Speaker 1: Yeah, they're either fake or they're being paid. It's one
Speaker 1: more thing I'm strong.
Speaker 2: And before we get to whatever that is, I think
Speaker 2: I know the answer to this question. I don't know
Speaker 2: if I can set you up for it. I don't
Speaker 2: know if I would be the right way to set
Speaker 2: you up for it. I know what your answer is, though,
Speaker 2: that one of your least favorite sensations is stickiness. Sticky.
Speaker 2: And so Jensen, who's our fill in newsperson, while Katie
Speaker 2: is out, made these delicious treats she brought in, and
Speaker 2: they're great. They're like a some sort of bread, cinnamon
Speaker 2: bread with caramel and nuts and apple apple. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: they're cutt into little finger squares. Everybody's picking them out
Speaker 2: of there with their fingers and you get caramel on
Speaker 2: your fingers and my hands are sticky and I can't
Speaker 2: get rid of it. Sticky? Why is? And then I
Speaker 2: was thinking about why is sticky so annoying? From an
Speaker 2: ever polutionary standpoint? Is there some reason an interesting would
Speaker 2: human beings just naturally be appalled by being sticky? You know?
Speaker 1: It was funny. Appalled is exactly the right word. I
Speaker 1: was playing golf not long ago with a buddy of
Speaker 1: mine and we're in his golf cart and and he's like,
Speaker 1: my god, my steering wheel is sticky? How did this
Speaker 1: get sticky? Why is this sticky? What happened? And he's
Speaker 1: wiping in his hands and he's just he's appalled. It's
Speaker 1: not like, oh that's weird, it's wet. No, it's like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, why is it sticky?
Speaker 2: So how did he something? Maybe did I don't know,
Speaker 2: did dinosaurs leave sticky residue or I don't know what
Speaker 2: it was, but we didn't. We didn't coexist with the dinosaurs.
Speaker 2: That I couldn't be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just gonna let that go. I'm pedantic,
Speaker 1: but I'm not that potantic. Could it be that something's
Speaker 1: on you and it's staying on you?
Speaker 2: I don't know, you know way that like if you're wet,
Speaker 2: it'll dry, disease, the plague something. I'll bet there is
Speaker 2: some disease that being sticky was. You didn't really want.
Speaker 1: That, the creeping crud.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't like sticky.
Speaker 1: You're right, Sticky steering wheel the worst, Yeah, because you
Speaker 1: have to keep touching it.
Speaker 2: Why is that sticky? Eh? Boy?
Speaker 1: So a couple of stories and I can't decide. You know,
Speaker 1: I was gonna go big on the radio show with them,
Speaker 1: but they're both fairly lengthy. One his excuse me, I
Speaker 1: believe I will be coughing for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: One of them is at from the New York Times
Speaker 1: talking about these influencers. Both of both of these stories
Speaker 1: are about quote unquote influence culture, whether it's on Instagram,
Speaker 1: which is huge, or TikTok or x or whatever. And
Speaker 1: they mentioned a couple that, of course I've never heard of,
Speaker 1: because I'm mostly repulsed by all of that and it
Speaker 1: seems phony and shallow and stupid to me. But they
Speaker 1: mentioned that a couple of these people's Lil Mikayla and
Speaker 1: mia Zelu, have millions of followers and are generating serious
Speaker 1: income despite the fact that they don't exist. They're entirely
Speaker 1: created by AI.
Speaker 2: Oh wow. When Nancy Pelosi whoever came up with this
Speaker 2: idea first, and that might have been two months ago, Uh,
Speaker 2: was really smart. Why didn't I do that as soon
Speaker 2: as our friend Craig showed us how to do the
Speaker 2: AI thing, I should have created an influencer. Yeah, good
Speaker 2: looking dude who can play the guitar or whatever, and
Speaker 2: then built a thing around him.
Speaker 1: Right, but is like super conservative or whatever. Yeah, maga
Speaker 1: guitar gym here with another you know, whatever the hell
Speaker 1: he's heard a red, white and blue cowboy hat, I
Speaker 1: assume anyway. So, for instance, Nancy Pelosi was at the
Speaker 1: Outside Lands Music's festival taking selfies and took a selfie
Speaker 1: with a popular influencer as two point four million followers
Speaker 1: me vibing to Gracey Adams and I look up and
Speaker 1: it's literally speaker, Pelosi said. The influencer goes by Lowel
Speaker 1: Michaela as she captured the photo in which the two
Speaker 1: are seen smiling. Catch, of course, is that she isn't real.
