Speaker 1: Yeah, there's an amazing trending topic right now on Twitter
Speaker 1: hashtag Trump is dead. And I thought, for just a
Speaker 1: second while we were talking, is it possible? Could it
Speaker 1: couldn't have happened that Trump died, And it appears to
Speaker 1: be Tim Heidecker. He tweeted basically like misinformation about Trump,
Speaker 1: and I think as like a kind of fun test
Speaker 1: of Elon Musk's new freedom of speech doctorate or whatever
Speaker 1: it is that's going on on Twitter. Needless to say,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm both loving it and hating it. On the
Speaker 1: one hand, I was like, Wow, that'd be so cool
Speaker 1: if Trump died, because he sucks ass. I mean not
Speaker 1: that I wish death on anybody, but if someone were
Speaker 1: to die who was bad, I would obviously be not happy,
Speaker 1: but not upset, I guess, is what I'm saying. Um,
Speaker 1: obviously have to respect the dead and Trump, you know,
Speaker 1: you have to be a dead Trump to me, would
Speaker 1: get a lot of my respect, Like I'd say, hats
Speaker 1: off to you, sir for no longer beat alive anyhow.
Speaker 1: But but on the one hand, I'm like, Wow, what
Speaker 1: interesting news that I'm not in any way excited about,
Speaker 1: but funny, funny, situation with Trump dying and then on
Speaker 1: the other hand, very upset because not upset, I guess,
Speaker 1: but surprised to learn that perhaps Trump isn't dead and
Speaker 1: just it's just a whole uh you know, pot pourri.
Speaker 1: I would say, of of emotions, a real, real mixed
Speaker 1: emotion situation. But anyhow, let's back up, because we're talking
Speaker 1: about the now, and I want to talk about the
Speaker 1: reason now, the back then, now then now from a
Speaker 1: week ago. So for many months, Elon Musk, the CEO
Speaker 1: of Tesla Motors, and the CEO of SpaceX, I guess,
Speaker 1: I want to say, and the CEO of Starlink also,
Speaker 1: I think. Anyhow, Uh, he's been threatening to buy Twitter.
Speaker 1: It started a joke on Twitter. Of course, He's like,
Speaker 1: I should buy Twitter, and all the Elon Musk fanboys
Speaker 1: were like, yeah, Mr Musk, do it, you know, like
Speaker 1: bring freedom of speech back to Twitter or whatever because
Speaker 1: they think their freedom of speech doesn't exist or something
Speaker 1: on Twitter because they can't say the N word. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna and this is all gonna make sense in a second,
Speaker 1: but that is the reason why they think there's no
Speaker 1: freedom of speech on Twitter, is because they want to
Speaker 1: say the N word, but then they say it and
Speaker 1: then they get banned or whatever shadow banned or whatever
Speaker 1: fantasy they think is going on their little intell brains.
Speaker 1: But anyhow, they're like, Mr Musk, please buy Twitter. We
Speaker 1: would love that. And then you know, Elon sort of
Speaker 1: acted like he was going to and then was like, no,
Speaker 1: he's not gonna do it, and then eventually made some
Speaker 1: formal offer for Twitter. Then Twitter accepted his offer. Then
Speaker 1: all these banks were like, hey, we're gonna give you
Speaker 1: money for Twitter because you're Elon Muskus is a very
Speaker 1: successful business man. You know what to do with the
Speaker 1: social network if you got one. And then in the
Speaker 1: midst of buying Twitter, Elon must was like, I'm not
Speaker 1: buying Twitter anymore. I just want to make sure that
Speaker 1: everybody has the lay of the land. Okay. Then at
Speaker 1: some point he's like, I'm not buying Twitter anymore. It's
Speaker 1: full of bots. Twitter sucks, It's terrible. Why would I
Speaker 1: spend forty four billion dollars on that, which is what
Speaker 1: he was going to pay for it. Then the Twitter
Speaker 1: people were like, actually, you can't do that. You said
Speaker 1: you were gonna buy Twitter, and now we have to
Speaker 1: go to court. We're gonna take you to court in
Speaker 1: Delaware Chancery Court, which is a court that nobody had
Speaker 1: ever heard of until a couple of months ago, when
Speaker 1: Elon Buss was like, I don't want to buy Twitter anymore.
Speaker 1: They're like, we're gonna take you to Delaware chancer Recort
Speaker 1: and you're gonna have to buy Twitter. And then, after
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks or a month of getting ready
Speaker 1: for the big trial for you know, Elon Must back
Speaker 1: and now to buying Twitter. He's like, oh, okay, I
Speaker 1: guess I'll buy Twitter because it turns out I'm gonna
Speaker 1: lose this case. And if I lose it, either gonna
Speaker 1: have to buy Twitter by force because I signed a
Speaker 1: contract and that's what happens, or I'm gonna, like have
Speaker 1: to lay out a bunch of money, like billions and
Speaker 1: billions of dollars for nothing. So what seemed implausible, impossible, ridiculous,
Speaker 1: absurd only a few months ago that the guy who
Speaker 1: runs Tesla, who is like an edge lord on Twitter
Speaker 1: was going to own Twitter, Elon must successfully completed his
Speaker 1: purchase of Twitter dot com, also known as the Internet's
Speaker 1: comments section. So now that I've given you all that background, Lyra,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're feeling like you understand the situation now
Speaker 1: better than ever. Yeah, So Elon Mosque owns Twitter. He's
Speaker 1: owned it for I don't know, a week, less than
Speaker 1: a week maybe at this point. I mean when you
Speaker 1: hear this podcast, he'll have owned it for like a
Speaker 1: week or something. Let's call it that. He started by
Speaker 1: bringing a sink into the Twitter lobby and then doing
Speaker 1: a tweet that was like I met Twitter. Let that
Speaker 1: sink in, which you know, in this grand scheme of jokes,
Speaker 1: is like one of the worst ones, but you know,
Speaker 1: a fair game, like you're trying, you know, he had
Speaker 1: David Fielder write that one for him or whatever, as
Speaker 1: alleged by a New York Times report that he has
Speaker 1: like he wants Nathan Fielder to be his friend or something.
Speaker 1: But if Nathan Fielder gave him that, that sounds like
Speaker 1: Nathan Fielder prints. That's correct. That Nathan Fielder is doing
Speaker 1: the ultimate troll where he's like, yeah, Elon, like I
Speaker 1: like you, like you're cool, Like let me help you out,
Speaker 1: like I'd love to write some jokes for you, and
Speaker 1: then he writes like really bad dumb jokes that all
Speaker 1: people who are legitimately funny, who aren't like an in
Speaker 1: cell because I don't think in cells can be funny personally.
