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Speaker 1: Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about

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Speaker 1: it it being bad things happening here here being you know,

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Speaker 1: wherever you are. We're talking specifically about wherever you are.

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Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans, one of the hosts of this podcast,

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Speaker 1: and with me today is a guy I have a

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Speaker 1: lot of admiration for probably my favorite YouTube documentarian, which

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Speaker 1: I guess would be the fastest way to sum up

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Speaker 1: who you are and what you do. Dan Olsen from

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Speaker 1: the channel Folding Ideas.

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Speaker 2: Dan. Hi, Hi, how you doing.

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Speaker 3: I'm doing well? Thanks for thanks for inviting me.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: No, Dan, you and I have like a topic of

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Speaker 1: shared interest to discuss. But the first thing I wanted

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Speaker 1: to talk about is your name on the internet is

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Speaker 1: foldable human.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: You. I don't feel like I could fold you very well. No, Okay,

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Speaker 1: So back in high school, I used.

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Speaker 3: To be like I was a really small guy, Like

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Speaker 3: I was a really skinny guy. And you remember the

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Speaker 3: you remember all the ads from the nineties for exercise equipment.

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Speaker 2: I do remember some of that. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: So the tagline that they always used for like the

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Speaker 3: as scene on TV exercise equipment was that it folds

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Speaker 3: for easy storage. Ah and being being dumb ass kids.

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Speaker 3: You know. It's like one person in our friend group

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Speaker 3: like has a car, but there's like seven of us,

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Speaker 3: and so someone's got to ride in the trunk. And

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Speaker 3: it's like, well, Dan gets to ride in the trunk,

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Speaker 3: Like we're going to stick Dan in the trunk because

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Speaker 3: he folds for easy storage. Because I was a small

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Speaker 3: guy and so it so I don't know why. When

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Speaker 3: I was like busy eric like trying to brand the channel,

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Speaker 3: like you know, a decade ago. Uh, I was like,

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Speaker 3: I had this phrase that I was using with students

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Speaker 3: that I was interacting with, was like, well, let's unfold

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Speaker 3: that idea, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, But like that.

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Speaker 2: Was kind of like on my mind.

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Speaker 3: So I was like, ah, well, we'll like call the

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Speaker 3: channel like unfolding ideas. Unfolding didn't really like just sound good,

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Speaker 3: so it's like, oh, folding ideas.

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Speaker 2: Uh. And then well.

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Speaker 3: Esthetic parallel to that, you know, foldable human. I don't

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Speaker 3: know it, it just it it came to me and

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Speaker 3: it sounded good, and it was nowhere on the internet.

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Speaker 3: There was like no overlaps. So I'm like, all right, interesting,

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Speaker 3: We're good to go. SEO locked in that's.

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Speaker 1: An example of a thing that I you know, we're talking,

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Speaker 1: We're gonna be talking a lot about stuff that's unsettling

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Speaker 1: about our modern era and how the Internet has sort

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Speaker 1: of altered human dynamics. One of the things that I

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Speaker 1: think is kind of neat about it is its ability

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Speaker 1: to kind of preserve an amber aspects of you from

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Speaker 1: the deep past. Like I have one of my emails,

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Speaker 1: like my personal email is a Gmail that I got

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Speaker 1: back when you had to get an invite to get

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Speaker 1: a Gmail, right like right when Gmail first became a thing.

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Speaker 1: And it's like, I'm not going to say it on

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Speaker 1: here because then my email will get bombarded with shit.

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Speaker 1: But like it's like a stupid joke that doesn't really

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Speaker 1: make any sense. And every time I give it to someone,

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Speaker 1: their like, why is that your email? Because I was

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Speaker 1: like twelve, Like I don't even remember why I set

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Speaker 1: this thing. It's just this like moment of something I

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Speaker 1: thought was funny when I was pre Pewbescent frozen in

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Speaker 1: amber forever. Because that's the Internet does that in little

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Speaker 1: ways for each of us.

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Speaker 3: I definitely abandoned my original something Awful account because some

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Speaker 3: like's like, you know what, maybe.

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Speaker 2: Not that user name anymore.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so you are so Dan if people are

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Speaker 1: not familiar with you, and I'm going to guess a

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Speaker 1: significant chunk of our listenership is kind of one of

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Speaker 1: the biggest touchstones for you recently was you put out

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Speaker 1: a video about the NFT craze that a lot of

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Speaker 1: people have credited with helping to kill it, me among them.

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Speaker 2: It's a wonderful, wonderful video.

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Speaker 1: Line go up was the actual title line goes yeah,

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Speaker 1: line goes up, very good breakdown of how they work,

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Speaker 1: why it was a con And you've been doing you know,

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Speaker 1: I think kind of the first really the first time

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Speaker 1: I became aware of you was you did a Flat

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Speaker 1: Earth documentary, which is is very good.

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Speaker 2: You know.

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Speaker 1: I did an article recently on like AI kids books

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Speaker 1: that was partly inspired by an investigation you did into

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Speaker 1: these kind of audible slash kindle grifters, the Mickelson Twins.

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Speaker 1: So you do that kind of thing, right like you

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Speaker 1: you you Bay, You kind of run across things that

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Speaker 1: are troubling or confusing to you, and then you investigate

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Speaker 1: them to a pretty impressive extent and put together very clear,

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Speaker 1: uh video investigations. You know, that's that's uh, I think

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Speaker 1: in a nutshell, probably pretty accurate.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's kind of where the where the channels ended up. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: it's it's been a few different things over over the years,

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Speaker 3: but that's kind of the phase that it's in right now.

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Speaker 3: Is this kind of like I don't know, like yeah, documentarian.

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Speaker 2: Place.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, a lot of your stuff seems

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Speaker 1: to focus on basically like the topic of kind of

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Speaker 1: online grifter culture and and sort of its intersection with

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Speaker 1: like different weird cultic milieuse like there's kind of a

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Speaker 1: cross especially like with NFTs, a real big crossover betwixt

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Speaker 1: the two, right, Like, it's kind of I think a

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Speaker 1: lot of crypto culture was kind of this intersection between

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Speaker 1: old school cons and kind of internet cult dynamics. So

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Speaker 1: I wanted to talk today about the problem of scam

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Speaker 1: culture in the United States because and I, by any

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Speaker 1: sort of like objective reckoning, I've been looking into this.

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Speaker 1: There are more scams and more fraud than right now

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Speaker 1: in the United States than at any point previously, and

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Speaker 1: basically from all sides, like phone scams are at the

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Speaker 1: highest rate they've ever been.

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Speaker 2: People are getting.

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Speaker 1: Like, like I think the statistic I've got is that

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Speaker 1: in March twenty one, I think is kind of when

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Speaker 1: that peaked at like four point nine billion robocall scams,

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Speaker 1: which is like like just kind of an outrageous increase

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Speaker 1: over where it was a few years ago. The rate

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Speaker 1: of like fraud against elderly people seems to be in

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Speaker 1: an all time high, at least in terms of dollar amount.

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Speaker 1: One of kind of the unsettling quotes that I came

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Speaker 1: across when I was looking into the degree to which

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Speaker 1: old people are being scammed, and it's often through various

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Speaker 1: email scams that are kind of based on getting trust

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Speaker 1: or frightening them that like someone else is trying to

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Speaker 1: scam them and so they need to give in from it. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: the thing that the quote I came across was a

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Speaker 1: regulator talking about this and being like, yeah, it's not

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Speaker 1: it's no longer like smaller even medium dollar cons. People

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Speaker 1: are stealing generational wealth, which was really interesting to me.

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Speaker 1: And then there's kind of like phishing attacks are at

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Speaker 1: pretty close to an all time high. I mean, there's

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Speaker 1: a I'll send you there's a graph that I came

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Speaker 1: across in a what was the source on this? In

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Speaker 1: a comparaateech article that I mean, it's just a straight

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Speaker 1: line up from January twenty twenty nine to like the

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Speaker 1: end of twenty twenty two. And so I'm I'm, I'm

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Speaker 1: kind of looking at all this, and there's a couple

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Speaker 1: of different causes, right, Like some of the stuff the

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Speaker 1: SEC did under ajit PI gets blamed for why it's

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Speaker 1: gotten even worse with with phone scams, although that's not

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Speaker 1: the whole story. AI powered tools have been a big

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Speaker 1: part of like why phishing attacks have increased so much.

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Speaker 1: But then like you've got like the degree to which

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Speaker 1: the elderly are being conned, which is like this kind

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Speaker 1: of at this intersection of a few different things. How

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Speaker 1: much more online old people are today than they were,

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Speaker 1: you know, ten to fifteen years ago.

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Speaker 3: For population bubble, yes, you know, multi valent dynamics.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, but kind of the commonality is that like scams

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Speaker 1: are all around, like people, we're all kind of being

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Speaker 1: assaulted by scams.

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Speaker 3: I mean time, I just I just grabbed my phone

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Speaker 3: and like of my last like fifteen text messages.

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Speaker 2: Maybe it's like.

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Speaker 3: Your pickup is available a couple like three with you know,

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Speaker 3: four with actual friends and then interact you just received

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Speaker 3: an e Interact transfer high long time, no talk, just

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Speaker 3: got your money, Okay, we'll send soon. Three hundred and

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Speaker 3: eighty nine can now be routed to your institution. Submit

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Speaker 3: Why the Canada Revenue Agency has sent you money? Your

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Speaker 3: verification code for visa transfer is And it's like it's

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Speaker 3: like it's just.

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Speaker 2: Constant, constant. I hadn't even because like.

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Speaker 3: I'm not going to be shocked at all if I

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Speaker 3: get a phishing text message during this conversation.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, like between my email and and like my text

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Speaker 1: messages or just phone calls, right, I get every day

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Speaker 1: I get two or three calls from scam likely, you know, yeah,

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Speaker 1: my good friend scam likely. Yeah, my old buddy, he's

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Speaker 1: always got always got something cooking. But yeah, it's and

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Speaker 1: I this kind of like I started focusing on this

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Speaker 1: more a couple of months ago because you know, I

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Speaker 1: had vaguely noticed, boy, it's just like nothing but fucking

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Speaker 1: scams coming into me through my phone these days. And

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Speaker 1: then a couple of months ago, I got a phone

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Speaker 1: call from my bank and it was one of those things,

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Speaker 1: like everyone else my cell phone lets me know when

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Speaker 1: like a call is from scam likely, or when it's

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Speaker 1: from like you know, and it had the name of

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Speaker 1: my bank on there. It was the right number, you know.

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Speaker 1: So I pick it up and human being is on

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Speaker 1: the line and they're like, is this you know, Robert

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Speaker 1: Evans And I'm like yeah, And then they're like, we've

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Speaker 1: seen some like fraudulent activity on your account. Can we

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Speaker 1: ask you a couple questions? And that is I've gotten

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Speaker 1: that call before. Legitimately, you know, it's not a weird

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Speaker 1: thing for your bank to be like, hey, let's talk

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Speaker 1: about these cuss.

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Speaker 3: Are you in the country right now? It's like no,

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Speaker 3: I'm I'm in New York. It's like, okay, so we're

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Speaker 3: seeing activity out in New York.

