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

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.

So, before we go any further, of course, please subscribe to the newsletter, the premium one as well.

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

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.

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?

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.

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

I think we record in the same room as last.

Something shifted.

Oh, okay.

So a labuboo probably has been in the last culture

area.

Yeah, I would assume.

Yeah.

Labubus

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.

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.

Elaborate.

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

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.

Like, it is just straightforward betting.

Who makes these?

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.

And the others did not take off.

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

Is the Labooboo on your back?

The Laboo is one of the one.

Is it the rare one, or is that just one?

No, it's real.

It's real.

No, it's rare.

Is it one of the 72?

No, no, no.

Obviously not.

So you call normal.

Is there a secondary laboo boo market?

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.

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.

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.

So not a huge margin.

No, not something you can even sell.

Exactly.

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

and unopened boxes.

Because again, it's about gambling.

It is about the chance that you might have a rare one.

Do they sell out?

Is that why?

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.

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

Yes, it's exactly the same.

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

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

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

Oh, sorry.

That's great.

Jesus Christ.

In this essay, I will.

Yeah, we live in hell.

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

lafufus.

Lefufus are the fake laboo boos.

Okay, that's fine.

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

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.

Quite likely there's nothing more to it.

Yeah.

Because I feel like

two years ago,

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

I mean, don't say that.

Don't speak that into existence.

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

There's nothing else.

Yeah, it's just like collector culture.

It's also like...

It's very nihilistic.

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.

Like, kids see paw patrols and they want stuff.

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.

We're going to do a movie.

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.

It's 0.04 Sol.

If you buy one of these, they should put you on a list.

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.

I've seen Labubu pop up on there and being like, no one will save you.

It's like like that kind of

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

So

as far, what is it that has enabled this, though?

Is it like very tick?

Is like this a very TikTok-driven movement?

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.

They're sold out all the time.

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

Why don't you walk me through that?

I'd love to actually like, how do you actually allegedly buy these?

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

buy boo-boo.

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.

And they have like drops at certain times.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

No, no, no,

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

It's really hard.

And the other thing, I mean, PopMart is

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.

That's it's just like straightforward engagement.

You know what I mean?

It's it's pretty insane.

So, when does this jump into being?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Like, China.

Is it that bad?

I mean, I still don't.

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.

I fully agree.

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

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?

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

Oh, it's not.

Like, you're totally right in that it's kind of clicking into that.

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.

It was exactly the same thing.

It was the kind of top trumps, well, not top trumps, football stickers.

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

The disappearing boxes, that is incredible.

Manipulative.

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.

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

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.

How will you get it?

Only us.

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.

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

desperate, right?

Like what is their laboo boo?

What is I don't know.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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...

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

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.

Accelerated by things like TikTok and TikTok Live in particular.

Yeah.

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.

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.

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

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.

It's like the natural

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.

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.

There are so many pans that sell out on Instagram.

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.

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

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

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

Yeah, for sure.

I mean, you know, I think it goes back to,

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.

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

Well, they mentioned it.

This is one of my favorite parts.

So during their antitrust here,

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

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.

And it was just things that they weren't competitors.

And TikTok was one of them.

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.

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

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,

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

This is not the same thing at all.

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.

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.

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.

And I think that same thing is happening on TikTok.

It happens on Instagram.

And a lot of it is user,

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.

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.

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

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

TikTok is a very punishing algorithm, at least in my experience.

Like if you stop posting, it's really hard to regain views.

I wasn't sure.

Yeah, I've actually always been, so there's a momentum on that.

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.

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,

almost like a, it's backing into SEO,

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.

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

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.

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

That used to be, or timeout, especially.

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.

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.

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

You go on a local news website.

My God, it's your phone is like 150.

Yeah, it's exactly and there's just pop-ups everywhere and you go.

And Google's saying, oh, the web's bad.

We're going to summarize that as an AI overview.

Isn't that great?

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.

And that's the thing.

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

diamond in the turds that we created.

And I think quite the turn of Freddy.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Yeah.

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

And it doesn't,

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

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?

YouTube does this.

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

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?

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

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

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?

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.

So they will reference something else that will send you somewhere somewhere else entirely.

And it's just the

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

You can find Close All Tabs wherever you listen to podcasts.

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

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?

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.

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

Excellent.

I'll leave all of these in the notes.

Don't worry.

You don't have to email me.

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.

So funny, but if you just type in dupes, it goes summarizing.

If you're looking for

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.

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

Sometimes it feels like they don't really care that much.

They just, they just kind of like mailing it in.

Yeah.

TikTok it for dupes, I find.

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.

They've really shoved it in.

They put it right in the middle.

So you can't.

And it looks terrible.

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.

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

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.

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.

You can step, no permit needed.

There was one where it was like

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.

And I love those because they're funny.

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.

That's commerce.

We should support that.

Not this weird QVC age.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Kind of like Vine almost,

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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

Yeah, it's impossible to quantify.

And also, I don't think it's that like,

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

Twitch is like that as well now.

Yeah, yeah.

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.

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.

There are different ways.

What way is that?

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,

and it starts, okay, story time.

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

The millennials get it ready, right?

And have it cause.

Hello, everyone, right?

Yes.

The Gen Z shake is the...

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

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.

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.

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

I think the

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

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.

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

It's weird, though, apparently.

Apparently, so.

Apparently, the algorithm likes it.

I also don't think so that Dan, over at

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.

Subway tanks guy has it on like a little.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, he has a level.

I think that that's lovely as well.

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?

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

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?

Did am I wrong?

Am I somehow?

And it's interesting how so much this comes back to the platform incentives.

Right.

And the human inside you assumes people don't like it.

Right.

Yes.

That's your initial reaction to it.

I always find your boss,

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

It doesn't, and it's embarrassing and it's patronizing to the people.

So, yeah.

Also, off, yeah, can you just do something off the cuff?

Oh, you would like me to fake spontaneity.

Absolutely.

I'll get.

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.

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

final like boxer in Animal Farm being marched to the glue factory.

The final way, you've outlived your usefulness.

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?

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.

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.

And it's like the functionality of journalism.

And I think this Google AI thing is, it's scary, man.

I think, like,

Neil got there early.

I'll give him this one.

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.

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

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

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?

That it creates products that then replace the things that other people were doing.

in search, that is old news.

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,

we ran this story

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.

And it was like 41%.

And that killed websites like celebrity net worth.

You know what I mean?

Or like travel companies because Google had flights,

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.

That's what's happening with AI.

It's the exact same thing.

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

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

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.

So

that's what they were so aggrieved by.

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

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

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

Did you see this test that they announced?

Feyonde mode, yeah.

Oh, is this Beyond AI mode?

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.

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

Websites,

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

That is actually.

Who needs websites?

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

But that's the thing.

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.

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

Man, were they right?

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.

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.

Jesus Christ, Rusty over there.

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

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

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.

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.

It's just part of a pattern of

reducing any need to go off that.

Yeah.

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.

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.

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.

Brilliant, right?

And now LinkedIn are doing mini games.

Apple news is it.

And I'm like, what?

Can you explain this LinkedIn game?

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.

It's just like, fuck that.

But what are these LinkedIn games?

Please walk through it.

I mean, they're just little word games.

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

Do you know what?

I've not played the LinkedIn ones.

But the Apple ones are just mini crossword, that kind of stuff.

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

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.

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

Yeah,

that would make me sort of go for it.

That would require too much like charm and thought behind.

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

I also

added vertical video to LinkedIn.

Evil.

And I think that if you post one of those, someone should come visit your house.

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

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

It's like,

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.

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.

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.

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

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

No, I've hit it.

Yeah, okay.

Isn't that the most depressing?

It's so,

doesn't it?

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

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.

I get really anxious.

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

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.

I require time to end, please.

But that sort of limitless space is why we get derivative content.

You know what I mean?

Like, that's, that's kind of.

Because people want more.

People want more.

And also, it just...

If there's space, someone will fill it.

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.

There are Amazon pages to fill.

and you need ideas the same way that a content creator needs ideas to post every single day.

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

space there.

And I hate to defend the platforms at all.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Yeah, I like you.

Thank you so much.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Should I be telling this thing all about my loved life?

I think we will see a Twitch streamer president maybe within our lifetimes.

You can find Close All Tabs wherever you listen to podcasts.

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

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.

Makes grandma's birthday her best one yet.

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.

And grandma still won't talk to me.

It's time for WhatsApp.

Message privately with everyone.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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?

So, if you're, you know,

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

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?

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?

And

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.

You can say the same things about gambling.

I think, yeah, you could do a great show about people gambling on sports.

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.

People take advantage of people.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

No, no, did I mention nutters?

No, I mean, just like people of dubious

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Yeah, there's more of it.

Yeah.

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

And that's.

Which is really interesting.

I mean,

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.

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?

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.

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.

It was so nice.

That's great.

No, it's so good.

That's the thing.

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

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

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

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

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

And they realized, too, that,

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.

Does Facebook have a danger zone pop-up?

I don't think it's a powerful thing.

I don't think so.

I don't think so.

I've never looked at it that long.

Don't look at the special stuff.

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.

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.

Okay, I'm done because my utility here is social networks.

On Google, like, I'd go and look for something.

People might do

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, yeah.

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.

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?

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.

I'm being, I'm even saying these words out loud.

I'm like, no, that's not going to happen.

Aravin's real.

I mean, people are trying to make different searches.

I mean, DuckDuckGo is kind of in that vein.

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

That's the problem.

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.

And yeah, most people use Google.

Most people stop their internet journey on Google.

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?

Because you have, I mean, Facebook is the classic example of this.

It just, then it just became massive growth every single quarter.

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.

It's mad, isn't it?

It's going to be selling porn and it's going to be selling drugs

to just to get the margins up, right?

And you're thinking, well, hold on,

but it's factfully in with that.

No,

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.

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.

I only just really sat and thought about this.

That is an insane fucking thing to put on a social network.

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?

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

The problem was with Facebook is that people didn't have enough friends.

Yes, to have

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?

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

And what's crazy?

It was profitable before they took it public.

I have read stories which suggest that Mark Zuckerberg didn't want to take it public.

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.

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.

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.

Twitter could have been a fine business.

The VCs need their payday, right?

That's the whole ecosystem.

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

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

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.

You should have prepped me with this one before.

It's interesting having the gap.

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.

Oh, yeah, Kotke.

Kotka.

Kotke, that is.

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

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.

And he sends real traffic as well.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

And there was just this.

I think it was like, I don't even remember it had view.

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.

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.

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

Yeah,

five hours of Joe Rogan.

Because it will help you find that.

Lex Friedman.

Yeah.

And then if you watch that, then maybe Charlie Kirk.

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

website.

I won't do that for too long.

That's why the episodes are so long.

It's 10 minutes per question.

So, Mia, what are you enjoying?

Oh, man.

I feel like there are a few content creators that I really like and really tune into.

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.

And I think she is really fun and

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.

And I'm like, thank you so much.

That's very good.

You know what I mean?

So I really like her.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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?

Like they were posting to a different internet.

They were thinking of the web as a completely different space.

Before the algorithms, I imagine.

Before the algorithms.

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.

This is why one of my favorites is Baseball Prospectus.

I know you're a

Dodger fan, right?

No Dodgers.

They suck suck right now

it's everyone's really special everyone

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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

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.

I'll definitely get behind you.

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

depth and niche

and like love of real content as well.

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.

I mean, I think of Paul Krugman, who left the New York Times.

I remember thinking, oh, there's...

On the show, Paul.

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.

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

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.

Yeah.

Get the entirety of the...

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

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

I mean,

I should have a standard following, right?

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

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

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.

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

You know what I mean?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

And

every media company should be showing that off.

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.

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.

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,

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

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.

However, you feel about The Verge or any other outlet, yeah, money, the things cost money to do money, money.

It's so expensive.

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

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

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

And you made this point very clearly.

It's what you said, like, it's someone taking my stuff.

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.

I will just make the fucking video.

You know what I mean?

Like, I don't care.

They should get it.

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.

It's just when you have resources, share them.

You're going to say something.

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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

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

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.

Sorry, no, it was like Harvey Weinstein.

I get all these different people.

Yeah, disgusting man.

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

Right.

It was getting in the middle.

The rest of the book was get it in the newspaper.

And I just think that is the

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.

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.

Why is that?

It's because people respect hearing the process more than the end result, the eventual story.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

It's lovely.

And it's also.

I feel like most readers like to know and appreciate.

It's not like most people are like, oh, these fucking idiots just tired.

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

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.

So I'm going to wrap it there.

It's been so wonderful having you both.

Mia, where can people find you?

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

Dave?

I'm on all those places except theverse.com.

I'm bloomberg.com slash opinion.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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