Speaker 1: They're like, that's not funny, and Elon Musk is like,
Speaker 1: this is cool. Nathan Fielder gave it to be. Nathan
Speaker 1: Fielder was like, I mean, he wouldn't do muahaha or whatever,
Speaker 1: but you know, in his mind, I would assume something
Speaker 1: like that. Anyhow. So he arrives at Twitter, he takes
Speaker 1: over Twitter, He fires the CEO, se fo, the head
Speaker 1: of like trust and security, who I guess like all
Speaker 1: the Elon Musk fanboys hate because she's a woman, and
Speaker 1: like ban Donald Trump. And then uh, immediately, immediately, all
Speaker 1: of these data tracking services, all these Twitter tracking services,
Speaker 1: like we've seen a fifteen thousand percent rise rise in
Speaker 1: the N word being tweeted on Twitter, and we've seen
Speaker 1: like a three thousand percent rise and I've remect and
Speaker 1: being mentioned on Twitter. And it's like, immediately these people
Speaker 1: think that Elon Musk has like pulled the whatever the
Speaker 1: rip chord of censorship that's been happening on Twitter, and
Speaker 1: they can talk about all these dumb things and say
Speaker 1: all these like rude things, and you know, talking about
Speaker 1: how they hate the Jews and hate black people, and
Speaker 1: so that starts like just spiraling out of control on Twitter.
Speaker 1: So then, in addition to you know, the rampant N
Speaker 1: word use and other horrible things um that spiked, Elon
Speaker 1: Musk then retweets some bullshit story about Paul Pelo's see
Speaker 1: some like completely unfounded, zero fact possessing story about you
Speaker 1: know this Nancy Pelosi essentially kidnapping, an assassination attempt, her
Speaker 1: husband was beaten with a hammer, And he tweets some
Speaker 1: story about I believe it's like him having to prostitute
Speaker 1: there or something, some ridiculous fantasy land Q and on
Speaker 1: right wing conspiracy that's totally baseless in every way, shape
Speaker 1: and form, not bounded by any sort of fact whatsoever.
Speaker 1: And of course, you know rightfully, so there's an enormous
Speaker 1: amount of backlash. But by the time the backlash is
Speaker 1: happening and Elon Musk he did delete the tweet, hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of people have now seen this like total
Speaker 1: like misinformation, bullshit. And meanwhile Elon Musk has tweeted some
Speaker 1: message to advertisers which is like he's not he doesn't
Speaker 1: want to let this become a hell escape, which obviously
Speaker 1: isn't true because it's immediately a hell escape. I mean, listen,
Speaker 1: if you're listening to this, you probably already know this
Speaker 1: because you're very online. And how much more can I
Speaker 1: say about this? But in the few days that Elon
Speaker 1: Musk is own Twitter, it's very obvious that one he
Speaker 1: doesn't know what to do with it, and that two
Speaker 1: whatever he does with it is probably gonna be dumb
Speaker 1: and bad. Uh. And three he'll be blamed for all
Speaker 1: of it by his critics and loved for it by
Speaker 1: his fans, which is great. So this sort of culminates
Speaker 1: with some story that he's gonna start charging people from
Speaker 1: blue check marks. So the idea that, like, what will
Speaker 1: it be like when Elon Musk owns Twitter is like
Speaker 1: quickly coming into focus. Right, people who are bad and
Speaker 1: stupid and shitty feel emboldened. Elon Musk as a leader
Speaker 1: is sort of bad and stupid and shitty in a
Speaker 1: bunch of different ways about information. That's not to say
Speaker 1: he's not a smart person, Like you can be really
Speaker 1: smart about certain things but be dumb about others, Like
Speaker 1: I certainly am that about all sorts of stuff. So
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's sort of like watching the end
Speaker 1: of Twitter to me in real time. And I've like
Speaker 1: talked about it and I've written about the end of
Speaker 1: Twitter and over the years, because I think it's always
Speaker 1: been a social network that's kind of the most on
Speaker 1: life support of all of the social networks in the
Speaker 1: sense that it never really found its stride. Its best
Speaker 1: moments are kind of the worst moments, right Like for Twitter,
Speaker 1: the biggest it's ever been is when Donald Trump was
Speaker 1: tweeting like a maniac on Twitter. I said before, it's
Speaker 1: like the comments section for all of the content everywhere
Speaker 1: on the Internet, and that is really what it feels like,
Speaker 1: you know, if anything, as I look at what is
Speaker 1: happening with Twitter in this post pandemic world, in this
Speaker 1: like very online world where everybody feels, I think increasingly
Speaker 1: this desire for distance from the discourse, like distance from
Speaker 1: the always online state that we have lived in. I
Speaker 1: see a kind of logical conclusion in the Twitter purchase
Speaker 1: in Elon Musk owning it, which is that everything he's
Speaker 1: done thus far in the short period of time, and
Speaker 1: I mean everything, has been a signal that the people
Speaker 1: who really like to use it are going to leave
Speaker 1: or are going to not enjoy it and want to leave.
Speaker 1: And in fact, there was a report a week or
Speaker 1: two ago that Vice had that the super users of Twitter,
Speaker 1: which is that of the users who create the content
Speaker 1: that most people are interacting with on Twitter, are already
Speaker 1: there's already attrition. They're they're already leaving. And to me,
Speaker 1: what I've seen with Ellen owning it is that attrition
Speaker 1: is only going to be accelerated, and it's not that
Speaker 1: they're going somewhere else. I think there's an entire generation
Speaker 1: of people who have used this thing that just don't
Speaker 1: want to be anywhere at all right now. That they
Speaker 1: don't want to be online. They don't want to be
Speaker 1: in constant arguments with random people on the internet. They
Speaker 1: don't see a utility in trying to make their point
Speaker 1: in a sort of black hole of opinion where ideas
Speaker 1: go to die, which is sort of what Twitter is.
Speaker 1: I'm one of these people. I used to tweet all
Speaker 1: the time. I was tweeting constantly until a few years ago,
Speaker 1: and then sort of slowly ebbed away and more and
Speaker 1: more like I'll sit down, I'll open Twitter, I'll look
Speaker 1: at it. I'll even maybe write a tweet about something
Speaker 1: or reached about to I'm about to retweet something or
Speaker 1: comment on something that somebody said, and then I just
Speaker 1: think it's the fucking point, you know, what's the point?
Speaker 1: Like I'm yelling into the void. They're yelling into the void,
Speaker 1: and nothing good is going to come of it. And
Speaker 1: so in the midst of all of this, you still
Speaker 1: have got this kind of specter of Twitter being that
Speaker 1: people talking about like the town square and the place where,
Speaker 1: you know, this is the global consciousness and where we
Speaker 1: all are talking and experiencing life on planet Earth, and
Speaker 1: how we're gonna you know, go to the become glowing
Speaker 1: orbs of pure thought or whatever if we just have
Speaker 1: enough discourse on Twitter. And and you know, I think
Speaker 1: in a way this whole thing exposes kind of the
Speaker 1: smallness of it, right, the kind of they the fragility
Speaker 1: of all of it. And is it actually the town square?
Speaker 1: You know? And if it's the town's where for whatever
Speaker 1: reality we live in it, is it the place where
Speaker 1: we're watching public hangings or is it the place where
Speaker 1: we see the greatest philosophers of our time engage in discourse?
