Speaker 1: A Zone Media, Hello and welcome to this week's Better
Speaker 1: Offline monologue. I'm your host ed ZiT Tron. I could not,
Speaker 1: for the life of me work out what I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about for this week's monologue. I am a
Speaker 1: little burned out, and Robert and Sophia telling me I
Speaker 1: should take a break sometime, and I will at some
Speaker 1: point everyone, I promise. But I was seeing and thinking
Speaker 1: last night about what I was going to do today,
Speaker 1: and I ended up sketching out some thoughts and I
Speaker 1: realized that this show genuinely helped me turn my life around.
Speaker 1: A little dramatic, but Better Offline really truly helped me
Speaker 1: leave a very dark place I was in April twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. I would argue it on some degree saved
Speaker 1: my life, and I will tell you how today. It's
Speaker 1: a monologue. You already had a great interview with Karen Haile.
Speaker 1: This week. I'm going to give you a little schmaltz,
Speaker 1: a little bit of who I really am. And I
Speaker 1: worry this is ferociously self involved or pretentious, but at
Speaker 1: least from the heart. Right. So back when I started
Speaker 1: the show in early twenty twenty four, I was really
Speaker 1: lost as a person, but also as someone who would
Speaker 1: call themselves a creative. I'd agreed to do the show
Speaker 1: and knew I was capable of pushing out content, but
Speaker 1: my personal life had become, let's just say, very bad.
Speaker 1: I was in a bad situation. I was overweight, I
Speaker 1: was unhappy. Therapy was kind of grinding at me. It
Speaker 1: didn't feel like it was changing anything because I was
Speaker 1: kind of in a depressive state where I didn't want
Speaker 1: to talk to anyone, which is why I wouldn't talk
Speaker 1: to my friends at all. And I had this fucking
Speaker 1: podcast I had to do that. I loved the idea
Speaker 1: of but I like confidence. I liked the pison vinegar
Speaker 1: you know me for today. And one day, as I
Speaker 1: struggled to work out what the fuck I was doing
Speaker 1: that week, I sat down to write the script for
Speaker 1: an episode about Shean, which is a Chinese clothing giant
Speaker 1: that grew its brand entirely online. And it was coming
Speaker 1: up on my birthday, Averri twenty fifth, and it's a
Speaker 1: day I really enjoyed. So I was pushing myself to
Speaker 1: do something, anything to get this episode off my plate
Speaker 1: and move on to planning the day, which is a
Speaker 1: few weeks out that would end up being dog shit
Speaker 1: like it always was, and I was bored. I didn't
Speaker 1: care about Shin. I didn't care what I was doing.
Speaker 1: I didn't think you would either. And I sat there
Speaker 1: thinking about whether or not I could realistically do better
Speaker 1: offline anymore, or my newsletter or really end of this crap,
Speaker 1: and what can I say? My birthday kind of sucks
Speaker 1: and it always kind of led me to a weird slump,
Speaker 1: but I was in one that day anyway. I was
Speaker 1: really not in a great place, and if I'm honest,
Speaker 1: I was kind of spiraling. So I closed this Google
Speaker 1: doc and I sat teary eyed, staring at the ceiling.
Speaker 1: Babou my cat was on top of me kind of.
Speaker 1: I was sat at this table, and he shoved himself
Speaker 1: kind of on top of my knees, which he does
Speaker 1: when he knows I'm hurting, which is lovely. And I
Speaker 1: sat there thinking about things, and I was drafting in
Speaker 1: my head something about not doing the newsletter anymore, and
Speaker 1: wondering how the fuck I was going to do forty
Speaker 1: or so more episodes. I was really quite worried, and
Speaker 1: this was really largely due to my personal I'm three
Speaker 1: minutes into this and I've just rambled about myself. But
Speaker 1: you know what, that's what the monologues for. And I
Speaker 1: looked at the time and I realized I'd only written
Speaker 1: eight hundred words in two hours, and I felt very
Speaker 1: bad about myself. I thought, I don't care about Shiin,
Speaker 1: and so I went to look at Google to see
Speaker 1: if I could find something, anything about the tech industry
Speaker 1: that would be more interesting right about and I saw
Speaker 1: immediately something that pissed me off. A cycled tech gate
Speaker 1: that had ripped off a story from another site, and
Speaker 1: they'd entirely ripped it off. They copypasted the entire thing,
Speaker 1: if not automate the entire thing. I was irate, not
Speaker 1: just because I was looking for something and this was
Speaker 1: making my life harder, but because Google was making money
Speaker 1: off of this. And in that moment, I realized that
Speaker 1: I needed to find out who did this. I need
Speaker 1: to find the rap fuck that made this happen. I
Speaker 1: remember the name i'd kind of touched upon in the
Speaker 1: previous newsletter that i'd only just drafted, Propagar Ragavan, and
Speaker 1: I realized I've said propagar Ragavan over a hundred times
Speaker 1: on this show, but I really didn't know who he
Speaker 1: was at the time, so I sat My eyes were red, puffy,
Speaker 1: and felt just like doom in every fiber of my being,
Speaker 1: wondering how I tell Robert and Sophie that I needed
Speaker 1: a break. Weeks into the show, and I immediately discovered
Speaker 1: the story of the biggest shithead I've run into in tech,
Speaker 1: the man that destroyed Google Search. I discovered a man
Speaker 1: that has done unfathomable damage to the Internet, and I
Speaker 1: kind of got a template for how bastards have ripped
Speaker 1: a part of the tech industry in search of growth.
Speaker 1: It was and it remains, the moment that the growth
Speaker 1: of all costs rot economy actually made sense to me. Now,
Speaker 1: as you probably realized, they take a lot of my
Speaker 1: newsletter work and put it into the podcast, But The
Speaker 1: Man that destroyed Google Search was the first time I've
Speaker 1: ever taken a script and made it into a newsletter.
Speaker 1: And this fundamentally changed how I write, because up until
Speaker 1: literally that episode, my spoken voice and my written voice
Speaker 1: were different. I wrote in a probably a more ballsy
Speaker 1: way than I talk. I was deeply unconfident with my voice.
Speaker 1: You can probably hear it in the first few episodes
Speaker 1: as well, you could tell, and this episode was very cathartic,
Speaker 1: and it was also the first moment I'd really felt
Speaker 1: proud of anything I'd worked on, which is an insane
Speaker 1: statement given the amount I've written and produced before. Then.
Speaker 1: I realized in this moment, too, that I'd been treating
Speaker 1: myself without much dignity or respect, and that things in
Speaker 1: my life had to change. The man that destroyed Google
Speaker 1: Search was my first real breakthrough piece and made me
Speaker 1: rethink how he looked at the world, in part because
Speaker 1: it showed me the scale at which one man's selfishness
Speaker 1: can reach such havoc. Maybe it's a little much to
Speaker 1: put this much meaning on a fucking podcast episode, but
Speaker 1: these monologues are where I get to have my fun
Speaker 1: and be a little much something that I used to
Speaker 1: hate about myself, but at the very least have turned
Speaker 1: into a good career. Nevertheless, this breakthrough also pushed me
Speaker 1: to many other breakthroughs in my life and allowed me
Speaker 1: to fully emerge from Michelle I'd been in since birth.
Speaker 1: Had I not chased down Probagar Ragavan, I have no
Speaker 1: idea how I'd complete the first season of Better Offline,
Speaker 1: let alone reach the third tram On right now, and
Speaker 1: the fact I won on award from this is completely insane.
Speaker 1: I don't even know how to express how happy it
Speaker 1: makes me, and I have a weird thing with being
Speaker 1: excited or being happy. You're really gonna you're learning a
Speaker 1: lot about me today, possibly too much. But look, I've
Speaker 1: never felt understood by the world, and when I've looked
Speaker 1: upon the world through my own eyes, I've struggled to
Speaker 1: understand it myself. But in the last year of my work,
Speaker 1: I've found myself. I've found myself doing this show. My voice,
Speaker 1: my personality, my vigor, my anger, my fury, my love,
Speaker 1: my passion, all through trying to understand what the fuck
Speaker 1: is going on with the computer. It all sounds ridiculous
Speaker 1: when I say it out loud, but I think you'll
Speaker 1: like it. And my lack of confidence, even if as
Speaker 1: I say this now, it's because I've never been good
Speaker 1: at appearances. I've never been good at fitting in, And
Speaker 1: it took until twenty twenty four for me to truly
Speaker 1: speak with confidence, and took me until like twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five for me to even like how I looked or
Speaker 1: who I was as a person. I've never been good
Speaker 1: at pretending. I've never been able to fit into the
Speaker 1: little corporate management squares you're meant to Other than my
Speaker 1: ability to be pleasant and conciliatory, I can't deal with
Speaker 1: someone lying to me, which includes, but isn't limited to
Speaker 1: people that bullshit me because they've decided that I'm stupid.
Speaker 1: I've never felt peer pressure because I've never felt popular, cool,
Speaker 1: or important, nor do I feel smart. I do this
Speaker 1: show because I have to, as doing it has brought
Speaker 1: me some degree of salvation at times when I felt
Speaker 1: truly lost, brought me closer to people that I love
Speaker 1: and respect, and allowed me to process the complex emotions
Speaker 1: I experienced reading about and understanding this stuff, and really
Speaker 1: understanding my childhood, which was largely based growing up online.
Speaker 1: I ain't have friends, I didn't really have things to
Speaker 1: do other than being online, and it made me who
Speaker 1: I am, but also made me kind of reflect on
Speaker 1: things each year as I saw the Internet begin to crumble.
Speaker 1: But I really love doing this show and I have
Speaker 1: no idea if this monologue is going to be something
Speaker 1: you care for, but I want you to know why
Speaker 1: I'm doing it. I want you to know who I
Speaker 1: am and what I am because this show has allowed
Speaker 1: me to express myself in a way that I've never
Speaker 1: allowed myself to and as a result, has allowed me
Speaker 1: to become who I am and took me off a
Speaker 1: path that was equal parts dark and hopeless. Now I
Speaker 1: get to do a podcast where I call tech CEO, scum,
Speaker 1: pigs and shit heads, living the dream, and I am,
Speaker 1: albeit depressingly recently, extremely happy in my life because of
Speaker 1: the work I get to do and the people it's
Speaker 1: led me to, and to the friendships I already have
Speaker 1: that have deepened as a result. And hearing from all
Speaker 1: of you is wonderful too. I'm so lucky to be
Speaker 1: able to do this, but also that so many of
Speaker 1: you reach out with kind words, with funny things that
Speaker 1: you've found, or just stories that pissed you off too.
Speaker 1: It's genuinely magical. Whatever the size of this community is
Speaker 1: really grateful for it. I'm grateful that I get to
Speaker 1: do this, and I'm great grateful that I get to
Speaker 1: do these like five to ten minute long monologues where
Speaker 1: I just share how I feel at random. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's been this week's monologue. Next week, we have a
Speaker 1: really fun interview with Giant bomb coming up as well.
Speaker 1: Just just did that. The show fucking rocks. Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening.