Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Carol
Speaker 1: Masser and I'm Tim Stanovic. Welcome to the Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: Week Extra. It's a weekly podcast bringing you a highlight
Speaker 1: our favorite interview from the week. And this week it's
Speaker 1: really a simple question, Carol, do you want to be famous?
Speaker 1: I really did love this interview. It's a question asked
Speaker 1: by a new HBO Max documentary. It provides really a
Speaker 1: window into the world of influencers. It's called Fake Famous.
Speaker 1: It's been described as a yearlong social experiment to turn
Speaker 1: three individuals into Instagram influencers behind the camera, in front
Speaker 1: of the camera, and creating the influencers. Is a veteran
Speaker 1: technology journalist Nick Bilton. He's written for Vanity Fair, the
Speaker 1: New York Times. He's also the author of the book
Speaker 1: Hatching Twitter, A true story of money, power, friendship and betrayal.
Speaker 1: By the Way, it's a good book. He wrote, produced
Speaker 1: and directed the documentary, and we began with just kind
Speaker 1: of asking how it all came about. I've been a
Speaker 1: technology reporter for almost twenty years now, and um I
Speaker 1: was a Fanity Fair about five years ago, and Graydon
Speaker 1: Carter was my editor chief, and you know, we were
Speaker 1: kicking around a few documentary ideas over the years, and
Speaker 1: a couple of years back, he said, oh, we should
Speaker 1: do a documentary on influencers, uh. And I said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: the whole industry is a bit of a joke. And
Speaker 1: he said what do you mean. I said, well, I
Speaker 1: could make an influencer in ten minutes. And he said, well,
Speaker 1: that's our documentary and um, and that was essentially how
Speaker 1: this all began. And I had been at the New
Speaker 1: York Times. Uh, I had written about box. You know,
Speaker 1: these these uh fake accounts that exist on social media
Speaker 1: that can be created by writing code and so on,
Speaker 1: and I had written about the rise of them and
Speaker 1: how advanced they were getting over the years. I had
Speaker 1: then written about them when I was a bandy fair
Speaker 1: talking about the election, how Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: both had millions and millions of fake accounts following them,
Speaker 1: and of course influencers employed these same tactics. And that
Speaker 1: was essentially what we wanted to show in the film.
Speaker 1: And Nicky say that influence our culture is is a
Speaker 1: bit of a joke, but hey, there's there's real money
Speaker 1: behind this, and and there's real money behind it's still
Speaker 1: even though it seems like a lot of people and
Speaker 1: companies are in on the joke. Well, I think it's
Speaker 1: interesting because there is real money behind it, um, But
Speaker 1: it's at the same time it's not. It's it is
Speaker 1: so inauthentic in in the way that the money, you know,
Speaker 1: changes hands, in the way that influences essentially purport to
Speaker 1: be kind of these these new bearers of ideas and
Speaker 1: culture and consumerism and so on. It's you know, when
Speaker 1: we really kind of show this in the film, I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the things that we talk about is is
Speaker 1: how influencers the entire concept of it, uh is it is.