Speaker 1: And I think it's probably the former more than it
Speaker 1: is the latter, and everybody's kind of like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't want to watch the hanging. Like sure, some people
Speaker 1: will still show up for the gore, but a lot
Speaker 1: of people just don't want that to be a part
Speaker 1: of their lives. And so, you know, as I'm sort
Speaker 1: of contemplating the end of this era, which is a
Speaker 1: post V two social media, like i'd say like Facebook
Speaker 1: and Twitter are kind of V two if my Space
Speaker 1: and friends to r V one of social media, Instagram, Facebook,
Speaker 1: Twitter are sort of V two, and they sort of
Speaker 1: like post V two world that we're gonna live in,
Speaker 1: and thinking about all of this stuff and thinking about
Speaker 1: the ramifications of not just Twitter, but this era of
Speaker 1: social media kind of coming to a close. You know.
Speaker 1: I thought about people that I know and that I've
Speaker 1: observed who have actually maybe lived this and really thought
Speaker 1: about out at and I started thinking about Gia Tolentino. Lyrah,
Speaker 1: do you know Gia Tolentino. I do. She was big
Speaker 1: on Twitter, and she was somebody who was like a
Speaker 1: central character on Twitter, very online. I think Gia represents
Speaker 1: a very online generation which I think I'm part of
Speaker 1: for sure, And I think there's a whole generation of
Speaker 1: people who were raised by the Internet. I talked about
Speaker 1: these people all the time. To me, they're a real
Speaker 1: demographic that's very different than most people. But then there's
Speaker 1: a whole segment of that audience that is like, I
Speaker 1: don't want to be on the Internet anymore. And I
Speaker 1: think Gia, who wrote this amazing book Trick Mirror and
Speaker 1: also again previously super Online, maybe like the vanguard or
Speaker 1: at least, has been thinking a lot about what it's
Speaker 1: like if you're not so online anymore, and what that
Speaker 1: means for you as a human being on planet Earth.
Speaker 1: So g is here. G is here, and we're going
Speaker 1: to talk to her now about the Internet. Before we
Speaker 1: get started, I just want to say that you have
Speaker 1: done something on the Internet that has sort of like
Speaker 1: broke my brain a little bit. About your name on Instagram.
Speaker 1: Your name is Gia Tortellini. This is correct. That's like
Speaker 1: your screen name, Okay, And so when I see your
Speaker 1: name now, like wherever I see it, my brain is like,
Speaker 1: your actual name is wrong and it should be Tortalini,
Speaker 1: which makes no sense. So can yeah, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: like it's op seck, it's you know, it's just a
Speaker 1: better name. It's harder to find. It's also slightly unprofessional,
Speaker 1: Like I really believe in that, and that's kind of
Speaker 1: my stance on all of it. You basically quit Twitter
Speaker 1: for two years. Can you talk about what spurred that
Speaker 1: and you know the experience of what it's been like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I had gotten on Twitter late because I
Speaker 1: was in the Peace Corps until eleven and I didn't
Speaker 1: get on Twitter until late, I think, when I started
Speaker 1: grad school and I was starting to write for the Internet,
Speaker 1: and I was outside New York. I didn't know anyone
Speaker 1: in New York, and I had been without internet for
Speaker 1: a year in the Peace Corps, and so it seemed
Speaker 1: incredibly generative and interesting, and you know, I could see
Speaker 1: all these things that I couldn't see from ann Arbor, Michigan,
Speaker 1: and I could listen in on these conversations and whatever.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have a career if not for it. It
Speaker 1: was my only connection to the media world. It was like,
Speaker 1: I was quote unquote good on Twitter and good with
Speaker 1: these mechanisms of self commodification and self broadcasting that have
Speaker 1: become the center of the Internet. So I kind of
Speaker 1: wrote that and I was having fun. And I remember
Speaker 1: I was in the All Websites campfire. Everyone was making
Speaker 1: jokes about how they wanted the Internet to burn down
Speaker 1: all the time, and I was like, what are these
Speaker 1: jaded people talking about. You know, it's like, the Internet
Speaker 1: is so fun, get on my goog reader every day
Speaker 1: and discover something new, you know. But then, you know,
Speaker 1: that was like my first two years on Twitter was
Speaker 1: feeling like that. I moved to New York to take
Speaker 1: a job editing features for Jezebel and then got engulfed in,
Speaker 1: you know, in a different kind of scale, right, a
Speaker 1: website where you could run something and you know, this
Speaker 1: was very new to me, where you could get a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people read reading it and yelling at you
Speaker 1: very very quickly, and I found it exciting. I was
Speaker 1: found it a little dangerous, you know. You remember Gaker
Speaker 1: was constantly getting in trouble and we were always sucking up.
Speaker 1: But it we had this total freedom, and it was
Speaker 1: like the first time that I had really experienced how
Speaker 1: intensely adversarial Twitter could be. And mostly I was like, well,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a gauntlet. You figure out if you
Speaker 1: can navigate it. If you can't, you can't. And then
Speaker 1: I started working with The New Yorker in and around
Speaker 1: the time that Trump got elected, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this whole Arab spring like promise of the global town
Speaker 1: square where everything trends towards liberal democracy and increasing freedom,
Speaker 1: the whole Obama era democratization of media that I had
Speaker 1: been a part of, you know, all these people that
Speaker 1: never would have had any entry into the field, like me,
Speaker 1: you know, who were able to because of Twitter. The
Speaker 1: full on identitarian backlash against the Obama era opening up
Speaker 1: of culture that was made possible via the Internet was
Speaker 1: hitting right around that. The first essay in my book
Speaker 1: is about this. I was writing it to try to
Speaker 1: go about answering one specific question, and that question was
Speaker 1: why did the Internet feel so good ten years ago?
Speaker 1: And why does it feel so so bad right now?
Speaker 1: And you know, implicitly like, what are the ways in
Speaker 1: which it will continue to get worse? Right anyway? So
Speaker 1: I finished my book in early and like every year,
Speaker 1: I would intervene in my seasonal depression during Super Bowl
Speaker 1: weekend by taking myself to the beach, like in North
Speaker 1: Beach and just getting high in reading books, like completely
Speaker 1: by myself, not speaking to anyone for like three days.
Speaker 1: And I did that, and I I just turned my
Speaker 1: book in and the first book that I opened on
Speaker 1: the beach while extremely stoned was Jenny O'Dell's How to
Speaker 1: Do Nothing, Um, you know, which is an incredible book,
Speaker 1: and it is you know, making the argument, you know,
Speaker 1: basically against capitalist instrumentalization, this idea that everything we need
Speaker 1: to do needs to be productive visible that in fact,
Speaker 1: the actually important things in life are not quantifiable, they're
Speaker 1: not efficient, they're caregiving and maintenance and all these things
Speaker 1: that these platforms don't recognize even as as any part
Speaker 1: of life at all, like these thoughts that cannot be
Speaker 1: put onto Twitter basically. And I was like, okay, I
Speaker 1: have to really change my relationship with the Internet. So
Speaker 1: right then, I put blockers on my computer and on
Speaker 1: my phone that I couldn't use social media for more
Speaker 1: than forty five minutes a day. And and so I
Speaker 1: would it would like it would actually block you because
Speaker 1: like there's yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I do the nuclear
Speaker 1: and well and it's it's called self control on Google Chrome,
Speaker 1: and I use freedom on my you know, the super
Speaker 1: Orwellian like I gotta turn on my self control and
Speaker 1: my freedom. You know that on its own is such
Speaker 1: a this topic sort of weird, but I needed it,
Speaker 1: Like I can't stop looking at my stuff on social media,
Speaker 1: so I have an app called Freedom or whatever which
Speaker 1: allows me to be a person, not this thing on
Speaker 1: the internet. Yeah, and then whence Freedom would stop working
Speaker 1: because it's a glitchy app, I would be like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, my freedom, Like what happened to my freedom?
