Radio Better Offline: David "Shingy" Shing

Welcome to Radio Better Offline, a tech talk radio show recorded out of iHeartRadio's studio in New York City. In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by famed “digital prophet” David “Shingy” Shing, who calls himself a “creative omnivore,” to talk about adtech, being a "digital prophet," and society's attraction to nostalgia. https://www.shingy.com/ Vote for Better Offline's "Man Who Killed Google Search" as the best business podcast episode in this year's Webby's! Open until April 17! Vote today! https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2025/podcasts/individual-episode/business --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at https://discord.com/invite/QUUQUP9szv Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitron See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Speaker 01

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• 1:19Speaker 03

  Call Zone Media.

• 1:23Ed Zitron?

  Hi, me, Momo, Ed Zitron. This is Better Offline. We're in iHeartRadio studio in beautiful New York City.

• 1:40Ed Zitron?

  Today, I am joined by a man who in 2014 rose to fame after becoming AOL's Digital Prophet. He joins me in the studio today, David Shing, best known as Shingy David.

• 1:50Speaker 04

  Hi, Ed. How are you, mate?

• 1:50Ed Zitron?

  Shingy, I am fantastic.

• 1:51Speaker 04

  Hell of an intro.

• 1:52Ed Zitron?

  Oh, yeah. This is the most normal show in tech. What are you up to these days, Shingy?

• 1:57Speaker 04

  Uh, great question. There's three things I'm primarily up to.

• 2:01Ed Zitron?

  Okay.

• 2:02Speaker 04

  I'm out speaking and educating. That's

• 2:04Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 2:04Speaker 04

  what I'm known for. I also have a creative house.

• 2:06Ed Zitron?

  Nice.

• 2:07Speaker 04

  That started around pandemic times.

• 2:09Ed Zitron?

  What's a creative house do?

• 2:10Speaker 04

  It does everything from iconography all the way through to strategy. So all the way through.

• 2:14Ed Zitron?

  What's iconography?

• 2:15Speaker 04

  A brand, you happen to be wearing a brand on your T-shirt right now. Somebody designed that, dude.

• 2:18Ed Zitron?

  Okay, so a design thing?

• 2:20Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 2:20Ed Zitron?

  Cool.

• 2:20Speaker 04

  And then the other flip side is a advisory practice.

• 2:23Ed Zitron?

  That's cool.

• 2:24Speaker 04

  And it's institutional advisory as well as small startups, which has really been research for me, which has been amazing.

• 2:29Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, as a fellow consultant with a podcast, it's always good to meet another one. So you, it's been a while since you rose to fame. What kind of hap- what kind of happened? Because you, I remember I was in the Bay Area at the time when I saw you, you arise on MSNBC and then just went and did other things. I had to go and make some mistakes in my life, I guess. Um, what was it you did at AOL?

• 2:53Speaker 04

  So I ran thirteen countries for them. I ran the media and marketing for them.

• 2:56Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 2:56Speaker 04

  Throughout Europe.

• 2:58Ed Zitron?

  You, but what, what did that actually entail?

• 3:01Speaker 04

  I ran thirteen countries with multi millions of users.

• 3:04Ed Zitron?

  But what did you do each day? Because?

• 3:05Speaker 04

  I launched, I launched a series of websites.

• 3:07Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 3:08Speaker 04

  And I launched a series of ad platforms.

• 3:10Ed Zitron?

  Uh huh.

• 3:11Speaker 04

  And I helped change the iconography for AOL. And when you build a new brand and you don't have any budget to support it.

• 3:16Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 3:17Speaker 04

  You have to think about a way to be in the marketplace. So I created a persona.

• 3:21Ed Zitron?

  Wait, did you not have like much budget?

• 3:23Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, we did. But not in Europe.

• 3:25Ed Zitron?

  No, not in Europe?

• 3:26Speaker 04

  No. So because what happens with a big company, you could probably appreciate this. If one division performs poorly, everyone suffers.

• 3:34Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 3:35Speaker 04

  So if you're not close to the sun, you're not going to get all the budget. It's just how it works.

• 3:39Ed Zitron?

  It's funny because your whole thing, I don't say this as an insult, got kind of flattened to that one picture of you with the kind of

• 3:45Speaker 04

  MSNBC?

• 3:46Ed Zitron?

  Yes, the MSNBC. Yeah, because, and then there was that Guardian interview. It's like you drew a zebra? It said you, you showed someone AOL a picture of a zebra.

• 3:55Speaker 04

  Zebra pants?

• 3:56Ed Zitron?

  Zebra pants, possibly. It's just

• 3:59Speaker 04

  I was wearing them, by the way.

• 4:00Ed Zitron?

  Nice, alright. Yeah, it's, it's funny because you've become

• 4:05Ed Zitron?

  Somewhat of like a, like a, I wanna say like a character within tech. A meme, I think meme's fair, but it's more than that.

• 4:14Speaker 04

  The character's probably a little underrated.

• 4:15Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, it's just because you have a real job, it seems, and you have this whole time, despite the fact that I've been told, like, oh, this guy just like shows up and says he's the digital prophet. And I was genuinely curious about like it, the, I'm, I'm excited.

• 4:28Speaker 04

  I never really told anybody the mystery.

• 4:31Ed Zitron?

  I, I wanna hear the story.

• 4:32Speaker 04

  And the magic of it still replicates today. So I would go in and get interviews, get audiences with brands we could never be in front of.

• 4:42Ed Zitron?

  Like what?

• 4:43Speaker 04

  Like what brand?

• 4:44Ed Zitron?

  Like, yeah, what kind of brands?

• 4:45Speaker 04

  Nike.

• 4:46Ed Zitron?

  Nike. Why couldn't Awell get in front of them?

• 4:48Speaker 04

  Well, they could, but they're gonna just sell ads. I'm trying to sell innovation on top of the ads. So much bigger than we would ever be able to do.

• 4:54Ed Zitron?

  And what would that innovation manifest as? What were you selling to Nike for ex? I, I know this is just an example.

• 5:00Speaker 04

  Um, we invented an ad called Devil.

• 5:02Ed Zitron?

  Uh huh.

• 5:02Speaker 04

  Which was like this incredible new magazine-esque style ad takeover.

• 5:08Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 5:09Speaker 04

  That the I A B ended up picking up and running with. So we were just building things that were radically different than spots and dots that sales teams are selling.

• 5:15Ed Zitron?

  Right. So how do you feel about AI? How are you feeling about all this? Cause look, you were part of a hype cycle. So end of twenty fourteen was like, was like a very hype driven time. It's like the, the sexiest time in Indiegogo and Kickstarter land, I would say, back then. What do you think of AI? How do you feel about it? Do you think it's a bubble?

• 5:38Speaker 04

  No.

• 5:39Ed Zitron?

  No.

• 5:39Speaker 04

  It's been, well, it's also been around for forty, fifty years.

• 5:42Ed Zitron?

  Right. So generative AI specifically.

• 5:44Speaker 04

  What do I think about that?

• 5:45Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, sure.

• 5:46Speaker 04

  Think it's magical.

• 5:47Ed Zitron?

  Really?

• 5:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, it hallucinates occasionally, but I think it's great. Cause if I can extend a background without having to go reshoot it, that's pretty good. And I'm able to change it out.

• 5:56Ed Zitron?

  Can you do that though?

• 5:57Speaker 04

  Yeah. Have you not been, have you not even checked out Firefly or?

• 5:59Ed Zitron?

  I, I have. I, I read, I read your sub stack. I do read your blog. It's just right now, as a hype man, I don't mean that derisively. I, I mean that like your job, your job is ostensibly hype. Right now, it feels like there is this marketing dissonance between Firefly, which I I'm aware and I know there are lots of people who listen to the show who are going to be very angry at me that we're even talking about Adobe AI. Calm down, everyone. It's Shingy. Allow him in. But it's it feels like you've got this massive business failure happening in the background. Billions of dollars burn from OpenAI, but you've got some utility. How do you balance that? Like, how do you?

• 6:39Speaker 04

  In what characterization of you said generative AI and then OpenAI?

• 6:43Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, well, I'm talking about the fact that you're hyping up something that is unsustainable right now.

• 6:49Speaker 04

  Which bit?

• 6:50Ed Zitron?

  I mean, the generative AI features of Firefly, for example, the same.

• 6:54Speaker 04

  Why is it not sustainable?

• 6:55Ed Zitron?

  Well, because OpenAI burns five billion dollars a year. They still haven't worked out any profitability for any of these models.

• 7:00Speaker 04

  They don't own Firefly.

• 7:02Ed Zitron?

  Yes, but Firefly is run on generative models, so.

• 7:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:05Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 7:06Speaker 04

  And they help create ad performances.

• 7:09Ed Zitron?

  Sure.

• 7:09Speaker 04

  At scale.

• 7:10Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 7:11Speaker 04

  So at some point in time, these things level out.

• 7:13Ed Zitron?

  When? Because that's the thing, like the amount.

• 7:15Speaker 04

  When there's demand for better ads.

• 7:18Ed Zitron?

  Right. I just feel like we're a little lost within the generative AI conversation, like as an industry.

• 7:25Speaker 04

  Right.

• 7:25Ed Zitron?

  And I'm curious, you see.

• 7:27Speaker 04

  Do you play with runway?

• 7:28Ed Zitron?

  I I've played with Sora a bit.

• 7:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:31Ed Zitron?

  I just think I found runway to be really fucking mediocre.

• 7:33Speaker 04

  It well, there's a dystopian to it, which is definitely that shine will come off and that production is going to be pretty amazing. Single, single tool that does one thing, no good.

• 7:43Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 7:43Speaker 04

  But a tool that allows you to master audio without an engineer, pretty amazing.

• 7:47Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, but does that exist yet?

• 7:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, it does with voice AI.

• 7:51Ed Zitron?

  Cause Riverside is not good.

• 7:53Speaker 04

  Riverside is a podcasting platform.

• 7:54Ed Zitron?

  And they have AI mastering on it.

• 7:56Speaker 04

  God bless them, but they're not just doing mastering. So you can upload something to something like voice AI and it's absolutely designed for mastering.

• 8:02Ed Zitron?

  Right, but there is this massive financial problem at the side of this, that this stuff is burning so much money. And I guess you could have on-device models, but that's nowhere near what we. I just, I don't know how you couch these two things.

• 8:18Speaker 04

  Um, supply and demand. I mean, there's a massive supply for new ways of creating different tools.

• 8:26Speaker 04

  And the supply cycle is incredibly wide. It feels like web, you know, back in the web one dot O cycles.

• 8:33Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 8:33Speaker 04

  But now it has different tools that are much faster built.

• 8:36Ed Zitron?

  But the demand isn't there.

• 8:38Speaker 04

  You don't think so?

• 8:39Ed Zitron?

  I mean, I did a piece a few months ago, no, weeks ago, Jesus Christ, time dilation, where it was like Copilot has like eleven million monthly active users.

• 8:48Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 8:49Ed Zitron?

  Which is pretty piss poor, and that's Microsoft's. I am hearing that there are various companies like Eleven Labs, which are kind of leveling out as far as user base goes. What happens if this doesn't get much bigger?

• 8:59Speaker 04

  It just continues to do what everything else does. It tails off and becomes a niche, which is okay.

• 9:03Ed Zitron?

  You think so?

• 9:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's totally okay.

• 9:05Ed Zitron?

  So you seem quite high on it. So what are you using then? Talk to me about the AI tools, tools you use.

• 9:09Speaker 04

  Um, the obvious. I mean, I think chat's interesting. I think that Claude is interesting to help you do draft one. So those sort of tools are fine. I think Sora is it seems interesting but dystopian. Runaway works okay if you can actually model it correctly.

• 9:26Ed Zitron?

  When you say dystopian, what do you mean?

• 9:28Speaker 04

  Over glossy, really hard to understand, depth of field. Like it's if you're going to be a deep practitioner, you know the sort of thing you want.

• 9:38Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 9:39Speaker 04

  To try and visualize that can be very difficult. And I think that's kind of the challenge today is these tools do remarkable amount of work.

• 9:46Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 9:46Speaker 04

  It's a matter of can you get it to do the work that you want it to do without taking more time than actually doing it physically.

• 9:54Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 9:54Speaker 04

  With software. So it's just software and it's and it's curious, but it's not. It, here's what I am seeing.

• 10:02Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 10:02Speaker 04

  I'm seeing a consolidation of tools saying, here's one tool that you log into and it does all these things for you.

• 10:06Ed Zitron?

  Hmm.

• 10:06Speaker 04

  But it does all of them only okay.

• 10:08Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 10:09Speaker 04

  So you have to splinter off and find something that does just what you want it to do.

• 10:12Ed Zitron?

  So focused.

• 10:12Speaker 04

  And it, you know, better at book writing than maybe stories or better at drawing than maybe painting a landscape. I mean, these articulations have become really just splinters of a certain technique.

• 10:25Ed Zitron?

  Hmm.

• 10:26Speaker 04

  Today, all corralled into one thing. And I don't think anything does a great job. Words are great. I think the, the agent.

• 10:33Ed Zitron?

  I don't know if I agree on the words side.

• 10:34Speaker 04

  I don't, I, well, as a.

• 10:36Ed Zitron?

  But never let, and you still, your, your point's made.

• 10:38Speaker 04

  But, but it's, it's way better than me as a first edit copywriter, so.

• 10:41Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, but that's a skill issue, Shingy. Like, like you could get better by writing more.

• 10:46Speaker 04

  You could.

• 10:46Ed Zitron?

  Right, it's good. Like, do you, is your Substack Chat GPT written or Claude written?

• 10:51Speaker 04

  No, but it's, but it's, you know. I think what's interesting about the tools, I don't want to have to necessarily become very technical when I'm wanting to shoot a, an idea of a landscape or something. By the way, I'm only using my own images and only purposely not using anything generative. It's all like photos from my own photo library.

• 11:11Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 11:12Speaker 04

  So no stock, no, no generative, because until it's actually really good, as much as I'm an advocate for it, I'm, I'm a better believer in craft than I am than.

• 11:20Ed Zitron?

  Uh huh.

• 11:21Speaker 04

  So can these tools, like mastering, for example, of sound, love that, love that for a tool, because I have no clue how to bring EQs up, I have no clue how to bring in any depth within a voice and no clue on that. So God bless.

• 11:31Ed Zitron?

  And do you use it for that? Like you actually use it? What do you use for mastering it?

• 11:36Speaker 04

  I, I use voice, I think it's voice.ai. I've used a couple of them.

• 11:39Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 11:39Speaker 04

  And by the way, when you skim it, you know, when I'm looking for something, it's typically in, at urgency.

• 11:44Ed Zitron?

  Uh huh.

• 11:44Speaker 04

  Other levels are low and I can't seem to bring them up and they're over peaky and then.

• 11:47Ed Zitron?

  Right, right.

• 11:47Speaker 04

  I use a service, it comes back, it's too peaky, or it's got too much bass. I don't know, right? So it's really about can, can I use things or tools that help get to a better artifact than the actual tools that I can use? Because democratization of tools means that everything gets kind of flatlined. So I'm looking for things to become really interesting. I don't necessarily, I don't necessarily think that the quality of the end result is higher resolution enough.

• 12:14Ed Zitron?

  Hmm.

• 12:14Speaker 04

  But it sure beats squeaky markers and bleed proof pads.

• 12:18Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 12:18Speaker 04

  We grew up with. So the efficiency of getting ideas out, love that.

• 12:23Ed Zitron?

  Right, but is it craft if you're using generative AI?

• 12:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think it is. I think it's, I think an, an artist can use any tool, this just happens to be one of them today.

• 12:33Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 12:34Speaker 04

  Now, you talked about value though. You talked about this thing seems to be bleeding money, et cetera, et cetera.

• 12:38Ed Zitron?

  All of them.

• 12:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, God bless.

• 12:41Ed Zitron?

  What do you mean, God bless?

• 12:41Speaker 04

  I mean, that's, that's going to be their problem. At some point in time, they're going to have to factor that out and figure out a model that everyone's trying to, you know, generate these tools that can be the panacea and then they're going to make money on it at some point.

• 12:54Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, maybe.

• 12:55Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's just not all the tools are going to make money, you know that.

• 12:59Ed Zitron?

  Sure, but none of the tools currently make money. Like that's, that's kind of the thing. It just, it feels like an atypical hype cycle in that having lived through enough of these now myself, I'm a little bit younger than you. I've never seen one that was just burning cash like this and it but I've never seen one with more nor have I ever seen one with more disconnection between the utility and the marketing hype. It feels like they are promising more than ever.

• 13:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:26Ed Zitron?

  And we're in this weird dissonant area where it's like no one really knows what's gonna happen.

• 13:32Speaker 04

  Well, you know, I live in the the space of ads still, so from an ad perspective, there is no shortage of demand.

• 13:38Ed Zitron?

  But but for what, though?

• 13:40Speaker 04

  Ads.

• 13:40Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, sure, but demand for ads, but what about generative AI? Like, where does generative AI into this? Are you saying creative?

• 13:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, helping to create the ads. I think the ads that are created with generative are pretty rubbish.

• 13:51Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 13:52Speaker 04

  But the truth is, there's a demand for lots of ads because of just sheer audience growth. But the reality is that efficiency of can you make ads cheaper? That's a that's a conundrum.

• 14:02Ed Zitron?

  But is is generative AI doing that?

• 14:05Speaker 04

  Uh, I don't think so. I think they're doing some of it, perhaps. Maybe they're doing an interesting background that would have taken yeah, but it can't, it's not the whole thing. And by the way, if you and I were to look at a bunch of ads right now and try and pick with their AI or not AI, you would, I think nine out of 10 would get. We would know that that's written by AI.

• 14:21Ed Zitron?

  There's like an uncanny valley feel to them.

• 14:24Speaker 04

  It's got a dystopian, I guess. It's kind of feels a little bit like it. And we've gone way beyond hallucination. We've gone in this kind of, you just know. You can just see it and feel it. It's cold. It's weird.

• 14:33Ed Zitron?

  And the funny thing is, is I think what you're talking about is not hallucination. It is actually an accurate depiction of something, but it's too accurate. It has this kind of sheen to it.

• 14:44Speaker 04

  It does. It does have a sheen.

• 14:45Ed Zitron?

  Feels like the movie AI.

• 14:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:46Ed Zitron?

  Ironically.

• 14:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, it does.

• 14:47Ed Zitron?

  I said that it came off my head. I'm like, shit, I'm stupid. Anyway.

• 14:50Speaker 04

  And the number of frames a second seem off. There's something very

• 14:53Ed Zitron?

  There's too much light. The lighting's perfect.

• 14:55Speaker 04

  I completely agree with you, but it's also where I see those sort of things used during more kind of tiny jads, like things that are just trying to get a lot of these creatives saturating the marketplace, which ultimately if we're not careful, we'll make ads more expensive, meaning to to get to Ed, the human at the end of it. If you've if you've now just become completely oblivious. Or ignoring ads that feel like they're AI'd because unless that gets figured out.

• 15:22Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 15:22Speaker 04

  You'll become blinded these AI ads. So to get to you is even going to be harder.

• 15:25Ed Zitron?

  So this is the weird thing right now. Ads and AI don't seem to have touched that much. And I say this because there's a company. So you heard of perplexity?

• 15:34Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 15:34Ed Zitron?

  So perplexity is allegedly, Hayden Field at CNBC reported this last year. They're apparently looking for like fifty five dollars CPM.

• 15:42Speaker 04

  On what platform?

• 15:43Ed Zitron?

  On on their search net, their search platform.

• 15:45Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 15:46Ed Zitron?

  But you've not really seen ads and AI touched. Like even Google's AI search, they just did ads.

• 15:52Speaker 04

  No, I think perplexity, if you were to give it a prompt and it recommended something that you were looking for.

• 15:58Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 15:58Speaker 04

  Assuming you're looking for a piece of gear and they recommend a piece of gear versus these other ten pieces of gear.

• 16:03Ed Zitron?

  Ah.

• 16:03Speaker 04

  That review is probably in their eyes an ad.

• 16:05Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 16:06Speaker 04

  You know what I mean? It's not, it may not be a display ad as we've seen it in the past.

• 16:09Ed Zitron?

  They're not doing ads yet. It's just.

• 16:11Speaker 04

  No, but I'm saying they could be in the description. You you're you're are they formally not doing ads or they haven't?

• 16:17Ed Zitron?

  They haven't started yet. No, they want to.

• 16:19Speaker 04

  And when they do those ads, they will be subtle like that. They will be within descriptions. They will be contextually relevant to that person in terms of the totality of a story and not just a display.

• 16:29Ed Zitron?

  I'm just wondering.

• 16:30Speaker 04

  I think it will be.

• 16:30Ed Zitron?

  No, no, no, I'm I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just wondering how they pull it off because the whole thing with hallucinations, you can't predict where an ad is going to appear or what it's going to appear next to.

• 16:38Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 16:39Ed Zitron?

  And I think the.

• 16:40Speaker 04

  If it's with with if it's with words, the context is wider.

• 16:43Ed Zitron?

  You think so?

• 16:43Speaker 04

  If it's with voice.

• 16:44Ed Zitron?

  They're not going to do voice. Like Arabin's not.

• 16:47Speaker 04

  You know, it's like, it's just a wider context though. So let's just let's just stream for a second. If you're able to do that, at least you've got a wider con- concept of what the story is versus a display ad around.

• 16:58Ed Zitron?

  Sure, but I mean, I mean, just like practically speaking, if you vomit out a bunch of text.

• 17:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:03Ed Zitron?

  Which may rip off a journalist outlet or two. How do you like I?

• 17:09Ed Zitron?

  Perhaps I need to actually ask you the question. Why do you think that ads and AI really haven't touched it? Because ChatGPT doesn't monetize with that perplexity is thinking about it, haven't. Google AI has only just started considering it. Do you think it's a generative side? Like you've been in the ad slot for decades now.

• 17:27Speaker 04

  I guess it depends on, it depends on which place you want to sit in that question. Are you talking about me as somebody going to that tool to use it?

• 17:34Ed Zitron?

  No, I'm wondering why the companies themselves have been hesitant.

• 17:38Speaker 04

  No, no, no, hang on, let me, let me, let's get back to the context real quick. So I can understand the framing. Is it, is it me going to perplexity's website to be able to use its tool? And it's folding in ads in the results of me using it as a user?

• 17:50Ed Zitron?

  I mean, I mean on a grander, I mean on a grander perspective, like taking it away from just like the user right now. You've been in ads for a long time.

• 17:57Speaker 04

  Forever. So I think.

• 17:57Ed Zitron?

  Why do you think they, it feels like ads to ad tech has traditionally been very quick to adopt stuff. Like they will rush, they rush to fucking Meerkat, they rush to everything fast. Yeah, remember that? Um, but it's AI, they've generative AI, generative search, ChatGPT.

• 18:12Speaker 04

  Because I just don't think it's, I would, I would say that it's just a little naive. And I have seen ads. I have seen ads that are directed by, so scripted by AI, shot by humans.

• 18:29Ed Zitron?

  Sure.

• 18:30Speaker 04

  And they look, there's just something missing. And because that litmus test of is it warm enough? Does it feel like something is emotive? It misses.

• 18:40Ed Zitron?

  Sure.

• 18:40Speaker 04

  It is going to get a lot better, man. This is not even a debate, but.

• 18:44Ed Zitron?

  I mean, it absolutely is a debate. I mean, I will absolutely debate the shit out of this. The training data required to make Sora better does not exist. Even if you took every video ever taken, Adobe is paying people to take video. But my question was actually really way more specific, which is you have been in ad tech for a long time.

• 19:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:02Ed Zitron?

  Everything else has been in like, um, generative AI platforms are not integrating ads as a monetization mechanism. Why do you think that is?

• 19:12Speaker 04

  Because the presentation layer of that, the actual ability to generate something that feels like it's not cold specifically. And I've said it a few times now, is not up to snuff. Everything else in the background that is actually using. Lots of big data to be able to represent the right type of context to you. Today, we will call the AI is in play. So I think there's a marriage between what's going on in the back humming along.

• 19:36Ed Zitron?

  Uh huh.

• 19:36Speaker 04

  And the presentation layer of that, Ed, to be honest, is terrible.

• 19:39Ed Zitron?

  I agree with, I agree, but maybe they'll need to be more specific. It feels like ad tech is, they will do the generative side. There's tons of ad tech platforms that will generate like.

• 19:49Speaker 04

  And you see those ads.

• 19:49Ed Zitron?

  The specs.

• 19:50Speaker 04

  Yeah. Or, or you've seen the ads too. You've seen the shiny, muscly person.

• 19:54Ed Zitron?

  Oh God, yeah. The horrifying, like beautiful people.

• 19:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:57Ed Zitron?

  With like a nineteen, a nineteen pack. I mean more on a practical level of you were AOWA.

• 20:02Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 20:03Ed Zitron?

  You were inspiring them to do more things. It feels like when it comes to the platforms themselves, putting aside the actual.

• 20:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:09Ed Zitron?

  Ads themselves. I mean, it doesn't feel like anyone, not perplexity, perplexity being so slow. Google especially so weird. It feels like they're hesitant to attach ads to these platforms at all.

• 20:22Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 20:23Ed Zitron?

  To the platforms? Yeah, as in like they haven't integrated, because ad tech loves integrating shit. They love putting stuff on stuff. But it feels like they've stepped away from, like they had.

• 20:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, and maybe, maybe because of, that's a really interesting question. Maybe it's because it's just. You know, it's an interface for creation and they don't want to actually bastardize it with ads today. It might be that, it might be that pure, it might be that pure.

• 20:43Ed Zitron?

  I wonder if it's difficult to integrate it because.

• 20:46Speaker 04

  Or where would you? Because that's, that's the thing. Today feels a bit like Wikipedia meets answers.com.

• 20:53Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 20:54Speaker 04

  It feels a bit kind of retro, you know?

• 20:56Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 20:56Speaker 04

  And because it's a new interface, the only way to put the context around it is in the context of what you're generating and it's.

• 21:01Ed Zitron?

  And that's random every time.

• 21:02Speaker 04

  And it's also software equals ads before. So if we roll this back to the early nineties, mid nineties, there were holes cut across websites for display ads and those formats were accredited. Now it's so rare. There is a little bit of through line that feels like it's consistent. But it's not a consistent interface. It feels like it wraps ads around it, particularly on mobile, but desktop probably more so.

• 21:24Ed Zitron?

  And I wonder, and like this wasn't meant to be an oppositional question. It's just fascinating to me.

• 21:28Speaker 04

  Oh, I don't think it is. I think it's a really good question because, because I would say that these, but the reason why I keep on asking for a point. Question to the question is that you've got creation tools and you've got consumption tools.

• 21:41Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 21:41Speaker 04

  And at times they're the same thing.

• 21:43Ed Zitron?

  Sure.

• 21:44Speaker 04

  If you look at chat or if you look at, you know, if you look at Claude, they're the same thing. So you're in there creating as a creator as well as somebody who's consuming. That that's pretty new from a dynamic of a user interface.

• 21:55Ed Zitron?

  It is.

• 21:56Speaker 04

  You don't go in, you don't, well, you could go in and create a video on the fly. And upload it to Instagram. But you wouldn't expect to see an ad on your creation of that video on Instagram. You know what I'm saying? So given that's the case, there's a, there's a new paradigm is all I'm saying.

• 22:13Ed Zitron?

  And I.

• 22:13Speaker 04

  I haven't really thought about that paradigm converging.

• 22:16Ed Zitron?

  And that's the thing, like your whole thing is what's new and sexy and ads and all that. Shiny. And it's, it's just so strange. It's truly unique because when we had the bullshit AR thing, I'm sure you remember that. They had ads on that shit immediately. You could not, you couldn't, you were filthy with filters. You could do, have like a sprite filter on your face if you wanted it. They had the ads immediately.

• 22:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:40Ed Zitron?

  And it just.

• 22:41Speaker 04

  Because in that context, it feel like you really could, can you just layer it?

• 22:44Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, and it's just like it, and you, I agree with you that they are creative interfaces when you look at them. This is not a judgment on how much I like them. It's just what they work, work as.

• 22:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:54Ed Zitron?

  It just feels so weird that ad tech or like none of these platforms want to. Sam Altman said he doesn't like it, whatever, but it's just so bizarre.

• 23:10Ed Zitron?

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• 26:15Speaker 04

  What about the fact that the gold rush of AI happening now is also part of the fallout of the euphoria of the Web three NFT blockchain world?

• 26:27Ed Zitron?

  How do you mean?

• 26:28Speaker 04

  And what I mean by that is that that was all the attention. If we met, I don't know, on this particular show, three, four years ago, that's probably all you'd talk about.

• 26:35Ed Zitron?

  I mean, I mean, this show didn't exist three years ago, but I was I was on that.

• 26:39Speaker 04

  If we were, but you know what I'm saying? So but that that has kind of, that isn't as quite hypey as it is today. So what I'm saying, if people are saying Web three, the future of that's more puristic. We haven't seen a world like this. This is going to be incredible. Let's buy land in it, blah, blah, blah. Perhaps the positioning of what does this new web, better web look like? Jamming ads in it is just like having the uninvited guest to the party.

• 27:03Ed Zitron?

  I don't know if I feel like it's a utopian thing. It's just it. The idea of any of these companies being like, oh, well, we don't want to fuck up the internet. I mean, look at Google search. I mean, there is no great effect of that has fucked up the internet. Probably a ragavan piece of shit.

• 27:21Ed Zitron?

  It's it's just so strange and I really only came to this conversation thinking about this. Because every single hype cycle, other than in crypto, I can understand why the ads weren't quite as prevalent. I can understand because it's difficult to do blockchain ads. Christ, what a hype cycle idea. But blockchain ads, because the sure, the immutable ledger, but how would you actually reliably? You could probably say a click hap- no, actually, it would be difficult.

• 27:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, attribution across that would be challenging, but I also think, but to on your point. I I don't know why, to be honest, but I do think maybe there is. It's always an outcome. Monetizing a platform of popularity is always going to be an outcome. It doesn't. And by the way, that's with every platform, you know, it starts with the purists of all the social platforms. None of them had ads initially.

• 28:10Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 28:11Speaker 04

  And then if you look at something, if you go into the vault and look at things like MySpace, they never had ads for the longest time because the artist was the ad. I mean, you know.

• 28:19Ed Zitron?

  Sure.

• 28:20Speaker 04

  It makes sense.

• 28:20Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, but I'm I'm just thinking I'm having like one idea, which is very difficult for my brain. It almost feels like these hype cycles have failed because they haven't found an ad, an ad thing. All of the previous ones, all the, the internet is built on advertising, as you well know. But none of them, not meta, not metaverse, not crypto, not generative AI, have found a stable ad income. And I have to wonder if it might be that the subscription model is not scalable. Or at least it doesn't scale to the the dollars that advertising can provide, which most of tech is dependent on.

• 28:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, the subscription dollars versus the ad dollars is still there.

• 28:59Ed Zitron?

  Pathetic, yeah.

• 29:00Speaker 04

  It it forget about it, but there's something really interesting about that popularity, though. We're still in this world of popularity, right?

• 29:06Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 29:07Speaker 04

  Until you get scale, you don't have an audience that actually you can monetize. But it still comes down to, I think, these two interfaces are in conflict because you've got consumption and creation happening on the same platform.

• 29:16Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 29:16Speaker 04

  Which I think is incredibly unique.

• 29:18Ed Zitron?

  It is unique and I get, however, I feel about generative AI. There hasn't been something like this shit before, which is, I find it deeply annoying and all of it frustrating and the environmental and the theft and all of that and the fact it's actually, the people it's put out of jobs feel like people who are already vulnerable as well, like art, art directors and like freelance audio people and freelance creatives are the ones getting fucked by this. And all of this is happening for them all to lose money. That to me is the dystopian part. That they haven't, they've, no one really appears to be benefiting from this, other than maybe Sam Altman and Dari Amade.

• 29:57Speaker 04

  There is something, Ed, to the culture of creativity, which is even in, in ads today still. Is that creative is considered the non-working part of the media.

• 30:07Ed Zitron?

  How do you mean?

• 30:08Speaker 04

  I mean, that it doesn't count as part of the media, creative. So it's always this cost item.

• 30:13Ed Zitron?

  So what, the journalists and the artists and.

• 30:16Speaker 04

  Or, or the, yeah, the people who create the commercials, for example, that typically doesn't get rolled up as part of the media spend or success. So it's always debatable. Media isn't because it's absolute, because it's, you got a rate card, you know, where the audiences are, you know?

• 30:28Ed Zitron?

  I, I get what you're saying. Who are the people that have, when you say it's not rated or like it's not.

• 30:33Speaker 04

  It's not considered part of the, of the media.

• 30:35Ed Zitron?

  Who are the people saying this? Is it the ad, the ads people? They just don't consider the creatives?

• 30:40Speaker 04

  Oh, the brands. So if a brand is sitting here saying, look, we're going to create an ad, but the cost of that ad doesn't get attributed to where the media is because media is always whole. So that's always.

• 30:50Ed Zitron?

  I'm not sure I understand.

• 30:51Speaker 04

  So I, I guess my point in saying this is that we're always going to try and skinny down the cost of creation.

• 30:58Ed Zitron?

  Right, okay.

• 30:59Speaker 04

  That's really the nut of it, because everything else, that's rate card, negotiable, whatever. But the actual physical cost of the thing that gets placed, that always seems to be, um.

• 31:09Ed Zitron?

  No, that.

• 31:09Speaker 04

  A stepchild.

• 31:10Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 31:11Speaker 04

  And that's a shame. And so when you talk about vulnerability, I completely agree with that.

• 31:14Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 31:15Speaker 04

  The flip side of that is all of these efficiency tools that we see and AI is considered one of those today. Because generative is, is just one part of it, which is still trying to find, I believe, its way. I find some things that are really kind of amazing.

• 31:29Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 31:30Speaker 04

  But not all the time. Like I'm, I wouldn't be using it all the time, but.

• 31:33Ed Zitron?

  You can't. It is not reliable enough.

• 31:35Speaker 04

  Good point.

• 31:35Ed Zitron?

  No, I'm not, I wasn't even trying to got you there, but you just can't right now.

• 31:38Speaker 04

  And it's also, you know, it's not higher, higher resolution enough. There's many reasons why, but it does get you to mediocre faster. And so at least.

• 31:46Ed Zitron?

  Jesus.

• 31:46Speaker 04

  That allows you to be able to get.

• 31:48Ed Zitron?

  I'm not disagreeing, but yeah.

• 31:49Speaker 04

  So at least make those decisions and say, obviously that's a bad idea. We're not going to go forward with it as opposed to somebody polishing 10 great ideas. Or 10 mediocre ideas and finding out there's one should have been executed faster, better, sooner. Maybe that's a, uh, maybe that's a case for it.

• 32:03Ed Zitron?

  I think you've really touched upon something though, which is. I think a lot of my listeners and my readers struggle with why so many corporations want generative AI to grow and part of it is the labor automation.

• 32:16Speaker 04

  Why they want generative AI to grow?

• 32:18Ed Zitron?

  Why they want AI to be a thing? And there's many stupid reasons, but I never thought about the fact that just in the ads world, which controls large swathes of our economy and funds a lot of the tech industry. Just all creativity was considered minor. I never, I mean, it's very obvious now I say it, but like it's fascinating to know that from that pers- is that like an executive position?

• 32:38Speaker 04

  Well, yet, here's the, here's the challenge. You have mediocre creatives seen by many.

• 32:45Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 32:46Speaker 04

  And you see really great creatives seen by few. So that's why it feels like the creatives still sort of sit at the back. They're trying to do these things, but they, but whenever a discussion says at scale, that's when it falls apart. So that's why it's, it's kind of.

• 33:03Ed Zitron?

  Why is mediocre seen by the many though? Like why does?

• 33:06Speaker 04

  Simply because of format, I think is really, you know, the ability to try and create something that has a contagiousness to it today seems to have a celebrity moment. Those days, I think are kind of at least falling away. And there are better places for people to hold their attention. So metrics have to change effectively. Go away from popularity and talk about other things like how do you hold somebody's attention for the longest time versus just trying to saturate, you know?

• 33:36Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 33:37Speaker 04

  I mean, I think it's, I think the landscape's changing, but I don't think it's, I don't think creation of content or creativity is evolving at the same pace.

• 33:49Ed Zitron?

  But would evolving even matter if there was this attitude towards creatives?

• 33:53Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, well, E G format, of course.

• 33:57Ed Zitron?

  What do you mean?

• 33:58Speaker 04

  The shape of the ad, style of the ad, you know, you talked about A R as a good example, that was small audience's wow experience, to be honest.

• 34:07Ed Zitron?

  But where was the conversion there? Cause that's the thing, it doesn't feel like there has been a new successful ad format in a long time.

• 34:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:15Ed Zitron?

  Have you seen other?

• 34:17Speaker 04

  I really haven't.

• 34:18Ed Zitron?

  It's so strange.

• 34:19Speaker 04

  Tried on, as I'm sure you have with Vision Pro, you've tried on the goggles.

• 34:22Ed Zitron?

  Oh, Christ, yes.

• 34:23Speaker 04

  You know, I can't really see anybody. Firstly, it just doesn't scale. Comes back to that, right? There is no scale.

• 34:29Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 34:29Speaker 04

  But it's immersive. But the reality of are you building things for a one to many or you're building it for one to one?

• 34:36Ed Zitron?

  And just even then, I have to wonder if there's not a problem which we, the geniuses have discovered, which is there is no, like, we're in the iHeart Radio studios, one of the most successful advertising formats. And as my listeners love to tell me, is the ads, the basic radio play ads.

• 34:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, the audio ads, sure.

• 34:55Ed Zitron?

  And display ads. And so CPA, CPM. Otherwise, it doesn't feel like advertising has.

• 35:01Speaker 04

  Evolved?

• 35:01Ed Zitron?

  It tried to evolve.

• 35:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, we tried to do with Devil. We tried to do with these incredible formats.

• 35:06Ed Zitron?

  And do they work?

• 35:07Speaker 04

  They cer- certainly did. And the measurement of work is, you know, dwell time, click through, all of those things that you can measure.

• 35:15Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 35:15Speaker 04

  They were going through the roof. And they they work until they become standards. And then they don't work because they're everywhere. So there's this exclusivity to these things that make you feel like you're.

• 35:24Ed Zitron?

  It's scale.

• 35:25Speaker 04

  And then scale comes and ruins.

• 35:26Ed Zitron?

  No, because when everyone does the same thing, and it all gets, and it all gets back to fucking display.

• 35:31Speaker 04

  Well, you end up with homogenization, right? So that's why it's, that's why it's homogenized. Everything feels normalized. It feels.

• 35:37Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 35:38Speaker 04

  Consistently the same thing regardless of what you put in it. There was a, there was something, and I, you know, this conversation makes me think of something that was retro years ago. When these ad formats came out, there was this ad, and I don't know what brand it is, so that at the jump, it tells me that the thing didn't work. But what was working was this incredible experience. So a band built shape of a ad, display ad, two shapes. One was square, one was rectangular, effectively. And in this square, they had a drummer and maybe a guitarist. And in that square, they had a bassist and maybe the vocalist. And they were playing live in these display.

• 36:15Ed Zitron?

  In the display ads.

• 36:15Speaker 04

  And those live despite, because they were proportionally the same. They were being broadcast to these websites.

• 36:21Ed Zitron?

  That's so strange.

• 36:22Speaker 04

  It was so fabulous.

• 36:24Ed Zitron?

  Did it work?

• 36:25Speaker 04

  It felt, I don't know, but it made a hell of an impression on me twenty years upstream.

• 36:29Ed Zitron?

  So that's the thing, it's.

• 36:30Speaker 04

  And I just felt very inventive.

• 36:31Ed Zitron?

  That is inventive. I'm also going to have to look this up because that's how, how the hell.

• 36:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, bend in a box or something. I don't remember.

• 36:37Ed Zitron?

  I'll look this up.

• 36:38Speaker 04

  It's very cool.

• 36:38Ed Zitron?

  But it's, you get. It feels almost as if the more I think about the ads and display ads and all this, how like this might actually be what's really undermined generative AI, which is they are trying to scale something that requires advertising dollar level funding with subscriptions, which may not work.

• 36:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think you've hit on something, but I do think that when there's a format that becomes consistent, which doesn't exist today.

• 37:05Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 37:06Speaker 04

  When you've got that, there's always these outliers that are trying to create something around that format.

• 37:11Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 37:11Speaker 04

  So back then, in the day, there was breakouts and you have an ad you click on it, you know, folds open.

• 37:17Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 37:17Speaker 04

  You know, all of those sort of things that happened. All of that stuff was really just to say, here's the format that we've all decided is important. We're going to put this value on top of it that makes it feel like it's really different. And it reminds me of that band in the box thing.

• 37:29Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 37:29Speaker 04

  Because there's no consistent interface, you can't have a consistent ad. So everything around it, all these ads that we're going to see, they're going to be cloaked in this thing called context and value, I think. And it'll be obfuscated. Because it'll come back as a long paragraph talking about why you should buy these Sony headphones versus something else.

• 37:45Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I can see them trying that.

• 37:48Speaker 04

  For sure. I mean, particularly in descriptive results.

• 37:50Ed Zitron?

  The problem is, if that if that result is generative, that's going to shave off that little bit of CPM revenue that's going to scrape it off. It's like, it's almost as if it's antithetical to ads.

• 38:01Speaker 04

  Actually, I'll tell you where it won't shave it off. It won't shave it off because it'll probably move from a CPA to, sorry, CPM to CPA.

• 38:08Ed Zitron?

  How expensive would that be?

• 38:10Speaker 04

  Who knows? But it depends on the cost of, I mean, it depends on what the attribution cost is going to be, but let me just stay with me for a second. If it moves from cost per million to, or thousands, to cost per acquisition, then there is a direct cost because that ad is generated one to one.

• 38:26Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 38:27Speaker 04

  So that it isn't a many to many model, it's a one to many.

• 38:30Ed Zitron?

  And.

• 38:30Speaker 04

  Sorry, it's actually a one to one generative. So I'm able to produce an ad that feels highly tailored to Ed and his needs, but that should be highly valuable, I suspect.

• 38:39Ed Zitron?

  It should be, but the hallucination when you scale it to a million people is the thing.

• 38:43Speaker 04

  But you don't have to, sorry, you don't have to scale it, is what I'm saying.

• 38:46Ed Zitron?

  Yes, you do.

• 38:46Speaker 04

  No, you don't, you don't. Because if people aren't, if you're searching generally for. An ad.

• 38:52Ed Zitron?

  Some headphones. We're searching for some headphones and you're presented with an ad for headphones. If it's generating for each person, say a million people see this ad and it is one to one.

• 39:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:00Ed Zitron?

  It is still generated with fresh.

• 39:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:02Ed Zitron?

  At one point it's gonna hallucinate. It's just.

• 39:04Speaker 04

  Right.

• 39:05Ed Zitron?

  And this, I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong with the idea. It's just the.

• 39:09Speaker 04

  It's not completely thought out, I can tell you.

• 39:11Ed Zitron?

  No, no, no.

• 39:11Speaker 04

  But I love, I love what you.

• 39:12Ed Zitron?

  The scale.

• 39:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:14Ed Zitron?

  And it's like.

• 39:14Speaker 04

  But the scale is a challenge. Period, full stop.

• 39:17Ed Zitron?

  With generative AI is, it's, I just have to wonder if this is not part of the economic failure because it doesn't, it scales, but when you try and scale it in the traditional tech software way. Subscriptions, it's not, they're not making enough money enough with it. But even when you try and put it into ads. Ads are, ads are by definition going to be scaled to millions, hundreds of millions of people to make any money. And if you're doing generative, you're gonna have things like Google telling you to eat rocks.

• 39:45Speaker 04

  I, I will tell you that I think this conversation isn't ready for that type of architecture because the generative tools are designed for. Generating. They're not designed to consuming.

• 39:56Ed Zitron?

  Sure.

• 39:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't think there's a mass, I don't think the volume of people is, is at a point where. Average people are going to consume things based on a search criteria as a new rhythm.

• 40:10Ed Zitron?

  I mean, that's how Google makes all its money.

• 40:12Speaker 04

  And it's Google. But if you're talking about these other tools that are thinking about how they actually monetize, it's from a creative perspective, not from a consumption.

• 40:20Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I was just talking at scaling generative AI as an ad tech tool or an ad tool.

• 40:25Speaker 04

  And your reference to that example with Google, yeah, I, I'd be surprised if they're not. At least trialing that.

• 40:33Ed Zitron?

  Oh, they, they just started trying, but it's funny. It's just.

• 40:36Speaker 04

  In their search results.

• 40:37Ed Zitron?

  In their search, they just started.

• 40:39Speaker 04

  Gemini tools, you know?

• 40:40Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, well, no, they, they're now putting Gemini front and center, which is so funny. It's just like.

• 40:44Speaker 04

  Well, it definitely crowds out their homepage, let's just say that.

• 40:46Ed Zitron?

  Well, that's the thing. Like, Google's in this weird, this really weird spot now and. Actually.

• 40:53Speaker 04

  Do you think it's a catch up spot? What? Tell me when you say weird, define that some more.

• 40:56Ed Zitron?

  Well, I mean, the Google search has never been worse.

• 40:58Speaker 04

  Right, it's definitely correct.

• 41:00Ed Zitron?

  Worst it's ever been.

• 41:00Speaker 04

  A little bit like Craigslist of the nineties, yes.

• 41:03Ed Zitron?

  I, by comparison, Craigslist information was relatively validated. I mean, they didn't. You didn't have Craigslist optimization experts, and if you did, I'd love to meet them. But it's, Google's position right now is they're behind on AI, even though it's like being the first to eat out of the toilet, in my opinion. It's, they're behind on AI, they're.

• 41:24Speaker 04

  Another toilet analogy.

• 41:25Ed Zitron?

  Ad traffic is slowing, like that, everything is kind of contracting with them and they're desperate and people hate these AI search results. So, yeah, they are in a weird spot, but on top of it, I think we've actually noticed one thing, which is the core economics of tech are around ads and ads have been the same.

• 41:45Speaker 04

  I agree.

• 41:45Ed Zitron?

  For fifteen to twenty years, they've, they've had.

• 41:47Speaker 04

  I agree.

• 41:47Ed Zitron?

  I mean, ads at scale.

• 41:49Speaker 04

  Sure. So. It's the at scale question that comes back to that, because, you know, everything sounds great in that statement until you say at scale.

• 41:58Ed Zitron?

  Exactly.

• 41:59Speaker 04

  Kind of the world.

• 42:02Speaker 04

  Oh, mate, you, you'll hear that, the creative brief stage, where it's like, how can we do this? But it needs to scale. I'm like, wow, but that's not, take that out of the vernacular of ads. Take that out of the vernacular of media. It's, everything is trying to scale. The beauty industry is trying to do things at scale. They're trying to do things at a high volume. I mean, this is just part of the vocab.

• 42:20Ed Zitron?

  It's an attempt to do something at scale with nuance, which is almost impossible, I imagine.

• 42:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's a good observation.

• 42:28Ed Zitron?

  I mean, look at the Super Bowl commercials. They're all, they're all insane. That every single Super Bowl commercials likes either old people doing something that young people do or eleven celebrities.

• 42:37Speaker 04

  Right.

• 42:37Ed Zitron?

  And I was watching the.

• 42:38Speaker 04

  Lots of electric, lots of retro soundtracks.

• 42:40Ed Zitron?

  Exactly.

• 42:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:41Ed Zitron?

  And like, big noises. And I feel very stupid because now I understand they are trying to create something that they are trying to create something that everyone could enjoy. Man, I know so little sometimes.

• 42:52Speaker 04

  But, but that's, I mean, the truth of that is to, to matter for everybody means you matter for nobody.

• 42:57Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 42:58Speaker 04

  And that analogy rings true there. So there's something nostalgic and comfortable and okay, but everything around it has to be super weird to try and make it fit, you know, in that example. But, you know, I think a Super Bowl is a really good example of, you know, it's a moment, right? The rest of. I don't know what happens on daytime TV, but those sort of ads don't turn up there, I suspect.

• 43:19Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, because you would also be spending so much money on all of that. You'd know more about the economics.

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• 45:37Ed Zitron?

  I actually want to change gears slightly because you did write something related to nostalgia. And as a creative, as you go about your business, are you finding more demand on the client's side for more nostalgic things returning to the 90s or the 2000s? Are you finding any of that?

• 45:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's not a date stamp.

• 45:58Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 45:58Speaker 04

  It's just a feeling and that nostalgic vibe is, I think it's a throwback to, look, we're in a room right now that has a lot of nostalgia around it, mate. These buttons couldn't be more big.

• 46:09Ed Zitron?

  Oh, I love them.

• 46:10Speaker 04

  And these sort of analog knobs and you know what I mean?

• 46:13Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 46:13Speaker 04

  Creeky chairs and you know, the only thing that's modern in here are the Shaw mics. Everything else is kind of retroed, including the.

• 46:20Ed Zitron?

  And Daniel Goodman's wonderful scales.

• 46:22Speaker 04

  And the MDR headphones, whatever we're wearing right now. But what's amazing about this is there's a throwback, one to those who are old enough to know about nostalgia and those are young enough to be curious about it. Because they, you know, didn't grow up with it, but they're super curious, you know, to read through liner notes and understand that there's a flip side to an LP. And there's something very, there's something very Moorish about slowing it down. Because it's, everything is highly consumptive. In the time we've spoken, I saw you pick up your phone.

• 46:49Ed Zitron?

  Oh, that was to get a picture.

• 46:49Speaker 04

  Half a dozen times.

• 46:50Ed Zitron?

  No, it's once I count.

• 46:52Speaker 04

  But can I not exaggerate?

• 46:54Ed Zitron?

  No.

• 46:54Speaker 04

  But what's amazing about this is it, there's something really kind of about that distraction.

• 46:58Ed Zitron?

  Hmm.

• 47:00Speaker 04

  That, there's something beautiful about nostalgia and I'm gonna keep harping on about it because I see it pop up. I mean, Super Bowl's a classic example. I think I counted like 11 songs or something, Ed, I'm gonna misquote that. But I could pick everything from bloody Huey Lewis to Journey or something. And I'm like, my God, you know, firstly, what happened? And secondly, is this the only thing we have is this throwback? There's something really unique about it.

• 47:25Ed Zitron?

  I have to wonder if it's not a bit of trying to ignore reality as well. You talk about, I don't mean it in a bad way.

• 47:30Speaker 04

  No, I mean, I totally respect that.

• 47:31Ed Zitron?

  When you look at the news, it sucks. You look at, like, everything kind of sucks. There's, you talk about the idea that we're constantly getting, we're having to engage with other devices constantly. And I agree. And it's the kind of a return to a time when we weren't harassed by them, even. Though we, I love being online, but at the same time, no, I fucking hated it before online. I'm not gonna pretend. I imagine normal people crave the time of not being online constantly and not having. Cause it's not just like content. It's you get work emails, you get your, your texts from people mad at you. You get a text from a T-shirt company you bought from fifteen years ago.

• 48:04Speaker 04

  Right.

• 48:04Ed Zitron?

  It feels like maybe people are craving a, an off-ramp almost.

• 48:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, or permission to have one at least.

• 48:11Ed Zitron?

  Yes.

• 48:12Speaker 04

  Can I also say though, there's something about perhaps this fast culture that we've generated. And this futuristic vibe that we've been in, something, and what I mean, but I'm just gonna apply this to.

• 48:25Ed Zitron?

  Go on.

• 48:26Speaker 04

  I'm just gonna apply this to a thought in that statement you said about nostalgia. When I watch a brand like BMW online and I see their cars, which look amazing.

• 48:37Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 48:39Speaker 04

  The love that a retro car, like an old car that they did like back in the eighties, a boxy M-series or something, an M3 or something. Three twenty-five I or something. Uh, it gets way more love and commentary than anything they've got either in market or even planning on doing.

• 48:55Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 48:55Speaker 04

  Hyundai is a classic example. They, you know, they threw out this, they might bring back this boxy, beautiful.

• 49:01Ed Zitron?

  Oh, is this the electric one, but it's like an eighties car?

• 49:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, dude. And it's got the, you know, it's got the square lights and.

• 49:06Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:07Speaker 04

  And you'll see people go into every single design detail, like the white wall tire to the, to the type of mudcap. You don't get that sort of detail today. It's all spec, right? And it's not, there's no emotion to it, but you look at these things that feel like. And it's not bygone emotion. It's a different era of freedom. And maybe that's kind of the thing that is, is a land, like terrestrial radio. It's probably. Still massive. I mean, I have so bloody successful. Terrestrial radio is unbelievable.

• 49:37Ed Zitron?

  And I think it's because in a world of just sudden conversations, you have real ones. The reason that I like doing, the reason that then any listener was curious about this, the reason I don't do a lot of virtual interviews is they, they kind of suck.

• 49:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:48Ed Zitron?

  Like I made them pretty good, but the in-person, it's having the microphone. It's like hearing yourself, the, the bassy tones.

• 49:54Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 49:55Ed Zitron?

  I also have to wonder. If the reason that people are nostalgic for things like an old car or like a CD player or whatever, is it felt like the companies gave more of a shit? Because you talk about that thing of scaling.

• 50:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:08Ed Zitron?

  It's for, it's built for everyone but built for no one. Every car kind of looks the same. They all have the kind of Tesla-esque curve to it. Or like, they look like a Porsche Cayenne.

• 50:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:19Ed Zitron?

  I'm not a car guy.

• 50:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:20Ed Zitron?

  They all kind of look and feel the same and they all kind, and people are craving something that feels like anyone cared about building it, mate.

• 50:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, and maybe it all got to a point, I think maybe designing culture generally has got to a point where it feels like it's efficient.

• 50:32Ed Zitron?

  Yes.

• 50:33Speaker 04

  And that efficiency means it's not, I'm not tied to any of it, dude. You know what I mean?

• 50:38Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 50:38Speaker 04

  And that evolution of design means that if you've got efficiency already because using battery technologies and you're using something that doesn't have to feel like it looks like a pin.

• 50:47Ed Zitron?

  Hmm.

• 50:47Speaker 04

  So it becomes wind efficient. And you build something that's square, square, square, square. God bless, I think it's amazing.

• 50:54Ed Zitron?

  I think this is why people don't like generative AI content as well, because it really, the point we're making earlier that it all kind of looks the same, it has the uncanny valley.

• 51:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:01Ed Zitron?

  It feels like, wow, no love went into it. Not just like, not just like this is mass produced. It's not even mass produced. It's this sub-production where we're creating this thing for no, for nobody and everybody at the same time. I don't, I'm not going to debate generative AI's efficacy with you in any further. I'm sorry about that.

• 51:22Speaker 04

  No, no, go, go.

• 51:23Ed Zitron?

  But it's more, we're all kind of craving a return to a time when things may, felt like they were made for someone, that they were made with a bit of a soul. And it sucks to be in this world and it, and it sucks to, and I think that nostalgia is the natural, it's kind of the natural endpoint of a culture that has escaped any kind of personalization or joy in the creation of anything mass market. Even the utility of these things doesn't feel like it's for people.

• 51:52Speaker 04

  You know, Ed, as you're having this discussion and I'm with you.

• 51:55Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 51:55Speaker 04

  I look out at the screen that we're facing and Flowrider was on.

• 51:59Ed Zitron?

  Oh, was he?

• 51:59Speaker 04

  And before that was Flavor Flav. And I think before that I might have seen Snoop.

• 52:03Ed Zitron?

  Yep.

• 52:04Speaker 04

  And I look at that and think, to your point, there's something about these, this cycle of comfort and familiarity that I think is, it's really interesting because what you're talking about is. By the way, I will just put a pin in this and say that I think the generative AI creation will absolutely be for everything other than the human. And when you want to put a human in it, just film them. And then add them to this generative crazy background and utopia if you want to do it. So but these blended AI experiences will happen. But I do think that because it's called CGI previously.

• 52:37Ed Zitron?

  I and but I actually I'm gonna push back on that and say, I believe that will happen.

• 52:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:42Ed Zitron?

  But I think people are gonna get really upset with it because you're kind of seeing it with Severance and the Mandalorian when they're doing these weird. I don't know what it's called, but it's when they do the on on shot thing where it's they pretend they're outside. And for a while it convinced people, then you saw it enough times, you're like, no fucking motherfucker.

• 52:58Speaker 04

  But what it would also do though is it'll it'll inspire you when you see something that's really designed by cutting up the cardboard box to make it feel like a cardboard box.

• 53:06Ed Zitron?

  Sure.

• 53:06Speaker 04

  And I can show you some really good examples of people that push back against that and say, we're just gonna film this thing analog dude.

• 53:11Ed Zitron?

  Oh, yeah.

• 53:11Speaker 04

  You can feel it and it feels so different.

• 53:14Ed Zitron?

  And it it does. And it's just we're we're getting back to maybe nostalgia is just wishing that people that creatives gave it not creatives. Yeah, it feels like the mechanisms of creatives more than anything.

• 53:25Speaker 04

  Gave a shit.

• 53:25Ed Zitron?

  Gave a shit and felt like they were putting any thought into it other than just kind of simmering it down for everyone, making creative.

• 53:33Speaker 04

  I I've almost bought the Samsung flip phone a couple of times.

• 53:36Ed Zitron?

  Oh, it's so cool.

• 53:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's so cool.

• 53:38Ed Zitron?

  I love it. I I I use that. Exactly. I need my iMessage. I need it. I'm a pig.

• 53:43Speaker 04

  And I don't have two phones. It just drives me crazy. But even the Motorola looks amazing. But there's something about that time when you'd have a flip phone and buttons and all that sort of rubbish.

• 53:51Ed Zitron?

  I I didn't. I didn't have a flip phone. I had the the

• 53:54Speaker 04

  The Nokia.

• 53:55Ed Zitron?

  Chocolate bar Nokia.

• 53:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:56Ed Zitron?

  Oh, that was so good though. It's funny. It's it's funny though.

• 54:00Speaker 04

  Chocolate bar Nokia, yeah.

• 54:02Ed Zitron?

  But even then it kind of fucking sucked. I don't know why I'm pretending like I like this device. The moment the iPhone came along.

• 54:07Speaker 04

  Because you're probably still talking on the phone and that sounded amazing.

• 54:09Ed Zitron?

  Oh, God, no.

• 54:09Speaker 04

  What it did on the tin.

• 54:10Ed Zitron?

  No, I just like.

• 54:11Speaker 04

  You were texting with all those buttons?

• 54:12Ed Zitron?

  Yes. Oh, I'm I'm a freak in many ways. And it's just funny because.

• 54:19Ed Zitron?

  As we discuss all these different bits, it really is just like creativity is considered this stepchild of ads. Ads are the way that a lot of people are exposed to an alarming amount of creativity. And it feels like people at scale are kind of becoming more aware of how much is manufactured for them. Maybe it's not just that thing, maybe it's not that things have changed a ton, I believe they have obviously, but it's that they've kind of, people are more aware now of when they're being fucked with, when they're being given the same slop, when they're being given, and I think that corporations may have slightly overplayed their hand.

• 54:52Speaker 04

  Mm hmm, mm hmm. In the mass production era, I mean, you'll see that with foods, you'll see that with, I mean, education in that criteria is way more transparent and interesting than it used to be, because you don't have to have, you know, can consume less and probably feel better.

• 55:08Ed Zitron?

  I did.

• 55:09Speaker 04

  I have a question for you. Is that an Oura ring?

• 55:10Ed Zitron?

  Yes, I've got an Oura ring.

• 55:11Speaker 04

  Why are you wearing it?

• 55:12Ed Zitron?

  Uh, because it attracts my sleep.

• 55:14Speaker 04

  Oh, you do?

• 55:14Ed Zitron?

  My workout.

• 55:15Speaker 04

  And you're actually, you are using it as a utility?

• 55:17Ed Zitron?

  I am.

• 55:17Speaker 04

  You haven't, how long you had it?

• 55:18Ed Zitron?

  Couple of years.

• 55:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, generation one, isn't it?

• 55:21Ed Zitron?

  Oh, three.

• 55:23Speaker 04

  And do you find, so do you do anything with the data? Or you just do it to, does it just reassure you?

• 55:29Ed Zitron?

  Oh, no, no, this is, this is the terrible choice if, if you wanted any gotcha. No. So actually, I'm really interested in my sleep because I, I realized a few years ago that my sleep was fucked. And I couldn't work out why. I was depressed. Um, but I've become fascinated by what, I don't know, weed or alcohol do to me. Not that I'm like experimenting, but if I have a bad night's sleep, I like to look at it and say, all right, this does affect me. I just got this thing called a Somni as well.

• 55:56Speaker 04

  What is it?

• 55:57Ed Zitron?

  It's like a thing you strap to your head and it has little electrodes that go onto the top. It's this fella.

• 56:02Speaker 04

  You sleep with that on?

• 56:03Ed Zitron?

  No, no, you just put it on, it does like 15 minutes before bed. It has increased my R E M sleep and I have been feeling sharper.

• 56:10Speaker 04

  Really?

• 56:11Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. I'm annoying.

• 56:12Speaker 04

  Sorry, what does this thing do? Does it give you, send electrodes into you or something?

• 56:15Ed Zitron?

  It has some sort of waves it does on you. I should be able to say this offhandedly.

• 56:20Speaker 04

  But, but you're finding your sleep cycles better?

• 56:22Ed Zitron?

  Yes.

• 56:22Speaker 04

  Now, are you finding that, that the patterns you, your sleep cycles previously, once you've sort of indicated I'm having a crappy night's sleep, has it changed your behaviour?

• 56:31Ed Zitron?

  Yes.

• 56:31Speaker 04

  No.

• 56:32Ed Zitron?

  Uh, like, uh, the how proximity of using any substances before bed, like, uh, what I eat, when I eat, that was a big thing, like eating late. I also.

• 56:41Speaker 04

  Oh, wow. Okay. So you are, you really are digging into the data.

• 56:44Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, because otherwise why am I wearing this thing that on dating apps convinces people that I'm married?

• 56:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, amen.

• 56:49Ed Zitron?

  It's very fucking annoying.

• 56:50Speaker 04

  There's something interesting about, you know, the adoption of these sort of technologies, like athletes, for example, will.

• 56:55Ed Zitron?

  Oh, yes.

• 56:55Speaker 04

  They'll clearly fall back to things like.

• 56:57Ed Zitron?

  The whoop band and.

• 56:57Speaker 04

  Or will or not. They'll be, they'll, they'll wear a garment or a.

• 57:02Ed Zitron?

  Oh.

• 57:02Speaker 04

  Like they'll wear these technologies that have been around for a long time for athletes, but you know, the eye watches of this world or the, you know.

• 57:09Ed Zitron?

  Eye, eye watch?

• 57:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:11Ed Zitron?

  No, no, no, that, no, that just means you've been around a while. You're just still saying the shit before they'd even announced it. But yeah, so.

• 57:18Speaker 04

  What's interesting to me is these, you know, the, the subtlety of technology, while it calms down and gives you what you need.

• 57:24Ed Zitron?

  Mm hmm.

• 57:24Speaker 04

  Hopefully that changes your, your psychology. Now, we don't, you don't necessarily see that on the phone because all the phone does is kind of distract you or take you down a, a, a rabbit hole. And so I was just super curious about what your behavior is, your relationship with that sort of tech.

• 57:37Ed Zitron?

  But it is funny.

• 57:37Speaker 04

  Pushed away from all of it.

• 57:38Ed Zitron?

  I generally do, like I, with my workouts, I track my calories and that is emotional.

• 57:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, good on you.

• 57:44Ed Zitron?

  Abs, no, that is absolutely emotional, though.

• 57:47Speaker 04

  Like I. That's a good use case for that.

• 57:48Ed Zitron?

  But if I, but, oh, no, I use it. Oh, but this is the ultimate tech bullshit, though. I don't use this to track all my workouts. I track boxing with this.

• 57:56Speaker 04

  Oh, you do. You box with the ring on?

• 57:58Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 57:58Speaker 04

  You bandage your hand up like that with a ring on?

• 58:00Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, you get, you get quick wraps on.

• 58:02Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 58:02Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, and it just.

• 58:03Speaker 04

  Doesn't crush your fingers, having that thing?

• 58:04Ed Zitron?

  It did with certain wraps.

• 58:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, okay.

• 58:06Ed Zitron?

  But it's.

• 58:07Speaker 04

  It's not the lowest profile ring, that's why I'm asking.

• 58:09Ed Zitron?

  No, it's really not. It's like the chunky one. Victoria's Song of the Verge was, was.

• 58:13Speaker 04

  Are we spending too much time on the horror ring?

• 58:14Ed Zitron?

  I don't care. It's my show. I'll do whatever the hell I want. I can say fucking shit and balls and all that. Um, it is funny, though, because. All of this talk about nostalgia, it is kind of where even I personally am leaning. I'm listening to fucking metal from fifteen years ago. My favorite in Flames album is Colony, which is twenty years old and barely resembles the band anymore.

• 58:35Speaker 04

  Right.

• 58:36Ed Zitron?

  Like, one of my favorite movies is the Guardians of the Galaxy movie, the first one, which is inherently nostalgic. And those movies got shit as all it became about was nostalgic. And now I've just had a live thought, which is, that is the thing that's, that is actually something that's driving a lot of culture, which is, the reason the Marvel movies did well at the beginning was they were fun, they were nostalgic, they had these characters you'd love to see, and they got progressively worse as these companies were like, okay, what do people like about this? Fuck it, it's the people they recognize. Look, it's the guy from The Thing, the corporatization of nostalgia. I, I think it's.

• 59:12Speaker 04

  But, but it does get rebooted, right? So if you look at the music videos that are playing back here.

• 59:16Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 59:17Speaker 04

  Half those soundtracks, and I'm paraphrasing this, are, are using a soundtrack that's retro.

• 59:22Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 59:22Speaker 04

  And there's some, it's familiar, right? You hear this backbeat and think, that seems like that's funky Trin Dama from, you know, James Brown. You hear that in the track and think, okay, there's a reason why that works, because it's just good. And there's something about the time that that was done.

• 59:37Ed Zitron?

  And it wasn't created to scale.

• 59:38Speaker 04

  Right.

• 59:39Ed Zitron?

  I'm serious.

• 59:40Speaker 04

  Generative AI.

• 59:41Ed Zitron?

  I'm putting even aside generative AI for now. I just mean like, because if you look at this, there would be multiple things on TikTok where it's like, a band has popped up, you're like, wow, they're so good, or people have said this, and it's turned out to be like, they're pretending to be a garage band, but it's actually a signed artist with United.

• 59:57Speaker 04

  Right, right, right.

• 59:57Ed Zitron?

  And, and it's, it does.

• 59:59Speaker 04

  The old bait and switch?

• 1:00:00Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, and there's so much of it now, and there are things that are made to be, to appear normal and natural that are absolutely not. And I think people are craving normality again, they're craving things that don't feel. Mass-produced.

• 1:00:14Speaker 04

  I agree with you.

• 1:00:16Ed Zitron?

  It's a funny, it's a funny time.

• 1:00:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, I wrote about craft this week and it was really just about, you know, if you've got all these tools that make you feel like happy hands.

• 1:00:23Ed Zitron?

  What do you mean happy hands?

• 1:00:24Speaker 04

  Like very excited.

• 1:00:25Ed Zitron?

  Alright.

• 1:00:26Speaker 04

  And I can defend that all day, every day, but what I lean towards is craft, you know, I will all day, every day, rather a pen and pencil than trying to scribble something down on my iPad, you know?

• 1:00:36Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:36Speaker 04

  So there's just something more visceral and I'm, I'm leaning towards that as a test to make sure I'm not losing my rods and cones. That, that it's not just down this rabbit's warrant of distraction, then I can actually be, you know, back to creation.

• 1:00:50Ed Zitron?

  Are you, well, you say, you say you're like aware of your phone nagging you, are you generally, do you surround yourself with tech or do you try and stay?

• 1:01:00Speaker 04

  I'll push back.

• 1:01:00Ed Zitron?

  How so?

• 1:01:01Speaker 04

  So I had all the tech that made me look like a tribal leader like you. I mean, I get it dude, but I did, it, I, when I don't, gamifying data doesn't excite me about myself.

• 1:01:09Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:01:10Speaker 04

  And it's not that interesting. And so the thing that's wild for me is nature. I mean, tech is, yeah, it's great to know, but what am I going to do with it? And I don't know if I want to do that with it, whatever that is. So no, I try not to, I'm trying to push back to, you know, no, not trying to push back. I'm trying to restrict the amount of things that occupy my mind and take my attention away from creating.

• 1:01:38Ed Zitron?

  And what are you creating and is it for, is it just for you?

• 1:01:41Speaker 04

  I know, I'm right, you know, yeah, it is, it is really, I have this concept of addition of one. It really is just for me and it doesn't matter if it doesn't scale and you know, I'm a classically trained designer, so I'm back to full design outside of my creative practice. And I have a wet studio, so I'm in, I'm married to an artist.

• 1:01:58Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I'm married to an artist. We have, you know. What is a wet studio?

• 1:02:00Speaker 04

  We have paints in the thing that are constantly dry. I mean.

• 1:02:04Ed Zitron?

  Lovely.

• 1:02:04Speaker 04

  It's very practical dude and it's not, uh, screen free. A lot of it is just back to articulating things. You know, playing music, you know, things that actually feel like I play guitar, sing all that rubbish.

• 1:02:17Ed Zitron?

  Oh, it's fun.

• 1:02:18Speaker 04

  But it's, oh, it's fantastic.

• 1:02:19Ed Zitron?

  I love, I love singing.

• 1:02:20Speaker 04

  But more of that than just sort of being a participant.

• 1:02:24Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:25Speaker 04

  I'd rather be actively participating in it, which is why I can't stand sports. I mean, I can't stand sitting and watching sports. I'd rather play football if I'm gonna, you know, I'd rather go out in the field and kick if I'm gonna kick.

• 1:02:36Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:02:36Speaker 04

  I can't really sit back and watch it. It drives me nuts.

• 1:02:38Ed Zitron?

  Interesting.

• 1:02:39Speaker 04

  But there's something about kind of, um, just taking that position of the polymath. I've got lots of ideas that I want to express. Let's get them down on paper.

• 1:02:47Ed Zitron?

  But they're expressed for you rather than not.

• 1:02:49Speaker 04

  Yeah. Unless others find it interesting. I've got a fashion collab that I'm doing and I've got these artisans and craft people in, in, in Mexico that are actually hand stitching this embroidery instead of digital embroidery, which I could have done.

• 1:03:02Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:03:02Speaker 04

  And finding it sitting, it's sitting on the fabric differently. I mean, it's all of these things that are slow crafts. They're, they're bloody, it's just awesome, dude. It really is.

• 1:03:12Ed Zitron?

  No, it's.

• 1:03:12Speaker 04

  It slows me down and puts me in a place that feels more conscious.

• 1:03:15Ed Zitron?

  It's funny because this show came from a newsletter that I wrote for three hundred people, fifty eight thousand five hundred now. And this show started with a lot of people being very unfair to me on Reddit. And I will admit, I changed absolutely.

• 1:03:29Speaker 04

  Welcome to the internet.

• 1:03:30Ed Zitron?

  Oh, no, fuck yeah. I didn't change shit. I just kept doing it until I felt good. And it's interesting how the show's done well based on that, rather than trying to change it for anyone.

• 1:03:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, I get you.

• 1:03:41Ed Zitron?

  Partly because I didn't, I never really understood why I would change for them. Like I, it was like, HorseIdiot55 has told me they don't like it when I say this. What the fuck am I meant to do? Write it down and like, avoid the word? Fuck that.

• 1:03:52Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:03:52Ed Zitron?

  It just, it feels the, that is also another thing plaguing creatives, that there's this apparent source of derision and judgment on tap.

• 1:04:02Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:04:03Ed Zitron?

  And you have to do that to scale, to do that. And the desperation for engagement is kind of sucking the joy out of even the process. It's too slow.

• 1:04:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:11Ed Zitron?

  It, it must be done this fast. We must be timely.

• 1:04:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, but there's one thing that's definitive is there's only certain amount of time in a day, isn't there?

• 1:04:19Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:19Speaker 04

  You can't create new, new version of it, but you can participate in it differently. I think this has been an interesting conversation for me because I didn't know what we were gonna chat about, if anything.

• 1:04:28Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:29Speaker 04

  And I'm an admirer of your work, so congrats on all you're doing.

• 1:04:32Ed Zitron?

  Thank you so much, Shingy. I think we can wrap it there. Where can people find you, Shingy?

• 1:04:37Speaker 04

  Uh, you know, the interwebs.

• 1:04:39Ed Zitron?

  Yes, but where?

• 1:04:41Ed Zitron?

  Okay, I'll put it in the episode.

• 1:04:42Speaker 04

  Easily found on LinkedIn.

• 1:04:44Ed Zitron?

  Just look up Shingy.

• 1:04:45Speaker 04

  Shingy, you can go to my dot com, I'm there too, hanging out.

• 1:04:48Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:48Speaker 04

  Um, yeah, but you know, it's, yeah, this has been a blast. Thanks for coming in on a a hot streak about Jen.

• 1:04:55Ed Zitron?

  Of course.

• 1:04:56Speaker 04

  And we exit out on pottery. Who the hell knows?

• 1:04:59Ed Zitron?

  Joyous creative, my mum's potter as well. Shout out, KZitron. All right, you've been listening to me. My name's Ed Zitron. You can Google the, uh, who destroyed Google search and you will find the answer is me. Thank you so much to Daniel Goodman, our wonderful producer here in New York, and thank you, of course, to all of you for listening. You'll now hear a very similar message after that I recorded in February of last year, and I swear I'm gonna re-record. Matt Osowski and I were talking about this yesterday. Peace out.

• 1:05:32Ed Zitron?

  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 [email protected] or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat dot where's your ed dot at to visit the Discord and go to r slash better offline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening.

• 1:06:05Speaker 05

  Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:06:38Speaker 01

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