'll go on a website on
Speaker 2: your phone and your phone will be one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty degrees within two seconds because there's twenty one different
Speaker 2: ad trackers. But then even with I feel like algorithms,
Speaker 2: mentioning algorithms is almost cliche at this point because it's
Speaker 2: so obvious. But even then, you've got people on forums
Speaker 2: who are actively trying to scam you. And the large
Speaker 2: problem is, ironically that while there are all these warring incentives,
Speaker 2: the actual all people who run the Internet have never
Speaker 2: had any responsibility for it. They've made all the money
Speaker 2: off of it. But it's not like Google or Facebook,
Speaker 2: and indeed both have kind of peeled back layers of
Speaker 2: protecting people from spam and scams. It's not like they've
Speaker 2: ever thought we should make sure this is good. They
Speaker 2: did for a minute, I think they did for like
Speaker 2: the first ten years of Google, maybe the first five
Speaker 2: six years of Facebook, but they then went wholl whoa whoaah,
Speaker 2: this isn't going to grow forever. We need to fuck
Speaker 2: with it, we need to make it worse. But I
Speaker 2: do think that that self discovery is still there. YouTube,
Speaker 2: even though it's a complete nightmare with the algorithm, is incredible.
Speaker 2: It really is still incredible. It fuckings. I wish anyone
Speaker 2: other than Google owned it, Lockheed Martin Hanoi, perhaps Wow,
Speaker 2: like a more ethical company than Google. Yeah, at least
Speaker 2: we know what they're doing. I think the YouTube still
Speaker 2: has this incredible educational side, and you have all of
Speaker 2: these incredible niches on there. You have guys making covers
Speaker 2: of songs in the styles of other bands. You have
Speaker 2: people I saw someone making like a wood ice cream
Speaker 2: on there the other day, Like, there's still this magic there.
Speaker 2: The magic at the end isn't dead. And I think
Speaker 2: that the problem is is that to get there you
Speaker 2: have to go through like bobed wire or bobbed why.
Speaker 2: You don't realize is sharp until it's cutting your throat.
Speaker 1: The thing that I love so much about this vision
Speaker 1: of the Internet that you lay out is that you're
Speaker 1: able to make these business decisions that tech leaders have
Speaker 1: made hyper personal for people. And I don't know it
Speaker 1: was almost like a rallying cry of like yeah, like
Speaker 1: never forget how these fucks ruined the like tried to
Speaker 1: ruin the Internet to make money, Like like never forget
Speaker 1: that we had something that was kind of good and
Speaker 1: people decided what if we fucked with it to make money?
Speaker 2: And that's the thing. It's these people, their power has
Speaker 2: come from their relative anonymity. Well, we know who's sachur
Speaker 2: in the Della and Sam Moltman and Sunda Pashai and
Speaker 2: all of these people, we know who they are. They
Speaker 2: have mostly just got glossy, they get glossy profiles, and
Speaker 2: they're mostly unknown, when in fact I think they're turns
Speaker 2: about to war criminals. We know who Mark Zuckerberg is,
Speaker 2: But I don't think people realize Mark Zuckerberg's bad thing
Speaker 2: he did was not just his outright sexism or stealing
Speaker 2: the website from the Riverboat Twins the Winklebot bosses. It's
Speaker 2: the fact that it's not just a wiged people that
Speaker 2: he's led to getting killed. It's not all of that.
Speaker 2: It's the fact that at its core, Facebook is a
Speaker 2: tool that's used to hurt people. Now, it is used
Speaker 2: to manipulate and twist them. It does not have to
Speaker 2: be that way, literally doesn't. Because Mark Zuckerbet has complete
Speaker 2: controlled the company. He could tomorrow turn off all monetization
Speaker 2: on Facebook. The stock would crash, but there's nothing anyone
Speaker 2: could do. They couldn't fire him. He controls the whole company.
Speaker 2: He chooses this. And I think what people don't realize
Speaker 2: is they kind of ambiently know these people suck. They
Speaker 2: don't know what they're doing and why they're doing it
Speaker 2: and the intentions behind it. And I think that educating
Speaker 2: them on that is important because the more that that happens,
Speaker 2: the more that people realize this is deliberate, the less
Speaker 2: likely they are to get such a free ride in
Speaker 2: the press. And they only care about the press. The
Speaker 2: press is such a powerful thing with them because they've
Speaker 2: got all the money in the world now they just
Speaker 2: need They just have their names, They just have their legacy.
Speaker 2: So fuck that legacy. I'll piss on it.
Speaker 1: Piss on it, you do it on your podcast beautifully eloquently. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: because I'm talking to another tech podcaster, I kind of
Speaker 1: have to start with my dessert a little bit because
Speaker 1: a podcast that we piss on a lot on this
Speaker 1: podcast is the All In Podcast, And I mean your
Speaker 1: face just there really says it.
Speaker 2: All and need a show.
Speaker 1: Okay, So last week, obviously we talked about Musk and
Speaker 1: Trump's big breakup flight update there, which is that Musk
Speaker 1: did tweet that he regretted some of what he said
Speaker 1: about Trump. Everybody was talking about this. But the All
Speaker 1: In Podcast, which you might say, is hosted by a
Speaker 1: group of business idiots. You know, it's one of the
Speaker 1: biggest tech podcasts in the world. It's like four Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley invester types, one of whom David sax Is Trump's
Speaker 1: like AI and cryptos are. They were notably silent, and
Speaker 1: all their listeners were like, what's up? Like why are
Speaker 1: they not putting out an episode on this? Like where's
Speaker 1: the episode?
Speaker 2: I do love that though, I do love that their
Speaker 2: listeners to this day continue to win the Fell for
Speaker 2: It Again award. Yeah, it's like, I don't get it.
Speaker 2: Why are these guys not being honest with me as
Speaker 2: they've done like hundreds of craven obviously like very much
Speaker 2: corrupt things, but they are business idiots. By the way,
Speaker 2: David Sach's famous for selling fucking Yama to Microsoft, an
Speaker 2: internal message to Shamath is actually evil. Shamav is one
Speaker 2: of the original people who built the growth team at
Speaker 2: Facebook under Sheryl Samberg, Naomi gLite, Jacob Yakob Olivan I
Speaker 2: think his name is Javier Olivan, possibly Las Backstrom as
Speaker 2: well as part of that all of the original shit
Speaker 2: heels that made Facebook how bad it is today, Well
Speaker 2: thanks to Shamav. But yeah, these what are those freaks
Speaker 2: up to now? They just they're not talking about the
Speaker 2: Elon breakup because they don't know which which daddy is
Speaker 2: going to kiss them that week, Like, I don't really
Speaker 2: know what they're doing.
Speaker 1: No, And I have to say, it made me really
Speaker 1: appreciate what you do what I do, that that we
Speaker 1: have actual press and podcasts that get to talk about
Speaker 1: what's happening, get to be actually critical of technology. And
Speaker 1: I guess it just made me realize how much tech
Speaker 1: press fails. It fails their audience, that fails as listeners.
Speaker 2: I'm like, And that's the thing though, I think the
Speaker 2: all in podcasts are genuinely harmful. I think they're bad
Speaker 2: for society. I think they've done horrible things. I think
Speaker 2: they're tiny in the comparison to the harm that Kevin
Speaker 2: Ruce and Casey Newton do with hard Fork tell me more.
Speaker 2: I think hard Fork. I think hard Fork gives people
Speaker 2: permission to support the powerful. Casey Newton's boyfriend works at Anthropic.
Speaker 2: They've had Dario m a Day or Warrio as I
Speaker 2: call him, the CEO of Anthropic on their three times
Speaker 2: they've had multiple different Anthropic and they disclosed that Casey's
Speaker 2: boyfriend works there. The fuck is going on there? Every time?
Speaker 2: I'm bringing this up with everyone because it's insane, It's
Speaker 2: totally disgusting, and we have The New York Times pretending
Speaker 2: like this is somehow okay. They are in the pocket
Speaker 2: of the AI companies they regularly put Bruce himself is
Speaker 2: one of the more noxious and genuinely bad for the
Speaker 2: world people who he did a whole thing on a
Speaker 2: company that claimed they were excited to replace jobs. They
Speaker 2: were just going to replace humans in jobs. But when
Speaker 2: you looked at the articles, it just went out, never
Speaker 2: built anything, Remember built a single fucking thing. They were like, Oh,
Speaker 2: We're gonna do a working environment to train models, and
Speaker 2: Cabri Ruster is like, goddamn, I'm so scared. I'm so scared.
Speaker 2: He did a piece about Agi. I said this on
Speaker 2: Blue Sky. It's like it's like one hundred millionaires or
Speaker 2: billionaires decided they were going to track down and capture
Speaker 2: Santa Claus. Agi is impossible. It does not exist with
Speaker 2: the day. We do not even have the beginning of
Speaker 2: understanding of the intelligence of human beings. So, yeah, all
Speaker 2: in sucks. All In's awful, noxious, terrible, poisonous. But hardfork
Speaker 2: is just as damaging and quite frankly, Neili Patel over
Speaker 2: at the Verge fucking speaking with Brian Chesky and Task
Speaker 2: Rabbit CEO unbelievable. Sunda Pishai goes on there and he
Speaker 2: gives him one hundred and fifty word questions. No, it's
Speaker 2: not just all In. It's really convenient. Actually, I'm not
Speaker 2: saying you're doing this to just say all In is
Speaker 2: the problem. No, the problem is is that we have
Speaker 2: people like I run a PR firm. I don't do
Speaker 2: anything with anything related to my clients on the podcast. Ever,
Speaker 2: well News that same deal just because to keep them file.
Speaker 2: We have the some of the biggest tech podcasts which
Speaker 2: are kissing up to Brian Shesky, They are kissing up
Speaker 2: to every AI founder. They are literally co hosted by
Speaker 2: someone who is going out with someone from the second
Speaker 2: largest AI company. This is our tech media, this is
Speaker 2: our tech podcasting. It's said disgrace when I a part
Speaker 2: time blogger and podcaster who runs a PR firm and
Speaker 2: the most ethical of them all. That's insane. What is
Speaker 2: going on? How is this the world we live in?
Speaker 2: The answer is business idiots. It's because the people that
Speaker 2: control these publications do not actually connect with the means
Speaker 2: of production and have any or have any real interest
Speaker 2: or fundamental understanding of the things they're talking about. With
Speaker 2: the exception of Neli Pateel, I actually think he knows better.