Speaker 1: And so starting I had already been really significantly trying
Speaker 1: to curb my usage, and then in my book came out,
Speaker 1: I had a best case scenario experience, but I found
Speaker 1: it just horrifically um self alienating. I was always like,
Speaker 1: it's okay as long as I can be completely myself.
Speaker 1: It's okay, as long as as long as I'm not
Speaker 1: manufacturing a different self for the internet. But then the
Speaker 1: proportions that resulted from having a book that was that
Speaker 1: was much more successful than I ever, ever, ever, ever,
Speaker 1: ever had an inkling that it possibly even could be.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like a book of nine word essays
Speaker 1: like right correctly wrong. But oh mom had releases something
Speaker 1: every year where he's like, these are the books that
Speaker 1: I loved or whatever, and your your book is on it, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know you will. You don't expect that you
Speaker 1: don't And and it was just suddenly it was not
Speaker 1: possible to be the fundamental way that I had always
Speaker 1: believed in being in the world, which is just totally reciprocal,
Speaker 1: totally open to anything. Like strangers would send me long
Speaker 1: emails and I'd emailed them back, and I was just like,
Speaker 1: this is no longer proportionately possible. And it made me upset,
Speaker 1: making me feel like there was some reason to put
Speaker 1: some sort of guard up, made me feel really bad
Speaker 1: and weird and not at all like myself. And so
Speaker 1: I started tweeting way less. And then the pandemic happened
Speaker 1: six months later, and the feeling that I had had
Speaker 1: since my book came out that I needed to get
Speaker 1: off the Internet, that I was too visible, both in
Speaker 1: terms of praise or negativity. You know, it proved itself
Speaker 1: to be true. I had a big wave of sort
Speaker 1: of being the Twitter main character in in mail down
Speaker 1: May of the pandemic, there was this poem that went
Speaker 1: viral about me that some old dude had written. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like in some literary magazine published it with the
Speaker 1: title Geo Tolentino and now it's on no your meme
Speaker 1: dot com. Like it was just like I need to
Speaker 1: and I was still on it for work to some extent.
Speaker 1: But then in August I was about to have a baby,
Speaker 1: and I was like, you know, it's now or never,
Speaker 1: because I'm going to be up all night, in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night for for months, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to be scrolling. I'm going to be reading something and
Speaker 1: I don't want it to be Twitter. And so I
Speaker 1: figured I shouldn't make a clean break now and see
Speaker 1: how long I can stay off. And I'm still off.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so much there that you've touched on
Speaker 1: that was such a long answer. I'm sorry, No, No,
Speaker 1: it was good. It was good because you actually went
Speaker 1: through like a million of the things that have been
Speaker 1: on my mind and are sort of weighing on me
Speaker 1: as I think about this idea of ourselves in places
Speaker 1: like Twitter and how we view ourselves and what that
Speaker 1: means like for how we live. I think we've built
Speaker 1: an unsustainable system. Right. There's all this very altruistic language
Speaker 1: around every social network about how it's this like lofty
Speaker 1: thing that we're all hurtling towards Jack Dorsey's like it's
Speaker 1: the you know, global consciousness, and people called Twitter a
Speaker 1: town square and Mark Zuckerberg talks about how his pursuitent
Speaker 1: life is to connect the world. But it seems increasingly
Speaker 1: that the scale of those connections is like breaking people's minds.
Speaker 1: It's like kind of ruining like humanity in a way.
Speaker 1: And so you've kind of backed away from it, And
Speaker 1: I wonder, like does something come out after this, Like
Speaker 1: what is the next stage of this, Like does it
Speaker 1: just metastic size? Does it get worse? Or like is
Speaker 1: there an off ramp? Have you found the off ramp?
Speaker 1: Like what what is your view on that? I think
Speaker 1: that there is no off ramp within the economic concentatives
Speaker 1: of the companies themselves, right, I mean, they literally cannot
Speaker 1: be profitable unless more people spend more time on there,
Speaker 1: and there's no way for that to be possible without
Speaker 1: all of those things happening that break our brains, right,
Speaker 1: you know, Like I always think about the way Patricia
Speaker 1: lockwould put it in that great novel of hers that
Speaker 1: just came out about the Internet. The attention moves on
Speaker 1: the Internet like the shine on a school of fish.
Speaker 1: What we're talking about is just the baseline logic of
Speaker 1: capitalist accumulation, right where the teleological vision is perpetual growth,
Speaker 1: perpetual increase, perpetual volume, perpetual scale. I don't want to
Speaker 1: downplay you know, let's say me too our Black lives matter,
Speaker 1: but I really think that the movements that have had
Speaker 1: real teeth in the real world that have come up
Speaker 1: off of Twitter and Facebook, like, they have all been
Speaker 1: reactionary and they have far outweighed the positive consequences of
Speaker 1: you know, the progressive gains that have been you know,
Speaker 1: one on these platforms. The kinds of actual connection that
Speaker 1: have been made are incredibly destructive. And you know, I
Speaker 1: would think about during the protests in I got all
Speaker 1: of my information about where to go off of Twitter
Speaker 1: and off of Instagram, you know, but the action was
Speaker 1: happening offline, and the effect overall is that of profound
Speaker 1: isolation and loneliness and alienation. And you know, there's no
Speaker 1: way that I can see any of these company is
Speaker 1: doing anything but promising one and delivering the other. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean most of my friends have stopped tweeting, you know,
Speaker 1: I'll say that, you know, there is a sort of
Speaker 1: generational thing happening. I mean, I've had similar experience. I
Speaker 1: haven't like full on left, Twitter or any of these
Speaker 1: social networks, but like the amount of posting that I
Speaker 1: do comparatively is way way down, Like I can barely
Speaker 1: find anything to talk about. And I think there is
Speaker 1: something that has happened driven by the pandemic a little bit,
Speaker 1: the fact that we've had just so much Internet that
Speaker 1: it almost feels like overwhelming. But but also it does
Speaker 1: seem like there's sort of our maturing relationship with the Internet.
Speaker 1: It's like, why does this need to be said in public? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean right in your book, you quote Jason Cocky,
Speaker 1: who's like one of the original bloggers on the Internet.
Speaker 1: He says something like he didn't make any sense to
Speaker 1: write my personal thoughts down, not on the Internet. Actual
Speaker 1: reminded me of truth or Dare the Madonna documentary when
Speaker 1: Warren Batty's talking to Madonna about how like they're filming
Speaker 1: and he hates it because he's old and she's like
Speaker 1: way younger than him, and she's making this documentary which
Speaker 1: is really good for her, and they're filming everything thing
Speaker 1: and he's like, there's nothing to say off camera. Would
Speaker 1: you say something if it's off camera, which is exactly
Speaker 1: what he was expressing. So there's obviously like these generational
Speaker 1: sort of ebbs and flows of this, like the one
Speaker 1: thing that I keep hoping for. And I think we
Speaker 1: see a little bit with like the attrition of things
Speaker 1: like on Facebook, where it's becoming more and more old
Speaker 1: people and like boomers and fewer and fewer young people
Speaker 1: want to be a part of it. Is it a
Speaker 1: generational change that happens where people reject this? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think every generation has their social network, and the boomers
Speaker 1: have Facebook, and you know, millennials have Instagram and and
Speaker 1: gen z has TikTok or whatever else, right, Like I
Speaker 1: think that that's Is that better? No? I think I
Speaker 1: don't think it's better. I mean, I don't think it's
Speaker 1: better until you know, I would be great if the
Speaker 1: next iteration would be one in which proportions were gated.
