Speaker 1: Also media, locally hated, globally loathed, chosen by God and
Speaker 1: perfected by science. I'm ed Zeitron and this is Better
Speaker 1: Offline Today. I'm joined by an incredible duo. We've got
Speaker 1: Mia Sarto of The Verge and Dave Lee of Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: Thank you both for joining me in the studio.
Speaker 2: Happy to be here.
Speaker 1: So before we go any further, of course, please subscribe
Speaker 1: to the News let the premium one as well. Please
Speaker 1: help me, and for a limited time you can buy
Speaker 1: a Better Offline challenge coin. A bunch of other staff
Speaker 1: links in the episode notes. But you two, I'm so
Speaker 1: excited to have you here because you were two of
Speaker 1: my favorite opinion columnists as well, but also a feature
Speaker 1: like you. I've known your work for many years, so
Speaker 1: I'm very very excited to have you here. Mia, I
Speaker 1: wanted to start with a simple question, though, what is
Speaker 1: a labo bou. You've shown me this creature, this you
Speaker 1: are finding like little evil thing, and everyone wants one,
Speaker 1: and I don't done this. Every time I try and
Speaker 1: look it up and it makes me upset.
Speaker 2: This could be the first time a la boobo has
Speaker 2: stepped foot in the iHeartRadio offices.
Speaker 1: I think we record in the same room as.
Speaker 2: Right, something shifted. Oh okay, so Labooboo probably has been
Speaker 2: in the last culture recent area.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would assume.
Speaker 2: Yeah. La Boo Boos are little plush dolls. They have
Speaker 2: kind of like a hard plastic human like mean face,
Speaker 2: but then are wearing like a bunny suit. They come
Speaker 2: in all different colors, and I think the most important
Speaker 2: thing to know about Laboo Boos is it is just gambling.
Speaker 2: It's just gambling for kids and kind of adults now elaborate.
Speaker 2: So they come in blind boxes, which is like they
Speaker 2: are all in like a little plaster or a paper cartan,
Speaker 2: and you have like a one in six chance of
Speaker 2: getting a certain you know these colors, and then there's
Speaker 2: one rare one that's like a one in seventy two chance,
Speaker 2: and it says it right on the box like it
Speaker 2: is just straightforward betting.
Speaker 3: Who makes me.
Speaker 2: They are sold by this company called PopMart, and they're
Speaker 2: based on like a cartoon I think, like a broader
Speaker 2: umbrella called The Monsters. So Labooboo is one character in
Speaker 2: The Monsters.
Speaker 1: And the others did not take off. I'm not the.
Speaker 2: Same way, but I think there are some fans for
Speaker 2: the other characters, the labooo or no, it's real, it's
Speaker 2: real because of the seventy two no no, obviously not.
Speaker 1: So is there a secondary la boo boo market.
Speaker 2: Well, this is where it gets interesting, and this is
Speaker 2: why I think leabuo boos are funnier and kind of
Speaker 2: stupider than they appear on the surface, because from my
Speaker 2: observations and from talking to friends who are like good
Speaker 2: at flipping things, there is no really no resale value
Speaker 2: for opened laboo boos. So if I wanted to sell
Speaker 2: this pink laboo boo, it would go for maybe like
Speaker 2: forty bucks fifty bucks, and they retail for like twenty
Speaker 2: seven ninety nine, not including shipping and tax, and.
Speaker 1: Not a huge margin. No, you can even sell exactly.
Speaker 2: The ones that do go for some money are the
Speaker 2: rare ones, which is like you know, their special colors
Speaker 2: and unopened boxes, because again it's about gambling. It is
Speaker 2: about the chance that you might have a rare one.
Speaker 2: They're also out on Popmart's app, which we can talk about, like,
Speaker 2: I think it is like the funniest thing ever to
Speaker 2: do to parents of young children and to teens.
Speaker 3: I mean, I feel like this was my life of
Speaker 3: Pokemon cards.
Speaker 2: It's exactly the same.
Speaker 3: Game trumps right right.
Speaker 2: And there is some like off like downstream La Booo
Speaker 2: culture where people will dress in this essay. I will,
Speaker 2: but people will like dress up their boo boos. They'll
Speaker 2: like get accessories. There's a crazy kind of like off
Speaker 2: brand black market for like La Boo boo related things
Speaker 2: like lafu fooss are the fake laboo boos. I also
Speaker 2: own a La fu Fu that I bought at the
Speaker 2: Statue of Liberty as God intended. But yeah, the labubos
Speaker 2: are interesting because it's not about the doll. It's about
Speaker 2: how you acquire it, and it's about the odds, the
Speaker 2: odds that you're taking.
Speaker 3: Really, there's nothing more to it. Yeah, I feel like
Speaker 3: two years ago this would have got This would have
Speaker 3: had like an NFT element to it, right.
Speaker 2: I don't say that, don't speak that into.
Speaker 3: Exibits, but I think it's wholesome that it's just it's
Speaker 3: just the thing, yeah, nothing else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just like collector culture.
Speaker 1: It's also like very nihilistic.
Speaker 2: It's it's pretty nihilistic. There's no ip related to it
Speaker 2: that people are familiar with. There's no film like La
Speaker 2: Boo Boo movie that people are obsessed with, like you know,
Speaker 2: Paw Patrol, like kids see.
Speaker 1: Pop want stuff, and like ten years ago this would
Speaker 1: have already remember with Angry Birds. Yeah, Grovio is like
Speaker 1: we're gonna do a TV show, We're gonna do a.
Speaker 2: Movie, or like Grumpy Cat. I just wrote about grumpy cats,
Speaker 2: so there's a grumpy there's a whole aspect.
Speaker 3: But this will come.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's kind of what I'm waiting for. Also, it
Speaker 1: does seem there is a Laboo Boo fan connect collection
Speaker 1: on Magic Eden. It's zero point zero four Soul. If
Speaker 1: you buy one of these, they should put you on
Speaker 1: a list. It's fascinating because I've done everything I can
Speaker 1: to avoid this, and I've mostly seen like cities by
Speaker 1: a Diana Classic Instagram account. I've seen Leboobuo pop up
Speaker 1: on there and being like no one will save you.
Speaker 1: It's like that kind of brain rot style thing where
Speaker 1: it's like a cute s you've always been like, no
Speaker 1: one will save you, the world will collapse. It's just
Speaker 1: La Boobos, Yes, but it is. I thought that'd be more.
Speaker 1: I thought there would be more to it, but it
Speaker 1: just see, it's just gam it's just gambling. We've found
Speaker 1: a way to give children gambling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this isn't the first one either, Like their
Speaker 2: blind boxes are definitely a thing, like Sunny Angels were
Speaker 2: the last blind box thing that was kind of a craze.
Speaker 2: They're little cherub like dolls, probably like two or three
Speaker 2: inches tall, and they're all naked, and I think that's
Speaker 2: why adults felt weird about owning them. But labuobos are
Speaker 2: not naked, so people feel comfortable putting out them on
Speaker 2: their like expensive handbags.
Speaker 1: So that's what is it that has enabled this? Though?
Speaker 1: Is it like very ta is Like this is a
Speaker 1: very TikTok driven movement.
Speaker 2: It's definitely on TikTok. I think. Also a big reason
Speaker 2: they're so kind of like zeitgeisty or buzzy is because
Speaker 2: they're impossible to buy. They're sold out all the time.
Speaker 2: I went through the steps of trying to buy a
Speaker 2: Laboo Boo on the PopMart app, and it was, hell,
Speaker 2: why don't you woke.
Speaker 1: Me through that? I'd love to actually like, how do
Speaker 1: you actually allegedly buybies?
Speaker 2: Okay, well, I didn't realize that you have to play
Speaker 2: like a mini game basically like Boo Boo. This is
Speaker 2: what people don't understand is like I have been through
Speaker 2: the trenches to buy the stupid doll. You have to
Speaker 2: so on the PopMart app, they're always sold out, right,
Speaker 2: and they have like drops at certain times, and the company,
Speaker 2: i think wanted to sort of recreate the experience of
Speaker 2: going to a store and seeing an empty shelf where
Speaker 2: you're like looking for the doll or looking for the product.
Speaker 2: So when they drop, there are like digital shelves or
Speaker 2: or like boxes where individual labo like six boxes of
Speaker 2: Labuo boos will be place like digital ones, right, and
Speaker 2: you can watch them sell out and you just scroll
Speaker 2: through the boxes to find a la Boo boo for sale,
Speaker 2: and most of the time they're all like grade out,
Speaker 2: so that's something like it's in someone else's cart, and
Speaker 2: then they'll get released, like someone will abandon it or whatever,
Speaker 2: and then you can you have to like spam click
Speaker 2: the box. It's crazy, and then you can shake it
Speaker 2: and it will give you hints about like what it's not,
Speaker 2: what doll it's not. I'm sorry, I feel like I'm
Speaker 2: speaking in tongues.
Speaker 1: No no, no, this is I'm following you. It's just horrifying.
Speaker 2: It's really hard. And the other thing, I mean, PopMart
Speaker 2: is they're sick. They're so sick and brilliant because they
Speaker 2: also get thousands of people watching their TikTok lives for
Speaker 2: hours waiting for them to drop laboo boos in TikTok shop,
Speaker 2: And that is engagement. That's it's just like straightforward engagement
Speaker 2: for me, you know what I mean, it's it's pretty insane.
Speaker 3: So when does this jump into being? I mean, there's
Speaker 3: no other ip around it. Yeah, but I think of
Speaker 3: like Minecraft, that kind of stuff. I mean, very sort
Speaker 3: of different product. But eventually they went, let's Microsoft bought it,
Speaker 3: and then they made a movie and all that stuff,
Speaker 3: and there was the commercialization was massive after it's very organic.
Speaker 3: Is there a point do you think where that just
Speaker 3: suddenly people go, all the kids are crazy about these things.
Speaker 3: We can't just let this go by?
Speaker 2: Maybe, like maybe, But also it feels so straightforwardly consumeristic
Speaker 2: that like I could see it just dying down in like.
Speaker 1: Two months recession indicators they stopped selling these out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, honestly, I feel like people are being obsessed
Speaker 2: with buying la booboos instead of like groceries or whatever
Speaker 2: is a recession indicator, like these are cheap three, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Like, I also feel like China just leads the world
Speaker 1: in this kind of yeah, like nineties style evil consumerism,
Speaker 1: Like this is some shit you would see in a
Speaker 1: mid nineties film about evil tech CEOs, Like we've created
Speaker 1: a devil dull like China.
