Speaker 1: Welcome to the Hudcast. This is a crypto podcast where
Speaker 1: we talk about the best n f T investments and
Speaker 1: how you can get rich. To bro, if you just
Speaker 1: accept the wave of the future and decentralize your finance
Speaker 1: and invest in a bank that can take all of
Speaker 1: your money overnight and disappeared because it was really just
Speaker 1: being run by a guy in Macedonia and he was
Speaker 1: just a rug pole the entire time. And you lose
Speaker 1: your life savings and you have no recourse and that's
Speaker 1: the fucking future of investments. Bro. Hey, Bro, you're fired. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fair. This is it could happen here podcast about
Speaker 1: how things are bad, sometimes a podcast about how to
Speaker 1: make them less bad. Today we're talking about the former
Speaker 1: how things are bad, and we're we're talking about financialization
Speaker 1: um and specifically the financialization of like human being is
Speaker 1: in the endeavor to create art? Uh and so artis
Speaker 1: artist a broad broad term. I mean, I said the
Speaker 1: endeavor to I'm sure they all want to be creating art. Well,
Speaker 1: this won't make any sense to people yet, so I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna give a brief overview. There's an article
Speaker 1: in the Atlantic that dropped on November twenty nine, called
Speaker 1: what Happens when You're the Investment. It's by Rex Wouldbury
Speaker 1: Um who I hate um. So as a note, okay,
Speaker 1: let let me just get the the the nut of
Speaker 1: the article is, and that there's been a couple of
Speaker 1: other articles on this guy. His name is Alex mass
Speaker 1: mesh Um and he is a French kid, I think,
Speaker 1: who decided to tokenize himself. And what that means is so,
Speaker 1: like you've got the etherium blockchain, right, he basically he's
Speaker 1: he's putting he's carving up aspects of his like potential
Speaker 1: future earnings, and he's putting those on the Ethereum blockchain
Speaker 1: as like tokens that people can buy. And the idea
Speaker 1: is that this kid had wanted to like start a
Speaker 1: business and be an entrepreneur, but he didn't have any money.
Speaker 1: So using like on the ether blockchain, he turned himself
Speaker 1: into tokens basically like his potential future earnings and his time.
Speaker 1: And basically people are able to buy up coins effectively,
Speaker 1: I mean not coins, but tokens shares. Yeah yeah, dollar
Speaker 1: sign Alex is like the name of the token which
Speaker 1: basically shares they're buying. He's turned himself essentially into a
Speaker 1: publicly traded company kind of um. And holders of his
Speaker 1: coins are like, he's splitting up fifteen percent of his
Speaker 1: income for the next three years basically among people who
Speaker 1: like hold his coins. And he raised like twenty grand
Speaker 1: this way. Um. And it's not just like it's not
Speaker 1: just his future earnings that are being kind of tokenized.
Speaker 1: You can also use tokens to like buy retweets from him,
Speaker 1: or one on one conversations or and here's a line
Speaker 1: I love and introduction to someone in his network. And
Speaker 1: and it's the overall idea because there's you can find
Speaker 1: some other good articles. Good as an interesting word to use.
Speaker 1: You can find other interesting, fascinating articles about this this idea,
Speaker 1: which is like human beings tokenizing their future earning potential
Speaker 1: um in order to uh raise money um. And And
Speaker 1: it's uh the way this is usually sold as a
Speaker 1: good thing. In fact, I should probably just read a
Speaker 1: quote from this Atlantic article to give you an idea
Speaker 1: of how uh mass measure is or of how um
Speaker 1: um the art. The author of the article, Rex good Wouldbury,
Speaker 1: is is trying to sell this ship. We all have
Speaker 1: the slightly annoying friend who insists that she knew about
Speaker 1: so and so before they were even famous. When it
Speaker 1: comes to Taylor Swift, I'm that friend, and I'm more
Speaker 1: than slightly annoying about it. I was a Taylor fan
Speaker 1: in her pre fearless full on country days, years before
Speaker 1: Conway interrupted her on stage at the v m AS.
Speaker 1: But in our current constructive fandom, I'm treated no differently
Speaker 1: than a fan who discovered Swift on SNL a few
Speaker 1: weeks back. This would be different, though. If Taylor had
Speaker 1: done what mass Measure did and turned herself into an investment,
Speaker 1: she could have issued a social token. Whereas non fungible
Speaker 1: tokens or n f t s are so called because
Speaker 1: of the uniqueness of a digital asset, social tokens are fungible.
Speaker 1: In other words, each Alex token is interchangeable with every
Speaker 1: other Alex token, just like a dollar bill can be
Speaker 1: traded for any other dollar bill. Say Taylor issued had
Speaker 1: issued her own token, Let's call it a dollar signs swift,
Speaker 1: and say she had sold dollar signed Swift to her
Speaker 1: biggest fans. Yeah, say I was one such fan. Over time,
Speaker 1: as Taylor's popularity grew, the value of the Swift token
Speaker 1: would have appreciated. As an early believer, I would have
Speaker 1: shared in the financial upside of her growing fame. The
Speaker 1: Swift token I had brought for a hundred dollars in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven might be worth a hundred thousand dollars today.
Speaker 1: The Taylor Swift mini economy would serve both the singer
Speaker 1: and early fans like me. As an artist, Taylor could
Speaker 1: have funded her work by selling dollar signs or Swift tokens.
Speaker 1: She might not have needed to sell ownership of her
Speaker 1: master's and she might not have been forced to re
Speaker 1: record her albums to take back control over her art.
Speaker 1: Taylor's fans, for their part, would have been rewarded for
Speaker 1: a decade of patronage. We're all evangelists for our favorite artists,
Speaker 1: yet we capture little of the value that we helped create.
Speaker 1: And then there's a lot that, like I find unsettling there.
Speaker 1: One of them is the idea that, like, yeah, the
Speaker 1: fact that I was a fan of someone earlier means
Speaker 1: I should get some sort of reward for it, Like
Speaker 1: I should be treated differently because I liked it earlier,
Speaker 1: which you might recognize, like the thing that everybody has
Speaker 1: been shipping on for like fandoms for years now, like
Speaker 1: it's been a it's been a huge thing where like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're being an asshole if you're if you're talking about
Speaker 1: like if you think you have some additional ownership of
Speaker 1: Star Wars because you watched it ten years before the
Speaker 1: fans today and so you like different stuff in it.
Speaker 1: Like that's we all recognize that as like toxic um.
Speaker 1: But the the whole argument of this article is that like, no,
Speaker 1: this is how the entire future of creativity should work.
Speaker 1: We find unsettling. And it also it also ties into
Speaker 1: like a really concerning development in paras social relationships of
Speaker 1: like invest in them, want to buy a conversation with
Speaker 1: them in like this really weird way. Um And the
Speaker 1: fact that young artists are going to be pressured into
Speaker 1: this kind of thing is really scary. Yeah, because there's
Speaker 1: like one of the things mass Measure did as like
Speaker 1: um uh as an experiment, was like allow people who
Speaker 1: had bought his tokens to make life decisions for him,
Speaker 1: like tell him when to wake up in the morning
Speaker 1: and whether or not to eat red meat and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. And he stated that like, well, none of
Speaker 1: this is binding, right, Like I'll i'll I might do
Speaker 1: what they say, but like I'm not going to do
Speaker 1: anything crazy or whatever. But also this is like the
Speaker 1: first iteration of this um. And I like this Atlantic article,
Speaker 1: which I think is unhinged for reasons we'll get into,
Speaker 1: but it's purely talking about like, look at this incredibly
Speaker 1: successful person. Imagine if they've gotten to be incredibly successful
Speaker 1: using this method instead, and it might have like spared
Speaker 1: them this thing. But when I keep thinking about is like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of people, like there's no reason to
Speaker 1: invest in them, Like, yeah, maybe if you come out
Speaker 1: with a great song or a great video, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you could get investments, And I'm sure that could work out.
Speaker 1: I'm sure, Like Taylor Swift is a successful enough person,
Speaker 1: I'm sure she could have found a way to succeed
Speaker 1: under that system too. But what I think will be
Speaker 1: much more common because there's no real reason to anticipate
Speaker 1: that the average person will have an earnings potential. If
Speaker 1: you give them twenty grand, that's greater than twenty grand. Um,
Speaker 1: the most likely thing is that like people just buy
Speaker 1: shares and poor people to make them do fucked up ship.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's gonna be How would you not how would
Speaker 1: that not be where it goes? That's that's that's the
Speaker 1: only way that this is going to get like used
Speaker 1: on a large scale. People just selling themselves. People are
Speaker 1: people are gonna use the ether blockchain to like crowdfund
Speaker 1: and crowd uh cast a new jackass basically, like it's
Speaker 1: going It's not going to be like a thousand Taylor
Speaker 1: Swift's all token izing themselves. It's going to be like
Speaker 1: millions of people in the Global South issuing tokens to
Speaker 1: like vote on whether they roll down the hill in
Speaker 1: a barrel or in like a fucking porta potty. Like
Speaker 1: it's just it's a nightmare to me to contemplate people
Speaker 1: actually adopting this. You know, there's there's a lot of
Speaker 1: really like the thing I think is the most incredible
Speaker 1: part about this is that like, okay, so like it
Speaker 1: basically doesn't matter what like economic theory you used to
Speaker 1: look at it. It's like every single one of them
Speaker 1: tells you something just like absolutely fucked about it. And
Speaker 1: like you know, because because I mean they're there, there's
Speaker 1: there's there's some extent to which I look at this
Speaker 1: and it's like this isn't that much different than the fact,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like, okay, so you're paying someone to
Speaker 1: do whatever you want, but like, okay, like that's not
Speaker 1: that much different than just a job, right, Like it's
Speaker 1: it's not it's not inherently that much different than the
Speaker 1: fact that everyone is forced to just do wage labor.
Speaker 1: But also, like there's one was interesting things to me
Speaker 1: that I thought about this when I was what I
Speaker 1: was reading this was so, do you just know what
Speaker 1: capitalization is? Yeah? Yeah, so this is this is just
Speaker 1: capitalizing a person, right, Like it's literally taking a person
Speaker 1: public effect put putting, turning them into like a tradeable
Speaker 1: share and that's like an investment. Yeah, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is all one of the things that like a Forbes
Speaker 1: article I found points like this is another kind of
Speaker 1: unregulated securities training. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what's what's interesting
Speaker 1: to me about it is that like, okay, so you know,
Speaker 1: this is also already how accounting wise, every corporation sees
Speaker 1: a person, right like every every every every person in
Speaker 1: the asset book is you know, yeah, you know, like
Speaker 1: a wage is just capitalization, right, It's like how much
Speaker 1: will you pay now for this much money? Later you
Speaker 1: could But it's like people are doing it to themselves now,
Speaker 1: which is like this, Yeah, you could argue that like
Speaker 1: elements of this or how like banks treat you when
Speaker 1: you get a mortgage right um like, but but also
Speaker 1: that's much more rigorous and limited, like it has like
Speaker 1: regulations and it has for how those things work. It's
Speaker 1: not some like twelve year old getting like like going
Speaker 1: on to coin base and buying part of you as
Speaker 1: a joke with your with like his dad's money, right like,
Speaker 1: because it's like yeah, because what if it's like, there's
Speaker 1: no law against a seventeen year old I guess if
Speaker 1: maybe their parents may need to consent, but there's no
Speaker 1: law against the seventeen year old getting a facial tattoo
Speaker 1: of like the doors of a concentration camp on their face.
Speaker 1: But what if some kid tokenizes himself for forty grand
Speaker 1: so he can drop an EP and that's what like
Speaker 1: a bunch of four channers who buy up his his
Speaker 1: shares want him to do um. And maybe the fucking
Speaker 1: kid does that because he knows it's going to get him,
Speaker 1: because his brain is not done and he knows it's
Speaker 1: going to get him. A bunch of fucking social media
Speaker 1: clouds and like it's there's a lot of and there's
Speaker 1: no way to regulate that, Like it's just an inherently
Speaker 1: toxic proposition that I don't think the government would. I
Speaker 1: don't know what side of this the government would even
Speaker 1: step in on, Like what is the regulation of people
Speaker 1: deciding I'm letting random strangers who pay me money vote
Speaker 1: on what I do with my life? What do you
Speaker 1: ever think? It reminds me of a lot is like
Speaker 1: the micro lending stuff from the nineties, where it was like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we'll like empower these people by we'll go in and uh,
Speaker 1: We're going to give them like a small amount of
Speaker 1: money and they have to pay back. And it was
Speaker 1: like you know, and and all of the same stuff
Speaker 1: that you're reading, all the arguments about why this is
Speaker 1: a good thing are exactly the same as the micro
Speaker 1: lending ones and that stuff. You know. There there were
Speaker 1: two ways it turned out. One was basically you get
Speaker 1: the scenario where both sides are scamming each other, where
Speaker 1: you know, all the people who are getting these micro launchers,
Speaker 1: they're just taking the money and walking right like that's
Speaker 1: you know that their their their things. Oh this is
Speaker 1: I can just get money like this and we can
Speaker 1: just keep I just keep not paying it back, and
Speaker 1: so I'm scamming them. But then on the other side,
Speaker 1: you have these people who are like, oh cool, I
Speaker 1: can give this person this loan and turn them into
Speaker 1: a debt pion and it and you know, and and
Speaker 1: the the the really depressing side about it is so
Speaker 1: that the people who couldn't get away, like I mean,
Speaker 1: we're literally reduced debt pions. And you know, I mean
Speaker 1: there's a huge wave of suicides in India. Probably don't
Speaker 1: say example is wave of suicides people drinking past a
Speaker 1: side because they couldn't pay off these loans and so
Speaker 1: and and the thing that's different about this is that
Speaker 1: like I mean, ay, you're doing it to yourself. But
Speaker 1: then be again, there's no regulation. But that also means
Speaker 1: there isn't any way to force someone to do what
Speaker 1: you say you're gonna It's it's unclear how it's going
Speaker 1: to be enforced. And the other thing that is not
Speaker 1: clear is like what does losses look like? Like what
Speaker 1: what happens when someone like you cannot make back on
Speaker 1: like an investment, But if the investment is a person,
Speaker 1: how does that work? And if someone's contractually obligated to
Speaker 1: give a certain share of their income. What happens when
Speaker 1: there's not enough income for that, like, like you know,
Speaker 1: so those types of things. Yeah, I mean there's no
Speaker 1: answer to that. Uh, And there's nobody like the money
Speaker 1: that's going to be whatever made in this is going
Speaker 1: to be made before anyone steps into to try to
Speaker 1: answer that. If anyone ever does, like, um, it's it's
Speaker 1: gonna be the next because I think we're I think
Speaker 1: we're heading for a crash with with n f t s.
Speaker 1: Like there was just an article today about how what
Speaker 1: is of nfc T trading is done by like ten
Speaker 1: percent of people, which further back because the allegations of
Speaker 1: n f t s is that most of what's happening
Speaker 1: isn't people actually buying them. It's people like the same
Speaker 1: person using multiple wallets basically trying to jack up the
Speaker 1: perceived value by throwing a bunch of other Internet money
Speaker 1: that they already have. So these these whales who have
Speaker 1: like a bunch of crypto gaming the system, and we've
Speaker 1: seen some of it. And the biggest n f T
Speaker 1: S salever, it was like half a billion dollars and
Speaker 1: it was a guy selling it to himself and then
Speaker 1: transferring it back into another wallet to try to make
Speaker 1: it look like it was worth half a billion dollar.
Speaker 1: There's even though no one had actually really paid that
Speaker 1: for it. Um so I and I think you know that.
Speaker 1: And kind of what we've seen with the regulations, the
Speaker 1: government's annance for n f t s, I think that's
Speaker 1: a problem for them in the near future. And I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be surprised to see this takeoff next, especially given
Speaker 1: like the creator economy that we're seeing on like the
Speaker 1: kind of thattk yeah TikTok Like, I wouldn't be surprised
Speaker 1: if you saw a rash of big TikTok stars tokenizing themselves.
Speaker 1: And like I'm not even sure, I'm I'm I'm sure
Speaker 1: it would be a mix of the person making the
Speaker 1: tokens being the one doing the scam and the person
Speaker 1: receiving or the people buying the tokens being the one doing. Like,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it would be a mix of different kinds
Speaker 1: of exploitation. But it's not gonna be good, I mean,
Speaker 1: And and just like a t it's gonna make like
Speaker 1: I don't know, fifty people super rich when they when
Speaker 1: they first start trying it right like that, that that is
Speaker 1: that is like when this happens, like when a TikTok
Speaker 1: star with five million followers, when they do this, they
Speaker 1: will make boatloads of money. It's just unclear what happens
Speaker 1: after that. Yeah, well, Fleet of Mexico. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that would be the smart thing. That would be the
Speaker 1: smart thing to do. Yeah. In this Forbes article I found,
Speaker 1: which is a thousand times better than me, it lay
Speaker 1: into article like even though it's written by someone I
Speaker 1: think who's also into crypto, it's just it actually it
Speaker 1: asks some of these questions we've been talking about UM,
Speaker 1: and it cites David Hoffman, who's the CEO of a
Speaker 1: of a token ized real estate platform UM, on what
Speaker 1: he sees as some of the problems. Like what he,
Speaker 1: as a guy who's supports aspects of this kind of thing,
Speaker 1: sees is the problems with us and uh it's yeah
Speaker 1: one sec UM Hoffman, returning to his core problem with
Speaker 1: the personal token model model, Hoffman re emphasized that the
Speaker 1: assured is an utility that come with some of these
Speaker 1: tokens don't exist, for with with certain kinds of tokens
Speaker 1: don't exist, for like these personal tokens. How risky this
Speaker 1: investment is is completely defined by the individual. In his disclaimer,
Speaker 1: he's and he's talking about one of the guys who's
Speaker 1: token himself, this guy named Kerman. In his disclaimer, he
Speaker 1: says this is a highly risky investment and that you
Speaker 1: could lose all your money, which is a terrible thing
Speaker 1: to say because with personal tokens, the issuer is in
Speaker 1: complete control over exactly how risky the investment actually is.
Speaker 1: It's largely up to them whether there are risks or not.
Speaker 1: Which is like a kind of illegal securities trading that
Speaker 1: I don't think we've ever anyone's ever done. Um, Like
Speaker 1: it's this, it's this fascinating new con where you're literally
Speaker 1: the you're you're doing securities trading, but instead of it
Speaker 1: being over a company, it's just you and technically there's
Speaker 1: no consequences if you just take the money and run.
Speaker 1: Like I don't know what kind of contract, Like you
Speaker 1: couldn't have a contract that says that you could say,
Speaker 1: they're that you're obligated to pay out your future earnings,
Speaker 1: but you couldn't have to work, Like that's not enforceable.
Speaker 1: You can't like contractually obligate someone two to like work,
Speaker 1: like you're allowed to quit a job. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess you could put penalties in it, but I don't,
Speaker 1: like none of the current ones have anything. I mean,
Speaker 1: or they could go to The other option is is
Speaker 1: that they could go to jail for fraud if they
Speaker 1: try to shot, if they try to not follow through
Speaker 1: on the investment. If you say like, yeah, I I
Speaker 1: invested in you and you said that you would do
Speaker 1: these things, you didn't do them, Now you can go
Speaker 1: to prison. That is the other Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: that will at some point, like there will be scams
Speaker 1: and some of that will come in. But like, none
Speaker 1: of these current ones, none of them are saying here's
Speaker 1: my specific I'm going to make this special. It's not
Speaker 1: like like if you like with a Patreon, right, You're
Speaker 1: you're paying a little bit at a time on an
Speaker 1: ongoing basis for a very clear product. Generally is so
Speaker 1: far these aren't that they're just like I'm gonna try
Speaker 1: to do something that makes money and if it does,
Speaker 1: you get a cut of it. And that's it's so
Speaker 1: much like there's nothing that's stopping mass Metch from saying
Speaker 1: like hey, my, my and my attempt didn't work. Uh
Speaker 1: so we're done. No no money for anybody like that,
Speaker 1: and I you're not. There's no accounting requirements, there's no
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of ways in which it's sucked up
Speaker 1: from a financial except it's not it's not his it's
Speaker 1: not it's not you're not investing in his business. You're
Speaker 1: nesting in him. So even even if even if he
Speaker 1: takes another job, they're still it seems to be contractually
Speaker 1: obligated to still get that of his income. Yes, And
Speaker 1: I think that's that's the area in which I think
Speaker 1: it would be abusive for the person being token ized,
Speaker 1: because most people aren't gonna like most people don't make
Speaker 1: that much money. So they raise someone manages to like
Speaker 1: raise five or ten grand and then just winds up
Speaker 1: for years giving a cut of their income that winds
Speaker 1: up being more than they got initially to a bunch
Speaker 1: of like it's almost like a like a payday loan
Speaker 1: that you've blockchain. Yeah you know, Okay, so this is
Speaker 1: this is what I'm thinking about. Because so there's I
Speaker 1: don't know if I talked about this on the show,
Speaker 1: but there's a thing in China where they've been kind
Speaker 1: of cracking down it now for starting nineteen like literally
Speaker 1: every single app like had a like had a pet
Speaker 1: a loan thing in it, so like like your flashlight
Speaker 1: app would have would offer you a pet a loan
Speaker 1: and it was basically it was yeah, they were there.
Speaker 1: Was originally tied in with like people who buy um,
Speaker 1: you know, I was originally tied in with like like
Speaker 1: the the services that like their version of Amazon for example,
Speaker 1: would like, oh, hey, we'll give you a loan so
Speaker 1: you can buy this, you can order fried chicken. And
Speaker 1: I was always wondering when this would come to the US,
Speaker 1: and I think it might never hope, I mean hopefully
Speaker 1: it never does. And I think it might not just
Speaker 1: because of how like powerful our petty loan industry is.
Speaker 1: But it's like we've we've now invented. It seems like
Speaker 1: it's gonna happen, but like dumber, like our our version
Speaker 1: of it is like this thing which is just you know,
Speaker 1: it's what what if what if paid a loans but
Speaker 1: on the blockchain? Except you know, I mean when I
Speaker 1: guess this is the everything you know that that we've
Speaker 1: been getting at, is that the difference between this being
Speaker 1: a paid a loan, and this being you scammed a
Speaker 1: bunch of people is what the enforcement mechanism looks like.
Speaker 1: And you know this this this comes back to some
Speaker 1: other things I think you're interesting about this one is
Speaker 1: that you know, so the whole the n f T
Speaker 1: drift right is based on convincing people that there's value
Speaker 1: in ownership right there, like ownership itself has inherently has value.
Speaker 1: And yeah, but but this this is not that this
Speaker 1: is this is you know, this is going back to
Speaker 1: know your value value is built on labor, right well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like labor and like like personhood, like like you
Speaker 1: as a personal brand is the thing that they're trying
Speaker 1: to get at it. And the thing the thing that's
Speaker 1: missing here though, is that in order for like you know,
Speaker 1: in order for like labor to produce value right in
Speaker 1: this way, there has to be like there has to
Speaker 1: be a way for you to force them to pay
Speaker 1: you like you need you need coercion for it. And
Speaker 1: if there's no coercion, then you know, you just take
Speaker 1: a bunch of money and leave. And and that that
Speaker 1: I think is like this this is going to be
Speaker 1: the battle over like if this becomes a thing it's
Speaker 1: going to be you know, the people who buy these
Speaker 1: things are gonna wind up like trying to you know,
Speaker 1: I think they're gonna be the ones you try to
Speaker 1: put your regulation because they're gonna you know, they're gonna
Speaker 1: go in. They're gonna be I want to get my
Speaker 1: money back, and that could end really really really badly,
Speaker 1: right if you know, I mean it probably will. I like,
Speaker 1: I don't know how popular I think this will be
Speaker 1: because I think that I hope this is a maybe
Speaker 1: if there'd never been like a Patreon or something, but
Speaker 1: the actual use case of this seems to already be
Speaker 1: well served by the existing capitalist infrastructure. Like people, I
Speaker 1: think more people wanted back a creator's Patreon than they
Speaker 1: want to like own pieces of a person's time and
Speaker 1: earning potential like that. That seems like a more niche
Speaker 1: and weird desire to people than just like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: these guys make a video I like every week, so
Speaker 1: I'll throw them three dollars. Well, I think I think
Speaker 1: the difference though, is that pittureon money gets you money
Speaker 1: for normal people. This gets you money from like tech bros.
Speaker 1: And that Yeah that's always yeah, it's it's a grift
Speaker 1: designed to And I want to dive back into this
Speaker 1: Atlantic article because it's so bad in such a comprehensive
Speaker 1: way that I think it deserves analysis. That's what put
Speaker 1: a pin in what you said. But I want to
Speaker 1: start with, like how the person writing this this Rex motherfucker,
Speaker 1: like his his concept of the the history of the Internet. Um,
Speaker 1: because it's completely wrong. Quote. We're on the precipice of
Speaker 1: the third era of the Web. The Web's first era
Speaker 1: was about information flowing freely. Think Google giving you access
Speaker 1: to the world's knowledge. Most of us were passive consumers
Speaker 1: in this era. The second era was the social web Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.
Speaker 1: People began to create their own content, and that content
Speaker 1: became the lifeblood of the big platforms. We became active participants,
Speaker 1: but the platforms devoured all the profits. The promise of
Speaker 1: the Internet and the Internet was to erase the gatekeepers.
Speaker 1: Instead of waiting for a record label to sign you,
Speaker 1: you could share your music on Spotify, instead of asking
Speaker 1: a publication to share your words. You could tweet instead
Speaker 1: of being tapped by a studio execut You could become
Speaker 1: a YouTuber. What happened is that these platforms became the
Speaker 1: new gatekeepers. The third era of the web is about
Speaker 1: writing the ship. Social capital becomes economic capital. Value no
Speaker 1: longer accumulates to brokers and intermediaries. That's number one, completely wrong.
Speaker 1: But one thing. Yeah, the first era of the Internet,
Speaker 1: I would say, was about the idea that information should
Speaker 1: flow freely. And Google came in like a decade or
Speaker 1: more into that period. Like I had been on the
Speaker 1: Internet five years before Google hopped into that ship, and
Speaker 1: Google was actually the start of of the end of
Speaker 1: that period um And it's it's the idea that, like
Speaker 1: the social web, was people creating their own content. Most
Speaker 1: of the social web's initial capital, and like all of
Speaker 1: its initial money, came from taking content that people were
Speaker 1: being paid to make on legacy platforms that had existed
Speaker 1: before social media, taking that content, putting it on social media,
Speaker 1: and then monetizing that without paying money back to the
Speaker 1: people had made the content. The money in social media
Speaker 1: did not initially come from people making their own content,
Speaker 1: and the way that they mean it, like, yeah, you
Speaker 1: at college humor or whatever, We're making your own content
Speaker 1: and sharing it on social media. But you've been doing
Speaker 1: that before social media. Social media just actually made it
Speaker 1: less profitable eventually. Like, the way he summarizes this is
Speaker 1: so wrong because what the social web actually did. And
Speaker 1: the other thing I'd argue is that the first era
Speaker 1: of the Internet, the like early days when things are
Speaker 1: happening on like forums and weird little angel fire websites
Speaker 1: and like even my Space, um, which I think is
Speaker 1: kind of my Space, kind of straddles the first in
Speaker 1: second eras uh, that was fundamentally much more an era
Speaker 1: of people creating their own content, because the the lifeblood
Speaker 1: of uh social media today isn't people really making their
Speaker 1: own content, it's people reacting to content that other people made. Um.
Speaker 1: And again it just shows the fact that he's he's
Speaker 1: summarizing it this way in a way that I think
Speaker 1: is so wrong and inaccurate to how things actually developed. Uh.
Speaker 1: Is characteristic of his attitude towards this stuff, where he's
Speaker 1: kind of seeing the only real meaningful evolutions in in
Speaker 1: in the Internet through the corporations that monetized it. Um,
Speaker 1: which is just telling of like how this guy actually
Speaker 1: sees the way the Internet has developed. And you will
Speaker 1: not be surprised to know, Uh, this motherfucker is an
Speaker 1: investor at Index Ventures. Um. Yeah, Like he's he's he's
Speaker 1: a guy who's business is capitalizing things, um, and so
Speaker 1: that's the only way he sees the development of the Internet,
Speaker 1: even though that's not the accurate way of looking at
Speaker 1: how the Internet evolved. And I think I think that
Speaker 1: there's one more really important thing that he leaves out here,
Speaker 1: which is that because you know, like we're talking, oh,
Speaker 1: this is the third age of the Internet, Like no,
Speaker 1: the third day of the Internet started like I don't know,
Speaker 1: the mid early mid tends. When I would say when
Speaker 1: gamer Gate hit is when I would I would I mean,
Speaker 1: it's going to be a little off, I depend it
Speaker 1: depends what it depends what you mean by age. So
Speaker 1: one of my friends worst in advertising, and he was
Speaker 1: talking about this where you know, can we can we
Speaker 1: can talk about like gammer Gate in the sort of
Speaker 1: fascist moles, but there was something else happening back end,
Speaker 1: which was the Internet of Things stuff and the Internet
Speaker 1: things stuff like you know, like nobody it's kind of
Speaker 1: a I don't know, like I think we mostly think
Speaker 1: about it's like it's kind of a joke or like
Speaker 1: it just sucks, But really what it was was that
Speaker 1: that that was the period in which people figured out
Speaker 1: that the thing that the actual money and be made
Speaker 1: on the Internet was some selling people's personal information and
Speaker 1: that and there and and the Internet things like just dramatic,
Speaker 1: like just indescribably increased the amount of data that you
Speaker 1: could extract from people. And that that was that's the
Speaker 1: actual that was the actual change of like like that
Speaker 1: that that's that's that's the thirty of the Internet, and
Speaker 1: that the earth of the Internet will last basically for
Speaker 1: everyone until we destroy it, which is that you know,
Speaker 1: the commodity is just all of all of the information
Speaker 1: about who you are, where you go, like what you buy,
Speaker 1: who you talk to. That just being sold off to
Speaker 1: two advertisers is you know, the thing that he's very
Speaker 1: very carefully not talking about and instead focusing on, Oh,
Speaker 1: it was users creating content. And it's like no, they
Speaker 1: the internet just they they sold spying on the entire world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think there's there's two good ways to to
Speaker 1: divide the Internet into ages, and the ages would be
Speaker 1: slightly different each way. One is kind of how you're
Speaker 1: doing it is the way in which it was monetized, Right,
Speaker 1: That's that's that's one way too. And then if that's
Speaker 1: the case it's going to start with, it was not
Speaker 1: at all. It was an entirely public project and everybody
Speaker 1: on it was on it through like a university, and
Speaker 1: like people did not pay to access it. Other than
Speaker 1: that you had to be at an institution or a university.
Speaker 1: And then like we get to the kind of the
Speaker 1: dot the era before the dot com boom and of
Speaker 1: the dot com boom, and then like the early pre
Speaker 1: social internet stuff like something awful and like having stumbled
Speaker 1: upon and and whatnot, and like those sending traffic to
Speaker 1: sites like where I used to wear, cracked and um.
Speaker 1: And then kind of the social media, which is the
Speaker 1: start of as you said, like the data being monitor
Speaker 1: monetize like individuals data being the thing either that's being
Speaker 1: directly monetized or it's being used to deliver like target
Speaker 1: it adds to you. Um. And then there's like if
Speaker 1: you think about it in terms of content, it's it
Speaker 1: starts like for the first era wouldn't even involve Google
Speaker 1: because it would be like the start of us neet
Speaker 1: up to eternal September in nine and then you know
Speaker 1: on from there. Um. But either way, this guy doesn't
Speaker 1: like everything he says about the history of the Internet
Speaker 1: is dumb. It's just a very simplified version and you
Speaker 1: don't actually look at like the interocking systems, um. Because
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I don't know why he describes it
Speaker 1: this way, because it is it is like it's accurate
Speaker 1: if you squint and don't think about it. Um. But
Speaker 1: it's weird because like this article is like it's four
Speaker 1: tech bros. So I don't know why he describes it
Speaker 1: this way because I feel like he could describe it
Speaker 1: a lot more accurately, um if he if he wanted to. Well,
Speaker 1: it's something I'm gonna get into. I'm gonna say this
Speaker 1: point like twice eveniod. I'm gonna get into the neoliberalism
Speaker 1: episodes and I'm writing, but one of one of the
Speaker 1: key features of neoliberalisms that they lie is that the
Speaker 1: neo liberals have to have two versions of what they believe.
Speaker 1: They have the version that they tell everyone else, which
Speaker 1: is completely a lie and is not what they believe
Speaker 1: at all. And then it has they have the version
Speaker 1: that they tell to each other, which is what they
Speaker 1: actually believe, and they completely they contradict each other completely.
Speaker 1: They mostly believe things. Everything they say in public is
Speaker 1: just a complete lie, and that I think that's what
Speaker 1: he's doing here, which is that this that like that
Speaker 1: history of the Internet is the one you sell the
Speaker 1: but consumption because yeah, that that's that's that's the lie
Speaker 1: you tell people to take money from them. And then
Speaker 1: he has a thing that he believes but which he
Speaker 1: will not ever tell you because you know if if
Speaker 1: if he tells you what like he actually wanted to do,
Speaker 1: you would run screaming from the room. And you can
Speaker 1: you can read between what he wants you to believe.
Speaker 1: I think is made very clear by how he divides,
Speaker 1: by the fact that when he starts like dividing up
Speaker 1: the ages of the Internet, he says, the first one
Speaker 1: is the time in which people wanted information to be free.
Speaker 1: And what he's kind of saying by doing that is
Speaker 1: saying like that was an infant stage of the Internet.
Speaker 1: And obviously the natural evolution of the Internet is for
Speaker 1: every single thing on it to become monetized. And because
Speaker 1: I also believe the Internet should be every aspect of
Speaker 1: our lives, like this is a megaverse guy or a
Speaker 1: metaverse guy, like I think the Internet should should be
Speaker 1: involved in every aspect of life. That means every aspect
Speaker 1: of life should be financialized. Um, and that's extremely radical,
Speaker 1: but it does not sound that way. When you describe
Speaker 1: it that way, people's heads go. But like what he's
Speaker 1: saying is deeply radical, and I think also, like again
Speaker 1: you want to talk about like the first and not
Speaker 1: just the early age, because the first people who kind
Speaker 1: of built the backbone of the Internet were mostly like
Speaker 1: very radically anti uh capitalizing on Like there was this
Speaker 1: idea that like it absolutely should be as free as possible.
Speaker 1: Like Steve Wozniak, the guy who functionally invented the personal computer,
Speaker 1: had a background like as a phone freaker, like literally
Speaker 1: literally robbing phone companies to get like free phone calls
Speaker 1: and stuff like these, Like most of the early Internet
Speaker 1: pioneers were like some kind of criminal um. And the
Speaker 1: early ages of like Internet content being monetized mostly started
Speaker 1: with people doing ship for free. Like that was how
Speaker 1: the people who made money on it. That's how all
Speaker 1: of my bosses and that's how fucking I got started.
Speaker 1: Was like you would just start making ship and you
Speaker 1: would put it out for free, and eventually like that
Speaker 1: would get enough traffic that you you you you draw
Speaker 1: ads to you and whatnot, and you'd make money. But
Speaker 1: it was always like all of the content that that
Speaker 1: made the Internet, and all of the content creators who
Speaker 1: are huge now mostly started um doing something like even
Speaker 1: it was just like throwing up videos on YouTube, right
Speaker 1: or like going on. And that's that's less the case
Speaker 1: with the zoomers now because a lot of them got
Speaker 1: started on at things like like Twitch, where the idea
Speaker 1: is to from the beginning be trying to monetize yourself,
Speaker 1: and while you're like building a brand, you're constantly monetized.
Speaker 1: But that's a really recent change, and I actually I
Speaker 1: find it kind of unsettling because that was I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's a mix because I'm certainly not of the I'm
Speaker 1: not of the of the mind that like, if someone
Speaker 1: is asking you to do work, you should be getting
Speaker 1: paid for it. But if you are trying to if
Speaker 1: you are trying to like build a life as a creator,
Speaker 1: the best way to do that creatively is to just
Speaker 1: make the things that you think are cool and then
Speaker 1: make like if if other people like it, you make money.
Speaker 1: Like better things get made than that. That Like that
Speaker 1: that is the way the best art gets made. I
Speaker 1: think it's a few things going on here because like
Speaker 1: the way I think, like I think Actually the reason
Speaker 1: why he frames it this way is because he's trying
Speaker 1: to get back to his idea of freedom. Right. He
Speaker 1: describes like the golden age of the the Internet being information
Speaker 1: flowing freely. He thinks that the blockchain is a new
Speaker 1: version of that, So that's why he's framing it in
Speaker 1: this way. The second thing is in terms of artists
Speaker 1: and creators. Um. If you think about like, yeah, like
Speaker 1: like the when the early age of what he calls
Speaker 1: like the of what we we kind of all been
Speaker 1: reframinged to it. Like the second area when like era
Speaker 1: of like when social media and like content creation like
Speaker 1: sites are a thing. That's like just use YouTube as
Speaker 1: an example. Um. Because there was a low saturation and content,
Speaker 1: it was easier for someone to rise up and gain
Speaker 1: a platform. Let's say someone like Bo Burnham, right, who
Speaker 1: started as just a kid and now is like a
Speaker 1: very popular comedian. Um. But then YouTube instead of backing
Speaker 1: creators like that, um, which they did a little bit,
Speaker 1: but they did not as much. They instead started, uh,
Speaker 1: Like the thing that happened was like, uh, YouTube really
Speaker 1: incentivizing sharing like late night content and sharing like like
Speaker 1: TV clips of TV shows and like using like doing
Speaker 1: using legacy media on their platform. And that's the things
Speaker 1: they really backed, that's the things they really pushed into
Speaker 1: your feet. It's like tonight show clips. Um. So a
Speaker 1: lot of those original original content creators kind of got
Speaker 1: left behind and now are now like just their own
Speaker 1: are running on their own personal brands. Some of them
Speaker 1: use Patreon for example. But it's also it's impossible to
Speaker 1: do this now because there's an oversaturation of content. The
Speaker 1: only thing that's done this recently is TikTok because it
Speaker 1: was a brand new platform. There was again a new
Speaker 1: opportunity for a lot of kids to gain to gain
Speaker 1: a lot of audiences really quickly. I mean, I just
Speaker 1: I to based on what you're saying, I think that
Speaker 1: like TikTok is the closest to how cool ship happened
Speaker 1: on the Internet before everything go because because it is
Speaker 1: like you're not starting from like everyone starts. I guess
Speaker 1: knowing you could make money, but that was the same
Speaker 1: way you start because you're like you're doing a thing,
Speaker 1: and if that thing takes off, then there's ways to
Speaker 1: monetize and like that. Yeah, I think that's why probably
Speaker 1: white bar to white is so popular general. Really, growth
Speaker 1: on TikTok is pretty Uh, it's pretty organic. It's not,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not boosted by big brands. Uh, the
Speaker 1: same way you know, stuff like YouTube is and now
Speaker 1: it's probably gonna be edging in that direction. But it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's not, it's it's not there yet. So
Speaker 1: and his argument in this is to get back to
Speaker 1: just being like a small content creator getting your stuff seen.
Speaker 1: His solution to this problem of like YouTube and stuff
Speaker 1: backing like these large like light night shows and backing
Speaker 1: like these large like corporately funded things. His solution is
Speaker 1: that if you're a small if you're a small content creator,
Speaker 1: you should sell yourself as an asset to other people
Speaker 1: on the internet. Right, So, because like his his idea
Speaker 1: is that he wants to get rid of the gate
Speaker 1: keepers of the Internet and go back to how the
Speaker 1: Internet was. But his solution for doing that is just
Speaker 1: by selling you as a person brand to other people
Speaker 1: on the internet who are like tech bro investors. So
Speaker 1: that that's why it's framed this specific way. So I
Speaker 1: think when we're all like talking about like why does
Speaker 1: he describe it this way, what's all this weird stuff
Speaker 1: going on. It's because that's how he's rationalized in his brain,
Speaker 1: is for how what he thinks being a free artist is,
Speaker 1: and he thinks this is going to be the new
Speaker 1: method to get there. There's another important sort of macro
Speaker 1: thing to think about this year, which is that the
Speaker 1: underlying basis of all of this right is the assumption
Speaker 1: that everyone is an entrepreneur. Is that you know, like
Speaker 1: every everyone is doing all of their stuff at all
Speaker 1: times because they want, you know, in order to be
Speaker 1: a business owner. And this has been like you know, this,
Speaker 1: this has been the great ideological victory of the right
Speaker 1: in the last fifty years, is that they convinced everyone
Speaker 1: that like every single person is you know, like you're
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not even temporary embarrassed Millonaire syndrome. Is
Speaker 1: like even people who like are working jobs, right, like
Speaker 1: working wage labor jobs, think of themselves as you know,
Speaker 1: content creators. And a content creator, you know, is a
Speaker 1: small business owner. And this has in a manly coercive
Speaker 1: while I've a course or two, but corrosive effect on
Speaker 1: you know, anyone working together to do something because you know,
Speaker 1: oh you're not you're not You're not a worker. You're
Speaker 1: just like you're a content creator. You're you know, you're
Speaker 1: a small business owner. You're like you know, you what
Speaker 1: and and and that's you know this, this is a
Speaker 1: very long running thing that much of incredibly posericial people
Speaker 1: have been trying to do really since like I mean
Speaker 1: arguably like the thirties, but the complete success of that
Speaker 1: and the way that you know, they're they're they're selling
Speaker 1: exactly the same thing that they were selling in like
Speaker 1: the eighties, but now it's this like, you know, you're
Speaker 1: trying to get people to do it to themselves. And
Speaker 1: also they throw all of this like sort of nonsense
Speaker 1: tech jargon at you to get you to sort of
Speaker 1: like stop looking at the fact that this is just
Speaker 1: sort of you know, this is this is this is
Speaker 1: just the new, even worse version of everyone being a
Speaker 1: worker who thinks that they're like, you know, also going
Speaker 1: to be this owner someday. Yeah. I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't have anything else really to say about it other
Speaker 1: than this, but like, I mean, this was a good
Speaker 1: amount to say. I just think this is so I
Speaker 1: think it's such an example of kind of the way
Speaker 1: in which the worst people in the world are trying
Speaker 1: to steer the internet. Um, and by steering the Internet,
Speaker 1: steer the soul of like the human race. Um. Like
Speaker 1: this is a vision of the future this guy is sharing.
Speaker 1: And this article that I isn't isn't positioning itself as radical,
Speaker 1: but includes some like deeply radical ideas about how the
Speaker 1: world should go. And by the way, I should also
Speaker 1: note that he's also just like blatantly wrong every time
Speaker 1: he brings up a number, um, like he taught he
Speaker 1: he points out in this article that forty six million
Speaker 1: Americans own cryptocurrency. The real number is more likely about
Speaker 1: one million kind of it at most, like by every
Speaker 1: credible I have no idea where he's getting forty six
Speaker 1: million Americans own cryptocurrency. And again, the stat just came out,
Speaker 1: And that's part of his argument is that like, obviously
Speaker 1: people love the blockchain and these tokens and like this
Speaker 1: is this is inevitably going to get more and more popular.
Speaker 1: Um And when again, the reality is that every real
Speaker 1: thing that's happening on the on the blockchain is pretty
Speaker 1: much versions of a security scam that the government has
Speaker 1: just announced they're going to finally start regulating but yeah,
Speaker 1: I wanna so that the stat the study that just
Speaker 1: came out today was that analysis of six point one
Speaker 1: million trades of like four point seven million in f
Speaker 1: T s. It shows that the top ten percent of
Speaker 1: traders were responsible for of trading um, which again is
Speaker 1: more evidence that all that's happening is people boosting prices. Also,
Speaker 1: the average, the vast majority, like more of an FT
Speaker 1: sales are for less than two hundred dollars. Some of
Speaker 1: them are for just pennies. Like what the stuff that
Speaker 1: you're hearing about is all ridiculous outliers, and its outliers
Speaker 1: specifically because people are pumping stuff up in order to
Speaker 1: try to call on someone um. And that's the whole
Speaker 1: basis of this guy's the structural argument, the reason that
Speaker 1: he's attempting to our you that like there's actually desire
Speaker 1: here and that this is in fact, the future of
Speaker 1: the Internet is based entirely upon like numbers that are
Speaker 1: either bad or he's or he's deliberately using he's deliberately
Speaker 1: lying about the numbers, because there is no credible number
Speaker 1: evidence I've ever heard that forty six million Americans currently
Speaker 1: owned cryptocurrency or even have ever owned cryptocurrency. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think the other kind of nail on the coffin
Speaker 1: for this idea and why I don't think it's going
Speaker 1: to catch on the same way these guys think it
Speaker 1: think it does. And this is something he acknowledges in
Speaker 1: the article is like not a lot of people know
Speaker 1: how the stockic change works, like very like he he says,
Speaker 1: I think it's like I don't know like he I
Speaker 1: forget what number he says, but um, but he says
Speaker 1: like not not tons of people actually use or know
Speaker 1: what the stockic stockic changes. Um. And the reason why
Speaker 1: Patreon was so successful and why it's so useful for
Speaker 1: content creators is because it's a very intuitive system. It's
Speaker 1: very clear how it works. It's clear what you're doing.
Speaker 1: There's no really questions about where your money is going
Speaker 1: or what's happening. This I don't think this is ever.
Speaker 1: I don't think this whole personal investment thing is ever
Speaker 1: going to actually go off because people don't understand what
Speaker 1: the blockchain is and it's too much work to explain
Speaker 1: it to them. Um. And just because of how much
Speaker 1: work it is to wrap your mind around, like so
Speaker 1: where is my money going? What do I have to
Speaker 1: set up how does that work? That's way too much
Speaker 1: of a headache, because in order for this to actually work,
Speaker 1: you need this to break out of the tech bro
Speaker 1: bubble or else this is just gonna be this small
Speaker 1: tech bro thing of people handing over the same one
Speaker 1: hundred dollars to all their friends in a circle, um,
Speaker 1: which is what it is currently. And I in order
Speaker 1: to break out of that circle, they need to get
Speaker 1: you know, your grandmother to learn what crypto is and
Speaker 1: how blockchains work. And that's not gonna happen. Um. So
Speaker 1: I think that is the one other nail in the
Speaker 1: coffin for this type of idea is like Patreon is easy.
Speaker 1: Patreon makes sense this thing. It is not nearly as
Speaker 1: intuitive for supporting a YouTuber you like, yeah, oh okay, cool.
Speaker 1: I actually found evidence on where that forty six million
Speaker 1: Americans number comes from. Yeah, so basically number one. I
Speaker 1: found like a fucking crypto news source pointing out that,
Speaker 1: Like when people started tweeting that forty six million Americans
Speaker 1: is based on a study we'll talk about a second,
Speaker 1: but like when people started tweeting about this, like the
Speaker 1: immediate response in the bitcoin subredit was like well that's
Speaker 1: not fucking possible. Uh. Like one of the people in
Speaker 1: the Bitcoin subred it said, sounds very high. I don't
Speaker 1: know a single person who owns it, and this says woman,
Speaker 1: six or seven people own it. Yeah, And and it
Speaker 1: comes from a study conducted in January by the New
Speaker 1: York Digital Investment Group servying a thousand participants with incomes
Speaker 1: over fifty dollars, so that that seems valid. Wait, they
Speaker 1: just said it's over fifty This okay, this method, yeah,
Speaker 1: this this method. You will get a few like Pew
Speaker 1: released to studies suggesting that like six of Americans have
Speaker 1: used cryptocurrency at some point, and like all of what's
Speaker 1: coming out as kind of sketchy, all of the data,
Speaker 1: there's like reasons to be kind of unsettled about it.
Speaker 1: But also one of the things that you studies showed
Speaker 1: is that the vast majority of Americans have heard of cryptocurrency, uh,
Speaker 1: and most haven't used it, Like the vast majority have
Speaker 1: not chosen to get involved. Like, however accurate you think
Speaker 1: this is, Like, there's another article coming out that says
Speaker 1: that came out and I guess May of this year,
Speaker 1: that's said that's based on a Gemini study, which is
Speaker 1: Gemini is a crypto exchange that over fifty million Americans
Speaker 1: are likely to buy crypto in the next year. UM,
Speaker 1: which doesn't seem to have happened. Uh, Like, I just
Speaker 1: don't see. There's all sorts of like weird little studies
Speaker 1: commissioned to buy weird little groups, but it really doesn't.
Speaker 1: It seems like it's it's again kind of part of
Speaker 1: the grift. Like I'm not seeing a lot of rigor
Speaker 1: in any of this. UM anyway, whatever, We've talked enough
Speaker 1: about this ship. I just I think we all as
Speaker 1: soon as we read the article were so like appalled
Speaker 1: by it that what we should probably we talk about
Speaker 1: this for forty five minutes. Yeah,