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Speaker 2: That's you.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, did you just buy something in Florida? No, I

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Speaker 1: never go to Florida, but uh so yeah so And

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Speaker 1: I didn't actually get to see where they were going

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Speaker 1: with this. Nothing suspicious had happened. But like after they

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Speaker 1: say that, I'm like okay, yeah, like what's what's the charge?

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Speaker 1: And then my phone disconnects right like it's you know again,

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Speaker 1: my where I live, you know, Oregon is the middle

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Speaker 1: of nowhere, so like sometimes connectivity is not great. So

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Speaker 1: I call them back, you know, and I get on

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Speaker 1: the phone with a person and they're like, yeah, what's

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Speaker 1: what seems to be up? And I'm like, well, you

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Speaker 1: guys called me saying that like that there was some

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Speaker 1: possibly fraudulent activity that we needed to talk about. The

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Speaker 1: lady on the other end is like, no one here

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Speaker 1: called you. Like, I'm looking at your record. I can

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Speaker 1: tell when someone's getting a call. We don't have any

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Speaker 1: record of that. And I explained what happened, and she

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Speaker 1: like goes back, talks to a supervisor and is like,

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Speaker 1: so that was a scam. They've this is something we've

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Speaker 1: seen more and more lately. They've they're able now to

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Speaker 1: actually just spoof our banks and this is my bank

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Speaker 1: is a significant sized institution. They're able to spoof our

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Speaker 1: phone number now and so you can't tell through the

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Speaker 1: caller ID, And like it was this whole thing where

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Speaker 1: like obviously I know, don't give certain things over the phone,

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Speaker 1: even if they're pretending to be your bank. We never

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Speaker 1: got to that point where anything was actually compromised, but

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Speaker 1: it was just like, well, shit, like what are you Like?

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Speaker 1: That's this is now well beyond a thing where like

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Speaker 1: you're getting called and someone's offering you you know, to

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Speaker 1: make a bunch of money, you know, holding a Nigerian

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Speaker 1: prince's wealth or something. If you sit in your bank account,

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Speaker 1: this is your bank calls you and your phone tells

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Speaker 1: you that it's your bank, and a human being who

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Speaker 1: sounds just like the bank teller like it's it's gotten

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Speaker 1: so and I think kind of the broad obviously, each

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Speaker 1: of these individual vectors by which scamming has increased is

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Speaker 1: a worthy story and a separate story in a lot

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Speaker 1: of ways, but they also come together in this like well,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's not it's not like weird at this

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Speaker 1: point to note that everybody seems angrier, and everybody seems paranoid,

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Speaker 1: and you hear more stories about like people opening fire

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Speaker 1: on folks pulling into their driveway to turn around, and

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Speaker 1: there's you know that story. Obviously there's guns and stuff

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Speaker 1: that's also connected to that. But I wonder how much

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Speaker 1: of the paranoia and anger is at least exacerbated by

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Speaker 1: the fact that everyone is fighting off a million scammers

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Speaker 1: at all times.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's a good observation, like that, just

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Speaker 3: we're seeing this erosion of public trust in reality. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: And and some of that is like deliberate and political.

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Speaker 3: Uh And a lot of it is just coming from

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Speaker 3: like the fact that technology has enabled spam in in

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Speaker 3: unprecedented new vectors and the fact that you can like

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Speaker 3: that you can automate bombarding people with.

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Speaker 2: Noise. Uh.

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Speaker 3: Is is just kind of it's eaten away at all

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Speaker 3: of us because it's like, how do I how do

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Speaker 3: I trust anything? I mean so like and this is

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Speaker 3: the thing is it's like, Okay, so I've been I've

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Speaker 3: been keyed into this and thus paranoid for like a

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Speaker 3: decade now. So if I get a message that's like,

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Speaker 3: you know, like that from my bank, if it comes

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Speaker 3: in text, then it's like I don't interact with the

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Speaker 3: original thing that it came from. I then go like

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Speaker 3: on the website. It's like all right, I like call

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Speaker 3: my bank to uh to to inquire about it. Like

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Speaker 3: never you know, it's like never communicate through the channel

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Speaker 3: that you're first contacted in.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're dealing with your bank. And it's like

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Speaker 1: and it's like, but is that level of paranoia healthy?

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Speaker 1: And it's like that takes that also takes effort.

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Speaker 3: That means you have to have the foresight to be like,

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Speaker 3: do not panic see the thing process it consciously go

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Speaker 3: somewhere else and like, you know, activate a different channel.

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Speaker 3: You know, if they contact you through text, you know,

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Speaker 3: go through like email or or like live chat. If

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Speaker 3: they contact you through email, call them on the phone,

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Speaker 3: not with the phone number that was at the bottom

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Speaker 3: of the email, go to the website. And it's like

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Speaker 3: that's effort, that's effort. I don't even have that much

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Speaker 3: energy in me sometime, and a lot of other people

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Speaker 3: just like absolutely don't. And and that leads to like

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Speaker 3: just exhaustion, vulnerability, you know, all of the things that

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Speaker 3: feed into like paranoia, distrust, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,

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Speaker 3: et cetera. And it's it's relentless. Like online advertising is

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Speaker 3: basically useless at this point. Oh yeah, because like if

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Speaker 3: you ran, if you ran a legitimate ad, you know,

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Speaker 3: unless you have the money to run like a real

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Speaker 3: proper you know, basically TV commercial. Yeah, like banner ads.

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Speaker 3: I haven't I've seen like I don't know one legitimate

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Speaker 3: banner ad for like a car company in the last year.

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Speaker 3: Everything else is like a hearing aid scam or you know,

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Speaker 3: liquefy your belly fat using the metaverse.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's it's this constant like number one, It's

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Speaker 1: led me to the situation where when I see an

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Speaker 1: ad on social media in particular, but with any sort

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Speaker 1: of like print in online ad, my assumption is it's

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Speaker 1: probably a con right. Yeah, even if it's like, oh wow,

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Speaker 1: that shirt looks nice, well, that company is probably not

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Speaker 1: going to ship me that shirt right like, or it

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Speaker 1: won't be right like, yeah, it'll be that photo is

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Speaker 1: absolutely not from the company that is running this ad.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. You just you assume you distrust as a as

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Speaker 3: a first measure. You see you see a banner ad,

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Speaker 3: you see the aesthetics of advertising, and the assumption is

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Speaker 3: that it's like, ah, that's gonna you know, that's gonna

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Speaker 3: get me to sign up for some subscription that's going

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Speaker 3: to be buried in like recurring payments that yeah, I

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Speaker 3: will never be able to cancel.

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Speaker 1: And it's it's interesting because I, I mean, I'm not

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Speaker 1: sure if this has been your experience, but like I

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Speaker 1: can acknowledge, I think I morally have to acknowledge, like

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Speaker 1: part of my success financially as a creator has been

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Speaker 1: as a result of that. Because one of the things

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Speaker 1: that we've seen in the ad market is that text ads,

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Speaker 1: ads for print and shit do not work, do not

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Speaker 1: function in any way, shape or form, and a lot

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Speaker 1: of like random innersitt ads don't work well, but creator

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Speaker 1: ads work well, and so there's money in it, right

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Speaker 1: because people listen to like people have a degree of like, Okay,

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Speaker 1: well this is like number one. It's just like the

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Speaker 1: process of consuming a YouTube video or a podcast is

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Speaker 1: different from an article. But like the ads work better

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Speaker 1: because it doesn't feel the same as like the scrum

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Speaker 1: of shit that like is getting pushed into every conversation

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Speaker 1: you have on Twitter.

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Speaker 3: Yea a human that I can confirm existence has at

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Speaker 3: least taken.

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Speaker 1: A look at this, like this is not at least

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Speaker 1: like not a complete con or whatever, right yeah, or.

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Speaker 3: If it is, then like then the host has also

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Speaker 3: has also been.

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Speaker 2: Kind of like gone by that and whatever, Like it.

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Speaker 3: Ends up, yeah, we're in this together. Like it ends

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Speaker 3: up being at least like a little bit sort of

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Speaker 3: sort of distant distanced from that, you know, like the freakin'

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Speaker 3: you know, by by a square foot of land in

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Speaker 3: Scotland and become a lord and that whole thing is

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Speaker 3: like a scam being run out of China. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I Mean one of the one of the kind of

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Speaker 3: like weird ironies for me is it's like, okay, so

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Speaker 3: line goes up, came out, well, the crypto ecosystem was

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Speaker 3: in its like biggest ad blitz ever. You know, they

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Speaker 3: had the Super Bowl ads coming up just like a

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Speaker 3: month later, actually weeks, like weeks afterwards, and so you know,

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Speaker 3: like the vast majority of the like mineral ads that

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Speaker 3: ran on that video were crypto dot Com, were ftx,

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Speaker 3: were binance, and and the ad rates that they were paying,

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Speaker 3: like the CPM that they were paying to run on

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Speaker 3: crypto relevant videos was insane. It was like it was

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Speaker 3: like twenty eleven all over again.

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Speaker 1: Twenty eleven was the only good time to be in

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Speaker 1: digital content creation. There's like a lot that's unsettling about that.

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Speaker 1: I think one of the things that is like most

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Speaker 1: frustrated to me is the degree to which it's meant

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Speaker 1: that we've we've gone backwards. Like there was this people

354
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Speaker 1: who like study tech and kind of the way socialization

355
00:19:19,520 --> 00:19:22,040
Speaker 1: around big tech works talk about this thing called the

356
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Speaker 1: trow of disappointment, right, which is when you get a

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Speaker 1: new technology, everybody we're in like the hype phase for

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Speaker 1: like AI right now, right, yeah, And then at a

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Speaker 1: certain point it becomes clear which aspects of the hype

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Speaker 1: were right, you know, the degree to which the technology

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Speaker 1: is capable of doing things that kind of the evangelists

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Speaker 1: were claiming, and to which extent the hype was wrong

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Speaker 1: right in what areas is the tech always going to

364
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Speaker 1: fall short? And that's called like the trow of disappointment

365
00:19:47,280 --> 00:19:49,480
Speaker 1: when people start to reel and then you know, things

366
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Speaker 1: kind of are supposed to level after that's dot com

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Speaker 1: is not in fact magic, Yeah, exactly, exactly. You can't

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Speaker 1: just keep shoveling money into this shit forever and the

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Speaker 1: hopes of exponential returns. Or as a consumer, like at

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Speaker 1: a certain point, I can remember the time when phones

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Speaker 1: were exciting and I was, as especially as a journalist,

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Speaker 1: like really interested every new year at like what new

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Speaker 1: things they're capable of. And then after a couple of

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Speaker 1: years it was like, well, every phone is like there's

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Speaker 1: no difference. Now there's no excitement in getting a new phone.

