Radio Better Offline: Mia Sato & Dave Lee

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Speaker 11 Locally hated, globally loathed, chosen by God, and perfected by science, I'm Ed Zittron, and this is Better Offline.

Speaker 11 Today, I'm joined by an incredible duo. We've got Mia Sato of The Verge and Dave Lee of Bloomberg.
Thank you both for joining me in the studio. Happy to be here.

Speaker 11 So, before we go any further, of course, please subscribe to the newsletter, the premium one as well. Please help me.

Speaker 11 And for a limited time, you can buy a better offline challenge coin and a bunch of other staff links in the episode notes.

Speaker 11 But you two, I'm so excited to have you here because you were two of my favorite opinion columnists as well, but also feature.

Speaker 11 Like, you've, I've known your work for many years, so I'm very, very excited to have you here. Mia, I wanted to start with a simple question, though.
What is a laboo boo?

Speaker 11 You've shown me this creature, this horrifying, like little evil thing, and everyone wants one. And I don't understand, every time I try and look it up, it makes me upset.

Speaker 1 This could be the first time a labuboo has stepped foot in the iHeartRadio offices.

Speaker 11 I think we record in the same room as last. Something shifted.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay. So a labuboo probably has been in the last culture

Speaker 1 area.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I would assume. Yeah.
Labubus

Speaker 1 are little plush dolls. They have kind of like a hard plastic human-like mean face, but then are wearing like a bunny suit.
They come in all different colors.

Speaker 1 And I think the most important thing to know about labubus is it is just gambling. It's just gambling for kids and kind of adults now.

Speaker 11 Elaborate.

Speaker 17 So they come in blind boxes, which is like they are all in like a little plastic or a paper carton.

Speaker 17 And you have like a one in six chance of getting a certain, you know, these colors. And then there's one rare one that's like a one in 72 chance.
And it says it right on the box.

Speaker 17 Like, it is just straightforward betting. Who makes these?

Speaker 17 They are sold by this company called Pop Mart, and they're based on like a cartoon, I think, like a broader umbrella called The Monsters. So Labooboo is one character in The Monsters.

Speaker 11 And the others did not take off.

Speaker 17 Not the same way, but I think there are some fans for the other characters.

Speaker 18 Is the Labooboo on your back?

Speaker 11 The Laboo is one of the one. Is it the rare one, or is that just one?

Speaker 17 No, it's real. It's real.

Speaker 18 No, it's rare. Is it one of the 72?

Speaker 11 No, no, no. Obviously not.
So you call normal. Is there a secondary laboo boo market?

Speaker 17 Well, this is where it gets interesting. And this is why I think labubus are funnier and kind of stupider than they appear on the surface.

Speaker 17 Because from my observations and from talking to friends who are like good at flipping things, there is no, really no resale value for opened labubus.

Speaker 17 So if I wanted to sell this pink labuboo, it would go for maybe like 40 bucks, 50 bucks, and they retail for like 27.99, not including shipping and tax and all that.

Speaker 11 So not a huge margin. No, not something you can even sell.

Speaker 17 Exactly. The ones that do go for some money are the rare ones, which is like, you know, their special colors

Speaker 17 and unopened boxes. Because again, it's about gambling.
It is about the chance that you might have a rare one.

Speaker 11 Do they sell out? Is that why?

Speaker 17 They're all sold out on PopMart's app, which we can talk about. Like, I think it is like the funniest thing ever to do to parents of young children and to teens to like make this happen.

Speaker 18 But I mean I feel like this is my life with Pokemon cards.

Speaker 11 Yes, it's exactly the same.

Speaker 18 I mean at least there was a sort of game with Pokemon that you had.

Speaker 11 There's like Trump's right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 17 And there is some like off like downstream labo boo culture where people will dress up.

Speaker 11 Oh, sorry.

Speaker 11 That's great.

Speaker 17 Jesus Christ. In this essay, I will.

Speaker 11 Yeah, we live in hell.

Speaker 17 But people will like dress up their laboo boos. They'll like get accessories.
There's a crazy kind of like off-brand black market for like labooboo-related things. Like

Speaker 17 lafufus. Lefufus are the fake laboo boos.

Speaker 11 Okay, that's fine.

Speaker 17 I also own a lefufu that I bought outside the Statue of Liberty as God intended.

Speaker 17 But yeah, the laboo boos are interesting because it's not about the doll. It's about how you acquire it.
And it's about the odds, the odds that you're taking, really.

Speaker 18 Quite likely there's nothing more to it.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 18 Because I feel like

Speaker 18 two years ago,

Speaker 18 this would would have had like an NFT element to it, right?

Speaker 17 I mean, don't say that. Don't speak that into existence.

Speaker 18 Well, I think it's quite wholesome that it's just the thing.

Speaker 11 There's nothing else.

Speaker 17 Yeah, it's just like collector culture.

Speaker 17 It's also like...

Speaker 11 It's very nihilistic.

Speaker 17 It's pretty nihilistic. There's no IP related to it that people are familiar with.
There's no film, like laboo boo movie that people are obsessed with. Like, you know, paw patrol.

Speaker 17 Like, kids see paw patrols and they want stuff.

Speaker 11 And like 10 years ago, this would have already... Remember with Angry Birds? Yeah.
Rovio was like, we're going to do a TV show.

Speaker 17 We're going to do a movie.

Speaker 11 or like grumpy cat i just wrote about grumpy cat so there was a grumpy cat there's a whole ass movie but surely all this on the show this will come yeah that's kind of what i'm waiting for also it does seem there is a labuboo fan connect collection on Magic Eden.

Speaker 11 It's 0.04 Sol. If you buy one of these, they should put you on a list.

Speaker 11 It's fascinating as well because I've done everything I can to avoid this. And I've mostly seen like City Spy Diana, classic Instagram account.

Speaker 11 I've seen Labubu pop up on there and being like, no one will save you. It's like like that kind of

Speaker 11 brain rot style thing where it's like a cutesy voice being like, no one will save you. The world will collapse.
And it's just labooboos. Yes.
But it is, I thought there'd be more.

Speaker 11 I thought there would be more to it, but it just, see, it's just gam. It's just gambling.
We've found a way to give children gambling. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And this isn't the first one either. Like their blind boxes are definitely a thing.
Like Sunny Angels were the last blind box thing that was kind of a craze.

Speaker 1 They're little cherub-like dolls, probably like two or three inches tall, and they're all naked. And I think that's why adults felt weird about owning them.

Speaker 1 But laboo boos are not naked, so people feel comfortable putting them on their like expensive handbags.

Speaker 11 So

Speaker 11 as far, what is it that has enabled this, though? Is it like very tick? Is like this a very TikTok-driven movement?

Speaker 1 It's definitely on TikTok. I think also a big reason they're so kind of like zeitgeisty or buzzy is because they're impossible to buy.

Speaker 11 They're sold out all the time.

Speaker 1 I went through the steps of trying to buy a laboo boo on the Potmart app and it was hell.

Speaker 11 Why don't you walk me through that? I'd love to actually like, how do you actually allegedly buy these?

Speaker 1 Okay, well, I didn't realize that you have to play like a mini game basically to

Speaker 11 buy boo-boo.

Speaker 17 This is what people don't understand is like, I have been through the trenches to buy the stupid doll. You have to, so on the Potmart app, they're always sold out.
Right.

Speaker 17 And they have like drops at certain times.

Speaker 17 And the company, I think, wanted to sort of recreate the experience of going to a store and seeing an empty shelf where you're like looking for the doll doll or looking for the product. Right.

Speaker 17 So when they drop, there are like digital shelves or basket or like boxes where individual

Speaker 17 like six boxes of labubus will be placed, like digital ones. Right.
And you can watch them sell out and you just scroll through the boxes to find a laboo for sale.

Speaker 17 And most of the time they're all like grayed out so that some, like it's in someone else's cart and then they'll get released, like someone will abandon it or whatever.

Speaker 17 And then you can, you have to like spam click the box. It's crazy.
and then you can shake it, and it will give you hints about like what it's not, what doll it's not.

Speaker 17 I'm sorry, I feel like I'm speaking in tongues.

Speaker 11 No, no, no,

Speaker 11 I'm following you, it's just horrifying.

Speaker 17 It's really hard. And the other thing, I mean, PopMart is

Speaker 17 they're sick. They're so sick and brilliant because they also get thousands of people watching their TikTok lives for hours waiting for them to drop labooboos in TikTok shop.
And that is engagement.

Speaker 17 That's it's just like straightforward engagement.

Speaker 17 You know what I mean? It's it's pretty insane.

Speaker 18 So, when does this jump into being?

Speaker 18 I mean, so there's no other IP around it. Yeah.
But I think of like Minecraft that kind of stuff. I mean, a very sort of different product.

Speaker 18 But eventually they went, let's, let's, well, Microsoft bought it and then they made a movie and all that stuff. And there was the commercialization was massive after it's like very organic.

Speaker 18 Is there a point, do you think, where that just suddenly people go, all the kids are crazy about these things? We can't just let this go by.

