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Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to What Future. I'm your host, Joshua Tapulski,

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Speaker 1: and We've got a great episode today because I have

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Speaker 1: been wanting to talk to our guest for a long time,

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Speaker 1: and in fact, the guest of today's show I had

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Speaker 1: on my old podcast a long, long time ago, and

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Speaker 1: it was one of the greatest conversations I've ever had

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Speaker 1: in my entire life. And frankly, I've spent a lot

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Speaker 1: of years in therapy dealing with the fact that not

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Speaker 1: every conversation could be as good as that one. Um

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Speaker 1: of course, talking about my conversation with barrettund Thurston, who

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Speaker 1: is a podcaster and a writer and a TV personality.

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Speaker 1: I think he's done a Ted talk. I believe he

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Speaker 1: is uh, he may be an astronaut. He's doing many things,

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Speaker 1: and he has a fascinating guy. He currently is writing

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Speaker 1: for puck News you may have heard of is one

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Speaker 1: of my favorite new websites, and he's been writing about

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Speaker 1: social media and technology and and one of the things

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Speaker 1: that he talks about a lot, and I know thinks

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Speaker 1: about a lot, is sort of the way we get

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Speaker 1: information and what's in our diet, how we get the

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Speaker 1: news of the day, how we process it, how we

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Speaker 1: think about it, how generationally we're thinking about these things.

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Speaker 1: And that to me is a fascinating topic because I

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Speaker 1: feel like we have this information crisis in the world

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Speaker 1: right now. I mean, I really believe the root of

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Speaker 1: of most of our problems in society. Okay, that's pretty broad,

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Speaker 1: but I think the one of the main causes of

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Speaker 1: the pain that we experience in modern life is the

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Speaker 1: fact that it's become so impossible to get and understand information.

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Speaker 1: There's so much noise, so much misinformation, so much that

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Speaker 1: is wrong that you have access to. Right when we

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Speaker 1: thought of the Internet, we you know, me and the

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Speaker 1: think tank that created the Internet that I worked on,

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Speaker 1: when we envisioned the Internet, or when we thought about

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Speaker 1: it in its earliest days, this idea that it could

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Speaker 1: give you access to all the world's knowledge, that you

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Speaker 1: could have every book and every library, every encyclopedia, every

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Speaker 1: piece of information available felt like the superpower that we

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Speaker 1: would all have, that this is like the beginning of

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Speaker 1: a new era of understanding and education and information and

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Speaker 1: and humanity coming together and people solving their problems, and

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Speaker 1: we're all gonna you know, communicate and share and explore

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Speaker 1: together in cyberspace, and you know, look at all this

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Speaker 1: access that we now have to edify ourselves to become smarter,

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Speaker 1: to become better citizens of the world. And what nobody

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Speaker 1: seem to think of, and myself included, is that the

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Speaker 1: the inverse of all the world's information is true, is

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Speaker 1: that all of the world's disinformation can also exist there.

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Speaker 1: And in fact, it turns out disinformation and misinformation is

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Speaker 1: louder and faster and sexier and more interesting and more

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Speaker 1: exciting than the real stuff. And it's easier to share,

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Speaker 1: and it's easier to scan people with, and it's easier

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Speaker 1: to convince people of For whatever reason, we are drawn

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Speaker 1: as human beings too, the more dramatic stories, and the

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Speaker 1: more dramatic stories are often the lies. And so the

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Speaker 1: Internet has become as much as it is a tool

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Speaker 1: for humanity to explore the world's knowledge and to explore

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Speaker 1: all of the fascinating aspects of humanity itself, it's also

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Speaker 1: become this massive and horrible tool for disrupting in the

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Speaker 1: worst way possible, with the most negative connotations possible, disrupting

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Speaker 1: how our brains work and disrupting what we know and

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Speaker 1: what we believe. Is true, and what we agree on

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Speaker 1: is scientific and whether or not the Earth is flat, like,

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Speaker 1: these are now things that are up for debate in

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Speaker 1: a lot of circles. And I say a lot of

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Speaker 1: circles on the internet. It feels like a lot of circles,

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Speaker 1: but in reality, maybe it's only a few circles. But

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Speaker 1: those circles are are growing, and there the pools inside

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Speaker 1: the circles are deepening, and we're being sucked down to

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Speaker 1: the bottom of the sea. And now I'm imagining like

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Speaker 1: a cylinder filled with water and we're all in it

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Speaker 1: at any rate. This is my roundabout way of saying.

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Speaker 1: I thought, who better to talk about the Internet and

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Speaker 1: information and the future of humanity as we know it?

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Speaker 1: Who better to have a conversation with about those topics

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Speaker 1: than Barrettunde Thurston. And uh, he agreed to come on

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Speaker 1: the show. He's here with us right now. Okay, I'm

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Speaker 1: very happy you're here. Yeah, I had you on my

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Speaker 1: show in which is like kind of amazing. I went

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Speaker 1: back and listened to a little bit of it. We

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Speaker 1: were both drinking. First off, you were having a gigantic

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Speaker 1: glass of whiskey and I was having vodka. We got

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Speaker 1: into a long conversation about the iguanas whole foods. Which

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Speaker 1: you do you you don't live in New York anymore?

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Speaker 1: Do you? You live in l A. I live in

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Speaker 1: l A. I left New York four years ago. Now

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Speaker 1: that's smart, that's so smart. I'm jealous of you, all right,

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Speaker 1: So let's talk about you for a second. Now, let's

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Speaker 1: I mean, obviously we now know where you're located. That's important.

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Speaker 1: So I've been reading you a lot, because you're writing

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Speaker 1: for Puck, Yes, puck News. Is that what we call it.

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Speaker 1: We call it puck we call it. The website is

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Speaker 1: puck dot news. But my name is just I like

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Speaker 1: Puck a lot. I gotta tell you, I'm a big fan.

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Speaker 1: I'm a subscriber. I have been reading and fall going along.

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Speaker 1: But your stuff is really interesting lately, especially because you're

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Speaker 1: always interesting. But you've been talking a lot about social media.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you just wrote a thing about TikTok that

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Speaker 1: I thought was super interesting. You've been obviously talking about

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Speaker 1: Elon Musk and the Twitter situation you made a passing comment.

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Speaker 1: Obviously that's been a topic of great interest to me

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Speaker 1: because because it's your fault, because I personally am responsible

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Speaker 1: for Elon Musk's behavior, laid the path I did. Why

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Speaker 1: did I do that? Why did I Why did they

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Speaker 1: make him act in that way? But you made this

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Speaker 1: kind of past you mentioned You're like, yeah, Twitter as

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Speaker 1: we know it is basically dead or something like that.

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Speaker 1: I'm paraphrasing. Do you really believe that? Is it over?

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Speaker 1: I think so. What I added in that comment was

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Speaker 1: that you know, I was referring to Twitter in the

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Speaker 1: past tense because I think of Twitter, it is code,

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Speaker 1: but it is also culture, and it is the unique

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Speaker 1: combination of code and culture that created the environment that

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Speaker 1: we knew as Twitter. The same goes for cities like

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Speaker 1: New York is a different place than when I lived

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Speaker 1: there four years ago, I think, especially if a place

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Speaker 1: goes through a major tragedy, it is substantively different. You know,

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Speaker 1: after if you lived in New York before and on

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Speaker 1: eleven and never lived there after, you don't really know

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Speaker 1: New York anymore. Like the character of the place has

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Speaker 1: shifted even though it's still in New York. It's kind

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Speaker 1: of an existential question of or metaphysical one too. If

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Speaker 1: like all my cells have changed, am I still me?

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Speaker 1: But in this case, I think what Ellen has done

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Speaker 1: at Twitter so violently abrupt in terms of driving out

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Speaker 1: staff and also users of a certain kind, that he

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Speaker 1: has shifted the nature and culture of the place. He

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Speaker 1: has signaled really obviously and sort of boneheadedly, what type

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Speaker 1: of speech he wants to be free, which is his

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Speaker 1: right wing buddies, and what type he will police, which

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Speaker 1: is anything critical of him or any jokes he doesn't understand.

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Speaker 1: Twitter's culture is now Elon's limitations, and he's just scaled

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Speaker 1: himself and he's implemented his predilections and personality into the code.

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Speaker 1: And if he he has the right to do that,

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Speaker 1: that's what billions of dollars and debt and other people's

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Speaker 1: money can help you do. But it is not the

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Speaker 1: Twitter that we commonly refer to anymore because a lot

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Speaker 1: of the people who made that place what it was

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Speaker 1: aren't spending time there. And I include myself in that,

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Speaker 1: And I'm late to the exodus by some measures, even

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Speaker 1: though I substantively like downgraded my time there years ago

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Speaker 1: before Ellen even came on the scene. He just accelerated

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Speaker 1: a path outward and made it easier for me to

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Speaker 1: spend time elsewhere. I mean that point is like I

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Speaker 1: get it so well because I feel the same way

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Speaker 1: like this. You know, there definitely was a point, you know,

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Speaker 1: I don't know when I was just like no, I'm

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Speaker 1: not going to do this anymore. But but it has

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Speaker 1: to end, right, like he can't sto financially sustainable in

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Speaker 1: its current state, don't you don't know? It isn't. And

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Speaker 1: I think there's cultural death, there's technological or kind of

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Speaker 1: operational death, um, and there's financial death, and and all

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Speaker 1: of these are on the table, and I think they

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Speaker 1: probably move in that order. Certainly, the cultural one, I

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Speaker 1: think has already very much begun. When you start like

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Speaker 1: banning journalists who criticize you as if you were Saudi

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Speaker 1: Arabia itself. It's one thing to take their money, it's

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Speaker 1: another to adopt their stance on you know, freedom of

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Speaker 1: expression and free press in your public square business with

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Speaker 1: no sense of irony about it, like legit just doing that.

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Speaker 1: So when people like me and you and others, a

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Speaker 1: lot of the black Twitter folk, even some of like

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Speaker 1: the crypto kids, like there's a whole community, it's just

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Speaker 1: like I'm not here for this. It's exhausting. The town

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Speaker 1: square shouldn't be the subject of discussion of the town square,

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Speaker 1: right if you don't gather the town screat to be like, wow,

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Speaker 1: look at this, I love that what they've done with

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Speaker 1: the stones here or whatever. Yeah, like they gather to

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Speaker 1: talk about other stuff about like the janitor, you know. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's like it's like one of those things like when

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Speaker 1: the story is just about right and it's like it's

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Speaker 1: like when you've made it about you or whatever, so

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Speaker 1: you're part about the money, you know. My colleague at Puck,

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Speaker 1: William Cohen, has written much more incisively on this angle

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Speaker 1: because he's a former banker and understand some of the

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Speaker 1: Wall Street nous of how Ellen put this deal together

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Speaker 1: and what's required and when payments are due, and he's

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Speaker 1: gonna owe some significant amount of money on the debt

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Speaker 1: he took out to pay for this thing. He can

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Speaker 1: afford it. But with every drop in the share price

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Speaker 1: of Tesla, it's gonna sting a little more, With every

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Speaker 1: increase in the FED rate, it's going to sting a

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Speaker 1: little more. And with every dollar of revenue that brands

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Speaker 1: aren't spending in his toxic environment because they don't want

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Speaker 1: to be adjacent to a white supremacy and Nazis and

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Speaker 1: fake news. It's gonna sting a little more, and at

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Speaker 1: some point he's gonna have to do something even more

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Speaker 1: radical than what he's already done just to keep the

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Speaker 1: lights on, which he has decided so far to handle

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Speaker 1: by not paying his rent, which is so very trumpy

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Speaker 1: of another brilliant genius billionaire over it. Like not paying

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Speaker 1: your rent is one of those things where like if

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Speaker 1: you're a regular human being, it's such a great demonstration

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Speaker 1: of like the difference in in class in in like

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Speaker 1: what the billionaire class are the very rich or cape

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Speaker 1: below that we are not. And by the way, the

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Speaker 1: rent on Twitter spaces is not like a month or something,

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Speaker 1: you know. I mean, it's not like a one bedroom

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Speaker 1: apartment in in in like Bushwick or something. It's like,

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Speaker 1: I don't even know what the rent would be. It's

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Speaker 1: probably way more than that right now. Yeah. But like

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Speaker 1: he's just like I'm not going to pay the rent,

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Speaker 1: and everybody's like, well, okay, I guess, like what do

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Speaker 1: we do. We can't do anything to Elon Musk or

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Speaker 1: like to the company, but like if you don't pay

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Speaker 1: your rent or if I don't pay you know what

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Speaker 1: I mean, Like, if a normal person, and maybe we're

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Speaker 1: not perfectly normal, but I'm definitely above normal at this point.

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Speaker 1: But in general, a person who does not pay their

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Speaker 1: rent our consequences. You're gonna get fucking evicted. Like we're

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Speaker 1: gonna take you to court, and like none of that

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Speaker 1: should happens. And it's like to me, like, what's more

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Speaker 1: going than like him going, I'm not gonna pay it

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Speaker 1: is that nobody does anything. It's like everybody sits there

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Speaker 1: and we're raised, Josh in this world where where someone

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Speaker 1: like Elon, of his gender, of his race, of his

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Speaker 1: inherited wealth decides to transgress, we tend to celebrate it

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Speaker 1: right until it's too late, you know. Yeah. He I mean,

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Speaker 1: he's like he's less cool. Heisenberg was way cooler than this.

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Speaker 1: His drugs aren't as good, but his blue math is

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Speaker 1: like I don't know, fucking the blue check mark. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but he can afford to call our bluff. As a society,

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Speaker 1: he can afford to wait us out. And us I

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Speaker 1: don't mean like me and you specifically, but just society

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Speaker 1: at large. You know, people who need money to live,

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Speaker 1: money that they get paid on a weekly, bi weekly

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Speaker 1: or monthly basis. He can take the hit longer because

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Speaker 1: he's got a big old cushion to fall back on,

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Speaker 1: and so he can just like he knows he'll get

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Speaker 1: sued for how he treated the employee when he first

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Speaker 1: came in. And he's just gonna see, like will they

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Speaker 1: go through their trouble of hiring lawyers or will it

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Speaker 1: burn so much of their time because they can't afford

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Speaker 1: to spend it on that and I can just rent

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Speaker 1: them out. It's it's the Trump move, you know. It's

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Speaker 1: like I'm gonna break this law. Let's see at the

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Speaker 1: government bothers to process. I'm gonna not pay these vendors.

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Speaker 1: Let's see if they bother to send lawyers after me?

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Speaker 1: Or will I just settle for pennies on the dollar?

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Speaker 1: And it's a deal. I won the deal of the century.

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Speaker 1: But you're also just it's also criminality, it's another word

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Speaker 1: for it, and dishonor you know, at at best, the

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Speaker 1: most charitable interpretation is he's a meanie and he's not honorable.

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Speaker 1: He sucks the thing that I find so and I've

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Speaker 1: talked about this a bunch, but like you know, I

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Speaker 1: don't want to belabor and I'm sure you're all talked

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Speaker 1: out over Twitter, but like, what's so incredible to means?

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Speaker 1: I never was like Elon Musk is clearly the smartest

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Speaker 1: man in the world or anything. But there was a

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Speaker 1: period where I was like, this guy is interesting, way

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Speaker 1: before he was whatever his Twitter persona was. There was

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Speaker 1: a period of years where Elon Musk was like you

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Speaker 1: didn't hear that much about him on a personal level,

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Speaker 1: but you heard a lot about the things he was doing,

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Speaker 1: and the things he was doing, We're really fucking interesting

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Speaker 1: and really seemed to be working right, like once he

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Speaker 1: was involved in Tesla, the SpaceX stuff, some of his

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Speaker 1: like bigger ideas that he would talk about, but you

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Speaker 1: never really he didn't go like way into detail on it.

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Speaker 1: It's so strange to me to see the evolution or

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Speaker 1: de evolution of his character, of his personality, like whoever

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Speaker 1: he plays in public, it's like he's hearing these cheers

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Speaker 1: from whoever wherever it is a different section of the

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Speaker 1: stands and it's like that part of the room. Yes,

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Speaker 1: so I I share a big part of that, Josh,

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Speaker 1: And I think I went from we're talking to a

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Speaker 1: decade ago, you know, not really knowing anything about this

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Speaker 1: guy heard about Tesla a little bit. Ah, the roadster

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Speaker 1: looks kind of cool. I'll never have one of those anyway.

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Speaker 1: Ten maybe getting serious about wanting to get a car

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Speaker 1: in New York because my wife came from California. She's like,

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Speaker 1: I can't do this subway thing all the time, grocer,

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Speaker 1: how do you live? Like this isn't a life we

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Speaker 1: call this? I agree with her, and I was like, cool, cool, cool,

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Speaker 1: but we're not getting a combustion engine car, Like that's

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Speaker 1: my line. Her her line was I need car. Mine

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Speaker 1: line was not gas car. And there was one option,

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Speaker 1: you know, which was Tesla Model three. Okay, So I

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Speaker 1: start paying more attention. I'm building spreadsheets to analyze with

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Speaker 1: the best car, and the Nero is coming out but

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Speaker 1: it's not available yet from Kia, Hyundai and all. And

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Speaker 1: I'm also keen on the space thing and I'm like

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Speaker 1: starting to look into what's up with SpaceX and the

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Speaker 1: YouTube algorithm is great for me. I have never really

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Speaker 1: been fed Nazis. I've sort of disinformation. I've been fed

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Speaker 1: like how to make great cocktails, how to compost, you know,

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Speaker 1: and like what electric cars should you buy? Like my

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Speaker 1: YouTube is dope, and YouTube got a whiff that I

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Speaker 1: was interested in space again because I was space kid

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Speaker 1: and I saw I watched his announcements around the Mars

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Speaker 1: launcher and the reusable rockets, and I just admired his

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Speaker 1: systematic thought. Yeah, he has like thought through all these parts,

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Speaker 1: and he was laying it out very logically, very engineering oriented,

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Speaker 1: and over promising stuff that would eventually happen definitely wouldn't

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Speaker 1: happen when he said it would definitely. That's the one

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Speaker 1: thing you know is true is that he's not telling

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Speaker 1: the truth about the ready date, but beyond that, added

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Speaker 1: up multiplanetary species climate change evies. Yes, sign me up.

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Speaker 1: So camm Callie got the Tesla. At least the three

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Speaker 1: real excited had friends that SpaceX almost visited. SpaceX never

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Speaker 1: made it over to visit there, but just at admiration

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Speaker 1: for these two pieces of the puzzle boring company, I

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Speaker 1: don't know, flamethrowers. That's kind of weird. That's exactly when

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Speaker 1: it started to go to the moment. That's a moment. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was like he was getting high on his own supply,

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Speaker 1: Like that's the fucking reality. People were like, you're so cool. On,

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Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, I'll put a flamethrower out, And that

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Speaker 1: was it. To explain part of the transition. You explain

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Speaker 1: what happens to a lot of young men who get

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Speaker 1: radicalized by the Internet. In this case young maybe a

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Speaker 1: political but ultimately hyper conservative, largely white men who vol

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Speaker 1: into the rabbit holes of you know the thing about feminism, right,

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Speaker 1: they want to cut your balls off anymore god video,

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Speaker 1: you know the thing about black people. They want to

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Speaker 1: take everything you ever worked hard for and rub it

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Speaker 1: in your face. You know the thing about indigenous people,

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Speaker 1: you know, to think about climate and it just becomes

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Speaker 1: this like low appeal to people's deep insecurities. And that

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Speaker 1: was modeled for him by the former president very well,

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Speaker 1: very effectively, by Fox News and by people in an

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Speaker 1: atmosphere online where he spent a lot of time. You know,

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Speaker 1: he loves memes. I mean, so much of this stuff

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Speaker 1: was born out of me culture with Pepetter Frog and

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Speaker 1: gamer Gate. You know, that was all mean warfare early on.

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Speaker 1: And he's he's a Reddit kind of guy. You know,

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Speaker 1: he's a he's a hashtag kind of dude, and if

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Speaker 1: a Ford Chain kind of guy. He's a fortune early

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Speaker 1: and he you know this, if he plays with with Q.

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Speaker 1: You know my pronouns are um, was it prosecute fauci?

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's some que stuff, right, But it's

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Speaker 1: it's actually very explicable if you've as you have spent

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Speaker 1: time on the part of the internet. That's not just

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Speaker 1: about cloud services and profits going up into the right,

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Speaker 1: but that's about emotion and culture and disaffected young men,

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Speaker 1: which are usually the source of most societal collapses, like

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Speaker 1: young men with too much time on their hands did

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Speaker 1: agree and and not productively put to use and and Ellen,

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Speaker 1: who as CEO of four companies should have had plenty

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Speaker 1: to do, Well, that's my thing. This is what as

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Speaker 1: you're saying this, all I can think is, and I've

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Speaker 1: said this so many times, but like if I were

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Speaker 1: the world's richest man, do you know what I would

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Speaker 1: not do is I would not fucking tweet. I would

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Speaker 1: not go on Twitter. I would not need to go

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Speaker 1: on Twitter. He's that you and him are different. I

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Speaker 1: feel like there's so many things to do in the

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Speaker 1: world that you could be doing that isn't tweeting. And

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Speaker 1: I think you probably identify with this. We're very online

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Speaker 1: people and we've probably spent like a pretty good amount

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Speaker 1: of our career like building our whoever we are, like

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Speaker 1: our persona. Like it's like on Twitter, on Instagram or whatever,

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Speaker 1: like we're communicating, but we're also and I'm not saying

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Speaker 1: I did this consciously, but it becomes a thing where

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Speaker 1: you're like, that's your platform, Like that's where you talk

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Speaker 1: to people. That's like where you need to kind of

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Speaker 1: be doing what you're doing, Like you do it, they're right,

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Speaker 1: but but like to build an electric car, you don't

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Speaker 1: do it on on Twitter, Like you don't need to

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Speaker 1: do it on Twitter. Like to go to space, you

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Speaker 1: don't do that on Twitter. It's not part of the

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Speaker 1: it doesn't need to be part of his Like Tim

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Speaker 1: Cook doesn't fucking tweet, you know. Tim cooks like has

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Speaker 1: he tells like his fourth assistant to get his social

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Speaker 1: media person to tend a tweet about the new watch

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Speaker 1: or whatever. Tim Cook has something that Ellen's missing. He's

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Speaker 1: got a whole sense of himself. Yeah, he has self

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Speaker 1: affirmation that doesn't require thousands of strangers every day to

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Speaker 1: affirm him. Instead, he's got self love in a way

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Speaker 1: that is satisfied and quiet moments as opposed to happen

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Speaker 1: to make noise, to prove that he still exists. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and so it's not that mysterious. You know, we're not

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Speaker 1: inside of Elan specifically, but I know what it feels

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Speaker 1: like to like picture or didn't happen, right, like I

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Speaker 1: and and I'm I think objectively more balanced, you know

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Speaker 1: than even though I have way less money, I have

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Speaker 1: more of what I need. Yeah, what's up with right?

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Speaker 1: You're not You're not the world's richest man, and yet

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Speaker 1: here you are acting normal. So unusual we get to

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Speaker 1: watch somebody, you know, with an unmet need act out

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Speaker 1: in public, and we've seen it with Kanye, and we've

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Speaker 1: seen it with Trump, and we've seen it with a

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Speaker 1: lot of folks, with all kinds of people thrust into

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Speaker 1: public life who don't have their own private lives sorted out.

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Speaker 1: And so in that sense, he there's no mystery. It's

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Speaker 1: not intriguing, it's not novel. It's just so much more

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Speaker 1: in our face because he forces us to watch. Because

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Speaker 1: when he literally bought the cat that we all were communicating, like,

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Speaker 1: he bought like the phone company, you know, he was like, no,

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Speaker 1: I own the lines now, So you're gonna hear me

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Speaker 1: a lot. I'm just gonna kind of hell you guys,

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Speaker 1: what's going on? Like you're like, dude, I didn't You're

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Speaker 1: not in this call. He's just popping up. But okay,

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Speaker 1: but it's interesting you mentioned Kanye, and obviously Trump, like

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Speaker 1: Kanye is very I mean, I assume he's still pretty rich,

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Speaker 1: but has been at times very rich and very powerful,

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Speaker 1: very much like in a public eye and very much

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Speaker 1: in control of like the public sort of conversation, not

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Speaker 1: where Elon is, like he's not the world's richest man.

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Speaker 1: And yet they both have access to presumably in Trump

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Speaker 1: as well to kind of any information they want or need.

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Speaker 1: And yet they all all from very different backgrounds, all

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00:22:18,200 --> 00:22:21,760
Speaker 1: from very different doing very different things, seem to gravitate

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Speaker 1: towards and publicly gravitate towards this weird conspiratorial thinking that

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Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't want to give anybody too

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Speaker 1: much credit. I think that all of them, including Trump,

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Speaker 1: I hate to say it, are intelligent in some way. Yeah,

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00:22:38,920 --> 00:22:41,800
Speaker 1: you know, not a stretch, that's yes, easy, But like

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Speaker 1: the should they gravitate towards is kind of the lowest,

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Speaker 1: like the bottom of the barrel. Like conspiracy ship. Right,

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Speaker 1: Like it's not like, oh I didn't hear this one before.

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Speaker 1: It's not like oh wow, like I hadn't considered that

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Speaker 1: angle the Jews. The Jews, that's your hot, intelligent take

413
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Speaker 1: the thousands year old conspiracy. It's like the Protocols of

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Speaker 1: the Elders of Zion or whatever is the new conspiracy

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Speaker 1: that you're you that you've now been included into. But

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Speaker 1: it's funny, it's like I and Ellen shares the same ship.

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Speaker 1: It's like the Fauci's conspiracy stuff, and it's like the

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Speaker 1: stuff that it's really designed for people who don't have

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Speaker 1: better access to information. Right, So a lot of what

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Speaker 1: you've said applies to many of us. You could take

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Speaker 1: someone from the early nineteen hundreds and they could make

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Speaker 1: that speech about anyone alive after after two thousand. It's

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Speaker 1: like you have access to incredible information. Right, I thought

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Speaker 1: drinking mercury on a daily basis would improve my humors,

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00:23:47,359 --> 00:23:50,639
Speaker 1: you know, and like you know better? Wait don't, right?

426
00:23:50,640 --> 00:23:54,040
Speaker 1: And you have you know, hell Shine and Wikipedia and

427
00:23:54,160 --> 00:23:58,520
Speaker 1: doctors like you have you have science, and yet right,

428
00:23:58,960 --> 00:24:04,560
Speaker 1: you still in age in superstition and conspiracy and unproven things.

429
00:24:04,600 --> 00:24:08,560
Speaker 1: So it's so tempting and very easy, and I'll be like,

430
00:24:08,800 --> 00:24:11,440
Speaker 1: what's wrong with those people? But it's like, okay, we're

431
00:24:11,480 --> 00:24:13,520
Speaker 1: all people. Something wrong with all of us. They have

432
00:24:13,600 --> 00:24:17,160
Speaker 1: as bigger stage on which but that's That's what I'm saying,

433
00:24:17,240 --> 00:24:19,240
Speaker 1: is so yeah, I feel like I can understand when

434
00:24:19,320 --> 00:24:22,680
Speaker 1: you don't have access to so access doesn't mean anything.

435
00:24:23,720 --> 00:24:27,720
Speaker 1: You know, people who enslaved other people had access to

436
00:24:27,800 --> 00:24:31,359
Speaker 1: the idea of human rights right right, Like it wasn't

437
00:24:31,359 --> 00:24:34,640
Speaker 1: like a secret you know, oh my god, people could

438
00:24:34,720 --> 00:24:39,440
Speaker 1: just own themselves what that's madness. They weren't waiting for

439
00:24:39,880 --> 00:24:42,399
Speaker 1: you know, king to say it out loud, right it was.

440
00:24:42,480 --> 00:24:45,159
Speaker 1: It was no, it was noable. Yeah, and yet there

441
00:24:45,200 --> 00:24:49,080
Speaker 1: were incentives set up and benefits set up to encourage

442
00:24:49,640 --> 00:24:52,040
Speaker 1: millions of people to go along with something we now

443
00:24:52,119 --> 00:24:55,600
Speaker 1: says like absolutely insane and the humanizing and terrible. That's

444
00:24:55,640 --> 00:24:57,960
Speaker 1: a long way of getting to like, what's the incentive

445
00:24:58,600 --> 00:25:01,760
Speaker 1: for people with presumable a lot of power and access

446
00:25:01,800 --> 00:25:06,439
Speaker 1: to resources and better information than us to engage in

447
00:25:06,440 --> 00:25:11,080
Speaker 1: the opposite transgression is a hell of a drug. And

448
00:25:11,160 --> 00:25:14,719
Speaker 1: if if you can be self perceived as like yo,

449
00:25:14,800 --> 00:25:18,000
Speaker 1: I'm so punk rock, you know, I find the real truth,

450
00:25:18,080 --> 00:25:19,960
Speaker 1: Like it goes back to X files. Man, we're old

451
00:25:20,040 --> 00:25:22,800
Speaker 1: enough to remember, like the truth is out there which

452
00:25:22,840 --> 00:25:25,320
Speaker 1: planted to see. Not that shows specifically, but it was

453
00:25:25,359 --> 00:25:31,360
Speaker 1: of a moment where we can't trust anything like two

454
00:25:31,440 --> 00:25:35,080
Speaker 1: plus two is four maybe proven? Well what okay? But

455
00:25:35,200 --> 00:25:37,159
Speaker 1: what kind of numbers are you and what system of

456
00:25:37,240 --> 00:25:40,280
Speaker 1: math are you basing that on? What assumption you can

457
00:25:40,320 --> 00:25:43,720
Speaker 1: think yourself into not thinking? You're thinking when you're just

458
00:25:43,760 --> 00:25:47,760
Speaker 1: spewing nonsense. And there's a lot of nonsense that passes

459
00:25:47,840 --> 00:25:52,760
Speaker 1: for intelligence and thought these days. That's just counterintuitive bullshit.

460
00:25:53,840 --> 00:25:59,320
Speaker 1: But it's packaged up as Andrew tape. It's packaged up

461
00:25:59,359 --> 00:26:02,120
Speaker 1: as being a piro, and he he sounds like a nerd,

462
00:26:02,200 --> 00:26:07,000
Speaker 1: and he must be smart, not that everything he says

463
00:26:07,160 --> 00:26:12,480
Speaker 1: is bullshit. And and so I think people like a

464
00:26:12,560 --> 00:26:15,359
Speaker 1: Kanye or an Elon or parts of us or it's like,

465
00:26:15,840 --> 00:26:19,919
Speaker 1: all right, I know you told me that COVID you

466
00:26:19,960 --> 00:26:22,440
Speaker 1: know we'd have to do these things, but I don't

467
00:26:22,440 --> 00:26:25,400
Speaker 1: know the government has been wrong about this stuff before. Look,

468
00:26:25,440 --> 00:26:28,480
Speaker 1: the black person and me, not specifically me, but ancestrally,

469
00:26:28,560 --> 00:26:32,080
Speaker 1: who was experimented on in Tuskegee by government health experiments.

470
00:26:32,280 --> 00:26:36,480
Speaker 1: Understand skepticism about government health man dates that might hurt people.

471
00:26:37,160 --> 00:26:39,240
Speaker 1: So the anti vax thing, it's not even like you're

472
00:26:39,280 --> 00:26:42,280
Speaker 1: so dumb. Why don't you believe science? Well, science is

473
00:26:42,320 --> 00:26:46,080
Speaker 1: always changing, and sometimes science is abused. When you have

474
00:26:46,160 --> 00:26:48,320
Speaker 1: no trust or very low trust in environment, then you

475
00:26:48,359 --> 00:26:52,359
Speaker 1: can take good faith nuance and weaponize it as faith

476
00:26:52,400 --> 00:26:56,920
Speaker 1: in nothing, and it becomes nihilism, and it becomes ship posting,

477
00:26:57,240 --> 00:27:00,600
Speaker 1: and it becomes pretend intelligence when you're just pedal noise

478
00:27:00,600 --> 00:27:03,120
Speaker 1: and nonsense. And I think Ellen crossed that line so much.

479
00:27:03,240 --> 00:27:06,880
Speaker 1: As a business owner. He was frustrated at California's mandates

480
00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:10,000
Speaker 1: to keep people safe, and he took it to the

481
00:27:10,080 --> 00:27:14,920
Speaker 1: extreme and is now peddling conspiracy theories about one guy

482
00:27:14,960 --> 00:27:17,840
Speaker 1: who's spent most of his life literally trying to save

483
00:27:18,000 --> 00:27:21,200
Speaker 1: millions and millions of people. Right, Like, there's many people

484
00:27:21,200 --> 00:27:24,240
Speaker 1: who could and should be vilified. Anthony Faucier one of them.

485
00:27:24,320 --> 00:27:26,760
Speaker 1: He's made mistakes. I would acknowledge that some of the

486
00:27:26,800 --> 00:27:35,600
Speaker 1: messaging wasn't always clear, but prosecution trumpe medals, you know,

487
00:27:36,320 --> 00:27:40,040
Speaker 1: not like firing lines. I don't know, man, I I

488
00:27:40,160 --> 00:27:44,040
Speaker 1: know some of the answer and it gets exhausting sometimes.

489
00:27:44,040 --> 00:27:46,560
Speaker 1: But then this is also like, Okay, what's the what's

490
00:27:46,600 --> 00:27:52,920
Speaker 1: the lesson or the opportunity here besides spinning up media cycles?

491
00:27:52,960 --> 00:27:57,240
Speaker 1: Talking about the guy who's powered by media cycles. I mean,

492
00:27:57,720 --> 00:28:00,320
Speaker 1: I know, I agree the deeper thing that we're playing

493
00:28:00,359 --> 00:28:03,199
Speaker 1: around with here, which is like, Okay, what's the motivation,

494
00:28:03,480 --> 00:28:07,240
Speaker 1: what's the insensive? How do we try to like protect

495
00:28:07,280 --> 00:28:10,800
Speaker 1: against this because he's not alone, he's loud. But I

496
00:28:10,880 --> 00:28:15,160
Speaker 1: just I think there's something about being perceived as brave

497
00:28:16,280 --> 00:28:21,480
Speaker 1: and clever, and there is a value to victimhood, which

498
00:28:22,200 --> 00:28:26,840
Speaker 1: anyone in power loves to wrap themselves in that flag.

499
00:28:27,359 --> 00:28:30,600
Speaker 1: The greatest deflection against criticism of your own power is

500
00:28:30,640 --> 00:28:33,920
Speaker 1: to claim to be the victim. You know. It's also

501
00:28:34,000 --> 00:28:37,320
Speaker 1: so crazy too. You're like, I don't think you're the

502
00:28:37,400 --> 00:28:40,360
Speaker 1: guy who's had the hard time, but like, you know,

503
00:28:40,440 --> 00:28:43,120
Speaker 1: it works. It's super effective. I mean I think. I mean,

504
00:28:43,320 --> 00:28:45,560
Speaker 1: there's like ten things you just said that I'm like, fuck, yes,

505
00:28:45,640 --> 00:28:48,800
Speaker 1: like I completely agree, and I'm like yes, one thing,

506
00:28:48,920 --> 00:28:51,280
Speaker 1: just to go back to you really quickly, The thing

507
00:28:51,280 --> 00:28:53,080
Speaker 1: you said about the X files, which I think about

508
00:28:53,120 --> 00:28:55,240
Speaker 1: all the time, is like, you know, when I was

509
00:28:55,280 --> 00:28:57,400
Speaker 1: a kid, you know, or whatever young adult I guess

510
00:28:57,400 --> 00:28:59,760
Speaker 1: when it was on. There's a lot of stuff on

511
00:28:59,760 --> 00:29:02,840
Speaker 1: that show that circles of friends of mine and we

512
00:29:02,840 --> 00:29:04,840
Speaker 1: were like, yeah, what is up with Not like the

513
00:29:04,880 --> 00:29:08,080
Speaker 1: things like there's aliens or whatever, but there were books

514
00:29:08,120 --> 00:29:11,120
Speaker 1: that now formed the basis for like some of the craziest,

515
00:29:11,520 --> 00:29:14,560
Speaker 1: most fringe conspiracy theories that were like these books like

516
00:29:14,600 --> 00:29:17,040
Speaker 1: Behold a Pale Horse and like these like old school

517
00:29:17,040 --> 00:29:20,280
Speaker 1: like the Robert Anton Wilson books like the Illuminatus trilogy

518
00:29:20,320 --> 00:29:22,840
Speaker 1: and stuff that we're like, oh, yeah, the Nights Templar

519
00:29:22,880 --> 00:29:24,840
Speaker 1: and the Vatican and there's all this like cover up

520
00:29:24,880 --> 00:29:26,400
Speaker 1: and whatever, and you're kind of like, yeah, I kind

521
00:29:26,400 --> 00:29:28,720
Speaker 1: of believe that because the Vatican seems sort of sucked

522
00:29:28,800 --> 00:29:31,560
Speaker 1: up and who knows it's really going on there. All

523
00:29:31,600 --> 00:29:35,120
Speaker 1: the people I knew it was all like the fascist state,

524
00:29:35,480 --> 00:29:37,760
Speaker 1: the government man is like covering it up or whatever.