Speaker 1: You know, people are desiring some sort of online interaction
Speaker 1: that will reflect rather than distort real life. And I
Speaker 1: felt a little bit that way. I was a kid
Speaker 1: that liked to be on stage and love to talk
Speaker 1: to everybody, and I felt that I felt like, why
Speaker 1: would I not like have my thoughts open to the
Speaker 1: world and see who was interested. It's also part of
Speaker 1: the personality of being a writer, you know. I mean
Speaker 1: that's literally still my job. But I do feel like
Speaker 1: there's been a big sort of mountain where there were
Speaker 1: a lot of people who were like, why wouldn't we
Speaker 1: do this, Why wouldn't we see what happens, what could
Speaker 1: result if a bunch of people are looking, and who
Speaker 1: we could become, and what and what we could make
Speaker 1: of this? And then we saw it and we were like, no.
Speaker 1: We took the algorithmic and economic incentive that had become
Speaker 1: like an emotional one, this idea of what is the
Speaker 1: maximum number of people that I could get to see
Speaker 1: and applaud this right, it's a basic human desire in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways that was just stretched beyond all
Speaker 1: reason by the profit model these companies. And we saw
Speaker 1: what it means, and it means every day on Twitter
Speaker 1: there's a main character you know, like it It means
Speaker 1: doc saying, it means getting swat teams sent to your door.
Speaker 1: It means things that people actually don't want. I don't
Speaker 1: think that you could make a social media company that
Speaker 1: is as profitable as these companies would like to be
Speaker 1: on any humane structure, Like there's no scale, it's humane
Speaker 1: that fits with like the capitalistic model. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: think that the fantasy of endless growth will ever will
Speaker 1: ever map onto like any sort of healthy social network,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think it's really possible in any
Speaker 1: industry with any model at all, but certainly not with
Speaker 1: social media. On top of this conversation about how the
Speaker 1: Internet is sort of breaking what we know of humanity,
Speaker 1: how much of it is real? Right, because we talked
Speaker 1: a little bit the beginning about Twitter and the scale
Speaker 1: of its audience, and and you and I are people
Speaker 1: in media, and we're surrounded by other people in media,
Speaker 1: and in some ways those people do chart the conversation
Speaker 1: for a much larger audience that isn't in places like Twitter,
Speaker 1: and maybe isn't on Facebook. But is that real? You've
Speaker 1: been off Twitter, you've been basically not using it for
Speaker 1: several years. Did you feel in that time that, like
Speaker 1: the things that were happening on the Internet, did they
Speaker 1: crop up in your regular quotes around and I don't
Speaker 1: you know, you're regular real life. Did it feel like
Speaker 1: without Twitter that you were still exposed to the kinds
Speaker 1: of things that were happening on Twitter, or did it
Speaker 1: change like your perception of what actually is very real
Speaker 1: in the world. I think getting off Twitter didn't change
Speaker 1: because I think I had registered, you know, these things
Speaker 1: where you're like, why the funk is everyone talking about
Speaker 1: fucking shrimp and cinnamon toast crunch or whatever? You know,
Speaker 1: like like those things always registered. They had been registering
Speaker 1: for a really long time, you know. I think you
Speaker 1: spend that. Actually, what you just cited is interesting because
Speaker 1: it is like the six o'clock news story towards the
Speaker 1: end of the broadcast where they're like shrimp and what
Speaker 1: is it? Cinnamon toast shrimp and cinnamon toast crunch, And
Speaker 1: it's like a little item about how some guy found
Speaker 1: a shrimp in his cinnamon toast crunch, which, like there's
Speaker 1: stories like that all the time. You did not cite
Speaker 1: some big drama that was playing out, right, Like is
Speaker 1: it stuff like that like that actually break through to reality. Well,
Speaker 1: I it's a little more. It's a little more personal
Speaker 1: in this respect because I had had several sort of
Speaker 1: shifts in my attentional priorities kind of both intentional and not.
Speaker 1: And I had written about internet ephemera a lot. I'd
Speaker 1: written about sucking memes, you know, like I was just
Speaker 1: writing about garbage all the time because I loved having
Speaker 1: my face and garbage all day, you know. And then,
Speaker 1: you know, as soon as COVID started, and my face
Speaker 1: was in nothing but garbage all day, and I didn't
Speaker 1: have this vibrant you know, rough around the edges, just
Speaker 1: normal life, you know, to loom much larger than the Internet.
Speaker 1: Every time I, you know, put down my phone, I
Speaker 1: stopped being interested in Internet ephemera. I stopped being interested
Speaker 1: to see if I could write eleven hundred words about
Speaker 1: what some bullshit thing that a bunch of teenagers were
Speaker 1: saying could mean about whatever, you know, Like I couldn't
Speaker 1: write that kind of piece anymore. And I had always
Speaker 1: blocked out a lot of things. I had always taken
Speaker 1: a lot of pleasure and just not learning about something
Speaker 1: that it didn't seem like I needed to know about.
Speaker 1: I think that one of the brain diseases that Twitter
Speaker 1: gives people is the idea they need to have an
Speaker 1: opinion on everything. This is a disease that's also common
Speaker 1: among opinion writers, like of which I was, and a
Speaker 1: kind of one, and so I always it's just like
Speaker 1: posters disease, posters disease, Bill, It's it's adjacent to posters ease.
Speaker 1: I think it's like op end writer's disease, right where
Speaker 1: you're like, what does this mean about this? It's like
Speaker 1: sometimes ship doesn't have to mean ship about ship, and
Speaker 1: you can just you know, like read a book and whatever. Right,
Speaker 1: And so it's like what Britain says about it, unless
Speaker 1: you really mean it, you don't have to write that.
Speaker 1: You don't have to. And but that isn't that a
Speaker 1: product of the hot take industrial complex? Like isn't that
Speaker 1: are we We've accelerated the need for content so people
Speaker 1: have to constantly come up with Actually, the hot take
Speaker 1: industrial complex has has has folded a bit. People have
Speaker 1: realized that, like, actually, you can just sit this one out.
Speaker 1: Although I get on Twitter now and I see people
Speaker 1: being like, hey, you can just sit this one out,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, the real sitting this one out is
Speaker 1: just nut saying yeah, not saying that. You know that.