Speaker 1: She's one of a slew of influencers created through aio
Speaker 1: have gained popularity in recent years despite the fact that
Speaker 1: they don't exist. Me A Zulu Zelu Zelu, a blonde haired,
Speaker 1: blue eyed AI influencer with one hundred and sixty seven
Speaker 1: thousand followers, recently made headlines for attending Wimbledon. A recent
Speaker 1: report by the online creation platform cap Wing found that
Speaker 1: a computer generated celebrities are amassing millions of followers and
Speaker 1: millions of dollars in revenue for the teams behind them.
Speaker 2: This has got to be scaring the hell out of
Speaker 2: actual influencers that whoa is this over? Already? Is the
Speaker 2: era of the influencer? Did it come and go?
Speaker 1: This? Quickly? Listen to this shit? Would you? A Brazilian
Speaker 1: AI influencer with more than eight million Instagram followers who
Speaker 1: serves as the voice of the Brazilian retailer magalou rakes
Speaker 1: in thirty four thousand dollars per post, while low Mikayla,
Speaker 1: who again doesn't exist, makes about seventy thirty thousand, well,
Speaker 1: seventy four thousand dollars per post. Hey, I just got
Speaker 1: a cute little handbag. It's absolutely amazing. Goes with all
Speaker 1: my outfits. I was out clubbing blah blah blah, and
Speaker 1: here it is seventy four thousand dollars per for this
Speaker 1: quote unquote influencer who doesn't exist.
Speaker 2: You know what, it'd be good as a fake little
Speaker 2: kid that tries out toys like the babies the baby
Speaker 2: I saw one the other day. This one was impossible
Speaker 2: to not like. You'd have to have a heart of
Speaker 2: stone to not like because it was baby me.
Speaker 1: I think that's entertainment for idiots. I'd reject the entire.
Speaker 2: Genre, but there's nothing cuter than babies laughing. And there
Speaker 2: were these were babies telling jokes to each other and
Speaker 2: they were laughing, and the laughing.
Speaker 1: Baby might get me.
Speaker 2: The laughing babies was one hundred percent dead on. And
Speaker 2: I mean, you can't not enjoy a baby laughing. But
Speaker 2: these babies were telling each other like corny jokes and
Speaker 2: just dying laughing. Oh, I enjoyed that. But if you
Speaker 2: could create a fake baby who's trying out baby products,
Speaker 2: oh that's a gold mine.
Speaker 1: So this little Mikaila thing was introduced in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: Maybe the original AI influencer has appeared on magazine covers,
Speaker 1: released music, and served as the face of campaigns for
Speaker 1: Calvin Klein and Prada, all while purporting to be a
Speaker 1: Brazilian American teen from Downey, California. She now identifies as
Speaker 1: twenty two, created by a tech company called Dapper Labs,
Speaker 1: which specializes in creating video games and collectibles. Whatever the
Speaker 1: hell that means.
Speaker 2: You want to hear one of the jokes that the
Speaker 2: baby's told. The baby told the other babies that.
Speaker 1: They laugh, I absolutely do.
Speaker 2: Yes, Baby's sitting there at the straight face talking to
Speaker 2: his baby friends. Oh boy, our dog ate all the
Speaker 2: scrabble pieces the other day. We had to take him
Speaker 2: to the vet. No word yet.
Speaker 3: Oh and is that's all right, mister president. That's a
Speaker 3: pretty good joke that that that is. I'm going to
Speaker 3: tell that to my wife as soon as we're done here,
Speaker 3: and she.
Speaker 1: Would laugh like a little baby. So the other story
Speaker 1: I want to tell you, which is kind of similarish,
Speaker 1: Jeff Blair was writing about it National Review and it's
Speaker 1: it's about left wing influencers. But he points out there's
Speaker 1: absolutely this on the right. In fact, there have been
Speaker 1: some cases of it that came to the fore on
Speaker 1: the right. So many of these people who are like
Speaker 1: lots of followers, super influential, post all the time about
Speaker 1: politics and stuff, are being paid by organizations like there's
Speaker 1: this organization called Chorus that pays as much as eight
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a month to these people to just constantly
Speaker 1: hammer left wing talking points online. And Jeff writes, you know,
Speaker 1: here's a link to who these people are. He says,
Speaker 1: I haven't heard of any of them. But he says,
Speaker 1: I'm also not hip to like who's really moving and
Speaker 1: shaking among twenty year old college girls online. But yeah,
Speaker 1: these people are making thousands of dollars a month. All
Speaker 1: they have to do is submit all of their content
Speaker 1: to a shady progressive organisation called Chorus for preclearance and
Speaker 1: message approval, while employing the appointed I'm sorry, well, employing
Speaker 1: the appointed talking points of the day, and funneling all
Speaker 1: bookings through their secret paymasters. The contracts reviewed by Wired
Speaker 1: dot Com prohibit standard partnership disclosures, declaring that Creators will
Speaker 1: not publicize the publicize their relationship with Chorus, or tell
Speaker 1: others that they're members of the program without Corus's prior
Speaker 1: written consent. They also forbid Creators from disclosing the identity
Speaker 1: of any funder. Then they get into, of.