525
00:29:38,440 --> 00:29:41,680
Speaker 1: And now it's like weirdly flipped. The right wing now

526
00:29:41,760 --> 00:29:44,920
Speaker 1: has like somehow adopted these things that I felt like

527
00:29:44,960 --> 00:29:47,960
Speaker 1: were these really like almost like hippie ish sort of conspiracies.

528
00:29:48,400 --> 00:29:51,840
Speaker 1: If you think of conspiracy theories as a virus capable

529
00:29:51,840 --> 00:29:56,000
Speaker 1: of spreading morally neutral in terms of the hosts. It

530
00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:59,800
Speaker 1: will attach itself to. Yeah, and it has variants and

531
00:29:59,800 --> 00:30:03,800
Speaker 1: it mutate, and it will find new ways to increase

532
00:30:03,960 --> 00:30:06,640
Speaker 1: the mortality rate, but not so much that it decreases

533
00:30:06,840 --> 00:30:09,120
Speaker 1: the are not in the spread, Like all this stuff

534
00:30:09,160 --> 00:30:10,640
Speaker 1: we shouldn't know, but we know now because of COVID.

535
00:30:10,920 --> 00:30:13,120
Speaker 1: We're all a little epidemiologists. Now I just dropped are

536
00:30:13,240 --> 00:30:16,840
Speaker 1: not in a casual conversation. So because I read a

537
00:30:16,840 --> 00:30:20,320
Speaker 1: white paper, you know, or five in the past three years,

538
00:30:20,560 --> 00:30:22,960
Speaker 1: you're staying informed, you know what's going on, and again

539
00:30:23,120 --> 00:30:25,880
Speaker 1: overwhelming my brain with things that I like specialists to

540
00:30:25,880 --> 00:30:30,240
Speaker 1: actually specialize. So you know, being liberal is not an

541
00:30:30,240 --> 00:30:35,479
Speaker 1: inoculation against conspiracy. And the same doubt of systems, you know,

542
00:30:36,000 --> 00:30:40,280
Speaker 1: is available to liberal and conservative. And it's the basis

543
00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:43,280
Speaker 1: for americanness to begin with, Like we don't trust the king.

544
00:30:43,720 --> 00:30:47,200
Speaker 1: We started with distrust. That's a good point. We should

545
00:30:47,240 --> 00:30:50,240
Speaker 1: overthrow the government. Actually, yeah, So it's like whether you're

546
00:30:50,280 --> 00:30:52,760
Speaker 1: like a black panther who doesn't trust the government, or

547
00:30:52,800 --> 00:30:55,400
Speaker 1: like some libertarian pharm owner who doesn't trust the government.

548
00:30:55,440 --> 00:30:57,840
Speaker 1: Like we share something, we like, what's up with this government?

549
00:30:58,360 --> 00:31:00,280
Speaker 1: And even though one may vote for democ rats and

550
00:31:00,320 --> 00:31:03,160
Speaker 1: the other for putting yourself. I think that's that's a

551
00:31:03,240 --> 00:31:05,640
Speaker 1: great question. I'd love to get the answered to. Is

552
00:31:05,640 --> 00:31:08,680
Speaker 1: a super good question. But I also like, I used

553
00:31:08,680 --> 00:31:11,960
Speaker 1: to indulge in conspiracy theory. I'm gonna I can't believe

554
00:31:12,360 --> 00:31:17,600
Speaker 1: this before everybody else did. Josh, Wow, you're like the

555
00:31:17,760 --> 00:31:20,200
Speaker 1: indie rock guy. Yeah, like I was that guy. I'm

556
00:31:20,200 --> 00:31:21,920
Speaker 1: that guy that like I was there at the at

557
00:31:21,920 --> 00:31:25,560
Speaker 1: the indie club, you know, like in the basis literally

558
00:31:25,680 --> 00:31:29,000
Speaker 1: like losing my edge. This is the LCD sound edge.

559
00:31:29,160 --> 00:31:31,000
Speaker 1: You're like, I was there when it happened, and now

560
00:31:31,040 --> 00:31:33,680
Speaker 1: that everybody's into them, they're not cool anymore. You were

561
00:31:33,720 --> 00:31:37,680
Speaker 1: the original info force. Theories are not cool When the

562
00:31:37,800 --> 00:31:41,280
Speaker 1: richest guy in the world loudly embraces them, they lose

563
00:31:41,320 --> 00:31:44,000
Speaker 1: their edge. Certainly not fun. It is no longer transgressive

564
00:31:44,080 --> 00:31:49,440
Speaker 1: or countercultural when the ruling class rules by conspiracy theory. Right,

565
00:31:49,640 --> 00:31:52,000
Speaker 1: So when the president of the United States is like,

566
00:31:52,400 --> 00:31:54,720
Speaker 1: you know, what's true, lizard people, they're like, fuck, I

567
00:31:54,760 --> 00:31:58,280
Speaker 1: guess I can't be engaging that he did. Actually, lizard

568
00:31:58,320 --> 00:32:01,600
Speaker 1: people didn't mean he's he's got So it's not cool

569
00:32:01,760 --> 00:32:04,600
Speaker 1: and I think it's it's but it's more dangerous. There's

570
00:32:04,640 --> 00:32:11,200
Speaker 1: something about indulging, like with highly processed foods or dessert, right,

571
00:32:11,280 --> 00:32:14,480
Speaker 1: A little bit has value. It can add balance, it

572
00:32:14,520 --> 00:32:17,640
Speaker 1: can add an interesting, rich flavor. But if you just

573
00:32:17,840 --> 00:32:22,120
Speaker 1: eat that, if you only eat Twizzlers, you're gonna die

574
00:32:22,480 --> 00:32:25,240
Speaker 1: a horrible death sooner. Twizzler is actually a sponsor of

575
00:32:25,320 --> 00:32:27,920
Speaker 1: this episode, so sort of disappointing to hear that you're

576
00:32:27,920 --> 00:32:30,960
Speaker 1: not a fan, but it's too popular. They need to

577
00:32:30,960 --> 00:32:33,880
Speaker 1: stay punk, you know, punk, and every mainstream Twizzler is

578
00:32:33,920 --> 00:32:47,840
Speaker 1: the most punk candy of all times. Really, though, it's

579
00:32:47,880 --> 00:32:50,760
Speaker 1: funny that you mentioned that you were into conspiracy when

580
00:32:50,760 --> 00:32:53,120
Speaker 1: it was cool or whatever, but like Ham Radio times,

581
00:32:53,120 --> 00:32:54,440
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, like as a whole different

582
00:32:54,480 --> 00:32:57,040
Speaker 1: level of commitment. Well, I used to I used to

583
00:32:57,080 --> 00:32:59,160
Speaker 1: love Coast to Coast, you know, the Art Bell Show,

584
00:32:59,200 --> 00:33:00,960
Speaker 1: which is like people calling and they'd be like, you know,

585
00:33:01,040 --> 00:33:04,160
Speaker 1: I was haunted by a spirit or whatever. Or he'd

586
00:33:04,200 --> 00:33:07,720
Speaker 1: have people on who had like UFO sightings. And actually

587
00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:12,360
Speaker 1: Alex Jones comes from his show, like he became a

588
00:33:12,360 --> 00:33:14,640
Speaker 1: regular or something on this show, which was like, you know,

589
00:33:14,640 --> 00:33:16,840
Speaker 1: it's like a naturally syndicated, like he was on at

590
00:33:16,840 --> 00:33:19,440
Speaker 1: midnight and it would be like people talking about conspiracy

591
00:33:19,560 --> 00:33:21,760
Speaker 1: or talking about ghosts or talking about whatever. And it

592
00:33:21,800 --> 00:33:24,000
Speaker 1: was fun because it was like, be crazy if that

593
00:33:24,040 --> 00:33:26,760
Speaker 1: were real, you know, it's your point, Like when the

594
00:33:26,760 --> 00:33:29,640
Speaker 1: president is like it's real, it's like okay, like you

595
00:33:29,640 --> 00:33:32,000
Speaker 1: know what, Yeah, that loses a little bit of its

596
00:33:32,160 --> 00:33:34,960
Speaker 1: novelty factor. Yeah, and I think a little bit of

597
00:33:35,760 --> 00:33:40,600
Speaker 1: like high sodium, high fruc dose corn syra like beef

598
00:33:40,880 --> 00:33:44,360
Speaker 1: jerky whatever the thing is like a beef jerky food

599
00:33:44,360 --> 00:33:46,959
Speaker 1: and can'ts you know, like, oh, that's that's cool. If

600
00:33:46,960 --> 00:33:49,920
Speaker 1: you're traveling into space, it shouldn't be your whole diet.

601
00:33:50,440 --> 00:33:55,400
Speaker 1: I don't know, like tuna fish that's can diversifileside and

602
00:33:55,760 --> 00:33:58,560
Speaker 1: a little bit of conspiracy theory. It probably does a

603
00:33:58,600 --> 00:34:01,440
Speaker 1: body good a whole the system built on it. Then

604
00:34:01,480 --> 00:34:03,760
Speaker 1: the whole system falls down because we actually do need

605
00:34:03,840 --> 00:34:08,160
Speaker 1: to believe in something. Yeah, nonbelief isn't enough. And if

606
00:34:08,200 --> 00:34:10,920
Speaker 1: you start doubting everything, you don't have anything left to

607
00:34:10,960 --> 00:34:13,160
Speaker 1: stand on. You find yourself alone in the universe, which

608
00:34:13,200 --> 00:34:16,640
Speaker 1: is pretty existentially terrifying, which is Elon Musk almost it's

609
00:34:16,640 --> 00:34:18,440
Speaker 1: where he's headed. That's why he's like trying to like

610
00:34:19,120 --> 00:34:22,080
Speaker 1: fly out to Mars, like be literally alone in the universe.

611
00:34:22,120 --> 00:34:24,759
Speaker 1: But the cost of his indulgence is a lot of

612
00:34:24,760 --> 00:34:26,719
Speaker 1: the rest of us, you know, No, I mean, we're

613
00:34:26,760 --> 00:34:29,759
Speaker 1: all just like shrapnel flying at everybody from his own

614
00:34:29,800 --> 00:34:32,400
Speaker 1: weird like midlife crisis that he's experiencing that he has

615
00:34:32,440 --> 00:34:35,799
Speaker 1: to like talk about on Twitter. Adjacent to Twitter, you

616
00:34:35,840 --> 00:34:38,279
Speaker 1: just wrote this piece about TikTok, about America trying to

617
00:34:38,320 --> 00:34:41,759
Speaker 1: shut down TikTok. Get out of TikTok, which and read

618
00:34:41,920 --> 00:34:45,000
Speaker 1: at puck dot news, puck dot News on my page.

619
00:34:45,040 --> 00:34:48,040
Speaker 1: TikTok on the Clock or something like that is the title. Hold,

620
00:34:48,040 --> 00:34:50,640
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you it is. The headline is TikTok

621
00:34:50,719 --> 00:34:52,640
Speaker 1: on the Clock. I have it up here. What happens

622
00:34:52,640 --> 00:34:55,040
Speaker 1: to the creator economy if the world's most important new

623
00:34:55,160 --> 00:34:59,000
Speaker 1: social platforms banned in the United States? We maybe amount

624
00:34:59,000 --> 00:35:01,960
Speaker 1: to find out, says our Turn of Day. Uh okay,

625
00:35:02,080 --> 00:35:05,000
Speaker 1: but like it's not gonna be banned, is it. They're

626
00:35:05,000 --> 00:35:11,440
Speaker 1: gonna You said that, like gen Z would jin Alpha, um,

627
00:35:11,560 --> 00:35:15,279
Speaker 1: you would would unite form Voltron from Jenne. They don't

628
00:35:15,280 --> 00:35:17,560
Speaker 1: have any whether they don't have any power. We all

629
00:35:17,600 --> 00:35:20,960
Speaker 1: have more power than we know. And I think if

630
00:35:21,080 --> 00:35:24,680
Speaker 1: these kids stopped signing up from military duty, if they

631
00:35:24,719 --> 00:35:28,280
Speaker 1: stopped paying for their parents and grandparents social Security checks,

632
00:35:28,840 --> 00:35:31,359
Speaker 1: because we're in this page you go system, they could

633
00:35:31,400 --> 00:35:33,240
Speaker 1: they could shut some ship down. Do you think TikTok

634
00:35:33,280 --> 00:35:35,319
Speaker 1: is that important? You don't think they'd just be like, well,

635
00:35:35,640 --> 00:35:38,640
Speaker 1: you know, I nodded to the idea that something so

636
00:35:38,760 --> 00:35:42,360
Speaker 1: culturally ameshed and with such deep daily habits, you know

637
00:35:42,360 --> 00:35:44,440
Speaker 1: it's some high person. Is there are some stats I

638
00:35:44,520 --> 00:35:45,759
Speaker 1: left out of this piece as far as like the

639
00:35:45,840 --> 00:35:49,360
Speaker 1: number of people under nineteen that represent the core usage

640
00:35:49,440 --> 00:35:54,080
Speaker 1: of TikTok. It it seems impossible. I don't think it is.

641
00:35:54,280 --> 00:35:57,400
Speaker 1: It seems impossible that one day that would just disappear.

642
00:35:57,760 --> 00:36:00,880
Speaker 1: Do you think you say, the average time daily is

643
00:36:00,920 --> 00:36:04,600
Speaker 1: like minutes a day is the average TikTok and they

644
00:36:04,640 --> 00:36:07,520
Speaker 1: have billion monthly active user? Well, I say that's crazy.

645
00:36:07,520 --> 00:36:10,080
Speaker 1: But then I'm like, how much time did previous generations

646
00:36:10,120 --> 00:36:13,120
Speaker 1: spend watching TV? And it's way more than ninety minutes

647
00:36:13,120 --> 00:36:15,479
Speaker 1: a day. It was like four hours a day or more.

648
00:36:15,600 --> 00:36:18,400
Speaker 1: I remember finding stats in that early two thousand's so

649
00:36:18,440 --> 00:36:20,800
Speaker 1: we're like all blown away by that, but like, actually

650
00:36:20,840 --> 00:36:23,279
Speaker 1: it's much closer to do because in TikTok is in

651
00:36:23,320 --> 00:36:25,360
Speaker 1: some way like you're kind of flipping through channels, so

652
00:36:25,400 --> 00:36:29,080
Speaker 1: it is actually closer to a TV experience than maybe

653
00:36:29,120 --> 00:36:31,279
Speaker 1: any other social app. And the end it's and it's

654
00:36:31,360 --> 00:36:34,520
Speaker 1: higher for our high usage people, you know, it's like

655
00:36:34,560 --> 00:36:37,160
Speaker 1: that's the average user, and then the ones who over

656
00:36:37,200 --> 00:36:38,640
Speaker 1: index are going to be a two hours a day,

657
00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:40,680
Speaker 1: three hours a day and just living in the palm

658
00:36:40,719 --> 00:36:43,600
Speaker 1: of their hand. So I think you'd be based on

659
00:36:43,600 --> 00:36:47,240
Speaker 1: the combination of concerns about TikTok. You've got people concerned

660
00:36:47,239 --> 00:36:51,279
Speaker 1: about data and privacy. You've got people concerned about youth

661
00:36:51,360 --> 00:36:54,720
Speaker 1: mental health and that's like a catchy thing to suddenly

662
00:36:54,880 --> 00:36:59,000
Speaker 1: give a shit about. Right. You've got folks concerned about China,

663
00:36:59,719 --> 00:37:03,160
Speaker 1: some for good reasons, some for racist reasons, but their

664
00:37:03,160 --> 00:37:05,480
Speaker 1: reasons don't matter. They're on the same team when it

665
00:37:05,480 --> 00:37:08,960
Speaker 1: comes to like skepticism toward anything that comes from that nation.

666
00:37:09,400 --> 00:37:12,560
Speaker 1: It's like that meme with the theme with the arms

667
00:37:12,600 --> 00:37:15,920
Speaker 1: locked together, you know I'm talking about it looks like

668
00:37:16,000 --> 00:37:19,080
Speaker 1: two guys like arm wrestling, but it's like, is it

669
00:37:19,200 --> 00:37:21,120
Speaker 1: like a black arm and a white arm and they're

670
00:37:21,200 --> 00:37:23,680
Speaker 1: like locked together? Am I crazy? And I just like

671
00:37:23,760 --> 00:37:26,359
Speaker 1: to make me feel crazy, not to watch you try

672
00:37:26,400 --> 00:37:28,319
Speaker 1: to paint a picture with it. What the call? It's

673
00:37:28,320 --> 00:37:30,000
Speaker 1: got a it's got a name. I don't know. Let's

674
00:37:30,040 --> 00:37:31,919
Speaker 1: leave it to a listener. This will be the easter

675
00:37:32,400 --> 00:37:36,480
Speaker 1: the first listener to find me on Mastodon and tell

676
00:37:36,640 --> 00:37:40,359
Speaker 1: me it's called epic handshake. Okay, you know what I'm

677
00:37:40,400 --> 00:37:42,399
Speaker 1: talking about, right, you probably know what you're talking about,

678
00:37:42,400 --> 00:37:43,960
Speaker 1: but not by that. Damn it. Hold on, I'm just

679
00:37:44,000 --> 00:37:46,239
Speaker 1: gonna send you this meme template right now. I'm gonna

680
00:37:46,239 --> 00:37:50,800
Speaker 1: put in the chat here. Oh you were saying that, like, yeah,

681
00:37:50,840 --> 00:37:53,640
Speaker 1: the people who are like racist, Yeah, it's a coalition

682
00:37:53,680 --> 00:37:55,840
Speaker 1: to people who have good reasons to worry about China.

683
00:37:56,160 --> 00:38:00,960
Speaker 1: It's like this me, It's like it's like mental health advocates, racists,

684
00:38:01,440 --> 00:38:07,879
Speaker 1: national security people banning TikTok, and the diagram very diverse here,

685
00:38:08,040 --> 00:38:09,920
Speaker 1: that's the illustration we should have done. I like that,

686
00:38:10,000 --> 00:38:11,719
Speaker 1: actually is could this be the thing that brings us

687
00:38:11,760 --> 00:38:14,760
Speaker 1: all together? I mean, I do think a common enemy.

688
00:38:14,840 --> 00:38:16,840
Speaker 1: I thought that before COVID. I was like, oh, COVID

689
00:38:16,920 --> 00:38:18,919
Speaker 1: the alien invasion. It's the closest we're going to get

690
00:38:19,080 --> 00:38:21,040
Speaker 1: and it ripped the country apart in the world too.

691
00:38:21,239 --> 00:38:23,719
Speaker 1: So No, it's funny because I thought the same thing

692
00:38:23,719 --> 00:38:26,959
Speaker 1: about when Russian invaded Ukraine. I was like, Okay, now

693
00:38:27,280 --> 00:38:33,759
Speaker 1: America we're classically against historically like we are, And Matt

694
00:38:33,800 --> 00:38:38,080
Speaker 1: Gates is like, actually, no, it's crazy, right, it's fucking bizarre.

695
00:38:38,400 --> 00:38:40,560
Speaker 1: These Republicans are like, actually, you know, Putin's got a

696
00:38:40,560 --> 00:38:42,879
Speaker 1: good points, Like, dude, does he like is that where

697
00:38:42,880 --> 00:38:45,040
Speaker 1: we're at? Is that where the your party? Anyhow? Sorry,

698
00:38:45,040 --> 00:38:47,759
Speaker 1: not think good, not to fucking lose it, but um

699
00:38:47,920 --> 00:38:52,040
Speaker 1: let's take some deep breath together, Josh, Is TikTok dangerous?

700
00:38:52,600 --> 00:38:55,240
Speaker 1: That sounds like the most bullshit sorry, like CNN question

701
00:38:55,280 --> 00:38:59,440
Speaker 1: of all time? Is TikTok dangerous for the youth? Now?

702
00:38:59,520 --> 00:39:00,840
Speaker 1: I mean, like what should take on it? Like, do

703
00:39:00,880 --> 00:39:03,640
Speaker 1: you actually think there's real concern like the privacy thing

704
00:39:03,640 --> 00:39:06,440
Speaker 1: I get, I get the snooping ship, but like, I

705
00:39:06,480 --> 00:39:11,480
Speaker 1: think there's real concern in that is super addictive and

706
00:39:11,520 --> 00:39:15,200
Speaker 1: it's become back to this world of low and no trust.

707
00:39:16,440 --> 00:39:18,840
Speaker 1: TikTok to place people go to get real questions answered.

708
00:39:19,200 --> 00:39:23,319
Speaker 1: It's like chat GPT, but like way larger scale. And

709
00:39:23,400 --> 00:39:26,759
Speaker 1: sometimes the results you get back are as non factual

710
00:39:27,080 --> 00:39:30,040
Speaker 1: as that body, but they present as like, this is

711
00:39:30,080 --> 00:39:31,920
Speaker 1: what you should do to heal this thing. This is

712
00:39:31,960 --> 00:39:33,439
Speaker 1: what you should do in terms of how you vote.

713
00:39:33,680 --> 00:39:36,920
Speaker 1: You know, miss info on TikTok is crazy. Yeah, so

714
00:39:37,080 --> 00:39:41,200
Speaker 1: so it's it's a risky vector for misinformation. It's risky

715
00:39:41,239 --> 00:39:43,440
Speaker 1: in terms of the black box of how it operates

716
00:39:43,760 --> 00:39:49,360
Speaker 1: and semi public square media ecosystem without checks and balances,

717
00:39:49,840 --> 00:39:51,759
Speaker 1: and that's all that's always been. That was the case

718
00:39:51,800 --> 00:39:54,360
Speaker 1: with Facebook, that's the case with It's just transfers to

719
00:39:54,400 --> 00:39:57,400
Speaker 1: whatever the hot thing is. And and TikTok for me

720
00:39:57,560 --> 00:40:03,279
Speaker 1: is more fascinating and potentially more dangerous because it's a

721
00:40:03,320 --> 00:40:06,400
Speaker 1: social network that like you don't have to bring friends

722
00:40:07,239 --> 00:40:10,840
Speaker 1: to experience it. You just trust, like the algorithm is

723
00:40:10,840 --> 00:40:14,480
Speaker 1: the one friend you need. Whether you're a creator or

724
00:40:15,840 --> 00:40:18,120
Speaker 1: I'm more of a passive consumer. In terms of your

725
00:40:18,160 --> 00:40:21,000
Speaker 1: experience on there, you like a few things, you you

726
00:40:21,080 --> 00:40:23,680
Speaker 1: linger a half second longer on this thing versus that thing,

727
00:40:24,040 --> 00:40:26,600
Speaker 1: And they just dialed you in quick and they put

728
00:40:26,640 --> 00:40:28,719
Speaker 1: you in a little box and like you're this type

729
00:40:28,719 --> 00:40:31,560
Speaker 1: of user four four six dash B seven and you

730
00:40:31,600 --> 00:40:35,160
Speaker 1: get that stuff in your feet and it's it's like, um,

731
00:40:35,200 --> 00:40:39,600
Speaker 1: if a pharmaceutical company could like build a highly addictive

732
00:40:39,680 --> 00:40:43,040
Speaker 1: drug just for you. Within ten minutes of knowing that

733
00:40:43,280 --> 00:40:47,880
Speaker 1: sounds great, I'm listening. That's what I want. Okay, you

734
00:40:48,000 --> 00:40:49,799
Speaker 1: got a little bit high from this, Like what if

735
00:40:49,840 --> 00:40:54,759
Speaker 1: we kind of juice that it's persia. It's actually it's

736
00:40:54,800 --> 00:40:57,680
Speaker 1: the promise of you're actually making it sound attractive and

737
00:40:57,719 --> 00:41:00,440
Speaker 1: exciting to me. Is that a problem for me personally?

