Friends, hello and welcome to the Never Post Mailbag episode four rainy season 2025 in which we respond to listener emails, comments, voicemails, and voice messages about our segments. Folks, you know it because I've said it before, but I'm gonna say it again. We love to hear from you. It's why we do the show. Please do get in touch and tell us your thoughts on our segments. All of the ways that you can get a hold of us are in the show
notes. Drop us a line. And if you don't, Georgia is gonna cry.
I am. I'm crying right now.
I've seen it happen. She cries.
He said it was
I'm your host, Mark McNetta. Joining me today in order of their spicy food tolerance, I assume. Woah. Ascending Hans Buto, n p s p.
Yeah. I think that's right. I think that's right.
I'm the
old man of the group. So I got I got that heartburn coming in the night.
I didn't I didn't wanna lean really hard into the Midwest The Midwest. But
As long as there's also lots of mayonnaise in there, I would be like, hey. God. No. Hans. No. Take it back. My god.
Next in line, Jason Oberholzer, NPEP.
Yeah. I'm probably somewhere in the middle here. I'm looking at Georgia and I'm trying to figure out which side of the line we're gonna be on. I can do it. I don't always seek it out. So that's where in the middle I am.
Georgia, and then next in line, Georgia Hampton, NP, p.
I'm honored to have this position in this order. I do like spicy food. Spicy food doesn't really like me. Oh. So I do really enjoy it and I have fun eating it.
What's your favorite spicy dish that you wish you could have more that you don't?
Oh, god. I mean, a lot of like Indian dishes. It's
worth the pain.
It is. When it's spicy and tasty, you just
can't you can't do any better than that. Georgia, would you do hot ones?
Absolutely not. Okay. No. I hate that, but that's for different reasons. I hate food challenges. Don't
like big interviews. That's too bad because, like, because I saw Sean
at the Webby's and I
was like, Sean, Georgia would Georgia would be on it. Listen.
I locked eyes with Sean at the Webby's, and I felt we had a cosmic connection. So Sean, get at me. Would love to talk
to you. As long
as it doesn't involve anything spicy, we're good.
No. No. No. It's my I just I I hate food challenges. I hate them. I don't like it. They kinda yuck me out. So I wouldn't I get it. Do it.
Yeah. Hey, guys. Mailbag. Look at us.
Wow. I
think we're mailing it. I think I did it.
I did
a good job.
Mike got
the call.
So you
did it? See you on the other side.
Alright. Let's mailbag. up, in response to a previous mailbag, and I would just like to aside here for one moment to formally acknowledge something that Jason has pointed out, which is that we get the most listener mail in response to or I shouldn't say in response to, I should say immediately following mailbags. Yeah. It's great. Yeah. So even though you are writing in and talking to us about segments, we get most of this communication immediately
following the publish of a mailbag. So I just wanna say, that's great. Keep doing that.
That's rad.
But you don't have to wait. You can reach out anytime you have a thought. Okay. So Hern Sushi wrote in after the previous mailbag and said, I just listened to the latest mailbag, and I wanted to say, fuck yes, RSS. Now I'll pause here and say, fuck yes, RSS.
RSS. We did Yes. RSS.
I am also still using a beautiful turquoise iPod mini and a Tungara gay open hardware iPod. Oh, yes. To listen to podcasts and music from Bandcamp. There are dozens of us. Dozens. And I just wanted to acknowledge or maybe not acknowledge, but to request. I wanna know about all of the weird, like, open hardware RSS gadgets.
Yes. Definitely.
Because like, this rules.
Yeah. This is awesome. And I'm glad that we are slowly inculcating everyone into the RSS feed life. Okay.
Next up, on the subject of platforms and hentai, Gabriel wrote in and said this, I've recently seen a chart on how ChatGPT is gobbling up the traffic from the biggest websites. I didn't verify it, but it seems right to me. ChatGPT doesn't really feel like the Internet to me. It's more like a tool that just happens to use the Internet, But I already had trouble thinking of some of the other sites as Internet websites, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, etcetera, are
more like apps to me. I think that the Internet shouldn't be apps, but I guess I'm just old school. For me, the Internet is a website that I access in a browser on my PC laptop on my desk. Shout out to Mike who has to sit down with his laptop to write important emails. Still true. It seems like increasingly how people use the Internet is through apps on phones, and it just makes me wonder, what is
the Internet? Am I just a boomer who is used to browsing actual websites like forums and blogs, and I should consider everything that needs an Internet connection to function? Is any app that I have on my phone the Internet? Podcasts, chat GPT, console games, torrenting. What else is the Internet that I didn't consider? Bonus question. When I'm at work and I open an app on my phone to turn on the AC and the lights at home, which are all connected to my Wi Fi, is that the Internet?
When my printer refuses to print because I stopped paying a subscription, is that the Internet? When I have to wait for ten minutes before I can start my car because of a software update, is that the Internet? Gabriel? Gabriel. I think those things are the Internet.
I think it's all the Internet. It's all the Internet. But like derogatorial.
Yeah. Yeah. Internet open parentheses not complimentary. Yeah. Internet parentheses threat. I mean, this reminds me of the there was discussion that happened many many years ago where it was like, what's the Internet versus the World Wide Web? Yeah. Like, back when this was like, you know, we were still sort of figuring out what this delimiter was. It was like you would go on Usenet, right, would be the Internet, but like www.yahoo.com was the World Wide
Web. That was the and like, are all of these things the information superhighway?
Oh, boy.
Getting to your question, the immediate thing that I thought was like, yeah, all the things that need an Internet connection to function are the Internet, including like the Internet of Things. And then you call out the Internet of Things, which yeah. I think it's like the global network of machines, even if they're your refrigerator, it's all the Internet.
