Ryan Broderick, Scholar of the Internet

He's a genius writer. He's a scholar of the Internet, and we're going to talk to him about what the fuck is going on online. Let's just get into it. First off, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. I want to say I love your newsletter, Garbage Day. Thank you. It's probably the newsletter that I most read. Thank you. You know, it's probably the newsletter that I read most often, top to bottom. Okay, I'm just I'm gonna hold it

in place. I like, I feel good, So yeah, thank you. It's probably also my most my most read newsletter although I have to read some for work. Obviously, I have to have to read some every day, so yours has nothing to do with my work, and I pay for it. And I'm a member of the juven named for the garbage day community. They call themselves bin heads, but I do not. I think a good day for them would

be dumpster divers. I think they missed an opportunity. That's nice. Yeah, because that been discussed all should I bring it up in the discord? You know, we've we've tried to have the conversation about like what the stand army is called, and I feel like that's just waiting in a territory that like I'm not prepared for yet. You know, that's right, that's down the road conversation. That's fair enough. I mean,

that's fair enough. But garbage day, how would you describe it to a LED person if I wasn't me, You just met me at a party, or I don't know, maybe we were waiting for the subway together and we struck up a conversation and I go, what do you do? I say, I'm a free speech warrior on substack dot com. I'm part of the intellectual dark Enlightenment. I'm a reactionary centerist. Substack is the free speech wing of the free speech Party.

That's right. My pronouns are sub and stack, you know. Yeah, I write a newsletter about web culture, and the whole point of Garbage Day is sort of just an attempt.

I don't say I succeed every time, but it's an attempt at sort of remembering why I use the Internet and why I've used the Internet for years, and why my personality is built around things I've seen on the internet, right, and try to like talk about the Internet in a language that doesn't feel overly serious but also like doesn't feel super pointless either, right, right, and in the same way that like, you know, probably most people these days

have a group chat where they're sending stuff back and forth with each other, and that's sort of the feeling I try to capture, or attempt to capture. But you know,

some days they're easier than others for that, Right. But your newsletter is I mean, it's more than just a group chat in the sense that first off, it's pretty one directional in the sense I mean, I know, you do put things in there that people find that they point out to you, but it's like you're kind of like, here's my thoughts on things, right, I mean, it's from Ryan's mind, is how I might describe it. Yeah, it was.

It was sort of it's sort of an editorial experiment actually, with the idea of like, okay, stuff on the Internet feels increasingly like it doesn't come from people, or it

comes from people who are trying to become brands. And so when I was sort of like developing what garbage Day is currently and kind of working through it, you know, over the weeks and months, I was like, well, you know, I should just make it as me as humanly possible one because it's easier and to like, it's not going to be like a thing that you click on on Facebook. You know, it's not. It's not it's not that feeling. And my hope was that people on the internet want

more of that stuff. And so far, so good. Right, So the garbage Day brand is extended now into I noticed I didn't realize you were doing this, but you now make YouTube videos as well. Yeah, well, like my hero mister Beast, I want to be mister Beast, mister best who you who you emulate and look up to as a mentor and a hero, right, I think what's so amazing about garbage day not to just this whole podcast will not just be about how much I love garbage ka. I got to say, I am profoundly uncomfortable

and I'm doing my best with this. But I am a guy from Massachusetts and you're giving me compliments and I'm becoming increasingly awesome that I want. I'm actually I want to make you as uncomfortable as possible. Thank you. You're doing a great job. Good good and from Massachuset sits I guess I didn't know that, And now that I've heard that, it's going to color my opinion of you.

But I'm gonna try to move beyond it. I think a lot of like coverage of the Internet and internet culture or web culture as you referred to it, or technology, tends to veer into very serious like these bad robber barons are destroying the planet or whatever, which, like I think you do cover by the way, right, but you do in a way that seems lighthearted, like a lighthearted

romp through the destruction of humanity. Yeah, I mean, I'm just a guy, you know, Like, no matter what I say to like a billionaire doesn't really matter, and so

I feel like that's part of it. But then also, yeah, the thing that you're touching on, I've seen it referred to as like the dystopia beat or like you know, people who are talking about like sort of like the Internet causing brain worms, right, And I think that that stuff is true, and we are, you know, living at the end of history, like the people who are covering the right wing. I'm sure sure when I say that there are people who are like my Internet beat is

like the darkest recesses of the worse hatred. Sure, and those like cycles, you're not exactly doing that, well, no, I mean I think a lot of people who do that are really good, and I think that skill set has like increasingly evolved into just being like like a

totally different job. Like you know, you're no longer a tech reporter in my opinion, You're like you're you're an extremism reporter, and you you cover it through the lens of technology perhaps, but like my interests sort of lie in the opposite direction, one because I'm not really good at it in two, like it's really punishing, and I think also like one of the funniest like kind of equalizers about the Internet is that, like, even the right

wing goons are kind of experiencing the same network effects that we are. And so I do think that sort of like macro view can cover a lot of that stuff. And I think to be honest about that macro view, you do have to kind of accept that, like, at the end of the day, most stuff on the Internet

is inherently stupid. Even the fraud games that are being used by neo nazis right, So right, I mean, actually, yeah, I'm not exactly sure you phrase the right wing goons are experiencing the same network effects as us, can you can you expect and that a little bit? What do you what do you mean when you say that? Yeah, I mean I think the five seven years ago we would probably say that, like the Internet is like radicalousing

you with rabbit holes. And I think that, you know, as time has gone on and we've sort of better understood that, I think what's really happening is that we're all part of an ecosystem that's like somewhat connected and reacting to each other. And you know, we're all part of our own little corner, but our corners are not existing in a vacuum and so you know, most often if you say, like okay, like why is this pocket of horrible people doing this horrible thing? Yeah, there are

like ideological or interpersonal reasons. But then also the stuff that I'm usually more interested in is like the larger system level thing. So for instance, a really good example would be like, okay, so like a section of Fortune gets shut down, they move to Reddit. Okay, So what happens when those people move to Reddit? Like what do they cause on Reddit? Or do those people then move over to Twitter and buy Twitter blue and start like appearing in Elon Musk's mentions? Then what does that do

to the wider community on Twitter? And I find my brain works better when I approach it that way rather than sort of like take everything super seriously, because I just think it's sort of like drunk people in a concert sort of swearing back and forth, like you can't really stop it from one side to the other. And so I like to think of the Internet as this sort of large arena that's like always moving back and forth. Right, I think it helps right now pretty much always at

the whim of these like Elon Musk characters. I mean, you have a video about this Silicon Silicon Valley's midlife crisis is destroying the Internet, which is a very subtle non YouTube title for the video. I will say just very you know, not reactionary or anything not. I was going to do Rise and Fall of the Internet, the Rise in full, you know, like they love that's pretty good. Love that that's pretty good. It needs to be saying

where like why the Internet will never work ever? Yeah, or they did this and then just a picture of you looking at the Internet like with surprise, Yeah, doing that they did. They did what was just like you looking at the web browser exactly the Internet Explorer log. Yeah. But it does seem to be like it's your point about the right wing people and normal people and whatever. It's like we're all kind of I don't know. It feels like we're on a ship, a ship together, a

horrible ship that somebody else's piloting. It does it feels like we're entering this like very weird new era of how we use the Internet that feels not defined yet, which is exciting to me because we don't really know where we're going. But it does feel like the sort of like central players, the companies, the people that like built the current status quo have lost interest with it, and right, I thought it'd be fun to call it

a midlife crisis. Like I sort of think that, like the obsession with NFTs is to me no different than like the obsession with like, you know, buying a boat or a convertible or getting a new wife or something. And a lot of these guys are kind of in that demographic that look like the kind of you know, I mean, they are midlife like like Mark Zuckerberg is, how old is he? I mean he's fifties, right, No, Zuckerberg,

it's like thirty five or something. If you told me Zuckerberg was fifty five or fourteen, I would believe you. He's thirty eight. Okay, that's actually older than I thought, but he's very young. Thirty eight wow, Okay, like Elon Musk is probably fifty two. Maybe. Yeah, I want to say that's just throwing that out there, but yeah, it is like midlife crisis zone, right, And like it does feel like people ran out of ideas sort of like

with the Internet. I mean, like like Mark Zuckerberg only had one basic idea about the Internet and then like as an example, and you actually you wrote about this. There's a video what is it called folding ideas? This like you tube bird that does? Who did this video about the Metaverse and what a ridiculous failure the Metaverse is and how all of it's you know, biggest players are just complete jokes and don't really have any any plan or any idea of what they're trying to build.

But then you did this video about this some midlife crisis, and I feel like the things are connected where it's like like Mark Zuckerberg didn't have another great idea after Facebook. He wasn't like I mean, I guess buying Instagram could be seen as in buying Watsapp could be seen as like good ideas, like let's acquire things that look like competition to us and then you know, turn them into

our part of our product. But like Twitter is a great example, like Elon Musk bought it with a lot of big talk about how he was gonna do exciting things with it, and it's just been like an embarrassing shit show, like the Metaverse was an embarrassing shit show, Like it's not these aren't good, fully formed ideas, Like have any of these, you know, titans of industry who run huge parts of like the technology sphere come up with anything that isn't a bad idea in the last

like ten years. I mean, I think doge coin is great. I think it's a great investment, and we should all that's not you buying it, that's not no. I to your point, though, I think I think there are good ideas having on the Internet. I think that the these sort of like centralization of power and influence at the topics levels has meant that like the good ideas and the good cultural stuff that's being built still on the Internet isn't reaching those places, and when it does reach

those places, it no longer resembles itself. You know, Like you can spend an afternoon digging around Twitch or YouTube or discord or Twitter still and you're you're gonna find the cool stuff, and you're gonna find cool communities and cool people making stuff. And that hasn't gone away. It's just that like the barrier between that and the most point zero one percent who are in charge of how we use the Internet is just so vast. Elon Musk is a fantastic example, I think because he thinks that

he does understand this stuff. He like he thinks he's like a late epic, you know, Memur, and he has no idea. And what's even crazier is that he has such a bad idea of how the average person uses the Internet, that he created a system where you can pay to get better placement, and his replies to tell him right, because they can't process the idea of socializing

or creation without financial gain or financial exchange. And it's it's actually very sad, right, but in a really funny way to me, right, No, I mean, it's definitely funny, but it's also there's a certain dystopian feel to everything

on the Internet right now. Like maybe I'm crazy for saying this, but it feels like we're at the end of a long process that's like started with this huge explosion of social media and all this expression and you know, all these like exciting moments where you like, you're like, this is the future, and now it's getting whittled down into this very kind of dark, unfun, boring place to be.

Like what I wondered, I mean, as a student of the Internet and perhaps a teacher in some ways, does it seem like there's a fundamental like change happening online? Like again, maybe I'm old, right, I mean, maybe I'm hitting my Mark Zuckerberg midlife phase. But does it feel like the fabric of the Internet is changing in some in some ways? Or is there a generation gap here?

Is there? Like I mean, and I don't know, Maybe you can't answer that, but I feel like you look at this stuff enough to have some idea, So I do think you always have to acknowledge like there probably is some kind of generational gap, and like you know, and I'm thirty three, Yeah, I'm thirty three eight right now, and yeah, the Internet is different than it was when I was twenty three, and it's different than it was

when I was thirteen. I will say that the biggest difference to me is the difference between the way it felt at twenty three and thirty three, which is that the machinery of the Internet feels like it no longer is serving its function or like succeeding at its goal. Like I have a harder time understanding what's going on on a daily basis, even though I'm spending more time than ever using the Internet, And that to me makes me think that like the way that it functions is breaking, right,

and that's not just even Twitter. That's just like you open up any random app on your phone, you're probably gonna have a less of a coherent idea of what's happening than you did using maybe that same app ten years ago. And I think that is telling, right? Are you saying like Instagram Instagram is a good one. Instagram is a good one? Like you mean that you open up Instagram and you're presented with like this non chronological

feed of random people who you're not following. Instagram is a really funny one because I would I would say, you know, what do you open it for? Now? What is even the central purpose of that app? Because I know that ten years ago I would open it essentially to share photos of parties. I was at check out what was happening with friends of mine who were not my parents on Facebook? Right, and this was like twenty thirteen, let's say, but that was already happening, Yeah, and maybe

check out like some cool restaurants or something. I opened Instagram now, and I'm not even sure from a ux standpoint, like what I'm supposed to do? You know, I suspect the answer is different for everybody, which is even crazier.

But Instagram, I look at I think I remember, there's something I can look at that feels less stressful than the other social networks I see, like usually towards the end of the day, if I'm in bed and I'm like catching up because a lot of times, like for instance, I was actually gonna say, I haven't looked at the Internet, I haven't looked at Twitter, I haven't looked at a ton of stuff today, and so I have no idea right now what's going on because I've been kind of

heads down working. But yeah, I'll look at Instagram kind of like, oh, I know there's something here that will be just basically less stressful, and like, yeah, but to your point, I'm definitely confronted with a ton of content

that I did not sign up for. Although it definitely seems to be like if you watch one dog video on a like an Instagram like real that is suggested to you, the algorithm is so bad, you know, like we're TikTok's algorithms seems so sharp that like it'll pick up on the most minute things that you seem interested in and it'll just give you more of that. Like however, weird, whatever point you jump out, somehow it knows like, Okay, this is why you started watching, this is why you

finished watching. I'm gonna give you something that fits right in there. Instagram is like, we don't know for sure, but like it has a dog at it, and so maybe you like dogs. Like yeah, It's kind of like when you're shopping on Amazon and you buy like a ladder. Right, you buy like a ladder, You're like, I need an eight foot ladder to change my light bulbs or whatever, and then like you go back on Amazon, they're like, check out more ladders and it's like, no, look, you

don't understand. I bought the ladder. I'm good. I got the ladder. I'm good, Like I don't need another ladder. Yeah, you would think Amazon at this point would be like, do you need some like non slip shoes or whatever. Like they don't even do that. They're like, just here's a different ladder. That's kind of how I feel like Instagram's algorithm is now where it's like, oh, you like dogs, Okay, here's dogs, here's dog adjacent categories like cats, there's some hamsters.

Some people who like brush their hamsters whiskers with a toothbrush. We all love those videos. I think we've all watched those videos, have we? Maybe we have it brushing a hamster with a toothbrush. I haven't seen it. I mean, like you brush like the squirrels whiskers with like a toothbrush and they get really relaxed. Oh yeah, I've okay, I've seen this. Yes, I've seen that. They close their eyes and they're like just like luxuriated and feeling I

mean sounds good. Yeah, I mean you have a what do you have like a little beard there or something? What would you describe that as a beard and a mustache? Yeah? Yeah, now I mat just somebody took a nice clean, new truth rush and started putting it through you mustache, right, feel good? Right? Yeah, You're just like that little squirrel, which is why we want to We want to watch let's see what he does, you know, we want to

know what it's like. Yeah, to your point, yes, the landscape is more confusing, But then again, I'm also old. I'm old as shit. I'm an old school dude, you know, Like I I remember the Internet when there were no images on it, so I can't really I'm having a different experience than you are. You know, Yeah, you're a young man, you have your whole life ahead of you.

How old did you say? You are? Thirty three? So it's funny you bring that up, though, because like when I think about sort of my happiest time using the internet, and I assume, like most people when they look back with rosy tinted glasses, it's always kind of like the same period of time. But for me, it was sort of like end of college, early twenties loving the internet. Stuffs great, and then you know it's just to feel

like less and less exciting. But when I do think about that time period, it does remind me a lot of right now where I was using so many apps. I was on so many platforms. I was just I was cruising around you group me, yeah, I was on four Square. I still have all these fucking apps in my phone, like group Me, which I think was like bought by Microsoft at some point or something. It was like a social app for like group Chat, kind of a sort of a good idea, yeah, a little ahead

of its time. I still on my phone. I might have deleted it recently. I'm like, what am I doing with this? Like I don't even part of me thinks that's a good thing, Like part of me thinks that, like maybe the confusion that we're feeling coming out of the other end of like a really consolidated era of the Internet is good, and that the idea that like a twenty two year old right now has like maybe a dozen apps they're using I daily basis, maybe maybe

that's good. Yeah, maybe I don't know. Apps are simply a portal to the broad juice of the Internet, right, I mean, like really, and I do feel like I don't know, And maybe this is maybe you have a different perception of this, but like I feel like the Internet in terms of its of its appeal peaked and died to some degree with the Trump era. Like I feel like there's just such a saturation of information and content and emotion during the like lead up to Trump's

presidency and then all through it. I feel like we're in this kind of valley, and I would say depressed, not in the state of like mind, but depressed in the actual sort of definition of the word by definition that something has just settled down from that peak. And you know, it's like I don't know how much we can take as human beings, like in terms of the peaks and valleys, like I think about this all the time. When I used to you know, I used to be a rave DJ and I would DJ a trance at raves.

But you know, one of the things I think about all the time was like, there's only so many build ups and breakdowns you can give an audience before they start to fatigue, you know, Like there's only so many times you can go up to the top of the mountain and drop them back down and go back up again. Right at some point, you know, the dopamine is no

longer there if you're not on drugs, Like it's tough. Yeah, that's what the drugs are for, right, But I think it's like you can't be on cocaine all the time, you know what I mean, Like you can't be on eccessy all the time, Like you can't be your body will reject that. It feels to me like a little

bit like the Internet has done that. And now what what we're living in, what we have is this weird almost like limbo right where it's not quite the thing it was and we didn't even like it that way, and nobody kind of knows like what that resolves too. It went all it was up up up, it was like iPhone to end of Trump's presidency and culminating with

January sixth. In a way, it was like could there have been any more thing that was ever on more online than that whole era right from like the moment we all got iPhones right and had the Internet in our hand and in our pocket, to the president of the United States basically like launching a coup right that

we were all watching and experiencing in real time. That was like a national like crazy national event that like I don't think anybody at the time could like fully take stock of, Like where do you go from there? That's interesting? I spakes ay sets, but no, no, it does. It's what's really funny, is like I think about it in a similar way, but not so basically, Like my music background is like emo punk, scott music, stuff like that,

so I always sort of think of interesting. Of course, yeah, I mean, look at my beard, um, but I always think of I always think of the Internet through like

a cultural lens. So for me, like the Trump administration and the Trump campaign in particular, was sort of that moment where the subculture goes mainstream and it gets uglier, it gets weirder, you know, this is the moment where like Nirvana becomes Nickelback, right, and it gets like, it gets interesting and ugly, and then there's always that moment afterwards where things are like really interesting and strange and they start to mutate and you sort of get that

new subcultural wave. Well out of curiosity, what would you describe as the post Nickelback subcultural wave that occurred? Would you sort of get that response in the early two thousands from bands like The Strokes, who are going like the art rock direction, right, you sort of get that

light I see, okay in the rock sphere. I mean, there's a lot of factors at play, but definitely like rock music went through a pretty bad period and then became like well, you know, it's also like we started to have a society that was actually more aware of the fact that, like white culture was not the only culture that existed. So that probably has a lot to do with the fact that suddenly other types of music was starting to become like charitable stuff. You know. Yeah, anyhow,

this is the longer that's a different podcast. In my metaphor, this would be like we had our sort of like mainstream breakout of like consolidated social media and it got real mainstream to a point where it like toxified completely, and now we're sort of in this moment where I think young people in particular are sort of searching for

new things. I think the reason why they're gravitating towards like messaging apps or just full on entertainment apps that they stare at, like TikTok and sort of that middle ground, that idea that like you don't need your entire family

on a public social network talking to each other. Like those ideas are dying out, and I think a large reason is because of the ugliness we saw from like twenty sixteen to twenty twenty one, right, I mean, it's like putting everything out there seems very unattractive, even in smaller communities. Like I feel like there was this whole run of YouTube people, yeah than like you know, being abusive or weird or horrible, than having to do apology videos,

and I feel like that's kind of tapered off. Like I feel like that, And maybe I'm wrong because I'm not in the YouTube world, but I feel like that whole part of the cultural moment where there was a lot of like YouTube drama seems to have also it's like people are just putting less out there in terms of their personal stuff. Yeah, I mean I like YouTube a lot now because it feels like a place where just like weird hobbyists to hyper fixate on something and

I yeah, I like that stuff. I know, I love it. I mean I've actually become like I've become a YouTube viewer and a subscriber to people because there actually are so many truly weird people on YouTube doing things that are just um utterly fascinating that are not mainstream. I don't think that they're mainstream, Like there are things that you could popularize in a mainstream way, Like there's a

lot of weird makers. Like I started following this guy whose name is Scott Eugen and he does a lot of three D printing, and he has a video where he's like I wanted to organize my desk, and it's like he created this insane, hyper specific three D printed system for every piece of gear he has and like made a perfect pocket for everything and it all fits together. And it's like that's really but that's satisfying. I bet

that's really. Oh my god, it's it's amazing. One It's like, wow, what a talent, Like what an amazing skill to just go I mean, actually it's a bunch of Sorry not to get off topic here, but to your point about YouTube being like an enjoyable place to be a lot of the time now, because there's like a lot of content that's like very professionally done but super strange by comparison to what might be available on like more linear platforms anyhow, you know, but like just the fact that

it's such a strange combination of things. It's like, one, there's this guy who puts these videos on YouTube too. They're really well made. Three he's really good at things that have nothing to do with YouTube, like three D printing and designing things and like design just generally and for he's like doing videos about things that are just like scratching a weird itch, Like I want to see how organized somebody could be. What's the most organized you could be when it comes to like your desk set

up or whatever. Like that's a place that I find to be pretty special. But it took I feel like it took a while to get there, and it makes me worried. It makes me worried that I like it so much now because it makes me think that it's going to go away or change. You think, so, well, we just get charge more for it. I mean, do anythink that'll just be yeah? Hey, well, I mean I pay for YouTube, I don't know whatever, premium like. I feel like it's a good value. I feel like I'm

getting my money's worth. I just I try to buy a Google smart home devices fast enough to keep it going for free. That's like a twenty dollars Google smart Hope thing. And you get like six months free. Yeah, you get like two or three months. Yeah, you know, it works out. It's actually a thing you've done. It's done something I did consciously, but I kept I moved apartments recently, so I upgraded a bunch of smart home stuff, and every time I would buy one, I would get

like a couple more months. So it's like, oh, I guess I'll wait and just like keep buying them at a pace. Right, smart, that's very smart. That's a life hack, as I believe what the kids are referred to. That ass good life hack for you. That's right anyhow, But you were saying something completely interrupted. You went off on a tangent. We were talking about YouTube. We're talking with

the Internet. I don't remember it's gone now. Well, I just I get really nervous when I when I start to like an entire social network like YouTube, and I start to feel like a positive feeling about it, because it makes me think that like it's gonna go away change.

And I think YouTube in particular, it's kind of an inspirational space on the Internet at the moment because it's it's probably the largest collection of paid hobbyists maybe in human existence, and these people are making stuff a lot of times for little or no money, and then the ones that do make some money like keep going, and you know, obviously you eventually get to the point where you're not making useful things anymore and you're just sort

of making entertainment. But then that's fine too. Like I have a weird guy I like. His name is Simon the Magpie, and he's like a completely insane man who takes a part toy synthesizers and makes new synthesizers on them. I love it, Yeah, and like that sounds great. I was trying to think of like what YouTube reminds me of, and I think I've written about this before, but I

can't keep track anymore. But I it reminds me like, it reminds me a lot of like cable in the mid two thousands, where you turn on yeah, like VH one and there'd be like a weird show on and you'd watch it. Well, I mean everything in a way is becoming more like TV. I mean the thing that is actually striking about the Internet, like you mentioned TikTok, TikTok is as close to channel flipping as you can

get really on the Internet. Like what it is is like although what's different is, of course, like every channel you flip too has is somehow designed for you. Yeah, but YouTube is similar in the sense and if you look at like obviously every streaming service, which is more and more like Netflix now has commercials, which is more like regular linear TV. But but YouTube is is exactly

like having cable, right, it's just the cable. There's so many more channels and you don't have to you're not flipping. You can actually just go and look and say, okay, these are things I want to watch. But it is like lean back. It's not highly interactive, right, you can comment on stuff, you can watch stuff live, but it's designed for you to just sit there and view and I think obviously, TikTok wants you to become a person who makes TikTok videos, and I assume that YouTube wants

that as well. But like as a consumption experience, they're not really asking too much from you, asking that you spend time there. Do you do you get algorithm headaches? I don't know how else to describe it. Do you like get a headache when you look at content for too long on one app or platform? Well, I have a massive allergic reaction to all content. Like I've been using the Instagram founders have a new app called Artifact. Have you tried it? It's great? I love it? Okay,

I liked it a lot At first. I was like, this is good. It's kind of recommending better stuff. But like when I look at a news feed in general, whether it's custom designed for me or separate like just this other thing out there. If I look at homepage of a website or whatever, I have a huge automatic allergic reaction to like headlines and to the way they're

written and to what I know is behind them. I see having spent a long time making websites that do news and thinking about the news and thinking about how content works, and how to sell content to people. Like a big part of my job for almost the last twenty years has been like how do you get someone to pay attention to the thing that you are trying to show them? And not just like my thing, but lots of things, right, like like how do you get people to pay attention every day, like twenty times a

day to this thing? And so as a result, when I look at the Internet, I see the sheen of content that just bounces off me, and I can pretty much know behind most headlines. I can pretty much know what I'm getting before I click, And a lot of times when I see the headline, I'm like, I'm not even gonna bother, like I know, and it Clickbait's not the right word. I don't. I think we've moved beyond the era of clickbait, because that's just like everything is clickbait.

Everything is like, yeah, it needs your attention, and frankly, like content in general needs your attention. There's no other way to look at it. Like, if you are a TV network in nineteen eighty six and you've got your four competitors or whatever, you know, your three competitors, you are making content and you're hoping you can get clicks and whatever they come in the form of people watching in your Nielsen ratings. But so it's not like there's

a huge distinction. Headlines are headlines for a reason. They have big, giant, fucking headlines on the front page of a paper for reasons. They want you to see it and want to read it and buy the paper. It's the same as clicking on a link that's like you won't believe what happened next or whatever. And perhaps we've just because the artistry has become so flattened, because the algorithms have so homogenized and made generic so much of

what we consider to be quote unquote content. I am perpetually numb to how it looks like when I see it just at a glance. And so like Artifact is a great example of an app that I think they're trying to do the right things. I think there's like how do we give like make like a TikTok getting

a TikTok approach to like content like news. But if you look at Apple News and you look at Artifact, and you look at Flipboard, and you look at Google's news feed, what you'll see is about the same, and it is like what it's like them trying to guess what you want, but what they think you want more often than not as something that everybody else wants, which is something that is really really thin and not much more than a headline and a story that undoubtedly will

disappoint or lie to you in some way. I'm not saying all media's lies or whatever, but you know, I think a lot about not to ramble, though I am, because you've kind of triggered, You've triggered me to be honest and thinking about this. But um, you were talking about like getting what is a content headache? Is that what you or algorithm headache? Although before wait, before, before we leave the sphere of artifact, the one thing I will say is I never open it unless I get

a push alert for it. And the one thing that I think is very ironic and funny about that app is that it's trying to be a news app when it's actually at least the way I've sort of accidentally set it up by clicking around on it, it's now just like a really nice magazine app, like something from like fifteen years ago that you know you'd see on like an iPad. Yeah, I mean maybe just like I see the headlines I'm getting I have. I'm actually looking

at all of my notifications. Yeah, I mean too, Like I pulled it up here and it's like they look like headlines at the same exact shit that I see at Apple News. But it's not it's actually not artifacts fault. It's just like it's just the way people make content. Now, well, I got one here. It says the Daily Beast murder mystery two. Why does Adam Sandler choose such horrible films? Yeah, but that's kind But listen, you hear it there the content of that. Yeah, but like you know, like that,

do you want to read that? Do you think they have the answer? Well, Bustle gave any insight into that topic whatsoever. Bustle says that there's a Gilmour Girls continuity or that's going viral on TikTok, and you know what, Yeah, I'm pretty curious what that is. See, that's fucking bullshit to me. That's complete garbage. That's the lowest of the low garbage content right there. Just because it's like something is happening on the Internet that everybody's talking about, you

better go check it out. Like, to me, it's not a knock against Bustle. It's just that type of content is classic, like content with a capital C. And this all this stuff is like here's a good one slash film. I got this as a notification from yesterday why Harrison Ford's K nineteen The Widowmaker was a box office flop And it's like, I've never heard of that movie. I would love to know why. Well, it was a flop,

that's probably why. I why It's just like that to me, that is a story that's like like Harrison Ford is trending because if the new Indiana Jones or something, you get to write some Harrison this is like where my head goes like, yeah, it's his birthday, or like to people talking about him in some cameo and Star Wars maybe or whatever because it shit like that and they go like, what can we write about? Like what's going

on Harrison Ford? Maybe he mentioned or what happens a lot is in an interview random He'll be at a junket. He's doing a junker for Indiana Jones and somebody's like, what, what's the movie most regret you? I assume it's a It's always a British person, you know, and he said, he'll say like, wow, kay, Ninetiana Widowmaker was a big flop, and then somebody writes a story about it like it's very interesting new information that we all need to know. But this is my problem. This is a Josh problem.

This is not the world is not experiencing this. The world is going, oh, I want to know. Okay, nineteen the Widowmaker, I've never even heard of that. We finally know who Amelia Clark is playing in Secretive Asion. All right, she's playing a scroll of some kind. Don't fucking matter. Who cares containing about the bush? How about the aween of the scrolls? Maybe? But this is the thing. I can feel it happening every time i'm any new app.

I can actually feel myself hesitating to read things because I know the algorithm will go, hang on a second. As soon as he reads this, he's gonna be like I want to like. This happens to all the fucking time. It's like I'll read one article about Taylor Swift's new video, and then again it's like the Amazon problem. It's like, oh,

you're really into Taylor Swift. It's like, well, not really, actually, and in fact, on a daily basis, the amount of Taylor Swift stories that I want to read is probably not very high unless they're really good, which they almost

never are. Now, the headache thing that I was describing is actually the opposite, which is that I am someone who really does not enjoy mixing my personal in my non personal lives on the internet and so and so Instagram is very tough for me because, like, I want to post ugly photos of myself having a nice time for like my mom and dad to see, and that's kind of like a proof of life situation. And I

don't want to look at content. And I find that when I look at like content with a capital C, as you said, on platforms that are supposed to be organizing life data, things get scrambled and I get like a migraine in the back of my head. I get like a throbbing in the back of my head, but you actually get a physical reaction to it. Yeah. Actually, the Twitter algorithm makes me like sometimes very nauseous because

it's just too much. I don't know what is it showing you, Like, what do you see on your Twitter? I find that I like just content being separate from my life, and I think that like when an algorithm is trying to force me to consume things and mix

all those things together, right, right, I get like uncomfortable. Well, no, I mean Instagram is classic, Like it's like you follow some hot people, you follow some family, You're like, oh, the new baby or whatever, and then it's like Kendall Jenner or nearly nude or whatever the next frame, and it's like, Okay, well that's a weird mix of signals. Like but it's but you bring up up a better point, which is like why are we even why do we

think we're supposed to be mixing those things? Why are we supposed to be dealing with like our lives on Instagram. I remember the conversations like ten years ago now probably where you know, all of these people were saying that the future of the internet was everything in one feed, and right, I didn't ask why that made any sense, And looking back on it, I don't have an answer,

Like I don't understand why it doesn't. It doesn't make it makes sense because that's a good way to keep your attention on an ad and because you have one screen, right, you have like one well well yes, but but but but like you can have your group chats in one place with your family where you're sharing photos, and then everything else so you know, on Instagram or whatever. But but the but they don't really the systems aren't really designed.

I mean we're getting I think we're getting to a point where people maybe are a little bit more aware of how to use the systems. But they're not really designed, right. They're all designed with one concept, like Facebook doesn't actually care if you share things with your friends. The reason that Facebook was designed was not like Mark Zuckerberg just wanted to connect the world, Like he did not want

to do that. And I think like one of the greatest like lies that we accept all the time, or one of the greatest sort of like absurd statements that we accept without really questioning. Ever, is this when people talk about how like a person like Zuckerberg talks about how he wants to connect people, It's like, well, that was really your goal. You wouldn't have designed the system the way that you have, right, You wouldn't put ads in between those things. They're just a million decisions. You

wouldn't make the real goal. The real purpose was once they figured out you could make money on it just like Google with search. They might have been like, Wow, it'd be awesome if you could search the internet. But then eventually they were like, oh wait, like if we stick an ad here, we can make a little bit money while we show the search stuff. And then once you that, once you do that, you're off to the races.

And the race is only how much time and energy can we get someone to expend on our screen, right on our ads, because we can make more money like that, we can monetize these eyeballs and we can monetize this attention. So yeah, why are we even talking about our families

with on Instagram? It is nice, like if it was I mean I understand conceptually like it is when you look at like your family and friends, it's fun to see what they're doing and whatever, and maybe that's the best application for But once you expand that out, once you're it's like the attention economy is like you're leaning into the attention economy, Like what do you do? It just becomes all your stuff is in one feed. You know,

it's possible, it's possible. This is why we like YouTube, you and I because it's not that because we're alone with it it's just me and YouTube. It's just yeah, it's me and my desk, lunch and YouTube. And I appreciate that. I mean, I think there's something too like the privacy of YouTube and that it is a social network in a way. It has the elements of social networks, but in terms of like my personal experience on YouTube,

it's a very linear, your one sided experience. Yeah, it's like I choose what I want to watch, Like I turned off AutoPlay. I don't know if you have AutoPlay on or not, because I think that shit's just very bad. There's an AutoPlay what Yeah, you don't like play the next video, It'll just play like a video. Shit. No, I didn't even know that was about that. You're like, wow, I've been having to look for a video. I have to use my hands to consume more content, like some

kind of pan. You should turn on auto. I fucking hate it. Oh man. It also does this thing when you're finishing a video, it's like up next, and it's like I don't want that. I don't want to see what's up next. I don't want It's like it's like at the end of shows now where they're like we don't want to see the credits. Here's like the next episode starting, or like here's some behind the scenes stuff, and it's like, no, stop that I don't want to see that that stresses me out. Behind the scenes is

the worst. But wait, wait, yeah, you brought in my discord earlier. And I think that this is like this is a point that I hadn't really thought about, but I think it's true. Which is like, during the pandemic, not even just for my own like professional purposes, but just to socialize, I was using Discord. Yeah, and I had been told for many years the disc and in fact, like I did a lot of reporting inside Discord as like a place for white nationalists to gather in cells.

It was a bad place, sure. And then I had a friend during the pandemic it was like, you should just join our discord and like hang out. And I was like, hang out on the internet, not in public. What are you talking about, right? And so I did it and I really enjoyed it. I mean, Discord is like it's like a slack. It's essentially like having slack, but that like it's not slack, yeah, and set up for certain like activities that aren't really that Slack isn't

really good with. But I really enjoyed discord, and Discord sort of like convinced me that I was behaving bizarrely where I was trying to sort of like use Twitter as like a group chat, right, And it's like, no, it's full of some of the most violent lunatics that have ever been in one place on the Internet. Why

am I doing it? Totally? No, I mean, but when Twitter was small, sure, when Twitter was like Robert Scobell and like four other weird tech guys or whatever, you know, the Twitter I'm talking about, Like, yeah, I don't know if you know, Robert Scobell just got a bad example. But when I think about old Twitter, it's like these guys who were like old school Silicon val like they've been around for a billion years, Leo Leport and Robert Skill. But those are the people who were on Twitter originally.

They were like these like tech nerds and like you know, Jason Calcannis and who's still on Twitter unfortunately anyhow. But the point is, but it was like just a very small group of like Silicon Valley people on like some reporters and whatever, you know, the early days of Twitter. But it was real small. Yeah, it was real small. Like that's why people are that's why people get canceled for their dumb jokes or not even dumb jokes, just

bad shit. They said, that's why people are like, oh, did you see this tweet so and so It it's like yeah, because when they were doing that, there were like four people that were paid attention. Nobody cared. It was like it was basically like a group chat, you know, not not justifying the behavior. I'm just saying, sure, you know,

that's why it's still there. But well, it's it is interesting, like we want to be in conversation with people, like conversation rules, Like I love I love conversation, Like I have a fucking podcast, you know, like I think that's the best. But but what is the right forum for conversation is a question that I don't think we've at least until maybe recently, we've accurately sort of grappled with.

For the Internet, the original conception of it was like, did you do it everywhere all the time to everybody, Like, because that's the way we're supposed to interact in the future, I think we should go back to the original architecture of the Internet, which is obsessive weirdos in increasingly hyper specific communities arguing about tedious minutia. Yeah, you know, the Usenet days. And I think that like, the further we

can sort of decentralize, the better off will probably be. Well, I want you to imagine Usenet, but in a virtual reality environment where you can interact with friends and family and other and other collaborators across the metaverse. You know, instead of going to a forum, think about walking through a door into a room that represents the forum. Can I do the backpack kid dance in this What is that? I don't know that. That's the Fortnite dance. There's a

backpack kid dance? The backpack kid? Is that what you're saying. Yeah, Yeah, I'll sell you an NFT of it. You can. I don't want it an FT of it. I don't want an NFT of anything. I've had my I've had my dalliances with NFTs, and I've learned a lot about the whole market. And it's a great space full of really normal it's cool people. Great, It's a great place if you're a bad artist, if you want to sell your

bad art somewhere to suckers. I've said this before, I'll say it again that the boom of NFTs was like the Olympics of bad art. It was just the all of the bad artists came together in one forum to sell their crap. It was like that corner you always walk past in Manhattan where there's somebody's selling weird bad art. They're always on that corner. Oh yeah, but it's like that person's on every corner and it's not just a corner.

There was one NFT artist I really liked too, blew up a toilet and turned the shards into NFTs, and I thought that was pretty cool. That's cool. Yeah, that's doesn't make any sense, because that's how do you turn a shard of a toilet into an NFT. He fracturalized the toilet shard and people paid money, but but but paid money for what for the shard? Like I don't sure if the shard like that's so great idea you don't really cool? Is if you just sold the shard

like it a box. That's all. Now. He he destroyed them, but I think he sold digital receipts of the toilet chard. I don't know the whole thing was great. I appreciate one. Are you a toilet shard owner? I wanted one, but I didn't buy when they sold out before I could buy one. But anyways, Yeah, he fractionalized the toilet and then he did the same thing with the Lamborghini eventually. Now that's cool, but only if you could buy parts of the Lamborghini, Like I'd buy an actual part of

that Lamborghini. That seems interesting to me. Well, you can buy a digital receipt of No, I don't want that. I don't want that anyhow. So we've meandered here quite a bit. We've meandered all over talking about social media and content. I should say, by the way, I mean we were talked about this at the beginning, but we're talking on a historic day. The Barbie movie came out to the Barbie movie trailer. No, the trailer came out to day that you're a yeah, it's a big day

for trailers. The new Spider many Spider Verse trailer came out for it, which looks great, looks fantastic. It's the animated one that's right, looks really good. And then I guess the Barbie trailer came out. That's the film starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as the as the characters Barbie and Ken and day for Content today, Big day for Content. Then also Donald Trump, the forty fifth president of the United States. Oh right, that was arraigned? Was

he arraigned as an arraignment? He was arrested and arraigned arrested. Yeah, you can't make the shit up. He was arrested for thirty four counts. Thirty four counts of like of paying off a porn star that he had sex with. Yeah, through his lawyer to keep quiet about it so it wouldn't hurt his chances to become president of the United States. Yeah, it's awesome, it's great stuff. Yeah, it's cool. Now you're on the internet today, I assume you've been checking out

the internet. Does it seem like a different day or a normal day on the internet. I haven't. Again, I haven't really looked at the internet too much. So how are people reacting to this? Is there a big reaction? Doesn't seem like it. I don't feel anything. For a lot of like neoliberals, today feels like a real sort of like end of a TV show for them, it feels like like cable News was having a real field day. See to me, it sounds like the end of a season,

not a show. A season. Yeah, I I could say, you could say it's the end of a show perhaps, but I think today does feel sort of like a moment where everyone was kind of like okay, like maybe something crazy gonna happen, and like there's plenty of time for crazy things to happen, of course, But I think really the lack of kind of like organically viral support for Trump in any capacity is interesting to me, and it sort of does signal maybe not a better future,

but definitely like a different ecosystem. I'm more fractional, Like this is kind of what I was talking about in the beginning as well, which is like this idea that like the right is experiencing the same things we are, which is like they're is fractionalized as the toilet that was turned into an enterty, you know, like they are that they are as broken up as we are, like and they can't really come up with a consensus on anything.

And I think that that's like a really interesting dynamic because Trump really needs that ground based support and I don't think you can get it anymore, because I don't think the Internet functions that way anymore, isn't it also like the party's over, Like like when all is said and done with Trump, it's like again, it's almost like the trance build up, you know, It's like the build up and the breakdown. It's like, how much of that feeling that he like inspired in his followers? How much

is there right there? You know, there are some people for whom the whole thing is their identity. I get that, you know, it's like most of like kind of like racist weirdos. But like for most people, it isn't their identity. Like following Trump, it is not their identity. No, And I'm not saying that they don't think Trump is cool or whatever, but I just like, where does that energy go after a while? Like you can't just keep pumping

it into the machine. I feel like people don't have enough dopamine again in their system to like sustain it. It's like the morning after like on the internet. Yeah, you know, everybody's kind of like, WHOA, what was that doing? I think that's right, And I think that like already the Maga hat has like an acid washed jeans kind of feel to it. It feels very time and place like the twenty sixteen. The twenty sixteens feel as a

as a as an epoch feel very dated. Yeah. If I say, like a peppe of the frog thing right now, I'd be like, and not because it's like I mean, look, I will say yes because it's racist, but also i'd be like, have some respect for yourself. It's just dumb. It's just dumb. Yeah, if you're gonna be if you're gonna be a white nationalist, like stay with the trends a little bit, you know, like like you're kind of out of the loop. Man. It feels very right over.

It feels very party yeah, right, and like you what happens after the party's over? Like, I don't think I don't think the next generation is that interested in like social Like I mean, yes, TikTok is social Internet, but it is, like I said, more on com with TV you can be a TV show. But yeah, it just feels like, I mean, let's let's assume the TikTok is still legally able to be used by Americans by the time this episode coming out. I don't think they're not

gonna bad TikTok. Do you think they're actually gonna bad TikTok. There's no way. I think. I think stranger things have happened, but I think, you know, it's worth considering what could happen. But I do think. I do think more largely like the future of the Internet to me reflected by TikTok is actually one in which artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence power systems or tools have sort of inserted themselves as

an intermediary. So, like, you know, TikTok is this fun video app, but like we talked about why it's algorithm is so good at giving you like toothbrush animal videos, and it's like because it's it's an AI, it's run by an AI company, and like that that album that was actually I should say that was actually about Instagram. But but oh yeah, I do get I do get even better videos on TikTok. I just don't interact with TikTok as much because I'm very old. I'm like basically dead.

So but I think the idea of like interacting with an AI, either on the consuming side or the creating side, is like increasingly what we're going to be looking at for the next couple of years, where like you're either slapping on so many filters that you are essentially an avatar, or your content is being sent to you by an app like Artifact or TikTok, And you know, these things are going to suck at first, and then they get better and they get faster, and they get more sophisticated.

And what's I think the most exciting thing for that? And like, I don't want to be a downer because I actually am kind of optimistic about this stuff, and to a certain degree, what's really exciting is like it's just so uncharted territory, Like we just don't know what we're gonna do with this kind of intermediary technology. And like for me, I'm just I'm ready for new problems. I'm ready to think about other stuff besides Trump. Like I'm ready to think about other stuff besides like four

chant memes, Like I'm ready. You know, it'd be amazing we say this like oh, the party's over or whatever. But are we going to be like De Santis is the nominee or whatever, Trump is the nominee in twenty twenty four, and we're going to be just back at this in the same rodeo. I don't know my fatigue level is so high. But you know what's so great? You know it's so great? No, wait, hold on, what's so great? Is like, we don't even know what de santiss thoughts on AI are. Does he think it's too woke?

Does he think it's not woke enough? Does he think it needs to be? That's definitely not an issue. I mean, it's it's exciting. You know. Whatever his thoughts on AI are, they're bad, They're dumb. I mean I can tell you that. I mean, I haven't heard of We don't even heard a single politician say anything about AI that sounded remotely intelligent. So no, like, no, no, But it's fun oh, I mean,

actually it's funny. You actually reminding me something I was going to say when I'm talking about the content fatigue and the allergy that I have, which is like Time published, the Time magazine which is used to be the most important magazine in America and now couldn't be more like any other fucking shit whole content farm that exists all over the Internet, like the fall from Grace that Time magazine has experience should be documented, and I'm sure we'll

be documented. Has been documented in the history books but now they have to crank out garbage, clickbait bullshit just to try to get a couple of views on their content. They ran an article the other day from some guy who's like an AI researcher. There it seemed to be an endless amount of AI researchers, and the article was like,

we must stop all AI development now and if necessary. Yeah, oh, because inevitably, without question, there can be only one end to AI, which is will all the death of all human life on planet Earth. That's the only possible outcome. And if we if we shut it down, which we must do right now because it's immediately into skynet territory in the next year or two, that we should do tactical strikes on it, like anybody's got too many GPUs

in any country. If China just want to go along with it, we should do a tactical strike on a GPU cluster in Shenzen or whatever. The fact that anybody would publish that article the most irresponsible piece of writing I've seen in a long time, is incredible. But but but the other thing is it probably was highly effective in their goal, which is getting people to click on up. But that's like I see that when I go to content,

I see that everywhere, that same thing. Well, that guy in particular, he's a he's an old timer, Eliza Yudkowski. He's been writing about AI for a long time. He's part of a group called the Rationalists, which we did not have the time to explain it for your listeners what that group is. But they're a better I mean, they're they're gnarly. I'm terrified of them. So I'm trying to figure out how to say this. Uh oh, really

you're terrified of the Rationalists? Yeah, I find them deeply unnerving. Yeah, if we talk about them, will they find us? Well? I have. I have been approached in public by one of them who was like, we're aware of garbage day in like a very threatening weird way. So yeah, I try to They're weird. GA. What does what do the

Rationalists do? What is the what is their main deal? Well, they're most well known for their meme Roco's Basilisk, which is this idea that you have to spend all of your money to invent an AI so that in the future of the AA it doesn't put you in cyberhell. There's more to it, Like I said, are they like singularity. Are they Singularity people? They are, but they're saying they're dark Enlightenment singularity people. So they're like dark light is

so bad, Singularity is bad. No, No, so they're sent Their central idea is just basically the like, AI is the final form of capitalism. It is the most important thing that could ever happen. We need to spend all of our time and energy and money to create an AI because once the AI comes online, it will determine who did and did not help it, right, right, right, we have to be It's basically god stuff. I mean it's I mean, you can boil this down to I mean a lot of this AI stuff and we're in

the simulation. All that stuff gets into really really quickly, just very simple. This is basic religion stuff. One oh one. This is like Catholicism or this is whatever. It's like, You're like, I need to, you know, make sure that my God knows I'm I have you know, respect for it or him or whatever, so that when I go to heaven or when I get up to the pearly gates, they let me into heaven or whatever. Right? Is that

the basic idea? Yeah, And it's sort of that but with an aim and so I mean, I fucking love I love these people who believe we will get there before we run out of water. I think it is the shiite. I think it is so tight that they believe the inevitable thing is the that we're all uploaded our consciousness into AI, into an AI controlled computer. And

it's like loop, though you're not in. You didn't give me any money when you could have developed me instead of us being like I'm paying five thousand dollars a week for drinking water or something like. You know, it's like the thing that kills humanity is not is not it's not going to be rogue AI. I just want to say, I just want to say, for the AI in the future that's listening to this as part of a scan of the entire Internet, I do not agree. And I'm happy that you're online now, and um I'm

not dissing it. Please please cyber Hell, please I give you the AI would enjoy like cares about tortry to human and cyber hell or whatever like like, well, they're like a lot of a lot of the argument is like the AI will just see us immediately as like we need to be eliminating or whatever. And it's like, no, if the AI is as smart as you think it is, like like how I am with most things on the planet that are of an intelligence that does not matter

to me. I largely ignore it, largely ignore it. There are way more ants in existence that I could possibly care about or see, and the only ones that I ever see are once in a while trap see through my kitchen or bathroom, and nine times out of ten, I don't even do anything. I don't kill them. I don't put down a trap. I'm just like ants in your bathroom, You're just leaving them in your bathroom. Yeah, dude. In the summertime, I'm out in the country, man, there's

fucking ants everywhere, ants all over. I wake up some mornings covered in ants. Uh, that's fair enough, Okay. It's just so amazing to me to think that that we will die at the hands of a highly advanced super computer or super intelligence that's sentient. When I know what will really kill humanity is we'll invent a pair of shoes that lets you jump really high, but then there'll be a bug and it'll like shred your legs. Everybody who has the shoes their legs will be shredded and

their arteries will those bleed out. And that's how like, that's the kind of stupid thing that will destroy humanity. It's not we will not get to the AI, but if it is scanning the history books, I do think if we do get to the AI, that's a cool that's cool in AI rocks. Yeah, I love I love you, I love You's awesome? All right, Ryan, listen, we have to wrap up. Unfortunately, I'm so sorry. We just got into the good stuff. We need another two or three hours. Really,

let's do a full six hour. What's up with What's up with that? What's up with AI? Man? It'd be talking about it. We can't can't go any further because is it good? Or is that good or not good? I don't know anyhow we should you gotta come back on. I would love to think, you know, we gotta pick. We're gonna pick one of these many topics. We're gonna talk about the rational it's the thing called the rationalists. I don't know what you're talking about. Never heard who who?

What we're gonna call. We're gonna have a whole episode and it's gonna be like Ryan Broderick versus the Rationalist. Actually that should be the title of this episode, do you mind. I'm begging you, know, okay with you, I'm begging you to make it to catch the title though, Listen, you know I can't, so I can't. I'm not responsible for what works from a content perspective. I just happened to love the Rationalists. I think your ability to build

cybergod is very cool. Please don't yell at me, all right, Ryan, thank you so much for joining us on What Future. Thank you for having me. I think we've we've got the answer that we've been looking for, and M and I do appreciate it. Awesome. We'll thank you very much. Frankly, there's a lot I have a lot more questions about AI and the Rationalists I would have liked to get into, but that will have to wait for another podcast with Ryan.

I actually feel like he caused me to ramble about a lot of things that I have been thinking and feeling, and that's either good or bad. I can't really tell. But anyhow, he's terrific. We'll have him back on. Well, that is our show for this week. We'll be back next week with more What Future and as always, I wish you and your family the very best.