738
00:41:00,840 --> 00:41:04,040
Speaker 1: As you've been describing TikTok just in this last thirty

739
00:41:04,040 --> 00:41:06,840
Speaker 1: seconds or seconds, I have been in the back of

740
00:41:06,880 --> 00:41:08,560
Speaker 1: my head. I'm like, maybe I should be looking at

741
00:41:08,560 --> 00:41:11,719
Speaker 1: TikTok more often. Like I'm a very sick man. I'm

742
00:41:11,760 --> 00:41:13,680
Speaker 1: doing dry January, so it could be I'm just looking

743
00:41:13,719 --> 00:41:18,200
Speaker 1: for something like addictive, you know, but like I get it.

744
00:41:18,320 --> 00:41:21,040
Speaker 1: I've been there, I do. I'll open TikTok occasionally and

745
00:41:21,120 --> 00:41:23,880
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, you'll start looking at ship. It

746
00:41:24,000 --> 00:41:26,279
Speaker 1: is like the pringles, you know, like once you pop,

747
00:41:26,280 --> 00:41:28,520
Speaker 1: you can't stop or whatever. It's also and what I

748
00:41:28,520 --> 00:41:30,399
Speaker 1: didn't put in the puck piece because I can never

749
00:41:30,440 --> 00:41:34,600
Speaker 1: put everything in one thing, So we copy and paste,

750
00:41:34,880 --> 00:41:37,000
Speaker 1: like we are a meme driven society, even before we

751
00:41:37,080 --> 00:41:39,920
Speaker 1: use that word the way Hollywood does a copy and

752
00:41:39,960 --> 00:41:42,200
Speaker 1: paste on types of movies. You know, one thing hits

753
00:41:42,239 --> 00:41:45,680
Speaker 1: and everybody's doing the thing. Everybody wants a Marvel cinematic universe,

754
00:41:45,680 --> 00:41:48,560
Speaker 1: and everybody needs big I p and like leverage a

755
00:41:48,600 --> 00:41:52,600
Speaker 1: book or superstar perfectly both, so the risk is lower

756
00:41:52,600 --> 00:41:54,759
Speaker 1: and we can just spend a town of money on

757
00:41:54,760 --> 00:41:56,400
Speaker 1: this and make a fun town of money after that

758
00:41:56,440 --> 00:41:59,680
Speaker 1: and not be original. Right. That also happens in business

759
00:41:59,719 --> 00:42:03,360
Speaker 1: and in social media. Facebook just copies and paste. So

760
00:42:03,440 --> 00:42:05,919
Speaker 1: the more successful TikTok is, the more everything else looks

761
00:42:05,920 --> 00:42:11,359
Speaker 1: like TikTok. Right, our Instagram isn't Instagram anymore, it's just TikTok. Yeah,

762
00:42:11,360 --> 00:42:14,480
Speaker 1: but a failed TikTok like a bad TikTok. If I'm

763
00:42:14,520 --> 00:42:16,520
Speaker 1: on a reel and I accidentally go to the next reel,

764
00:42:17,239 --> 00:42:20,080
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm immediately turned off, and always like how

765
00:42:20,120 --> 00:42:21,920
Speaker 1: do I get out of this? Which they don't make

766
00:42:22,000 --> 00:42:25,680
Speaker 1: very easy. Course they don't. It's entrapped, but you can't

767
00:42:25,719 --> 00:42:28,320
Speaker 1: get out of the reels once you're in there. I've

768
00:42:28,400 --> 00:42:32,000
Speaker 1: quit the app on multipleccasions. They're not your friendly neighborhood

769
00:42:32,040 --> 00:42:36,719
Speaker 1: drug dealer. They're not Cal or Doug or Jenn or

770
00:42:36,719 --> 00:42:42,080
Speaker 1: whoever your dealer was. They are big pharma of social media.

771
00:42:42,160 --> 00:42:44,200
Speaker 1: I have a medical marijuana life, so I get it

772
00:42:44,239 --> 00:42:47,719
Speaker 1: straight from the from the state. I think, you know

773
00:42:48,160 --> 00:42:50,239
Speaker 1: when when it jumped the shark a bit. For me,

774
00:42:50,280 --> 00:42:54,680
Speaker 1: I'm on Instagram like you had. Twitter was text. You

775
00:42:54,760 --> 00:42:57,560
Speaker 1: like reading, you know, you like writing, but not too much.

776
00:42:58,080 --> 00:42:59,919
Speaker 1: That's Twitter for you. You want to write too much

777
00:43:00,000 --> 00:43:02,680
Speaker 1: as medium for you, there's blogspot or something to date

778
00:43:02,719 --> 00:43:06,520
Speaker 1: myself if you want. If you want still photos and

779
00:43:06,600 --> 00:43:10,080
Speaker 1: like cool photos with stories associated with them in captions,

780
00:43:10,360 --> 00:43:12,920
Speaker 1: then you go to Instagram. You want short form video

781
00:43:13,000 --> 00:43:15,160
Speaker 1: that kind of moves at the speed of freaking meth,

782
00:43:15,600 --> 00:43:18,560
Speaker 1: then you go to TikTok. But now everything is everybody

783
00:43:18,640 --> 00:43:21,000
Speaker 1: just has to be and everybody else's ship, and nobody

784
00:43:21,040 --> 00:43:23,480
Speaker 1: can just be who they are, so there there's no

785
00:43:23,560 --> 00:43:26,160
Speaker 1: fixed identities in this world. So everybody just wants to

786
00:43:26,160 --> 00:43:28,080
Speaker 1: be what the cool kid is at the time. So

787
00:43:28,239 --> 00:43:32,000
Speaker 1: Facebook is TikTok, Instagram is TikTok. Twitter is just whatever.

788
00:43:32,239 --> 00:43:36,000
Speaker 1: It's dead. But I think when I'm on Instagram and

789
00:43:36,040 --> 00:43:40,800
Speaker 1: I see I see a still photo, but it's actually

790
00:43:40,880 --> 00:43:46,000
Speaker 1: a video because the algorithm and the incentive structure forced

791
00:43:46,000 --> 00:43:49,560
Speaker 1: a normal human being to use a weird app to

792
00:43:49,640 --> 00:43:54,400
Speaker 1: turn their photo into a looping second video. Not a gift,

793
00:43:54,719 --> 00:43:56,560
Speaker 1: gifts the whole thing. That's a whole different type of

794
00:43:56,600 --> 00:43:59,560
Speaker 1: media format at a place for that too. Nope, so

795
00:43:59,600 --> 00:44:04,200
Speaker 1: we're just gonna We're gonna contort your natural abilities and

796
00:44:04,239 --> 00:44:07,440
Speaker 1: sensibilities into this other thing because we don't know how

797
00:44:07,440 --> 00:44:09,319
Speaker 1: to make our own ship work. So we're just gonna

798
00:44:09,400 --> 00:44:12,279
Speaker 1: copy theirs and make you TikTok. So even people who

799
00:44:12,280 --> 00:44:14,040
Speaker 1: are on Instagram like I hate TikTok, No, you don't,

800
00:44:14,600 --> 00:44:17,160
Speaker 1: because you're in it right now. You're living in TikTok's

801
00:44:17,200 --> 00:44:20,160
Speaker 1: great shadow. But I think that people on Instagram do

802
00:44:20,480 --> 00:44:23,919
Speaker 1: legitimately hate it. And I believe strongly that the only

803
00:44:23,960 --> 00:44:27,040
Speaker 1: reason why reels, if it's successful at all, it's because

804
00:44:27,040 --> 00:44:31,040
Speaker 1: it's being like forced, forcibly pushed on the users in

805
00:44:31,040 --> 00:44:33,640
Speaker 1: a way that it's like really uncomfortable and they don't like. No.

806
00:44:33,760 --> 00:44:36,240
Speaker 1: That was that was the great Facebook pivot to video

807
00:44:36,400 --> 00:44:40,400
Speaker 1: that accelerated the over investment of so many newsrooms, and

808
00:44:40,440 --> 00:44:43,319
Speaker 1: it was like years later, like, well, actually we were

809
00:44:43,400 --> 00:44:48,520
Speaker 1: counting three second video starts. Well, okay, actually we added

810
00:44:48,520 --> 00:44:52,600
Speaker 1: a zero to all the video plays across the network. Now,

811
00:44:52,600 --> 00:44:55,080
Speaker 1: if listeners may not know, there was a period where

812
00:44:55,440 --> 00:44:57,760
Speaker 1: on the Internet when there was like a news company

813
00:44:57,840 --> 00:45:01,080
Speaker 1: or whatever, they would just publish like sometimes they do,

814
00:45:01,200 --> 00:45:03,400
Speaker 1: like a long form video. There'd be some images that

815
00:45:03,440 --> 00:45:06,040
Speaker 1: would do a gallery. And then one day Facebook was like,

816
00:45:06,239 --> 00:45:08,160
Speaker 1: video is going to be the next big thing for

817
00:45:08,200 --> 00:45:11,160
Speaker 1: our platform. Everybody should really make video. And then it

818
00:45:11,320 --> 00:45:15,759
Speaker 1: literally many large news organizations that were well funded were

819
00:45:15,800 --> 00:45:18,399
Speaker 1: like we're firing the people who write and we're gonna

820
00:45:18,400 --> 00:45:21,920
Speaker 1: make video. And then it was a huge failure. Nobody

821
00:45:21,920 --> 00:45:23,400
Speaker 1: watching any of the video, Nobody gave a ship, and

822
00:45:23,440 --> 00:45:25,520
Speaker 1: then a bunch of those companies went out of business,

823
00:45:25,560 --> 00:45:29,080
Speaker 1: like a crazy amount of companies now don't exist because

824
00:45:29,120 --> 00:45:32,120
Speaker 1: of the pivot to video. And then Facebook was like, oh,

825
00:45:32,160 --> 00:45:34,840
Speaker 1: we like completely miscounted the numbers. Also, like those views

826
00:45:34,880 --> 00:45:36,839
Speaker 1: we said you were getting, like we're not real at all,

827
00:45:37,200 --> 00:45:39,279
Speaker 1: Like we didn't have any real clue about what we

828
00:45:39,280 --> 00:45:42,759
Speaker 1: were doing there, or we lied. And on top of that,

829
00:45:43,480 --> 00:45:48,240
Speaker 1: you cannot trust the outlet with an incentive to inflate

830
00:45:48,280 --> 00:45:51,319
Speaker 1: its numbers to tell you what's going on, and part

831
00:45:51,320 --> 00:45:56,520
Speaker 1: of what happened is Facebook shifted its algorithm to prioritize

832
00:45:56,920 --> 00:46:00,000
Speaker 1: video right, to make sure it went more viral, got

833
00:46:00,040 --> 00:46:05,319
Speaker 1: more views, and ranked higher than stills or texts. And

834
00:46:05,360 --> 00:46:08,360
Speaker 1: then they publicly said we're seeing a shift toward video

835
00:46:08,440 --> 00:46:12,560
Speaker 1: amongst our users. Right, They're like, they're like, it's weird.

836
00:46:12,840 --> 00:46:15,279
Speaker 1: We put video now on their feet and they seem

837
00:46:15,360 --> 00:46:19,200
Speaker 1: to be watching it because there's nothing else now. It's true.