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Speaker 1: It's just like, well this my old phone is broken,

377
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Speaker 1: so I need a new phone. But like I'm not

378
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Speaker 1: like wow, the new capabilities of this device, but I

379
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Speaker 1: feel like there's another I don't even I don't really

380
00:20:31,000 --> 00:20:32,840
Speaker 1: know what to call it. But there's also this kind

381
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Speaker 1: of thing where we the Internet helps to create, or

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Speaker 1: is the method through which is disseminated a new labor

383
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Speaker 1: saving device, and then the scams reach such a density

384
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Speaker 1: that the amount of labor you're able to save is minimal, right,

385
00:20:48,760 --> 00:20:53,000
Speaker 1: Like that's that's I feel like there's like a that's

386
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Speaker 1: at least one of the things that I've noticed, especially

387
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Speaker 1: with like digital communication, with just communication in general. Right,

388
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Speaker 1: my smartphone made it easier to stay in touch all

389
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Speaker 1: the time, and now my smartphone like it. Obviously I

390
00:21:06,119 --> 00:21:08,720
Speaker 1: still carry the damn thing everywhere, but like my text

391
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Speaker 1: messages are mostly scams, and my emails are mostly scams,

392
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Speaker 1: and most of the calls that I get are scams.

393
00:21:13,640 --> 00:21:15,920
Speaker 2: Like yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 3: I've actually been finding myself drifting back towards email as

395
00:21:18,640 --> 00:21:22,800
Speaker 3: a communication medium just because the spam filters are better,

396
00:21:23,119 --> 00:21:26,720
Speaker 3: you know, mature and sophisticated and for the most part

397
00:21:26,760 --> 00:21:29,360
Speaker 3: they work. Yeah, like they're yeah, it's like I can

398
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Speaker 3: actually people can actually reach me by email.

399
00:21:32,600 --> 00:21:34,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty cool.

400
00:21:36,119 --> 00:21:39,720
Speaker 3: And you know, like there's there's a whole tech like

401
00:21:39,920 --> 00:21:41,400
Speaker 3: really kind of the big thing is there's this whole

402
00:21:41,440 --> 00:21:42,840
Speaker 3: technological element to it.

403
00:21:42,880 --> 00:21:44,960
Speaker 2: And you know, when you when you.

404
00:21:44,880 --> 00:21:47,320
Speaker 3: Sort of pitched the idea of this conversation with the

405
00:21:47,880 --> 00:21:51,440
Speaker 3: first two places, my brain went to where John Romulus Brinkley,

406
00:21:51,760 --> 00:21:57,040
Speaker 3: the goat testicle doctor yes, yes, yes, and pioneer of

407
00:21:57,560 --> 00:22:04,399
Speaker 3: new media radio and and of course uh and Marshall mcluan. Yeah,

408
00:22:04,400 --> 00:22:06,240
Speaker 3: you know, like those those were the those were the

409
00:22:06,240 --> 00:22:08,840
Speaker 3: two things that my brain immediately was like, this is

410
00:22:08,920 --> 00:22:10,840
Speaker 3: this is sort of like relevant to it because like

411
00:22:11,280 --> 00:22:15,439
Speaker 3: Brinkley was, he was a pioneer of radio. He he

412
00:22:16,000 --> 00:22:21,800
Speaker 3: absolutely advanced sort of the format of like what radio

413
00:22:21,920 --> 00:22:25,480
Speaker 3: could be and how you could use radio to not

414
00:22:25,720 --> 00:22:29,640
Speaker 3: just extract money from people, but get them onto your

415
00:22:29,840 --> 00:22:33,280
Speaker 3: side such that after they have given you their money,

416
00:22:33,960 --> 00:22:38,040
Speaker 3: like they're they're not just they're not just your your victims,

417
00:22:38,080 --> 00:22:41,000
Speaker 3: You're you're not just rolling into town and selling them

418
00:22:41,080 --> 00:22:44,680
Speaker 3: some some snake oil and then like skid daddling as

419
00:22:44,680 --> 00:22:48,840
Speaker 3: fast as possible, you have made them into your fans,

420
00:22:49,359 --> 00:22:52,560
Speaker 3: into your followers. And you know the way that he

421
00:22:52,640 --> 00:22:55,760
Speaker 3: did that by connecting his scam to like a sense

422
00:22:55,800 --> 00:22:59,439
Speaker 3: of identity. You know that he wasn't just this fake doctor.

423
00:22:59,480 --> 00:23:01,480
Speaker 3: He was also so effectively a pastor.

424
00:23:02,280 --> 00:23:05,639
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, people who had defend it after there was

425
00:23:05,720 --> 00:23:09,680
Speaker 1: no longer any chance of them, Like after it had

426
00:23:09,720 --> 00:23:12,359
Speaker 1: been sort of proven that the thing that he was

427
00:23:12,440 --> 00:23:15,639
Speaker 1: promising was not real, right, Yeah, like once there was

428
00:23:15,640 --> 00:23:17,879
Speaker 1: no more. It's almost like you know that play the

429
00:23:17,960 --> 00:23:21,080
Speaker 1: Music Man, Yeah, yeah, if you if you at home

430
00:23:21,200 --> 00:23:22,000
Speaker 1: or not, Like I'm not.

431
00:23:22,000 --> 00:23:24,160
Speaker 2: A huge musical theater guy. This is a pretty famous play.

432
00:23:24,200 --> 00:23:27,080
Speaker 1: But like the basic idea is this guy tells everyone come,

433
00:23:27,200 --> 00:23:29,680
Speaker 1: this con man comes to town, tells everyone he's gonna

434
00:23:29,720 --> 00:23:31,919
Speaker 1: make like a big band and raises money for it,

435
00:23:31,960 --> 00:23:34,400
Speaker 1: and his plan is to like take the money and run.

436
00:23:34,640 --> 00:23:36,960
Speaker 1: It's kind of what the Monoail Sketch and The Simpsons

437
00:23:37,040 --> 00:23:40,760
Speaker 1: is based on to a significant extent. And if I'm

438
00:23:40,800 --> 00:23:43,640
Speaker 1: remembering correctly, I shouldn't have brought this up, maybe because

439
00:23:43,640 --> 00:23:45,960
Speaker 1: I'm actually not that knowledgeable about musical theater. But my

440
00:23:46,040 --> 00:23:48,399
Speaker 1: recollection of the way it goes is that like he

441
00:23:48,480 --> 00:23:51,000
Speaker 1: falls in lover some shit and feels bad, and you know,

442
00:23:51,040 --> 00:23:54,280
Speaker 1: they wind up he winds up becoming not a con man.

443
00:23:54,359 --> 00:23:56,760
Speaker 1: But like I think the modern version of that is

444
00:23:56,800 --> 00:23:59,600
Speaker 1: he just he gets people to like adopt as a

445
00:23:59,600 --> 00:24:03,040
Speaker 1: religion and the idea that these fucking trombones and uniforms

446
00:24:03,040 --> 00:24:06,119
Speaker 1: and tubes and shit are on the way, and like,

447
00:24:06,240 --> 00:24:10,119
Speaker 1: you know, then they attack the local newspaper and string

448
00:24:10,160 --> 00:24:12,320
Speaker 1: a journalist up in the center of town for telling

449
00:24:12,359 --> 00:24:15,159
Speaker 1: them that there were ten years into this city, hasn't

450
00:24:15,200 --> 00:24:17,920
Speaker 1: started a bay anyway, whatever, Yeah, yeah.

451
00:24:17,720 --> 00:24:21,719
Speaker 3: And so so the other mccluan, you know, his his

452
00:24:21,800 --> 00:24:24,879
Speaker 3: famous postulate, the medium is the message, which remains a

453
00:24:24,960 --> 00:24:28,800
Speaker 3: radical observation to this day, is just that it's this

454
00:24:28,840 --> 00:24:34,120
Speaker 3: assertion that the medium itself is more important than any

455
00:24:34,119 --> 00:24:37,439
Speaker 3: given message on it, or even the like the the

456
00:24:37,600 --> 00:24:42,840
Speaker 3: combined weight of the individual messages. Now, I think in

457
00:24:42,880 --> 00:24:46,560
Speaker 3: some regards mccluan kind of went like overboard with that

458
00:24:46,600 --> 00:24:49,240
Speaker 3: because he said that it's like content doesn't matter at all,

459
00:24:49,280 --> 00:24:52,439
Speaker 3: and it's like, ah, I think content matters. But the

460
00:24:52,480 --> 00:24:55,520
Speaker 3: point still stands that like the medium itself, the like

461
00:24:55,680 --> 00:24:59,120
Speaker 3: the invention of radio, the invention of television, the invention

462
00:24:59,280 --> 00:25:04,000
Speaker 3: of the internet, the invention of social media had a bigger,

463
00:25:04,320 --> 00:25:06,840
Speaker 3: like has had a bigger impact than any given thing

464
00:25:06,920 --> 00:25:11,040
Speaker 3: on it, because that's the thing that ultimately we warp

465
00:25:11,080 --> 00:25:15,320
Speaker 3: our lives around that, we restructure our homes around, we

466
00:25:15,359 --> 00:25:20,680
Speaker 3: restructure our physical environment around, we restructure how we spend

467
00:25:20,880 --> 00:25:24,880
Speaker 3: our days like that, our time usage gets warped around

468
00:25:25,000 --> 00:25:29,800
Speaker 3: the medium itself, and thus the medium becomes the portal

469
00:25:29,840 --> 00:25:31,440
Speaker 3: for information to travel.

470
00:25:31,119 --> 00:25:35,120
Speaker 1: Through absolutely and it also I mean, I think there's

471
00:25:35,160 --> 00:25:38,280
Speaker 1: an extent to which that is true of kind of

472
00:25:38,280 --> 00:25:42,879
Speaker 1: the way parasocial dynamics impact things like political belief. I

473
00:25:42,920 --> 00:25:44,920
Speaker 1: think there are a lot of people, and I think

474
00:25:44,960 --> 00:25:47,080
Speaker 1: there are a lot of things that people a lot of,

475
00:25:47,200 --> 00:25:50,480
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to like radical politics, that people

476
00:25:50,520 --> 00:25:55,320
Speaker 1: adopt because somebody who they had come to already like

477
00:25:55,600 --> 00:25:58,760
Speaker 1: expresses those politics, right, and so something that maybe never

478
00:25:58,800 --> 00:26:02,120
Speaker 1: would have gotten any purchase with them suddenly is able

479
00:26:02,160 --> 00:26:04,479
Speaker 1: to get purchased with them because like a dude that

480
00:26:04,520 --> 00:26:08,399
Speaker 1: they are, a lady, that they had a parasocial relationship

481
00:26:08,560 --> 00:26:11,199
Speaker 1: express this kind of stuff. And it just it's not

482
00:26:11,280 --> 00:26:13,399
Speaker 1: that it like hacks their brain. It's not that like

483
00:26:13,520 --> 00:26:19,159
Speaker 1: people are you know, little robots. It's that, uh, this

484
00:26:19,320 --> 00:26:21,480
Speaker 1: is kind of the way influence works. It's the same

485
00:26:21,520 --> 00:26:25,520
Speaker 1: reason why like your you like, people often wind up

486
00:26:25,520 --> 00:26:28,600
Speaker 1: believing similar things to their parents or similar things to

487
00:26:28,640 --> 00:26:29,399
Speaker 1: their friends group.

