Better Offline - Monologue: How Better Offline Saved Me

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Starting point is 00:00:21 All-Zone Media. Hello and welcome to this week's Better Offline monologue. I'm your host, that's itchron. I could not for the life of me, work. what I wanted to talk about for this week's monologue. I'm a little burned out. And Robert and Sophie are telling me I should take a break sometime and I will at some point, everyone, I promise. But I was seeing and thinking last night about what I was going to do today and I ended up sketching out some thoughts. And I realized that this show genuinely helped me turn my life around.

Starting point is 00:00:59 It's a little dramatic, but I know, but BetRofline really truly helped me leave a very dark place I was in in April 24. I would argue it on some degree saved my life, and I will tell you how today. It's a monologue. You already had a great interview with Karen Howe this week. I'm going to give you a little schmaltz, a little bit of who I really am. And I worry this is ferociously self-involved or pretentious, but at least it's from the heart, right? So back when I started the show in early 2024, I was really lost as a person, but also as someone who would call themselves a creative. I'd agreed to do the show and knew I was capable of pushing out content, but my personal life had become, let's just say, very bad. I was in a bad situation, I was overweight, I was unhappy, therapy was kind of grinding at me, it didn't feel like it was changing anything because I was kind of in a depressive state where I didn't want to talk to anyone, which is why I wouldn't talk to my friends at all. And I had this fucking podcast I had to do that I loved the idea of, but I lacked confidence. I lacked the piss and vinegar you know me for today. day. And one day, as I struggled to work out what the fuck I was doing that week, I sat down to

Starting point is 00:02:09 write the script for an episode about Sheehan, which is a Chinese clothing giant that grew its brand entirely online. And it was coming up on my birthday, April 25th, and it's a day I really enjoy. So I was pushing myself to do something, anything, to get this episode off my plate and move on to planning the day, which was a few weeks out, that would end up being dog shit like it always was. And I was bought. I didn't care about Sheehan. I didn't care what I was. doing. I didn't think you would either. And I sat there thinking about whether or not I could realistically do better offline anymore or my newsletter or really end of this crap. And what can I say? My birthday kind of sucks. And it always kind of led me to a weird slump. But I was in one that day

Starting point is 00:02:47 anyway. I was really not in a great place. And if I'm honest, I was kind of spiraling. So I closed this Google Doc and I sat, teary-eyed, staring at the ceiling. Babu, my cat was on top of me. I was sat at this table and he shoved himself kind of on top of my knees, which he doesn't. does when he knows I'm hurting, which is lovely. And I sat there thinking about things, and I was drafting in my head something about not doing the newsletter anymore, and wondering how the fuck I was going to do 40 or so more episodes. I was really quite worried, and this was really largely due to my personal life. I'm three minutes into this, and I've just rambled about myself, but you know what? That's what the monologues for. And I looked at the time, and I realized I'd only written 800 words in two

Starting point is 00:03:29 hours. And I felt very bad about myself. I thought I don't care about Sheehan. And so I went to look at Google to see if I could find something, anything about the tech industry that would be more interesting to write about. And I saw immediately something that pissed me off, a site called TechGate that had ripped off a story from another site. And they'd entirely ripped it off. They'd copy-paced the entire thing, if not automate the entire thing. I was irate, not just because I was looking for something and this was making my life harder, but because Google was making money off of this. And in that moment, I realized that I needed to find out who did this.

Starting point is 00:04:03 I need to find the rat fuck that made this happen. I remembered a name I'd kind of touched upon in the previous newsletter that I'd only just drafted. Propagar Ragavam. And I realized I've said Propagar Ragavan over a hundred times in this show, but I really didn't know who he was at the time. So I sat. My eyes were red and puffy, and felt just like doom in every fiber of my being,

Starting point is 00:04:23 wondering how I'd tell Robert and Sophie that I needed to break weeks into the show. And I immediately discovered the story of the biggest shithead I've run into in tech, the man that destroyed Google Search. I discovered a man that had done unfathomable damage to the internet, and I kind of got a template for how bastards have ripped apart the tech industry in search of growth. It was, and it remains, the moment that the growth at all cost for rock economy actually made sense to me. Now, as you probably realize, they take a lot of my newsletter work and put it into the podcast, but the man that destroyed Google Search was the first time I've ever taken a script and made it into a newsletter. And this fundamentally changed how I write, because up

