Also media. Hello, welcome to Better Offline. I'm, of course your host ed Zetron. Apologies to everyone for missing the monologue last week. I know many of you have threatened my life. That's a joke. You're all very lovely about it. But we are back this week. It's Hate to Season. I'm gonna be honest. Hate Season has been so much fun that everyone is just I think we're just gonna do this forever. And today I'm joined by an incredible guy. I'm gonna be one of two divas coming together to
maximize our joint sleigh. I'm joined by Henry Zebrowski of last podcast on the Left. Henry, how are you?
I am good? I'm filled with rage, with rage about one I'm ready. Honestly, I hate the goddamn metaverse. It's I saw it pop up the other day. I saw a person mention the metaverse. And there is one guy, Jamie something guy on Twitter you can find him who. I watched him go from Crypto from clubhouse to crypt web three to NFTs to Metaverse to AI and now he's back to Metaverse and I think that just people. He's wrong.
He's wrong, but also he's professionally but that's crazy, Like people are very unfair of me about my correct opinions. But it's insane to me how many of these consultant swindlers still exist and how there are still people being like, yeah, dude, yeah, the metaverse is still here, man, I'll pay you.
I'll do this because they're desperate. They're desperate for some other realm of productivity and work. There's something they really thought. They had us pegged during COVID, Like at some point they were like, they miss work, they miss work, they miss they miss they miss people, they miss us, and they have this idea of like, oh, the social network. Like what we have to do is convince them they're
hanging out. We have to convince all of them that they're all just gonna like, oh no, no, it's it's it's work, sure, but it's like a lifestyle. Work is like your lifestyle.
Do you remember that whole period as well, just before the metaverse, where they were all of the remote work articles that were like, we're missing the serendipity at the office. We're missing it. You can't bump into a friend at the office and have these thoughts. I love that because it was always written by a boss, because you could tell because everyone else at work is like, I just want to put my fucking headphones and I just want to get my job done.
Please leave me alone. We have crawled into the heads of these giant corporate like that's kind of what we're living in. I feel like we're living in a giant ketamine. Like we're in a ketamine fueled dream right now, Like we are.
In a live inside the ketamine dream. But what is the who is the dreamer?
Dreamer is people like Zuckerberg and these guys that are kind of forming how they think we view reality. They're like trying to put that on us. They're trying to say, we love work, we love productivity as a as a as a as an animal, as a human animal. They believe we crave crushing it, we crave dividends, we clave we love hustling. And I've just we've never just been in this place now where we're kind of being dragged through their version of the future which is just not
panning out, you know, the metaverse. I get a show in the metaverse once right in The Men of Us, which one it was something Yes, I want It was something like so everybody was a little weeble wobble person, right, because they had to eliminate general Remember when they had to go through the whole thing because they had to eliminate lower half of people.
Oh, yes, because they said they were bringing in legs, but then the legs didn't didn't pan out.
Legs, yes, because legs mean penis and balls or vagina, right, And so what happened was is that as soon as those were in play, as soon as legs were in play, penis and balls and vaginas were in plays. And then immediately the people started getting sexually harassed on the metapas.
But did they ever put the legs in? I thought they weren't able to get them in at all.
No, because that was the let's just say, I believe you saw several attempts at this, this idea of like, we can't put in legs, You can't put in legs. You mean to tell me you built an entire second reality and you can't put in fucking legs, all right?
I mean, I mean practically speaking, putting in functional legs that mapped to movement from the user would be difficult.
But it's just I never really understand That's now even when there there's the aesthetics have like a flat like a candle. Who cares. It's as soon as people saw legs, they saw genitals, and they started saying horrific stuff to each other on the metaverse, and so they got rid of leggs.
Tell me about this metaverse experience you have this New Year's Eve.
So I was asked to do It was during COVID. I was asked to do the comedy for a New Year's Eve party quote unquote in a build out. It was like a metaverse build out. It was one of those that they had done it for this specific event, and the goal was that people were walking around this virtual space and they would come upon you, and then your camera would turn on and you'd see quote unquote the real person there. I was in a character. He
was wildly invasive. Everybody was obviously had agreed to it. But I was Cheddargoblin, which is a character from a movie called Mandy Right. I was playing that, Yeah, this is my life. This is called the Entertainer's life. Ed. I mean, yeah, they gave me one thousand dollars. That's worth it. It was it was for the tears because then I put in I propped up, I have a build out of the cheddar Gomblet and from Mandy right,
I have a poll from the original model. I put it in a chair and I put it on, put a camera on it. Yeah, and then I was talking as him roasting people that would arrive to the little comedy build out right that they had. And the thing is is that it's what happened after every single COVID stream show is that obviously it was janky. It was strange.
People were not even though they thought they were prepped that their cameras would turn on, they were not prepped that their cameras would turn on and they would get scared, and it was bad. You know, It's like all that type of stuff. But in the end it really is. Which is what I discovered afterwards is the closing of the laptop after this and the silence.
Oh was it just like constant noise in the well.
