Better Offline - Make Fun Of Them, Pt. 1

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

In part one of this week's two-part Better Offline, Ed Zitron walks you through a radical new idea: make fun of CEOs, tear down their legacies and push back on their empty promises. 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/@edzitronSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. American soccer is about to explode. The World Cup is coming. Ramel sending on the Army Store at the chip. I'm Tab Ramos. I'm Tom Boehler. On our podcast, Inside American Soccer, you'll get the real storylines, the biggest decisions, and the truth about the U.S. national team. It wouldn't be a huge surprise if our team ends up in the quarterfinals or potentially a great run into the semifinals. Listen, Inside American Soccer with Tom Bogart and Tab Ramos on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, wherever you get your podcast.

AllZone Media. Hello and welcome to BearRof. I'm your host, Ed Zittron, of course. And I want to start you off with a little bit of a question. Have you ever heard Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, speak? You ever heard the words come out of his mouth? Look, I'm going to share with you today some of the trenchant insights from Sam Orman. I'm going to start with this agonizing 37-minute-long podcast conversation he had with his brother, Jack Altman from last month.

I warn you, he really is an annoying and stupid dickhead. Well, I think that would be incredible. like other products, like there will be crazy new social experiences. There will be like Google Docs style AI workflows that are just way more productive. You'll start to see like

they'll have these like virtual employees. But the thing that I think will be the most impactful on that five to 10 year time frame is AI will actually discover new science. Yes, this tech podcast is now actually a food podcast and today's special is the word salad. When asked why he believes AI will discover new

science, Altman says, I think we've cracked reasoning in the models, adding that we've got a long way to go, and that he thinks we know what to do, adding that OpenAI's O3 model is already pretty smart, and that he's heard people say, wow, this is like a good PhD. And that's the entire answer, by the way. It's a completely nonsensical answer. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, a company allegedly worth $300 billion to venture capitalists and soft bank, it kind of sounds like a huge fucking idiot. But head, you cry, you can't just call Sam Altman an idiot. He isn't stupid. He runs a big company. He's super successful. My counter to that is first,

yes, I can. I'm actually doing it right now. And second, if Altman didn't want to be called stupid, he wouldn't say stupid shit with a straight face to a massive global audience. Now, when his brother Jack asked, so reasoning will lead to science going faster or just new stuff or both, and by the way, that is the question. Sam Altman said, I mean, you already hear scientists who say they're faster with AI. Like, we don't have AI, maybe autonomously doing science. But if a human scientist is to read I'm just productive using 03. That's still a pretty big deal. Yeah.

And then as that keeps going, and the AI can like autonomously do some science, figure out novel physics. At this point, Jack Altman asked Div, and I quote, that is all happening as a co-pilot now. And I know it sounds like I may have

maybe misunderstood him. Maybe I read the transcription. I didn't actually. I listened to the whole thing. In fact, Manasowski, my producer, please play the clipping question. Is it all that happening as a,

co-pilot right now. Yeah, there's definitely not. Like, you definitely can't go say like, hey, chat GBT, VT, figure out new physics and expect that to work. So I think it is currently co-pilot-like. But I've heard, like, anecdotal reports from biologists where it's like, wow, it really did figure out an idea. I had to develop it a little bit more, but it made like a fundamental leap. Now, this is a nonsensical conversation, and both of them sound very, very stupid. To be clear, none of this is, like, poorly put into context. Like, they sound like, they sound like this for the entire 37 minutes, I didn't have to do anything. I didn't need to make many moves to make them sound like stupid dickheads. They sound like it on their own. Now let's go to some of

the more quotes. So, so this is going to make new science or make science faster? Asked Jack Altman. Yeah, I hear scientists are using AI to go faster, and citation needed there, Sammy. But if a human scientist goes three times faster, need another citation there, using my model, that would be good. Also, I heard from a guy that he heard a guy who did biology who said, this helped. And that's what Sam Hortman fucking said. Even reading back the transcript, I feel what little of my sanity remains kind of stripping away. All of this is so good and so phenomenal. Let's give this man $40 billion or more every year until he creates superintelligence. That'll fucking work. But I want to share with you some of the other incredible quotes from the genius mind of Sam Altman,

A person with the integrity of Deepak Chopra and the ability to spout inane vapid shit that sounds impressive to morons like, well, Deepak Chopra. You know, you hear these stories of people who like use AI to do market research and like figure out new products and then like email some manufacturer

and get some dumb thing made and sell it on Amazon and run ads. Like there are people that have actually figured out at small scale in the most boring ways possible how to like put a dollar into AI and get the AI to like run a toy business. But it's actually working. Yeah. So that'll climb the gradient.