Yeah. I agree.
Yeah. Yeah. There's a good decade there, where like the Internet of Things was always looming in the think pieces as coming and arriving and life changing. And it turns out it just like kind of came and arrived and became everything and nothing really feels any different.
And now my air conditioner is connected to the Internet and it's got a timer on it that I can change via an app on my phone to time when it turns on and off, but it doesn't it doesn't ever apply. Like no matter how many times I do it in the app, the actual appliance never behaves any differently. And that feels like the Internet. You know I mean? Like, that feels thematically right.
But I do think there's sort of different designations worth being made here of the Internet of things, the social Internet.
Right.
I mean, it's all the Internet, but the app Instagram on my phone feels like a different Internet than the app on my phone I use to change the color of the light bulbs in my light fixtures.
But I think it's like, this is where this like the psychogeographic metaphors are useful.
You know, like
Like it does.
Pittsburgh and Palm Springs are both The United States, but they're very very different places. I think, you know, the Internet feels similarly sometimes.
Definitely. Well, I think this dovetails very nicely into some messages we got around my segment around tactility and buttons and smartphones. And we got this message from Alec that says, hi, Neverpost. I finished Georgia's segment on tactility and smartphones with a thick yellow electrical wire in my
hands. I was steadily coiling it in wide circles around a vacuum, finishing my nightly janitor work at Seattle based tech mega corp and wondering why I couldn't relate to this lack of touch, this void that needed to be filled. The answer came almost immediately. Rubbery plastic wire running through my fingers, threatening to burn them through the friction of its passing. Touch is a major sense in my line of work, only to sight. I can feel the coffee stain on
your desk as well as I can see it. And more importantly, I can feel when I've wiped it away. Touching a sticky mess is not satisfying, but what I like about my job is the act of reaching out and changing the world around me bit by tiny bit. With each bag of trash, each stroke of the toilet brush, not only do I know I am doing
something impactful, but my body knows it too. When I spend too long on my phone, some part of myself feels adrift in the sea of content, floating further and further away from the pile of meat and bones lying in my bed. I think the need for tactile experiences is very high, both as a way for our minds to stay grounded within our bodies, and as a way for our bodies to get
the feedback that they have a purpose. That they are not just for ferrying a brain and a thumb around to look at the next screen. That's a very long way of saying that I love buttons, and I think they're fun to press. Thanks for the thought provoking episode as always.
Yeah. of all.
Fucking shouts to Alex.
That was great.
Beautifully beautifully written.
Yes.
And I mean, I completely agree with you. I think what you're describing when you start feeling adrift from your actual physical body is something I struggle with constantly because I am online so much, because I'm interfacing with screens so much more than I'm doing something, I would say, like intentional with my body, with my hands, with my physical self.
This reminds me of when I used to work in restaurants a lot. And my wife, who was then my girlfriend, we were just starting to date, worked in an office, and she would say, sometimes I really like doing dishes, and I would say, no. And she would say, all of my projects are long term projects that never have any resolution, but when I do a
dish, I wash it, I put it down, I dry it, and it's done. And it's like that same sort of impulse of, ugh, I think I can touch rather than the thing that swirls around me, I think is a is a strong inclination.
This is something I think about a lot with jobs I've had in the past. When I was an undergrad, I was the lab assistant in a dark room for multiple years and was responsible for mixing the chemistry together that was used in the black and white darkroom. And even I mean, the act of printing a photograph in a darkroom is so physical. You specifically cannot have a phone out because it will destroy your
paper. Even I was a barista when I moved to Chicago, and the the experience of that job is so physical and so physical in a way that kind of negates the possibility of using screens, which is something I find exponentially more helpful for me when it's like, no, actually, you can't.
Mhmm. I think part of what feels good when I spend like a weekend making music with the fellows that I record with is that I cannot touch my phone because my hands are busy. Like Mhmm. They're on instruments. I cannot use it.
And that is very satisfying. The other thing that's made me think of sort of like in a psycho spatial sense, if not psycho geographic, is that when I started doing podcasts after being a writer for a while, podcasting felt more spatial and tactile to me in a way that's sort of like reminiscent of the way Hans, your wife was saying that like dishes is a job you can finish. Like podcast is a job you can finish because there's so much raw material and you move it around and you drag
it and you cut it. You do all these things that like writing is just the moving of ideas around and they could be anything. Like podcast has material. There's actually materiality to it. So I felt more grounded doing also just stare at my screen digital work because it was a different kind of stare at my screen digital ideal work.
That's interesting.
Yeah. Mean, sort of materialize writing
Right.
Into clips that you have to move around, that you cut, that you place, that you organize. Yeah. There's something to that that makes it feel much more Yeah. I mean, tactile
Yeah.
In a way.
Much more satisfying.
So we actually got a lot of messages around mods and add ons that you can attach to your devices to make them feel more tactile and have more sensation to them. And one in particular that I wanted to bring here is an audio clip from Tim.
As a motion graphic artist, I do a lot of your digital illustrations so that I can get into my animation software of choice faster. And within the last few years, swapped to Procreate on the iPad for that specifically because of how powerful the Apple Pencil is versus, you know, using your finger or just being on a Wacom which doesn't have a screen in
it, which was my go to for many years. And initially those touch interface buttons where you're zooming in and out with pinches and touching four fingers at once to do certain things felt
like magic and I really enjoyed that experience. But then no matter what I changed in the settings, would always be undoing by accident with the palm registration turned off and it was infuriating that all these touch commands actually became a hindrance to my process and after a bit of googling found out that there's a large contingent of the illustration community that uses a party controller called the eight Bit
Do because you can map different key shortcuts to each button. So there are like number pads, bluetooth number pads that you can buy from Amazon but they're pre programmed and I didn't like the bulkiness of it and this tiny little controller just seems so much more appealing to me so I got one recently, mapped all of the keyboard shortcuts and Procreate to it and honestly, like my illustration process is so much better for it because you still need to, you know, pinch the zoom, that's
still natural part of it, but being able to like press buttons to swap the brushes, swap the colors, really enhance the drawing process for me specifically, and it was such an interesting thing because this eight bit do is like completely programmable. It's something that was made for gaming and now is becoming a way to act activity back to other processes on the device. And me,
I'm going, you can add different profiles to this thing. What else can I actually add keyboard shortcuts to to improve my experience with the touchscreen interface? And it's like, can I use this to start driving music when I'm listening in the next room or something? Like, it's actually opened a lot of opportunities that I just wanna start experimenting with after it enhanced my illustration experience so much.
I think this is so interesting, specifically because the world of digital illustration is one where tactility is so at the forefront of the conversation. I mean, the mention of, like, Wacom tablets, the the texture of the screen that you're using is often something that people will like modify. So you can find tablets or even almost like films that you can put over tablets that make it feel more like you are drawing on paper, even if you're not.
I believe that.
That's cool. Mike, you're a big route your own keypads macros sort of guy, aren't you?
Yeah. I was gonna say, I relate to this really hard because I spent probably about a full year, maybe like three or four years ago, trying to figure out what the most efficient way for me to edit audio and sound design is. And like, it turns out, yeah, that it's like it really is like having one hand that is the tool's hand. So, you know, that's like on the trackball mouse. And then the other hand is just is switching tools.
So I just have a bank of buttons and a few knobs that switch between what the tools are, and it's just like I remember when I got it set up and I started doing it, I was like, oh, shit. Okay. Yeah. Like, this is sort of how you're supposed to do this. And it really it drove home for me this idea that it's like, there is no knowing things without the body. That, like, the body is just really so intimately involved in
knowledge. And, like, not just, like, getting the work done, but in, like, knowing what to do next and feeling what the next step in your process is and knowing the solutions to problems and, like, building your skills. It's all just so embodied, and so much of technology just throws all that out the window.
It says, like Yeah.
Flat nothing, touching nothing, all chick lit Feeling nothing.
Smooth. And also, like, freeze cognitive load because, like, when you are just interacting with an interface with, like, a mouse or a touch pad or only that, like, you are making cognitive level they give to think through, oh, I'm switching to the faders for this and then it's going down by however many d b's I can pull rather than, like, left hand turns knob down. Like, loud knob go down.
Yeah. And that knob does and like the important
thing And that's the only thing that knob does.
That knob does. Make it go down.
Yeah. And so your body can just be like, go down. Yeah. And you can focus on thinking about like creative ideas or the other thing you're supposed to be thinking about rather than like, okay. So sub menu three.
Yeah. Exactly. So I think I got to this point because I was like, know, production and stuff and like worked in recording studios, and I was like, a mixing desk is stupid. It is like an ancient piece of technology that does not represent the way that I work or the way that I wanna work. However, it is a thing that has one not like, each thing that's on it has a function and that's important. And so, yeah, like recapturing that is is great.
I think also in the opposite way, that's what drives me so nuts about, you know, your printer having an app and the idea of having to wait for your card at work because there's a software update. Like, you conceptualize everything and separate it from the physical that much, it's too much. It's too I I I long for a return to one button do one thing.
Yeah. Your printer is never gonna work, but at least it's not working in a one to one relationship with you.
Yes. Exactly. Last thing on this is a message from Tom.
Hey, Never Post Gro. It's Tom Lum. Miss you guys. Regarding touchscreens from episode 32, Smooth Moves, I just wanted to share a parable that I always think of when it comes to bad touchscreen interfaces, especially touchscreens on keyboards like the Apple Touch Bar that I I despise. So at the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, formerly the EMP Museum, there is a small silly video game called Tenya Wanya Teens. It was created by Keita Takahashi, who was the director
of Katamari Damacy, one of the best games ever made. And in this game, Tenya Wanya Teens, you play a teenager going through a speedrun of their day, but your controls are a grid of 16 colorful arcade buttons, with each color corresponding to a hyper specific action. Like red might be brushing your teeth, green might be playing guitar, and blue might be confessing your love. These are all actual actions in the game, and there
are so many more. And as you are speedrunning through your day as a teenager, you have to do the right action at the right time. The catch being that randomly, the colors of the buttons will swap out from beneath them, so you'll go to hit the button to confess your love to your crush, but then it will have switched to brushing your teeth, or you will accidentally confess your
love in front of the whole class. It's a really great playable metaphor for the awkwardness of being a teen, that you don't feel quite in control of your body, or that you feel like you're always doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. But the thing is, that's exactly what a bad touch interface is, but not on purpose. Like, here it was used as a pastiche and a joke, but like, any touch interface that changes when you're not looking is a Tenya Wanya teen situation.
And of course it's even worse in a car. So, of course, touch surfaces can be great, especially when what you're looking at is what you're touching. But you have to be careful, you're not literally creating a teniawanya teen situation. Anyway, congrats on the Webby. I don't want to take all the credit, but if we're being honest, I think my intro at the start of the episode really did a lot of heavy lifting in that episode, so you're welcome for the Webby. That was a joke. God, that was sad.
I think I think we should chisel off a part of the webby and send it to Yeah.
Break off
It's only fair, really.
So I have amazing news, which is that I looked up Tenya Wanya Teens, and it's so cute and amazing. Okay.
But I mean, what a great metaphor for like it's yeah. So, you know
It's perfect.
Bad touchscreen interface is just recreating the awkwardness of not knowing how to use your body as a teenager.
Yeah. It's perfect.
Confess your love. Confess your love. No.
No. I just wanna sign in. I'm just gonna send an email.
You're just my printer. Next
up, we got an email in response to my segment on charts and the turn of the century. This comes from Jack who says that that reminded him of the way that being able to graphically present research via chart, infographic, or diagram almost always makes it resonate more with an audience and or client. This places huge pressure on researchers like myself specializing in qualitative methods where the aim is to understand different experiences, perspectives, and
values, not just count them. Reflecting on my work, I can't help but link the trend for quantitative charts with the trend for research methods that promise being able to quantify qualitative data. In particular, the abundance of workshops and public engagement methods centered around the post it note. These are activities that promise to capture the breadth and depth of human perspectives into neat digestible visualized
forms. He then references the brilliant Shannon Mattern. And goes on to say, it feels like there's definitely a link between the proliferation of charts as the go to research output and the proliferation of post it note based methods as a way of performing qualitative research. Being able to point at a pile of post it notes, group them, count them, visualize them on a Miro board feels like an attempt of qualitative researchers to condense their work into charts as a format. I agree, Jack.
And I have been in a lot of meetings where we move a lot of post it notes around because somebody came back in with a lot of qualitative sociological research, and it's not real until it is visualized, and that is the post it note phenomenon. There are anguished looks in the chat right now. I think everyone
just thinking of like, hey. You know,
I'm not looking at anyone in particular, by which I mean none of none of our clients that we all work on shows for. But like
And love.
I think about this a
lot when people are like, you know, we're really data driven here. So really, our decisions are very data driven. And then and then the conversation turns to what does the audience like?
You're like, I don't
we you know, it's hard to explain to people that it's like so much of what you are using to make very big, and in certain cases important, you know, at least as far as decisions related to media are important. Decisions are like ciphers for things. You know, you're like slapping a mask on top of something and then only ever talking about the mask
Right. And not the thing that is on the other side of it. But it's like, yeah, it's how so much of this industry and how so many people really just like it's what they feel like is the closer way to access the truth. Yeah. The truth has numbers associated with it, and that just makes things complicated.
Yeah. And in other ways, it's just like a continuation of this grand conflict between magic and science that is sort of always spooling out across time and various methods.
Next up friend of the show, George Rohawk wrote in about my segment on blocking, and George said, in the mailbag, there was a brief discussion about blocking folk that you know directly slash personally, and muting was briefly discussed. But I don't think muting gets as much credit as it deserves. I have so many people muted. The mute is the unsung hero of social media. I mean, this is hard to argue
with. I completely agree.
I'm a
huge fan of muting.
I I don't mute as much as I should. But like, there's a reason that it, you know, like, the days of IRC or whatever, it was just the main tool. Right? Like, someone's bothering you or someone is causing trouble in a channel or something, just mute them. Like, they'll you just don't see them anymore, and, like, that's the end of it.
And I think, you know, we talked about this a little bit in the segment that, you know, Caroline pointed out that sometimes a mute isn't a solution when you don't want someone to be in possession of information about your life in any way.
Right.
At least you wanna provide some friction to them getting that information. And I think that's true. But, yeah, like, 90% of the time probably, a mute goes a long way. On Blue Sky, at least, when when I get an irritating at reply, I have started just muting those people. It, like Yeah. It's like one and done. Like, I don't I don't need this.
It's just a softer blow. Obviously, there's different layers of this because, yeah, if someone is harassing you, if someone is using access to, for example, your Instagram profile, which if you muted someone, you're just not seeing what they're posting, but they can still look at your profile. They might not be able to see your story, but they can look at your photos that you've posted. Like, if there's danger or a problem with them even have axing having access to that,
muting is not gonna be enough. Yeah. But I do appreciate it as kind of a a softer pushing away.
I actually I have started using it more like Twitter for all the things that were wrong with it had a great feature in the the soft block of blocking someone and unblocking them forced and unfollow. That doesn't work on Blue Sky, and I would often use that on Twitter for someone who it like it seemed like them following me caused them distress. That like, they would only ever
I'm replies for you.
When they were mad about something.
Yeah.
And like, all of their replies to me would just be angry. And I'll be like, listen, I'm gonna do you a favor, and I'm just gonna get me out of your timeline.
I'm just I'm just gonna get out of here.
Now, I just block those people on Blue Sky just, you know, because I can't unfollow them. I can't force them to unfollow me. But people who are just like sort of low level irritating or who do the blue sky thing of like, well, actually ing constantly. Yeah. That's a mute.
Like, those people get muted.
And that's fine. It's a gentle way of being like, hey. Yeah.
Yeah. I just shut the fuck up.
But truly, as always, the only real virtuous path is to get out of everyone's timeline, and so never post.
Just don't do it. Yeah. With that, we're gonna take a little break. Okay. So joining us is Kurt White. Kurt, thanks for coming on.
Kurt. Good to see you guys again.
Alright. Everybody may remember Kurt from our segment about the Internet and the sense of self and using technology to construct the sense of self. So, Kurt, thanks for coming on for us to read some listener communications to you. Our one is from Paul from Sweden. Is this is was this furnished in the email as germane information, Jason?
This is how Paul would like to be described.
Okay. This is Paul from Sweden.
We honor that. Paul writes, I was just listening to your latest mailbag episode when a thought struck me, and I had the idea to write this message. As I was hearing the questions and perspectives of the listeners of the show, I suddenly became aware of a thought process that I've maintained for most of my life. I realized the general apathy
that I had towards my opinions. Every time I heard something that interested me or that I related to, I would get the instinct to write it with my own thoughts only to tell myself that no one would listen before I could even finish the thought. I've even noticed this in other people my age with barrenous chat rooms and overly vague conversations. I wonder if the Internet has anything to do with this as the anonymous nature of social media can make posting feel like screaming into a
pillow. I wonder if it has always been like this, as I am only 17 and have never known an Internet without social media. What do you think? Has our expanded worldview led to the views of ourselves shrinking? I'm sure I'm not the person to write about this, but at least it feels good to get this thought out of my head. Paul, that does feel like a good thought to get out of
your head. Mhmm.