Speaker 1: I know it's you're right, The hot tache world has
Speaker 1: somewhat imploded because and I think that's good. I know
Speaker 1: it's definitely good because like the scale of content is
Speaker 1: and this is feeds right back into what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Is this like belief that there is this sort of
Speaker 1: infinite adience that you can go and grab, like if
Speaker 1: you have a million people reading, maybe you can have
Speaker 1: five million people reading, maybe ten million. And to your
Speaker 1: point about the capitalistic sort of underpinions of it, there's
Speaker 1: this demand for up to the level of, hey, you're
Speaker 1: an op ed writer and you have to write something
Speaker 1: about this, but down to I have to say something
Speaker 1: on Twitter, right, there's like the machine demands yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean and and literally the machine does demand it. Back
Speaker 1: to the thing that you were talking about earlier with
Speaker 1: the vision of the self. This is against something that
Speaker 1: I wrote about in the book, but it's like the
Speaker 1: greatest pleasure that I've ever had in my life are
Speaker 1: moments in which my selfhood has dissolved, right, moments where
Speaker 1: I feel a total dissolution of the ego. Whether it's
Speaker 1: I'm like around my friends, or I'm out dancing, or
Speaker 1: am I an acid or you know, like walking in
Speaker 1: the park with my dog, just things where you feel
Speaker 1: the boundaries of yourself disappearing. On the Internet, all it
Speaker 1: does is sore those up and position you at the
Speaker 1: center of a universe at which we are most certainly
Speaker 1: not the center. And that was something that I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about for a long time. And since getting off Twitter,
Speaker 1: one thing I have not been able to spend any
Speaker 1: less time on my phone. My brain did feel clearer
Speaker 1: and better because I, you know, didn't have this useless
Speaker 1: cacophony of you know, of ship that no one would
Speaker 1: remember the next day. You know, I didn't have that
Speaker 1: pointed in my eyes at all time. But I sort
Speaker 1: of was secretly like, maybe I'll start having these amazing ideas,
Speaker 1: like maybe my brain will start being incredibly original, like
Speaker 1: genius will pour forth because I'm finally you know, And
Speaker 1: it's like, no, I was actually any time to be
Speaker 1: bored or whatever so we can generate. And if anything,
Speaker 1: I was dumber being off Twitter because my brain wasn't
Speaker 1: just kind of being sharpened by these little like razor sharp,
Speaker 1: tiny useless irritants. But but were you off Twitter and
Speaker 1: Instagram and everything else? Like I don't know what you use?
Speaker 1: I mean obviously, like I said, you're on Instagram, you
Speaker 1: don't post that I use. I use Instagram. I don't
Speaker 1: follow celebrities like I follow my friends and then I
Speaker 1: follow a lot of like National Park and dog and
Speaker 1: meme accounts, but so Instagram is a pretty positive space
Speaker 1: for me. Well, it's interesting on Instagram is I've actually
Speaker 1: I feel allergic now almost seeing like regular Instagram images,
Speaker 1: like I think there's something about again, maybe like the
Speaker 1: deep Grape Juice boys, like yes, no, I want. I'm
Speaker 1: like everything I followed recently has been like largely meme accounts,
Speaker 1: and it is just I've been like putting these in
Speaker 1: like a WhatsApp conversation that I have with with some
Speaker 1: friends and family, and they were like, you have posters disease,
Speaker 1: Like what's going on? Like all you're doing is like
Speaker 1: putting these memes in here, and I'm like, yeah, just no.
Speaker 1: I mean I like to think that they're great, but
Speaker 1: I mean they're not mine, you know, I'm just borrowing.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting though, that is a place where if
Speaker 1: you go back a few years ago, pre pandemic, for sure,
Speaker 1: Instagram was like you might follow people who like looking
Speaker 1: at their content is some form of self harm where
Speaker 1: you're like this person seems to be having like a
Speaker 1: life that is so good and so enjoyable and so beautiful.
Speaker 1: And my life by comparison, feel so small and ugly.
Speaker 1: And I assume the mainstream user is still looking at
Speaker 1: that stuff more, but I think that is still the
Speaker 1: economic engine is like hot women on vacation being like
Speaker 1: I have anxiety and like that's that's it now, right,
Speaker 1: But there usage is dropping like precipitously, Like I mean,
Speaker 1: somebody was just tweeting about I sound so deranged. I'm like,
Speaker 1: somebody was just tweeting about Instagram's users are like kind
Speaker 1: of going, you know, leaving the service. But that is true. Um,
Speaker 1: the numbers are going down, and like, I guess where
Speaker 1: I get to and perhaps you know where we can
Speaker 1: conclude this exploration of what the funk is going on
Speaker 1: on the Internet and what happens next? You know, is
Speaker 1: it that okay? Well, all that attention just went over
Speaker 1: to TikTok, and like on TikTok, not only is it
Speaker 1: further reinforcement of some of the craziest ship that you've
Speaker 1: ever seen in your life, and it all happening in
Speaker 1: real time like video, Like you don't even get a
Speaker 1: chance to like process it because like you're literally watching
Speaker 1: it before you know what you're doing. Unbelievable decontextualization machine.
Speaker 1: It's wild. But then it's also you know, the data
Speaker 1: is being sold to like foreign entities and whatever is
Speaker 1: going on, you know, like, you know, is it just
Speaker 1: that it just we keep digging a hole, Like is
Speaker 1: TikTok the next big world destroying hole that we are
Speaker 1: digging for ourselves? Or is it the that we don't
Speaker 1: just get better at this as a society. You think,
Speaker 1: as long as it's being driven by capitalism, there's always
Speaker 1: going to be something that is chipping away at our
Speaker 1: identity and our humanity and our society. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I try to think about it in terms of like
Speaker 1: what are the incentives of the company, and then what
Speaker 1: are the incentives of the people on them, and and
Speaker 1: the extent to which Like on TikTok, I mean, the
Speaker 1: incentive of the company is to get as many raw
Speaker 1: hours of video that can then be analyzed by powerful AI,
Speaker 1: you know, to increase like repressive surveillance technology, you know
Speaker 1: on weakers, Like it's like you know, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's not sci fi like that's actually happening now that
Speaker 1: that is exactly what's happening. I mean, that is the
Speaker 1: mildest version of what's happening. But the the user's incentive
Speaker 1: is also to upload as many hours of raw video
Speaker 1: as possible that are watched by as many people as
Speaker 1: possible and engaged with as many as people as possible.
Speaker 1: And I think, like take offline capitalism, we know, to
Speaker 1: whatever extent that still exists, I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: we still do find ways to preserve basic humanity in
Speaker 1: the grip of mechanisms that are incredibly dehumanizing, right, I
Speaker 1: mean the real estate market, right, like just anything like
Speaker 1: the workers at Amazon like managed to unionize and build
Speaker 1: community in the middle of a machine that is literally
Speaker 1: built to break them into the ground. Like I think
Speaker 1: that people are always capable of of surprising themselves and
Speaker 1: resisting the incentives that are presented to them. But I
Speaker 1: also think that the you know, if the if the
Speaker 1: company can only make money, if people engage in this
Speaker 1: endless capitalist accumulation of growth, then people are going to
Speaker 1: do it. Then that is going to be the controlling
Speaker 1: behavior on the platform, and the dynamics that result from
Speaker 1: that will be the controlling ones in culture, and we
Speaker 1: will get Q and on, and we will get people
Speaker 1: storming the capital and we will get constant conspiracy, we
Speaker 1: will get the total dissolution of any idea of shared truth.