Speaker 3: I mean, I still, I mean, I feel like when
Speaker 3: I used to buy football stickers as a kid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but this is so they were blind.
Speaker 3: I didn't know whether there was a good players in
Speaker 3: there or bad players. Different scale and different level of
Speaker 3: a session from what you're describing there. But isn't there
Speaker 3: just this part of a young person's brain that says,
Speaker 3: I want to collect these, My friends are going to
Speaker 3: collect these. It's fun, right, I mean, I don't see
Speaker 3: it's combsolutely different.
Speaker 1: Oh it's not like you're totally right in that. It's
Speaker 1: kind of clicking into that. You had a bit of
Speaker 1: that with the n f T S and you've had
Speaker 1: right at the beginning, especially and with top Shots as well,
Speaker 1: which was the NFTs for basketball games that they then
Speaker 1: expanded and then failed. It was exactly the same thing.
Speaker 1: It was the kind of top trumps or not top
Speaker 1: trumps at football stickers. The difference is that they've built
Speaker 1: like an economic layer to it to like torture the
Speaker 1: people trying to buy them the disappearing boxes.
Speaker 3: That is.
Speaker 1: Manipulative.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really interesting. It also feels very much like
Speaker 2: what a lot of shopping is these days is like
Speaker 2: a you know, a stand in for a hobby collecting.
Speaker 2: Like I feel like the Boo Boos and Stanley Cups
Speaker 2: are like the same thing. Do you all know what
Speaker 2: Stanley cup? I'm sorry, sorry no, but that means your
Speaker 2: your brain is good the test, like your brain is
Speaker 2: not fried. That is like the women who collect like
Speaker 2: dozens of Stanley Cup colors and there's no reason to
Speaker 2: have them, but like that is their form of you
Speaker 2: know that it's a hobby.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I just want to read something from the
Speaker 1: Wikipedia page for La Booboo. The Federation Council of Russia
Speaker 1: proposed banning the sale for the Boo Boos. The reason
Speaker 1: was their frightening appearance and potential hunt children's mental health
Speaker 1: in Russia. A Katsena alta Beva, Deputy Chair for the
Speaker 1: Committee and Science Education, Culture, state that the figures caused
Speaker 1: children to feel fear. I just want to say that that,
Speaker 1: like that was just a very funny sentence. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Russia's massive ethics cause there it's just I think it.
Speaker 1: You've really mentioned something though, with like collectibles that reminds
Speaker 1: me of entities as well, where it's I collect comic
Speaker 1: artwork and I original compic. I fucking delight in it.
Speaker 1: I've filled my walls. I won't be getting anymore, but
Speaker 1: like it has meaning and those I know like sports
Speaker 1: Memorbile that they collect stuff because oh it's a meaningful
Speaker 1: game whatever, or the player. With this, it's like like
Speaker 1: n FT's it's that with all of the culture removed.
Speaker 1: It's just strip mind to the core of you want
Speaker 1: what everyone else wants, You want it now, how will
Speaker 1: you get it? Only us? And the fact that there's
Speaker 1: not another thing that Pop Mart has done like this
Speaker 1: is so strange though, Yeah, like they're not. It's almost
Speaker 1: like they're being a little bit cautious with it. They
Speaker 1: don't want to overfill and push their luck a bit,
Speaker 1: which is fascinating. And also the reason I mentioned this
Speaker 1: China is American e commerce companies do not have that
Speaker 1: killer instinct I feel like in China they'll fucking roll
Speaker 1: our asses with making this cut of stuff. They made
Speaker 1: an evil looking doll with no ip that they're just
Speaker 1: like we own this by.
Speaker 2: It, and now people are obsessed, like how did it
Speaker 2: take off?
Speaker 1: Was it? They're like, one, is it just something that appeared?
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: The weirdest thing is that, from what I understand, one
Speaker 2: of the Black Pink girls we're seen, she was seen
Speaker 2: with a labubu.
Speaker 1: And that's Korean pop.
Speaker 2: Yes, k pop group, one of the probably one of
Speaker 2: the biggest.
Speaker 1: Happens yeah the world I'm Sane video.
Speaker 2: I can't remember if it was Jenny or Lisa, but
Speaker 2: I think maybe Lisa from Black Pink had a la
Speaker 2: boo boo and it like it had been kind of
Speaker 2: percolating already, but that really like blew it up in
Speaker 2: a crazy way. But Yeah, my prediction is like this
Speaker 2: will be not a thing anymore when it's they're easy
Speaker 2: to acquire because again, my theory is that it's really
Speaker 2: just about the process of acquisition, and I guess it's
Speaker 2: purchasing rather than like the actual thing. And I think
Speaker 2: also a lot of other especially like American toymakers, are
Speaker 2: desperate right, like what is their laboo boo?
Speaker 1: What is I don't know, and the things it's it's
Speaker 1: they're trying they're going to solve it by going, well,
Speaker 1: we'll just make a better one. It's like, No, the
Speaker 1: actual thing you need to do is engage your killer
Speaker 1: instinct and call Fangil or one of those companies they
Speaker 1: Fangile has more in common I think than any like
Speaker 1: Mattel as far as creating a product like Labuobo. It's
Speaker 1: just this thing of scaring people saying, oh, if you
Speaker 1: don't get in on now this, now you'll miss it.
Speaker 1: Just to think with the NFTs things with Crypto and
Speaker 1: now they've brought it for children, which is great. I think.
Speaker 1: I think it's good. It's also I think the natural
Speaker 1: endpoint of this bullshit fandom culture we've been in the
Speaker 1: last ten to fifteen years maybe where it's just like it's.
Speaker 3: Just why, I think you're underestimated the degree to we
Speaker 3: see these things just cycle around.
Speaker 1: Oh again, I don't disagree on that it is a
Speaker 1: cyclical thing, but I think it's also just like, why
Speaker 1: do we have this because everyone has this? Why do
Speaker 1: we do this because everyone does this? Accelerated by things
Speaker 1: like TikTok and TikTok Live in particular.
Speaker 3: Yah, the urgency is interesting. Yeah, and I think the
Speaker 3: if there's one thing, even if the toys go away,
Speaker 3: that mechanism an enduring thing. But it'd be interesting to
Speaker 3: see if an American brand does try that fully here,
Speaker 3: because it's kind of similar to do you ever remember
Speaker 3: used to use like booking dot com and I would say,
Speaker 3: three people book this room in the last twenty minutes,
Speaker 3: you better get it otherwise you're not going to do it.
Speaker 3: And we we sort of we that was, you know,
Speaker 3: got a lot of scrutiny, has been an unfair way
Speaker 3: to force people to buy things in a hurry, and
Speaker 3: I suspect would see the same.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's like the natural growth of e commerce
Speaker 1: and all the ways you can kind of push a customer.
Speaker 1: You see it with like every single Instagram drop chip thing.
Speaker 1: If you click then it's like sixty two people are
Speaker 1: buying this right now. Yeah, you need to buy this
Speaker 1: special code looking at it. Yeah, and if you don't,
Speaker 1: they're going to sell out. This is the pans that
Speaker 1: sold out. There are so many pans that sell out
Speaker 1: on Instagram. But leading into another thing, actually both of
Speaker 1: you have kind of covered as well. It feels like
Speaker 1: this is almost humanity trying to move with the algorithm
Speaker 1: to fit what people would be going after a growth
Speaker 1: of as you put Dave, that the fact that, yeah,
Speaker 1: we are trend seekers, we will want to kind of
Speaker 1: fit in. But it leads to this thing of this
Speaker 1: got popular because it got it got popular and it
Speaker 1: hit the algorithmic side. You were mentioning before we came
Speaker 1: in here here that there is an almost an seo
Speaker 1: level to posting on TikTok.
Speaker 2: Now, yeah, for sure, I mean, you know, I think
Speaker 2: it goes back to do you remember like two years
Speaker 2: ago everyone was freaking out that people were using TikTok
Speaker 2: like a search engine, which no, was like, so quaint
Speaker 2: I think I think like a Google exact mentioned it
Speaker 2: at some event.
Speaker 3: Right, well, they mentioned it. This is one of my
Speaker 3: favorite parts. So during their antitrust here right right where
Speaker 3: we say lost, eventually they are that Google is a
Speaker 3: monopoly because kids are turned to TikTok to search, and
Speaker 3: it was just it was and Google had this slide.
Speaker 3: They were briefing journalists with than others that had all
Speaker 3: the sort of supposed competitors, and it was just things
Speaker 3: that they weren't competitive, and TikTok was one of them.
Speaker 3: And there was this idea and because here's the thing.
Speaker 3: If someone might go on TikTok and say, oh, good
Speaker 3: restaurant New York and get like a couple of videos
Speaker 3: or whatever. But the idea that there was like a
Speaker 3: utility that's replacing like for like was very very helpful
Speaker 3: to me. But it was at a point sort of
Speaker 3: picked up by all these kind of trends arenown to
Speaker 3: be like, oh, Google's in trouble because people are searching
Speaker 3: on TikTok. Not really, you know, it's it's that'd be
Speaker 3: like saying I'm searching on television. You know, it's there's
Speaker 3: not this not the same thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely not. And it's obviously like it was deployed
Speaker 2: very strategically by Google, you know, like bringing out very
Speaker 2: specific statistics or whatever. But the I think the point
Speaker 2: stands that like the same thing I've written about sort
Speaker 2: of the degradation of Google Search as a window into
Speaker 2: the web. And part of that is because people spam
Speaker 2: the web with horrible things, like things that kind of
Speaker 2: suck and are not useful because they're trying to appease
Speaker 2: an algorithm, and I think that same thing is happening
Speaker 2: on TikTok. It happens on Instagram, and a lot of
Speaker 2: it is user like comes from the user. We have
Speaker 2: to be honest that like people make shitty content.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: It's not just the tech companies who like make the
Speaker 2: systems bad. But there also is like sort of the
Speaker 2: guiding hand of TikTok where it will give creators ideas
Speaker 2: for types of content to make. These are what people are.
Speaker 2: These are the terms that people are searching for. What
Speaker 2: if you made a video about trending restaurants in your
Speaker 2: neighborhood or la boo boo, right, And part of it
Speaker 2: is like people want to want ideas for what to
Speaker 2: make yours. TikTok is a very punishing algorithm, at least
Speaker 2: in my experience, Like if you stop posting, it's really
Speaker 2: hard to regain views.
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure. Yeah, I've actually always been So there's
Speaker 1: a momentum.
Speaker 2: All there's a momentum for sure, for sure, And this
Speaker 2: is something creators have talked a lot about. But you
Speaker 2: need ideas for what to post and if TikTok is saying,
Speaker 2: a bunch of people are searching for this one specific
Speaker 2: restaurant in New York, why wouldn't you make a video
Speaker 2: about it? Right, It's like sort of it's it's almost
Speaker 2: like a it's backing into SEO, where you kind of
Speaker 2: instead of searching for, you know, terms related to what
Speaker 2: you make, you take the terms that the platform is
Speaker 2: giving you or telling you, suggesting you make content based
Speaker 2: off of Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's it's the kind of incentive driven web at this point,
Speaker 1: because I think that with the thing with SEO especially
Speaker 1: is there were there were people always made shit content,
Speaker 1: but there were also people who genuinely like, here are
Speaker 1: ten things I really like in New York. I mean
Speaker 1: one of my one of the saddest, like a brand
Speaker 1: that's still around, as like Zagat that used to be
Speaker 1: or Time Out especially.
Speaker 3: I mean there's so many Sports Illustrated, you know, they're
Speaker 3: just these places that were making good content their business
Speaker 3: how didn't work? And one of my grievances with Google
Speaker 3: at the moment strongly is that what they're selling now
Speaker 3: is the solution to the web they created, Yes, saying
Speaker 3: we've got all these disgusting websites out there. You go
Speaker 3: on a local news website, my god, it's it's your
Speaker 3: phone is like one hundred exactly, and there's pop ups everywhere,
Speaker 3: and you get and Google's saying, oh, the web's bad.
Speaker 3: We're gonna we're gonna summarize that as an aoverview. Isn't
Speaker 3: that great? And so well, the web's bad because the
Speaker 3: design had to be you know, the way we made
Speaker 3: content had to change in order to appease the platform.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing. You did a great piece actually
Speaker 1: about there reaping the rewards of it's unfairy advantage and
Speaker 1: also kind of like selling you swill and being like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll find the dogs, will find the diamond in the
Speaker 1: turds that we created, and I think quite the turn afraid, yeah,
Speaker 1: why they give me a microphone. But it's so sad
Speaker 1: as well, because there is an innocence to it. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you know people are looking for New York stuff,
Speaker 1: and you know New York, of course you'd say that
Speaker 1: time out reason that brought up as well as it
Speaker 1: used to be that you pick up time out and
Speaker 1: be like, oh, well, these people think they're cool. Like
Speaker 1: it was a big degree of that, and I think
Speaker 1: TikTok is leaned into that as well, with content creators
Speaker 1: like that, because I have seen tiktoks of stuff in
Speaker 1: New York. I've moved to America in two thousand, and
Speaker 1: they have spent many, many hours in New York. There's
Speaker 1: shit I'm surprised by. It's cool, and then you get
Speaker 1: the people who are doing it chop shop style, and
Speaker 1: it's unfortunate but kind of inevitable that you'd see this
Speaker 1: on social networks. What's confusing to me is why TikTok
Speaker 1: feels like the first one to really give it the
Speaker 1: actual try, because Instagram is sort of half asked it.
Speaker 1: Twitter's never really like people try and appear for algorithms,
Speaker 1: but it didn't feel like the companies were as serious
Speaker 1: about it as say maybe a Google or indeed TikTok.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I mean Instagram at least the search
Speaker 2: has always sucked. Yeah, and it doesn't. I don't know
Speaker 2: that it makes sense to optimize that same way that said,
Speaker 2: Instagram also does have like creator tools where it will
Speaker 2: be like this is how you should edit a video
Speaker 2: or this is how you should make content.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: YouTube does this so it's it's not that I just
Speaker 2: think that search on TikTok is something so different. I
Speaker 2: did something recently where I was I searched for something
Speaker 2: on TikTok and there was like a little pop up
Speaker 2: that the app gave me that was like, if you're
Speaker 2: not finding an answer that's satisfactory, why don't you ask
Speaker 2: people to make content based off of it? Or something?
Speaker 2: It was crazy, you know, it was so many levels
Speaker 2: of optimization that I was like, this is really an experience.
Speaker 2: It doesn't exist on other platforms on it's such a bid.
Speaker 3: It's such a by design thing with TikTok search, because
Speaker 3: one thing is really I find really aggravating as someone
Speaker 3: who you know isn't as clued up on the online
Speaker 3: culture as evidently you guys both.
Speaker 2: Are like, well nobody has laboo boo.
Speaker 3: I'll often see on TikTok some reference or something and
Speaker 3: I'll go, what are they talking about? What is that about?
Speaker 3: And TikTok doesn't allow you just to link to another video, right,
Speaker 3: and so what it forces you to do is there'll
Speaker 3: be the search suggestion, there'll be people doing searches, there'll
Speaker 3: be people that know that people are looking for searchers,
Speaker 3: so they will reference something else that will send you
Speaker 3: somewhere else in entirely. And it's just the net effect
Speaker 3: of that is, instead of going to the video that
Speaker 3: explain the thing that I'm confused about, I end up
Speaker 3: watching maybe five others with ads in between every second
Speaker 3: or third one, and I still don't really know. I mean,
Speaker 3: although some of the things I think if I did
Speaker 3: see the explanation, I still wouldn't understand it. But just
Speaker 3: trying to get there in the first place is really
Speaker 3: really tricky.
Speaker 1: It's when you get to the point of like, why
Speaker 1: are they creating search tools on their platforms? Is it
Speaker 1: so that you can find the thing you need or
Speaker 1: so that they can fine like they can kind of
Speaker 1: get you halfway.
Speaker 3: I don't think.
Speaker 1: It's I'm just be clear. I'm not front loaded this
Speaker 1: and suggesting the evil and everything everything everything they do.
Speaker 1: But the tweaks they make kind of are one of
Speaker 1: the funny things mere you put you actually put in
Speaker 1: the article about dupes though, that excellent. I'll leave and
Speaker 1: call of these in their notes.
Speaker 3: Don't worry.
Speaker 1: You don't have to email me. Uh was you if
Speaker 1: you look for Apple dupes on Instagram? You get this
Speaker 1: thing saying protect your favorite brands. The sale of promotion
Speaker 1: of counterfeit goods is not allowed on Instagram. So funny,
Speaker 1: But if you just type in dupes, it goes summarizing.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for alternative alternatives to high end products,
Speaker 1: dubes are are the way to go. A dupe is
Speaker 1: a product that replicates the quality, indoor appearance, a price.
Speaker 1: They're alternative. So funny, and then you get a bunch
Speaker 1: of videos that are selling jupes. Sometimes it feels like
Speaker 1: they don't really care that much. They just they just
Speaker 1: kind of like mailing it in.
Speaker 3: Ye tiktokt for jubes. I fine. I wrote a column
Speaker 3: months ago now, but it was I saw one video
Speaker 3: and there's this guy and he hadn't even got out
Speaker 3: of bed, right, and he said, oh, Apple's selling these
Speaker 3: pod maxes for three hundred bucks, but these ones are
Speaker 3: only twenty And he was holding his hands you can't
Speaker 3: see on the public, holding his hand in the air,
Speaker 3: and he didn't have a product in his hand. He
Speaker 3: just had a screenshot of the Apple the official Apple
Speaker 3: AirPod Maxes, and it was just sort of floating around
Speaker 3: with his hand. And then what he was selling on
Speaker 3: TikTok shop was you know, a twenty bucks knockoff that
Speaker 3: was terrible, and I wrote about basically how the TikTok
Speaker 3: shop is. I think it's kind of insulting to TikTok users.
Speaker 3: They've really shoved it in. They put it in the middle,
Speaker 3: so it looks terrible, looks terrible. The products are just awful.
Speaker 3: Some of the marketing people do is so trashy. It's
Speaker 3: like got all this like sexual in the endo in
Speaker 3: it and all this kind of stuff, and TikTok were
Speaker 3: just like, well, no, we're happy with it basically, and
Speaker 3: they actually tried to deep force a big correction on
Speaker 3: a column that had nothing wrong with it other than
Speaker 3: the fact it was calling out that it was a
Speaker 3: terrible place.
Speaker 1: I think that TikTok should lean more into the excellent
Speaker 1: Chinese business owners, though. I don't know if you've seen
Speaker 1: any of these insane ones where it'll be like we're
Speaker 1: selling giant houses, you can't step, no permit needed. There
Speaker 1: was one where it's like for people sent its like
Speaker 1: one says I'm racist, one says I'm ablest, and one
Speaker 1: goes I'm stepan. If you need to buy high quality
Speaker 1: cables with your logo on it, and I love those
Speaker 1: because they're funny. They're funny, but they're also just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're trying to do the algorithm, but fuck you by
Speaker 1: K and at the end that just like, we have
Speaker 1: a bunch of cables with you that's respectable, that's that's commerce.
Speaker 1: We should support that, not this weird QVC. It almost
Speaker 1: feels like we're trending towards what every music video in
Speaker 1: the nineties was making, like this very kind of like
Speaker 1: greasy consumerism. Though I will add this isn't me suggesting
Speaker 1: anyone specifically has decided to be evil. This is just
Speaker 1: what happens when incentives for people. I think when you
Speaker 1: get like the slop shop in TikTok.
Speaker 3: I think the incentives of all the major networks have
Speaker 3: been so interesting and sort of shaping. I mean, you
Speaker 3: were talking earlier about Twitter. They never really push people
Speaker 3: in much of a direction in terms of what to
Speaker 3: sort of be talking about. But one thing they did
Speaker 3: reward constantly the algorithm was anger. Yes, and Facebook got
Speaker 3: into that problem with you know when they you know,
Speaker 3: for a long the longest time they thought any engagement
Speaker 3: is good engagement until they realized it was you ain't
Speaker 3: and uncles like having to go at each other over
Speaker 3: politics or whatever. That's when they realized that was bad.
Speaker 3: And I'm still not convinced they do realize how bad
Speaker 3: that is. Twitter was all about anger I did for
Speaker 3: a short while, and this was years ago I think now,
Speaker 3: But like TikTok did seem to sort of push people
Speaker 3: towards doing stuff right, which I thought was quite healthy,
Speaker 3: Like well, the things that did well were you know,
Speaker 3: friends getting together and dancing. It was being out and about,
Speaker 3: it was being funny. But the stuff that worked was actually.
Speaker 1: Quite entertaining, like Vine almost, but yeah, just like.