838
00:46:19,360 --> 00:46:22,960
Speaker 1: That's like, you know, Shijin Ping saying, you know, we're

839
00:46:23,000 --> 00:46:26,279
Speaker 1: just seeing a high degree of loyalty among people of

840
00:46:26,360 --> 00:46:32,520
Speaker 1: China for me, people want me to rule forever, said

841
00:46:32,560 --> 00:46:34,919
Speaker 1: the man holding a gun to people. We should be so,

842
00:46:35,080 --> 00:46:37,400
Speaker 1: we should be so lucky to have such an opportunity

843
00:46:37,400 --> 00:46:40,640
Speaker 1: to just completely railroad people like left, right and center

844
00:46:40,920 --> 00:46:43,600
Speaker 1: and just just forcing this ship on them. It's a

845
00:46:43,640 --> 00:46:45,760
Speaker 1: bleak picture, but I have a I have a thought.

846
00:46:45,800 --> 00:46:48,759
Speaker 1: Listening you describe what's going on with the TikTok ification

847
00:46:48,920 --> 00:46:51,279
Speaker 1: of all the social networks, which is like, to me,

848
00:46:51,400 --> 00:46:55,480
Speaker 1: it almost feels like the Netflix effect, which I think

849
00:46:55,520 --> 00:46:57,600
Speaker 1: we've seen now kind of start to crumble a bit,

850
00:46:57,640 --> 00:46:59,960
Speaker 1: which is like Netflix is like we're Netflix would do

851
00:47:00,040 --> 00:47:02,399
Speaker 1: our thing. Now we're making original stuff. Okay, now that's

852
00:47:02,440 --> 00:47:05,719
Speaker 1: fucking killing. Now everybody is scrambling like to play catch

853
00:47:05,800 --> 00:47:08,759
Speaker 1: up to the streaming to be Netflix, right, and you've

854
00:47:08,800 --> 00:47:11,000
Speaker 1: got HBO doing it, and you've got fucking paramount doing

855
00:47:11,040 --> 00:47:13,480
Speaker 1: it whoever, And and it turns out there's like a

856
00:47:13,520 --> 00:47:15,959
Speaker 1: limit to how much of that ship that we want

857
00:47:16,040 --> 00:47:18,920
Speaker 1: and that will tolerate, and frankly, like there's a fatigue

858
00:47:18,960 --> 00:47:21,040
Speaker 1: that will set in after a while, right where you're

859
00:47:21,080 --> 00:47:22,920
Speaker 1: just like, this may be the best ship in the world.

860
00:47:22,960 --> 00:47:24,600
Speaker 1: I may have a hundred of the best shows to watch,

861
00:47:24,600 --> 00:47:26,560
Speaker 1: but like I don't really have the time or the

862
00:47:26,600 --> 00:47:29,480
Speaker 1: attention span or the interest at this point, because like

863
00:47:29,640 --> 00:47:32,399
Speaker 1: my adobamine has left my brain. I'm fucking like tapped out.

864
00:47:33,040 --> 00:47:36,040
Speaker 1: Is it possible that this is the final breath or

865
00:47:36,080 --> 00:47:39,719
Speaker 1: the near final breath of like social media as we

866
00:47:39,800 --> 00:47:42,560
Speaker 1: know it, that that it's collapsing in upon itself, like

867
00:47:42,560 --> 00:47:45,000
Speaker 1: they've run out of ideas, they've run out of attention.

868
00:47:45,080 --> 00:47:47,440
Speaker 1: I do think this is just me riffing now, But

869
00:47:47,560 --> 00:47:50,560
Speaker 1: like I do think we're entering a phase post not

870
00:47:50,640 --> 00:47:53,279
Speaker 1: post pandemic, because there's still like a pandemic happening, but

871
00:47:53,600 --> 00:47:56,440
Speaker 1: post the worst, most intense part of it that we

872
00:47:56,480 --> 00:48:00,080
Speaker 1: experienced where we were all alone inside online all a

873
00:48:00,520 --> 00:48:03,000
Speaker 1: for a long time. I feel like there's a little

874
00:48:03,000 --> 00:48:05,319
Speaker 1: bit of like people going like I don't know if

875
00:48:05,360 --> 00:48:07,399
Speaker 1: that's what I want to be now, Like I want

876
00:48:07,400 --> 00:48:11,600
Speaker 1: to be like that. So is it possible? There's these

877
00:48:11,640 --> 00:48:14,040
Speaker 1: like all these forces coming together. This is just my

878
00:48:14,080 --> 00:48:19,239
Speaker 1: weird wishful thinking that like people don't want TikTok everywhere,

879
00:48:19,719 --> 00:48:22,520
Speaker 1: They don't even maybe want to be on social media

880
00:48:22,600 --> 00:48:27,200
Speaker 1: that much anymore. Maybe TikTok is just this like super

881
00:48:27,400 --> 00:48:32,880
Speaker 1: pronounced last gasp of social media as we know it.

882
00:48:33,960 --> 00:48:37,200
Speaker 1: Any any any does that sound like possible? I think

883
00:48:37,239 --> 00:48:39,760
Speaker 1: I think that's a beautiful sentiment. I want that world.

884
00:48:40,719 --> 00:48:44,839
Speaker 1: I still believe that world is possible. I remember I

885
00:48:44,880 --> 00:48:48,279
Speaker 1: loved Clubhouse, and then I went outside clubhouse. God, I

886
00:48:48,320 --> 00:48:52,919
Speaker 1: forgot about clubhouse, right. It was very simple. I couldn't socialize,

887
00:48:53,000 --> 00:48:56,680
Speaker 1: I couldn't host things, and that was a wonderful substitute.

888
00:48:57,000 --> 00:48:59,120
Speaker 1: And then I left my house and I went and

889
00:48:59,160 --> 00:49:02,560
Speaker 1: filmed my TV series America Outdoors on PBS. Check it

890
00:49:02,560 --> 00:49:06,080
Speaker 1: out and the PBS, and I was like, all of

891
00:49:06,120 --> 00:49:08,040
Speaker 1: a sudden, I'm not spending all my time talking to

892
00:49:08,080 --> 00:49:12,200
Speaker 1: strangers on a party line. I'm just like at a

893
00:49:12,280 --> 00:49:15,480
Speaker 1: restaurant again, of restaurants, you know what. I love strangers

894
00:49:15,480 --> 00:49:17,520
Speaker 1: on the street. I love random people at the coffee shop.

895
00:49:17,560 --> 00:49:21,160
Speaker 1: Taken too long to order, give me a d MV line. Yes,

896
00:49:21,840 --> 00:49:26,080
Speaker 1: And it was all superior to that novel interesting but

897
00:49:26,160 --> 00:49:30,480
Speaker 1: unsustainable blip in the in the grand sweep of all

898
00:49:30,480 --> 00:49:34,480
Speaker 1: the social technologies. It was like a potent blip. And

899
00:49:34,520 --> 00:49:36,480
Speaker 1: so I was wrong about the sustainability of that. And

900
00:49:36,960 --> 00:49:39,120
Speaker 1: more to the point, so where the people who devoted

901
00:49:39,160 --> 00:49:41,920
Speaker 1: so much more of their time to it With social media.

902
00:49:42,680 --> 00:49:46,279
Speaker 1: I am excited for us to escape the phase that

903
00:49:46,360 --> 00:49:51,000
Speaker 1: we've been in, the centralization, the feed based, Like even

904
00:49:51,160 --> 00:49:54,600
Speaker 1: the word feed just makes me feel like livestock, right,

905
00:49:54,719 --> 00:49:56,160
Speaker 1: just like, oh, I'm gonna go to the feed. I'm

906
00:49:56,200 --> 00:49:59,279
Speaker 1: gonna feed im freaking the memes and the data. And

907
00:49:59,400 --> 00:50:02,200
Speaker 1: then some there is fattening me up to shove ads

908
00:50:02,200 --> 00:50:05,799
Speaker 1: into the feed to take stuff from me so I

909
00:50:05,800 --> 00:50:09,080
Speaker 1: can buy things. I don't need to monetize you. Yeah,

910
00:50:09,200 --> 00:50:15,319
Speaker 1: and so we will always tend towards that because of capitalism,

911
00:50:15,320 --> 00:50:19,000
Speaker 1: which won't let a diverse ecosystem prevail. It will tend

912
00:50:19,040 --> 00:50:24,480
Speaker 1: towards mono culture in food and entertainment, in technology platforms

913
00:50:24,719 --> 00:50:26,680
Speaker 1: because people want more and more and more, and shareholders

914
00:50:26,760 --> 00:50:28,080
Speaker 1: want more and more and more, and that means everybody's

915
00:50:28,080 --> 00:50:32,000
Speaker 1: got to chaste the same damn rabbit. But the gen

916
00:50:32,120 --> 00:50:34,480
Speaker 1: Z and the Alpha is in particular, you know, they

917
00:50:34,480 --> 00:50:37,560
Speaker 1: grew up in the ashes of the financial crisis and

918
00:50:37,600 --> 00:50:40,520
Speaker 1: they bear the brunt of the trillion dollars in college debt.

919
00:50:40,680 --> 00:50:43,120
Speaker 1: You know, they're they're older siblings especially, so it's like,

920
00:50:43,239 --> 00:50:44,840
Speaker 1: I don't know so much about this, And then the

921
00:50:44,880 --> 00:50:48,760
Speaker 1: planet's reminding us like, hey, this whole feed based system,

922
00:50:48,880 --> 00:50:52,160
Speaker 1: infinite feeding, you'll eat your home planet and won't have

923
00:50:52,200 --> 00:50:56,520
Speaker 1: anywhere to live. That's not sustainable either, So more of us,

924
00:50:56,640 --> 00:50:59,120
Speaker 1: I don't know if the whole system will totally change,

925
00:50:59,239 --> 00:51:02,800
Speaker 1: but more of us will. This alternative universe you're talking

926
00:51:02,840 --> 00:51:06,360
Speaker 1: about it excites me, and so I joke about Mastodon.

927
00:51:06,480 --> 00:51:10,520
Speaker 1: I think it's like a hint that we can create

928
00:51:10,560 --> 00:51:13,680
Speaker 1: other environments. In my podcast How the Citizen, the most

929
00:51:13,680 --> 00:51:17,439
Speaker 1: recent season is exploring how we use technology to help

930
00:51:17,560 --> 00:51:20,400
Speaker 1: us show up as active citizens and members of society

931
00:51:20,719 --> 00:51:23,759
Speaker 1: and not just be fed to an economic engine that

932
00:51:23,800 --> 00:51:26,360
Speaker 1: we didn't build and that we generally don't benefit from.

933
00:51:26,400 --> 00:51:28,279
Speaker 1: And I just learned a lot talking to people who

934
00:51:28,320 --> 00:51:31,000
Speaker 1: have done different things with tech, the folks a new

935
00:51:31,040 --> 00:51:34,200
Speaker 1: public who are designing digital public spaces differently, as for

936
00:51:34,320 --> 00:51:37,200
Speaker 1: all Chafe over in the Middle East, who has created

937
00:51:37,560 --> 00:51:40,640
Speaker 1: this social media network that operates very differently from all

938
00:51:40,640 --> 00:51:43,399
Speaker 1: the noise we've been talking about and just doesn't give

939
00:51:43,440 --> 00:51:46,600
Speaker 1: people infinite powers on day zero to funk around and

940
00:51:46,600 --> 00:51:49,480
Speaker 1: find out how much damage they can cause the society.

941
00:51:49,960 --> 00:51:54,160
Speaker 1: It respectfully on boards people into actual communities. First, it

942
00:51:54,239 --> 00:51:58,359
Speaker 1: doesn't have vcs, which makes it possible. I love that,

943
00:51:58,840 --> 00:52:02,800
Speaker 1: And because the insensives, like if you start with venture

944
00:52:02,840 --> 00:52:05,880
Speaker 1: capital money and so it's rich people who need to

945
00:52:05,880 --> 00:52:10,160
Speaker 1: get richer. This is already just like disposable, but they

946
00:52:10,280 --> 00:52:15,120
Speaker 1: drive everything you pursued downstream from that. All your user research,

947
00:52:15,400 --> 00:52:19,120
Speaker 1: all your ux design, all your growth marketing tactics are

948
00:52:19,160 --> 00:52:21,799
Speaker 1: so that a millionaire can get to be a billionaire.