Speaker 1: I think my point of view with all of them
Speaker 1: was like, use it as long as you still feel
Speaker 1: like a human. And with me, I can still easily
Speaker 1: use Instagram and feel like a human um, but for Twitter,
Speaker 1: I couldn't anymore. You know, people either embrace not feeling
Speaker 1: like humans, which plenty of people do and have, or
Speaker 1: we back off. It's strange to feel like this ludite
Speaker 1: quality coming out in me when I'm not that old
Speaker 1: and I'm such a creature of the digital world. The
Speaker 1: best of what people are looking for in these platforms
Speaker 1: barely approaches the things that we actually want in real life,
Speaker 1: right The kind of connection, the kind of love, the
Speaker 1: kind of being seen, the kind of fun that people
Speaker 1: are really really looking for. It only really exists in
Speaker 1: real life. And I think people know that, you know,
Speaker 1: probably if you talked to a fift year old right now,
Speaker 1: like they both are deeper in it than either of
Speaker 1: us ever were. And they also probably know that better
Speaker 1: than either of us, do you know? And I wonder
Speaker 1: if those two truths will sort of pull on each
Speaker 1: other from opposite ends. Of the spectrum on people's minds,
Speaker 1: you know, like the recognition of the harm and then
Speaker 1: the participation in it. Sort of feels like what we're
Speaker 1: doing with many things visa v this stage in you know,
Speaker 1: American history. But I think what's amazing where you get to,
Speaker 1: I mean, basically where you get to in that argument
Speaker 1: is sort of like we have to alter the systems
Speaker 1: that make the world function to change the way we
Speaker 1: behave within the systems, like capitalism as a concept, or
Speaker 1: at least the the version of it that currently exists,
Speaker 1: where it is like such an insanely top down capitalism
Speaker 1: where the people who are in the machine have so
Speaker 1: little power to control like their actual fate inside of it.
Speaker 1: It is like we have to like smash capitalism is
Speaker 1: like sort of you know, like a fundamental I think
Speaker 1: that's the answer to every single problem we have, Like
Speaker 1: I'm a change and everything. I mean that that is
Speaker 1: the answer. But but there's also a different way into
Speaker 1: that answer. The way that I'm more think about that
Speaker 1: is that I don't think we were at large would
Speaker 1: have this kind of unhealthy compulsive relationship to the Internet. If,
Speaker 1: for example, let's take the conversation around like representation. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like the frenzy around representational change exists only because
Speaker 1: the avenues towards material change are so cut off and protracted. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like if all of these sectors of labor we're
Speaker 1: not crumbling, and if economic stability were not in many
Speaker 1: ways like tied, especially in case of emergency to visibility
Speaker 1: on these platforms like your go fund me, if your
Speaker 1: kids fucking shot in school. You know, Like it's like
Speaker 1: the way that these platforms are are serving as sort
Speaker 1: of poor substitutes for civic mechanisms and like financial layers
Speaker 1: of security that have been hollowed out by the system.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like I think that that if if
Speaker 1: American life was better, the way that we would interact
Speaker 1: with the Internet would be different. There's a raw and
Speaker 1: desperate edge to this desire to establish like the attentional
Speaker 1: equivalent of a tiny four oh one K or something right, Right,
Speaker 1: We've dissolved the sense of like support of community, and
Speaker 1: we're like looking for it on these vast platforms that
Speaker 1: say they will deliver community and connection and support and
Speaker 1: all those other things that if we had actual like
Speaker 1: support and communities and like networks within our society that's
Speaker 1: that are taking care of people, people felt valued in
Speaker 1: their work by their politicians and by their government. You know,
Speaker 1: like we would be both a lot less, No, I
Speaker 1: mean to be a lot less to say, right, if
Speaker 1: you had healthcare and you didn't have like this insane
Speaker 1: student loan stuff, and you could like rent an apartment
Speaker 1: and not go broke, like, you wouldn't have as much
Speaker 1: to be posting about. Which but that's maybe the system
Speaker 1: is that it Like, yeah, I think you and I
Speaker 1: both are feeling probably pretty depressed about the current state
Speaker 1: of the internet. It gives me a little glimmer of
Speaker 1: hope because if people like us and other people are
Speaker 1: feeling this and seeing and trying to act on it,
Speaker 1: maybe there's the possibility that we actually can affect some
Speaker 1: kind of change in the grander scheme here. And so
Speaker 1: that if I can end this on a hopeful that
Speaker 1: I think has given me enough fuel at least for
Speaker 1: it in the next twenty four hours. Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: faith in that too. I think even just like simple refusal,
Speaker 1: like simple refusal, I've been thinking about it, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like with the abortion stuff like jury nullification,
Speaker 1: Like I've been thinking more about like a simple quiet
Speaker 1: refusal to participate in various things that are you know,
Speaker 1: pitched to us as normal and ubiquitous and and necessary
Speaker 1: like the you know, the reason I was able to
Speaker 1: get off Twitter is because I accrued the professional freedom
Speaker 1: that allowed me to not need it to get work.
Speaker 1: Me seven years ago could not have literally afforded to
Speaker 1: get off Twitter because I needed it to help me
Speaker 1: get a job. But but I think there is something
Speaker 1: to be said for like constantly evaluating what are the
Speaker 1: freedoms that are available to me that I would like
Speaker 1: to make use of that I am not making use
Speaker 1: of in any direction. And I think there's yeah, there's
Speaker 1: always more visa v. Social media than meaning Well, I agree,
Speaker 1: And also I feel like, I don't know, more conversations
Speaker 1: like this can maybe start to get I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that I personally have any importance on anybody, but it's
Speaker 1: like it's nice to talk to another person who is
Speaker 1: aware of this thing that feels like it's just underpinning
Speaker 1: all of the way that that the Internet functions, you know,
Speaker 1: And like I think everyone I know, I want there
Speaker 1: to be everyone know. I mean getting off Twitter as
Speaker 1: part of it. But I do think it's also like
Speaker 1: when you talked about the things where you kind of
Speaker 1: lost yourself and you felt like those were like your
Speaker 1: best experiences where you weren't thinking about yourself, like dancing
Speaker 1: or walking the dog or whatever, like you're talking about
Speaker 1: things that also were happening in physical reality exactly. I mean,
Speaker 1: you didn't name a single thing that was like something
Speaker 1: you were doing on your computer or on a phone own,
Speaker 1: And so I do think there's again not to be
Speaker 1: a lot, And I mean, what's so crazy as I
Speaker 1: remember arguing with my dad when I was like twelve
Speaker 1: about how the internet was going to change the world
Speaker 1: and how important it was, But there is something that
Speaker 1: is like that missing piece does seem to be what
Speaker 1: is it like now to be physically around other people
Speaker 1: and to have to engage in things that are not
Speaker 1: like your words on a screen versus somebody else's. And
Speaker 1: I think that's like a big part of the missing link. Well,
Speaker 1: and I think everyone realized that there's there's so much
Speaker 1: more space now for people to understand that post or
Speaker 1: you know, not post pandemic, but at this point in
Speaker 1: the pandemic where it's like there's no substitute for it.