Just the idea of like, as a performer like this was kind of one of the big issues I had to just even just during COVID, which is the cavernous silence after the show that you have now done on Zoom in which you have been in a sort of similacrum of real life for half a second, and then as soon as the laptop closes, all that illusion is shattered,
and now you're just sitting in silence. And there's a part of me that thinks that that is kind of the issue with the phenomenon as a whole, which is this fake, a fake version of society that they wanted to recreate for us in order for us to obey whatever rules they want to set up for us. And so like, as I was in this, I was like, oh, I'm a part of the normalizing process of this, Like this is a I am a person, and I am
here doing this as a way to show all of you. Look, even if the world is uninhabitable, even if all the corporations of the world make the surface a giant like lava stream, the rest of us can still go underground. And don't worry. There can still be the Friends reboot. Don't worry. There can still be any type of Sharman you like. It can be there, It can be underground. We can live underground. We don't need all of this real life, right.
I also think it's just to your point about living inside the heads. It is really funny watching them try and sell it, like make stuff to sell us when they do not speak to real people, like yeah, what what are you fucking pigs like sitting at desks?
Right? You want to walk around h world?
I guess Look it's the few pigs like this, right, What do you think?
The thing about the human version of the right now, what I see is the in the IRL version of the metaverse are the corporate like it is not only a it's an apartment complex, it's where you work. It's also where the the you got your slop balls, and then you can go over here and you can get your face injections, and you can go over here and you can do the thing that makes you look and sound, and you can get the clothes and make look just like everybody else.
The Google version of worry Free from Sorry to bother you.
Yes, yes there is. That's that's like one soft rollout right for I.
Do believe they'll back though they've started pulling back on corporate benefits, So I think it is going to be the moment a company offers housing within their campus. That's how you know that they've just lost the plot and they're like a how to fuck it? How do we do this just give them housing?
I guess I genuinely believe all of this is the dry run for some form of United States of Peter Teel.
See.
That's that's the thing though, because I see that argument. But whenever I read them or hear them talk, or actually look at the success of them trying to do like the network state stuff, which always seems to go poorly because running a city or a country is hard. It's hard, they also see it fall apart, and I see them put like, AI in general, is this thing that's very much a cultureless person. I personally doesn't know anything how they think.
Knowledge or culture works.
Culture is just when you go to the art spender and you're like, what art, please, I've got one hundred dollars. How much art can I get for this?
Oh? I'm just humans hanging out spending time and in culture too. Yeah, it's like it's this culture is literally just a it was a not to not to minimize it, but it's almost a to me in my mind, it's a it's a it's a product of our connectivity as an animal, as a psychic animal. I see, that's the point of it. And so they're just trying to. They don't they think that day Okay, they hate though.
They really have like a deep homophobia towards anything emotional or sensual, also feminine, is what they do.
I do believe that that that is the literal vibe that I get, which is this idea of you look at Peter Thiel talking, look at these people talking, and I guess that's what it is.
Is that is still though, but you're saying this like a self loathing to it.
I just mean in terms of his the way they view it as frivolous and stupid, right, But our our need for connection is something that is replaced. That is very trindset. Yes, and that that is and it's extremely easy to place. And so what they didn't do little things. What you were saying too, is that the idea of a corporate culture. It's like when I was working in office jobs, the idea of a culture. I was like, oh no, no, no, no, I'm here to get health insurance.
Like I'm not here to meet you, buddy, Like I'm here for health insurance, you know, Like I'm here to work, like to just get the fuck out of here and go home. But they want they just want all of us. They want every minute of our fucking breathing lives.
Well, that kind of reminds me again around just before the metaverse, all of the anti remote work stuff that talked about office culture is like, office culture is so important. You need office culture. Office culture is what brings the company together. Missing for most of these articles was a definition of office culture because it was just kind of work propaganda.
And doing what your boss wants you to do. Yes, oh, that is what office culture means. Mm hmmm, because which means you're living in a dictator. You're living in his you're living in his reality.
And on top of that, it's like you, oh, so you're saying we should have a culture that involves supporting labor and respecting labor and valuing work and supporting us Like oh god, no, no, no, no, sorry, sorry, don't get us wrong. It's the culture of the office, not the people in it.
It is the full tables. Yes, we have there's a we got a never ending soup bowl.
M he loves I used I used to have a wee work long ago, and I never tried the beer. And when I finally tried it, I'm like, Wow, these people fucking hate us because it was like the worst beer. They could have put like a keg of bud Light and.
It would have been fine.
But they somehow found like a beer that tasted not quite as bad as Natty Light.
But and they just and then but it's their where it's the wee work of beer.
Yes, it really is. It's like the beer slop.
Yeah, these I find it we are not living up to their expectations.
Ed.
Yeah, I think that's what it is, is that we're really not living up to their expectations. We're not dying fast enough, we're not working hard enough. And that's the thing, is that we really should be working and dying up until the very minute, the very minute that we die.
Technically we should be productive in that it is. And that's why, you know, when I hear the argument like about how people like me should be having kids, and then I hear where the argument's coming from, and I hear it's about me keeping up the ever exponentially rising capitalistic output. That's really all they're concerned about. It's other enough workers. Yeah, it's really funny.
We're going to get the listener, the occasional listeners who are like because occasionally with. I think we've got a fairly left leaning audience, but occasionally, I'm sure you're listening now, one of you guys who's like a straight up like somehow a center left person who's very pro work would be like, whoa, whoa whoa. Office culture's importance that everyone knows what they're doing their job. I know why I'm doing my job make money. Well, I'm an entertainer now,
I guess not guess it's a real job. But I remember the officers I've worked in. The one that was the worst was the one that I actually respected the most for just not pretending there was a work culture. They didn't have any of that shit. They were just like, you need to do that, this enough, or we fucking fire you. It's p off truly not marrish place.
But it didn't try.
No one tried to pretend like we're a family.
Hit no one. No, this is jail. Unless you're working at a not for profit helping people directly, there is absolutely no reason for you to have a fucking thesis statement outside of we're company that makes goods for people, or we provide X and we pay you to do X. That is it. That's all we do like it's there, doesn't even have to be special in that. And this is the problem is that where I see it from literally from reality television shows all the way up to
this top. Now this concept of everything has to have like uh presented story. Everybody already has to be arriving with a character arc ready to go locked in. And now the bosses are doing that. The bosses have are applying a character arc to us. They are saying they're trying to tell us what we are gonna do for them. And now I feel like we're in this process of they are going to try over the next decade or so, to kill as many of us as possible, to literally
weed out the people that are against it. They're gonna make us sick. They're gonna put bad things in the food, They're gonna pull out all of the things protecting the environment. They're extremely sure they're gonna be able to beat all of those for themselves, right, And then what they're gonna do is create a breakoff civilization. All of this is a dry run for them to leave us behind.
The funny thing is is, though I believe you that that's what they may plan, I.
Just I mean the plan. It's the plan.
I don't think they're competent enough to prove it. Because the metav Hus was the I think Clubhouse was the beginning for me, but the Metavhus was the moment when I was like, oh, you don't speak to any real people like you.
Just the house was the single dumbest than giantest, thank god, flaming pile of waste of money of anything I have ever that was so stupid. I was gonna almost use a presidential word ad it was so stupid that the whole thing, I cannot believe the whole thing needs to be deleted. That it was just repackaging intercoms. If it was repackaging a zoom call, a conference call.
It's like, do you ever wanted really really really really bad non produced radio.
With people that thought they were great? Welcome to clubhouse.
Do you want to hear vcs talk for hours and say multiple slurs? Well, guess well, we have a place for you.
We already have podcasts. Man. Yeah.
But the thing is, though it was I remember getting The reason that it got to me Clubhouse specifically was because the amount of people I talked to was like, this is the future, man, it's the future. This is how everything's gonna get done. I voice, what's your clubhouse stretch?
What's your every But are you how many times I heard that fucking sentence? And I was just like, this super flu is gonna kill all of us? That was like the only that was my name. I was like terrified of dying. Yes, I was like, we're all gonna fucking die. And you want me to repackage radio again, I've already done it, dude, I did it fifteen years ago, just like the Good Doctor.
I am a podcaster. Yeah, it's but.
It was also just a moment where I was like looking at all of these supposedly smart people, all these people who are meant to really know what they're fucking talked about, and watching them as they just went yeah, this is this is crazy, man. And then at the same time, I've been reading all this anti remote stuff and I was like, wait a minute, all of these are written by managers or bosses who aren't in the office. And then it was just kind of obvious, but none
of these people interact with their business. Is all regular people, so they're just the things that they make do not reflect solving human problems. And then the meta us comes along and half most of the media was like, yep, this makes perfect sense, and I as a gamer, was like you were describing World of Warcraft or like an MMRPG, you were just describing going online in a group I played. EverQuest I have the skin already happened?
And also it looks like somebody read the book snow Crash, like one of the one of their aides read the book snow Crash at some point in college vaguely described the concept of making real estate out of nothing, which I think really was what the metaverse was about. Was his idea of recreating a world in which they could own everything, yet they wanted to own the next Internet. That was very much what Zuckerberg wanted. That was the idea. Is that they would have said and they would again
set all the rules. They'd set all the rules, they'd already had set up, all the real estate parameters. They you'd show up into this like brand new world of a thing, and then you'd be described, oh my god, there's a McDonald's. Oh my god, there's a fucking pizza hut. Oh my god, because they've already bought into this real estate concept. Because they were just trying to figure out.
I also feel like that's a part of it. They saw some of the writing on the wall of like it's gonna be hard to get these fuckers back in the office. These fuckers went home and they're fucking enjoying their They just do it.
They're doing as much work, if not more, and they seem happy.
That shit fucking hate Wait. Wait, wait, I did you see I want to smell what he's eating. I want to look I want to hear what he's listening to. I want to ask him about his wife. I want to lookt his wife, I want to think about his wife. And so what I think that like, that's what I think turns into right, Yeah, So they just then realized, like, oh, but what if we could do it so we can bring them into this other world and then we own it's like that, it's it's real. Then eventually we can
let go. Yeah, then we can let go of real life real estate. Then maybe if we build it all in the in the metaverse, just on that great books no crash, anybody read, the end we could do is we could build out this amazing new real estate system while the earth eats itself alive on the surface. I
do think that that's the other side. What we're also seeing is the other side of this too, which is why they were all showed up at the inauguration, because they were all so excited for the fact that they were going to just be like, let's boil the planet. Let's boil the surface of the planet. And then they have to come to the metaverse. They have to come to us because we're the only ones that are going to have the stuff to protect them.
It's really funny as well, because everything was saying is true, but they left out because their lack of this, their lack of connection to anything it working. They didn't check if it worked. They also left us out. It also didn't work.
That's the best part, and that's the best part is that what I don't know us human beings are fast and there's no They have tried to model us. They have tried to model us again and again, and they've looked at history and they've done all the number crunching, and they can't figure it out. They can't they can't figure it out. They all of these things fail because they legitimately are operating in a fantasy world. They're operating
outside of reality. They because they believe they can imprint there. They can literally just put their reality on us. They just think that they can do that. Well, look at Lemis and look at us, and then you see it's actually super difficult. It's actually really weird. I actually think part of what broke my brain was in the twenty sixteen election when Trump won in the first place. That was the first time I saw something and I was like, oh, wow,
elections might actually do something. Yeah. It was like the first time I realized that the fix might not be entirely in from people that actually are in control. Yeah.
I I definitely like, I didn't get particularly political until after that. I will admit to being completely ignorant of stuff.
So why would I. I didn't feel these things. And then everything changed.
Then everything happened, and then it was do you suddenly look backwards You're like, oh, did I miss everything? And I'm still learning as well a lot of this stuff. And I feel like when you saw all of them turn up at the White House, it was so fucking grim. But I saw people who were surprised and that really made me laugh. The people were like, wait, what, huh, why are they kissing up. They said three years ago that they liked me.
Huh, there's a part of me you see. This is my problem is that I look at this and it made me laugh. Oh. Yes, I finally felt like I'm correct. I'm correct. They're all on, they all and they couldn't give a fuck. No, they couldn't give a fucking shit about our lives. The only reason they want to replace us so bad. And that's the thing when we're talking about ED, I actually got turned on your work about this idea that we're going to be hit in this AI wall, and I could not be more in agreement.
There's a part of my brain that sayings like, where's the guy that wants to make the trillion dollars that finally makes the little robot that puts dirty dishes in the dishwashing machine. That's what we want. What we want is a little robot man that I can yell at, that can do does laundry, does put the clothes away, and does the dishes that hit Henry.
The pro is that's really difficult.
Like that's the thing.
They're like, Okay, can we do stuff that would help people? Maybe I don't know, wash that flaws we kind of got vacuum robots.
But sucking. They scare my dogs. Yeah, I want a thing that can pet the dog. But also when it comes down to it, I don't need it to be God in the machine because guess what, the real God doesn't exist, and the real God gives children aids. I don't need another one. Yeah.
Also I don't know. None of this works, Like just none of it work. None of it works.
It's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen. But also, within ed, why do we do about continuing to be in their delusion? We break it?
Like that's what I'm doing, Like that's the thing right now as as we talk, I've recently been working on this piece about how like Anthropic admitted in Core they made five billion dollars cumulatively like of all time, which when you follow their previous revenue reports, does not make sense.
And I'm arguing with people constantly all through today leading up to this because what has actually what the real power of these people is is that they've they control like we live in their world through narratives, the narratives that are created, and it is you it's true, Yep, it's Elon Musk buying Twitter. Yes, it's Google Search, Yes it's this, But a lot of it is just institutions like see in c NBC New York Times.
I'd like they are.
Captured, but not necessarily by the entities, but by the ideologies. The ideology is the AI will be big. AI will be big. It's not that it's oh, it may be, it's it will be.
They can't say how you notice that too? Right? They all are like all this stuff about AI and they project all of these but none of them actually says specifically, what do you mean, like, what are the uses of AI? Like what exactly? You say? Oh, it has all these uses. It's inevitable, it's gonna replace all of these things. And it's more like, but to what end? How al So, yeah, it's like, what was it doing that? I don't think
it is, dude, because guess what, man, guess what? You've this ship with the fucking WEIMO When they came out and they said that they can't they have to kick it to some guy in the Philippines to dry drive it. If it gets specifically stuck with.
With way Mo, that's not even generative AI. Because they love to say ais that you conflate them WAYM kind of works way most interesting because it's interesting, it's interesting, it's an actual thing that drives people around. I think that there are a ton of issues that I will go into in a future episode. But with like large language models, I have been and I'm gonna say this in passing. I'm not going to go into depth because I don't want them to people to get mad at me.
But I'm currently learning to code, and the more I learn about the code, the more I get scared about people using large language models to code because I don't know. I'm getting worried that there are software engineers out there that can't read code and just copypaste it from place, or that they're willing to ship code that kind of
looks right but they don't really understand. I'm not saying this is all software engineers, but I'm worried that the software engineers they're building these lms for are the ones that don't know what they're fucking talking about.
Buddy, I think that that is exactly what we're seeing here. I think that we are in oh No. I literally think that this is a it's all human lead. All of the issues are human lead it is still because you would need a perfect AI to make a perfect AI, right, you would need it's it's too human, it's too janky. We are my whole view, one of my more I guess you could guess to call it a mystical view.
But I think one of the problems I have with AI is I do believe that there is like a one percent of the human brain that we just can't we literally can't see if we wanted to see it, because we're looking at ourselves. That there's like a like in terms of just the observer gets in the way of the thing that we need to be looking at right Like we are, there's a part of our consciousness that we will never duplicate ever. We just want don't
even just on thinking we don't. This is what I'm saying, is that at the very bottom of it, we don't really understand what the key is. So how is a bunch of cargo short wearing, basement dwelling coders sitting in a place that probably have never kissed a girl or a man before, and then now they're gonna make the new human thought machine, you know what I mean? Like that's kind of like what we're seeing. So what we're
seeing here is it's all based. It's all it's turtles all the way down, and it's just gonna keep going.
With the software engineers, I found that there's this real we're seeing this schism between those types of basement dweller in cell types. There are the coaders who know just enough to get by and keep that job without being fired, and then the people who actually do software engineering, who are relatively normal folks who are just going about their lives and now.
They are people like the truth. They view it as like because I know that it can go as far as to being like an art form and like a it's a whole thing. But again that points to not to create an absolutely bedrock structure for a new conscious entity on it doesn't sound like the way that works.
What's the summation of what code is is not nixaresh, good mind, mate. The point where it's like coding is not just writing code. There is an art form to it cal Newport as well. It is as well where it's like it's a there is a cultural awareness. There is awareness of how one constructs stuff. If you I don't know the way I put it is like, how comfortable would you be feeling about a building where I don't know the architect only kind of knew what.
Materials were in it.
It's most I think it's mostly bricks.
I legitimately think that that is Another big issue is that it's they're they low they're low balling the creation
of the New God. You know, like they're literally like nickel and diming it with guys, and they're creating these dumb deadlines and they're creating all of these things where it's like, you know, if Bitter Tiel really wanted to take over the very globe, he has, to my mind, he has to have more like of a thousand year view like with the old like the the way that they view the world more and like China and stuff like that, where they he needs more of a longer Yeah,
but who's gonna take this bord Henry. That's not American capitalism. Tell me about it, bro, I tell me about it. I got fucking agents, fucking breathing out my neck every day, all right, and I do podcasting. I can't imagine what these idiots, all these people in the fake Money Realm and then the fake Computer God Realm are what the pressure is from the inside for them all to make all this bullshit money.
I have to wonder if the people inside the labs though, at this point, as they kind of it's become kind of obvious that like, this isn't really doing the thing. They don't actually they haven't made any gods, and now it's just kind of like, uh, what we're doing because I think they're all just fucking around, not in like a completely labor free way. They're just like doing experiments and spending like millions of dollars of computer at dates, being like what if this works, what if this works?
What if this works? Ed does this? I'm a CEO? That's what I've learned. When you know I've learned about being a CEO? What is it? The only job replaceable be a by aie here's a ceo? Oh what Literally, it's the easiest, it's the dumbest. They have nothing but like not to be like I work very hard blah blah blah. But they have plenty of time. They can just sit and think about these dumb things all day and play around with it, and they're just waiting for enough.
Like I gus also think there's a massive obviously it's capitalism, but the lateral moves, these guys just get to make like they get to just sort of like decimate a company, decimate a bunch of stuff, lose everything, and then they get to just kind of jump ship to another thing. And I tell you my favorite one.
So there's a guy called Jay Perk who is the co CEO of a company called lace Works. I believe I'm just gonna check that on air and yeah, see lace Works. So this company, yeah, lace Work. So this company was famous for doing an event where they handed out thirty thousand dollars worth of Lululemon gift cards in a night to convince people to use their software. So that guy and that company into the fucking ground, and
you know what happened. He got a job at Meta and now he heads up one of the AI divisions in Microsoft.
The meritocracy's real, what is it? Do they not? At some point it has to almost be purposeful. It has to be like, do you think that they do it almost in a way. What if there is a game being played to where they all know it's not gonna happen, and we all know it's not gonna happen, but they are. We're all like, all of these middle men have propped
up the economy with this shit. Yeah, so it almost kind of feels like it's it's almost like they're making money on the constant rug pull and the moving of all of the stuff back and forth. It's almost like maybe it's good to hire somebody that will purposely blow it all up so then they never have to get it done.
I just think I think it's more stupid than that. I think it is they hire people who look and sound like that, who they've worked with before, who have the right things on LinkedIn, who then go who then can say that I have this theory the era of the business I I call it where it's like these people are just morons, and if you look at they're morons, If you look at them as dipshits without much strategy, the world actually makes a way more sense than.
This is what we've been saying, you know, we've been saying on the show, this idea of like trying to come back from conspiracy theory and just understand that there's just way more human beings being extremely bad at really important jobs.
Yeah, and those are the humans that run these companies because like, if you've ever heard Sachin Adella talk CEO of Microsoft, it is like sustaining one hundred concussions a second. It's insane, he meanders. There was an interview I saw him give in Davos, I think, where he spoke for three straight minutes to a yes or no question, and it's just like, and this is I think, as a journalist, you should just be able to get out like a
taser at that point. You don't have to use it, but you can just like start crackling it a bit like yep, uh huh, yeah is there.
Why does no one ever just say just straight to stand up and be like, excuse me, sir, what in the living hell are you talking about? I know why, I know. Why can there just be one person be like, hey, just one question? What the living fuck is going on? Why? What do you do? I want you to tell me what you did today, from the moment you woke up until when you got here. I want to hear what you did for the money. I and like, that's the thing.
They will never answer that because a lot of it is just I read emails, I drank coffee, I went to lunch, I went to a meeting.
I didn't really listen. Hey, CEO's shops extremely important. Okay, when I have my executive time, Rob knows my producer. He knows when I'm there, and I am in my blessed somnu lescens. If you think I'm sleeping, yeah, I'm thinking dreaming of the mind dojo. I'm in my mind dojo. That's where I do every day. I do my car and I think about different ways for me to spend our money.
You know, it takes a lot of effort and works as a CEO to go, hey, do this.
Hey, if you guys thought about not having buttons on this, you know what I mean? Like that, I love those that stuff. It was like, Chief Jobs is a genius and it's just like making that at buttons.
Well, Steve Jobs was a genius in the sense that he was No, no, I don't mean this in a defensive way. I mean a genius in quotation marks, because it was he was like, what if it was good? It's like, what if instead of it, instead of being clicking buttons, it was a touchscreen. But because touch screens are being shit, what if they were good and responsive and people use them? And when wow, this is fucking great. I should come up with that. It's like, that's like what I'm saying something worked.