That's wonderful. I I would have I was pegging Paul as a fellow Gen Xer here. Yeah, same. That was the most impassioned defense of apathy I've heard in a while. I felt myself relaxing into it. But then I also thought, you know, it's a feeling I can remember when I was 17, interestingly enough, where I think you're sort of confronted at that time of life with the sort of all the thoughts in your head and the sort of world that seems much larger than it actually is in some ways. And I
think it can feel overwhelming and stifling. I think that's a sort of creativity problem, actually. I think it's something that has to be kind of born with community. And I don't know that the internet either seems to me as a positive or negative in that. I think it's just something that is. I mean, I didn't have the internet I had at 17 was so much less. But I think I still had that strong feeling. And I think one has to sort of learn how to
trust one's own thoughts and feelings as valuable. And very often, if you can do that, you'll find that other people will respond to them and take them seriously. And the world will seem a little smaller, but in a good way. I always sort of envied the millennials in a way, because guys What?
You hate money?
You guys took it. Well, it's a
love hate.
It's a love hate thing. It's Same, to be honest. You seemed to have an easier time of that, take it seriously, and the world will make room. And I don't know that we really thought know what I mean? But now it's so full, maybe people have come back around, and they're not so sure if there's any room anymore. But I think there is room, was room, and will be room.
I do think I was gonna say my my main thought, both hearing from Paul and hearing you talk about it, Kurt, was like, you know, we can all argue about whether or not the generational divide really makes a difference, but, like, I I wonder if that is at play here because I remember growing up,
you know, in the early nineties. Right? We're we're just sort of getting out of the the Gen X apathy, but we're still in this kind of like, you know, the most important thing is to be cool, and there was nothing less cool than caring about stuff.
Mhmm. Yeah.
And so for me, like, it felt almost like a little rebellious to care about things and to, like, have strongly held opinions and to, like, you know, defend them and advocate for them. And I wonder now if, like, the Internet is a place where, like, everybody's got an opinion. They're constantly advocating for them. They're all irritating as shit. Is a way for you to, like, look at the world and be like, uh-uh. Like, that sucks. No. Thank you.
I mean, kind of to then add to this chronology we're creating. When I was growing up in the February, the feeling was very different than that. That being online was very much like, oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna tell everyone. And it was a, you know, a very embarrassing time, but one that was sort of enacted upon by my peers and certainly by myself. I was profoundly sincere online, very publicly. And I do I do struggle a bit with the cacophony of voices now and feeling a little paralyzed by it.
Yeah. It's interesting. I in pitch meetings and in discussion, there are so many moments where we pause and try to think, like, we're assuming the Internet has something to do with this in some, like like, catalistic way. But is this just how, you know, insert thing works? Is this just what it feels like to be a human? Like, independent of the Internet? Is this just like how this concept exists on the world? Would a
medieval merchant recognize this Yeah.
Exactly. And so I feel like, yeah, I'm sort of struggling on this particular question with that. In some ways, like, yes, this is a just a reasonable way to fuel that a lot of people feel. But in some ways, I think this is tied into the chronology we're setting up of sort of caring and posting on
the Internet. As somebody who posted a lot on the Internet and stopped, I think not just because I burned out from having a public persona, but because there was a bit of frustration, cynicism, despondency that creeped in, having been in a space that was like forwarding ideas and agendas and understanding of the world, and with some vague goal in the future that if we just understood things enough and sorry to the charts question from before, if we could put
them graphically enough, if we could just explain them correctly, if we had enough post its to move around, clearly, like, wisdom would win out, and we would like make correct decisions because we had better and more information. And as that's became increasingly difficult to see positive outcomes from, or even like ways in which it impressed the world, it became more difficult to consider posting.
In some ways, that does start to reflect on like contributing my ideas to a discourse, or having an idea worth sharing, and some sort of resentment of people who assume that their ideas are worth sharing in any way that I have to like get over a knee jerk response of like, why would you why would you tell anyone anything you're thinking? It's not gonna fucking matter, which is a bad place to land.
I mean, I think there's a happy medium here. Because at least personally, my frustration is often with the belief that you are now automatically an expert on whatever topic. I get frustrated by all these people basically, actualing each other until it becomes this ouroboros that just sort of collapses in on itself. But I think I think there is space, Kurt, to kind of what you were saying of, like, not taking it to that place, but also not taking in the other direction where it's like, well,
why even say anything at all? Like, I think there's a space to just be like, to make room to have observations, to talk to each other, to communicate without it either being, and this is the definitive end of the story decision about this.
Mhmm.
And also feel additive. It's it's more communal. It's more conversational.
Mhmm. I was reminded, and I hope this is a building adjoining, but if not, we have editors. I want to read a little quote from a little book. It was a little book of Georgia O'Keeffe paintings. Just a tiny little book of Georgia. And there's a wonderful quote in the front that I always have loved. A flower is relatively small. Everyone has many
associations with a flower, the idea of flowers. You put out your hand to touch the flower, you lean forward to smell it, maybe touch it with your lips, almost without thinking, or give it to someone to please them. Still, in a way, nobody sees a flower, really. It is so small. We haven't time, and it takes time, like to have a friend takes time. If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it, no one would see what I see because I would paint it small, like the flower is small.
Well, there you have it, Paul from Sweden. Here's
your answer.
