Better Offline - Hater Season: Henry Zebrowski

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

Better Offline’s “Hater Season” - an ongoing roundtable with tech’s greatest haters - continues as Ed is joined by Henry Zebrowski of Last Podcast on the Left to talk about Business Idiots, the metaverse, and the beauty of the human mind.https://www.patreon.com/cw/lastpodcastontheleft youtube.com/@lpntv Please support me by subscribing to my premium newsletter - here’s $10 off your first year of annual https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/84rt762qen YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more. --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/  Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitron Email Me: [e-mail] omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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You're good for 300 crimes? Yeah. We got two. I'm ready to go right up to present day. Listen to Crimless on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. AllZone Media. Hello, welcome to. better off line. I'm of course your host Ed Zittron.

Apologies to everyone for missing the monologue last week. I know many of you have threatened my life. That's a joke. You're all very lovely about it. But we are back this week. It's Hater season. I'm going to be honest. Hate a season has been so much fun that everyone is just, I think we're just going to do this forever. And today I'm joined by an incredible guy. I'm going to be one of two divasers coming together to maximize our joint sleigh. I'm joined by Henry Zabrowski of last podcast on the left. Henry, how are you? I am good.

I'm filled with rage. With rage about what? I'm ready. Honestly, I hate the goddamn metaverse. It's, I saw it pop up the other day. I saw a person mention the metaverse. And there is one guy, Jamie something, just guy onto it. You can find him.

Who I watched him go from crypto, from Clubhouse to web 3 to NFTs to Metaverse to AI and now he's back to Metaverse. And I think... He's wrong. He's wrong, but also... He's professionally wrong. But that's crazy. Like, I...

People are very unfair to me about my correct opinions, but it's insane to me how many of these consultant swindlers still exist and how there are still people being like, yeah, dude, I... Yeah, the Metaverse is still here, man. I'll pay you. I'll do this. It's because they're desperate. They're desperate for some... some other realm of productivity and work.

There's something, they really thought they had us pegged during COVID. Like at some point, they were like, they miss work. They miss work. They miss, they miss, they miss people, they miss us. And they had this idea of like, oh, the social network, like, what we have to do is convince them. They're hanging out. We have to convince all of them that they're all just going to like, oh, no, no, it's, it's, it's work. Sure, but it's like a lifestyle.

Work is like your lifestyle. Do you remember that whole period as well just before the Metaverse where there were all of the remote work articles that were like, we're missing the serendipity of the office. We're missing it. You can't bump into a friend at the office and have these thoughts. I love that because it was always written by a boss because you could tell because everyone else at work is like, I just want to put my fucking headphones in. I just want to get my job done.

Please leave me alone. We have crawled into the heads of these giant corporate guys. Like, that's kind of what we're living in. I feel like we're living in a giant ketamine. Like, we're in a ketamine-fueled dream right now. Like, we are in a... We live inside the ketamine dream, but who is the dreamer? The dreamer is people like Zuckerberg

and these guys that are kind of forming how they think we view reality. They're like trying to put that on us. They're trying to say, We love work. We love productivity. As a, as a, as an animal, as a human animal, they believe we crave crushing it. We crave dividends. I love hustling.

We love hustling. And I've just, we've just been in this place now where we're kind of being dragged through their version of the future, which is just not panning out. You know, like the metaverse. I did a show on the metaverse once. I didn't New Year's Eve. In the Metaverse? Which one? Facebook Horizon Worlds.

It was some, yes. It was something like, so everybody was a little weeble-wobble person, right? Because they had to eliminate general. You remember when they had to go through the whole thing? Because they had to eliminate lower halves of people. Oh, yes, because they said they were bringing in legs, but then the legs didn't pan out. Legs. Yes, because legs mean penis and balls.

or vagina, right? And so what happened was is that as soon as those were in play, as soon as legs were in play, penis and balls and vaginas were in plays, and then immediately the people started getting sexually harassed on the Metaverse. But did they ever put the legs in?

I thought they weren't able to get them in at all. No, because that was the... Let's just say, I believe, you saw several attempts at this idea of like, we can't put in legs. You can't put in legs? You mean to tell me you built an entire second reality and you can't put in fucking legs?

I mean, I mean practically speaking, putting in functional legs that mapped to movement from the user would be difficult. But it's just, I never really understood. Yeah, that's not even with your, there's the aesthetics of legs. Have like a flat like a Ken doll. Who cares? As soon as people saw legs, they saw genitals and they started saying horrific stuff to each other on the metaverse. And so they got rid of legs.

Tell me about this metaverse experience you had, though, so this New Year's Eve. So I was asked to do, it was during COVID. I was asked to do the comedy for a New Year's Eve party, quote unquote, in a buildout. It was like a metaverse buildout. It was one of those, they had done it for this specific event. And the goal was that people were walking around this virtual space and they would come upon you. and then your camera would turn on and you'd see quote and quote

the real person there. I was in a character it was wildly invasive. Everybody was obviously had agreed to it, but I was cheddar goblin which is a character from a movie

called Mandy, right? I was playing. Yeah, this is my life. This is called the entertainer's life, Ed. I mean, yeah. They gave me a thousand dollars. That's worth it. It was.

It was. for the tears. Because then I put in, I propped up, I have a build out of the cheddar goblin from Mandy, right? I have a poll from the original model. I put it in a chair and I put it on a, I put a camera on it.

Yeah. And then I was talking as him, roasting people that would arrive to the little comedy buildout that they had. And the thing is, is that what happened after every single COVID stream show is that obviously it was janky.

It was strange. Yeah. People were not, even though they thought they were prepped that their cameras would turn on, they were not prepped that their cameras would turn on and they would get scared and it was bad. You know, it's like all that type of stuff. But in the end, it really is, which is what I discovered afterwards is the closing of the laptop after this and the silence. Oh, was it just like constant noise in there? Well, just the idea of like, as a performer, like this was kind of one of the big issues I had to just even just

during COVID, which is the cavernous silence after the show that you have now done on Zoom in which you have been in a sort of simulacrum of real life for half a second. And then as soon as the laptop closes, all that illusion is shattered. And now you're just sitting in silence. And there's a part of me that thinks that that is kind of the issue with the phenomena as a whole, which is this fake, a fake version of. society that they wanted to recreate for us in order for us to obey whatever rules they want to set up for us. And so, like, as I was in this, I was like, oh, I'm a part of the normalizing process of this.

Like, this is a, I am a person and I am here doing this as a way to show all of you, look, even if the world is uninhabitable, even if all the corporations of the world make the surface, a giant, like, lava stream, the rest of us. can still go underground and don't worry. There can still be the Friends reboot. Don't worry, there can still be any type of Charmin you like. It can be there. It can be underground. We can live underground. We don't need all of this real life.

Right. I also think it's just, to your point about living inside their heads, it is really funny watching them try and make stuff to sell us when they do not speak to real people. Like, yeah, what are you fucking pigs like? You know, sitting at desks, right? You want to walk around a world, I guess. Look, it's the few, you pigs like this, right?

What do you think you hogs? The thing about the human version of the, right now what I see is the, in the IRL version of the Metaverse are the corporate like. It is not only a, it's an apartment complex. It's where you work. It's also where the, the, you got your slop bowls. And then you can go over here. here and you can get your face injections and you can go over here and you can do the thing that makes you look and sound and you can get the clothes and make you look just like everybody else.

Like the Google version of Worry Free from Sorry to Bother You. Yes, yes. There is. That's like one soft rollout, right? For I do believe what. They've started pulling back, though. They've started pulling back on corporate benefits. So I think it is going to be the moment a company offers housing within their campus, that's how you know that they've just lost a

lot and they're like a how do it how do we do this would just give him housing i guess i genuinely believe all of this is the dry run for some form of united states of peter teal see that's that's the thing though because i i see that argument but whenever i read them or hear them talk or actually look at the success of them trying to do like their network state stuff which always seems to go poorly because running a city or a country is hard it's hard they also see it fall apart, and I see them put, like, AI in general is this thing that's very much a cultureless person, I personally who doesn't know anything, how they think knowledge or culture works.

Culture is just when you go to the arts vendor and you're like, one art, please, I've got $100. How much art can I get for this? Cultures humans hanging out spending time. And in perfection, too. Yeah, it's like, it's this culture is literally just a, it was a, not to, not to minimize it, but it's almost a, in my mind, it's a product

of our connectivity as an animal, as a psychic animal. Like, that's the point of it. And so they're just trying to, they don't, they think that's gay. Okay, Ed? They have, no, they really have like a deep homophobia

towards anything emotional, essential, so feminine is what they get. I do believe that, that is the literal vibe that I get, which is this idea if you look at Peter Thiel talking, look at these people talking. And I guess that's what it is, is that they fail.

But you saying there's like a self-loathing to it? I just mean in terms of his, the way they view it as frivolous and stupid. Right. That our need for connection is something that is replaced. That is very easily replaced. Yes. And that is,

and it's extremely easy to place. And so what they didn't do, little things, what you were saying too, is the idea of a corporate culture. It's like when I was working in office jobs, the idea of a culture, I was like, oh, no, no, no, no, no.

I'm here to get health insurance. Like, I'm not here to meet you, buddy. Like, I'm here for health insurance, you know? Like, I'm here to work, like, to just get the fuck out of here and go home. But they want, yeah, go ahead. They just want all of us. They want every minute of our fucking breathing lives.

Well, that kind of reminds me again around just before the Metaverse, all of the anti-remote work stuff, that talked about office culture. It's like, office culture is so important. You need office culture. Office culture is what brings the company together. Missing for most of these articles was a definition of office culture because it was just kind of work propaganda.

It's doing what your boss wants you to do. Yes. That is what office culture means. Mm-hmm. Which means you're living in a dictator. You're living in his reality. And on top of that, it's like, oh, so you're saying we should have a culture that involves supporting labor

and respecting labor and valuing work and supporting us. They're like, oh, God, no. No, no, no, sorry, sorry. Don't get us wrong. It's the culture of the office, not the people in it. It is a, this is prison.

Yes. We have a foodst ball tables. There's a, we got a never-ending soup bowl. Mmm. You know, hmm. Mmm. I used to have a wee work long ago,

and I never tried the beer. And when I finally tried it, I'm like, wow, these people fucking hate us. Because it was like the worst beer. They could have put like a keg of Bud Light and it would have been fine. But they somehow found like a beer that tasted not quite as bad as Natty Light. But they just and then, but it's their wear. It's the we work of beer.

Yes, it really is. Yeah, it's like the beer slop. Yep, it's beer slop. These, I find it. we are not living up to their expectations, Ed. Yeah. I think that's what it is, is that we're really not living up to their expectations.

We're not dying fast enough. We're not working hard enough. And that's the thing is that we really should be working and dying up until the very minute. The very minute that we die, technically we should be productive in that. It is, and that's why, you know,

when I hear the argument, like about how people like me, be having kids. And then I hear where the argument's coming from. And I hear it's about me keeping up the ever exponentially rising capitalistic output. That's really all they're concerned about. So there are enough workers. Yeah. It's really funny. We're going to get the listeners, the occasional listeners who are like, because occasionally we're, I think we've got a fairly left-leaning audience, but occasionally I'm sure you're listening now, one of you guys, who's like a straight-up, like somehow a center-left person who's very pro-work would be like, whoa, whoa, whoa,

office culture's importance so that everyone knows what they're doing their job. I know why I'm doing my job. Make money. Well, I'm an entertainer now, I guess not. Guess it's a real job. But I remember the offices I've worked in, the one that was the worst, was the one that I actually respected the most for just not pretending there was a work culture. They didn't have any of that shit.

They were just like, you need to do this enough or we fucking fire you. It's a PR firm. Truly nightmarish place. But it didn't try. No one tried to pretend like, we're a family here. No, we're not. This is jail.

Unless you're working at a not-for-profit, helping people directly, there is absolutely no reason for you to have a fucking thesis statement outside of, we're a company that makes goods for people, or we provide X and we pay you to do X. That is it. That's all we do.

Like, it's, there doesn't have to be special than that. And this is the problem is that where I see it from, literally from reality television shows all the way up to this top now, this like concept of everything has to have like a presented story. Everybody already has to be arriving with a character arc ready to go locked in. And now the bosses are doing that. The bosses have, are applying a character arc to us. they are saying they're trying to tell us what we are going to do for them and now i feel like we're in this process of they are going to try over the next decade or so to kill as many of us as possible to literally weed out the the the people that are against it they're going to make a sick

they're going to put bad things in the food they're going to pull out all of the things protecting the environment they're extremely sure they're going to be able to beat all of for themselves, right? And then what they're going to do is create a break off civilization. All of this is a dry run for them to leave us behind. The funny thing is, though, I believe you that that's what they may plan. I mean the plan. That's the plan. I don't think they're competent enough to prove it, because the metaverse was the, I think Clubhouse was the beginning for me, but the Metaverse was the moment when I was like, oh, you don't speak to any real people.

Clubhouse was the single dumbest, giantist, flaming pile of waste of money of anything I have ever. That was so stupid. I was going to almost use a presidential word, Ed. It was so stupid that the whole thing, I cannot believe. The whole thing needs to be deleted. It was just repackaging intercoms. It was repackaging a Zoom call, a conference call.

It was a dumbest shit. wanted really, really, really, really bad non-produced radio with people that thought they were great. Welcome to Clubhouse. Do you want to hear VCs talk for hours and say multiple slurs? Well, guess what? We have a place for you. We already have podcasts, man. Yeah, but the thing is, though, it was, I remember the reason that it got to me, Clubhouse specifically, was because the amount of people I talked to was like, Ed, this is the future, man, it's the future. this is how everything's gonna get done. Tell me about it, dude.

What's your clubhouse strategy? What's your clubhouse strategy? How many times I heard that fucking sentence? And I was just like, this super flu is gonna kill all of us. That was like the only, that was my main response. I was like terrified of dying.

Yes, I was like, we're all gonna fucking die and you want me to repackage radio again? I've already done it, dude. I did it 15 years ago. Just like the good doctor. I am a podcaster. Yeah, it's,

but it was also just the moment where I was like, looking at all of the things, these supposedly smart people, all these people who were meant to really know what they were fucking talking about, and watching them as they just went, yeah, this is, this is crazy, man. And then at the same time, I've been reading all this anti-remote stuff. And I was like, wait a minute, all of these are written by managers or bosses who aren't in the office. And then it was just kind of obvious, but none of these people interact with their businesses or regular

people. So they're just, the things that they make do not reflect solving human problems. And then the metaverse comes along and half, most of the media was like, yep, this makes perfect sense. And I, as a gamer, was like, you were describing World of Warcraft or like an MMRPG. You're just describing going online in a group. I played EverQuest. I have the scars. It already happened. And also, it looks like somebody read the book Snow Crash. Like, One of their aides read the book Snow Crash at some point in college, vaguely described the concept of making real estate out of nothing, which I think really was what the metaverse was about,

was this idea of recreating a world in which they could own everything from get. Yeah, they wanted to own the next internet. That was very much what Zuckerberg wanted. That was the idea, and they would again set all the rules. They'd set all the rules. They'd already had set up all the real estate parameters. you'd show up into this brand new world of a thing

and then you'd be described oh my God there's a McDonald's oh my God there's a fucking pizza hut oh my God because they've already bought into this real estate concept because they were just trying to figure out I also feel like that's a part of it they saw some of the writing on the wall

of like it's gonna be hard to get these fuckers back in the office these fuckers went home and they're fucking enjoying their fucking oatmeal and their families they're doing as much work if not more and they seem happier fuck that shit fucking hate I hate I hate the back.

I hate the back. I can't see. I want to smell what he's eating. I want to look. I want to hear what he's listening to. I want to look at his wife. I want to look at his wife. And so what I think that's what I think what it turns into, right?

I think it can go on all the shit. Yeah. And so they just then realize like, oh, but what if we could do it so we can bring them into this other world and then we own it's like that. Then eventually we can let go. Yeah, then we can let go of real life real estate. Then maybe if we build it all in the,

in the metaverse, just like in that great book, Snow Crash. Anybody read the end? What we could do is we could build up this amazing new real estate system while the Earth eats itself alive on the surface. I do think that that's the other side. What we're also seeing is the other side of this too, which is why they all showed up at the inauguration, because they were all so excited for the fact that they were going to just be like, let's boil the planet. Let's boil the surface of the planet and then they have to come to the Metaverse

They have to come to us Because we're the only ones that are going to have The stuff to protect them It's really funny as well Because everything you're saying is true But they left out because their lack of Their lack of connection to anything It working

They didn't check if it worked They also left us out What about us? It also didn't work That's the best part And that's the best part Is that what I know us? human beings are fascinating.

And there's no, they have tried to model us. They have tried to model us again and again. And they've looked at history and they've done all the number crunching. And they can't figure it out. They can't. They can't figure it out. They, all of these things fail because they legitimately are operating in a fantasy world. They're operating outside of reality.

They, because they believe they can imprint their, they can literally just put their reality on us. They just think that they can do that. Well, look at LMS. And look at us. And then you see it's actually super difficult. It's actually really weird. I actually think part of what broke my brain was in the 2016 election when Trump won in the

first place. That was the first time I saw something and I was like, oh wow, elections might actually do something. Yeah. It was like the first time I realized that the fix might not be entirely in from people that actually are in control. Yeah, I

I definitely like I didn't get particularly political until after that I will fully admit to being completely ignorant of stuff Same why would I? I didn't feel these things and then everything changed then everything happened and then it was do you suddenly look backwards you like oh did I miss everything and I'm still learning as well a lot of this stuff and I feel like when you saw all of them turn up at the White House it was so fucking grim but I saw people who were surprised and that really made me laugh the people were like Wait, what? Huh? Why are they all kissing up? They said three years ago that they liked me. Huh? There's a part of me.

You see, this is my problem, is that I look at this, and it made me laugh. Oh, yeah. Because I finally felt like, I'm correct. I'm correct. Yeah. They're all on, they all, they couldn't give a fuck. Not even. They couldn't give a fucking shit about our lives.

The only reason they want to replace us so bad. And that's the thing. When we're talking about, Ed, I actually got turned on your work about this idea that we're going to be hitting this AI wall and I could not be more in agreement. There's a part of my brain that's saying it's like, where's the guy that wants to make the trillion dollars

that finally makes the little robot that puts dirty dishes in the dishwashing machine? That's what we want. What we want is a little robot man that I can yell at, that can do does laundry, does, puts the clothes away, and does the dishes. That's it.

Henry, the problem is, is that's really difficult. Like, that's the thing in their phone. They're like, okay, can we do stuff that would help people? Maybe, I don't know, or wash their floors. We kind of got vacuum robots, but they're expensive. Ruma suck and they scare my dogs. Yeah, I want a thing that can pet the dog.

But also, when it comes down to it, I don't need it to be God in the machine because guess what? The real God doesn't exist and the real God gives children AIDS. I don't need another one. Yeah. Also, I don't know. None of this works. Like just none of it works.

It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. But also. But then, Ed, what do we do about continuing to be in their delusion? We break it. Like, that's what I'm doing. Like, that's the thing. Right now, as we talk,

I've recently been working on this piece about how, like, Anthropic Amitted in court, they made $5 billion cumulatively, like of all time, which when you follow their previous revenue reports does not make sense. And I'm arguing with people constantly all through today leading up to this, because what has actually, what the real power of these people is, is that they control, like, we live in their world through narratives. The narratives that are created. And it is, it's true.

Yep, it's Elon Musk buying Twitter. Yes, it's Google search. Yes, it's this. But a lot of it is just institutions like CNN, CNBC, New York Times, they are captured, but not necessarily by the entities, but by the ideologies. The ideology that AI will be big. AI will be big. It's not that it's, oh, it may be. It's, it will be. And they can't say how. You notice that too, right? They all are like all this stuff about AI and they project all of these but none of them actually

says specifically what do you mean like what are the uses of AI like what exactly you say oh it has all these uses it's inevitable it's going to replace all of these things and it's more like but to what end

how also yeah like what is it doing that I don't think it is dude because guess what man guess what you the shit with the fucking Waymo when they came out and they said that they have to kick it to some guy in the Philippines to drive it if it gets specifically stuck. With Waymo, that's not even generative AI because they love to say AI so that you can flate them. Waymo kind of works. Waymo's interesting because it's interesting. It's an actual thing that drives people around.

I think that there are a ton of issues that I will go into in a future episode. But with like large language models, I have been, and I'm going to say this in passing, I'm not going to go into depth because I don't want people to get mad at me, but I'm currently learning to code. And the more I learn about code, the more I get scared about people using large language models to code, because I don't know, I'm getting worried that there are software engineers out there that can't read code and just copy paste it from place, or that they're willing to ship code that kind of looks right, but they don't really understand. I'm not saying this is all software engineers, but I'm worried that the software engineers they're building these LLMs for are the ones that don't know what

they're fucking talking about. Buddy, I think that that is exactly what we're seeing here. Oh, no. I think that we are in a... Oh, no. I literally think that this is a... It's all human led.

All of the issues are human led. It is still, because you would need a perfect AI to make a perfect AI, right? You would need... It's too human. It's too janky. We are...

My whole view, one of my more, I guess, I guess they call it a mystical view. But I think one of the problems I have with AI is I do believe that there is like a 1% of the human brain that we just can't. We literally can't see if we wanted to see it because we're looking at ourselves. That there's like a like in terms of just the observer gets in the way of the thing that we need to be looking at. Right. Like we are, there's a part of our consciousness that we will never duplicate ever.

We just won't. We don't even understand thinking. We don't. This is what I'm saying is that at the very bottom of it, we don't really understand what the key is. So how is a bunch of cargo short wearing basement dwelling coders sitting in a place that probably have never kissed a girl or a man before? And then now they're going to make the new human thought machine? You know what I mean? That's kind of like what we're seeing. So what we're seeing here is it's all based, it's all, it's turtles all the way down. And it's just going to keep going. software engineers, I found that there's this real, we're seeing this schism between those types of basement dweller in cell types. There are the coders who know just enough to get by and keep their job without being fired. And then the people who actually do software engineering who are relatively normal folks who are just going about their lives. And the art people, like the truth, they view it as like, because I know that it can go as far as to being like an art

form and like a, it's a whole thing. But again, that points to not to create an absolutely bedrock structure for a new conscious entity on. It doesn't sound like the way that works. What's the summation of what code is is not. Nick Zoresh could make mine made the point where it's like, coding is not just writing code. There is an art form to it. Cal Newport as well did as well.

Where it's like, there is a cultural awareness. There is the awareness of how one construct stuff. I don't know. The way I put it is like, how comfortable would you be feeling about a building where, I don't know, the architect only kind of knew what materials were in it.

It's most, I think it's mostly bricks. I legitimately think that that is another big issue, is that it's, they're low-balling the creation of the new god. You know, like, they're literally, like, nickel and diming it with guys, and they're creating these dumb deadlines, and they're creating all of these things

where it's like, you know, if Peter, Taylor Till really wanted to take over the very globe. Yes, to my mind, he has to have more like a thousand year view. Like with the old, like the way that they view the world more than like China and stuff like that. We're like,

he needs more of a longer view of who's going to take this forward. But Henry, that's not American capitalism. American capitalism. Tell me about it, bro. I know. Tell me about it. I got fucking agents fucking breathing down my neck every day. All right? And I do podcasting. I can't imagine

what these idiots all these people in the fake money realm and in the fake computer god realm are what the pressure is from the inside for them all to make all this bullshit money. I have to wonder if the people inside the labs, though, at this point, as they kind of,

it's become kind of obvious that like, this isn't really doing the thing. They don't actually, they haven't made any gods. And now it's just kind of like, uh, what are we doing? I think they're all just fucking around,

not in like a completely labor-free way. They're just like doing experiments and spending like, millions of dollars of computer dates being like, what if this works? What if this works? What if this works? Ed, I'm a CEO.

That's what I've learned. We know I've learned about being a CEO? What? Is the only job replaceable by AI is a CEO. Oh, 100%. It's the easiest, it's the dumbest. They have nothing but, like, not to be like I work very hard,

blah, blah, blah, blah, but they have plenty of time. They can just sit and think about these dumb things all day and play around with it. And they're just, waiting for enough. Like, I also also think there's a massive, obviously it's capitalism, but the lateral moves these guys just get to make. Like, they get to just sort of like decimate a company, decimate a bunch of stuff, lose everything, and then they get to just kind of jump ship to another thing. Can I tell you my favorite one? So, there's a guy called Jay Parique,

who was the co-CEO of a company called Laceworks, I believe. I'm just going to check that on there. And let's see, Laceworks. So, this company yeah lacework so this company was famous for doing an event where they handed out $30,000 worth of Lulu Lemon gift cards in a night to convince people to use their software

so that guy ran that company into the fucking ground and you know what happened he got a job at Meta and now he heads up one of the AI divisions in Microsoft the meritocracy's real what is, do they not at some point it has to almost be purposeful.

It has to be purposeful, right? Do you think that they do it almost in a way? What if there is a game being played to where they all know it's not going to happen and we all know it's not going to happen but they are, we're all like all of these middlemen have propped up the economy with this shit. So it almost kind of feels like

it's almost like they're making money on the constant rugpole and the moving of all of the stuff back and forth. it's almost like maybe it's good to hire somebody that will purposely blow it all up so then they never have to get it done. I just think I think it's more stupid than that. I think it is they hire people who look and sound like them, who they've worked with before,

who have the right things on LinkedIn, who then can say that I have this theory, the era of the business idiot, I call it where it's like, these people are just morons. And if you look at them... Oh, they're morons. If you look at them as dipshits without much strategy,

the world actually makes a way more sense than... This is what we've been saying... We've been saying on the show, this idea of trying to come back from conspiracy theory and just understand that there's just way more human beings being extremely bad at really important jobs. Yeah, and those are the humans that run these companies. Because, like, if you've ever heard Satchin Adela talk,

CEO of Microsoft, it is like sustaining 100 concussions a second. It's insane. He meanders. there was a interview I saw him give in Davos, I think, where he spoke for three straight minutes to a yes or no question. And it's just like, and this is, I think as a journalist,

you should just be able to get out like a taser at that point. You don't have to use it, but you can just like start crackling it a bit, like, yep, uh-huh, like the Oscars music. Like the Oscars music. Why does it any, is there, why does no one ever just say, just straight and sit up and be like,

excuse me, sir, what in the living hell are you talking about? I know. Why could there just be one person be like, hey, just one question, what in the living fuck is going on? What do you do? I want you to tell me what you did today from the moment you woke up until when you got here. I want to hear what you did for the money. And like, that's the thing. They will never answer that because a lot of it is just I read emails and I drank coffee. I went to lunch. I went to a meeting. I didn't really listen. Hey, CEO's job's extremely important, okay? When I have my executive time, Rob knows, my producer, he knows.

When I'm there and I am in my blessed somnulescence, you think I'm sleeping. Yeah. I'm thinking, dreaming of the business. The mind dojo. I'm in my mind dojo. That's where I do every day. I do my karate. And I think about different ways for me to spend our money.

You know? It takes a lot of effort. and work as a CEO to go, hey, do this. Hey, have you guys thought about not having buttons on this? You know what I mean? Like that guy, I love those stuff. I love that Steve Jobs is a genius and it's just like making out of buttons. Well, Steve Jobs was a genius in the sense that he was, no, no, I don't mean this in a

defensive way. I mean genius in quotation marks because it was, he was like, what if it was good? Like, he's like, what if instead of it, instead of being clicky buttons, it was a But because touch screens have been shit, what if they were good and responsive? And people used them and went, wow, this is fucking great. I should come up with that. It's like, that's like what I'm saying. What is something worked?

Why? Like that's the other thing, Ed, that I've never really understood. And I feel like there's like, I'm just dumb in that way where I was like, I feel like, when it comes to the environment, that there is a lot of money in saving the environment. Yes. Right? It feels like in my head, there's some. body that's going to maybe clean the ocean that will also then become a trillionaire.

And I feel like that could be a really good focus on what we need to do in the future and you can make money. I just don't understand. And I just feel like I'm a silly, dumb, I'm a bad capitalist. I learned that I could give all my people raises and it really doesn't affect my fucking bottom line because my bottom, it's ridiculous. It's fucking the margins are fucking ridiculous. It's short terminism. because if you think of it, you probably wouldn't make money immediately from saving the environment. You wouldn't make it yet. No, you sell some penguins. Honestly, dude.

There's ways you're talking to a capitalist. Just get some penguins. Round up a bunch of good, healthy penguins. You selling them to an elementary school? It's stuff like that. You do certain things where you, you, you, you, there's ways to do it in fun ways. There's fun things. I also just think solar power is kind of magical.

and batteries are kind of magical, like that stuff. But if you think of it in the short-term way, it's weird because what I'm about to describe is buying batteries and solar panels before you make much money off of them, such as, just to be clear, a capital expenditure, which will lead to an eventual payoff.

Now that, they hear and they go, fuck no, that sounds terrible. However, if they're like, invest in a bunch of GPUs for a possible return, but probably not, they're like, fuck yeah, that makes perfect. sense because they're all trapped in the past.

They keep, because these people are so discontal, the thing I always say is like they don't have problems, they don't know how to fix them. So they look at the world and they go, what are my problems? Well, I don't have enough money. What do poor people like? TikTok and hamburger, I guess. I mean, you saw the, did you read that Epstein file, that one email? There was one that went back and forth about the idea of, it was an extremely racist email from, I forget, it was somebody within, forget who it was explaining to Jeffrey Epstein.

He's like, look, you see, the same people was about Jay-Z buying into the NFL. And they were doing this, this commercial with Jay-Z. And he's like, look, you see, they're doing, they're advertising to the people who should be super angry. That's exactly what we're going to do. You see, look, you just gave them exactly what they want.

and that's all they care about, which I think is minimizing of human beings, obviously, because they think that there's more than this, because what they've just done is we do actually, our countries actually, which I'm certain you're well aware of head, is kind of in a deep turmoil right now, and there's protests in every single major city that exists almost 24-7, and they're just not talking about it. And that's really the issue is that they're just trying to delete that out of the narrative, as if. it's funny as well because if you want to make people happy you make food cheaper and better and you make housing and you make their general life better it's easy to do the fucking fat boy actually ran in a really good thing the idea of bringing manufacturing to people or so if he had

done one single maybe good thing maybe anybody could have a good uh a favorable opinion what's going on but the we are uh nothing nothing good happened right nothing's good is happening And we are, we've just now started a new war and we, uh, and I go to Florida, the groceries are as expensive as they are in Los Angeles. Jesus Christ. You know what I mean? Like, and they don't see the difference in Florida. They think it's perfect. They don't buy groceries. They don't buy, like these people don't buy groceries. They don't, I, I genuinely wonder if they have someone who brings them like a soda. Like, do they go to the fridge? Do you think these people like, like, like, I, like, that's the thing. Because I think the,

they see the world as friction to be removed. They see every experience as friction, and they, at the top of the pile, have removed all friction, such as they don't meet unexpected people. No. They don't get talked to by anyone they don't want to talk to, and indeed can reject anyone they want.

Anybody. Anything they don't want to do. So things like, oh, I've got to go to the bathroom. I've got to go do my laundry. I've got to go unload the dishwasher. Maybe the dishwasher is like something we can automate. Fine. washing dishes sucks, laundry sucks.

They're not trying to fix those problems. Well, they're trying to fix is, um, what do you people do? Well, you do something and I want to get rid of that. So I've created a large language model that will tell you it will do anything,

I guess. Yeah, because that's all it does. You want to be friends with it. And I think that that is also an important thing we have to constantly call it, which is they're not AI. They're language models.

There's no, there is no intelligence inside. And I think that that has to keep being hit, being like, and I keep saying this places and people are like, oh, well, you know, but they're pretty smart. And I'm like, I, they're not smart at all. It is easy

to mimic how we talk. It's, we aren't, because this is the thing. The human mind is unknowable. The human mind is endlessly complex. Our communication, however, is extremely patterned.

We know exactly, we know how to, we, it is, we have, we have so endless amounts of examples of human conversation, and it's easy to mimic. But here's the thing about thought. I don't know about you, but my thoughts are not linear. I've got like rockets going off in my head constantly.

Not like genius thoughts. It's like stupid thoughts. It's like, oh, what I got to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like my butt hurts. I'm hungry. Yeah, yeah. Do I need to be?

Probably not. Like things like that constantly. Like human thought. is chaos. And if you're a listener, by all means email me easy at betteroffline.com and tell me how you think. Because I think that a lot of these people want to believe that they sit there and they enter their mind dojo and they do their gun carter from equilibrium to think. And then the genius spits out. Because if you do that, you think large language models are genius. They also, it goes back to my thing, where it's, they're all looking at the past. They believe that the only

way to tell the future is by just looking at the past and going, it's kind of like that. You know, sort of fucking like, as, you know. Meanwhile, we are heading into, I love, you know, I'm a big, I love Terrence McKenna and that kind of shit. And I love his concept of the idea of we're in this like novelty zone. Okay, go on.

Tell me more. That the universe longs for novelty and builds novelty out. And that life doesn't, it doesn't get like, but he was the way you just. describing it. So it's like instead of like imagining our technology and our society ever going upwards towards some form of utopia, we're actually endlessly folding in on top of ourselves like a fractal, right? Like we're constantly folding. We're slowly breaking large groups into smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller niche microgroups. There's more and more layers to a

single subject, the more and more information that is readily available to the human consciousness. we just complicated again and again and again and again and again. And that's where we're going to be headed to is more unique situations as we have more information to deal with it. As each generation came up before, we operated largely, each country, each area operated into sort of like a vacuum of information and kind of had to do its own thing and develop those stuff. This is the kind of like we're heading into an area where everything,

knows what everybody's doing at all times. And it's going to change how we behave. Yeah, it already is. It already is. It's going to change. And I think that that is kind of what we're seeing now, is that these things are, nothing can play out. Like, in another world, like in another country, I could have seen a thing with January 6th back in the day,

the insurrection. And in another country, the White House would have been burnt to the ground. People would have been mass executions, that style. And I do believe. that the internet created another world where they observe themselves insurrection. Yes, like posting insurrection.

Yes, they didn't understand, they were, they couldn't understand that they were being history. They were, they were walking through a thing as if they were on their own cell phones watching somebody else do it. That's like the way I describe it, which is a, I think a new phenomenon. Like you were like watching a bunch of people doing a pro doing a, what used to be like an inherent human way of changing our government. Right. That used to be a way we used to do. Like an attack on the very fabric of society.

We used to get together and hang a bunch of guys. You know what I mean? It was like a thing that we used to do. And now that it's not, I feel like that's up what we're seeing here. is this effect, is that we're all on camera. And so it's going to affect how we behave. I see, I have this theory that I like that I love saying, even though it doesn't map to the thing called the beginning of history,

which is just that it is no longer illustrative to use history to explain stuff. It is no longer, it's, you can't, you're like, we are not, like, everyone's like, okay, we've worked everything out. It's just a question of going up from here. Great. No. I actually think what's happening is we have done stuff for decades based on looking backwards. The situations we've got ourselves in where look at everything's Trump's doing. It's horrifying.

But what he is doing is instead of going, well, we didn't do this before, so we're going to keep being nice. It's just, what if I didn't do that? A lot of the boundary pushing is just the result of ignoring what decorum was. and a lot of the rationalizations for a lot of tech stuff comes from looking at the past. It's the same bullshit. Uber lost a lot of money. No, it didn't. 32.9 billion is a lot of money, but Open AI raised $42 billion in the last year. Amazon Web Services cost a lot of money. Actually, not normalized for inflation. Amazon Web Services cost about $38.9 billion in 11 years. Amazon is going to spend $200 billion in CAPEX in 2026. The actual historic comparisons are used as ways to placate people.

It's don't worry about it. This didn't happen before. And the reason I say the beginning of history is you need to start looking forward. Like that's what everyone needs to, like stop pretending the because thing didn't happen before.

Have none of you played craps? One dice roll does not predicate. Anything can happen. And if you start. Anything can happen. Yeah. It's just, oh no, I believe it entirely. I think that we are,

we have been let loose from those examples. I think that once we understand, but, you know, I think this goes all the way to a psychic thing, though. I think this goes straight to this full to an idea of

human beings not fully understanding what they're capable of and their potential at all times. Okay. And I think that we have accepted a very low position in reality

as, as this amazing quantum computer walking around fired by like literally like I do it gets a little in the wooie area but it's the truth is that they

we're capable of a lot and I think that they make a lot of money on debasing the human spirit and so like and that's the idea the idea is that we are we need them they're nothing we're nothing without them

we have to be constantly entertained by them. We need to be, oh, we're just as hungry as like all this kind of shit. And we just have to do more of, no, we're not going to do that. Instead, we're going to do a naked bike ride. And said, we're going to do this thing. Like, literally, like, I know that's

ridiculous, but there needs to be more of that sort of culture jamming, which we're already seeing. And I think the, no, I fully agree because it's, I say that, like, I've taught myself a lot of economics and accountancy in the last year because a lot of people said, you couldn't possibly understand this. I was like, okay, let me find out. I think that everyone underestimates

human beings. I think that many of my listeners, actually with the last podcast, I imagine you get this as well. People like, oh, I couldn't possibly understand something so complex. I have listeners who email me complex economic theories who are like builders and teachers and realtors and shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. The human, they want you to believe that you are mediocre and that the summation of your life is a large language model, which is just everything on the internet crammed into something. And that you don't need to think this, you must think this is intelligent because if you do that, you'll look down on yourself and you'll be easier to sell to, easier to capture, and easier to use. Because in the end, when you use a large language model, it is training you. I saw a really interesting statement that I forgot where it was, but it was like the idea that we're in this, we're being governed by gigantic economic and political forces that are all under the guys of,

you don't really care though, do you? Right? Like it's this idea of we're now in this area where it's a bunch of guys. We're like, well, you never cared about this stuff. So what do you care? What do you care about this thing? What do you care what we do?

Just like, just fucking eat your slop and go to work or I'll kill you. All right? Why do you care? I feel like you care. You know? Buy more fucking software. Yeah, shut the fuck up. Right? Just shut the fuck up, whatever.

Just shut, like, that's, I mean, it's going to take us to say, I do care. I do actually care about human beings. I care that you've assigned massed shock troops to fucking arrest children. You're building fucking, fucking warehouses to prison people. I care. I care about the Epstein files. I care about them a great deal. Fun fact, Henry, did you know that the CEO of LinkedIn per J-mail, Reid Hoffman,

he actually endorsed Jeffrey Epstein on LinkedIn? And I refuse to believe that. Well, it's sadly in the files. But what's so funny is, like, when I... You mean that sea of disinformation? Fuck him. Here's the thing. When I read that, I was crying with laughter.

because it's just like there are so many people in the Epstein files who are guilty by association because they fucking went to the island but like you are the CEO of LinkedIn and you endorsed Jeffrey Epstein could not find out what for God knows

did you get into well you see my own my own pet obsession is Epstein's connections to the comedy world which is just amazing oh it is just you know what I'll tell you man I'll say a year of so many years

of being nervous around people. It is so nice to know that every single person I've ever liked is just not shit. And they can all absolutely suck my dick. Yeah, it's, you know, there's a release. There's a release of like the guys that book Jay, Just for Laughs used to be connected to him. Timothy Chamleys, a PR person,

his publicist, Peggy Siegel is connected to him. The guys from the Interlaken that trained, Chaparone and all those people that did make all these superstars. He was like he gave them $450,000. So it's like all of this stuff where you're like, I'm really ready to tell all of these guys to go fuck themselves. And J-mail was great as well. You could just go in there and type the name of anyone you meet

and hopefully they're not in there. You just do that, man. I'd recommend you do that. That's all I do. That's all like every time I meet a new person, I'm like, yeah, let me just run that name through J-mail. Oh, where were you? What do you do?

Where were you in 2018, by the way? It's so weird, though. It's like, Sergey Brin and Larry Page were in there. Like, Sergey Brin definitely seems to have, at some point, associated with Epstein. Nothing in the tech media really about it. Well, then you also look at his connections with moot,

all of that kind of stuff. But to me, I always believe all of that, though. I actually got a great break. down on the show about that from a listener. Again, how our listeners are some of the smartest, most educated people. Isn't that so fucking cool? It means the world to me.

It's same. Like, I love my listeners. Like, I adore them. I love it. And this, someone broke me down about, like, the secret history of 4chan, which is just the idea of that. Well, at the time, Christopher Poole was moving away from 4chan already. He already had other ideas.

He was already on the way out. He had already kind of segued. He had been trying to create a sort of area. for bad actors on 4chan for a while. It never took. And when Epstein and Steve Vannan got involved with him, he was already kind of out the door. So Epstein probably had nothing.

Epstein had nothing to do with 4chan. But then it was interesting how that took off because of the Steve Bannon-Ebstein connections to him. But it really was just, to me, what I thought was interesting is more so after the fact about how they were making fun of the QAnon-Forchan PizzaGate stuff by you. using the Pizza Gate stuff themselves.

Yeah. So it's like a game on a game, on a game, and it's all just, it just makes people go crazy. You know what's really interesting, though? None of this generative AI, like Epstein was kind of into AI, it seems, but he was into it in the same way every business it is. So he's like, what if it could do all this stuff that I've imagined? But none of this era is part of, like, he, maybe he was like a load-bearing pedophile, like, because- I think they missed the ketamine.

I think it was no ketamine. And I do think it was a different thing because at the time, what Epstein really was more focused on was his appearance on the internet. He was focused on the information about him on the internet. And that's why he got into all of the informational technology and all that shit, because he was trying to figure out, how can I control how people hear about me and talk about me? And that's really what that's what that's what that,

it was about. And then he was, because you remember, he was into fucking freezing his come and making a world of supermodel sex slaves that he would make

endless children with. And that's his big ideas, Ed. He was trying to fucking live forever and so he had other ideas. So he wasn't here in this one. He was doing... Didn't turn out of it?

No. He's looking great now, though. Well, I mean, I don't know if I agree that Jeffrey Epstein looks great. I don't know if I... I just saw him.

He's doing it. Oh yeah, I always, me and him, whenever I go to Tel Aviv, I see him. That's my whole thing. I go check in with Jeff. We go down there. It's amazing. I love it. We high five.

Hang out with him, David Bowie, Michael Jackson. Oh, God. Well, Henry. Salam bin Laden. Salam bin Laden! Finally we're here. They're all there. All right.

All right, Henry. We're going to wrap it there. Henry, where can people find you? Go and check it out. And last podcast and left on all of the worst shits. Our videos are on Netflix now, and you can also see us on YouTube, and we've got a new, if you want to check out, if you like live play, role-playing games,

we've entered into the fray over here, and we do Bloodbath, Vampire the Masquerade. It's LPN RPG. It's over on our YouTube channel, LPN TV. And it is, honestly, I think it's really good. And it is a dark and evil version of an LPN, a RPG playthrough. Hell yeah, we'll get some links at that in the notes.

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You're going to love them I'm Ed Zetron Subscribe to the newsletter You'll have them on log this week Sorry for missing it last week Cheers everyone, I love you all Thank you for listening to Better Offline The editor and composer of the Better Offline

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