Speaker 1: Today's episode of What Future with Joshua Topolski is a
Speaker 1: re release. It's a really interesting listen. We will be
Speaker 1: back next week with an all new episode.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, hey, and welcome to What Future. I'm
Speaker 2: your host, Joshua Topolski, and We've got a great episode
Speaker 2: today because I have been wanting to talk to our
Speaker 2: guests for a long time, and in fact, the guest
Speaker 2: of today's show I had on my old podcast a long,
Speaker 2: long time ago, and it was one of the greatest
Speaker 2: conversations I've ever had in my entire life. And frankly,
Speaker 2: I've spent a lot of years in therapy dealing with
Speaker 2: the fact that not every conversation could be as good
Speaker 2: as that one. Of course, talking about my conversation with
Speaker 2: Bartunde Thurston, who is a podcaster and a writer and
Speaker 2: a TV personality, I think he's done a Ted talk.
Speaker 2: I believe he is maybe an astronaut. He's doing many things,
Speaker 2: and he has a fascinating guy he Currently he's writing
Speaker 2: for Puck News, which you may have heard of, is
Speaker 2: one of my favorite new websites, and he's been writing
Speaker 2: about social media and technology and one of the things
Speaker 2: that he talks about a lot, and I know thinks
Speaker 2: about a lot is sort of the way we get
Speaker 2: information and what's in our diet, how we get the
Speaker 2: news of the day, how we process it, how we
Speaker 2: think about it, how generationally we're thinking about these things,
Speaker 2: And that to me is a fascinating topic because I
Speaker 2: feel like we have this information crisis in the world
Speaker 2: right now. I mean, I really believe the root of
Speaker 2: most of our problems in society. Okay, that's pretty broad,
Speaker 2: but I think the one of the main causes of
Speaker 2: the pain that we experience in modern life is the
Speaker 2: fact that it's become so impossible to get and understand information.
Speaker 2: There is so much noise, so much misinformation, so much
Speaker 2: that is wrong that you have access to. Right when
Speaker 2: we thought of the Internet, you know, me and the
Speaker 2: think tank that created the Internet that I worked on,
Speaker 2: when we envisioned the Internet, or when we thought about
Speaker 2: it in its earliest days, this idea that it could
Speaker 2: give you access to all the world's knowledge, that you
Speaker 2: could have every book and every library, every encyclopedia, every
Speaker 2: piece of information available, felt like this superpower that we
Speaker 2: would all have, that this is like the beginning of
Speaker 2: a new era. Of understanding and education and information and
Speaker 2: humanity coming together and people solving their problems, and we're
Speaker 2: all going to communicate and share and explore together in
Speaker 2: cyber space. And look at all this access that we
Speaker 2: now have to edify ourselves to become smarter, to become
Speaker 2: better citizens of the world.
Speaker 3: And what nobody.
Speaker 2: Seemed to think of, and myself included, is that the
Speaker 2: inverse of all of the world's information is true, is
Speaker 2: that all of the world's disinformation can also exist there.
Speaker 2: And in fact, it turns out disinformation and misinformation is
Speaker 2: louder and faster and sexier and more interesting and more
Speaker 2: exciting than the real stuff, And it's easier to share,
Speaker 2: and it's easier to scan people with, and it's easier
Speaker 2: to convince people of For whatever reason, we are drawn
Speaker 2: as human beings to the more dramatic stories, and the
Speaker 2: more dramatic stories are often the lies. And so the
Speaker 2: Internet has become as much as it is a tool
Speaker 2: for humanity to explore the world's knowledge and to explore
Speaker 2: all of the fascinating aspects of humanity itself, it's also
Speaker 2: become this massive and horrible tool for disrupting in the
Speaker 2: worst way possible with the most negative connotations, possible, disrupting
Speaker 2: how our brains work and disrupting what we know and
Speaker 2: what we believe is true and what we agree on
Speaker 2: is scientific, and whether or not the Earth is flat, Like,
Speaker 2: these are now things that are up for debate in
Speaker 2: a lot of circles. And I say, in a lot
Speaker 2: of circles. On the internet, it feels like a lot
Speaker 2: of circles, but in reality, maybe it's only a few circles.
Speaker 2: But those circles are growing, and the pools inside the
Speaker 2: circles are deepening, and we're being sucked down to the
Speaker 2: bottom of the sea. And now I'm imagining like a
Speaker 2: cylinder filled with water and we're all in it.
Speaker 3: At any rate. This is my roundabout way of saying.
Speaker 2: I thought, who better to talk about the Internet and
Speaker 2: information and the future of humanity as we know it.
Speaker 2: Who better to have a conversation with about those topics
Speaker 2: than Baritunde Thurston. And he agreed to come on the show.
Speaker 2: He's here with us right now. Okay, I'm very happier here.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I had you on my show in twenty fifteen, Yeah,
Speaker 2: which is like kind of amazing. I went back and
Speaker 2: listened to a little bit of it. We were both drinking.
Speaker 2: First off, you were having a gigantic glass of whiskey
Speaker 2: and I was having vodka. We got into a long
Speaker 2: conversation about the iguanas whole foods. Which do you don't
Speaker 2: live in New York anymore?
Speaker 3: Do you? You live in LA?
Speaker 4: I live in LA. I left New York foty years ago.
Speaker 2: Now that's smart, that's so smart. I'm jealous of you,
Speaker 2: all right, So let's talk about you for a second. Now, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously we now know where you're located. That's important.
Speaker 2: So I've been reading you a lot because you're writing
Speaker 2: for Puck Puck News.
Speaker 3: Is that what we call it.
Speaker 4: We call it puck. We called the website is puck
Speaker 4: dot news, but the name is just Puck.
Speaker 2: I like Puck a lot. I gotta tell you, I'm
Speaker 2: a big fan. I'm a subscriber. I have been reading
Speaker 2: and following along. But your stuff is really interesting lately,
Speaker 2: especially because you're always interesting. But you've been talking a
Speaker 2: lot about social media. I mean, you just wrote a
Speaker 2: thing about TikTok that I thought was super interesting. You've
Speaker 2: been obviously talking about Elon Musk and the Twitter situation.
Speaker 3: You made a passing comment.
Speaker 2: Obviously that's been a topic of great interest to me
Speaker 2: because because it's your fault, because I personally am responsible
Speaker 2: for Elon Musk's behavior.
Speaker 4: You laid the path I did.
Speaker 3: Why did I do that?
Speaker 2: Why did I Why did they make him act in
Speaker 2: that way? But you made this kind of pass you
Speaker 2: mentioned You're like, yeah, Twitter as we know it is
Speaker 2: basically dead or something like that.
Speaker 3: I'm paraphrasing. Do you really believe that? Is it over?
Speaker 4: I think so. What I added in that comment was
Speaker 4: that you know, I was referring to Twitter in the
Speaker 4: past tense because I think of Twitter, it is code,
Speaker 4: but it is also culture, and it is the unique
Speaker 4: combination of code and culture that created the environment that
Speaker 4: we knew as Twitter. Same goes for cities like New
Speaker 4: York is a different place than when I lived there
Speaker 4: four years ago, I think, especially if a place goes
Speaker 4: through a major tragedy, it is substantively different. You know,
Speaker 4: after if you lived in New York before nine to
Speaker 4: eleven and never lived there after, you don't really know
Speaker 4: New York anymore. Like the character of the place has shifted,
Speaker 4: even though it's still in New York. It's kind of
Speaker 4: an existential question of a or metaphysical one too. If
Speaker 4: like all my cells have changed, am I still me?
Speaker 4: But in this case, I think what Elon has done
Speaker 4: at Twitter is so violently abrupt in terms of driving
Speaker 4: out staff and also users of a certain kind, that
Speaker 4: he has shifted the nature and culture of the place.
Speaker 4: He has signaled really obviously and sort of boneheadedly what
Speaker 4: type of speech he wants to be free, just his
Speaker 4: right wing buddies, and what type he will police, which
Speaker 4: is anything critical of him or any jokes he doesn't understand.
Speaker 4: Twitter's culture is now Elon's limitations. And he's just scaled himself, right,
Speaker 4: He's like implemented his predilections and personality into the code, right,
Speaker 4: And and he has the right to do that. That's
Speaker 4: what billions of dollars and debt and other people's money
Speaker 4: can help you do. But it is not the Twitter
Speaker 4: that we commonly refer to anymore because a lot of
Speaker 4: the people who made that place what it was aren't
Speaker 4: spending time there. Yeah, and I include myself in that.
Speaker 4: And I'm late to the exodus by some measures, even
Speaker 4: though I've substantively like downgraded my time there years ago,
Speaker 4: before Elon even came on the scene. He just accelerated
Speaker 4: a path outward and made it easier for me to
Speaker 4: spend time elsewhere.
Speaker 2: I mean that point is like I get it so
Speaker 2: well because I feel the same way like this. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, there definitely was a point, you know, I
Speaker 2: don't know when I was just like now I'm not
Speaker 2: can't do this anymore, but it has to end, right
Speaker 2: like he Can's not financially sustainable in its current state,
Speaker 2: don't you know?
Speaker 4: It isn't. And I think there's cultural death, there's technological
Speaker 4: or kind of operational death, and there's financial death, and
Speaker 4: all of these are on the table, and I think
Speaker 4: they probably move in that order. Certainly, the cultural one,
Speaker 4: I think has already very much begun. When you start
Speaker 4: like banning journalists who criticize you as if you were
Speaker 4: Saudi Arabia itself. It's one thing to take their money.
Speaker 4: It's another to adopt their stance on you know, freedom
Speaker 4: of expression and free press in your public square business
Speaker 4: with no sense of irony about it, like legit just
Speaker 4: doing that. So when people like me and you and others,
Speaker 4: a lot of the black Twitter folk, even some of
Speaker 4: the crypto kids, Like there's a whole community that's just like,
Speaker 4: I'm not here for this. It's exhausting. The town square
Speaker 4: shouldn't be the subject of discussion of the town square, right,
Speaker 4: But I don't.
Speaker 2: Gather the town's creditly be like, Wow, I look at this.
Speaker 2: I love the what they've with the stones here or whatever.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like they gather to talk about other stuff right
Speaker 4: about like the janitor, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks like one of those things like when
Speaker 2: the story is just about right and it's like it's
Speaker 2: like when you've made it about you or whatever.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you're a point about the money, you know.
Speaker 4: My colleague at Puck, William Cohen, has written much more
Speaker 4: incisively on this angle because he's a former banker and
Speaker 4: understand some of the Wall streetness of how Elon put
Speaker 4: this deal together and what's required and when payments are due,
Speaker 4: and he's gonna owe some significant amount of money on
Speaker 4: the debt he took out to pay for this thing.
Speaker 4: He can afford it, right, But with every drop in
Speaker 4: the share price at Tesla, it's going to sting a
Speaker 4: little more. With every increase in the FED rate, it's
Speaker 4: gonna sting a little more. Yeah, and with every dollar
Speaker 4: of revenue that brands aren't spending in his toxic environment
Speaker 4: because they don't want to be adjacent to a white
Speaker 4: supremacy and Nazis and fake news, it's going to sting
Speaker 4: a little more. And at some point he's gonna have
Speaker 4: to do something even more radical than what he's already
Speaker 4: done just to keep the lights on, which he had
Speaker 4: decided so far to handle by not paying his rent, right,
Speaker 4: which is so very trumpy of another brilliant, genius billionaire
Speaker 4: over it.
Speaker 2: Like not paying your rent is one of those things
Speaker 2: where like if you're a regular human being, it's such
Speaker 2: a great demonstration of like the difference in class in
Speaker 2: like what the billionaire class or the very rich or
Speaker 2: capable of that we are not. And by the way,
Speaker 2: the rent on Twitter spaces is not like thirty eight
Speaker 2: hundred dollars a month or something. I mean, it's not
Speaker 2: like a one bedroom apartment in like Bushwick or something.
Speaker 2: It's like I don't even know what the rent would be.
Speaker 2: It's probably way more than that right now.
Speaker 4: It's ad zeros.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but like he's just like I'm not going to
Speaker 2: pay the rent, and everybody's like, well, Okay, I guess,
Speaker 2: like what do we do. We can't do anything to
Speaker 2: Elon Musk or like to the company, but like if
Speaker 2: you don't pay your rent, or if I don't pay
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, like if a normal person,
Speaker 2: And maybe we're not perfectly normal, but no, I'm.
Speaker 4: Definitely above normal at this point.
Speaker 2: But in general, a person who does not pay their
Speaker 2: rent the air consequences gonna get fucking victed, Like we're
Speaker 2: gonna take you to court, and like none of that
Speaker 2: should happens. And it's like to me, like, what's more
Speaker 2: going than like him going, I'm not gonna pay it
Speaker 2: is that nobody does anything.
Speaker 3: It's like everybody sits there.
Speaker 4: Look, we're raised, Josh in this world where when someone
Speaker 4: like Elon, of his gender, of his race, of his
Speaker 4: inherited wealth decides to transgress, we tend to celebrate it
Speaker 4: right until it's too late, you know.
Speaker 3: White.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he I mean, he's like just like Heisenberg was
Speaker 4: way cooler than this guy.
Speaker 2: His drugs aren't as good, but his blue math is
Speaker 2: like I don't know, fucking the blue teck mark.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but he can afford to call our bluff as
Speaker 4: a society. He can afford to wade us out. And
Speaker 4: us I don't mean like me and you specifically, but
Speaker 4: just society at large. You know, people who need money
Speaker 4: to live, money that they get pay on a weekly, buy, weekly,
Speaker 4: or monthly basis. He can take the hit longer because
Speaker 4: he's got a big old cushion to fall back on,
Speaker 4: and so he can just like he knows he'll get
Speaker 4: sued for how he treated the employees when he first
Speaker 4: came in. And he's just gonna see, like will they
Speaker 4: go through their trouble of hiring lawyers or will it
Speaker 4: burn so much of their time because they can't afford
Speaker 4: to spend it on that, and I can just weep
Speaker 4: them out. It's the Trump move, you know. It's like
Speaker 4: I'm gonna break this law. Let's see if the government
Speaker 4: bothers to prosecute I'm going to not pay these vendors.
Speaker 4: Let's see if they bother to send lawyers after me,
Speaker 4: or will I just settle for pennies on the dollar
Speaker 4: and it's a deal. I'm won the deal of the century.
Speaker 4: But you're also just it's also criminality, that's another word
Speaker 4: for it, right, and dishonor you know, at best, the
Speaker 4: most charitable interpretation is he's a meanie and he's not honorable.
Speaker 2: The thing that I find so and I've talked about
Speaker 2: this a bunch, but like you know, I don't want
Speaker 2: to belabor it, and I'm sure you're all talked out
Speaker 2: over Twitter, but like, what's so incredible to me is
Speaker 2: I never was like, Elon Musk is clearly the smartest
Speaker 2: man in the world or anything. But there was a
Speaker 2: period where I was like, this guy's interesting. Yes, way
Speaker 2: before he was whatever his Twitter persona was, there was
Speaker 2: a period of years where Elon Musk was like you
Speaker 2: didn't hear that much about him on a personal level,
Speaker 2: but you heard a lot about the things he was doing,
Speaker 2: and the things he was doing were really fucking interesting
Speaker 2: and really seemed to be working right, Like once he
Speaker 2: was like involved in Tesla, the SpaceX stuff, some of
Speaker 2: his like big ideas that he would talk about, but
Speaker 2: you never really eadn't go like way into detail on it.
Speaker 2: It's so strange to me to see the evolution or
Speaker 2: de evolution of his like character, of his personality like
Speaker 2: to whoever he plays in public. Yeah, it's like he's
Speaker 2: hearing these cheers from whoever wherever it is.
Speaker 4: A different section of the stands. He's playing to that
Speaker 4: part of the room. Yes, so I share a big
Speaker 4: part of that, Josh. And I think I went from
Speaker 4: we're talking a decade ago, you know, not really knowing
Speaker 4: anything about this guy, heard about Tesla a little bit.
Speaker 4: Oh the roadster looks kind of cool. I'll never have
Speaker 4: one of those anyway, to twenty eighteen, maybe twenty seventeen,
Speaker 4: getting serious about wanting to get a car in New
Speaker 4: York because my wife came from California. She's like, I
Speaker 4: can't do this subway thing all the time because the
Speaker 4: grocery stores is how do you live? Like this isn't
Speaker 4: a life we call this. I agree with her, and
Speaker 4: I was like, cool, cool, cool, but we're not getting
Speaker 4: a combustion engine car, Like that's my line. Her her
Speaker 4: line was I need car. Mine line was not gas car.
Speaker 4: And there was one option, yeah, you know, which was
Speaker 4: Tesla Model three. Okay, so I start paying more attention.
Speaker 4: I'm building spreadsheets to analyze what the best car, and
Speaker 4: the Nero is coming out but it's not available yet
Speaker 4: from Kia and Hyundai. And I'm also keen on the
Speaker 4: Space thing, and I'm like starting to look into what's
Speaker 4: up with SpaceX, and the YouTube algorithm is great for me.
Speaker 4: I have never really been fed Nazis and sort of disinformation.
Speaker 4: I've been fed like how to make great cocktails, how
Speaker 4: to composts, you know, and like what electric cars should
Speaker 4: you buy? Like my YouTube is dope? And YouTube got
Speaker 4: a whiff that I was interested in space again because
Speaker 4: I was a space kid, and so I watched his
Speaker 4: announcements around the Mars launcher and the reusable rockets, and
Speaker 4: I just admired his systematic thought. He has like thought
Speaker 4: through all these parts, and he was laying it out
Speaker 4: very logically, very engineering oriented, and over promising stuff that
Speaker 4: would eventually happen definitely wouldn't happen when he said it
Speaker 4: would definitely. That's the one thing you know is true
Speaker 4: is that he's not telling the truth about the ready date.
Speaker 4: But beyond that, added up multiplanetary species climate change evis Yes,
Speaker 4: sign me up. So came to Cali, got the Tesla.
Speaker 4: At least the three real excited yeah, had friends that
Speaker 4: SpaceX almost visited. SpaceX never made it over to visit there,
Speaker 4: but just at admiration for these two pieces of the puzzle.
Speaker 4: Boring company I don't know, flamethrowers. That's kind of weird.
Speaker 4: That's exactly when it started to go the moment. That's
Speaker 4: a moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was like he was getting high on his
Speaker 2: own supply, Like that's the fucking reality. People were like,
Speaker 2: you're so cool on He's like, yeah, I'll put a
Speaker 2: flamethrower out.
Speaker 3: And that was it.
Speaker 4: To explain part of the transition, You explain what happens
Speaker 4: to a lot of young men who get radicalized by
Speaker 4: the Internet. In this case young maybe a political but
Speaker 4: ultimately hyper conservative, largely white men who fall into the
Speaker 4: rabbit holes of you know the thing about feminism, right,
Speaker 4: they want to cut your balls off. Wait, is that's
Speaker 4: not going to be a man anymore?
Speaker 3: God, is there a video?
Speaker 4: You know the thing about black people, They want to
Speaker 4: take everything you ever worded hard for and rub it
Speaker 4: in your face. You know the thing about indigenous people,
Speaker 4: you know, to think about climate shait and it just
Speaker 4: becomes this like low appeal to people's deep insecurities. And
Speaker 4: that was modeled for him by the former president very well,
Speaker 4: very effectively, by Fox News and by people in an
Speaker 4: atmosphere online where he spent a lot of time you
Speaker 4: know he loves memes. I mean, so much of this
Speaker 4: stuff was born out of meme culture with pet bat
Speaker 4: of Frog and gamer Gate, you know, that was all
Speaker 4: meme warfare early on. And he's he's a Reddit kind
Speaker 4: of guy. You know, he's a he's a hashtag kind
Speaker 4: of dude. And is he a four chain kind of guy.
Speaker 4: He's a four chang crely and he you know this
Speaker 4: if he plays with with Q. You know my pronouns
Speaker 4: are was it prosecute fauci? I mean, that's that's some
Speaker 4: cute stuff, right, but it's actually very explicable if you've
Speaker 4: as you have spent time on the part of the Internet.
Speaker 4: That's not just about cloud services and profits going up
Speaker 4: into the right, but that's about emotion and culture and
Speaker 4: disaffected young men, which are usually the source of most
Speaker 4: societal collapses. Is like young men with too much time
Speaker 4: on their hands. I guess I agree, and and not
Speaker 4: productively put to use. And Elon, who as CEO of
Speaker 4: four companies, should have had plenty to.
Speaker 3: Do, well, that's my thing.
Speaker 2: This is as you're saying this, all I can think is,
Speaker 2: and I've said this so many times, but like if
Speaker 2: I were the world's richest man. Do you know what
Speaker 2: I would not do is I would not fucking tweet.
Speaker 2: I would not go on Twitter. I would not need
Speaker 2: to go on.
Speaker 4: Like he's that you and him are different.
Speaker 2: I feel like there's so many things to do in
Speaker 2: the world that you could be doing that isn't tweeting.
Speaker 2: And I think you probably identify with this. We're very
Speaker 2: online people and we've probably spent like a pretty good
Speaker 2: amount of our career like building our whoever we are,
Speaker 2: like our persona. Like it's like on Twitter, on Instagram
Speaker 2: or whatever, like we're communicating, but we're also and I'm
Speaker 2: not saying I did this consciously, but it becomes a
Speaker 2: thing where you're like that's your platform, Like that's where
Speaker 2: you talk to people. That's like where you need to
Speaker 2: kind of be doing what you're doing, Like you do
Speaker 2: it there, right, h But like to build an electric car,
Speaker 2: you don't do it on Twitter, Like you don't need
Speaker 2: to do it on Twitter. Like to go to space,
Speaker 2: you don't do that on Twitter. It's not part of
Speaker 2: the like doesn't need to be part of his birth.
Speaker 2: Like Tim Cook doesn't fucking tweet, you know, Tim cooks
Speaker 2: like has he tells like his fourth assistant to get
Speaker 2: his social media person to tend to tweet about the
Speaker 2: new watch or whatever.
Speaker 4: Tim Cook has something that Elon's missing. He's got a
Speaker 4: whole sense of himself. Yeah, he has self affirmation that
Speaker 4: doesn't require thousands of strangers every day to affirm him instead. Right,
Speaker 4: he's got self love in a way that is satisfied
Speaker 4: and quiet moments as opposed to having to make noise
Speaker 4: to prove that he still exists. Yeah, and so it's
Speaker 4: not that mysterious. You know, we're not inside of Elon specifically,
Speaker 4: but no, I know what it feels like to like
Speaker 4: picture or it didn't happen right like I And I'm
Speaker 4: I think objectively more balanced, you know than Elon. Even
Speaker 4: though I have way less money, I have more of
Speaker 4: what I need.
Speaker 3: Ye, what's right, You're not the world here. You are
Speaker 3: acting normal, so unusual.
Speaker 4: We get to watch somebody, you know, with an unmet
Speaker 4: need act out in public. And we've seen it with Kanye,
Speaker 4: and we've seen it with Trump, and we've seen it
Speaker 4: with a lot of folks, with all kinds of people
Speaker 4: thrust into public life who don't have their own private
Speaker 4: lives sorted out, and so in that sense. There's no mystery,
Speaker 4: it's not intriguing, it's not novel. It's just so much
Speaker 4: more in our face because he forces us to watch.
Speaker 4: Because when he.
Speaker 2: Literally bought the thing, yeah that we all were communicating,
Speaker 2: like he bought like the phone company, you know, he
Speaker 2: was like, no, I own the lines now, So you're
Speaker 2: gonna hear me a lot. I'm just gonna kind of
Speaker 2: like here, you guys, what's going on? Like you're like, dude,
Speaker 2: I didn't. You're not in this call. He's just popping up.
Speaker 2: But okay, But it's interesting you mentioned Kanye, and obviously
Speaker 2: Trump like Kanye is very I mean, I assume he's
Speaker 2: still pretty rich, but has been at times very rich
Speaker 2: and very powerful, very much like in the public eye
Speaker 2: and very much in control of like the public sort
Speaker 2: of conversation, not where Elon is, like, he's not the
Speaker 2: world's richest man. And yet they both have access to
Speaker 2: presumably in Trump as well, to kind of any information
Speaker 2: they want or need. And yet they all all from
Speaker 2: very different backgrounds, all from very different doing very different things,
Speaker 2: seem to gravitate towards him publicly, gravitate towards this weird
Speaker 2: conspiratorial thinking that I don't know. I don't want to
Speaker 2: give anybody too much credit. I think that all of
Speaker 2: them incline voting Trump, I hate to say it, are
Speaker 2: intelligent in some way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, it's not a stretch, that's yes, easy.
Speaker 2: But like the shit they gravitate towards is kind of
Speaker 2: the lowest, like the bottom of the barrel, like conspiracy shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, Like it's not like, oh, I didn't hear
Speaker 2: this one before. It's not like, oh wow, like I
Speaker 2: hadn't considered that angle.
Speaker 4: Oh the Jews. Really the Jews, that's your hot intelligent
Speaker 4: take the thousand year old conspiracy.
Speaker 2: It's like the protocols of the Elders of Zion or
Speaker 2: whatever is the new conspiracy that you're you that you've
Speaker 2: now been been in clued into. But it's funny. It's
Speaker 2: like Ian Elon shares the same shit. It's like the
Speaker 2: Fauci conspiracy stuff. Yeah, and it's like the stuff that
Speaker 2: is really designed for for people who don't have better
Speaker 2: access to information.
Speaker 4: Right, So a lot of what you've said applies to
Speaker 4: many of us. You could take someone from the early
Speaker 4: nineteen hundreds and they could make that speech about anyone
Speaker 4: live after you know, nineteen ninety after two thousand and said, like,
Speaker 4: you have access to incredible information, right, I thought drinking
Speaker 4: mercury on a daily basis would improve my humors, you know,
Speaker 4: and like you know better, Wait it doesn't, right, And
Speaker 4: you have you know, Healthline and Wikipedia and doctors like
Speaker 4: you have, you have science, and yet you still engage
Speaker 4: in superstition and conspiracy and unproven things. So it's so
Speaker 4: tempting and very easy. And I'll often be like, what's
Speaker 4: wrong with those people? Right? But it's like, Okay, we're
Speaker 4: all people. Something's wrong with all of us. They have
Speaker 4: a bigger stage on which that's That's what I'm.
Speaker 2: Saying is so yeah, I feel like I can understand
Speaker 2: when you don't have access to.
Speaker 4: So access doesn't mean anything. You know, people who enslaved
Speaker 4: other people had access to the idea of human rights
Speaker 4: right right, Like it wasn't like a secret, you know,
Speaker 4: it wasn't like that, oh my god, people could just
Speaker 4: own themselves what that's madness. They weren't waiting for you know,
Speaker 4: King to say it out loud right right, It was no,
Speaker 4: it was knowable, Yeah, And yet there were incentives set
Speaker 4: up and benefits set up to encourage millions of people
Speaker 4: to go along with something we now say is like
Speaker 4: absolutely insane and dehumanizing and terrible. Right, that's a long
Speaker 4: way of getting to like what the incentive for people
Speaker 4: with presumably a lot of power and access to resources
Speaker 4: and better information than us to engage in the opposite
Speaker 4: transgression is a hell of a drug. And if you
Speaker 4: can be self perceived as like, yo, I'm so punk rock,
Speaker 4: you know, I find the real truth? Like it goes
Speaker 4: back to X Files. Man, we're old enough to remember,
Speaker 4: like the truth is out there, which planet a seed?
Speaker 4: Not that show specifically, but it was of a moment
Speaker 4: where we can't trust anything. Yeah, like two plus two
Speaker 4: is for maybe prove it? Yeah, well okay, but what
Speaker 4: kind of numbers are you and what system of math
Speaker 4: are you basing that on? What assumption?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: You can think yourself into not thinking, you're thinking when
Speaker 4: you're just viewing nonsense. And there's a lot of nonsense
Speaker 4: that passes for intelligence and thought these days. That's just
Speaker 4: counterintuitive bullshit. Right. But it's packaged up as Andrew Tate,
Speaker 4: you know, wow, it's packaged up as Ben Shapiro, And
Speaker 4: he sounds like a nerd, so he must be smart.
Speaker 4: I love Ben right, not that everything he says is bullshit,
Speaker 4: but so much is so much, And so I think
Speaker 4: people like a Kanye or an Elon or parts of us,
Speaker 4: it's like, all right, I know you told me that COVID,
Speaker 4: you know we'd have to do these things. But I
Speaker 4: know the government's been wrong about this stuff before. Look,
Speaker 4: the black person in me, not specifically me, but ancestrally,
Speaker 4: who was experimented on in Tuskegee by government health experiments,
Speaker 4: understand skepticism about government health mandates that might hurt people.
Speaker 4: So the anti vax thing is not even like, you're
Speaker 4: so dumb, why don't you believe science? Well, fucking science
Speaker 4: is always changing, right, and sometimes science is abused. When
Speaker 4: you have no trust or very low trust in the environment,
Speaker 4: then you can take good faith nuance and weaponize it
Speaker 4: as faith in nothing, and it becomes nihilism, and it
Speaker 4: becomes ship posting, and it becomes pretend intelligence when you're
Speaker 4: just peddling noise and nonsense. And I think Elon crossed
Speaker 4: that line so much. As a business owner, he was
Speaker 4: frustrated at California's mandates to keep people safe, right, and
Speaker 4: he took it to the extreme and is now pedling
Speaker 4: conspiracy theories about one guy who's spent most of his
Speaker 4: life literally trying to save millions and millions of people, right, Like,
Speaker 4: there's many people who could and should be vilified. Anthony
Speaker 4: Fauci ain't one of them. He's made mistakes. I would
Speaker 4: acknowledge that some of the messaging wasn't always clear, but
Speaker 4: prosecution those are working out here trump a bit. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's like metal, you know, not like firing lines. I
Speaker 4: don't know, man, Well I know some of the answer
Speaker 4: and it gets exhausting sometimes. But then this is also like, okay,
Speaker 4: what's the what's the lesson or the opportunity here besides
Speaker 4: spinning up media cycles? Talking about the guy who's powered
Speaker 4: by media cycles? Right? And I mean, I think the
Speaker 4: deeper thing that we're playing around with here, which is like, Okay,
Speaker 4: what's the motivation, what's the incentive? How do we try
Speaker 4: to like protect against this because he's not alone, he's loud.
Speaker 4: But I just I think there's something about being perceived
Speaker 4: as brave and clever, and there is a value to
Speaker 4: victimhood which anyone in power loves to wrap themselves in.
Speaker 4: That flag. The greatest deflection against criticism of your own
Speaker 4: power is to claim to be the victim.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It's it's just so crazy too. You're like, I don't
Speaker 2: think you're the guy who's had the hard time.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The thing you said about the X Files, which I
Speaker 2: think about all the time, is like, you know, when
Speaker 2: I was a kid, you know, or whatever, young adult,
Speaker 2: I guess when it was on. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: stuff on that show that circles of friends of mine
Speaker 2: we were like, yeah, what is up with not like
Speaker 2: the things like there's aliens or whatever. Yeah, but there
Speaker 2: were books that now form the basis for like some
Speaker 2: of the craziest, most fringe conspiracy theories that were like
Speaker 2: these books like Behold a Pale Horse in like these
Speaker 2: like old school like the Robert Anton Wilson books like
Speaker 2: the Illuminatus trilogy and stuff that were like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: the Knights Templar and the Vatican and there's all this
Speaker 2: like cover up and whatever, and you're kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I kind of believe that because the Vatican seems sort
Speaker 2: of fucked up and who knows what's really.
Speaker 3: Going on there?
Speaker 2: All the people I knew it was all like the
Speaker 2: fascist state, the government man is like covering it up
Speaker 2: or whatever.
Speaker 3: And now it's like weirdly flipped.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the right wing now has like somehow adopted these
Speaker 2: things that I felt like were these really like almost
Speaker 2: like hippieish sort of conspiracies.
Speaker 4: If you think of conspiracy theories as a virus capable
Speaker 4: of spreading morally neutral in terms of the hosts, it
Speaker 4: will attach itself to yeah, and it has variants, and
Speaker 4: it will mutate, and it will find new ways to
Speaker 4: increase the mortality rate, but not so much that it
Speaker 4: decreases the are not in the spread, Like all this
Speaker 4: stuff we should know, but we know now because of COVIDR.
Speaker 4: We're all a little epidemiologists. Now I just dropped. Are
Speaker 4: not in a casual conversation. So because I read a
Speaker 4: white paper, you know, or five in the past three years.
Speaker 3: You're staying in formed, you know what's going on.
Speaker 4: And again overwhelming my brain with things that I like
Speaker 4: specialists to actually specialize. Right, So you know, being liberal
Speaker 4: is not an inoculation against conspiracy. Right, And the same
Speaker 4: doubt of systems, you know, is available to liberal and
Speaker 4: conservative and it's the basis for americanness. To begin with,
Speaker 4: like we don't trust the king. We started with distrust.
Speaker 4: That's a good point. We should overthrow the government. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 4: So it's like whether you're like a black panther who
Speaker 4: doesn't trust the government, or like some libertarian pharm owner
Speaker 4: who doesn't trust the government. Like we share something. We like,
Speaker 4: what's up with this government? And even though one may
Speaker 4: vote for Democrats and the other.
Speaker 2: For Republicans, with this government, I think that's a that's
Speaker 2: a great.
Speaker 4: Question, is a super good question. But I also like
Speaker 4: I used to indulge in conspiracy theory. I'm gonna I
Speaker 4: can't believe I'm about to say before everybody else did.
Speaker 2: Josh, Wow, Oh you're like the the indie rock guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like I'm that guy. I'm that guy that like
Speaker 4: I was there at the at the indie club, you know,
Speaker 4: like in the base.
Speaker 3: Like losing my edge.
Speaker 2: This is the LCD sounds lose to my edge, you Like,
Speaker 2: I was there when it happened.
Speaker 4: And now that everybody's into them, they're not cool anymore.
Speaker 3: You were the original infoce.
Speaker 4: Theories are not cool when the richest guy in the
Speaker 4: world loudly embraces them, right, they lose their heads cutly
Speaker 4: not fun. It is no longer transgressive or countercultural when
Speaker 4: the ruling class rules by conspiracy theory.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Right, So when the President of the United States is like,
Speaker 4: you know what's true, lizard people like fuck, I guess
Speaker 4: I can't be engaged in that.
Speaker 3: It actually says him, but lizard people didn't. I mean,
Speaker 3: he's got so.
Speaker 4: It's not cool, and I think it's it's more but
Speaker 4: it's more dangerous. There's something about indulging, like with highly
Speaker 4: processed foods or dessert, right, a little bit has value.
Speaker 4: It can add balance, it can add an interesting, rich flavor.
Speaker 4: But if you just eat that, if you only eat Twizzlers, yeah,
Speaker 4: you're gonna die a horrible depth sooner.
Speaker 2: Than it's actually a sponsor of this episode, so sort
Speaker 2: of disappointing to hear that you're not a fan, but.
Speaker 4: It's too popular. They need to stay punk, you know,
Speaker 4: punk can ever be mainstream.
Speaker 2: Twizzler is the most punk candy of all time as well. Know,
Speaker 2: it's funny that you mentioned that you were into conspiracy
Speaker 2: when it was cool or whatever, but.
Speaker 4: Like ham Radio times, you know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 4: as a whole different level of commitment.
Speaker 3: Well, I used to.
Speaker 2: I used to love Coast to Coast, you know, the
Speaker 2: Art Bell Show, which is like people calling and they'd
Speaker 2: be like, you know, I was haunted by a spirit
Speaker 2: or whatever. Or he'd have people on who had had
Speaker 2: like UFO sightings. And actually Alex Jones comes from his show,
Speaker 2: like he became a regular or something on the show,
Speaker 2: which was like, you know, it was like a naturally
Speaker 2: syndicated like yeah, he was on at midnight and it
Speaker 2: would be like people talking about conspiracy or talking about
Speaker 2: ghosts or talking about whatever. And it was fun because
Speaker 2: it was like, be crazy if that were real, you know,
Speaker 2: to your point, like when the president is like it's real,
Speaker 2: it's like okay, like you know what, Yeah, that loses
Speaker 2: a little bit of its novelty factor.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think a little bit of like high sodium,
Speaker 4: high fructose corn cere like beef jerky whatever the thing is,
Speaker 4: like a beef jerky food cans, you know, like, oh,
Speaker 4: that's that's cool. If you're traveling to space, it shouldn't
Speaker 4: be your whole diet.
Speaker 2: I don't know what tun to diversify outside the cave,
Speaker 2: and it's a little bit of conspiracy theory.
Speaker 4: It probably does a body good, right, a whole system
Speaker 4: built on it. Then the whole system falls down because
Speaker 4: we actually do need to believe in something. Yeah, non
Speaker 4: belief isn't enough. And if you start doubting everything, you
Speaker 4: don't have anything left to stand on. You find yourself
Speaker 4: alone in the universe, which is pretty existentially terrifying, which
Speaker 4: is Elon Musk almost. It's where he's headed.
Speaker 2: That's why he's like trying to like fly out to Mars,
Speaker 2: like be literally alone in the universe.
Speaker 4: But the cost of his indulgence is a lot of
Speaker 4: the rest of us, you know.
Speaker 2: No, I mean, we're all just the shrapnel flying at
Speaker 2: everybody from his like own weird like midlife crisis that
Speaker 2: he's experiencing that he has to like talk about on Twitter.
Speaker 2: Adjacent to Twitter, you just wrote this piece about TikTok,
Speaker 2: about America trying to shut down TikTok Get Out of TikTok.
Speaker 4: Which people can read at puck dot News, Puck dot News,
Speaker 4: buy my page. TikTok on the Clock or something like that.
Speaker 3: Is the title, hold on, I'm I tell you it is.
Speaker 3: The headline is TikTok on the Clock.
Speaker 2: I have it up here what happens to the creator
Speaker 2: economy If the world's most important new social platform is
Speaker 2: banned in the United States, we may be amount to
Speaker 2: find out, says Caratonde. Uh okay, but like it's not
Speaker 2: gonna be banned, is it? They're gonna band You said
Speaker 2: that like gen Z would.
Speaker 4: And Gen Alpha would unite form Voltron from gen.
Speaker 3: I don't have any Whether they don't have any power.
Speaker 4: We all have more power than we know. And I
Speaker 4: think if these kids stopped signing up from military duty,
Speaker 4: if they stopped paying for their parents and grandparents social
Speaker 4: Security checks, because we're in this page you go system,
Speaker 4: they could they could shut some shit down.
Speaker 3: Do you think TikTok is that important? You don't think
Speaker 3: they'd just be like, well.
Speaker 4: You know, I nodded to the idea that something so
Speaker 4: culturally enmeshed and with such deep daily habits, you know
Speaker 4: it's some high person. Is there some stats I left
Speaker 4: out of this piece as far as like the number
Speaker 4: of people under nineteen that represent the core usage of
Speaker 4: TikTok It it seems impossible. I don't think it is.
Speaker 4: It seems impossible that one day that would just disappear.
Speaker 3: I think you say the average time daily is like.
Speaker 4: Ninety minutes a day is the average TikTok craze and
Speaker 4: they have a billion monthly active user.
Speaker 2: Well, I say that's crazy, But then I'm like, how
Speaker 2: much time did previous generations spend watching TV? And it's
Speaker 2: way more than ninety minutes a day.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was like four hours a day or more.
Speaker 4: I remember finding these stats in the early two thousands.
Speaker 2: So we're like all blown away by that, but like,
Speaker 2: actually it's much close to do because in TikTok is
Speaker 2: in some way like you're kind of flipping through channels,
Speaker 2: so it is actually closer to a TV experience than
Speaker 2: maybe any other social.
Speaker 4: App and the end, and it's higher for our high
Speaker 4: usage people, right, you know, it's like that's the average user,
Speaker 4: and then the ones who over index are going to
Speaker 4: be two hours a day, three hours a day and
Speaker 4: just living in the palmitter hand. So I think you'd
Speaker 4: be based on the combination of concerns about TikTok. You've
Speaker 4: got people concerned about data and privacy. You've got people
Speaker 4: concerned about youth mental health, and that's like a catchy
Speaker 4: thing to suddenly give a shit about. You've got folks
Speaker 4: concerned about China, some for good reasons, some for racist reasons,
Speaker 4: but their reasons don't matter. They're on the same team
Speaker 4: when it comes to like skepticism toward anything that comes
Speaker 4: from that nation.
Speaker 2: It's like that meme with the with the meme with
Speaker 2: the arms locked together. You know I'm talking about it
Speaker 2: looks like two guys like arm wrestling, but it's like,
Speaker 2: is it like a black arm and a white arm
Speaker 2: and they're like locked together?
Speaker 3: Am I crazy?
Speaker 4: I just like to make it feel crazy. You're not
Speaker 4: fun to watch. You try to paint a picture with
Speaker 4: one got a name? I don't know. Let's leave it
Speaker 4: to a listener. This will be the Easter egg. The
Speaker 4: first listener to find me on Mastadon and tell.
Speaker 2: Me it's called epic handshake. Okay, you know what I'm
Speaker 2: talking about, right.
Speaker 4: I probably know what you're talking about, but not by that.
Speaker 3: Damn it.
Speaker 2: Hold on, I'm just gonna say you this meme template
Speaker 2: right now. I'm going to put in the chat here.
Speaker 2: Oh you were saying that, like, yeah, the people who
Speaker 2: are like racists, Yeah, it's a coalition people who have
Speaker 2: good reasons to worry about China.
Speaker 3: It's like this meme.
Speaker 4: It's like, it's like mental health advocates, racists, national security people. Right,
Speaker 4: the Van diagram is very diverse here, that's the illustration
Speaker 4: we should have done.
Speaker 2: I like that, Actually is could this be the thing
Speaker 2: that brings us all together?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: I mean I do think a common enemy.
Speaker 4: I thought that before COVID. I was like, oh, COVID
Speaker 4: is the alien invasion. It's as close as we're going
Speaker 4: to get. And it ripped the country apart in the
Speaker 4: world too.
Speaker 2: So No, it's funny because I thought the same thing
Speaker 2: about when Russia invaded Ukraine. I was like, Okay, now America,
Speaker 2: we're classically against us. You don't like Russia historically like
Speaker 2: we are, And and Matt gets is like, actually, no,
Speaker 2: it's crazy, right, it's fucking bizarre. These Republicans are like, actually,
Speaker 2: you know, Putin's got a good point. It's like, dude,
Speaker 2: does he like is that where we're at? Is that
Speaker 2: where you're part?
Speaker 3: Aready? Anyhow?
Speaker 2: Sorry, not not to fucking lose it, but let's take
Speaker 2: some deep breaths together. Josh is TikTok dangerous? Yeah, this
Speaker 2: sounds like the most bullshit sorry like CNN question of
Speaker 2: all time.
Speaker 3: Bear Tunde. Is TikTok dangerous for the youth?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: I mean, like what is your take on it?
Speaker 2: Like do you actually think there's real concern Like at
Speaker 2: the privacy thing I get, I get snooping shit, but like.
Speaker 4: I think there's real concern in that is super addictive
Speaker 4: and it's become back to this world of low and
Speaker 4: no trust. TikTok the place people go to get real
Speaker 4: questions answered. It's like chat GPT, but like way larger scale,
Speaker 4: and sometimes the results you get back are as non
Speaker 4: factual as that bot. Oh yeah, but they present as
Speaker 4: like this is what you should do to heal this thing,
Speaker 4: this is what you should do in terms of how
Speaker 4: you vote.
Speaker 3: No misinfo on TikTok is crazy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, So it's it's a risky vector for misinformation.
Speaker 4: It's risky in terms of the black box of how
Speaker 4: it operates and semi public square media ecosystem without checks
Speaker 4: and balances, and that's always been that was the case
Speaker 4: with Facebook, that's the case with But it's just transfers
Speaker 4: to whatever the hot thing is, right, and TikTok for
Speaker 4: me is more fascinating and potentially more dangerous because it's
Speaker 4: a social network that like you don't have to bring
Speaker 4: friends to experience it. You just trust, like the algorithm
Speaker 4: is the one friend you need. Whether you're a creator
Speaker 4: or I'm more of a passive consumer. In terms of
Speaker 4: your experience on there, you like a few things, you
Speaker 4: linger a half second longer on this thing versus that thing,
Speaker 4: And they just dialed you in quick and they put
Speaker 4: you in a little box and like you are this
Speaker 4: type of user for four to six dash B seven
Speaker 4: and you get that stuff in your feed. And it's
Speaker 4: like if a pharmaceutical company could like build a highly
Speaker 4: addictive drug just for you within ten minutes of knowing you.
Speaker 2: That sounds great, unless yet that's what I want. Okay,
Speaker 2: you got a little bit high from this, Like what
Speaker 2: if we kind of juice that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's for the personalized drugs. Yeah, it's actually it's
Speaker 4: the promise of your actual.
Speaker 2: Personal sound attractive and exciting to me? Is that a
Speaker 2: problem for me personally? As you've been describing TikTok just
Speaker 2: in this last thirty seconds or forty five seconds, I
Speaker 2: have been in the back of my head, I'm like,
Speaker 2: maybe I should be looking at TikTok more often, like
Speaker 2: almost very sick man. I'm doing dry January, so it
Speaker 2: could be I'm just looking for something like addictive, a
Speaker 2: new fix, you know, but.
Speaker 3: Like I get it. I've been there, I do.
Speaker 2: I'll open TikTok occasionally and I'm like, you know, you'll
Speaker 2: start looking at shit. It is like the pringles, you know,
Speaker 2: like once you pop, you can't stop or whatever.
Speaker 4: It's also and what I didn't put in the puck
Speaker 4: piece because I can never put everything in one thing.
Speaker 4: So we copy and paste, like we are a meme
Speaker 4: driven society, even before we use that word the way
Speaker 4: Hollywood does a copy and paste on types of movies.
Speaker 4: You know, one thing hits and everybody's doing the thing right.
Speaker 4: Everybody wants a Marvel cinematic universe, and everybody needs big
Speaker 4: ip and like leverage a book or a superstar or
Speaker 4: preferably both, so the risk is lower and we can
Speaker 4: just spend a fuck ton of money on this and
Speaker 4: make a fuck ton of money after that and not
Speaker 4: be original. Right. That also happens in business and tech
Speaker 4: and social media. Facebook just copies and paste. So the
Speaker 4: more successful TikTok is, the more everything else looks like TikTok. Right,
Speaker 4: our Instagram isn't Instagram anymore.
Speaker 2: It's just TikTok. Yeah, but a failed TikTok, like a
Speaker 2: bad TikTok. So if I'm on a reel and I
Speaker 2: accidentally go to the next reel, I'm like, I'm immediately
Speaker 2: turned off and always like how do I get out
Speaker 2: of this? Which they don't make very easy. Of course
Speaker 2: they don't. It's entrap mean, but you can't get out
Speaker 2: of the reels once you're in there. I've quit the
Speaker 2: app on multiple occasions.
Speaker 4: They're not your friendly neighborhood drug dealer. They're not cal
Speaker 4: or Doug or Jena, whoever you're a dealer with. They
Speaker 4: are big pharma of social media.
Speaker 3: I have a medical marijuana lize, so I get it
Speaker 3: from the state.
Speaker 4: When it jumped the shark a bit for me, I'm
Speaker 4: on Instagram. Like you had Twitter with text. You like reading,
Speaker 4: you know, you like writing, but not too much. That's
Speaker 4: Twitter for you. You want to write too much, that's medium
Speaker 4: for you. There's blog Spot or something to date myself
Speaker 4: if you want. If you want still photos and like
Speaker 4: cool photos with stories associated with them in captions, then
Speaker 4: you go to Instagram. You want short form video that
Speaker 4: kind of moves at the speed of freaking meth. Then
Speaker 4: you go to TikTok. But now everything is everybody just
Speaker 4: has to be in everybody else's shit, and nobody can
Speaker 4: just be who they are. So there's no fixed identities
Speaker 4: in this world. So everybody just wants to be what
Speaker 4: the cool kid is at the time. So Facebook is TikTok,
Speaker 4: Instagram is TikTok. Twitter is just whatever. It's dead. But
Speaker 4: I think when I'm on Instagram and I see I
Speaker 4: see a still photo, but it's actually a video because
Speaker 4: the algorithm and the incentive structure forced a normal human
Speaker 4: being to use a weird app to turn their photo
Speaker 4: into a looping, thirteen second video. Not a gift. Gifts
Speaker 4: are a whole thing. That's a whole different type of
Speaker 4: media format. Totally had a place for that too. Nope,
Speaker 4: so we're just gonna We're gonna contort your natural abilities
Speaker 4: and sensibilities into this other thing because we don't know
Speaker 4: how to make our own shit work, so we're just
Speaker 4: going to copy theirs and make you TikTok. So even
Speaker 4: people who are on Instagram, I hate TikTok. No you don't,
Speaker 4: because you're in it, right now you're living in TikTok's
Speaker 4: great shadow.
Speaker 2: But I think that people on Instagram do legitimately hate it,
Speaker 2: and I believe strongly that the only reason why reels,
Speaker 2: if it's successful at all, it's because it's being like
Speaker 2: forcibly pushed on the users in a way that it's
Speaker 2: like really uncomfortable and they don't like.
Speaker 4: And here that was the great Facebook pivot to video
Speaker 4: that accelerated the overinvestment of so many newsrooms. And it
Speaker 4: was like years later, like, well, actually we were counting
Speaker 4: three second video starts. Well, okay, actually we added a
Speaker 4: zero to all the video plays across the network.
Speaker 2: Now, if listeners may not know, there was a period
Speaker 2: where on the Internet when there was like a news
Speaker 2: company or whatever, they would just publish like texts. Sometimes
Speaker 2: they'd do like a long form video, there'd be some images,
Speaker 2: they would do a gallery. And then one day Facebook
Speaker 2: was like, video is going to be the next big
Speaker 2: thing for our platform. Everybody should really make video. And
Speaker 2: then it literally many large news organizations that were well
Speaker 2: funded where like we're firing the people who write and
Speaker 2: we're gonna make video yep.
Speaker 3: And then it was a huge failure. Nobody watching any
Speaker 3: of the video.
Speaker 2: Nobody gave a shit, and then a bunch of those
Speaker 2: companies went out of business, like a crazy amount of
Speaker 2: companies now don't exist because of the pivot to video.
Speaker 2: And then Facebook was like, oh, we'd like completely miscounted
Speaker 2: the numbers. Also, like those views we said you were getting,
Speaker 2: like we're not real at all, Like we didn't have
Speaker 2: any real clue about what we were doing there, or
Speaker 2: we lied.
Speaker 4: And on top of that, you cannot trust the outlet
Speaker 4: with an incentive to inflate its numbers to tell you
Speaker 4: what's going on. And part of what happened is Facebook
Speaker 4: shifted its algorithm to prioritize video, you know, right, to
Speaker 4: make sure it went more viral, got more views and
Speaker 4: ranked higher than stills or texts. And then they publicly
Speaker 4: said we're seeing a shift toward video amongst our users.
Speaker 3: Right, They're like, they're like, it's weird.
Speaker 2: We put video now on their feed and they seem
Speaker 2: to be watching it because there's nothing else.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's true.
Speaker 4: That's like you know, Shi Jinping saying, you know, we're
Speaker 4: just seeing a high degree of loyalty among other people
Speaker 4: of China. Right for me, people want me to rule forever,
Speaker 4: said the man holding a gun to his people.
Speaker 2: We should be so, we should be so lucky to
Speaker 2: have such an opportunity to just completely railroad people like left,
Speaker 2: right and center and just just forcing this shit on them.
Speaker 2: It's a bleak picture, but I have a thought listening
Speaker 2: to you describe what's going on with the tiktokification of
Speaker 2: all the social networks, which is like, to me, it
Speaker 2: almost feels like the Netflix effect, which I think we've
Speaker 2: seen now kind of start to crumble a bit, which
Speaker 2: is like Netflix is like, we're Netflix. We're doing our thing. Now,
Speaker 2: we're making original stuff. Okay, now that's fucking killing. Now
Speaker 2: everybody is scrambling like to play catch up to the
Speaker 2: streaming Netflix to be Netflix, right, and you've got HBO
Speaker 2: doing it, and you've got fucking Paramount doing it whoever,
Speaker 2: And and it turns out there's like a limit to
Speaker 2: how much of that shit that we want and that
Speaker 2: will tolerate, and frankly, like there's a fatigue that will
Speaker 2: set in after a while, right where you're just like
Speaker 2: this may be the best shit in the world. I
Speaker 2: may have one hundred of the best shows to watch,
Speaker 2: but like I don't really have the time or the
Speaker 2: attention span or the interest at this point, because like
Speaker 2: my doobamine has.
Speaker 3: Left my brain. I'm fucking like tapped out.
Speaker 2: Is it possible that this is the final breath or
Speaker 2: the near final breath of like social media as we
Speaker 2: know it, that it's collapsing in upon itself, like they've
Speaker 2: run out of ideas, they've run out of attention. I
Speaker 2: do think this is just me riffing now, but like
Speaker 2: I do think we are entering a phase, not post pandemic,
Speaker 2: because they're still like a pandemic happening, but post the worst,
Speaker 2: most intense part of it that we experienced where we
Speaker 2: were all alone inside online all day for a long time.
Speaker 2: I feel like there's a little bit of like people
Speaker 2: going like I don't know if that's what I want
Speaker 2: to be now, Like I want to be like that.
Speaker 2: So is it possible there's these like all these forces
Speaker 2: coming together. This is just my weird wishful thinking that
Speaker 2: like people don't want TikTok everywhere, they don't even maybe
Speaker 2: want to be on social media that much anymore. Maybe
Speaker 2: TikTok is just this like super pronounced last gasp of
Speaker 2: social media as we know it any any Does that
Speaker 2: sound like possible?
Speaker 4: I think, I think that's a beautiful sentiment. I want
Speaker 4: that world. I still believe that world as possible. I
Speaker 4: remember I loved clubhouse, and then I went outside clubhouse.
Speaker 3: God, I forgot about clubhouse. Right.
Speaker 4: It was very simple. I couldn't socialize, I couldn't host things,
Speaker 4: and that was a wonderful substitute. And then I left
Speaker 4: my house right, and I went and filmed my TV
Speaker 4: series America Outdoors on PBS. Check it out in the
Speaker 4: PBS apps, great very Smith Clugg. And I was like,
Speaker 4: all of a sudden, I'm not spending all my time
Speaker 4: talking to strangers on a party line. I'm just like
Speaker 4: at a restaurant. Again. Well, I love restaurants, you know what.
Speaker 4: I love strangers on the street. I love random people
Speaker 4: at the coffee shop. Taken too long to order? Give
Speaker 4: me a DMV line. Yes, And it was all superior
Speaker 4: to that novel interesting but unsustainable blip in the in
Speaker 4: the grand sweep of all the social technologies. It was
Speaker 4: like a Poe blip. And so I was wrong about
Speaker 4: the sustainability of that. And more to the point, so
Speaker 4: where the people who devoted so much more of their
Speaker 4: time to it with social media, I am excited for
Speaker 4: us to escape the phase that we've been in the
Speaker 4: centralization the feed based Like even the word feed just
Speaker 4: makes me feel like livestock, right, just like, oh, I'm
Speaker 4: going to go to the feed. I'm going to feed.
Speaker 4: I'm freaking the memes and the data. And then some
Speaker 4: they're just fattening me up to shove ads into the
Speaker 4: feed to take stuff from me so I can buy things.
Speaker 3: I don't need to monetize you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And so we will always tend toward that because
Speaker 4: of capitalism, which won't let a diverse ecosystem prevail. That
Speaker 4: will tend toward monoculture in food, in entertainment, in technology platforms,
Speaker 4: because people want more and more and more, and shareholders
Speaker 4: want more and more and more, and that means everybody's
Speaker 4: got to taste the same. Damn rabbit. But the gen
Speaker 4: Z and the Alphas in particular, you know, they grew
Speaker 4: up in the ashes of the financial crisis, and they
Speaker 4: bear the brunt of the trillion dollars of college debt.
Speaker 4: You know, they're older siblings, especially, so like, I don't
Speaker 4: know so much about this, And then the planet's reminding
Speaker 4: us like, Hey, this whole feed based system, infinite feeding,
Speaker 4: you'll eat your home planet and won't have anywhere to live.
Speaker 4: That's not sustainable either. So more of us, I don't
Speaker 4: know if the whole system will totally change, but more
Speaker 4: of us will seek this alternative universe you're talking about.
Speaker 4: It excites me, and so I joke about Mastodon. I
Speaker 4: think it's like a hint that we can create other environments.
Speaker 4: In my podcast How the Citizen, the most recent season
Speaker 4: is exploring how we use technology to help us show
Speaker 4: up as active citizens and members of society and not
Speaker 4: just be fed to an economic engine that we didn't
Speaker 4: build and that we generally don't benefit from. And I
Speaker 4: just learned a lot talking to people who've done different
Speaker 4: things with tech, the folks that knew public who were
Speaker 4: designing digital public spaces differently, as for Alshafe over in
Speaker 4: the Middle East, who's created this social media network that
Speaker 4: operates very differently from all the noise we've been talking
Speaker 4: about and just doesn't give people infinite powers on day
Speaker 4: zero to fuck around and find out how much damage
Speaker 4: they can cause the society. It respectfully onboards people into
Speaker 4: actual communities first. It doesn't have vcs, which makes it possible.
Speaker 4: I love that, and because the incentives, like if you
Speaker 4: start with venture capital money, and so it's rich people
Speaker 4: who need to get richer. So this is already just
Speaker 4: like disposable, but they drive everything you pursue downstream from that.
Speaker 4: All your user research, all your UX design, all your
Speaker 4: growth marketing tactics are so that a millionaire can get
Speaker 4: to be a billionaire. Then whose need are you really
Speaker 4: meeting with that feed and so to really have TikTok
Speaker 4: be the last gasp, we need different funding mechanisms which
Speaker 4: are available but not wide scale, and we need people
Speaker 4: designing these spaces who are more than just bored engineers. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we need people who actually know how to design spaces,
Speaker 4: you know, like designers, interior designers, cultural programmers, artists. We
Speaker 4: need folks who understand people to build spaces for people.
Speaker 4: And many of those folks have not been included. They've
Speaker 4: been subjected to the visions and imaginations of a very
Speaker 4: small group of folk who don't have the broadest human experience.
Speaker 3: And who are incentivized to make money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, above all, it might talk about like community and ship, but.
Speaker 4: You don't have to take a vow of poverty but
Speaker 4: if your premise is returning ten x and getting valued
Speaker 4: at a billion dollars and being a unicorn, then you've
Speaker 4: already You've already I wouldn't even say corrupted. You have
Speaker 4: vastly limited the possibilities for what you create under those conditions,
Speaker 4: and so we need fewer limits.
Speaker 3: First, of your vision. This vision you're just paying is
Speaker 3: very beautiful. I feel like that.
Speaker 4: I think I think we you know, we did that
Speaker 4: a little bit together. I'll take it.
Speaker 3: I will take some credit.
Speaker 4: You can have fifteen percent of the vision at a
Speaker 4: pre money valuation, generous call it thirty million.
Speaker 3: Thank you. That sounds good.
Speaker 2: I'll fine, I'll take that. I like that, all right.
Speaker 2: So okay, I think that's a great place to leave it.
Speaker 2: But you have a ton of stuff going on. You
Speaker 2: mentioned a couple of things now before we end. I
Speaker 2: want you to tell me then, and by proxy tell
Speaker 2: everybody listening. Obviously you're writing for pop You've got a
Speaker 2: PBS show you just mentioned.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's called America Outdoors. When can I see that?
Speaker 4: Where can I see that? You can see it now?
Speaker 4: It's re airing on you know. Find your local PBS affiliate.
Speaker 4: You can go to PBS dot org slash America Outdoors.
Speaker 4: They have a great streaming app that doesn't strip your
Speaker 4: identity and sell it back to you. Just the PBS
Speaker 4: digital app PBS Passport. If you pay, Oh yeah, I
Speaker 4: subscribe to that.
Speaker 2: It's great. It's it's money well spent. It's like I
Speaker 2: think it's cheap too. It's like a yearly thing, it's
Speaker 2: like forty bucks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's great, and you're supporting your local PBS station,
Speaker 4: which in some communities is the only local news available
Speaker 4: and local media available. So I've become an even bigger
Speaker 4: fan of PBS working with them and not just watching
Speaker 4: some of their stuff. So check out America Outdoors. It's
Speaker 4: not a wildlife show. It's a human show about our
Speaker 4: relationship with nature's and it's people we don't typically see.
Speaker 4: A couple of examples. I spent time with formally incarcerated
Speaker 4: folk who learned how to fight forest fires in prison
Speaker 4: and now do it as free people and understand some
Speaker 4: of their journey. I spend time with multiple indigenous communities
Speaker 4: in what we call Idaho and Minnesota and California and
Speaker 4: learned many of their traditions with respect to the land
Speaker 4: that they're on I go crabbing with the most conservative
Speaker 4: person I've ever knowingly been around in my life in
Speaker 4: the chest today, and I go hiking with refugee kids
Speaker 4: in Idaho, like it's surfing and horseback riding and just
Speaker 4: beautiful people. When it helped me remember how much we
Speaker 4: still have in common, which includes, at the basis level,
Speaker 4: our planet. So check out America outdoors, check out Puck,
Speaker 4: pay for it, It's worth it. And how the Citizen
Speaker 4: is my podcast where we take Citizen to be a verb.
Speaker 3: And you're in season three.
Speaker 4: We are at season four now, we're we're about to
Speaker 4: drop season four. We launched in twenty twenty, got some awards,
Speaker 4: had some really dope conversations, and the show is all
Speaker 4: about sharing new ways to show up in society and
Speaker 4: exercise our power. Sometimes that's voting, most of the time
Speaker 4: it's a total new bag. It's business stuff, it's tech stuff,
Speaker 4: it's culture stuff. And I tend to interview one person
Speaker 4: at a time about their thing, and then we give
Speaker 4: listeners in each episode a way to make it your
Speaker 4: thing and actions you can take in your life to
Speaker 4: just practice these muscles that have aturo feed so much
Speaker 4: because the only thing we've been told to do is.
Speaker 3: Shopkeehit, which is guy.
Speaker 2: You gotta admit it's pretty fun though, like it's super fun.
Speaker 4: Hot in fact, Yeah, they've gamified resource loss.
Speaker 3: It's so true.
Speaker 4: So Josh, it's a great reunion. Yeah, thank you for
Speaker 4: having me on here. Thank you so much for doing this.
Speaker 4: You got to come back do it some more, talk
Speaker 4: about some new things. I'm sure you'll have like ten
Speaker 4: new things next time. We talked to each other. Happy
Speaker 4: to come back.
Speaker 2: Well, that conversation was amazing and also went kind of long,
Speaker 2: so I don't have a lot of time. They're telling
Speaker 2: me I have to wrap it up now, they're telling me.
Speaker 2: There's several people are motioning towards me. Look, they're doing
Speaker 2: that thing where they pointing to their watch and then
Speaker 2: like making their hand go in a circle like wrap
Speaker 2: it up. So I'm feeling a lot of pressure right now.
Speaker 2: So that is our show for this week, and we'll
Speaker 2: be back next week with more What Future And I
Speaker 2: should say before I go that. What Future is an
Speaker 2: iHeartMedia podcast. It's executive produced by Lyras Smith, Adam Wand
Speaker 2: is our editor, and Jenna Caagel Am I saying that
Speaker 2: right Kegel, just like Bagel right, is our supervising producer.
Speaker 3: She's mad at me.
Speaker 2: Now, I hope you're all happy, and if you would
Speaker 2: like to, and you don't have to know, one's going
Speaker 2: to afford to you, but it would be great for me.
Speaker 2: I could finally hold my head up proudly at family dinners.
Speaker 2: If you would just go on iTunes or Apple podcasts
Speaker 2: or any place where you can add a star rating
Speaker 2: to this podcast and give it five or six stars,
Speaker 2: that would be great because my family doesn't respect me,
Speaker 2: and I think if you do that, they'll start to
Speaker 2: come around to the idea that I'm worth respecting.
Speaker 3: So I really appreciate that