949
00:52:22,920 --> 00:52:26,640
Speaker 1: Then whose need are you really meeting with that? Feat uh?

950
00:52:26,800 --> 00:52:29,560
Speaker 1: And so to really have TikTok be the last gasp.

951
00:52:30,120 --> 00:52:33,200
Speaker 1: We need different funding mechanisms which are available but not

952
00:52:33,280 --> 00:52:36,640
Speaker 1: white scale, and we need people designing these spaces who

953
00:52:36,719 --> 00:52:41,040
Speaker 1: are more than just board engineers. Yeah, we need people

954
00:52:41,040 --> 00:52:44,600
Speaker 1: who actually know how to design spaces, you know, like designers,

955
00:52:44,640 --> 00:52:50,680
Speaker 1: interior designers, cultural programmers, artists. We need folks who understand

956
00:52:50,880 --> 00:52:55,480
Speaker 1: people to build spaces for people, and and many of

957
00:52:55,480 --> 00:52:58,360
Speaker 1: those folks have not been included. They've been subjected to

958
00:52:58,600 --> 00:53:01,120
Speaker 1: the visions and imagination is of a very small group

959
00:53:01,120 --> 00:53:04,600
Speaker 1: of folks who don't have the broadest human experience and

960
00:53:04,880 --> 00:53:08,080
Speaker 1: who are incentivized to make money. Yeah, above all, it

961
00:53:08,160 --> 00:53:10,319
Speaker 1: might talk about like community and ship, but you don't

962
00:53:10,320 --> 00:53:14,600
Speaker 1: have to take a vow of poverty. But if if

963
00:53:14,640 --> 00:53:18,960
Speaker 1: your premise is returning ten x and getting valued at

964
00:53:18,960 --> 00:53:22,720
Speaker 1: a billion dollars and being a unicorn, then you've already

965
00:53:23,120 --> 00:53:25,760
Speaker 1: You've already I wouldn't even say corrupted. You have vastly

966
00:53:25,920 --> 00:53:29,719
Speaker 1: limited the possibilities for which you create under those conditions,

967
00:53:30,400 --> 00:53:33,120
Speaker 1: and so we need few were limits. First off, your vision,

968
00:53:33,200 --> 00:53:35,279
Speaker 1: this vision you're just paint is very beautiful. I feel

969
00:53:35,280 --> 00:53:37,000
Speaker 1: like that. I think I think we you know, we

970
00:53:37,080 --> 00:53:38,759
Speaker 1: did that a little bit together. You well, all right,

971
00:53:38,800 --> 00:53:40,840
Speaker 1: I'll take I will take some credit. You can have

972
00:53:41,680 --> 00:53:46,000
Speaker 1: the vision at a pre money valuations. Call it thirty million.

973
00:53:46,160 --> 00:53:48,920
Speaker 1: Thank you. That sounds good, I'll find I'll take that.

974
00:53:49,000 --> 00:53:51,359
Speaker 1: I like that, all right. So okay, I think that's

975
00:53:51,360 --> 00:53:52,719
Speaker 1: a great place to leave it. But you have a

976
00:53:52,719 --> 00:53:54,279
Speaker 1: ton of stuff going on. You mentioned a couple of

977
00:53:54,280 --> 00:53:57,200
Speaker 1: things now before we end. I want you to tell

978
00:53:57,280 --> 00:54:00,799
Speaker 1: me then, and by proxy tell everybody listening. Obviously you're

979
00:54:00,800 --> 00:54:04,279
Speaker 1: writing for pop You've got a PBS show you just mentioned. Yeah,

980
00:54:04,320 --> 00:54:07,000
Speaker 1: it's called America Outdoors. When can I see that? Where

981
00:54:07,000 --> 00:54:09,440
Speaker 1: can I see that? You can see it now? Um,

982
00:54:09,440 --> 00:54:12,880
Speaker 1: it's re airing on you know. Find your local PBS affiliate.

983
00:54:13,040 --> 00:54:15,320
Speaker 1: You can go to PBS dot org slash America Outdoors.

984
00:54:15,600 --> 00:54:18,000
Speaker 1: They have a great streaming app that doesn't strip your

985
00:54:18,040 --> 00:54:20,680
Speaker 1: identity and sell it back to you. Just the PBS

986
00:54:20,719 --> 00:54:24,160
Speaker 1: digital app PBS Passport. If you pay, Oh yeah, I

987
00:54:24,280 --> 00:54:26,919
Speaker 1: subscribe to that. It's great. It's it's money well spent.

988
00:54:27,040 --> 00:54:28,560
Speaker 1: It's like I think it's cheap too. It's like a

989
00:54:28,680 --> 00:54:31,280
Speaker 1: yearly thing. It's like forty bucks. It's and you're supporting

990
00:54:31,280 --> 00:54:34,040
Speaker 1: your local PBS station, which in some communities is the

991
00:54:34,040 --> 00:54:37,640
Speaker 1: only local news available and local media available. So I've

992
00:54:37,680 --> 00:54:40,480
Speaker 1: become a even bigger fan of PBS working with them

993
00:54:40,480 --> 00:54:42,680
Speaker 1: and not just watching some of their stuff. So check

994
00:54:42,719 --> 00:54:45,920
Speaker 1: out America Outdoors. It's it's not a wildlife show. It's

995
00:54:45,920 --> 00:54:49,400
Speaker 1: a human show about our relationship with nature. It's and

996
00:54:49,400 --> 00:54:52,960
Speaker 1: and it's people we don't typically see. A couple of examples.

997
00:54:53,000 --> 00:54:56,600
Speaker 1: I had spent time with formally incarcerated folk who learned

998
00:54:56,640 --> 00:54:59,440
Speaker 1: how to fight forest fires in prison and now do

999
00:54:59,520 --> 00:55:02,800
Speaker 1: it as free people and understand some of their journey.

1000
00:55:02,800 --> 00:55:06,719
Speaker 1: I spent time with multiple indigenous communities in what we

1001
00:55:06,880 --> 00:55:11,600
Speaker 1: call Idaho and Minnesota and California UH and learned many

1002
00:55:11,800 --> 00:55:14,200
Speaker 1: of you know their traditions with respect to the land

1003
00:55:14,440 --> 00:55:18,120
Speaker 1: that they were on. I go crabbing with the most

1004
00:55:18,120 --> 00:55:21,800
Speaker 1: conservative person I've ever knowingly been around in my life

1005
00:55:21,880 --> 00:55:26,000
Speaker 1: and the child and I go hiking with refugee kids

1006
00:55:26,000 --> 00:55:29,759
Speaker 1: in Idaho like it's surfing and horseback riding and just

1007
00:55:29,880 --> 00:55:33,279
Speaker 1: beautiful people. When it helped me remember how much we

1008
00:55:33,360 --> 00:55:36,320
Speaker 1: still have in common, which includes UH at the basis

1009
00:55:36,400 --> 00:55:40,879
Speaker 1: level our planet. So check out America Outdoors, check out

1010
00:55:40,880 --> 00:55:44,160
Speaker 1: Puck pay for it It's worth it, and and how

1011
00:55:44,200 --> 00:55:47,320
Speaker 1: the Citizen is my podcast where we take Citizen to

1012
00:55:47,360 --> 00:55:49,399
Speaker 1: be a verb. And you're in season three. We are

1013
00:55:49,440 --> 00:55:51,919
Speaker 1: at season four now, we're about to about to drop

1014
00:55:51,920 --> 00:55:55,719
Speaker 1: season four. We launched in got some awards, had some

1015
00:55:55,800 --> 00:55:59,760
Speaker 1: really dope conversations, and the show was all about sharing

1016
00:56:00,200 --> 00:56:03,880
Speaker 1: new ways to show up in society and like exercise

1017
00:56:03,920 --> 00:56:06,799
Speaker 1: our power. Sometimes that's voting. Most of the time, it's

1018
00:56:06,880 --> 00:56:10,160
Speaker 1: a total new bag. It's business stuff, it's tech stuff,

1019
00:56:10,360 --> 00:56:13,560
Speaker 1: it's culture stuff. And I tend to interview one person

1020
00:56:13,600 --> 00:56:16,080
Speaker 1: at a time about their thing, and then we give

1021
00:56:16,120 --> 00:56:19,279
Speaker 1: listeners in each episode a way to make it your

1022
00:56:19,360 --> 00:56:22,480
Speaker 1: thing and and actions you can take in your life

1023
00:56:22,960 --> 00:56:25,319
Speaker 1: to just practice these muscles that have at your feeds

1024
00:56:25,360 --> 00:56:27,160
Speaker 1: so much because the only thing we've been told to

1025
00:56:27,200 --> 00:56:29,520
Speaker 1: do is shop for it, which is guy, you got

1026
00:56:29,520 --> 00:56:32,520
Speaker 1: a man. It's pretty fun though, like it's super fun.

1027
00:56:33,600 --> 00:56:38,440
Speaker 1: In fact, they've gamified resource loss. So, Josh, it's a

1028
00:56:38,480 --> 00:56:41,640
Speaker 1: great reunion. Thank you for having me on here. Thank

1029
00:56:41,680 --> 00:56:43,839
Speaker 1: you so much for doing this. You've got to come back,

1030
00:56:44,239 --> 00:56:46,879
Speaker 1: do it some more. Talk about some new things. I'm

1031
00:56:46,880 --> 00:56:49,439
Speaker 1: sure you'll have like ten new things next time we talked.

1032
00:56:50,000 --> 00:56:57,120
Speaker 1: Happy to come back. Well, that conversation was amazing and

1033
00:56:57,160 --> 00:57:00,520
Speaker 1: also went kind of long, so don't have a lot

1034
00:57:00,520 --> 00:57:02,680
Speaker 1: of time. They're telling me, I have to wrap it up. Now,

1035
00:57:02,840 --> 00:57:05,839
Speaker 1: they're telling me. There's several people are motioning towards me.

1036
00:57:06,080 --> 00:57:08,160
Speaker 1: Look they're doing that thing where they pointing to their

1037
00:57:08,200 --> 00:57:10,880
Speaker 1: watch and then like making their hand go into circle,

1038
00:57:11,040 --> 00:57:13,239
Speaker 1: like wrap it up. So I'm feeling a lot of

1039
00:57:13,239 --> 00:57:15,879
Speaker 1: pressure right now. So that is our show for this week,

1040
00:57:15,920 --> 00:57:18,000
Speaker 1: and we'll be back next week with more What Future,

1041
00:57:18,600 --> 00:57:20,400
Speaker 1: And I should say before I go that What Future

1042
00:57:20,440 --> 00:57:23,560
Speaker 1: is an I Heart Media podcast. It's executive produced by

1043
00:57:23,600 --> 00:57:27,320
Speaker 1: Lyrah Smith, Adam Wand is our editor, and Jenna Cagel

1044
00:57:27,360 --> 00:57:29,480
Speaker 1: am I saying that right Kegel, just like Bagel Right,

1045
00:57:29,920 --> 00:57:32,360
Speaker 1: is our supervising producer. She's mad at me. Now, I

1046
00:57:32,360 --> 00:57:34,760
Speaker 1: hope you're all happy. And if you would like to,

1047
00:57:34,960 --> 00:57:36,600
Speaker 1: and you don't have to, no one's gonna force you,

1048
00:57:36,720 --> 00:57:38,880
Speaker 1: but it would be great for me. I could finally

1049
00:57:39,320 --> 00:57:41,560
Speaker 1: hold my head up proudly at family dinners. If you

1050
00:57:41,560 --> 00:57:45,560
Speaker 1: would just go on iTunes or Apple podcasts or any

1051
00:57:45,720 --> 00:57:47,960
Speaker 1: place where you can add a star rating to this

1052
00:57:48,000 --> 00:57:51,360
Speaker 1: podcast and give it five or six stars, that would

1053
00:57:51,400 --> 00:57:54,120
Speaker 1: be great because my family doesn't respect me, and I

1054
00:57:54,160 --> 00:57:56,320
Speaker 1: think if you do that, they'll start to come around

1055
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Speaker 1: to the idea that I'm worth respecting. So I really

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Speaker 1: appreciate that