488
00:26:29,640 --> 00:26:31,480
Speaker 2: You know, if your friends are.

489
00:26:31,400 --> 00:26:34,200
Speaker 1: All saying like you know, on the positive end of things,

490
00:26:34,240 --> 00:26:36,720
Speaker 1: if you're if you grow up like like I did.

491
00:26:37,040 --> 00:26:38,600
Speaker 2: I don't know about your high school, but if you.

492
00:26:38,600 --> 00:26:41,320
Speaker 3: Are like I like that. I was just thinking the

493
00:26:41,320 --> 00:26:43,840
Speaker 3: same thing. Like my vocabulary in high school.

494
00:26:43,640 --> 00:26:47,280
Speaker 1: Was yeah, yeah, there is there's a slur that starts

495
00:26:47,320 --> 00:26:49,359
Speaker 1: with F. That was like every third word out of

496
00:26:49,359 --> 00:26:52,000
Speaker 1: not just my mouth, but everyone I knew. No. The

497
00:26:52,040 --> 00:26:55,800
Speaker 1: movie super Bad captures this to a significant degree of fidelity.

498
00:26:55,800 --> 00:26:58,760
Speaker 1: To be honest, that's just the way shit was. And

499
00:26:58,880 --> 00:27:02,720
Speaker 1: like the early aughts, and then you know, the people

500
00:27:02,760 --> 00:27:05,600
Speaker 1: I hung around with, suddenly there were more people who

501
00:27:05,640 --> 00:27:08,840
Speaker 1: were openly queer. And suddenly people weren't talking that way,

502
00:27:08,960 --> 00:27:11,879
Speaker 1: and I stopped talking that way. It's just how people are.

503
00:27:12,000 --> 00:27:15,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, just from like somebody that I admired being like, hey.

504
00:27:15,200 --> 00:27:16,879
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't say that. I don't think that's cool.

505
00:27:17,240 --> 00:27:19,959
Speaker 2: Oh that is kind of fucked up.

506
00:27:20,040 --> 00:27:23,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then you know, and it's it's not an

507
00:27:24,040 --> 00:27:25,919
Speaker 1: like yeah, I can I can go to my the

508
00:27:25,960 --> 00:27:28,360
Speaker 1: subreddit for my show and see people being like yeah,

509
00:27:28,359 --> 00:27:31,600
Speaker 1: I started getting interested in like anarchist politics and history

510
00:27:31,640 --> 00:27:34,000
Speaker 1: and stuff because of something Robert said. And I don't

511
00:27:34,040 --> 00:27:36,640
Speaker 1: think that's bad, because I think anarchist's history and politics

512
00:27:36,680 --> 00:27:39,520
Speaker 1: are useful even if you're not an anarchist, Right, it's

513
00:27:39,600 --> 00:27:43,879
Speaker 1: valuable to understand that history. It's often undertold. But this

514
00:27:44,040 --> 00:27:47,040
Speaker 1: is the same dynamic, This thing which has benefited me

515
00:27:47,080 --> 00:27:49,159
Speaker 1: and to some extent benefited some of the ideas that

516
00:27:49,200 --> 00:27:52,040
Speaker 1: I think are should be more widely known. This is

517
00:27:52,080 --> 00:27:54,560
Speaker 1: also why there's more Nazis, right, like it's it's it's

518
00:27:54,640 --> 00:27:56,760
Speaker 1: cuts every where which way.

519
00:27:57,200 --> 00:27:59,080
Speaker 2: And so so mccluan.

520
00:27:59,200 --> 00:28:01,760
Speaker 3: You get these new you get the Internet, you get

521
00:28:01,760 --> 00:28:04,560
Speaker 3: the subdivisions of the Internet, like you get social media,

522
00:28:04,640 --> 00:28:09,200
Speaker 3: you get email, you get you know, instant messaging and whatnot.

523
00:28:09,359 --> 00:28:14,600
Speaker 3: And because those technologies have this gravitational effect around them

524
00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:19,400
Speaker 3: that alters the trajectory of how we structure our lives,

525
00:28:21,200 --> 00:28:26,280
Speaker 3: they become because they are potent, because they are valuable

526
00:28:26,320 --> 00:28:33,000
Speaker 3: communication vectors. They become prime targets for grift. And the

527
00:28:33,040 --> 00:28:35,840
Speaker 3: thing is is that all of these technologies that have

528
00:28:35,960 --> 00:28:40,520
Speaker 3: accelerated communication, you know, people have long been pointing out

529
00:28:40,560 --> 00:28:44,160
Speaker 3: like the negative impacts of social media, and just like

530
00:28:44,880 --> 00:28:49,680
Speaker 3: the the effect on like self esteem, self perception of

531
00:28:49,800 --> 00:28:56,280
Speaker 3: just being exposed to other people's curated, idealized version of

532
00:28:56,360 --> 00:29:02,200
Speaker 3: themselves so constantly. You know, it's like this like that's

533
00:29:02,240 --> 00:29:07,800
Speaker 3: already you know, uh, impactful in potentially negative ways.

534
00:29:08,240 --> 00:29:08,360
Speaker 1: Uh.

535
00:29:08,440 --> 00:29:11,240
Speaker 2: And that's when you're dealing with like real people.

536
00:29:11,800 --> 00:29:11,920
Speaker 1: Uh.

537
00:29:12,520 --> 00:29:16,560
Speaker 3: And but then you add on to that that it's like, oh,

538
00:29:16,680 --> 00:29:19,240
Speaker 3: you go on Instagram and like you can be following

539
00:29:19,920 --> 00:29:22,800
Speaker 3: a bot and not even know it. You know, you're

540
00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:25,720
Speaker 3: you're getting you know, and the algorithm is going to

541
00:29:25,760 --> 00:29:28,080
Speaker 3: float this stuff. And so particularly if you're looking down

542
00:29:28,120 --> 00:29:34,080
Speaker 3: these like these addictive infinite scroll feeds, uh, you know,

543
00:29:34,400 --> 00:29:39,560
Speaker 3: you don't have the filter of pre interaction to to

544
00:29:39,640 --> 00:29:42,480
Speaker 3: gauge those things. So like so like I follow you

545
00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:44,880
Speaker 3: on Twitter, and I know that if I see, like, oh,

546
00:29:44,960 --> 00:29:47,640
Speaker 3: Robert Evans has retweeted this thing, that it's like okay,

547
00:29:47,720 --> 00:29:51,000
Speaker 3: so like he's taken a look at it, uh and

548
00:29:51,000 --> 00:29:53,440
Speaker 3: and it's been through like the filter, the filter of

549
00:29:53,480 --> 00:29:56,800
Speaker 3: his brain, and so I can probably just like, you know,

550
00:29:56,920 --> 00:30:00,360
Speaker 3: take my trust in that thing up like one notch, right.

551
00:30:00,800 --> 00:30:03,080
Speaker 3: But if I'm just like scrolling down the like the

552
00:30:03,280 --> 00:30:08,000
Speaker 3: algorithmically curated like this is what our computer has determined

553
00:30:08,160 --> 00:30:12,040
Speaker 3: is similar to things that you have already looked at.

554
00:30:12,640 --> 00:30:17,200
Speaker 3: It's it's just it's so much more fraught. But there's

555
00:30:17,400 --> 00:30:21,040
Speaker 3: it's really easy to be complacent and just be like, oh,

556
00:30:21,240 --> 00:30:25,000
Speaker 3: I trust this thing, I trust this platform. And that's

557
00:30:25,000 --> 00:30:28,040
Speaker 3: where we get into the trow of disappointment. Is yeah,

558
00:30:28,080 --> 00:30:31,120
Speaker 3: this like, I trust these algorithm. These algorithms do a

559
00:30:31,160 --> 00:30:34,480
Speaker 3: really good job of like, oh, I watched Dan and

560
00:30:34,560 --> 00:30:37,880
Speaker 3: so the YouTube algorithm introduced me to like a bunch of.

561
00:30:37,840 --> 00:30:40,360
Speaker 2: Other really good creators. Cool.

562
00:30:41,040 --> 00:30:45,000
Speaker 3: Uh oops, I watched one video on flat Earth and

563
00:30:45,240 --> 00:30:51,000
Speaker 3: now my my recommends are full of like COVID denihialism

564
00:30:51,040 --> 00:30:56,440
Speaker 3: and anti maskers and you know, the Trucker movement and

565
00:30:56,440 --> 00:30:59,840
Speaker 3: and all of these other like wedges to just sort

566
00:30:59,840 --> 00:31:01,480
Speaker 3: of slowly rot in my brain.

567
00:31:03,000 --> 00:31:06,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like it it's it's like kind of the

568
00:31:06,680 --> 00:31:09,560
Speaker 1: way our parents told us, or dare or whatever told

569
00:31:09,640 --> 00:31:11,920
Speaker 1: us drugs worked, you know when we were little kids,

570
00:31:12,200 --> 00:31:14,920
Speaker 1: where someone's like, oh, you want some pot. Here's some

571
00:31:15,120 --> 00:31:17,840
Speaker 1: straight up heroin, right, like you want some of it is too,

572
00:31:17,920 --> 00:31:21,960
Speaker 1: like you want some crack cocade? No, and I it

573
00:31:22,080 --> 00:31:23,960
Speaker 1: is you know you were talking about like yeah, you

574
00:31:24,000 --> 00:31:26,800
Speaker 1: see you follow someone and you see them share something,

575
00:31:26,840 --> 00:31:28,920
Speaker 1: and if they're a trusted source for you, you know,

576
00:31:28,960 --> 00:31:31,760
Speaker 1: it bumps it up a notch. And even that you

577
00:31:31,800 --> 00:31:34,480
Speaker 1: know that's the way it, like it works for me

578
00:31:34,560 --> 00:31:36,840
Speaker 1: as well. But there's a degree to which I find

579
00:31:36,880 --> 00:31:40,920
Speaker 1: it like problematic, especially because like we all fuck around

580
00:31:41,000 --> 00:31:43,160
Speaker 1: on the internet too. I had a thing go crazy

581
00:31:43,240 --> 00:31:47,120
Speaker 1: viral recently where like someone someone posted an obviously photoshopped

582
00:31:47,160 --> 00:31:50,680
Speaker 1: image of like a control, like a Logitech controller at

583
00:31:50,680 --> 00:31:53,120
Speaker 1: the bottom of the of the sea and was like, look,

584
00:31:53,160 --> 00:31:55,840
Speaker 1: the controllers survive, and I like, I shared it to

585
00:31:55,840 --> 00:31:57,840
Speaker 1: make a joke, right, and the joke was that, like, well,

586
00:31:58,320 --> 00:32:00,360
Speaker 1: the joke was that like, well the control or we're

587
00:32:00,360 --> 00:32:02,240
Speaker 1: gonna find out was one of the more functional things

588
00:32:02,240 --> 00:32:04,480
Speaker 1: about that terrible sub and that was And I even

589
00:32:04,520 --> 00:32:07,040
Speaker 1: posted underneath it this obviously this is not a real image, guys.

