Hello Internet - Hello Internet Episode One Hundred

Episode Date: March 30, 2018

Grey and Brady discuss: tennis balls and necessary lies revisited, the first self-driving fatality and the future of (semi)autonomous cars, tattoos, bitmoji, the UK Nazi pug, and everyone's favorite social network: Facebook. Sponsors: Skillshare: Never stop learning. Learn new skills or improve your current ones with 18,000+ online classes at www.skillshare.com/hello - first 1000 people to sign up receive their first 2 months for $ 0.99 FreshBooks: Online invoicing made easy - get a free unrestricted 30-day trial at FreshBooks.com/hello and enter "Hello" in the how did you hear about us section Backblaze: Online backup for $5/month - get a fully-featured 15 day free trial at backblaze.com/hellointernet Listeners like YOU on Patreon Show Notes: Discuss this episode on the reddit Roger Federer on tennis balls Uber Self-Driving Car Pedestrian Kills Pedestrian HI tattoo Hello Fish Tattoo regrets bitmoji Brady Bitmoji The Producers Springtime for Hitler Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue, by Ryan Holiday Grey's super-active, semi-abandoned Facebook page

Hi, this is Dirk from Verita... I can't even do it. Oh my god. Here we go. Here we go. This is Dirk from Veristablium, and you're listening to the 100th episode of Hello Internet. Maybe it's time to stop making fun of my name. Green versus yellow tennis balls. Yep. This has become quite the thing. Yeah. I've seen a little bit of this on my Twitter timeline. So for people who don't know, I'll do the quick background.

Gray and his wife had a little marital discussion about whether tennis balls were green or yellow, which caused Gray to do a little tweet poll about it. Do you think tennis balls are green or yellow? Lots of people got into it. It got lots of votes. It even got a little bit of media coverage, which was quite funny. And we discussed it on Hello Internet. And it was really interesting what happened as a result

of the Hello Internet discussion. There was lots of Tim foolery. There were several scientific studies done. I don't know if you've seen the one there I've popped in the show notes where someone actually took my advice and measured the light spectrum from lime, from lemon, and from a tennis ball to see which it was closer to. And so, you know, they wrote up a little scientific report and many a laugh was had, and that could have been the end of it. Except that one listener,

I think he must've found out that his girlfriend and his girlfriend's father were going to the tennis. So he decided to tell them, oh, I listened to this podcast. They were talking about whether tennis balls are green or yellow. And the father, who is not a Tim, who is just the father of a girl whose boyfriend listens to Hallyu Internet, was quite taken by this. And the next day he found himself in a little gaggle of people who were waiting to meet and get autographs from quite possibly the greatest tennis player ever,

current world number one tennis player, although he's about to just go back down to number two, but I think he's the greatest tennis player ever, Roger Federer. They were all waiting for Roger Federer to walk past between whatever matches he was playing, sign a couple of autographs and whisk away. And while he was signing these autographs this dad calls out roger are tennis balls green or yellow and amongst all like the confusion roger federer the question just suddenly took him and he looked up and he went i think he said something along the lines of the yellow aren't they and then a few other people in the crowd went yeah yeah they're yellow and this guy the dad who was filming this with his mobile phone said i I think they're green, but lots of other people think they're yellow.

And then Roger Federer said, no, no, they're yellow. And then walked off. That in itself, I think, was a great Hello Internet moment. And I declared then and there that this Tim's girlfriend's dad is going to get a Hello Internet Medal of Honor. Is that legal? He doesn't even listen to the show, but you're thinking... Nah, he's getting one. He's getting one one and he's what, within enough degrees of separation from the initiating

incident that he's going to get a medal. It's never been written anywhere that you have to be a listener to get a Medal of Honor. I imagine it helps. I mean, to be fair, I don't think we have anything written anywhere about how anything works, but yes, that's true. We haven't written down rules about how the medals work. No. A lot of people said that I shouldn't be just giving them willy nilly and I needed your approval. But even if you said no to this, I would say too bad. He's getting one. This is what happens, people. Could I stop him? No. Often I could not. I could not. Would you stop me is the question. You wouldn't veto this one, surely. This is a great moment. Having the greatest tennis player in history weigh in on this minor squabble about the color of tennis balls.

I certainly could disagree with you. One, you send me a video and from my perspective, it's some guy in a crowd is commenting on the tennis ball thing, right? And it's like, oh, okay, great. I feel like the medals should be going to actual listeners of the show. So I do feel like I can disagree with you, but I just, you seem so tickled by this that I know there's nothing I can do to stop you from simply mailing out one of these medals to a guy who's going to be very surprised to just get a box that's an award that he has no idea about. It would be the second one awarded. Look, I see what you mean about you have to be a listener, like you have to be a citizen of a certain country to win certain

honors. But I think medals of honor generally are just for the furtherance of the greatness of Hello Internet. And this definitely has furthered the cause in a very special way to me. So I thought it was fantastic. I thought it was absolutely fantastic. I had a right laugh at it. And that could have been it. Just so you understand, I know you don't really appreciate who Roger Federer is. This is the equivalent of, say, instead of tennis balls, you and your wife had been discussing something about Mr. Chomper's ears. You couldn't decide something about his ears or not. And then someone went and got an official comment from Charles Darwin about it. This is what it is to me. This is the level of greatness in the field.

