Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► Have you ever noticed the face on the iPhone?

00:00:03 ◼   ► Do you mean like the cameras?

00:00:06 ◼   ► While we were getting ready today, I was looking at my iPhone.

00:00:09 ◼   ► And then I noticed that the iPhone was looking right back at me.

00:00:12 ◼   ► Oh, no, I never noticed those ones!

00:00:15 ◼   ► Oh yeah, look at that.

00:00:18 ◼   ► Well, I have to get a new phone now.

00:00:21 ◼   ► I just wanted to point it out, for anyone who has an iPhone

00:00:25 ◼   ► that does not have the home button,

00:00:28 ◼   ► that has the new line across the bottom.

00:00:31 ◼   ► On the lock screen, it makes a little face.

00:00:34 ◼   ► The line is the mouth, the camera button,

00:00:36 ◼   ► and the flashlight button are the two eyes that look at you.

00:00:40 ◼   ► And now I cannot unsee this forever.

00:00:44 ◼   ► - Well, here's the thing that makes it kind of worse.

00:00:46 ◼   ► If you just leave the iPhone on,

00:00:48 ◼   ► the mouth starts to move, right?

00:00:51 ◼   ► So it's going like, hm, at me,

00:00:54 ◼   ► if I sit there for long enough.

00:00:55 ◼   ► - It goes a little hmf,

00:00:57 ◼   ► And what I think is extra funny is the effect on my phone

00:01:01 ◼   ► when I swipe up from the lock screen.

00:01:04 ◼   ► For but a brief moment,

00:01:06 ◼   ► there is a face at the very top of the iPhone.

00:01:10 ◼   ► So...

00:01:12 ◼   ► cannot unsee.

00:01:13 ◼   ► -That's really good.

00:01:15 ◼   ► He's just, like, judging, like,

00:01:16 ◼   ► "What are you doing with this home screen?"

00:01:20 ◼   ► -Maybe I'll make this my new background.

00:01:21 ◼   ► I'll just screenshot that face at the top of my phone

00:01:24 ◼   ► and leave it like that.

00:01:25 ◼   ► -God, that would be brilliant.

00:01:27 ◼   ► and also be so confusing.

00:01:29 ◼   ► iPhone, always judging.

00:01:32 ◼   ► How you doing, Myke?

00:01:33 ◼   ► I'm good.

00:01:34 ◼   ► I, um, we're going to talk about the American meme today.

00:01:37 ◼   ► American meme.

00:01:38 ◼   ► We're going to talk about that later on in the show.

00:01:40 ◼   ► But I watched it today, and it is actually

00:01:45 ◼   ► a pretty depressing documentary.

00:01:47 ◼   ► Well, I found it pretty depressing.

00:01:49 ◼   ► Wow, spoilers, Myke.

00:01:51 ◼   ► Well, I wished I would have been able to warn people beforehand,

00:01:56 ◼   ► but I didn't really know much about it.

00:01:59 ◼   ► But yeah, I found it fascinating and we'll get into why.

00:02:02 ◼   ► But I don't know if it was the right pre-show

00:02:06 ◼   ► entertainment for me today, but.

00:02:08 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:02:10 ◼   ► - Probably not.

00:02:13 ◼   ► Probably not the thing to put you in a real cheery mood

00:02:17 ◼   ► right before starting a podcast.

00:02:19 ◼   ► - Question everything I know and just judge my own existence

00:02:26 ◼   ► and my own career.

00:02:28 ◼   ► This is so good, feeling good.

00:02:31 ◼   ► - Good, I'm glad you're feeling great.

00:02:33 ◼   ► - Yep, feeling real good.

00:02:35 ◼   ► I wanted to ask you actually,

00:02:37 ◼   ► I feel like there is a thread that we never got back to,

00:02:42 ◼   ► which was something that you,

00:02:44 ◼   ► I think you mentioned you would update us on

00:02:47 ◼   ► towards the end of the year,

00:02:48 ◼   ► which was one of your mysterious projects.

00:02:51 ◼   ► - I don't have any mysterious projects.

00:02:53 ◼   ► - Project Golem.

00:02:56 ◼   ► Yes, Project Golem.

00:02:57 ◼   ► Yes, that was a thread we had not finished sewing.

00:03:00 ◼   ► - I couldn't think of the way to finish that metaphor either

00:03:03 ◼   ► so I just like, oh, didn't come back to it.

00:03:05 ◼   ► Like tying it, do you tie a knot in it?

00:03:07 ◼   ► Is that what you do?

00:03:08 ◼   ► - I think maybe, I was enjoying,

00:03:11 ◼   ► I don't know if Myke's going to edit it down

00:03:13 ◼   ► for the final version of the podcast,

00:03:14 ◼   ► but I enjoyed the good 30 seconds of silence

00:03:17 ◼   ► as you tried in your head to figure out the way to close.

00:03:19 ◼   ► - Now, now, come on, now come on.

00:03:22 ◼   ► That's not, I'm gonna leave it in its entirety now

00:03:25 ◼   ► so people will know it wasn't 30 seconds of silence.

00:03:28 ◼   ► And I just sit there just like a robot,

00:03:30 ◼   ► like I was just like waiting.

00:03:32 ◼   ► - Will they know, will they trust it,

00:03:34 ◼   ► that it's the actual amount of silence?

00:03:35 ◼   ► That's very easy to fix in post.

00:03:36 ◼   ► - The sensorial hand of Myke comes down again,

00:03:40 ◼   ► even on his own silences.

00:03:41 ◼   ► - But yes, I feel like this was,

00:03:45 ◼   ► we've been talking in the past couple episodes

00:03:47 ◼   ► about the yearly themes that we have going on.

00:03:52 ◼   ► And this is the one note that I had made in my private Cortex

00:03:57 ◼   ► show notes to myself a year ago was

00:04:00 ◼   ► to update people in the future about Project Golem.

00:04:03 ◼   ► And we never quite got around to it

00:04:05 ◼   ► in either of the discussions.

00:04:06 ◼   ► Am I right in remembering that this was a project for you

00:04:10 ◼   ► that was like, if you didn't do it,

00:04:12 ◼   ► then you probably weren't going to do it?

00:04:13 ◼   ► Am I remembering that rightly?

00:04:14 ◼   ► So this is why I feel that I'm going to mention it here,

00:04:17 ◼   ► because I did specifically say that I should have

00:04:20 ◼   ► some kind of update for this one way or the other.

00:04:24 ◼   ► Whereas sometimes, not that I have mysterious projects,

00:04:27 ◼   ► but if I did have mysterious projects,

00:04:29 ◼   ► they might also just mysteriously disappear.

00:04:31 ◼   ► -If you were one to be known as such a person.

00:04:35 ◼   ► -Right, which is not what I am, so I just want to --

00:04:37 ◼   ► -It's not your character.

00:04:38 ◼   ► It would be out of character, really, for you if you did do that.

00:04:43 ◼   ► -You know, I don't appreciate that part.

00:04:46 ◼   ► It's definitionally untrue every time.

00:04:49 ◼   ► But, so here's the thing, it was,

00:04:52 ◼   ► the way I pitched it as it was a big thing

00:04:54 ◼   ► that I sort of wanted to do for myself

00:04:58 ◼   ► as a different and interesting project for me to work on.

00:05:03 ◼   ► And when you were in the last episode

00:05:07 ◼   ► talking about officially putting into the freezer

00:05:11 ◼   ► your fiction project, I'm basically at the same position

00:05:15 ◼   ► with what was Project Golem.

00:05:19 ◼   ► It was a thing over the past year that I should have put maybe a thousand hours into,

00:05:25 ◼   ► and I probably put a lot closer to something like a hundred hours into that project.

00:05:30 ◼   ► The thing that I've done, which may be a useful way for some people to think about how they decide on projects

00:05:38 ◼   ► that are part of their life or not, is I have a couple of triggers that I've set for

00:05:46 ◼   ► or I can revisit this in the future if I want to, but only if two things are true.

00:05:54 ◼   ► And one of those things I've decided on is a certain amount of video production on the

00:06:00 ◼   ► YouTube side.

00:06:01 ◼   ► That if, say for example, over the last n years I haven't produced x number of videos,

00:06:08 ◼   ► like on average, that this is not even a project that I'm going to consider reviving until

00:06:16 ◼   ► that statement is true.

00:06:18 ◼   ► It can be very easy to spread yourself too far

00:06:21 ◼   ► over too many things because you want to do a bunch of stuff.

00:06:25 ◼   ► And sometimes it's hard to come up with hard and fast rules

00:06:29 ◼   ► for what you are or aren't doing.

00:06:31 ◼   ► So for Project Golem for me, like I said,

00:06:33 ◼   ► I've said it kind of like, unless there's X videos

00:06:36 ◼   ► in N number of years on average,

00:06:39 ◼   ► this is not a thing that I'm even allowed to reconsider

00:06:42 ◼   ► as a project going forward.

00:06:44 ◼   ► It's away, it's been shelved.

00:06:46 ◼   ► I just wanted to officially get that on the record

00:06:48 ◼   ► since I did promise an update a long time ago.

00:06:51 ◼   ► - But we're not gonna get any details.

00:06:53 ◼   ► I was hoping we'd get a detail.

00:06:54 ◼   ► - Okay, so-- - Some description.

00:06:56 ◼   ► - No, okay, like, I kind of want to give details,

00:06:59 ◼   ► but the problem is, here's the problem, Myke.

00:07:02 ◼   ► I know that if I do, what's going to happen

00:07:05 ◼   ► is I'm going to get a million people sending me emails

00:07:07 ◼   ► saying, "Oh, I'd love to help you with that thing."

00:07:09 ◼   ► And I don't want to be on the receiving end of that.

00:07:14 ◼   ► and setting these little triggers for when it can revive is actually my way of being able to put it to bed quietly and never think about it for a long time.

00:07:26 ◼   ► So goodbye Project Golem.

00:07:28 ◼   ► We literally hardly knew you.

00:07:31 ◼   ► Moving right along.

00:07:38 ◼   ► I was really thinking like, "Oh, we're gonna get some details."

00:07:42 ◼   ► Nope.

00:07:44 ◼   ► Myke, do you even know who you podcast with?

00:07:46 ◼   ► I don't know if you do.

00:07:47 ◼   ► I was surprised to see it in the document.

00:07:49 ◼   ► I was like, oh, wow, OK.

00:07:51 ◼   ► Look, I just wanted to close the door.

00:07:52 ◼   ► That's all it was.

00:07:53 ◼   ► While we're here,

00:07:55 ◼   ► it's February.

00:07:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:58 ◼   ► You have not returned to the internet in full capacity.

00:08:02 ◼   ► I'm just wondering that it's another project that has now kind of passed its review deadline.

00:08:09 ◼   ► you're just staying away? Like what's happening? Do you have like what's going on?

00:08:15 ◼   ► I'm fine thank you. Not coming back anytime soon. That actually, to relate to Project Golem a little

00:08:22 ◼   ► bit, I do have two things that I definitely want to do and finish before I even consider returning.

00:08:30 ◼   ► So there's two projects that I want to finish before I do come back but

00:08:37 ◼   ► I don't know. I'm kind of liking it out here. It's nice. Floating in the void, sort of separate

00:08:45 ◼   ► from whatever is occurring in the maelstrom of the internet. So I feel like I'm doing pretty well.

00:08:51 ◼   ► - Do you miss anything?

00:08:52 ◼   ► - Yes. Yes. There are things that I miss, and I think there's two clear downsides.

00:09:04 ◼   ► Downside number one is I'm clearly more disconnected from a lot of people I would classify as professional

00:09:17 ◼   ► colleagues or conference friends or other Internet personalities that I'm acquaintances

00:09:24 ◼   ► with.

00:09:26 ◼   ► And that to me has always been one of the primary use cases of Twitter in particular.

00:09:32 ◼   ► the internet in general is, having an awareness of what a bunch of people are up to.

00:09:39 ◼   ► And there are people who I wouldn't necessarily, like we're not necessarily going to have an

00:09:42 ◼   ► instant message conversation, but it's nice to have this level of acquaintance.

00:09:50 ◼   ► And I think by far and away that's the thing that I'm missing out on the most and is also

00:09:58 ◼   ► a very useful thing.

00:10:00 ◼   ► Our friend Casey talks about the pyramid of communication.

00:10:05 ◼   ► If you imagine right at the very top is like a phone call.

00:10:09 ◼   ► - Right.

00:10:10 ◼   ► - And then right at the very bottom

00:10:11 ◼   ► is like an email newsletter or something.

00:10:14 ◼   ► You've lopped off a bunch of them.

00:10:16 ◼   ► So like ways that you might communicate with people

00:10:19 ◼   ► through an app reply or seeing a post

00:10:22 ◼   ► on some social network or like having this

00:10:24 ◼   ► like asynchronous communication of like

00:10:27 ◼   ► you just know what they're doing,

00:10:28 ◼   ► they know what you're doing.

00:10:30 ◼   ► you've kind of cut off those avenues,

00:10:32 ◼   ► therefore cutting off those relationships.

00:10:34 ◼   ► Like if you don't have a legitimate form

00:10:38 ◼   ► of regular one-on-one communication with that person,

00:10:41 ◼   ► whether it be through text messages

00:10:43 ◼   ► or through some kind of closed social network

00:10:46 ◼   ► or closed platform like Slack,

00:10:48 ◼   ► then you just don't communicate with them anymore.

00:10:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's the asynchronicity and the low level of it

00:10:54 ◼   ► that's actually valuable.

00:10:55 ◼   ► Because there's a funny thing I've thought many times,

00:10:59 ◼   ► I almost wish there was a way in iMessage

00:11:02 ◼   ► to specify a less interruptive text message

00:11:06 ◼   ► that you want to send.

00:11:08 ◼   ► So to be able to say, like this text message,

00:11:12 ◼   ► it's perfectly fine for the person to only see

00:11:15 ◼   ► the new bubble when they open up the messages app.

00:11:18 ◼   ► - Right.

00:11:19 ◼   ► - Like, I want to be able to say a thing and--

00:11:22 ◼   ► - Or even that's just like a low priority toggle.

00:11:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, or something like a low priority toggle.

00:11:28 ◼   ► that. I mean, this is, of course, you immediately run into this email problem, right, where

00:11:32 ◼   ► an email some clients will show, where people can specify like an urgent email, or I forget

00:11:38 ◼   ► exactly what this little system is, but I remember when I was in school sometimes you

00:11:41 ◼   ► would see that emails would have like three exclamation marks next to it.

00:11:45 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a priority system that was in like Lotus Notes and Outlook and stuff. But

00:11:50 ◼   ► there were like three levels of it, so they were always all of them three exclamation

00:11:57 ◼   ► marks because why would you have like a one exclamation mark urgency of an email? It's

00:12:04 ◼   ► wild.

00:12:05 ◼   ► Yeah and you'd have some people in a business setting who would only send like it was just

00:12:09 ◼   ► set as default or whatever on their outgoing messages that all of their messages were three

00:12:14 ◼   ► exclamation marks.

00:12:15 ◼   ► Every email that I send demands a reply so they are all urgent by nature.

00:12:21 ◼   ► So the listeners don't worry I understand the great dangers and inherent problems of

00:12:26 ◼   ► letting a sender specify urgency of any kind in a message

00:12:31 ◼   ► because it's just begging for abuse.

00:12:33 ◼   ► But I've caught myself thinking many times,

00:12:35 ◼   ► I wish there was a,

00:12:36 ◼   ► 'cause like iMessage is a pretty standard platform

00:12:40 ◼   ► for a huge number of people that it almost feels like

00:12:44 ◼   ► it's too much of a jump up from email.

00:12:46 ◼   ► Like I want something that's higher than email

00:12:48 ◼   ► but lower than a text message

00:12:50 ◼   ► which appears on their phone immediately.

00:12:52 ◼   ► So that's why I've thought many times,

00:12:54 ◼   ► like I kind of wish I could send an iMessage

00:12:56 ◼   ► to this person that would just silently be on their phone

00:13:00 ◼   ► for the next time they opened the app.

00:13:02 ◼   ► And in a way, Twitter was sort of that kind of thing.

00:13:07 ◼   ► You wouldn't necessarily assume that a person

00:13:09 ◼   ► was getting an alert for your @ message

00:13:11 ◼   ► or anything like that.

00:13:12 ◼   ► Or you figure like Twitter direct messages

00:13:14 ◼   ► were a whole other tier of communication

00:13:16 ◼   ► that the other person was allowed to sort out

00:13:18 ◼   ► however they want.

00:13:19 ◼   ► It's like iMessages are too,

00:13:22 ◼   ► because of the way they work on the phone,

00:13:24 ◼   ► they're too intrinsically high level.

00:13:27 ◼   ► So that's why for some people I would put in the acquaintance

00:13:31 ◼   ► or conference friend category,

00:13:33 ◼   ► I find myself sometimes hesitating

00:13:35 ◼   ► about sending an iMessage

00:13:36 ◼   ► 'cause it feels like it's too interruptive

00:13:39 ◼   ► and too demanding of their attention

00:13:42 ◼   ► for what might just be like a,

00:13:45 ◼   ► just a little remark that I wanna pass their way,

00:13:47 ◼   ► which is like a keeping in touch kind of remark, so.

00:13:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've noticed the value

00:13:51 ◼   ► in the kind of the asynchronicity of not even the one-on-one stuff, but just people just

00:13:58 ◼   ► talking about what they're up to and sharing what they're up to is then when you bump into

00:14:01 ◼   ► that person again, two things happen. One, you have something to talk to them about because

00:14:06 ◼   ► you're tangentially aware of what's going on in their life. And two, you don't have to have that

00:14:11 ◼   ► awkward thing where they reference something, but you don't know what they're talking about because

00:14:14 ◼   ► you don't follow their Instagram anymore. Yeah, yeah. So I think that that's definitely a thing

00:14:20 ◼   ► that I feel like is a useful tool of the internet

00:14:25 ◼   ► that I do feel like I'm missing out on

00:14:27 ◼   ► is that passive awareness of what other people are up to

00:14:32 ◼   ► and the occasional little touch points

00:14:36 ◼   ► where you have some small interaction on Twitter,

00:14:39 ◼   ► for example, and it's like, oh yes,

00:14:41 ◼   ► we have maintained this acquaintance relationship

00:14:45 ◼   ► and then it makes things easier

00:14:46 ◼   ► when you see them again in person.

00:14:48 ◼   ► But I guess the problem is those tools, those platforms,

00:14:53 ◼   ► they also hold with it the worst

00:14:55 ◼   ► of what you're trying to avoid, I guess.

00:14:57 ◼   ► - Exactly, and it's one of the reasons why Twitter

00:15:00 ◼   ► in particular is the really useful one.

00:15:01 ◼   ► It's the where everybody is chatting platform,

00:15:05 ◼   ► but then it's also the platform of, oh, right,

00:15:09 ◼   ► there's also a huge number of followers here

00:15:12 ◼   ► and people trying to get your attention for very,

00:15:14 ◼   ► like the disadvantage is also the advantage

00:15:17 ◼   ► that it is a great advantage to not be exposed to people always trying to pull your attention

00:15:27 ◼   ► in one way or another for their own ends sometimes, or...

00:15:30 ◼   ► - I think it's also that there are just an endless amount of things to distract you on

00:15:36 ◼   ► Twitter. There's always more stuff. Like it's not even just people talking to you, you can

00:15:41 ◼   ► just go and find more things, always, constantly. - Yeah, that's true. I mean, I think for

00:15:46 ◼   ► I mean, Twitter on the "how much was I distracted by it" spectrum was always relatively low.

00:15:52 ◼   ► Something like Reddit and Hacker News were vastly higher on the "how distractible does

00:15:56 ◼   ► my brain find it" spectrum.

00:15:59 ◼   ► But I guess what I'm trying to articulate here is the thing that is the advantage and

00:16:04 ◼   ► the disadvantage is a kind of silence.

00:16:07 ◼   ► The silence is really useful, and it's a thing that as time has gone on I feel like I'm appreciating

00:16:12 ◼   ► more is the lack of input from the world, but that silence also means, "Oh, I don't

00:16:20 ◼   ► have the updates from like the further reaches of my social circle as to what people are

00:16:27 ◼   ► up to." And there is no way to get the one without the other really, or in any kind of

00:16:37 ◼   ► effective method.

00:16:38 ◼   ► Well there is.

00:16:39 ◼   ► Oh yes?

00:16:40 ◼   ► You could have a private account.

00:16:44 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:16:46 ◼   ► I mean you could.

00:16:47 ◼   ► I don't think that I would recommend it.

00:16:49 ◼   ► I think that it has a lot of trade-offs, right?

00:16:53 ◼   ► How would that work?

00:16:54 ◼   ► I'll come back to the internet and set my Twitter to private and what?

00:16:57 ◼   ► Boot a hundred thousand people off of it?

00:17:00 ◼   ► Well no, no, no.

00:17:01 ◼   ► But you could set up a second account.

00:17:03 ◼   ► You could just set up a secret account.

00:17:05 ◼   ► Oh a second account!

00:17:06 ◼   ► Forget it.

00:17:07 ◼   ► - Oh, that's a lot of hassle.

00:17:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's not as much hassle as you would think

00:17:11 ◼   ► it would be, but it's an option that I don't think.

00:17:14 ◼   ► - But then you've gotta like,

00:17:15 ◼   ► then you gotta re-follow it and it's--

00:17:17 ◼   ► - You follow like seven people.

00:17:18 ◼   ► It's hard, it would be hardly difficult for you, but yes.

00:17:21 ◼   ► - Okay, but, like here's the other thing,

00:17:24 ◼   ► and this will, you know, this may tie a little bit

00:17:27 ◼   ► into the movie we'll discuss eventually,

00:17:29 ◼   ► but it's also the thing that having one account,

00:17:32 ◼   ► which is the CGP Grey account,

00:17:35 ◼   ► means that there are people who are following me

00:17:37 ◼   ► that it's like it's useful to know that and to be able to sometimes reach out to

00:17:41 ◼   ► people through which there's no other real communication channel.

00:17:45 ◼   ► So what you're saying is verified or get the f*** out.

00:17:50 ◼   ► No, it's not just verified, but it's the like, I always think of Twitter as a useful

00:17:58 ◼   ► way to have a door that's open to some people. And by having a bunch of people following

00:18:05 ◼   ► my Twitter account, it makes that Twitter account a real resource in some ways that

00:18:11 ◼   ► I've been able to take advantage of sometimes. So that's why the private account is like,

00:18:16 ◼   ► "Oh, this is no good because I'm not going to get other people following my private account,"

00:18:20 ◼   ► which then defeats this other useful value of it. So that's why that's not going to happen.

00:18:25 ◼   ► So I'm not going to set my account to private. Although there is a part of me which thinks

00:18:31 ◼   ► that would be kind of hilarious if I did that coming back from the internet. I'm back.

00:18:38 ◼   ► Tweet number one, this account is now going private. Goodbye.

00:18:40 ◼   ► It would be kind of terrible really.

00:18:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't think that would win me a lot of friends to do that sort of thing.

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00:21:06 ◼   ► So that is thing number one that I miss.

00:21:10 ◼   ► And that's the thing that is useful.

00:21:11 ◼   ► The other the other thing is is so hard to articulate.

00:21:14 ◼   ► I feel like I feel like listener if you know what I mean.

00:21:17 ◼   ► You'll know what I mean.

00:21:18 ◼   ► I can't explain it in words.

00:21:20 ◼   ► I miss a certain kind of meme-y internet humor that you find nowhere else but the internet.

00:21:29 ◼   ► I always have this feeling like the internet is this terrifying wild west that's also just hilarious in a way that no other place is.

00:21:42 ◼   ► where you have like, meme mutation across this, you know, hundreds of thousands of users,

00:21:49 ◼   ► and humor can be really quick and really obscure sometimes,

00:21:54 ◼   ► and so there's a certain kind of humor that I feel like

00:21:57 ◼   ► there's no ability to replace this with any other medium.

00:22:01 ◼   ► It's so intrinsic to what the medium is that it's not replicable.

00:22:05 ◼   ► Because I think part of what makes it satisfying

00:22:07 ◼   ► is if you get it, you feel like you're a part of something.

00:22:11 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a good way to articulate it.

00:22:13 ◼   ► And you know that other people won't get it.

00:22:16 ◼   ► Like if you weren't there to see that meme mutate,

00:22:18 ◼   ► or if you don't know what it means,

00:22:20 ◼   ► or you're not part of the community making the joke

00:22:22 ◼   ► and something just flies by,

00:22:24 ◼   ► you can just think, I don't understand that.

00:22:26 ◼   ► But other people find it hilarious because they get it.

00:22:29 ◼   ► Yeah, I feel like it's the thing that to me

00:22:33 ◼   ► is like internet artwork, internet genius,

00:22:35 ◼   ► is when a meme has been used 100,000 times

00:22:40 ◼   ► in one particular way, and then someone finds the way

00:22:43 ◼   ► to turn it in an absurd new direction,

00:22:47 ◼   ► and that humor only works because the other way

00:22:50 ◼   ► is so ingrained into your brain.

00:22:52 ◼   ► And that's a kind of unexpected humor

00:22:55 ◼   ► that's born of an intense repetition

00:23:00 ◼   ► that you're just not going to get anywhere else.

00:23:02 ◼   ► - The most perfect example of this,

00:23:05 ◼   ► which you were probably thinking of, is a meme called loss.

00:23:09 ◼   ► I'm not sure. I don't think this is what I'm thinking of. I'm not thinking of anything

00:23:12 ◼   ► in particular, but...

00:23:13 ◼   ► This is a perfect example of this. It's this weird cartoon, this upsetting cartoon that

00:23:19 ◼   ► results in somebody dying, and it's been mutated into a million ways to the point that...

00:23:25 ◼   ► Oh, oh, this is the... I know this one. Yeah. Right.

00:23:29 ◼   ► There's like four intersecting lines, or a bunch of other lines can symbolize loss. I'll

00:23:35 ◼   ► put some links in the show notes that try and explain loss.

00:23:38 ◼   ► It's control-alt-delete. I recommend a link for you to include. I don't know if you've

00:23:43 ◼   ► seen it, but there's a YouTube channel called Hbomberguy. And he did a 45-minute, I think,

00:23:49 ◼   ► YouTube episode just about loss. Yeah, so this is a good example.

00:23:54 ◼   ► Loss is a meme that I don't really know other than knowing that it exists in this format.

00:24:00 ◼   ► And so I've found out kind of what it means later on. But this is like a perfect example,

00:24:05 ◼   ► think of meme internet humor it's like it tricks you because sometimes you're

00:24:12 ◼   ► you're looking at a lost meme and you don't realize it until you realize it

00:24:16 ◼   ► you're only gonna get it if you know about it and if you don't know about it

00:24:22 ◼   ► it's just gonna go by you like same as the kind of maybe on a more kind of

00:24:27 ◼   ► general level like Rick Rowling it's like a similar thing like if somebody

00:24:33 ◼   ► Somebody sends you a link and you get to the Rick Astley song.

00:24:37 ◼   ► If you don't know what Rickrolling is, it doesn't mean anything to you.

00:24:40 ◼   ► It's just like someone sent me a dumb song.

00:24:42 ◼   ► But if you know what Rickrolling is, you get the meta joke.

00:24:45 ◼   ► Right, or then the thing that I love is someone does a mutation on that where the joke is

00:24:50 ◼   ► almost you're expecting to get Rickrolled and something adjacent to it happens and it's

00:24:54 ◼   ► like, "Ah, that's great!

00:24:55 ◼   ► That's really good what you've done there."

00:24:59 ◼   ► But I've been thinking about that a bunch because it's just a really good example of

00:25:03 ◼   ► how a change in medium allows a different kind of expression.

00:25:10 ◼   ► And yeah, memes are sort of dumb and jokey, but I also love it.

00:25:16 ◼   ► Like I've always loved this stuff.

00:25:18 ◼   ► Like I've always deeply loved the like the crazy Wild Westness of the internet, like

00:25:24 ◼   ► the, you know, the intrinsic coyote spirit tricksterness of it.

00:25:28 ◼   ► And there's something about a certain kind of meanie humor that feels like it expresses

00:25:32 ◼   ► this really well, or when, you know, people are just making terrible mutations of a joke

00:25:39 ◼   ► and you can twist it around where it's so bad but it gets repeated so often it becomes

00:25:43 ◼   ► its own thing.

00:25:44 ◼   ► I feel like nothing really quite scratches that itch in my brain.

00:25:52 ◼   ► The closest thing is something like Easter eggs in YouTube videos, you know, where people

00:25:56 ◼   ► hide something.

00:25:58 ◼   ► It's not remotely internet-y humor,

00:26:00 ◼   ► but I feel like that's the closest kind of thing

00:26:04 ◼   ► that you can do.

00:26:05 ◼   ► And I think it is no coincidence that my most recent video,

00:26:10 ◼   ► the airplane boarding video,

00:26:12 ◼   ► is I think maybe the most packed with Easter eggs

00:26:16 ◼   ► in any video that I have done.

00:26:19 ◼   ► And I'm kind of dying to know

00:26:21 ◼   ► if people have caught all of them,

00:26:22 ◼   ► but there are so many.

00:26:23 ◼   ► - You could do a video about the history of Easter

00:26:27 ◼   ► and have less Easter eggs in that video than you do in the one you've currently got.

00:26:34 ◼   ► Yeah, but I think that was happening partly because of a kind of frustration in my brain.

00:26:40 ◼   ► Like, this is the closest thing I can do, but it's like, how many things can I hide in this video?

00:26:45 ◼   ► Why are these numbers those numbers? What can I stuff in the captions somewhere?

00:26:49 ◼   ► Like, so many things are shoved into that, and I honestly think it's a kind of expression

00:26:56 ◼   ► of feeling like I'm missing this kind of humor, is putting all of those things in there.

00:27:02 ◼   ► So what we're saying is people should go and watch the airplane boarding video like six

00:27:07 ◼   ► times to make sure that they catch it all.

00:27:10 ◼   ► Well, I mean, obviously, they clearly totally should.

00:27:13 ◼   ► Well, that video is doing really well.

00:27:14 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, it's doing well.

00:27:16 ◼   ► Maybe it's because everyone is rewatching it trying to catch all the Easter eggs.

00:27:18 ◼   ► Yep, probably.

00:27:19 ◼   ► Which I will leave as an exercise to the viewers,

00:27:24 ◼   ► but there's a lot in there.

00:27:25 ◼   ► But yeah, so those are my feelings.

00:27:27 ◼   ► I miss those two things.

00:27:28 ◼   ► I miss them quite a lot, but I don't feel any real sense

00:27:36 ◼   ► of urgency to come back.

00:27:39 ◼   ► And I really do think that a lot of the advantages

00:27:45 ◼   ► outweigh the disadvantages.

00:27:47 ◼   ► And primarily, one of the main things I was talking about

00:27:51 ◼   ► at the very beginning of this project

00:27:53 ◼   ► was simply just the amount of reading that I do.

00:27:55 ◼   ► And this has gone very well hand in hand

00:27:59 ◼   ► with what I've talked about on the show,

00:28:00 ◼   ► about trying to change some of the ways

00:28:02 ◼   ► that I work on videos and what the research

00:28:05 ◼   ► and production cycle looks like.

00:28:07 ◼   ► This has been a huge success in terms of

00:28:09 ◼   ► the amount of reading that I do,

00:28:10 ◼   ► the number of books that I read has dramatically increased.

00:28:15 ◼   ► And there has been like a totally unavoidable,

00:28:20 ◼   ► very obvious increase in my ability to focus

00:28:25 ◼   ► and pay attention to the thing that I'm reading,

00:28:28 ◼   ► which was the thing that concerned me the most.

00:28:30 ◼   ► And so that's also partly why there is a hesitation

00:28:35 ◼   ► to go back because the effect there has been so strong

00:28:40 ◼   ► that it feels like confirmation.

00:28:41 ◼   ► Oh, I wasn't wrong that I'm having

00:28:44 ◼   ► a harder time reading things

00:28:45 ◼   ► I think it's partly because of the nature of this medium. I think I was very clearly

00:28:50 ◼   ► right. So that's something else on the other side of the scales.

00:28:55 ◼   ► Are you working more?

00:28:57 ◼   ► I would say I'm working better. I don't know because I haven't really been time-tracking.

00:29:01 ◼   ► That's been an intentional thing off to the side. So I don't have data to support that.

00:29:05 ◼   ► You doing it to me again?

00:29:06 ◼   ► What?

00:29:07 ◼   ► You doing this thing? You're doing something to me again where you're like, "Oh, I have

00:29:11 ◼   ► this great idea come along with me on this ride. By the way, I've abandoned it. You're

00:29:16 ◼   ► on your own."

00:29:17 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:29:18 ◼   ► No, no, I'm not. We talked about this on the first episode of the new year, that I've temporarily

00:29:23 ◼   ► paused time tracking. I'm slowly, just within the last week, I'm doing some slow exploratory

00:29:31 ◼   ► "how do I want to return to this?" But I mention it because I haven't done time tracking for

00:29:39 ◼   ► a while so I don't really have hard numbers to back it up. But I can say something like

00:29:44 ◼   ► almost certainly the number of pages of printed material that I'm reading in a week is proportional

00:29:51 ◼   ► to the number of quality writing hours in a week. And so both of those things have gone

00:29:58 ◼   ► way up since I left the internet. But yeah, it's, I don't feel confident in making a statement

00:30:03 ◼   ► like yes, but this is also partly because of the fuzzy nature of my work. Like how much

00:30:08 ◼   ► How much does reading count as doing some kind of work?

00:30:11 ◼   ► Do I really want to include that?

00:30:13 ◼   ► Not really, even though I think it's an important part of it.

00:30:16 ◼   ► So I don't feel like I have a clear answer to that question.

00:30:19 ◼   ► But Myke, don't worry.

00:30:21 ◼   ► I haven't abandoned you in time tracking land.

00:30:23 ◼   ► I'm coming back.

00:30:24 ◼   ► I just, for part of the project of reorder, I specifically wanted to...

00:30:29 ◼   ► There's a few things I'm doing with this, but I specifically wanted to remove as much

00:30:35 ◼   ► of the structure of life that past me had imposed on things, and that even drilled right

00:30:41 ◼   ► down into the concept of what categories of his life does he track. Again, like, I'm

00:30:46 ◼   ► not interested in what that guy thought about anything, so on as many areas as I've been

00:30:52 ◼   ► able to, from big and small, I've tried to remove as much influence from that past

00:30:58 ◼   ► me had as possible. So that is just one of those areas, an intentional stepping back.

00:31:02 ◼   ► But don't worry, I'm coming back, Myke. I won't leave you in time tracking land.

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00:33:28 ◼   ► The American Meme, a Netflix original documentary, follows around a selection of influencers,

00:33:39 ◼   ► some social media influencers, and also has a lot of interviews with other individuals,

00:33:45 ◼   ► people who are famous on the internet, people who were famous on the internet, that kind

00:33:49 ◼   ► of thing, to kind of reinforce what's going on.

00:33:52 ◼   ► It's a very well-made documentary.

00:33:55 ◼   ► I liked the presentation style.

00:33:58 ◼   ► I liked that it had something to say, like it clearly had a point that it was trying

00:34:02 ◼   ► to make.

00:34:03 ◼   ► I really like it.

00:34:05 ◼   ► You recommended this to me and I want to know how you came across it and then kind of to

00:34:12 ◼   ► set this conversation up, why you thought it would be worthwhile for us to talk about

00:34:16 ◼   ► it.

00:34:17 ◼   ► Well, I'm feeling a little bit guilty about recommending it to you because of your emotional

00:34:23 ◼   ► reaction to it this morning and the mood that it's put you in. I just came across it because

00:34:30 ◼   ► Netflix seemed to think this was the thing that I absolutely had to watch. And so at

00:34:35 ◼   ► the end of everything I was watching at Netflix, it was like, "Hey, I don't know if you know,

00:34:39 ◼   ► but we've made this documentary called American Meme that we think is a 99% match for you.

00:34:44 ◼   ► So we're going to recommend it every time on everything." And at some point I just watched

00:34:48 ◼   ► And so yeah, I recommended it just because I thought, like,

00:34:52 ◼   ► there is a way in which this movie strikes me as a strange kind of work documentary.

00:35:00 ◼   ► I'm not sure if listeners have watched it if they would perceive it that way,

00:35:05 ◼   ► but I think it is. I think it's a documentary about how a new kind of famous person works.

00:35:14 ◼   ► works. It is a new kind of job. There is a line in the documentary which I think was misguided.

00:35:21 ◼   ► Somebody's, I don't remember who it is, but somebody's giving an interview and they're

00:35:26 ◼   ► talking about like, oh... So the reason it's called the American meme is because it's a pun

00:35:31 ◼   ► on the American dream and they, I think they clearly came up with the name because one of the

00:35:36 ◼   ► parents of one of the people that they're following starts talking about the American

00:35:40 ◼   ► Dream" and like a light bulb probably went off in somebody's head of like "oh we have

00:35:44 ◼   ► a name for the documentary, it's the American meme" because she said that the American Dream

00:35:49 ◼   ► has changed because they came from Russia, they emigrated to America and the American

00:35:56 ◼   ► Dream when they were a kid was a specific thing right like two car in every garage,

00:36:01 ◼   ► you know opportunity that kind of thing.

00:36:03 ◼   ► Yeah this is for people who are this is Krillix's parents, Krillix is an interesting sort of

00:36:08 ◼   ► person we'll talk about later but...

00:36:10 ◼   ► heard of this person before this documentary, honestly, never at all. Everybody else I knew

00:36:15 ◼   ► of a little bit, but this guy, I think for reasons that are clear, I had never come across

00:36:20 ◼   ► him, because like...

00:36:21 ◼   ► Yeah, this is what we describe as like...

00:36:23 ◼   ► The world he operates in is a very different world to me.

00:36:27 ◼   ► I think of the, um, people do those infographics of like the podcast universe and like what

00:36:32 ◼   ► places overlap with others, and if we're talking about just the internet universe, it's like

00:36:37 ◼   ► - Krillics is in some kind of galaxy light years away

00:36:41 ◼   ► from any of our circles.

00:36:42 ◼   ► So it's like, I'd never come across this person before,

00:36:45 ◼   ► but it's his parents talking about that idea,

00:36:48 ◼   ► the American dream, but it was not only for them,

00:36:50 ◼   ► it's also like, the dream is obviously

00:36:52 ◼   ► that they want it for their kids.

00:36:55 ◼   ► Like this, the dream that they have these,

00:36:57 ◼   ► this physical and product security in life,

00:37:00 ◼   ► that they have all the nice things.

00:37:02 ◼   ► - I think that guy's name is Kirill, Kirill.

00:37:05 ◼   ► - Krillex was a handle that he went with for a while.

00:37:08 ◼   ► - Okay, yeah, he went through a bunch of handles.

00:37:10 ◼   ► - I will not say his handle on the show,

00:37:13 ◼   ► but his name is Kril, K-I-R-I-L-L.

00:37:17 ◼   ► - Right, Kril.

00:37:19 ◼   ► And yeah, and then they end up with this son who has this,

00:37:22 ◼   ► I mean, is in his world very successful,

00:37:27 ◼   ► but it's just a totally unexpected kind of thing

00:37:29 ◼   ► for them as parents.

00:37:31 ◼   ► It was not what they were dreaming for their son,

00:37:33 ◼   ► and he went in sort of a different way.

00:37:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, he has a job I think most parents

00:37:40 ◼   ► would be embarrassed about.

00:37:42 ◼   ► - Oh, don't worry, Myke, we'll get to him.

00:37:43 ◼   ► - Okay, great, okay, okay, well, maybe great.

00:37:46 ◼   ► But yeah, so yeah, that's where the line

00:37:49 ◼   ► that I was getting to is it comes off

00:37:51 ◼   ► of kind of talking about that to be like,

00:37:52 ◼   ► oh, the kids today, they wanna just be famous as a job.

00:37:56 ◼   ► Like, they wanna ask them what they wanna do

00:37:59 ◼   ► when they grow up, they say they wanna be famous.

00:38:01 ◼   ► And I have a couple of problems at this point.

00:38:04 ◼   ► I think that's always been the case.

00:38:06 ◼   ► I don't think that there's anything inherently different

00:38:09 ◼   ► about people's desire for fame, right?

00:38:12 ◼   ► But now there's just more pause to it.

00:38:15 ◼   ► And the biggest thing, which they touch on,

00:38:17 ◼   ► like a bunch of influences touch on during this documentary,

00:38:20 ◼   ► is that there is now nobody that can get in your way

00:38:24 ◼   ► in the same way that there was in the past.

00:38:27 ◼   ► Usually there would be layers of people

00:38:29 ◼   ► you had to go through to say what you wanted to say or to get a platform for

00:38:34 ◼   ► yourself. But now people can just sign up for an account and they can do whatever

00:38:38 ◼   ► they want and they can say whatever they want. So it kind of frustrated me to hear

00:38:43 ◼   ► that because it's kind of just it's like perpetuating this stereotype of lazy

00:38:46 ◼   ► Millennials which I don't enjoy. I just think the difference for the millennial

00:38:51 ◼   ► generation of which I'm a part of is we were born into a world

00:38:56 ◼   ► where the internet was a thing and the internet has brought with it new types of jobs and

00:39:02 ◼   ► we both do them and people like those types of jobs because the internet gave brought

00:39:08 ◼   ► with it and for the millennial generation brought with it the idea that you can do whatever

00:39:13 ◼   ► you want and the internet can give you the tools to do that in a way that maybe wasn't

00:39:20 ◼   ► the case before. So that was like the one thing that frustrated me about the documentary

00:39:25 ◼   ► is that they made this documentary about all these people and then kind of just pooh-poohed

00:39:28 ◼   ► the idea of anybody wanting to be this way. And I think that that was purely to enforce

00:39:33 ◼   ► the narrative of sadness through the people that they picked, which is a genuine thing.

00:39:39 ◼   ► Totally get it. It's real. But that was definitely, every documentary has a through line. And

00:39:46 ◼   ► the through line of this documentary is that this life ultimately leads to just abject

00:39:51 ◼   ► sadness.

00:39:52 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I do agree with that.

00:39:55 ◼   ► The one little asterisk that I put on that statement about being famous is,

00:39:59 ◼   ► well, I do think it is true that humans seem to be creatures that have always

00:40:05 ◼   ► craved social approval and the more, the better.

00:40:10 ◼   ► Uh, and so like the, you know, I think you can go back to medieval ages and there

00:40:16 ◼   ► were children who wanted to be kings.

00:40:19 ◼   ► All right.

00:40:19 ◼   ► I don't think that's really any different.

00:40:22 ◼   ► My asterisk though is I do think that there is something about the modern world which

00:40:30 ◼   ► allows the encouragement of a kind of non-specific fame.

00:40:35 ◼   ► Yes, it's just famousness. Not "I want to be a singer, I want to be an actor, I want to be famous."

00:40:40 ◼   ► But I think a lot of people have in their mind what they want that to look like,

00:40:45 ◼   ► but they just use the word to explain what they're trying to get across.

00:40:49 ◼   ► because the idea of famous people now, they're less pigeonholed into a certain profession

00:40:58 ◼   ► because people have more opportunities available to them. So like Paris Hilton is the whole

00:41:06 ◼   ► documentary kind of pivots around Paris Hilton, which is brilliant. Like this, I have a completely

00:41:13 ◼   ► different thought about kind of everything we do now because they like they basically say that she

00:41:22 ◼   ► is like the kernel of all of this social media stuff and I agree like having seen all of this

00:41:27 ◼   ► like yes of course she was doing all this stuff a long time ago and you know a lot of the idea of

00:41:33 ◼   ► like fame coming from nowhere came from her obviously she had a an upbringing that allowed

00:41:39 ◼   ► for it but like she just kind of exploded onto the scene and then became a massive superstar

00:41:44 ◼   ► without really doing much of anything but she now does so many things she has so many different

00:41:54 ◼   ► businesses and there are so many celebrities that are like that now that they are less known for one

00:42:00 ◼   ► thing because they can do many more things more doors are available that's a that's a good point

00:42:08 ◼   ► That's a good point, that she did start as a non-specific famous person.

00:42:14 ◼   ► A socialite. She just was a socialite, which is a term that actually doesn't really exist anymore,

00:42:20 ◼   ► because influencers replaced what socialites were.

00:42:24 ◼   ► Oh wow, okay. I was just trying to mull over what you mean by socialite doesn't exist as a

00:42:29 ◼   ► thing anymore. You've totally sold me. When we were younger, that was the term for like,

00:42:35 ◼   ► this person's photographed going to a bar and it's like important where they're going.

00:42:38 ◼   ► But now nobody could give a crap what the paparazzi are doing. They see all this stuff

00:42:45 ◼   ► from the perspective of the people that are already there or the person themselves. So like

00:42:50 ◼   ► socialite and influencer are just the same thing, but now that role of influencer is more powerful

00:42:58 ◼   ► than the socialite role used to be. Yeah, that's a good point. I do want to pause you here because

00:43:04 ◼   ► because there's a thing which I think is important to mention at the start of this movie, which is...

00:43:10 ◼   ► So I watched it the first time and I thought, oh, let's, you know, I wanted to recommend it, I thought it was kind of an interesting thing.

00:43:15 ◼   ► And I watched it again last night to refresh my memory about it.

00:43:21 ◼   ► And there is a thing that when you know it also really changes your perspective on this movie,

00:43:28 ◼   ► which dovetails into exactly what you're saying.

00:43:32 ◼   ► Paris Hilton is the executive producer of this documentary.

00:43:36 ◼   ► - Huh. - Right?

00:43:37 ◼   ► Yeah, huh, right?

00:43:38 ◼   ► It makes a lot of things make much more sense

00:43:43 ◼   ► once you know this.

00:43:45 ◼   ► It's because it makes you realize,

00:43:46 ◼   ► how did this documentary come into existence

00:43:48 ◼   ► in the first place?

00:43:49 ◼   ► It's obviously her creative project.

00:43:52 ◼   ► And then the second time I'm watching this documentary,

00:43:56 ◼   ► I just kept thinking the first time I saw it,

00:43:59 ◼   ► I was impressed by Paris Hilton does so much more stuff

00:44:02 ◼   ► than I really had any idea, simply because I had no reason

00:44:05 ◼   ► really to pay attention to Paris Hilton.

00:44:06 ◼   ► Again, she's off in another orbit,

00:44:09 ◼   ► totally unconnected to my own orbit.

00:44:11 ◼   ► But then the next time through,

00:44:12 ◼   ► I kept being much more impressed with how crafty she is,

00:44:17 ◼   ► and I was paying much more attention to what parts

00:44:24 ◼   ► of her story is she telling in this documentary?

00:44:27 ◼   ► And what are other people saying about her

00:44:30 ◼   ► in this documentary upon which she is also

00:44:33 ◼   ► an executive producer?

00:44:35 ◼   ► And I think that the documentary itself

00:44:39 ◼   ► is like an example of its own thing,

00:44:43 ◼   ► that Paris Hilton, a famous person who does a bunch of stuff

00:44:48 ◼   ► and that aggregate up into her own fame,

00:44:51 ◼   ► is adding to that portfolio this artifact,

00:44:55 ◼   ► which is another thing that increases her fame in the world

00:44:59 ◼   ► that is her project.

00:45:02 ◼   ► Like the movie, I don't know,

00:45:03 ◼   ► I found really on the second viewing,

00:45:05 ◼   ► the movie like twists in on itself in this interesting way

00:45:10 ◼   ► in that in almost any other circumstance,

00:45:14 ◼   ► if you found out that a documentary

00:45:17 ◼   ► of which there was one primary subject,

00:45:19 ◼   ► That person was also the executive producer of that documentary.

00:45:23 ◼   ► You would feel a bit like, oh, I've been deceived.

00:45:26 ◼   ► It's totally thrown, thrown everything into question about what is here.

00:45:31 ◼   ► But this is actually a perfect case where no, this is, this is an example of the

00:45:37 ◼   ► very things you're talking about in the documentary proves the point.

00:45:40 ◼   ► Yeah, it proves the point.

00:45:42 ◼   ► It's like, this is another Paris Hilton project brought to you by Paris Hilton to

00:45:46 ◼   ► increase the overall fame of Paris Hilton.

00:45:49 ◼   ► which is also incredibly successful because I, before this came along, I probably haven't thought about her in 10 years.

00:45:58 ◼   ► Like, I remember her exploding onto the scene when I was younger in the early stage of her career,

00:46:03 ◼   ► seeming to come out of nowhere, and then being absolutely everywhere, and I haven't thought about her in a long time.

00:46:08 ◼   ► And then through this documentary, she is reinforcing her fame through a group of people who

00:46:17 ◼   ► either haven't come across her or just haven't thought about her in a long time

00:46:21 ◼   ► and made a really interesting thing to further this point.

00:46:24 ◼   ► So I just wanted to mention it because I think it makes the documentary more interesting watching,

00:46:32 ◼   ► but it's almost a spoiler to mention it ahead of time.

00:46:36 ◼   ► But I found it fascinating when I was watching the credits being like,

00:46:39 ◼   ► "Wait a minute, executive produced by Paris Hilton. Oh, fantastic. This is great."

00:46:45 ◼   ► That is really amazing.

00:46:47 ◼   ► Again, I kind of found myself astounded going through it, listening to her talk about the

00:46:54 ◼   ► things that have happened in her life.

00:46:57 ◼   ► She references a commercial that she made for Carl's Jr., which is a fast food chain

00:47:02 ◼   ► in America, that was too hot for TV.

00:47:07 ◼   ► And she made this commercial and then realized, "Oh, this is interesting.

00:47:12 ◼   ► I can leverage this idea again."

00:47:14 ◼   ► And like just the way that she talks about some stuff that she did in her past and like

00:47:19 ◼   ► some decisions that she made from it was just, it was just really clever.

00:47:23 ◼   ► And I also just feel really sorry for her too at certain points.

00:47:27 ◼   ► Like there's this one moment she's talking about paparazzi and she's standing in front

00:47:31 ◼   ► of this artwork that she has in her home, which is a picture of cameras and it flashes

00:47:40 ◼   ► and she can also turn sound on and it can make the noise of camera bulbs and stuff.

00:47:45 ◼   ► And she said that sometimes she hears flash bulbs even when they're not happening.

00:47:52 ◼   ► And I was just like, I feel bad for her at that moment, like that made me feel sad for

00:47:56 ◼   ► her.

00:47:57 ◼   ► Like, that's a crazy thing to happen to you.

00:47:59 ◼   ► That people take your picture so much that you hear it when it's not even happening.

00:48:06 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like Phantom Phone Syndrome, but for paparazzi.

00:48:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:48:11 ◼   ► Which sounds like a nightmare.

00:48:12 ◼   ► Yeah, it sounds terrible, really.

00:48:14 ◼   ► Like I also think, the other thing watching this, like the documentary, she sort of spans

00:48:19 ◼   ► her career over the course of this thing while being interspersed with other influencers.

00:48:27 ◼   ► And it's very well produced, really interesting, I genuinely recommend it.

00:48:31 ◼   ► But the other thing that I can't help but perceive as a meta-purpose of this project

00:48:37 ◼   ► is that it's-- she's reinforcing her fame, but by the end of the documentary, she's using

00:48:44 ◼   ► the documentary to-- I could be reading too much into this, but I feel like she's really

00:48:51 ◼   ► walking you to the conclusion of why she may be withdrawing from public life to some level.

00:49:00 ◼   ► that she does not want to be this socialite, outgoing, at-parties kind of person,

00:49:08 ◼   ► and that she's working on—like the documentary ends with her creating this virtual reality version

00:49:14 ◼   ► of herself, that she's thinking about how can she use this in future projects, and what can she do

00:49:22 ◼   ► with this where she doesn't have to go places, and she doesn't have to go out, and she's really

00:49:28 ◼   ► like, taking you step by step, and I think with scenes like showing all the paparazzi

00:49:33 ◼   ► of trying to show the viewer why after, you know, as she said, after 20 years of being

00:49:41 ◼   ► in the public eye and having to be this brand of like a crazy 20-something party girl, that

00:49:50 ◼   ► she wants to pull back. And so, like, I don't know, I was just looking at this and again

00:49:56 ◼   ► God damn it. It's really clever. Like this is also a clever way to

00:50:01 ◼   ► With your fans maybe start to delicately suggest

00:50:06 ◼   ► that you're not going to be around as much or you're not going to be visible as much and

00:50:12 ◼   ► And this is like a document that you can point to

00:50:15 ◼   ► That is very sympathetic towards that case

00:50:19 ◼   ► Yeah, because at the beginning I feel like she's going a little too heavy on

00:50:25 ◼   ► on the way that she interacts with her audience.

00:50:30 ◼   ► But by the end of it, I kind of believe it.

00:50:35 ◼   ► Like at first I'm like, there's no way this is true.

00:50:37 ◼   ► Like she's talking about how much she loves her audience

00:50:40 ◼   ► and that she FaceTimes with her audience.

00:50:42 ◼   ► Like sometimes she would exchange phone numbers with people

00:50:45 ◼   ► and they'll have text messages.

00:50:46 ◼   ► And she says like she otherwise feels lonely

00:50:49 ◼   ► and that her audience kind of gives her a sense of family.

00:50:54 ◼   ► So then by the end of it, when she's then talking about the fact that she wishes she

00:50:57 ◼   ► had a family, and everyone that she is friends with has kind of moved on in their lives except

00:51:04 ◼   ► for her, I'm kind of more inclined to believe what she's saying in the beginning.

00:51:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:51:11 ◼   ► That it's kind of what she has, like that's all that's left for her now.

00:51:17 ◼   ► Yeah, she does go very hard in the beginning, which is also part of like, one of the things

00:51:21 ◼   ► I think is interesting to talk about with regard to this documentary is the ways that

00:51:28 ◼   ► a bunch of these influencers cultivate relationships with their fans. But her, this opening where

00:51:36 ◼   ► she where she does go through, like you say, all these details of how close she is and

00:51:40 ◼   ► talking about feeling, you know, traveling everywhere, it feels very lonely. It's, it's

00:51:46 ◼   ► almost so intense it's a little hard to take seriously.

00:51:50 ◼   ► And there's another great pair of YouTube videos

00:51:53 ◼   ► called "Selling Stupid" by a YouTuber

00:51:55 ◼   ► called George Rockwell Smith, or Smit.

00:51:59 ◼   ► And he does that, but he does that as like a joke

00:52:02 ◼   ► about how people do this.

00:52:04 ◼   ► So he has this whole thing about like,

00:52:05 ◼   ► "Oh, I felt really lonely before I started YouTube,

00:52:08 ◼   ► "and every one of you has helped make me feel less lonely."

00:52:12 ◼   ► But he's doing it in this cynical way to demonstrate,

00:52:14 ◼   ► Like, this is what people who are influencers say to make you feel closer to them.

00:52:21 ◼   ► Like, it's a tactic.

00:52:24 ◼   ► And it's like an exploitative tactic.

00:52:26 ◼   ► Right, because this is why I was kind of rolling my eyes at the beginning of the documentary.

00:52:31 ◼   ► Because it's like, well, it starts off with her just saying all this stuff that I've heard people say that, like,

00:52:36 ◼   ► I try my very, very best to talk about things the way that I actually feel them.

00:52:43 ◼   ► Um, you know, and like that, that's not something that I could ever imagine myself saying, you know, stuff like that.

00:52:50 ◼   ► Like, I have a great appreciation for what people are able to give me in my life.

00:52:56 ◼   ► You know, the fact that we have people that listen to our shows means a lot to me because it means I can live the life that I want to live and can do the stuff that I want to do.

00:53:03 ◼   ► But like words like "I love every single one of you" is like, it's a really heavy thing to say.

00:53:12 ◼   ► Yeah, her exact quote is, "I love my fans as much as they love me."

00:53:17 ◼   ► Which is, which I find an uncomfortable sentence on both ends of it.

00:53:22 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the sort of thing where I'm like, "I don't know."

00:53:26 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, and so I agree, like it starts out a little eye-rolly,

00:53:30 ◼   ► and all I can think of is the cynical joke version of this that I've heard on YouTube,

00:53:35 ◼   ► to make fun of this kind of thing. And again, I came away very much feeling

00:53:42 ◼   ► like Paris Hilton is a really clever person and like there are many things that she says

00:53:48 ◼   ► in the documentary where I don't think that she's lying but as a as a public person sometimes

00:53:58 ◼   ► you can decide like which side of a thing do you want to emphasize and there are there

00:54:03 ◼   ► are quite a few sentences where I feel like if Paris and I were going to get coffee and

00:54:07 ◼   ► and we're chatting and we're actually friends.

00:54:10 ◼   ► I could hear a different side of that same thing,

00:54:13 ◼   ► like a different side of it emphasized.

00:54:16 ◼   ► But nonetheless, I agree with you that by the end of it,

00:54:21 ◼   ► a much more sold on some of the sincerity

00:54:24 ◼   ► of what she means at the beginning of it.

00:54:28 ◼   ► And yes, the documentary, the reason why Myke is feeling

00:54:33 ◼   ► the way he's feeling probably is because

00:54:36 ◼   ► The documentary really is a bit of a tour of sadness

00:54:40 ◼   ► through a bunch of influencers' lives.

00:54:43 ◼   ► Without being really heavy-handed about it,

00:54:45 ◼   ► it's just, I think it's just sort of showing you

00:54:47 ◼   ► a bunch of stuff, and for some of these people at the end,

00:54:52 ◼   ► I think you feel really quite badly for them.

00:54:55 ◼   ► And Paris Hilton in particular, it does come back around to,

00:54:59 ◼   ► at the end when she's talking about her other peers

00:55:03 ◼   ► who stay at home and have families,

00:55:05 ◼   ► and that means a lot to them and she doesn't have this,

00:55:08 ◼   ► that it makes the beginning part much more believable.

00:55:12 ◼   ► But nonetheless, one of the things

00:55:15 ◼   ► that this documentary does touch on

00:55:17 ◼   ► that I do feel so uncomfortable with

00:55:21 ◼   ► and I see a lot of influencer people do

00:55:25 ◼   ► is this kind of family talk about their fans.

00:55:32 ◼   ► And I really, like this kind of stuff

00:55:35 ◼   ► just always makes me feel so uncomfortable.

00:55:37 ◼   ► And I think it often makes me think of

00:55:41 ◼   ► what we've discussed before, the corporate thing

00:55:46 ◼   ► where a company tells you

00:55:48 ◼   ► that we're all family members here.

00:55:50 ◼   ► Like when I worked at a school and they're like,

00:55:52 ◼   ► we're all just one big family taking care of these children.

00:55:55 ◼   ► It's like, well, no, not really.

00:55:58 ◼   ► - By the way, that's super weird to say,

00:56:01 ◼   ► especially when there's children involved.

00:56:03 ◼   ► Like it makes it super, it makes it so much worse

00:56:06 ◼   ► as like a thing.

00:56:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, I heard that and I was never able to be like,

00:56:10 ◼   ► how do you want me to parse this sentence?

00:56:13 ◼   ► Like the way I think you want me to parse it

00:56:17 ◼   ► is as a kind of, you want the loyalty

00:56:21 ◼   ► that I would give a family to exploit, right?

00:56:24 ◼   ► But like we're not a family in any meaningful way.

00:56:27 ◼   ► And this is another person in the documentary,

00:56:30 ◼   ► DJ Khaled, who I will say comes across to me

00:56:35 ◼   ► as being vastly more either disingenuous or just,

00:56:40 ◼   ► well, I'll leave it as disingenuous with his,

00:56:43 ◼   ► is like, all of my fans are family.

00:56:45 ◼   ► And when someone shouts out my name on the street,

00:56:48 ◼   ► I'm like, boom, stop what I'm doing.

00:56:49 ◼   ► That's family over there.

00:56:50 ◼   ► Like I gotta say hi to this person.

00:56:52 ◼   ► - Fam love.

00:56:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's, that kind of stuff

00:56:55 ◼   ► makes me really uncomfortable.

00:56:57 ◼   ► And I don't know if it's too far to say it,

00:57:01 ◼   ► but there is something when I see people do that

00:57:03 ◼   ► that feels, it feels a little exploitative.

00:57:07 ◼   ► And I'm not perfect about it,

00:57:10 ◼   ► but it is why I try even to avoid the word fan.

00:57:15 ◼   ► Like my preferred phrasing is to talk about the audience.

00:57:21 ◼   ► Like that's the level that I'm comfortable with.

00:57:24 ◼   ► But like I said, I'm not perfect.

00:57:25 ◼   ► Sometimes I will use the word fan

00:57:27 ◼   ► just because a sentence is clearer

00:57:29 ◼   ► and less awkward than that.

00:57:30 ◼   ► But I feel like that's the appropriate level

00:57:33 ◼   ► of relationship here.

00:57:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause language is so difficult.

00:57:36 ◼   ► I know I have and will use the word love,

00:57:39 ◼   ► but it's not what I mean, right?

00:57:42 ◼   ► It's like it's a different thing.

00:57:44 ◼   ► It's like a great appreciation

00:57:47 ◼   ► or a feeling of some level of indebtedness

00:57:51 ◼   ► or whatever it ends up being.

00:57:53 ◼   ► But it's so, there aren't really words to describe

00:57:58 ◼   ► a lot of the things that we're trying to say

00:58:00 ◼   ► a lot of the time.

00:58:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, and you have the double problem

00:58:03 ◼   ► that a word like love is a word that does a lot

00:58:05 ◼   ► of heavy lifting on many fronts in the English language.

00:58:08 ◼   ► And so it's a word that intrinsically blurs boundaries,

00:58:12 ◼   ► is used in many different contexts.

00:58:14 ◼   ► But the one with Paris Hilton where,

00:58:19 ◼   ► It inevitably happens that influencers and creators

00:58:24 ◼   ► end up having communities, and then those communities

00:58:27 ◼   ► end up using words to describe themselves

00:58:29 ◼   ► or their relationship to the creator.

00:58:32 ◼   ► And Paris Hilton's one was at the most apex of this

00:58:35 ◼   ► that I've ever come across this,

00:58:36 ◼   ► where her community of fans calls themselves

00:58:41 ◼   ► the Little Hiltons, which is fine, no problem with that.

00:58:45 ◼   ► But then they often refer to her as Mom,

00:58:48 ◼   ► And I felt like, man, that is the most top-tier level

00:58:53 ◼   ► of fan-to-person communication I've come across.

00:58:58 ◼   ► - And all of their usernames is something Dot Hilton.

00:59:01 ◼   ► Like, people take on the name as if it's their name.

00:59:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, that this is a family thing and she is the mom.

00:59:11 ◼   ► And I don't know, I had such mixed feelings about that.

00:59:16 ◼   ► And one of the things I thought when I came across

00:59:18 ◼   ► that the first time is, I felt really sorry for what must be some non-zero number of mothers

00:59:28 ◼   ► of children who are super fans of Paris Hilton, who refer to Paris Hilton as "mom". And

00:59:36 ◼   ► then as the parent you're in some kind of weird sort of but not really competition for

00:59:43 ◼   ► attention with Paris Hilton as like a mother figure?

00:59:47 ◼   ► There is a worse example of this that comes next though.

00:59:50 ◼   ► What? What's worse? I missed it.

00:59:52 ◼   ► Where she says that like some people refer to her as Jesus, as like Jesus.

00:59:57 ◼   ► And she thinks that that's really nice.

00:59:59 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I took that. No, but here's the thing.

01:00:02 ◼   ► That goes so far over the top that to then, then to me, that was almost an example of Mimi humor,

01:00:07 ◼   ► where people are photoshopping her as Jesus in all of these situations.

01:00:12 ◼   ► Right, but like the idea where she's like, "Oh, they call me this and I think it's really nice."

01:00:15 ◼   ► Like that's way too much.

01:00:17 ◼   ► - I mean, yes, saying that you are the son of God

01:00:20 ◼   ► is quite high on the apex, but like to me,

01:00:23 ◼   ► it is, it was, when I watched it,

01:00:26 ◼   ► I took that as just so hilariously high,

01:00:28 ◼   ► I can't take this seriously.

01:00:30 ◼   ► And whether or not she means it,

01:00:31 ◼   ► my brain interprets her as doing a little bit

01:00:34 ◼   ► of like a smile and a wink

01:00:36 ◼   ► when she says she thinks that's great.

01:00:37 ◼   ► I don't know if that's true or not,

01:00:39 ◼   ► but that's why the mom one resonates much more for me,

01:00:41 ◼   ► because it feels, it feels too real

01:00:45 ◼   ► and impossible not to take in a somewhat serious way.

01:00:48 ◼   ► Whereas the Jesus one is like, okay,

01:00:50 ◼   ► but now when you're showing me photoshops of you

01:00:52 ◼   ► at like the Last Supper, it's, I can't take this seriously.

01:00:55 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:00:58 ◼   ► I don't know, am I like, do you think I'm too sensitive

01:01:01 ◼   ► about that sort of stuff?

01:01:01 ◼   ► But it's just something that always strikes me,

01:01:05 ◼   ► this cultivation of a relationship.

01:01:11 ◼   ► I would say you put a lot of emphasis into the meanings behind words, which on the face

01:01:19 ◼   ► of it is a silly sentence to say.

01:01:22 ◼   ► I don't think it's as silly as you think it sounds to me.

01:01:24 ◼   ► No, but like, I mean, like just on the face of it, that that's just a silly sentence.

01:01:28 ◼   ► You care about what words mean. But it is something that that is true about you. And

01:01:33 ◼   ► it's something that's rubbed off on me a little bit over time. Like, for example, one, I never

01:01:39 ◼   ► tried to use the word lucky like I'm so lucky I try not to use that word very

01:01:46 ◼   ► much I like to you say fortunate instead because for me personally like I feel I

01:01:52 ◼   ► work really hard and have worked really hard for what I've got and lucky would

01:01:57 ◼   ► implies to me in my mind that I did it had nothing to do with me right that I

01:02:04 ◼   ► was just right place right time and I obviously believe there is an element of

01:02:09 ◼   ► that. Of course there is. There's an element of luck and there's an element of right place,

01:02:12 ◼   ► right time. But I also had to work really hard as well, so I consider it more fortunate. It is

01:02:17 ◼   ► good fortune for me to have the job that I have. I have been fortunate. I've been lucky/worked hard

01:02:24 ◼   ► for it. So that's the kind of thing that I focus on. And so yeah, I totally understand where you're

01:02:32 ◼   ► coming from and I know why this stuff means like it really grates on you or really like has an

01:02:38 ◼   ► impact on you because of the way that you think about these things like I know your problem your

01:02:43 ◼   ► long problem with the word community right but at the same time I've heard you say it.

01:02:49 ◼   ► Oh yeah that's what I mean like I haven't been perfect about it.

01:02:52 ◼   ► Yeah it's impossible to be because if you hear people say a thing all the time it just becomes

01:03:01 ◼   ► part of what you say. It's like in the same way that my accent has changed over time because of

01:03:08 ◼   ► the people that I talk to. Like it's not even just my American friends who I talk to for my shows.

01:03:14 ◼   ► I can tell that my Romanian wife is changing my accent and is changing even the words that I use.

01:03:23 ◼   ► Like talking to Adina, like there's just some some ways that words are structured and sentences are

01:03:28 ◼   ► structured if you are Romanian so if you speak English and you're Romanian there's certain

01:03:33 ◼   ► words that you use in orders that sound weird to a native English speaker and I find myself

01:03:39 ◼   ► doing that a lot now. So yeah this is just a thing that happens so hearing people say

01:03:45 ◼   ► I love all my fans and we have such a strong community you're gonna say it at some point

01:03:52 ◼   ► because you keep hearing people say it all the time.

01:03:54 ◼   ► And because I think the--

01:03:57 ◼   ► I'm trying to think of the most technically correct way

01:04:00 ◼   ► to phrase a thing would be something like,

01:04:02 ◼   ► "I am glad that the audience keeps showing up."

01:04:07 ◼   ► Is it like a terrible sentence

01:04:11 ◼   ► to try to convey multiple times in many ways?

01:04:14 ◼   ► And then you compound this as well with something like,

01:04:17 ◼   ► and again, partly why I thought American meme

01:04:20 ◼   ► might be interesting to discuss,

01:04:21 ◼   ► because while we've mentioned these people

01:04:24 ◼   ► are in different galaxies than us.

01:04:26 ◼   ► This is also a work documentary that is adjacent

01:04:30 ◼   ► to what we do.

01:04:31 ◼   ► And so I will have conversations with industry people

01:04:36 ◼   ► in which I will just completely use the word community

01:04:39 ◼   ► because it's the conveyance of an idea.

01:04:43 ◼   ► And to try to be more precise about it

01:04:47 ◼   ► is runs against the purpose of language,

01:04:50 ◼   ► which is to communicate with someone else

01:04:53 ◼   ► in a professional context.

01:04:55 ◼   ► And so yeah, that's also why.

01:04:58 ◼   ► It just seeps out and it becomes the word.

01:05:00 ◼   ► And it's also possible to imagine that in 10 years,

01:05:03 ◼   ► that the newer sense of a word-like community

01:05:07 ◼   ► just completely has washed over the old one so much

01:05:11 ◼   ► that this becomes an objection which goes away as well.

01:05:14 ◼   ► Right, because words change and they're flexible over time.

01:05:16 ◼   ► But I just, I don't know, I just,

01:05:18 ◼   ► I still think at the very top,

01:05:22 ◼   ► seeing Paris Hilton as mom slash Jesus and DJ Khaled's fam love for his family of millions

01:05:29 ◼   ► of followers.

01:05:32 ◼   ► I just wonder how much of that is engineered to intentionally create a kind of intensity

01:05:42 ◼   ► from the audience because I know that that is a thing that people do, like intentionally

01:05:46 ◼   ► try to engineer an intensity.

01:05:50 ◼   ► And I feel like family level intensity is too far.

01:05:54 ◼   ► Like it's too much.

01:05:57 ◼   ► I mean, to go back to the thing we were talking about before,

01:06:02 ◼   ► why do I like to put Easter eggs in my videos?

01:06:04 ◼   ► One of the reasons is because like,

01:06:05 ◼   ► that's the kind of thing I always like in videos.

01:06:08 ◼   ► And I think it's rewarding to a certain kind of viewer

01:06:12 ◼   ► who likes those sorts of things to go back

01:06:15 ◼   ► and then try to hunt down, like what are the little in-jokes?

01:06:18 ◼   ► And to me, that feels like an appropriate level of reward

01:06:22 ◼   ► and intensifying of fandom,

01:06:26 ◼   ► but the family level, it just makes me uncomfortable.

01:06:29 ◼   ► But that may be why I don't have 100 million followers

01:06:33 ◼   ► on Instagram, because I'm not.

01:06:35 ◼   ► - That's 'cause you just don't use it.

01:06:36 ◼   ► But I don't know if Instagram is the right platform

01:06:39 ◼   ► for you personally, considering your life.

01:06:40 ◼   ► - I think Instagram is the best platform for me, Myke.

01:06:43 ◼   ► I can't imagine a platform on which I would have

01:06:45 ◼   ► more success than Instagram.

01:06:46 ◼   ► I did want to note that actually that this documentary almost entirely focuses on Instagram

01:06:55 ◼   ► as social media. For a lot of this documentary, the phrase social media and Instagram are

01:07:03 ◼   ► one and the same.

01:07:04 ◼   ► Yeah, that is very true.

01:07:06 ◼   ► And I found that to be kind of fascinating, but makes complete sense.

01:07:11 ◼   ► Why do you think it makes sense?

01:07:12 ◼   ► for most people, Instagram is the most mainstream social media platform now of

01:07:18 ◼   ► which people share themselves right so Facebook exists yes but Facebook isn't

01:07:23 ◼   ► really an influencer driven platform it is a people you know platform and that's

01:07:29 ◼   ► an end of the other ones of the other big platforms you have Twitter and you

01:07:32 ◼   ► have Instagram but Instagram is a much more successful platform for influencers

01:07:38 ◼   ► because they get to influence you with influential things that you can see

01:07:42 ◼   ► That's the point, right?

01:07:44 ◼   ► Because there's like a lot of talk about ads

01:07:47 ◼   ► and like the amount of money people can make from ads.

01:07:49 ◼   ► You know, numbers are thrown from $50,000 per post

01:07:52 ◼   ► to a million dollars per post.

01:07:55 ◼   ► And I really like, there is somebody,

01:07:58 ◼   ► they used to be on Vine.

01:08:00 ◼   ► I don't really know much more than the person's name,

01:08:02 ◼   ► Amanda Cerny, and she says,

01:08:05 ◼   ► "People walk away from ads on TV."

01:08:08 ◼   ► And I just love that.

01:08:12 ◼   ► It's true. People don't want to see ads on TV, but they will consume ads that sponsor content on Instagram.

01:08:21 ◼   ► Because it's people that they believe in telling them a thing.

01:08:26 ◼   ► You know, like it is, there is an implied relationship going on, which says, "I trust this person, so I'll pay attention to what they have to say."

01:08:36 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's also reflected on the industry side in ways that I find quite breathtaking,

01:08:44 ◼   ► because in the documentary, like you said, they go through the price for single photo

01:08:51 ◼   ► ads that are on Instagram of like the celebrity using a particular product, you know, from

01:08:55 ◼   ► 50,000 to a million. But the thing that is much more, I mean, those are big numbers,

01:09:02 ◼   ► But what's also much more striking to me even than that is,

01:09:07 ◼   ► is the audience size for those things.

01:09:12 ◼   ► So like the industry slang for this is like CPM, right?

01:09:16 ◼   ► How much does it cost to get a thousand people

01:09:19 ◼   ► to see your ad?

01:09:21 ◼   ► And different industries have different rates.

01:09:25 ◼   ► And we've sort of discussed like podcasts

01:09:27 ◼   ► have a pretty good rate compared to other mediums.

01:09:30 ◼   ► And I think it's partly because people are hearing the podcaster talk for so long, and

01:09:34 ◼   ► then the podcaster does those ads.

01:09:36 ◼   ► It's actually a similar thing.

01:09:38 ◼   ► So the influencer is an endorsement led advertising, which for a lot of podcast advertising is

01:09:45 ◼   ► the same, because you trust us, which I would just say is like a line, which is why I sell

01:09:51 ◼   ► her ads.

01:09:53 ◼   ► Because I know how important that relationship is, and I don't want to take advantage of

01:09:58 ◼   ► So we decide the advertisers that we work with for that very reason,

01:10:03 ◼   ► because I don't want to advertise a product that's bad,

01:10:06 ◼   ► that makes people trust me less,

01:10:09 ◼   ► because then that undermines what we're trying to do here in the first place.

01:10:12 ◼   ► Yeah, and there's a synergy here, right?

01:10:15 ◼   ► Like if you are a trustworthy person and you're not just doing any ad,

01:10:20 ◼   ► but you're selecting the ads,

01:10:22 ◼   ► then that will probably increase your CPMs over time

01:10:26 ◼   ► because you get a higher response from the audience.

01:10:28 ◼   ► It's a feedback loop.

01:10:30 ◼   ► And so like podcasts generally have much better CPMs

01:10:33 ◼   ► than YouTube videos.

01:10:34 ◼   ► Just like, not always, but on average.

01:10:37 ◼   ► But then the thing that I find astounding is like,

01:10:40 ◼   ► but if you're looking at charts,

01:10:42 ◼   ► and this is why I was joking about like,

01:10:43 ◼   ► oh, I should be on Instagram more,

01:10:45 ◼   ► is Instagram CPMs,

01:10:49 ◼   ► like the cost for an advertiser to reach a thousand viewers,

01:10:53 ◼   ► those rates are crazy high.

01:10:56 ◼   ► And it is just astounding to me how much more valuable to advertisers a photo on Instagram is worth than anywhere else.

01:11:09 ◼   ► And that's also why it totally makes sense that if you are trying to play this game of being an influencer,

01:11:18 ◼   ► Instagram, that platform is worth 100 times more to you

01:11:22 ◼   ► than something like YouTube,

01:11:23 ◼   ► just straight up from an advertising perspective

01:11:26 ◼   ► of the effort that goes into producing a photo for an ad

01:11:30 ◼   ► and the rates that you're going to get

01:11:31 ◼   ► and the frequency that you can do it.

01:11:33 ◼   ► It's crazy.

01:11:35 ◼   ► But that is also why the documentary

01:11:37 ◼   ► is so heavily focused on Instagram,

01:11:40 ◼   ► because people who are playing the influencer game,

01:11:44 ◼   ► they're not dummies.

01:11:45 ◼   ► They know that's where all of the money and the attention is.

01:11:50 ◼   ► And that's where you can really integrate yourself

01:11:53 ◼   ► and someone else's life from the audience perspective

01:11:57 ◼   ► of what are people looking for.

01:11:59 ◼   ► So again, it's not my platform of choice,

01:12:03 ◼   ► but I find it just to, from my perspective,

01:12:06 ◼   ► it seems like a very surprising outlier

01:12:10 ◼   ► in terms of rates and response and audience.

01:12:15 ◼   ► But it also makes sense.

01:12:17 ◼   ► People like looking at pictures of people.

01:12:19 ◼   ► And that's what Instagram gives you.

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01:14:05 ◼   ► There's a quote at the beginning of the documentary from Carril. He says "My real life isn't that

01:14:11 ◼   ► interesting so I feel like I have to put on an exaggerated truth" and this is a

01:14:16 ◼   ► thing that I hear a lot and when I see people say that like Instagram makes

01:14:21 ◼   ► them sad or they don't like it is because they feel like all they're

01:14:25 ◼   ► seeing is this exaggerated truth and it gives them the fear of missing out like

01:14:29 ◼   ► FOMO right? And I find it really interesting and I don't know if I come

01:14:34 ◼   ► at this differently because I am a person who shares to an audience on Instagram or

01:14:42 ◼   ► if I'm just wired a little bit differently but I come at it at a perspective of the stuff

01:14:48 ◼   ► that I share on Instagram are just the most interesting things that I'm doing or the things

01:14:55 ◼   ► that I find the most interesting. I'm not personally going out of my way to manufacture

01:15:02 ◼   ► or anything in my life to share on social media.

01:15:05 ◼   ► Like, there are just, these are things that I'm doing

01:15:09 ◼   ► and I'm choosing to share what I think

01:15:11 ◼   ► is the most interesting.

01:15:13 ◼   ► So when I see other people doing stuff,

01:15:15 ◼   ► I'm like, oh, that's just the most interesting thing

01:15:18 ◼   ► that they're doing right now.

01:15:19 ◼   ► Like, if I see someone who's doing a bunch of stuff,

01:15:22 ◼   ► I think, oh, it looks really cool,

01:15:24 ◼   ► my first thought isn't this person

01:15:26 ◼   ► does cool stuff all the time.

01:15:28 ◼   ► Like, my thought is just this person

01:15:30 ◼   ► just shows the cool stuff that they're doing.

01:15:33 ◼   ► And that is like a big difference for me

01:15:34 ◼   ► because I don't feel like, "Aw, man, I'm so boring

01:15:39 ◼   ► "because I watch Netflix documentaries at home

01:15:43 ◼   ► "when I could be out climbing a mountain

01:15:46 ◼   ► "or going to a nightclub."

01:15:48 ◼   ► Like my thinking is just like,

01:15:49 ◼   ► the way I come in is those people

01:15:51 ◼   ► also watch Netflix documentaries at home,

01:15:53 ◼   ► but they just don't show you that.

01:15:55 ◼   ► And so it's just an interesting thing to me

01:15:59 ◼   ► that people do feel that way and it's interesting that there are people that feel like that they can

01:16:03 ◼   ► only just create false things, like they have to just create things out of nothing

01:16:11 ◼   ► so that they have something to share. It's just such an interesting thing to me.

01:16:15 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean there's a lot in that. You know, again, when I talked about having

01:16:20 ◼   ► used Instagram for a while, you know, we talked about it on the show and also in private,

01:16:27 ◼   ► I could not articulate why Instagram made me sad very well.

01:16:31 ◼   ► Like it just, it did, but it wasn't anything specific as FOMO or anything.

01:16:35 ◼   ► Like it was just something about it made me sad and I couldn't pin it down in a very precise way.

01:16:40 ◼   ► But I do think you may be wired a little bit differently here because...

01:16:46 ◼   ► I do think I am.

01:16:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:47 ◼   ► I do think I am.

01:16:48 ◼   ► You are more cognizant of people just showing the highlight reel of their life.

01:16:54 ◼   ► But nonetheless, I think there are many cases

01:16:59 ◼   ► where people can know a thing intellectually,

01:17:03 ◼   ► but say the emotional part of their brain,

01:17:07 ◼   ► it just does not register and it does not land.

01:17:09 ◼   ► And I think this is a case where maybe

01:17:12 ◼   ► the knowing part of your brain

01:17:14 ◼   ► and the emotional part of your brain

01:17:15 ◼   ► are more lined up in what is happening on Instagram.

01:17:18 ◼   ► And so I think almost anybody who follows lots of people

01:17:21 ◼   ► on Instagram could articulate the idea

01:17:24 ◼   ► that, oh, of course they're showing the most interesting parts of their life, or of course

01:17:29 ◼   ► these photos are staged. But nonetheless, I suspect most people have the experience,

01:17:35 ◼   ► have the emotional experience of not being able to internalize the time compression effect

01:17:43 ◼   ► that occurs, where you just don't see so much of what's going on. It's even a thing like

01:17:51 ◼   ► I feel it's like the absence of one thing does not like prove its existence or non-existence.

01:17:58 ◼   ► Like I think people see if all I ever see is this person doing something fun,

01:18:04 ◼   ► they must only do fun things.

01:18:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:18:10 ◼   ► Like and like that people aren't stringing together or people's brains

01:18:14 ◼   ► and don't do a good job of stringing together.

01:18:17 ◼   ► The in-between time.

01:18:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:18:20 ◼   ► Well, I even think to a much lesser extent than something like Instagram, but us doing the podcasts even has the same time compression effect.

01:18:30 ◼   ► The things that we talk about relate to what we're doing or things that are going on in the world or stuff that we're checking out.

01:18:40 ◼   ► But like, as the listener is listening to shows,

01:18:43 ◼   ► especially if they're say, catching up on the back catalog,

01:18:46 ◼   ► like they're flying through life at a much accelerated rate.

01:18:51 ◼   ► And then also when you hear a new show,

01:18:54 ◼   ► you're just thinking about maybe what happened

01:18:55 ◼   ► in the previous show.

01:18:57 ◼   ► And I think there's a way in which most people's minds

01:18:59 ◼   ► kind of erase the information that these things happened

01:19:04 ◼   ► two or three weeks apart,

01:19:06 ◼   ► that they didn't happen side by side.

01:19:09 ◼   ► I mean, like just think about how many episodes

01:19:12 ◼   ► are in between every time we go to WWDC.

01:19:15 ◼   ► Right, like there's a tremendous

01:19:17 ◼   ► time compression effect there,

01:19:19 ◼   ► and that can make it feel like,

01:19:21 ◼   ► oh, we're doing much more than we actually are.

01:19:25 ◼   ► But I think that's also part of the business

01:19:30 ◼   ► of being this influential person on social media

01:19:33 ◼   ► is to be aware of that,

01:19:37 ◼   ► and to create these things.

01:19:41 ◼   ► I don't know, it was acrylics or krill?

01:19:43 ◼   ► How should I say it?

01:19:45 ◼   ► I'm not gonna, like I cannot remember.

01:19:47 ◼   ► - It is krill. - Kurill.

01:19:49 ◼   ► It's not krull?

01:19:50 ◼   ► I think krull is also what's in my head here.

01:19:52 ◼   ► - No, it's krill. - Kurill.

01:19:53 ◼   ► Okay.

01:19:54 ◼   ► So let's talk about krill for a minute because--

01:19:59 ◼   ► - Oh boy.

01:20:00 ◼   ► - Especially on the second viewing,

01:20:03 ◼   ► I think Paris Hilton and him

01:20:05 ◼   ► are the two most interesting people in the documentary.

01:20:08 ◼   ► - They're actually focused around him.

01:20:10 ◼   ► So like the other two people, it's Josh Otrovsky,

01:20:14 ◼   ► who goes by The Fat Jewish, and Brittany Furlan,

01:20:17 ◼   ► who was very, very popular on Vine,

01:20:20 ◼   ► and has since kind of moved to other platforms,

01:20:23 ◼   ► but has, I think, like her big thing,

01:20:25 ◼   ► which she was for a time the number one person on Vine.

01:20:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, which is, we can touch,

01:20:33 ◼   ► I feel like is a curse to wish upon any person. And the Josh guy is, from my perspective,

01:20:41 ◼   ► kind of almost certainly thinking about Paris Hilton as the executive producer, he is her

01:20:46 ◼   ► friend and the two of them probably realised they were enough to get this thing off the

01:20:50 ◼   ► ground and brought on other people to be in the documentary.

01:20:52 ◼   ► He's had an interesting life and there's like all this plagiarism stuff around him

01:20:56 ◼   ► and then he started a successful business.

01:20:58 ◼   ► Like, he is an interesting figure to tell a story around too,

01:21:03 ◼   ► but he doesn't have what the other three have,

01:21:07 ◼   ► where Paris and Caril and Brittany all seem to have a much greater undercurrent of sadness than him.

01:21:17 ◼   ► Or at least he doesn't show it.

01:21:19 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think he's the least interesting person.

01:21:23 ◼   ► And he also strikes me as a particular personality type that I find incredibly repulsive, which

01:21:28 ◼   ► is the person who will do absolutely anything for attention.

01:21:32 ◼   ► And it's like, "Oh, I want nothing to do with you."

01:21:35 ◼   ► - He doesn't care what he does, he'll just do it.

01:21:42 ◼   ► - To me, it's like, "Oh, you're in this documentary because you were Paris's friend, and you can

01:21:47 ◼   ► see the strings knowing that she's the executive producer."

01:21:50 ◼   ► But going back to Krull and talking about his life.

01:21:54 ◼   ► - Karel, great, how are we gonna do this?

01:21:56 ◼   ► Do we need a different name?

01:21:59 ◼   ► - No, no, it's fine.

01:21:59 ◼   ► Well, we can't use his actual Instagram handle.

01:22:01 ◼   ► - No, we cannot use that.

01:22:02 ◼   ► - Sorry, his hand of mic would be too much.

01:22:05 ◼   ► Even, yeah, but.

01:22:07 ◼   ► So there's this thing with people who have public personas,

01:22:12 ◼   ► which I find annoying is where someone will say something

01:22:20 ◼   ► like, "Oh, I have a public persona,

01:22:23 ◼   ► and that public persona is not me.

01:22:26 ◼   ► It's nothing like me."

01:22:28 ◼   ► And then if you're in the position

01:22:29 ◼   ► to actually meet these people,

01:22:31 ◼   ► very often it's like, "Oh, your public persona is you."

01:22:36 ◼   ► Like, you don't seem any different.

01:22:40 ◼   ► You know, like, you're not Andy Kaufman

01:22:42 ◼   ► playing a character here, right?

01:22:44 ◼   ► Like, this is totally you.

01:22:47 ◼   ► And Josh in the documentary strikes me as that way.

01:22:50 ◼   ► Like, I have a-- it's impossible for me to conceive

01:22:52 ◼   ► that he's any different in real life

01:22:54 ◼   ► than he is the way he portrays himself in the video,

01:22:58 ◼   ► which is part of the reason why I find him less interesting.

01:23:00 ◼   ► But Kirill has this real arc of sadness

01:23:07 ◼   ► across the documentary.

01:23:08 ◼   ► So when you're introduced to him,

01:23:12 ◼   ► he is introduced and comes off as basically

01:23:15 ◼   ► like a total bro asshole party guy.

01:23:19 ◼   ► And his, like I don't even know quite how to describe this job, but his job is to be the party at bars and events.

01:23:32 ◼   ► He is effectively the hype person at a party.

01:23:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:23:37 ◼   ► He is creating games.

01:23:39 ◼   ► What weird and wonderful and wild things are occurring around him all the time.

01:23:45 ◼   ► and he is effectively making it a night to remember for the people that attend the place that has hired him.

01:23:51 ◼   ► He's like...

01:23:53 ◼   ► I was gonna say he's like a magician, but I don't think that's the right way to put it.

01:23:58 ◼   ► I don't really know how to describe him.

01:24:00 ◼   ► He's also an example of a thing that I think is interesting to keep an eye out for, which is...

01:24:06 ◼   ► You sort of look at this guy online and you think...

01:24:10 ◼   ► "Oh, this guy is just this party bro."

01:24:14 ◼   ► And it's very easy, I think, for someone to look at him

01:24:18 ◼   ► and think of him as this idea of like,

01:24:21 ◼   ► "Oh, he just got lucky doing this thing,

01:24:24 ◼   ► "but anyone could do this thing."

01:24:25 ◼   ► But his backstory is this like,

01:24:28 ◼   ► "Oh, he actually was trying to be an animator."

01:24:30 ◼   ► And they share some of his artwork.

01:24:32 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, he was actually skilled enough

01:24:34 ◼   ► "to be an animator."

01:24:35 ◼   ► Like that's a thing he could have done.

01:24:36 ◼   ► - Not just an animator.

01:24:37 ◼   ► specifically he wanted to work for Disney.

01:24:40 ◼   ► Which is so wild when you then see

01:24:43 ◼   ► what he does for a living now.

01:24:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, but I think it's a good example

01:24:46 ◼   ► of here is a person with talent

01:24:48 ◼   ► and he's trying to figure out a way to expend this.

01:24:51 ◼   ► And so he initially wants to be an animator

01:24:53 ◼   ► and he's good at it,

01:24:54 ◼   ► but he decides this isn't the path for him.

01:24:56 ◼   ► And then from there,

01:25:00 ◼   ► they sort of brushed past it really quickly,

01:25:02 ◼   ► but he's doing a little bit of standup comedy,

01:25:04 ◼   ► like he's working at comedy clubs.

01:25:05 ◼   ► And he must have been good enough to get access to pretty serious people,

01:25:10 ◼   ► because he then translates this into being the photographer.

01:25:14 ◼   ► And I think it's such a smart thing that he says that he wanted to be around the important people backstage,

01:25:21 ◼   ► and so he had to figure out how to make himself indispensable to those people.

01:25:26 ◼   ► And it's like, man, what a, like, it's such a clear way to think about something that many people don't, where they're like, I want to be famous, I want to be in the green room, right?

01:25:38 ◼   ► But he's like, how can I be useful to those people?

01:25:41 ◼   ► And so then he's taking photographs, and he's a very skilled photographer, and so skilled, like he's flipping through these pictures that he took,

01:25:52 ◼   ► took and real professional musicians are then hiring him to do photo shoots with them like

01:25:58 ◼   ► oh we only want this guy to do our photos while he's on tour. It's Nas. He still has

01:26:03 ◼   ► like the official iTunes photograph for now. Like it's crazy how good he was at this. And

01:26:08 ◼   ► then at some point, this is less clear to me, but he starts to transition on his Instagram

01:26:15 ◼   ► to taking photographs of parties and like taking photographs of crazy debauchery but

01:26:26 ◼   ► also kind of making it look beautiful.

01:26:31 ◼   ► And where he gets his fame is he did a series of photographs of party girls getting champagne

01:26:38 ◼   ► poured on their faces.

01:26:40 ◼   ► you think about what's happening at the party, the photos are striking, the photos are attention

01:26:46 ◼   ► getting.

01:26:47 ◼   ► And that seems to be what launched him.

01:26:50 ◼   ► Because he notices that this starts becoming a thing that when he is the photographer at

01:26:55 ◼   ► events, people are requesting that he does like pour champagne on me and photograph it.

01:27:01 ◼   ► And this somehow becomes his transition into being this professional party dude/photographer.

01:27:11 ◼   ► And I find it interesting because I think it's a good example of someone trying to

01:27:22 ◼   ► like navigate by compass, what are they good at?

01:27:27 ◼   ► What's useful?

01:27:28 ◼   ► What are people requesting?

01:27:30 ◼   ► And he even has a really quick line in the documentary about how it's so sweet.

01:27:36 ◼   ► He has like the sweetest Russian mom in the world who's like, she's just so cute.

01:27:40 ◼   ► And she's talking about, "Oh, he was always such a good boy and he never got in trouble

01:27:44 ◼   ► and he always went to school on time," and all this stuff, right?

01:27:47 ◼   ► And how like he was a good kid, but he himself always recognized that he had this ability

01:27:54 ◼   ► to be like a total asshole that people still kind of liked.

01:27:59 ◼   ► And he takes that personality quality that he can generate and turns it into being this

01:28:05 ◼   ► party person.

01:28:07 ◼   ► And more than many people, by the end of the documentary, I am really on board that this

01:28:15 ◼   ► persona of him is a thing that he has created.

01:28:20 ◼   ► It's not him.

01:28:21 ◼   ► That like, if I were to meet him in person in private, he wouldn't be the thing that

01:28:27 ◼   ► he seems on Instagram.

01:28:29 ◼   ► Because he also, like, he says, he purposefully tries to say things that he knows will upset

01:28:35 ◼   ► people too.

01:28:37 ◼   ► You know, and I don't agree with that as like a way necessarily to live your life,

01:28:42 ◼   ► but I think that there's still something about you, if you come to that idea, but this

01:28:48 ◼   ► is not a discussion we need to get into now, but I do think I understand what you're

01:28:53 ◼   ► getting at, where like he seems to have a little bit more depth to him than his Instagram

01:28:58 ◼   ► feed would seem to indicate. And there was something that his mum said that I did find

01:29:05 ◼   ► interesting, which I'd never thought of before, which is like, if an actor plays a criminal

01:29:10 ◼   ► in a movie, you don't think the actor's a criminal. And I was like, that's interesting.

01:29:16 ◼   ► The viewing experience for me was, especially on the second time round, I felt I was much

01:29:21 ◼   ► more aware of him on the second viewing, that I feel like you go for these real emotional

01:29:28 ◼   ► switch of kind of assuming he's this jerk that he is seeming at the beginning, and like,

01:29:36 ◼   ► "Oh yeah, yeah, everybody says they're not their persona."

01:29:38 ◼   ► But by the end of it, I really think that he isn't.

01:29:44 ◼   ► And there are a few things that he says where I feel like this man, his path to fame led

01:29:55 ◼   ► him straight into a kind of Dante's Inferno that's also a rave.

01:30:00 ◼   ► Yeah, I think he has the hardest life and the hardest job out of everybody here. Because

01:30:07 ◼   ► his job is to go to a different nightclub every night, get drunk, and party. I couldn't do that.

01:30:16 ◼   ► I couldn't possibly do it. And the other thing about like that I just kept thinking about

01:30:22 ◼   ► afterwards is it's so clearly a job that's destroying him and it's destroying him physically.

01:30:30 ◼   ► It's destroying him through just the tremendous amount of alcohol consumption that he basically

01:30:35 ◼   ► has to do to be part of it.

01:30:38 ◼   ► And it's also destroying his ability to relate to people.

01:30:42 ◼   ► Like he has a quick little line, but he talks about how, have you ever tried to talk to

01:30:49 ◼   ► people?

01:30:51 ◼   ► They're awful and I hate them all."

01:30:53 ◼   ► And I was like, "Whoa!"

01:30:54 ◼   ► And it strikes me as a really genuine line, but I think it's also—

01:30:58 ◼   ► Also he's saying, like, "Have you ever tried talking to a drunk person when you're sober?"

01:31:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:31:04 ◼   ► Well, so this is the thing.

01:31:05 ◼   ► He says, you know, that's even worse than just talking to someone and that he has to

01:31:08 ◼   ► get down on his level.

01:31:10 ◼   ► But the thing I kept thinking of was like, "Of course this is going to happen because

01:31:16 ◼   ► Every night he's entertaining the Morlocks.

01:31:19 ◼   ► And he's gotta go into these places.

01:31:23 ◼   ► And I think it's fair to say that these kind of mega-parties also attract a certain kind

01:31:30 ◼   ► of person.

01:31:31 ◼   ► And then he's interacting with, essentially exclusively, these people and is also in a

01:31:36 ◼   ► customer service role, in a way.

01:31:39 ◼   ► And it's like, I cannot imagine a more perfect storm

01:31:44 ◼   ► to create out of what was possibly a Disney animator,

01:31:50 ◼   ► the world's most intense misanthrope.

01:31:54 ◼   ► That seems to be his arc, and I feel the worst for him

01:31:59 ◼   ► at the end, even though he seems like the biggest jerk

01:32:03 ◼   ► at the beginning.

01:32:06 ◼   ► There is a thread that sums up towards the end of the movie of like, how are you supposed

01:32:14 ◼   ► to get out of this? And it really focuses on Kirill as well here. So what's he supposed

01:32:21 ◼   ► to do next now? Like he's in this life. What is the next part of his life? What do you

01:32:27 ◼   ► do and it shows some people who have moved on right so you know like it shows

01:32:35 ◼   ► Josh the fat Jewish he's created a wine company and so he's like well I've got

01:32:42 ◼   ► my out now I'm I've created a thing which can he says like what do I got

01:32:50 ◼   ► like three years doing this character this this person who's influencing but

01:32:54 ◼   ► now I have a business. And there's a guy whose name escapes me, which is kind of funny considering

01:33:02 ◼   ► his point in the documentary, there's a guy who was in a Britney Spears video since he

01:33:08 ◼   ► erased himself from social media. And he's kind of talking about like, these people are

01:33:14 ◼   ► stuck, because what do you do? Where do you go? Like, you can't just reinvent yourself.

01:33:21 ◼   ► what if nobody wants what you want to do now and they don't care about what you do next?

01:33:27 ◼   ► And like that is a real fear for people in any kind of entertainment but I think even

01:33:34 ◼   ► in a way it is way harsher on people who live for likes.

01:33:41 ◼   ► Yeah and the and Britney the Queen of Vine is just like the really harsh example of this.

01:33:48 ◼   ► because her platform was stolen from her. It was taken away.

01:33:53 ◼   ► Yeah, that it disappeared. She was the number one person on Vine.

01:33:56 ◼   ► And in particular, that case, I feel really bad for her because she was also the number one person

01:34:05 ◼   ► on Vine right at the beginning. And she also has to then deal with the statistical inevitability

01:34:12 ◼   ► that as a platform deck topples in size,

01:34:16 ◼   ► the person who's the number one person at the start

01:34:19 ◼   ► is probably not going to be the number one person

01:34:21 ◼   ► at the end of an incredible increase in size.

01:34:24 ◼   ► Like that's just the way platforms work

01:34:26 ◼   ► as you bring on viewers.

01:34:28 ◼   ► - Especially it's funny because the first person

01:34:30 ◼   ► to knock her off is a friend of hers

01:34:31 ◼   ► who she introduced to the platform.

01:34:33 ◼   ► - Right, and then there's the next person to go above her

01:34:37 ◼   ► is another friend that she brought to the platform.

01:34:39 ◼   ► And I can't help but notice the little remark

01:34:41 ◼   ► mark where she says something like "he did it right," implying that the first person

01:34:45 ◼   ► to knock her off, like maybe there's some animosity there. But still, no matter how

01:34:50 ◼   ► much you tell yourself about what matters and what doesn't matter, it has got to be

01:34:55 ◼   ► psychologically crushing to be like, "I'm the number one person on this thing," and

01:35:00 ◼   ► then to boom boom boom get ratcheted down to be the number—but the number ten person

01:35:06 ◼   ► on the thing. Like that has to be really hard. And then it all goes away. Vine gets destroyed,

01:35:14 ◼   ► which leads to what YouTubes will always and forever call the Vine refugee invasion, where

01:35:20 ◼   ► they all tried to transition to the platform, but it's like her moment was over. And this

01:35:29 ◼   ► is also the thing of like her style of humor was very good for Vine and just didn't translate

01:35:35 ◼   ► as well for YouTube. And it's so crushing as she's trying to get into acting and real

01:35:43 ◼   ► roles and the very fact that she was such a well-known person on Vine is now nothing

01:35:48 ◼   ► but a detriment to her. That people don't want to consider her for an acting role because

01:35:54 ◼   ► she was this Vine girl and she's too well branded as this thing. It's just awful.

01:36:00 ◼   ► Like it's so, it's so, it's so trying and you know her way out of this seems to be a

01:36:09 ◼   ► relationship like that's that she's like I'm basically a normal person now mostly and

01:36:13 ◼   ► I'm in a relationship and that's that's her path out and you know Paris Hilton is Paris

01:36:18 ◼   ► Hilton is checking out of public life entirely possibly but Kirill is he doesn't he doesn't

01:36:26 ◼   ► seem to have a clear path like the other main focuses of the documentary do.

01:36:31 ◼   ► So there's a reason why this documentary maybe like you know made me a little sad or

01:36:38 ◼   ► was this an interesting thing to come to is that I feel like I am trying to make some

01:36:45 ◼   ► changes in the way that I use social media but I don't know how to make them or what

01:36:49 ◼   ► they are. But there's just something that I've noticed recently like the main thing

01:36:56 ◼   ► Sometimes I feel like when I am going to Twitter, which has been my home on the internet for

01:37:02 ◼   ► like 12 years now, I feel like I'm going into battle every time I open the app. And the

01:37:14 ◼   ► reason I feel this way, I think, is that there's just been a change in the kind of style of

01:37:20 ◼   ► general discourse over the last few years where everyone feels just more angry. Everyone's

01:37:26 ◼   ► more angry now about everything. And so like it does one of a couple of things. One, people

01:37:35 ◼   ► are more angry at me and everyone, right? So like you will say a thing and people will

01:37:40 ◼   ► want to more vehemently tell you why you're wrong or tell you why you're stupid. And the

01:37:45 ◼   ► other is I know I perceive more people as being angry at me than they probably are.

01:37:52 ◼   ► And this is not a thing that I feel on Instagram because people aren't really talking to each other

01:38:04 ◼   ► very much. So like I have increased my usage of Instagram but have not decreased my usage

01:38:12 ◼   ► to Twitter for a variety of reasons. Like I have a note in my Apple Notes which is titled

01:38:18 ◼   ► rules of engagement and I've been trying to like plan out on there like where do I want

01:38:28 ◼   ► things to go and what do I want them to be. One of my biggest problems is my hot takes.

01:38:38 ◼   ► takes get everyone in trouble. So like something will happen and I'll have

01:38:42 ◼   ► something to say and then sometimes I will then spend the next 48

01:38:46 ◼   ► hours either debating with people or just being told why I'm stupid. Right,

01:38:53 ◼   ► this is just a thing, you know, this is a thing that happens to a lot of people

01:38:57 ◼   ► and I know it's not necessarily exactly as it that seems but that's how it

01:39:02 ◼   ► feels, you know, because as is normal, the thing where I think we've spoken about,

01:39:06 ◼   ► about, we've touched on it's not an original thought of the idea of like the bad stuff

01:39:10 ◼   ► stays with you more than the good stuff does.

01:39:13 ◼   ► It's just a thing that happens, it's just a human nature thing.

01:39:17 ◼   ► So yeah, I just think this has hit me at a time where I'm like feeling like I want to

01:39:21 ◼   ► change some stuff.

01:39:22 ◼   ► I don't want to leave Twitter, that's because I get so much out of it personally for many

01:39:28 ◼   ► reasons.

01:39:29 ◼   ► You know, like it is a great tool for me to tell people what I'm up to.

01:39:32 ◼   ► It's a great tool for me to understand what's going on in people's lives, which is exactly

01:39:38 ◼   ► what you were talking about, the thing that you're missing.

01:39:41 ◼   ► It's great for that.

01:39:43 ◼   ► And it's also my most valuable feedback mechanism.

01:39:48 ◼   ► Like it really is, most of the time, it's great.

01:39:53 ◼   ► The feedback that I get in reference to the shows that I'm doing is just proportionately

01:39:58 ◼   ► better than the feedback I get from the tweets that I post. So if I say something on a show

01:40:05 ◼   ► and people are reacting to that thing, by and large it's helpful stuff. Or they're telling

01:40:10 ◼   ► me some thoughts about it. But if they're reacting to a tweet that I've sent, it tends

01:40:14 ◼   ► to be more angry.

01:40:17 ◼   ► You mean like a tweet hot take?

01:40:21 ◼   ► So, you know, I think it's probably because my hot takes on podcasts, I can explain them.

01:40:28 ◼   ► I have more than 280 characters to get my opinion out.

01:40:33 ◼   ► And or there's such a barrier to entry that typically by the time that people have opened

01:40:37 ◼   ► the Twitter app, they probably, they don't care about telling me why I'm wrong anymore.

01:40:41 ◼   ► So you know, I just figured like, I don't want to leave any platform, but I want to

01:40:46 ◼   ► change what I put into them all because I have such a valuable mechanism to share

01:40:53 ◼   ► my opinions which is this that I don't really feel like I need to give my best

01:41:00 ◼   ► opinion for what for likes and retweets like that's why I'm doing it right like

01:41:05 ◼   ► I'm sharing a hot take in the hope that it gets retweeted a thousand times

01:41:09 ◼   ► that's why I'm doing it why everyone does it you wouldn't do it otherwise so

01:41:14 ◼   ► So maybe I need to stop doing that?

01:41:17 ◼   ► But at the same time, there is a line at the beginning which calls all of this stuff a

01:41:22 ◼   ► new drug.

01:41:24 ◼   ► I was opening my Instagram whilst watching this documentary.

01:41:31 ◼   ► Because we've had some big life events happen over the last weekend, and people were very

01:41:36 ◼   ► engaged with the things that I've been posting.

01:41:39 ◼   ► So it's just this self-fulfilling thing. I don't know. I'm at a point where I'm looking

01:41:47 ◼   ► to try and think more and be a little bit more considered about the places I share things,

01:41:54 ◼   ► not necessarily about how much I'm sharing and that maybe my hot takes are best served

01:42:00 ◼   ► lukewarm multiple days later on a podcast than they are in 280 characters on Twitter.

01:42:07 ◼   ► and that I just continue to get feedback and share stuff

01:42:10 ◼   ► that I'm working on, things I'm excited about on Twitter

01:42:12 ◼   ► and more things about my life on Instagram.

01:42:15 ◼   ► Like that's where I think I'm kind of settling.

01:42:17 ◼   ► The problem I have is sometimes I really can't help myself.

01:42:22 ◼   ► - Sometimes that hot take, it feels so hot.

01:42:24 ◼   ► You gotta get it out of your hands right now.

01:42:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, and the only people that can really deal with it

01:42:29 ◼   ► are the people that are following my Twitter profile.

01:42:32 ◼   ► I don't know, it's just like I feel like this has come

01:42:35 ◼   ► at a time when I'm already thinking a lot about this stuff.

01:42:38 ◼   ► And I don't really have a lot of parallels

01:42:40 ◼   ► to the things that these people are talking about.

01:42:43 ◼   ► I do think that there is an image portrayed

01:42:47 ◼   ► in this documentary that everybody that lives a life

01:42:52 ◼   ► like this is sad, which I don't think is the case.

01:42:54 ◼   ► I think everybody in the world has periods of sadness.

01:42:58 ◼   ► But this documentary seems to claim

01:43:02 ◼   ► that if you live your life on the internet in public

01:43:04 ◼   ► that you will ultimately be sad and that's the only path,

01:43:07 ◼   ► which I don't think is true completely.

01:43:10 ◼   ► And I know that's not how I am,

01:43:12 ◼   ► but it is just like I have noticed some stuff

01:43:16 ◼   ► that I would prefer to be different,

01:43:19 ◼   ► but I can't change them.

01:43:21 ◼   ► Like I would prefer if Twitter would go back

01:43:24 ◼   ► to how it was six or seven years ago.

01:43:26 ◼   ► But the genie's out the bottle now.

01:43:29 ◼   ► Nothing can be done about that.

01:43:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's the same thing.

01:43:33 ◼   ► It's like if I could freeze the internet

01:43:36 ◼   ► as it was 10 years ago, that would be great.

01:43:39 ◼   ► That'd be my preferred fun internetting.

01:43:43 ◼   ► I do think, I agree that the documentary,

01:43:45 ◼   ► "Everybody is Sad in American Meme,"

01:43:48 ◼   ► but I think there is a true thing here,

01:43:53 ◼   ► which is that especially now that there is this concept

01:43:58 ◼   ► of I can be famous on Instagram, being an Instagram model

01:44:03 ◼   ► or whatever it is that you're doing,

01:44:04 ◼   ► like not even the non-specific fame,

01:44:06 ◼   ► but I do think that is much more likely

01:44:11 ◼   ► to attract the sort of person who is then also going

01:44:16 ◼   ► to be more vulnerable to the vicissitudes

01:44:21 ◼   ► of those platforms.

01:44:22 ◼   ► So I wouldn't be surprised if you could say

01:44:27 ◼   ► that there was like a higher proportion of something like depression among people who

01:44:34 ◼   ► are professional influencers than the general population. Again, I'm not saying they're

01:44:40 ◼   ► all depressed, but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if you did a longitudinal study

01:44:46 ◼   ► and said like, "Oh, right, it's 20% more incidences of depression."

01:44:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, my point is, which I know you're agreeing with,

01:44:52 ◼   ► is just it's not a cause and effect relationship.

01:44:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't think it's a cause and effect relationship,

01:44:57 ◼   ► but I do think, you know, it's a bit like

01:45:01 ◼   ► Britney Vine Girl at some point.

01:45:04 ◼   ► She tells the audience that she was really into drama

01:45:08 ◼   ► as a kid, and it's like, well, no one's surprised.

01:45:11 ◼   ► Like, you don't need to tell anyone this.

01:45:13 ◼   ► You're obviously this kind of person

01:45:15 ◼   ► who really wants to be on a stage

01:45:18 ◼   ► and is really looking for that feedback.

01:45:21 ◼   ► And it's not surprising then that platforms

01:45:26 ◼   ► are going to disproportionately attract

01:45:28 ◼   ► those kinds of people who are then also more vulnerable

01:45:33 ◼   ► to the changing weather of the platform,

01:45:38 ◼   ► or I think are going to be more vulnerable

01:45:40 ◼   ► than the average population to negative feedback

01:45:44 ◼   ► or criticism or all of these kinds of things.

01:45:46 ◼   ► So I do think there's a feedback effect here,

01:45:50 ◼   ► which isn't good, but I completely agree.

01:45:52 ◼   ► It's not a cause and effect situation,

01:45:56 ◼   ► but it is something that makes me a little worried

01:46:01 ◼   ► that there's nothing to do about it,

01:46:04 ◼   ► but like intrinsically these platforms attract people

01:46:08 ◼   ► for whom which maybe it would be better

01:46:10 ◼   ► for them not to be on,

01:46:12 ◼   ► like from large scale down to the small scale.

01:46:16 ◼   ► But I don't know.

01:46:17 ◼   ► It's, again, not cause and effect,

01:46:18 ◼   ► but I think there's some correlation there.