Speaker 11 Maybe, like, maybe, but also it feels so straightforwardly consumeristic that like i could see it just dying down in like two months recession indicator is when they stop selling these out yeah well honestly i feel like people being obsessed with buying laboo boos instead of like groceries or whatever is a recession indicator like these are cheap you know what i mean like i also feel like china just leads the world in this kind of yeah like 90s style evil consumerism like this is some shit you would see in a mid-90s film about evil tech ceos like we've created a devil doll.

Speaker 11 Like, China.

Speaker 18 Is it that bad?

Speaker 11 I mean, I still don't.

Speaker 18 I mean, I feel like when I used to buy football stickers as a kid. Yeah, but this is fun.
They were blind. I didn't know whether there was good players in there or bad players in there.

Speaker 11 I fully agree.

Speaker 18 It's a different scale and different level of obsession from what you're describing there.

Speaker 18 But isn't there just this part of a young person's brain that says, I want to collect these, my friends are going to collect these. Absolutely.
It's fun, right?

Speaker 18 I mean, I don't see it's that completely different.

Speaker 11 Oh, it's not. Like, you're totally right in that it's kind of clicking into that.

Speaker 11 You had a bit of that with the NFTs, and you've had right at the beginning, especially, and with Top Shots as well, which was the NFTs for basketball games that they then expanded and then failed.

Speaker 11 It was exactly the same thing. It was the kind of top trumps, well, not top trumps, football stickers.

Speaker 11 The difference is that they've built like an economic layer to it to like torture the people trying to buy them.

Speaker 18 The disappearing boxes, that is incredible.

Speaker 11 Manipulative.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's really interesting. It also feels very much like what a lot of shopping is these days, is like a, you know, a stand-in for a hobby.

Speaker 1 collecting like i feel like labooboos and stanley cups are like the same thing um do y'all know what stanley cups i'm sorry i'm sorry

Speaker 11 sorry for a moment i don't want to i didn't know what stanley no no no no no but that means your your brain is good you passed the test like your brain is not fried that is um like the women who collect like dozens of stanley cup colors um and there's no reason to have them but like that is their form of you know that it's a hobby yeah and i just want to read something from the wikipedia page for labo boo the federation council of russia proposed banning the sale of labubus the reason was their frightening appearance and potential harm to children's mental health in russia a katerina altabaiva deputy chair of the committee on science education and culture state that the figures cause children to feel fear i just want to say that that like that was just a very funny sentence found this red line i think yeah yeah russia's massive ethics cause there it's just I think you've really mentioned something with like collectibles that reminds me of NFTs as well, where where it's i collect comic artwork and i original comic art i delight in it i've filled my walls i won't be getting any more but like it has meaning and those i know like sports memorabilia they collect stuff because oh it's a meaningful game whatever or the player with this it's like like nfts it's that with all of the culture removed it's just strip mine to the core of you want what everyone else wants You want it now.

Speaker 11 How will you get it? Only us.

Speaker 11 And the fact that there's not another thing that Pop Mart has done like this is so strange though yeah like they're not it's almost like they're being a little bit cautious with it they don't want to overfill and push their luck a bit which is fascinating and also the reason i mentioned this china is american e-commerce companies do not have that killer instinct i feel like out in china they'll fucking roll our asses with making this kind of stuff they made an evil looking doll with no ip that they're just like we own this buy it and people are obsessed like how did it take off was it they're like one is it just something that appeared okay the weirdest thing is that from what i understand one of the black pink girls were seen she was seen with a laboo boo and that's a korean pop yes k-pop k-pop group one of the probably the one of the biggest acts in the world um insane video i can't remember if it was jenny or lisa but i think maybe lisa from black pink had a laboo boo and it like it had been kind of percolating already but that really like blew it up in a crazy way um but yeah my prediction is like this will be not a thing anymore when it's they're easy to acquire Because again, my theory is that it's really just about the process of acquisition and the process of purchasing rather than like the actual thing.

Speaker 17 And I think also a lot of other, especially like American toy makers are.

Speaker 17 desperate, right? Like what is their laboo boo? What is I don't know.

Speaker 11 And the things it's it's they're trying they're going to solve it by going, well, we'll just make a better one.

Speaker 11 It's like, no, the agile thing you need to do is engage your killer instinct and call Fanjuel or one of those companies.

Speaker 11 Fanjuel has more in common, I think, than any like Mattel as far as creating a product like Labubo.

Speaker 11 It's just this thing of scaring people, saying, oh, if you don't get in on now, this, now, you'll miss it. Just the thing with NFTs, things with crypto.

Speaker 11 And now they've brought it for children, which is great.

Speaker 11 I think it's good. It's also, I think, the natural end point of this bullshit fandom culture we've been in the last 10, 15 years, maybe where it's just like, it's just like...

Speaker 18 I think you underestimate the degree to which these things just cycle around

Speaker 11 again and again. I don't disagree on that.
It is a cyclical thing, but I think it's also just like, why do we have this? Because everyone has this. Why do we do this? Because everyone does this.

Speaker 11 Accelerated by things like TikTok and TikTok Live in particular. Yeah.

Speaker 18 The urgency is interesting. Yeah.
And I think if there's one thing, even if the toys go away, that mechanism seems like an enduring thing.

Speaker 18 But it'd be interesting to see if an American brand does try that fully here, because it's kind of similar to, do you ever remember you used to use like booking.com and it would say, three people booked this room in the last 20 minutes.

Speaker 18 You better get it, otherwise, you're not going to do it. And we sort of, we, that was, you know, got a lot of scrutiny as

Speaker 18 being an unfair way for to force people to buy things in a hurry. And I suspect we'd see the same with oh, yeah.

Speaker 11 It's like the natural

Speaker 11 growth of e-commerce and all the ways you can kind of push a customer. You see it with like every single Instagram drop chip thing.
If you click there, it's like 62 people are buying this right now.

Speaker 11 Yeah. You need to buy this special code.
I'm looking at it right now. Yeah.
And if you don't, they're going to sell out. This is the pans that sold out.

Speaker 11 There are so many pans that sell out on Instagram.

Speaker 11 But leading into another thing, actually, both of you have kind of covered as well, it feels like this is almost humanity trying to move with the algorithm to fit what people would be going after.

Speaker 11 A growth of, as you put, Dave, that the fact that, yeah, we are trend seekers, we all want to kind of fit in.

Speaker 11 But it leads to this thing of this got popular because it got popular and it hit the algorithmic side.

Speaker 11 You were mentioning before we came in here, Mia, that there is an almost an SEO level to posting on TikTok now?

Speaker 1 Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, I think it goes back to,

Speaker 1 do you remember like two years ago, everyone was freaking out that people were using TikTok like a search engine, which now feels like so quaint.

Speaker 1 I think like a Google exec mentioned it at some event, right?

Speaker 18 Well, they mentioned it. This is one of my favorite parts.
So during their antitrust here,

Speaker 18 where they, which they lost eventually, they argued that Google isn't a monopoly because kids are turning to TikTok to search.

Speaker 18 And it was just, it was, and Google had this slide they were briefing journalists with and others that had all the sort of supposed competitors.

Speaker 18 And it was just things that they weren't competitors. And TikTok was one of them.

Speaker 18 And it was this idea, and because here's the thing, someone might go on TikTok and say, oh, good restaurant, New York, and get like a couple of, you know, videos or whatever.

Speaker 18 But the idea that there was like a utility that's replacing like for like was very, very hopeful to me.

Speaker 18 But it was at a point sort of picked up by all these kind of trends and now it's going, oh, Google's in trouble because people are searching on TikTok. And I was like, well, not really.
You know,

Speaker 18 That'd be like saying I'm searching on television.

Speaker 18 This is not the same thing at all.

Speaker 1 Yeah, absolutely not. And it's obviously like it was deployed very strategically by Google, you know, like bringing out very specific statistics or whatever.

Speaker 1 But I think the point stands that like the same thing, I've written about sort of the degradation of Google search as a window into the web.

Speaker 1 And part of that is because people spam the web with horrible things, like things that kind of suck and are not useful because they're trying to appease an algorithm.

Speaker 1 And I think that same thing is happening on TikTok. It happens on Instagram.
And a lot of it is user,

Speaker 1 like comes from the user. We have to be honest that, like, people make shitty content.
Yeah. You know what I mean? It's not just the tech companies who like make the systems bad.

Speaker 1 But there also is like sort of the guiding hand of TikTok where it will give creators ideas for types of content to make. These are what people are, these are the terms that people are searching for.

Speaker 1 What if you made a video about trending restaurants in your neighborhood or laboo boo, right?

Speaker 1 And part of it is like people want to want ideas for what to make.

Speaker 1 TikTok is a very punishing algorithm, at least in my experience. Like if you stop posting, it's really hard to regain views.

Speaker 11 I wasn't sure. Yeah, I've actually always been, so there's a momentum on that.

Speaker 1 There's a momentum for sure, for sure. And this is something creators have talked a lot about, but you need ideas for what to post.

Speaker 1 And if TikTok is saying a bunch of people are searching for this one specific restaurant in New York, why wouldn't you make a video about it? Right. It's like sort of,

Speaker 1 almost like a, it's backing into SEO,

Speaker 1 where you kind of, instead of searching for, you know, terms related to what you make, you take the terms that the platform is giving you or telling you, suggesting you make content based off of.

Speaker 11 Yeah, it's it's the kind of incentive-driven web at this point.

Speaker 11 Because I think that with this, the thing with SEO especially is there were people who always made shit content, but there were also people who genuinely like, here are 10 things I really like in New York.

Speaker 11 I mean, one of my, one of the saddest like deaths of a brand that's still around is like Zagat.

Speaker 11 That used to be, or timeout, especially.

Speaker 18 I mean, there's so many Sports Illustrated, you know, they just, these places that were making good content, their business model didn't work.

Speaker 18 And one of my grievances with Google at the moment strongly is that what they're selling now is the solution to the web they created.

Speaker 18 They're saying we've got all these disgusting websites out there.

Speaker 11 You go on a local news website.

Speaker 18 My God, it's your phone is like 150. Yeah, it's exactly and there's just pop-ups everywhere and you go.

Speaker 18 And Google's saying, oh, the web's bad. We're going to summarize that as an AI overview.
Isn't that great?

Speaker 18 And I said, well, the web's bad because the design had to be, you know, the way we made content had to change in order to appease the platform.

Speaker 11 And that's the thing.

Speaker 11 You did a great piece, actually, about reaping the rewards of its unfair AI advantage. And also, kind of like selling Hughes Swill and being like, Yeah, we'll, we'll find the dog shit, we'll find the

Speaker 11 diamond in the turds that we created.

Speaker 18 And I think quite the turn of Freddy.

Speaker 11 It's why they give me a microphone. Um, but it's it's so sad as well because there is an innocence to it.

Speaker 11 There's like, yeah, if you know people are looking for New York stuff and you know New York, of course, you'd say that timeout.

Speaker 11 The reason I brought up Zagat as well is it used to be that you pick up timeout and be like, oh, well, these people think they're cool. Like, it was a big degree of that.

Speaker 11 And I think TikTok has leaned into that as well with content creators like that, because I have seen TikToks of stuff in New York. I've moved to America in 2008.

Speaker 11 I've spent many, many hours in New York. There's shit I'm surprised by.
It's cool. And then you get the people who are doing it chop shop style.

Speaker 11 And it's unfortunate, but kind of inevitable that you'd see this on social networks. What's confusing to me is why TikTok feels like the first one to really give it.

Speaker 11 the actual try because Instagram's sort of half-assed it.

Speaker 11 Twitter's never really like people try and appear for algorithms, but it didn't feel like the companies were as serious about it as, say, maybe a Google or indeed TikTok.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think, I mean, Instagram at least, the search has always sucked.

Speaker 1 And it doesn't,

Speaker 1 I don't know that it makes sense to optimize that same way.

Speaker 1 That said, Instagram also does have like creator tools where it will be like, this is how you should edit a video or this is how you should make content, right?

Speaker 1 YouTube does this.

Speaker 1 So it's not that, I just think that search on TikTok is something so different.

Speaker 1 I did something recently where I was I searched for something on TikTok and there was like a little pop-up that the app gave me that was like, if you're not finding an answer that's satisfactory, why don't you ask people to make content based off of it or something?

Speaker 1 It was crazy. You know, it was so many levels of optimization that I was like, this is really an experience that doesn't exist on other platforms.
One thing

Speaker 18 such a by design thing with TikTok search because one thing is really, really i find really aggravating as someone who you know isn't as clued up on the online culture as evidently uh you guys both are like well nobody has laboo boo

Speaker 18 so i'll often see on tick tock some reference or something and i'll go what are they talking about like what is what is that about And TikTok doesn't allow you just to link to another video, right?

Speaker 18 And so what it forces you to do is there'll be the search suggestion. There'll be people doing searches.
There'll be people that know that people are looking for searches.

Speaker 18 So they will reference something else that will send you somewhere somewhere else entirely. And it's just the

Speaker 18 net effect of that is instead of going to the video that explained the thing that I'm confused about, I end up watching maybe five others with ads in between every second or third one.

Speaker 18 And I still don't really know. I mean, although some of the things I think, if I did see the explanation, I still wouldn't understand.
But

Speaker 18 just trying to get there in the first place is really, really tricky.

Speaker 1 Hi, I'm Morgan Sung, host of Close All Tabs from KQED, where every week we reveal how the online world collides with everyday life.

Speaker 5 There was the six-foot cartoon otter who came out from behind a curtain.

Speaker 8 It actually really matters that driverless cars are going to mess up in ways that humans wouldn't.

Speaker 9 Should I be telling this thing all about my love life?

Speaker 10 I think we will see a Twitch stream or president, maybe within our lifetimes.

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Speaker 11 It's when you get to the point of like, why are they creating search tools on their platforms?

Speaker 11 Is it so that you can find the thing you need or so that they can find, like, they can kind of get you halfway?

Speaker 11 I don't think it's, I'm, just to be clear, I'm not front load this and suggesting they're evil in everything, everything, everything they do, but the tweaks they make kind of are.

Speaker 11 One of the funny things, Mia, you put, you actually put in the article about dupes, though.

Speaker 11 Excellent. I'll leave all of these in the notes.
Don't worry. You don't have to email me.

Speaker 11 Was you, if you look for Apple dupes on Instagram, you get this thing saying, Protect your favorite brands. The sale or promotion of counterfeit goods is not allowed on Instagram.

Speaker 11 So funny, but if you just type in dupes, it goes summarizing. If you're looking for

Speaker 11 alternatives to high-end products, dupes are the way to go. A dupe is a product that replicates the quality and/or appearance of price.
You're alternative. So funny.

Speaker 11 And then you get a bunch of videos that are selling dupes.

Speaker 11 Sometimes it feels like they don't really care that much. They just, they just kind of like mailing it in.
Yeah.

Speaker 18 TikTok it for dupes, I find.

Speaker 18 I wrote a column months ago now, but it was i saw one video and it was this guy and he hadn't even got out of bed right and he said oh apple's selling these airpod maxes for 300 bucks but these ones are only 20 and he was holding his hand you can't obviously see on apologies holding his hand in the air and he didn't have a product in his hand he just had a screenshot of the apple the official apple airpod maxes and it was just sort of floating around with his hand and then what he was selling on tick tock shop was you know a 20 buck knockoff that was terrible and i wrote about basically how the tick tock shop shop is, I think it's kind of insulting to TikTok users.

Speaker 18 They've really shoved it in. They put it right in the middle.

Speaker 11 So you can't. And it looks terrible.

Speaker 18 It looks terrible. The products are just awful.
Some of the marketing people do is so trashy. It's like got all this like sexual innuendo in it and all this kind of stuff.

Speaker 18 And TikTok were just like, well, no, we're happy with it, basically.

Speaker 18 And they actually tried to force a big correction on a column that had nothing wrong with it other than the fact it was calling out that it was a terrible place to shop on.

Speaker 11 I do think that TikTok should lean more into the excellent Chinese business owners, though. I don't know if you've seen any of these insane ones where it would be like, we're selling giant houses.

Speaker 11 You can step, no permit needed. There was one where it was like

Speaker 11 four people saying it's like, one says, I'm racist. One says, I'm ableist.
And one goes, I'm Stefan. If you need to buy high-quality cables with your logo on it.

Speaker 11 And I love those because they're funny.

Speaker 11 They're funny, but they're also just like, yeah, we're trying to do the algorithm, but fuck you. Buy cable.
And at the end, they're just like, we have a bunch of cables with you. That's respectable.

Speaker 11 That's commerce. We should support that.
Not this weird QVC age.

Speaker 11 It almost feels like we're trending towards what every music video in the 90s was making, like this very kind of like greasy consumerism.

Speaker 11 Though I will add, this isn't me suggesting anyone specifically has decided to be evil. This is just what happens when incentives pour people, I think.
When you get like the slop shop in TikTok.

Speaker 18 I think the incentives of all the... major networks have been so interesting and sort of shaping.
I mean, you were talking earlier about Twitter.

Speaker 18 They never really pushed people in much much of a direction in terms of what to sort of be talking about. But one thing they did reward constantly, the algorithm, was anger.
Yes.

Speaker 18 And Facebook got into that problem with, you know, when they, you know, for a long, the longest time, they thought any engagement is good engagement until they realized it was your auntie and uncles like having a go at each other over politics or whatever.

Speaker 18 That's when they realized that was bad. And I'm still not convinced they do realize how bad that is.
Twitter was all about anger.

Speaker 18 I did for a short while, and this was years ago, I think now, but like TikTok did seem to sort of push people towards doing stuff, right? Which I thought was quite healthy. Like, how do you well?

Speaker 18 The things that did well were you know, friends getting together and dancing, it was being out and about, it was being funny, it was better, but the stuff that worked was actually quite entertaining.

Speaker 11 Kind of like Vine almost,

Speaker 18 yeah, like just like Vine in terms of just the sort of the humor that traveled. I think that what's happened, though, is they've turned the screw on the monetization and the amount of sponsored stuff.

Speaker 18 And honestly, like the and I never quite know what drives it, right?

Speaker 11 Because is it that some people come up with a format for a format for um a video that works and then tick tock goes oh that's good we'll get others to do it or do you think sort of tick tock is trying to nurture it itself first i mean i guess it's a bit of both i imagine yeah it's chicken and egg is because i i had this theory about a year ago or maybe actually 2023 where it's like at some point how much of content is just going to be geared towards what they think the algorithm wants and because the algorithm with good reason they don't want to just publish exactly what would work because then people would only do that and i think that there's just this weird battle between I think any content creator, I think all of us, like there's a certain degree of what's going to do well.

Speaker 11 And personally, as everyone knows from this show, I've just done what I want since the beginning, regardless of what people said. But there is a pull of like, what will do well? What do people want?

Speaker 11 And what is a person in this case? And so you've just got this people probably, I reckon for the most part, people are making honest content.

Speaker 11 I think it's like it's impossible to quantify it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's impossible to quantify. And also, I don't think it's that like,

Speaker 1 it makes a lot of sense when you think of the internet or these platforms as a workplace, which for a lot of these people, it is. For me, it is in some ways.

Speaker 1 The Verge employs me and pays my bills, but part of my work, part of my, how my work travels is based on my ability to ride algorithmic waves when needed, right?

Speaker 1 And it's the same way that like you still see journalists on threads. I don't really post on threads very much, but you see journalists on threads post screenshots of their articles.

Speaker 1 And then in the replies, they'll post the link because they think that they're going to get downvoted, right? Or downranked for putting a link in there. She's insane.

Speaker 1 And that's the same way that, like, you know,

Speaker 11 Twitch is like that as well now. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 17 And I mean, Elon Musk has just come out straightforwardly and said, like, you know, it's, I can't remember the term he used, but yeah, he's acknowledged that.

Speaker 17 But, you know, the same practices sort of carry over to video platforms where you need to start a video in a certain way if you want it to get traction.

Speaker 11 There are different ways. What way is that?

Speaker 17 Well, there are different ways to do it. Some stuff that goes really does really well is like, you you know, selfie style camp, selfie style video,

Speaker 17 and it starts, okay, story time.

Speaker 18 I'm sure you've seen what's the Gen Z shake that you know, like where you put it down.

Speaker 11 The millennials get it ready, right? And have it cause.

Speaker 18 Hello, everyone, right? Yes. The Gen Z shake is the...

Speaker 17 So you guys are like, yes, that's.

Speaker 17 Well, that's a perfect example of like people, the shake is this thing where people were, I guess, surmising that if you put your camera down, like you start recording and you put your camera down in a way that feels like you were just caught in the moment.

Speaker 17 Yeah. And you were just recording, jumping in to record a video, like that is effective for people or it makes it feel organic or it makes it feel relatable, like whatever.

Speaker 1 But yeah, everyone does some, like some level of optimizing.

Speaker 18 I think the

Speaker 18 dark side of this is that trying to predict what works is turning people completely loopy.

Speaker 18 Like, so I saw, and I won't say who it is, I might have, my assessment on how this person feels might be wrong, but I saw a singer who made a short video, maybe 30 seconds where she had like one verse of a song and she's like oh guys you like this and it was wonderful and it got like you know over a million views and everyone's going oh record this record this record and so she did right she sort of took time off the platform made like a an ep and put the songs out there came back on tick tock to make the content about the song being ready and it got next to nothing engagement and you can just see at least my impression was that you could see her kind of going why like why like i've done the song i've done the actual work of releasing a song and the algorithm for some reason maybe it seems less organic organic or maybe people just didn't like the song maybe i'm ugly now maybe like all these and people go what is it that's preventing it and i think that's where it's kind of troubling i i agree and i think that it's really hard sometimes to see the difference between the algorithm and the reader or the viewer right because it's like what did you like did people actually like it as well as the question there there was also a youtube video that went up a couple months ago where someone was investigating why lots of videos have a person holding the tiny microphone the lavalier microphone And it really.

Speaker 18 In the Bloomberg TikTok account, I'd do the whole micro thing and people would take the nick out of me.

Speaker 11 It's weird, though, apparently. Apparently, so.
Apparently, the algorithm likes it. I also don't think so that Dan, over at

Speaker 11 Morning Brew as well, does. He holds like a full-scale, like, old news microphone.
I think people need to go back to that. I love that.
I love that.

Speaker 18 Subway tanks guy has it on like a little. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 11 No, he has a level. I think that that's lovely as well.

Speaker 11 But it's like, I hadn't really thought about how it drives people insane, but it does. Even early days of the newsletter, I would text Matt Matt Weinberger, friend of the show, be like, Is this shit?

Speaker 11 People he's like, just keep writing, just ignore it, just keep writing, it will grow naturally. But we've been conditioned for this thing where we've constantly

Speaker 11 even me, and I try and pretend I don't get affected by stuff like this, but it's like you see something do well or don't do well, your natural inclination is, why? What can I do to strike?

Speaker 11 Did am I wrong? Am I somehow? And it's interesting how so much this comes back to the platform incentives. Right.

Speaker 18 And the human inside you assumes people don't like it. Right.
Yes. That's your initial reaction to it.

Speaker 18 I always find your boss,

Speaker 18 he's always talking about how the verge just has to be true to what it's doing and not sort of bow to any of the platforms that they go.

Speaker 18 And I think that's always been a very good lesson because I think too many media outlets, we sit here and we go, oh, okay, this is the thing that's working on TikTok.

Speaker 18 We're going to sit down, we're going to act in a certain way, we're going to do it in a certain tone. And I've had previous employers where they're like, oh, just trying to do it off the cuff.

Speaker 18 And I'm like, well, when you work for, and I stress a previous employer,

Speaker 18 I would argue with my editors and saying, authentic for us was to not do that.

Speaker 18 And it's a very sort of hello, fellow kids thing that happened.

Speaker 18 So in these serious places tried to be all like, hey, you know, like in the same way that when a politician like Chuck Schumer tries to do some TikTok joke, it's like, it's not real.

Speaker 18 It doesn't, and it's embarrassing and it's patronizing to the people. So, yeah.

Speaker 11 Also, off, yeah, can you just do something off the cuff? Oh, you would like me to fake spontaneity. Absolutely.
I'll get.

Speaker 11 But it gets back to to credit to Neli here, the term Google Zero, I think is really interesting because this idea that, and as you wrote about recently, Dave, that Google is basically possibly taking away the traffic from everyone or dictating who gets traffic now in a very direct way, though not one they control because it's a large language model, or at least controlling its indirect.

Speaker 11 And I think it's, it's almost like a

Speaker 11 final like boxer in Animal Farm being marched to the glue factory. The final way, you've outlived your usefulness.

Speaker 11 And I feel like the media, and I, by the the way i say this with a great deal of sympathy yeah you're going to chase which would get you clicks for your click driven business but i think you see you're we're at the end or the beginning of a dark kind of like semi-dark era where we're seeing the cost of orienting journalism around trends and clicks so aggressively and we're kind of now with the boobas and everything we're seeing the natural result of orienting things around trend chasing because it's like here's a thing that has no real resale value that owning it is just symbolic do you care about the show?

Speaker 11 No. Why are you making these news stories? Well, it's because people are going to be looking for them.
Why are you covering the same thing as everyone else? Because everyone's looking.

Speaker 11 And there's a fair argument for that. If there is a big funding round or a big news story, of course everyone's going to cover it.
It just needs the traffic.

Speaker 11 And it's like the functionality of journalism. And I think this Google AI thing is, it's scary, man.
I think, like,

Speaker 11 Neil got there early. I'll give him this one.

Speaker 17 The other, one thing I'll say about the Google Zero, this idea that, you know, the traffic will go down until it it hits nothing.

Speaker 11 I don't think it will hit nothing, I should say.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I think for some people it has basically hit nothing.

Speaker 17 However, I will say that, like, and I posted this on Blue Sky, but this has just been the MO for Google and with search for years before AI overviews. The idea that Google is self-dealing, right?

Speaker 17 That it creates products that then replace the things that other people were doing. in search, that is old news.

Speaker 17 And it's funny that, you know, people are kind of that the AI overview of it all is what kind of finally makes people realize it. When I worked at the markup,

Speaker 17 we ran this story

Speaker 17 by some great former colleagues that like measured the percentage of the first page of Google results on a phone screen, how much of that space was taken up by Google products itself.

Speaker 17 And it was like 41%.

Speaker 17 And that killed websites like celebrity net worth. You know what I mean? Or like travel companies because Google had flights,

Speaker 17 shopping, right? Like all of these services that other sites were providing. Google just made its own version and they were like, we're going to put this at the top.

Speaker 11 That's what's happening with AI. It's the exact same thing.

Speaker 18 In those cases, in Europe, they regulated against it.

Speaker 18 So when these companies come along and say, oh, Europe's being so overbearing or everything, that's what they're talking about.

Speaker 18 They're talking about the fact that Google shopping can't dominate the top 20% of a search page when you search for iPad or whatever.

Speaker 18 So

Speaker 18 that's what they were so aggrieved by.

Speaker 18 But now with all the AI, I mean, I was on my mobile, on my cell phone the other day, and

Speaker 18 I was scrolling for days before I got to Organic Conference.

Speaker 17 And now they're doing the entirely AI-generated whole page.

Speaker 11 Did you see this test that they announced? Feyonde mode, yeah. Oh, is this Beyond AI mode?

Speaker 17 Yeah, it's called, I forget what it's called. I would have to look it up.
But they announced it last Friday, Thursday or Friday. And basically, it's separate from AI mode.

Speaker 17 You search for something and it creates, honestly, exactly what web pages look like. Websites,

Speaker 17 and it is, you know, it'll have a section.

Speaker 17 If you search, I think the example they gave was like solo traveling in Japan, and the top part will be like Reddit and Reddit and YouTube posts, so like communities or forums.

Speaker 17 Then there will be a whole different section of the SERP, the search engine result page, that is, yes, that is web guide. Web guide, web guide.

Speaker 17 And then it'll be sort of like, you know, top places to go. And it will pull stuff in from Expedia or not Expedia, TripAdvisor, things like that.

Speaker 17 It basically subsections the SERP to look like an SEO generated or like an SEO-driven article. It's really crazy.
It's the snake.

Speaker 18 That is actually. Who needs websites?

Speaker 18 No, but it's all over, isn't it?

Speaker 11 But that's the thing.

Speaker 11 It's ironic as well, because the origins of Google were based on this idea that there was too much original content for you to find alone. And it was kind of noble.

Speaker 11 And also within the original paper, they were like, yeah, if ads ever get involved with this, it's fucked. Man, were they right?

Speaker 11 But it's this sense of they've never had much gratitude towards the web. And you made me actually think of something with traffic dropping away.

Speaker 11 This is also, if you read like Search Engine Journal, like these are great publications, by the way, you want to see some real like journalist-ass journalists, people that read SEO and talk to SEO people all day.

Speaker 11 Jesus Christ, Rusty over there.

Speaker 11 But there are so many situations where traffic has just disappeared from a concept and that just Google went, no, not today.

Speaker 11 The idea that they're building pages like this is fascinating as well, because it's like, wow, we don't need you anymore.

Speaker 11 Yes, you do dick wad how is it going to generate the page what's it going to be based on and their their thought i imagine i'm i'm guessing is likely oh people won't notice i think people will i think they will i think people will see ai results which is why the traffic's dropping and go okay that answers my question but i think an entire fake page people are going to be like okay and maybe they'll click them but they're not going to stick around on them they're not going to read much it's not going to be particularly enjoyable but maybe i'm wrong and i hope I'm not wrong.

Speaker 11 Because if this is an idea of something replacing the web, that is Google. Like, that's more Google zero-y than anything I've ever seen.
It's grotesque.

Speaker 18 It's just part of a pattern of

Speaker 18 reducing any need to go off that. Yeah.

Speaker 18 And one of the most egregious examples of it isn't even AI. And every time I see it, it annoys me more and more.

Speaker 18 So one of the things that some publications have been quite successful at, Bloomberg's one of them, the New York Times, famous, is games, right? Wordle, connections, whatever.

Speaker 18 A little thing that would make people subscribe to the app, open the app every day, maybe catch a bit of news while they're there.

Speaker 11 Brilliant, right?

Speaker 18 And now LinkedIn are doing mini games.

Speaker 11 Apple news is it. And I'm like, what? Can you explain this LinkedIn game?

Speaker 11 Because I got the pop-up for the Apple News thing, and I think I posted it on Instagram, and I don't know what this shit is.

Speaker 11 It's just like, fuck that. But what are these LinkedIn games? Please walk through it.
I mean, they're just little word games.

Speaker 18 I mean, there's nothing, they're just trying to sort of.

Speaker 18 Do you know what? I've not played the LinkedIn ones. But the Apple ones are just mini crossword, that kind of stuff.

Speaker 18 The thing with the LinkedIn ones, which I find quite funny, is it will tell you how many of your colleagues

Speaker 18 have done. And it's like, oh, 300 of your colleagues at Bloomberg have done the mini crossword.
Oh, okay. That's that's really useful information.

Speaker 17 I imagine the crossword answer for every single day on LinkedIn is just like hustle, rise, grind, or that would be quite fun though.

Speaker 18 Yeah,

Speaker 11 that would make me sort of go for it. That would require too much like charm and thought behind.

Speaker 17 LinkedIn, if you're listening, I can write your games.

Speaker 11 I also

Speaker 11 added vertical video to LinkedIn. Evil.
And I think that if you post one of those, someone should come visit your house.

Speaker 17 Yeah, it's like that's well known.

Speaker 11 They're like, no, I'm thinking more like the FBI.

Speaker 11 It's like,

Speaker 11 what do you got on the laptop? Let me check that hard drive real quick. But it's so funny as well because all of this is just coming down to please click our website.
Please don't leave our website.

Speaker 11 Our website is the most important. It almost feels just desperate.
Like it feels that TikTok generally, and I don't say this with any, TikTok upsets me when I use it. I need the page to end.

Speaker 11 This is just a weird thing in my brain. I'm like, no, infinite makes me, I don't want to look at this forever.

Speaker 18 Have you ever reached the clip that says, hey, you've been scrolling for a while?

Speaker 11 No, see, I'm the only one who's ever seen this.

Speaker 18 No, I've hit it. Yeah, okay.
Isn't that the most depressing? It's so,

Speaker 11 doesn't it?

Speaker 1 Yeah, but at that point, I'm like, god damn, I need to go outside.

Speaker 18 Do you know what's all about? There's like a clip you get. If you've been scrolling, and it must be like an hour and a half, maybe.

Speaker 11 I get really anxious.

Speaker 18 It'll say, please, you know, you've been doing this a long time.

Speaker 11 I need to hit the end. If I get the sense that there's no end, I'm like, I can't look at this.

Speaker 11 I require time to end, please.

Speaker 1 But that sort of limitless space is why we get derivative content. You know what I mean? Like, that's, that's kind of.

Speaker 11 Because people want more. People want more.

Speaker 1 And also, it just... If there's space, someone will fill it.

Speaker 1 And that was kind of what I was trying to get at in my dupe story, which is like the same thing that happens on an infinite scroll feed on recommendation-based social media platforms is happening to like our physical goods simply because there is Amazon space.

Speaker 1 There are Amazon pages to fill. and you need ideas the same way that a content creator needs ideas to post every single day.

Speaker 1 Like when it is so algorithmic and recommendations based and taste-based, it's just like, just throw whatever

Speaker 1 space there.

Speaker 11 And I hate to defend the platforms at all.

Speaker 11 I think there's the thing you said earlier about people did make shit content before actually really did resonate because it's there's also a degree here of, yeah, there's a bunch of derivative content, but there's also consumer demand.

Speaker 11 And yeah, as human beings, we want to see more of a thing we're interested in.

Speaker 11 I do think part of the unhealthy parts of the internet is we can fuel just about anything, perhaps not for the best, but it's, and there's a goodness to it as well.

Speaker 11 There's many alternative communities that have found good things online and then others.

Speaker 11 But it's interesting because it's fulfilling the need of needing an infinite scroll, which is a need that they created on the platforms themselves.

Speaker 11 And I also found that story interesting because you didn't really have sympathy with any like it felt like you were empathetic for everyone, but not sympathetic to anyone.

Speaker 11 It was like you recognized why people did these things and why people want dupes of expensive things is probably because the things are too expensive.

Speaker 11 But then you had the skirt worn by the by Taylor Swift.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I like you.

Speaker 11 Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I really like stories where you read it and your allegiance changes. I think that's like one of my favorite things to write.

Speaker 1 And when I find, when I can figure out ways to put it into that format, I really enjoy it. But yeah, I mean, like, I don't really love the

Speaker 17 debate going into like who's right and who's wrong because it is just like not that helpful and not that interesting.

Speaker 17 That feels more like, you know, just gossip or something. But I like this idea that like everyone is a little bit being taken advantage of, and everyone also sucks a bit here.

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Speaker 21 Not all group chats are the same, just like not all Adams are the same.

Speaker 21 Adam Brody, for example, uses WhatsApp to plan his grandma's birthday using video calls, polls to choose a gift, and HD photos to document a family moment to remember, all in one group chat.

Speaker 8 Makes grandma's birthday her best one yet.

Speaker 21 But Adam Scott group messages with an app that isn't WhatsApp. And so the photo invite came through so blurry, he never even knew about the party.

Speaker 11 And grandma still won't talk to me.

Speaker 22 It's time for WhatsApp.

Speaker 21 Message privately with everyone.

Speaker 11 And I also think that there is a certain degree of human beings take advantage of other human beings too. The rip-offs, the I'm the person, I'm the laboo boo whisperer.
It's a great quote there.

Speaker 11 Like, I'm the person that can help you find the thing. There are all of these channels about how you can, like gambling tips, about how you can buy and resell stuff.

Speaker 11 There are ethically dubious things that pop up on the internet, but there's also hunger for it.

Speaker 11 Those people are taking advantage just as much as the incentives of the platform take advantage of people.

Speaker 11 I think the platforms are generally more evil because they have more capacity for harm, but that doesn't mean that these small-time people would not do evil things, even given that scale.

Speaker 18 I feel like the platforms, the difference between how the platforms behaved and how what people describe as what the legacy gatekeepers from yesteryear is that they don't have any sort of standards of what's good, right?

Speaker 18 So, if you're, you know,

Speaker 18 you're running a children's television company, Nickelodeon, Nickelodeon, children's BBC, whatever,

Speaker 18 you're not commissioning a show like Mr. Beast or whatever, because you just, you, something makes you going, oh, is this really what we want here?

Speaker 18 Do we want to make it that everyone's obsessed with money and they're willing to sort of do these crazy stunts, embarrass themselves, whatever?

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 18 you make those decisions despite knowing that people would lap it up. People would go crazy.
And I think you could say the same thing about sexualized content.

Speaker 18 You can say the same things about gambling. I think, yeah, you could do a great show about people gambling on sports.

Speaker 11 Oh, we had one back during the Super Bowl, and many listeners did not like that. I talked about sports, but it gets back to the same incentives, like you're saying, though.

Speaker 11 People take advantage of people.

Speaker 18 But I think there used to be this idea that the major companies...

Speaker 18 when they're even down to say 60 minutes right on on cbs they would say right is this genuinely important and do we need to do it and i think when the platforms don't apply those same standards what it means is is that the people with just completely nonsense theories and opinions just get on that same surface where any TV producer worth their salt at all would go, okay, well, we're not going to put this guy on because what are his qualifications?

Speaker 18 We don't, you know, we don't know if he's talking gibberish or not. So there's been problems with that in terms of who gets on, but like, I think it's, I think it's better maybe in some respects.

Speaker 11 No, and I think the, but you're also touching on something, which is these platforms have, despite what they're doing right now, have always acted as if they're never going to be the arbiters of what is used as content.

Speaker 11 It's just like we're helping you find stuff. But it's very clear that they want to be the producer or at least mimic being a producer as well.

Speaker 11 And it's very interesting as well because everything we're discussing is just incentives. It's incentives and how people are drawn by it.
Because you mentioned nutters.

Speaker 11 No, no, did I mention nutters? No, I mean, just like people of dubious

Speaker 11 intent and content. People like Curtis Yarvin or Eliza Yudkowski or these less wrong freaks.
They were 10 years ago, they would have never had them.

Speaker 11 I would say they would have likely not got a New York Times column, whatever.

Speaker 11 But I think what that is, is actually a mashing between everything we're talking about, which is 10 years ago, there wasn't perhaps the pull of SEO.

Speaker 11 There wasn't the pull of tons of online content suggesting that we need to talk to this guy and humor him seriously. There was tons of reporting saying these people were evil.

Speaker 11 But now, I genuinely think some of these things also might get clicks, or they'll see the interviews that these people get 500,000 views.

Speaker 11 So they're drawn by all these new incentives versus having an actual quality bar i do think it is uh

Speaker 11 funny though that these companies to this day are still pretending that they have no responsibility for the content they they have no they have no quality standards they need to maintain and indeed they will tweak them to whatever level i'm not even saying that anything has changed

Speaker 18 i mean i there's been changes in the sense that they i think

Speaker 18 well I struggle to give Facebook too much credit on this, but you know, they definitely have made tweaks around

Speaker 18 just having, you know, a regular family member talk on Facebook and that being driven to it.

Speaker 18 But what they've what they've kind of pivoted to, and maybe they've done it not out of any sort of obligation to improve the problem, but because they realize now that content made by people you don't know that's sort of made in a certain way, you're going to look at that for longer anyway, so they don't get it.

Speaker 11 Yeah, there's more of it. Yeah.

Speaker 17 There are more people you don't know than do.

Speaker 18 And that's. Which is really interesting.
I mean,

Speaker 18 I find now, and the only time I get any utility from the Facebook app is when it says, here's what you were doing 10 years ago.

Speaker 18 And I'll take a screenshot of that, send it to whoever it was, and go, look, can you believe that was 10 years ago?

Speaker 18 And that's going to start running out soon, I think. I'm going to run out of those sort of, you know, memories and the people don't post it.

Speaker 18 But that time when it used to be a platform where you'd have like a party and the next day there'd be, you know, 100 photos of people tagged it. I mean, that feels like a completely different way.

Speaker 11 It was so nice.

Speaker 11 That's great. No, it's so good.
That's the thing.

Speaker 11 As angry as I am at these platforms, it's brokenhearted, romantic, because when I got on Facebook, it was genuinely magical.

Speaker 11 Like you said, you'd go to a party, someone like 10 shit webcam photos would be up there, you'd say,

Speaker 18 yeah, and you'd tag me in that one at Lucknow.

Speaker 11 Or just like you'd see someone that you talked to for a minute, and you were friends. I had tons of friends at Penn State, for example.
And there was something like nice about that. And I guess that

Speaker 11 was just before they realized how much money they could make or before they went public.

Speaker 17 And they realized, too, that,

Speaker 1 you know, humans have an endless appetite for slop, not even AI slop. It's just like if you give them a scroll-y feed, they will just keep going until we hit the danger zone.

Speaker 18 Does Facebook have a danger zone pop-up? I don't think it's a powerful thing.

Speaker 1 I don't think so.

Speaker 11 I don't think so. I've never looked at it that long.

Speaker 11 Don't look at the special stuff.

Speaker 11 And I think it's the shift away from their claimed utility towards the real one that they want, which is they all want to be entertainment networks.

Speaker 11 Because this concept of we ran out of stuff, that is it. It's like you'd go on Facebook, you check Facebook, and you'd go, oh, this, this, and this.

Speaker 11 Okay, I'm done because my utility here is social networks. On Google, like, I'd go and look for something.
People might do

Speaker 11 idle looking, but they're like generally with a target.

Speaker 11 Now you've TikTok was, I think, created within the realm of people want to see stuff.

Speaker 11 Like it was, it never tried to sell itself as a place where you meet your friends, a place where you interact with others.

Speaker 1 Yeah, in fact, it was distinctly, this is a place where you are not by people you know. You know what I mean? You're posting things to

Speaker 1 an assumed audience that does not include your parents or your friends.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 18 And TikTok doesn't, compared to the other networks tick tock doesn't really encourage you to post right when you when you when you if you do one video then it will say oh do this this this this is this but it's quite content for people just to to consume if that's what they're passing but it's an entertainment it's not like a huge sort of you know nudge in the app to say oh get get get posting yeah and i think we're and even with google now it's like what is google anymore is it are they trying to not making it a search is it going is a place where google i mean it always was a place where google served you ads but now it's you are in the Google zone.

Speaker 11 And I have to wonder if I say this with some optimism, whether someone might go, huh, what if we made a search engine that helped you find things?

Speaker 11 That could be a billion, two billion annual revenue business. You know, it's not a hundred billion, but we also don't need to do antitrust shit every year.

Speaker 11 I'm being, I'm even saying these words out loud. I'm like, no, that's not going to happen.
Aravin's real.

Speaker 18 I mean, people are trying to make different searches. I mean, DuckDuckGo is kind of in that vein.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I like them, but people just don't use them.

Speaker 18 That's the problem.

Speaker 11 And that's the thing. It's like, do they not use them? Or is it just not as many as Google use them? I'm not even saying you're wrong.
It's just when you say people, you mean most people.

Speaker 11 And yeah, most people use Google. Most people stop their internet journey on Google.

Speaker 18 I mean, the thing that ties a lot of these platforms' problems together is the point in which they go public, it all just goes nuts, right?

Speaker 18 Because you have, I mean, Facebook is the classic example of this. It just, then it just became massive growth every single quarter.

Speaker 18 And that sort of, and I, and I think, I mean, and this is such a sort of basic observation, I guess, but you know, I think if you applied that model to say, the bodega on your street, right, okay, every year you need to grow by 10%, imagine what that business is going to go.

Speaker 18 It's mad, isn't it? It's going to be selling porn and it's going to be selling drugs

Speaker 18 to just to get the margins up, right? And you're thinking, well, hold on,

Speaker 11 but it's factfully in with that. No,

Speaker 11 this is the rot economy. This is the growth.
It's everything, everything driven around growth. It's the moment that growth must be perpetual.

Speaker 11 Because in 2017, there was an internal Facebook thing I put out last year. Big up to Jeff Horwitz's Broken Code, great book, where there's a whole thing where Zuckerberg needed 12% perpetual growth.

Speaker 11 I only just really sat and thought about this. That is an insane fucking thing to put on a social network.

Speaker 11 I must have more friends. I must connect with more.
And it's, and now when you look at everything, that is the incentive of everything. It's not really about do we buy toys? Do we search things?

Speaker 11 It's how do we keep people here or get the credit card, which is, I mean, the age-old capitalism thing.

Speaker 18 The problem was with Facebook is that people didn't have enough friends. Yes, to have

Speaker 18 constant stuff. Yeah, it's that you'd run out of stuff.
And so then it became, okay, well, how do we make them, when they're looking at this site, look on it for longer?

Speaker 18 And that's when we started to get all the mad.

Speaker 11 And what's crazy?

Speaker 11 It was profitable before they took it public. I have read stories which suggest that Mark Zuckerberg didn't want to take it public.

Speaker 11 And I'm like 50-50 on whether he did because there's enough evidence that suggests that he was quite happy with it being a $50 billion public, a private company.

Speaker 11 And then I think he realized, oh, wait, I control this whole thing. I can never be fired.
But it's like trying to give a soul to.

Speaker 18 There is, there's regret, though. I mean, Jack Dorsey is probably the famous one there, right? And he's going to say it should never have been a public company.
And he's right. If only Twitter.

Speaker 18 Twitter could have been a fine business.

Speaker 18 The VCs need their payday, right? That's the whole ecosystem.

Speaker 11 I always wonder whether we don't have more interesting venture capital models with like revenue shares or like

Speaker 11 something that is more interesting than if I give you a bunch of money, you might sell this in the future.

Speaker 11 It's sad, but it's you know what? I want to ask a good question though. Are there any parts of the internet you enjoy right now? I truly want to know.

Speaker 18 You should have prepped me with this one before.

Speaker 11 It's interesting having the gap.

Speaker 18 I'm sort of gravitating towards old style blogs, like weblogs. Do you ever see, and I think, I don't know how to pronounce it.
I think it's kotka.org.

Speaker 11 Oh, yeah, Kotke. Kotka.
Kotke, that is.

Speaker 18 And it's just, it's just a blog. There's maybe three or four entries a day, and he's been doing it, and he's got a team

Speaker 18 for a long, long time, yeah. And it's just a beautiful design, and the stuff is just interesting stuff.
It kind of reminds you of the days when you just have a few web blogs that you'd rate.

Speaker 11 And he sends real traffic as well.

Speaker 18 Yeah, I imagine it does, but it doesn't. You couldn't launch that site today and gain popularity.
I think you have this sort of legacy of people that have always visited that website.

Speaker 18 I actually, I, although I'm a new reader, so maybe I don't know.

Speaker 11 No, but I kind of agree with 98% of it. Other than I think you could do something like this.
It's just that starting a new thing fucking sucks.

Speaker 11 Like I went and I have some personal experience with this. And I went and looked back where I was five years ago.
300 subscribers, 60 views on my first piece.

Speaker 11 But you have to have the ability to do a bunch of shit until it makes money. And I had a main job, had a PR firm.
And I think just making money and creating anything is so difficult. But I love cook.

Speaker 11 I actually, I had not thought of it in a while, but it's just a place where someone thoughtful has said, you should check this out.

Speaker 11 Kind of mimics, I don't know, friendships or iconoclasts, like the idea of someone who.

Speaker 18 Yeah, and there's a tone as well. Yeah.
You just kind of know you're going to get, it's going to be sort of mildly nerdy, but not too much so.

Speaker 18 And that's what you get when you go there. And I think it's, yeah, it's when people get nostalgic for the web, I think it's that kind of discovery that they're thinking about.

Speaker 11 Yeah, and it's, it is the thing that I think a lot of listeners miss as well. It's like we're not, we don't just hate arbitrarily.
We're not just angry. It's just there's something taken away.

Speaker 11 Like we mentioned, Facebook, the quality. It also used to be Google.
You used to just be able to dick around on Google and find some bizarre stuff.

Speaker 11 I remember back in college, I lost this 2006, I want to say. I was in my, in my Dustin Pangonis college room, mate.
We randomly typed in, you know, you're right by Nirvana into YouTube.

Speaker 11 And there was just this. I think it was like, I don't even remember it had view.

Speaker 11 It was this grainy video of this like young Asian guy singing this like really kind of like slightly out of tune version of the song, but it was so interesting and grim. Like, he seemed very sad.

Speaker 11 Can never find it again. But that was the kind of internet I kind of missed-like, just these arbitrary moments where you find these weird things.

Speaker 18 You can't find that clip on YouTube, but would you be interested in two hours of Joe Rogan instead?

Speaker 11 Yeah,

Speaker 11 five hours of Joe Rogan.

Speaker 18 Because it will help you find that.

Speaker 11 Lex Friedman.

Speaker 18 Yeah. And then if you watch that, then maybe Charlie Kirk.

Speaker 11 And then you're in the next one. Or you've learned three times of racism.
We get Lex Fridman going, How you you are on computer on

Speaker 11 website. I won't do that for too long.
That's why the episodes are so long. It's 10 minutes per question.

Speaker 11 So, Mia, what are you enjoying?

Speaker 17 Oh, man. I feel like there are a few content creators that I really like and really tune into.

Speaker 17 There is a woman who makes like sort of YouTube video essays that are very well researched. Her name is Mina Lei, and she does sort of like fashion and consumerism and culture and art and stuff.

Speaker 17 And I think she is really fun and

Speaker 17 just like clearly, I saw this thing the other day that someone was like, if you can't write a normal essay, you should not try to do video essays. And she can do both.
It's clear she can do both.

Speaker 17 And I'm like, thank you so much.

Speaker 11 That's very good.

Speaker 17 You know what I mean? So I really like her.

Speaker 17 There's another person that I follow on TikTok and other platforms named Ryan Finn.

Speaker 17 And she is also really great, also kind of writes about like kind of like a she write, she she talks about fashion and uh clothing and culture in a really like heady kind of

Speaker 17 it's it's it's the type of content that people who don't read would see it and be like, it's really not that deep, but it is, you know, and I appreciate that someone takes things seriously like that.

Speaker 17 Um, there are also like corners of the internet, even on platforms like TikTok or Instagram, um, that I just like find the nerds and they still are just plugging away and doing whatever they want, and their posts get like 50 views and they're fine with it.

Speaker 17 And like, that's, I think, where it's special.

Speaker 17 Where I don't like it when I follow a creator and suddenly everything is Spawn Con, or I follow a creator and clearly they're just sort of like jumping on trends.

Speaker 17 Um, I also like websites where there's still like new content being posted, but you can clearly find the markings of like 2006. Like, I'm a big knitter, and Ravelry is the

Speaker 17 place to find knitting patterns in like the early to mid-2000s. And sometimes I'll find photos clearly from that era, and it's like really delightful.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 17 Like they were posting to a different internet. They were thinking of the web as a completely different space.

Speaker 11 Before the algorithms, I imagine. Before the algorithms.

Speaker 17 And Ravelry also, like, it has some algorithmic stuff, but like a lot of it is sort of... pure, I think.
They're like forums, you know what I mean, that people post on.

Speaker 11 This is why one of my favorites is Baseball Prospectus. I know you're a

Speaker 11 Dodger fan, right?

Speaker 17 No Dodgers. They suck suck right now

Speaker 11 it's everyone's really special everyone

Speaker 11 that's a dead but baseball prospectus i think has looked the same way since it was made and it's just like really specific nerdy stuff but i think you can even see it in sports you've got people like chad moriamo over at dodgers digest i think it is you've got these like really specific and you know that they're probably doing okay but they're not like millions of views every month or anything but you've got this kind of niche strength and my hopium i i snort aggressively is that these will never stop being made because they're still being made now.

Speaker 11 There's never been a more bleak time to make niche-specific content and keep making it, but people keep doing it.

Speaker 11 I mean, Carl Brown from Internet of Bugs, he likes to do the most straightforward thing and just talks, and it's great.

Speaker 11 And he has a growing audience, but you can, he does very specific developer-focused stuff with a very straightforward explanation. Lovely fella.
And it's nice seeing those.

Speaker 11 And it's what gives me a bit of hope because if those people, if you never find any of that stuff anymore, if everything is just mainstream, I think that's terrifying.

Speaker 11 but even look at gamers nexus big hot steve burkhov the legend hard run box as well you've got millions of subscribers there is there is hunger for this stuff there's hunger for like passionate people storytelling even i mean i was always a big fan of um a british guy tom scott i feel like you might have

Speaker 18 and he he's done that for years and years made youtube videos and he did he did like 20 minutes on the design of the british plug for like an outlet and how it's quite i really want to see this video and he makes the case that it's you know one of the finest things that Britain's ever come up with because it, you know, you can't electrocute yourself by putting it in all that sort of stuff.

Speaker 18 And I, and I remember watching thinking, God, I've just watched 15 minutes about the history of the plug.

Speaker 18 And I, and I, but he was, he's just such a sort of a resting, interesting guy, bona fide nerd, but a great presenter.

Speaker 18 One of the things I take from the sort of substack era, if you like, is like, I imagine, and I'm not going to make you get into numbers, but I imagine The Verge with its paywall now has a lot of people saying, oh, why are you paywalling?

Speaker 18 And I find it really interesting that when big publications put up a paywall, everyone gets a little bit mad, right?

Speaker 18 They say, That's, you know, and like whenever I post a link to Bloomberg, it's also, oh, it's paywall, da, da.

Speaker 18 And yet, when one person launches a sub stack and says, Right, this is 10 bucks a month, oh my god, they kind of go, oh, great, good for you.

Speaker 11 I'll definitely get behind you.

Speaker 18 And I think what that's showing us is: one, it's a kind of, you know, middle finger to the mainstream media, fine. But then the second thing, maybe, is that I think people have respect for

Speaker 18 depth and niche

Speaker 11 and like love of real content as well.

Speaker 18 Yeah, because I think they want to sort of, they love the idea that someone gives up and gives up, you know, a steady thing, goes into a sub stack.

Speaker 18 I mean, I think of Paul Krugman, who left the New York Times. I remember thinking, oh, there's...

Speaker 11 On the show, Paul.

Speaker 18 Well, I remember thinking, okay, Paul, you're being a cranky old man just because the editors don't want you to do that. But now his sub stack is brilliant.
It goes to such length.

Speaker 11 If you know Paul Krugman, please get him in touch with me.

Speaker 18 But it's great. And I think I'm much more inclined to chuck, you you know, when the New York Times wants to upgrade my subscription, I'd rather send that to Paul on his own.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 18 Get the entirety of the...

Speaker 11 Because you're incentivizing this individual voice, and you know the person, kind of, parasocially.

Speaker 18 And the way that I think bigger publications kind of lean into that is to have these sort of niches. I mean,

Speaker 11 I should have a standard following, right?

Speaker 17 Oh, yeah, everyone should follow me on the Verge.

Speaker 17 You can follow me and all the topics I write about.

Speaker 17 But I'm glad you said that, Dave, because I think that is, it shows a thing that mass media or big media companies have failed to do, which is explain what we're actually doing day to day.

Speaker 17 And I, that's why I am active on TikTok.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean?

Speaker 17 I talk to people who will never probably read my story and probably will never subscribe to the verge, truthfully. Some do, thank you so much, but a lot of them will just watch my videos.

Speaker 17 And that is a way for me to explain to them what it takes for me to write a story. This is how I talk to people.

Speaker 17 This is like, I think people don't realize that like when I'm writing stories, I'm actually sometimes going in person to interview the person. You know what I mean?

Speaker 17 Like it's, and I don't blame them really for not not knowing because media has done a really bad job of explaining it historically.

Speaker 17 And I hope that, you know, folks who read my work know that like I'm an, I'm a one, I'm one person and I write these stories.

Speaker 17 And obviously there's copy editors and editors and photo editors and, you know, dev, like dev folks who make my stories come to life.

Speaker 17 But like, we are just people making shit that we like and we think is worth your time. And

Speaker 17 every media company should be showing that off.

Speaker 11 You made a really, you made a post quite like maybe it was last year, forgive me, where it was saying we're kind of journalists are ceding ground to content creators who are reusing their stuff.

Speaker 11 And I think it comes down to a failure of, I'm not saying anything specifically about any given outlet, but a failure to realize that people want people. They want to read people.

Speaker 11 And I think that large broadsheets tend to fail. Actually, I will give big props to...
the FT for doing this, that they let their freak flags fly. Bryce Elder, The Legend,

Speaker 11 and like AlphaVille as well, because people want to read people.

Speaker 11 And I think that what should be table stakes now is that every outlet should get everyone a good microphone, get everyone a good camera, media train them, zhuzh them up a bit so that they can sound good and represent the work of the publication in a personal way that makes people more willing to understand there's a paywall, which is a reasonable thing.

Speaker 11 However, you feel about The Verge or any other outlet, yeah, money, the things cost money to do money, money. It's so expensive.

Speaker 1 It's really fucking expensive to write 6,000-word word features that's like months of my time many many people's you know work and resources and I think also like if we don't fill that I and I know a lot of people disagreed with me when I said like we're seeding ground and people didn't like it for a lot of valid reasons but

Speaker 1 If we are not there, something will fill the space.

Speaker 1 I was basically just sick of seeing my stories super, you know, behind someone's head.

Speaker 11 And you made this point very clearly. It's what you said, like, it's someone taking my stuff.

Speaker 1 It's someone taking my stuff. Yeah, exactly.
It's someone taking my stuff. It's, they're misrepresenting it, getting basic facts wrong.
And, like, I have 30 minutes in my day.

Speaker 1 I will just make the fucking video. You know what I mean? Like, I don't care.

Speaker 11 They should get it.

Speaker 11 There should be the space for they should have like iHeldRadio gives me a studio at least because it's like, oh, imagine, I might want to do an in-studio thing, might make for good content.

Speaker 11 It's just when you have resources, share them. You're going to say something.

Speaker 18 Well, I think part of all of this as well is showing the process is the most, it travels almost more than the story. right? And it breeds a ton of trust.

Speaker 18 I mean, I'm always surprised you can be, you know, in rooms of people who are, you know, incredibly successful.

Speaker 18 And they'll still, they'll ask the most like rudimentary questions about the journalistic process, like, oh, who tells you what to write? Yes.

Speaker 18 And I'm like, God, my job would be much easier if someone did tell me what to write, as opposed to it being the other way around. Things like, do you let people read things?

Speaker 18 I think just going into the process is really, really useful.

Speaker 18 And I always, there was, I was at a dinner thing once, and this one guy made this point that I thought was, I've always thought of when we're talking about this, is if you said to somebody when was journalism in America the most trusted right they're gonna my assumption most people would say uh Watergate yeah

Speaker 18 and he said no it wasn't Watergate that made journalism trusted it was a very good film about Watergate that made journalism trusted because all that film was was just them trying to get this stuff in the paper and them going through hell

Speaker 18 to make it happen and if you want a more modern example that the um the book uh she said by the new york times reporters that did the um jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 18 Sorry, no, it was like Harvey Weinstein. I get all these different people.

Speaker 11 Yeah, disgusting man.

Speaker 18 But their book, they knew what Harvey Weinstein had done within about 10 pages of the first chapter. Right.

Speaker 11 It was getting in the middle.

Speaker 18 The rest of the book was get it in the newspaper. And I just think that is the

Speaker 18 more of that process that journalists share off the cuff constantly is super powerful. And that's what Twitter used to be very good at.

Speaker 18 There was a big shift in newsrooms among bosses that went, hold on a second, the official account is getting no engagement, but when this random person on one of our UK desks starts tweeting about it, that gets loads of pickup.

Speaker 18 Why is that? It's because people respect hearing the process more than the end result, the eventual story.

Speaker 11 They want to also know, and I know that this is difficult for different, like your opinion stuff is fucking fantastic, by the way, at Bloomberg.

Speaker 11 It's really like Bloomberg has actually been very impressive in how they've grown out the opinion stuff. So this is not a detraction.
of that.

Speaker 11 I, at least in my writing, have found that people really like to know why you care.

Speaker 11 And I think that explaining that, even on here, talking about your work, mate, it's like hearing it just a little bit about the things that draw you into the story. I think it's so powerful.

Speaker 11 It's also, people love it. I mean, after CES, I know I see like Victoria Song and Sherlin Lowe, both of them get the loveliest comments from people like, oh, I just found your work for the show.

Speaker 11 It's lovely. And it's also.

Speaker 11 I feel like most readers like to know and appreciate. It's not like most people are like, oh, these fucking idiots just tired.

Speaker 11 When they actually know what goes into it, I feel like there's more goodness in people around this than they know.

Speaker 11 And now you've made that comment about watergate and we've been thinking about it all fucking day. I'm obsessed with it.
I know that. That is such a good point.

Speaker 11 So I'm going to wrap it there. It's been so wonderful having you both.
Mia, where can people find you?

Speaker 1 I'm on Blue Sky, TikTok, Instagram, and theverge.com, where again, you can follow me.

Speaker 11 Dave?

Speaker 18 I'm on all those places except theverse.com. I'm bloomberg.com slash opinion.

Speaker 11 But Blue Sky, Instagram, the rest, yeah. And I must recommend both of their work.
Both of you are two of my favorite, right? Uh, no, like, I'm actually so excited.

Speaker 11 I got this one of my favorite episodes ever recorded. I'm just gonna be honest.
Um, I am Ed Citron. You can find me on the podcast betteroffline.

Speaker 11 You go betteroffline.com, click newsletter, click all the stuff, uh, get the challenge coin if you want. Uh, but really, just I'm so grateful to have all of you, love you all.
Thank you for listening.

Speaker 11 And then you're gonna hear it say thank you for listening again. Gonna get an email, I'm gonna ignore it, I'll respond.
Thank you for listening, but thank you for listening.

Speaker 11 Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Osowski.
You can check out more of his music and audio projects at mattosowski.com.

Speaker 11 M-A-T-T-O-S-O-W-S-K-I dot com.

Speaker 11 You can email me at easy at betteroffline.com or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and, of course, my newsletter.

Speaker 11 I also really recommend you go to chat.where's your ed.at to visit the Discord and go to r slash betteroffline to check out our Reddit.

Speaker 11 Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 22 Better Offline is a production of CoolZone Media.

Speaker 22 For more from CoolZone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 3 Hi, I'm Morgan Sung, host of Close All Tabs from KQED, where every week we reveal how the online world collides with everyday life.

Speaker 5 There was the six-foot cartoon otter who came out from behind a curtain.

Speaker 8 It actually really matters that driverless cars are going to mess up in ways that humans wouldn't.

Speaker 9 Should I be telling this thing all about my love life?

Speaker 10 I think we will see a Twitch stream or president maybe within our lifetimes.

Speaker 1 You can find Close All tabs wherever you listen to podcasts.

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