I mean, means something. Every person's something means something, right? We have to find a way to not be the cliche of ourselves. And we do have to do that publicly somehow. There's no correction for that but to sort of bungle into it.
And it's and that's probably even harder when you're 17. You know? Like, it's not easy when you're 40. But No. It's it's I I've at least got a a couple iterations of seventeen years under my belt. Doing the seventeen is particularly hard.
Yeah. That's right. And before long, you have an award winning podcast. You
know, you hit 40, they just hand them out
to you. They hand them out to you. That's right.
Kurt, this next question I found here is particularly plucks to appeal to the Gen X in you. So we'll get back to that.
Very good. Very good.
Chris writes it and says, finally getting around to writing you about shutting down my PC. My emotional response to this simple act changed as the interface did. For reference, I'm 45 years old. My PC was an Apple two e.
Oh, yeah. I hope.
Had one myself. It wasn't my but I did have one. Yeah.
My early PCs had dedicated single function on off switches. Often these came with a satisfying clunk. That sound Right. The time I found myself with a PC where the default method of shutting down was to click a menu option, I felt genuinely offended. Especially since that process took a bit of time, none of the instant feedback of a switch. I didn't like that it felt more like a request than a command. Maybe it was because PCs used to freeze up rather more often than
they do now. I didn't trust the technology fully. PCs usually still have an instant off switch hidden away at the back, but now on the rare occasions I need to use this, it somehow feels violent. Even switching my phone all the way off seems, if not extreme, then unnecessarily forceful. I've noticed my language reflects this as well. What I
would once call a reboot, I'd now call a hard reboot. If this turns out to be a broader phenomenon than just myself, I wonder what has contributed to the attitude change. Anthropomorphizing language like putting things in sleep mode? Do our devices feel more like extensions of ourselves? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Even if it's to tell me, hopefully gently, that I'm alone in this. Kurt, is Chris alone in this? Oh, no.
I I loved all that. Those old noises live in my soul somewhere. I just love it. I have a collection of them in my head and heart. And I think that's a good that's extensions of oneself. It does feel like that. And maybe we're a little more hesitant to sort of do violence to it for that very reason. Know, it's meant to be always shining like a beacon in the background or something like that. There's something lost when we do that and something sort of hard when we have to do
it. Yeah, I hadn't thought of it myself in a violent way, but I can easily imagine it. I can easily imagine. My current PC that I'm sitting here with, it hides the button so thoroughly that every every time I need to press it, I need to shine a bright light on it because it's it's so hidden that I can't even I can't even see it. I don't know what that means, but it it does it does conjure a certain amount of violence in me when I have to look for the goddamn things.
Well, I think that means like, this is these are conscious design choices made by people who don't want you to turn these things off ever. And like the relationship that we had at one point with the machines where you had to turn them on before engaging is it's gone. Like, they are always there. We are always engaging.
Well, I think there's something here about access and accessibility in terms of having access to this device and the device having access to you. Because I cannot remember the last time I consciously turned off my phone.
Yeah. And it's for the same purpose that it always has been, which is like, it starts doing too many weird things and I don't know why. And then I try to turn it off, and I found that, like, I haven't turned off this model of the phone enough, so I don't actually know how to do it quickly. Yeah. I have to, like, figure out which combination of buttons starts to turn it off again.
You have to look it up.
And it's like a two stage process.
You you get a lot of screenshots of you trying to
set up
the phone. Yeah.
But and it does Jason Jason, to your point of the times I've had to turn my phone off are when it's, yeah, it's glitching, something's not working. And back to the violence point, it does kind of feel like you're slapping someone in the face because they're freaking out, and you're like, snap out of it. Like, you're just like slapping.
I'll work you I'll wake you up again soon, buddy. Just for a couple of seconds. Don't don't worry about it.
Well, it's like you're you're severing your connection to the world. You're like, well, I'm you know, like, it it you disconnect. But that has an embodied feeling to it now. We are. As opposed to just an an emotional psychological one. Right?
Right. And also because there's a sense like, it feels like the software is turning it off, not the hardware, because there's not a big clunk button Mhmm. To turn it off. Like, I'm I'm mad, like, I'm touching the screen and swiping the thing and it's turning itself off, and I always fear that it will never let me turn it back on.
Yeah. Where do each of you keep your phones when you come in of a night and you're kind of done?
Oh, no. The face that Kurt made?
Oh, god. I've turned into the person I never wanted to be with this. It's turned into such a multifunction device that I'm very often trying to wake myself up without waking Emily up. And so, I'll slip it under my pillow with the hope that my non noise alarm will wake me and not her before the noise alarm. So I I literally sleep with it like a child sleeps with a with a tooth that's just come loose under its pillow. No fairy has ever visited me in the night, however.
Yeah. Well, then yes, it is an extension of ourselves. I think that answers
the I will make a note about the violence of processes. You know, the old Unix machines had all kinds of violence built into the language. You know, you would kill things, kill as a command, right? I mean, this language, they had a TV series, not a bad one, a halt and catch fire, you know, named after a real catastrophic process that would happen at that time. So I think we were sort of used to a certain level of violence built into our devices that's maybe it's been sort of sublimated.
Kurt, thank you so much for taking some time out of your busy professional real job to join us for some some good old fashioned podcasting.
No. No. The world needs podcasts like this.
Don't you dare?
I believe it. I believe it. You know? Don't trust me. We need to send a good message to our listeners here. Right? We trust your instinct that you have something to offer.
There you go. So you heard it here from Kurt. I want you to, before you go to sleep, turn the podcast on, put it under
your pillow. Kurt, what are you guys working on over at Unraveling these days? What do got coming up?
Oh, man. Some wild and wonderful stuff. We're in the middle of a series of three episodes in honor of Pride Month. We just did an episode on queer theory. And then next, talked to a colleague in Singapore who's a music therapist about all kinds of different aspects of expression and protection and identity, and then resilience in trans youth, and then some great stuff coming up in July, too.
Hell, yeah. All right. We'll put some links in the show notes.
Up next, we got a message from Alex about our segment that we did. It was actually a whole episode that we did about whether or not the Internet is driving you. Yes. You absolutely to the brink of your mental capacity. And Alex said to us, I am an ex smoker. And while I haven't had a cigarette in over a decade, I still think of myself as a recovering drug addict. I have to. It's basically the only thing that keeps me from starting up again. Shame can be a powerful motivating force. You know?
Unlike a lot of ex smokers, I never had a problem with a lack of constant oral fixation. Me, I could never figure out what to do with my hands. While listening to the episode, I checked for my own stats of the day, and I was shocked to find that I unlocked my phone 57 times and spent nearly two hours on TikTok and thirty six minutes on blue sky during a workday at a job that in no way requires any use of my phone. Is two hours on TikTok worse than 20 or so cigarettes a day? Maybe not.
What I'm trying to say is I think TikTok and whatever else you consider, quote, unquote, the feed are like cigarettes. Like cigarettes, the feed makes you think you need it to get through your day.
I do really resonate with this idea of feeling like you have to do something with your hands.
Me too. Me too. As Hans was reading that, I was like, feeling the impulses go down to my arm of like, you should grab that phone, dude.
Oh, wow. Yeah.
A lot
of the time Yeah.
A lot of times, I will notice myself just grabbing my phone and, like, opening the weather app for, like, no reason just to physically do it.
Yeah. Or it's like that thing where you're like, oh, I'm gonna check I'm gonna check Instagram. Like, okay. I checked Instagram. I'm gonna check TikTok. Okay. I checked TikTok. I'm gonna check blue sky. Okay. I checked blue sky. Okay. I'm gonna check Instagram. I check Instagram.
Oh, yeah.
I'm done checking Instagram. I'm gonna check TikTok.
Mean, I've done it even worse where I'd be like, now that I'm done checking Instagram, I'm gonna close the app and it's time to check Instagram.
I'll,
like, look at my own photos. Like, I don't know what I'm doing. Like, and I will you know, kind of to what we had talked about in that actual episode. It's almost like I've been sleepwalking. I'll just be like Yeah. Am I in the shower? Like, what no. Like, I'm just like, how how
did I get here? Like, what am I looking for? That that's the question I asked in the the episode and it's something that I use a lot as a barometer where I'm like, wait a I feel like I'm doing this with such frenetic energy and then I have to be like, maybe we just maybe we just fold our hands neatly in our lap for a couple minutes.
I have a question for the three of you. How would you describe, in what terms, metaphors, however you want to think about it, the feeling of being interrupted by something else and being forced to hard eject out of the feed
That's great.
Before that cycle has completed. Is it great? Is it great, or do you feel like a like, oh god.
No. I don't need anything that's happening in a cycle. Like, there's no complete need to complete an activity. There's nothing. It is just time passing because and I really do think like, Alex, like, I think you're on to something. Like, I really do think it it started because my hand hadn't done a thing in a while. And it's like, well, maybe there's something on the thing that I grab. And then you're just like,
in it a little bit. But when I'm interrupted, I'm not like, no. I need my I was like, oh, okay. Sure. What are we what am I doing with my life?
Yeah. It feels like waking up. Like, feels which is maybe dark to say. But, yeah, it really feels that way. Because otherwise, I mean, I'll be on TikTok looking at TikToks, and maybe they're not especially funny or I'm not finding my my algorithm's not, like, picking up what I want or something. And I will have the thought while looking at TikTok, like, oh, after this, I should open TikTok.
Like, wear my glasses? They're on your head. Yes. Yeah.
Where I'm like, well, if I go on TikTok, I'll find what I'm looking. And then I'm like,
oh my god. I'm on TikTok. Oh god. No.
But, yeah, if if for example, someone calls me on my phone and I'm scrolling TikTok and it just, you know, pauses the video, that is the thing that shows up on my screen. I'm like, oh, my dad's calling me. Whatever feeling I feel of like, hey, I was watching that or whatever is vanishingly small.
Yeah. I think what Alex is describing is like idle phone use. Right? Like, this is like the the hands are not busy with other things and so I busy them or, you know, in a sense, they busy themselves with with the phone. And really what it is is that it's like the phone the phone is a is the easiest at the moment avenue to just filling minutes and to occupying the brain, or to having the brain occupied for you.
Like, you know, you don't you don't have to expend the energy of practicing an instrument for ten minutes or reading a book for fifteen minutes or whatever. You can just pick up a device, look at it, and have things happen to you that are, you know, entertaining or informing or whatever. And I was gonna say to sort of extend Alex's metaphor a little bit, like, I do think that, you know, a lot in a lot of ways, apps are like
cigarettes. It's just like if each individual cigarette was also able in text to say to you, it's very important that you do this as often as possible. You this is sort of how you are defining who you are as a person. If you don't do this, you're gonna miss out on things that are happening in the world. Please consider paying money to do this too. It would be nice if you supported this individual cigarette with a crowdfunded donation. If you don't, we could
go away at any moment. Yes. We depend on how good you feel.
And now
is a great time to talk about membership at night.
Up next, we have a message from Tyver Foucault about our roundtable on leaving social media platforms. And Tyver writes, I left Twitter at the end of twenty twenty two. There was one other sadness that I experienced before I left. In the strange Twitter sphere, adjacent to weird Twitter, it was common for micro fiction authors and general weirdos to make themselves a bot. Not AI as we know it now, but a Markov chain bot, which remixed the corpus of your posts in the style of at horse ebooks.
They were sweet little guys happily puttering along, mashing together pieces of your voice to make their own thoughts, growing as you grew. They often didn't make sense, but sometimes they would say something very profound. Not unlike when a toddler shares a perspective that surprises and delights. My bot had been there beside me for six years. He had a personality. I read every post he made. Elon said he would kill the bots, and he did. He killed mine, and he killed the bot of my dear friend
and fellow author, Tiny Obscure, and we mourned. To honor them, we made a zine.
Yeah. The I think the bot the bot ecosystem on Twitter at its height was one of the best parts about it.
That's why that's so interesting. It
ruled. It was really really good. Man. And I totally understand like mourning. You know what mean? Like, suddenly, you know, like, there was mourning for horsey books. Like, would be I can see why there would be mourning for this. Yeah.
Yeah. It's interesting because it's like a deletion of a like a content type and as well as like the community that it lives in. Yeah. But I mean, honestly, the coolest thing you could do after that is magazine. So
Oh my god. That's such a cool idea. I'm so glad you did that. And then Tyver also shared with us the final tweet before leaving Twitter, which goes as follows. The Twitter leavers oath. I will not be terminally online. My friendships and community will outlive this website. My heart cannot be monetized. I will not become food for monsters. Should their claws find my flesh, may they drown in my blood.
Fuck yes. Holy shit.
Every word of it true and hard
as fuck.
That's the hardest shit I've read all year.
We should start saying this together before we do live shows.
Fuck it. I'm just gonna get it tattooed on my chest.
Yeah. Sick as hell. Oh my god.
Hell yeah. Timer. Alright. And finally, it's what you've all been waiting for, an update on cool graffiti. Now I'm gonna have to go over the ground rules again. This was supposed to be your favorite one word graffiti instances.
The rules have changed.
But I'll allow that you just give me good graffiti, but I'm mad about it.
Now it's now
it's just sick photos of funny things on walls.
Yeah. Exactly. Including the one, which is a sticker. They sent me a sticker from Dylan that says fuck Yelp.
Although the sticker doesn't just say fuck Yelp.
It also says pure madness.
Yes. It's unclear if they're related. Right? In my mind in my mind, they absolutely are.
Yeah. Think they're different because the font is different.
But they're so close.
Tonally, they are the same.
Somebody thought that putting them together was funny, and they were.
They're right.
Yeah. And I like this as, one thought that follows another. Like, premise, fuck Yelp. Conclusion, pure madness.
Yeah. Well then, Jason, how do you feel about the next one, which has, in fact, no words at all?
I hate this, but I'm gonna allow it. Fabie Fakes sent us a graffiti Among Us guy.
Yeah. Just one of the Among Us guy.
From Italy. That's the surprising part about this. Well Some Italian youths are spraying Among Us guys on their walls. Mamma Mia. No. Alex Alex Morris sent a phrase, which is really stretching my credulity here. He moved back to Chicago Let's go. When he says, when I moved back to Chicago a few years ago, my night out, we went to Pequads for deep dish. I saw this written on the bathroom wall and I knew I was home. Wayne Gretzky killed my uncle. Sad face.
The sad face really sells it.
I was gonna say, it's like, oh, man.
Does does this mean something to you Chicago people? Like, at all?
I mean, I I I'm the worst person ever to ask about this. Having lived here for almost a decade,
I Does Wayne Gritsky killed any of your
family members? Not
yet, though. The possibility is always there. He has a thirst for blood.
Kieran Rex sends in a famed piece of local folklore graffiti on a bridge over a highway that says, give peas a chance, as in multiple vegetables. Peas, that's fun. That's a pun. That's not one word graffiti, but thank you for sending it in.
Personally, I think the Brits have given peas enough chances, frankly.
There's they're
they're Give seasoning a
chance. Confounding. The confounding Yeah.
Give sees hey. How about
Yeah. Josh Pelton gave me a one word submission. It's 50. 50. This is what
you want, Jason? This is what I want. This is
what you want. You like this
This is great.
A single word that you kinda cannot giggle at. 50.
50.
That's great. Scarf.
He also sent in chicken jockey,
which is two two people joining forces, it looks like.
It does. It's yeah. Two different colors.
Chicken jockey is a Minecraft reference.
Oh, really? Yeah. Finally in this list is someone who I believe is a friend of mine, unless they have the exact same name as him, Max Himmelho. Hi, Max. Your mom was my grade teacher. Who wrote in to say, it pains me that this could be my contribution to such a thoughtful, insightful show, but here's Speedo fart.
Yeah. Hell yeah. Word. One word, Max. Speedo fart.
One word. Speedo fart is one word. So Max, well done.
Next to a sleeping
Yeah. Yeah. Dick? Is that
a sleeping
dick? Is that a
dick that's asleep? Seems to be.
Wearing a little sombrero?
Yeah. Yeah.
Wearing a little hat.
He's doing something fun. You tell his mom's a teacher because he knows how to follow directions. One funny word spray painted on a wall. That's what I like. Well done. Put pictures of them on my desk.
Alright, folks. We mailbagged. We did it. Thank you, friends, for joining. Thank you, Georgia, Jason, Hans,
for chanting. I got scared.
Oh, spicy.
Hans, what spicy food are you gonna try next? And then tell us in the next mailbag how it went.
Oh, next mailbag? Okay. I'm gonna try tuna fish. With a little bit of ranch powder in it.
Wow. I'm gonna show it a packet of cracked pepper.
And then point point to it across the room.
Now, like we always say at the end of the episode, should their claws find my flesh, they may drown in my blood?
See you all next time. Yes.
Okay. Bye. Bye.