Why, Like that's all the other thing ed that I've never really understood, and I feel like there's like I'm just dumb in that way where it's like I feel like when it comes to the environment, that there is a lot of money in saving the environment. Yes, right, it feels like in my head there's somebody that's gonna maybe clean the ocean that will also then become a trillionaire, and I feel like that could be a really good focus on what we need to do in the future
and you can make money. I just don't understand, and I just feel like I'm a silly dumb I'm a bad capitalist. I learned that I could give all my people raises and it really doesn't affect my fucking bottom line, because my bottom it's ridiculous. It's fucking the margins are fucking ridiculous.
It's short terminism because if you think of it, you probably wouldn't make money immediately from saving the environment.
You wouldn't make it. Yeah, so no, you sell some penguins. Honestly, dude, there's ways to hear talking to a capitalist. Just get some round up a bunch of good, healthy penguins, you selling them to an elementary school. Like it's like it's stuff like that. You see you do a certain thing were you you gig? There's ways to do it in fun ways. There's fun things.
I also just think solar power is kind of magical and botes are kind of magical, like like bad stuff. But if you think of it in the short term way, it's weird because what I'm about to describe is buying batteries and solar panels before you make much money off of them, such as, just to be clear, a capital expenditure which will lead to an eventual payoff. Now that
they hear and they go, fuck no, that sounds terrible. However, if they're like investing a bunch of GPUs for a possible return but probably not, they're like, fuck yeah, that makes perfect sense because they're all trapped in the past. Yeah, they keep it because these people are so discant. That thing I always say is like they don't have problems that they don't know how to fix them. So they look at the world and they go, what are my problems? Well,
they don't have enough money what do poor people like? Uh? TikTok and Hamburger? I guess uh?
I saw the did you read that Epstein file? The one email there was one that went back and forth about the idea of it was an extremely racist email from I forgot it was somebody within forget who it was. Explaining to Jeffrey Epstein, he's like, look, you see the same people. It was about jay Z buying into the NFL, and they were doing this this uh this commercial with jay Z and he's like, he's like, look you see, that's the same They're doing their advertising to the people
who should be super angry. That's exactly what we're going to do. See, look, you just gave them exactly what they wanted. That's all they care about, which I think is minimizing of human beings obviously, because they think that there's more than this, because what they've just done is
we have we do. Actually, our country is actually, which I'm certain you're well aware of, head is kind of in a deep turmoil right now, and there's protests in every single major city that exists almost twenty four to seven, and they're just not talking about it. And that's really the issue is that there's just they're just trying to delete that out of the narrative as if it's funny as well.
Because if you want to make people happy, you make food cheaper and better, and you make empousing, and you make the general life better, it's.
Easy to do. Try to fucking fat boy actually ran in a really good the idea of bringing manufacturing to people. Or if he had done one single maybe good thing, maybe anybody who could have a good, favorable opinion. What's going on? But we are nothing nothing could happen, right, nothing's good is happening, and we are we've just now started a new war and and we uh And I go to Florida. The groceryes are as expensive as they are in Los Angelesjesus Christ, you know what I mean. Like,
and they don't see the difference in Florida. They they don't buy groceries. They don't buy like. These people don't buy groceries, they don't.
I I genuinely wonder if they have someone who brings them like a soda, Like do they go to the fridge? Do you think these people like like? I like, that's the thing, because I think the they see the world as friction to be removed. They see every experience as friction, and they at the top of the pile have removed all frictions, such as they don't meet unexpected people, they don't get talked to by anyone they don't want to talk to, and indeed can reject anyone they want. They
are any much anything they don't want to do. So things like oh, I gotta go to the bathroom, I've gotta go do my laundry. I gotta go unload the dishwasher. Maybe the dishwasher is like something we can automate fine washing dishes sucks, laundry sucks. They're not trying to fix those problems. Well, they're trying to fix is.
What do you people do?
Well, you do something, and I want to get rid of that. So I've created a large language model that will tell you what will do anything. I guess because that's all.
And I think that that is also an important thing we have to constantly call it, which is they're not Ai their language models. There's no there is no intelligence inside. And I think that that has to keep being hit being like and I keep saying this place is and people are like, oh, well, you know, but they're British smart, and I'm like, I I don't think it is easy to mimic how we talk's we aren't because this is the thing. The human mind is unknowable. The human mind
is endlessly complex. Our communication, however, is extremely patterned. We know exactly, we know how to we it is. We have so endless amounts of examples of human conversation, and it's easy to mimic.
But here's the thing about or I don't know about you, but my thoughts are not linear.
Now.
I've got like rockets going off in my head constantly, not like genius thoughts.
It's like stupid thoughts. It's like what do I need to be?
Probably not like things like that constantly. Like human thought is chaos. And if you're a listener, by all means, email me easy at better off Line dot com and tell me how you think. Because I think that a lot of these people want to believe that they sit there and they enter their mind dojo and they do their gun carter from equilibrium to think, and then the genius spits out.
Because if you do that, you.
Think large language models a genius. They also it goes back to my thing where it's they're all looking at the past. They believe that the only way to tell the future is by just looking at the past and going.