Speaker 2: Course, you'd make that part of the deal. We're going
Speaker 2: to give you ten thousand dollars to spout this as
Speaker 2: a twenty one year old about this political position. But
Speaker 2: part of the deal is you're not allowed to say
Speaker 2: we're paying you well.
Speaker 1: Of course, right, yeah, yeah, And they get into in
Speaker 1: some of their documents, how hey, it's really great that
Speaker 1: we exist as a nonprofit because we don't have to
Speaker 1: disclose any of our contributors blah blah blah. Non but
Speaker 1: and you can't disclose any of this either.
Speaker 2: I watch out for that. I don't understand. One of
Speaker 2: the reasons I don't understand how the only influencer thing
Speaker 2: works is don't you just assume that they're getting paid
Speaker 2: by whatever that thing is. They're telling you it's so great.
Speaker 2: That's where they're telling you it's so great. Not always,
Speaker 2: but a lot of the time.
Speaker 1: So yeah, a lot of the time. And it does
Speaker 1: happen on both sides of the aisle. And anyway, he says,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna I'm gonna read this just because there's
Speaker 1: certain figures on the right who I find abhorrent to readers.
Speaker 1: There's an invisible world out there, a hidden hand, and
Speaker 1: it is driven by money, the dark matter of politics.
Speaker 1: We caught a fleeting glimpse of how foreign money is
Speaker 1: spent on the right at least once over the last
Speaker 1: few years with the Tenant scandal. Recall that there Russian
Speaker 1: intelligence use Canadian cutouts to recruit Lauren Southern Timpoole and
Speaker 1: moral horror show Benny Johnson, among others, to record commentary
Speaker 1: pieces about topics the Russians selected and scripted to advance
Speaker 1: Russia's geostrategic interests among the MAGA right, that was but
Speaker 1: one scandal discovered due to the carelessness of its practitioners.
Speaker 1: Let's stick to the sort of unpleasant insectoid analogy that
Speaker 1: began this piece, and therefore recall the rule of pests.
Speaker 1: If you see one inside your house, rest assured he
Speaker 1: brought company with him. There is far more and worse
Speaker 1: that you can't see, lurking hidden within your walls or
Speaker 1: your floors, a world going on underground.
Speaker 2: That's a pretty clever way look at it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you know what, there's one more part
Speaker 1: that I think is really good. It would be easy
Speaker 1: enough to laugh at Democrats, to dismiss this humiliation as
Speaker 1: yet more evidence that they are an unpopular group of
Speaker 1: sad frauds who need to pay for their online influencers
Speaker 1: the way maladjusted losers frequent brothels. But I ask myself
Speaker 1: where all that Katari and Chinese money goes? And I
Speaker 1: ponder the message coordination of so many rytoid influencers, and
Speaker 1: I begin to wonder. I wonder who on my side,
Speaker 1: or anyone I've taken on good faith in fact secretly
Speaker 1: practices the world's oldest profession.
Speaker 2: A haha, good question.
Speaker 1: My only question is, so when do I get my
Speaker 1: prostitute myself? Do you want us to say variety of
Speaker 1: loathsome regimes?
Speaker 2: What do you want us to say? For how much?
Speaker 2: Every day we're talking about how great Brundei is all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, but we're not. Remember cars.
Speaker 1: When my youngest was studying combination of law and foreign
Speaker 1: policy and that sort of thing and foreign relations, I
Speaker 1: told her, look, you go to work for loathsome regimes
Speaker 1: because they pay better. Put your scruples aside, take the
Speaker 1: sad Russian money, and tell everybody online how Putin's really
Speaker 1: standing up for Christianity.
Speaker 2: The dog ate scrabble pieces took him to the vet.
Speaker 2: No word yet you get it?
Speaker 1: That is so funny. Well, I guess that's it.