The App That's Reprogramming Your Mind - Zack Telander

Zack Telander is a weightlifter, coach & YouTuber. TikTok may be a colossal waste of time, but at least most people consider it to be harmless. A recent blog post made me think differently and today we look at the world's first digital weapon of mass-destruction through pleasure rather than pain. Expect to learn why Digital Dementia is a real phenomenon, how young girls are developing tourettes-like tics from watching videos, the dangers of atrophying focus through watching too much TikTok, why Grammarly and ChatGPT are no longer impartial, the awkwardness of vlogging a day in the life at Google when you get laid-off, whether calling a man bald is sexual harassment and much more... Sponsors: Get $100 off plus an extra 15% discount on Qualia Mind at https://neurohacker.com/modernwisdom (use code MW15) Get over 37% discount on all products site-wide from MyProtein at https://bit.ly/proteinwisdom (use code: MODERNWISDOM) Get 20% discount on House Of Macadamias’ nuts at https://houseofmacadamias.com/modernwisdom (use code MW20) Extra Stuff: Gurwinder’s article - https://gurwinder.substack.com/p/tiktok-may-be-a-chinese-bio-weapon Subscribe to Zack's YouTube Channel -https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC94_fvLx7abZgs9LIkM7jxw Get Zack's Program for $1 - https://www.patreon.com/zacktelander Follow Zack on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/coach_zt Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #tiktok #psychology #war - 00:00 Intro 01:22 TikTok Is Destroying the West 20:46 Grammarly Has Turned Woke 24:58 The Political Bias of AI Chat 34:18 Google & Meta’s Adult Daycare Ends 40:41 Calling a Man Bald is Sexual Harassment in the UK 46:21 Floyd Mayweather’s Return to the Ring 51:36 Dick Durbin’s New Supplement Law 1:00:16 Should You Approach Women in the Gym? 1:10:48 What’s Next for Zack? - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  There's a substantial body of research showing a strong association between smartphone addiction, shrinkage of the brain's grey matter and digital dementia, an umbrella term for the onset of anxiety and depression and the deterioration of memory, attention span, self-esteem and impulse control, crucially, the last of those increases the addiction. It's using weaponizing, commercializing and leveraging pleasure to sedate people into the outcomes that it wants. I have a bone to pick with you before we get into today's episode.

• 0:30Zack Telander?

  Okay.

• 0:31Chris Williamson?

  What's this for the people that are just listening?

• 0:34Zack Telander?

  Zevia.

• 0:36Chris Williamson?

  What's what? How would you describe this? This would be a can of of Zevia, wouldn't it? You know what I'm going to say to you, don't you?

• 0:43Zack Telander?

  I've been drinking those since you've been gone.

• 0:45Chris Williamson?

  For the people that don't know, we live in separate houses on the same plot of land and I erroneously gave you the access code to my back door.

• 0:55Zack Telander?

  No, in all fairness, you didn't give it to me. Our landlord gave it to us.

• 0:59Chris Williamson?

  Right, okay. You've been going into my house, my fridge, and you left me one Zevia.

• 1:07Zack Telander?

  Yeah, yeah, you know, at least I left you one.

• 1:11Chris Williamson?

  You're a mother. Ah, okay, anyway, getting on TikTok. One of my very good friends, Gwinder, that's been on the show three or four times, wrote a phenomenal article about TikTok and I want to go through it today with you. So in a survey asking American and Chinese children what job they most wanted, the top answer among Chinese kids was astronaut and the top answer among American children was influencer. Since 1970, the Western average IQ has been steadily falling, at least in part, due to ease of access to entertainment. So even if you're able to use your brain, the goals that you work toward are more pointless. You're a TikTok user, right?

• 1:56Zack Telander?

  Yep.

• 1:59Zack Telander?

  Yeah, like it's the article is amazing and everyone should should definitely give it a read. But I think one of the there's there's different sections to this. And I think the top line, actually, if I'm not mistaken, the most downloaded, the most successful app in history. And the reason it's most successful app in history is because of a multitude of different factors. But a lot of it is like this work to reward ratio. And it's very slanted towards the reward. The least amount of work you can do, the most dialed in algorithm to feed you as quickly as possible.

• 2:39Zack Telander?

  And that is something that I didn't even know was happening to me when I downloaded TikTok. But I remember one night I stayed up until like 5:30 in the morning. And I was probably on it from two, no, I was probably on it from like midnight to 5:30. And it felt like I didn't even do anything that was like, and then I realized like, wait a minute, you can't go to sleep at 5:30 in the morning and be a regular human being. That's strictly because of TikTok. And so then I was able to mitigate that.

• 3:09Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. So this article from Gwinder, I'm going to go through a little bit of it now. For the people that haven't read it, this will give you a nice overview. So previously, you would have gone to war with your enemies by using weapons of pain. Right? You would have sieged them inside of their castle. You would have cut off the food supplies. You would have tortured people. You would have killed them with axes. But this is the first pleasure weapon of mass destruction, rather than a pain weapon of mass destruction. It's using weaponizing, commercializing and leveraging pleasure to sedate people into the outcomes that it wants. The reason that TikTok is able to learn your preferences so fast is because the shortness of the videos allows it to iterate much more quickly.

• 3:51Chris Williamson?

  It's also supposedly using the front facing camera to detect facial expressions. You see that little bit?

• 3:58Zack Telander?

  Yeah, that was, okay, so that one was the one that really freaked me out. But I had, there's a part of TikTok that like there are these viral trends that happen where people scan their face. On it and then it like shows like an animal that they look like or the AI generation of what it is. I'm like, you realize we're just scanning our faces like to a perfect degree and then publishing it out on the internet. And like the AI can just continually use that. I mean, everyone's face is pretty much. Dialed in now.

• 4:27Chris Williamson?

  Wasn't there that, uh, there was that app Age Yourself, Ageify or something?

• 4:31Zack Telander?

  Yes.

• 4:32Chris Williamson?

  Remember when everyone made themselves look older? That was maybe three or four years ago.

• 4:34Zack Telander?

  And then somebody said, hey, don't do this because they're creating a database with your facial features. Yeah. TikTok is doing that every single day.

• 4:41Chris Williamson?

  So you can actually go onto TikTok's website and in the developer tools on the backend, which is linked in Gurwinder's article, it shows the different categories that it's, it, this is already built in. This is already available for developers on TikTok. It's out there on, it's like tiktok.com slash features slash some other bullshit. Um, okay. So TikTok is able to learn preferences quickly because of how short the videos are.

• 5:03Zack Telander?

  Right.

• 5:04Chris Williamson?

  That's really interesting, right? Because, you know, you can iterate so fast through these different preferences. Uh, act that this has included from being on TikTok, none of which I knew about, include licking toilets, snorting suntan lotion, eating chicken cooked in NyQuil and stealing cars. One challenge known as devious licks encourages kids to vandalize property. I think that was actually toilets. Uh, while the blackout challenge in which kids purposely-

• 5:31Zack Telander?

  No, devious licks, devious lick, like doing a lick is like doing like a vandalism thing.

• 5:36Chris Williamson?

  Oh, okay.

• 5:37Zack Telander?

  So it wasn't the toilet thing. That's a total, that's a separate lick, Chris. Okay?

• 5:42Chris Williamson?

  No, the, no, no, no, no. Licking toilets, yes, but the devious licks was done on toilets as well. The vandalism-

• 5:49Zack Telander?

  Oh, yeah. They would like explode toilets and stuff. Yes.

• 5:53Chris Williamson?

  Uh, blackout challenge in which kids purposefully choke themselves with household items has even led to several deaths, including a little girl a few days ago. There is evidence that watching such content can cause mass psychogenic illness. Researchers recently identified a new phenomenon where otherwise healthy young girls who watched clips of Tourette's sufferers developed Tourette's like tics.

• 6:16Zack Telander?

  Yeah. Um, it goes on to talk about TikTok brain.

• 6:19Chris Williamson?

  Yes, I'm gonna get on to that.

• 6:20Zack Telander?

  Were you gonna get to that? Okay, okay. So move on to that because that I feel like that is the he that's an insane term that like really is starting to mess with me. People need to read this article and you're like.

• 6:33Chris Williamson?

  Well, look, this is the front end of the funnel.

• 6:34Zack Telander?

  Go, go, go.

• 6:35Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so although this is super dumb, right? You can have a short term level of insanity because it encourages you to cook chicken in NyQuil or break a toilet seat and steal cars and get yourself in trouble. The problem is what it does to people over the long term. And that's what you're getting to. There's a substantial body of research showing a strong association between smartphone addiction, shrinkage of the brain's gray matter and digital dementia. An umbrella term for the onset of anxiety and depression and the deterioration of memory, attention span, self-esteem and impulse control. Crucially, the last of those increases the addiction, right? If the thing that you're using reduces your ability to control your impulses, then it is going to be more likely that you continue to do it.

• 7:18Chris Williamson?

  Because the videos are so short and require so little focus, many habitual TikTokers can already be found complaining on websites like Reddit about their loss of mental ability, a phenomenon that's come to be known as TikTok brain.

• 7:31Zack Telander?

  Yes.

• 7:32Chris Williamson?

  TikTok's capacity to stupefy people both acutely by encouraging idiotic behavior and chronically by atrophying the brain should prompt consideration of its potential use as a new kind of weapon, one that seeks to neutralize enemies not by inflicting pain and terror, but by inflicting pleasure.

• 7:50Zack Telander?

  So there's a couple of things like as someone who who I like, I only open TikTok like for an hour and it's crazy how just like it just powers into your brain, right? And the algorithm is perfect. The the interface is perfect. It covers the entire screen. It's this dumbed down like. Just hops into my like monkey brain and just like, uh, okay. So what, at least I'm sitting here and talking to you about the implications of that. And I have self-control over it. Now imagine, like, I don't think a child could have this conversation.

• 8:33Zack Telander?

  I don't think any, any kid is even thinking along these lines at all. And, and that's what's, that's really, that's really frightening to me. Man, like I, I, I wish there was a way to display this. In fact, there are some people on Tik Tok who are talking about this thing. And you just swipe, you're like, wow, that's crazy. Tik Tok is a really fucked up place. Swipe, okay, now we got, you know, now we got a next video. I swear to God, man, there was a, there was a creator on Tik Tok. He was like, you know, we're not meant to be like literally crying. I, I've been brought to tears from Tik Tok videos because it's like a really emotional

• 9:13Zack Telander?

  video on someone surviving cancer and like hitting a home run and for their like passed away father and like, I'm crying. And then the next video is some just like meme compilation that is just completely meaningless. And then into some, you know, chick dancing around and lip syncing like it's crazy. And the funniest thing is while this creator is saying this, he's like, you're not meant to, to, to consume stuff like this. I am consuming it like this. So the next one is just exact, you know, it's, it's wild.

• 9:46Chris Williamson?

  Trying to defeat the system by using the system is always going to be a difficult challenge, right?

• 9:51Zack Telander?

  Right. And, and I think this kind of leads into the accelerationism part of the article, which I know you're going to get to. But I, it's, it's funny. It's like, how do we fight this without influence? And how do you gain influence without being a part of the problem? That is ultimately what we're, we're having to deal with. And he offers, he offers like a real grassroots solution, but it's kind of like, ah, just, I don't know how effective that's going to be.

• 10:21Chris Williamson?

  So the way that you can tell that this particular app has got serious problems is how closely the CCP, the country that owns one of the three golden board seats on ByteDance, which is the company that owns it. They have their own version, which is called Douyin. So the CCP has forbidden access of the app to Chinese kids. The Chinese equivalent called Douyin is a spinach version where kids don't see twerkers and toilet lickers, but science experiments and educational videos. Also, it is only available to kids for 40 minutes per day, and it cannot be accessed between 10pm and 6am. Like, just that, just that alone should make us think,

• 11:03Chris Williamson?

  how is it that in America, or in the West in general, because of our democratic roots, we are prepared to allow a platform to be proliferated. People can choose whatever they want to. You want to give people as much freedom as it is that they want. And yet, the country that this comes from is so concerned about the impact it has on young people that they have stopped use of it.

• 11:26Zack Telander?

  Right, so this, this, you know, begs the question on my behalf is like the, you know, romanticizing the authoritarian government that is the CCP. And we can point to the CCP as being this shining star and like protecting its own citizens. But he even brings up in the article that they were doing the zero tolerance protocol on COVID, and that was a complete failure. It's, it's like a horrible place to be. So it's, I don't want to be in the mindset of this massive pendulum swing to where it's like, all right, now we need the government to control everything.

• 12:06Chris Williamson?

  He says in the article, you've got a choice between the tyranny of dopamine or the tyranny of the despot.

• 12:13Zack Telander?

  What a line, man. This is a fan. You know why this is a fantastic article? It's got it like has a it's a three pronged attack. It talks about the algorithm. It talks about the the effect on TikTok brain. And then it talks ultimately about control from one country to another. This reminds me of, um, I have it written down here in my notes. This this reminds me of the famous Yuri Besmanov interviews. Did you ever see those?

• 12:36Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 12:36Zack Telander?

  The the ideological subversion. And and something I like to think about is the the ship of Theseus. And I'm not entirely sure if that works with this. But it's essentially you're changing something so slowly that you you can't. It's so gradual as it's as if it never changed at all. Like you don't you don't really know. So we're taking these tiny, tiny steps. And maybe 10, maybe 20 years down the road. Um, there will be substantial differences, but we would never have been able to tell as it as it happened.

• 13:08Chris Williamson?

  Going back to what's happening in China, the creator of TikTok and CEO of ByteDance Zhang Yimin was originally intending the content on TikTok for the Chinese version to be the same as it is in the UK and the US and stuff, which is popularity. As such, Douyin started off much like TikTok is now with the content dominated by teenagers singing and dancing. In April 2018, however, the CCP began action against Zhan citing that platforming of improper content. This is anti-communist values, etc. Zhan then took to social media to offer a grovelling public apology, stating our products was took the wrong path and content appeared that was incommensurate with socialist core values. Liberal capitalism is about making people work in order to obtain pleasurable things. And for decades, it's been moving towards shortening the delay

• 13:53Chris Williamson?

  between the desire and gratification because that's what consumers want. This is why TikTok could prove such a devastating geopolitical weapon. Slowly but steadily, it could turn the West's youth, its future, into perpetually distracted dopamine junkies, ill-equipped to maintain the civilization built by their ancestors. In this way, not only does the West fall, but the entire concept of Western liberalism is defeated by the CCP, which paves the way for them as well. If TikTok is not a murder weapon. Then it is a suicide weapon. China has given the West the means to kill itself, but the death wish is wholly the West's. After all, TikTok dominated our culture as a result of free market forces, the very thing that we live by.

• 14:35Chris Williamson?

  They're correct that the West's being controlled by everyone means it's controlled by no one. And without brakes or a steering wheel, we're at the market's mercy. The CCP may be right about the illness, but they're wrong about the cure. Democracies are vulnerable because there's no one controlling their advancement, but autocracies are vulnerable for precisely the opposite reason.

• 14:53Zack Telander?

  Right.

• 14:53Chris Williamson?

  They're controlled by people, which is to say woefully myopic apes. China is currently suffering from the myopia of Xi's zero COVID policy, which is ravaging the country. We'd be unwise to exchange the tyranny of dopamine for the tyranny of despots. In the long term, the only way to prevent digital dementia is to raise awareness of the neurological ruin wrought by apps like TikTok, exposing their ugliness so they fall out of fashion like cigarettes. Will surely sound like alarmists. TikTok destroys so gradually that it seems harmless, but if the app is a time bomb, that will wreck a whole generation years from now. Then we can't wait till its effects are apparent before acting, for then it will be too late.

• 15:30Zack Telander?

  Yeah, so there, I think that's the, the solution that he offers is like this grassroots movement where parents need more oversight, but I think like this message needs to continually go out. Like guys like Andrew Huberman have done an incredible job of talking about dopamine and people becoming dopamine junkies. And it used to be in the form of drugs. That was the only thing that we had to worry about. Drugs, alcohol, expedient pleasures, maybe sex, you know, going out late, staying up late, certain things like focusing on your nutrition. But we're starting to talk more and more about the cell phone. And if there is a part of the cell phone that is the most dangerous, it is TikTok.

• 16:13Zack Telander?

  It is just open it and scroll through it and you will see exactly what I'm talking about. He also talks about how Twitter, Instagram or Meta, they have followed suit and they and even and even YouTube with YouTube Shorts. Right. They've all followed suit saying, oh my God, Tik Tok is the most successful, literally objectively, the most successful app. We have to follow suit. So it's no longer just this strange app from China that we don't know about. It's every app.

• 16:43Chris Williamson?

  It's fundamentally the the.

• 16:45Zack Telander?

  It is the new ways.

• 16:47Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, exactly of the system.

• 16:48Zack Telander?

  Yeah.

• 16:48Chris Williamson?

  I mean, for me, man, I I see no reason that we shouldn't just ban the app outright. I don't think.

• 16:54Zack Telander?

  Well, because it's like, how long is it going to take until YouTube Shorts just pops up? It's like we chop, it's the Hydra, you know, you chop one head, one head's gonna pop up. I think it's probably, you know, it wouldn't hurt because it's so much more advanced and there's a lot of proprietary stuff involved in their algorithm. So yeah, that might be a good solution for now, but it is very important that we tell people exactly this, like the more people that read this article, the better.

• 17:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 17:24Zack Telander?

  Seriously, this, this is, this is fantastic. And you sent it to me and you're like, dude, this is amazing. You came home from your trip this past weekend, you're like, man, this is amazing today. This is amazing. Like you've read it a couple of times now, like.

• 17:38Chris Williamson?

  Rogan tweeted it out, Jonathan Haidt tweeted it out.

• 17:41Zack Telander?

  You don't do that stuff that often, right? How often do you read an article more than once? Like, I'm gonna send this to everyone I know.

• 17:47Chris Williamson?

  Twenty minutes, it's twenty minute long article. There's tons more that we haven't gone into on this, but in short, man, yeah, maybe you're right. Maybe Instagram and YouTube Shorts and stuff would try and reverse engineer what's going on so that they can capture it. But at least those are companies that we have a little bit of control over if they start to behave in ways that we don't agree with. At the moment, if the company decides to, ByteDance decides to put its finger on the scale in one way or another, we're shit out of luck. The CCP has one of three, I think they're called golden seats, which is on the board of Tik Tok. They can just do whatever they want. Tik Tok is the CCP, right?

• 18:29Chris Williamson?

  And we are allowing that app to atrophy the brains of kids, for instance, right?

• 18:36Chris Williamson?

  The difference between Carver or caffeine and a drug that is more heavily controlled like MDMA or psilocybin or something like that is the depth of its effect. So it shouldn't be that all apps that do social media are blocked, right?

• 18:53Zack Telander?

  Right.

• 18:53Chris Williamson?

  You don't need to stop Instagram or TikTok or Twitter five years ago. They weren't limbically hijacking people into the same level.

• 19:03Zack Telander?

  Ah, but see, but maybe not to the same level. It's just that this is so shocking. Like, we thought, I honestly think that the majority of people thought that, that we had kind of like reached what peak social media was.

• 19:17Chris Williamson?

  I think you're right.

• 19:17Zack Telander?

  Right? And then all of a sudden TikTok came in and they're like, no, no, no, no, no. This is.

• 19:21Chris Williamson?

  It's way lower to fall, yeah.

• 19:23Zack Telander?

  Yeah, this is it, right? Um, and so I think that it's just the evolution, but it happened really fast. Like, it was, it wasn't a slow evolution to TikTok. It was like, okay, we're pretty much capped out on what social media is. Boom, TikTok comes and then everyone's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Everyone's scrambling around to figure things out. And I think that, you know, your comparison to the drugs, it might be sound, but these are drugs that are evolving, right? Like Instagram, Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, those are things that are evolving. They're not capped out. They're going to keep getting more and more dopamine hijackable, if you will, right?

• 20:02Chris Williamson?

  One of the problems that you have is those other platforms, at least there are other elements to it. And they bring this up as well, that TikTok's algorithm, the For You page, is the method through which you communicate with the platform.

• 20:15Zack Telander?

  Right.

• 20:15Chris Williamson?

  It's not a byproduct of other things that you've got, right? It is just this, there is nothing for you to do except consume. Even Twitter has got a For You page now. It's not the same, it's still mostly text, et cetera, but For You page was pioneered by TikTok. So yeah, dude, it's, it's, it's really, really terrifying. I'm glad that Gwinda's written this article. Everybody needs to go and check it out. It's gwinda.substack.com. They can go and watch it, read through it and stuff. And yeah, but talking about other problems that we've come up against, Grammarly, Grammarly getting themselves into trouble in one of our group chats. And this is the first time that I've ever heard about this. And then Michaela Peterson slipstreamed me and tweeted about it yesterday. So I'm gonna do a video about

• 20:59Chris Williamson?

  it. I can't believe it. So one of our friends who uses Grammarly to help him with the writing that he does for emails, it looks like it's maybe a Gmail screenshot that he's sent here, which Dean will put up on the screen. And it says, hi, guys. Hope you're doing well. I've attached our new onboarding, blah, blah, blah. And Grammarly highlights stuff kind of the way that you would do in Google, yeah, Google Docs. Everything would be red. This is purple. And it considers, it gives you suggestions. Underneath guys, consider using more inclusive language. Alternatives are everyone, all, team, and folks. And the tip

• 21:39Chris Williamson?

  is some readers may find the term guys non-inclusive. If your intended meaning applies to all people, a gender neutral term may be more effective. So I did a little bit of research, right? Did a little bit of research. And I decided that I was going to have a read of, to do some more digging and see if Grammarly's ever been pulled up before. It actually has. This guy David Mokatoff wrote an article on Medium, how Grammarly checking software has become infected with woke lingo. A funny thing happened while I was working on a story for Medium. I always use Grammarly, a grammar checking software. The algorithm didn't like the word indignant. Grammarly told me that the phrase impoverished was a better choice. I ignored the suggestion. In another story, I was again prompted to not use a word. The word was

• 22:23Chris Williamson?

  manpower. The suggestion was workforce, or human resources, or staffing. Some readers may find manpower dated or non-inclusive in this context. To avoid distraction, consider replacing it with a more neutral term. And then he tried manhole, which was suggested to be changed to maintenance hole, or utility hole. Some readers may find manhole dated or non-inclusive in this context, to avoid distraction. He also tried manatee, but Grammarly seemed to be okay with manatee. Manhole, manpower, not okay.

• 22:59Chris Williamson?

  Manatee.

• 23:01Zack Telander?

  God damn it.

• 23:02Chris Williamson?

  Was okay. But here's an interesting thing, right? So we're just talking about TikTok there and we're now talking. So what TikTok is doing is nudging our preferences in quite a sort of subtle way, although it's incredibly powerful in a subtle way. And then you have, I think Grammarly is probably an American owned company that is trying to really reprogram people's preferences. And language is the way that we experience the world.

• 23:27Chris Williamson?

  Is it that big of a deal?

• 23:28Zack Telander?

  So a few things, there's a gay bar in Chicago called The Manhole. So that could be conflicting. I think also people from the Midwest would be screwed because that's all we say is guys. Hey, guys, what do you do? What are you guys doing? But down in the South, you say, hey, y'all, you know?

• 23:47Chris Williamson?

  So. That isn't that funny that people that are kind of more progressive are having to repurpose hick language in a desperate attempt to be gender neutral.

• 23:57Zack Telander?

  Yeah, don't, don't call the South racist, man, or non-inclusive. They've got a very inclusive, you know, all-inclusive term in y'all. That's a great argument right there. All right, so really quickly, Grammarly, just for like, because I'd never heard of it until this group chat uses AI, kind of like ChatGPT to just correct grammar and like, maybe optimize sentence structure. Does it automate an entire thing? Like, can you just write copy with it? No, you can't.

• 24:28Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 24:29Zack Telander?

  Okay, so it's not like ChatGPT in that way. It's just, hey, don't.

• 24:32Chris Williamson?

  To get on to in a second.

• 24:33Zack Telander?

  Don't use cisgender terms that are considered.

• 24:38Chris Williamson?

  Non-gender neutral, yeah.

• 24:39Zack Telander?

  Yeah, like manhole or manatee. Oh, wait, manatee slipped.

• 24:43Chris Williamson?

  Manatee happened to be all right somehow.

• 24:45Zack Telander?

  All right, good, good. Well, what would we call manatee, by the way? We all a t?

• 24:54Chris Williamson?

  So I was like thinking to myself, okay, we've got this issue with Grammarly. I wanted to look into ChatGPT about whether or not that has a particular bias. And there's been some really good research done on this.

• 25:08Chris Williamson?

  One of the issues that we're going to come up against is that ChatGPT and other language models will be used by more and more people as a replacement for things like Google or Bing. You're going to go to ChatGPT to give you a solution as opposed to put a search term into Google to provide you with a list of potential solutions and pages.

• 25:28Zack Telander?

  Whoa, whoa, dude. Okay, go on.

• 25:32Chris Williamson?

  So what you can imagine is if ChatGPT has a particular kind of bias in any direction at all, that's really going to have a profound impact on the way that people live their lives, given that they're going to it not only as their search engine, but as the solution provider. So if anything is going to replace the current Google search engine, search engine stack, future iterations of language models such as ChatGPT, for which people are going to be interacting with on a daily basis for decision-making tasks, said researcher David Rosado, he is a very good guy for this stuff. Language models that claim political neutrality and accuracy like ChatGPT does while displaying political biases should be causes of large concern.

• 26:13Chris Williamson?

  So he put it through a number of political orientation tests that you can do, political compass, tons and tons and tons of them, it's all listed on an article. So he has done this December 6th, December 24th, and then he did one just this week as well. According to Rosado, ChatGPT's political bias were preliminary and based on limited data, the results are now more robust, he said, and can say with greater certainty that ChatGPT indeed exhibits a preference for left-leaning answers to preferences with political connotations. Politically, in the compass test, blah, blah, blah, it had come out against the death penalty and free markets, but in favor of abortions, more taxes on the rich, government subsidies, welfare benefits, and for those who refuse to work, also pro-immigration among other

• 26:58Chris Williamson?

  things. Now, the problem that you have is, or some other thing that I've seen, one of my friends asked it to give a justification for authoritarianism, and it said, as a ChatGPT thing, I cannot...

• 27:12Chris Williamson?

  Give points like this. It's like if you asked it how to make a Molotov cocktail, it would avoid to do this stuff. However, if you ask it to give you a justification for communism, it'll happily do it.

• 27:24Zack Telander?

  Wow. So why, why do you think this is happening? Do you think it's, you know,

• 27:31Zack Telander?

  restrictions that have been put forth by the engineers, the developers? Or is it that these things are inherently the smartest thing because the computation is done by AI?

• 27:41Chris Williamson?

  So the, the reason that it's put forward by this Rosado guy is that what ChatGPT is, is a language learning model and it has been trained largely on language that was written by people who have this particular political bias leaning because for them that would be what is socially acceptable. Now, that being said, this guy has done a number of different studies and over time it's swung from left to right. It's changed. So December 6th, it was very left leaning. December 24th, it appeared like it had flattened back out and then most recently it's really gone quite far out to the left again. Now, this, this should be a concern. No matter what your political leaning

• 28:19Chris Williamson?

  is, it should be a concern that potentially the new biggest search function in the world is unable to be objective.

• 28:30Zack Telander?

  But don't we always say that, you know, political ideology in general in America swings back and forth, right? Depending on, you know, usually it's the quad. It's usually the four year term of presidency and Congress and, and the Senate. Wouldn't you say that the AI is just playing catch up and swinging with?

• 28:53Chris Williamson?

  So I don't think that a program which is supposed to supply answers should be swinging at all. If I ask it to give me a definition of the word woman, that shouldn't be mediated by what the political viewpoint code du jour at the time.

• 29:09Zack Telander?

  But if it's generated, if it's generated by language across the internet at large, that's what's gonna happen.

• 29:16Chris Williamson?

  It is, but it's able to take up, you know, the entirety of time. It shouldn't be swaying backward and forwards that much, especially when it comes to.

• 29:22Zack Telander?

  The entirety of time of the internet though, right? Like, I mean, maybe some his, I don't know. Yeah, you. I'm just playing devil's advocate here, you know, because it is very interesting.

• 29:34Chris Williamson?

  Well, the other problem that you have is they say that there is no political bias. AI systems, they claim to be providing neutral and factual information and yet display clear political bias. That's the concern that this guy has.

• 29:48Zack Telander?

  Yeah, you know, this is kind of a side, but I, I remember being little and hearing about AI for the first time and what it would be able to do. I was much younger and I was talking with my father and I had this kind of like existential crisis. It was like, you know, we, we talk about automation of jobs, jobs that we might be losing and using chat GPT for copyright is like very common now, and that's within like the last month. I mean, because copywriting is something where it's like, ah, I just finished this product and I don't really want to work on copy, but copy is so important. You know, I need to hire a copywriter, but now I could just plug it into chat GPT, right?

• 30:28Zack Telander?

  Like it's incredibly beneficial, but like if we refine that down, it's like, well, could I just make an AI a lawyer for me? Like an AI could just take the input from what's happening in the courtroom and tell, say exactly what should, should happen, right? It would take every law textbook that's ever existed, every case that's ever existed and do that. And I remember thinking about this when I was little, not with chat GPT in mind and just being like, what is the point of anything? And then like, you know, walking off and like playing baseball with my friends later, but like having that, that thing happen to me and it's weird. I don't know how much that has to do with, you know, the political leaning of it, but it is kind of freaky, man. It really, really is.

• 31:13Chris Williamson?

  Well, there's some law bots that are being used to replace a lot of the kind of middle in fiduciary and also litigation stuff that was previously done by humans.

• 31:25Zack Telander?

  Yeah. What's the front end job that like processes a lot of casework in a law office? What's that?

• 31:32Chris Williamson?

  Whatever that is.

• 31:32Zack Telander?

  Yeah. Absolutely, it could be done by chat GPT.

• 31:35Chris Williamson?

  I think, I think, I think a big chunk of it is already being done by specially trained law AIs. But dude, I mean, between the, the grammarly thing and the, the chat GPT sort of leaning, is it a massive deal that it's popping up and saying, hey, guys, some readers may find the term guys non-inclusive. Is it an absolutely huge deal? Probably not. I think the concern that people have is, what does this happen? What, what happens if we start to nudge these preferences a little bit more? What happens?

• 32:05Zack Telander?

  It's the ship of theseus thing, you know, like one little change here, one little change there, one little, and it just happens over time to the point where, you know, 20 years from now, our very own language is not what it was. You know, words don't mean what they used to mean. The, the absolute changing of the term guys, like we can't pick up, we can't discern that guys is a colloquialism and we don't actually mean men, we just mean all humans that I'm speaking to directly. Like, maybe that becomes a thing, like, who knows? But it also could force people into being like, this is bullshit. And again, the pendulum could swing harder back.

• 32:45Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. I mean, language is always evolving. The way that it evolves feels more organic because certain words come in, certain words come out. And, you know, there are words, we did that segment before where it was a imbecile and cretin and a bunch of other words that are kind of similar to, yeah, that's similar to retard, but they haven't been, they haven't gone the way of cancellation. And yet they totally could have done. So it kind of is a, an arbitrary change. I think the real concern that people have, and it's the same issue with regards to TikTok, as soon as you can see what the algorithm is doing, it feels less natural, it feels less organically generated, it's this sort of mask off manipulation. And that's what people get worried about. Because

• 33:25Chris Williamson?

  if you, if the word guys simply as a natural byproduct of conversations ends up no longer being used to refer to a group of people, no one would really notice. So there's no one to point the finger at. But if you see a program suggesting, how about you don't use the word guys, because it might not be sufficiently gender inclusive, people are going to have a problem with that. We don't like the idea that our preferences are being messed with. And chat GPT absolutely is, as is Grammarly.

• 33:54Zack Telander?

  It's absolutely, I mean, I mean, that, that use of guys or having an issue with guys is a very stark in your face. Whoa, this is a very left leaning or woke type of.

• 34:06Chris Williamson?

  Manhole is the real problem, though. Manhole is where the battle lines will be drawn.

• 34:11Zack Telander?

  I'm sorry, that was so fucking funny, man.

• 34:13Chris Williamson?

  Around manhole and manatee. Next one, TikTok trend of a day in the life of a Google or Meta employee backfires as they lay off 13,000 unproductive staff. So a Google worker who famously documented her day in the life of working at Google has now had to do another vlog, a day in my life getting laid off in a viral TikTok. So a Google employee who racked up thousands of views with videos showing off the perks of the tech giant's swanky offices has tearfully documented being caught up in a mass layoff. Nicole Tsai, whose role at Google was Partner Services Program Manager, according to her LinkedIn profile, had been vlogging about my day in my life, the

• 34:55Chris Williamson?

  company enjoying free candy, games, catered lunches and coconut waters, Harry Potter themed meeting rooms and massage chairs. I'm heading over to this butterfly themed meeting room to take my next meeting and then I'm going to head over to the confetti room to take my next meeting. It's so sparkly and beautiful in here, she said in one TikTok video earlier this month. Next, I'm going to go upstairs and grab some lunch. There are also pizza and a variety of different vegetables and meat. The food is always really good. And of course, you can see every, everything you see in the office is free. Unfortunately, on Friday, Google's parent company Alphabet announced it would slash nearly 12,000 jobs worldwide in the latest of a series of mass layoffs across the industry. They found out through email and she does this vlog talking

• 35:38Chris Williamson?

  about it. And in a video which has been viewed nearly 3 million times, Ms. Tsai documented a day in my life getting laid off at Google.

• 35:48Zack Telander?

  So I'm curious if this is a result of automation, because if anywhere, I think, would require, you know, less workers as technology improves, it would be somewhere like Google. Was it, do you think it was, it had to have been because of like, a lot of these jobs could be automated?

• 36:07Chris Williamson?

  I'm sure that there'll be a lot of people that know exactly what's going on. I think it's most likely due to recession, very, very bad year for the stock market.

• 36:18Chris Williamson?

  And declining productivity. Elon came into Twitter and laid off

• 36:22Zack Telander?

  Yep.

• 36:22Chris Williamson?

  An absolute metric ton of people because as far as

• 36:26Zack Telander?

  It just seems like

• 36:27Chris Williamson?

  They weren't doing anything.

• 36:28Zack Telander?

  Right.

• 36:29Chris Williamson?

  And the, I'm going to try and give this girl her due as best I can. If you were going to vlog a day in your life, and you've seen these videos, they've got, they went viral and about Twitter. This particular one that she did was pretty egregious. You know, she goes in and just doesn't seem to do anything, but she will say, now I'm going to take my next meeting. And now I'm going to go to this room and now I'm going to work or whatever it might be. But she doesn't show the work like by design. We can't, it's going to be

• 36:56Zack Telander?

  Yeah.

• 36:57Chris Williamson?

  Much less interesting for her to talk about whatever spreadsheet she's working on than it is for her to say, and then I got this lunch and then I got this coconut water. And then I went to the gym and then I had a massage chair. Like those are the bits that are interesting. So there is a little bit of selection bias going on here, but it seems to me that these tech companies have got tons and tons and tons of bloat. They've gotten rid of that, given the fact that the stock market is squeezing them and profits are going to be down. So they've just had to do mass layoffs. Now 12,000 people is so many people.

• 37:27Zack Telander?

  So if you remember when these tech companies started blowing up, they became the subversive business, successful business. We're not going to have a massive floor of cubicles lined up. We're going to have an open air thing. We don't, you know, we, we need creative thinkers. I think like Google had like a group of people that they called like the dreamers or something. And they, it was this really cool kind of like futuristic ideal that became kind of cringey at a point. And I think we're catching the tail end of that. I think honest to God, they're like, oh wait, let's just, uh, you know, batten down the hatches here and like become an actual business. Cut, you know, trim the fat. It sucks.

• 38:09Zack Telander?

  It definitely sucks that, you know, the, the millennials, maybe even later, the Gen Z generation is dealing with these layoffs, whoever's there. And, and it could be older people or whatever. But I just remember this, there were a ton of movies, like even when I think about like the Elizabeth Holmes documentary at Theranos, a lot of what they talked about were these tech companies, just like. Just being very showy in their physical space. And that was with the, the amount of employees that they had these massive campuses with butterfly rooms and candy rooms. And we're different and, and things like that. When now they just, they just need to be a business, you know?

• 38:50Zack Telander?

  And I think that that's ultimately like, I think Elon, and again, I don't want to like, take a particular side in this, but I'm pretty sure Elon never ran Tesla like that. And, uh, so then when he went to Twitter and he kind of saw that same view of, of this like playland for work. He was like, all right, let's just stop doing this and let's dial it in a little bit.

• 39:15Chris Williamson?

  Yes. I think one of the reasons that you can afford to have so much bloat is that the margins that these companies have.

• 39:22Zack Telander?

  Yes.

• 39:22Chris Williamson?

  Are insane. The reason that you can have this massive campus and everyone gets free lunch and there's a massage chair. Is because these companies make tons and tons of money hand over fist because their costs. The, the cost of putting something on the internet, apart from the manpower made to create it and the service base to host it is essentially zero. And it's scalable and it's unlimitedly scalable.

• 39:44Zack Telander?

  It's, it's the explosion and then the catch up, right? And we are at the catch up now, like, um, it, the explosion was like, oh my God, we got so much money. We'll just do whatever. It doesn't matter. Everything is caught up now. There might be saturation in the market. There might be competitors that are coming to take you down. The stock market could suck. Uh, and then you're like, okay, now everything's caught up. Like, let's figure this out again. Uh, it was a fun time, but it was, it was interesting.

• 40:10Chris Williamson?

  Game over now. Yeah. Austin that's got, didn't Facebook try and start a, build a new business here, build a new building here? And they've just bailed out partway through. I just don't think that they're going to use it. Or is it Google maybe?

• 40:23Zack Telander?

  Um, I, I'm not sure. I'm not sure that they've built like a big campus. Um, I know there's a big Apple. Here, a lot of big tech companies, but I didn't know if there was a big like plan for some like massive amount of acreage for a big meta campus coming here.

• 40:39Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so getting on to something that's very, very important. Calling a man bald counts as sexual harassment, UK judge rules. UK employment tribunal argued that the use of the word bald as an insult related to a protected characteristic of sex. Calling a man bald can now be classed as sexual harassment. A UK employment tribunal judge has ruled, this is CNBC. Three members of the tribunal who decided on the ruling and alluded to their own experience of hair loss said that baldness was more prevalent in men than women. Therefore, they argued that the use of the word bald as an insult related to a protected characteristic of sex. The tribunal compared calling a man bald to commenting on the size of a woman's breasts based on a 1995 case. What do you think?

• 41:22Chris Williamson?

  Is calling a man bald the same as saying you're a small titty bitch?

• 41:30Chris Williamson?

  You're a small titty bitch. And it's not, it's just you're bald.

• 41:34Zack Telander?

  What if they have big titties then? Is that the same? Yeah, so small titty or big. Claiming, talking about another woman's breasts is the same as talking about a man's baldness.

• 41:44Chris Williamson?

  What if I say that you've got a beautiful head of hair? You've got a big head of hair. That's a lot of hair you've got there.

• 41:48Zack Telander?

  Yeah. Wow.

• 41:50Chris Williamson?

  Stop sexualizing me.

• 41:52Zack Telander?

  If we were to consider this versus the grammarly thing, I wonder which one's more ridiculous.

• 41:58Chris Williamson?

  This is pretty, this is pretty ridiculous.

• 42:01Zack Telander?

  This isn't, yeah, this is pretty, pretty insane.

• 42:03Chris Williamson?

  The story is really good. The ruling published Wednesday was made on a case where the insult was alleged to have been used against Tony Finn while he worked as an electrician for the British Bung Manufacturing Company. Finn had worked at the company who manufactures wooden cask closures for the brewing industry in Yorkshire in the northeast of England for nearly 24 years. He was fired last year and the circumstances around his dismissal were also part of the case. Finn claimed that he was called a bald and was also threatened by his supervisor, Jamie King, in a dispute in July 2019. The tribunal determined that using this insult was a violation against the claimant's dignity. It created an intimidating environment. It was done for that purpose and it related to the claimant's sex.

• 42:46Chris Williamson?

  So, ladies and gentlemen, do not call a man bald or you will get into serious trouble.

• 42:52Zack Telander?

  I mean, the, the, I didn't know that's why he filed it. I mean, that, that's just like, you're making fun of someone on the job. That's harassment, right? Uh, I don't think saying the word bald as a description should be then, uh, you know, more specifically like tuned into, oh, this is sexual harassment. Like the bald part, saying someone's a bald, like, that's just making fun of someone, right? Like, that's harassment, of course, on the job. Um, I didn't know that's what the story was.

• 43:28Chris Williamson?

  That's what, that's, that's what they said. But the problem, the problem is that if you want to do protected sex characteristics, you're going to open up these kinds of conversations, right? Because on average, women don't go bald that much. So it means that men will take their baldness as a protective characteristic. It's the same reason why actually-

• 43:47Zack Telander?

  Oh, so now we're factoring averages and generalizations.

• 43:51Chris Williamson?

  I think so.

• 43:52Zack Telander?

  I don't think we, I don't think people want to do that that often, do they?

• 43:56Chris Williamson?

  I saw a really interesting post on Instagram yesterday about the fact that calling someone uh, an incel or a virgin or a cook online is significantly more accepted than slut shaming. If you were to call a girl on social media a slut or a whore, that would go down very badly. But if you were to accuse a guy of being a virgin, that would just be seen as a, a quippy insult. So there are asymmetries in what is typically used and what's typically accepted, I think. And uh, yeah, bald lives matter, man.

• 44:30Zack Telander?

  But in think, in a world where we're not allowed to make rules based off of generalizations, right? Where we have to factor in every little specific thing, you are now making a rule based off of a generalization.

• 44:43Chris Williamson?

  What's an example of a rule where we're, that we're not allowed to make something based on a generalization?

• 44:48Zack Telander?

  Well, we have to factor in all different genders and, and norms. Like we, we create rules based off of, you know, uh, transgenders wanting to use different bathrooms, things like that, who are this, they're not- They are not a major piece. They're not, um,

• 45:08Chris Williamson?

  They're an outlier, yeah.

• 45:08Zack Telander?

  They're an outlier where now we're using a general, you know, a generality to determine this rule, right? Like, men are bald, women aren't. So now we have to make this rule. Very interesting.

• 45:21Chris Williamson?

  Well, it is, but I, I, I actually think that this is part of a just general odd trend of people getting themselves into situations in court where they just, they just want to get back at somebody that they feel has aggrieved them. And now, without actually realizing it, you have somehow created a precedent where calling a man bald counts as sexual harassment in the UK because it's a protected sex characteristic.

• 45:48Zack Telander?

  I, Americans see things that the UK do, and we just laugh like we think it's hilarious. And the funny thing is, the opposite happens too. The UK sees things that America does, and they laugh too. We just laugh at each other for the stupid shit that we do, the stupid rules that we come up with. It's so funny. I, I remember you said this to me yesterday, man. And I just, I was laughing so hard because it was in the UK. That's why I thought it was funny and that for no real reason. It's just like,

• 46:18Chris Williamson?

  It'll be coming for the US as well.

• 46:20Zack Telander?

  Yeah.

• 46:20Chris Williamson?

  Did you see that Floyd Mayweather is stepping back into the ring?

• 46:24Zack Telander?

  I mean, I, I didn't see that, but it's like, it's kind of weird that guy. His, uh, it's, it's the old, uh, well, if I can make a bunch of money off of this, like, am I really going to retire?

• 46:36Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 46:37Zack Telander?

  Just not, hi- his thing is not getting hit. It's,

• 46:40Chris Williamson?

  Yes. So this is from MMAfighting.com Floyd Mayweather books next exhibition bout against ex Bellator fighter, reality TV star, Aaron Chalmers. So I used to party with Aaron Chalmers in Newcastle back in the day. Aaron Chalmers became famous for being on Geordie Shore, which is

• 46:57Zack Telander?

  Oh, so he's a Geordie. Yeah, okay.

• 46:58Chris Williamson?

  British, British equivalent of Jersey Shore. And he then pivoted from reality TV to MMA. He had a two and two professional record, and then he retired two years ago. So a non boxer, I, I think he maybe did do one, one boxing fight perhaps, but anyway, he, uh, he,

• 47:19Chris Williamson?

  Is not exactly an elite opponent, hasn't been in the ring for two years. On Monday, Mayweather announced that he'll be facing ex Bellator fighter and reality TV star, Aaron Chalmers on February 25th. So that's only one month's time.

• 47:33Zack Telander?

  What sounds does it say?

• 47:36Chris Williamson?

  I don't think so. These, whatever they're called, exhibition fights really seem to be kind of fast and loose with all of this. Since retiring with a perfect 50-0 record, this final win coming over the two division UFC champion Conor McGregor, Mayweather has stayed busy with a long string of exhibition bouts. Remember, he only fought Deji, what, four months ago, three months ago? He's faced mixed martial artists, social influencers, and overmatched boxers while continuing to pad his fortune with what is likely a hefty payday every time he competes. He initially announced a fight against one championship Muay Thai fighter, Liam Harrison, who is coached by a friend of mine. However, that matchup fell apart as quickly as it came together because Harrison's under contract. Chalmers stepped in, a man who hasn't

• 48:20Chris Williamson?

  been in the ring for two years, and is a reality TV star. And the only thing that I can think is that Mayweather absolutely desperately needs the money.

• 48:32Zack Telander?

  Yeah, which is really strange, right? Because I remember some article saying he was one of the richest athletes on the planet at some point.

• 48:39Chris Williamson?

  Best paid.

• 48:41Zack Telander?

  Best paid. Okay, so not best managed, not best money managed.

• 48:45Chris Williamson?

  Correct. Not least expending.

• 48:47Zack Telander?

  Yeah. Wow. Okay, first off, who's watching that fight? Like, are we gonna be like, oh, man, the Floyd Mayweather, Jordy Shore guy's fight is gonna be on? You know what I mean? Like,

• 49:07Zack Telander?

  like, well, we gotta head out, we gotta go to a bar on Sixth. We gotta go.

• 49:11Chris Williamson?

  Can't wait to see Jordy Shore versus Floyd Mayweather. Well, here's another question. Like, why wouldn't it be, why not fight Jake Paul? Why not fight KSI? Those would both be, you fought KSI's worst boxing younger brother, and you've.

• 49:28Chris Williamson?

  For Logan Paul, that is the brother of.

• 49:31Zack Telander?

  Here's a better question. Why not just manage your money better?

• 49:35Chris Williamson?

  Why not stop spending it all? Yeah.

• 49:36Zack Telander?

  Yeah.

• 49:37Chris Williamson?

  Have you seen, let's see if his Instagram is still the same because it used to be the case back in the day that Floyd Mayweather's Instagram was basically endless adverts for a strip club.

• 49:49Zack Telander?

  Yes.

• 49:50Chris Williamson?

  Is it still that?

• 49:53Chris Williamson?

  Valuable people don't pay for things. Uh, maybe it's not. Maybe it's not quite as bad. Uh, no, it doesn't look as quite as degenerate as it used to. Would you remember what, do you remember the ones I mean? It was just.

• 50:05Zack Telander?

  Right, but that's his business.

• 50:06Chris Williamson?

  City adverts.

• 50:07Zack Telander?

  It's his business. It's probably good business. Titties are always good business.

• 50:11Chris Williamson?

  Well, yeah, but I mean, come on, mate. Like you're a boxer. You've got however many million followers you've got.

• 50:16Zack Telander?

  Yeah, right. We're talking about a guy who's made maybe a billion dollars in his sports career.

• 50:22Chris Williamson?

  28.6 million followers posting out titties to everybody and this post got.

• 50:28Zack Telander?

  Somebody's got to do it.

• 50:29Chris Williamson?

  2,000 comments. Yeah, I, um, I just think it, what it shows is not only does he need the money, but he needs the money now. Because if he needed the most money, he would be able to wait around for contract negotiations with a KSI or a Jake Paul. And it would end up being a much more attractive. I would watch Jake Paul versus Mayweather. I would go to Sixth Street and find somewhere with you and we would sit down and we would get tacos and we would watch that fight. So I'd be interested in what happens.

• 50:53Zack Telander?

  Yes.

• 50:54Chris Williamson?

  I have no interest in this. So what that means is.

• 50:57Zack Telander?

  Oh, well, I was a big follower of Jordy Shore, so I can't say, say the same, man.

• 51:01Chris Williamson?

  Sorry.

• 51:02Zack Telander?

  Literally the first fucking time I've ever heard of this show.

• 51:05Chris Williamson?

  You're massive. I am aware that you're a massive fan when it comes to that. Um, but yeah, I, I just think that it's evident that he really, really needs the money very, very badly.

• 51:14Zack Telander?

  Do you ever think, do you ever think that some of these, uh, some of these athletes are like junkies for what they do? Like it's all they know for their entire lives and then they get out and they're like, wow, I don't want to be out.

• 51:25Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 51:25Zack Telander?

  I mean, maybe, maybe junkie is a little harsh. Maybe it's not him. Junkie's a little harsh, but it could be the case. I don't know.

• 51:32Chris Williamson?

  What was that thing that you were telling me about to do with the new supplement law?

• 51:37Zack Telander?

  Oh, I don't know enough about it. We can't. I don't know enough.

• 51:41Chris Williamson?

  Okay, I took a couple of notes down for people that are interested. So Senator Richard Durbin is trying to pass a bill.

• 51:47Zack Telander?

  We call him Dick Durbin. Because this is, yeah, Dick Durbin. This is an Illinois senator, bro. This is, you know.

• 51:53Chris Williamson?

  How famous is the senator that he's got a, he's got an existing nickname?

• 52:00Zack Telander?

  So that, no, like, Richard is, that's the nickname for Richard.

• 52:05Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, but like, yeah. Would you, we call him Dick Durbin?

• 52:08Zack Telander?

  Yeah, because in, when he ran, I mean, it's much like vote for Dick Durbin. Oh, okay. Dick Durbin, yeah.

• 52:14Chris Williamson?

  I'd just vote for Dick.

• 52:14Zack Telander?

  I'll just say that Illinois and Chicago, some of the most corrupt politicians and politics to have ever existed in America. So we stand by that.

• 52:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, so he's trying to pass this bill, which is Bill S 4090. It would add a regulation which wouldn't allow any supplement to be sold without meeting expensive regulation criteria.

• 52:35Zack Telander?

  Um, and the question from the video that I had sent you was, um, what does he have to gain from this?

• 52:42Chris Williamson?

  Is he invested in some pharmaceutical companies?

• 52:44Zack Telander?

  Right.

• 52:45Chris Williamson?

  Can you explain for the people that don't understand, can you explain what the process is for getting a supplement out into the world at the moment?

• 52:50Zack Telander?

  As, as far as I'm concerned, there really is not much that needs to be done, like almost at all. I'm pretty sure, um, I don't know if you have to register with the FDA even. Um, and because there is an FDA bylaw, I remember looking into this at some point. Um, where like they don't have the right to, uh, like basically audit your product and make sure that you're selling whatever you're selling. So yeah, this law seems pretty, pretty good.

• 53:22Chris Williamson?

  That's the thing. I mean, I understand.

• 53:23Zack Telander?

  It seems pretty good, but I'll say this, who stands to win? And it's, that's why I dislike it. I was, I was leaning towards, let's not do this. Um, we talked extensively about how TikTok is. Making children's brains into gray matter. Okay, that's much more scary than some bodybuilder selling some, you know, sketchy supplement products to a small amount of people when, you know, I, I personally don't like seeing pharmaceutical, pharmaceutical companies and big companies winning, especially when a small business can do it the right way.

• 54:03Zack Telander?

  We know people who own small supplement business and they take a lot of pride in the product that they make. They would not be able to sell these products. They would not be able to have a business if this thing went through. And that's what I'm concerned with. So I'm leaning towards saying fuck dick Durbin on this one.

• 54:21Chris Williamson?

  Fuck dick.

• 54:22Zack Telander?

  Fuck dick on this.

• 54:24Chris Williamson?

  I, I thought you were gonna say that.

• 54:26Zack Telander?

  It's interesting to think about both sides, right? Like, yeah, regulation could be kind of cool because you could be consuming poison.

• 54:32Chris Williamson?

  Well, I said when you brought it up to me this morning before we went to the gym, as you swallowed down two scoops of completely untested, random powder mixed in water. You and Dylan are just having this proprietary blend of horse hair and bull semen and whatever it is, like cow toes and stuff. And that's what you, that's what you're taking. That being said, you guys in the bodybuilding community at large generally has a soft spot for a guy with a large bathtub and a ton of meth. And he sprinkles a bit of the meth into a pre-workout and then you get to use it. This is Jack 3D. This is what's that, what's the labs that makes crack?

• 55:18Zack Telander?

  Oh, so that, yeah, so crack is not even, that has dimethyl something. It's DMAA is what we call it.

• 55:26Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 55:26Zack Telander?

  DMAA. That's what, that's what was in the old Jack 3D formula. And that is a banned substance now.

• 55:35Chris Williamson?

  15 years later, re-released.

• 55:37Zack Telander?

  Yes, but you have to buy it on eBay, basically.

• 55:40Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 55:41Zack Telander?

  So, but I, I, look, we have a soft spot, right? For that, because it's like fun, you know, and we're responsible. Like I, we, we know one of the guys who I think is like the top mind around supplements in Derek.

• 55:57Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 55:58Zack Telander?

  And like, we are responsible consumers, obviously teenage kids who go and get.

• 56:06Zack Telander?

  Sketchy internet drug so that they can work out harder. That's not a good thing.

• 56:11Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. So I mean, look at Logan Paul's Prime, man. That's got 200 milligrams of caffeine and it's being drank by 11 year olds. It's being drank by kids that weigh one third of your body size.

• 56:22Zack Telander?

  Yeah, that's the wild thing. This is, and I'm going to go on a bit of a tangent here. Okay. Cause I do think there is a caffeine consumption like epidemic in America. Um, I remember asking this woman what she drank this morning. She said, I had a venti cold brew, which is a venti cold brew. And I like looked it up as something like 250 milligrams caffeine. She's 125 pounds. Okay. She's like, yeah, I'll probably get another caf or probably get another coffee. At 3pm. Now there is some science that talks about athletic performance around caffeine use, and it could be anywhere from, I mean, there's clinical dosage of like actual improvements in athletic performance.

• 57:04Zack Telander?

  It's three to sometimes even nine milligrams per kilogram of body weight. So being a hundred kilo male, you can take 300 to almost 900 milligrams. And it sounds crazy, right? But we're talking about athletic performance here. We're not talking about a buzz. So you can go to your marketing job, Suzie. Okay. So we have, there's absolutely a caffeine degeneracy and I definitely feed into it. Okay. I totally understand that, but uh, it's, it's something that definitely needs to be talked about. But I, what, something I want to say is Red Bull was the, like, was the first, like, okay, let's get caffeine. Remember that? And people used to hate Red Bull for that reason. And then there was Red Bull vodkas, which started to happen.

• 57:47Zack Telander?

  I remember it was all over the news saying, don't drink Red Bull vodka. Cause it's an upper and a downer. It's killing you. All this shit, right? Now we have drinks. I don't know how much is in a Red Bull. 80? 100?

• 57:58Chris Williamson?

  Uh, 150, I think.

• 58:00Zack Telander?

  The small can.

• 58:01Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, maybe 120, 150. I think it's 150.

• 58:03Zack Telander?

  That's another thing, bro. That's a walk in the fucking park, especially for Suzie. She's got to have two of those. Okay. So it just, the, the line just keeps changing. Another thing too, man, the, um, What's the martini, espresso martini? Okay, we used to complain about Red Bull vodkas. And now people are obsessed with espresso martinis. Hey, you're doubling the fucking Red Bull vodka sweetheart. You think you're being all cutesy because it's in a different glass? That's just caffeine and straight alcohol going right into you. Okay?

• 58:44Zack Telander?

  That's my rant and I'm sticking with it. I gotta, I gotta talk about this.

• 58:47Chris Williamson?

  That's a good take. It's a fair take, man. But I think when it comes to the supplement thing, the concern that you would have from everybody's side that doesn't want legislation is if the only way that companies can make stuff like a multivitamin or a greens powder or creatine or whatever, is to go through this very expensive process, you're then going to raise up the price because that needs to be passed down to the consumer. These companies aren't going to make products for nothing. So first off, you push a ton of small companies out, which reduces competition, which means that companies can then, that remain in the market can then charge more. They can also need to charge more because of the increased cost that they've had to go through in order to get this product regulated. And that means that the customers end up paying more. That being said, are there concerns?

• 59:32Chris Williamson?

  I have pretty big concerns about the fact that you can, me and you can go out to the garden and just create a random list of ingredients and go, now it's a supplement. Hide it behind proprietary blend. And it's just this pixie dust thing and we can create a cool brand and start selling it. That's, that, that, that is a concern. And I don't really know what the solution is. Neither of those worlds seem particularly great to me.

• 59:56Zack Telander?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm, I agree with you. I agree with you, even though it seems as though I'm like staunchly on one side. I totally agree with you. I do think though, I'm leaning away from the regulation.

• 1:00:08Chris Williamson?

  I would agree. I don't think that I'm down for regulation longer term. Um, what else we got here?

• 1:00:15Chris Williamson?

  That gym girl, that Jessica gym girl lady who did the TikTok thing, obviously recounted a horrific experience that she went through in the gym as she did hip thrusts and a guy glanced her way three or four times during a three-minute-long set. She got quite upset about it and now she's had to release a twit longer talking about how TikTok creator has issued an effusive, what's effusive? Effusive, expressing feelings of gratitude, pleasure, or approval in an unrestrained or heartfelt manner. I don't think that that was the tone of her public apology. Yeah, I don't think she said that word. No, Jessica Fernandez was hit with a torrent of abuse over a video she posted last week

• 1:00:58Chris Williamson?

  in which she fumed that a fellow weightlifter was staring at her like a piece of meat. And she did say that. She also said, this is why I don't want to have children. This is why we need to, like, I should go over and pull his pee pee off. It was just that every different headline, like, quote, he headline that you would get in a TikTok video was put into one. We also watched from an unnamed gym in Austin, Texas, a video that started off with a guy pretending like he was going to teach you how to approach girls in the gym. And it's a dude with his top off and he's in good condition. And he says, I'm going to teach you how to approach girls in

• 1:01:39Chris Williamson?

  the gym. And then it pans to a group of six or seven girls next to him. And they just say, don't, and flick their hair and walk away. Total girl boss moment. A serious girl boss moment. I don't know about you, but if I'm into the gym and I'm single and I'm trying to find a girl that I like, dating in the gym is a really, really, or finding partners in the gym is a really good place to start. You know that you've got tons in common. You know that you are probably going to have a fitness journey that you could go on together.

• 1:02:17Chris Williamson?

  It seems to me that reducing the likelihood that men not only outside of the gym, because it'll cross over, but in the gym will approach a girl that they like, who both may be single, and maybe the girl was looking at him and thinking, wow, like, he's quite nice. Are there situations during which girls feel uncomfortable in the gym? Yes. Does this Jessica doing her hip thrusts at 60 pounds class as one of those? No, she doesn't.

• 1:02:43Zack Telander?

  Yeah, so I have the post right here. This guy kept making me feel extremely uncomfortable and uncomfortable at my gym. This is why I'll end up crying on stream because I feel so grossed out at times with the amount of sexualization I experience. Hopefully this spreads awareness for girls who experience this type of treatment at the gym. And then on the next slide, so this is by a meme account called The Gains, did great research on this. But the next slide, it's the, it shows her, her page, she's a content creator, and oh, there's a link tree. And in that link tree, there is an OnlyFans. So, look, I don't want to say, I don't want

• 1:03:24Zack Telander?

  to say this, because that would be way too far of a leap, that if you are on, if you have an OnlyFans, you deserve to get sexualized everywhere. But it's, it does seem a little bit odd that you're complaining about the sexualization of yourself when that's exactly what you're commodifying. Right? And, and the actual video herself, the guy was just like, he would like look over. That was it. It was like

• 1:03:51Chris Williamson?

  For half a second. He went over and I think he asked, he asked if he could help her to put the weights on. But I mean, this is, this particular story has been heavily, heavily, heavily done to death, but quite well. And I think that situations like this are important to remind people about boundaries. And, you know, her grovelling apology that she's come out and spoken about how she didn't realize that this is damaging, and she reflected after the thousands of comments that she received, et cetera, et cetera. I think that Very few people would look at that video and say, the guy did anything wrong. Almost everybody would look at it and say, the girl was out of order. And the response is important because it teaches both guys and girls what is appropriate behaviour.

• 1:04:36Chris Williamson?

  If you want guys to walk around a gym being, I've thought this before, especially some of the gyms that we've trained at in Austin. There's girls everywhere, right? And I'm like, I can't, there's nowhere really for me to look, apart from looking at you, that doesn't have a girl within my field of view. So you can imagine if you're a young, impressionable guy, that you could actually get yourself into the stage where the toxic male gaze is something you're so terrified of, that you actually become super self-conscious. Maybe you're really unhappy with, you feel like you've inherited some flaw, some sort of gender, sex-based flaw that you can't get rid of. You're this unsalvageable, insufficient, awful human. That's not very good.

• 1:05:18Chris Williamson?

  And then also for girls in the gym, this reminds, because girls will, all of our preferences get influenced by the people that are around us. If other girls start to see that, let's say that the response to that video was, yeah, fuck that guy, that's completely out of order, that guy totally shouldn't be doing that. That will begin to set the new boundary for what girls deem in the gym to be acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. And if you make acceptable behaviour massively unacceptable, that basically conditions girls to feel much more vulnerable all the time. They're going to become more upset at things that maybe aren't worth them becoming upset at. This is how concept creep happens, right?

• 1:06:01Chris Williamson?

  If, if everything is racist, then nothing is racist. Right, yes. And over time, you start to expand the definition of racism to encapsulate anything that you can. But the problem that nobody ever talks about is the fact that for the people who experience both real and non-real racism, that makes their lives worse. The people that experience real harassment in the gym, which was not this girl, now feel like they're being lumped in with somebody that experienced something way less traumatic. And for the people who aren't experiencing sexual objectification, they're now wondering, well, maybe that, maybe that little glance that that guy did through the door as we walked through, maybe that is something that I should be concerned about. And this is how people become ever more anxious in situations because of this concept creep.

• 1:06:44Zack Telander?

  And that that anxiety goes away over the internet. And so I think the the physical picking up of women or vice versa is definitely dying down a little bit, especially if there's a fear to looking like a creep and being caught on video for it. But you you had talked about just in general, talking to women or other people in the gym. And what was you said this, this is kind of the the red pill definition thing is like the difference between a creep. And what is it is like?

• 1:07:20Chris Williamson?

  The difference between someone you creeped out by and someone that you are happy came up to you is how attracted you are to them.

• 1:07:26Zack Telander?

  Right, which is not entirely true, but that's a very that's a very like red pill.

• 1:07:30Chris Williamson?

  It's not entirely false, though, either, right?

• 1:07:33Zack Telander?

  True.

• 1:07:33Chris Williamson?

  Even a girl that's in a relationship, if if some absolute hunk, if Chris Hemsworth comes over to her, she is less likely to feel insulted at the very least.

• 1:07:45Zack Telander?

  Right. And, you know, it could actually feel good for her or whatever.

• 1:07:51Chris Williamson?

  It would be complimentary.

• 1:07:52Zack Telander?

  Yeah. Yeah. And I think the main thing that I would ever suggest to someone is to just try and have some self awareness and to go along the lines of like friendship first and see what happens. Right? I mean, I think that in general, like, there is a place, I guess, for pickup artistry, but it's much narrower than just meeting and talking to people. And you're gonna I feel like you're gonna have a higher likelihood of being successful with a potential mate if if you go that route, if you go the route of just talking first and and establishing some sort of base level connection.

• 1:08:33Chris Williamson?

  Well, being casual is always going to come off more cool, right?

• 1:08:37Zack Telander?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:37Chris Williamson?

  I think the main mediator. Is whether or not girls feel safe. I think that their concern, you know, if Chris Hemsworth came up and was, sorry, I just wanted to say that I think you look really nice today and I hope that you're having a great workout. And then he wanders off or whatever, right? Or what's your name? Whatever the lame opening line is that you decide to use. Whether that was Chris Hemsworth or some other guy, the bigger difference is going to be if this dude comes up and starts being very, very forthcoming, uh, you know, close body language.

• 1:09:10Zack Telander?

  But that doesn't work no matter what, I think.

• 1:09:13Chris Williamson?

  True, but even if even Chris Hemsworth couldn't get away with that is my point. It doesn't matter how good looking that that guy is. If he comes over and he overlays that aggressiveness, you're going to begin to really, really select out. There will be a cohort of women that are attracted to that very forthcoming type guy, but it's going to be significantly tuned down. And the worry that most girls have about guys coming up to them in the gym, I think is that it's not, you know, it must be flattering for a girl to have a guy come over and pay her a compliment. I don't know. Do you want to go through the rest of your life, never receiving compliments that are well meaning and not objectifying and all the rest of it? Is that a world that you really want to live in? If you're a girl that works hard in the gym and a guy never comes

• 1:09:57Chris Williamson?

  up to you and says that you actually look nice? That would suck.

• 1:10:01Zack Telander?

  Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, it depends. I don't know what the result of this would be.

• 1:10:06Chris Williamson?

  I don't know. Well, I mean, we're not girls and we don't often receive compliments. The only compliments that guys receive in the gym are from other guys. I think in 15 or 16 years of training in the gym, I've never received a compliment from a girl in the gym. Uh, I can't remember. I literally can't remember. If you ever received, uh, maybe with weightlifting, you would get that kind of like good lift type thing.

• 1:10:27Zack Telander?

  Yeah, good lift type of thing, but I don't know. Um.

• 1:10:34Zack Telander?

  Maybe I like, I like your shirt.

• 1:10:37Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:37Zack Telander?

  Yeah, something like that, or like I like those shorts.

• 1:10:40Chris Williamson?

  The lowest ball.

• 1:10:41Zack Telander?

  Yeah, something like that.

• 1:10:43Chris Williamson?

  Anyway, what have you got coming up next, man? What can people expect from you over the next month or so?

• 1:10:47Zack Telander?

  Um, just some new, uh, style of content that I've been doing with our friend, our mutual friend Dylan. It's kind of, what we've decided to do was

• 1:10:59Zack Telander?

  sometimes just lifting content online and most of the time lifting content online can get kind of boring. Other times podcasting content online can get kind of boring. So what we've done is kind of miss, mix the two. If you're ever bored with the way that the conversation is going, just hold out and you can watch us do some snatching and cleaner jerking and like fun. You know, weightlifting style movements and things like that. Um, and if you get bored of that, we might be talking about valuable things like it doesn't matter. You were even on the episode today and I'm really excited about the potential for that. These shorter clips that we've been posting on Instagram have been doing really well, and I'm hoping that it can kind of draw people to the longer style. People have been asking for it. Like we would love to see a podcast like this. This is a great idea.

• 1:11:44Chris Williamson?

  You did Matt Fraser as well. There's a Matt Fraser episode people can go and check out.

• 1:11:47Zack Telander?

  That was honest to God, that episode was like why I started a podcast. I felt that when I met Matt Fraser, him and I were like kindred spirits. We both went to University of Vermont at the same time. We both think the same way around training and we both started in weightlifting. But then after that conversation, I felt this emotional connection to the guy that I didn't think I would, I would have had before. And I like, upon reflecting, I'm like, damn, this is really what podcasting is all about. Like, don't you feel the same way? Like sometimes you, you get done with an episode and you're like, man, that was a good episode. Really great. But other times you get done with someone and you're like, holy fuck, I just made like a, a bond.

• 1:12:30Zack Telander?

  You know, and I'm so blessed to be able to share that experience now. It was something that I was nervous. You and I had talked a lot about should I do a podcast, should I not? And I did it and I'm loving it. And you know, something with this training style of podcast where we're lifting, I want to bring people on. Like I want to bring people that, you know, go to the gym casually and lift with them and like shoot the shit. I think it could be a really great idea. So that's really all I have going on. Anyone who wants to check me out, go to Zach Telander, Z A C K T E L A N D E R on YouTube. And you can also check me out on Instagram, Coach underscore Z T. And then if you want to start training, you can go to my Patreon, patreon.com slash Zach Telander. That's it. Dude, I appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you.

• 1:13:16Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 1:13:27Speaker 03

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• 1:13:33Speaker 04

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• 1:13:37Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:13:40Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 1:13:41Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a middle without parent.