Speaker 1: It is very similar to advertising, but even more extreme
Speaker 1: in that the whole goal is to make you feel
Speaker 1: worse about yourself, so that you want to experience what
Speaker 1: an influencer experiences in their wonderful life of their free
Speaker 1: vacations and their fancy Lamborghinis and this, that and the other,
Speaker 1: and and really they're getting all this stuff for free,
Speaker 1: but they're not necessarily being honest about whether they actually
Speaker 1: like it or not. And so sorry, well, this is
Speaker 1: this is like kind of social media at its core, though, right,
Speaker 1: it's not just influencers who we are posting the highlight reel. Right,
Speaker 1: this is like how how normal people use Instagram. Right,
Speaker 1: They show off the best parts of their lives. It's
Speaker 1: like a holiday letter, you know, the trips to Africa
Speaker 1: and the kids are all getting straight a's on steroids. Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's completely true. I think that you know, Instagram,
Speaker 1: I personally believe is the worst at this. They're the
Speaker 1: guiltiest of it because Instagram was founded on this idea
Speaker 1: of being deceptive to the viewer and the uh the
Speaker 1: whole point of filters that were there was a highlight
Speaker 1: of Instagram, which can make your really bad photo look
Speaker 1: really good by just pressing a single button. And the
Speaker 1: founders of Instagram, they wanted it to feel like like
Speaker 1: a Vogue magazine or a Vanity Fair. They wanted people
Speaker 1: to post the beautiful shot images and make it appear
Speaker 1: as if you know, that was the life that you
Speaker 1: wouldn't living. And I think that the end result of
Speaker 1: that was that you now have a system in place
Speaker 1: where I think it's just the most inauthentic platform on
Speaker 1: the Internet. Every every platform has the problems. You have
Speaker 1: Twitter where it's and everyone's just angry at everyone else,
Speaker 1: and you know, they all have their things, but Instagram,
Speaker 1: I think is the absolute most deceptive of them all. Well,
Speaker 1: and talk about deception. I mean it's like when you
Speaker 1: find out reality show, what do you mean that that's
Speaker 1: not real? Um? And you're finding it out with Instagram
Speaker 1: and I love where you know you showed and you
Speaker 1: guys use like a toilet seat to be a plane window,
Speaker 1: like who to thunk? Like it's just amazing a new toilets.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting is you know, and Tim had you know,
Speaker 1: Tim and I were talking before we got going. You know,
Speaker 1: kids want to do this. They want to be influencers,
Speaker 1: they want to be famous, which is something you ask
Speaker 1: a group of of twenties some things right when you
Speaker 1: kind of line up a couple of people to work with.
Speaker 1: So the one of the other aspects of the giving
Speaker 1: of this film that we did a lot of research
Speaker 1: into and I had read about before, was, um, when
Speaker 1: you look at the studies that have been done, there's
Speaker 1: all these longitudinal studies who have been done Lais done
Speaker 1: them other other universities to where over the years they
Speaker 1: ask kids every single year, what do you want to
Speaker 1: be when you grow up and back in the sixties
Speaker 1: and seventies, kids used to be wanted to be a
Speaker 1: teacher or a lawyer, doctor. Back in the eighties, they
Speaker 1: started to kind of get a little bit interested in fame,
Speaker 1: but it was famed for something that they had done,
Speaker 1: like they wanted to be a basketball player or an
Speaker 1: actor or something. Fast forward to today and kids just
Speaker 1: want to be famous and they want to be famous
Speaker 1: influencers because they think that is the fast track to
Speaker 1: get there. And so now eight seven percent of children
Speaker 1: say in America say they want to be famous influences
Speaker 1: when they grow up. And you know, that's interesting that
Speaker 1: you say, because you do highlight three three people, Chris,
Speaker 1: Dominique and Wiley, And that's kind of without giving too
Speaker 1: much away, that's that's kind of the conclusion that that
Speaker 1: Chris comes to, right, he talked about how he wants
Speaker 1: to be famous for being him. Yeah, so we you know,
Speaker 1: the film started off with this idea of like, let's
Speaker 1: go and get three people who have a very small
Speaker 1: following online. Let me go and buy them fake followers. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, fake box that exists on social media. Let's
Speaker 1: do a bunch of fake photo shoots. As you said,
Speaker 1: where we you know, we we took an aeroplane seat.
Speaker 1: You hold it up against the screen that looks like
Speaker 1: it's out of an airplane window. You take a photo
Speaker 1: and it actually looks like you're in a private Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really amazing. We're all going to be like buying
Speaker 1: toilet seats now Rember on a fake private jet. And
Speaker 1: then we took we took three people in this regard,
Speaker 1: did all this stuff and then wants to see which
Speaker 1: direction they would go. And we we genuinely had no
Speaker 1: idea how it was going to work out. I didn't
Speaker 1: know if if they were all become superstars or there
Speaker 1: would or it would just sailed dismally. And we were
Speaker 1: really lucky that it took three different routes. We had
Speaker 1: one of the guys who was just like, I am
Speaker 1: not interested in this. This is ridiculous. Uh, this is
Speaker 1: all fake. I want real fame. I want I'd rather
Speaker 1: not be famous than have fake fame. We had another
Speaker 1: guy who essentially panicked in the middle of all this
Speaker 1: and was bullied online and shut his account down, and
Speaker 1: his story was pretty fascinating to watch and and sad.