590
00:32:07,080 --> 00:32:10,320
Speaker 1: But like then I saw, like I wound up finding

591
00:32:10,640 --> 00:32:12,680
Speaker 1: it went. The post that I did of it went

592
00:32:12,760 --> 00:32:15,960
Speaker 1: so viral that like it wound up like screen captain

593
00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:18,280
Speaker 1: in some different Reddit communities for people to talk about,

594
00:32:18,360 --> 00:32:20,600
Speaker 1: and they it was only the first post, not the

595
00:32:20,600 --> 00:32:22,840
Speaker 1: one where I was like, obviously this is fake, and

596
00:32:22,880 --> 00:32:24,840
Speaker 1: like it was a joke. You know, it was it

597
00:32:24,880 --> 00:32:26,680
Speaker 1: was a it was a it was a ship post.

598
00:32:27,240 --> 00:32:30,520
Speaker 1: We were banton online. Yeah yeah yeah. But also I'm like,

599
00:32:30,600 --> 00:32:33,880
Speaker 1: I wonder how many people now think that literally there's

600
00:32:33,880 --> 00:32:36,000
Speaker 1: a Logitech controller that they found at the bottom of.

601
00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:36,920
Speaker 2: The sea because of that?

602
00:32:38,680 --> 00:32:40,800
Speaker 1: What is what are the ethics now of like making

603
00:32:40,840 --> 00:32:44,280
Speaker 1: a making a ji a jape as like somebody who's

604
00:32:44,320 --> 00:32:46,440
Speaker 1: got like a following, like where does that come into?

605
00:32:46,480 --> 00:32:48,560
Speaker 1: And like I don't know, and I don't I'm certainly

606
00:32:48,600 --> 00:32:51,200
Speaker 1: not like clear on it because I seem to be

607
00:32:51,240 --> 00:32:54,080
Speaker 1: incapable of not shit posting. I spent too much time

608
00:32:54,080 --> 00:32:55,200
Speaker 1: on something awful as well.

609
00:32:57,360 --> 00:32:58,560
Speaker 2: But it's so.

610
00:32:58,680 --> 00:32:59,959
Speaker 3: It's so hard to give up.

611
00:33:00,120 --> 00:33:01,000
Speaker 2: I miss it.

612
00:33:01,080 --> 00:33:03,160
Speaker 3: I miss the days when I could just make like

613
00:33:03,400 --> 00:33:08,600
Speaker 3: tasteless jokes on on on Twitter and you know, a

614
00:33:08,640 --> 00:33:12,120
Speaker 3: couple hundred people would see them and go like that's funny. Uh.

615
00:33:12,160 --> 00:33:14,880
Speaker 3: And now it's like, ah, if if I'm a little

616
00:33:14,880 --> 00:33:17,600
Speaker 3: too ironic, someone's going to be like, oh crap, are

617
00:33:17,760 --> 00:33:20,320
Speaker 3: are you like that happened? It's like, no, no, that

618
00:33:20,360 --> 00:33:22,200
Speaker 3: did not happen. But that did not happen. This is

619
00:33:22,280 --> 00:33:22,880
Speaker 3: this is fake.

620
00:33:22,960 --> 00:33:25,160
Speaker 2: I am. I am telling you lies for it was

621
00:33:25,200 --> 00:33:26,400
Speaker 2: a bit, but it was a bit.

622
00:33:26,880 --> 00:33:30,120
Speaker 1: I was doing a bit, but no, And that's like,

623
00:33:30,520 --> 00:33:33,960
Speaker 1: you know, something awful, which is kind of the the

624
00:33:33,960 --> 00:33:37,240
Speaker 1: the digit It's like the oh crap, now I've forgotten

625
00:33:37,240 --> 00:33:38,600
Speaker 1: a very basic science team, you know.

626
00:33:38,560 --> 00:33:41,040
Speaker 2: The big the big puddle of boiling goop.

627
00:33:41,120 --> 00:33:45,480
Speaker 1: That life came out of the prim It's the primordial,

628
00:33:45,520 --> 00:33:49,880
Speaker 1: primordial of digital culture. That's what Something Awful was. It

629
00:33:49,960 --> 00:33:53,200
Speaker 1: was a forum website that gave birth in various ways,

630
00:33:53,240 --> 00:33:56,640
Speaker 1: some direct and some indirect to four Chan, to Reddit,

631
00:33:57,560 --> 00:34:00,000
Speaker 1: to Twitter culture, you know, to all of these different

632
00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:03,320
Speaker 1: to anonymous, to all of these different things have a

633
00:34:03,440 --> 00:34:07,840
Speaker 1: you can trace a lineage back to Something Awful. And

634
00:34:08,440 --> 00:34:11,280
Speaker 1: the motto of that website, as written by the terrible

635
00:34:11,320 --> 00:34:13,920
Speaker 1: person who founded it, was the Internet makes you stupid.

636
00:34:15,080 --> 00:34:20,640
Speaker 1: And I at the time what that kind of meant was.

637
00:34:20,960 --> 00:34:23,880
Speaker 1: And if you're younger, or if you just weren't very

638
00:34:23,960 --> 00:34:26,040
Speaker 1: online in the late nineties early two thousands, you may

639
00:34:26,080 --> 00:34:28,440
Speaker 1: not remember this long period, but there was a fairly

640
00:34:28,480 --> 00:34:32,120
Speaker 1: long period where the default assumption in regular society was

641
00:34:32,840 --> 00:34:37,880
Speaker 1: whatever happens online doesn't matter, right, like, it can't matter.

642
00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:42,760
Speaker 3: Probably fraudulent, it's almost certainly like made up. You can't

643
00:34:42,960 --> 00:34:45,400
Speaker 3: you can't trust anything online.

644
00:34:45,160 --> 00:34:47,960
Speaker 1: And real people are not on the internet, right, Like

645
00:34:48,480 --> 00:34:51,359
Speaker 1: it's kids, it's nerds, but like, you know, guys who

646
00:34:51,440 --> 00:34:54,160
Speaker 1: run banks aren't online. You know, Like the idea that

647
00:34:54,200 --> 00:34:56,359
Speaker 1: the richest man in the world would spend all of

648
00:34:56,400 --> 00:35:01,879
Speaker 1: his time shit posting was absurd, Like, so.

649
00:35:02,840 --> 00:35:05,560
Speaker 3: He really should be busier than he observably is he?

650
00:35:05,680 --> 00:35:07,799
Speaker 1: Certainly it seems like it, although I guess so should

651
00:35:07,840 --> 00:35:10,000
Speaker 1: I if I if.

652
00:35:09,920 --> 00:35:14,240
Speaker 2: I'm being fair, But yeah, it's.

653
00:35:15,600 --> 00:35:21,319
Speaker 1: There's this, uh, this degree to which digital culture is

654
00:35:21,360 --> 00:35:24,719
Speaker 1: still very much a huge chunk of it. Like we

655
00:35:24,760 --> 00:35:27,200
Speaker 1: all want it to not matter. We all want a

656
00:35:27,200 --> 00:35:30,240
Speaker 1: place where we can just shit post and bullshit because

657
00:35:30,239 --> 00:35:33,279
Speaker 1: shit posting and bullshiting comes out of like the very

658
00:35:33,320 --> 00:35:36,120
Speaker 1: same impulses that like determine a lot of how we

659
00:35:36,160 --> 00:35:38,640
Speaker 1: interact with like our friends, right, you know, we all

660
00:35:38,640 --> 00:35:40,600
Speaker 1: need some times where you can just sit down, have

661
00:35:40,640 --> 00:35:44,000
Speaker 1: a couple of beers or whatever and like say shit

662
00:35:44,120 --> 00:35:46,440
Speaker 1: with your with your buds, you know, and it's not

663
00:35:46,960 --> 00:35:50,480
Speaker 1: it's not being recorded, it's not going up any everywhere forever.

664
00:35:50,600 --> 00:35:53,160
Speaker 1: You can just kind of like talk. This is the

665
00:35:53,480 --> 00:35:56,080
Speaker 1: it's a it's a field almost social experimentation is a

666
00:35:56,160 --> 00:36:00,359
Speaker 1: huge part of maturity of growing up, becoming a person. Uh,

667
00:36:00,400 --> 00:36:04,840
Speaker 1: and I think we all get kind of there's a

668
00:36:04,880 --> 00:36:08,080
Speaker 1: degree of like the accessibility of the Internet that makes

669
00:36:08,160 --> 00:36:11,160
Speaker 1: that impossible to entirely get over even though it is

670
00:36:11,200 --> 00:36:15,200
Speaker 1: demonstrably untrue. What happens on the Internet matters quite a lot,

671
00:36:15,560 --> 00:36:19,080
Speaker 1: and you can have a real significant you can influence

672
00:36:19,120 --> 00:36:22,279
Speaker 1: your own life in very negative ways by saying.

673
00:36:21,960 --> 00:36:24,000
Speaker 2: The wrong thing on the Internet at the wrong time.

674
00:36:24,280 --> 00:36:38,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean lots of people have observed just this

675
00:36:38,080 --> 00:36:40,200
Speaker 3: fact that it's like on Reddit, you can you're not

676
00:36:40,239 --> 00:36:42,799
Speaker 3: on Reddit, I mean on Reddit too, but you know,

677
00:36:42,880 --> 00:36:47,560
Speaker 3: on Twitter, like once, you know, once a month, Twitter

678
00:36:47,640 --> 00:36:55,560
Speaker 3: elects some ten follower anime profile pick with who with

679
00:36:55,560 --> 00:36:58,759
Speaker 3: with a single tasteless joke and makes it the full

680
00:36:58,800 --> 00:36:59,719
Speaker 3: crim of reality.

681
00:37:01,200 --> 00:37:04,879
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's like that's a and.

682
00:37:04,880 --> 00:37:07,120
Speaker 3: The thing, I don't think this is actually that far

683
00:37:07,160 --> 00:37:11,759
Speaker 3: off topic, just because like it's this warping of reality,

684
00:37:11,880 --> 00:37:15,520
Speaker 3: this warping of like what is real, what is trustworthy,

685
00:37:15,920 --> 00:37:19,160
Speaker 3: what are the like impacts of things, And the fact

686
00:37:19,200 --> 00:37:23,719
Speaker 3: that like you know, ten follower account can become can

687
00:37:23,760 --> 00:37:29,680
Speaker 3: become international news. Yeah, has to sit alongside the endless

688
00:37:29,680 --> 00:37:35,799
Speaker 3: bombardment of Dick pills and global leaders. Like I had

689
00:37:35,800 --> 00:37:37,759
Speaker 3: this joke that I was trying to formulate over the

690
00:37:37,800 --> 00:37:42,279
Speaker 3: weekend of like World War two with Twitter, where it's like,

691
00:37:42,440 --> 00:37:45,279
Speaker 3: you know, just a joke hinging on the idea that

692
00:37:45,360 --> 00:37:49,000
Speaker 3: some like follower bought would observe this like, ah, it's like,

693
00:37:49,320 --> 00:37:51,279
Speaker 3: you know, two posts in a row, Like it's like

694
00:37:51,320 --> 00:37:55,320
Speaker 3: the USSR has rolled into Berlin, Stalin has unfriended the President.

