Hello the Internet, and welcome to this episode of The Weekly Zeitgeist. Uh. These are some of our favorite segments from this week, all edited together into one NonStop infotainment laugh stravaganza.
Uh yeah, So, without.
Further ado, here is the Weekly Zeitgeist. Well, that voice you hear is not Harry Kane. We are thrilled to be joined by one of our favorites, the tech journalists and writer behind the newsletter Where's Your ed At?
Where's Your ed dot At?
This podcast with cool Zone Media Better Offline is a must listen. One of my favorite podcasts that launched in the last year, So good go check it out.
It's head ZiT Dry.
Welcome back to the podcast.
The podcast voice the entire time. I don't even know what that is.
You're in the pot, You're in the rock with the casters. Man, I didn't start on college radio, so what were you? Were you playing music or were you just doing like I was.
I was playing music, but I was talking and I just bring random people in.
Yeah.
And my favorite thing to do was when I got crank calls from people is I'd find the number and call them back. I'd be like, I think we got cut off somehow right most of the I'm sorry, I'm sorry man, Okay, you're on radio.
Whoa. It's always interesting to see that kind of troll energy. Were like, I only meant it for to go in one direction. The second you acknowledge as a person, it all falls apart a conversation.
Yeah, but I was born on the Internet. I was ready for this, like right exactly.
Oh man, who was that one dude who did those crank calls in the UK?
That comedian?
I remember, like they went viral over here in the internet era. Hmmm, it was like crah my, god he would do never mind, I'll find the thing. It was like Jersey Boys you're thinking of, Yeah, Jerky Boys, the Jersey Boys. I think that's a musical. Yeah.
Look, my brain's not working all right. That makes three of us, that's right. Two five. What is something from your search history that's revealing about who you are or something you've recently screen grabbed that is revealing about who you are?
Well, thank god you added in that second one just to really expand.
Yeah, that's what we're here for. It's good.
It's good.
It's like you're doing this for seven years, you know. It's sometimes we got to add a little wrinkle, like did you hear what I did with my voice at the beginning, the like deep thing, Like when I said deep, I made my voice deep. It was kind of.
It's interesting you're like Bette Midler and how she kept just adding things to her repertoire throughout her long career. Yeah. She people say she was a triple threat. I think it's quintuple, far more than that. But but that is not what I'm here to talk about today. We're doing a Bett Middller special or is that the one of the books we can talk about that.
Yeah, that's why this episode is called for the Boys in reference to the film and for the Boys.
Thing from my I'll choose google search, I guess for this one, just because I'm a bit of a traditionalist. But I googled Steve Bonnet and he was a pirate and I thought he was a made up pirate from that show Our Flag Means Death, which was on HBO for a while, which was a very very very funny show. I think it just got canceled, but it was very funny.
And you know, it's a good show on HBO after season most.
Strangly and it's great. I highly recommend it if you if you want to watch it. But he was known as the Gentleman Pirate. And then my sister's boyfriend does like tours in Charleston, South Carolina. It was nice enough to give my wife and I and my mom a tour, and we went by this public square and it said here was where Steve Bonnet, the Gentleman Pirate was hanged by the neck. And it turns out that Steve Bonnet
was a real pirate. This is what I googled. And he was a gentleman's pilot, a pirate in that he and he was a sea pilot in ways too, but I meant pirate and.
To keep justifying the mistake.
You made, make it longer.
The pilots of the sea in many ways c SCA of course.
But he was called the gentleman pirate because often pirates they just stole their ships or got them in a devious way. But he was a very rich man who wanted to become a pirate, so he bought.
A shop playing as a pirate.
Yeah, but he then became one where he at a shit and he paid his crew wages, which had never happened before. Where the pay for pirates was just if you stole stuff off another boat, you know, yeah, you get that.
Just got that's your pay.
Whatever you can, whatever you can fit in your arms, man, that's your salary, exactly, exactly.
And yeah, he was a real got interesting guy. And I think it is funny when you will get history where it's like, oh, this person probably died at fifty or something. It's like, oh, no, this man is famous and he was like twenty seven or something when he, like just Blackbeard was a real pirate. I went on a real pirate.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was very two thousand and five, yes, correct, when everyone is like are you a pirate or are you a ninja? And that was a fucking thing people said seriously to each other, and I was like, get the fuck.
Away from me. Neither. So binary like that was when the Internet was five years old and it had the same interests as a five year old.
Yes, yes, sorry, this is where we're at as are you pirate or ninja?
Next we're going to be into race cars and bay can Yeah, it is true.
And now it's starting to get like terminal ailments as it gets older, you know exactly, it's very sick yeah, yeah, truly self despising.
We're teenagers, right, paranoia in to our early twenties. I guess, exactly what is something that you guys think is underrated?
I think you know, last time we were on here as Aaron was bagging on kids, and so I want to bring it back, so I'm not gonna but yeah, yeah, kids fine, And you know he was just basically like, I hate kids and so my underrated though? Are magnet tiles? You guys got the kids, you're familiar with magnet tiles?
Yes, but I do not have a magnetic refrigerator.
No, no, No, like magnet Legos, Magni incredible.
Yeah, okay, magnet tiles we do have.
Yes, Yeah, I got a nephew. He's over at my house every Saturday, and I now believe I have the largest magnetile collection in North America. Wins and bins.
You bought or he just has slowly been moving it over to your house.
Oh?
No, I bought him.
And then every time we start building something, we go, you know what, I bet we can hit the ceiling, and then he and I he's four, we get on Amazon and we find someone were like, all right, we'll be here, for next week, and so we just keep building building, and I think they're they're underrated because there's
so much to take with Zaren's physics talk. You really have to think about balance and like all you have to be very creative in your thinking and it's not completely structured, and so I think they're underrated to way for kids.
Imagine, yeah there it is so much easier to clean up than legos. Oh yeah, less painful, yeah, less painful. But they're all like kind of one of like five shapes usually. I mean that's that's a generalization. I don't want to be unfair to magnetiles do.
A lot of tesselating.
Yeah, it's not like legos is just such a mess. Yeah magnetiles, how long for the days of magnetiles?
That's my over rated as legos. Is there any reasons?
Oh great, Yeah, that's been my overrated.
Basically, legs are for losers.
I think.
Here's my thing with legos. It's very limiting. They heard when you step on them, and then now I went to go get legos and for the kid, and it's like so much of them are pre set build this one specific thing, and it's really hard to find, just like the random Star Wars thing.
It's instruction following when I get build a giant parakeet or something.
Sure, but I have an accomplishment for the kid we're talking about. Yeah, I don't know.
I don't like rules.
The kids, Michael Jordan's kid kids.
Everybody should google Jordan, right, I only know that.
As a meme. Is that actually what's the context for?
He was in a shooting contest, like in a like at a basketball camp, and some other was like, hey, man, like you're supposed to let the win. I think, yeah, it's on video.
But could you movement for them kids?
Yeah?
Basically, But I do like Elizabeth, how this nephew of yours seems to be just like laundering all of his toy requests through you.
Oh, completely, this is a safe house.
His father, my brother, was at the store trying to get a birthday present for some other kid's birthday party, and he texted me a picture which one should What present should I get this kid? And it was like magnets, not magnet tiles, but like a magnet kit or like a headlamp. And I show my nephew. I'm like, dude, which one should he get? He said? Tell him to get the headlamp and then you get me the magnet. I was like, all right, I am a sucker. I will just give him everything.
So yeah, I know, I know, and then you each return them to the other opposite store you get and then exactly yeah.
Yeah.
The other thing with Legos is like they're so they have such a monopoly across Like, so I got my like it was recently my year old's birthday, and I got him an action figure just like an you know, and he at first he was like, wait what, I don't I don't get it, but yeah, what do I
do with this? But now it's like his favorite toy because it doesn't break into a hundred pieces when you drop it, right, and you can, but like Legos are just so like all their toys just dissolve into one hundred pieces when you drop them, and they're like impossible to like store anywhere, whereas this you like put in a drawer and then like pull it out. So yeah, it's just it's great. Yeah, it's good that there's like an interactive toy that like requires spatial reasoning and all
that stuff. It is like, I don't know, I feel like it's too much at this point, like there's it's too and maybe that's just in my household because my other son is like obsessed.
With Legos, well are everywhere. I don't trust big Lego.
No, yeah, there's no way a company that big isn't like doing something.
On somehow, like there are no good billionaires, you know, I don't trust them.
Every fifth Lego in like a set has a listening device built out.
I mean it was.
Weird, but like, yeah, my daughter had one that was like build this eye tracking device.
That's right, yeah, and then put it on your dad shop on line.
Paul of you, what is something you think is overrated?
Okay I might, No, I don't. Okay, it's not overrated. But like, who the fuck is going to watch the presidential debate this year? I don't even know what's happening with voting, but I don't want to watch.
What are they going to debate about? I don't know what they're.
Gonna even who can remember who they're talking to?
Yeah?
All right.
The first challenge is name the person standing across from you?
No, just is getting there without falling over? Okay, this is the least like I've watched the debates before and I've like commented on them and talked about it, but I'm like, this is gonna be so utterly depressing, and also there's so much other shit going on, and everybody's mad at both of them for very legitimate reasons, like.
Don't nobody don't just put them?
You know those that celebrity boxing show that used to be like do that?
Do that?
See if they can get in the ring without falling over.
Let's see if that works, aw man, purely stress based experience that will be of just like, yeah, I hate both of them.
So much, Yeah, for sure, But then.
Like also being stressed out. Every time Joe Biden starts a sentence, it's like, oh, fuck, how's how's this one gonna end? He doesn't even know?
Yeah, That's how I feel about my stand up sets. I'm like, there's no fucking way Joe Biden's feeling the same way as me doing crowd work, Like who knows where this is gonna go. We're both like I'm definitely gonna bomb today, you know, both of us, Me and Joe.
Biden, right, yeah that I don't know what those debates are gonna look like at all, And I don't know like they both think they're like, oh, yeah, watch this, y'all, You're gonna fucking love this, And I don't know if it's gonna render the results that they.
Think it will.
I am interested to see how he like approaches Trump because the last time he was like all fired up about Malarkey and he was like.
Oh, shut up.
And now it's like, will he have that confidence and ability to breathe through talking?
You know what I mean? Yeah? Yeah, he has moments of energy where like this feels like a burst of I was saying this on yesterday's episode, but like this feels like when he was like that's it, I'm going
out there. I'm gonna call press conference and answer all their dang questions man, and like he was good for good but like he did what he was hoping to do for like twelve minutes and was like and I'm out and then like came back to the stage and was like sundowning, And it's just like, yeah, man, it like doesn't he There's no way to be confident that he's going to be able to like reliably stand up there and not embarrass himself.
You know that? Uh what do they call it?
Like a second like a right, But when people are in like like dying and they're like in a hospital bed and then they get a burst of energy right before they die.
Have you heard.
Yeah, I feel like that's this.
Entire term for.
Wind yea.
Yeah, I'm like, I'm getting your hopes up.
Yeah.
Yeah, probably for both of them too. They're like, we need this, we need each other to stay alive just a few moments longer.
All right, let's uh, let's take a quick break and we'll come back and do some art criticism. We'll be right back, and we're back. We're back, and sort of recap. Google search used to be good. It was good, and I remember a time that that was like the tech breakthrough that everyone was like, fucking believe this shit, it's like magic.
They feel like it was a slow bun. Yeah, but then it just was so ubiquitous at some point that it was just like people just assumed it would always work.
Yeah, right, Yeah, there was like a time in the late nineties early it's where people were like, it's it was cool.
People are like here, let me google that, right, or it was like a verb anymore, or like you knew how to use it too. It's like you gotta use quotation marks or got to use signs between Google foo. That's why I use alta vista.
Actually that's what.
Someone say Google foo, and sometime that's a certain kind of guy, right.
But I mean, like, yeah, Ed, we've when the last time you were talking, we were talking about the rotten economy, and I know we've made mention of just how Google's become just worse and worse, and then your recent episode about how Google just became an absolute, just unusable basically ad service just because as some of the words I understood, and I was I was right there with you other times conceptually I knew where you were going, but I couldn't quite put it all together intellectually.
So could you?
Would you mind explaining just sort of this shift from this like code yellow change that occurred, or this code yellow moment into this basically glorified ad server we have now, But please explain it as if I am an ignorant person that was distracted by a toddler while they were listening.
Problem. So the episode I wrote and the news company newsletter was about in two thousand and I'm now going to pull it up Slide eighteen eighteen, correct because the dates are important.
Yes.
So in twenty nineteen, there was a low called Ben Gomes, who is the head of Google Search. Ben Gomes had been at Google since nineteen ninety nine, so basically the beginning he worked directly with Sergey and Larry. He is and there are tons of articles about him where everything he talks about he's talking like a Renaissance painter. He's like, I believe the connectivity between dating, like he's so romantic
about it. So on February fifth, twenty nineteen, he gets through a connection of events something called a code yellow, which is an internal Google thing that says there is a problem that's significant. There are higher codes, but they're extremely rare. Code yellow itself is actually pretty rare. So what happened was this code yellow was the revenue and ad side of Google saying Google Search, you are not making us enough money. You need to make us more money.
And also, and this is very important, the amount of queries going into Google is not growing enough. Now, little side note for you, queries in this case is referring to the amount of times that people search. Now, if you think about it for just a second, is that necessarily connected to how good Google is not necessarily. In fact, if there are less queries, maybe Google's better.
Any round what they were looking for, right, yes.
Which does not work for Google. So Google is then in this little futz of the code yellow, and between Ben Gomes and some other guys there's a conversation where he says, hey, guys, I feel like Google is getting too close to the money. Google seems to only care about growth. And after about a month they resolve the code yellow, and there's a big email thread and there's a ton of emails that I'm just leaving out, but
I'm sum racing as quick as possible. There's also on the sidelines this guy called Jerry Dishler, who was one of these noxious VP types who was kind of like, yeah, guys, we need to make more queries and we need to make more money, so could you just do that? So the code yellow comes to an end, and it turns out that the guy behind it is a guy called Prabagar Ragavan who was then the head of advertising, it
a head of ads on Google. And Ben Going sends out a thing to a bunch of people who are all congratulating each other, saying we got through this great job. Everyone Brabaga responds saying, yeah, actually engineering did that. You didn't do it. He didn't do anything.
Wow.
So so these emails came out through a Department of Justice is antitrust hearing, and I realized this is a lot of history. In twenty twenty, Brabaga becomes head of Google Search, and he then goes he takes over Google Search from this idealistic from the idealist who worked on Google Search from the.
Beginning, right, So he came in, he was.
Basically pushed him out. And also, to be clear, this queries metric is insane. Having more queries means nothing. And in fact, these emails kind of detail that he takes over in twenty twenty. Now, if you're really think about it, Google started to get really bad in like twenty nineteen twenty twenty, and has got significantly worse constantly since twenty twenty. End of twenty nine, well, mid twenty nineteen. They added this to mobile, but they put it fully onto desktop
as well. In twenty twenty, they maybe changed to make it harder to tell when something is an AD on bribble now.
Yeah, yeah, and I definitely noticed that change.
They made a bunch of changes to make Google worse.
Yeah, it used to be pretty easy. There was like a background. It seemed like pretty clear that they had a internal discussion and we're like, well, we don't want the product, we don't want to be actively tricking people into.
Well they they it was funnier than that. They were just like, yeah, we need to see the numbers go up. Please make number go higher. Now, line go up now.
Yep. But yeah, like during the two thousands, like it was like there was a balance of like, we need this to be a product, product that people want to use, and we need to make money off of ads. But they've hit a point where they don't really give a shit if it's a product that people want to use.
It seems like it's that.
And also within these emails, and again this is from the Department of Justice, is suit against Google for monopoly. So hey, what monopoly could they have? And what's really stark about it is what mister Ragavan's previous job was. So can you think of a what would the worst job that could be previously held by someone running Google Search? Just think about it for a second. You might not get it, but just think what is the worst company he could have worked for that isn't like, I don't
know define actively. Yeah. Different companies, Like.
One of the worst would be Google Ads. They're like driving revenue.
Within this period, be not good at their job. I'll skip to it. Mister Ragavan ran search at Yahoo Watch two thousand and five to twenty twelve. In that period, they went from I think like a thirty three percent market share versus Google's thirty six percent to literally doing a deal where bing would power Yahoo.
Yeah. Yeah, let me just say in fact check you real quick, let me go Yahoo that Nope, never said.
She says he's great and has a huge dick.
Crazy.
No, but it's crazy because you read this thing, and you read this story, and you read the emails, and I was writing it and I was like, is this someone messing with This is ridiculous, right because the emails are so grim. There's one with this guy is engineer called Shashi Thaka who's like, can we tell Sundar Pushai about this and stop this? That's the CEO of Google and his former job was McKinzie.
Yeah.
Yeah, they're on the right side of a lot of things. I was gonna say, bread prices, carton yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it's wild because you've read this story and you're like, it couldn't be this obvious, could it? And the timeline is just perfect yea, And I will actually say something. I'm previewing, something I'm working on. The Only time I've ever seen worse than this story is in my next newsletter about Facebook.
Yeah.
Well, you don't have emails in this chain where someone is like, yeah, actually it's good. The product sucks, right, I actually like this, this is good. I've got documents where there's someone writing, yeah, here are the changes we've made at Facebook to increase engagement that made Facebook worse. Yeah, right, worse for the user and it and guess who guess what COO of Facebook Sheryl Samberg until twenty twenty two, McKinsey.
Yeah, no kidding.
The people that run Facebook right now, or product managers or growth people. This is the This is tying it back to Google. The people in charge are management concerns, as people, revenue people. They're not the people who build anything. They are parasites.
Yeah. It's sort of like what yeah, private equity does to like any other business, Like, we don't know this business innately at all. We just know how to make the line go up, and if that means everything falls apart, like then great, well.
They're going to do.
We have the monopoly right right? What was the way that search human was making ads before or making like generating revenue before the ads or they're just saying we need to blaz themm so search.
But to be clear, at this point, like twenty nineteen, Search was making them tens of billions of dollars.
Sure, it wasn't like it was.
A fledgling business and they were like, oh, we got to grow up everyone. This was a business printing money.
Right.
It was a beloved product that everybody used. That everyone was like, man, I'm glad that Google exists. I'm glad that Google isn't bad, right, and it was almost kind of magical. You just find everything now because the people in charge are thinking, how do we keep people on Google more? How do we make people use Google more? Versus how do we make Google good? Yeah, it sucks, and it's across almost every tech platform you look at.
This is because I spoke about the rot economy last time, but since then I've done a lot of work actually covering the actual rot. Because you can speak big picture and you can say, Okay, yeah, things are bad thing, bad people bad, look at bad person. But when you see in start writing how these people act and the grimness, the craven nature of the way these people work, it's it's stomach churning turning. I forget which one it is, and it's just it's disgraceful. But also, these people have names.
I genuinely think that just by saying Propagar, Ragvans and uppershy all them, Ryl Sandberg, last Batter, Drump like, all of these people have names. I'm not saying do anything. I'm just saying that I genuinely think that they will stop doing quite as many bad things if we keep saying it. Right, because Probaca for a man who runs an one hundred billion dollars a quarter, I think revenue property just Google Search. He is very, very quiet. No one had really heard of it. He'd be mentioned as
a Wired art call. There was a ZDNA art call that called him Yahoo's search master, which is one of the funniest things considering.
How bad Yahoo got afterwards.
Right, But these people, I'm not saying anything should happen. I'm just saying talk about them, saying their names will shame them, and perhaps they won't feel much shame. But the more that these people are called out for these specific actions, I think change can actually happen. And also Google's in a real pickle right now, like they they have buggered Search up quite horribly, if I'm honest. Yeah, Like, I've never seen a product get destroyed this badly other than Facebook.
Yeah, I mean, I think, like, if ads are the guiding principle, I guess it, does that mean it's bad for people looking for information? If if part of it means they're getting the best deal on the one of those indoor silent basketballs, you know, just being serviced to them.
I'm trying to find the good and the bad. Yeah, but that's the thing. So advertising itself is not evil, and for a while it wasn't perfect. I mean anyway, it's.
An ad in a second, But.
I mean, I definitely can't with ads on ads on better offline. Sorry, everyone, there's a lot of them. I don't control it. But advertising has always been a problem for Search. In the original Google paper, written by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, they literally say that advertising can create the wrong incentive for Google.
Yes, it's yeah, it's the main conflict at the center of the entire business. Like, this is not coming out of nowhere. This is like a long held battle where they had people in positions of power who were just knew this was the battle. They were like, there's going to be add people or money people who are going to be constantly pushing us to decrease the quality of the service we provide customers so that we can, you know, make our ads more effective at getting them to click right.
Like that's basically what it comes down to.
I think what it is is that, yeah, there was always going to be some profit incentive. I don't think that's possible to avoid, but it was a fairer trade. It felt like it wasn't so utterly craven. Yeah, but that's the thing. It's when you look at how they've acted, especially in these emails, and it's where's your head dot at look for the man who killed Google Search, or listen to the podcast these emails. The people fighting against this are saying things out of a disaster movie. They're like,
I'm afraid that all we care about is growth. Money is the money is getting too close the search ads are getting too close to the Search. Is there any way we can stop this. I'm not signing up to this kind of thing. This will create bad incentives. All of the warnings of that, and then some guys like noh, kram it, you're going to work. And now Ben Gomes is SVP of education, you know Google's education like that, Sure, we all have interfaced with Google's education problem. I'm on
the island from the prisoner, right, he's gone. This man has been put in a box, probably because they can't fire him, and he's much more valuable in the corner than he is out there talking to people like me. Yeah, right right, because I would absolutely I would be on a plane to go and talk to it. But hey, Ben goes.
But it's the same thing. We've talked about this with DEI and you know other you know, with environmental policies, when companies are asked to pay attention to the environmental impact, it will be popular and it will be entertained by them for while, you know, like for Google, it lasted almost an entire decade. But like that was the main battle that's happening within Search is like, Okay, we're trying
to make this product better. The money people are trying to you know, take it over, and eventually it just they wear you down because Wall Street is ultimately the thing that the people at the very top end up getting kind of inundated with to the point that it's like, what, you know, it's their entire incentive structure. So just feel like, yeah, the whole thing is just management people and above conjugating the desires of Wall Street down through the people who
are actually building products that customers use. And you know, basically that is the conflict that we're seeing happen over
and over again. And the people who care about the quality of the product, or care about the initiative to make their company more diverse, or the people or who care about the environmental impact of their company like that eventually always seems like it gets drummed out by Wall Street and gets treated as unrealistic and idealistic and childish by Wall Street, who ends up only caring about profitability.
And what's crazy is Wall Street loves plenty of very bad companies. Tesla is a garbage company, but it's a meme stock. Now it does no connection to reality, right meta as a company has burned like fifteen billion dollars. I think or something like that on the metaverse, which is never happening. But also they have made Facebook and Instagram borderline unusable, and Wall Street loves them because they
print money. What's insane is all these companies had to do was provide a decent service and just make them better, and they could just print money run them like a casino, like just we don't want to mess with the winning formula. That's why casinos look the way they do for so long, because they have a supply and demand thing and they work it very nicely, but they know touching that little
balance canno the whole thing off. And it's crazy. It makes me feel a little bit crazy, like it does because, as I mentioned earlier, when I wrote The Row Economy, I had a few public things and I looked at and I was like, yeah, this makes sense. This is this is a strong theory. It's backed up by things I've read seeing it in action, really, and I'm already kind of pissy. I'm kind of a pissy missy by before, but reading what they're doing, and like some of these
Facebook things I've got coming as well. That company. I used to think that Google was the worst them, but Facebook is Mark Zuckerbook's genuinely evil, as are all the people and Glit and Schultz and all these other people. There are so many people at Facebook who are just do not care. They don't care about the user. I kind of admire that there are people at Google who do right, and I think that only makes what Brabagara Ragavan did more evil because he's just like na, Nah,
don't listen to the bloke who built this crap. No, make more money, now, make money, now, make money, now, make money for the machine. So I could make the search engine worse and get more money, now what. And all they had to do was just kind of leave it alone. But guess what, that doesn't create eternal growth in the street. Also, the real change was twenty fifteen when Sundark men, mckenzy boy and the McKenzie people. The moment they touch it, they got the brown midas touch
turns everything to poopy. It sucks. It sucks so bad. Because they didn't have to do this, they could have still Google would probably if they left it in a good condition and didn't really touch it for seven years, probably still print like sixty seventy eight billion dollars a quarter. Because it's so ubiquitous. They pay Apple like ten billion dollars. Yeah, I think to make it exclusive on iPhone as well.
It's just insane. It's really insane. And I think the especially given what I've seen with the Facebook stuff, much of it already out there, is I reckon behind the curtain. There's a lot companies like this. I wouldn't be surprised if the Boeing stuff is going to reveal a lot
more like this as well. But within the tech industry, this is what is happening, and this is what happens when you don't have the people who build stuff running software or hardware, you just get McKinsey scam artists who crap up everything forever.
Yeah, it's like the same thing that happened that's happened with the film industry, where people in like the marketing accounting departments displaced the actual creatives who are developing films, and they're like, no, no, no, no, no, these are the movies that make the line go up. Do you know anything about movies or stories like you?
No?
Let me give you a good example. Microsoft, they just shut down a number of studios, including the one I forget what the name. Tokyo based studio called that made a game called Hi Fi Rush, incredibly successful first party title exclusive to Xbox NPC. Of course, great game. They shut down the studio and a bunch of other ones then immediately the next day, and I think the Verge had this one as what it was like. Microsoft says they need to make more games like the one that
the studio they shut down. Mate, Like they were like, we need smaller indie games that people love, right, And it's like you just killed the company that did you And it's so obvious, and it's so obvious, and also I'm not even sure it's good business, right, I'm not sure they're actually making or saving more money.
I don't know.
Well Google, yeah, they're definitely making money handover. This same thing with Facebook, but these things with game studios in particular, and the same with entertainment. It's like, you're not actually making money off of this. You're just like, I gotta I'm gonna get fined fifty million dollars somewhere. Can we just kill that movie we filmed? Yeah, exactly, we just not release it. Can we take that off tax return?
The other should close that loophole by the way. That's if I can't deduct a boat, they shouldn't be able to Deduck Wiley Coyote and his courtroom drama.
Yeah, not the other one.
But also the other thing is I think all these tech companies don't realize at some point people are not going to care anymore. They're going to stop using these products and they're not going to come back. Right but that but the actual use user churn is going to happen.
So that would require them to no longer be a monopoly. Right. It feels like that's the thing that like the actual anti trust lawsuits need to like come through and actually make it so that they don't have these enormous.
I mean, that's never gonna happen, right. However, the thing that will, I think is not what people are expecting is, oh, they'll stop. They won't stop using Google because they need a search engine unless they don't, right, unless people just change their habits to move away from search engines. Now that search engines are bad, right, if they don't use Facebook anymore. Like you've used Facebook recently, I'm sure it's terrible. You can't even see the people you want to see.
Same with Instagram, I mean you run an account for the daily Zeitgeist. I'm sure you know. You put it out and you're like, of the thousands of people that follow you, like twelve see it because of the algorithm. Yeah, right, at some point people just gonna go, I don't care, I just won't use that. Facebook has already had churn. They've had over the last ten years, a decent amount of churn. They've picked up new users, but it can.
Go the other way.
And the problem that these companies have is none of the people who built any of it, with Facebook being the exception, they're just a completely different animal. For the most part, the people who built these companies aren't there anymore, or they've been shoved in the corner and going out to the public and saying, hi, guys, So Google search blue. It was so bad, but it's good now. People are gonna be like, yeah, sure, mate.
Pull Dominos pizza. We understand our product has been bad. That's because we're trying to save money. Right.
Yeah, it's just very depressing. It The whole thing makes me very angry. But hey, it's it's broadcast baby.
Yeah. All right, let's say let's take a quick break, because I do want to talk about and Ron Musk and what's going on over there. We will be right back. Is the green microphone for Eagles?
It's it is my favorite color and also my favorite team's color. My favorite like green, everything?
Is it?
Yeah? Green?
I love green? Greenies over a green, huge green.
It's your favorite color. I don't think I've ever asked you that, what's your favorite color? Bro?
Don't don't, don't start like you care now you know what I mean?
Is it gray? I know?
You idiot?
The orange idiot.
I love orange.
Orange is near the top.
Orange is good. I love orange. Don't just say that now, Jack, Now.
I got a little orange flower right here. Oh yeah, orange sun flowers, orange star flowers, what they're called? All right? All right?
Is that why you have Netherlands jerseys?
Miles?
I do like I that is aside from the fact that there are a lot of like like you know, some legendary players that have played for the Netherlands. But yeah, I like, yeah, that's one reason I like to wear that jersey. Come like, yeah, like nice, you can't not everybody can pull orange off. And you know what I think it was? It was it took one ex girlfriend to say I looked good in orange to be like, yes, now I'm taking risks. Baby used to wear blue. I
used to I'm not joking. I used to only wear fucking blue, like only blue, not even because I thought I was like some kind of like a crip or whatever. I was just so such boy that I was like, blue is my favorite. And then like if I'm feeling blue, yeah, I'll wear Carolina or I call the Carolina blue. Yeah, baby, no, no, no, no, no, no, Carol Wallace.
Blue.
I'm wearing to be Supper's blue. But then yeah, and then it took this one one ex to be like, wow, you look really good. And then like her friend we went out like to a like a bar or something there. I was like, okay, orange shirt, I like that on you.
And I was like I'm I'm the orange. Oh my god, there it is. You can control my behavior. So with one on something i'm wearing, I will wear nothing else for you.
I stopped shaving my shitty beard because someone in college was like I was like, oh, it looks like terrible.
She's like no.
I kind of remember thinking like, oh, what's up with him? Because he had like the interesting facial hair, and I was like, do you mean because it looks so shitty.
She's like, well, you know, but it was. It was interesting and for a while I thought that was the movie. It's not wonder they must know right there, like yeah, they're probably like yo, I could visit this idiot to wear orange and not shave his stupid ass beer.
Someone said it was funny when I was six and I'm still doing stand up, like what are you doing?
Exactly right? Yeah, yeah, look at this now.
All right, I don't know. Are we where we all were? We always back is the question.
It doesn't matter back, We've been back, never been away. All right, we're back, We're but back to the news.
We have important news. A restaurant in Las Vegas promised a bluey Day and it ended up being not so great. Those kind of yeah, it kind of Wonka experience ish that, but not I don't know, like this, this feels a little different to me.
That's why that's why I wanted to bring it to to this Triumvirate of great minds. Is because ever since that Wonka experience in Glasgow, I've always just been dubious of like any event that's like gear towards kids. It's like, and we've got characters that you can check out. And yeah, this hot dog place they said, Hey, it's called dirt Dog. They're like, yo, Blue Day, watch Bluey all afternoon face painting, gave Blue giveaways, Meet the Bluey, Meet Blue and friends.
So guess what the parents showed up And now you can already guess how this ends, because why the fuck would we talk about a successful blue event? No, it was no good.
It was so good. It was amazing.
The kids had such a good time.
Well, the last work by the people in the suits was incredible.
I'll just play this clip from the local news. It starts off with a little girl saying, how like upset she was about the bullshit she was seeing in front of her.
And I saw him like the sclor hill.
I was mad, she said, I saw him and I just ignored him.
I was so mad.
Did he look like the cartoon?
Did he look like what like on TV?
No? He he looked like unexpected we could like hear fear.
Sophia and other kids had the same reaction. The Bluey they expected was not who greeted them. On the left. This is a photo a parent took at an event with the popular cartoon character Bluey. On the right, it's a staff member of Dirk Dog in a makeshift Bluey costume.
The kids were distraught.
Some kids were crying.
Some kids were upset, crying in their parents' shoulders. Three thousand people RSVP on the Facebook event. Crowds poured in for hours. There were lines outside in the heat. Inside concerns about capacity, from the face painting to baked goods. Many parents say they were underwhelmed and the free stuff got snatched up quickly.
How could you do that to.
Little kids? How could you do that?
So when I look at it, I'm like, it's not it's it definitely does not rise to the egregiousness of the walka experience that was like the Wanka thing was like existentially troubling on the inside, right right, right, Yeah, this looks like a restaurant, Like it looks like a Blaze pizza on the inside.
Right that just happens to like have be overcrowded and have some like like have a Bluey children's birthday party happening right like that?
Yeah exactly, I mean, you know, like the restaurants like this is the restaurant's apology made it feel less scared because I was like, is this a scam or I think this feels more like the restaurants I.
Love this restaurant. First, it's called dirt Dog. It's a hip hop themed hot dog restaurant. That's great. I was I was hoping that there would be like more of an old dirty bastard vibe, But I don't know how you pull off an old dirty bastard vibe, like in a place that serves food but to kids.
And then I want to trademark infringement. Then there's one thing. They'll have a bad event, but they won't. They won't assessence, I mean exactly, dude.
That that was a question that occurred to me, is like where how the fuck are they? They reached out to the creators of Bluuie and we're like, hey, we're gonna throw an event with theyd probably get dinged for that at a mask, right, So this has to be bad news for them one way or another drawing attention to this event. But yeah, it looks like a Blaze pizza with an Eminem poster on the wall. That's the only poster that I couldn't see, just the.
One like really like great, but you want a hip hop thing they have. Yeah, yeah, it's from the It's from the Encore album. Not even one of his good ones. Yeah the Encore. Nobody was fucking with that one.
That just seemed like real cool though. Yeah, they were like, wow, Bluey's really popular. Good to know we won't fuck this up next time.
And to know we're like, we're high as shit at our hot dog restaurant. It's on a whim thought, maybe this would be something for the kids.
Uh.
They posted on their social media quote, we are truly sorry this event wasn't to standard. We will work on improving all of the events going forward so we can bring you the highest quality as you all deserve. We appreciate everyone taking the time to send us your feedback, and some of the feedback was fuck you, My kids are so upset because you had some guy in the
jank ass bandit pajamas. That shit wasn't even Bluey, because that was a thing that like the people, the complaints from parents, they feel like very American, you know what I mean, Like we're shit, isn't that bad?
You know what I mean?
But you want to act like they were like and they served us broken glass. They're like, Okay, dude, it was some dude.
It was sure.
The costume was yanky and it was banded. Okay, that's true.
But they were you know, they were giving up.
They were they had free sets and ship there was a good college effort. They weren't telling you anybody like AI, supernatural effects and shit were gonna happen.
This is exactly what I would have expected from a free blue event put on by a hot dog restaurant. Excite think it's a bar. Also, I was looking up. I think it's almost more a bar with hot dogs at it. Yeah, it is just a hot dog. So you brought your kids to a bar, you know what I mean?
It's not.
Ya. But I do like the the part where the news report is like and many parents were underwhelmed.
That is the story.
That's the essence of the story. It was underwhelming, right right. Costume was a big miss, Like they fucked up the costume really badly. But that is not the level that requires a local news story. It feels like this is kind of coasting off of the power of that Willy Wonka story exactly. I think that's what I think everybody. That's that's why I was even like another Wonka story.
And then I'm like this feels like it. Look, we get it. We we want everybody to we want another sad Oupa lupa at a bar.
You know.
The costume is truly fucked, Like they really did a bad job with the costume. Yeah, the way that thing is cut, I would not have kids around an adult man in that in that car.
No like his Yeah, the body of Batman is like a big mumu. But then the face part is like a flat paper like mask that's like rising up over his head because he doesn't want to like actually wear it. But look, you can entertain a three year old with a cardboard box and crans like that. That's an afternoon for three like you. So if there's this much anguish over an event is probably coming from like, you know, them reading your.
Shit, you know, yeah, yeah, so I don't know anyway, just just get a fucking cardboard guys.
It that fucking hard.
You don't have to take a blue fest just y. I'm like always amazed at with like what the baby is playing with, Like he's got all these toys and ship now he just likes to play with the fucking weird stopper behind the door. That's like, yeah, that's like his favorite toy.
Educational.
No, he's fucking playing that ship like a fucking banjo or like mouth.
Harp like the bassist.
Yeah, you don't realize how important those doorstoppers are, by the way, until you break one. Because we have not had one in our door for like, I think maybe eight months, because the walls places it. Our neighbors, I think, are like that this is we have to go property. Dalus plummeted in the entire it's just the door knob hitting the wall is so loud and jarrings like.
The dream Palace at the end of Inception where it's just like crumbling right, all right, And finally big news in the world of AI kind of. I don't know. They changed the voice basically. I saw like a headline a couple of days back those like open AI releases a new like flirtier chat GPT.
And I was like, all right, like I don't un necessarily want the.
Way you said that, like yeah, yeah, no, that was me being horny, but this one already Yeah all right, So they're releasing basically a new AI voice assistant that sounds exactly like Scarlett Johansson from the movie Her, possibly because they realize that people getting horny for their smartphones is good business. Possibly because Sam Altman is so sam Altman.
I meant to talk about him more on our Tech episode because he's he's like a real He's a lot kind of exactly what Ed talks about when he's talking about like manager class people who pose as like I'm an engineer, I understand the ins and outs of all this, but then like doesn't like all all he's ever really done is like get Wall Street excited about an idea that he doesn't truly understand, or that he does understand but is trying to get people to misunderstand, very similar to Elon Musk.
So ask sam Alton Freed exactly and we're done here. Actually that's we We got to go out on that. But all right, Blake, Yeah, just give us a song.
Following the presentation, though he tweeted simply the word Her,
which he has said before is his favorite movie. He's also the person who like talks about how he keeps a gun and poison pill on him like all the time in case the AI attacks, Like he just he his whole strategy is he likes to play up how advanced and like sci fi his technology is, even though experts in the field suggest it's basically just like a glorified autocomplete, But like he's borrowing from the cultural capital that sci fi films have given us to make billions
and billions of dollars, Like it's the there's this massive market on Wall Street that is like based on all this hype around these things that I think he's like, miss I can't I can't tell if he's like wilfully misunderstanding it or like some of the reporting on him suggests he like doesn't really understand the code, So maybe he really believes his own bullshit and is like, finally we've created my girlfriend that has been wanting to fuck forever. I love her so much.
Please tell me what I'm looking at. These are ducks gliding on the water. I mean, there's all like I feel like on Twitter, so many people are just dubious, like out the fucking Gate in terms of like what they like what it said it was doing, and they're like they're probably just training it on the like just these very narrow, these very narrow examples. But yeah, either way, like like you were saying on Tuesday, we're not past the point of fun party toy, you know, yeah, like
that's like what it does. It's like, oh, man, get it to write a song about Jack's plumpers, and it's like even then, Zeitgang is even fucking better than AI. So I'm like, I don't look, no, you're not. You're not usurping anybody except for maybe, you know, being a bad visual artist or something. Yeah, they're usurping me. My My ability to write plumpers is pretty limited.
But I'm sorry that zyk. I don't like hearing you say that I don't.
About my friend.
Yeah, I do.
But one thing open A. I had to walk back the claims that they I was designed to sound like Scarlett Johansson because obviously they get sued if they didn't. So they're like, we've had these voices forever. But yeah, it's that this is not just open aye. Like cyber Truck. Elon Musk was like, this is the truck from Blade Runner, right, which is like set in a depressing healthscape run on slavery.
You know.
He's like, yeah, but that's pretty tight, right, can robots consent?
Whoa?
Whoa?
What the fuck did you get from the Here We Go. Yeah shit, metaverse is from all sorts of different sci fi universes, snow Crash being the most dystopian end upsetting, and now Her, which, like the movie Her ends with the protagonist realizing that he actually has to deal with the messiness of human relationships, and the AI is like abandoning humanity, right, I.
Mean, if they should, they need to focus on like the cool shit I get, like the overarching themes from sci fi, but like one part was that I wish they could bring back are like the drugs from.
Sci fi movies.
Yeah, I dropped Report and he's like, oh, he wants some clarity, and I'm like, the fuck is that? And this dude was like fucking like watching his dead family and whole home video, like like, yo, let me see that. I don't need metaverse, but yeah, you know, I'll take I feel like a.
Drug in Minority Report looked like a reverse Kazoo, Like it wasn't it like an inhale little inhale.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, like it like kind of shot it in your mouth.
I kind of like that.
I want more eye dropper.
Drugs that.
I also carry a gun and poison. I just hate my life.
Yeah, that's just in case I need to.
Man, look at that. Oh man, I would my whole my teenage bedroom would have been filled to the pack, to the gills, was spent clarity inhalers Man.
Well, yeah, kazoo mixed with like a little with a vape. I guess I guess we have those. They're called vapes.
Oh, I guess they are just vapes.
Yeah. Anyways, all right, that's gonna do it this week's weekly Zeichgeist. Please like and review the show If you like, the show means the world de Miles. He he needs your validation, folks. I hope you're having a great weekend and I will talk to you Monday. Bye.
Conder, doctor at a