Speaker 1: And then we had our third person who essentially went
Speaker 1: all the way and became a want of a better description,
Speaker 1: a famous influencer and um, and she got so much
Speaker 1: reached stuff, all because we had bought her fake followers
Speaker 1: and it looked like she had hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: real followers. I mean, it was a It was a
Speaker 1: life changer in some ways for her. Right, she was
Speaker 1: an actress, you know, and she talked about kind of
Speaker 1: going out beforehand, and you know, it wasn't so easy.
Speaker 1: But once she built up are you built up in
Speaker 1: Instagram following? For her, she was getting callbacks and people
Speaker 1: would note that when she went back, you know, to
Speaker 1: those auditions. Well, I think that this is I think
Speaker 1: one of the status aspect of our culture today, especially
Speaker 1: business and and people's young people's pursuits of what they
Speaker 1: want to do when they grow up, you know and
Speaker 1: get out of school and so on. When you go
Speaker 1: to an audition in Los Angeles as an actor and actress,
Speaker 1: the first thing they're looking at is how many follows
Speaker 1: you have on Instagram, which is just such a stupid metric.
Speaker 1: Quite frankly, it just doesn't mean anything exactly. Could you
Speaker 1: imagine if Meryl Street had to say, show how many
Speaker 1: followers you had on social media before she got a gig.
Speaker 1: But it but it's not just that industry, every industry.
Speaker 1: It's writing, it's radio, it's just a creative industry. And
Speaker 1: it's and I think it is such a uh, just
Speaker 1: the wrong metric to be looking at, and I completely
Speaker 1: fault the people who run these industries for doing it.
Speaker 1: And I think it's just so shortsighted. But what was
Speaker 1: so evident in the in the filming of the doc
Speaker 1: was that the Dominique who we got to follows her
Speaker 1: life change as a result. She got called back, she
Speaker 1: got you know, there was one moment that we didn't
Speaker 1: put in the film where she her mom was in
Speaker 1: town visiting her in l A. And she was they
Speaker 1: were trying to get into the stancy restaurant. They couldn't
Speaker 1: get in. Her mom showed her dominique Instagram account and
Speaker 1: and showed how many falls they had and they let
Speaker 1: her right in. Well, I can't believe that made that.
Speaker 1: I can't believe that we didn't film it something that
Speaker 1: happened on the side. But but it's just just even
Speaker 1: that was just so ludicrous. And I think that it's
Speaker 1: like a currency almost it's a currency. That's exactly what
Speaker 1: it is. So is this the way that you see
Speaker 1: things continuing nick even though there is more scrutiny, especially
Speaker 1: with this documentary around the industry, because you do make
Speaker 1: the point that hey, this isn't the best interest of
Speaker 1: sort of everyone involved, that this thing doesn't come tumbling down.
Speaker 1: This influencer culture, I mean, I think that I think
Speaker 1: influence the culture has already burned itself quite frankly. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that the most influencers lived in the bubble
Speaker 1: and think that people believe that they're you know, that
Speaker 1: their lives and their lives, and I think most people
Speaker 1: realize that they're not. Um. I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: one thing, it's we have this expert on the in
Speaker 1: the film, just In Bateman, who of course as a
Speaker 1: child star and has gone on to written an amazing
Speaker 1: book about fame and what it means for society, and
Speaker 1: she says that these people are not famous. Their incommercial hosts,
Speaker 1: you know, they're hawking a product. And that really stuck
Speaker 1: with me because I think, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: that's really what influencer culture is. It's just you're just
Speaker 1: a fancy infomercial host and and one thing that was
Speaker 1: evident to us is we we filmed some influencers doing
Speaker 1: certain things, and and behind the scenes, they you know,
Speaker 1: they hated the trip they were on, they hated the
Speaker 1: hotel they were at, they thought the food was awful,
Speaker 1: but they still posted it lying saying that they loved it,
Speaker 1: because if they were honest, they wouldn't get invited back,
Speaker 1: or they wouldn't get invited to the next thing. And
Speaker 1: I think that that's what people really have to realize.
Speaker 1: When you're scrolling through your phone and you're seeing these
Speaker 1: people live the so called wonderful life, the reality is
Speaker 1: they're only showing you the peak peak highlights, and even
Speaker 1: that is fake and exaggerated. But from a marketing perspective,
Speaker 1: this must work because it is working for brands and
Speaker 1: companies to send these influencers these things, and there is
Speaker 1: a return on investment, else they wouldn't be doing it right. No, Well,
Speaker 1: that's the thing, it's not. The thing is that they're
Speaker 1: they're throwing. It works sometimes for these American companies and
Speaker 1: these brands, but it doesn't work most times, and the
Speaker 1: marketing companies don't know which ones are going to work
Speaker 1: and which ones are not, so they just throw all
Speaker 1: the spaghetti against the wall and hope and the best
Speaker 1: and really for them. You know, you could buy a
Speaker 1: a TV spot on the Super Bowl, you know, and
Speaker 1: I don't know what it costs. You gave millions and
Speaker 1: millions of dollars, or you can you can say, oh,
Speaker 1: we're going to work with fifty influencers or a hundred
Speaker 1: influences for the same amount of money. One of them
Speaker 1: may may get that reach, and so I think that
Speaker 1: they don't. But it does not work in the respect
Speaker 1: of the way most people think it does. Nick. You
Speaker 1: did talk with our own Bloomberg News reporter, Sarah Fryar.
Speaker 1: She's our tech reporter, one of our tech reporters. She's
Speaker 1: written a book, No Filter, The Inside Story of Instagram,
Speaker 1: And I talked with her too before our interview, and she,
Speaker 1: you know, she'd never having a conversation. She brought up
Speaker 1: a good point. She goes, why has nobody done something,
Speaker 1: you know, or who should do something about all of
Speaker 1: this fakery on Instagram. You know, the fact that you, Nick,
Speaker 1: were able to buy all these followers and all this
Speaker 1: engagement for these regular people and make them look famous,
Speaker 1: get them brand deals. Is this on the companies? Is
Speaker 1: it on the FTC? I mean, what do we do well?
Speaker 1: I think that the you know, when it comes down
Speaker 1: to it, the people that are most of fault here
Speaker 1: beyond far and away are the technology companies. Um, it
Speaker 1: is not in their interests in Saraces is in the
Speaker 1: film and um this is said the buss Sarah and
Speaker 1: I have reported in the past, it's not in their
Speaker 1: interest to to make sure that they they fix this.
Speaker 1: You know, Instagram supposedly has a billion users, right and
Speaker 1: based on the experts we spoke to and bought dealers
Speaker 1: and things like that, you could you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: feasible that there are around half of the of the
Speaker 1: accounts on Instagram are fake or debt accounts or whatever.
Speaker 1: But Instagram has no incentive to get rid of those
Speaker 1: fake accounts because if they did, they wouldn't have a
Speaker 1: billion users. And if they didn't have a billion users,
Speaker 1: Facebook stock isn't worth what Facebook stock is. Advertisers don't
Speaker 1: think that they're the value for what they're paying is
Speaker 1: worth what it is, and so they don't do anything
Speaker 1: to get rid of it. And I think the other
Speaker 1: aspect of it is that Instagram makes sure that the
Speaker 1: likes and the comments and the number of follows you
Speaker 1: have and all those little metrics that give people so
Speaker 1: much anxiety that they are so high up on the
Speaker 1: scale of things that you see. And I think that
Speaker 1: that is one aspect of the film that we really
Speaker 1: talk about. Two is it's how it's leading to anxiety
Speaker 1: for kids and depression and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: And Instagram does care one iota. All they care about
Speaker 1: is the metrics. It's like a constant like popularity, race,
Speaker 1: um and right, and like we talked about it here,
Speaker 1: you know news like you know our followers and are
Speaker 1: you mentioned? And it's it's it's crazy and you think
Speaker 1: about on a younger but you think about on a
Speaker 1: younger population, right, Like what this does to these kids?
