Speaker 1: My welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert
Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And we're back to a
Speaker 1: subject that may be familiar to you if you've been
Speaker 1: listening to the show for a bit. It's the next
Speaker 1: battle in the war against the Machines. That's right, you know,
Speaker 1: as we've already discussed on the show, and I think
Speaker 1: it's obvious to most of our listeners. The wonders of
Speaker 1: interconnectedness that the web have have have given us have
Speaker 1: also unleashed some less than satisfying realities. You know, we
Speaker 1: we worry about smartphone addiction and that the degree to
Speaker 1: which these these devices and the many apps they have
Speaker 1: on them have been engineered to gain our attention. And
Speaker 1: then there's been growing attention given to the role social
Speaker 1: media has in in you know, playing into you know,
Speaker 1: corporate and state manipulation, endangering democracy, our personal freedom, and
Speaker 1: our happiness. We've we've recorded a few different notable episodes
Speaker 1: on these topics. Right, so, I know you and Christian
Speaker 1: a while back did an episode. Now this was years ago, now,
Speaker 1: so the research has come a long way since then,
Speaker 1: I think. But you did an episode on what the
Speaker 1: measurable psychological effects of social media were, uh, and there's
Speaker 1: still I think this is still a developing field. Like
Speaker 1: I notice a lot of conflicting findings when I read
Speaker 1: upon this, like is social media making us more lonely,
Speaker 1: more depressed? Whatever? It seems like the answer to that
Speaker 1: question is it's complicated, right, And and I think we'll
Speaker 1: discuss a little this later on too. That you know,
Speaker 1: it also depends on how you're using social media, what
Speaker 1: your role is, or using social media as part of
Speaker 1: your job, etcetera. Yeah. Uh, then we also you and
Speaker 1: I Robert did a couple of episodes within the past
Speaker 1: couple of years called the Great Eyeball Wars that were
Speaker 1: primarily about the attention economy, about the fact that our
Speaker 1: our devices, and specifically especially like social media platforms on
Speaker 1: those devices, but other platforms also are because they make
Speaker 1: their money by getting you to use them and pay
Speaker 1: attention through you know, advertiser dollars. Like you are the
Speaker 1: product on these platforms. You're not the customer, uh, and
Speaker 1: your attention is what is being sold to the advertisers.
Speaker 1: They're addicting us, and they're addicting us on purpose pretty much, right, Like,
Speaker 1: one of the I think the handiest metaphors is that
Speaker 1: a social media app on your smartphone turns your smartphone
Speaker 1: into a tiny slot machine. Yes, but it's but while
Speaker 1: a Vegas slot machine is is programmed to steal all
Speaker 1: of your money, uh, this slot machine, this tiny slot machine,
Speaker 1: is programmed to steal all of your time, your time
Speaker 1: and your attention. Yeah, it wants you using it as
Speaker 1: much as possible. And the numbers on this are kind
Speaker 1: of freaky, like when when you actually measure how much
Speaker 1: time people spend on their smartphones, especially looking at apps
Speaker 1: like Facebook or you know, their social media apps, they
Speaker 1: don't usually like what they find out when those numbers
Speaker 1: come in, right, And so only we do have tools
Speaker 1: on a lot of our smartphones now to track our
Speaker 1: screen time and to keep tabs on and even set
Speaker 1: up little barriers to excessive use. But as far as
Speaker 1: I know, like most of that stuff is still very voluntary.
Speaker 1: And then we're not doing as the default settings on
Speaker 1: a phone um or certainly when you get a new phone,
Speaker 1: you don't tend to bring over your your sort of
Speaker 1: legacy settings from the former phone. So, um, you know,
Speaker 1: I think there's a there's a huge argument to be
Speaker 1: made that that these companies are not really you know,
Speaker 1: going in head first in in the battle to reduce
Speaker 1: your screen time, right. Uh. And then also we did
Speaker 1: a more recent episode called The Doppelganger Network where we
Speaker 1: talked about the jumping off point for that was an
Speaker 1: article that we read by Robert Zapolski, the neuroendo chronologist
Speaker 1: to Think at Stanford and he uh, then he made
Speaker 1: a comparison between the effects of social media use and
Speaker 1: and digital media more generally, and uh, the psychological conditions
Speaker 1: like cap craw a delusion that caused this rift between
Speaker 1: recognition and familiarity in the brain. So it creates a
Speaker 1: kind of a kind of strange, alienated world where where
Speaker 1: normally you'd pair these experiences of cognitive recognition, you know,
Speaker 1: knowing that you recognize something you see and the feeling
Speaker 1: of familiarity with it, but that is kind of torn
Speaker 1: asunder by the dynamics of social media. Yeah. And and
Speaker 1: so I I don't think you know the idea this
Speaker 1: argument that oh that so the social media is potentially dangerous,
Speaker 1: that it's that it has you know, ill effects. This
Speaker 1: is probably not new. I think everyone's heard somebody argue
Speaker 1: it to some extent, and we've even seen people make
Speaker 1: fun of the argument, like, for instance, one image that
Speaker 1: it frequently makes the round is UH is an old
Speaker 1: old timey photograph of like a subway car or a
Speaker 1: train full of individuals, everybody reading a newspaper, everybody's face
Speaker 1: hidden in a newspaper, and then using this to make
Speaker 1: fun of the argument that you know, oh, everybody's just
Speaker 1: plugged into their phones, they're not connecting with each other,
Speaker 1: as if to say, well, this is exactly the same thing,
Speaker 1: but it's not. I think it's it's definitely worth driving
Speaker 1: home that the type of UH psychological involvement that's going
Speaker 1: on with a social media platform on a mobile device
Speaker 1: is entirely different than what you would find by just
Speaker 1: sticking your head into a book or a newspaper. A
Speaker 1: book or a newspaper is not a real time feedback device. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think one thing that that that that
Speaker 1: kind of like poking fun at this argument does reveal
Speaker 1: is that you can take the argument too far and
Speaker 1: be kind of totalizing about it. Because it's important to
Speaker 1: recognize that the reason people use these services are because
Speaker 1: they do provide something that people want. You know, people
Speaker 1: through social media are able to keep up with friendships
Speaker 1: that might have fallen by the wayside otherwise, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe long distance friendships. Uh. You know, these these these
Speaker 1: platforms and these devices do enable all kinds of things
Speaker 1: and peoples lives that are valuable and good. Right, And
Speaker 1: you can certainly go overboard and kind of a luddite
Speaker 1: response to it and say, well, the internet is bad
Speaker 1: or technology is bad. Uh, and I feel like everybody's
Speaker 1: gonna have varying opinions. Like to one extreme, you may
Speaker 1: be convinced that social media is uh you know, you know,
Speaker 1: it's leaning more and more towards the self digestion of
Speaker 1: human civilization. Or or you may see nothing wrong with
Speaker 1: social media though you may say, look, Robert and Joe,
Speaker 1: I you know, I use my Instagram, I use my Facebook.
Speaker 1: I keep with up with a few friends, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a few celebrities or a few bands or what have you.
Speaker 1: I get the news through it, and that's it. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't you know, you know, greatly improve or harm
Speaker 1: my psychic experience of reality. Yeah, and if and if
Speaker 1: that's what you believe, our goal is not to convince
Speaker 1: you that, no, you don't understand it's actually ruining your life.
Speaker 1: I mean, you may very well have a perfectly healthy,
Speaker 1: limited relationship with social media, and you may be one
Speaker 1: of the people who's getting more out of it than
Speaker 1: it's getting out of you. But for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: I think we do want to make the case that
Speaker 1: that is not what's going on. Right I would say
Speaker 1: that most of us. Even if you you can say
Speaker 1: you know honestly that you have a healthy relationship with
Speaker 1: social media, you can probably not say the same for
Speaker 1: everyone in your circle. There there there's probably somebody or
Speaker 1: several people that the display signs of unhealthy usage. So
Speaker 1: in this episode, you know, we're gonna we're gonna look
Speaker 1: at some arguments against social media. Specifically, we're going to
Speaker 1: be discussing UH an author by the name of Jarn
Speaker 1: Lanier and his two thousand eighteen book Ten Arguments for
Speaker 1: Deleting Your Social Media Accounts right Now. It's a great title,
Speaker 1: it gets right to the point it does and and
Speaker 1: it is a fabulous little book that Joe and I
Speaker 1: both both read for this episode. It's um it's short,
Speaker 1: it's something on the order of what hundred and forty
Speaker 1: six pages long. It's extremely accessible, Like he did not
Speaker 1: make this a you know, a high high level computer
Speaker 1: science intellectual argument. It is written so that I think
Speaker 1: pretty much anybody could understand it. It's very accessible, it's
Speaker 1: very ground level, and I think it makes a pretty
Speaker 1: compelling case that at least well he His argument is
Speaker 1: that social media in the business model that exists today,
Speaker 1: is doing more harm than good, and our best way
Speaker 1: of fighting that harm is to have everybody get off
Speaker 1: of these platforms, because this will force the the company
Speaker 1: is involved to actually implement changes, right and and so
Speaker 1: his his argument is not one against technology, and it's
Speaker 1: not even necessarily against one one against um a certain
Speaker 1: form of social media. It's against a particular business model
Speaker 1: that powers social media. And that business model, I think
Speaker 1: is what he ends up calling the bummer business model.
Speaker 1: It's a business model that is paid for by behave
Speaker 1: year old modification. Yes, bummer, be you in any are,
Speaker 1: which Linear says stands for behaviors of users modified and
Speaker 1: made into an empire for rent. It's clever having an
Speaker 1: acronym because it sticks with you and uh and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's clever and it's a little bit funny, and and
Speaker 1: that can be said for the entire book. Despite being
Speaker 1: a fairly serious topic with some potentially serious ramifications for
Speaker 1: humanity at large and for individual you know, self worth,
Speaker 1: it is a humorous read at times, and it is
Speaker 1: it is fun to read. So I can't recommend it
Speaker 1: highly enough. There's a book you can read on the
Speaker 1: train and the plane, on a toilet. Uh, you know
Speaker 1: it just it makes for a great but important casual read. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we we've talked about maybe getting him on the
Speaker 1: podcast sometime soon, and that would be great to have
Speaker 1: a conversation with him. But today we just wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about maybe a couple of the arguments that he
Speaker 1: brings up in the book and and our thoughts about them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna attempt to regurgitate the entire book because
Speaker 1: the book is is already already speaks for itself. So
Speaker 1: we'll start though, by just talking about Jarren Lanier himself.
Speaker 1: You might be familiar with him already, perhaps you're not.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you've just read his name and thought it was
Speaker 1: pronounced Jared Lantier, which is how I've been pronouncing in
Speaker 1: my mind. That's how I've said it on the show
Speaker 1: a lot. But anyway. He is a scientist, a musician,
Speaker 1: and a writer. He is a major figure in the
Speaker 1: realm of virtual reality, having founded the VR company VPL
Speaker 1: Research in the nineteen eighties, and while he didn't coin
Speaker 1: the term virtual reality, this is generally attributed to French
Speaker 1: playwright uh Anton and R. Toad In, he did popularize it.
Speaker 1: He helped create the first commercial VR products and introduced avatars,
Speaker 1: multiperson virtual world experiences, and prototypes of major VR applications
Speaker 1: such as surgical simulation. He was involved in the creation
Speaker 1: of the Nintendo power glove. Yeah, now you're playing with
Speaker 1: power which you know, which I have to say, the
Speaker 1: power glove. I never had one as a kid, but
Speaker 1: I saw people with them, I knew people who had them,
Speaker 1: and it it was this, this instrument of wonder. I
Speaker 1: don't think it was all that practical as a gaming device,
Speaker 1: but I think it inspired a lot of people. And
Speaker 1: I also love seeing, especially nineteen nineties science fiction where
Speaker 1: they have reused a power glove as part of like
Speaker 1: a cybernetic you know, outfit for somebody. Anyway, he was
Speaker 1: also involved in the with the creation of the headset
Speaker 1: apparently for the nine film The lawnmower Man. So you're
Speaker 1: really bringing out the hits here. Yeah, And I think
Speaker 1: this is probably not the stuff that usually gets highlighted
Speaker 1: about his career, but it's this, you know, some of
Speaker 1: the stuff that I think some of our listeners might
Speaker 1: be familiar with. Exactly. I should point out that he's
Speaker 1: not credited on lawnmower Man, but he does get a
Speaker 1: thanks on the far superior sci fi work Minority Report.
Speaker 1: Uh he But more to the point, though, he's an
Speaker 1: author of several books, such as the two thousand six
Speaker 1: in Nation is an Alienated Experience. You are not a
Speaker 1: gadget of Manifesto from two thousand ten, who owns the
Speaker 1: future from and Don of the New Everything from seventeen. Now.
Speaker 1: I tend to think of him kind of as a
Speaker 1: technology philosopher, and I really like a lot of his
Speaker 1: approach because it's got a healthy skepticism about over hyping
Speaker 1: technology and what it can do. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: he's not anti technology. He's clearly somebody who loves digital technology,
Speaker 1: loves computers. You know, he's worked with them his whole career,
Speaker 1: and so he doesn't end up saying throw your smartphone
Speaker 1: in the fire, flush it down the toilet, smash it
Speaker 1: with a hammer. It's not an anti technology message. He
Speaker 1: actually has a very specifically tailored message trying to identify
Speaker 1: exactly what it is about the social media platforms specifically
Speaker 1: as they exist today that's causing problems for us and
Speaker 1: for our society, and how could they be changed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: ultimately he is he's an optimist. Like he's he's presenting
Speaker 1: an optimistic view of the future, like certainly highlighting problems,
Speaker 1: but discussing how we can address them, which I love.
Speaker 1: I feel like I've spent too much of my life, um,
Speaker 1: you know, looking at more pessimistic views of reality and
Speaker 1: dystopian views of reality, and I've gotten to the point
Speaker 1: where those just don't serve me anymore. So I far
Speaker 1: prefer reading an author like like Jarrelin here. So the
Speaker 1: book in question, I have to talk about the cover
Speaker 1: of it, because the cover is is very simple, you know,
Speaker 1: just a black and red text on a white background
Speaker 1: and a silhouette of a cat walking off the cover
Speaker 1: of the book. And the cat is a central metaphor
Speaker 1: in the book, right, because as he points out, you know,
Speaker 1: as much as we love dogs, I love dogs, you do.
Speaker 1: You do love dogs, And I love dogs too, just
Speaker 1: as I don't own one. But as much as we
Speaker 1: love dogs, we domesticated the dog, the cat arguably domesticated itself. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, it interacts in our lives more on its terms. Uh.
Speaker 1: You you were at great pains to attempt to train
Speaker 1: the cat, as anyone who's ever certainly you know, tried
Speaker 1: to to you know, shoot a film about cats can
Speaker 1: attest to um. So, Lanier argues that social media is
Speaker 1: essentially turning us into well trained dogs. But we should
Speaker 1: really strive to be cats, able to dictate our involvement
Speaker 1: in the relationship at hand, to scratch the hand that
Speaker 1: feeds us, if we so wish, to sleep wherever we choose,
Speaker 1: refuse food, walk on all the furniture. Ultimately we should
Speaker 1: we should want to be cats. We don't want to
Speaker 1: be social media's dog. Yeah. And also, I mean, while
Speaker 1: he's advising people to quit social media, he's making an argument,
Speaker 1: and he's not. It's not a totalizing argument. I mean,
Speaker 1: he realizes that different people are in different circumstances. Uh,
Speaker 1: that it's it's not a choice that will work for everybody, right, Like,
Speaker 1: he's very clear on the on the fact that quitting
Speaker 1: social media is a privilege and not everybody is able
Speaker 1: to do it. A lot of people, uh you know,
Speaker 1: own a business or or or part of their job
Speaker 1: entails them using social media. I know some people like that,
Speaker 1: and then they're just they're trapped in they're trapped in it,
Speaker 1: you like, you just can't walk away from it, or
Speaker 1: you might be shackled to it more socially, like, well,
Speaker 1: if I stop using uh, you know, Facebook, how am
Speaker 1: I gonna can connect connect with my friends who all
Speaker 1: live in another city and I just moved to a
Speaker 1: place where I don't know anybody. Um, you know, they're
Speaker 1: all these arguments to be made, and so he's not.
Speaker 1: He's not, you know, drawing this firm line in the
Speaker 1: sand and saying, you know, the winners over here, losers
Speaker 1: over there, or anything of the of the sword. And
Speaker 1: he's certainly not arguing that, you know, we should we
Speaker 1: should all go and make a big dramatic to do
Speaker 1: about quitting social media either because I think I think
Speaker 1: we all see that occasionally on our feet to oh,
Speaker 1: that's the most embarrassing thing when you see somebody post
Speaker 1: a lot about how they're quitting and then they quit
Speaker 1: for a week and then they're back. Yeah. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: in fact, I actually I shared I shared something about
Speaker 1: this book on my private social media feed, and and
Speaker 1: immediately like somebody was like calling me out for having
Speaker 1: posted about quitting social media on social media. But of
Speaker 1: course I think what's wrong with that? I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: where are we going to talk about leaving social media
Speaker 1: but social media to a certain extent um. And and
Speaker 1: also well, I mean this episode where we're discussing his
Speaker 1: arguments again, you know, we're not necessarily saying everybody's got
Speaker 1: to get off social media, but I do think these
Speaker 1: are some interesting arguments, very worth considering. Um, we're discussing
Speaker 1: these on an episode that will be promoted on social
Speaker 1: media because that is part of the distribution business model
Speaker 1: of this podcast exactly. It's like, this is how, you know,
Speaker 1: one way that we reach listeners, and if we don't
Speaker 1: do this, it won't reach as many listeners. So I
Speaker 1: don't know, how do you how do you balance that? Is? Like,
Speaker 1: are you actually doing better if you say, well, let's
Speaker 1: not post the episode on social media so fewer people
Speaker 1: will hear it. Yeah, thus is the world. Thus have
Speaker 1: we made it? But at any rate, Linear also ultimately
Speaker 1: says like, hey, I'm not even saying quit social media forever.
Speaker 1: And you know, because all timately he's hope, he's hopeful
Speaker 1: that social media can be corrected, that we can come
Speaker 1: back to a version of social media media that is
Speaker 1: not harmful to us in so many ways. And then
Speaker 1: also he's saying, like, you know, quit for a while
Speaker 1: and come back. That's the only way you'll you'll have
Speaker 1: any kind of like insight on what it's doing to you,
Speaker 1: Like this will help give you the uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the vantage point by which to to understand the interaction
Speaker 1: between your life and these bummer systems. All right, well,
Speaker 1: maybe we should take a quick break and then when
Speaker 1: we come back, we can discuss a couple of the
Speaker 1: arguments from the book and our thoughts about them. Than
Speaker 1: than alright, we're back. So again, the book that we're
Speaker 1: discussing is uh journalin Ears ten arguments for deleting your
Speaker 1: social media accounts. Right now, you're probably wondering, what are
Speaker 1: those ten arguments. We're not going to regurgitate all ten
Speaker 1: arguments here. If you want to know what they are.
Speaker 1: You should pick up a copy of it because without
Speaker 1: even opening the book, all ten are listed on the
Speaker 1: back right, which is which is was handy. You know,
Speaker 1: you can just you can instantly see what you're in for.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be talking about I think basically four of
Speaker 1: the arguments and uh in discussing them a bit here
Speaker 1: for you. Yeah, some in more depth than others. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing that we should talk about upfront, because it's
Speaker 1: sort of a foundational argument that feeds into all the others,
Speaker 1: is this point that, in Linear's words, due to social media,
Speaker 1: you are partially losing your free will. Uh So, one
Speaker 1: of his core arguments on which many of the others
Speaker 1: rest is that social media is at heart a mass
Speaker 1: program of behavior modification for rent. That is how these
Speaker 1: companies make money. So if your Facebook, the way that
Speaker 1: you make money is that people pay you to have
Speaker 1: some kind of influence on users of Facebook, and that
Speaker 1: influence could be a very traditional, normal style of advertising,
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that you know that happens everywhere
Speaker 1: and most people aren't bothered by, right because it's clear
Speaker 1: what's happening. You're just seeing an ad for a product
Speaker 1: that somebody thinks you might want and you know, there's
Speaker 1: the ad and you might go by it. That's you know,
Speaker 1: we're not generally very bothered by that. Right. Always reminds
Speaker 1: me of the moment in Futurama where a fry encounters
Speaker 1: in the future and advertisement in his dream. That's a
Speaker 1: little creepier. We find it intrusive. And he says, you know,
Speaker 1: we didn't have that in my time. We just had advertisements,
Speaker 1: you know, all over the place and in the sky
Speaker 1: on the board. I mean, certainly we do live even
Speaker 1: without social media. We live in an age of you
Speaker 1: just ubiquitous advertising. Yeah, and you know that is This
Speaker 1: is one thing that he does sort of attack is
Speaker 1: the problem that the web arose on an advertising pay
Speaker 1: for model. Uh. You know, back in the early days
Speaker 1: of the web, there was this idea that everything needed
Speaker 1: to be free to access. You couldn't charge people to
Speaker 1: get stuff on the web. But then how do you
Speaker 1: pay for producing that stuff. Somebody's got to make it,
Speaker 1: you know that they've got to get paid somehow. So
Speaker 1: what happens, Well, you'd pay for it by showing advertising
Speaker 1: along with the thing, and the advertisers would pay for
Speaker 1: what you're seeing right. And of course, again coming back
Speaker 1: to podcasting, we're not blind to the fact that that's
Speaker 1: essentially what you have with this podcast. This podcast is
Speaker 1: provided to you for free, but you have to put
Speaker 1: up with advertisements. Right now, I don't really mind that
Speaker 1: from an advertisement from a from a podcast point of view,
Speaker 1: because when I listen to podcasts and when I make
Speaker 1: a podcast, I generally think the advertising that's happening there
Speaker 1: is fairly straightforward. It's pretty clear what's going on. Somebody's
Speaker 1: pitching you a product. I mean, likewise on television. Of course,
Speaker 1: television start off with the same model and he discusses this.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like here's the signal, here's some programming,
Speaker 1: but here are also some advertisements. But generally speaking, without
Speaker 1: getting into some of the you know, the trickier forms
Speaker 1: of television advertising and product integration and so forth, you're
Speaker 1: you're still dealing with a situation where it's like I'm
Speaker 1: watching a show. Okay, now I'm watching an ad. Now
Speaker 1: I'm watching the show again. Right. But even when even
Speaker 1: with other things, you know, like uh, sponsored content and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, I mean, I think there's there's a
Speaker 1: big difference between what's clear and what's sneaky. I think
Speaker 1: generally people tend to be okay with advertising when it's
Speaker 1: clear what's going on, When you know, they're told who's
Speaker 1: paying for what they're seeing, and it's clear what the
Speaker 1: person who's paying for what they're seeing wants them to do.
Speaker 1: Usually it's like buy my product or become a member
Speaker 1: of my service or something like that. That that's that's
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that I usually feel fine about
Speaker 1: that most people tend to feel fine about what's going
Speaker 1: on with social media. According to Tolneer's argument is that
Speaker 1: there is a much sneakier, more subtle, and perhaps more
Speaker 1: sinister thing happening, which is that our behavior is being
Speaker 1: modified in ways that are not clear, that are not
Speaker 1: that are not obvious to us, ways that we're not
Speaker 1: aware of, and we oftentimes, in fact, most of the
Speaker 1: time don't know who's doing it right. And I think
Speaker 1: we all have those moments using a product like Facebook
Speaker 1: where something an advertisement will pop up or predict or
Speaker 1: perhaps a post even made by a friend will pop up,
Speaker 1: and you'll stop for a second and wonder, why was
Speaker 1: that served to me? Why am I seeing this? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What is what have I done? What sort of interactions
Speaker 1: on my part or you know, a demographic information on
Speaker 1: my part has led to this being put in my face.
Speaker 1: But there's a good chance that it is. It's either
Speaker 1: serving the like the supply model of Facebook, which is
Speaker 1: trying to keep you engaged on the platform for as
Speaker 1: long as possible, so that that's one thing. They just
Speaker 1: want to keep you on there so they can modify
Speaker 1: your behavior more, gather more data about you, show you
Speaker 1: more ads. Uh, So that's one thing. They might be
Speaker 1: just showing you it to you because their vast collection
Speaker 1: of data shows that when you see stuff like this,
Speaker 1: you use Facebook for a longer period of time, or
Speaker 1: you log back on more often later in the day.
Speaker 1: So that might be one thing. But the other thing
Speaker 1: might be that you're seeing that thing because somebody has
Speaker 1: targeted you for some kind of act. They want to
Speaker 1: generate some kind of effect. And this could be like
Speaker 1: become my customer kind of effect, or it could be
Speaker 1: something else. It could be in effect like we want
Speaker 1: to make people stay home instead of go out and
Speaker 1: vote today. Now at this point I do want to
Speaker 1: drive home as well. That one thing that Lanier is
Speaker 1: very clear on is that he is making no argument
Speaker 1: that there is like a room at Facebook or Twitter
Speaker 1: or wherever where like evil operations go on, that there's
Speaker 1: like a sinister cabal in any of these organizations that
Speaker 1: are sitting down and saying what can we do to
Speaker 1: destroy the human soul or anything like that? Right, there's
Speaker 1: not a m wahahaha committee. There is. Instead, there is well, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, there are decisions being made by people about
Speaker 1: what types of incentives will be algorithmically optimized and so
Speaker 1: so that is something where it's not like the humans
Speaker 1: who operate in these companies don't bear responsibility. They do,
Speaker 1: but they're not they're they're generally not trying to ruin
Speaker 1: the human race, So they're not trying to say, what,
Speaker 1: what's the worst thing we can do to our users? Right?
Speaker 1: That would that would just be a simplification of something
Speaker 1: that is a lot more complicated, and it's taking place
Speaker 1: not on the scale of even of an individual or individuals,
Speaker 1: but taking place in the scale of a corporation. What
Speaker 1: Linear argues is that bad business incentives which prioritize behavior
Speaker 1: modification are leading to the creation of algorithms that sort
Speaker 1: of automatically commit these these behavior modification schemes, and so
Speaker 1: behavior modification can be linked to traditions and the behaviorist
Speaker 1: school of psychology, which flourished in the twentieth century. We've
Speaker 1: talked on other episodes of the show about like B. F.
Speaker 1: Skinner and behaviorism. Behaviorism sometimes gets demonized, and they're definitely
Speaker 1: really good reasons to be historically critical of the behaviorist
Speaker 1: trend in the history of psychology, but it also wasn't
Speaker 1: entirely wrong, like behaviorism, I think could be credited with
Speaker 1: trying to make psychology a more objective science. But it
Speaker 1: also you know, a common criticism is the it sort
Speaker 1: of treats the human brain like a black box. You know,
Speaker 1: conditioning goes in, behavior comes out, and whatever happens inside
Speaker 1: just isn't really important. But one thing that it did
Speaker 1: show is that if you treat the human brain like
Speaker 1: this kind of like mystery machine where you just kind
Speaker 1: of like put conditioning in and keep calibrating until you
Speaker 1: get the output behavior you want, you can actually change
Speaker 1: behavior in an extremely effective way like that, Like you know,
Speaker 1: behavioral conditioning can be very powerful. And Landiar's Linear's argument
Speaker 1: is that modern social media is sort of almost a
Speaker 1: perfect vehicle for refining behavioral conditioning because it can collect
Speaker 1: extremely minute data about you, and lots of it because
Speaker 1: of course it has you know this connection like it.
Speaker 1: It records everything you do and all the stuff you
Speaker 1: do on social media. There's actually a lot of things
Speaker 1: you do on social media that they can learn a
Speaker 1: lot about, from your brain states to where you are
Speaker 1: through location tagging, to what you spend money on and
Speaker 1: you know your linked accounts, to the words you use
Speaker 1: reflecting your moods. Like they can, they know a lot
Speaker 1: about you and about how what they show you affects
Speaker 1: what you do right, you know, I would be loath
Speaker 1: perhaps to say that they know us better than we
Speaker 1: know ourselves, but they're that. I feel like they often,
Speaker 1: these platforms often know us better than we are perhaps
Speaker 1: prepared to admit to ourselves. Yeah, well, they know things
Speaker 1: about you that are different from the way you think
Speaker 1: about yourselves. They know about you from a behavioral conditioning
Speaker 1: standpoint where they can track in a really minute way
Speaker 1: what conditioning goes in and what behavior comes out. We
Speaker 1: tend not to think of ourselves that way. We tend
Speaker 1: to think of ourselves from the inside out. We think
Speaker 1: about our own mind states. You know, we tell a
Speaker 1: narrative about our behaviors in which everything is rationalized to
Speaker 1: make sense. So it's often we feel kind of demeaned
Speaker 1: when it's suggested that we are vulnerable to behavioral conditioning.
Speaker 1: It's like no, no, no, I'm not. You know. It's
Speaker 1: like how people think advertising doesn't work on that, you know, like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not more likely to buy a product because I
Speaker 1: saw a commercial for it, but you know you probably are.
Speaker 1: I mean, we just tend to think we're more mentally
Speaker 1: independent of the effects of stimuli that we actually are.
Speaker 1: Or we will will criticize and say it doesn't affect
Speaker 1: us on one platform and then on another will celebrate
Speaker 1: it without naming any names. One might use a particularly popular,
Speaker 1: you know, music streaming service, and you might go, wow,
Speaker 1: I really love the algorithm on this thing. It really
Speaker 1: knows what I'm into it. Yes, me, it keeps giving
Speaker 1: me musical suggestions that are they're totally on point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you need you have to stop sometimes like, well,
Speaker 1: I guess that's a good thing, but is it really Yeah.
Speaker 1: So social media platforms they can gather all this data
Speaker 1: about you, but also they have extreme psychological power over you.
Speaker 1: I mean, especially the big one to think about his
Speaker 1: Facebook just like it's this almost perfect machine for maximizing
Speaker 1: potential and behavior modification. It can make you feel and
Speaker 1: think what it wants with astonishing effectiveness just by showing
Speaker 1: you certain things that it has figured out that when
Speaker 1: it shows these things two people like you, you tend
Speaker 1: to react by behaving a certain way. And then of
Speaker 1: course it can just keep calibrating those those efforts more finally,
Speaker 1: and finally, finally with extremely high quality feedback based on
Speaker 1: the way it tracks your behavior and all the ways
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier. So this this is his basic argument,
Speaker 1: and you can see that companies like Facebook are interested
Speaker 1: in in always getting tighter and tighter control of the
Speaker 1: data and feedback about you in these sorts of ways.
Speaker 1: I was just reading a story the other day, uh,
Speaker 1: in the M I T. Tech Review about Facebook being
Speaker 1: involved in funding research on a wearable headband that could
Speaker 1: supposedly read your thoughts. Now, I don't think we should
Speaker 1: get overly alarmed about like this one particular news story,
Speaker 1: because this kind of technology is probably very crude at
Speaker 1: this point. You know, it doesn't tell you a lot
Speaker 1: today going to go from like zero to black mirror
Speaker 1: in a year on this particular front, right, But I
Speaker 1: do think the fact that Facebook is funding this kind
Speaker 1: of research should tell us something. They want to get deeper,
Speaker 1: They want to go further. They want to get closer
Speaker 1: and closer to your brain to know exactly how you're
Speaker 1: reacting to things in real time all the time. They
Speaker 1: want they want sort of like infinitely precise and finally
Speaker 1: calibrated data about you. And why would they want that.
Speaker 1: It's because it gives them better control over what you do.
Speaker 1: And that control can be rented out to sponsors. And again,
Speaker 1: and those sponsors could be fairly straightforward. They could be
Speaker 1: somebody trying to get you to buy their brand of shoes,
Speaker 1: or it could be a government trying to control what
Speaker 1: you do on a certain day, or or control how
Speaker 1: you feel about a political movement. Absolutely, and and that
Speaker 1: certainly they did. The involvement of of of other states
Speaker 1: or operator is acting on the part of on the
Speaker 1: behalf of other states has has certainly been in the
Speaker 1: news a great deal recently. Well, yeah, it's very strange
Speaker 1: that like that. I don't know if people would have
Speaker 1: predicted ten years ago. Maybe they did, and I wasn't
Speaker 1: aware of it that social media would start to become
Speaker 1: a major um statecraft and national security concern. Yeah. I mean, well,
Speaker 1: I think we were all probably in the you know,
Speaker 1: in the in the same boat. You know, for the
Speaker 1: most part, when social media started up, it just seemed
Speaker 1: like a thing that was a fun way to connect
Speaker 1: with a few other people that you knew and maybe
Speaker 1: meet some new people. It's yeah, and it was you know,
Speaker 1: for the most part, you know, it was just you
Speaker 1: and friends and potential new friends on there, and your
Speaker 1: parents weren't on it yet. Major politicians were not on
Speaker 1: it yet. Um major governments were seemingly not involved yet. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's the I don't want to be overly,
Speaker 1: I don't want to demonize it too much, but I
Speaker 1: mean it's kind of the addiction model, right. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, your first your first dose of this drug
Speaker 1: is free, maybe your first free, uh, several doses, you
Speaker 1: get hooked. And then what Linear talks about a big
Speaker 1: issue going on with these companies is that there is
Speaker 1: this problem of network effects. Right. Network effects are the
Speaker 1: thing that happens in digital media businesses where people tend
Speaker 1: to get locked into a service, and once people are
Speaker 1: locked into a service. It's very hard for there to
Speaker 1: be an effective competitor and get people to move over there.
Speaker 1: People are already on Facebook. If you tried to start
Speaker 1: a better Facebook today, and people have tried to start
Speaker 1: like nonprofit facebooks, no, nobody goes over there new before
Speaker 1: and it lasts like an afternoon. Yeah, you're you're already.
Speaker 1: People are on Facebook because that's where their friends are,
Speaker 1: and that's where all that's where everything is happening. It's
Speaker 1: network effects that keep people locked in. Once they're already there,
Speaker 1: and once everybody's there, you can kind of like lock
Speaker 1: the doors and then start doing whatever you want inside
Speaker 1: and you can check out any time you like, right,
Speaker 1: but you can never leave you all right, So we're
Speaker 1: skipping and skipping around a bit. But another argument, basically
Speaker 1: the fifth argument that Linear makes is that social media
Speaker 1: is making what you say meaningless, and the core argument
Speaker 1: here comes down to context. Now, entering into this argument,
Speaker 1: I personally thought about the rather simple example that I'm
Speaker 1: sure many of you are thinking of right now, and
Speaker 1: an ambiguous text message or email that has taken out
Speaker 1: of context because there are limitations to what we can
Speaker 1: typically convey in these you know, limited generally short form
Speaker 1: communication formats. Uh. You know, an emoji can only do
Speaker 1: so much to provide context to what you're saying. You
Speaker 1: ever notice how if you listen to a friend of
Speaker 1: yours talk about something, it sounds normal and fine. But
Speaker 1: if you listen to a snippet of a stranger's conversation,
Speaker 1: they sound like a complete moron and it's like embarrassing
Speaker 1: or or at best like a cryptic alien where you're
Speaker 1: just like, what what what? What was that? I'll never know?
Speaker 1: But do you know? I mean? And it's not like
Speaker 1: strangers happened to be Like there's something wrong with people
Speaker 1: you don't know as opposed to people you do know.
Speaker 1: Is that when you know somebody, you have context based
Speaker 1: in their personality and your relationship with them. What they're
Speaker 1: saying makes sense to you because you know them and
Speaker 1: you know how they generally think about things and all that.
Speaker 1: If you were if you didn't know this person you
Speaker 1: just happened to overhear them. Is you know, you walk
Speaker 1: by on the sidewalk and they were saying the same
Speaker 1: thing that would normally say that would sound normal to
Speaker 1: you as part of a conversation. You might think like, wow,
Speaker 1: what that What a freak. I know, people probably think
Speaker 1: the same thing about me all the time. Oh, I'm
Speaker 1: sure people think that about I mean I think about
Speaker 1: this all the time, Like I'll be out somewhere having
Speaker 1: a conversation about Highland or to the quickening, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: what do I sound like? What kind of what kind
Speaker 1: of idiot do I sound like to somebody who doesn't
Speaker 1: know me? I mean, I probably maybe I sound that
Speaker 1: bad to people who do know me, but no. Alright,
Speaker 1: So but anyway, coming back to linear here, he's getting
Speaker 1: some of thisp flies to his case, but basically he's
Speaker 1: saying that you with context or the lack of context,
Speaker 1: you know, it comes down to the lack of individual
Speaker 1: control over context on social media. And he points to
Speaker 1: two extreme examples of this online to sort of, huh,
Speaker 1: you know, better illustrate what's happening elsewhere. So, like the
Speaker 1: two extreme cases would be when, um, when you have
Speaker 1: legit ads popping up on say, terrorist recruitment videos on YouTube,
Speaker 1: which was which was a problem at least early on,
Speaker 1: is that you would have a legitimate advertiser and ultimately
Speaker 1: an illegitimate content or an illegitimate user, and those would
Speaker 1: be matched together in the context, would would be you know,
Speaker 1: accidental and terrible. Yeah, platforms are juxtaposing content without understanding
Speaker 1: what that content is, and it very often doesn't reflect
Speaker 1: well on any of the content, or certainly on some
Speaker 1: of it. Right. And then the other example he brought up,
Speaker 1: we're when you have images of say, women and girls
Speaker 1: whose whose images are are sexualized or incorporated into violent
Speaker 1: media without their consent. Again, that's like a it's horrible,
Speaker 1: and it is an extreme example, but he argues that
Speaker 1: these extreme cases are possible because social media in general
Speaker 1: robs us of control over context. When we express ourselves online,
Speaker 1: we have no idea how that expression will be presented
Speaker 1: specifically to anybody else. How often is there some public
Speaker 1: controversy about like a tweet where you know, somebody is
Speaker 1: like somebody's like, hey, I found a tweet by ex celebrity,
Speaker 1: you know, where they said something that looks really bad,
Speaker 1: and then that person defends themselves by saying, but you
Speaker 1: took it out of context. And what you really feel
Speaker 1: about this, of course, is going to very highly case
Speaker 1: by case because maybe the context changes the meaning of
Speaker 1: it and maybe it doesn't. But when it's is presented
Speaker 1: as a snippet that individual doesn't have control of the context.
Speaker 1: Maybe you have control of the context, but but they don't.
Speaker 1: It's similar when and we certainly see this, uh in
Speaker 1: our political cycles as well. You know, something that a
Speaker 1: candidate said or wrote, uh ten years ago is you know,
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, what have you? Uh? Is taken out
Speaker 1: as a snippet and presented often without completely either without
Speaker 1: context or without like complete contexts as to what they
Speaker 1: were talking about. Uh. And you know, and in some cases,
Speaker 1: I mean, anytime you're quoting somebody, you are you are
Speaker 1: literally taking them out of context. But like, uh, there
Speaker 1: are ways that being taken out of context can be
Speaker 1: pernicious and then they're i mean, they're totally normal ways
Speaker 1: to do it too. But then again, is when when
Speaker 1: something is taken out of context, is there's kind of
Speaker 1: implied by that statement that context is usually in place.
Speaker 1: And it's like saying, who who left that this toy
Speaker 1: on the kitchen floor? Let's put it back where it
Speaker 1: those you don't want to live in a reality where
Speaker 1: the toys are always on the kitchen floor, in which
Speaker 1: context is always out of place. And uh, And so
Speaker 1: that's ultimately what he's getting out with social media. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna gonna read just a quote from his writings here, quote,
Speaker 1: we have given up our connection to context. Social media
Speaker 1: mashes up meaning. Whatever you say will be contextualized and
Speaker 1: given meaning by the way algorithms and crowds of fake
Speaker 1: people who are actually algorithms match it up with what
Speaker 1: other people say. And he continues, speaking through social media
Speaker 1: isn't really speaking at all. Context is applied to what
Speaker 1: you say after you say it for someone else's purposes
Speaker 1: and profit. So essentially, we have surrendered context to the
Speaker 1: bummer platform, he's saying, rendering communication quote petty, shallow and predictable,
Speaker 1: and as such, only the extreme voices, the worst of us,
Speaker 1: the loudest, the you know, the most acidic voices in
Speaker 1: our coal sure are going to be the ones that
Speaker 1: rise up. Oh yeah, I mean, this is a whole
Speaker 1: other point he makes that I guess we're not going
Speaker 1: into in depth, but I mean, he argues that these
Speaker 1: platforms necessarily promote the worst voices because the worst voices
Speaker 1: tend to drive engagement, and the platforms want to drive engagement.
Speaker 1: What gets people using the platforms more, keeps people glued
Speaker 1: to Twitter, glued to Facebook. It's like whatever gin's up
Speaker 1: the most negative emotion, right, And one cookword on engagement.
Speaker 1: One thing that he hammers home a number of times
Speaker 1: in the book is that when you hear the word
Speaker 1: engagement used in a social media context, what we're talking
Speaker 1: about is manipulation. So try to think about that next
Speaker 1: time if you're attending a meeting or reading an article,
Speaker 1: uh sort of like especially a pro social media argument,
Speaker 1: uh you know about social about engagement, just uh switch
Speaker 1: it out for the word manipulation and see how the
Speaker 1: taste fits you. But called engagement cotton manipulation of whatever
Speaker 1: you like. It ends up creating the environment where everybody
Speaker 1: has to play that game in order to be heard.
Speaker 1: And of course that means it changes the way that say,
Speaker 1: legitimate journalistic uh um publications have to play the game.
Speaker 1: You know, you have to uh lean into even you know,
Speaker 1: more ridiculous headlines for instance clickbai clickbait headlines in order
Speaker 1: to get that precious and engagement, and that can have
Speaker 1: an eroding effect on the institutions of journalism and themselves.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, I mean well that also goes with the
Speaker 1: just like it is the most uh the most toxic
Speaker 1: or most uh, whatever voices gin up the most negative
Speaker 1: emotion tend to be promoted on these platforms because they
Speaker 1: drive engagement. The same could be true of topics. So
Speaker 1: like you might not say that, well, my voice is toxic,
Speaker 1: but like, whatever topics get people the most, like upset
Speaker 1: and worried and aggravated and angry and all that, those
Speaker 1: topics are going to be favored by algorithms that are
Speaker 1: trying to prease engagement. So they know, you know, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of times, um, publishers of online media
Speaker 1: know that there are certain topics that get people really upset,
Speaker 1: and those will be the highest performing articles on the
Speaker 1: videos on social media those days. Yea. Like think of
Speaker 1: chemicals as engagement, like which chemicals are most engaging when
Speaker 1: you get them on your skin? You know, I instantly
Speaker 1: think of the ones that are going to sting right, uh,
Speaker 1: And suddenly I can't think of anything but those stingy
Speaker 1: places on my skin. Um. So you know again, one
Speaker 1: of the things that he comes back around to too
Speaker 1: is that you know what, in this context situation is
Speaker 1: that what you were saying is only valuable or relevant
Speaker 1: insofar as it serves the platform and again, you were
Speaker 1: not the customer on this platform. You are the product.
Speaker 1: The customers are those uh, those corporations or even state
Speaker 1: players that have the money to pay into the bummer system. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now I was glad to see that he thinks podcasts
Speaker 1: have not been ruined yet. Yes, yes, so there there's
Speaker 1: a whole section in this uh this argument where he
Speaker 1: goes on to discuss podcasts and uh and he makes
Speaker 1: an argument that podcasts are a rare area of our
Speaker 1: media that are not bummer yet. But he does dream
Speaker 1: up and describe an absolute nightmare scenario for the future
Speaker 1: of podcasts that I hope never comes to pass. And
Speaker 1: while I was reading it, I was literally breaking out
Speaker 1: in sweats. Yeah. I mean, because think about what we
Speaker 1: do on the show, you know, stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: Is full of our personalities and our context, and we
Speaker 1: have the time and we have the space to present
Speaker 1: topics and ideas, to present our takes and topics and ideas,
Speaker 1: and a chance to share our personalities with the listener
Speaker 1: in a continuous episodic manner. And as a result, you,
Speaker 1: the listener, you kind of know us. You you know,
Speaker 1: when when when we get something wrong, you have the
Speaker 1: context to understand what's going on generally, you know, and
Speaker 1: what we do on this show is not easily reduced
Speaker 1: to sound own bites. That's true. And this has been
Speaker 1: a problem before, right, Yeah, you should trust us on
Speaker 1: this because every now and then, not currently, but it's
Speaker 1: did with a fair amount of regularity, someone will come
Speaker 1: to us and say, we need some sound bites. Yeah,
Speaker 1: give us fifteen second clips of your show to show
Speaker 1: what the show is really about. To show what the show,
Speaker 1: that should be the clip. But no, it's like it's
Speaker 1: impossible to do. When you try to pull out fifteen
Speaker 1: seconds of our show, nothing sounds right, I mean, nothing
Speaker 1: really makes sense on its own. That's that short. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're not we're not a zing or factory here. We're
Speaker 1: not calculating celebrities or want to be celebrities, and we're
Speaker 1: not actively trying to play the sound bite game. We're
Speaker 1: not trying to play the bummer game with this show.
Speaker 1: But to clarify all this and really explain what he's
Speaker 1: talking about, uh, Lanear devises a way to quote ruined podcasting.
Speaker 1: Uh And then he had nobody do this. Okay, so
Speaker 1: somebody's gonna do I mean, I yeah, I can, I
Speaker 1: can see it. How Basically, he describes a sort of
Speaker 1: podcast aggregator app that serves up snippets from podcasts with ads,
Speaker 1: of course, and the resulting situation would be that podcasts
Speaker 1: would then be incentivized to produce the sort of content
Speaker 1: that lends itself to this format, so fiery, you know,
Speaker 1: extreme attention grabbing sound bites, the kind. Okay, so imagine
Speaker 1: clips of podcasts that are that are prioritized the same
Speaker 1: way that like tweets or Facebook posts or YouTube videos
Speaker 1: are prioritized by the content recommendation algorithms. So just basically
Speaker 1: like pulling out the most egregious and like negative emotion
Speaker 1: conjuring moments of things. Yeah, and the horrible outside of context. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the horrible thing is that I can well imagine
Speaker 1: the marketing on soci an aggregator. You know, it would
Speaker 1: be something like, don't have time for all the podcasts
Speaker 1: in your life? Well, now you don't have to let
Speaker 1: telepod pick out the best parts of the shows and
Speaker 1: topics you love and serve it up to you in
Speaker 1: an easy to consume dose of wonder that fits into
Speaker 1: your busy schedule. And I and it sounds kind of convincing.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like, yeah, I'm busy. I don't have
Speaker 1: time for a whole bunch of hour long podcasts. There's
Speaker 1: so many of them. Why not let the algorithm slice
Speaker 1: out just the choice cuts from all my favorite shows
Speaker 1: and give them to me. Friends out there in podcast land.
Speaker 1: If this happens, boycott I do not do this. Do
Speaker 1: not unless you're already this type of show that is,
Speaker 1: you know, leaning, because there are shows out there that
Speaker 1: do land themselves well to uh to this sort of thing,
Speaker 1: not necessarily by design, but just by sort of the
Speaker 1: suit that the type of topics are already covering, or
Speaker 1: the individuals involved, the personalities involved, you know. And it's
Speaker 1: not saying that you know that their villains because of it,
Speaker 1: but I think there are a lot of great shows
Speaker 1: and you know, hopefully ours is on that list where yeah,
Speaker 1: you you you can't cut out these little segments and
Speaker 1: expect the host organism to survive or to be able
Speaker 1: to communicate what it's trying to com unicate. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be called pod butcher. And if pod Butcher came to pass,
Speaker 1: you know, I can tell you that we would not
Speaker 1: be able to produce the sort of show we produced
Speaker 1: now that you presumably like. If we had to satisfy
Speaker 1: such an algorithm, and what you like would have even
Speaker 1: less to do with it, because you would have handed
Speaker 1: your likes and choices over to Bummer, just as we, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, would have handed over context itself. And the
Speaker 1: interesting thing is Linear is not the only person, or
Speaker 1: the first really to recognize the death of context in
Speaker 1: social media. I was looking back at an article from
Speaker 1: twelve and Forbes from Susan Tardonico, and she wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: every relevant metrics shows that we are interacting at breakneck
Speaker 1: speed with frequency through social media, But are we really
Speaker 1: communicating with our communication context stripped away? We are now
Speaker 1: attempting to forge relationships and make decisions based on phrases, abbreviations, snippets, emoticons,
Speaker 1: which may or may not be accurate rep presentations of
Speaker 1: the truth. And we can we can actually go back
Speaker 1: even even further on this notion as well um on
Speaker 1: the show. In the past, I've discussed the work of
Speaker 1: futurists Alvin and Heidi toffler Uh. They wrote an important
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy book titled Future Shock, which was also made
Speaker 1: into a uninformative but also kind of more entertaining than
Speaker 1: informative orson Wells narrated TV show. That's also that's wonderful
Speaker 1: in its own right. But the book, uh was pretty great,
Speaker 1: and they discussed the apparent and possible disruptions of the
Speaker 1: human experience and human society due to rapid advances and technology.
Speaker 1: And I would like everybody to consider this quote from
Speaker 1: Future Shock nineteen seventy again quote. Rational behavior in particular
Speaker 1: depends upon a ceaseless flow of data from the environment.
Speaker 1: It depends upon the power of the individual to predict,
Speaker 1: with at least fair success, the outcome of his own actions.
Speaker 1: To do this, he must be able to predict how
Speaker 1: the environment will respond to his acts. Sanity It's elf
Speaker 1: thus hinges on man's ability to predict his immediate personal
Speaker 1: future on the basis of information fed him by the
Speaker 1: environment and me personally. I would extrapolate this to the
Speaker 1: digital environment that we've grown increasingly dependent upon. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like every day, like multiple times a day, over
Speaker 1: and over again, we're plugging into the digital environment and
Speaker 1: checking out of our physical environment as being a main
Speaker 1: determiner of our behavior. But it's not an environment that's
Speaker 1: chiefly mechanically dominated by things like you know, everyday Newtonian
Speaker 1: physics that we can predict pretty well. It's more like
Speaker 1: the main environments that we're participating in are like the giant,
Speaker 1: you know, super complex slot machine where you you pull
Speaker 1: the lever and you know, you can pull the lever
Speaker 1: in a few different kinds of ways and you don't
Speaker 1: know exactly what's going to come back out at you.
Speaker 1: So this is this is the digital context, the digital environment,
Speaker 1: and when everyone to keep that in mind, is I
Speaker 1: continue reading this quote from the Toffler's here quote. When
Speaker 1: the individual is plunged into a fast and irregularly changing
Speaker 1: situation or a novelty loaded context, however, his predictive of
Speaker 1: accuracy plummets. He can no longer make the reasonably correct
Speaker 1: assessments on which rational behavior is dependent. To compensate for this,
Speaker 1: to bring his accuracy up to the normal level again,
Speaker 1: he must scoop up and process far more information than before,
Speaker 1: and he must do this at extremely high rates of speed.
Speaker 1: In short, the more rapidly changing and novel the environment,
Speaker 1: the more information the individual needs to process in order
Speaker 1: to make effective rational decisions. And of course there are
Speaker 1: limits to our speed. So anyway that the tofflers, I think,
Speaker 1: really strike a chord with our current situation in this passage,
Speaker 1: at least from my standpoint. I mean, sanity itself hinges
Speaker 1: on our ability to predict our immediate personal future on
Speaker 1: the basis of information fed to us by the digital environment.
Speaker 1: And here we are attempting to communicate, act, and absorb
Speaker 1: knowledge in a social media environment that makes it impossible
Speaker 1: to control the information fed to us, absorb it all properly,
Speaker 1: and control the context of our own voices. Yeah, all true,
Speaker 1: I think. I mean it's it's kind of scary. I
Speaker 1: mean to think about the fact that I'm quite sure
Speaker 1: that nobody, there is nobody at Facebook who fully understands
Speaker 1: all the decisions made by the you know, the content
Speaker 1: recommendation algorithm that creates the Facebook feed, right, I mean there,
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe they could go maybe they have some
Speaker 1: way of going through if they could look at an
Speaker 1: individual one and say, okay, here are probably some reasons
Speaker 1: why you were shown this, why you were shown that.
Speaker 1: But they can't, like they can't predict it all. You know,
Speaker 1: you can't generate one of these feeds just uh, you know,
Speaker 1: with your own brain. Yeah, I mean, and we're we're
Speaker 1: ultimately we're just continuing to understand what and to what extent,
Speaker 1: you know, the harm is. I was looking around, um
Speaker 1: at some various uh, you know, posts and sort of
Speaker 1: industry thoughts about about how social media has been linked
Speaker 1: to struggles with depression and anxiety. Uh. And there are
Speaker 1: actually some serious discussions going on within the journalism field
Speaker 1: where journalists often feel the need to maintain a social
Speaker 1: media presence or are mandated to and are forced to
Speaker 1: deal with the resulting actually, I mean actual trauma and PTSD.
Speaker 1: Oh man, if you're a journalist, especially working in some
Speaker 1: kinds of fields, you are going to be inundated day
Speaker 1: in and day out with with hateful messaging from people
Speaker 1: who don't like whatever you're you're saying or doing in
Speaker 1: your career. Uh. People telling you to go kill yourself,
Speaker 1: people telling you that you're a fraud. And you know,
Speaker 1: and heaven yea, and Heaven forbid your your gender, your
Speaker 1: gender identity, your your your race or um or what
Speaker 1: have you. Uh, you know, happens to to you know,
Speaker 1: put you in the lines of sights of you know,
Speaker 1: particular troll groups on social media. Totally. And and I
Speaker 1: know that there is a kind of common reaction, I think,
Speaker 1: especially from people who don't deal with this problem themselves,
Speaker 1: say like, you know, it's just people, it's just trolling.
Speaker 1: Just get over it, you know, it's just trolling. Like
Speaker 1: you're probably just failing to imagine what it is like
Speaker 1: to to actually face this kind of like hate and
Speaker 1: abuse all the time. You know, we're we're highly social creature.
Speaker 1: I mean, even if you don't actually fear violence against yourself,
Speaker 1: which you might have good reason to, depending on you know,
Speaker 1: who you are and who these people are and what
Speaker 1: they say. But I mean, if anything should be clear,
Speaker 1: is that the digital world and the physical world are
Speaker 1: are not separated by an impassable chasm, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: we online Israel life Israel life, and we see violence
Speaker 1: stemming from digital activities. Yeah. But even if you're not
Speaker 1: in that category, dealing with an onslaught of just hate
Speaker 1: and abuse all the time, is it is life ruining. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and generally we're not trained to deal with it.
Speaker 1: So a lot of the discussions going on in journalism
Speaker 1: are are, you know, should we be training people to
Speaker 1: to cope with the flood of negative commentary and effectively
Speaker 1: sort out what you be ignored, what requires attention, and
Speaker 1: what constitutes an actual threat that should be you know,
Speaker 1: reported to authorities and to reiterate, of course, it's not
Speaker 1: just journalists that deal with this kind of issue, but
Speaker 1: like journalism is one field where a lot of times
Speaker 1: people have to be on these platforms, whether they want
Speaker 1: to be or not, and also by the nature of
Speaker 1: their work just naturally just attract a lot of negative attention.
Speaker 1: Right if, if, if someone wants to learn more about this,
Speaker 1: I should point out that Kyle Bessie wrote a great
Speaker 1: post just last month at journalism dot co dot uk
Speaker 1: titled how social media impacts mental health and Journalists. And
Speaker 1: of course, in thinking about all this, you know, comes
Speaker 1: back to the fact that like this is the reality
Speaker 1: we've built for ourselves, you know. I mean it's through
Speaker 1: this complex interface of you know, of corporate interests and
Speaker 1: algorithms and and so forth, but still like this is
Speaker 1: the world we've made for ourselves. We've created, we've created,
Speaker 1: you know, through our use of technology, these new pitfalls
Speaker 1: and these new pairs to social engagement. All right, we
Speaker 1: need to take another break, but after this we'll be
Speaker 1: back with more of our discussion. Thank thank alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: So one of Jarren Lanier's arguments from this book ten
Speaker 1: arguments to what is it? How exactly does it go
Speaker 1: for deleting your social media accounts? Right now? Yeah? There
Speaker 1: it is. Um. One of them is that quote social
Speaker 1: media hates your soul? Now, Robert, what are we to
Speaker 1: make of this? So this is this is argument ten.
Speaker 1: So this is the like, the final, all encompassing argument.
Speaker 1: So in a sense, it's almost a little bit unfair
Speaker 1: for me to skip to it because it it hinges
Speaker 1: upon all the arguments that he's made. But it's not
Speaker 1: going to spoil the book. It's not. But to give
Speaker 1: you a taste of it, I'm just gonna read the
Speaker 1: second paragraph from the first page of this argument quote
Speaker 1: to review. Your understanding of others has been disrupted because
Speaker 1: you don't know what they've experienced in their feeds. While
Speaker 1: the reverse is also true, the empathy others might offer
Speaker 1: you is challenged because you can't know the context in
Speaker 1: which you'll be understood. You're probably becoming more of an a,
Speaker 1: but you're also probably sadder. Another pair of bummer disruptions
Speaker 1: that are mirror images your ability to know the world,
Speaker 1: to know truth has been degraded, while the world's ability
Speaker 1: to know you has been corrupted. Politics has become unreal
Speaker 1: and terrifying, while economics has become unreal and unsustainable, two
Speaker 1: sides of the same coin. That's pretty bleak, And it's
Speaker 1: hard to imagine just from that paragraph that he is
Speaker 1: ultimately presenting an optimistic message. He is, he is, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know he's he's saying though that Look, Bummer's
Speaker 1: behavioral modification has taken place not only at an individual scale,
Speaker 1: but at a societal scale. In this it's reach is
Speaker 1: more like a religion, and it's and it concerns not
Speaker 1: only the way you live your life online, but what
Speaker 1: it means to be a person at all, which, again
Speaker 1: may say on a bit extreme and a bet out there,
Speaker 1: but I think he really makes a strong case for this. Uh.
Speaker 1: First of all, coming back to free will, which we
Speaker 1: talked about earlier, free will is central to most religions.
Speaker 1: You're you're hard pressed to find a spiritual model in
Speaker 1: which humans are mere automatons. But under Bummer, he argues,
Speaker 1: free will isn't destroyed, but it is assaulted. It's degraded,
Speaker 1: you have less of it, and certain parties wind up
Speaker 1: with more alongside, you know, their wealth and power that
Speaker 1: they've already accumulated or are accumulating as they take more
Speaker 1: and more of your free will, you know. And this, actually,
Speaker 1: I think does does go along with I don't know.
Speaker 1: So we've talked before about the coherence of the idea
Speaker 1: of free will on this show, and I'm sure we're
Speaker 1: gonna get a lot of kind of like a materialist
Speaker 1: push back on the idea of free will, saying, hey,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, free will is an incoherent concept. I
Speaker 1: think you could make that argument based on some definitions
Speaker 1: of free will, but in this sense, the sense that
Speaker 1: he uses it, I think free will is an important
Speaker 1: thing to consider and is a real concept. Basically it
Speaker 1: free will means um the feeling that you have control
Speaker 1: over your own behavior by understanding the influences on yourself
Speaker 1: and thinking about them consciously. And you know, you can
Speaker 1: never understand all of the influences on yourself, but there
Speaker 1: are definitely ways in which you can be in a
Speaker 1: system where you you feel like you understand most of
Speaker 1: the inputs that are coming in on you, and you
Speaker 1: can process them consciously and your decision making versus a
Speaker 1: system like like a kind of behavioral modification system where
Speaker 1: you in fact don't know you're being influenced. You don't
Speaker 1: know who's influencing you, and this is all opaque. You're
Speaker 1: just suddenly producing behaviors that feel alien and you don't
Speaker 1: know why you're doing them. Yes. Now, another religion based
Speaker 1: argumently makes uh in this chapter is that Bummer ultimately
Speaker 1: wants you to believe it is the Internet and it
Speaker 1: is the main part of your devices. Uh. But but
Speaker 1: it but it ultimately is separated. You know. He says
Speaker 1: you can have the Internet with social media, and he
Speaker 1: makes a strong argument for that. You know, that's ultimately
Speaker 1: I think his point is that you know, you you
Speaker 1: could have a great Internet just by sort of switching
Speaker 1: everything from the behavior modification pay for a model to
Speaker 1: like a subscription model where you know, like you could
Speaker 1: have something like Facebook, but instead of modifying your behavior
Speaker 1: uh to pay for it, you just you just pay
Speaker 1: to get access, right and uh and uh. Lanier argues
Speaker 1: that you know, in the same way that Protestants rejected
Speaker 1: papal indulgences, you know you can you know, you can
Speaker 1: reject the social media, but keep the Internet. You can
Speaker 1: reject the version of your faith that is uh that is,
Speaker 1: you know, tiresome or offensive or dangerous, and keep the
Speaker 1: parts that work for you. I mean, I've said that
Speaker 1: before regarding just religion in general. You know, whatever religion
Speaker 1: you adhere to, uh, I can almost guarantee you there
Speaker 1: is some version of it, uh that is that is
Speaker 1: ultimately more accepting and uh you know, and more liberal
Speaker 1: in its outlook. Uh you know, whether it's in your
Speaker 1: immediate area or or you have to go out to
Speaker 1: find it. As another issue, he also makes the argument
Speaker 1: that Bummer activates the pack setting of her mind, and
Speaker 1: in doing so, it quote resurrects old conflicts that had
Speaker 1: been associated with religion in order to engage people as
Speaker 1: intensely as possible. So basically, social media riles us up
Speaker 1: and causes the kind of like pack mentality and tribalism
Speaker 1: that normally you would have to look to a religion
Speaker 1: to do. Yeah, and what he This is part of
Speaker 1: an earlier argument in the book, but basically it's part
Speaker 1: of an argument he makes about how uh social media
Speaker 1: is making us meaner and and worse by by triggering
Speaker 1: types of thought patterns that are more associated with obsession
Speaker 1: with hierarchies and and in group out group thinking and
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Yeah, and domination mentality, yeah, dominated culture.
Speaker 1: And then he he also points out that Bummer ultimately
Speaker 1: asked you to have faith not in in God or
Speaker 1: God's or a godess, but in the almighty algorithms that
Speaker 1: decide what slice of news, political commentary, fake news, parody,
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory, or just outright hate you see in your feed,
Speaker 1: and that it's you know, entirely anti ENLiGHT enlightenment in
Speaker 1: that regard, and that it makes learning subservient to human
Speaker 1: power hierarchies. Well, yeah, I mean by allowing these algorithms
Speaker 1: to control what you see all day, you are, in practice,
Speaker 1: whether you know you think about this or not, in practice,
Speaker 1: you're giving your consent to somebody to shape who you
Speaker 1: become as a person. And uh, And that that's a
Speaker 1: lot of power, that's a lot of faith to put
Speaker 1: in some business. He goes on from here to discuss
Speaker 1: another destructive force in human discourse, memes. Um, So this
Speaker 1: is that this is one of these areas where when
Speaker 1: I talk about memes, I feel like I often just
Speaker 1: come off like an old person, an old, grumpy person
Speaker 1: who doesn't understand how the kids talk, you know, complaining
Speaker 1: about memes. But no, I I am with you there,
Speaker 1: even when I see a meme that's funny, and I
Speaker 1: see him all the time, you know, I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: not above memes. It's like, yeah, some are really funny
Speaker 1: and I like them, but there's a part of me
Speaker 1: that always sort of rebels. And I think it has
Speaker 1: to do with what we were talking about about context earlier.