695
00:37:55,560 --> 00:37:59,719
Speaker 3: I hope this doesn't mean anything, you know that it's

696
00:37:59,719 --> 00:38:04,200
Speaker 3: like the you have, like you have international politics happening

697
00:38:04,760 --> 00:38:09,000
Speaker 3: in the same space as fake international politics, as the

698
00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:13,000
Speaker 3: same space as just like this endless bombardment of you know,

699
00:38:14,200 --> 00:38:20,239
Speaker 3: of curated reality, fictionalized reality, unreality and spam, and no

700
00:38:20,239 --> 00:38:23,680
Speaker 3: one knows what's real anymore, no one knows what to trust,

701
00:38:23,760 --> 00:38:27,160
Speaker 3: and the instinct and a lot of people is to

702
00:38:27,280 --> 00:38:29,799
Speaker 3: just give up trying to parse the difference. And that

703
00:38:29,960 --> 00:38:32,480
Speaker 3: makes us like increasingly vulnerable.

704
00:38:33,520 --> 00:38:36,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think.

705
00:38:37,960 --> 00:38:42,360
Speaker 1: A big part of what's what's kind of at the

706
00:38:42,360 --> 00:38:45,000
Speaker 1: core of the problem here is what you've said here

707
00:38:45,080 --> 00:38:46,840
Speaker 1: makes us vulnerable. The degree to which this can be

708
00:38:46,880 --> 00:38:51,279
Speaker 1: weaponized is really significant, Like the you know, one of

709
00:38:51,360 --> 00:38:52,920
Speaker 1: the things that we saw that I think is kind

710
00:38:52,920 --> 00:38:57,080
Speaker 1: of low key a significant moment in sort of info conflict.

711
00:38:57,120 --> 00:39:01,239
Speaker 1: Shit is this last this weekend, last weekend from you

712
00:39:01,280 --> 00:39:04,879
Speaker 1: know where we're talking now, there was a mutiny by

713
00:39:05,000 --> 00:39:09,840
Speaker 1: the Wagner Mercenary forces in Ukraine and southern Russia against

714
00:39:09,840 --> 00:39:12,840
Speaker 1: the Russian government, or at least that's what it appears

715
00:39:12,840 --> 00:39:15,120
Speaker 1: to have been now right, this is Russia. A lot

716
00:39:15,160 --> 00:39:16,719
Speaker 1: of this is really weird. So I'm not going to

717
00:39:16,800 --> 00:39:20,120
Speaker 1: say we know, we don't. We certainly don't know entirely

718
00:39:20,200 --> 00:39:23,200
Speaker 1: like what happened there, like what's going on there? But

719
00:39:24,239 --> 00:39:27,760
Speaker 1: a couple of things happened very quickly. For one, folks

720
00:39:27,800 --> 00:39:29,880
Speaker 1: on the right, and there were also a lot of

721
00:39:29,960 --> 00:39:33,480
Speaker 1: kind of like shit had left people who adopted this

722
00:39:33,520 --> 00:39:37,160
Speaker 1: too decided that liberals were cheering on the head of

723
00:39:37,200 --> 00:39:42,000
Speaker 1: Wagner Yvjiny Pregoshin because like they believed he was a

724
00:39:42,040 --> 00:39:44,040
Speaker 1: reformer and that like they'd all thought this guy, who

725
00:39:44,080 --> 00:39:46,920
Speaker 1: was like objectively a piece of shit and a fascist,

726
00:39:47,000 --> 00:39:49,080
Speaker 1: is like they're cheering him on because they hate Putin

727
00:39:49,160 --> 00:39:51,640
Speaker 1: so much and they've convinced themselves that he's you know,

728
00:39:51,680 --> 00:39:53,560
Speaker 1: going to fix Russia, and he's like, no, no, I

729
00:39:53,760 --> 00:39:57,080
Speaker 1: didn't see that. Like, look, I love calling people out

730
00:39:57,120 --> 00:39:59,920
Speaker 1: when they have shitty takes, specifically on this specific war,

731
00:40:00,040 --> 00:40:02,440
Speaker 1: because I've been covering it since twenty fourteen, But like,

732
00:40:02,680 --> 00:40:04,960
Speaker 1: I didn't see that, and none of the people talking

733
00:40:04,960 --> 00:40:08,560
Speaker 1: about how liberals were doing this provided any evidence of it.

734
00:40:08,600 --> 00:40:11,000
Speaker 1: And it happens all the time, right Sometimes people will

735
00:40:11,000 --> 00:40:13,640
Speaker 1: like take a post that has like thirty likes and

736
00:40:13,680 --> 00:40:16,120
Speaker 1: be like, this is what the left is saying, But

737
00:40:16,239 --> 00:40:18,399
Speaker 1: like with this, there was even less. Like I didn't

738
00:40:18,440 --> 00:40:21,560
Speaker 1: see a single post where someone was like, Pregosion's gonna

739
00:40:21,600 --> 00:40:24,120
Speaker 1: like fix you know, corruption in Russia or whatever. No

740
00:40:24,160 --> 00:40:27,520
Speaker 1: one was saying that they just invented that this was

741
00:40:27,560 --> 00:40:29,840
Speaker 1: going on. And it part of it is that, like,

742
00:40:30,719 --> 00:40:32,520
Speaker 1: you know, the way Twitter works now made it a

743
00:40:32,560 --> 00:40:35,439
Speaker 1: lot easier for dis info to spread from this thing,

744
00:40:35,520 --> 00:40:38,120
Speaker 1: Like there was very famously a guy who is an

745
00:40:38,239 --> 00:40:41,400
Speaker 1: absolutely a con artist just started sharing up bunch of

746
00:40:41,520 --> 00:40:44,759
Speaker 1: videos from there with like bad commentary that was inaccurate,

747
00:40:44,880 --> 00:40:45,520
Speaker 1: and Elon.

748
00:40:45,400 --> 00:40:47,080
Speaker 2: Musk was like, this is the guy I've come to

749
00:40:47,120 --> 00:40:48,920
Speaker 2: trust about. You can say Elon Musk.

750
00:40:49,120 --> 00:40:52,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, we can say Elon Musk I don't know. It's

751
00:40:52,719 --> 00:40:54,080
Speaker 1: a problem, Dan, So.

752
00:40:54,200 --> 00:40:56,319
Speaker 3: You beat me to Elon Musk because I was going

753
00:40:56,400 --> 00:40:58,279
Speaker 3: to say this like the con artist was. But then

754
00:40:58,320 --> 00:41:00,480
Speaker 3: it turns out that he was just retweeting that is,

755
00:41:00,520 --> 00:41:02,680
Speaker 3: like he got of course he got involved anyway.

756
00:41:02,840 --> 00:41:07,759
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And it's the I don't think this the

757
00:41:07,800 --> 00:41:10,960
Speaker 1: solution was not because we lived, you know, our parents

758
00:41:10,960 --> 00:41:13,239
Speaker 1: and grandparents lived to the day where most people would

759
00:41:13,280 --> 00:41:16,080
Speaker 1: be like, well, you know, folks who are in politics

760
00:41:16,160 --> 00:41:18,040
Speaker 1: maybe need to care about this. I might want to

761
00:41:18,040 --> 00:41:21,280
Speaker 1: get the broad strokes of it, but like random people,

762
00:41:21,600 --> 00:41:25,480
Speaker 1: you know, shouldn't be influencing what's going on with these

763
00:41:25,520 --> 00:41:27,880
Speaker 1: international relations. And that's how you get shited, like the

764
00:41:27,960 --> 00:41:30,759
Speaker 1: Dulles brothers carrying out coups all over the world on

765
00:41:30,840 --> 00:41:33,120
Speaker 1: behalf of the US government, where most Americans are like.

766
00:41:33,040 --> 00:41:34,160
Speaker 2: What did we do in Guatemala?

767
00:41:34,200 --> 00:41:36,680
Speaker 1: I didn't know we had guys in Guatemala and that

768
00:41:36,760 --> 00:41:39,960
Speaker 1: wasn't great. But also this new thing where if you

769
00:41:40,040 --> 00:41:44,840
Speaker 1: are a personality, if you are in media, then you

770
00:41:44,920 --> 00:41:48,200
Speaker 1: are obliged to be a part of every big thing

771
00:41:48,239 --> 00:41:52,319
Speaker 1: that happens everywhere, even if you are demonstrably incompetent at

772
00:41:52,320 --> 00:41:55,360
Speaker 1: that and everyone is demonstrably incompetent at that past a

773
00:41:55,400 --> 00:41:55,960
Speaker 1: certain point.

774
00:41:56,080 --> 00:41:56,239
Speaker 2: You know.

775
00:41:57,040 --> 00:41:59,759
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's been Oh boy has that. That's been

776
00:41:59,800 --> 00:42:00,759
Speaker 3: a lot to deal with.

777
00:42:01,120 --> 00:42:04,160
Speaker 1: And it going back to the original thing that started

778
00:42:04,160 --> 00:42:06,879
Speaker 1: this conversation. That's part of how so many of these

779
00:42:06,920 --> 00:42:12,320
Speaker 1: cons perpetuate is that, like people are only competent, including

780
00:42:12,360 --> 00:42:16,960
Speaker 1: famous people, including people with followings in limited areas, and

781
00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:19,480
Speaker 1: once you get out of your area of competence, it's

782
00:42:19,520 --> 00:42:21,759
Speaker 1: easy to get fooled. And if there's a bunch of

783
00:42:21,760 --> 00:42:23,640
Speaker 1: people who trust you because of the things you were

784
00:42:23,719 --> 00:42:26,600
Speaker 1: right about, then they can very easily get fooled when

785
00:42:26,600 --> 00:42:27,360
Speaker 1: you get fooled.

786
00:42:27,880 --> 00:42:31,879
Speaker 3: One of the big hazards there is that, and this

787
00:42:31,920 --> 00:42:36,760
Speaker 3: is a long standing observation, is that huckster's con artists

788
00:42:37,360 --> 00:42:40,719
Speaker 3: are going to be more willing than anyone else to

789
00:42:40,880 --> 00:42:45,200
Speaker 3: pretend to be up to date on it. They have

790
00:42:45,280 --> 00:42:47,359
Speaker 3: no compunction about being It's like, oh, yeah, I know,

791
00:42:47,440 --> 00:42:55,319
Speaker 3: I'm an expert on submarines and Ukraine and Russia and belarush, yeah.

792
00:42:55,239 --> 00:42:56,440
Speaker 2: You know, so there.

793
00:42:58,680 --> 00:43:00,800
Speaker 3: The reason it's a con man is it's a confidence

794
00:43:00,800 --> 00:43:03,759
Speaker 3: man because they get your confidence because they act confidently

795
00:43:04,239 --> 00:43:07,160
Speaker 3: and give you reason to give you reason to trust them,

796
00:43:07,320 --> 00:43:09,719
Speaker 3: and they have no moral compunction about lying to you.

797
00:43:10,360 --> 00:43:10,480
Speaker 1: Uh.