This is the Charles Darwin or Isaac Newton of tennis. He just happens to be alive. This means that I'm officially right in your eyes? Is that how this works? Well, that's another issue. I'll tell you another thing, though, about Roger Federer that you may not appreciate. But you know how there are certain things on the internet that you don't mess with because everyone will jump on you, like electric fences, because they have really zealous followers. Roger Federer is one of those things. I was about to say, can you give me

an example of things that you don't mess with on the internet, Brady? Like what are beehives you are not supposed to poke with sticks? You're normally the one who tells me, so you know more about them than me. You're the one who says, no, we're not talking about that. I have never said such a thing, Brady. Criticizing Roger Federer is such a beehive. Never criticize Roger Federer because his fans, known as the Fedheads,

are very zealous. This is like tennis Logan Paulers. Is that what this is? Like, I'll make jokes about Elon Musk till the cows come home, but I'm not saying anything bad about Roger Federer. Are his fans so annoying that you don't want to like him, Brady? Is that one of these situations? No comment. No comment from Brady at all. So anyway, after Roger Federer weighed in on the debate, this story, for lack of a better word, completely blew up

and went absolutely everywhere. Like the Today Show in America, it was in all the newspapers, it was on all the websites, it was all over the BBC, our tennis balls, yellow or green, for like a day and a half or two days became an absolute obsession, a media obsession. Any mention of Grey and his wife where it all started or hello internet had completely vanished from existence lots of tims were upset about this they were like oh they're not mentioning gray and they're not mentioning hello internet like

that's just what happens with these things yeah but it became absolutely massive you couldn't look anywhere without it coming up do you care or are you relieved that you kind of got pushed out of the story? I mean, you kept sending me more and more things from news stories about where it was being posted. And the number one thing, no, I don't feel like I need to be credited that I worded a tweet that was a discussion about my wife and I and tennis ball. Like that is the kind of thing on the internet that trying to have any kind of ownership of that is just like an insanity, right? Like, so I want to be really clear. I would have no expectations that by the time this thing gets pattern matched up to good morning America, that good morning America is like great, and his wife were having a discussion

about tennis balls, right? Like, I would not expect that. But I did have this different feeling where I kind of did not like you keeping sending me these articles where you're like, oh, look, it's over here now. Oh, look, it's over here now. I only sent like three or four.

I think it was three or 400. It felt like a lot. It was not. I will let you continue, but you are doing me a disservice here. It was not that many. It was three or four. It wasn't that many, but you are doing me a disservice here. It was not that many. It was three or four. It wasn't that many, but it was also on Twitter. Like people just kept sending me like,

hey, look, the thing is over here. Okay. So there is also a way where I feel like, how can I say this thing without sounding like the world's most jaded asshole? I think that boat's sailing, mate. Yeah, no, it's totally gone. But there's a thing where people want you to be happy that this thing that you started has spread far and wide throughout the news media. And my response to this is not a kind of happiness. It's just like enough of these things have happened over the years.

I've seen this happen with other people enough over the years that this is just like a pattern. And I feel like this is what the media machine does like they're looking for things that they know are going to get them views and attention and they will just repeat and pattern amplify that and copy the others what the others are doing yeah and copy the others but they copy the others in this like battle of the memes for attention of who's watching tv and any kind of thing like this where you can divide people in teams like it's going to spread. But my feeling people are like,

oh, aren't you excited? Like it made the New York Times is like not exciting. This is like literally the job of these companies is to find things that will get people's attention and to pattern amplify them across time. So I almost felt like, oh, this thing that was fun for the podcast, now it is everywhere in the world. And it's just been pattern amplified all over the place. It was a strange thing to see this spread across the internet. But that's what happens. Catchy ideas spread.

It would be definitionally impossible for them not to spread. But that's how these things go. They spread across the internet very fast and very far. Just to be clear, I wasn't sending you those things because I wanted you to be like excited or happy or proud. I was winding you up, basically, because I know how much you hate the media. So the fact that like, you and your wife just, you know, chatting about tennis balls for 10 minutes in your house can make it as a news story in the times of london yeah like i expect you to see that and go oh my god what world do i live in i'm sending that to you to like poke the grumpy old man and get him more upset about news not like well done you should be proud you've made it yeah i know that's

100 what you're doing which is also why br, you may have noticed you got very few responses from me. Brady sends the articles through and is like, I say nothing back, right? I'm not going to reply because I know you're trying to wind me up, right? That's why I CC your wife into the messages as well, because she's polite and replies. And she was also getting a bit wound up. And I happened to be away while this was going on and you were group messaging my wife and replies. And she was also getting a bit wound up. And I happened to be away while this was going on and you were group messaging my wife and I. And I was busy, but I came very, very close

to sending my wife a message, which would have been something along the lines of like, don't keep replying to Brady, you're just encouraging him. Because she was all like, this is tweet booting, right? This is outrageous. She was just playing. She was being fun. She got the joke.

