Full disclosure: We had a whole plan for this episode and then things went insanely off the rails when we discovered something kind of shocking? What it looks like has happened is that several South American E-sports players, a professional soccer player, and a Welsh arts correspondent are either all shilling random NFTs in the exact same way or all had their accounts taken over? We have a lot of questions and not a ton of answxers. But this episode is honestly an absolutely wild journey. Also, ...
Jun 16, 2022•1 hr
This week we finally got to play around with TikTok’s Creative Center. It’s a tool for marketers, but also has some really powerful tools for looking at what’s trending globally on the app. We spent some time this week playing around with it. What did we learn? Well, a couple weird things. TikTok users love Sundays, the top videos on the app are mostly ads, and TikTok is offering marketers a tool for replacing popular songs with royalty free stock music to use in their campaigns. That last one i...
Jun 10, 2022•49 min
This week, we kick off the episode with a big long discussion about weird stuff European people do. The Brits are obsessed with a random restaurant near Coventry. The Swedes are feeding people who stay over for dinner. And the Finnish appear to have constructed an elaborate years-long joke about their love of buckets. But our main topic for the week is Instagram Reels. It’s Zuckerberg’s last chance at creating a genuinely exciting content ecosystem. After an hour of scrolling through it, we’re n...
Jun 02, 2022•1 hr 1 min
We’ve had a crazy week. But we’re back with a heap of upsetting updates from the world of crypto. And then we dive into our main topic of the week: What if the weirdos making memes and fancams and supercuts of the Depp v. Heard trial don’t disappear after the trial is over? What if the trial doesn’t end the way these very sad Disney adults want? What if it morphs into something like QAnon, where truthers endlessly rant and rave about this for years? What if this horrible thing just never goes aw...
May 27, 2022•1 hr 1 min
It’s that time again! Facebook has new Widely Viewed Content Report and it’s just as weird and bizarre as the previous one. This time we’re talking about a Vietnamese content farm, relatable Netflix memes, and an impossibly viral Eminem video. This episode also features an exciting cameo!! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thecontentmines.com...
May 20, 2022•57 min
WARNING: This episode does contain spoilers. This week, as a way to celebrate 100 episodes of The Content Mines, we’re sending out our bonus minisode to all our listeners for free. As long-time listeners of the show know, we love arguing about Marvel movies. So we decided to go see the new Doctor Strange and, boy, do we have lots of thoughts about it. TL;DR - Ryan really liked it at first and now isn’t so sure and Luke wasn’t so sure at first and now he really likes it. Typical. Thank you all fo...
May 12, 2022•32 min
It’s our 100th episode! That’s crazy! In that time we’ve gone through two names for the show, three versions of our theme song, and, just, so many stories about magicians on Facebook. This week is all about the big crypto crash of May 2022. We have to call it that because there’s a very good chance that there could be more this year. Or this one ends up spiraling so far out of control that the whole thing goes to zero. Let’s talk about what happens when the line stops going up! This is a public ...
May 12, 2022•55 min
This week Ryan and Luke are recording from the same place! They’ve left their respective Zoom screens to sit in the same room. It’s a whole different vibe. This week’s big topic is Piers Morgan, the British tabloid journalist who tweets absolute garbage all day. He has a new show on a new channel and, according to Luke, the metrics they’re bragging about don’t make any sense. Weird, right? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus e...
May 06, 2022•59 min
This week we’re talking about Netflix’s very bad week. The stock has plummeted. Employee morale has cratered. Layoffs have started. It seems like a real mess. We look into how years of relying on an algorithm led the company to start making real weird decisions that actually remind us a lot of another company… Facebook. Also, Luke talks about the greatest British art project of maybe all time. SHOW NOTES “The Netflix Bubble Is Finally Bursting” The Duke Smoochum Thread “Netflix’s Big Wake-Up Cal...
Apr 28, 2022•56 min
This week, Luke goes through the various petty beefs that he’s been following on the internet and attempts to explain why he doesn’t really care about them. Though, it kinda sounds like he cares about them. And Ryan spent some time watching Tucker Carlson’s weird — and kinda homoerotic — documentaries on the Fox Nation streaming platform. There was a surprising amount of stuff on there about aliens! SHOW NOTES The Scott Adams thread “Meet the woman behind Libs of TikTok, secretly fueling the rig...
Apr 21, 2022•56 min
This week caps off our final installment from the Miami Bitcoin convention. We also talk about Elon Musk trying to takeover Twitter. Hilariously, we recorded this on Tuesday of this week, before the news that he wanted to do a big takeover of the company. We were worried that this would be dated but the news on Thursday, but actually we think we kind of nailed it. So that's pretty cool! If you want to hear more about crypto from us, here are two other recent episodes to check out if you haven’t ...
Apr 14, 2022•57 min
Ryan just landed in Miami for Bitcoin 2022, the huge crypto conference. And Luke surprised him by telling him mid-recording this week that he has COVID. So, yeah, this episode has some weird vibes to it. We’re talking about why Miami is trying to become the Bitcoin capital of the United States and what it would mean if that actually happened. SHOW NOTES “The Tech Bros Take Miami” “Miami Is Hosting The World’s Biggest Crypto Party” “Miami Wants to Be the Hub for Bitcoin” “Crypto tax: ‘MiamiCoin’ ...
Apr 07, 2022•51 min
What does The Oscars Slap mean for content? What does it say about personal brands in 2k22? R buzzy viral topics still relevant?? Can u b alt and also online? Has the vibe shifted and, if so, how effed is it rn? We’re talking about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars and why it’s the end of the current era of the internet and why Grimes allegedly hacking and extorting Hipster Runoff may have been the end of the era before that! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this...
Mar 31, 2022•56 min
We’re going long on NFTs this week. Particularly the confusing and murky world of NFT copyright. Who owns an NFT? And what can you do with it? We’re exploring the Web3 concept of a “ headless brand ”. Turns out it’s really confusing and also kind of dumb! But also kind of interesting! SHOW NOTES The “Headless Brands” white paper The Egregore Wikipedia article “Prolific restaurant developer Andy Nguyen plans first restaurant tied to Bored Ape Yacht Club” This is a public episode. If you would lik...
Mar 25, 2022•55 min
This week we’re going deep on a term Luke coined a few episodes ago: “structural dissonance”. It’s that feeling you get seeing images of the invasion of Ukraine in the same content feed as memes, viral animals, lifestyle influencers, or video game playthroughs. It defines the internet, but it also defines kind of our entire current existence. It’s confusing and weird and is breaking our brains and making it harder to understand actual reality. As you can tell, this week’s episode is very light. ...
Mar 17, 2022•1 hr 14 min
We went deep into the weird and uncanny world of Facebook again. We promise we’re moving one after this lol. But we couldn’t ignore Facebook’s massive transparency report. We discovered some absolutely wild stuff. Most importantly, bingo livestreams are a thing and, damn, they are popular. Also, we spend a little while talking about why sanctions against Russia do not mean that Russian dark money suddenly disappeared from Facebook and make the internet magically better over night. SHOW NOTES vir...
Mar 10, 2022•51 min
This week is probably our weirdest and most confusing rabbit hole ever. We looked into why Facebook is full of posts claiming that Katie Couric has met some kind of “tragic end” and why they’re all advertising CBD gummies. We think we figured out how it happened, but it was a real rats nest. We also continue to analyze the info war surrounding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. SHOW NOTES The Zelensky rap video Taylor Lorenz’s Katie Couric thread The fake Daily Mail store URL that’s hosting a fake NB...
Mar 03, 2022•1 hr 10 min
This week, we're talking about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Obviously, this is a fast-moving situation. We recorded this mid-day on Thursday, February 24, 2022. We're looking at the torrent of content around the invasion and trying to wrap our heads around whether or not, when the boots hit the ground, if memes or online content matters at all. SHOW NOTES https://twitter.com/rizviuzair/status/1496761944006668292?s=21 https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1496876397595353094 https://twit...
Feb 24, 2022•54 min
This week we are, once again, talking about another real bad week for Facebook, a company that appears to be having more bad weeks at a higher frequency than ever before. We also peer into the metaverse which is even dumber than we ever could have imagined. Is being a "metamate" the future? SHOW NOTES https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/14/22932824/hmrc-nft-seizure-fraud-investigation https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-backrooms https://twitter.com/kentbye/status/1493092806222516224 https://uploadvr...
Feb 17, 2022•58 min
Netflix is the biggest streamer in the whole world. They are, effectively, the streaming entertainment standard. So why are they launching a news site and poaching journalists from places like Condé Nast? In 2022, why would you want to run a digital media website? We speculate wildly about why that might be! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thecontentmines.com...
Feb 10, 2022•50 min
This week we're journeying into the dark heart of American masculinity... again. We're talking about Joe Rogan. Why do people like him? Should Spotify keep disturbing his show? Does it even matter? Should we smoke DMT and meet the techno elves that run our Earth simulation? These are all questions we may or may not address this week! SHOW NOTES: https://twitter.com/KateMerrill/status/1487406724076253188 https://twitter.com/k8tmac/status/1487537430240677889 This is a public episode. If you would ...
Feb 03, 2022•54 min
We're diving deep into the philosophical issues at the core of TikTok, namely, why users on the app keep threatening to kill each other. What is it about TikTok's algorithm and user incentives that causes so many moral panics that end in networked abuse. Is it human nature or is it something the app is actively doing to us? Warning: this episode contains a lot of metaphors. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit w...
Jan 27, 2022•54 min
We went down the rabbit hole on the "primitive living" YouTube genre. We haven't solved every question we had but we did learn a few things. A Bunch of the pages seem to be run by the same person, a bunch more are sharing each other's videos, many of them are running their Facebook pages out of Thailand or Singapore, and based on some drone footage we came across it seems like they're all filming in the same section of the Cambodian wilderness. This episode is real dense this week! SHOW NOTES: h...
Jan 20, 2022•50 min
This week we dig into the weird possibly entirely fictitious companies that sports teams around the world are partnering with to build NFT and metaverse products. Fake CEOs, weird non-office storefronts, shady international rights management services, and bizarre Chinese masterclass education platforms — this episode's got it all! SHOW NOTES: https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/1480990948972658689 https://www.theguardian.com/games/2022/jan/11/wordle-creator-overwhelmed-by-global-success-of-hit...
Jan 13, 2022•1 hr 2 min
This week we're talking about one of the UK's buzziest Twitter accounts, @PoliticsForALI, which was suspended by the platform this week. It was run by a 19-year-old college student and it was kind of a mess, but also totally useful, sort of. A creature born from all of Twitter's best and worst features. Also, this week, Ryan learns some shocking information about Tintin. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www....
Jan 06, 2022•53 min
It's (probably) our last episode of the year! We're talking about what we think will be the big trends of next year. Basically, we think every company will operate like a Gamestop pump and TikTok will cause a diplomatic incident that kicks off WW3. It's all very optimistic stuff! Also, Luke and Ryan compare notes on what country is the worst to get an antigen test in (it's Portugal). See you next year (probably). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers ...
Dec 09, 2021•1 hr 2 min
We're digging deep into Tumblr's 201 Year In Review. We're looking at the top trends, ships, aesthetics, memes, and communities. What does it all mean? How is Minecraft YouTube so big? Why are teens into emo again? Do people really just want to be little goblins living in a small house in some kind of bog? We have a lot of questions! SHOW NOTES: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/nov/30/squid-game-no-threat-to-traditional-british-tv-hits-finds-barb https://twitter.com/TechEmails/statu...
Dec 02, 2021•1 hr 7 min
This week we're talking about the noxious vortex of international bodybuilders, pick up artists, and cryptocurrency evangelists. The dream of all bad internet seems to be some kind of money laundering scheme based in Dubai. Also, we go super long this week on Twitter Spaces. SHOW NOTES: https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-59386855 https://twitter.com/fox13/status/1463200080282873857 https://twitter.com/SolBrah/status/1461348636663509000 https://twitter.com/Moneybaglives/status/1462817457245151234 ...
Nov 25, 2021•1 hr 8 min
In Facebook's Q3 content report, they revealed that a page called Thinkarete Lifestyle was responsible for some of the most viral content on the platform last summer. But the question is... who or what is Thinkarete Lifestyle? Well, after some pretty hardcore investigating, we think we've figured it out. SHOW NOTES: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/brass-against-singer-apologizes-peeing-012740464.html https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/it-s-hard-not-to-pity-ghislaine-maxwell https://twitter....
Nov 18, 2021•1 hr 8 min
This week we're live from London! Thank you all who came out for our live show this week. Live on stage we made Guardian reporter Alex Hern guess the prices of various NFTs and, wow, things did not go the way we expected... Considering I (Ryan) recorded all of this via a simple line out and we were doing powerpoint slides I'd say this doesn't sound half bad! Even if it doesn't sound good, this is our first attempt a live show and we did it all ourselves in a basement, please be nice. This is a p...
Nov 13, 2021•25 min