Speaker 1: Affirmation on the Internet at its most kind of thrilling
Speaker 1: has always felt alienating to me. But love in real
Speaker 1: life that feels real, you know, And there's nothing like unsurveilled,
Speaker 1: un mediated presence the internet. It's best can only kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, approach a shadow of that. And we're little
Speaker 1: animals like we we are, and we need to we
Speaker 1: need to go out into a field. Yeah and run free. Gia,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. This is fascinating conversation. I really appreciate.
Speaker 1: I feel like there's probably like two more hours of
Speaker 1: stuff that we could have talked about, and so we'll
Speaker 1: have to do this again sometime. Yeah, thank you for
Speaker 1: having me, and I am very interested to see where
Speaker 1: this goes, aren't we all? So what are you going
Speaker 1: to do now? Well, I gotta pay for that blue
Speaker 1: check mark number one. I gotta give him twenty bucks
Speaker 1: a month to get keep my blue checkmark going. We
Speaker 1: didn't even talk about this that he's like arguing with
Speaker 1: Stephen King. Stephen do we talk about this? Stephen Kings? Like?
Speaker 1: Are you joking? Like you should pay me to be
Speaker 1: on Twitter? Like I'm not gonna give you twenty dollars
Speaker 1: above and Elon Musk is like, Okay, how about eight dollars?
Speaker 1: And it's like, dude, this is not how you run
Speaker 1: a business. This is not how you come up with
Speaker 1: the plan to save Twitter is like haggling with Stephen
Speaker 1: king On on Twitter about the cost of a blue
Speaker 1: check bark. By the way, like the idea of pain
Speaker 1: a monthly fee to have a blue check mark on
Speaker 1: Twitter is absurd. Anyhow, So what am I going to do.
Speaker 1: I'm going to continue not giving a ship increasingly about
Speaker 1: like the discourse on social media, because uh, what I
Speaker 1: know to be true is that there are more important
Speaker 1: things in life, and that doesn't it doesn't define reality,
Speaker 1: you know. So I don't have a problem with remaining
Speaker 1: Like I'm I still have a Facebook account. I never
Speaker 1: quit Facebook, but I certainly don't fucking use Facebook, and
Speaker 1: I don't think about Facebook. It's not part of my
Speaker 1: diet every day on the internet. And so I think
Speaker 1: increasingly like Twitter is gonna look like that, and Instagram
Speaker 1: is gonna look like that, and then we'll find something new.
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe it's TikTok, but maybe there's something else,
Speaker 1: or maybe there's nothing. Maybe we just go back to
Speaker 1: email and I'm fine with that. So, like the question is, like,
Speaker 1: does Twitter fucking matter? Like, Actually, what I'll say is
Speaker 1: it matters if we are like interacting with reality and
Speaker 1: real people and not fighting with random people on the Internet.
Speaker 1: That's unhealthy. But in the grand scheme of the reality
Speaker 1: that we exist in, we think Twitter is important because
Speaker 1: media people are on Twitter, and a few celebrities are
Speaker 1: on Twitter, and a very very small group of people
Speaker 1: like Elon Musk, thinks Twitter is important. He's a billionaire,
Speaker 1: a very successful CEO. He loves to have people tell
Speaker 1: him that he's got funny and cool ideas, and he's
Speaker 1: on Twitter all the time, acting like that's the place
Speaker 1: where all the stuff happens. But for most people in
Speaker 1: the world, for most human beings in America and beyond,
Speaker 1: Twitter is not the stuff that is happening. Twitter is
Speaker 1: not the place where real things happen. The Internet and
Speaker 1: technology are very very important and can do amazing things,
Speaker 1: but at the end of the day, not everything should
Speaker 1: be equally weighted, and increasingly, like stuff I see on
Speaker 1: Twitter or stuff that you see on Twitter or Facebook
Speaker 1: or Instagram needs to be taken as a giant grain
Speaker 1: of salt, like that's not reality. Reality exists outside of that,
Speaker 1: and we've got to grapple a lot more with that.
Speaker 1: We think the value of information is how fast you
Speaker 1: can get it. They're literally used to be this thing,
Speaker 1: and people still do it. And it is someone commenting first.
Speaker 1: Like when we used to publish blog posts on many
Speaker 1: websites that I ran. You would write the story it,
Speaker 1: put it up, and then somebody would comment as quickly
Speaker 1: as possible first, meaning I was the first person to
Speaker 1: comment on this story. Okay, Twitter does that at scale.
Speaker 1: It's like I'm the first person to tell you, like
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson is dead, how did he die? Where did
Speaker 1: he die? When did I did he really die? You
Speaker 1: don't know any of that fucking information? What is my account?
Speaker 1: You don't know I have a blue check mark. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe not if you look at my bio to the
Speaker 1: say I'm a reporter for the New York Times. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe I'm just a fucking guy. Maybe I'm an orderly
Speaker 1: at the hospital. But like the point is you could
Speaker 1: see it first. Michael Jackson is dead. What you know
Speaker 1: about Michael Jackson's death is non existent. But like that
Speaker 1: is like the core of misinformation. It is like I
Speaker 1: can say some bullshit on Twitter or anywhere else, and
Speaker 1: it can be spread around really quickly, so quickly and
Speaker 1: so much that people think is real. It collapses the
Speaker 1: context into a fucking bite size, little SoundBite. And now
Speaker 1: that's the fucking thing that is broadcast out into the ether.
Speaker 1: And like that is why it's such a destructive and
Speaker 1: shitty and useless part of the Internet. It is, and
Speaker 1: it is really truly like it is. So it's such
Speaker 1: a refined and clear thing now to me that like
Speaker 1: this method of communicating information to people is fundamentally broken
Speaker 1: and bad. It is so fucking obvious, it is so clear.
Speaker 1: And the fact that we would sit here and anybody
Speaker 1: would sit here and defend it and want to be
Speaker 1: part of it and really care about it is deranged.
Speaker 1: Open it up. Let's see what people are talking about.
Speaker 1: What's happening. Plastic recycling is a myth. Study says, that's
Speaker 1: the first thing I see. Fans are freaking out over
Speaker 1: Donald Phazon and his daughter's clueless costumes. Here's the fucking
Speaker 1: article about Gretta Thunberg. Grettath Thunberg used to see her
Speaker 1: goals to protect the plan from climate change, but now
Speaker 1: she admits it's to overthrow the whole capitalist system, which
Speaker 1: she says responsible for imperialism, oppression, genocide, racist, oppressive extraction.
Speaker 1: Is um here, I am about to click on the
Speaker 1: fucking article about how Gretta Thunberg actually wants to overthrow capitalism.
Speaker 1: Actually a message to Elon Musk is trending, as is
Speaker 1: Daniel Radcliffe. Daniel Radcliffe says speaking out against J. K.
Speaker 1: Rowling was important. Not everybody in the franchise shares her
Speaker 1: belief like that sounds like a great thing you're about
Speaker 1: as I'm watching Entertainments the night to borrow like Daniel, Well,
Speaker 1: that is our show for this week. We'll be back
Speaker 1: next week on Thursday with even more what Future And
Speaker 1: as always, I wish you and your family the very
Speaker 1: very best.