A's kind of like that. Yeah, it's sort of fucking like as you know. I meanwhile, we are heading into I love you know, I'm a big I love Terrence McKenna and that kind of shit, and I love his concept of the idea of we're in this like novelty zone. Okay, go on, right, tell me more that the universe longs for novelty and builds novelty out and that life doesn't it doesn't get like but he was the way you're describing.
And so it's like, instead of like imagining our technology in our society ever going upwards towards some form of utopia, we're actually endlessly folding in on top of ourself like a fractal Right, Like we're constantly folding. We're slowly breaking large groups into smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller, niche micro groups. There's more and more layers to a single subject, the more and more information that is readily
available to the human consciousness. We just complicated again and again and again and again, and that what we are in and that's where we're going to be headed to is more unique situations as we have more information to deal with it. As each generation came up, before we operated largely each country, each area operated into sort of like a vacuum of information and kind of had to
do its own thing and developed a stuff. This is the kind of like we're heading into an area where everybody knows what everybody's doing at all times, and it's going to change how we behave. Yeah, it is going to it's going it already is. It's going to change.
And I think that that is kind of what we're seeing now, is that these things are nothing can play out like in another world, Like in another country, I could have seen a thing with January sixth, back in the day the insurrection in another country, Uh, the White House would have been burnt to the ground, people in mass executions that style. And I do believe that the
Internet created another world where they observe themselves insurrecting. Yes they yes, they didn't understand they were They couldn't understand that they were being history. They were. They were walking through a thing as if they were on their own cell phones watching somebody else do it. That's like the way I describe it, which is a I think a new phenomena, like you were like watching a bunch of people doing a pro doing a what used to be
like an inherent human way of changing our government. Right. That used to be a way.
We used to like an attack on the very fabric of society.
We used to get together or hang a bunch of guys, you know what I mean. It was like a thing that we used to do. And now that it's not, I feel like that's what we're seeing here is is this effect is that we're all on camera and so it's gonna affect how we behave I.
See, I have this theory that I liked, I love saying even though it doesn't mat to the thing called the beginning of history, which is just that it is no longer illustrative to use history to explain stuff.
It is not.
It can't like we are not like everyone's like, okay, we've worked everything out. It's just a question of going up from here.
Great.
No, I actually think what's happening is we have done stuff for decades based on looking backwards, the situations we've got ourselves in where look, everything's trump Trump's doing.
It's horrifying.
But what he is doing is instead of going, well, we didn't do this before, so we're going to keep being nice, it's just what if I didn't do that. A lot of the boundary pushing is just the result of ignoring what decorum was, and a lot of the rationalizations for a lot of tech stuff comes from looking at the past. It's the same bullshit. Uber lost amount of money, No, it didn't. Thirty two point nine billion is a lot of money, but open Ai raised forty
two billion dollars in the last year. Amazon web services cost a lot of money. Actually, not normalized for inflation, Amazon web services cost about thirty eight point nine billion dollars in eleven years. Amazon is going to spend two hundred billion dollars in capex twenty twenty six. The actual historic comparisons are used as ways to plicate people. It's
don't worry about it. This didn't happen before. And the reason I say the beginning of history is you need to start looking forward like that's what everyone needs to like, stop pretending the because things didn't happen before.
Have none of you played craps one by anything? Can happen. Anything can happen, and if you see anything can happen. Yeah, it's just oh no, I believe it entirely. I think that we are we have been let loose from those examples. I think that once we understand. But you know, I think this goes all the way to a psychic thing though. I think this goes straight to this full to an idea of human beings not fully understanding what they're capable
of and their potential at all times. Okay, And I think that we have accepted a very low position and in reality, as as as this amazing quantum computer walking around fired by like like literally like I do, it gets a little in the woo wee area, but it's the truth is that they we're capable of a lot. And I think that they make a lot of money on debasing the human spirit and saying like and that's the idea. The idea is that we are We need them.
They're nothing, We're nothing without them. We have to be constantly entertained by them. We need to be Oh, we're just as hungry as like like all this kind of shit and we just have to do more of No, we're not gonna do that and said we're gonna do naked bike ride and said we're gonna do this thing like literally, like I know that it's like ridiculous, but there needs to be more of that sort of culture jamming, which we're already seeing. And I think the no.
I fully agree because it's I said it, like I've told mysel a lot of economics and accountancy in the last year. Because a lot of people said, you couldn't possibly understand this, I was like, Okay, let me find out. I think that everyone underestimates human beings. I think that many of my listeners actually with the last podcast time actually get this as well, people like, oh, I couldn't
possibly understand something so complex. I have listeners who email me complex economic theories, who are like builders and teachers and real shit. Yeah, yeah, the human being. They want you to believe that you are mediocre and that the summation of your life is a large language model, which is just everything on the internet crammed into something, and
that you don't need to think this. You must think this is intelligent, because if you do that, you look down on yourself, and you'll be easier to sell to, easier to capture, and easier to use, because in the end, when you use a large language model, it is training you.
I saw a really interesting statement that I forgot where it was, but it was like the idea that we're in this we're being governed by gigantic economic political forces that are all under the the guys of you don't really care, though, do you? Right? Like, it's this idea of we're now in this area where it's a bunch of guys we're like, well, you never cared about this stuff, so what do you care? What do you care about
this thing? What do you care? What we do? You just like, just fucking eat your slop and go to work or I'll kill you, all right, why do you care? Act like you care? You know, I'm more fucking software. Yeah, shut the fuck up, right, just shut the fuck up whatever, Just chug like that's and it's going to take us to say I do care. I do actually care about human beings. I care that you've assigned massed shock troops to uh fucking arrest children.