Starting point is 00:05:00 until literally that episode, my spoken voice and my written voice were different. I wrote in a probably a more balsy way than I talk. I was deeply unconfident with my voice. You can probably hear it in the first few episodes as well. You could tell. And this episode was very cathartic. And it was also the first moment I'd really felt proud of anything I'd worked on, which is an insane statement given the amount I've written and produced before then, I realized in this moment, too, that I'd been treating myself without much dignity or respect, and that things in my life had to change. The man that destroyed Google Search was my first real breakthrough piece and made me rethink how he looked at the world, in part because it showed me the scale at which one man's

Starting point is 00:05:42 selfishness can wreak such havoc. Maybe it's a little much to put this much meaning on a fucking podcast episode, but these monologues are where I get to have my fun and be a little much, something that I used to hate about myself, but at the very least have turned into a good career. Nevertheless, this breakthrough also pushed me to many other breakthroughs in my life and allowed me to fully emerge from a shell I'd been in since birth. Had I not chased down Prabagar Ragavan, I have no idea how I'd complete the first season of Better Offline, let alone reach the third, which I'm on right now. And the fact I won an award from this is completely insane. I don't even know how to express how happy it makes me. and I have a weird thing with being excited or being happy. You're learning a lot about me today, possibly too much.

Starting point is 00:06:26 But look, I've never felt understood by the world. And when I've looked upon the world through my own eyes, I've struggled to understand it myself. But in the last year of my work, I've found myself. I've found myself doing this show, my voice, my personality, my vigor, my anger, my fury, my love, my passion, all through trying to understand what the fuck is going on with the computer. It all sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud, but I think you like it. And my lack of confidence, even as I say this now,

Starting point is 00:06:55 because I've never been good at appearances. I've never been good at fitting in. And it took until 2024 for me to truly speak with confidence and it took me until like 2025 for me to even like how I looked or who I was as a person. I've never been good at pretending. I've never been able to fit into the little corporate management squares you're meant to other than my ability to be pleasant and conciliatory.

Starting point is 00:07:16 I can't deal with someone lying to me, which includes but isn't limited to people that bullshit me because they've decided that I'm stupid. I've never felt peer pressure because I've never felt popular, cool or important, nor do I feel smart. I do this show because I have to, as doing it has brought me some degree of salvation at times when I felt truly lost, brought me closer to people that I love and respect and allowed me to process the complex emotions, I experience reading about and understanding this stuff, and really understanding my childhood, which was largely based growing up online. I didn't have friends. I didn't really have things to do other than being online. It made me who I am,

Starting point is 00:07:51 but also made me kind of reflect on things each year as I saw the internet begin to crumble. But I really love doing this show, and I have no idea if this monologue is going to be something you care for. But I want you to know why I'm doing it. I want you to know who I am and what I am. Because this show has allowed me to express myself in a way that I've never allowed myself to. And as a result, has allowed me to become who I am and took me off a path that was equal parts dark and hopeless. Now I get to do a podcast where I call tech CEO's scumbags, pigs and shitheads, living the dream. And I am, albeit depressingly recently, extremely happy in my life, because of the work I get to do and the people it's led me to, and to the friendships I already

Starting point is 00:08:29 have that have deepened as a result. And hearing from all of you is wonderful too. I'm so lucky to be able to do this, but also that so many of you reach out with kind words, with funny things that you've found, or just stories that pissed you off too. It's genuinely magical. whatever the size of this community is, really grateful for it. I'm grateful that I get to do this and I'm grateful that I get to do these like five to ten minute long monologues

Starting point is 00:08:53 where I just share how I feel at random. So yeah, that's been this week's monologue. Next week we have a really fun interview with Giant Bomb coming up as well. Just did that. The show fucking rocks. Thank you for listening. Another podcast from some SNL

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Better Offline - Monologue: How Better Offline Saved Me

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