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