Now you may wonder if the gradient is mentioned at some point elsewhere. It's not. But is another clip. So every year before the last like, maybe up until last year, I would have said like, hey, I think this is going to go really far, but it still seems like there's a lot that we've got to figure out. And is another clip. If something goes wrong, I would say,

like somehow it's that we build legitimate super intelligence, and it doesn't make the world much better. It doesn't change things as much as it sounds like it should. And just one more. So yeah, I think the relativistic point is really important, but like, you know, to us, our jobs feel incredibly important and stressful and satisfying. And if we're all just making better entertainment for each other in the future,

maybe that's kind of what at least one of us is doing right now. It's gobbudugook. It's nonsense. It's bullshit peddled by a guy who is, only the most tangential understanding of the technology's company's building that made him a billionaire. Every single interview with Sam Altman is like this. Every single one, ever since he became a prominent tech investor and founder, without fail, every time. And the sad part is that Sam Mortman is alone in this. Sundop is shy, when asked one of Nilai Patel's patented 100 word plus questions about Joni Ive and Sam Altman's new and likely heavily delayed hardware startup, had this to say.

I think AI is going to be bigger than the internet. There are going to be companies, products, categories created, which we aren't aware of today. So I think the future looks exciting. I think there's a lot of opportunity to innovate around hardware, form factors at this moment with this platform shift. So I'm looking forward to seeing what they do. We are going to be doing a lot as well. And I think it's an exciting time to be a consumer. It's an exciting time to be a developer.

So I think looking forward to it. The fuck are you on about Sundar? Your answer to a question about whether you anticipate more competition is to say, yeah, I think people are going to make shit we haven't come up with yet, and a hardware of some sort will be involved. Well, I think Peshire is likely a little bit smarter than Clammy Semi, in the same way that Satchan Adela is a little bit smarter that's under Peshai, and in the same way that a Golden Treva is smarter than the Chihuahua. Well, that's it.

None of these men are super-intelligencies, nor, when pressed, do they appear to have any actual answers or regular intelligences. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy. Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter.

Who's that worst singer in the group? The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, uh, you only got in the... Your parents made a huge donation. The group.

The yard herds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yard, but they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me.

I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart.

Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-8-4-4-I-Hart. Hey, I'm Deanna Maria Riva, actress, mother, lover, and a Gen X woman walking through life one hot flash and hormonal crying jag at a time. You ladies know what I mean. I'll bet you a perimenopausal chin here you do. So let's talk about it. Join me on my new podcast. How hard can it be with Deanna Maria Riva, where I call on my Gen X squads from Ohio to Hollywood as we navigate midlife's most fantastic BS. All of a sudden, I'd had hanginess happening on my own. I was like,

What the hell is that? I was married when I had her, so I didn't even consider how empty that Ness was going to be. Mood swings, night sweats, fupas, sex drive. Wait, what sex? Dating at 45. How hard can it be getting naked at 50 with the new guy? That one's kind of hard. Well, that's lighting.

They say we can't polish a turd, but we're sure going to try. So let's get blunt with laughs, tears, or tears of laughter, and dive into it, unfiltered and unbothered and ask, how hard can it be? I cannot believe I'm about to say. I'll say this out loud in public. Listen to How Hard Can It Be with Diana Maria Riva as part of My Cultura Podcast Network available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

American soccer is about to explode. The World Cup is coming. Ramos sending on an historic. I'm Tab Ramos. I'm Tom Bo. On our podcast, inside American soccer, you'll get the real storylines. I'm not worried about politic.

I'm not worried about balligan. I'm not worried about McKinney. My only concern is what happens in the back. The biggest decisions. If you're going to look at stats and numbers, he has no shot at making this World Cup team. And the truth about the U.S. national team. It wouldn't be a huge surprise if our team ends up in the quarterfinals

or potentially a great run into the semifinals. The World Cup is almost here. Experience it all with us. Listen, Inside American Soccer with Tom Bogart and Tabramos on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Now, if you've read the newsletter version of this episode, you'll come across a multi-paragraph answer from Satchin Nadella, when asked on Dwarkesh Patel's podcast,

how Microsoft will reach $130 billion in revenue from AGI. I'm not going to read it out here, and I don't hate you enough to include a clip. But the question was, how do you get Microsoft to $130 billion in revenue? And Satchin Nadello's answer is like 150 words, And it's like, abundance, explosion, GDP will grow, industrial revolution, inflation-adjusted percentages, the winners will be the people who do stuff and then productivity will go up. I will link to this interview in the episode notes, because it's fucking nonsense, just like the rest of them. And I have this idea, I have this concept I've come up with, and it's that we need to stop idolizing these speciously informed goobers.

Well, kind of souls or Zitron haters may hear this and say, um, actually, Satchezer, a down is very smart. Stop. I want you to stop there and I suggest that you have a smart person who comes along and tells you what smart sounds like. Because smart don't mean long words and nothing. It means actually knowing the shit you're talking about. And look, really, a truly smart person should be able to speak clearly enough that their intent is obvious and clear. Now, it's tempting to believe that there's some sort of intellectual barrier between you and the powerful. That these confusing and obtuse things they say, that's the sound of genius rather than somebody who has learned a lot of smart-sounding words without ever learning what

they mean. But Ed, they're trained to do this. I am someone who has media trained hundreds of people, and there's only so much you can do to steer someone's language. You can't say to Sundopichet, hey man, can you sound more confusing? You can, however, tell them what not to talk about and hope for the best. Sure, you can make him practice. Sure, you can give them feedback, but people past a certain stage of power or popularity are going to talk wherever they want. And if they're big, stupid idiots pretending to be smart, they're going to sound exactly like this. Why? Because nobody in the media ever asked them to explain themselves. When you've spent your entire career being asked friendly or friendly adjacent questions and never having someone say, wait, what does that mean?

You'll continue to mutate into a pseudo-communicator that spits out information adjacent bullshit. I am, to be clear, being very specific about the question, what does that mean? Powerful CEOs and founders never, ever, ever get asked to explain what they're saying, even when what they're saying barely resembles a sentence, let alone an answer. But let's get clear here. Let's think about a hypothetical scenario where your friend just said their dog died. You'd say something like, oh no, what happened? And they, let's say they responded with, well, my dog had a tragic, yeah, ultimately final distinction between their ideal and non-ideal stage due to the involvement of a kind of automatic mechanical device. And when that happened, we realized we'd have to move on

from the current paradigm of dog ownership and into a new era, which we both feel a great deal of emotion about and see the opportunities within. You'd probably be a little confused and ask them to explain what they meant. You'd ask, what do you mean by an automatic mechanical device? What does that mean? They'd then reply with, yeah, exactly, and that was part of the challenge. You see, like the various interactions we have in our day that are challenging, and we see a lot of opportunities in there sailing those challenges, but part of the road to getting around them is facing them head on, which is ultimately what happened here. And while we were involved, we didn't want to be. And so we had to make some dramatic changes. At this point, you still don't really know what happened. Did a car hit

their dog? Did they hit their dog with their car? In this scenario, would you nod and say, damn, man, that sucks. I'm glad I have such a smart friend. Don't know what happened their dog, though. Or would you ask them to explain what they're saying? Would you perhaps ask what it is they meant? Look, Pajai, Altman, Nadella, they've always given this kind of empty-brained intellectual slop in response to questions because the media coddles them. These people are product managers or management consultants, and in Altman's case, a savvy negotiator and a known for, and I quote, an absenteeism that rankled his peers in some of the startups he was supposed to nurture, as an investor at Wycombinator, according to the Washington Post.

And by Coddle, I mean that these people are deliberately engaging in a combination of detective work and amnesia, where the reader or the listener is forced to simultaneously try and divine the meaning of their answer, while also not thinking too hard about the question the interviewer asked, most importantly because the interviewer forgot already. Look at most modern business interviews. They involve a journalist asking a question, somebody giving an answer, and the journalist saying, okay, and moving on to the next question, occasionally saying, but what about this,

when the appropriate response to many of the answers is to ask them to simplify them so that their meaning is clearer. Look at them. Listen to them. Now, a common response to all of this stuff is to say that interviewers can't be antagonistic, and I just don't think a lot of people understand what that actually means. It isn't antagonistic to say that you don't understand what someone said, or that they didn't answer the question you asked. If this is antagonistic to you,

you are intellectually speaking a giant fucking coward, because what you're suggesting is that somebody cannot ask somebody to explain themselves, which is what an interview is. And I imagine nobody really wants to do this, because if you actually put these people on the spot, you'd realize the dark truth that I spoke of a few weeks ago, that the reason the powerful sound like idiots is because they're idiots. They sound like business idiots and create products to sell to business idiots because business idiots run most companies and by solutions based on what the last business idiot told them. Now I know some of you might hear this and say, these people can't be stupid. These people run companies. They make big deals. They read all these books and my answer is that

some of the stupidest people I have met in my life have read more books than you or I will read in a lifetime. Well, they might sound smart or they might be smart when it comes to corporate chess moves or saying this product category should do this. None of these men, not Altman, but Shire and the Della, actually has a hand in the design or the creation of the things that their companies make, and they never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever have. Regardless, though, I have a larger point. I believe it's high time we started mocking these people and tearing down their legends as geniuses. They're not better than us, nor are they responsible for anything that their companies build other than their share price, which is a meaningless figure, and the accumulation of power and resources.

These men are neither smart nor intellectually superior and it's time to start treating them as such. These people are powerful because they have names that are protected by the press. They are powerful because it is seen as a kind of unseemly to mock them because they're rich and running a company, a kind of corporate fealty that I find deeply unbecoming of an adult. We are at most customers. We do not owe these people anything. We are long past the point when any of the people running these companies actually invented anything they sell. If anything, they owe us something because they're selling us a product, even if said product is free and monetized by advertising.

While reporters, as anyone, should have some degree of professionalism in interviews or covering subjects, there's no reason to treat these people as special, even if they have managed to raise a lot of money or their popular product is used by a lot of people. Because if that were the case, we'd have far more coverage of defence contractor Lockheed Martin. They made $1.71 billion in profit last quarter, and haven't had a single quarter under a billion dollars in the last year. year. I realize of being a little glib, but the logic behind covering OpenAI is at this point they make a lot of money and they have a popular product, which is also a fitting description of Lockheed Martin. The difference is that OpenAI has a consumer product that loses billions of dollars, and Lockheed Martin is products that make billions of dollars by removing consumers from the earth.

Both of them are environmentally destructive. Covering Open AI doesn't seem to be about the tech, because if you looked at the tech, you'd have to understand the tech. You'd see that the user numbers weren't there outside of the 500 million people using chat GPD, and of course referring to the generative AI industry. And of those 500 million people, very few are actually paying for the product, and that the term user encompasses everything from the most occasional person who looks at chatGPT.com out of curiosity or the people using it as part of their daily lives. If covering open AI was about the tech, you'd read about how the tech itself doesn't seem to

have a ton of mass market use cases, and that those use cases aren't really the kind of things that people pay for. If they did, there'd be articles that definitively discussed them versus articles in the New York Times about everybody using AI that boiled down to I use chat GPT as search now, and I heard a guy who asked it to teach him about modern art. Yet man like Wario, Dario Amaday and clammy Sam Altman continue to be elevated because they're building the future, even if they don't seem to have built it yet, or have the ability to clearly articulate what the future actually looks like. Anthropic has now put out multiple stories, suggesting that its generative AI will blackmail people as a means of stopping use and from turning off the system, something which is so

obviously the company prompting its models to do so. Every member of the media covering this uncritically should feel ashamed of themselves. Sadly, this is all the result of the halo effect of being a guy who raised money, or a guy who runs big company. We must, as human beings, assume these people are smart, that they've never mislead us, because if we accept that they aren't smart and they will willingly mislead us, we'd have to accept that the powerful are, well, bad, and possibly unremarkable assholes. And if they're untrustworthy people that don't seem to be smart, we have to accept that the world is deeply unfair and caters to people like them, far more than it caters to people like us. We do not owe Satchin and Della any respect just because he's the

