Monologue: Dealing With The Weight Of History

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron takes a moment to discuss the current state of the bubble, and the way we’re all feeling at this time in history. Want to support me? Get $10 off a year’s subscription to my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/w08jbm4jwg it would mean a lot! The Register: Microsoft seemingly just revealed that OpenAI lost $11.5B last quarter https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/29/microsoft_earnings_q1_26_openai_loss/ YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more. --- 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 Email Me: [email protected] mailto:[email protected] 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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• 0:37Speaker 01

  Call Zone Media.

• 0:40Ed Zitron?

  Hello and welcome to this week's Better Off Line Monologue. I'm your host, Ed Zitron.

• 0:49Speaker 03

  Better Off Line.

• 0:52Ed Zitron?

  And goddamn, am I tired. I'm so tired of watching this routine. This goddamn routine, every single earnings. A big tech company talks about the wonder of AI. They post growth of revenue and the finance media writes that that growth came from selling AI, despite the fact that none of these companies actually say how much they've earned from selling either AI software or renting out GPUs. Isn't that weird? Isn't that really weird? We're two years in, three years in, honestly, and not a single one of them mentions how much they make from AI. Microsoft did it two quarters running, then they stopped. Not a problem. No need to check in on the company that has now spent over $200 billion since 2022,

• 1:35Ed Zitron?

  building data centers full of GPUs so that they could make an amount of revenue that they are deciding not to share. Like, just, are they shy? Are they shy? Are they, is the revenue too good? Oh, I couldn't possibly. I'm too shy, I couldn't share my AI revenue. Perhaps somebody should report this out sometime. In any case, everybody is aggressively intensely ignoring the elephant in the room. OpenAI, the billion-dollar baby that loves burning billions of dollars, who both the California and Delaware attorneys general decided to let convert to a for-profit entity. And guess what? OpenAI is already gearing up to go public in 2027. You know what? Fuck him, let them. Let them file a goddamn S1. Show me the innards of this company.

• 2:18Ed Zitron?

  I bet OpenAI's books are gonna look like a dog's dinner coming out of its asshole on Thanksgiving. The Register reported earlier this week that, as disclosed as part of Microsoft's earnings, OpenAI lost over $11 billion in the last quarter. Why are any of us pretending this makes sense? Why? Why are we doing this? Why are we pretending that OpenAI makes sense as a company? What does this company do? What have they done previously? And what will they do in the future that justifies any of this? I, I don't know if I have AI booster listeners. I don't know if any of you are really big AI fans. I don't know. If you are, please contact me and tell me why you believe it's worth it.

• 3:00Ed Zitron?

  And if your answer is, well, companies burned a lot of money to get to where they were in the future, what has to come out of this entity? That will justify this expense? Because that's really the thing that I'm rolling around in my mind. What justifies all of this? What justifies the capex? What justifies the OpenAI wants to raise $60 billion at the IPO in 2027? It'll never happen, but nevertheless, like, what is it that justifies all that? Is it the data centers? What will the data centers do? Nothing, it's gonna be more of the same. And that's before you get to the fact that the demand isn't there. It's just exhausting. I know I'm repeating myself. Not really gonna stop, though.

• 3:45Ed Zitron?

  I have no intention of stopping. In fact, I think I'm gonna go harder. And I know, it's really easy at times like this, when the world feels suffocating and illogical and unforgiving and dishonest and frustrating and confusing, to turn our guns inward, to tear down and to disarm and disparage, to fight back through isolating ourselves further. But these are the motives and moves of those who do not see a future, who crave an eternal status quo where history must repeat the enrichment cycles. The same mistakes that left us in a growth-driven near-apocalypse for three straight years, that have empowered charlatans like Altman and Amadei because they resembled stories of the past heroes of the tech industry like Uber and AWS enough to keep you warm and fuzzy every night without worrying about whether gravity exists.

• 4:29Ed Zitron?

  Good sense and mathematics don't need to matter when you're smoking enough copium that you're already imagining your next trip to visit the remains of the Titanic. So I'm gonna tell you something. I'm gonna tell you to do something dramatic, and yes, we all know where this is from, but I want you to say this out loud, as quietly as you want or as loudly as you want. Fuck these people. Doesn't that feel good? Fuck these people, fuck them. God, I'm told I can't swear that you can't address this financial insanity without anything other than the calm poise of a fucking monk. But how else am I meant to react to Sam Altman promising superintelligence for the 18th time? Or claiming in 2027 or 2028 we'll have automated AI science? Or signing deals for a trillion dollars of stuff that his company can never afford? Am I meant to applaud?

• 5:15Ed Zitron?

  Am I meant to be excited? Look at the rest of the tech industry. I mean, you can look at ChatGPT, but even outside of it. Our social networks look terrible. Facebook is a minefield of scams and AI slop. Instagram is 50% ads or more. Our email accounts are full of spam. I get five spam calls a day. Everything needs a fucking account. Fuck the future for a second. Can we just get the things that we use every day to fucking work again? Or is that too much to ask in an era where everything must grow eternally? I swear to God, the most impressive technology anybody could launch this year is something that actually does what it's fucking meant to. Pardon me for being a little salty, but God, every day in the news, somebody talks about how we're in the midst of a glorious era of artificial intelligence.

• 5:59Ed Zitron?

  Yet the products we use have never felt dumber. It's trite, I know, but three years into a hype cycle specifically oriented around intelligence software that changes our life, it feels like I should have something, anything, that feels like it's measurably improved. Every product feels worse. Everything. Put aside how you may feel about AI and be real. Is there something out there that's actually improved for you? Is there a single thing that's gotten better? And God, if you say, well, the models have improved a bit, who fucking cares? What does that do for you in a practical sense? What exactly has been done between 2022 and 2025 that actually matters? What they fucking do? ChatGPT has got a lot of free users.

• 6:44Ed Zitron?

  Well, some people use it for code. Some people use it and feel deeply buried mental health symptoms activate it. Some people use it for search. This is where we're at, and this is where we've been. And honestly, this is where we're always going to be. Why exactly did big tech spend over $80 billion in capital expenditures in the last quarter? What's the point? Why not sink some of that capex into making your products better or your users happier? Why not make your products work properly? Then again, perhaps that's just impossible for generative AI. Perhaps that's what Copilot and Gemini do. Maybe they just fuck stuff up. Maybe they're meant to only half work. Great, they get to lose money, their customers hate it. It's a real win-win scenario.

• 7:29Ed Zitron?

  And look, while OpenAI may claim to be building the future, it's clear what they want to do is continue the existence of the status quo. Of those that finance the status quo, making money off of it. Of those that herald the status quo's latest ideas getting the clicks. That continue the valley's rotten cycle of allowing companies to consume as much venture capital as they want until they can cash out. I think they've kind of given up on the thing where it's like, oh, we make something useful and sell it because it's good. OpenAI is not interested in innovation. They want to be a social network, a consumer tech startup, a software as a service company, a business productivity company, or whatever form will make the company grow as big as they want, even if said growth is deeply unprofitable. All that matters is that it grows. It's cancerous. It's depressing.

• 8:14Ed Zitron?

  It's frustrating when you meet people who they can't help but go to bat for this stuff. They claim it's amazing, but their justifications are flimsy. And they get mad at you. They get so mad at you for trying to burst that bubble, for trying to make them talk in practical terms. Because AI does something to everyone that loves it. Sure that there are some people, there are definitely some people that can use it healthily, fine. But I believe something about this product, because it makes you, to make it do anything useful, put in so much effort to gaslight yourself into believing it's good, that you simply must defend it. Because if you don't defend it, you have to admit that the software is training you, not the other way around.

• 8:57Ed Zitron?

  And the most vociferous boosters are so deeply, deeply in the hole, dig up stupid, that they can't help but defend it. They can't help but attack those who would not defend AI. That they can't help but claim that the mediocre is amazing, and that the future will come from stuff that sucks shit. And that's where we are right now. And in times like this, it's easy to feel defeated, and even easier to feel depleted. But I encourage you to focus on one thing: solidarity. The news make you, make you think that darkness is a monolith, that there are few people that feel like you do, but they do and they are everywhere.

• 9:40Ed Zitron?

  They are your friends, your family, and even the members of the Better Offline subreddit. If you feel dark, or lonely, or lost, or ground down by everything, know that many of us do too. You may feel terribly lonely, but even in our mangled, broken internet, there is community everywhere. And even if you may not believe it, people love you and feel the way you do too. Reach out to me at [email protected] if you ever want to chat. I can't promise I can read and respond to every single one, but I try to, and the subreddit is there for you too, and I'm on there too. It may feel like the forces against us are all powerful, but they are not. They're committed to burning billions of dollars only because they know that the second that they stop, the bubble will pop, and they will be revealed as the directionless charlatans they've always been.

• 10:23Ed Zitron?

  I believe now that every dollar spent on GPUs will ultimately be a waste, as I can find no compelling evidence that it's possible to make margin on them, before they die in what, the four to six years that they actually have any value. And I believe all of you will feel vindicated in time. It will be much easier to weather the difficult times we're in with friends and allies, and even more fun to celebrate victory with company. It's easy to give up. It's easy to feel discouraged in the face of adversity, to feel separated from others, to believe that isolation and turning inward is the only response. But I want you to feel emboldened by sorrow, to seek the comfort and energy of others, to make friends, to break bread, to build solidarity, and realize that you're never alone and will never be alone.

• 11:06Ed Zitron?

  You may feel like backing down, that the pressure against you by powerful forces is too much. And I tell you that it isn't, and that the only reason that pressure exists is because they fear and may even know that you are right. Thank you for listening to this show, for giving me your time, for giving me your patience and attention. I deeply appreciate your kindness and support. Tomorrow, I'm going to put out a really important premium newsletter about how GPUs may never be profitable, and then next week, believe it or not, I may have something even bigger. In any case, I could not ask for better listeners. Thank you again.

• 11:48Speaker 04

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• 14:22Speaker 08

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• 14:24Speaker 03

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