798
00:43:10,960 --> 00:43:15,920
Speaker 3: And and they are always going to be faster with

799
00:43:16,160 --> 00:43:19,880
Speaker 3: the take, faster with the confidence statement, faster with the solution,

800
00:43:20,160 --> 00:43:23,719
Speaker 3: faster with the with with a call to action to

801
00:43:24,120 --> 00:43:25,400
Speaker 3: buy their book or dick pills.

802
00:43:26,440 --> 00:43:29,759
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's it's the And often I think part

803
00:43:29,760 --> 00:43:31,439
Speaker 1: one of the things that's made this all so much

804
00:43:31,480 --> 00:43:33,520
Speaker 1: harder to catch and so much more durable is that

805
00:43:33,560 --> 00:43:36,160
Speaker 1: it's it used to be as obvious. You used to

806
00:43:36,160 --> 00:43:37,799
Speaker 1: be able to see like, Okay, well, this guy's a

807
00:43:37,840 --> 00:43:40,799
Speaker 1: con man, but like, I'm not a person who can

808
00:43:40,840 --> 00:43:44,319
Speaker 1: be conned by someone selling diet pills. That's not my vulnerability,

809
00:43:44,360 --> 00:43:46,719
Speaker 1: so I immediately recognize this guy as a con man. Or

810
00:43:47,000 --> 00:43:49,000
Speaker 1: I am not a person who can be conned by

811
00:43:49,560 --> 00:43:51,880
Speaker 1: Christianity stuff because I'm not a Christian, So I'm not

812
00:43:52,640 --> 00:43:55,840
Speaker 1: vulnerable to this con man. And now so much the

813
00:43:55,960 --> 00:44:01,280
Speaker 1: cons are downstream of the fot and of the fame,

814
00:44:01,520 --> 00:44:04,319
Speaker 1: and so a lot of people are getting taken in

815
00:44:04,360 --> 00:44:06,920
Speaker 1: by conman. And maybe you know the fact that person's

816
00:44:06,920 --> 00:44:09,080
Speaker 1: putting in a link for their their's supplements. You know,

817
00:44:09,200 --> 00:44:12,640
Speaker 1: on every viral post you don't buy their supplements, but

818
00:44:12,680 --> 00:44:14,920
Speaker 1: they'll come up with something else for you once they

819
00:44:14,960 --> 00:44:18,560
Speaker 1: get you in, once you're in the funnel, or even

820
00:44:18,560 --> 00:44:21,279
Speaker 1: if they never convince you to buy anything, if you're

821
00:44:21,320 --> 00:44:24,200
Speaker 1: sharing their content, that's bringing more people into the funnel,

822
00:44:24,480 --> 00:44:26,399
Speaker 1: you know, and that really wasn't the case. That wasn't

823
00:44:26,440 --> 00:44:28,759
Speaker 1: the case with you know, you go back ten years

824
00:44:28,760 --> 00:44:30,799
Speaker 1: talking about like Young Living, right, or some other like

825
00:44:30,880 --> 00:44:34,160
Speaker 1: multi level marketing company where they're selling you know, essential

826
00:44:34,160 --> 00:44:38,360
Speaker 1: oils with fraudulent health claims. They weren't getting random people

827
00:44:38,480 --> 00:44:41,799
Speaker 1: to spread their business without paying for shit. And now

828
00:44:41,840 --> 00:44:43,840
Speaker 1: you can do that. If you're a con man and

829
00:44:43,920 --> 00:44:46,640
Speaker 1: you've already got followers because you bought a bunch and

830
00:44:46,719 --> 00:44:49,320
Speaker 1: you're you're on the Ukraine, shit, you just grab whatever

831
00:44:49,400 --> 00:44:52,759
Speaker 1: videos and say whatever about them, you know, frame them

832
00:44:52,760 --> 00:44:55,000
Speaker 1: in whatever way is likely to get people to share

833
00:44:55,000 --> 00:44:58,120
Speaker 1: them the most. Then suddenly you gain two thousand, three

834
00:44:58,160 --> 00:44:59,920
Speaker 1: hundred thousand followers in the space of a night or

835
00:45:00,120 --> 00:45:02,920
Speaker 1: to and your ability to scam people and get money

836
00:45:02,920 --> 00:45:05,759
Speaker 1: out of them has increased several times. You know, the

837
00:45:06,120 --> 00:45:10,560
Speaker 1: con is downstream of the of the platform, right, so

838
00:45:11,680 --> 00:45:14,560
Speaker 1: you know that's you get this guy and maybe he's

839
00:45:14,560 --> 00:45:17,080
Speaker 1: shilling thing X or thing. Why he's got a couple,

840
00:45:17,200 --> 00:45:20,960
Speaker 1: you know, whatever different con he has. But regular people

841
00:45:21,200 --> 00:45:23,960
Speaker 1: can be in the in the business of spreading his platform,

842
00:45:24,040 --> 00:45:27,400
Speaker 1: of increasing his profitability, even if they're not vulnerable to

843
00:45:27,440 --> 00:45:29,000
Speaker 1: the con. Maybe they're not the kind of person who's

844
00:45:29,000 --> 00:45:32,640
Speaker 1: ever going to buy weight loss pills or supplements or

845
00:45:32,680 --> 00:45:36,560
Speaker 1: whatever kind of thing. But if this guy starts, you know,

846
00:45:37,000 --> 00:45:39,760
Speaker 1: sharing all of these videos on the fighting in Ukraine,

847
00:45:39,920 --> 00:45:41,520
Speaker 1: you know, at a moment when it happens to be

848
00:45:41,600 --> 00:45:44,440
Speaker 1: the opportune moment to do that, and they go crazy viral,

849
00:45:44,840 --> 00:45:47,719
Speaker 1: well then that guy is able to triple his following

850
00:45:47,920 --> 00:45:51,000
Speaker 1: and you know, and have people who are not interested

851
00:45:51,000 --> 00:45:53,840
Speaker 1: in his con spread his shit, which gets him followers,

852
00:45:53,840 --> 00:45:56,480
Speaker 1: which brings more traffic to whatever the money generating part

853
00:45:56,520 --> 00:46:02,000
Speaker 1: of the con is. Yeah, it's it's all a sales funnel.

854
00:46:02,320 --> 00:46:06,759
Speaker 1: Are just anxiety lives we have.

855
00:46:06,719 --> 00:46:10,560
Speaker 3: Built our society into just like a giant nested series

856
00:46:10,600 --> 00:46:14,560
Speaker 3: of sales funnels. Yeah, I don't know that's bound to

857
00:46:14,600 --> 00:46:16,799
Speaker 3: be a solid foundation. I don't see if you go wrong,

858
00:46:16,920 --> 00:46:18,760
Speaker 3: that seems like that will go well for us.

859
00:46:18,960 --> 00:46:20,839
Speaker 1: How do we get any ideas on how to fix

860
00:46:20,880 --> 00:46:23,839
Speaker 1: it or should we just should we just state a

861
00:46:23,880 --> 00:46:25,080
Speaker 1: problem and then run away.

862
00:46:25,480 --> 00:46:28,480
Speaker 3: I mean, the easy thing to do would be to

863
00:46:28,520 --> 00:46:34,200
Speaker 3: restore trust in our public institutions. You know, if we

864
00:46:34,280 --> 00:46:39,640
Speaker 3: could uh have sort of like I don't even want

865
00:46:39,680 --> 00:46:43,120
Speaker 3: to say, like a unifying cause, but just a sense

866
00:46:43,160 --> 00:46:47,640
Speaker 3: of common of like shared commonalty and and trust in

867
00:46:47,800 --> 00:46:52,560
Speaker 3: like our local our local society, you know, strong like

868
00:46:52,960 --> 00:46:57,440
Speaker 3: not necessarily strong families, but like strong family units constructed

869
00:46:57,760 --> 00:47:01,440
Speaker 3: or natural or however you want to like defin our constructors,

870
00:47:01,440 --> 00:47:05,160
Speaker 3: but like local with like good infrastructure around us, so

871
00:47:05,200 --> 00:47:09,600
Speaker 3: that our physical spaces are you know, appealing and comfortable

872
00:47:09,640 --> 00:47:12,239
Speaker 3: to live in and and provide us a sense of

873
00:47:12,320 --> 00:47:14,440
Speaker 3: like enrichment and fulfillment.

874
00:47:14,760 --> 00:47:15,840
Speaker 2: You know, the easy stuff.

875
00:47:16,400 --> 00:47:20,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, just just fix infrastructure, fix society, fix media, and

876
00:47:21,120 --> 00:47:22,839
Speaker 3: uh and then I think we're good.

877
00:47:23,600 --> 00:47:23,960
Speaker 2: Yeah.

878
00:47:24,040 --> 00:47:26,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's that's good. So if we fix everything,

879
00:47:26,719 --> 00:47:30,280
Speaker 1: then we won't have any more problems. That's great. We're

880
00:47:30,320 --> 00:47:32,640
Speaker 1: on the same page now. I mean it is really

881
00:47:32,719 --> 00:47:35,600
Speaker 1: like and this is there's it's also there's also this

882
00:47:35,680 --> 00:47:37,879
Speaker 1: kind of like problematic element of when you're like, well,

883
00:47:37,880 --> 00:47:40,759
Speaker 1: we want to like a problem is that there's zero

884
00:47:40,800 --> 00:47:43,840
Speaker 1: trust in institutions objectively a problem because it means that

885
00:47:43,880 --> 00:47:46,960
Speaker 1: when say the CDC is like, hey, guys, there's this,

886
00:47:47,120 --> 00:47:49,000
Speaker 1: there's a plague, we should probably do this and this

887
00:47:49,080 --> 00:47:51,719
Speaker 1: and this, it immediately becomes a culture war thing. And

888
00:47:51,800 --> 00:47:55,719
Speaker 1: so you can't actually you can't actually confront serious problems

889
00:47:55,719 --> 00:47:57,600
Speaker 1: the way that you need to be able to confront them.

890
00:47:57,840 --> 00:48:03,319
Speaker 1: It's just not possible anymore. Likewise, Like, but the other

891
00:48:03,360 --> 00:48:05,560
Speaker 1: issue is that like, well, for a significant chunks of

892
00:48:05,560 --> 00:48:08,680
Speaker 1: the population, there's never been any good reason to trust

893
00:48:08,880 --> 00:48:11,880
Speaker 1: you know, the institutions because you know, they're marginalized groups

894
00:48:11,880 --> 00:48:15,200
Speaker 1: and whatever, you know, when the institutional trust was higher,

895
00:48:15,280 --> 00:48:17,080
Speaker 1: like the government was fucking them in this way and

896
00:48:17,160 --> 00:48:21,120
Speaker 1: that way, and yeah, you know that's also so I wonder,

897
00:48:21,800 --> 00:48:24,160
Speaker 1: like I think there's a significant extent to which we

898
00:48:24,239 --> 00:48:28,640
Speaker 1: need new concepts of like what an institution is and

899
00:48:29,160 --> 00:48:31,960
Speaker 1: should be, Like we need It's it's such a ground

900
00:48:32,000 --> 00:48:35,200
Speaker 1: floor problem because like I don't know, we're never getting

901
00:48:35,239 --> 00:48:37,920
Speaker 1: back to a point where Americans trust the CDC. Like

902
00:48:38,000 --> 00:48:40,640
Speaker 1: that's just not going to happen, you know, Like whatever

903
00:48:40,760 --> 00:48:45,080
Speaker 1: the way forward is on us having less the overcoming

904
00:48:45,120 --> 00:48:48,719
Speaker 1: the anti vax anti science shit around medicine it's not

905
00:48:48,920 --> 00:48:51,480
Speaker 1: getting everyone to love the CDC. You know, that's just

906
00:48:51,560 --> 00:48:52,960
Speaker 1: not ever going to happen again.

907
00:48:53,120 --> 00:48:53,560
Speaker 2: Yeah.

908
00:48:53,719 --> 00:48:56,200
Speaker 3: And part of the complexity here is that it's it's

909
00:48:56,239 --> 00:48:59,160
Speaker 3: really easy to sort of say that, you know, it's like, Okay,

910
00:48:59,200 --> 00:49:03,960
Speaker 3: well the solution is like strong central institutions, and it's

911
00:49:03,960 --> 00:49:09,360
Speaker 3: like that's not that's not correct at all either, because

912
00:49:09,400 --> 00:49:12,000
Speaker 3: like I mean, the my go to example for that

913
00:49:12,040 --> 00:49:13,600
Speaker 3: would be that it's like look at look at the

914
00:49:13,680 --> 00:49:15,920
Speaker 3: LDS Church, look at Mormons. They have a very very

915
00:49:15,960 --> 00:49:21,080
Speaker 3: strong central institution that provides this like social anchoring point

916
00:49:21,400 --> 00:49:25,360
Speaker 3: for a lot of their lives, and yet Mormon communities

917
00:49:25,400 --> 00:49:30,400
Speaker 3: are incredibly vulnerable to affinity fraud and and MLM's you know,

918
00:49:30,520 --> 00:49:36,200
Speaker 3: like Utah Salt Lake is like the locus of MLM culture,

919
00:49:36,640 --> 00:49:40,880
Speaker 3: and so like it's not the sort of like strong

920
00:49:40,920 --> 00:49:43,319
Speaker 3: man like, ah, this is why we need strong like

921
00:49:43,400 --> 00:49:48,960
Speaker 3: you know, strong leaders is not isn't the answer in

922
00:49:49,320 --> 00:49:51,319
Speaker 3: its own way, even if it's a very tempting sort

923
00:49:51,360 --> 00:49:53,400
Speaker 3: of like answer to gravitate towards.

924
00:49:53,440 --> 00:49:58,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's that's I don't know, I don't actually know.

925
00:50:01,440 --> 00:50:03,839
Speaker 1: Part of the problem is that like there are little solutions, right,

926
00:50:03,880 --> 00:50:05,799
Speaker 1: there are little things that you can do, stuff like

927
00:50:05,920 --> 00:50:11,400
Speaker 1: advocating for you know, a more functional idea of like

928
00:50:11,520 --> 00:50:13,719
Speaker 1: a more a more functional legal definition of like what

929
00:50:13,760 --> 00:50:16,839
Speaker 1: an auto dialer is and what counts as like illegally

930
00:50:16,960 --> 00:50:19,640
Speaker 1: sort of like flooding phone lines with with with cons

931
00:50:19,640 --> 00:50:22,440
Speaker 1: and stuff or restricting you know, the ability of people

932
00:50:22,560 --> 00:50:26,440
Speaker 1: like bill collectors and stuff to utilize you know, the

933
00:50:26,480 --> 00:50:28,359
Speaker 1: phone system and some of the ways that they do,

934
00:50:28,480 --> 00:50:31,400
Speaker 1: like the and that can make stuff better. Just like

935
00:50:32,680 --> 00:50:35,920
Speaker 1: you know, at a certain point, we will develop tools

936
00:50:36,040 --> 00:50:38,920
Speaker 1: that mitigate some of the harm AI is doing in

937
00:50:39,000 --> 00:50:41,279
Speaker 1: the con space. Some of its ability to automate and

938
00:50:41,719 --> 00:50:44,840
Speaker 1: push shit to people at scale will get reduced at

939
00:50:44,880 --> 00:50:46,760
Speaker 1: a certain point. That will happen, right, because it happens

940
00:50:46,800 --> 00:50:47,280
Speaker 1: with everything.

941
00:50:47,320 --> 00:50:47,480
Speaker 3: You know.

942
00:50:47,520 --> 00:50:48,720
Speaker 2: AI is not unique.

943
00:50:49,680 --> 00:50:52,080
Speaker 1: This is the It's it's a you've heard the you've

944
00:50:52,080 --> 00:50:55,120
Speaker 1: heard the red Queen hypothesis, right, Yeah. It's kind of

945
00:50:55,120 --> 00:50:56,680
Speaker 1: a way of like for it's kind of like a

946
00:50:56,719 --> 00:50:59,600
Speaker 1: way of looking at evolutionary theory. There's this this point

947
00:51:00,040 --> 00:51:03,120
Speaker 1: in Alice in Wonderland where you know, the Red Queen

948
00:51:03,200 --> 00:51:06,400
Speaker 1: kind of like traps Alice in this situation where like

949
00:51:06,480 --> 00:51:08,640
Speaker 1: she's got to keep running as fast as she can,

950
00:51:09,600 --> 00:51:13,440
Speaker 1: but it's like a situation like a conveyor belt sort

951
00:51:13,440 --> 00:51:15,680
Speaker 1: of situation, So no matter how how hard she runs,

952
00:51:15,920 --> 00:51:18,279
Speaker 1: she never gets ahead. Right, And that's kind of the

953
00:51:18,280 --> 00:51:21,759
Speaker 1: way that like the evolutionary arms race works, right, Like

954
00:51:22,160 --> 00:51:24,719
Speaker 1: you know, one one animal develops a defense against a

955
00:51:24,760 --> 00:51:27,160
Speaker 1: predator and the predator develops a way around it, and

956
00:51:27,239 --> 00:51:32,399
Speaker 1: like the the like, that's kind of the best case

957
00:51:32,400 --> 00:51:35,160
Speaker 1: scenario for how we adapt to cons I think actually,

958
00:51:35,200 --> 00:51:38,919
Speaker 1: like technology just moves too fast now for us to

959
00:51:38,920 --> 00:51:40,880
Speaker 1: to be able to keep up, right, Like we're not

960
00:51:41,280 --> 00:51:45,000
Speaker 1: We're not just standing in place. We're consistently following behind.

961
00:51:45,239 --> 00:51:48,959
Speaker 1: And I don't know, I don't know what we do here, uh.

962
00:51:49,040 --> 00:51:51,400
Speaker 3: I mean yeah, so like there will there will be

963
00:51:51,480 --> 00:51:56,160
Speaker 3: technol technological solutions to specific manifestations. I mean a big

964
00:51:56,200 --> 00:51:59,360
Speaker 3: one like in there, like to not to not bant.

965
00:51:59,239 --> 00:52:00,759
Speaker 2: Is that you know, the uh.

966
00:52:02,600 --> 00:52:06,719
Speaker 3: At A, the legal system, the governments, Like governments need

967
00:52:06,800 --> 00:52:10,400
Speaker 3: to do something about the robocalling and the text messages

968
00:52:10,440 --> 00:52:14,839
Speaker 3: because they're rendering a vital piece of like sneak infrastructure unusable.

969
00:52:15,239 --> 00:52:21,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, people don't trust their phones anymore, and that's that's bad, Yeah,

970
00:52:21,719 --> 00:52:24,160
Speaker 1: because it means they stop using it. You know, it's like.

971
00:52:24,280 --> 00:52:30,160
Speaker 3: There's yeah, there's very real like consequences. Uh, and we

972
00:52:30,560 --> 00:52:34,279
Speaker 3: need to be able to trust that we're talking to

973
00:52:35,640 --> 00:52:38,320
Speaker 3: people who aren't just trying to get our money.

974
00:52:38,960 --> 00:52:40,440
Speaker 2: Yeah.

975
00:52:40,840 --> 00:52:45,319
Speaker 1: Yep, Well, Dan, anything you want to plug at the

976
00:52:45,360 --> 00:52:49,160
Speaker 1: end of this here YouTube channel Folding Ideas everyone should

977
00:52:49,239 --> 00:52:50,680
Speaker 1: check out if you have not already.

978
00:52:51,280 --> 00:52:53,799
Speaker 3: Yeah, the YouTube channel that's going to be the big one.

979
00:52:54,400 --> 00:52:57,520
Speaker 3: I'm still on. I'm on socials at Foldable Human, though

980
00:52:57,520 --> 00:52:59,560
Speaker 3: I'm trying to wean myself off of them because they're

981
00:52:59,560 --> 00:53:02,720
Speaker 3: broken and being broken purpose and they're.

982
00:53:02,560 --> 00:53:03,440
Speaker 2: Bad for my soul.

983
00:53:04,000 --> 00:53:07,320
Speaker 3: So I still I'm addicted, So I still keep coming back.

984
00:53:07,400 --> 00:53:09,799
Speaker 3: But I'm a lot less active than I used to be.

985
00:53:10,239 --> 00:53:12,680
Speaker 1: Oh sorry, I didn't hear you. I was too busy

986
00:53:12,920 --> 00:53:19,640
Speaker 1: getting anxious because of a thing on Twitter. No. Yeah, Dan,

987
00:53:20,040 --> 00:53:21,839
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on today. I really

988
00:53:21,920 --> 00:53:24,840
Speaker 1: appreciate your thoughts on all of this. I'm looking forward

989
00:53:24,880 --> 00:53:29,480
Speaker 1: to your next video, your next investigation, whatever that happens

990
00:53:29,520 --> 00:53:33,040
Speaker 1: to be. Folks should check out. If you haven't, line

991
00:53:33,080 --> 00:53:36,200
Speaker 1: goes up your documentary on NFTs. You should check out

992
00:53:36,840 --> 00:53:42,000
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs Is. I think what you called your Michelson Twins documentary. Yeah,

993
00:53:42,200 --> 00:53:45,200
Speaker 1: check out everything Dan has done. Thank you Dan, And

994
00:53:45,360 --> 00:53:48,440
Speaker 1: that is the episode. You can all go home now

995
00:53:48,880 --> 00:53:52,200
Speaker 1: and deal with the fact that your bank information just

996
00:53:52,239 --> 00:53:58,360
Speaker 1: got stolen by somebody in Macedonia.

997
00:53:59,480 --> 00:54:02,000
Speaker 2: It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.

998
00:54:02,080 --> 00:54:04,800
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website

999
00:54:04,800 --> 00:54:07,919
Speaker 2: coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1000
00:54:07,960 --> 00:54:10,520
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

1001
00:54:11,040 --> 00:54:13,200
Speaker 1: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated

1002
00:54:13,239 --> 00:54:16,360
Speaker 1: monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.

1003
00:54:16,480 --> 00:54:17,320
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening.