Radio Better Offline: Mia Sato & Dave Lee

Welcome to Radio Better Offline, a tech talk radio show recorded out of iHeartRadio's studio in New York City. Ed Zitron is joined in studio by Mia Sato of The Verge and Dave Lee of Bloomberg to talk how companies like TikTok and Google change the web with their incentives, the nihilism of Pop Mart's viral Labubus, and why people are more game to pay independent writers. Mia Sato, The Verge https://www.theverge.com/authors/mia-sato https://bsky.app/profile/miasato.bsky.social https://www.instagram.com/miasato.2/ Story around “dupes” https://www.theverge.com/cs/features/709635/knock-it-off Story around “Labubus” https://www.theverge.com/analysis/710047/labubu-pop-mart-blind-boxes-scarcity-marketing Dave Lee, Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/authors/AWQ3soOJK0Y/dave-lee https://x.com/DaveLeeBBG https://bsky.app/profile/davelee.me Story around Google and AI https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-07-28/google-is-reaping-the-rewards-of-its-unfair-ai-advantage?srnd=undefined Google “Web Guide” https://blog.google/products/search/web-guide-labs/ 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 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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• 1:19Speaker 02

  Call Zone Media.

• 1:22Ed Zitron?

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

• 1:41Ed Zitron?

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

• 1:48Speaker 04

  Happy to be here.

• 1:49Ed Zitron?

  So, before we go any further, of course, please subscribe to the newsletter, the premium one as well. Please help me. And for a limited time, you can buy a Battle Offline challenge coin and a bunch of other stuff links in the episode notes. But you two, I'm so excited to have you here because you were two of my favorite opinion columnists as well, but also a feature. Like you, I've known your work for many years, so I'm very, very excited to have you here. Mia, I wanted to start with a simple question, though. What is a Labubu? You've shown me this creature, this horrifying like little evil thing and everyone wants one. And I don't under every time I try and look it up and it makes me upset.

• 2:24Speaker 04

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

• 2:28Ed Zitron?

  I, I think we record in the same room as.

• 2:31Speaker 04

  Right, something shifted. Oh, okay. So a Labubu probably has been in the last Culture Esos area.

• 2:37Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I would assume.

• 2:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, Labubus are little plush dolls. They have kind of like a hard, plastic, human-like, mean face, but then are wearing like a bunny suit. They come in all different colors. And I think the most important thing to know about Labubus is it is just gambling. It's just gambling for kids and kind of adults now.

• 2:56Ed Zitron?

  Elaborate.

• 2:57Speaker 04

  So they're, they come in blind boxes, which is like they, they are all in like a little plaster or a paper carton. And you have like a one in six chance of getting a certain, you know, these colors. And then there's one rare one that's like a one in seventy-two chance. And it says it right on the box, like it is just straightforward betting.

• 3:15Ed Zitron?

  Who makes them?

• 3:15Speaker 04

  Um, they are sold by this company called Popmart and they're based on like a cartoon, I think, like a broader umbrella called The Monsters. So Labubu is one character in The Monsters.

• 3:25Ed Zitron?

  And the others did not take off, I'm.

• 3:27Speaker 04

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

• 3:31Speaker 05

  Is the Labubu on your back?

• 3:32Speaker 04

  The Labubu is looking at us, yeah. No, it's real, it's real.

• 3:35Speaker 05

  Is it one of the seventy-two?

• 3:37Speaker 04

  No, no, no, obviously not. No, this is a normal one.

• 3:40Ed Zitron?

  Is there a secondary Labubu market?

• 3:43Speaker 04

  Well, this is where it gets interesting. And this is why I think Labubus are funnier and kind of stupider than they appear on the surface. Because from my observations and from talking to friends who are like good at flipping things, there is no, really no resale value for opened Labubus. So if I wanted to sell this pink Labubu, it would go for maybe like forty bucks, fifty bucks. And they retail for like twenty-seven ninety-nine, not including shipping and tax and all of that.

• 4:11Ed Zitron?

  So not a huge margin.

• 4:12Speaker 04

  No, not at all.

• 4:13Ed Zitron?

  You can even sell.

• 4:14Speaker 04

  Exactly. The, the ones that do go for some money are the rare ones, which is like, you know, they're special colors. And unopened boxes. Because again, it's about gambling. It is about the chance that you might have a rare one.

• 4:26Ed Zitron?

  Do they sell out? Is that why?

• 4:28Speaker 04

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

• 4:36Ed Zitron?

  Just introduce them to gambling.

• 4:38Speaker 05

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

• 4:40Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 4:41Speaker 04

  It's exactly the same. It's exactly the same.

• 4:42Speaker 05

  At least there was a sort of game with Pokemon. There's like trumps, right?

• 4:46Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 4:47Speaker 04

  And there is some like off, like downstream LeBubu culture where people will dress.

• 4:51Speaker 05

  Downstream culture. Sorry. That's great.

• 4:56Ed Zitron?

  Jesus Christ.

• 4:57Speaker 04

  In this essay, I will.

• 4:59Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, we live in hell.

• 5:01Speaker 04

  But people will like dress up their LeBubus. They'll like get accessories. There's a crazy kind of like off-brand black market for like LeBubu-related things.

• 5:10Ed Zitron?

  Faux Bubus?

• 5:11Speaker 04

  Like, LeFufus. The Fufus are the fake LeBubus.

• 5:14Ed Zitron?

  Okay, that's pretty good.

• 5:14Speaker 04

  I also own a LeFufu that I bought outside the Statue of Liberty, as God intended. But yeah, the LeBubus are interesting because it's not about the doll. It's about how you acquire it and it's about the, the odds, the, the odds that you're taking, really.

• 5:30Speaker 05

  Quite likely there's nothing more to it.

• 5:31Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 5:32Speaker 05

  Like, because I feel like it, two years ago, this would have got, this would have had like an NFT element to it, right?

• 5:38Speaker 04

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

• 5:40Speaker 05

  Well, I, I think it's quite wholesome, but it's just, it's just the thing. It's just nothing else.

• 5:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's just like collector culture. It's also like.

• 5:48Ed Zitron?

  Very nihilistic.

• 5:49Speaker 04

  It's, it's pretty nihilistic. There's no IP related to it that people are familiar with. There's no film, like LeBubu movie that people are obsessed with, like, you know, Paw Patrol. Like, kids see Paw Patrol and they want stuff.

• 6:00Ed Zitron?

  And like 10 years ago, this would have already, remember with Angry Birds?

• 6:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:04Ed Zitron?

  Rovio was like, we're gonna do a TV show, we're gonna do a movie.

• 6:06Speaker 04

  Or like Grumpy Cat. I just wrote about Grumpy Cat. So I'm like, there's a Grumpy, there's a whole ass movie. Can I just say ass on this show?

• 6:12Speaker 05

  This will come.

• 6:12Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, that's kind of what I'm waiting for. Also, it does seem there is a LeBubu fan connect, collection on Magic Eden. It's 0.04 Sol. If you buy one of these, they should put you on a list. It's fascinating as well because I've done everything I can to avoid this. And I've mostly seen like City Spider Diana, classic Instagram account. I've seen LeBubu. Boo Boo pop up on there and being like, no one will save you. It's like that kind of brain rot style thing where it's like a cutesy voice being like, no one will save you. The world will collapse. And it's just Labubus.

• 6:43Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 6:44Ed Zitron?

  But it is, I, I thought there'd be more. I thought there would be more to it, but it just, see, it's just gam- it's just gambling. We've found a way to give children gambling.

• 6:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. And this isn't the first one either. Like their blind boxes are definitely a thing. Like Sunny Angels were the last blind box thing that was kind of a craze. Their little cherub like dolls, probably like two or three inches tall and they're all naked. And I think that's why adults felt weird about owning them, but Labubus are not naked. So people feel comfortable putting up them on their like expensive handbags.

• 7:14Ed Zitron?

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

• 7:23Speaker 04

  It's definitely on TikTok. I think also a big reason they're so kind of like zeitgeistier buzzy is because they're impossible to buy. They're sold out all the time. I went through the steps of trying to buy a Labubu on the Popmart app and it was hell.

• 7:38Ed Zitron?

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

• 7:42Speaker 04

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

• 7:47Speaker 04

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

• 7:54Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 7:54Speaker 04

  And they have like drops at certain times and the company, I think, wanted to sort of recreate the experience of going to a store and seeing an empty shelf where you're like looking for the doll or looking for the product.

• 8:07Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 8:08Speaker 04

  So when they drop, there are like digital shelves or bass or like boxes where individual Labubu, like six boxes of Labubus will be placed, like digital ones.

• 8:18Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 8:19Speaker 04

  And you can watch them sell out and you just scroll through the boxes to find a Labubu for sale. And most of the time they're all like grayed out so that something like it's in someone else's cart. And then they'll get released, like someone will abandon it or whatever. And then you can, you have to like spam click the box. It's crazy. And then you can shake it and it will give you hints about like what it's not, what doll it's not. I'm sorry. I feel like I'm speaking in tongues.

• 8:42Ed Zitron?

  No, no, this, this, I'm, I'm following you. It's just horrifying.

• 8:46Speaker 04

  It's really hard. And the other thing, I mean, Popmart is They're sick. They're so sick and brilliant because they also get thousands of people watching their TikTok lives for hours, waiting for them to drop LaBooboo's in TikTok shop. And that is engagement. That's it's just like straightforward engagement.

• 9:04Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 9:05Speaker 04

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

• 9:07Speaker 05

  So when does this jump into being, I mean, you said there's no, there's no other IP around it.

• 9:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:13Speaker 05

  But I think of like Minecraft that kind of started. I mean, a very sort of different product, but eventually they went, hmm, that's that's Microsoft bought it. And then they made a movie and all that stuff. And there was the commercialization was massive after it was like very organic. Is there a point, do you think, where that just suddenly people go, all the kids are crazy about these things? We can't just let this go by.

• 9:31Speaker 04

  Maybe, like maybe, but also it feels so straightforwardly consumeristic that like I could see it just dying down in like two months.

• 9:41Ed Zitron?

  Recession indicators when they stop selling these out.

• 9:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, honestly, I feel like people being obsessed with buying LaBooboo's instead of like groceries or whatever is a recession indicator. Like, these are cheap throw, you know what I mean? Like.

• 9:52Ed Zitron?

  I also feel like China just leads the world in this kind of.

• 9:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:56Ed Zitron?

  Like 90s style evil consumerism. Like this is some shit you would see in a mid 90s film about evil tech CEOs. Like, we've created a devil doll. Like China has.

• 10:08Speaker 05

  Is it that bad? I mean, I still, I mean, I, I feel like when I used to buy football stickers as a kid.

• 10:12Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, but this is so.

• 10:13Speaker 05

  They were blind. I didn't know whether there was a good players in there or bad players in there.

• 10:17Ed Zitron?

  I fully agree.

• 10:17Speaker 05

  Different scale and different level of obsession from what you're describing there. But isn't there just this part of a, a young person's brain that says, I want to collect these. My friends are going to collect these.

• 10:26Ed Zitron?

  Absolutely.

• 10:26Speaker 05

  It's fun, right? I mean, I don't see it as that dramatically different.

• 10:29Ed Zitron?

  Oh, it's not like you're totally right in that it's kind of clicking into that. You had a bit of that with the NFTs. And you've had right at the beginning, especially and with Top Shots as well, which was the NFTs for basketball games that they then expanded and then failed. It was exactly the same thing. It was the kind of top trumps or not top trumps, the football stickers. The difference is that they've built like an economic layer to it to like torture the people trying to buy them.

• 10:53Speaker 05

  The disappearing boxes.

• 10:54Ed Zitron?

  That is incredible.

• 10:55Speaker 05

  That's.

• 10:56Ed Zitron?

  Manipulative.

• 10:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's really interesting. It also feels very much like. What a lot of shopping is these days is like a, you know, a stand in for a hobby. Collecting, like, I feel like Labubus and Stanley cups are like the same thing. Do y'all know what Stanley cup? I'm sorry.

• 11:13Ed Zitron?

  Sorry, you mean, sorry.

• 11:16Speaker 04

  No, no, no, no, no. But that means your, your brain is good. You pass the test. Like, your brain is not fried.

• 11:22Ed Zitron?

  That is.

• 11:22Speaker 04

  Um, like, the women who collect, like, dozens of Stanley Cup colors. And there's no reason to have them, but like, that is their form of, you know, that it's a hobby.

• 11:32Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. And I just want to read something from the Wikipedia page for Labubu. The Federation Council of Russia proposed banning the sale of Labubus. The reason was their frightening appearance and potential harm to children's mental health. In Russia, Ekaterina Altabeva, deputy chair of the Committee on Science, Education and Culture, stated that the figures caused children to feel fear. I just want to say that that, like, that was just a very funny sentence.

• 11:54Speaker 05

  Russia's found its red line, I see.

• 11:56Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, yeah. Russia's massive ethics cause there. It's just, I think you've really mentioned something, though, with, like, collectibles. That reminds me of NFTs as well, where it's, I collect comic artwork. And I, original comic book, I fucking delight in it. I've filled my walls, I won't be getting anymore. But like, it has meaning. And those I know, like, sports memorabilia, they collect stuff because, oh, it's a meaningful game, whatever, or the player. With this, it's like, like NFTs, it's that with all of the culture removed. It's just strip mine to the core of, you want what everyone else wants? You want it now? How will you get it only us? And the fact that there's not another thing that Popmart has done, like, this is so strange, though.

• 12:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:38Ed Zitron?

  Like, they're not, it's almost like they're being a little bit cautious with it. They don't want to overfill and push their luck a bit, which is fascinating. And also, the reason I mention this, China, is American e-commerce companies do not have that killer instinct. I feel like out in China, they'll fucking roll our asses with making this kind of stuff. They made an evil-looking doll with no IP that they're just like, we own this, buy it now.

• 12:59Speaker 04

  People are obsessed, like.

• 13:00Ed Zitron?

  How did it take off? Was it, they're like, one, is it just something that appeared?

• 13:04Speaker 04

  Okay, the weirdest thing is that, from what I understand, one of the Blackpink girls were seen. She was seen with a Labubu.

• 13:12Ed Zitron?

  And that's a Korean pop.

• 13:13Speaker 04

  Yes, K-pop, K-pop group, one of the, probably the, one of the biggest acts in the world.

• 13:18Ed Zitron?

  Insane videos.

• 13:19Speaker 04

  I can't remember if it was Jenny or Lisa, but I think maybe Lisa from Blackpink had a Labubu. And it like, it had been kind of percolating already, but that really like blew it up in a crazy way. Um, but yeah, my prediction is like, this will be not a thing anymore when it's, they're easy to acquire. Because again, my, my theory is that it's really just about the process of acquisition and the process of purchasing. Rather than like the actual thing. And I think also a lot of other, especially like American toy makers are desperate, right? Like what is their Labubu? What is, I don't know.

• 13:53Ed Zitron?

  And the things it's, it's, they're trying, they're going to solve it by going, well, we'll just make a better one. It's like, no, the actual thing you need to do is engage your killer instinct and call FanDuel or one of those companies. They, FanDuel has more in common, I think than any like Mattel as far as creating a product like Labubu. It's just this thing of scaring people, saying, oh, if you don't get in on now, this now, you'll miss it. Just the thing with NFTs, things with crypto. And now they've brought it for children, which is great. I think, I think it's good. It's also, I think the natural endpoint of this bullshit fandom culture we've been in the last 10, 15 years, maybe. Whereas just like, it's just.

• 14:29Speaker 05

  I think, I think you underestimate the degree to which these things just cycle around again and again and again.

• 14:34Ed Zitron?

  I don't disagree on that. It is a cyclical thing, but I think it's also just like, why do we have this? Cause everyone has this. Why do we do this? Cause everyone does this accelerated by things like TikTok and TikTok Live in particular.

• 14:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:47Speaker 05

  The urgency is interesting.

• 14:48Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 14:49Speaker 05

  And I think the, if there's one, if, even if the, the toys go away, that mechanism seems like an enduring thing. But it, it'd be interesting to see if an American brand does try that fully here, because it's kind of similar. To, do you ever remember you used to use like booking.com and it would say, three people booked this room in the last 20 minutes. You better get it, otherwise you're not gonna do it. And we, we sort of, we, that was, you know, got a lot of scrutiny as, as, as been an unfair way for, to force people to buy things in a hurry. And I suspect we'd see the same with.

• 15:20Ed Zitron?

  Oh, yeah. It's, it's like the natural growth of e-commerce and all the ways you can kind of push a customer. You see it with like every single Instagram drop ship thing. If you click them, it's like 62 people are buying this right now.

• 15:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:32Ed Zitron?

  You need to buy the special code.

• 15:34Speaker 05

  Looking at it, right?

• 15:34Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. And if you don't, they're gonna sell out. This is the pans that sold out. There are so many pans that sell out on Instagram. But leading into another thing, actually, both of you have kind of covered as well. It feels like this is almost humanity trying to move with the algorithm to fit what people would be going after. A growth of, as you put, Dave, that the fact that, yeah, we are trend seekers, we all want to kind of fit in. But it leads to this thing of this got popular because it got, it got popular and it hit the algorithmic side. You were mentioning before we came in here, Mia, that there is almost an SEO level to posting on TikTok now?

• 16:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, I think it goes back to, do you remember like two years ago, everyone was freaking out that people were using TikTok like a search engine? Which now feels like so quaint. Um, I think, uh, I think like a Google exec mentioned it at some of, right?

• 16:23Speaker 05

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

• 16:28Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 16:28Speaker 05

  Where they, we say lost eventually. They argued that Google isn't a monopoly because kids are turned to TikTok to search. And it was just, it was, and Google had this slide they were briefing journalists with and others that had all the sort of supposed competitors.

• 16:42Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 16:42Speaker 05

  And it was just things that they weren't competitive. And TikTok was one of them. And there was this idea, and because here's the thing, if someone might go on TikTok and say, oh, good restaurant, New York, and get like a couple of, you know, videos or whatever. But the idea that there was like a utility that's replacing like for like. Was very, very hopeful to me, but it was at a point sort of picked up by all these kind of trends announced being, oh, Google's in trouble because people have searched on TikTok. And it's like, well, not really, you know, it's, it's, that'd be like saying I'm searching on television. It's the, this not, this not the same thing.

• 17:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely not. And it's obviously like, it was deployed very strategically by Google, you know, like bringing out very specific um statistics or whatever. But the, I think the, the point stands that like the same thing, I've written about sort of the degradation of Google search as a window into the web. Um, and part of that is because people spam the web with horrible things, like things that kind of suck and are not useful because they're trying to appease an algorithm. And I think that same thing is happening on TikTok. It happens on Instagram and a lot of it is user like comes from the user. We have to be honest that like people make shitty content.

• 17:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:52Speaker 04

  You know what I mean?

• 17:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:53Speaker 04

  Um, it's not just the tech companies who like make the systems bad. Um, but there also is like sort of the guiding hand of TikTok where it will give creators ideas for types of content to make. These are what people are, these are the terms that people are searching for. What if you made a video about trending restaurants in your neighborhood or La Boo Boo, right? Um, and part of it is like people want to want ideas for what to make your, it's TikTok is a very punishing algorithm, at least in my experience. Like if you stop posting, it's really hard to regain views.

• 18:27Speaker 05

  I wasn't sure. Yeah, I've actually always been, so there's a momentum almost.

• 18:30Speaker 04

  There's a momentum for sure, for sure. And I, this is something creators have talked a lot about, but you need ideas for what to post. And if TikTok is saying a bunch of people are searching for this one specific restaurant in New York, why wouldn't you make a video about it, right? It's like sort of, it, it's, it's a, a, almost like a, it's backing into SEO.

• 18:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 18:49Speaker 04

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

• 19:00Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, it's it's the kind of incentive driven web at this point because I think that with this, the thing with SEO especially is there were there were people always made shit content, but there were also people who genuinely like here are 10 things I really like in in New York. I mean, one of my, one of the saddest like deaths of a brand that's still around is like Zagat. That used to be or Time Out especially.

• 19:22Speaker 05

  I mean, there's so many, Sports Illustrated, you know, they just these places that were making good content. The business model didn't work. And one of my grievances with Google at the moment strongly is that what they're selling now is the solution to the web they created.

• 19:37Ed Zitron?

  Yes, exactly.

• 19:38Speaker 05

  We've got all these disgusting websites out there. You go on a local news website. My God, it's it's.

• 19:42Ed Zitron?

  Your phone is like 150 degrees.

• 19:44Speaker 05

  Exactly. And there's just the pop ups everywhere and you go to the top and and Google's saying, oh, the web's bad. We're gonna, we're gonna summarize that as an AI overview. Isn't that great? And so well, the web's bad because the design had to be, you know, the way we made content had to change in order to to appease the platform.

• 20:00Ed Zitron?

  And that's the thing. You you did a great piece actually about reaping the rewards of its unfair advantage. And also kind of like selling Hugh Swill and being like, yeah, we'll we'll find the dog shit. We'll find the the the diamond in the turds that we created. And I think.

• 20:16Speaker 05

  Quite a turn of phrase.

• 20:18Ed Zitron?

  That's why they why they give me a microphone. But it's it's so sad as well because there is an innocence to it. There's like, yeah, if you know people are looking for New York stuff and you know, New York, of course, you'd say that. Time Out, you reasonably brought up Zagat as well as it used to be that you pick up time out and be like, oh, well, these people think they're cool. Like, it was a big degree of that. I think TikTok has leaned into that as well with content creators like that because I have seen TikToks of stuff in New York. I moved to America in 2009. I've spent many, many hours in New York. That shit I'm surprised by. It's cool. And then you get the people who are doing it chop shop style. And it's unfortunate, but kind of inevitable that you'd see this on social networks. What's confusing to me is why TikTok feels like the first one to really give it the actual try.

• 21:02Ed Zitron?

  Because Instagram sort of half-assed it. Twitter's never really, like, people try and appear for algorithms, but it didn't feel like the companies were as serious about it as, say, maybe a Google or indeed TikTok.

• 21:12Speaker 04

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

• 21:18Ed Zitron?

  Yes.

• 21:19Speaker 04

  And it doesn't. I don't know that it makes sense to optimize that same way. That said, Instagram also does have like creator tools where it will be like, this is how you should edit a video, or this is how you should make content, right? It's very, YouTube does this. So it's, it's not that, I, I just think that search on TikTok is something so different. I, I did something recently where I was, I searched for something on TikTok and there was like a little pop up that the app gave me that was like, if you're not finding an answer that's satisfactory, why don't you ask people to make content based off of it or something? It was crazy. You know, it was so many levels of optimization that I was like, this is really an experience that doesn't exist on other platforms.

• 22:02Speaker 05

  It's such a by, it's such a by design thing with TikTok. So it's because one thing is really, I find really aggravating. As someone who, you know, isn't as clued up on the online culture as evidently you guys both are like.

• 22:15Speaker 04

  Well, nobody has LaBubu's here but me, so.

• 22:18Speaker 05

  I'll often see on TikTok some reference to something and I'll go, what are they talking about? Like, what is, what is that about? And TikTok doesn't allow you just to link to another video, right? And so what it forces you to do is there'll be the search suggestion, there'll be people doing searches. There'll be people that know that people are looking for searches, so they will reference something else that would send you somewhere else entirely. And it's just the, the net effect of that is instead of going to the video that explained the thing that I'm confused about, I end up watching maybe five others with ads in between every second or third one. And I still don't really know. I mean, although some of the things, I think if I did see the explanation, I still wouldn't understand. But like just trying to get there in the first place is really, really tricky.

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• 24:10Ed Zitron?

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• 24:54Ed Zitron?

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• 25:15Ed Zitron?

  It's when you get to the point of like, why are they creating search tools on their platforms? Is it so that you can find the thing you need or so that they can find, like, they can kind of get you halfway? I don't think it's, I'm, just to be clear, I'm not front-loading this and suggesting they're evil in everything, everything, everything they do, but the tweaks they make kind of are. One of the funny things, Mia, you put, you actually put in the article about tubes, though. Excellent. I'll even call it these in the notes, don't worry. You don't have to email me. Uh, was you, if you look for Apple dupes on Instagram, you get this thing saying protect your favorite brands. The sale or promotion of counterfeit goods is not allowed on Instagram. So funny, but if you just type in dupes, it goes summarizing. If you're looking for alternative, alternatives, the high end products, dupes are all the way to go. A

• 25:57Ed Zitron?

  dupe is a product that replicates the quality and or appearance of price. Your alternative. So funny. And then you get a bunch of videos that are selling dupes. Sometimes it feels like they don't really care that much. They just, they just kind of like mailing it in.

• 26:10Speaker 05

  Yeah. Tik Tok it for dupes. I find, I wrote a column months ago now, but it was, I saw one video and there's this guy and he hadn't even got out of bed, right? And he said, oh, Apple's selling these AirPod Maxes for 300 bucks, but these ones are only 20. And, and he was holding his hands. You can't obviously see on a, he was holding his hand in the air and he didn't have a product in his hand. He just had a screenshot of the Apple, the official Apple AirPod Maxes. And it was just sort of floating around with his hand. And then what he was selling on TikTok shop was, you know, 20 buck knockoff. That was terrible. And I wrote about basically how the TikTok shop is, I think it's kind of insulting to TikTok users. They've really shoved it in. They put it right in the middle.

• 26:50Ed Zitron?

  Oh, and it looks terrible.

• 26:51Speaker 05

  Looks terrible. The products are just awful. Some of the marketing people do is so trashy. It's like got all this like sexual innuendo in it and all this kind of stuff. And TikTok were just like, well, no, we're happy with it basically. And they, they actually tried to deep force a big correction on a column that had nothing wrong with it, other than the fact it was calling out there's a terrible place to shop online.

• 27:12Ed Zitron?

  I think that TikTok should lean more into the excellent Chinese business owners though. I don't know if you've seen any of these insane ones where it would be like, we're selling giant houses. You can, no permit needed. There was one where it's like four, four people sent. It's like, I, one says, I'm racist. One says, I'm ableist. And one goes, I'm Stefan. If you need to buy high quality cables with your logo on it. And I love those because they're funny.

• 27:36Speaker 05

  They're funny.

• 27:37Ed Zitron?

  They're funny, but they're also just like, yeah, we're trying to do the algorithm, but fuck you. Buy cable. And at the end, they're just like, we have a bunch of cables with you. That's respectable. That's, that's commerce. We should support that. Not this weird QVC. It almost feels like we're trending towards what every music video in the nineties was making, like this very kind of like greasy consumerism. Though I will add, this isn't me suggesting anyone specifically has decided to be evil. This is just what happens when incentives for people, I think. When you get like the slop shop in TikTok.

• 28:07Speaker 05

  I think the incentives of all the major networks have been so interesting and sort of shaping. I mean, you were talking earlier about Twitter. They never really pushed people in much of a direction in terms of what to sort of be talking about. But one thing they did reward constantly, the algorithm, was anger.

• 28:20Ed Zitron?

  Yes.

• 28:21Speaker 05

  And and Facebook got into that problem with, you know, when they, you know, for a lot, the longest time they thought any engagement is good engagement. Until they realized it was your auntie and uncles like having a go at each other over politics or whatever. That's when they realized that was bad and I'm still not convinced they do realize how bad that is. Twitter was all about anger. I I did for a short while, and this was years ago, I think now, but like TikTok did seem to sort of push people towards doing stuff, right? Which I thought was quite healthy, like.

• 28:47Ed Zitron?

  How do you mean?

• 28:48Speaker 05

  Well, the things that did well were, you know, friends getting together and dancing. It was being out and about, it was being funny, it was better. But the stuff that worked was actually quite entertaining.

• 28:56Ed Zitron?

  Kind of like Vine almost.

• 28:57Speaker 05

  Well, but yeah, like just like Vine in terms of just the sort of the humor that traveled. I think that what's happened though is they've turned the screw on the monetization and the amount of sponsored stuff. And and also like the, and I never quite know what drives it, right? Because is it that some people come up with a format for a format for um a video that works? And then TikTok goes, oh, that's good, we'll get others to do it. What do you think sort of TikTok is trying to nurture it itself first? I mean, I guess it's a bit of both.

• 29:24Ed Zitron?

  I imagine, yeah, it's chicken and egg because because I I had this theory about a year ago, maybe actually twenty twenty three, where it's like, at some point, how much of content is just going to be geared towards what they think the algorithm wants? And because the algorithm, with good reason, they don't want to just publish exactly what would work because then people would only do that. And I think that there's just this weird battle between, I think, any content creator, I think all of us, like, there's a certain degree of what's going to do well. And personally, as everyone knows from this show, I've just done what I want since the beginning, regardless of what people said. But there is a pull of like, what will do well? What do people want? And what is a person in this case? And so you've just got this, people probably, I reckon for the most part, people are making honest content.

• 30:08Speaker 04

  I think it's like

• 30:09Ed Zitron?

  But it's impossible to quantify.

• 30:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's impossible to quantify. And also, I don't think it's that like, it makes a lot of sense when you think of the internet or these platforms as a workplace, which for a lot of these people it is. For me, it is in some ways. The Verge employs me and pays my bills, but part of my work, part of my, how my work travels is based on my ability to ride algorithmic waves when needed, right? And it's the same way that like you still see journalists on threads. I don't really post on threads very much, but you see journalists on threads post screenshots of their articles. And then in the replies, they'll post the link because they think that they're going to get downvoted, right? Or down ranked for putting a link in there.

• 30:47Ed Zitron?

  She's insane.

• 30:48Speaker 04

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

• 30:50Ed Zitron?

  Twitter's like that as well now.

• 30:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. And I mean, Elon Musk has just come out straightforwardly and said like, you know, it's, I can't remember the term he used, but yeah, he's acknowledged that. But you know, the same practices sort of carry over to video platforms where you need to start a video in a certain way if you want it to get traction.

• 31:09Ed Zitron?

  And what way is that?

• 31:10Speaker 04

  Well, there are different ways to do it. Some, some stuff that goes really, does really well is like, you know, selfie style, selfie style video. And it starts, okay, story time. I'm sure you've seen.

• 31:23Speaker 05

  What's the Gen Z shake?

• 31:24Speaker 04

  Oh, where you put it down.

• 31:26Speaker 05

  Millennials get it ready, right?

• 31:27Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 31:28Speaker 05

  And have it and they go, hello, everyone, right?

• 31:29Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 31:30Speaker 05

  The Gen Z shake is the

• 31:31Speaker 04

  Is like

• 31:31Speaker 05

  So you guys

• 31:32Speaker 04

  Yes, that's, well, that's a perfect example of like people, the, the shake is this thing where people were, I guess, surmising that if you put your camera down, like you start recording and you put your camera down in a way that feels like you were just caught in the moment. Yeah. And you were just recording, jumping into record a video like that is effective for people or it makes it feel organic or it makes it feel relatable, like whatever. But yeah, everyone does some, like some level of optimizing.

• 31:58Speaker 05

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

• 32:05Ed Zitron?

  Yes.

• 32:06Speaker 05

  Like, so I saw, and I won't say who it is, I might have, my assessment on how this person feels might be wrong. But I saw a singer who made a short video, maybe thirty seconds, where she had like one verse of a song. And she's like, oh guys, you like this? And it was wonderful and it got like, you know, over a million views and everyone's going, oh, record this, record this. Of course, and so she did, right? She sort of took time off the platform, made like a, a, an EP and put the songs out there. Came back on TikTok to make the content about the song being ready. And it got next to nothing engagement and you can just see, at least my impression was that you could see her kind of going, why? Like, why, like, I've done the song, I've done the actual work of releasing a song. And the algorithm, for some reason, maybe it seems less organic or maybe people just didn't like the song. Maybe I'm ugly now, maybe like all these, and people go, what is it that's preventing it?

• 32:51Speaker 05

  And I think that's where it's kind of troubling to me.

• 32:52Ed Zitron?

  I, I agree, and I think that it's really hard sometimes to see the difference between the algorithm and the reader or the viewer.

• 33:00Speaker 05

  Right.

• 33:00Ed Zitron?

  Because it's like, what did you like? Did people actually like it as well as the question there? There was also a YouTube video that went up a couple of months ago where someone was investigating why lots of videos have a person holding the tiny microphone, the lavalier microphone. And it really.

• 33:16Speaker 05

  I do that.

• 33:17Ed Zitron?

  No, but that's.

• 33:17Speaker 05

  Bloomberg TikTok account, I do the whole micro thing and people take the mic out of me.

• 33:21Ed Zitron?

  But it's weird though.

• 33:22Speaker 05

  Rightly so.

• 33:22Ed Zitron?

  Apparently algorithm likes it. I don't think so. Dan, uh, over a, a morning brew as well does, he holds like a full scale, like old news. I think people need to go back to that. I love.

• 33:33Speaker 05

  I love that. Subway takes guy has it on like a little thing, right?

• 33:36Ed Zitron?

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

• 33:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:38Ed Zitron?

  But it's like, I hadn't really thought about how it drives people insane, but it does. Even early days of the newsletter, I text Matt Weinberger, friend of the show, be like, is this shit? Do people, he's like, just keep writing, just ignore, just keep writing, it will grow naturally. But we've been conditioned for this thing where we're constantly, even me, and I try and pretend I don't get affected by stuff like this. But it's like, you see something do well or don't do well. Your natural inclination is why? What can I do to, did, am I wrong? Am I somehow? And it's interesting how so much this comes back to the platform incentives.

• 34:09Speaker 05

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

• 34:12Ed Zitron?

  Yes.

• 34:13Speaker 05

  That's, that's your initial reaction to it. I'd say, I, I always find your boss, Nele, Eli. He's always talking about how the verge is just has to be true to what it's doing. And not sort of bow to any of the platforms as they go. And I think that's always been a very good lesson, because I think too many media outlets, we we sit here and we go, oh, okay, this is the thing that's working on TikTok. We're gonna sit down, we're gonna act in a certain way, we're gonna do it in a certain tone. And I've had previous employers where they're like, oh, just trying to do it off the cuff. And I'm like, well, when you work for, and I stress a previous employer, I I would argue with my editors in saying authentic for us was to not do that. And it's a very sort of hello fellow kids thing that happens.

• 34:54Speaker 05

  When these serious places tried to be all like, hey, you know, like, in the same way that when a politician like Chuck Schumer tries to do some TikTok joke, it's like, it's not real, it doesn't, and it's embarrassing and it's patronizing to the people. Yeah.

• 35:07Ed Zitron?

  Also off, yeah, can you just do something off the cuff? Oh, you would like me to fake spontaneity? Absolutely, I'll get. But it's, and it gets back to to credit to Neil I hear the term Google Zero. I think it's really interesting because this idea that, and as you wrote about recently, Dave, that Google is basically in possibly taking away the traffic from everyone or dictating who gets traffic now in a very direct way. They're not one they control because it's a large language model, or at least controlling it's indirect. And I think it's, it's almost like a final like boxer in Animal Farm being marched to the glue factory, the final way you've outlived your usefulness. And I feel like the media, and I, by the way, I say this with a great deal of sympathy. Yeah, you're gonna chase which would get you clicks for your click driven business.

• 35:51Ed Zitron?

  But I think you see your, we're at the end or the beginning of a dark, kind of like semi dark era where we're seeing the cost of orienting journalism around trends and clicks so aggressively. And we're kind of now with the boobies and everything, we're seeing the natural result of orienting things around trend chasing because it's like, here's a thing that has no real resale value, that owning it is just symbolic. Do you care about the show? No. Why are you making these news stories? Well, it's because people are going to be looking for them. Why are you covering the same thing as everyone else? Because everyone's looking and there's a fair argument for that. If there is a big funding round or a big news story, of course, everyone's going to cover it.

• 36:28Speaker 05

  Just needs the traffic.

• 36:29Ed Zitron?

  And it's like the functionality of journalism. And I think this Google AI thing is, it's scary, man. I think like Neelai, Neelai got there early, I'll give him this one.

• 36:40Speaker 04

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

• 36:45Ed Zitron?

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

• 36:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think for some people it has basically hit nothing. Um, however, I will say that like, and I posted this on Blue Sky, but this has just been the MO for Google and with search for years. Before AI overviews, the idea that Google is self-dealing, right? That it creates products that then replace the things that other people were doing in search. That is old news and it's funny that, you know, people are kind of, that the AI overview of it all is what kind of finally makes people realize it. When I worked at the markup, um, we ran this story, um, by some great former colleagues, um, that like measured the percentage of the first page of Google results on a phone screen.

• 37:32Speaker 04

  How much of that space was taken up by Google products itself? And it was like 41% and that killed websites like Celebrity Net Worth. You know what I mean? Or like travel companies, um, because Google had flights, um, shopping, right? Like all of these services that other sites were providing, Google just made its own version. And where they were like, we're going to put this at the top. That's what, that's what's happening with AI. It's the exact same thing.

• 37:57Speaker 05

  With, in those cases, in, in Europe, they regulated against it, right? So when, when these companies come along and say, oh, Europe's being so overbearing or whatever. That's what they're talking about, right? They're talking about the fact that Google Shopping can't dominate the top 20% of a search page when you search for, you know, iPad or whatever, you know? So, um, that's what was, they were so aggrieved by. But I mean, even, but now with all the AI, I mean, I was on my mobile, on my smartphone the other day and it was, I was scrolling for days before I got to organic content.

• 38:23Speaker 04

  And now they're doing the entirely AI-generated whole page. Did you see this text that they announced?

• 38:27Speaker 05

  AI mode, yeah.

• 38:28Ed Zitron?

  Oh, is this beyond AI mode?

• 38:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's, I forget what it's called. I would have to look it up, um, but they announced it last Friday, Thursday or Friday. And basically it's separate from AI mode. You search for something and it creates. Honestly, exactly what webpages look like, websites.

• 38:43Ed Zitron?

  Oh my god.

• 38:44Speaker 04

  And it is, um, you know, it'll have a section, if you search, I think the example they gave was like solo traveling in Japan. And the top part will be like Reddit and Instagram, Reddit and YouTube posts, so like communities or forums. Then there will be a whole different section of the SERP, the search engine result page that is, yes.

• 39:01Ed Zitron?

  It's called web guide.

• 39:03Speaker 04

  Web guide, web guide. And then it'll be sort of like, you know, top places to go and it will pull stuff in from Expedia or not Expedia, Trip Advisor, things like that. It's, it basically subsections the SERP to look like an SEO generated or like an SEO driven article. It's, it's really crazy. It's the snake.

• 39:21Ed Zitron?

  That is actually.

• 39:22Speaker 05

  Who needs websites anymore?

• 39:24Ed Zitron?

  No, but it's all over, isn't it? But that's the thing, I, it's the net, it, it's ironic as well because the origins of Google were based on this idea that there was too much original content for you to find alone. And it was kind of noble and also within the original paper, they were like, yeah, if ads ever get involved with this, it's fucked. Man, were they right. But it's this sense of, they've never had much gratitude towards the web. And you made me actually think of something when with traffic dropping away. This is also, if you read like search engine journal and like, these are great publications, by the way, you want to see some real like journalists, those journalists. People that read SEO and talk to SEO people all day, Jesus Christ, rusty over there. Uh, but there were so many situations where traffic has just disappeared from a, from a concept. And they just Google went, no, not today.

• 40:08Ed Zitron?

  The idea that they're building pages like this is fascinating as well because it's like, wow, we don't need you anymore. Yes, you fucking do, dickwad. How is it going to generate the page? What's it going to be based on? And their, their thought, I imagine, I'm, I'm guessing, is likely, oh, people won't notice. I think people will. I think they will, I think people will see AI results, which is why the traffic's dropping and go, okay, that answers my question. But I think an entire fake page, people are going to be like, okay, and maybe they'll click them, but they're not going to stick around on them. They're not going to read much. It's not going to be particularly enjoyable. But maybe I'm wrong and I hope I'm not wrong because if this is an idea of something replacing the web, that is Google. Like that's more Google zero-y than anything I've ever seen. It's grotesque.

• 40:53Speaker 05

  Oh, it's just, it's just part of a pattern of, um, reducing any need to go off that.

• 40:58Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 40:58Speaker 05

  To get, and, and one of the most egregious examples of it isn't even AI. Every time I see it, it annoys me more and more. So one of the things that some publications have been quite successful at, Bloomberg's one of them, New York Times, famous, is games, right?

• 41:12Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 41:12Speaker 05

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

• 41:19Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 41:19Speaker 05

  Right? And now LinkedIn, they're doing mini games.

• 41:23Ed Zitron?

  What is, can you explain?

• 41:23Speaker 05

  And I'm like, why?

• 41:25Ed Zitron?

  Can you explain this LinkedIn game thing? Cause I got the pop up for the Apple news thing and I think I posted it on Instagram and I don't know what this shit is. Like, it's just like, fuck that. But what are these LinkedIn games? Please walk me through.

• 41:35Speaker 05

  I mean, they're just little word games. I mean, there's nothing, they're just trying to sort of capture. I, I, do you know what? I've not played the LinkedIn ones, but the, the Apple ones are just mini crossword, that kind of stuff. The thing with the LinkedIn ones, which I find quite funny, is it will tell you how many of your colleagues

• 41:48Speaker 04

  Oh my god.

• 41:49Speaker 05

  Have that, and it's like, oh, 300 of your colleagues at Bloomberg have done the mini crossword. Oh, happy. That's, that's really useful information.

• 41:54Speaker 04

  I imagine the crossword answer for every single day on LinkedIn is just like hustle, rise, grind, work.

• 42:00Speaker 05

  That would be quite fun though.

• 42:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, that would be really funny.

• 42:02Speaker 05

  That would make me sort of go for it.

• 42:03Ed Zitron?

  That would require too much like charm and thought behind it.

• 42:06Speaker 04

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

• 42:10Ed Zitron?

  I also, they added vertical video to LinkedIn.

• 42:13Speaker 04

  Evil.

• 42:14Ed Zitron?

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

• 42:18Speaker 04

  Yes, like that's wellness check.

• 42:20Ed Zitron?

  They're like, no, I'm thinking more like the FBI. It's like, what do you, what do you got on the laptop? Let me, let me check that hard drive real quick. Uh, but it's, it's so funny as well because all of this is just coming down to, please click our website, please don't leave our website. Our website is the most important. It almost feels just desperate. Like it feels that TikTok generally, and I don't say this with any, I, TikTok upsets me when I use it. I need the, add the page to end. There's just a weird thing in my brain. I'm like, no, infinite makes me, I don't want to look at this forever.

• 42:50Speaker 05

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

• 42:53Ed Zitron?

  No.

• 42:54Speaker 05

  See, I, I feel like I'm the only one who's ever seen this.

• 42:56Speaker 04

  No, I've hit it.

• 42:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, okay. Isn't that the most depressing?

• 42:59Speaker 04

  It's so sad.

• 43:00Speaker 05

  Doesn't it?

• 43:00Speaker 04

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

• 43:03Speaker 05

  Do you know what we're talking about? There's like a clip you get, if you've been scrolling, and it must be like an hour and a half, maybe.

• 43:07Ed Zitron?

  I get really anxious.

• 43:08Speaker 05

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

• 43:11Ed Zitron?

  I need to hit the end. If I, if I get the sense that there's no end, I'm like, I can't look at. Like, I require time to end, please.

• 43:19Speaker 04

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

• 43:26Ed Zitron?

  Because people want more.

• 43:26Speaker 04

  People want more and also it just, if there's space, someone will fill it. And that was kind of what I was trying to get at in my dupe story, which is like the same thing that happens on an infinite scroll feed, on recommendation-based social media platforms is happening to like our physical goods, simply because there is Amazon space. There are Amazon pages to fill and you need ideas. The same way that a content creator needs ideas to post every single day. Like, when it is so algorithmic and recommendations-based and taste-based, it's just like, just throw whatever. And I think- Space there.

• 43:58Ed Zitron?

  And I hate to defend the platforms at all. I think there's, the thing you said earlier about people did make shit content before. Actually, really did resonate because it's, there's also a degree here of, yeah, there's a bunch of derivative content, but there's also consumer demand. And yeah, as human beings, we want to see more of a thing we're interested in. I do think part of the unhealthy parts of the internet is we can fuel just about anything, perhaps not for the best. But it's, and there's a goodness to it as well, as many alternative communities that have found good things online and then others. But it's interesting because it's fulfilling the need of needing an infinite scroll, which is a need that they created on the platforms themselves.

• 44:37Ed Zitron?

  And I also found that story interesting because you didn't really have sympathy with any, like, it felt like you were empathetic for everyone, but not sympathetic to anyone. It was like you recognized why people did these things and why people want dupes of expensive things is probably because the thing's too expensive. But then you had the skirt worn by the, by Taylor Swift.

• 44:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:55Ed Zitron?

  And the scort.

• 44:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. I really like stories where you read it and your allegiance changes. I think that's like one of my favorite things to write. Um, and when I, when I can figure out ways to put it into that format, I really enjoy it. But, yeah, I, I mean, like, I don't really love the debate going into like who's right and who's wrong. Because it is just like not that helpful or not that interesting. Um, that feels more like, you know, just gossip or something. But I like this idea that like everyone is a little bit being taken advantage of and everyone also sucks a bit here.

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• 46:45Ed Zitron?

  And I also think that there is a certain degree of... Human beings take advantage of other human beings, too. The rip-offs, the "I'm the person..." "I'm the LaBubu Whisperer." Great quote there. Like, "I'm the person that can help you find the thing." There are all of these channels about how you can... Like gambling tips, about how you can buy and resell stuff. There are ethically dubious things that pop up on the internet, but there's also hunger for it. Those people are taking advantage just as much as the incentives of the platform take advantage of people. I think the platforms are generally more evil because they have more capacity for harm, but that doesn't mean that these small-time people would not do evil things, even given that scale.

• 47:22Speaker 05

  I feel that the platforms... The difference between how the platforms behave and how... What people describe as like the legacy gatekeepers from, you know, yesteryear, is that they don't have any sort of standards of what's good, right?

• 47:34Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 47:35Speaker 05

  And so if you're, you know, you're running a children's television company, Nickelodeon, Children's BBC, whatever, you're not commissioning a show like Mr. Beast or whatever.

• 47:46Ed Zitron?

  No.

• 47:46Speaker 05

  Because you just... Something makes you going, "Oh, is this really what we want here?" It's like, "Do we want to make it that everyone's obsessed with money and they're willing to sort of do these crazy stunts, embarrass themselves, whatever?"

• 47:59Speaker 05

  And you you you make those decisions despite knowing that people would lap it up. People would go crazy. And I think you could say the same thing about sexualized content. You can say the same things about about gambling. I think, yeah, you could do a great show about people gambling on sports.

• 48:13Ed Zitron?

  Oh, we had we had one of back during the Super Bowl and many listeners did not like that I talked about sports. But it's it gets back to the same incentives, like you're saying, though. It's people take advantage of people.

• 48:23Speaker 05

  But I think there used to be this idea that the major companies, when even it was down to, say, 60 minutes, right, on on CBS, they would say, right, is this genuinely important and do we need to do it? And I think when the platforms don't apply those same standards, what it means is that the people with just completely nonsense theories and opinions just get on that same surface where any TV producer worth their salt of tour would go, okay, well, we're not going to put this guy on because what are his qualifications? We don't, you know, we don't know if he's talking gibberish or not. So there's been problems with that in terms of who gets on. But like, I think it's, I think it was better maybe in some respect.

• 48:59Ed Zitron?

  No, and I think the, but you're also touching on something, which is these platforms have, despite what they're doing right now, have always acted as if they're never going to be the arbiters of what is used as content. It's just like we're helping you find stuff, but it's very clear that they're, they want to be the producer or at least mimic being a producer as well. And it's very interesting as well because everything we're discussing is just incentives. It's incentives and how people are drawn by it. Because you mentioned nutters, like people.

• 49:27Speaker 05

  Sorry, what? No, no, no. Did I mention nutters?

• 49:30Ed Zitron?

  No, I mean, just like people of dubious intent, intent and content. People like Curtis Yarvin or Eliza Yudkowsky, all these less wrong freaks. They were 10 years ago, they would have never had them. I would say they would have likely not got a New York Times column, whatever. But I think what that is, is actually a mashing between everything we're talking about, which is 10 years ago, there wasn't perhaps the pull of SEO, there wasn't the pull of tons of online content suggesting that we need to talk to this guy and humor him. Seriously, there was tons of reporting saying these people were evil. But now I genuinely think some of these things also might get clicks or they'll see the interviews that these people get 500,000 views. So they're drawn by all these new incentives versus having an actual quality bar. I do think it is a.

• 50:14Ed Zitron?

  Funny though, that these companies to this day are still pretending that they have no responsibility for the content. They have no, they have no quality standards they need to maintain. And indeed, they will tweak them to whatever level. I'm not even saying that anything has changed.

• 50:28Speaker 05

  Hmm. I mean, there's been changes in the sense that they, I think, well, I struggled to give Facebook too much credit on this. But you know, they, they definitely have made tweaks around just having, you know, a regular family member talk on Facebook and that. That being driven to, but what they've, what they've kind of pivoted to, and maybe they've done it not out of any sort of obligation to improve the problem. But because they realize now that content made by people you don't know, that's sort of made in a certain way, you're going to look at that for longer anyway. So they don't.

• 50:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's more of it. There are more people you don't know than do.

• 51:02Speaker 05

  And which is a really interesting, I mean, I, I find now, the only time I get any utility from the Facebook app is when it says, here's what you're doing 10 years ago. And I'll take a screenshot of that, send it to whoever it was, and go, look, can you believe that was 10 years ago? And that's going to start running out soon, I think. I'm going to run out of those sort of, you know, because some of the people don't post it. But that time when it used to be a platform where you'd have like a party and the next day there'd be, you know, a hundred photos of people tagged it. I mean, that feels like a completely different.

• 51:27Ed Zitron?

  It was so nice as well. Like when I got.

• 51:29Speaker 05

  It's great. It's so good.

• 51:30Ed Zitron?

  That's the thing, like, as angry as I am at these platforms, it's broken heart romantic. Cause when I got on Facebook, it was genuinely magical. Like you said, you go on a party, someone like 10 shit webcam photos would be up there. You'd say.

• 51:42Speaker 05

  Tag it.

• 51:43Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, and you'd make.

• 51:44Speaker 05

  Tag me in that one like an idiot.

• 51:45Ed Zitron?

  Or just like, you'd see someone that you talked to for a minute and you were friends. I had tons of friends at Penn State, for example. And there was something like nice about that. And I guess that that was just before they realized how much money they could make or before they went public.

• 51:57Speaker 04

  And they realized too that, um, you know, humans have an endless appetite for slop. Not even AI slop. It's just like, if you give them a scrawly feed, they will just keep going until we hit the danger zone.

• 52:10Speaker 05

  Does Facebook have a danger zone pop up? I don't think it does.

• 52:13Speaker 04

  I don't think so. I don't think so.

• 52:15Speaker 05

  I've never looked at it that long.

• 52:16Ed Zitron?

  It's just like, don't, don't look at this.

• 52:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:18Ed Zitron?

  No, it's, and I think it's the shift away from their claimed utility towards the real one that they want, which is. They all want to be entertainment networks because this concept of we ran out of stuff, that is it. It's like you go on Facebook, you check Facebook and you go, oh, this, this and this. Okay, I'm done because my utility here is social networks. On Google, like I'd go and look for something. People might do idols, idle looking, but they're like generally with a target. Now you've TikTok was, I think, created within the realm of people wanna see stuff. Like it was, it never tried to sell itself as a place where you meet your friends, a place where you interact with others.

• 52:56Speaker 04

  In fact, yeah, in fact, it was distinctly, this is a place where you are not by people you know, you know what I mean? You're posting things to, to an assumed audience that does not include your parents or your friends. Yeah, yeah.

• 53:08Speaker 05

  And TikTok doesn't, compared to the other networks, TikTok doesn't really encourage you to post, right? When you, when you, when you, if you do one video, then it will say, oh, do this, this, this, this, this. But it's quite content for people just to, to consume if that's what their pattern is. There's not like a huge sort of, you know, nudge in the app to say, oh, get, get, get posting.

• 53:27Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, and I think we're, and even with Google, and it's like, what is Google anymore? Is it, are they trying to not making it a search? Is it going, is it a place where Google, I mean, it always was a place where Google served you ads? But now it's, you're in the Google zone. And I have to wonder if, I say this with some optimism, whether someone might go, huh, what if we made a search engine that helped you find things? That could be a billion, two billion annual revenue business. You know, it's not a hundred billion, but we also don't need to do antitrust shit every year. I'm being, I'm even saying these words out loud. I'm like, no, that's not gonna happen. I, I've been through.

• 54:04Speaker 05

  I mean, people are trying to make difference. I mean, DuckDuckGo is kind of in that.

• 54:08Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I like, I like.

• 54:09Speaker 05

  But people just don't use them. That's the problem.

• 54:11Ed Zitron?

  And it, and that's the thing. It's like, do they not use them? Or is just not as many as Google use them? I'm not even saying you're wrong. It's just when you say people, you mean most people. And yeah, most people use Google. Most people stop the, stop their internet journey on Google.

• 54:26Speaker 05

  I mean, the thing that ties a lot of these platforms' problems together is the point in which they go public, it all just goes. Not so, right? Because you have, I mean, Facebook is the classic example of this. It just, then it just became massive growth every single quarter. And that's all, and I, and I think, I mean, and this is such a sort of basic observation, I guess. But, you know, I think if you applied that model to, say, the bodega on your street, right? Okay, every year you need to grow by 10%. Imagine what that business is going to go mad, isn't it? It's going to be selling porn and it's going to be selling drugs. They're just, just, just to, just to get the margins up, right? And you're thinking, well, hold on a second. Respectfully and with love.

• 55:05Ed Zitron?

  No, this is the, this is the rot economy. This is the growth, it's everything, everything driven around growth. It's the moment that growth must be perpetual. Because in 2017, there was an internal Facebook thing I put out last, last year. Big up to Jeff Horowitz, Broken Code, great book, where there's a whole thing where Zuckerberg needed 12% perpetual growth. When you, and I just really sat and thought about this, that is an insane fucking thing to put on a social network.

• 55:29Speaker 05

  That's crazy.

• 55:29Ed Zitron?

  I must have more friends, I must connect with more. And it's, and that, now when you look at everything, that is the incentive of everything. It's not really about, do we buy toys? Do we search thing is how do we keep people here or get the credit card? Which is, I mean, the age old capitalism thing.

• 55:44Speaker 05

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

• 55:47Ed Zitron?

  Yes, exactly.

• 55:48Speaker 05

  To have the constant, yeah, it's that you run out of stuff. And so then it became, okay, well, how do we make them, when they're looking at this site, look on it for longer? And that's when we started to get all the mad videos and stuff.

• 55:58Ed Zitron?

  It was profitable before they took it public. I have read stories which suggest that Mark Zuckerberg didn't want to take it public. And I, I'm like 50/50 on whether he did. Because there's enough evidence that suggests that he was quite happy with it being a $50 billion public, a private company. And then I think he realized, oh, wait, I control this whole thing, I can never be fired. But it's like trying to give a soul to.

• 56:20Speaker 05

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

• 56:28Ed Zitron?

  If only someone.

• 56:29Speaker 05

  Twitter could have been a fine business, but people, the, the VCs need their, their payday, right? That's the whole ecosystem.

• 56:36Ed Zitron?

  It could have, that's why I always wonder whether we don't have more interesting venture capital models with like revenue shares or like, so like something that is more interesting than if I give you a bunch of money, this might, you might sell this in the future. It's, it's sad, but it's, you know what? I want to ask a good question though. Are there any parts of the internet you enjoy right now? I truly want to know.

• 56:59Speaker 05

  You should have prepped me with this one before.

• 57:01Ed Zitron?

  I don't know. It's interesting having the gap.

• 57:03Speaker 05

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

• 57:12Ed Zitron?

  Oh, yeah, Kotkey.

• 57:13Speaker 05

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

• 57:19Ed Zitron?

  Twenty years or something.

• 57:20Speaker 05

  For a long, long time, yeah. And, and it's just a beautiful design. And the stuff is just interesting stuff. It's kind of reminds you of the days when you just have a few weblogs that you, that you'd write.

• 57:30Ed Zitron?

  And he sends real traffic as well.

• 57:31Speaker 05

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

• 57:39Ed Zitron?

  I actually, I.

• 57:41Speaker 05

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

• 57:42Ed Zitron?

  No, but I, I kind of, I agree with 98% of it, other than I think you could do something like this. It's just that starting a new thing fucking sucks. Like that I went and I have some personal experience with this. And I went and looked back where I was five years ago. 300 subscribers, 60 views on my first piece. But you have to have the ability to do a bunch of shit until it makes money. And I had a main job, had a PR firm. And I think just making money and creating anything is so difficult. But I love, I actually, I had not thought of it in a while, but it's just a place where someone thoughtful has said, you should check this out, kind of mimics, I don't know, friendships or iconoclasts, like the idea of someone.

• 58:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, and there's a tone as well. You just kind of know you're going to get, it's going to be sort of mildly nerdy, but not too much so. And, and, and that's what you get when you go there. And I think it's, yeah, it's when people get nostalgic for the web. I think it's that kind of discovery that they're, they're thinking about.

• 58:34Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, and it's, it is the thing that I think a lot of listeners miss as well. It's like, we're not, we don't just hate arbitrarily, we're not just angry. It's just, there's something taken away, like we mentioned Facebook, the quality. It also used to be Google, you used to be able to dick around on Google and find some bizarre stuff. I remember back in college, I lost this, 2006, I want to say, I was in my, in my Dustin Pangone's college room, mate. We randomly typed in, you know, you're right by Nirvana into YouTube. And there was just this, I think it was like, I don't even remember it had view. It was this grainy video of this like, young Asian guy singing this like, really kind of like, slightly out of tune version of something, but it was so interesting and grim. Like, he seemed very sad, can never find it again.

• 59:17Ed Zitron?

  But that was the kind of internet I kind of missed, like just these arbitrary moments where you find these weird things.

• 59:23Speaker 05

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

• 59:27Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. Five hours of.

• 59:29Speaker 05

  Because it will help you find that.

• 59:31Ed Zitron?

  Lex Fridman.

• 59:32Speaker 05

  And then if you watch that, then maybe Charlie Kirk. Maybe then, then you're in.

• 59:36Ed Zitron?

  Oh, you've learned three times of racism. Or you get Lex Fridman going, how you are on computer on website. I won't do that for too long. That's why the episodes are so long. It's 10 minutes per question. But so Mia, what are you enjoying?

• 59:52Speaker 04

  Oh, man, I feel like there are a few content creators that I really like and really tune into. There's a woman who makes like sort of YouTube video essays that are very well researched. Her name is Mina Lei. And she does sort of like fashion and consumerism and culture and art and stuff. And I think she is really fun and just like clearly. I saw this thing the other day that someone was like, if you can't write a normal essay, you should not try to do video essays. And she can do, it's clear she can do both. And I'm like, thank you so much.

• 1:00:28Ed Zitron?

  That's very good.

• 1:00:29Speaker 04

  You know what I mean? So I really like her. There's another person that I follow on TikTok and other platforms named Ryan Finn, and she is also really great. Also kind of writes about like, kind of like a she, she, she talks about fashion and clothing and culture in a really like heady kind of it's, it's, it's the type of content that people who don't read would see it and be like, it's really not that deep. But it is, you know, and I appreciate that someone takes things seriously like that. There are also like corners of the internet, even on platforms like TikTok or Instagram that I just like find the nerds and they still are just plugging away and doing whatever they want and their

• 1:01:13Speaker 04

  posts get like 50 views and they're fine with it. And like, that's, I think where it's special, where I don't like it when. I follow a creator and suddenly everything is spawn con or I follow a creator and clearly they're just sort of like jumping on trends. Um, I also like websites where there's still like new content being posted, but you can clearly find the markings of like 2006. Like, I'm a big knitter and Ravelry is the, was the place to find knitting patterns in like the early to mid 2000s. And sometimes I'll find photos clearly from that era and it's like really delightful. You know what I mean? Like they were posting to a different internet. They were thinking of the web as a completely different space.

• 1:01:54Ed Zitron?

  Before the, before the algorithms, I imagine.

• 1:01:56Speaker 04

  Before the algorithms and Ravelry also like it has some algorithmic stuff, but like a lot of it is sort of pure. I think, um, they're like forums, you know what I mean? That people post on, but.

• 1:02:05Ed Zitron?

  This is why one of my favorites is baseball prospectus. I know you're a, you're a Dodger fan, right?

• 1:02:09Speaker 04

  Go Dodgers. They suck right now. Go Dodgers.

• 1:02:11Ed Zitron?

  It's everyone's, everyone's, that's a dead, but baseball prospectus I think has looked the same way since it was made and it's just like really specific nerdy stuff. But I think you can even see it in sports. You've got people like Chad Moriyama over at Dodgers Digest, I think it is. You've got these like really specific and you know that they're really doing okay, but they're not like millions of views every month or anything, but you've got this kind of niche strength and my hopium, I, I snort aggressively is that these will never stop being made because they're still being made now. There's never been a more bleak time to make niche specific content and keep making it, but people keep doing it. I mean, Carl Brown from Internet of Bugs, he like does the most straightforward thing and just talks and it's great. And he has a growing audience, but you can, he does

• 1:02:55Ed Zitron?

  um, very specific developer focused stuff with a very straightforward explanation. Lovely fella. And it's nice seeing those and it's what gives me a bit of hope because if those people, if you never find any of that stuff anymore, if everything is just mainstream, I think that's terrifying. But even look at Gamers Nexus, big, hot, Steve Berkover, the legend, hard run box as well. You've got millions of subscribers. There is, there is hunger for this stuff.

• 1:03:19Speaker 05

  There's, there's hunger for like passionate people storytelling, even, I mean, I was always a big fan of um, uh, British guy, Tom Scott. I feel like you might have.

• 1:03:27Ed Zitron?

  And.

• 1:03:28Speaker 05

  He's done it for years and years, made YouTube videos. And he did, he did like twenty minutes on the design of the British plug for like an outlet. And how it's got.

• 1:03:36Ed Zitron?

  I really wanna see this video.

• 1:03:37Speaker 05

  And he makes the case that it's, you know, one of the finest things that Britain's ever come up with because it, you know, you can't electrocute yourself by putting it in. Oh, that's stuff. And I, and I remember watching, thinking, God, I've just watched fifteen minutes about the history of the plug. And I, and I, but he was, he's just such a sort of a, a resting, interesting guy. Bonafide nerd, but a great presenter. One of the things I take from um the sort of Substack era, if you like, is like, I imagine, and I'm not gonna make you get into numbers, but I imagine The Verge with its paywall now has a lot of people saying, oh, why are you paywalling da, da, da, da. And I find it really interesting that when big publications put up a paywall,

• 1:04:14Speaker 05

  everyone gets a little bit mad, right? They say that, you know, and like whenever I post a link to Bloomberg, it's always paywall da, da. And yet, when one person launches a Substack and says, right, this is ten bucks a month.

• 1:04:23Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 1:04:24Speaker 05

  They kind of go, oh, great, good for you. I'll definitely get behind you. And I think what that's showing us is one, it's a kind of, you know, middle finger to the mainstream media, fine. But then the second thing maybe is that I think people have respect for uh depth and, and niche.

• 1:04:39Ed Zitron?

  And love, and like love for the content as well.

• 1:04:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, cuz I think, I think they want to sort of, they love the idea that someone gives up and gives up, you know, a, a steady thing, goes into a Substack. I mean, I think of Paul Krugman, who left the New York Times. I remember thinking, oh, there's.

• 1:04:53Ed Zitron?

  On the show, Paul.

• 1:04:54Speaker 05

  Oh, I remember thinking, okay, Paul, you're being a cranky old man just cuz the editors don't want you to do that. But now his Substack is brilliant. It goes to such lengths.

• 1:05:03Ed Zitron?

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

• 1:05:06Speaker 05

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

• 1:05:15Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:15Speaker 05

  Get the entirety of the.

• 1:05:16Ed Zitron?

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

• 1:05:21Speaker 05

  And the way that I think bigger publications kind of lean into that is to have these sort of niches. I mean, I'm pretty sure.

• 1:05:25Ed Zitron?

  Well, Verge just added following, right?

• 1:05:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, oh, yeah, everyone should follow me on theverge.com. You can follow me and all the topics I write about. But I'm glad you said that, Dave, because I think that is, it shows a thing that mass media or big media companies have failed to do, which is explain what we're actually doing day to day. And I, that's why I am active on TikTok. You know what I mean? I talk to people who will never probably read my story and probably will never. Subscribe to The Verge, truthfully, some do, thank you so much, but a lot of them will just watch my videos and that is a way for me to explain to them what it takes for me to write a story. This is how I talk to people. This is like, I think people don't realize that like, when I'm writing stories, I'm actually sometimes going in person to interview the person. You know what I mean? Like, it's, and I don't blame them really

• 1:06:10Speaker 04

  for not knowing, because media has done a really bad job of explaining it historically. And I hope that, you know, folks who read my work know that like, I'm, I'm a, I'm one person, and I write these stories. And obviously, there's copy editors and editors and photo editors and, um, you know, dev, like dev folks who make my stories come to life. But like, we are just people making shit that we like, and we think is worth your time. And every media company should be showing that off.

• 1:06:39Ed Zitron?

  You made a really, you made a post quite, like, maybe it was last year, forgive me, where it was saying, we're kind of, journalists are seeding ground to content creators who are reusing their stuff. And I think it comes down to a failure of, I'm not saying anything specifically about any given outlet, but a fail to, failure to realize that people want people, they want to read people, they, and I think that large broadsheets tend to fail. Actually, I will give big props to the FT for doing this, that they let their freak flags fly, Bryce Elder, the legend, uh, and like, AlphaVille as well, because people want to read people. And I think that what should be table stakes now is that every outlet should get everyone a good microphone, get everyone a good camera, media,

• 1:07:20Ed Zitron?

  train them, zhuzh them up a bit, so that they can sound good and represent the work of the publication in a personal way that makes people more willing to understand there's a paywall. Which is a reasonable thing, whether, however you feel about The Verge or any other outlet, yeah, money, the things cost money to do, money, money.

• 1:07:37Speaker 04

  It's so expensive. It's really fucking expensive to write 6,000-word features. That's like months of my time, many, many people's, you know, work and resources. And I think also, like, if we don't feel that, and I know a lot of people disagreed with me when I said, like, we're seeding ground, and people didn't like it for a lot of valid reasons, but. If we are not there, something will fill the space.

• 1:08:00Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:01Speaker 04

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

• 1:08:05Ed Zitron?

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

• 1:08:09Speaker 04

  It's someone taking my stuff. Yeah, exactly. It's someone taking my stuff. It's they're misrepresenting it, getting basic facts wrong. And like, I have thirty minutes in my day. I will just make the fucking video. You know what I mean? Like, I don't care.

• 1:08:20Ed Zitron?

  They should get, there should be the space for, they should have, like, iHeartRadio gives me a studio at least, because it's like, oh, imagine I might want to do an in-studio thing, might make for good content. It's just, when you have resources, share them. You were gonna say something.

• 1:08:31Speaker 05

  Well, I, I think part of all of this as well is showing the process is the most, it travels

• 1:08:39Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:08:39Speaker 05

  almost more than the story, right? And it, and it breeds a ton of trust. I mean, I'm always surprised you can be, you know, in, in rooms of people who are, you know, incredibly successful, and they'll still, they'll ask the most, like, rudimentary questions about the journalistic process, like, oh, who tells you what to write?

• 1:08:54Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:08:54Speaker 05

  And I'm like, God, my job would be much easier if someone did tell me what to write.

• 1:08:57Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:57Speaker 05

  As opposed to it being the other way around. Things like, do you let people read things? I think just going into the process is really, really useful. And I always, there was, I was at a, a dinner thing once, and this one guy made this point that I thought was, I've always thought of when I'm talking about this is, if you said to somebody, when was journalism in America the most trusted, right? They're gonna, my assumption, most people would say Watergate.

• 1:09:18Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:18Speaker 05

  Was the thing. And he said, no, it wasn't Watergate that made journalism trusted. It was a very good film about Watergate.

• 1:09:24Ed Zitron?

  You're right.

• 1:09:25Speaker 05

  That made journalism trusted, because all that film was, was just them trying to get this stuff in the paper and them going through hell to make it happen. And if you want a more modern example, that the, um, the book, uh, She Said by the New York Times reporters that did the, um, Jeffrey Epstein, uh, uh, sorry, no, it was, it was Harvey Weinstein. I get all these.

• 1:09:44Ed Zitron?

  Different person.

• 1:09:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, disgusting man.

• 1:09:47Speaker 05

  But, uh, their book, they knew what Harvey Weinstein had done within about ten pages of the first chapter, right?

• 1:09:54Ed Zitron?

  It was getting it through.

• 1:09:55Speaker 05

  The rest of the book was get it in the newspaper. And I just think that is the, the more of that process that journalists share off the cuff constantly is super powerful. That's what Twitter used to be very good at.

• 1:10:05Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:06Speaker 05

  There was a big shift in newsrooms among bosses that went, hold on a second, the official account is getting no engagement. But when this random person on one of our UK desks starts tweeting about it, that gets loads of pickup. Why is that? It's because people respect. Hearing the process more than the the end result, the the eventual story.

• 1:10:22Ed Zitron?

  They wanna also know, and I know that this is difficult for different like your opinion stuff is fucking fantastic, by the way, at Bloomberg. It's really like Bloomberg has actually been very impressive in how they've grown out the opinion stuff. So this is not a detraction of that. I, at least in my writing, have found that people really like to know why you care. And I think that explaining that, even on here talking about your work, it's like hearing it just a little bit about the things that draw you into the story. I think it's so powerful. It's also people love it. I mean, after CES, I know I see like Victoria Song and Shirlene Low, both of them get the loveliest comments from people. I just found your work for the show. It's lovely. And it's also, I feel like most readers like to know and appreciate. It's not like most people are like, oh, these fucking idiots

• 1:11:07Ed Zitron?

  just type. When they actually know what goes into it, I feel that there's more goodness in people around this than they know. And now you've made that comment about Watergate and be thinking about it all fucking day.

• 1:11:16Speaker 05

  I'm obsessed with it.

• 1:11:17Ed Zitron?

  No, it's such a good point. So I'm gonna wrap it there. It's been so wonderful having you both. Me, where can people find you?

• 1:11:23Speaker 04

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

• 1:11:29Ed Zitron?

  Dave?

• 1:11:30Speaker 05

  I'm on all those places except theverge.com. I'm Bloomberg.com/opinion. But Blue Sky, Instagram, the rest, yeah.

• 1:11:36Ed Zitron?

  And I must recommend both of their work. Both of you are two of my favorite writers. No, like, I'm actually so excited. I got this one of my favorite episodes we've ever recorded. I'm just gonna be honest. I am Ed Zitron. You can find me on the podcast Better Offline. You go betteroffline.com, click Newsletter, click all the stuff, get the challenge coin if you want. But really, just I'm so grateful to have all of you. Love you all. Thank you for listening. And then you're gonna hear it say thank you for listening again. Gonna get an email. I'm gonna ignore it. I'll respond. Thank you for listening. But thank you for listening.

• 1:12:14Ed 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 betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening.

• 1:12:45Speaker 02

  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.

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