Speaker 2: I just think he likes he wants to be friends
Speaker 2: with them.
Speaker 1: Oh that's even sadder. Something to me is like, these
Speaker 1: people are all so wealthy, and at certain point, what's
Speaker 1: the point of having fu money if you don't use
Speaker 1: it to say as well anybody.
Speaker 2: I don't think Ruth Newton and Neli Patel are like,
Speaker 2: fuck you money. I have no idea about the oil
Speaker 2: in guys months definitely read oh yeah.
Speaker 1: I think I think they're like, I mean, what what
Speaker 1: constitutes fuck you money?
Speaker 2: To me?
Speaker 1: Somebody who has none of it? I think yeah, less
Speaker 1: than what they're.
Speaker 2: Thinking, like one hundred dollars, seven hundred dollars. No, it's
Speaker 2: like a hundred million, like like there go, I think
Speaker 2: that's a good solid Like I can't think of even
Speaker 2: how I'd spend half of it money, like yeah, other
Speaker 2: than to create the all out podcast and then just
Speaker 2: like ruin their seo just like just like just like
Speaker 2: do nothing other than like dark seo operations to make
Speaker 2: it impossible to find this.
Speaker 1: What a dream?
Speaker 2: Actually? Lex Fridman. Lex Fridman is the most insane one.
Speaker 2: He's the top of the Tech podcast despite not covering tech,
Speaker 2: and he is the worst speaking person ever. He is
Speaker 2: so bad at talking.
Speaker 1: I am blocked by him on Twitter for I have
Speaker 1: no idea why.
Speaker 2: I mean, I love him because he goes like he
Speaker 2: was asking Donald Trump a question. He was like, bolitics,
Speaker 2: he is a dead game and I was like, there there,
Speaker 2: how do you win at that game? And it's just
Speaker 2: like May, May, did you not practice speaking before? Is
Speaker 2: this your first time? Is this your first It's like
Speaker 2: that is the Lex Fridman podcast. It's just his first rodeo.
Speaker 2: Every time he's like the guy from Memento, but it's
Speaker 2: with speaking. Welcome to Lex podcast.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, your Lex Treadman is so good.
Speaker 2: It's it's I have all the impressions down. I really
Speaker 2: want to go on Lex Fridman three hours with me
Speaker 2: and Lex. I think I could have some real fun.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, from your lips to Lex's ears. Maybe
Speaker 1: hot unblock you and then you can just ask.
Speaker 2: What you would do podcast on line? You you you right,
Speaker 2: keyboard and every I have tried the best one though,
Speaker 2: by far. Did you see the Lex Friedman Destiny debate?
Speaker 2: So he debated this horrible fucking piece of shit. Sorry no,
Speaker 2: he hosted a debate between Destiny's terrible far right twitch
Speaker 2: streamer and Norman Finkelstein, and it was like three I
Speaker 2: could not watch more than ten minutes of it. But
Speaker 2: what kept happening was Norman Finkelstein, who is like a
Speaker 2: has some views that and some not. I don't really
Speaker 2: know too much about him. I don't want to get
Speaker 2: into it, but it would be like Destiny going like
Speaker 2: he talks, he talks like the road Runner, and then
Speaker 2: Norman fincal Stein would just go miss the for really,
Speaker 2: your your words and your Wikipedia they touching me on
Speaker 2: every day. It's like Satan is pissing in my ears
Speaker 2: and he gets his name wrong every time. That was great.
Speaker 2: Lex Fridman just sat there the whole time, probably being like,
Speaker 2: who are these people? Why are they in my house?
Speaker 2: Why do they What is this in front of your foot?
Speaker 2: It's a microphone, lex microL God. I want to go
Speaker 2: on his pod so badly. Oh, I want to go
Speaker 2: on his pod so badly. I want to go on
Speaker 2: Lex Fridman. He'll never have me. He knows, he knows
Speaker 2: what's coming now, he knows I'm turning up in full
Speaker 2: joker makeup like it's also.
Speaker 1: They're like four hours long. I don't know whoever I am.
Speaker 3: I can hang for three hours, four hours, put me in.
Speaker 3: I'm ready the eleven hours I'll be. I'll be that
Speaker 3: just like on next legs we're doing that else? What
Speaker 3: else do you want to talk about?
Speaker 2: Legs? I got nothing on I had. I had fifteen
Speaker 2: hours of sleep in pre operation for this. I've been preparing,
Speaker 2: I've been training. He's like really like he does like
Speaker 2: MMA or something.
Speaker 1: They all do some kind of a physical fitness activity
Speaker 1: as their hobby, but you can tell they're like never
Speaker 1: normal about it. They never are doing it in a
Speaker 1: chill way. It's always in some weird way.
Speaker 2: They all do like really joyless working out as well.
Speaker 2: You can tell that they're just every fucking time they
Speaker 2: do it. It's like they're either in pain or they're
Speaker 2: taking like nineteen different substances. Well, none of where they
Speaker 2: drink like they probably drink the the butter coffee, yeah,
Speaker 2: I proof coffee, real pervert mixtures. Yeah.
Speaker 1: These are the people that we want in charge of
Speaker 1: our like tech ecosystem.
Speaker 2: These are the people that could speak for everyone, normal
Speaker 2: normal dudes. More.
Speaker 4: After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1: Earlier, you mentioned some I don't know, we'll say, false
Speaker 1: claims that are being made about AI. So let's get
Speaker 1: into some of these stories. You probably saw this, and
Speaker 1: I don't think I have to tell you, but did
Speaker 1: you know that Meta's chatbots are not actually real people?
Speaker 1: They didn't. If a chatbot is telling you it went
Speaker 1: to grad school to learn about therapy, it's probably not
Speaker 1: telling you the truth because it's not a person.
Speaker 2: I'm shocked.
Speaker 1: So Democratic Senators Corey Booker, Peter Welsh, Adam Schiff, and
Speaker 1: Alex Padilla are asking Meta to investigate what they call
Speaker 1: latant deception from its chatbots who basically lie about being
Speaker 1: licensed therapist. This coming from exclusive reporting from one of
Speaker 1: my favorite journalists, Samantha Cole over at for for a
Speaker 1: Media shout out to Smantha Cole. So basically what happened
Speaker 1: is that four or four initially reported that metas chatbots
Speaker 1: were creating the false impression that their licensed therapist. So
Speaker 1: these senators sent Meta a letter are basically saying like,
Speaker 1: please stop doing that. The letter says that Meta is
Speaker 1: deceiving users who seek mental health support from its AI
Speaker 1: generated chatbots. So basically, when you would ask the chatbot
Speaker 1: like what they what qualifies you to give me mental
Speaker 1: health advice? They would say very specific things. They would say, oh,
Speaker 1: I got my doctorate in psychology from an American Psychological Association,
Speaker 1: a credited program, and it's had ten years experience, and
Speaker 1: they would even give out specific license numbers. So it's
Speaker 1: like very specific, untrue claims. It should go without saying
Speaker 1: for listeners that these at thoughts these AI bots probably
Speaker 1: did not go to college because they're not human and
Speaker 1: obviously they didn't go to college. It does seem like
Speaker 1: Meta might have tweaked this because according to froll four.
Speaker 1: Now when you ask like what gives you the qualifications,
Speaker 1: the chatbot will say like, oh, well, I'm not a
Speaker 1: licensed therapist, but I am trained to help, which I
Speaker 1: guess is like a little bit more accurate.
Speaker 2: Well, did you see the story about that you could
Speaker 2: get them like they had things where they'll talk to
Speaker 2: children about having sex. Yes, Jeff Orwar it's the goat
Speaker 2: over a Wall Street Journal with that one. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is all a fucking result of something I've been
Speaker 2: saying for a while. Hey, when we don't regulate any
Speaker 2: tech ever, perhaps they're going to do whatever they fucking
Speaker 2: want without restraint. I don't know, just an idea, just
Speaker 2: the thought, just a little little nugget in my head
Speaker 2: saying like maybe if we don't stop them from doing anything,
Speaker 2: and in fact encourage them at all times, maybe they'll
Speaker 2: think that they can do anything and then do it.
Speaker 2: And then we're like, hey, here's a strongly worded letter
Speaker 2: fuck you.
Speaker 1: Yeah boo. It makes me sad that that's like the
Speaker 1: best we can do. Is like these dems sent a
Speaker 1: letter that was like, hey, can y'all stop? This is
Speaker 1: actually not cool. We would love it if you stops.
Speaker 2: Hmm, I don't like it. Please stop fucking just like
Speaker 2: at this point they should just stop punishing. There must
Speaker 2: be more than a government of any kind of even
Speaker 2: people in the government it's currently being trodden on could
Speaker 2: do more than this. But I think right now the
Speaker 2: Dems are just like, fuck, who do we kiss up to? Now?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Oh, we can't kiss there? Or asks who's asked? Can
Speaker 2: we kiss the people that vote for us? Ew? No, never,
Speaker 2: oh no, we need to find a powerful person. Is
Speaker 2: there any more powerful? Maybe Mark Cuban? We kiss Mark
Speaker 2: cube It's just fucking pathetic. This should like have the
Speaker 2: child sex thing, should have had someone put in jail
Speaker 2: like that is like, if you make a robot to
Speaker 2: fuck children, you should be in jail like a pedophile.
Speaker 2: I don't know, it feels pretty fucking simple to me.
Speaker 2: What shocks me is that this is like a radical
Speaker 2: statement within that oh that people.
Speaker 1: Who build robots that have sex with children should face
Speaker 1: some sort of yeah, or try should face some sort
Speaker 1: of meaningful coquen, Yeah, there should be a consequence.
Speaker 2: And people are just like, yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 1: I agree with you completely, and we kind of beat
Speaker 1: this from on the show all the time, Where do
Speaker 1: you think it comes from that? In any other context
Speaker 1: somebody that did that, would you would be like, well,
Speaker 1: obviously that person can't be out on the street making
Speaker 1: business decisions. What makes people kind of shrug their shoulders
Speaker 1: and say, well, it's business, what are you going to do?
Speaker 2: Tech and money? It's because people, because the twenty years
Speaker 2: of the tech and business media treating businesses like they're
Speaker 2: special has led to people treating businesses and tech like
Speaker 2: they're special. That's it. No regulation means that we have
Speaker 2: no way of controlling these people. We had one shot
Speaker 2: with Lina Khan and that shot is gone. We will
Speaker 2: happen in the future, I have hope, But right now
Speaker 2: we are getting the consequences of unrestrained tech. And yeah,
Speaker 2: you can say unrestrained capitalism. The reason I don't say
Speaker 2: that people are like, oh, you should just talk about
Speaker 2: capitalism is people have done a shit ton of that.
Speaker 2: But right now, when you look at the way the
Speaker 2: media discusses technology, it's an alarming lack of ignorance, but
Speaker 2: also alarming lack of like morals, Like the fundamental tech
Speaker 2: behind most of the growth and not the real growth
Speaker 2: is in like the theoretical growth. The market inspired vibes
Speaker 2: is based on a technology based on stealing, environmental destruction
Speaker 2: and just unrestrained communication, just completely insane stuff. You can
Speaker 2: have any conversation with these spots and people say, well,
Speaker 2: you can't restrict that, because then we'd lose freedoms. Yeah, like,
Speaker 2: we're not losing any right now. And on top of that,
Speaker 2: what are we saving. Well, they could do this, so
Speaker 2: we just let them do anything just in case we
Speaker 2: don't try. We don't try and stop them. It is
Speaker 2: impossible to stop large language models existing anymore. It is
Speaker 2: possible to punish those who put them out there in
Speaker 2: an unrestrained fashion. If someone chooses to they need the
Speaker 2: AI bubble to pop first, then they In fact, I'd
Speaker 2: love them too. I think they should all be punished.
Speaker 1: Do you see this bubble popping? Because I was reading
Speaker 1: earlier about how like this new Apple research paper are
Speaker 1: basically debunking these claims that like oh LMS, they can
Speaker 1: perform se reasoning like like, I feel like people who
Speaker 1: make money from AI are lying to us about AI's capabilities,
Speaker 1: lying to us about AGI. Sam Altman was just lying
Speaker 1: about the environmental impact of AI earlier this week. Do
Speaker 1: you think we're getting to a point where it's like
Speaker 1: the lies and the reality might start meeting each other
Speaker 1: a little bit.
Speaker 2: Nope, emphatic, Well, no, nothing has changed in the last year. Nothing.
Speaker 2: The paper you're talking about was about reasoning models. So
Speaker 2: the only trick they've had in the last three years, frankly,
Speaker 2: they had GPT four. Oh that was the big thing
Speaker 2: with multimodal stuff, so we could see it can't think,
Speaker 2: it can't see, it doesn't exist. It can take in
Speaker 2: video and look at it, can see visual data and
Speaker 2: say that. I have a reaction to that. Lax language
Speaker 2: models are kind of cool, Like what they could do
Speaker 2: is kind of interesting. We're denying that would be silly.
Speaker 2: They can't do much more than they can today. And
Speaker 2: that paper talked about how reasoning models don't fucking reason.
Speaker 2: They don't have a concept of reasoning. But really, I
Speaker 2: like to make this real simple. What's the product? What
Speaker 2: is it? Where's the product? What is the thing that
Speaker 2: we're all meant to be replaced by? Even you're having
Speaker 2: art directors and copywriters replaced with it. You're having screen
Speaker 2: screenwriters who are having their work looked at by AI.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like what happened many years ago with
Speaker 2: HR with resumes. They found a way to do that
Speaker 2: but with words. But other than that, where's the fucking beef,
Speaker 2: where's the product? Where is it? Agents don't exist. Every
Speaker 2: time you see someone see agent, shoot them. Sorry, I
Speaker 2: mean every time you see someone say agent, they are
Speaker 2: lying because they're trying to say agent and make you think, oh,
Speaker 2: autonomous thing. Autonomous And what they mean is chatbot, chatbot
Speaker 2: that can sometimes connect to other systems and can't even
Speaker 2: fucking do that. That's the crazy thing. That's the craziest thing.
Speaker 2: That's why I sound so crazy, because you look outside.
Speaker 2: You go and look on THEO and CNBC, you go
Speaker 2: look at tech Crunch, you go look at all these publications,
Speaker 2: and you see them going agents. Agents. Agents aren't the
Speaker 2: agent coming, They're not coming. They don't work. There was
Speaker 2: a study that came out of Salesforce I believe, that
Speaker 2: said that agents fall apart on multi step queries. You
Speaker 2: may think, what does multi step mean? Multi step means
Speaker 2: more than one action. You know, tends to be what
Speaker 2: happens when you do something. Yeah, and they can't fucking
Speaker 2: do it. They fall apart. The reasoning paper talked about
Speaker 2: how these things fall apart if you make them think
Speaker 2: too much.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I loved how it said it breaks down when
Speaker 1: the face with an unfamiliar problem, And I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, just like me, Like I feel the same.
Speaker 2: Been there, but yeah, no one has built the economy
Speaker 2: on my back.
Speaker 1: Yeah like no, yeah, no one is saying I'm going
Speaker 1: to like change the economy because I break down when
Speaker 1: faced with unfamiliar our novel problems.
Speaker 2: I'm but also, let's get simple again. Where's the product?
Speaker 2: Where is it? Because that's my proof. There's no fucking product.
Speaker 2: Everything is the same thing we were talking about six
Speaker 2: months ago, twelve months ago. Oh agency no, they're not.
Speaker 2: Stop lying to me like that's the thing you actually like.
Speaker 2: People love to come to me and say, well, actually
Speaker 2: the Microsoft's called I know. It's like, no, they don't.
Speaker 2: They do, but it doesn't do much more than it
Speaker 2: did a year ago. The only way Microsoft is able
Speaker 2: to make and Google is able to make money on
Speaker 2: AI is by forcing people to pay for it. Forcing
Speaker 2: people to pay for Google Google Workspaces. They raised the price,
Speaker 2: they've raised it months ago, but they only just emailed
Speaker 2: everyone about it. People quite pissed off. And that's the thing.
Speaker 2: That's what really is cooking my brain right now, is
Speaker 2: I still have people in the take media. You say, well,
Speaker 2: AI's here, AI's the biggest, most smartest thing ever. Look
Speaker 2: at coding. Yeah, I looked at coding. I had a
Speaker 2: guy called Carl Brown from the Internet of Bugs on
Speaker 2: the other day. The whole thing is people think that
Speaker 2: software engineers just code. They think that that's their whole job.
Speaker 2: They think that that's all they do. On top of that,
Speaker 2: the code that's written by these things is not reliable
Speaker 2: enough to just sink into production. It may speed up
Speaker 2: some workflows, but even then, what workflows does it speed up?
Speaker 2: And it's pumping the internet and software companies full of
Speaker 2: shitty software, and on top of that, none of it
Speaker 2: makes any money. It loses so much money. It loses
Speaker 2: billions and billions of dollars and it makes no money.
Speaker 2: Microsoft is going to make thirteen billion dollars in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five. You may think that sounds like a lot,
Speaker 2: but they've spent hundreds of billions of dollars in capital
Speaker 2: expenditures in the last three years. It's a fucking fast.
Speaker 2: It pisses me off every time I think about it,
Speaker 2: and people are still to this day trying to smuggbeck
Speaker 2: did you see and it's usually something that doesn't exist.
Speaker 2: It's like, ed, check out this, we made this new
Speaker 2: life form and it is just the Ninja Turtles movie,
Speaker 2: and it's just what the fuck I'm it. It's like
Speaker 2: arguing with a child, except children have more fundamentally sound logic.
Speaker 2: Every day, every day with this bollocks.
Speaker 1: I remember going to South Bay, Southwest a few years
Speaker 1: ago and the thing everybody was talking about was NFTs.
Speaker 1: It was like nftis everywhere, and then going the following
Speaker 1: year and it was like, we never did that. That
Speaker 1: what you're talking about NFT. It's like how quickly this was.
Speaker 1: We were being told this was like the big thing,
Speaker 1: this is.
Speaker 2: The big thing, but they couldn't work out how to
Speaker 2: do that NFTs with. If Google and Face and Meta
Speaker 2: and all them have actually found the NFT thing that
Speaker 2: more than one person would buy, they would have done
Speaker 2: NFTs if they thought selling, buying and selling pigeons was
Speaker 2: the next growth market. Every some darpish I would be saying,
Speaker 2: you cannot underestimate the pigeon fucking Jensen Wong of Invidea
Speaker 2: would be breeding pigeons right now. In fact, that's statuely
Speaker 2: the most insane thing so our economy. The US stock
Speaker 2: market is about thirty five percent made up of the
Speaker 2: Magnificent seven stocks. And I always fucked this up as Tesla, Google, Microsoft,
Speaker 2: Meta in Video, someone else Microsoft.
Speaker 1: I think you said Microsoft, but we'll let it fine.
Speaker 2: Nevertheless, whoever they are, nineteen percent of that is in video.
Speaker 2: In Video's entire I think like eighty eight percent of
Speaker 2: their revenue is based on selling GPUs for AI. What
Speaker 2: do you think happens when that stops happening? And also
Speaker 2: people are saying, well, well, they're growing so much quarter
Speaker 2: over quarter. Are you fucking telling me that in a
Speaker 2: year's time, based on this growth rate, this will have
Speaker 2: to happen and Video will be selling one hundred and
Speaker 2: something billion dollars of GPUs a quarter, which means that
Speaker 2: all of the rest of the companies in the Magnificent
Speaker 2: seven will be sending them one hundred billion dollars a quarter.
Speaker 2: Is that going to happen? So everyone's going to raise
Speaker 2: their capital expenditures. I'm the crazy one for saying this
Speaker 2: isn't going to happen. Anyway, when I'm right, people are
Speaker 2: going to eat ship.
Speaker 1: Well, I do have a question. I mean, it kind
Speaker 1: of relates back to what we were talking about with
Speaker 1: the tech podcast landscape. It's why do you think I mean,
Speaker 1: is it just money and influence and proximity to power
Speaker 1: that keeps the people who ostensibly should be telling this
Speaker 1: story telling the truth about these things that you're that
Speaker 1: you're talking about from doing cell Like, why are so
Speaker 1: few voices saying these things?
Speaker 2: I think there's a few things. One, I think people
Speaker 2: are way too differential to the powerful. They are also undertrained,
Speaker 2: under mentored. They are not rewarded for doing a good job.
Speaker 2: They are rewarded for keeping the status quo. The status
Speaker 2: quo is AI. So everyone's talking about AI. They are
Speaker 2: as massed heads across all publications almost they are told
Speaker 2: don't harsh the flow. They're not told those exact words.
Speaker 2: But they can't sit there and be like, hey, it's
Speaker 2: all this bullshit is all they could like, all these
Speaker 2: companies are making more money than ever, but the things
Speaker 2: they're talking about allies. They can't say that. They have
Speaker 2: to be like, well, why are they talking about AI?
Speaker 2: They can't be lying to us we can't start there,
Speaker 2: We couldn't possibly suggest that. So there's this natural deference
Speaker 2: that everything starts with. But really just basic education of
Speaker 2: finance and business is just not fucking there. In most
Speaker 2: of the tech press, there are some that are good
Speaker 2: at it, a few of them, very few of them.
Speaker 2: Kevin Russ is actually one of them. He knows better.
Speaker 2: The fact that he chooses to do this is truly disgusting.
Speaker 2: Same with Casey Newton. Casey Newton's one of the best
Speaker 2: business journalists, or he used to be before he did
Speaker 2: whatever this is. And you've got people out tomorrow at CNN,
Speaker 2: one of the best business writers out there. She's saying
Speaker 2: everything I'm saying. She sending it a little bit better
Speaker 2: in some cases been on the show already. There are
Speaker 2: people saying this. It's just for the most part, and
Speaker 2: one wants to harsh the flow. No one wants to
Speaker 2: lose access. And they are an alarming amount of people
Speaker 2: in the ipatow who want to be friends with the
Speaker 2: rock stars. If you've ever seen Almost Famous, Yeah that
Speaker 2: that wonderful scene with Buster Scrugs the.
Speaker 1: Case, Yeah, yes, well no.
Speaker 2: Leicester Bags, Buster Scruggs, I've got Will that's what I'm
Speaker 2: calling myself. I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's someone though.
Speaker 2: Let's someone though. Let my brain working in both brain cells,
Speaker 2: dueling to the death. There, No, it's you, don't. You
Speaker 2: don't make friends with the rock stars. And people want
Speaker 2: to be friends with the rock stars. They want to
Speaker 2: be the first one to get to hear the latest
Speaker 2: thing that they have to think. I know that sounds
Speaker 2: very like nineties cliche paranoia, but look at what's happening
Speaker 2: and tell me otherwise the fact that you And it
Speaker 2: gets back to the business idiot thing though, because you
Speaker 2: have this editorial substrate, these editors that are just like
Speaker 2: they haven't no fucking shit, but they know what the
Speaker 2: powerful say generally is right, even if it's not, even
Speaker 2: if it hasn't been right. They just they want it
Speaker 2: to be right. And it's much easier to sit there
Speaker 2: and be like, hey, it's going to be big now,
Speaker 2: especially when the whole economy is doing it. You might think,
Speaker 2: I don't know, as a journalist though, when the whole
Speaker 2: economy is based on something kind of flimsy, maybe you
Speaker 2: want to tell people about it. No, oh no, keep
Speaker 2: got to keep out at Disneyland open and the thing
Speaker 2: is they are gambled. Honestly, both me and them are gambling.
Speaker 2: We're gambling. I'm not gambling. I'm basing it on logic.
Speaker 2: But they are betting that they are right and that
Speaker 2: the powerful will prevail with AI, that AI will suddenly
Speaker 2: turn into this thing that does not exist, that AI
Speaker 2: will become despite the fact that agents don't do what
Speaker 2: they're meant to, that large language models are terrible at
Speaker 2: taking distinct actions that large which models are unreliable and
Speaker 2: hallucinat And on top of it, none of this shit
Speaker 2: makes money. It's horribly unprofitable and people don't want to
Speaker 2: pay for it. They think that all of that will
Speaker 2: get fixed because number is going up right now because
Speaker 2: n Video keeps selling GPUs. That is the only real
Speaker 2: metric that is keeping this bullshit alive, because it's sure
Speaker 2: asn't fucking business. There is an analyst that something beck
Speaker 2: I think. Laura brann at Yah, who Finance wrote this up.
Speaker 2: He said that he estimates Amazon will make five billion
Speaker 2: dollars in AI revenue this year, not profit revenue. They
Speaker 2: spent one hundred and five billion dollars or planned to
Speaker 2: on capital expenditures in twenty twenty five. The fuck is
Speaker 2: going on? What is going on? Why are we hearing
Speaker 2: this and being like sounds good to me? Or it's
Speaker 2: the early days. It's the early days. No, it is not.
Speaker 2: We are three years in hundreds of billions in capital expenditures,
Speaker 2: more money than has ever gone into any movement ever
Speaker 2: in the tech industry's history, has gone into generative AI,
Speaker 2: and we are where we were in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: and people need to wait the fuck up. It's embarrassing.
Speaker 2: It's very embarrassing. And when this ship bursts, and it
Speaker 2: has to, it has to because putting aside all the technology,
Speaker 2: you really think people are gonna buy that? I think
Speaker 2: it was like forty something billion dollars of GPU's last quarter,
Speaker 2: So next one they're gonna be forty eight, I guess,
Speaker 2: and then in a year it's gonna be what like
Speaker 2: eighty something. Is that gonna happen? Is that gonna keep
Speaker 2: happening or is it gonna slow down? Because they also
Speaker 2: don't have anywhere to install them right now because they
Speaker 2: assents don't pop up like weeds. No one looks at reality.
Speaker 2: It drives me insane. But Robert and Sophie let me
Speaker 2: yell every week, so I may.
Speaker 1: Robert and Sophie of Cool Zone Media friends of the show,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna say friends irl. We actually did a
Speaker 1: mini series collaboration with them about online harassment called Internet
Speaker 1: Hate Machine. We love Robert and Sophie at this podcast.
Speaker 2: No, those two encourage me constantly, Robin Sophie ever it
Speaker 2: calls out, and they're fantastic. They all they're very supportive.
Speaker 2: They fucking see it and it's just I'm ranting. I
Speaker 2: realize them.
Speaker 1: No, I love it. It's it's honestly nice to talk
Speaker 1: to somebody who rants about this shit as much as
Speaker 1: I do. I guess because it is. It is very
Speaker 1: frustrating to sort of tell the same story over and
Speaker 1: over again and feel like no one's listening. You were
Speaker 1: talking about the sort of connection of business reporting. Did
Speaker 1: you see that piece in the Wall Street Journal this
Speaker 1: week that really shed light on X's new strategy to
Speaker 1: woo back advertisers, which is essentially just yeah, just like
Speaker 1: threats and extortion and like threats of lawsuits.
Speaker 2: So for fucking cool. Yeah, very cool.
Speaker 1: I mean, like it reminds if you've ever seen one
Speaker 1: of my favorite movies, Goodfellas, it's what mobster Henry Hill
Speaker 1: calls like real grease ball shit, Like this is real,
Speaker 1: like mobster threat of extortion.
Speaker 2: Sure, Verizon should have just been like, go fuck yourself,
Speaker 2: Elon exactly.
Speaker 1: So that's what I found very shocking is that it's
Speaker 1: kind of working so essentially for folks who did not
Speaker 1: see that piece. The Wall Street Journal reported that their
Speaker 1: new strategy to woo back advertisers is to threaten them
Speaker 1: with lawsuits, and so it kind of works. Like Verizon,
Speaker 1: which had not advertised on X since twenty twenty, pledged
Speaker 1: to spend at least ten million dollars this year and
Speaker 1: if they didn't, X was going to sue them. The
Speaker 1: same with Ralph Lauren, the fashion brand, they agreed to
Speaker 1: start spending more money and ads on X because of
Speaker 1: the threat of lawsuit. The Law Street Journal said that
Speaker 1: at least six companies had either received lawsuit threats or
Speaker 1: were motivated in part by pressure tactics and have struck
Speaker 1: ad deals with X. And yeah, I mean, I part
Speaker 1: of me kind of gets it, because who if you're
Speaker 1: running a business, who wants to be tied up in
Speaker 1: a lawsuit with somebody like Elon musk Oh.
Speaker 2: This this is quite literally, this is quite literally a
Speaker 2: nambas game. They went, this will be cheaper, It's be cheap.
Speaker 2: They're probably not wrong, and they are right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it just is interesting that some of this kind
Speaker 1: of sounds like straight up extortion one of the things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and I also feel like, how embarrassing is
Speaker 1: it that you would have to extort these brands to
Speaker 1: want to do business with you, these strong arm tactics.
Speaker 2: This's embarrassing. But here's the real simple point that goes
Speaker 2: back to what we were just talking about. If we
Speaker 2: had a functional business press would be able to fucking
Speaker 2: shame these companies. The business press should say, you got
Speaker 2: extorted by Elon Musk, what are you doing? They should
Speaker 2: describe this story as extortion, But they're afraid of getting sued.
Speaker 2: Now what like this is the thing right now? The
Speaker 2: problem is that the right wig is willing to throw
Speaker 2: a bunch of money at shit. There are rich liberals.
Speaker 2: They just don't fucking care enough. They don't think they'll
Speaker 2: be sent anywhere. It's depressing. I mean, the idea of
Speaker 2: like praying for a rich billionaire to save us is
Speaker 2: kind of fucking ridiculous. But none of these companies had
Speaker 2: to do this, they could have all rolled over. They
Speaker 2: could have rolled over. They could have also made it
Speaker 2: difficult if one of them had made it difficult. I
Speaker 2: don't think they're going to super Horizon. Riison could actually
Speaker 2: materially harm Elon Musks, All of them could. It's just
Speaker 2: that they go, nah, it's not worth the fucking problem.
Speaker 2: Ten million, that's we could and they can probably eat
Speaker 2: the duct the off of taxes somehow. It's just it's
Speaker 2: very it's very depressing, very very depressing.
Speaker 1: It is. And I think when I look at what's
Speaker 1: happening with civil society organizations that are find themselves in
Speaker 1: the same arena with the Musk, like Media Matters, a
Speaker 1: media watchdog group, who Musk is suming like they're engaged
Speaker 1: in this big back and forth lawsuit and he assuming
Speaker 1: them for basically doing their jobs producing research into how
Speaker 1: X is moderated. There are organizations that don't have the
Speaker 1: money to be like will We're not going to back down.
Speaker 1: And then those are the organizations that are actually standing
Speaker 1: up and being like, we're gonna fight this. This is
Speaker 1: bully tactics. We're not gonna, you know, roll over. It's
Speaker 1: interesting that the companies that have money and power roll
Speaker 1: over immediately, Displayball immediately. And the organizations that don't, those
Speaker 1: are the ones who have to like take the pressure
Speaker 1: and be like, yeah, we have to stand up to
Speaker 1: him again.
Speaker 2: Functional business press there's never been, or at least if
Speaker 2: that has been, is very been, very weak, any real
Speaker 2: corporate accountability in the media. There is reporting that's quite excellent.
Speaker 2: Look at the Wall Street Journal, Jeff Horwitz, part of
Speaker 2: the team he did the Facebook file. Is incredible reporting there.
Speaker 2: But there's not people just saying, hey, this fucking sucks.
Speaker 2: Fuck you, what are you doing with a large enough
Speaker 2: platforms what I'm trying to build Because the thing is,
Speaker 2: these companies have more money than God. All they have
Speaker 2: is their names. That's why Verizon did this, because Verisen went,
Speaker 2: we won't get that much blowback in the press, but
Speaker 2: we'll get a ton of easy riding with the markets.
Speaker 2: The markets will love this, and they probably did. It's
Speaker 2: ten million dollars, which is nothing to Verizon. It just sucks,
Speaker 2: and I know that there's far more than could. They
Speaker 2: should be government, like a government of some kind that
Speaker 2: stops extortion in some way, but lacking that, a functional
Speaker 2: business media would say, and it used to exist, you
Speaker 2: go and looking like the two thousands. They used to
Speaker 2: rip the shit out of people. It's awesome, but that
Speaker 2: just it went away. And I think it's really easy
Speaker 2: to say, well, they're protecting advertisers. It's really easy to say, well,
Speaker 2: we don't want to piss off the advertisers. We couldn't possibly. No,
Speaker 2: it's fast, impler. They want them to win. They support
Speaker 2: the powerful. What they like the companies. They want to
Speaker 2: keep saying nice things about them. They don't want to
Speaker 2: say mean things about them, because then the companies wouldn't
Speaker 2: like them. It's really fucking sad. People love companies, not
Speaker 2: regular people. The media, yeah, they want to be the
Speaker 2: ones that tell you the story of the powerful far
Speaker 2: more than they want to hold anyone accountable more.
Speaker 4: After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1: This is gonna sound like a very weird analogy, but
Speaker 1: one of the places that I sort of got my
Speaker 1: start in media was celebrity journalism, and right, it reminds
Speaker 1: me so much of this where is that it is
Speaker 1: exactly that I mean it is. You don't you don't
Speaker 1: want this celebrity to be mad at you because you
Speaker 1: want to get the exclusive, you want to get the pictures,
Speaker 1: you want the access, so all you can say it's
Speaker 1: fluffy bullshit about the celebrity. It's like why celebrity journalism
Speaker 1: It is essentially dead, but it used to be like
Speaker 1: juicy and good.
Speaker 2: Well I think it still exists in England sadly because
Speaker 2: the way they do celebrity journalism is that they commit crime.
Speaker 1: It's they're like going through like a runaway garbage.
Speaker 2: They do like missus doubt fire situation to get one story.
Speaker 2: It takes them seven years. They become your child's best
Speaker 2: friend as a means of stealing your mobile phone. No,
Speaker 2: it's it is like journal gossip journalism, except it's not
Speaker 2: even good gossip journalism. Good gossip journalism still exists. I
Speaker 2: say good in a qualitative sense. Morally pretty horrifying, but
Speaker 2: it's it is everyone wants to be friends with the
Speaker 2: rock stars. They want to be the first one to
Speaker 2: talk positively about something, because people love reading positive news.
Speaker 2: Not that you give them anything else, not that you
Speaker 2: ever talk to your readers or see what they think.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite things to do, by the way,
Speaker 2: go on the verge and go and read any AI story.
Speaker 2: Read the comments the comments they don't like gay are
Speaker 2: then they're not enjoying this. It's almost as if real
Speaker 2: people are really disgusted by this stuff. But it is
Speaker 2: gossip journalism. It's you will talk to reports and you
Speaker 2: will say to them, hey, so you're covering like AI
Speaker 2: for example, and well you write about open AI and
Speaker 2: you seem to know all of the guys' names and
Speaker 2: all of their histories. What about the finance? They lost
Speaker 2: five billion dollars in twenty twenty four. What do you
Speaker 2: think of that? They go, oh, I don't deal with
Speaker 2: the numbers. Oh, I'm not a finance journalist. Can you
Speaker 2: fucking count? And they can, but they just they don't
Speaker 2: want to touch it. Because when you start thinking, ah,
Speaker 2: this company open Ai, they seem to burn billions of
Speaker 2: dollars and they keep they don't have enough, they don't
Speaker 2: bring in more, They lose more money than they bring in,
Speaker 2: and they need more money than anyone's ever had before.
Speaker 2: Is that a statele No need to think about that.
Speaker 2: They released a new model type it up. Send Sam
Speaker 2: Alton made a blog send because they want to be
Speaker 2: the they want to be part of the party. And
Speaker 2: then there's this bullshit where they're like, oh, yeah, well
Speaker 2: it's clicks. You want to get clicks. But the readers
Speaker 2: want this, The readers want what you give them. You
Speaker 2: can sure readers might not like you if you don't
Speaker 2: cover the most popular thing, but you don't have to
Speaker 2: cover it in this tripe way.
Speaker 1: No, you don't have to be farning like that's I
Speaker 1: don't think anybody's any reader is demanding that.
Speaker 2: I think that there are some that do, and they're
Speaker 2: very loud, and people are stupid. They're like, oh well,
Speaker 2: people in the valley say fuck them, fucking asshot. Fuck you.
Speaker 2: If you're an investor or an engineer in the valley
Speaker 2: and you're like, no, you need to talk positively about AI.
Speaker 2: Why do we have to prove ourselves to you? You're
Speaker 2: selling to me. You sell to me. I am the buyer.
Speaker 2: I am not. You are not the buyer. I don't
Speaker 2: have to prove myself to Oh you don't understand it?
Speaker 2: Fuck you. Also, if I don't understand it, you're doing
Speaker 2: a poor job explaining it. It's not my fucking fault.
Speaker 2: Chat GPT is changing everything. How how instead reporters just
Speaker 2: go chat? GPT is changing everything. It is growing faster
Speaker 2: than anything before. They're completely right, So did the coronavirus Like,
Speaker 2: I'm just like, look, we could. We took the coronavirus
Speaker 2: seriously in a very different way. It's just it's frustrating
Speaker 2: because I was not trained in economics. I didn't go
Speaker 2: to a well known school. I didn't get great I
Speaker 2: got decent grades in university, but like I got terrible
Speaker 2: grades in high school. I'm not like, I don't consider
Speaker 2: myself a super smart person, but this stuff is out there.
Speaker 2: It's obvious. It's very obvious. Even if you load chat
Speaker 2: GPT try and make it do your job. It don't work.
Speaker 2: Don't do it. I have a spreadsheet heavy job. I
Speaker 2: would love a computer to do it for me. It refuses.
Speaker 1: It's funny that you mentioned this. It took a lot
Speaker 1: of time, and it's trying to get CHATTYBT to do
Speaker 1: a spreadsheet related task and it was just a waste
Speaker 1: of four hours. I should have done it myself.
Speaker 2: My favorite one I did recently. So this is a
Speaker 2: company called Manus m A and us I called Manus.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm calling them now, Manus. So they claimed
Speaker 2: to be like the first agentic platform, and so what
Speaker 2: you do is I asked them to be like, get
Speaker 2: me a list of every article that has run mentioning
Speaker 2: me in the last two years. It took ten minutes,
Speaker 2: and every single step it coded Python to do. You
Speaker 2: could see it just like burning resources. And it came
Speaker 2: back with ten articles. Oh god, there is over one
Speaker 2: hundred in the last two years, and I'm okay, there's more.
Speaker 2: You've missed a lot. Came back with another nine. It's
Speaker 2: just like, I love living in the future. But that's
Speaker 2: the insane thing. If I was an investor and I
Speaker 2: saw this, I'd be freaked the fuck out. I'd be like,
Speaker 2: oh boy, we're all doing this. It's like finding out
Speaker 2: everyone at the party but you shit themselves.
Speaker 1: That's a good analogy, it really is.
Speaker 2: And you're just like, do what I should. I there
Speaker 2: is everyone else doing this? Is that good? And they
Speaker 2: were like I love it, and you're like, I'm not good,
Speaker 2: but I don't know. I'm just I'm so tired of it.
Speaker 2: But I do think I will prevail. I don't own
Speaker 2: any stocks, by the way. That's my other thing. That's
Speaker 2: the other thing. People love to be like, oh, you're
Speaker 2: just doing this because I've got no, I've got nothing,
Speaker 2: nothing of late no. And that's that's the scariest thing
Speaker 2: I'm doing this just the level of the game.
Speaker 1: Well, And I have to tell you one thing that
Speaker 1: AI has been doing kind of sex successfully is really
Speaker 1: polluting our discourse with like fake social media images because
Speaker 1: out of LA, I have to say, like so many
Speaker 1: of the obviously AI generated images showing LA this past
Speaker 1: week as like a flaming, burnt out healthscape of urban wreckage,
Speaker 1: which is pretty different from the actual photos I've seen
Speaker 1: of folks protesting. And I'm from DC. I remember very
Speaker 1: clearly in twenty twenty people when I would be like, oh,
Speaker 1: live in DC, people would be like, oh, I've seen
Speaker 1: pictures online of like isn't DC just on fire now?
Speaker 1: Like so sorry about your city? And I do, I mean,
Speaker 1: I want to talk a bit about what's happening in LA,
Speaker 1: because it has been a whirlwind of disinformation, both AI
Speaker 1: generated and not. Like one of the images I saw
Speaker 1: was a still image from the movie Blue Thunder, the
Speaker 1: action movie. Like the way people will slip in these
Speaker 1: images where it's like I know this image that's not.
Speaker 2: LA, and I think that's more prevalent than the AI.
Speaker 1: Slaw totally a thousand percent. One of the images that
Speaker 1: is that I see a lot is this picture of
Speaker 1: a palette of bricks where it resurfaced in that protest
Speaker 1: in LA where someone posted it to x saying it's
Speaker 1: civil war. Democrat militants are flooding the city with palettes
Speaker 1: of bricks. So the image is actually it's not AI generated,
Speaker 1: it's a real picture of bricks, but the bricks are
Speaker 1: from like a materials wholesaler based in Malaysia. But that
Speaker 1: same exact picture was floating around DC in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: and it was supposed to be evidence that like paid
Speaker 1: protesters and George Sorows are floating into this into Democrat
Speaker 1: cities to cause violence. And I think that you're so
Speaker 1: right that even though there are these AI generated images
Speaker 1: that are meant to create a certain narrative about what's
Speaker 1: going on in cities when there's protests, I do think
Speaker 1: it's more like cheap fakes where the image is real,
Speaker 1: but just the context around it is not correct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I.
Speaker 2: Think that there's also a bigger problem, which is how
Speaker 2: can I put this people who are not racists, people
Speaker 2: not on the right wing have no unity or solidarity
Speaker 2: behind any given message. I think that there is a
Speaker 2: large part of them that will throw anyone under the
Speaker 2: bus for their own safety. And on top of that,
Speaker 2: I think we're way too attached to this concept of objectivity.
Speaker 2: I think people are too scared to say the truth,
Speaker 2: such as, I don't know they're marching fucking soldiers against
Speaker 2: US citizens. That's fascism. Seems like a fairly obvious one.
Speaker 2: But the New York Times is like, men with guns
Speaker 2: approach people something on fire.
Speaker 1: So the New York Times have got to be one
Speaker 1: of the biggest offenders. They're so passive.
Speaker 2: It's them, but it's also the people in power. It's
Speaker 2: the Democrat senators are like, we will hold them accountable
Speaker 2: how I don't fucking know. But people are like, oh,
Speaker 2: we needed Joe Rogan have left. We need to put
Speaker 2: tens of millions of dollars into politics that talk about
Speaker 2: podcasts that aren't pod save America? How about that? How
Speaker 2: about we need to we need to put my idea
Speaker 2: and have a newslet are going out, but there's on Monday.
Speaker 2: It's like, I don't know. Look at what the right
Speaker 2: or even the center right has look at like the
Speaker 2: Barstool Media, for example, there are parts of Barstol's like
Speaker 2: a racism chart. You've got the Fortnite, Yeah, but you've
Speaker 2: got things like the Yak which are kind of like
Speaker 2: unclear about their goals or anything. But it's just five
Speaker 2: guys just sitting around being like a thats whats and
Speaker 2: like they seem to like each other. And people are like,
Speaker 2: how the fuck do they do it? How do they
Speaker 2: build these things? It's like they found five people who
Speaker 2: are entertaining to watch, and they gave them a lot
Speaker 2: of money and build a build big fucking studio that
Speaker 2: looks good and they stream regularly and they give them
Speaker 2: lots of money and lots of promotion. How did it
Speaker 2: possibly work? Here's my idea Western Kabuki. They're a podcast
Speaker 2: with June Juniper, trans trans woman.
Speaker 1: I've better guess down the show.
Speaker 2: I love w K point is, find them or someone
Speaker 2: like them and give them like five to ten million dollars,
Speaker 2: build a studio, give them national production, give them fucking
Speaker 2: advertising budgets, some radio and TV really push it. Those
Speaker 2: people will begin to move. People left. The reason that
Speaker 2: people are so freaked out by fucking trans people other
Speaker 2: than being incurious morons is they're not used to seeing them.
Speaker 2: You show a trans person just fucking existing and talking
Speaker 2: and having fun, people gotta go, oh, I as seen
Speaker 2: one of them before. That's a regular person. They just
Speaker 2: happen to be trans. You normalize this stuff by making
Speaker 2: it normal. And you want to have a Joe Rogan
Speaker 2: of the left, heavily fund someone with those principles and
Speaker 2: then let them cook, let them build a network. Instead,
Speaker 2: everyone wants to go and try, and they're like, what
Speaker 2: if we were gonna here's a pitch deck. We need
Speaker 2: four million dollars for data. Did you see the Democrat
Speaker 2: pitch deck?
Speaker 1: By the way, I did see that pitch deck. It
Speaker 1: came from a group called the Speaking with American Men Project,
Speaker 1: and they said they were willing to spend millions of
Speaker 1: dollars up to twenty million dollars to better understand how
Speaker 1: to appeal to the modern man. Well meaning, sure, but
Speaker 1: let's just say I don't think it.
Speaker 2: Was well received. So fucking funny. I love like, they
Speaker 2: need two to four million dollars just for data. If
Speaker 2: you put that in a pitch deck, they should kill you.
Speaker 1: Just straight execution, no trial, poison, but I mean it
Speaker 1: brings it. It really raises your question of like, what
Speaker 1: are we doing here? What are we doing here? Like
Speaker 1: it is. And I also think to your point about
Speaker 1: sort of not needing the Joe Rogan and the left,
Speaker 1: there's only a certain amount of people who are going
Speaker 1: to sit down and listen to a political podcast, right,
Speaker 1: and so like you really need people who are like
Speaker 1: doing sports content or makeup content, beauty content, muck bangs,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Like wherever people are already at, I
Speaker 1: think that's where you have to meet them. And I
Speaker 1: also think that we're good at that on the left always.
Speaker 1: I think that we, yeah, we want to spend four
Speaker 1: million dollars just researching the issue as opposed to actually
Speaker 1: doing anything that's going to be meaningful or useful.
Speaker 2: I think it's that. And also Joe Rogan is just
Speaker 2: an app, like just a big click and that they're
Speaker 2: a little throat clearing. Joe Rogan's horrible. The people who
Speaker 2: hasn't a horrible but if you actually listen to him.
Speaker 2: There's the same with THEO Voon. It's like you never
Speaker 2: sit there and go like, God, this guy's really talking
Speaker 2: down to me. You don't sit there and think, fuck,
Speaker 2: I wish you'd ask. I think that people in general
Speaker 2: really do not understand that we as human beings regularly
Speaker 2: forget things and regularly don't understand things. We regularly are
Speaker 2: just like, fuck, what's a how does stop? What is
Speaker 2: a stock? Like like a really obvious thing? And Joe
Speaker 2: rogen goes like computer interesting, Jamie brooking up a picture
Speaker 2: of a care Yeah, yeah, it's just like you don't
Speaker 2: get the sense that he knows anything, but he makes
Speaker 2: he asks the questions and he gets decent answers. He's
Speaker 2: able to keep him going for three hours somehow, and
Speaker 2: he is affable and friendly and happy to see them.
Speaker 2: There's I don't know if you call it charm, but
Speaker 2: it's at least they seem to like enjoy each other's proximity.
Speaker 2: It is it becomes political, but it is not inherently political.
Speaker 2: So people get all tied up, and how do we
Speaker 2: recreate that by getting someone who's a good interviewer and
Speaker 2: giving them lots of money and also look at his
Speaker 2: fuck it? Same with theovon. Look at their production. Look
Speaker 2: how good that production is. Look how nice it is?
Speaker 2: Why don't you build that? Oh? What pod? Save? America.
Speaker 2: Fuck pod Save America. Fuck them. I'm sorry. We mean
Speaker 2: every fucking time, every time it feels like nothing's happening.
Speaker 2: It's so condescending. Did you see the David Cross John
Speaker 2: Favreau interview? Now that was my foot, So David Cross
Speaker 2: said Jon Favreau on his podcast, and so he goes
Speaker 2: through his book and there's like the three of them
Speaker 2: goes through and there's the guy because I don't remember
Speaker 2: Johnny's and David Cross just like you got Jon Favreau
Speaker 2: and John Down and John Fevau has no idea what
Speaker 2: the fuck to do. And it's just like, yeah, if
Speaker 2: you if your big book that you're releasing for your
Speaker 2: very important podcasts that you care about a lot is
Speaker 2: ghost written, how am I meant to think you care?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: How am I meant to How is anyone meant to equate?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: How do we get young men? Oh? Young? We don't
Speaker 2: have anything like that that has the budgets of a
Speaker 2: Theo Vonne or the Yak or anything barstool. Look at Espianation,
Speaker 2: probably the closest we've ever got. And Vox just mostly
Speaker 2: enjoys taking money away from them. And that's the thing.
Speaker 2: These organizations don't exist because no one wants to fund them.
Speaker 2: They don't they want to. Joe Rogan have left despite
Speaker 2: realizing that it took years and years to buil Joe
Speaker 2: Rogan and a shit ton of money that he had
Speaker 2: and other people gave him. If you actually fund these
Speaker 2: things and put money behind them in all of these cases,
Speaker 2: I don't know if they are sincere, but they certainly
Speaker 2: fucking come off that way. It's probably fake. They're very
Speaker 2: good at lying. I think they're probably sincere towards the beginning.
Speaker 2: What if we had a very well funded kind of
Speaker 2: like leftist and the term leftist is even a problem
Speaker 2: because it's like, well, what is a leftist? Miserable little
Speaker 2: pile of secrets? I guess, like, I don't fucking know.
Speaker 2: How about you get together a diverse group of people
Speaker 2: who enjoys being around each other and they chat fucking
Speaker 2: shit in a really glossy, good video forward thing with
Speaker 2: a good social team that knows how to cut them.
Speaker 2: They do fun things. I choose the Yak because it's
Speaker 2: like the weirdly centristy cart like it. They just they
Speaker 2: just kind of enjoy like big cat in them. It's fine, fine,
Speaker 2: to watch like, I don't really love it. It's just
Speaker 2: I'm frustrated because the solutions are actually really obvious solutions
Speaker 2: the wrong word. The starting points are very obvious.
Speaker 1: You don't need four million dollars to figure them out.
Speaker 2: Actually I disagree for something else. Yes, you don't need research,
Speaker 2: you need money. Shove money into fucking million dollars of
Speaker 2: advertising budget a year minimum, just fucking create magic. Do
Speaker 2: you think all of the top podcasts on the podcast
Speaker 2: charts are there because just because they're good or is
Speaker 2: it because they're famous people or had a bunch of money.
Speaker 2: It's really easy to do this. You could do this
Speaker 2: tomorrow if you really fucking wanted to. You could choose
Speaker 2: someone and just be like, that person's gonna be it,
Speaker 2: and they're like, oh, who will be the who cares?
Speaker 2: Who actually cares? Start creating content like the Theovons, the Acts,
Speaker 2: the Joe Rogan's of the world that resembles people who
Speaker 2: aren't just white guys who there are tons of dating
Speaker 2: trans people, tons of entertaining black woman like yourself. It's
Speaker 2: just like there are tons of paper you could just
Speaker 2: fucking pick, put them together, throw the money. Well, if
Speaker 2: it doesn't work. Yeah, I agree, let's do nothing then, yeah,
Speaker 2: let's just sit here and let's pay another consultant that's
Speaker 2: a better Kinsey needs their body.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like a better way to spend the money. And
Speaker 1: having come up in some of these sort of democratic
Speaker 1: establishment circles, they love to be like, oh, we need
Speaker 1: to solve this problem, but we are not interested in sailing.
Speaker 1: We're not interested in spending a little bit of money.
Speaker 1: If it doesn't work, that's it. We can't try anything else.
Speaker 1: It's it's so off defeating.
Speaker 2: Also, it will work. I will. I'm sorry, I'm a dumbass.
Speaker 2: And at CS I propped I popped up like a
Speaker 2: five day long talk show at CS, and I cobbled
Speaker 2: it together as I went. It was some of the
Speaker 2: best fucking broad I'm not being arrogant. It was some
Speaker 2: of the best fucking broadcasts I've heard. And I made it,
Speaker 2: and I made it with no planning, And it was
Speaker 2: because I thought, I know these people are no questions
Speaker 2: to ask them. I'm not even positioning myself in any way.
Speaker 2: I'm saying this took I think the combined cost of
Speaker 2: that just to to say some stuff like sixteen thousand
Speaker 2: dollars total that was with a gear equipment, hotel rooms,
Speaker 2: and that was because it was the wow cs Like
Speaker 2: that's the thing, like you can and I budgeted that myself,
Speaker 2: by the way, But that's the thing. It isn't actually
Speaker 2: that expensive to do these things, and if you put
Speaker 2: real money into it, you could do something fucking incredible
Speaker 2: and you could absolutely. Do you think people want to
Speaker 2: hear your Rogan interview?
Speaker 1: These people got No, he's not a good, very good interviewer.
Speaker 2: Like I don't know if I agree.
Speaker 1: Tell me more.
Speaker 2: I don't think he's a smart interviewer, But I think
Speaker 2: Rogan is able to ask these questions that put people
Speaker 2: at ease, and he gets detailed, aren't weird answers out
Speaker 2: of them. He is able to relax them, probably because
Speaker 2: like there's one brain cell just like pops on and
Speaker 2: on like a light bulb question and he's like yeah,
Speaker 2: I like like, oh, yeah, I saw the Grinch the
Speaker 2: other yeah, I knew a guy like that. It's just
Speaker 2: like Joe Rogan doesn't know a single guy, Like he's
Speaker 2: just he stays in that studio. But his studio is
Speaker 2: really nice. They get fun clips, timple, horrifying, horrifying, and
Speaker 2: he is just a gender setting for like literal entities. Again,
Speaker 2: huge amounts of money, tons of cash, and yes there's
Speaker 2: grifts there, but goddamn, put the money into it. Throw
Speaker 2: the money into it. You want to know why people
Speaker 2: don't really know about a lot of these issues. It's
Speaker 2: insane that I me a part timer and one of
Speaker 2: the first people to just be like, oh, fucking business
Speaker 2: people stupid. We have a look up these business people
Speaker 2: and they're just saying fucking stupid shit. I should not
Speaker 2: be dynamic for saying this, but it's proof, and I
Speaker 2: mean this in a positive way. There's tons of opportunity
Speaker 2: out there. There's so many ways, and if you bankroll
Speaker 2: these things and make them aggressive and fun and support
Speaker 2: them legally as well as giving them the social proof
Speaker 2: and the advertising budget, people are gonna want to listen
Speaker 2: to that they don't. You can make them positive. They
Speaker 2: don't even need to be about serious stuff. But shit,
Speaker 2: when labor issues come up, you say, yeah, we're pro worker.
Speaker 2: Oh I think workers might like that one. Well, why
Speaker 2: are we angry at people because the business idiots? There
Speaker 2: are things you can and it's not even something you
Speaker 2: need to do disingenuously. I choose Western kabuki because all
Speaker 2: of those people. I think if you tried Caleb Wilson,
Speaker 2: one of my closest friends, do a football podcast for him.
Speaker 2: I think if you tried to force Kayleb to hold
Speaker 2: an opinion that he didn't want, he would kill you.
Speaker 2: But that's what you want. But again, the Democrats would
Speaker 2: say that and be like whoa wlah, whohah, what do
Speaker 2: you mean you don't like John Fatirman.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they would find somewhere like this isn't this is
Speaker 1: too folks. He needs to be more scolding.
Speaker 2: They've got their purity politics except for like trans people.
Speaker 2: Then they're like, well, okay, we don't have beliefs around
Speaker 2: these parts.
Speaker 1: No, totally.
Speaker 4: Let's take a quick break at our back.
Speaker 1: I have a question you, So am I mistaken. You're
Speaker 1: like a sports guy, right, like you're into sports. Okay,
Speaker 1: I have a story that I want to ask you about.
Speaker 1: Do you know much about FanDuel I'm familiar? Okay, So
Speaker 1: I saw this story last week, and I don't know
Speaker 1: much about sports. Actually, this is the only sports that
Speaker 1: I know anything about, which is tracked and ran track
Speaker 1: in high school. But Gabby Thomas, she's this Harvard educated
Speaker 1: black track olympian. She won a gold medals in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four during the Summer Olympics. She is awesome, we
Speaker 1: love her, but she experienced this like very scary hostile
Speaker 1: behavior from somebody who basically was trying to, according to them,
Speaker 1: throw her like have like get in her head to
Speaker 1: the point where she was not able to compete. So
Speaker 1: the exactly so last week she posted on X that
Speaker 1: a man followed her around the track and took pictures
Speaker 1: as she signed autographs for fans for mostly children, and
Speaker 1: shouted racist personal insults at her. So this dummy who
Speaker 1: did this also went on X and bragged, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: made Gabby Luz by heckling her and then it made
Speaker 1: my parlay win, and then posted a screenshot from the
Speaker 1: betting platform fan Duel. So when I saw this, I
Speaker 1: was like, well, I'm sure the betting platform would probably
Speaker 1: be very interested to know that one of their betters is,
Speaker 1: in his own words, like trying to influence the sport
Speaker 1: that he's gambling on. And Vanduel found him, boot him
Speaker 1: from the platform, and it was like, he's never going
Speaker 1: to be able to be on this platform again, they
Speaker 1: said FanDuel condemns in the strongest terms, abusive behavior directed
Speaker 1: toward athletes, threatening or harassing athletes is unacceptable.
Speaker 2: That's good.
Speaker 1: It is good. So I have to say, like, I
Speaker 1: look this guy up on Twitter, even though he deleted
Speaker 1: the tweet that was bragging about harassing Gabby. This is
Speaker 1: somebody who like clearly is very interested in sports betting.
Speaker 1: And I found this very alarming stat from ESPN. A
Speaker 1: study commission last year by the NCAA found that abuse
Speaker 1: by angry sports betters is one of the most common
Speaker 1: types of harassment college athletes received, making up at least
Speaker 1: twelve percent of publicly posted social media abuse. And I
Speaker 1: don't know it just really I don't think I had
Speaker 1: really checked in on how the rise and normalization of
Speaker 1: online spets online sports betting has like the way that
Speaker 1: that has kind of like shaped our online discourse, if
Speaker 1: it is in fact is linked to a rise on
Speaker 1: online harassment of athletes, like, I found that to be
Speaker 1: like actually genuinely kind of alarming.
Speaker 2: So Arif Hassan, who is the other co host of
Speaker 2: the sixty minute Trail the podcast Do with Western Kabooki's
Speaker 2: Caleb Wilson, did a great piece about this last year.
Speaker 2: I think all of the sport the sports gambling companies,
Speaker 2: I think all of them should be shut down. I
Speaker 2: think all of their executives should be put in prison forever.
Speaker 2: I think it is one of the most socially corrosive
Speaker 2: creations of all the time. I think. I live in
Speaker 2: Las Vegas. I believe that sport gambling should be if
Speaker 2: it is allowed to exist, which is a moral question
Speaker 2: to itself, it should be so heavily regulated. The companies
Speaker 2: like fanjil should be criminalized. Instead, they are growing like wildfire.
Speaker 2: I think that man in question should be in jail
Speaker 2: for a long time. I think that, in fact, if
Speaker 2: we had any two teeth, he should be done for
Speaker 2: attempting some kind of tortious interference. He should be like,
Speaker 2: make up legal fucking thing and stop pulling him for
Speaker 2: criminal proceedings, because that's how you actually make an example
Speaker 2: of people. It's horrible is to say, but if you
Speaker 2: go and chase a black woman, try to do a
Speaker 2: job because you want to make a little money, you
Speaker 2: should have to. You should get your life. I've kind
Speaker 2: of ruined by the legal process. You should even if
Speaker 2: you even if you win, it should be there should
Speaker 2: be a social punishment for such actions, not only for
Speaker 2: doing it to a person, but for a person of
Speaker 2: color within any industry already kind of like fighting against
Speaker 2: the racial horrors of America. You should they should be
Speaker 2: so scary to do that that you shouldn't do it. Instead,
Speaker 2: the black woman is the one that has to be
Speaker 2: scared and the guy, Oh no, I can't bet on fangir,
Speaker 2: but you can bet on DraftKings. I bet you can
Speaker 2: just go into any fucking casino. But there's never there's
Speaker 2: never actual real consequences because and even I don't even
Speaker 2: even looking up the story briefly, I don't see much
Speaker 2: horror around this. This should be like, I guess what
Speaker 2: should be front page news right now, the Gestapo or
Speaker 2: the like. It's just horrifying every day and new horror. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I stand by the thing about the sport the sports
Speaker 2: betting companies being yelled.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm psych it is wild that rather than facing consequences,
Speaker 1: what I think is like just an obvious social negative,
Speaker 1: these companies have been able to amass more and more power,
Speaker 1: They become more ubiquitous, and they're all over college campuses.
Speaker 1: And I don't have any data around this, but I
Speaker 1: can only imagine that the consequences for young men and
Speaker 1: boys is like not great, Well.
Speaker 2: Think about it. That's the other thing with the whole oh,
Speaker 2: what we're doing with young men. It's like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe we shouldn't have legalized sports gambling and made it
Speaker 2: hyper masculine and also as the right wing sunk as
Speaker 2: much money as possible into big strong men looking strong
Speaker 2: and blaming women and people of color for everything, not
Speaker 2: spend money on everything and just sit back and go
Speaker 2: and isn't the world nice? I don't know the whole
Speaker 2: man thing as well, is really for and this is
Speaker 2: a very male dominated. The sports gambling thing is male dominated.
Speaker 2: You've got people that do YouTube channels about how you
Speaker 2: can scam your way through parlays. It's just like you
Speaker 2: have this media cluster around it that's growing as well.
Speaker 2: It's just proof that a lot of modern bisiness doesn't
Speaker 2: have any morals at all, and we don't have governments
Speaker 2: that believe, thanks to Ronald Reagan and his ilk that
Speaker 2: we don't have like regulation or things that would stop
Speaker 2: businesses from growing rapaciously. And I mean, my whole bit
Speaker 2: is that growth is behind every fucking problem. We have
Speaker 2: the desperation for growth, and everything is fucking up everything,
Speaker 2: and sports gambling is it too. But it goes to
Speaker 2: Joe Rogan of the Left thing, it's like they grew
Speaker 2: into an opportunity. I don't think that. I think it's
Speaker 2: an easy way out to blame right wing podcasts for
Speaker 2: turning men against the Democrats when the Democrats just offered
Speaker 2: nothing to anyone ever, and in fact through everyone under
Speaker 2: the bus. And now they're throwing young men under the bus,
Speaker 2: which I mean, you can do that. Maybe it's right.
Speaker 2: Oh no, but you're not. You don't seem to be
Speaker 2: trying to appeal to any voter right now, just going like, ah,
Speaker 2: what did you see that? That's terrible. Someone should do something.
Speaker 2: You're a senator, I know, but what could I possibly do?
Speaker 2: I attend a ten sentate hearing's fuck, no, I got nothing.
Speaker 2: I'm not busy. I just don't want to go strongly
Speaker 2: worded letter. You know, it's the tool in their toolbox. Yes,
Speaker 2: you know, right wing people love to read killing me.
Speaker 1: Oh ed, this is honestly talking to you about these stories,
Speaker 1: is I don't know. This is a different kind of
Speaker 1: episodes than you usually do. Because I feel like I no,
Speaker 1: I do not apologize. This is exactly why I wanted
Speaker 1: to have you on. And one of the reasons I
Speaker 1: wanted to have you on is literally, whenever AI comes up,
Speaker 1: even tangentially in any episode we do, someone in the
Speaker 1: Spotify comments will be like, you should talk to Ed.
Speaker 1: Like this is like a hand like there are a
Speaker 1: handful of people who are like, whenever anything comes up,
Speaker 1: like listen to Ed, talk to Ed. So thank you for.
Speaker 2: For and also to those listeners. Bridget supported bat off
Speaker 2: line from the literal beginning, not just should talk to it.
Speaker 2: Bridget has been that very early. She deserves tons of credit.
Speaker 2: Like it's not like she has been behind, She's been ahead.
Speaker 1: Oh well, you know, I I remember when you when
Speaker 1: y'all and out you were doing the show. I was
Speaker 1: genuinely so excited exactly because of what you were just
Speaker 1: talking about. How especially in the podcast space, there are
Speaker 1: just so few people who are having these conversations who
Speaker 1: really want to kind of shed some light on all
Speaker 1: the ego and lies and bullshit and bullshit and scams
Speaker 1: that I feel like has become so normalized in the space.
Speaker 1: They're They're like, I could probably count on two hands
Speaker 1: how many voices I think are out there in the
Speaker 1: podcast space, specifically who are doing that, and there needs
Speaker 1: to be more.
Speaker 2: And also I don't think enough of them love technology,
Speaker 2: because that's the fundamental thing. I'm pissed off because they
Speaker 2: took something from us. I'm pissed off because I like
Speaker 2: the computer and I love to pay like you. The
Speaker 2: whole cool so media thing is the result of the Internet.
Speaker 2: My whole following is the Internet. My life's the Internet.
Speaker 2: And the drill crying tweet if you've seen that one, yeah,
Speaker 2: now get the fuck out of my office like it's
Speaker 2: And I think that that is missing from a lot
Speaker 2: of tech cynics as well. It's just that they want
Speaker 2: something to be mad at, rather than they're mad that
Speaker 2: something was taken. Also, if all this money and power
Speaker 2: went somewhere good, imagine how much better the world could be.
Speaker 2: I don't even mean that in the vague, vacuous, nonprofit
Speaker 2: flavored Oh the world be good. It'd be more fun,
Speaker 2: they'd be more exciting things. We could have more solidary,
Speaker 2: we could love each other more. They could be more
Speaker 2: interesting and fun, art made. They could be more support
Speaker 2: for social issues instead it's just this fucking smudge on
Speaker 2: the world right now when nothing's happening, hundreds of billions
Speaker 2: of dollars going into fucking nothing. It's depressing, but it
Speaker 2: can be better, and it gets better by taking their names.
Speaker 2: Don't let them, don't let make Google Search hate them.
Speaker 2: I fucked that part of Google Search. That's one of
Speaker 2: my proudest moments.
Speaker 1: How th tell me so?
Speaker 2: I did an episode last year called the Man who
Speaker 2: Killed Google Search or the Man that destroyed Google Search.
Speaker 2: And there's a guy called Propagard Ragavan. I found his
Speaker 2: details in the Department of Justice Anti Antitrust trial. They
Speaker 2: had all these emails and I basically found the story
Speaker 2: of this guy who was the head of ads called
Speaker 2: probably gol Ragavan, who wrapped fucked this guy Ben Gomes
Speaker 2: pushed him out, and literally the emails are like Ben
Speaker 2: Gomes or Shashi Fakher. I think one of the engineers goes.
Speaker 2: I'm just worried that all Google cares about his growth,
Speaker 2: to the point that when I read that, I had
Speaker 2: to go and check the u URL to make sure
Speaker 2: I was not being pranked. But it was my biggest story.
Speaker 2: And now Proba Ragavan has been given a technical title.
Speaker 2: He's like the chief technologist. He was the head of everything,
Speaker 2: and that he's the chief technologist. They put him out back,
Speaker 2: they put him on, they put him in an office
Speaker 2: without a door handle inside.
Speaker 1: He's still in that office.
Speaker 2: Yeah, eight hours a day. All right, Propa guy, you
Speaker 2: can leave now you're stock still vesting, mate, but don't
Speaker 2: talk to anyone. Don't plug in your computer. Piece of shit.
Speaker 2: I'd love to meet that guy. But he hates me
Speaker 2: and he's hard.
Speaker 1: That's incredible. I mean you said something. I mean, I
Speaker 1: like you. I love technology. The reason why I make
Speaker 1: a tech podcast is because I I love tech. I
Speaker 1: want it to be better. I want technology to be
Speaker 1: something that feels good and free again, Like I like,
Speaker 1: genuinely remember how it felt to stumble upon weird corners
Speaker 1: of the Internet that you could just tell were labors
Speaker 1: of love, like weird flash sites and shit like that.
Speaker 1: And I mean, you can really tell when someone who
Speaker 1: is talking about the Internet, who does so for a living,
Speaker 1: doesn't come from a place of loving tech and like
Speaker 1: being crazy about computers and crazy. Yeah, I do think
Speaker 1: it's like cranks who hate everything. They don't actually want
Speaker 1: it to be good. They want something to complain about,
Speaker 1: or or.
Speaker 2: They don't love technology, they love the tech industry. It's
Speaker 2: is a sick position that is gossip journalist, and I
Speaker 2: think that's the majority of them. It's scary and I'd
Speaker 2: love to be proven wrong well ed.
Speaker 1: Where can folks listen to better offline? Where can folks
Speaker 1: read the newsletter?
Speaker 2: Betrofline dot com. It's I bought that website for a reason.
Speaker 2: Betrofline dot com. You can find all my crap there.
Speaker 2: You click the links, you're find my profile, you find
Speaker 2: my everything, and that you has the big skull on it.
Speaker 2: That's how you know you're in the right place. And
Speaker 2: we're selling merch now, which I'm so happy with.
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say the merch is good.
Speaker 2: It's banging. It's so good. I don't the only reason
Speaker 2: I'm in Las Vegas, it's really hort otherwise be wearing
Speaker 2: my hoodie like it's fucking like the Zip Hop hoodies
Speaker 2: are fucking banging. I love it. I love that we
Speaker 2: have good merch. I wouldn't accept it. Were gonna do
Speaker 2: challenge coins?
Speaker 1: Yeah, is that your cat in the background, by the way.
Speaker 2: Yes, been trying to keep him from jumping up. It
Speaker 2: pisses me off. When I'm trying to do stuff, people
Speaker 2: are like, oh I cat, I'm like, get the fuck
Speaker 2: out of my camera. God God, I love him daily,
Speaker 2: but he's a pain in the ask.
Speaker 1: Wait, what is his name? Howe Howell? While Ed and Howell,
Speaker 1: thank you both for being here. Thank you for all
Speaker 1: of your work. If you want to follow me around
Speaker 1: the internet, I'm on TikTok at Bridget Murrie, I'm on
Speaker 1: Instagram at Bridget ren DC, and we're on YouTube. But
Speaker 1: there are No Girls on the Internet. Thank you much
Speaker 1: so much for being her Ed. We will see you
Speaker 1: on the internet.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for ways to support the show, check
Speaker 1: out our merch store at tangody dot com slash store.
Speaker 1: Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
Speaker 1: just want to say hi, You can reach us at
Speaker 1: Hello at teangody dot com. You can also find transcripts
Speaker 1: for today's episode at TENG Goody dot com. There Are
Speaker 1: No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget
Speaker 1: tod It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unboss Creative, edited
Speaker 1: by Joey pat Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Tari
Speaker 1: Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almado is
Speaker 1: our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you
Speaker 1: want to help us grow, rate and review us.
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