Building it's like fucking warehouses to prison people.
I care. I care about the Epstein files. I care about them a great deal.
Fun fact, Henry, did you know the the CEO of LinkedIn, per jmail Reatoff, he uh, he actually endorsed Jeffrey Epstein on LinkedIn, and I refuse to believe that. Well, it's sadly in the files. But what's so funny is like when that sea of disinformation, I he's the thing. When I read that, I was crying with laughter because it's just like, there are so many people in the Epstein files who are like guilty by association because they fucking
went to the island. But like you were the CEO of LinkedIn and you endorsed Jeffrey Epstein, could not find out what.
For god knows did you get into? Well, you see, my own my own pet obsession is Epstein's connections to the comedy world, which is just amazed. Yeah, it is just you know what I'll tell you, man, I'll say a year of so many years of being nervous around people, it is so nice to know that every single person I've ever liked is just not shit and they all absolutely suck my deck. Yeah, it's you know, he's there's
a release. There's a release of like the guys that booked Ja just for laughs used to be connected to him. Jimmy Chamalay's pr person, his her pub his publicist Peggy Siegel is connected to him. The guys from the Interlock and that trained Chapel Roone and all those people that didn't make all these the superstars. He was like, he gave them four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. So it's like all of this stuff where you're like, I'm really ready to tell all of these guys to go fuck themselves.
And Jmail was great as well.
You could just go in there and type the name of anyone you meet and hopefully they're not in there.
You just do that, man, I'd recommend you do that. That's all I do.
That's all I like every time I meet and you persed them like yeah, but he just let me just to run that name through Jmail.
Oh where were you? What do you do? Where were you? In twenty eighteen?
By the way, it's so weird though, it's like so gay Brinn and Larry Patron there like Britain definitely seems to have at some point associated with Epstein. Nothing, nothing in the type madea really about it.
It's well then you also look at his connections with Moot all of that kind of stuff. But I'll yeah, awesome to me. I always believe all that though. I actually got a great breakdown on the show about that from a listener again, how our listeners are some of the smartest, most educated. So fucking cool. Isn't that so fucking cool? It means the world of me.
It's same like I love my listeners like I adore them.
I love it. And this someone broke me down about like the secret history of four Chan, which is just the idea of that. Well, at the time, Christopher Poole was moving away from four Chan already, he already had other ideas. He was already on the way out. He had already kind of segued. He had been trying to create a sort of area for bad actors on four Chan for a while. It never took uh And when Epstein and Steve Bannon got involved with him, he was
already kind of out the door. So Epstein probably had nothing. Epstein had nothing to do with four Chan. But then it was interesting how that took off because of the Steve Bannon Epstein connections to him. But it really was just to me what I thought was interesting is more so after the fact about how they were making fun of the QAnon, four chan pizza Gate stuff by using
the Pizzagate stuff themselves. Yeah, so, I mean a game on a game on a game on a game, and it's all just it just makes people go crazy.
You know What's really interesting though, none of this general if AI is Like Epstein was kind of into AI, it seems, but he was into it in the same.
Way every business IDA is.
So he's like, what if it could do all this stuff that I've imagined? But yeah, he had know this era is part of like he maybe he was like a load bearing pedophile, like because.
I think they missed the ketamine. I think it was no ketamine, And I do think it was a different thing because at the time, what Epstein really was more focused on was his appearance on the Internet. He was focused on the information about him on the Internet, and that's why he got into all of the informational technology and all that shit, because he was trying to figure out, how can I control how people hear about me and talk about me? And that's really what that's what that
was about. And then because you remember he was into fucking freezing is common, making a world of supermodel sex slaves that he would make endless children with. And that's his big idea, is ed. He was trying to fucking live forever, and so he had other ideas. So he wasn't here in this one. He was here. He's looking great now.
Though, well, I mean, I don't know if I agree that Jeffrey Epstein looks great.
I just saw him. Oh yeah, I always me and him. Whenever I go to Tel Aviv, I see him. Jesus, that's my whole thing. I go check in with jeff We go down there. I love him, five hang out with him. David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Oh good, well, hem Ray Ama Bin Laden fine here, They're all all right, all right, Henry.
We're gonna wrap it there, Henry, where can people find you?
Go and check it out? And the last podcast on the left and all of the warships. Our videos are on Netflix now and you can also see us on YouTube, and we've got a new if you want to check out. If you like live play role playing games, we have entered into the fray over here and we do Bloodbath Vampire of the mask Rid. It's LPN RPG. It's over on our YouTube channel LPN TV. And it is. Honestly, I think it's really good and it is. It is a dark and evil version of an LPN event RPG playthrough.
Hell yeah, we'll get some links at that in the notes. Uh.
You can also now buy We've just launched our Better Offline fuck data centers, merch graivel T shirt, beanie stickers, tank tops, baby onesies. Put them everywhere you're gonna. I'm at ze tron. Subscribe to the newsletter. You'll have them unlogue this week. Sorry for biscuit last week. Cheers everyone, I love you all. Thank you for listening to Better Offline.
The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matasowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Matasowski dot com, m A T T O S O W s ki dot com. You can email me at easy at Better offline dot com or visit Better offline dot com to find more podcast links and of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat dot where's youreaed dot at to visit the discord, and go to our slash.
Better Offline to check out our reddit.
Thank you so much for listening Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.