CEO of Microsoft. If anything, we should show him outright scorn for the state of Microsoft's products. Microsoft Teams is an insulting mess that only sometimes works, leaving workers spending 57% of their time either in Teams chat, teams meetings, or sending emails according to a Microsoft's study. MSN.com is an abomination read by hundreds of millions of people a month, bloated with intrusive advertisements, attempts to trick you into downloading an app and quasi-content that may or may not be AI generated. There are few products on the modern internet that show more contempt for the user, other than of course the former Skype, a product that Microsoft lit languish for more than a decade, so thoroughly engorged with spam that leaving it unattended

for more than a month left you with 100 unread messages from Eastern European romance scammers. and Microsoft has finally killed it in May. Great jobs, sature, you fucking plat. Anyway, products like Word and Excel don't need improving, but that doesn't stop Microsoft from trying to bloat them with odd user interface choices and forcing users to fight with prop-ups that use an AI-powered co-pilot than most of them hate.

Why exactly am I meant to show these people respect? Because they run a company that provides a continually disintegrating service, because that service is such a powerful monopoly that it's difficult to leave it, if you're interacting with other people or businesses? I think it's because we live in hell. The modern tech ecosystem is utterly vile. Every single day our tech breaks in new and inventive ways.

Our iPhones resetting at random apps, not accepting button presses, our Bluetooth disconnecting, our word processors harassing us to try and use AI while no longer offering us suggestions for typos, and I'm referring to Google Docs, you're not insane, it's happening. And our useful products replaced with useless shit,

like how Google's previously functional assistance were replaced with generative AI that makes them tangibly worse, so that Google can claim that they have 350 million monthly active users on fucking Gemini. Yet the tech and the business media acts like everything is fine. It isn't fine. It's all really fucked. You can call me a cynic or a pessimist or throw trash at me or throw tomatoes or try and hose me down when I go outside or call me every name under the sun. But the stakes have never been higher and the damage never more widespread.

Everything feels broken and covering these companies as if it is and is insulting to your readers and your own intelligence. Look at the state of your computer or phone and tell me anything feels congruent or intentional rather than an endless battle of incentives. Look at the notifications on your phone and count the number of them that have absolutely nothing to do with information you actively need. Another podcast from some SNL, late night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter. There's the worst singer in the group.

The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yarn birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yard.

They're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Human me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again.

More Americans listen to podcasts than add-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com.

That's iHeartadvertising.com. Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and IHart Podcast presents soccer moms. So I'm Leanne. Yeah. This is my best friend, Janet. Hey. And we have been joined at the Hiport. since high school.

Absolutely. Now a redacted amount of years later. We're still joined at the hip. Just a little bit bigger hips, wider. This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey. With all the snacks and drinks. Sidebar.

Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer? Oh, they had a bogo. Well, then you got it. Do you want a white claw or something here? Just hit it. What are y'all doing? Microphones? Are you making a rap album?

Oh, I would. Come on. Could you imagine? I would buy it. Cutts through the defense like a hot knife through sponge cake. That sounds delicious. Oh, you're lucky. I'm not a drug addict.

You're lucky I'm not an alcoholic. You are. I'm lucky I'm not a killer. I love this team and I'm really trying to be a figure in their lives that they can rely on. Oh. Listen to soccer moms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Deanna Maria Riva. actress, mother, lover, and a Gen X woman walking through life one hot flash and hormonal crying

jag at a time. You ladies know what I mean. I'll bet you a paramedipausal chin here you do. So let's talk about it. Join me on my new podcast. How hard can it be with the Adamia Riva, where I call on my Gen X squads from Ohio to Hollywood as we navigate midlife's most fantastic BS. All of a sudden I'd had hanginess happening on my own. I was like, what the hell is that? I was married when I had so I didn't even consider how empty that nest was going to be. Mood swings, night sweats, fupas, sex drive. Wait, what sex? Dating at 45. How hard can it be getting naked at 50 with the new guy?

That one's kind of hard, no. Well, that's lighting. They say we can't polish a turd, but we're sure going to try. So let's get blunt with laughs, tears, or tears of laughter, and dive into it unfiltered and unbothered and ask, how hard can it be? I cannot believe I'm about to say this out loud in public. Listen to how hard can it be with Diana Maria Riva,

as part of my Cultura Podcast Network available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Now, as I wrote the newsletter version of this and this script, I got a bunch of notifications, and I'm going to recount them because most of them are still on my phone. I have a notification from Adobe Lightroom, an app I use occasionally to edit photos

that tells me to elevate any scene, now enhance people, skywater, and more with quick actions. I don't know. Zero cam, an app that brands itself as the first anti-AI, camera app where you capture moments not megapixels and got a ton of press about being this stripped down app, sent me a notification asking if I took a photo today. Amazon notified me that there's a deal, picked just for me, a battery pack that I bought several months ago. Every single company that sends notifications like these should be mocked and possibly put in prison, but if we have accepted

such vile conditions as the norm, I just believe that society is kind of lost. Apple should be tariffen feathered for allowing companies to send spam notifications, yet they're not because by and large Apple is less vile and exploitative than Microsoft, Google and Amazon, who also get pretty much a free ride. Now, if you're listening to this as a member of the Tech Press, seriously, please look at your daily experience with tech, I'm begging you. Count the number of times that your day or a task is interrupted by poorly designed software or hardware, such as the many, many times Zoom or Teams is a problem with Bluetooth, or a website just doesn't load. Like, sometimes Google, you type Google.com into the bar and it just doesn't load.

This also happens with other websites. Like, type something into your browser. It just doesn't work. It just happens. So cool. How about when software you're either using either actively impedes you, like, did you want to use AI, or just refuses to work in a logical way, such as Google Drive? Look at this.

You're covering tech, right? Maybe you should cover that the tech ain't working so good. There are tens of thousands of stories like this every day. And if you talk to actual people, you'd see how widespread. it is or maybe, I don't know, see that it's happening to you? Look, I'm not trying to call anyone out, which is why I'm not using specific names. But there are people responsible here, and the tech media writes about them every day. I realize it seems weird to constantly vent that a company is releasing broken,

convoluted software, but hey, if you can write 300,000 stories about how crime-ridden New York City is, why can't we write three of them about how fucked Microsoft offices or Google searches, or even just one, like one a month, one. And why can't we talk to the people in power about it? Why can't we ask them questions? Is it because the questions are too hard to ask? Is it because it feels icky to interrupt Sachin and Della as he waffles on about using co-pilot his entire life by saying, hey man, Microsoft Teams is broken, tons of people feel this way, why is it so fucked, or why have you let MSN.com turn into an AI slop hub or just a, hub of disinformation. Oh no, you say, oh no, I won't get my access. Oh, I'm going to lose my access.

Who gives a shit? Write a story about how Microsoft has become so unbelievably profitable as its products get worse and talk about how weird and bad that is from the world. Ask the dell of those tough questions or published at Microsoft's PR won't let you. These people are neither articulate nor wise, and whatever intelligence they may claim to add doesn't seem to manifest in good products or even intelligent statements. So why treat them like they're smart? Why show them any deference or pleasantries? These people have crapped up our digital lives at scale and they deserve contempt, or at least a stern fucking reception. I realize I'm repeating myself again and again and again. But why is there such a halo around these fucking bozos? I'm serious. Why are we so protective of these people?

Why? We're more than happy to criticize celebrities, musicians, professional sports players and politicians, fucking barely. But the business. class is somehow protected outside of the usual willingness to say that Elon Musk might have maybe done something wrong. I'm also not denying there are critics. We have Molly White, we've got Edward on Guaso Jr., Brian Merchant, and at a major outlet, no less, CNN, one of the greatest living business writers in Atlas and Morrow. I believe that tech criticism is a barely explored and hugely profitable industry if we treat tech journalism less like the society pages and more like a force to hold the most powerful people in the world accountable as they continually harm billions of people in

subtle ways. People are angry and they aren't stupid and they want to see that anger reflected in the stories they read. And the meek deference we show to the dumb fucking tech assholes is the opposite of that. As I've said before, we live in an era of digital tinnitus, nagged by notifications, warring with software ostensibly built for us that acts as if we're the enemy. And if we're the enemy, we should treat those building this software as the enemy in return. We're their customers, and they failed us. The entire approach to business owners in the tech media is ridiculous. These people are selling us a product and the product fucking sucks. Put aside however you feel about generative AI for a second and face one, very simple point. It doesn't do enough. It's really not

cool at all and we're all being forced to use it rather than the obvious benefits that everyone claims it has, just making us do so. Now I realize some members of the tech media may want these people to succeed or want to be the person who tells everybody that they did so. I get that there are rewards for you, promotions, new positions, TV appearances, repeating exactly what the powerful did and why they did it, were a plush role as a. a company's head of communications, but I am telling you your readers and viewers are waking up to it, and they feel like you have contempt for them and contempt for the truth. It's easy and common to try and dismiss my work as some sort of haters bullshit, a cynical approach to a tech industry that's

trying brave new things or some other such shit. In my opinion, there's nothing more cynical than watching billions of people get shipped, increasingly shitty and expensive solutions, and they get defensive of the people shipping them and hostile to the people who are complaining and that the products they use suck. I'm angry at these companies because they have at scale torn down a tech industry that allowed me to be who I am today, and their intentional and disgraceful moves feel me for the disgust. I've watched the tech media move away from covering technology and more toward covering the people

behind technology, to the point that the actual outputs, the software and the hardware we use every day, have taken a backseat to stories about whether or not Elon Musk's user uses a computer, which is meaningless empty gossip journalism built to be shared by peers and nothing else. And please, please do not talk to me about optimism. If you are blindly saying that everything OpenAI does is cool and awesome and interesting, you aren't being optimistic, you're telling other people to be optimistic about a company's success. It isn't optimistic to believe that a company is going to build powerful AI despite it failing to do so.

It's propaganda, and yes, this is also the case if you simply don't do the research to form a real opinion. I am not a pessimist because I criticize these companies, and framing me as one is cowardly and incredibly. If you're so weak-willed and speciously informed it, you can't see somebody criticizing a company without outright dismissing them as a hater or a pessimist, you're an insult to journalism or analysis and you know it in your wretched little heart. My art sings with a firm belief in the things I think, founded on rigorous structures of knowledge that I've gained from reading things and talking to people, because something in me is incapable of being swayed by something just because everybody else is. You're assuming people are right because it's inconvenient and uncomfortable to accept that they may not. be, because doing so requires you to reckon with a market-wide hysteria founded on desperation and a lack of hypergrowth markets left in the tech industry.

Worse still, in engaging with faux optimism, you are failing to protect your readers in the general public. And if that's what you want to do, ask yourself why? Why do you want these companies to win? What is it you want them to win? Do you want them to be rich? Do you want to be the person that told people they would be first? What is it that you want?

What is the world you want and what does it look like and how does doing your job in this way work towards creating that world? This isn't optimism. It's horse trading or strategic alignment behind powerful entities. It is choosing a side because your side isn't the reader of the truth. If it was, even if you believe generative AI was powerful and that they simply didn't understand, your duty would be to educate the reader in a clear, certain obvious way. And if you can't find a way to do so, acknowledging that and explaining why. True optimism requires you to have a deep, meaningful understanding of things so that you can engage in real hope, a magical feeling, one that could bore you through the most challenging times. What many claim is optimism is actually blind faith, the likes of which you'll see at a roulette or a craps table.

Or, of course, knowingly peddling propaganda. Breathe, head, breathe. I can't get you behind the microphone. Anyway, we live in hell, as I've said before. Just like Churchill once said, when you're going through hell, keep going. You're in the middle of a good rant. Keep ranting. Chew into the next episode, where I will pick this right back up. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Mattersowski.

You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Mattisowski.com. M-A-T-T-O-S-K-I.com. You can email me at E-Z at Better Offline.com or visit Better Offline.com to find more podcast links and, of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat. Where's Your Ed.at? To visit the Discord and go to our slash Better Offline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media.

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