127: Digital Digital Letdown

It's a it's a wide ranging conversation, so stay tuned for that. We have a night call that we want to take right now from the happiest place on Earth? Shall we roll it? Hey, nightcall, long time, first time. UM. I'm just calling to tell you the story of how I went to Disney World recently. UM. I live in Florida and I was visiting some family up in the Orlando area and we weren't while I wasn't planning on

going to the parts at all. I've been pretty as far as airing on the side of caution goes, I've been pretty extreme in terms of not leaving my house for the most part rationally, so I think I'm not like a gooraphobic or anything like that. But so I get there to visit family, and they basically are like, so there's this Florida resident discount right now, tickets are really cheap. We won't bring this up to the kids as a possibility until we talk to you. Will all go,

but only if you want to go. And I don't know, in like some sort of lapse of judgment or feeling like outnumbered, or you know that feeling of like, well, all of these people think it's a good idea, I guess maybe I'm being you know, extreme or something. So

I went and had a pretty good time. All of the lines are six ft apart, there's like hand sanitizers everywhere, there's like um plexiglass in between wine formations, so you're not like breathing on everybody as you're waiting in line, and most of the lines have been moved outside, but none of that really changes the fact that like a lot of rides are inside and you're just fucking touching a lot of stuff, And there's like so many different vectors of transmission at a park that like even at

percent capacity, which I think to holding it to it's still like a lot of people in and out. So I like, I went to the parks over the weekend, and then last night, I like kind of woke up in the middle of the night having a hard time sleeping, and then just sort of in that like middle of the night fashion started thinking about like all of the different ways we could have gotten COVID by going to

the parks. You how, you know, temperature checks only cover people who are like symptomatically sick and not those who are asymptomatic, and you know how many things we had to have touched. Anyway, bottom line is, I woke up in the middle of the night last night and had a full blown anxiety attack, which is actually the first one I've experienced throughout quarantine. Um probably because up until this point I've been extremely cautious, and then I felt I was feeling like I threw all of that away

by going to the parks this weekend. You know, wanted to give you an insider report of Disney World, which is like a fucking surreal right now, and just like wild to be there while everybody's like wearing masks, you know, it just it feels super weird, but also to give all of your listeners a warning that you know, if you're considering doing something, like if you're maybe feeling like, well, maybe everything is like safer out there, then I think it is or you're kind of double guessing the way

that you've approached quarantining and being safe up until now, and like feeling like you're being left out of stuff because like things are reopening and people are going out to eat and ship. I was feeling fine while I was there, and then it all just hit me when I got home and realized it was a terrible decision. So I would recommend not going overall, and I would also especially recommend not going if you're prone to anxiety is because this was the worst one that I've had

in a long time. Thanks night call, have a good one. Thank you so much for that call. That that is definitely good advice to heed um to be more cautious.

Then it seems like when you look at the rest of the world and you see how people are starting to be a little bit less careful, I think it can make you feel as though you're being overly vigilant by continuing to quarantine I guess it depends on how on where you're located, but um, I was curious if you guys Molly and Emily have felt like looking at, you know, how other people are operating at this stage of quarantine, that you feel like there's a disconnect there.

I think that people have gotten really cooped up because we've been in quarantine for so long, and especially with the fires in California and Oregon, it has like doubled down on those feelings of claustrophobia and have in fever.

So I definitely over the past like a few days, was just like had this urge to get out in the world, just desperately because I could not, and I think a lot of people because they've been holding back, then when they decided to do something, it is this sort of like liberating moment followed immediately by intense guilt

and shame. My mom has some friends who it's like they're very careful, but especially because they're older, and then it's like they'll go to Burger King to get some food and then just like have an anxiety attack of like what if I just fucked myself over by going to Burger King. What if I now get COVID from this, like it's not worth it. I'm kind of of two minds.

I think that there is definitely stuff that I am still there's no way I'm going to do it, and I kind of looked down upon people who do it. You know. I'm I'm in a college town right now, and like college bar culture is just full steam ahead here.

And that is you know, obviously college age people aren't necessarily going to be symptomatic or really you know, have an have an extreme case of COVID if they if they transmit it or if they get it, but you know, it affects the rest of the community eventually in some way, and that you know, it's hard for me to to be like, oh, you know, they just you know, we

have to we have to continue with life. I will say though, that like I do think that kind of that that shame and the guilt feeling about doing something like going to a McDonald's or a burger king or whatever. I don't feel at all anymore. I have to say, like going to a burger king or something. It's like that's not going to be I don't think how you contract COVID unless you are immune compromised in which case, you know, like like the collar said, all of this

stuff applies doubly. But there was just this article that came out, um was on Elemental, which is like a medium blog, like a science and health blog. It was chrending all day yesterday, but it was sort of this most recent collection of findings about COVID and like, you know, how much they differ from what was being reported early on about how you know, how it would spread, how

you need to protect yourself and all of that. And the big thing from it is that like the surfaces thing, which is a lot of what the caller was calling about, is not really necessarily the biggest risk factor. And the way that they were conducting the studies early on is not really an accurate representation of how like the pathogens would be spread, the concentration they would be spread in.

Just like being able to really concentrate on not like on the droplets thing on, just like not being in close quarters with people who you're not an applied with.

That's all pretty controllable. I feel like, I don't know, maybe it's because I've been out in the world for a while now that I don't feel I feel like, I know exactly like what I can and can't do, and so like, yeah, like going to a get pick up from somewhere, get fast food or something like that is not necessarily the stuff that I'm feeling guilt to your anxiety written about. I don't know, Okay, but what about going to Disney World, Well, that is your own.

I have to say though that, UM, I was so judgmental at the Honestly, the first like three months of quarantine, I had very strong reactions about how I felt other people were operating. And now that it's been this long, I'm trying to not do that. And I think, like the thing with Disney, I don't feel as though you should feel guilt or shame about doing that because you obviously made a call that you later realized was the

wrong call, and it's not the same. The only people I really judge or think should feel shame are the people who are like anti maskers, who are going around without a mask to basically be dicks and make a point. Yeah, I think that it's worth for giving yourself for going to Disney. I I guess maybe two months ago, UM or maybe three went there was a socially distanced UM like six of us were gonna have a glass of wine for someone's birthday, and I went up the street.

It was just my neighbors, and I wore a mask and then I sat down and we were all far apart. We were outside, and because we were eating and drinking, I took down my mask. Everyone took down their masks, and it felt like I was like, I'm not super comfortable with this, but I don't want to be wearing a mask and make them feel bad. And then on the walk home, my heart just started raising and I was like, I'm not comfortable with the fact that I

did that. And and not to judge anyone who is who's going out to eat or whatever, I do think that that can put um weight stuff in a very uncomfortable position with which we've talked about before. And I think it might be like I might consider it a little selfish, but I'm not going to really judge people for doing it. But there's this sense of like you, like the caller said, where you don't want to compromise someone else's decision to like bring their kid to Disney,

and it's they're taking these safety protocols or whatever. You don't want to be the one who brings everyone down, and it's only after you do it that you're like, oh shit, I made a mistake. And I think as long as you realize, like, as long as you check yourself and you think, like, you know, I won't do that again, I'm gonna be more careful, then there's no sense in really beating yourself up too much over it,

you know, I mean, Captain bring down over here. But um, I'll judge people for doing stuff that is overly risky and frivolous. I think, but if it's a mistake, like if they really if they're like, oh, ship, that I shouldn't have done it, you know. I mean, I think going to disney World because you get pressured into it and then feeling stressed out afterwards, is you know, completely understandable.

I don't think this person was, like, but going to Disneyland takes a lot more steps and planning and consideration than having a glass of wine with your friends in a distance hanging in somebody's backyard. Like, yeah, that's true. But if you if everyone's saying, well, here's what they're doing, it's capacity almost everything is outside. When she walked through the things that they were doing to keep people safe.

I could see there being this like sliding doors thing where you're like, I know I should say no, but I'm just I'm trying to like make a reasonable leap that that's enough, that that's okay. And I think that those weird You can make a judgment that rationally you wouldn't think you would make when you're just like, well, they're doing this, and they're doing this, and they're doing this like I don't know, you know, nobody knows anything

is the problem. And I do think you can judge people for I mean, clearly, like people are still having gender reveal parties and setting everything on fire. I surely judge those people. I judge people who are having big parties. I judge people who are doing things deliberately. But I I feel like everyone's had a moment where they just made the wrong call. You know that's true for sure. I mean it's just again, it's just all a matter

of what qualifies as dangerous or risky to you. And I think that that is and that has been the theme throughout the last half year. Is different at everybody at different moments, and what feels to you is completely reasonable and safe and rational to somebody else, maybe because they haven't read the same articles as you or whatever, like will seem like a major risk and super inconsiderate

and a horrible thing to do. And we're all living in different, like at different stages of this, like understanding and reality of like what this pandemic is, and a lot of us are I don't know, I feel like I'm I'm probably living in a place right now with it that a lot of people were living in with it a couple of months ago. I've kind of relaxed to a point that I feel comfortable with with it.

Whereas like there were a lot of people who were, I don't know, hanging out with friends on their porch or something, and I was like, oh God, you can't do that. But now I'm just like, whatever you like, I don't I don't feel like judgmental about it at all, And I would do it if anybody would have me, you know, I don't know. I don't judge people for hanging out on their porches or for hanging out with

friends in a group, usually in a pod. I do think the normalization of eating at restaurants has been completely Uh just know, people who are eating a restaurant. That's the one thing where I'm like, no way, no way, are you kidding me? Like, I was walking the other day to get pick up, and I passed um, a restaurant that has been operating on Vermont in Los Cila's with plexiglass, you know, walls up between tables and stuff.

And I saw people, I saw a couple that I know eating there, and I was like, man, it just doesn't like fun. First and foremost, it doesn't look fun. It was like, really, like, aside from the actual risk involved the plexiglass thing, the entire esthetics of it, you know, the everybody wearing masks around it while you're trying to eat food, it's just not fun looking at all. It

doesn't seem fun. I get stressed out by the fact that people have such like entitlement about being served by servers because that's what yeah, or to be out of the house, I guess. But you can be out of you could be out of the house, you could have a picnic. It's like the insistence on being served by service workers and the fact that that's who's really at risk are the service workers who have to deal with

hundreds of people every day. Again, I'm not necessarily putting the blame on individuals who are like who would like to have a nice dinner out. I'm putting the blame on all the people who reopened early. Especially now in l A we have this al Fresco bullshit program where they put tables on the sidewalk that they're now running out of money for, where again I'm like, well, why didn't they just take that money and give it to

restaurants to shut down and pay their staff. I completely agree with that, and I and again, and I think it's a great distinction Molly to say that I don't understand why people want to eat at restaurants right now, um, but shaming them individually when they've been told that the measures that are in place are relatively safe. Like, it's a weirding to want to have dinner out when you know that you're making a person who works there like

face the risk of you, you know, contaminating them. But it's also hard to not say, well that that's not a you know, that's not like a personal flaw on their part. Necessarily it's a weird call, but it's a flaw.

It's a systemic flaw. I think It's also that thing of the future being here and distributed unevenly where because coronavirus has been dealt with in a better way in other places, and because of social media, it's like people see that people in other countries are back to normal more or less in certain ways, and they're like, well,

why can't I do that? You know? I think in l A, some of the feelings I have about people eating in restaurants in New York, I have to remind myself, like, well, they're down to like a one percent transmission rate versus Los Angeles, which is not so it is different. Yeah. Yeah.

This was like an early problem I think with the coverage of the disease and so much of it being focused on New York, probably because a lot of media is based in New York and this is an ongoing thing we almost contend with is that, like the reality of COVID in New York was not what it was in the rest of the country at that time, and then I think that a lot of people like the measures that were being taken in certain places were like New York measures a lot of times, and now people

are still in the New York reality of stuff when like New York is not there anymore. And yeah, it's like all everybody's kind of cycling through this stuff at different times, and it just makes it it's hard to know where you stand. And that this was also the most dystopian week because the air quality is so bad. It's like, you know, unbreathable essentially. And I just went out for a drive because I was feeling so claustrophobic,

and all of the outdoor patios were packed. I was just like, people are eating outside in you know, poisonous air. It was shocking. Well, let's take a break and when we come back, we will be briefly discussing the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma. Tess and I watched the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, and we are going to fill Emily in on it a little bit. This documentary was going kind of viral for being about a lot of the issues with social media, um especially Facebook. And Tess,

what do you think of The Social Dilemma? Well, let me first say that everyone who was who had watched this movie that I know it was like, it's so good, it's so important, it's going to make you deactivate everything. Like I didn't read anything critical of it until after I tried to watch it, and then I I found that I had to go find other people who didn't like it because I hated this movie. I didn't watch the last ten minutes because I simply could not. It

was not what I expected at all. We've talked a ton on this podcast about the dangers of social media, about the dangers of being addicted to your phone, how it's so dystopian, how you know certain social networks, especially are prone to reading grounds for conspiracy theories that can be very dangerous, interfering with elections, all this kind of stuff.

And instead of a nuanced and intelligent view of, um, the dangers of that kind of thing, I found that this was like an after school special for people who might have thought like Facebook was good for them. You know,

it was shocking to me that people like this. I feel like the audience for this is people who are I guess less informed about how social media works then we are, because it did feel very one oh one in terms of like, hey, you know, they changed the photos so that you'll come back more, and they change the headerers because they want you to be refreshing. It's very addictive. Did you know it's crazy too, because so they're The format of this documentary is different. UM, it's

a lot of interviews. They interview a number of former UM, Facebook, Google, uh, all kinds of you know, venture capitalist people and designers and engineers who then many of whom then moved on to work at the center of humane technology. That people who basically worked at these companies and then felt like they were complicit in some horrible unraveling of society and became kind of like whistleblowers. And those interviews are interesting

and worth watching for sure. But then there's this whole other part of the documentary that we're dying to tell you about, Emily, because there it's wild. There there's a family. It's like a dramatization of how a family can be affected by social media over use, especially that children in

the family. And um this is also this leads to scenes where three different Vincent car tizers with different hair dues are in like mission controlled hairlines, yes and different and like one's kind of the like more relatable Vincent car tizer and wants the like really polished Vincent car tizer and they're manipulating. UM. One of the actors from the family from these dramatizations as if like they're you know, they're like, we gotta get him to get log onto

Facebook right now. How are we going to do that? Like, oh, well, we'll send him a notification that his ex girlfriend is dating someone else. And then it becomes this this really melodramatic kind of thing of him becoming like a withdrawn um, like he starts to look into joining fringe groups from this fake political party called like the Extreme Center or something. It's the wildest thing. I live in the Extreme Center totally.

It feels like a Black Mirror or something. But the overall effect is more like refor madness, yes, like a refor madness about social media. It's like social media is bad. I mean that's always the knock on Black Mirror though, right, is that it's just like like, did you know the

Internet is trying to kill you or something? And I think that there can be episodes of Black Mirror that are like that, But the best episodes of Black Mirror, and also just any conversation about this stuff in general, cannot stop at the idea that there is a mega corp that is trying to completely overtake your attention span.

There has to be some sort of examination of how I think how individuals operate within this and like how it's it's kind of beyond the technology, Like some of it is like genuine social phenomenons that are like augmented by technology, and like that stuff is more interesting to me than you know, I mean obviously like Cambridge Analytica and stuff like that with ebook is really bad and his like drastically impacted global politics over the last few years.

I think that that's like a different story almost then how individuals get addicted to social media in different ways, because it's I think hastill a lot to do with just how human beings are and not so much of it, like, um, the qualities of different platforms. Yeah, and they deal with

like the addictiveness. They use this phrase about, um, if you don't know what the product is, that means you're the product, which I shared for the first time at the Porn Awards from a guy who worked in anti porn antip you know piracy in helping porn stars not have their work get pirate ID. But you know that was one of the knocks on like the YouTube clones for porn and and anything that is like that where you're like, oh it's free, It's not really free. You're

paying with your own personal data. But I do think now that I'm thinking about it, I'm like, these are a lot of basic things that we know. Maybe we are just not the audience for this. Maybe the audience for this is like your grandparents. Hey, hey, Emily, there, I would agree with you. Other than you know, I'm not to say that everyone needs to be as deep into this and as interested in this world as we are.

I think by making by trying to get broad appeal for something that deals with topics that I think a lot of people do find very dry, and by dramatizing like this, you know, it is obviously a lot of people are are being drawn in by the premise of this and they're being really shocked at what it's portraying. But I also kind of just disagree with documentaries doing this,

you know. I mean, even if it is enlightening people that they're addicted to their phones or whatever, I think it it almost kind of obscures a lot of the points that it could ache. For instance, the you know, one of the Google guys I think is saying like I'm just so addicted to checking my email. I'm checking my email all the time, and it's you know, it's like that dopamine hit, and it avoids talking about how, especially in Silicon Valley, the culture is that you need

to check your email constantly and why is that? And how do we change that and address that? So it presents these interesting ideas and then yanks you away from them to refocus you on something that's way less intriguing to me. And it's sounds like it's treating all these

things like, you know, like email for example. It's funny to like think about them talking about an email addiction in this documentary, but like that that it's all compartmentalized instead of part of like a larger Yeah, like you're saying, like that this ties into a workplace culture like other things contined to like social culture. Like it's culture exactly, and it's strange. I think the dramatization has bothered me so much because it doesn't present an alternative to you know,

I guess it does present the alternative. It's either that you use your phone and you're on social media or you completely disconnect because you have to basically treat it like heroin. You know, if you if you take a tiny bit of like a you know, glance at your Facebook, like, you're going to be hooked because the algorithm is so advanced that it knows exactly how to keep you engaged, how to keep you engaged as long as possible, and

you have no agency in this interaction. You are just the you know, the little, you know, point of data that's going to get whisked along into the storm. I mean, that is kind of one of the more condensing parts of it is they're like, you know, these these things are changing human behavior, They're conditioning users to behave differently. Um. And the one of the points was just like, oh, the AI revolution is here, but this is the AI.

This is the AI that controls our world. Yeah, And they do make the point that AI is evolving faster than the human brain can. However, I mean, it's that's all true. But I think that the reason that this became so popular so quickly is because of quarantine, when there is no other choice to make a lot of the time if you want to interact with other human beings. And so we're all very sensitive to the fact that

our engagement has gone way up. But if we disconnected entirely and we're not living in a commune or whatever. Then what that means is that you are then having to like basically, you know, seek out alternative forms of communicating with people. Then those people are using and I don't know that that's that healthy either right now. You know, well,

this is like the whole thing with TikTok. You know, it's there's there's a lot of evidence that TikTok is just basically a personal data scraping tool and a face recognition software, and uh, you know, a whole generation of young people is now in this data base because of this like that. You know, there's a lot of evidence to suggest this, and I think a lot of people believe that, and everybody has made the calculation in their minds, like, well, that could be the case, but I want to hang

out with my friends. You know, you make that calculus whether it's right or not. Like everybody's sort of making these decisions for themselves. And that's why I'm always like a little bit like you're not unwillingly being pulled into

X y Z social network. You're making a decision because like for pleasure reasons, for work reasons, for for efficiency reasons, you've made the choice that that's I make a lot of choices conversely in my life that are not at all time effective or anything because or like an actively inconvenient because I want to sidestep a certain network for whatever reason. And you can do those two. But I also make a ton of decisions that totally put tons

of my data on the Internet. Like, you know, it's not not clean in any way, but they're all decisions at the same time, Like I don't know, and you can't be clean because everything is scraping your data. You know, cookies are scraping your data. Just anything you do you online is scraping it. So the option of completely dropping off the internet, especially right now when people are stuck at home and can't you know, just go live their lives,

it seems extremely difficult. What I really would like to happen is for new platforms to come up that are made by people that are not evil. Yeah, I mean, there needs to be less of a monopoly for sure, and more competition. And we do the evil test though, like realistically, like what's the evil test on people who are running in a business? I think that there's always going to be a downside to anything like this. You know,

it's just if there are more of them. I mean, for instance, I always think of Twitter as being kind of you know, there could be an alternative to Twitter with better moderation or like more safeguards for you know, abuse and stuff like that. It's just that there isn't, and that when things pop up, they're the only real hope that they have for being successful is to be acquired by one of the bigger companies. And so I think you don't even have to pass an evil test.

You just have to like proliferate in that marketplace and give and let people say like, hey, this is a better experience for me without it being absorbed by something that can make it, you know, part of the monolith. Yeah, and I think we've said this a lot, but maybe just going back to message boards, having things that you check less constantly, that have more moderation so that there are just like down times between reading Twitter all day. Yeah.

I mean again, we talked about this on our Bonus episode, but like we have to remove to like Twitter is niche, like Twitter is not Facebook, and the level of like people who are on it and people who are in it, it's big, you know, it's certainly a big service, but it's not. It doesn't It already is an alt to something which is Facebook. You know. I do agree, like we should have more choices as far as that goes,

but like we already I don't know. I I don't have total faith in the idea that like just more like you know, we need more els in the world and then we'll eventually like land on something virtuous. I don't think that that's the case. UM. I just wonder. I mean, it's when you think about how powerful these companies are. Uh. And again, like you know, I've always wanted to find something that offers like you know, certain

things that Facebook offers, but it's not Facebook. UM. And there have been things proposed from like the Wikipedia had an offshoot and l O and it's just the the migration doesn't happen, UM, and it just never becomes anything.

But I do wonder, like, you know, if you're on Facebook for one particular group and you see that a lot in UM in like really active groups like like podcast fan groups or UM parenting groups or whatever, where people say, I'm only on here for this, if that group could splinter off onto like a different site that had different, a whole different way of operating. Would that be enough to draw those people away from Facebook? Like for me, it would be you know, if you just

went to like a list server or something. Yeah, yeah, no, totally, I think, I think. And that's the thing, Like a lot of people don't realize that those options are out there for them, or they don't like it. Just takes a kind of critical mass of people to be like, Hey, we're gonna move this chess enthusiast group to yeah, who list servan It'll be fine, and then you'll need to check Facebook like one third as much as you do now, you know, Like, uh, we're not at all. I think

the people can make these decisionsmselves. We are now joined by Justin Charity. Justin Charity is a writer at The Ringer. He is the co host of Sound Only on The Ringer Network. Great podcast. Highly recommend it. Hi, Justin, what's up? Hello? Oh my god? This is exciting. I'm star struck by all of you. I feel like we've been trying to get you on Nightcall forever. I just feel like I feel like if there's going to be a Justin Charity episode of Nightcall, like you know, we just have to

prepare the world like it gets hot. Um, So we were just talking about the social network and not that this is the main reason that we wanted to have you on the podcast. There's plenty of other stuff to talk about. But and I'm sure that you're sick of being bugged about this, but you are one of my friends who was not on any social media at all anymore. He took the viv chastity, the valve chastity. When did you do this? I don't you know what it is.

I don't remember when it's specifically, it was vaguely around the time of whenever Kanye was releasing YEA. I just remember that. I remember like that was the last phase of Twitter discourse. That was around four was the Yea discourse? Who was that the last straw? You know? I didn't have that many strong opinions about YEA, if I remember correctly. Was it more about the fandoms surrounding Yea? And then wasn't about Kanye. It was just sort of anti climactic.

I think by that point it was probably several other things. Yeah, yeah, in the discourse was just sort of like the epilogue of my time on social media. It is a pretty like intense concentration of a lot of things that are wrong with how especially like art and celebrity gets discussed online, like anything having to do with Kanye can get you know, just to uh real quick. I didn't even like I was kind of tuned out for the discourse. I had to say. I think there was something in my brain

that just like flagged. I was like, this is exhausting. I'm not going to engage with this. And then I realized I think I had assumed you were still on Instagram or something, because you used to do all sorts of like bake good stuff and cooking on Instagram, which was always great. And then I realized you weren't even on Instagram anymore. I was like, dang even all the way,

Oh my god, I'm like dramatic. That's the problem is that I'm dramatic, right, So I had to be like another thing because I deleted Facebook and I lead it Instagram. I think I deleted something else. I can't even remember. Did you delete them all at once? Were you like one day that's it? Yeah? In one week? And then they do the thing where they try to sweat you out so they're like, listen, your account will be around for a month. It's just in case you want to.

It's like the worst breakup ever. Yeah, that's the one that I really that's the only one I've totally unplugged from. Yeah, I'm sorry I cut you off, but I just to go back to what you were saying a second ago. You're on Reddit now or did you like you segued to read it for No, I didn't say. I joined read it maybe like a year after I left Twitter, um because I kind of i'd never understood read it.

Like back during the thing, I remember it felt like a decade ago where people were really really hyping read it and trying to explain read it to me, and it all wait, my eyes glazed over, and I think I just got into this. Oh you know what it was. It's the amateur boxing subreddit that I sort of like followed enough that I was like, I should just make an account. Like. I actually like the structure of conver stations on Reddit, even if there are plenty of reasons

not to like particular subreddits. Um. Something about the conversational structure and the anonymity structure Reddit feels a bit healthier to me. Even though I know that healthy is not exactly read it's reputation. I love Reddit. It's a message board exactly. Yeah, and that's why I'm like, why am I not more into Reddit? Like that's the context of Internet conversation I grew up with and feel most comfortable with.

I have a Reddit account, I guess I've never posted on it, and I mostly just lark on a few different subreddits. But uh, tests, aren't you a big Reddit lurker. I'm giant Reddit lurker. I learn on Reddit for like, I set aside about an hour every evening from I reddit lurking. Yes, teach me how to reddit because I and I still feel like I don't do it right because I read to you know what I mean. I've I've maybe posted on Reddit five times. Ever, I've only posted I think twice. But I I find it less

addictive and less um like social media. When I pick two, I don't have like a curated homepage even I just picked two or three boards that I like and one. I mean, they're both pretty popular with the legal Advice and the am I the Asshole are my two mains. Am I the Asshole? Often that's that gets viral enough that it spreads to other other networks corners of the Internet. The Legal Advice is my favorite forever. I've talked about

it on the podcast before, just because it it. There was this one post about bats that I got in trouble for because there was there was like a ton of misinformation. It was an abandoned house that had a bat problem and it was going to be condemned, and there were a bunch of questions about that, and then in the comments people were like fearmongering about bats. And then we had a few bat defenders call into the pod and be like, test, don't get your information from Reddit,

and I didn't listen. I still do. I followed the Bats every Hour Twitter account, which one of the main things keeping me on Twitter is these accounts that post a picture of a bat. There's one that does a bat,

one that does a rat, and one that does a cat. No, there's also as Yes, but the Bats every Hour it's like they also are are pro bat activists, so they have a lot of bat facts that are like bats don't actually give you rabies, uh people think they do, and like vampire bats only eat like a teaspoon of blood and it's from cows. Mm hmmmm, I don't need to fear bat. It's like that pr It's like, that's like Katie Golden's bird bird Activists birds rights activists, except

for real Bat's got a bad rap this year. We gotta come rep for the bats. We got bats here.

It's pretty cool. Yeah, I feel like I feel like that's the thing though, Like you were talking about, like those sorts of accounts keep you on Twitter, and I feel like that's a big key difference with like Twitter versus a reddit or something like when I'm on Reddit, I'm usually specifically looking to find out about one top bick and I can really hone in on it and then get lost in a three posts long thread and

just read every single thing. But what I'm thinking of most recently is terrace House, that I had that kind of relationship to a Reddit where it's like, um, like, you know, anytime a new episode, would watch a new episode, then I would go and and read the mega thread for that episode and just read every single person's opinions

about it, which felt very cozy. It felt like, I don't know, back in the old days on like TV without pity or something, shout out terror Terror Ariano, Like, I used to just go and read thousands and thousands of posts about like Battlestar Galactica episodes and stuff, and

that was my Internet. And there is something kind of nice and chill about that with with Reddit, and you're not going to accidentally run into other information that gets you off track or angry about something else or something. You're like there to read about this one thing. Yeah. Well, justin You Are So Sound Only, which originally started as an AVA podcast for when Ava was the first one on Netflix. You and Michael Peters did. It wasn't like

a recap. It was like you guys, you guys go deep, Like every cap doesn't do it justice, I feel, especially because we didn't do per episode right. We sort of clustered the episodes into batches of six specifically to what it being too too like beat for beat recappy right, which is easy to do, I imagine. But yeah, and then we just yelled for four hours at a time about the saving Galleon and it was great and I lost my voice by episode two unfortunately. It was just

it was great. It was ecstatic. I have to say, having edited you on podcasts, because you came on a couple of times on my short lived anime podcast back in the day, like you have a great podcast voice, but like there are peaks around the peaks, so you can't get strain this. But yeah, uh, but then you guys brought it back recently. How many weeks now have you been back? Six? I think we're on episode six. We talked about Travis Scott this past week. That's the thing.

It's not an anime podcast now, and that's sort of the pitch is that this is not an anime podcast, and we're well, you had one, uh, you had like your first real anime episode, and I feel like it was like four weeks in or something like that, so it's diffuse. It's like wrapped the Internet anime all that. So Millennial Ship, did you talk about the Travis Scott burger? Yes? Yes, and the merch okay here, okay, didn't if you buy

the Travis Scott merchandise, because I seriously considered it. And I'm thirty three, so let's talk about this because I didn't just listen to that episode and Mico was was clowning on your big time for getting the shorts. I

believe I wanted to that they sold out. I wanted to get Okay, So Travis Scott was selling what they're like seventy dollar Jim short and there's a red pair and they look like they're just extremely mid nineties sort of overdesigned, and I almost I could have bottom because I just I spend time in mccaren park, you know, in Brooklyn, and you know I do jump squats. I could do some jump squats in those shorts. You know,

it could have worked for me. And then they sold out within the day, and then all the other merch is not good, Like Travis Scott is one of those rappers who has that kind of way too busy, millennial rapper aesthetic. And there's exactly one article of clothing of of that whole merch bundle from McDonald's that I thought I could pull this off. And then the rest of it is like, come on, dog, I pay taxes. I'm too old for this, okay, But did you have the burger? No?

And that's the thing, like I I go to McDonald's maybe like once every other year, and like it's not time, you know what I mean. I operate like an animal. It's not time for me to do my McDonald's pilgrimage. Even if Caxus Jack sends you you're not No, I don't know. I'm just not in the move. May I ask what this burger was because I'm I'm out of the loop. Yeah, explain what's I forget what's on the burger now? I'm just quarter pounder with bacon on it.

It's just like a burger they already have on the menu. It's so funny. It's just like the Travis Scott burger. It's just like a bacon cheeseburger. It's a whole because you have the fries, but then you get barbecue sauce for the fry. And it's funny because the commercial for it is so it really wants you to be impressed. Counter to what Molly just said. It really wants it's like pitching you on the idea of a hamburger, like

you've never heard of it. So it's like, what if you went to McDonald's and you got a sandwich in this in some bread, but then there's meat and then there's sauce on it. Wouldn't that be nice? Tell him? I have a seen It's like, wait a minute, this is not I don't am I being sold something I already have, is how I feel about. That's what's so funny about it to me is that it's so like postmodern. It's like you're ordering what Travis Scott orders that McDonald's exactly.

It's not like a special burger they made for him. It's like, this is what Cactus Jack orders when he goes to McDonald's, and you can go and do it too. I feel like Kanye was gonna do that gap promotion where he was going to like make a bunch of khakis and sell them, you know, cargo pants and like sell us cargo pants, and then Travis Scott like leapt ahead of him in norm core by being like, I've branded a regular burger. I'm gonna fucking put golden arches

on merch like, and you're gonna buy it. You're gonna pay top dollar for It's a move, but Michael noted. Michael noted that it's way more likely that I would buy those shorts, those seventy dollar shorts than it than it was that I would buy the A, which itself feels like a drag of me in some way that I haven't really even unpacked yet. I don't think it is. I don't think it is. I think that I mean,

what is it? I would love to just like camp out and watch like an Adam McDonald's and see what it looks like if somebody does come into order the Travis Scott Meal like, how do you ask for it? Like what do you? What do you say? And are you embarrassed when you do that? Or are you like no,

this is cool? Like I think all the people, especially all of the team, all the zoomers who do it, they're gonna be like every every zoomer I've ever interacted with in Rainbow six Siege team voice chat, you know what I mean, Like they're all the sort of I worry that there's just gonna be this onslaught of suburban kids wearing the worst clothes you can imagine, sort of with really over elaborate slang, really really really selling the bit to the cashier at McDonald's who was just so

profoundly irritated. The number of people whom Cactus Jack has sent. I saw a TikTok of somebody ordering it that was really funny where it was like he was like they were filming it. I think a lot of people will probably film themselves ordering the burger, but it was like this teenager and he goes in without a mask and he's like cactu shacks at me, and then the cashier's like, you have to wear a mask. Uh, here's a mask

for you and put it on. He's like catch jacks at me and they're like what He's like me, give me the Travis Scott burger. And then this woman in line, who's like a Karen starts just like going off at him and being like, what's wrong with you? You sound like a fucking dork um, and she like chases him and his friends out of McDonald's and she's like, you're such a fucking dweam. That's actually like that's a good Karen, Like, I mean whatever, I don't care about kids, order in

the Travis Scott mell McDonald's. But that's actually like a funny like you're funk out of here. It was so funny, especially because she kind of looks like from behind she's wearing like yoga pants and a tie die sweatshirt. And then she turns around and it's like a different type of woman than you expect, and she's just like what are you doing? What's why are you filming in here? Like? What, what the funk is wrong with you? She doesn't funk with Travis Scott. I mean a lot of people, don't

you know, there's a backlash. Yeah, So I wanted to talk to you specifically because you are an anime friend and you talk about animal on your podcast, and I'm pretty sure you won't talk about this on your podcast anytime soon, just because it's old and there's no real reason to talk about it. But I started watching Psycho Pass this past week, which we can explain for Molly and Tests, but is kind of like it's actually too much of a nightcall show. It's almost like two on

the Knows. I feel like a lot of the episodes that I'm watching, it's just like this is just like the exact stuff that we talk about every week. It almost makes me feel like, oh, like like a little bit self conscious. It's like they've already covered this ground, like all the stuff about like avatars and stuff and

in some of the early episodes. But it is a show that I started watching because of the Halo, which we discussed a couple of weeks about back the Amazon Halo that is like a it's a fitness tracker or like physical activity tracker that also is supposed to claims to be able to track your tone and your mood and you know, I guess for your own elucidation about yourself, but then who knows, you know what that data could actually be used for and the concept of psychopaths and

you can, yeah, fill in anything that I forget is that this happens in like a near future where everybody has a thing called a psycho pass, which is their level of like their crime coefficient. So it's sort of

like Minority Report. It's like a pre crime type thing, but it's basically like based on your psychological state, your emotional state, uh, and you know, whatever level of trauma that you've been through and haven't been gone through therapy for like how likely you are to be a violent criminal or just like any kind of criminal, I guess, And then uh, based on that, like this police force can uh they have these weapons that specifically only shoot

people who have a high enough crime coefficient. So it's like super super dystopian. Like there's a little bit like I feel like Watchman did something kind of like that in its first episode, where there's like a gun that

you have to have like permission to use. So it's like supposed to be this utopia, this utopian world that this show takes place in, but of course it's all super super dystopian because there's just this idea of like this this system that tracks your yeah, your your emotional instability and thus you likely had to do a crime. You watched this like it's this is old. This is like from or something I watched the first season like back, uh maybe a few years after the first day or

the first season. Yeah, wait, what made you want to go back to just the had you been meaning to? I've been meaning to watch it and from for a while because um Eric thum Our, our mutual friend, is a big fan of it, and I was really into an am really into Medico Magico, which is the same writer that's like a dark magical girl anime, and Psychopaths is more like a noir thriller type thing, but they're kind of about the same stuff. They end up kind

of existing in similar territory. Yeah, it made me. It made me think about just like I mean, you guys talked on a recent episode just about like getting the you know, I mean, no, no, it wasn't a episode. I think you and I were just talking about like getting into an anime, like half of it is just like buying into a concept like that, like a like a sci fi conceit a lot of times yeah, yeah, and and it being a conceit that is just I

don't know. Unlike a lot of other media, I feel like anime shows don't even really bother to do that much upselling of the concept. It's just like you really buy episode one, have to be prepared to put up with some dumb sh it and it and a lot of times it works, so a lot of times it doesn't. It. Psychopass is just something that I remember the first episode of Psychopaths feeling, so I don't know, and I think

that concept that show just gets over the top. I remember psychopath feeling like it gets really over the top about it's otherwise like you feel like you should be watching a procedural but it's so much Yeah, it goes to like the worst case scenario of every single corner of society. Really, like ask like somebody who like works ungodly hours at a drone factory and then like goes crazy and kills people at the drone factory. By programming

the drones to kill. Like it's just all like it's taking every single box of like society to your point about concepts. So it's like it's hard to go from watching something like Psychopaths to watching I don't know, if you wait and watch the season of Sherlock, you'd be like, really, this is all you got. I just watch Psychopaths. Yeah, you don't go hard enough. Yeah, Um, is there anything recently? I know you've been super into Black Lagoon, but any

any shows you've been into more? I mean that's the thing. I watched TV so sporadically, and this is true of even just like my animate consumption, I go through weird

not weird. I think a lot of people do this, but I otherwise don't watch a lot of television except when I get to those seasons where it's just like I'm gonna watch eight anime series for no reason, um, and they're all going to be from the mid two thousand's through you know, the past decade, um, Like when I first watched psychopath Yeah, this is great, Like I first watched Psychopaths and Ergo Proxy, which is also feels like a nightcall show. Ergo Proxy is I've never watched

Aergo Proxy, you know, what's what's the deal? I don't even remember. It's just it's one of those shows where everything feels sort of um, like techie and dystopian, and it's like, one thing that's sort of weird about the show is that Paranoid Android is the in credits music

for it. Um And I remember not liking Ergo Proxy when I first saw it, But it also has a vibe to it, and it's like the perfect kind of binge watching vibe where it's you don't really feel like putting up with an anime premise so much as you feel like just sort of letting yourself wallow in a certain aesthetic, yeah, certain musical like color, yeah, moodiness aesthetic sometimes or just something really like soft and cute. Sometimes you just want to be in like a cutie show

for a while a rom com Um. Black Lagoon is different. Black Lagoon is so um. It's like mid adds anime action and it has frankly, like really good race comedy. It's the same thing that I like about it, uh, because I don't know, it's like anime and Japanese video games sometimes have such a weird stilted conception of race

when they're working with like American characters especially. But I really like how Black like Black Lagoon has a really good neo Nazi arc where it's just like the characters are fighting neo Nazis on a boat, okay, and it's just really good. And the the show has a lot of stuff like that where it's actually surprisingly effectively multicultural in a way that has edged to it, but not in an ill intentions way that edge usually, you know what I mean. It sort of feels like a gritty

we are the world like vibe to it in a way. Yeah, Like it's picking up like the right stuff from more global action entertainment or genre entertainment or something. Doesn't watching really Dystopi and stuff make you want to curl up in a ball, though I don't know, I don't think so. There can be something kind of comforting about some stuff, And I think there is something about when it is in the medium of animation that makes it kind of

go down easier. I'm not always going to be in the mood for like I mean, I still have never finished watching The Leftovers, like that just got so dark for me that it was just like not fun to watch. I understand that it gets really amazing in later seasons, but it was such a bummer. I was like, why am I doing this to myself? I had that thought

at certain points in Madmen. There's something about anime where it's like there could be like grievous bodily harm, okay, but we're talking about this more is like an idea than like me putting myself through this as a piece of entertainment. So it like doesn't I mean, it's obviously like can be troubling and upsetting at times, but it just is like a different kind of experience. I don't know. I don't know how would you qualify that. I don't

I don't know how to describe that exactly. That to me, it's usually actually something about performances in anime that usually helped psychopaths especially. I just remember feeling like some of the performances feel strangely disconnected from what you're watching. And I don't know, there's always there's so many levels at which anime is like reminding you not to take it too seriously, unless it's a kind of show that really

wants to be taken that seriously. I guess right, But yeah, something like Psychopaths is like a good encapsulation of that, right where it's it's premise feel super convoluted and self serious, but at the same time it's execution just feel so patently absurd that you're never gonna feel that oppressed by it. Yeah, it's like a thinker not necessarily like I am then I'm gonna take this whatever idea this show is trying to get across and apply it directly to my life

or anything. It's more like, let's take it. Yeah, to take it's like let's take an absurd premise, drive it all the way to its logical endpoint, and do it with the most like melo drama and you know, just like like it's yeah, it's just like emo performances in every sense of the word, uh, from every character, Like

everything is just a way way dialed up. But I think the other thing that does a lot of favors to anime series, like something like Psychopaths, for instance, has multiple I think it has three seasons, but in general it's sort of stuff that's not you know, five hundred seasons stuff like Dragon Ball, right, Like it's not that uncommon for an and for something that's popular to get a single season and for the story of it to be something that needs to be sort of open and

shut in a single season, and I think that that creates this dynamic where a lot of series feel like it's the people working on it getting every idea they've ever had about this premise out and leaving sort of nothing on the field. I think that's the thing too.

It's just there's so much of a sense of yolo to a lot of these sort of high concept shows that it feels like it's harder to get out of live action television sometimes when it's sort of the vibe of live action television is that, oh, you're driving towards some sort of seasonal cliffhanger, and then the momentum of this is sort of indefinite, as opposed to an anime series that's like one to three seasons and you're just sort of like, we have to we're going to exhaust

this concept. Yeah, there's yeah, there's not this sense of like where it's like it's not like the same. I guess it's just like a completely different system of like pitching stuff to networks or studios or whatever, Like you don't have to necessarily come in with this idea of what happens in the sixth season when you're pitching an anime. I don't imagine. I don't don't want much about it.

But like I it doesn't seem like it's kind of coming out of that same sort of logic where it's like, okay, walk us through the third season, like you know, you have to know the fates of all these characters in

the first season. Like it's yeah, I don't know, it's I I've I've talked to a lot of people about how that is can be really frustrating, you know, within the American television system, and and I feel like that's that's one thing that maybe creatively is like I don't know, more open ended or less like structured or rigorous or something about h Japanese animation. I don't know. I feel like also just like British television shows that will do like just you know, a one off in America, Yeah,

it's like the similar idea. It's like, like, what's a good idea, let's do it for like, but it's like it's kind of the inverse because that in that case, it's just like this is a sixth episode idea, Like, that's all that we need to communicate this. Sometimes it's a sixth episode idea. Sometimes it doesn't have to be a ten season idea. You can really just like get what you're going for, and if it's a really high

concept thing, especially it's like maybe you exhausted in one season. Yeah, what's the last show non animated that you got into? Over over Lockdown, Over Lockdown. I haven't watched I don't know that I've watched any Oh, you know what, I just rewatched a ton of Grays with my girlfriend. That's the only watching TV, which I loved in college. I fucking loved Gray's Anatomy, and I loved it as much of fun revisiting Gray's Anatomy from the beginning of the show.

I loved how you called it Grays to show familiar insiders. No, that's great, Yeah, I I kind of. I have a hard time watching stuff in Lockdown too, Like I feel like the dominant sort of assumption has been like, oh, there's nothing to do, so you're just gonna watch every TV show or go through entire series that are like, you know, eight seasons long or something. I have never I think I started off lockdown, being too anxious to like sit still through anything and even still now this

is a bad habit that I don't like. Like I try to be more strict with myself about this, but now just because like everything is crazy, I don't care as much. I have to have my phone or something else to do while I'm watching something. And I used to just be like I was, I was on the screen, experience the cinematic event or whatever. Uh, And now I'm just like doing it, like I'll go in and out. I'll I'll go to the bathroom without pausing it. You know.

I'm just very inattentive. Now. I feel like I thought I was going to be super into because I play video games, and I thought that at the start of all of this of like lockdowns and whatnot, that I would I just sort of assumed, like I'm gonna play so many video games. I can tell I'm gonna lose so much time to this, and I haven't. I don't have the appetite for it, and I don't even know why.

Like the yeah, this all again, it's like the asumptions I had about what my media consumption would be like in the work from home tyranny I've just been wrong. Like I started baking a lot. Then I started learning some programming, but I have not gamed a ton or anything like that, which is, oh my god, we have to talk about the programming. Justin's a code or now, uh, Justin learned to code? I did, and it's like I

actually do, like contrary what we're saying before. I have a Twitter account now because I needed, um, you need a Twitter account to have uh access to Twitter api.

And so, like I was writing this, I've been writing, um, some small programs to like I had been writing some programs to comb Twitter for tweets about Q and on or basically like comb the q and on hashtag for tweets, and that ended up like with the spreadsheet of thirty q and on tweets, And so now I'm doing like all of this stuff where I'm trying to like data

mine it. And this is all just like as an exercise, but it is also kind of funny, like staring at thirty three thousand q and on tweets and a spreadsheet and seeing like rhetorical patterns and actual tweets and in people's profiles and stuff like that and the sort of distinction between the people who are tweeting in the hashtags and serely versus the people who are like this, this is awful, Like we have to we have to put an end to que and on. These are the worst people.

What's the ratio of like sincere Q and honors to Q and on critics when you look at it. I don't know yet. I haven't analyzed it yet. I spent a lot of time sort of generating different searches to tweak the kind of results that I was getting. I don't know. I'll let you know next week. I want to know this weekend. Yeah, I'm reading up this screenshot that you you sent me of the of the scraped tweets. I guess, uh yeah, it's like it's really hard to tell. Like I mean, I think like a lot of this

stuff is like is it. Did you also get people's um like profiles from this? There bioptions? Yeah, they're bios. Like everybody who says like family, God, country, constitution. That's the main thing at a glance, that's super obvious before I even like start parsing it, right, is that a lot of evangelical And it's funny. There's like a New York Time story from yesterday. Um, that's an author who is writing about this sort of connection between evangelicals and

Q and on. But it's so super obvious when you start looking through the profiles of a lot of Qunan people that the people who don't just have this sort of trust the plan, you know, Q and on slogan earring the explicit Q and on slogan earring they otherwise mostly tend to have like Christian evangelical signaling. Although I have noticed a lot of wellness, wellness oriented white ladies getting into Q and on over the past month or so especially, it's gotten really crazy, really yeah. Um, and

then somebody sent us a message. I think she might leave a call about it. But a lot of like Facebook mom you know, natural mom message boards, they go along this path from like, you know, anti vaxing to five G conspiracies to Q and on save the children, right and the children to save the children thing, because then people start getting an arguments being like what do you not want me to save the children? Um. A

lot of times recently actually in the past couple of weeks. Um, I still am in mom groups on Facebook, which I would like to not be on anymore. But I am. And one of the tops suggested pages of like one of the bigger mom groups has been a trump um page and it says like similar topics, you know, topics similar to the one that the group that you're in.

And because it's like an l a local mom's group, we're mostly liberal, but there is a small portion of the people who are in that group that are, like Molly said, um, it starts off with being like, I'm not an anti vaxxer. I just think we should be asking questions, and then it gets more into like a defensive like I don't like the term anti vaxxer, but I'm not vaccinating. Then it goes to five G and

then it falls off a cliff. And I think there are a lot of moms in particular, and probably other parents as well, but who are like kind of private about those things when they talk to you in person, but on their Facebook pages, on their social media, they're pretty public about Q and on stuff, which is has been interesting in terms of like school school board dynamics

and stuff like that when that becomes more public. Somebody sent me some crazy photos from a Q and on Saved the Children rally in Santa Monica in Santa mon There was one in Hollywood too, not that long. This one in Santa Monica. It was just like it looked like midsummer. It was like all these white women wearing like white dresses, like standing on the beach with these save the children signs. It was the creepiest thing I've

ever seen. Yeah, it's alarming. I hate that this kind of misinformation dynamic too, is the it feels like the definitive problem of the age, right, and it sort of feels like it paints people who are like naturally a guest at that stuff into this corner of being sort of ridiculed. Is like wanting to censor everybody. But it's like, what is the actually, you know what I mean, It's it's sort of yeah, it feels like nothing about our politics is conducive to figuring out what to do about

those people, you know. I mean. I've been working on a podcast episode for one of my other podcasts about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and just how that disseminated as a conspiracy theory in the early twentieth century, and it kind of makes me feel like a lot of the things we say about that it has to be this moment that makes people be like this. It's like, no, people have always been like this. Uh, even when things

get debunked. That makes some people double down and be like, oh, well, they want us to think it's fake, and that's you know, we know it's not really fake. I think I mean more like the tools of dissemination though, right. I think the thing that makes it feel like such a palpable political anxiety is just the fact that it's so in your because these platforms have so many of us on them,

because they're the seven generators of content. There's just something that feels like it's being thrown in your face constantly about that these people want to save the children. Yeah, and like disagreement or dissent is the only thing that can justify like staying on these platforms a lot of times,

especially with Twitter. So there has to be some sort of element of something that you're pushing against, whether that is, you know, the standard narrative that that Q and on is not real, or to you know that you should get your kids vaccinated, like like if you don't have something like it's basically like we're working our way down the list of like things that are fairly seemed like fairly common sense and and and kind of what abouting

them in some way? Uh like, there will always be a community that is going to try to poke holes and something that everybody takes for granted and that like can often just look like conspiracy theory theories. But it's just like this act of contrarianism basically kind of for its own sake, because otherwise, what are you going to

talk about? Yeah, and it just feels like it's like the kind of thing of if you're in a conversation that you don't know how to end with somebody and then you just keep bringing up stuff that you didn't actually want to talk about. It feels like that sometimes. I don't know that's that's actually like a very vivid

way of putting that. I think, well, yeah, as long as you're on Twitter, it's like you can only post nice things about stuff that you enjoy for so long before it's like, okay, what am I fighting against now here? Which is like good and bad? Let's look good and

bad thing about about that platform? Specifically, we talked about all this stuff a lot, I feel like, but I've always thought that, um, like you remember the I want to say, first wave sort of social media coverage where it was like, you would see those pieces right, where would be I don't know, a Slate columnist being like, I I left Twitter for three days, Here's what I learned in the wilderness, right, and everyone be like, he

quit Twitter for three days? Right? And I always felt like, um, those pieces are kind of silly, and people made fun of them. But I feel like an assumption that was always embedded in those pieces was that the problem with Twitter was that the problem with Twitter is other people. Right. The problem with Twitter is that people say things you don't like, and the idea is that it's a house site because of other people. When I think, actually, like

I love reading Twitter. The thing I dislike and the thing I distrust and the thing that it needs to be stamped out about Twitter is one's own impulse to post. Right, That's the actual problem. Like, the best version Twitter would be a word. The best version for a person, for me, at least, of Twitter is one in which you can if you want to see somebody's tweet, right, if you want to see what somebody is saying about something, you can find it. But you're liberated from the ability and

thus the impulse to post. I think that's the actual bad thing. Yeah, it's like the faulk feeling of responsibility that if you're not posting, then you're not participating in a meaningful way, both on the platform and in the world in general. And that is like this completely fake dynamic that that site and the way of communicating creates. Um. Yeah, I mean it seems like you found the perfect solution, which is to not be on Twitter, but to create codes to scrape Q and Q and to just read

thousands of quew and on tweets. That's really that's really what the ideal social media diet is. Thirty three thousand q and on tweets. You're like, I want to go right right to the part where I feel crazy. But that's the entire that's the entirety of it. You can you can just get that super concentrated espresso shot of queue and on Yeah, I mean that give me that Travis Scott burger of the mind. Oh, don't forget the sprite.

That's the most insulting thing about the Travis Scott commercial, by the way, is that he's like, and by the way, just you know, the Kuda grass. The thing that really makes this reflective of me, my my personality and Brandon ethos is that you have to be sure to drink a sprite with with this meal. It's a good sprite. It was the best sprite McDonald's sprite. I can't even it's been so long. Crazy taste, yeah to me, Yeah, I haven't had sprite since. To be honest, I had

a sip of sprite the other day. I was like, what, because if you go too long, like the idea of sprite and the reality of sprites are really lemon disjointed. Yeah, it just it tastes like like battery acid in a way, you know, because if you're if you're used to, if you if you're kind of idea of like the citrus soda was formed on sprite, and then a long time passes and you're drinking like actual like lemonade for instance, and then you reintroduce sprite. You're like, this is not citrus.

This is like acid. I don't drink a lot of soda, but the sprite, Like I'll have a root beer, a coke or whatever and be like this is fine with me. But the sprite was a bridge too far. I don't have a surge. I like how sodas taste like battery acid. That's what I liked about them. That's also what I like about grapefruit juice. Yeah, I mean ting for instance, like a grapefruit soda I can deal with because it's it's closer to the flavor of the fruit than a

sprite is close to the lemon lime personally. I mean, lemon lime is like a muddled flavor anyway. Grapefruit is very specific. Yeah, lemon lime is completely abstracted by by sprite. Like when you actually have something that's lemon lime, it's a completely different things like like sweet and sour mix or something in a in a bar, It's like, that's lemon lime and anything like sprite. Well, yeah, come on, guys, because sprite is a similacra exactly. I knew exactly this. UM. Well,

thank you justin for joining us. Normally we ask where people can find you, but we've established pretty strongly that nobody can find you anywhere except of the Ringer dot Com em lane. I exist in the wire, didn't Yeah, the president in the wired UM and you are as you mentioned, U sound only on the Ringer Network on wherever one gets their podcasts anything else, No, it's it. Thanks, thank you so much, justin tell them come back sometime and you know you can be part of the Night

Call anime and thank you for listening to Nightcall. You can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your shows. You can also follow us on social media. We are on Twitter at Nightcall Pod, Instagram, and Facebook at Nightcall Podcast. You can support us on Patreon at patreon dot com slash night Call where you can get our bonus episodes or monthly newsletter, our playlists and all of that fun stuff. And uh yeah, give us a night Call one to four oh four six night leave

your thoughts, concerns, conspiracy theories. We're always looking for a new ones and we'll see you all next week