10 Things We Like (and Don’t Like) About ‘Euphoria’ This Season. Plus, “The Feed Is Fake” With Lane Brown.

Chris talks about what’s new on TV this week (1:25), before briefly reacting to the ‘Lanterns’ trailer (3:01). Then he breaks down ‘Euphoria’ Season 3, Episode 6 by way of a Zach Lowe-esque 10 Things list (4:27). Later, he is joined by Lane Brown, a feature writer for New York Magazine, to talk about his piece “The Feed Is Fake,” which unpacks how stealth marketing campaigns are powering the hype behind some of pop culture’s most viral moments (26:01). The Feed Is Fake by Lane Brown Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Email us! [email protected] Host: Chris Ryan Guest: Lane Brown Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Additional Video Supervision: Sarah Reddy Order and it will come. Like today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 0:00Speaker 00

  I'm pro football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins, and I lived for a long time with something I did not know the name of: major depressive disorder. I carried sadness and anger because I thought I could handle it alone, but I couldn't. Now I want to make sure others know that that support is out there. If you're experiencing similar symptoms, talk to a healthcare professional. Visit mddallies.com to watch my story.

• 0:25Speaker 01

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• 1:35Chris Ryan?

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• 2:09Speaker 04

  Stand up and walk now.

• 2:12Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at TheRinger.com and joining me in the studio today is me. No Andy today, it's just Prince alone in the studio. I am however, joined remotely by Lane Brown from New York Magazine today. He's going to talk to me about his incredible piece in New York Magazine called "The Feed Is Fake," which scratches an itch that I have been having for a long time, especially ever since, you know, the whole "is geese a psyop?" debate raged online and yet, I don't really know if it raged anywhere else. And that's sort of what Lane's piece is about, is why it always feels like everyone is talking about something, but nobody is

• 2:53Chris Ryan?

  actually talking about it. He gets into the exploding industry of clipping for social media feeds, but also narrative manipulation. And then his piece is also like a much larger kind of essay about the current state of our cultural conversation and our understanding of what is popular and what matters, which is something that I think Andy and I always grapple with on this, on this pod. But I am going to talk a little bit about some, some TV news and also give you a few thoughts on last night's episode of Euphoria. As far as like what's coming out this week, as always, busy week in new television, but I, you know, I didn't get a chance to watch any of Dutton Ranch and I have to be completely honest, like Beth and Rip, when it comes to the Yellowstone universe, this is a Yellowstone

• 3:38Chris Ryan?

  spinoff starring Kelly Riley and Cole Hauser. Their characters were beloved on Yellowstone. I think that they worked really well as supporting characters. I'm not so sure I want to watch a television show entirely dedicated to them. And you don't have to because Annette Bening amazingly is also on this show, as is Ed Harris. But I will try to get to that at some point. Other new releases this week include Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, which is a new series on Apple TV with Tatiana Maslany. And it seems like it's a little bit of a normal suburban woman goes down a crazy rabbit hole when she witnesses something she shouldn't, looks like a thriller.

• 4:18Chris Ryan?

  With some social satire, I'm interested to check that out. Also, we have from Netflix, I believe this week is The Burrows, which is being kind of dismissively or casually referred to as Old Stranger Things or New Cocoon. But it is about a retirement community and an incident, possibly supernatural incident or extraterrestrial incident. I always had problems with that word occurring at this facility. So great cast, Alfred Molina and Alfred Woodard in it, but haven't got a chance to check out any screeners of that. That comes out this week and I think Eddie and I will probably hit both Maximum Pleasure and The Burrows at some point.

• 4:59Chris Ryan?

  As far as like TV news, I mean, really the biggest thing is that the Lanterns trailer dropped. I know Andy talks about Lindelof. Last week in my absence, this trailer is awesome. The pairing of Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre is the backbone of, that's like how a great TV show gets made, is you find the right two people and you fit them together. And Kyle Chandler as this kind of rugged and, you know, sort of self-involved version of Green Lantern and Aaron Pierre is the up and coming one who wants to do everything right. It's like a very solid basis for a show and there are Watchmen vibes in it. There is more special effects than I think I was expecting from the trailer.

• 5:44Chris Ryan?

  And maybe that's they're putting that forward a lot in the trailer just to bring in the DC heads. But it was a little bit more comic booky than I thought because I think the original sort of understanding of this show is that it was essentially like a true detective, but happened to be set in the DC Universe. It'll be great to see how it actually shakes out. I'm super excited for this series. I think what we're going to do with Widows Bay, obviously, the last episode, the one that focused mostly on Patricia, Kato Flynn, we've been singing her praises all season, but this is her standout episode. I won't give anything away if you haven't gotten a chance to see Widows Bay yet, but we'll talk about a couple, a brick of episodes together. Maybe on Thursday show, what we'll do is do four and five together. I do want to

• 6:28Chris Ryan?

  Talk about Euphoria, though, and in honor of my colleague Zach Lowe, I put together a 10 Things I Like and Don't Like about Euphoria, episode six, Stand Still and See. So for those who don't know, Zach Lowe, obviously, now has his own podcast with The Ringer Podcast Network. I worked with him at Grantland and now at The Ringer. And while he was at Grantland and at ESPN, he had kind of like a great column called 10 Things I Like and Don't Like, which was his notebook dump on the week in NBA that he had been watching. This is similar for this episode of Euphoria. I just thought it would be an easy way to kind of move through what was not necessarily my favorite or least favorite episode of all time. I thought it was like a needed setup for

• 7:08Chris Ryan?

  what is obviously going to be incredibly cathartic last two episodes of the season. I would imagine it's in play of the series, but we'll see. First of all, I would say I loved, number one, I loved the collection of images that he put together, charting Rue's longing and receiving of her sign or salvation. I mean, in the church, like Zendaya, well lit in a church, praying, hearing a call from her mother, you know, her face looks like Passion of Joan of Arc, you know, like this, Sam's got a bag and he goes into it. And I think especially in the Rue

• 7:51Chris Ryan?

  sequences about her trying to save herself is where the show is still at its best. And I think that her experiences over the course of this series are the most easily legible from the outside, where you're like, I can see what happened to this person and I can see what this person wants to become. The images at the end of the episode, she's listening to her book on tape Bible and it starts skipping and she almost crashes. She sees the bright light of the incredibly well lit monster truck or 18 wheeler coming towards her and crashes her car or pulls off the road and A spark gets on a tree and lights this burning bush.

• 8:36Chris Ryan?

  And you get this, this incredible biblical image of this woman finally, finally hearing the voice of God, you know, and the, the connections to the roots of Damascus, the connections of, of Christ and the burning bush. Like it's obviously rich with that imagery. It, does it play fast and loose with it? I think with the Rue stuff, it doesn't because so much of what addicts go through in recovery and, and in trying to save themselves comes from this relationship to a higher power. And that may or may not work for all addicts. And there are plenty of people who get clean without it. But obviously it's something that Levinson is deeply fascinated by.

• 9:19Chris Ryan?

  And it doesn't even have to come down to any specific dogma of something you'd find in the Bible, something you'd find in the Old Testament or whatever. It's just about believing that your life has value. And that's obviously something that Rue is looking for. And it leads me to one thing that I don't really like, which is the, what we've kind of done with the Jules character. Rue goes to Jules at one point in this episode and kind of makes her pitch for starting a family together and be finding like new problems to have and more classical American suburban concerns of, you know, what, what to do with your kids and stuff rather than

• 10:04Chris Ryan?

  fentanyl and sex work. And I think that Jules's reaction to Rue was good. I liked the slap. I liked the get out of my painting. If you think about this show as these people existing in their separate realities, I liked the idea that Jules was sort of snapping Rue out of whatever dream she was having and was like, you know, you don't actually have anything to trade here. Like we are not gonna go off and ride into the sunset. This is not the love story. Whether or not that remains the case for the rest of the series, I don't, I don't know if I, if I believe that, you know, I mean, to the extent that you care about something

• 10:45Chris Ryan?

  being end game on this show, but like are Rue and Jules like meant for each other? I don't know. I don't know if it, it's actually germane to the actual show itself, but. I did like that scene. I don't really know what they're doing with Jules. Um, and I don't know. You know, this was a, uh, the, the things of behind the scenes in this production of this show and what it required to get people in the same room to shoot it. I think I sometimes allow myself a little. To get a little distracted by that because I'll be like, oh, you can tell. This person wasn't available and they had to shoot all their scenes in like a hotel room like. I, I don't know if Hunter Schafer had more or less time than usual to shoot. Or whether or not there was like.

• 11:28Chris Ryan?

  Discussions about what to do with the Jules character, but I find like. She had, she had her artistic breakthrough on the set of LA Nights and now seems to be in her, I am going to do a. You know, a, a body study figure and then paint over it as like her. New like art phase that she's in. I don't know if that's like really that compelling television. But I like Hunter Schafer as a performer, so I, I wish there was more for that character to do. Um, as far as more things that I liked and didn't like, look, I love the high and low and I love the sacred and the profane. I love the church and the OnlyFans and the spaghetti westerns and the Polanski dread, the Hitchcockian moments.

• 12:11Chris Ryan?

  The seventies noir, you know, I think that Levinson moves pretty easily between those. And if anything. I think I've oft repeated, I'm never bored watching Euphoria. It's because of those tonal shifts, which even if the transmission really grinds sometimes on them. I still welcome them. It's still fun to have.

• 12:31Chris Ryan?

  A completely different feel from scene to scene. You could say that it's mimicking kind of like our. Our feed, you know, it's like when you flip through social media videos and you're kind of like. Going from one thing to another without any kind of, uh. Transition. That, that, that would be one way of looking at it. Another is just that he had several different shows that he wanted to make. And he's just going to make them and then stitch them together. I think that's also, you could make a criticism of the show, but in terms of like. The, um, spectrum of tone that he's playing with and also like reaching very, very, very high.

• 13:10Chris Ryan?

  And then also wallowing around in the grime and the grit of something exploitative, I think is pretty fascinating to watch. I also think it's really interesting and I really like the tension between cinematic and TV storytelling. I thought it was very funny when Sydney Sweeney walks onto the set of LA Nights for her one-line, pretty much throwaway day player part and starts improvising or disassociating with the actor who's playing opposite of from her and that she obviously is kind of thinking it's she's talking to Nate. And she does this kind of riff about how scared she is for her life right now.

• 13:51Chris Ryan?

  And the guy is kind of playing along with her and it's then shattered by the character of Oceana walking onto the set and saying like, are you gonna queue me up or what? I was very, very highly amused by Colin Camp saying, ah, yeah, this is giving a real clout vibe. Because I think everybody is always like, in their mind, they're making clout, you know, like in their mind, I'm sure everybody would love to be Alan Kuland in the 70s and not for clout to be what everybody was watching. But obviously, they're making LA Nights. And I think that there's almost a sly commentary happening there where it's, yeah, like Sam Levinson is making like, an episodic spaghetti western opera, but he's

• 14:32Chris Ryan?

  also making a soap opera. And he's trying to sort of pay both pipers there. And I like the effort. You know, I don't think it's successful for everyone. I know that Andy has both rejected some of the storytelling and also the interests that Levinson obviously has. He's also given it the college try. So I really appreciate him doing that for me because we're enjoying talking about the show. I think that Levinson, for as much as he's interested in high and low art, he's also interested in television and cinema. And whether or not you can bring the feeling of cinema, the cinema that he loves, and Sam's actually programming a festival out here in Los Angeles over like, I think it

• 15:17Chris Ryan?

  started last Friday and it's going through this week. Showing a bunch of movies that he says influenced season three and he's showing like Dirty Harry and Candy Snatchers, which is like a Agfa movie that you should check out. And he's showing Freeway, which is like the Reese Witherspoon 90s thriller. So he's like throwing a bunch of different like things up on the mood board. And it's hard to take all those cinematic influences and consistently make a television show. And maybe that's why the production of Euphoria is inconsistent because it's difficult to translate all of that stuff. But I am, I am enjoying it. Um, I will say that one thing I, uh, I also enjoyed was Daniel Dedwiler as Alamo's mom.

• 15:58Chris Ryan?

  The character introductions on, on Euphoria, a hallmark of Euphoria, the sort of backstory flashback moments. People, your mileage may vary on these, but, uh, I don't know that I necessarily walked away from that scene, truly understanding Alamo any more than I already did. Uh, but I did think this little, um, message in a bottle from 70s grindhouse movies. Or it actually wasn't really like that, really. What was it? It was more like an LA noir set in 70s black Los Angeles. And some people might be like the temerity of Sam to do that. I don't know. I thought it was pretty cool. Like it looked great.

• 16:39Chris Ryan?

  Daniel Dedwiler, I will watch, read a phone book, but seeing her play this, uh, Alamo's mother who essentially runs a long con on a kindly, but you know, disfigured man to set herself up with her boyfriend, uh, is, is awesome. It was a cool little, little snatch of time and it obviously Levinson had a blast making it because it just looks great. Uh, it told me nothing about why Alamo was riding at Rue with a polo mallet while she's buried up to her head in sand and it told me nothing about why he doesn't kill her. Um, so I enjoyed Daniel Dedwiler. I don't know if that, uh, that segment necessarily was necessary, quote unquote, but it was very cool.

• 17:23Chris Ryan?

  Think it's also cool that we're returning to meta euphoria. This is a degree of playing the hits, but one of the season two highlights for me was the show within a show, uh, within a show of Lexi's play depicting on and off screen events. The LA Knights thing has potential. It's coming, they're calling this, this picture in at the seventh inning. Uh, I, I like the idea of Lexi being responsible for writing Cassie's arc on, uh, LA Knights and also Lexi perhaps thinking of how to kill off Cassie's character and that little throwaway line that Lexi has where she's just like, you know, what am I going to do? I'm going to kill her. And then I think, I can't remember, it's, is it Gideon Adlon who's playing that friend? I can't remember, but she's just like,

• 18:08Chris Ryan?

  you gotta kill somebody every once in a while or else people get bored. That does not bode well for our, our ensemble. Somebody, uh, somebody may pass away in the last two episodes. I like that return to meta euphoria. Um, if that was sort of Cassie's long-term goal was just like fame, no matter what, instead of making tons of money to help Nate, I think that this arc for her would have been kind of interesting. Unfortunately, and this is my sixth thing, Cassie's OnlyFans modeling is kind of getting in the way of, of this show being legible to me. The further out we get towards Cassie and Nate, that's where the show gets really muddy. And on its own, it's kind of amusing and I like how every

• 18:48Chris Ryan?

  scene with Sydney Sweeney seems to be from another universe, whether it's like that Hitchcockian kind of tension of whether or not she's going to delete OnlyFans. We talked about the sci-fi B-movie stuff of a 50 foot woman from a couple of episodes ago, earlier in the season on the wedding night, the kind of almost Ari Asterish horror of Nate's, you know, being, getting his, uh, pinky toe chopped off. Nate is shrinking, Cassie is growing, but-

• 19:17Chris Ryan?

  This leads into my seventh thing, which is unfortunately also something I don't like, which is just Nate. I think they're leaving a lot on the table here because Nate is actually closer to Rue than anyone else. I mean, he's looking for redemption. He's trying to find a piece of the American dream. He's trying to shake off his past, which we get a glimpse of the old Nate as he stomps on the protected flowers that have held up his retirement community construction. But we get so little time with him and he gets almost no time with anyone of consequence from the show that it's kind of hard to tell how he got there and where he wants to go. And now we're in this ritual humiliation phase that's lasted the better part of the season. And this is my biggest question mark about where they

• 20:02Chris Ryan?

  want to go with this character. You've got Jacob Elordi. It doesn't really matter one way or the other if he's having fun. I can't tell. But give him something to do, please. Let's do something with Nate. Can Nate interact with anyone else from the show aside from Sydney Sweeney? I don't know. But it would be nice. It would be nice to get him. I loved that moment with him and Under Schaefer at the wedding. Like that, that actually had a charge. Let's do more of that. Kind of don't know where I'm at with Maddie. Eight is not a thing I don't like or like I, I just like Alexis Demme and I love like this character historically on the show. Her being a shadow madam of OnlyFans models who is now curious

• 20:42Chris Ryan?

  about Alamo's business and, you know, her pursuit of like financial gain for security to like gird against like everything that's happened to her life. Not unsimilar, not dissimilar from Alamo, I guess. Her reactions to things, I think, sometimes are a little convenient for the television show and, and, and have nothing to do with the character. I think that that's like understandable in terms of writing a TV show. You have to have people just kind of go along with stuff. But we're getting towards the end of this season and series and

• 21:17Chris Ryan?

  I'm not exactly sure how they're gonna bring together like the Alexis Demi part of this show, the Nate part of this show, the Jules part of the show with the thing that's the most successful, which is the Rue part of the show. Though, there is one thing that's starting to bug me about the Rue part of the show. And after I've sort of like waved away every criticism about like, but what about this and what about that when it comes like talking with Andy about Euphoria this season? And I'm like, you don't get it. It's a vibe. It's a feeling. Just, just go with it. The crime plotting is starting to get to me. That's, I don't know if this is actually 10, but I'm calling it 10. We're doing too much and explaining too little here. Lori is going to give up Alamo to the FBI, thus

• 21:59Chris Ryan?

  forcing him to work with her and allow her to use his, I guess, ambulance service to bring fentanyl from Mexico into the States because the border is closing. I'm not sure I buy that. Typically, like in crime dramas, like the threat of revealing someone to the FBI is like more of like a marking your reputation. And I think that Alamo wouldn't be just so like, ah, checkmated by Lori. Now, I know Alamo has ulterior motives here where he's also trying to get his stuff out of Lori's safe and perhaps everything else that Lori has. But this seems like it's one extra, like a hat on a hat. Like Lori and

• 22:42Chris Ryan?

  Alamo's collision course and the presence of the DEA on the outside via Rue is good. That's a good beef. They should have a shootout and work this shit out. You know, like, whatever. Let's get, let's get these characters getting after it. Now, being vaguely in business with each other while also intending on killing one another and robbing one another is a little thin. And then, you know, I'm not so sure why Rue is being given all these important gigs if seemingly everyone in Alamo's crew knows she's a rat. So, we obviously end with the rat and, you know, we have the rat and the snake for Rue before she goes on the road.

• 23:28Chris Ryan?

  She's terrified because her mother is now in danger.

• 23:33Chris Ryan?

  You know, we know that Alamo never lets a woman get over on him. But I don't really understand why Rue is now becoming the, you know, the agent of revenge against Lori. It doesn't seem like she is the most dependable person. It's not like she's like a, she's not a burglar. She's not a gunman. She's just a convenient person to work in a strip club and manage the girls until she wasn't. I don't really understand why not. Like when everybody shows up at Alamo's house with guns, I don't really understand why the, the shootout probably should have happened then. And now we're off for another element of this. This was among the more, you know, amusing parts of the show for, for much of this season. So I hope that they tighten the screws a little bit.

• 24:15Chris Ryan?

  I have a feeling based on what we saw as the trailer for next week, that next week is going to be largely focused on Coleman Domingo's ally character. And how that, I mean, seemingly his health incident impacts her. So I wonder if I had to guess, it's like, take a beat and then the big crime happens in the finale? I don't know. I don't know, I don't know when the, the moment is. And I don't know how much it's going to feel like a series finale versus a season finale. Those are my thoughts on Euphoria. I want to get into my conversation with Lane Brown. So I introduced Lane a little bit in the beginning of our convo, but I'll just tell you, I've worked with Lane about 15 years ago. When Grantland started, Lane is somebody I've always really admired.

• 24:59Chris Ryan?

  And he's now a features writer at New York Magazine where he does some really, really, really great reported pieces. And the thing that makes this feed is fake piece so fun to read to me is that it's really, really deeply reported. And it's really fascinating to read about all these different methods that marketing, digital marketing companies are using to populate our feeds with clips of shows and music and movies that we're, we're then supposed to be talking about, supposed to be ingesting. But it's also about like how the narrative around those things get shaped. And then really more, it's Lane kind of. Writing this, you know, awesome rant about like, how do we even know what things are actually popular?

• 25:44Chris Ryan?

  And it does that even matter anymore? And, you know, we had talked about the the geese psyop controversy on this show. And I'll wait a second, a couple of weeks ago, when it really popped off. And that's what really got my interest in this going. But I've also had this like nagging feeling for a while. I've noticed a really perceptible change in the tone of online discussion. Like, no shit, but not in the way that you think, not in like this. Everything is getting angrier way, but that like, everything kind of is starting to sound the same. Like it's, I'm starting to just be like, I can't tell the difference between the post above and the post below. If you read on Reddit or, you know, everybody's Instagram is starting to kind of like,

• 26:28Chris Ryan?

  merge into one Instagram and this kind of, everything is being optimized for engagement. Because I think that this is like, become way more important than connection with other human beings. Like, yeah, in your stories, you might, you know, be following what your friends are doing at any given moment. And that's kind of like my primary use of Instagram. But that whole other side of it with reels. And then I think especially for Tik Tok where people are making content, more or less, has led this to our phones being like our new connection to what we think a conversation is about culture in the world. And Lane writes about that beautifully. And I really wanted to talk to him about this piece.

• 27:08Chris Ryan?

  It's kind of a different look for the pod, but I thought it would be fun on a random Monday to do this. So thanks so much to Lane Brown for joining me. And thanks to Kai and Sarah and Kaya for producing today. I'll be back on Thursday. We're going to talk about Widows Bay. I'll have a guest and I'll get into deep Widows Bay lore then. But thanks to everybody for listening and let's get into my conversation with Lane Brown.

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• 29:46Chris Ryan?

  My guest is my former Grantland colleague, I should put that first, and current New York Magazine features writer, Lane Brown Lane. It's so great to see you, man. We were just remarking that I think the last time I have seen your face is as you were leaving Los Angeles and I was arriving in Los Angeles. Chris moved in and I moved out. Yeah, it's a, and it is an honor to be here in my favorite Podcast, the, the only organically popular podcast in the world. And also maybe perhaps the least clipped in. No, actually, you know, we are doing more clipping. Last week, New York Magazine published Lain's article, which is one part deep dive into the exploding clipping economy that has taken over algorithms and one part Jeremiah about how this shadowy industry

• 30:31Chris Ryan?

  has distorted our understanding of the conversations taking place within our culture. I think that's, that's if I had to pitch it to anybody, I suppose that's what I would say. And for people who've been listening fairly closely to the watch over the last couple of weeks, this stuff has come up in conversations, even though we haven't known it. I think most notably Andy and I more or less jokingly talked about the, the stuff that happened with Geese, the band Geese, a couple of weeks ago, Wired Magazine wrote an article about Geese's marketing company or the marketing company that works on behalf of Geese, that Geese is a client of. And John Semley wrote an article called the fanfare around the band Geese is actually a psyop, actually was a psyop, and the piece is largely about the unorthodox practices that had a good use,

• 31:16Chris Ryan?

  used on behalf of Geese. But this is like, Lain, I, I wanted to know, that's like sort of my in on this article. I saw this, um, there's a funny story I have to tell you, like after I, we hear from you for a little bit. But, you know, I think that that was sort of my in on your article. But what was the thing that kind of was like the kernel of, of the idea that got you to write this piece? It's sort of a two parter, basically. I, on, uh, I, I feel like I have been noticing things, uh, just every story I try to write,

• 31:50Chris Ryan?

  just in my sort of daily intake of information, uh, you know, I'm, I'm looking on Reddit, I'm, uh, you know, I'm seeing, you know, what the, what the voice of the people is on, uh, you know, in the internet comments. And then, uh, I don't know, I, I've kind of noticed, uh, just sort of more and more things, uh, I don't know, a little, little strange. And so I did it.

• 32:06Speaker 04

  Story on real estate a couple of years ago. It was all about how New York City rent prices were just sort of exploding at a time when basically people were leaving the city. And it's just in these, you know, New York City apartment reddits and just there would be full of people saying like, um, you know, this is not happening. That nobody's leaving, people are moving in, people are flooding back. It's like, this is just totally not the, not the case. So I sort of noted that and I saw the kind of the same thing over and over again when I was, as I was working on some other stories. And then I found this, this service, uh, I'm not going to say the name of it because I maybe don't want to give them, uh, I don't want to do the, any product placement here. But basically there are services that will essentially advertise your product within Reddit comments.

• 32:49Speaker 04

  And I thought, oh, this is really, uh, you know, they've, they've really figured something out here and they've, they've got me. And so I've kind of, you know, I've been begging my poor editors at New York Magazine to let me write a version of this for so long. And finally the sort of, you know, the geese thing came up and suddenly this was a thing that was, you know, sort of in the conversation. And I was finally able to break them down, but after years of, uh, of sort of twisting their arms. And so they finally kind of let me, uh, let me take a couple of weeks and, uh, and sort of dig into this. The other thing too, also is I have no idea what's popular anymore.

• 33:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:24Speaker 04

  As somebody that, you know, cares a lot about culture, I was the culture editor at New York Magazine for a long time and I, my job is kind of, all right, figure out who people are going to care about in six months. So we can put this person on the cover. And it used to be kind of simple to do that. Uh, we had, you know, things like ratings, uh, uh, back in the olden days. And so, uh, you know, that was fairly easy to do and it got harder and harder and harder. And now I just have absolutely no idea. Like I was, I was thinking, do you have any idea what is more popular, the bear or the pit?

• 33:56Chris Ryan?

  I don't know. Uh, I mean, I think, I think definitively in this case, right now, the pit. But I think cumulatively culturally, when you think about the like footprint of the bear, people saying, yes, chef. Like the way people maybe started dressing because of the way Jeremy Allen White dresses on that show. It's a different kind of influence. It's maybe people saying things and not even knowing that, yes, chef is from the bear.

• 34:21Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 34:22Chris Ryan?

  But it goes hand in hand with, there's different kinds of impact that shows can make. And I think, you know, over the course of our lives and, you know, especially working in music, there are bands that are important and there are bands that are big. And that's always been a tension in the media is to like, you know, are we making too big of a deal out of a band just because we personally like them? So we're going to fashion some narrative about why this is the only band that matters? When there is objectively NSYNC or somebody who is like exponentially bigger than The White Stripes or something like that. And that, that kind of back and forth has always been really fascinating.

• 35:04Chris Ryan?

  And like you, dude, I have, I don't think there's ever been a time where I've been less certain of not only what, how many people are watching something. And you get at this in your piece where you talk about, when you really start to go in about like, you know, all of this stuff being made by companies that have no incentive to share how people are watching it, how deeply people are watching it, how much they're paying attention to it. It's so complicated now. I'm sure you've had this experience now when you're like, even talking with friends or if you go to a bar and TV or movies come up. And the, the amount of siloing that's going on now where somebody is like,

• 35:45Chris Ryan?

  yeah, man, I, I am like a for all mankind, every scene completist. And then the next guy over is like, I don't even, I don't, I have no idea what you're talking about. And both are conversant in television.

• 35:58Speaker 04

  Right. Yeah, it's like every conversation about culture has, it has that, that sidebar about like where you sort of justify how popular you think a thing is. And it's like, oh, I was talking to my niece about this. Or you always bring in like this, is your evidence like a cooler young person that you, that you know, or something that is some more tapped in than you? Or, you know,

• 36:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I was at brunch and I I overheard this and everything. And it's we in theory, we should be able to track this stuff better than ever. Yes. Everything is and and but, yes, there is no incentive on the part of these companies that are, you know, making this stuff to actually share that data with us. And so we are just, uh, uh, you know, trying to look for every sort of strange little signal that we can find about how big one thing is and, uh, and kind of unfortunately, in this vacuum that we we have now, it's become really, really easy to sort of fake these signals of of popularity. And so I feel like, uh, we do not have a very clear view of, uh, of reality, which is kind of, uh, yeah, kind of strange. And so I I wrote mostly about, uh, you know, TV, pop music, sort of, uh, celebrity gossip, like the frivolous stuff.

• 37:02Chris Ryan?

  But it's like you can obviously see the implications for for everything here. It's like we're getting, uh, you know, all of our information, uh, right now through the same, uh, you know, sort of rectangle in our in our pockets. Yeah. Through social media and it's, uh, uh, it's so easy to sort of get a distorted look at, uh, just reality with this. And so it's kind of terrifying. And well, it creates an ecosystem in which I think that I'm sure you find this challenging as a reporter and as a as a features writer, where I think in my romantic conception of what my dad used to do as a newspaper journalist, you know, even though he was a film critic, but like he would still have to gather a lot of information,

• 37:46Chris Ryan?

  especially when he was a crime reporter, the crime reporting happens in the courts, you know, like you would go down to the courthouse and sit there and wait for an interesting case and and then be like, oh, this is good. This was a rich kid got into a car accident and is trying to get out of it. This is a good article or this is a good hook for a piece. But we're deriding driving a lot of our concept of what is.

• 38:08Chris Ryan?

  What is popular, or what is unpopular, or what is beloved, or what is being said about all those things, from online platforms that are very susceptible to the kind of manipulation, data inflation, and also narrative construction that, in some ways, I'm like, the game is the game. And I think you've probably heard some pushback about this piece, where it's like, how different is this from, say, Paola? How different is this from street teams plastering stickers all over a city for a band in the 90s? I was wondering if you could give our audience, without aggregating yourself, because I do want people to read the piece, just an idea of what clipping is, and how it maybe is

• 38:53Chris Ryan?

  a little bit different from, say, a digital marketing campaign for a band, a TV show, a movie, 10 years ago?

• 38:59Speaker 04

  Basically, if you've got a song, or a movie trailer, or a TV show, you take it, and you cut it into social media-friendly clips, like, short 20-second clips, and then you find a bunch of dummy social media accounts that will post all of this online at huge volumes. And essentially, as you do that, you are tricking the social media platform algorithms into interpreting it as a, basically, a sign of organic interest in this thing. And so when that happens, the platform sort of pushed these videos far and wide to users who ordinarily wouldn't have seen it. And then sometimes, they will kind of engage with it, and that will sort of, you know, add even more fuel to the fire, too. It's, yeah, it's a thing that started only, not too long ago. It's probably, at this

• 39:44Speaker 04

  point, four, five years old, but really, kind of in the last year, it's really sort of become a thing that everybody's doing. And, you know, it's like, yeah, it's from Beast, all the way up to Justin Bieber, to Bad Funny. And so it's it's tiny artists and big artists and everybody in between are doing it.

• 40:04Chris Ryan?

  Do you feel like it grew out of something organic? So like, obviously TikTok and Instagram reels,

• 40:14Chris Ryan?

  one of those like sort of pillars of how you make stuff on there is to soundtrack it or interpolate clips of things. Like I follow a thick of it memes account on Instagram where it's just scenes from the thick of it, you know, being posted all day long. And I'll just be like, oh, that's a that's a funny line. That's primarily how I've like rewatched that show in the last two years. I don't really know that there is a lot in it for the thick of it producers to have that still on my feed. But I'm curious whether you think that this has become a weaponization of organic fan interaction, or if it's something different than that.

• 40:50Speaker 04

  That's a good question. It is really, really hard to tell. And I feel like that's kind of the point. I think that the people doing this probably learned from things that actual, you know, fans were doing. And they saw that it, you know, worked in one way. But now it's like the volume is different. It's, you know, it's not just a couple of fans making, you know, adding a song to a clip of Euphoria or something. This is like 50,000 videos of the same thing being sort of dumped into social media all at the same, you know, over the same weekend to basically kind of like overflow the toilet and sort of get this, sorry to be scatological.

• 41:28Chris Ryan?

  Obviously, as a watch listener, you should know. That's fine.

• 41:31Speaker 04

  I think why it's different from, you know, sure, there are people that said that, you know, this is the pale up, fine, has always kind of existed. The fact that we don't have any trusted culture metrics at all anymore to tell us what's actually, you know, popular or not is is sort of one thing. And so we, you know, in the olden days, you could check a street team, you know, people putting up stickers or something against like sound scan sales. And you could kind of see the golf. But now there's just nothing to sort of check this against. It is just trivially easy to do. It is like so simple. It's everybody's doing it. It's at a scale that I think is is different. It's like, it's not just in one city. This is, you know, you're putting up posters.

• 42:13Chris Ryan?

  Like you're blasting this out to the entire universe of, uh, you know, TikTok's user base really, really quickly. And so the, you know, this, the scale of it is, is pretty different. So the clipping stuff happens, obviously on video, but you were talking a little bit about the, the feeling you were getting reading Reddit threads. And I, I certainly agree that there seems to be over the last couple of years. I can't really pinpoint the moment.

• 42:40Chris Ryan?

  But it reminds me a lot of like, you know, Twitter, I think, went from this thing that was sort of everybody's running like gag journal over the course of a day and was very much directed towards like a select group of followers. And then like, right when we started working at Grantland is when I think it became the primary promotional tool for journalism in, in the world. And there was that, that had its benefits and obviously also I think made everybody slightly insane.

• 43:07Chris Ryan?

  And then now it's kind of like a rage factory where you go and if you look on your for you page, at least when I do, there are people having these like insane arguments about things that I'm like, why are you guys even fighting about like how my bloody Valentine isn't that good? Like what, who started this fight? Why is this now like crossed over to six different friend circles that I seem to have and, or businesses, you know, and like some guy from Bloomberg is like, actually my bloody Valentine is the best. And I'm like, why are you commenting on this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's this, so I digress just to say, with Reddit, I noticed a real

• 43:49Chris Ryan?

  collapse of voice, like everything started to sound exactly the same.

• 43:55Chris Ryan?

  And obviously on Reddit, you can comment anonymously. And if you click on someone's user profile, often they'll be like, this person is hidden, like their activity.

• 44:05Chris Ryan?

  How much of, of what interested you about this project was not only like the obfuscation of data, the inflation of the sense of popularity that people can have, but also the shaping of narrative around cultural objects?

• 44:18Speaker 04

  Technique. The other thing that they're doing now is this thing, chaotic good sort of put a name on it. I don't know if this is the the name sort of used by everybody, narrative campaigns, where they are basically, yeah, using internet comments, using dummy accounts to comment on things in a way that makes it seem like, you know, everybody is talking about a thing in kind of the same way. And so see it on Reddit, you'll see it, you know, you'll see it happen on Twitter. A couple of people that I talked to, I thought this is sort of interesting. It's like clipping is something that you want to do at, you know, huge volumes because you want to push this out to everybody. Narrative campaigns are a subtler thing. You actually don't want that many people to notice this. You want kind of the right people to notice this. You want, you know, it's sort of a light sort of sprinkle of

• 45:05Speaker 04

  of sort of like narrative juice on a on a story to kind of shape something. And then, you know, once you do that, you can then use these other accounts to like amplify certain arguments too. And so, yeah, it is, it is really interesting because it's like, it seems like a lot of the pop culture fights that we've had over the past, you know, I don't know how many years have basically been seemingly the the result of some of this, some of these techniques. And so in the the story I talk about, you know, one example is like Bad Bunny in the Super Bowl.

• 45:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:36Speaker 04

  For for a month, there was, this was the loudest argument in America.

• 45:41Speaker 04

  You know, the NFL has hired this this Spanish speaking artist to perform. And then, you know, people are upset about that and other people are sort of defending this. And it, yeah, it turns out that basically the these bot detection firms that that track this kind of thing found that basically the shape of the argument was exactly the same on both sides.

• 46:02Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 46:02Speaker 04

  And and there, these accounts were basically posting at the same time, maybe in the same time zones, which is sort of suggestive of something coordinated.

• 46:12Chris Ryan?

  And so, yeah, when you, when you think about that, it's like all of these things that we're just, you know, at each other's throats about all the time. It's like, you know, how much of it is real? We have no idea. I was talking to a friend of mine who's a lawyer in the music business about your piece and about the Wired piece about Chaotic Good and Geese. And he was like, I wonder if the guys who did Cambridge Analytica knew that the endpoint of this was to get a geese song on a montage of Sixers highlights.

• 46:43Chris Ryan?

  You know, it's like Dreams come true. Yeah. But the Bad Bunny thing is a really good segue into the thing that I wanted to ask you about. You know, I was talking with, well, I guess your former colleague in a sense at Grantland, Kirk Goldsberry. He works with us at The Ringer now, and we were chatting about, for some reason, he hit me up about like, why is everybody talking about the Kevin Hart roast? And I was like, yeah, me too, although I don't know who's talking about it. Because really what's happened is it has been atomized down to its 30 most important 30 second clips, completely decontextualized from like the fact that that was like a three hour show on Netflix that

• 47:28Chris Ryan?

  I find roasts like super uncomfortable to watch. Honestly, don't understand them at all. It's excruciating. Yeah. And yet it is, I think Kirk called it like my junk feed where there's all these things that everybody I talk to seems relatively conversant in. But you can't find a single person who's like, I absolutely made time to watch a three hour roast of Kevin Hart and have a concern, like an opinion about it. And there's tons of stories like that. Like, I am a person who likes the Bad Bunny I have heard, does not give a shit who plays the Super Bowl halftime show and like,

• 48:09Chris Ryan?

  was very aware that that was like a weaponization that worked for both parties. Like whether or not Bad Bunny or Bad Bunny's label or Bad Bunny's marketing company participated in that debate. I said, I think it's actually like important that he gets to play the halftime show. But it can't, you know, and I thought his performance was really good, but it's like that kind of thing where I'm like, How the fuck are we talking about this for a third week? Like, and, and who actually is like, every day I wake up and go to bed thinking about the Super Bowl halftime show?

• 48:42Speaker 04

  You really do have to wonder how many of these people actually exist? Who gives a shit about anything? Like, people have enough, enough on their plates, I would think. I don't know, I can't imagine being upset about, you know, enough about anything to sort of long on and go off anymore. I talk about Justin Bieber using this for Coachella. At least we think so. Somebody paid to clip Justin Bieber's Coachella performance. And I, I really thought, you know, I, maybe I, I don't know if I have to go into witness protection after this. Like, am I gonna be, I mean, is this gonna be, you know, are people gonna be after me this weekend? And, you know, I was out walking around, I didn't hear from one belieber.

• 49:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:24Speaker 04

  And so, it, it really, it's like, just how much of this is, how much of this, how many paper tigers are there out there? It, you know, how much of this is real? It's like, we hear about, you know, these fan armies that are supposedly just, you know, burning people's houses down every time you say a negative word about whichever pop star. And it's like, how much of that is real? Or, and how much of that is just bots sort of bullying, you know, people into, into submission? Who knows? It's, it's really, it's a, yeah, strange, strange world out there.

• 49:58Chris Ryan?

  But there is like, real world implications to it. I mean, obviously, like, our political landscape is completely, like, shaped by this kind of online discussion. I mean, going through the Los Angeles mayoral race here now, and you can see a lot of the old positions being taken, that the same ones that have been sort of, and people have been Manning since 2016. There's like, a, a sort of progressive spoiler candidate, there is a far-right wing reality TV, like, candidate, like, there are two people kind of in the middle, trying to scrap to see who's gonna get into the runoff, and watching people talk about it online, even

• 50:38Chris Ryan?

  sometimes people I personally know, I'm like, oh, it kind of feels like you, if you're gonna actually take the indignity of posting, you are still parroting one of like, seven pre-agreed upon positions, right? And most of the time, I think it's almost reflexive now that people say things... I find this sometimes even talking to Andy, I'm like, I don't know how to make my point without making it in an extreme way, right? Like, I don't know how to say, like, I acknowledge this without saying I hated it or I loved it. And I think that that's something that I see a lot in criticism and in online discussion

• 51:19Chris Ryan?

  of culture now, where it's like, the idea of something being like a two and a half star, three star out of five star thing has completely vanished. You know, because even if you think that, there's like a really vocal contingent of people somewhere online, or quote unquote, people, who are like, this is actually the GOAT sci-fi show. This is, this is better than 2001. And you're like, ah, God, man, I really, really don't think so. But that doesn't mean I think it's an unredeemable piece of crap. I just don't want to spend 30 hours watching it, maybe, yeah.

• 51:53Speaker 04

  The negative engagement, the stuff that starts arguments, is the stuff that sort of goes, goes further. And so I think that's more, kind of, more of what you see. Well, okay, Spencer Pratt is obviously clipping it up. Like, he's got, he's got clipping events going, going full time. Although he is, to, to his credit at least, he's, I think he's, because of election laws, he's got to disclose it. And so he's the rare, you know, sort of clipping event that actually you sort of know where it's coming from. Most of the journalism in the world now has sort of disappeared behind paywalls. And so we are getting the TLDR version of stuff for the, you know, the stories that we're not subscribers to, from the, you know, the tweet about it, or the, you know, the quote tweet, or the, you know, the comment in-

• 52:34Chris Ryan?

  Or the argument about it afterwards.

• 52:36Speaker 04

  Yes, yeah, exactly. And so the, the terms of the debate are basically set by whatever that argument is, which is really easy to, you know, sort of amplify a real thing, or just completely astroturf it from, from scratch. And so it's, yeah, so I think that's probably another reason- While you're seeing it's like everything is the most extreme kind of, you know, fight that it could possibly be because that's, you know, it's, uh, somebody benefits when that, when that happens.

• 53:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And you see, I mean, we, and this has been going on since we were kids, but you see all the time on the left and the right. Political candidates, television shows, pieces of music, movies, TV, you know, whatever. Are essentially rejected from trying to occupy some sort of like middle ground, you know, like the, the, the stuff that. Really kind of at least drives conversation is the stuff that's going to be, and increasingly the, the more extreme kind of version of whatever we're, we're talking about.

• 53:31Chris Ryan?

  You know, I always try on this show. Andy and I always have this kind of running conversation about doing something because it's, uh, doing like covering a show because we think it's popular and, and there are shows. That, um, are hugely popular, but not necessarily within the algorithm that we follow. So something like, say, I think the Sheridan shows, Taylor Sheridan shows are a good example of something.

• 53:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:57Chris Ryan?

  I cannot honestly say that we would do as much Taylor Sheridan coverage. If those shows weren't obviously very big.

• 54:06Speaker 04

  Right.

• 54:07Chris Ryan?

  Taylor Sheridan also would not have made 13 shows in four years if he wasn't big and if Paramount and hadn't decided like this was what we're going to bet the farm on. By that same token, you know, we cover Euphoria on a week to week basis. I think that's a very big show. I, most of my friends have stopped watching it, you know, like, um, so it's, it's a, it's always this murky thing feeling around the dark for a light switch. And the thing that's funny about what you were writing about, especially like, you know, when you're talking about geese, which is a band that I like, and I kind of wonder if you don't, based on your description of how Cameron Winter sings.

• 54:45Speaker 04

  I like a good, uh, yeah, caterwall. Yeah.

• 54:47Chris Ryan?

  But I was like mildly offended by like. I'm not, I'm not being manipulated, man. Like I like geese. I like, you know, I, I, I started liking geese two years ago.

• 54:58Chris Ryan?

  Do you, did you come across anything in your research or in looking online and seeing these discord servers where people are, you know, begging someone to clip. Apple TV shows or what have you, where you were like, oh, well, I like that thing though.

• 55:13Speaker 04

  Chaotic goods roster, uh, has got some good stuff on it. Uh, and, uh, so it was kind of. Maybe a little bit, yeah, disappointing, I guess, to uh to see that. But I I also, uh, you know, I also understand. It's a we are this whole system is so broken that like you kind of need to uh you need to do this. You're either in or you're out. And so being in means, uh, you know, sort of resorting to some of these uh sort of shady techniques. I was in these Discord servers for uh three or four weeks. And uh basically, I would ask the publicists of the uh the people being clipped. You know, is this something that you uh, you know, did? Is this something that was paid for by the, you know, the artist and their or their or their team?

• 55:57Speaker 04

  And uh, nobody wants to talk about this. They're everybody's doing it, but I think, you know, for understandable reasons, they don't uh uh they don't want to talk about it. Because it is just kind of uh lame, I guess, would be the the word. Like, it's it's really sort of a bummer that that uh this is what we've come to. But uh at the same time, I totally understand why Geese or uh, you know, McGee or uh, you know, whoever uh has to do this. Because one of the things that this does, it's not just, you know, the artists that that do it are are sort of in the conversation. It's basically everybody who doesn't do this is uh sort of left out of the the conversation. You can't hold it against too many of the artists themselves. It's uh, I feel like it's more of a uh information ecosystem problem that is is complicated. It's the I blame the platforms, I think, more than anybody.

• 56:41Chris Ryan?

  At one point, you mentioned like the chaotic, one of the chaotic goods narrative shaping tactics was if an artist has a performance on Saturday Night Live at midnight, you're posting it. And the narrative, the comments under the video should be, this is the greatest live performance I've ever seen. This is the best live show I've ever seen on Saturday Night Live. Look, we have our new strokes. We have like, there's like an obvious like echo of like, there's this uh a sort of excellence or supremely like amazing thing that's happening. Rather than like, cool, like they played on SNL or whatever geeky thing some fan would say if they saw their favorite band playing on SNL.

• 57:24Chris Ryan?

  I was wondering whether or not you felt like, you know, you kind of mentioned this with the paywall media, traditional media sites, but. Whether or not you felt like this had kind of filled this vacuum where I don't even know where I would go now to find out what someone thought of an SNL live performance anyway. I mean, when we were coming up, there were plenty of things that recapped Saturday Night Live on Monday. There were plenty of articles where it was like, it sure seems like this band is having a moment. That would kind of shape maybe a narrative around it. But that's not in the artist's hands. The artist is hoping that John Poreless at the New York Times or somebody at Rolling Stone is like into them enough and is like, yeah, that was good. But you know, it's easier maybe to say, have like a lot of like a stan

• 58:08Chris Ryan?

  army of Ashley Padilla fans who were like, this is the new Kristen Wiig. I don't know.

• 58:13Speaker 04

  It is really hard for, for culture journalists and I think just journalism in general to, to know anything anymore. I think that this is like, I don't know where to go to find out, you know, what's, what's actually popular. I, I used to think that I had my, my finger on things, but all of the advertising sort of moved to short form video.

• 58:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:31Speaker 04

  All of the, yeah, the websites that you would, you'd sort of go to to, you know, find out what a writer sort of thought about this stuff. If, you know, some of them are still hanging on, but it's like a, quite a lot of them have disappeared. And so it's, uh,

• 58:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:45Speaker 04

  It is, I don't know. It's really tough. I, I don't think, you know, I am no better at anybody else than anybody else at figuring this out. I'm like just, you know, fumbling around in the dark here.

• 58:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I mean, it's also like, there's a degree to which there's like, I, I would actually be curious to get feedback from, from this conversation from people who are not necessarily working with it, within the media or are not handcuffed to their laptops 12 hours of the day and kind of working for seven of them, but also like ambiently looking online at stuff. Because I do think that that phenomenon, while it gave us careers, it also is kind of why sometimes it's really hard to tell like, Is there a whole world out there that doesn't give a shit about X, Y, or Z thing that we're writing about or arguing about? I know there is. But what are they, what do they care about? You know, because it's, it's, maybe they are

• 59:39Chris Ryan?

  not watching as much TV or listening to as much new music or care about whether obsession made 15 or 16 million dollars this weekend, but they're engaged with culture on some level or else, like, we cannot be propping this entire thing up. So how do they get their information and how seriously do they take what they see on their feeds? It's, it's, it's an impossible question to answer, maybe.

• 1:00:00Speaker 04

  Sort of a culture emergency, but the people I worry about maybe the most, though, are the artists themselves, because nobody has any idea what's popular. Nobody knows what people are actually responding to anymore. This is, like, we talked about, okay, like in the old Grantland days, we covered a show like Mad Men, which 200, 300,000 people watched, but we understood that the people that watched that show would maybe come to our website and read about it. But, you know, now, it's like the, we knew it wasn't as popular as Big Bang Theory, for example. But I feel like the, yeah, it's, it's impossible to compare something like, I don't know, Beef to House of the Dragon. I have no idea

• 1:00:43Speaker 04

  which is, which is sort of more of an impact. You know, you just think of an artist trying to pitch something right now, and it's like, I don't know what, you know, they don't know what kind of feedback they're, they're getting. Sort of their, their market research has just sort of been run through this, this whole, you know, sort of distortion pedal of, of social media that, that really kind of warps everything. Yeah. So like, it's, it's just, it's hard to know. And so I feel like, you know, I think about how the fact that, you know, every show on TV lately seems to be sort of derivative of like the, the White Lotus, or it's like we had, I know a couple of years ago, like, the agencies were telling, you know, telling everybody, it's like, all right, no more nice out riffs

• 1:01:25Speaker 04

  and anything. And it's, it's like, I kind of wonder, were those like the last two shows or the last two, like, culture products that we sort of had hard numbers for?

• 1:01:35Chris Ryan?

  Things and now, you know, we're just sort of reinterpreting them in the perpetuity because we have nothing else that with like real data on it's. It's so hard because like but back when you you and I were working together like something like Homeland would come on. It would be a sensation for two years. I mean, it was a very popular show for its entirety, but like those first couple of seasons of Homeland were like. It felt like you would come in on Monday and people would be like, let me know when you're ready to talk about Homeland, you know? Right, right. And that's what this like literally this podcast is built off that premise that there are these five, 10 shows a year. That yes, we Andy and I are happy to recommend 100 shows or 20 shows in a year.

• 1:02:13Chris Ryan?

  But there are going to be five or six that like we feel confident like that Mad Men group of people are going to be like, I want to talk about this or hear people talk about it. That Homeland thing that would then lead to 10 Homeland rip offs. That would have varying levels of success or critical appreciation and then they would kind of shed that. And get out, but you're right. It's like, I don't even know what I would try to imitate now. Like, I don't even know what a show like White Lotus is a good example. I think that there's a lot of reasons for that. One is. I think shows TV networks maybe are like, this is great because this is like a very controlled environment. You can isolate people. So that's essentially like.

• 1:02:59Chris Ryan?

  We don't have to worry a lot about extras. We don't have to do a lot of set pieces like it's just find a good location. Have a mystery and then have people portray one another and that's great for us.

• 1:03:09Chris Ryan?

  But I'm not sure what a show now. The pit I think would be the best example of, I think that Max and other places will start to try to say. How do we get? A 16 episode procedural up yearly, but have it be stickier and more. Maybe long lasting in the psyche than say the Chicago Dick Wolf Empire. Or or a procedural on a network. But I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if you can recreate that magic. And by the same token, if you clipped it enough,

• 1:03:48Chris Ryan?

  and if you had the faction of pit fans who seem to be talking about these people like they're actual humans instead of fictional characters, maybe you could manufacture an illusion that your pit ripoff police procedural or pit ripoff family drama was actually as big as the pit. I'm not sure.

• 1:04:08Speaker 04

  Talking to some of the people I've talked to, I believe you could. Obviously, shows fail all the time. Obviously, things get canceled all the time. Things just don't work. Things don't catch on. It feels like there's a way to put your finger on the scale a little bit more than there once was, and you can declare a hit by Fiat a little bit. I don't know. I think you guys were having a conversation the other day about Apple shows. And it's like a hit on Apple is different from a hit on Netflix or any other service with more subscribers. And so you're dealing with things at totally different scales. And so if a show without a lot of viewers, its survival prospects on Apple TV are probably better than they are.

• 1:04:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think that there's something to... Apple's volume play is still modest compared to Netflix.

• 1:04:53Chris Ryan?

  They seem to be way more willing to bring shows back. I don't know what their budget and model is and if it's different from show to show. I will routinely see renewal announcements or a new season of something that's in season four or five. Traditionally, a lot of these places, they wrap things up by season three, either because they see an attrition in viewership or because that's when contract renegotiations come up with cast. And I don't understand the economics of what Apple is playing at. It's pretty much a write-down for them and their larger business, so I'm not sure. And then you get into something like Netflix, like you're saying, where their data, to me, is incomprehensible.

• 1:05:36Speaker 04

  More people watched Bridgerton season three than watched the moon landing.

• 1:05:41Speaker 04

  It's like my favorite stat. Yeah, none of it makes any sense. Everything is incomprehensible. Who knows? But interestingly enough, one of the things that I've mentioned in the piece, the night agent was something that was being clipped. And yet, if you look at the numbers they released, that show was massively popular. It's like every episode is watched more than the Super Bowl or something, at least in season one or two, I think.

• 1:06:04Chris Ryan?

  I guess.

• 1:06:05Speaker 04

  What is the, so then why, why do we need, why do we need clippers at all? So it's, uh, yeah, I, I think we have a, uh, I don't think we have a clear, clear view of, uh, of any of this anymore. And it's, it's getting, uh, I don't know, it's getting a little scary. So I, yeah, I'm a single issue voter at this point. Real hard, uh, culture metrics.

• 1:06:23Chris Ryan?

  Bring back Nielsen ratings.

• 1:06:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think that, exactly. That would fix a lot.

• 1:06:27Chris Ryan?

  Let's wrap it up by discussing like where you see this is going next because this piece begins and ends, if I remember correctly, with, was it Joe Lim, the guy from Floodify?

• 1:06:38Speaker 04

  Joe Lim, yeah.

• 1:06:39Chris Ryan?

  Who, uh, your piece starts with an assertion from Joe that, that 90% of what you're seeing on your feeds is essentially fake advertising and, uh, or, or shadow advertising. It's, it's essentially like, there is like some, hey, a dollar per every thousand views,

• 1:07:00Chris Ryan?

  incentive for somebody to post it. And, uh, he, that, that statement kind of chilled me to my bone because, you know, if I kill 25 minutes looking at my phone, I'll have one part of my brain that's like just smoothed out and is looking at cats and soccer highlights and whatever. And then there's the other part that's like, isn't it weird that like, I've just gotten 11 videos that are the same template or have the same similar prompt or like something like Topjaw will be popular. And then 150 Topjaw style shows will be in my phone all of a sudden of like, guys getting interviewed on the street about what their favorite something is.

• 1:07:44Chris Ryan?

  But Joe seems to be suggesting at the end of this piece that this is all coming to an end. What it, can you, can you tell us a little bit about that?

• 1:07:52Speaker 04

  So Joe thinks, uh, that basically, uh, he thinks eventually people are going to stop trusting what they, what they see in their social media feeds. He thinks this has gotten so bad and I kind of, I think I sort of agree with him. This is, it's so clear. I think people really are noticing this more than they, more than they used to, that. Uh, you know, there's just so much, so much astroturf that he thinks eventually people will be turned off from this, but he thinks that the, you know, the clippers, at least the people that are doing the clipping now, they're going to basically be sort of directing all of this content at AI.

• 1:08:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:28Speaker 04

  So soon, you know, maybe we're not going to open social media apps. Maybe we're just going to have our AirPods in and it's going to, you know, Claude or ChatGPT is going to tell us what, what TV shows to watch or, you know, what, what music to stream. And he thinks that if, basically if they hit these LLMs with enough sort of volume of, you know, stealth marketing, that that will, you know, basically sort of trick the LLMs instead of tricking.

• 1:08:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Even now, if you, okay, so like the other day I was like, I think, who was I thinking about listening to? It was some, some band that had 12 albums and I was just kind of like, I'm not quite sure where to start. And I just, you know, did a usual Google search of ex artist ranked, which gives you a Gemini summary of what the two or three peak albums are in terms of like critical appreciation, but also these are the cult records. And then obviously there are the Reddit threads where people are ranking them. There's like rate your music threads. There's all these things where you can kind of find that information. But I noticed, and I think everybody has this experience now, that they're very rarely

• 1:09:38Chris Ryan?

  going past that Gemini summary of the answer to your question now. And so that vision of the future, that idea of basically your Google result being a prompt you give your AI agent essentially where you're just like, hey, I want to listen to Salem. What's music like? Like what are the best like witch house songs? And it creates a playlist for you or it tells you like, people like this. It's like, well, where are they getting that information? Like where is this, where's the learning happening? And I would imagine that there is also a worry that like AI agents probably already

• 1:10:19Chris Ryan?

  are operating multiple like social media feeds and just working from a prompt from an actual human owner are populating our feeds with this kind of stuff.

• 1:10:30Speaker 04

  This happened to search first. It's like research has just been completely sort of overtaken by spam. And that's, I think, where we're headed with with with social media. And so people, I think, are eventually going to escape. I do kind of wonder if it's like, you know, some of this is purposeful. It's like Google is, you know, they want you to use Gemini. They don't want you to use their their search engine anymore. And so maybe they're tanking, you know, on purpose or and pushing you to Gemini. And so, you know, then Gemini will then take in this, you know, huge amount of undisclosed advertising and then sort of spit that back to you in the form of, you know, supposedly personalized recommendations. I find it too. I ask ChatGPT all the time.

• 1:11:13Speaker 04

  It's like, what are, what are five, you know, albums that I've never heard before that sound a little like, I don't know, Alligator by Echo and the Bunny Men or something?

• 1:11:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:24Speaker 04

  It's spitting me back like incredible recommendations that, you know, I never would have found any other way. And yeah, I feel like this is this whole thing.

• 1:11:33Chris Ryan?

  Somewhere a bald record store employee is like, I could have told you. If you would just come to me, I would still have a job.

• 1:11:44Chris Ryan?

  Man, Lane, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been awesome and this piece is incredible. We'll link it in the show notes, obviously. And you can read Lane's writing on New York Magazine. I would, I would tell you where to follow him on social media, but you're probably just an open claw agent looking to blast him with geese propaganda. Lane, great seeing you, man. Thanks again to Lane Brown. You can read his piece in New York Magazine. We'll have that piece in the show notes for the pod on Spotify. As always, you can watch us on Ringer-TV on YouTube. You can write us at [email protected]. Follow us on Instagram at thewatchpod underscore. It's very funny to say these things after having this conversation with Lane.

• 1:12:28Chris Ryan?

  I wonder if Kai feels any extra pressure with clips this week after, you know, can you put up geese numbers, dude? Thanks to Kai and Sarah and Kaya for producing and we'll be back next on Thursday. Take care.

• 1:12:50Chris Ryan?

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• 1:13:20Speaker 04

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