Speaker 3: Vine in terms of just the sort of the humor
Speaker 3: that traveled. I think that what's happened, though, is they've
Speaker 3: turned the screw of the monetization and the amount of
Speaker 3: sponsored stuff and also like the and I never quite
Speaker 3: know what drives it, right, because it is it that
Speaker 3: some people come up with a format for a format
Speaker 3: for a video that works and then TikTok goes, oh,
Speaker 3: that's good, We'll get others to do it. What do
Speaker 3: you think sort of TikTok is trying to nurture it
Speaker 3: itself first, I mean, I guess it's a bit of
Speaker 3: buu im.
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, it's chicken and egg because I had this
Speaker 1: theory about year ago, maybe actually twenty twenty three, where
Speaker 1: it's like, at some point, how much of content is
Speaker 1: just going to be geared towards what they think the
Speaker 1: algorithm wants, and because the algorithm with good reason, they
Speaker 1: don't want to just publish exactly what would work, because
Speaker 1: then people would only do that. And I think that
Speaker 1: there's just this weird battle between I think any content
Speaker 1: creat I think all of us, like there's a certain
Speaker 1: degree of what's going to do well. And personally, as
Speaker 1: everyone knows from this show, I've just done what I
Speaker 1: want since the beginning, regardless of what people said. But
Speaker 1: there is a pool of like what will do well?
Speaker 1: What do people want? And what is a person in
Speaker 1: this case? And so you've just got this people probably
Speaker 1: I reckon for the most part, people are making honest content.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's impossible to quantify it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's impossible to quantify. And also I don't think
Speaker 2: it's that like it makes a lot of sense when
Speaker 2: you think of the Internet or these platforms as a workplace,
Speaker 2: which for a lot of these people. It is for me.
Speaker 2: It is in some way the Verge employs me and
Speaker 2: pays my bills. But part of my work, part of
Speaker 2: my how my work travels is based on my ability
Speaker 2: to ride algorithmic waves when needed. Right, And it's the
Speaker 2: same way that like, you still see journalists on threads.
Speaker 2: I don't really post on threads very much, but you
Speaker 2: see journalists on threads post screenshots of their articles, and
Speaker 2: then in the replies they'll post the link because they
Speaker 2: think that they're going to get downloaded. Right, you're down
Speaker 2: downrinked for putting a link in there.
Speaker 1: Insane.
Speaker 2: And that's the same way that like, you know, twit twit.
Speaker 1: Like that as well.
Speaker 2: Now yeah, yeah, and I mean Elon Musk has just
Speaker 2: come out straightforwardly and said, like, you know, it's I
Speaker 2: can't remember the term he used, but yeah, he's acknowledged that.
Speaker 2: But you know, the same practices sort of carry over
Speaker 2: to video platforms. Right, you need to start a video
Speaker 2: in a certain way if you want it to get traction.
Speaker 2: There are different ways, well, there are different ways to
Speaker 2: do it. Some some stuff that goes really does really
Speaker 2: well is like you know, selfie style camp, selfie style
Speaker 2: video and it starts okay, story time. I'm sure you've
Speaker 2: seen this, Oh where you put it?
Speaker 3: The millennials get it ready right and have it hello everyone?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Yes, the gen Z sake is the.
Speaker 2: Is like, so, yes, that's well, that's a perfect example
Speaker 2: of like people the shake is this thing where people
Speaker 2: were I guess surmising that if you put your camera down,
Speaker 2: like you start recording, and you put your camera down
Speaker 2: in a way that feels like you were just caught
Speaker 2: something in the moment. Yeah, and you were just recording
Speaker 2: jumping into record a video like that is effective for people,
Speaker 2: or it makes it feel organic, or it makes it
Speaker 2: feel relatable like whatever. But yeah, everyone does some like
Speaker 2: some level of optimizing.
Speaker 3: I think the dark side of this is that trying
Speaker 3: to predict what works is turning people completely loopy. Yeah right,
Speaker 3: Like so I saw and I won't say who is
Speaker 3: might have my assessment on how this person feels might
Speaker 3: be wrong. But I saw a singer who made a
Speaker 3: short video maybe thirty seconds, where she had like one
Speaker 3: verse of a song and she's like, oh guys, you
Speaker 3: like this and it was wonderful and it got like,
Speaker 3: you know, over a million views. I was going, I'll
Speaker 3: record this recorded because and so she did, right, She
Speaker 3: sort of took time off the platform, made like an
Speaker 3: EP and put the songs out there, came back on
Speaker 3: TikTok to make the content about the song being ready,
Speaker 3: and it got next to nothing engagement, and you can
Speaker 3: just see, at least my impression was that you could
Speaker 3: see her kind of going why why, Like, I've done
Speaker 3: the song, I've done the actual work of releasing a song,
Speaker 3: and the algorithm for some reason, maybe it seems less organic,
Speaker 3: or maybe people just didn't like the song. Maybe I'm
Speaker 3: ugly now, maybe like all this, and people go, what
Speaker 3: is it that's preventing it? And I think that's where
Speaker 3: it's kind of troubling to me.
Speaker 1: I I agree, and I think that it's really hard
Speaker 1: sometimes to see the difference between the algorithm and the
Speaker 1: reader or the viewer, right because it's like what did
Speaker 1: you like? Did people actually like it? As well as
Speaker 1: the question there. There was also a YouTube video that
Speaker 1: went up a couple months ago where someone was investigating
Speaker 1: why lots of videos have a person holding the tiny
Speaker 1: microphone the level of a microphone, and it really I.
Speaker 3: Do that, no, but that's a Bloomberg TikTok account. I'd
Speaker 3: do the whole micro thing and people take the make
Speaker 3: out it's weird.
Speaker 1: Apparently algorithm likes it. Certain think that Dan over a
Speaker 1: morning brew as well. Does he holds like a full
Speaker 1: scale like old news microft. I think people need to
Speaker 1: go back to that.
Speaker 3: I love the subway takes guy has it on like
Speaker 3: a little yah yeah level.
Speaker 1: I think that that's lovely as well. But it's like
Speaker 1: I hadn't really thought about how it drives people insane,
Speaker 1: but it does. Even early days of the newsletters, it
Speaker 1: takes Matt Weinberger, friend of the show, be.
Speaker 3: Like, is this ship the people like?
Speaker 1: Just keep writing, just to ignore, just keep writing. It
Speaker 1: will grow naturally. But we've been conditioned for this thing
Speaker 1: where we're constantly even me and I try and pretend
Speaker 1: I don't get affected by stuff for this, but it's like,
Speaker 1: you see something do well or don't do well. Your
Speaker 1: natural inclination is why what can I do to it?
Speaker 1: Am I wrong? Am I? Somehow? And it's interesting how
Speaker 1: so much this comes back to the platform incentives.
Speaker 3: Right, and the human inside you assumes people don't like it, right,
Speaker 3: that's your initial reaction to it, I'd say, I always
Speaker 3: find your boss Nileli. He's always talking about how the
Speaker 3: verse just just has to be true to what it's
Speaker 3: doing and not sort of bow to any of the
Speaker 3: platforms as they go. And I think that's always been
Speaker 3: a very good lesson because I think too many media
Speaker 3: outlets we sit here and go, oh, Okay, this is
Speaker 3: the thing that's working on TikTok. We're gonna sit down
Speaker 3: and in a certain way, we're going to do it
Speaker 3: in a certain tone. And I've had previous employers where
Speaker 3: they're like, oh, just trying to do it off the cuff,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, well, when you work for them, I
Speaker 3: stress a previous employee, I would argue with my editors
Speaker 3: and saying authentic for us was to not do that.
Speaker 3: And it's a very sort of hello fellow kids thing
Speaker 3: that happened. Serious places tried to be all like hey,
Speaker 3: you know, like in the same way that when a
Speaker 3: politician like Chuck Schumer tries to do some TikTok joke,
Speaker 3: it's like it's not real, it doesn't and it's embarrassing
Speaker 3: and it's patronizing to the people. So yeah, also off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, can you just do something off the calf. Oh
Speaker 1: you would like me to fake spontaneity, Absolutely, I'll get
Speaker 1: But it's it gets back to the credit to Neili Hear.
Speaker 1: The term Google zero, I think is really interesting because
Speaker 1: this idea that and as you wrote about recently Day
Speaker 1: that Google is basically possibly taking away the traffic from
Speaker 1: everyone or dictating who gets traffic now in a very
Speaker 1: direct way. They're not one they control because it's a
Speaker 1: large language model, or at least controlling, it's indirect, and
Speaker 1: I think it's it's almost like a final mut like
Speaker 1: Boxer in animal Farm being marched to the glue factory,
Speaker 1: the final way you've outlived your usefulness. And I feel
Speaker 1: like the media and I, by the way, I say
Speaker 1: this with a great deal of sympathy. Yeah, you're going
Speaker 1: to chase, which would get you clicks for your click
Speaker 1: driven business. But I think you've seen where at the
Speaker 1: end or the beginning of a dark kind of like
Speaker 1: semi dark era where we're seeing the cost of orienting
Speaker 1: journalism around trends and clicks so aggressively, and we're kind
Speaker 1: of now little boomers and everything. We're seeing the natural
Speaker 1: result of orienting things around trend chasing because It's like,
Speaker 1: here's a thing that has no real resell value that
Speaker 1: owning it is just symbolic. Do you care about the show? Now?
Speaker 1: Why are you making these news stories? Well, it's because
Speaker 1: people are going to be looking for them. Why are
Speaker 1: you covering the same thing as everyone else? Because everyone's
Speaker 1: looking And there's a fair argument for that. If there
Speaker 1: is a big funding round or a big news story,
Speaker 1: of course everyone's going to cover it. And it's like
Speaker 1: the functionality of journalism. And I think this Google AI
Speaker 1: thing is it's scary, man. I think like Neela got
Speaker 1: there early. I'll give him this.
Speaker 2: The other one thing I'll say about the Google zero
Speaker 2: this idea that you know, the traffic will go down
Speaker 2: until it hits nothing.
Speaker 1: I don't think it will hit nothing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think for some people it has basically hit nothing. However,
Speaker 2: I will say that like and I posted this on
Speaker 2: Blue Sky, but this has just been the mo for
Speaker 2: Google and with search for years before AI overviews. The
Speaker 2: idea that Google is self dealing, right, that it creates
Speaker 2: products that then replace the things that other people were
Speaker 2: doing in search. That is old news. And it's funny
Speaker 2: that you know people are kind of that the AI
Speaker 2: overview of it all is what kind of finally makes
Speaker 2: people realize it. When I worked at the Markup, we
Speaker 2: and the story by some great former colleagues that like,
Speaker 2: measured the percentage of the first page of Google results
Speaker 2: on a phone screen, how much of that space was
Speaker 2: taken up by Google products itself, and it was like
Speaker 2: forty one percent. And that killed websites like celebrity net worth,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, or like travel companies because
Speaker 2: Google had flights shopping, right, like all of these services
Speaker 2: that other sites were providing, Google just made its own
Speaker 2: version and they were like, we're gonna put this at
Speaker 2: the top. That's what That's what's happening with AI, which
Speaker 2: is the.
Speaker 3: Same thing with in those cases in Europe they regulated
Speaker 3: against it, right, So when when these companies come and say, oh,
Speaker 3: Europe's being so overbearing, or that's what they're talking about, right,
Speaker 3: they're talking about the fact that Google Shopping can't dominate
Speaker 3: the top twenty percent of a search page when you
Speaker 3: search for you know, iPad or whatever you know. So
Speaker 3: that's what was they were so aggrieved by. And I
Speaker 3: mean even but now with all the I mean, I
Speaker 3: was on my my brother on myself and the vantage
Speaker 3: it was I was scrolling for.
Speaker 2: Days and now they're doing the entirely AI generated whole page.
Speaker 2: Did you see this? Yeah, I forget what it's called.
Speaker 2: I would have to look it up, but they announced
Speaker 2: it last Friday, Thursday or Friday. And basically it's separate
Speaker 2: from AI mode. You search for something and it creates
Speaker 2: honestly exactly what web pages look like websites and it
Speaker 2: is you know, it'll have a section if you search
Speaker 2: I think the example they gave was like solo traveling
Speaker 2: in Japan, and the top part will be like reddit
Speaker 2: and reddit and YouTube posts, so like communities or forums.
Speaker 2: Then there will be a whole different section of the serp,
Speaker 2: the search engine result page that is, yes, that is
Speaker 2: web guide, web Guide, web Guide, and then it'll be
Speaker 2: sort of like you know, top places to go and
Speaker 2: it will pull stuff in from Expedia or not Expedia,
Speaker 2: trip Advisor, things like that. It's it basically sub sections
Speaker 2: the SERP to look like an SEO generated or like
Speaker 2: an SEO driven article. It's it's really crazy.
Speaker 1: It's the snake that is, who needs websites?
Speaker 3: No, But it's all over, isn't it?
Speaker 1: But that's the thing, it's the net. It's ironic as
Speaker 1: well because the origins of Google were based on this
Speaker 1: idea that there was too much original content for you
Speaker 1: to find it alone, and it was kind of noble.
Speaker 1: And also within the original paper they were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: if ads ever get involved with this, it's fucked. Man.
Speaker 1: Were they right? But it's this sense of they've never
Speaker 1: had much gratitude towards the web, and you made me
Speaker 1: actually think of something went with traffic dropping away. This
Speaker 1: is also if you read like Search Engine Journal and
Speaker 1: like these are great publications, by the way, you want
Speaker 1: to see some real like journalists as journalists, people that
Speaker 1: read SEO and talk to SEO people, or day Jesus
Speaker 1: Christ rusty over there. But there were so many situations
Speaker 1: where traffic has just disappeared from it from a concept
Speaker 1: and they just Google went no, not today. The idea
Speaker 1: that they're building pages like this is fascinating as well,
Speaker 1: because it's like, wow, we don't need you anymore, Yes,
Speaker 1: you fucking do, dick. What how is it going to
Speaker 1: generate the page? What's it going to be based on?
Speaker 1: And they're they're thought, I imagine, I'm guessing is likely. Oh,
Speaker 1: people won't notice. I think people will. I think they will.
Speaker 1: I think people will see AI results in, which is
Speaker 1: why the traffic's dropping and go okay. That answers my question.
Speaker 1: But I think an entire fake page people are going
Speaker 1: to be like, okay, and maybe they'll click them, but
Speaker 1: they're not going to stick around on them. They're not
Speaker 1: going to read much. It's not going to be particularly enjoyable.
Speaker 1: But maybe I'm wrong, and I hope I am not wrong,
Speaker 1: because if this is an idea of something replacing the
Speaker 1: web that is Google like, that's more Google zero than
Speaker 1: anything I've ever seen.
Speaker 3: Grotesque it It's just part of a pattern of reducing
Speaker 3: any need to go off that yeah, to get And
Speaker 3: one of the most egregious examples of it isn't even AI.
Speaker 3: And every time I say it, it annoys me more
Speaker 3: and more so. One of the things that some publications
Speaker 3: have been quite successful, app bloombo is one of them.
Speaker 3: New York Times famous is games, right word or connections
Speaker 3: or whatever, a little thing that would make people subscribe
Speaker 3: to the app, open the app every day, maybe catch
Speaker 3: a bit of news while they're there, right and now
Speaker 3: LinkedIn doing minigames, And I'm like, what can you explain
Speaker 3: this LinkedIn games?
Speaker 1: Because I got the pop up for the Apple News
Speaker 1: thing and I think I posted it on Instagram and
Speaker 1: I don't know what this ship is just it's but
Speaker 1: one of these LinkedIn games please walk.
Speaker 3: I mean they're just little word games. I mean, there's nothing.
Speaker 3: They're just trying to sort of do you know. I've
Speaker 3: not played the LinkedIn once, but the Apple ones just
Speaker 3: mini crossword that kind of stuff. The thing with the
Speaker 3: LinkedIn is I find quite funny is it will tell
Speaker 3: you how many of your colleagues have that, and it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: three hundred of your colleagues a Bloomberg have done the
Speaker 3: mini cross That's that's really a useful information.
Speaker 2: I imagine the crossword answer for every single day on
Speaker 2: LinkedIn is just like hustle, rise, grind or.
Speaker 3: That would be quite fun, though, Yeah, that would make
Speaker 3: me sort of go for it.
Speaker 1: That would require too much like charm and thought.
Speaker 2: But LinkedIn, if you're listening, I can write your games.
Speaker 1: Also, they added vertical video to LinkedIn evil and I
Speaker 1: think that if you post one of those, someone should
Speaker 1: come visit your house. They're like, no, I'm thinking more
Speaker 1: like the FB. It's like, what what you got on
Speaker 1: the laptop? Let me let me check that hard drive
Speaker 1: real quick. But it's it's so funny as well, because
Speaker 1: all this is just coming down to please click our website.
Speaker 1: Please don't leave our website. Our website is the most important.
Speaker 1: It almost feels just desperate, like it feels the TikTok generally.
Speaker 1: And I don't say this with any I. TikTok upsets
Speaker 1: me when I use it. I need the at the
Speaker 1: page to end. This is just a weird thing in
Speaker 1: my brain. I'm like, no, infinite makes me. I don't
Speaker 1: want to look at this forever.
Speaker 3: Have you ever reached the clip that says, hey, you've
Speaker 3: been scrolling for a while.
Speaker 1: No, see, I feel like I'm to anyone who's.
Speaker 3: Ever seen this, I've hit it. Yeah, okay, it's not
Speaker 3: the most depressing. It's so bad, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. At that point, I'm like, god, damn, I need
Speaker 2: to go.
Speaker 3: You know what about like a click? If you've been
Speaker 3: scrolling and it must be like an hour and a half,
Speaker 3: maybe I get really anxious it will please you know
Speaker 3: you've been doing this a long time.
Speaker 1: I need to hit the end. If I if I
Speaker 1: get the sense that there's no end. I'm like, I
Speaker 1: can't look at it like what I require time to end? Please.
Speaker 2: But that sort of limitless space is why we get
Speaker 2: derivative content, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Like that that's kind of because people want more.
Speaker 2: People want more, and also it just if there's space,
Speaker 2: someone will fill it. Yeah, And that was kind of
Speaker 2: what I was trying to get at in my dupe story,
Speaker 2: which is like the same thing that happens on an
Speaker 2: infinite scroll feed on recommendation based social media platforms is
Speaker 2: happening to like our physical goods simply because there is
Speaker 2: Amazon space. There are Amazon pages to fill, and you
Speaker 2: need ideas the same way that a content creator needs
Speaker 2: ideas to post every single day. Like when it is
Speaker 2: so algorithmic and recommendations based and taste space, it's just
Speaker 2: like just throw whatever, and I have space there.
Speaker 1: And I hate to defend the platforms at all. I
Speaker 1: think the thing you said earlier about people did make
Speaker 1: shit content before actually really did resonate because it's there's
Speaker 1: also a degree here of yeah, there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: derivative content, but there's also consumer demand and yeah, as
Speaker 1: human beings, we want to see more of a thing
Speaker 1: we're interested in. I do think part of the unhealthy
Speaker 1: parts of the Internet is we can feel just about anything,
Speaker 1: perhaps not for the best, but it's and there's a
Speaker 1: goodness to it, as well as many alternative communities that
Speaker 1: have found good things online and then others. But it's
Speaker 1: interesting because it's fulfilling the need of needing an infinite scroll,
Speaker 1: which is a need that they created on the platforms themselves.
Speaker 1: And I also found that story interesting because you didn't
Speaker 1: really have sympathy with any Like it felt like you
Speaker 1: were empathetic for everyone, but not sympathetic to anyone. It
Speaker 1: was like you recognize why people did these things, and
Speaker 1: why people want jeups of expensive things is probably because
Speaker 1: the thing's too expensive. But then you had the skirt
Speaker 1: worn by the by Taylor Swift. Yeah, I like Scott.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I really like stories where you read it and
Speaker 2: your allegiance changes. I think that's like one of my
Speaker 2: favorite things to write. And when I when I can
Speaker 2: figure out ways to put it into that format, I
Speaker 2: really enjoy it. But yeah, I mean like I don't
Speaker 2: really love the debate going into like who's right and
Speaker 2: who's wrong, because it's just like not that helpful and
Speaker 2: not that interesting. That feels more like, you know, just
Speaker 2: gossip or something. But I like this idea that like
Speaker 2: everyone is a little bit being taken in advantage of,
Speaker 2: and everyone also sucks a bit here.
Speaker 1: And I also think that there is a certain degree
Speaker 1: of human beings take advantage of other human beings too.
Speaker 1: They rip offs the I'm the person, I'm the La
Speaker 1: Booboo whisperer. It's a great quote there, like I'm the
Speaker 1: person that can help you find the thing. There are
Speaker 1: all of these channels about how you can gambling, tips
Speaker 1: about how you can buy and resell stuff. There are
Speaker 1: ethically dubious things that pop up on the Internet, but
Speaker 1: there's also hunger for it, those people taking advantage just
Speaker 1: as much as the incentives of the platform take advantage people.
Speaker 1: I think the platforms are generally more evil because they
Speaker 1: have more capacity for harm, but that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: these small time people would not do evil things even
Speaker 1: give and that scale.
Speaker 3: I sort of the platforms. The difference between how the
Speaker 3: platform behaves and how what people describe as what the
Speaker 3: legacy gatekeepers from you know, yesteryear, is that they don't
Speaker 3: they don't have any sort of standards of what's good right, right,
Speaker 3: So if you're you know, you know, you're running a
Speaker 3: children's television company Nickelodeon, Children's, BBC, whatever, you're not commissioning
Speaker 3: a show like Mister Beast or whatever, because you just
Speaker 3: something makes you going, oh, is this really what we want? Here?
Speaker 3: Is like, do we want to make it that everyone's
Speaker 3: obsessed with money and they're willing to sort of do
Speaker 3: these crazy stunts, embarrass themselves or whatever. And you make
Speaker 3: those decisions despite knowing that people would lap it up,
Speaker 3: people would go crazy. And I think you could say
Speaker 3: the same thing about sexualized content. You can say say
Speaker 3: the same things about about gambling. I think, yeah, you
Speaker 3: could do a great show about people gambling on sports whole.
Speaker 1: We have one of back during the Super Bowl, and
Speaker 1: many listeners did not like that he talked about sports.
Speaker 1: But it gets back to the same incentives, Like you're saying, though,
Speaker 1: it's people take advantage of people.
Speaker 3: But I think there used to be this idea that
Speaker 3: the major companies, when they're even down to say sixty
Speaker 3: minutes right on CBS, they would say, right, is this
Speaker 3: genuinely important? And do we need to do? And I
Speaker 3: think when the platforms don't apply those same standards. What
Speaker 3: it means is is that the people with just completely
Speaker 3: nonsense theories and opinions just get on that same surface
Speaker 3: where any TV producer worth their salt of tool would go, Okay, well,
Speaker 3: we're not going to put this guy on because what
Speaker 3: is qualifications? Don't you know? We don't know if he's
Speaker 3: talking gibberish or not. So there's been problems with that
Speaker 3: in terms of who gets on. But like, I think
Speaker 3: it's I think it's better maybe in some respect.
Speaker 1: No, and I think that, But you're also touching on something,
Speaker 1: which is these platforms have, despite what they're doing right now,
Speaker 1: have always acted as if they're never going to be
Speaker 1: the arbiters of what is used as content. It's just
Speaker 1: like we're helping you find stuff. But it's very clear
Speaker 1: that they're they want to be the producer or at
Speaker 1: least mimic being a producer as well. And it's very
Speaker 1: interesting all because everything we're discussing is just incentives. It's
Speaker 1: incentives and how people are drawn by it. Because you
Speaker 1: mentioned nutters like people like no, I mention utters. No,
Speaker 1: I mean just like people of dubious intent intent and
Speaker 1: content people like Curtis Jarvin or Eliza Yudkowski or these
Speaker 1: less wrong freaks they were ten years ago, they would
Speaker 1: have never had them. I would say, they would have
Speaker 1: likely not got a New York Times whatever. But I
Speaker 1: think what that is is actually a mashing between everything
Speaker 1: we're talking about, which is ten years ago there wasn't
Speaker 1: perhaps the poll of SEO. There wasn't the pool of
Speaker 1: tons of online content suggesting that we need to talk
Speaker 1: to this guy and humor him seriously. There was tons
Speaker 1: of purporting saying these people were evil. But now I
Speaker 1: genuinely think some of these things or some might get clicks,
Speaker 1: or they'll see the interviews that these people get five
Speaker 1: hundred thousand views, So they're drawn by all these new
Speaker 1: incentives versus having an actual quality bar. I do think
Speaker 1: it is funny, though, that these companies to this day
Speaker 1: are still pretending that they have no responsibility for the
Speaker 1: content they have no they have no quality standards they
Speaker 1: need to maintain, and indeed they will tweak them to
Speaker 1: whatever level. I'm not even saying that anything has changed.
Speaker 3: I mean there's been changes in the sense that they
Speaker 3: I think, well, I struggled to give Facebook too much
Speaker 3: credit on this, but you know, they definitely have made
Speaker 3: tweaks around just having you know, a regular family member
Speaker 3: talk on Facebook and that being driven to. But what
Speaker 3: they've what they've kind of pivoted to. And maybe they've
Speaker 3: done it not out of any sort of obligation to
Speaker 3: improve the problem, but because they realize now that content
Speaker 3: made by people you don't know, that's sort of made
Speaker 3: in a certain way, you're going to look at that
Speaker 3: for longer anyway, So they don't care.
Speaker 2: There's more of it. Yeah, there are more people that
Speaker 2: you don't have them do.
Speaker 3: And which is a really interesting mean I find now
Speaker 3: and the only time I get any utility from the
Speaker 3: Facebook app is when it says here's what you're doing
Speaker 3: ten years ago, And I'll take a screenshot of that,
Speaker 3: send it to whoever it was there, and go, look,
Speaker 3: can you believe that was ten years ago? And that's
Speaker 3: going to start running out soon. I think I'm going
Speaker 3: to run out of those sort of you know, membe
Speaker 3: because the people don't post it. But that time when
Speaker 3: it used to be a platform and where you'd have
Speaker 3: like a party and the next day there'd be you know,
Speaker 3: undred photos of people tagged it. I mean that feels
Speaker 3: like a completely different way.
Speaker 1: It was so nice as well, like when I got created.
Speaker 3: That's the thing.
Speaker 1: Like as angry as I am at these platforms, it's
Speaker 1: broken heart of romantic because when I got on Facebook,
Speaker 1: it was genuinely magical. Like you said, you go to
Speaker 1: a party, someone like ten ship webcam photos would be
Speaker 1: up there you see, yeah.
Speaker 3: And you.
Speaker 1: Or just like you'd see someone that you talk to
Speaker 1: for a minute and you were friends. I had tons
Speaker 1: of friends at Penn State, for example, and there was
Speaker 1: something like nice about that. And I guess that that
Speaker 1: was just before they realized how much money they could make,
Speaker 1: or before they went to public and.
Speaker 2: They realized too that you know, humans have an endless
Speaker 2: appetite for slop, not even AI slap. It's just like
Speaker 2: if you give them a scrollly feed, they will just
Speaker 2: keep going until we hit the danger zone.
Speaker 3: Which does Facebook have a danger zone?
Speaker 2: Up? I don't think so, I don't think, just like
Speaker 2: don't look at the stame.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's and I think it's the shift away from
Speaker 1: their claimed utility towards the real one that they want,
Speaker 1: which is they all want to be entertainment networks. Because
Speaker 1: this concept of we ran out of stuff. That is it.
Speaker 1: It's like you go on Facebook, you check Facebook and
Speaker 1: you go, oh, this, this and this. Okay, I'm done
Speaker 1: because my utility here is social networks on Google. It
Speaker 1: like I go and look for something. People might do
Speaker 1: idle idle looking, but they're like generally with a target.
Speaker 1: Now you've TikTok was I think created within the realm
Speaker 1: of people want to see stuff like it was. It
Speaker 1: never tried to sell itself as a place where you
Speaker 1: meet your friends, a place where we interact with others. Yeah.
Speaker 2: In fact, it was distinctly this is a place where
Speaker 2: you are not by people, you know, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean. You're posting things to to an assumed audience
Speaker 2: that does not include your parents network. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And TikTok doesn't compare to the other networks. TikTok
Speaker 3: doesn't really encourage you to post right when you when
Speaker 3: you when you, If you do one video, then it
Speaker 3: will say oh do this, this, this, this is this.
Speaker 3: But it's quite content for people just to consume if
Speaker 3: that's what they're But it's an entertainment. It's not like
Speaker 3: a huge sort of you know, nudge in the app
Speaker 3: to say, oh, get.
Speaker 1: Posting yeah, and I think we're even with Google, and
Speaker 1: it's like, what is Google anymore? Is it? Are they
Speaker 1: trying to not making it a search? Is it going?
Speaker 1: Is a place where Google serve? I mean it always
Speaker 1: was a place where Google served you ads, but now
Speaker 1: it's you were in the Google zone. And I have
Speaker 1: to wonder, if I say this with some optimism, whether
Speaker 1: someone might go, ah, what if we made a search
Speaker 1: engine that helped you find things that could be a
Speaker 1: billion two billion and your revenue business, you know it's
Speaker 1: not one hundred billion. But we also don't need to
Speaker 1: do antitrust shit every year. I'm being even saying these
Speaker 1: words out loud. I'm like, no, that's not going to happen.
Speaker 1: Arab insom.
Speaker 3: I mean, people are trying to make different I mean,
Speaker 3: Duck Duck goes kind of in that pain. But people
Speaker 3: just don't use them. That's the problem.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing. It's like, do they not use
Speaker 1: them or it's just not as many as Google use them.
Speaker 1: I'm not even saying you're wrong, it's just when you
Speaker 1: say people, you mean most people, and yeah, most people
Speaker 1: use Google. Most people stop the start their Internet journey
Speaker 1: on Google.
Speaker 3: I mean The thing that ties a lot of these
Speaker 3: platforms as problems together is the point in which they
Speaker 3: go public. It all just goes nutso right because you
Speaker 3: have I mean, Facebook is the classic example of this.
Speaker 3: It just then it just became massive growth every single
Speaker 3: quarter and that sort of and I think, I mean,
Speaker 3: this is such a sort of basic observation. I guess,
Speaker 3: but you know, I think if you applied that model
Speaker 3: to say the badega on your street, right, Okay, every
Speaker 3: year you need to grow by ten percent, imagine what
Speaker 3: that business is going to go mad? Isn't It's going
Speaker 3: to be selling porn and it's gonna be selling drug
Speaker 3: just just to just to get the margins up right,
Speaker 3: And you're thinking, we're holding that.
Speaker 1: No, this is this is the rot economy. This is
Speaker 1: the growth. It's everything everything driven around growth. It's the
Speaker 1: moment that growth must be perpetual. Because in twenty seventeen
Speaker 1: there was an internal Facebook thing. I've brought it out
Speaker 1: last last year. Big up to Jeff Orwitz Broken Code,
Speaker 1: great book where there's a whole thing where Zuckerberg he
Speaker 1: did twelve percent perpetual growth when you I'm just really
Speaker 1: sat and thought about this that is an insane fucking
Speaker 1: thing to put on a social network. I must have
Speaker 1: more friends, I must connect with more. And it's now
Speaker 1: when you look at everything, that is the incentive everything.
Speaker 1: It's not really about do we buy toys, do we
Speaker 1: search things? How do we keep people here or get
Speaker 1: the credit card? Which is I mean the age old
Speaker 1: capitalism thing.
Speaker 3: The problem was with Facebook is that people didn't have
Speaker 3: enough friends. Yes, exactly rut did constantly is that you've
Speaker 3: run out of stuff, and so then it became, ok, well,
Speaker 3: how do we make them when they're looking at this
Speaker 3: site look on it for longer. And that's when we
Speaker 3: started to get alder mad. It's crazy.
Speaker 1: It was profitable before they took it public. I've read
Speaker 1: stories which suggests that Mark Zuckerberg didn't want to take
Speaker 1: it public, and I'm like fifty to fifty on whether
Speaker 1: he did, because there's enough evidence that suggests that he
Speaker 1: was quite happy with it being a fifty billion dollar
Speaker 1: public a private company. And then I think he realized,
Speaker 1: oh wait, I control this whole thing. I can never
Speaker 1: be fired. But it's like trying to give a soul
Speaker 1: to there's great.
Speaker 3: I mean, Jack Dorsey is probably the famous one. There right,
Speaker 3: he's and he's should never have been a public company,
Speaker 3: and he's right if only been of fine business. But
Speaker 3: people the vcs need their payday, right, that's the whole
Speaker 3: ecosystem could have.
Speaker 1: That's what I always wonder whether we don't have more
Speaker 1: interesting bench capital models with like revenue shares or like
Speaker 1: like something that is more interesting than if I give
Speaker 1: you a bunch of money, this might you might sell
Speaker 1: this in the future. It's it's sad, but it's you
Speaker 1: know what, I want to ask a good question. Are
Speaker 1: there any parts of the Internet you enjoy right now?
Speaker 1: I truly want to know.
Speaker 3: You should have prepped me with this one before.
Speaker 1: It's interesting having the gap.
Speaker 3: Like I'm sort of gravitating towards old style blogs, like weblogs.
Speaker 3: Do you ever see and I think, I don't know
Speaker 3: how plants. I think it's cock Oh yeah, cocky. And
Speaker 3: it's just it's just a blog. There's maybe three or
Speaker 3: four entries a day, and he's been doing it and he's.
Speaker 1: Got twenty years for a long long time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's just a beautiful design and the stuff
Speaker 3: is just interesting stuff. It's kind of reminds you of
Speaker 3: the days when you just have a few.
Speaker 1: Weblogs that you'd rate since real traffic as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I actually it does, but it doesn't mean you
Speaker 3: couldn't launch that side today and gain populator. I think
Speaker 3: you have this sort of legacy of people that have
Speaker 3: always visited that. I actually, although I'm a new reader,
Speaker 3: so maybe I don't know, but.
Speaker 1: I kind of I agree with ninety eight percent of it.
Speaker 1: Other than I think you could do something like this,
Speaker 1: it's just that starting a new thing fucking sucks. Like that.
Speaker 1: I went, and I have some personal experience with this
Speaker 1: in I went and looked back where I was five
Speaker 1: years ago, three hundred subscribers, sixty views on my first piece.
Speaker 1: But you have to have the ability to do a
Speaker 1: bunch of shit until it makes money. And I had
Speaker 1: a main job, had a PR firm, and I think
Speaker 1: just making money in creating anything is so difficult. But
Speaker 1: I love I Actually I had not thought of it
Speaker 1: in a while. But it's just a place where someone
Speaker 1: thoughtful has said you should check this out. Kind of
Speaker 1: mimics I don't know, friendships or iconoclasts, like the idea
Speaker 1: of someone who.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's a as well, Yeah, I just kind
Speaker 3: of know you're going to get it's going to be
Speaker 3: sort of mildly nerdy, but not too much so. And
Speaker 3: that's what you get when you go there. And I
Speaker 3: think it's Yeah, So when people get nostalgic for the web,
Speaker 3: I think it's that kind of discovery that they're thinking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's it is the thing that I think
Speaker 1: a lot of listeners miss as well. It's like, we're
Speaker 1: not we don't just hate arbitrarily, We're not just angry.
Speaker 1: It's just there's something taken away. Like we mentioned Facebook,
Speaker 1: the quality. He also used to be Google. He used
Speaker 1: to just be able to dick around on Google and
Speaker 1: find some bizarre stuff. I remember back in college. I
Speaker 1: lost this two thousand and six, I want to say.
Speaker 1: I was in my Dustin Panganis college room mate. We
Speaker 1: randomly typed in you know, you're right by Nirvana into
Speaker 1: YouTube and there was just this I think it's like,
Speaker 1: I don't even remember it had view. It was this
Speaker 1: grainy video of this like young Asian guy seeing this
Speaker 1: like really kind of like slightly out of chewn version
Speaker 1: of somebody. It was so interesting in grim like he
Speaker 1: seemed very sad. I can never find it again. But
Speaker 1: that was the kind of internet I kind of missed,
Speaker 1: like just these arbitrary moments. So you find these weird things.
Speaker 3: You can't find that clip on YouTube, But would you
Speaker 3: be interested in two hours of Joe Rogan?
Speaker 1: Yeah, five hours because it will help.
Speaker 3: You find that. Yeah, and then if you watch that,
Speaker 3: then maybe Charlie Kirk and then you're.
Speaker 1: In the well you've learned three times of racism. You
Speaker 1: get legs from how you are on computer, on website.
Speaker 1: I won't do that for too long. That's why the
Speaker 1: episodes are so long. It's ten minutes per question. So
Speaker 1: what are you enjoying? Like?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Man? I feel like there are a few content creators
Speaker 2: that I really like and really tune into. There's a
Speaker 2: woman who makes like sort of YouTube video essays that
Speaker 2: are very well researched. Her name is Mina Le and
Speaker 2: she does sort of like fashion and consumerism and culture
Speaker 2: and art and stuff. And I think she is really
Speaker 2: fun and just like, clearly I saw this thing the
Speaker 2: other day that someone was like, if you can't write
Speaker 2: a normal essay, you should not try to do video essays,
Speaker 2: and she can do It's clear she can do both,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, thank you so much, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean. So I really like her. There's another person
Speaker 2: that I follow on TikTok and other platforms named Ryan Finn,
Speaker 2: and she is also really great, also kind of writes
Speaker 2: about like kind of like a She talks about fashion
Speaker 2: and clothing and culture in a really like heady kind
Speaker 2: of It's the type of content that people who don't
Speaker 2: read would see it and be like, it's really not
Speaker 2: that deep, but it is, you know, and I appreciate
Speaker 2: that someone takes things seriously like that. There are also
Speaker 2: like corners of the Internet, even on platforms like TikTok
Speaker 2: or Instagram, that I just like find the nerds and
Speaker 2: they still are just plugging away and doing whatever they want,
Speaker 2: and their posts get like fifty views and they're fine
Speaker 2: with it, and like that's I think where it's special
Speaker 2: where I don't like it when I follow a creator
Speaker 2: and suddenly everything is sponkn or I follow a creator
Speaker 2: and clearly they're just sort of like jumping on trends.
Speaker 2: I also like websites where there's still like new content
Speaker 2: being posted, but you can clearly find the markings of
Speaker 2: like two thousand and six, Like I'm a big knitter
Speaker 2: and ravelry is the was the place to find knitting
Speaker 2: patterns in like the early to mid two thousands, and
Speaker 2: sometimes I'll find photos clearly from that era and it's
Speaker 2: like really delightful, you know what I mean, Like they
Speaker 2: were posting to a different Internet. They were thinking of
Speaker 2: the web as a completely different.
Speaker 1: Space before the algorithms.
Speaker 2: I imagine, before the algorithms. And ravelry also like it
Speaker 2: has some algorithmic stuff, but like a lot of it
Speaker 2: is sort of pure. I think they're like forums, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean, people post on.
Speaker 1: But this is why one of my favorites is baseball perspectives.
Speaker 1: I know you're a Dodger fan.
Speaker 2: Right, Dodgers they suck right now, everyone's really everyone.
Speaker 1: That's a dead But baseball perspectus I think has looked
Speaker 1: the same way since it was made, and it's just
Speaker 1: like really specific, nutty stuff. But I think you can
Speaker 1: even see it in sports. You've got people like Chad
Speaker 1: Mariama over at Dodgers Digest. I think it is you've
Speaker 1: got these like really specific and you know that they're
Speaker 1: probably doing okay, but they're not like millions of views
Speaker 1: every month or anything. But you've got this kind of
Speaker 1: niche strength and my hopium I snort aggressively, is that
Speaker 1: these will never stop being made because they're still being
Speaker 1: made now. There's never been a more bleak time to
Speaker 1: make niche specific content and keep making it. But people
Speaker 1: keep doing it. I mean Carl Brown from Internet at Bugs,
Speaker 1: he like does the most straightforward thing and just talks
Speaker 1: and it's great and he has a growing audience. But
Speaker 1: you can he does very specific developer Folcus stuff with
Speaker 1: a very straightforward explanation, lovely fella and it's nice seeing
Speaker 1: those and it's what gives me a bit of hope
Speaker 1: because if those people, if you never find any of
Speaker 1: that stuff anymore, if everything is just mainstream, I think
Speaker 1: that's terrifying. But even look at gamers Nexus, Big Hot,
Speaker 1: Steve Burke over the Legend Heart run Box as well,
Speaker 1: you've got millions of subscribers. There is there is hunger
Speaker 1: for this stuff.
Speaker 3: There's hunger for like passionate people story turning out. Even
Speaker 3: I mean, I was always a big fan of British
Speaker 3: guy Tom Scott. I feel like you might have and
Speaker 3: he's done that for years and years, made YouTube video
Speaker 3: and he did he did like twenty minutes on the
Speaker 3: design of the British plug for like an outlet and
Speaker 3: how it's got this video and it makes the case
Speaker 3: that is, you know, one of the finest things that
Speaker 3: Britain's ever come with, because you know, you can't electrocute
Speaker 3: yourself by putting it in all sort of stuff. And
Speaker 3: I remember what you're thinking. I've just watched fifteen minutes
Speaker 3: about the history of the plug and I but he was.
Speaker 3: He's just such a sort of arresting, interesting guy. Bona
Speaker 3: fide nerd, but a great presenter. One of the things
Speaker 3: I take from the sort of substack era, if you like,
Speaker 3: is like I imagine, and I'm not going to make
Speaker 3: you get into numbs, but imagine the Verge with its
Speaker 3: paywalk now has a lot of people saying, oh, why
Speaker 3: are you pay warning? And I find it really interesting
Speaker 3: that when big publications put up a paywall, everyone gets
Speaker 3: a little bit mad, right they say that, you know,
Speaker 3: and like, whenever I post a link the Bloomberg's was like, oh,
Speaker 3: it's pay And yet when one person launches a substack
Speaker 3: and says, right, this is ten bucks a month, Oh
Speaker 3: my god, they kind of go great, good for you,
Speaker 3: definitely get behind you. And I think what that's showing
Speaker 3: us is one is a kind of you know, middle
Speaker 3: finger to the mainstream media. Fine, But then the second
Speaker 3: thing maybe is that I think people have respect for
Speaker 3: depth and niche and real Well, yeah, because I think
Speaker 3: I think they want to sort of they love the
Speaker 3: idea that someone gives up and gives up, you know,
Speaker 3: a steady thing goes into a substat I mean, I
Speaker 3: think of Paul Krugman, who left The New York Times.
Speaker 3: I remember thinking, I remember thinking, Okay, Paul, you're being
Speaker 3: a cranky old man just because the editors don't want
Speaker 3: you to do that. But now his substack is brilliant.
Speaker 3: He goes to such length.
Speaker 1: Please get him in touch with me.
Speaker 3: But it's great, and I think I'm much more inclined
Speaker 3: to chuck you know, when when when The New Times
Speaker 3: wants to upgrade my subscription, I'd rather send that to
Speaker 3: Paul on his own. Get the entirety of this, because.
Speaker 1: You're incentivizing this individual voice and you know, the person
Speaker 1: kind of parasocially.
Speaker 3: And the way that I think bigger publications kind of
Speaker 3: lean intoight is to have these sort of nations version
Speaker 3: following right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, everyone should follow me on the Verge
Speaker 2: so you can follow me and all the topics I
Speaker 2: write about. But I'm glad you said that, Dave, because
Speaker 2: I think that is it shows a thing that mass media,
Speaker 2: big media companies have failed to do, which is explain
Speaker 2: what we're actually doing day to day. And I that's
Speaker 2: why I am active on TikTok, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: I talk to people who will never probably read my
Speaker 2: story and probably will never subscribe to the Verge. Truthfully,
Speaker 2: some do, thank you so much, but a lot of
Speaker 2: them will just watch my videos and that is a
Speaker 2: way for me to explain to them what it takes
Speaker 2: for me to write a story. This is how I
Speaker 2: talk to people. This is like I think people don't
Speaker 2: realize that, like when I'm writing stories, I'm actually sometimes
Speaker 2: going in person to interview the person, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean. Like it's and I don't blame them really
Speaker 2: for not knowing, because media has done a really bad
Speaker 2: job of explaining it historically. And I hope that you know,
Speaker 2: folks who read my work know that, Like I'm I'm
Speaker 2: a I'm one person and I write these stories and
Speaker 2: obviously there's copy editors and editors and photo editors and
Speaker 2: you know like dev folks who make my stories come
Speaker 2: to life, but like we are just people making shit
Speaker 2: that we like and we think is worth your time.
Speaker 2: And every media company should be showing that off you.
Speaker 1: Made a really you made a post quite like maybe
Speaker 1: it was last year forgive me where it was saying
Speaker 1: we're kind of journalists are seeding ground to content creators
Speaker 1: who are reusing their stuff. And I think it comes
Speaker 1: down to a failure of not saying anything specifically about
Speaker 1: any given out there. But I failed to failure to
Speaker 1: realize that people want people. They want to read people.
Speaker 1: They and I think that large broadsheets tend to fail. Actually,
Speaker 1: I will give big props to the ft for doing this,
Speaker 1: that they let their freak flags fly, Bryce Elder the
Speaker 1: Legend and like Alphaville as well, because people want to
Speaker 1: read people. And I think that what should be table
Speaker 1: stakes now is that every outlet should get everyone a
Speaker 1: good microphone, get everyone a good camera media, train them
Speaker 1: up a bit so that they can sound good and
Speaker 1: represent the work of the publication in a personal way
Speaker 1: that makes people more willing to understand. There's a paywall,
Speaker 1: which is a reasonable thing, whether however you feel about
Speaker 1: the Verge or any other outlet. Yeah, money, the things
Speaker 1: cost money to do. Money money so expensive.
Speaker 2: It's really fucking expensive to write six thousand word features.
Speaker 2: That's like months of my time, many many people's you know,
Speaker 2: work and resources. And I think also, like if we
Speaker 2: don't fill that, and I know a lot of people
Speaker 2: disagreed with me when I said, like we're seeding ground,
Speaker 2: and people didn't like it for a lot of valid reasons.
Speaker 2: But if we are not there, something will fill the space.
Speaker 2: I was basically just sick of seeing my stories super
Speaker 2: you know, behind someone's head.
Speaker 1: And you made this point very clearly. It's what you said,
Speaker 1: like if someone taking my stuff.
Speaker 2: Someone taking my stuff, Yeah, exactly, it's someone taking my stuff.
Speaker 2: It's they're misrepresenting it, getting basic facts wrong. And like
Speaker 2: I have thirty minutes in my day, I will just
Speaker 2: make the fucking video, you know what I mean? Like,
Speaker 2: I don't care.
Speaker 1: They should get it. There should be the space for
Speaker 1: they should have, Like I whole radio gives me a
Speaker 1: studio at least, because it's like, oh, imagine what want
Speaker 1: to do it in studio? Thing? What make for good content?
Speaker 1: It's just when you have resources, share them. Are you
Speaker 1: going to say something.
Speaker 3: Well, I think part of all of this as well
Speaker 3: is showing the process is the most It travels almost
Speaker 3: more than the story, right, and it breathes a ton
Speaker 3: of trust. I mean, I'm always surprised you can be,
Speaker 3: you know, in in rooms of people who are, you know,
Speaker 3: incredibly success and they're still they'll ask the most like
Speaker 3: rudimentary questions about the journalistic process, like oh, who tells
Speaker 3: you what to write? And I'm like, God, my job
Speaker 3: would be much easier if someone did tell me what
Speaker 3: to write. It being the other way around, things like
Speaker 3: do you people let people read things? I think it's
Speaker 3: going into the process is really really useful. And I
Speaker 3: always there was I was a dinner thing once and
Speaker 3: this one guy made this point I thought, was I've
Speaker 3: always thought of when they're talking about this is if
Speaker 3: you said to somebody, when was journalism in America the
Speaker 3: most trusted? Right they can my assumption most people would
Speaker 3: say water Gate, Ye, the thing? And he said no,
Speaker 3: it wasn't Watergate that made and trusted. It was a
Speaker 3: very good film about Watergate that made journalism and trusted,
Speaker 3: because all that film was was just them trying to
Speaker 3: get this stuff in the paper and them going through
Speaker 3: hell to make it happen. And if you want a
Speaker 3: more modern example, that the book she said by the
Speaker 3: New York Times reporters that did the Jeffrey Epstein. Sorry, no,
Speaker 3: Harvey Weinstein, I get, but their book they knew what
Speaker 3: Harvey Weinstein had done within about ten pages of the
Speaker 3: first chapter, right it was getting the rest of the
Speaker 3: book was getting in the newspaper. And I just think
Speaker 3: that is the more of that process that journalists share
Speaker 3: off the cuff constantly is super powerful. That's what Twitter
Speaker 3: used to be very good. There's a big shift in
Speaker 3: newsrooms among bosses that went hold on a second, the
Speaker 3: official account is getting no engagement, but when this random
Speaker 3: person on one of our UK desks starts tweeting about it,
Speaker 3: that gets loads of pickup. Why is that? It's because
Speaker 3: people respect hearing the process more than the end result
Speaker 3: the events.
Speaker 1: They want to also know. And I know that this
Speaker 1: is difficult for different Like your opinion stuff is fucking fantastic.
Speaker 1: By the way, at Bloomberg, It's really like Bloomberg has
Speaker 1: actually been very impressive in how they've grown out the
Speaker 1: opinion stuff. So this is not a detraction of that I,
Speaker 1: at least in my writing, have found that people really
Speaker 1: like to know why you care. And I think that
Speaker 1: explaining that even on here talking about your work, it's
Speaker 1: like hearing it just a little bit about the things
Speaker 1: that draw you into the story. I think it's so powerful.
Speaker 1: It's also people love it. I mean after c yes,
Speaker 1: I know, I see like Victorious Song and Das Sheerlyn Lowe,
Speaker 1: both of them get the loveliest comments and people, I
Speaker 1: just found your work for the show. It's lovely. And
Speaker 1: it's also I feel like most readers like to know
Speaker 1: and appreciate. It's not like most people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: these fucking idiots just ti when they actually know what
Speaker 1: goes into it. I feel that there's more goodness in
Speaker 1: people around this than they know. And now you've made
Speaker 1: that comment about watergain and be thinking about it all
Speaker 1: fucking days.
Speaker 3: It's such a good point.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to wrap it there. It's been so
Speaker 1: one of for having you both me and what can
Speaker 1: people find you?
Speaker 2: I'm on Blue Sky, TikTok, Instagram, and the Verge dot com,
Speaker 2: where again you can follow me, Dave.
Speaker 3: I'm one of all those places except these dot com
Speaker 3: I'm Blueberg dot com slash Opinion, but Insta.
Speaker 1: And I must recommend both of their work. Both of
Speaker 1: you are to my favorite right, no, like, I'm actually
Speaker 1: so excited I got this one of my favorite episodes recorded.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna be honest. I am ed Zeitron. You
Speaker 1: can find me on the podcast The Better Offline. You
Speaker 1: go Better offline dot com, click newsletter, click all this stuff,
Speaker 1: get the challenge coin if you want, but really, just
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful to have all of you, love you all,
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening, and then you can hear it
Speaker 1: say thank you for listening again. I'm going to get
Speaker 1: an email. I'm going to ignore it. I'll respond thank
Speaker 1: you for listening, but thank you for listening. Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of
Speaker 1: the Better Offline theme song is Metasowski. You can check
Speaker 1: out more of his music and audio project at Mattasowski
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Speaker 1: s ki dot com. You can email me at easy
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Speaker 1: you so much for listening.
Speaker 2: Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media.
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