Speaker 1: So I just want to go follow up on what
Speaker 1: you just said. I think I know the answer. So
Speaker 1: the valuations of these companies, whether it's Facebook, whether it's Instagram.
Speaker 1: Within Facebook, you know their user numbers, the metrics they
Speaker 1: are giving advertisers, is it all based on totally fake data?
Speaker 1: And does it even matter if they are because does
Speaker 1: the ecosystem kind of work? I mean, the eCos it's
Speaker 1: funny the ecosystem, the system works. It really truly does.
Speaker 1: I mean it's funny. Like on Instagram, I get get
Speaker 1: ads that are sent to me that I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: actually I would click on that. I mean, I won't
Speaker 1: out of principle because I don't want to give them
Speaker 1: the money. But but you know, the targeting works. There's
Speaker 1: a reason that Google and Facebook are value to what
Speaker 1: their value that simply based on advertising. So it does work.
Speaker 1: But I think that the reality is is that there
Speaker 1: is an incredible amount of deception going on at the
Speaker 1: same time from these companies. And I think that and
Speaker 1: they're fully aware of it. You know. It's like you
Speaker 1: think about the advertising. You know, you can say I
Speaker 1: want to advertise a pink bicycle to people who like
Speaker 1: pink and live in in this town. Uh, and the
Speaker 1: you know, wake up at six am and drink green juices,
Speaker 1: and you can do that. You can literally target that
Speaker 1: person and they'll probably click on your bike and buy it.
Speaker 1: But so if they if they have the technology and
Speaker 1: the and the smarts to be able to pull out off,
Speaker 1: they also have the technology and the smarts to be
Speaker 1: able to kill the box. But they don't because it's
Speaker 1: not in their best interests because if they had to
Speaker 1: be honest, they would probably have half the number of
Speaker 1: users that they really have. And what's that going to
Speaker 1: do for the stock price? Right? Nick? You, you, by
Speaker 1: your own admission, have have been covering these companies for
Speaker 1: about fifteen years. Facebook just had its its seventeenth birthday. Um.
Speaker 1: You open up the film with this sort of montage
Speaker 1: of of you appearing on different television programs, saying that
Speaker 1: you used to be the one who would go on
Speaker 1: TV and defend these social platforms. It does seem like though,
Speaker 1: in recent years, with fake news proliferating on Facebook and
Speaker 1: you know, fake news and bad things happening on Twitter,
Speaker 1: and then of course the rise of the influencer and
Speaker 1: the mental health issues that are associated with Instagram, it
Speaker 1: does seem like the conversation around social media has really shifted.
Speaker 1: It from it being a tool that, you know, in
Speaker 1: the words of Mark Zuckerberg, right, is about connecting and
Speaker 1: sharing two more that that's one about, you know, the
Speaker 1: effect that these platforms are having on our lives and
Speaker 1: in not a good way. When did that shift happen
Speaker 1: for you? When did you start to see that happening.
Speaker 1: So I think it's it's a great question. And I
Speaker 1: think you know, one thing I've noticed is, you know,
Speaker 1: the technology people, both reporters and people who work in
Speaker 1: tech and so on, who I know, on a personal level,
Speaker 1: we were kind of old the nerds, if you will,
Speaker 1: that got on these platforms first. You know, we were
Speaker 1: the first ones on Instagram and Snapchat and Twitter, and
Speaker 1: and I think in those early days, what was so
Speaker 1: intriguing about them was that they were what they said
Speaker 1: they were going to be. They were a place for
Speaker 1: you to connect and share things and and and take
Speaker 1: pretty photos and just have have a you know, and
Speaker 1: people could comment on them. And I think what happened
Speaker 1: is over time they started to become the worst versions
Speaker 1: of themselves. And you know, Twitter, I think is just
Speaker 1: I mean, I used to be on their twelve hours
Speaker 1: a day, would be in the background in the news
Speaker 1: room when I was working. I was constantly tweeting links
Speaker 1: and articles and comments and thoughts and this, that and
Speaker 1: the other. I barely look at it now because it's
Speaker 1: so the triolic. It's got so much hatred and anger
Speaker 1: on there, and and you can be you can see
Speaker 1: your career destroyed by for one tweet because someone doesn't
Speaker 1: like it. And I think that, um, you know, all
Speaker 1: across the board, these platforms have grown so quickly and
Speaker 1: so so big that the and the companies haven't put
Speaker 1: the effort forth to try to control them and try
Speaker 1: to make them, you know, work in the same way
Speaker 1: they did in the beginning. That um, that they are
Speaker 1: now in the place that they are. And and and
Speaker 1: for me and all those early people to bring this
Speaker 1: back to what I say earlier, all those early nerves
Speaker 1: that start signed up, none of them use them anymore.
Speaker 1: None of them people who used to work on Twitter,
Speaker 1: I know who built the platform do not use it.
Speaker 1: And I think that that the reason for that is
Speaker 1: because it has become it's become such a bad thing
Speaker 1: in society. It has become so negative and and I
Speaker 1: think that people are fed up. Well, I should say,
Speaker 1: you did write the book Hatching Twitter. You wrote the
Speaker 1: book on Twitter, so you do know a thing or
Speaker 1: two of them the early days of Twitter. Yes, well,
Speaker 1: And I would say, though, social influencers can also be good.
Speaker 1: And you point this out, whether it's Black Lives Matter,
Speaker 1: whether it's me Too, whether it's climate change, whether it's
Speaker 1: the Arab Spring right, it can be a force for good.
Speaker 1: It can be. But I think that here and there's
Speaker 1: no question if it was you know, if it wasn't
Speaker 1: for I mean, look, I can't say this definitively, but
Speaker 1: I guess the question is, would me to have happened
Speaker 1: if it wasn't for social media? Would Black Lives Matter
Speaker 1: have happened if it wasn't for social media? There are
Speaker 1: certain people who say, well, black lives matter, for example,
Speaker 1: you know, in the nineties sixties we had the civil
Speaker 1: rights movement that was no social media then, right, so
Speaker 1: that you know that, that's one argument some people make.
Speaker 1: I don't know if the answer is true or if
Speaker 1: it's not. I don't necessarily think me too would have
Speaker 1: happened if it wasn't for it. And I think that
Speaker 1: you know, there are and the climate change stuff that's happening,
Speaker 1: and and and so on. I think that the reality
Speaker 1: is though that you know that Kevin Kelly, who started Wired,
Speaker 1: he's a technology philosopher, if you will, and he said
Speaker 1: to at one point he said, look, when you look
Speaker 1: at technology, it makes there are always bad sides to it.
Speaker 1: In his opinion, technology makes society fifty one better and
Speaker 1: for worse, So they're there are bad things that happens.
Speaker 1: My opinion about social media today is that it makes
Speaker 1: things worse and better, and I think when technology starts
Speaker 1: to do that, it's time for us to question if
Speaker 1: we should be still using it or fixing it or
Speaker 1: how to fix it. Speaking of that, there is this
Speaker 1: scene in the movie where you're on your hands and
Speaker 1: knees cleaning up after your kids. I think you're picking
Speaker 1: up magnetiles. It's something that's very familiar in my household
Speaker 1: as well. I spent a lot of time cleaning up magnetiles. UM.
Speaker 1: What are your thoughts about your kids and social media?
Speaker 1: Nick and your family and social media? Well, it's really interesting.
Speaker 1: I think the thing that I came away from in
Speaker 1: this film was, you know, when I've written about tech
Speaker 1: in the past and and um and different technologies and
Speaker 1: how they've changed and so on, I have been UM.
Speaker 1: One of the things that that has been interesting is
Speaker 1: I always thought that you had to teach kids when
Speaker 1: they were teenagers not to use you know, to be
Speaker 1: more aware of social media and technology. And so when
Speaker 1: I thought it was like it was a thing that
Speaker 1: you taught them when they was twelve or thirteen. And
Speaker 1: the thing that I've realized during this making this film
Speaker 1: was that you need to be teaching them when they're
Speaker 1: three and four and five years old. Um. You know.
Speaker 1: Barton day Thurston is one of the commenters in the movie,
Speaker 1: and he has this great line where he says, you know,
Speaker 1: when it comes to most things in society, we we
Speaker 1: protect our kids from them. We we don't let them
Speaker 1: go near a gun until there's twenty one years old
Speaker 1: or eighteen years old. We don't let them drive a
Speaker 1: car or drink and all these different things until they
Speaker 1: are that age. And when it comes to technology, we've
Speaker 1: left into the Wolves, and the Wolves of course being
Speaker 1: those big bad companies that all they care about their
Speaker 1: metrics and and I think that for me, I'm now
Speaker 1: teaching my kids, you know when they look at YouTube
Speaker 1: and things like that and go online, that some of
Speaker 1: the things they say are not real and some of
Speaker 1: them are bad. So I just want to know, have
Speaker 1: you ever done a selfie in front of the pink Wall?
Speaker 1: You know, I have not done a selfie in from
Speaker 1: the Pink Pink Wall, but we we did when we
Speaker 1: shot the film. Were the opening of the film, there
Speaker 1: was a good three days we were there, and we
Speaker 1: definitely had some fun with our phones messing around in
Speaker 1: front of it. Well, it's a lot of fun to watch.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting what you say about kids, because you
Speaker 1: finished off the documentary showing all these pictures of kids
Speaker 1: on Instagram, obviously disturbing in my opinion. We we yeah
Speaker 1: the end of the film, which doesn't give anything away
Speaker 1: for listeners, but at the end of the film, we
Speaker 1: we wanted to bring it back to the beginning of
Speaker 1: the film where we talked about that study of what
Speaker 1: kids want to be when they grew up and and
Speaker 1: I remember saying that to the one of the bruces, like, oh,
Speaker 1: we should see we can get some pictures of like
Speaker 1: kid influencers. And I've never really looked at kid influencers before.
Speaker 1: And when we looked and I and we saw these photos,
Speaker 1: it was completely shocking to see these kids that are
Speaker 1: their influencers. And we were so lucky. We had worked
Speaker 1: with Michael Abels, who did the music and the score
Speaker 1: for the film, and he's done a lot of horror
Speaker 1: movies and when he did the music for the end,
Speaker 1: he said, I see, he's like, I've got this and
Speaker 1: he completely did that was veteran technology journalist Nic Built
Speaker 1: and the documentary is fake famous on HBO. One of
Speaker 1: the things I think you and I both agree on
Speaker 1: what was so disturbing is just the little kids who
Speaker 1: want to be influencers. Yeah, I mean I had this feeling, Carol.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's okay to say, but as
Speaker 1: I was watching the documentary, I was like, Okay, we
Speaker 1: really live in how Oh my god, No, I think
Speaker 1: it's safe to say. And you see how kind of
Speaker 1: tortured people were about the process. Um, I really love
Speaker 1: this film. You've been listening to Bloomberg Business Week Extra,
Speaker 1: be sure of listen to our Bloomberg Business Week Daily
Speaker 1: radio show, airing live Monday through Friday at two pm
Speaker 1: Well Street time on Bloomberg Radio. Are we influencers? I
Speaker 1: don't think so. I'm definitely not. But watch us on
Speaker 1: our daily broadcast on YouTube just search Bloomberg Global News
Speaker 1: and you can also see me on Bloomberg Quicktake, available
Speaker 1: on Bloomberg dot Com, slash qt, and st mean platforms
Speaker 1: like Roku, Apple TV, Samsung TV, and more. I'm Tim
Speaker 1: Stentovick and I'm Carol Mancer. This is Booker m