Speaker 1: You know, I worry about meme culture degrading the context
Speaker 1: of original images and text in a way that that
Speaker 1: just constantly batters down our defenses and batters down our
Speaker 1: desire to understand things and in their original meaning. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He He writes that memes may at first, you know,
Speaker 1: when we first engage with them, they might seem to
Speaker 1: amplify what we're feeling or trying to say. And you know,
Speaker 1: for instance, somebody posts a bit of its news or
Speaker 1: thought and you back it up with like, what do
Speaker 1: you see in so many Facebook responses? Or I guess
Speaker 1: on other social media platforms as well, you see like
Speaker 1: gifts and memes that seem to be sort of an
Speaker 1: amen brother kind of an argument or or or some
Speaker 1: other interaction with the content. But but but ultimately, like this,
Speaker 1: this feeling of amplification is an illusion. You're only reinforcing
Speaker 1: the notion that virality is truth. Whatever is the most
Speaker 1: viral is rewarded, and that's a key part of Bummer's design.
Speaker 1: But just because it's viral does not mean it is
Speaker 1: the truth. And uh, which seems like an overstatement of
Speaker 1: the obvious when I say it like that, But but again,
Speaker 1: don't think about you know, think about the way we
Speaker 1: interact with it and the way we use memes. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you go to any fact checking website, just pick
Speaker 1: your favorite I mean, poll it a fact or whatever,
Speaker 1: and you like scroll down and you scroll down to see,
Speaker 1: you know, like truth ratings by source. What's always the
Speaker 1: number one source of total fabrications. You might think of
Speaker 1: immediately your least favorite politician, but no, it's not a person.
Speaker 1: It's viral image. Viral image is always the number one
Speaker 1: source of false facts that are spreading around the Internet.
Speaker 1: Why is that, Well, because viral image is an extremely
Speaker 1: powerful method for spreading falsehoods. It spreads way easier than
Speaker 1: somebody going on TV and saying them and here goes
Speaker 1: on from here to you know, also point out that
Speaker 1: many of these bummer companies and in some of the
Speaker 1: key individuals associated with them, you know, they're also they
Speaker 1: also put a lot of emphasis on grander ideas of
Speaker 1: organizing all information, of providing communities with purpose of creating AI.
Speaker 1: And ultimately he says that you know, this is a
Speaker 1: this is a danger to to personhood. You know that
Speaker 1: there's a spiritual danger uh, to us in our sense
Speaker 1: of personhood when we start, you know, putting too much
Speaker 1: emphasis on these these non human models of of thinking
Speaker 1: and humanity. Uh, you know which, Again this is getting
Speaker 1: into kind of heady, headier territory than most of the book.
Speaker 1: But I think it's it's an interesting case. You know
Speaker 1: what is how how are these powerful corporations thinking about
Speaker 1: what it is to be human? And then how is
Speaker 1: that changing the definition at least like the sort of
Speaker 1: the spiritual definition and the self defining principle of personhood.
Speaker 1: So again, like this this argument in the book, I
Speaker 1: it does have I think there is a possibility that
Speaker 1: you hear this or even you read it, and you start,
Speaker 1: you know, asking yourself, well, is that that really the case?
Speaker 1: So we're really thinking about social media like it's a religion?
Speaker 1: Is it still? Is it? Is it actually uh serving
Speaker 1: a purpose that is akin to religion? And I think
Speaker 1: I think he makes a strong case. I think that
Speaker 1: I think it's one of those things where you kind
Speaker 1: of like you wake up one day and you realize, oh,
Speaker 1: I I have joined the church social media and I've
Speaker 1: actually I've been attending services for years and I didn't
Speaker 1: quite realize it. You know, you know, you tend to
Speaker 1: think of of a religion as you know, is this
Speaker 1: as a as a church or a temple? Is these
Speaker 1: images of God's and you don't think of the roles
Speaker 1: that they play in a culture. And how even as
Speaker 1: you know, for the most part, and you know in
Speaker 1: many cultures, there is a movement away from these organized religions.
Speaker 1: You know, there's this there's this possibility that we are
Speaker 1: we are rebuilding something that operates in much the same
Speaker 1: way or maybe in just some of the same worst ways, Yeah,
Speaker 1: without without some of the same, without providing some of
Speaker 1: the best. Because I've you know, as I've discussed in
Speaker 1: the show before, you know, I think they're I think
Speaker 1: religion and spirituality, uh that they both have tremendous benefits
Speaker 1: to individuals and as certainly to uh uh to societies
Speaker 1: and uh you know, you can get that sense of
Speaker 1: community with a religious organization. You know, they can do
Speaker 1: a great deal of harm if they are you know,
Speaker 1: if they have toxic beliefs wound up into their their fabric,
Speaker 1: or they they promote uh toxic personality dynamics. Sometimes, yes, certainly,
Speaker 1: but yeah, we we would. What we don't want to
Speaker 1: do is certainly to put all the of that aside
Speaker 1: and then rebuild. Yeah, like, like you say, a new
Speaker 1: digital religion that is based on most of the worst
Speaker 1: qualities of what came before. Yeah, I mean, I I
Speaker 1: find most of this book a pretty compelling message, but
Speaker 1: I do want to emphasize again that it's like, um,
Speaker 1: it emphasizes a lot of what's negative about the current
Speaker 1: model of social media. But even with these like bummer companies,
Speaker 1: he doesn't demonize. He's not saying and we're not saying
Speaker 1: that like all the people who work at these companies
Speaker 1: are bad people. We're not even saying that like necessarily
Speaker 1: all the things done by these companies are all their
Speaker 1: products are bad. I mean, like you know, Facebook and
Speaker 1: Google and all these companies have. They provide real technologies
Speaker 1: and real products that do you know, great things for
Speaker 1: people's lives that make all kinds of things easier. They
Speaker 1: provide enormous wealth and convenience and stuff like that. So
Speaker 1: it's not that like everything these companies do is bad.
Speaker 1: I mean that that's not true by any stretch of
Speaker 1: the imagination. It's just that there are certain elements about
Speaker 1: the business model of especially the social media platforms, and
Speaker 1: specifically it's the element that its behavior modification for rent
Speaker 1: that really do need to be reformed. And that's where
Speaker 1: his recommendation comes in. He says, if you want to
Speaker 1: give these companies financial incentive to reform, delete your accounts. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the bummer illness is there in social media, and the
Speaker 1: only way to get rid of it, to rid the
Speaker 1: host of that that the infection, is to step away
Speaker 1: from it, to have them to create this financial incentive
Speaker 1: for those for these corporations to change, and and ultimately, yeah,
Speaker 1: he he has this positive view, this optimistic view that
Speaker 1: it can change that if we were to do this,
Speaker 1: if we're all to do this, not all at once,
Speaker 1: but perhaps this gradual awakening uh to the reality you know,
Speaker 1: we could reach the point where social media can exist
Speaker 1: in a form that is not not demeaning of our personhood,
Speaker 1: that is not modifying our behavior to the benefit of
Speaker 1: you know, you know, unknown corporations or by state or
Speaker 1: non state players. Yes. There. So there are a ton
Speaker 1: of other arguments he gets into in the book that
Speaker 1: we did not have time to address today. Of course,
Speaker 1: you know, we're not going to address everything in the book.
Speaker 1: If we can get Jared Lanier to come on the
Speaker 1: show sometime, I'd be interested in talking about some of
Speaker 1: the other ones, uh, especially, but also I'm interested in
Speaker 1: hearing from listeners who who disagree, maybe who or you know,
Speaker 1: agree or disagree, because one thing I recognize is that
Speaker 1: I think I have an emotional predisposition to bias in
Speaker 1: favor of these arguments. Uh, simply because I I feel
Speaker 1: like in my life I have witnessed a lot of
Speaker 1: negativity growing out of social media. I personally, emotionally don't
Speaker 1: like platforms like Facebook and Twitter and TRU and so
Speaker 1: you know, I I've got a predisposition that makes this scene,
Speaker 1: this all seemed good to me. So I'd be interested
Speaker 1: in hearing, you know, the arguments presented to the contrary
Speaker 1: that that would go against my biases that say, no,
Speaker 1: maybe it's not as bad as he's representing. Right. And likewise,
Speaker 1: if anyone out there has quit social media, if you
Speaker 1: have deleted your social media accounts, I'd be interested to
Speaker 1: hear your take on how that went. You know why?
Speaker 1: You know, why did you do it? Uh? Did did
Speaker 1: you accomplish what you hope to accomplish by stepping away? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know all this is a fair game for discussion.
Speaker 1: So again, the title of the book is Ten Arguments
Speaker 1: for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jared Lanier.
Speaker 1: That's l A in I E. R. It's a as
Speaker 1: of this recording, it's currently available in hard back and
Speaker 1: it's coming out in paperback very soon. Yeah. If it's
Speaker 1: not out by the time this episode publishes, it will
Speaker 1: be coming out soon. Yeah. So again, highly recommend this
Speaker 1: read and would love to hear from listeners who read
Speaker 1: it as well. In the meantime, if you want to
Speaker 1: follow what we do, head on over to Stuff to
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