But yeah, no, of course, of course. I know you're trying to wind me up and it fits exactly in like the gray checklist of not media hatred, but media sadness, disappointment, a little bit of despisal. I'm not angry at the media. I'm disappointed. Yeah, I'm disappointed. And next time you want to tell me about the brave fourth estate protecting our democracy from all sorts of ills, I will remind you that they spent lots of time on whether or not tennis balls are green or yellow. Can't argue with that. I know we talk about how I will sometimes cut things that you say from the show, segments that I find boring, sports ball corners sometimes.

But I have to say that last episode, I did have a real crisis of confidence of if I should even put up that section about necessary lies of society. There was something about it that just felt like, I don't know if I really want to open this door publicly. I really did think about it. Like, should we put up this little section?

We're not really saying anything that's terrible in here. This is not like a brand new idea that has never been released into the world. But there was something about it that I felt a little bit uncomfortable about. But once the show was up, then I immediately asked on Twitter, like, hey, everybody, tell me your necessary lies to keep civilization together. Because like, well, when it's out here, let's just double down. And it's interesting because I think I got back many terrible answers and that people would just say things that like are phrases that you hear that simply aren't true. So I'm trying to think about how to define more clearly this idea of like a necessary lie of civilization. And I think your one just then as the transition is totally true. Like cheaters never win is a kind of civilization propaganda that we have to try to get people on board with, even though it's not true.

Anyway, so there were a bunch of answers that I thought were not really good or just like aphorisms. But I think the best answer that I got was from Greed Grow on Reddit. And the necessary lie is that violence is not the answer or violence is not the solution. Man, that is a really great necessary lie of civilization. It's almost definitionally there to keep civilization together. That like civilization is the resolution of problems without having to resort to violence. And that feels like a real ground level kind of agreement that there are plenty of things that you could probably try to solve with violence, but we all have to agree together that like we're not going to resort to this tool

and we have to agree that like this keeps things together. Like we're not going to resort to violence as a solution, but it's like, there are plenty of situations where we use violence as a solution. We have wars, right? Or it's like, we pay police like to essentially force things to occur. So I really like that as an answer for a necessary lie of civilization is like, we teach kids like violence is not the answer.

Violence is not the solution. And it often can be, but we just, we can't resort to it. Otherwise, we'll be a bunch of chimps tearing each other apart. So violence isn't the solution then, because ultimately, we tear each other apart. Violence is not the solution if everyone uses violence. Violence can be a solution if a select few people use it. Yeah, that's really getting to the core of, like we were talking last time, like the psychopathy school of like, oh, we pull some people apart and we say like, hey, here's some things you

might want to know that are actually true. Like you're going to be very successful or very terrible people. And being willing to resort to violence is one of those things. It's like if everybody does this, civilization falls apart, which is why it's a necessary lie. But like on an individual basis, it can kind of work. The thing it made me think about, which again, it's like, oh God, I don't even want to say it out loud. When I was in middle school and like on the edge of being a kid who was about to be bullied a little bit.

And, you know, the adults tell you, it's like, oh, I'll ignore the situation. You know, don't do anything. Bullies just feel bad about themselves, which is also like a weird lie. Like you hear all of this advice. And my experience as a kid was nothing stopped the beginning of bullying faster than adding a little bit of violence into the solution. What did you do, Gray? Because my question I was going to ask you was, have you ever used violence as a solution? And I thought, there's no way he'd answer that. And you've just offered it up. Well, your criminal past. And I thought, there's no way he'd answer that. And you've just offered it up. Well.

Your criminal past. It's not criminal. It's self-defense. What did you do? Did you punch someone? A bully? Did you punch a bully? Look, I don't even really want to get into the details, right?

It sounds cooler if you don't tell anyway, because we can imagine something more awesome. I don't know. Look, here's the thing. The reason why I would be like a potential bullying target is because I wasn't like a big buff kid or anything like shock surprise. Younger Gray was kind of a nerd, right? Like total surprise. I'm sure to absolutely everybody. Oh, you mean he wasn't quarterback at the school football team?

Yeah, that's not the image of how it was. So you just had to, you laid down a marker once. You laid down a marker. And the trick is you have to be able to convince the other person that retaliation will be unreasonably large. Again, I don't want to say these things out now, Brady, why do I say them into the microphone? But it's just you and me here. When I was a teacher, I would just see it like i had the interesting experience of teaching at mixed schools with both boys and girls teaching at girl-only schools and teaching at boy-only schools like it was really interesting as an adult to see this like from a different perspective and it's like oh there's a couple of lessons that i learned there like lesson number one is high school is even more awful like viewing it from the perspective as an adult than it was as a kid.

But it's like, oh, okay, I can see that none of the boys make it through school without being subjected to some kind of physical violence. And none of the girls make it through school without being subjected to some kind of psychological violence from each other. It's like, it's just so obvious. I like that violence is not the answer or the solution one.

I feel like that was just a really, really great answer to this question. And I'll be sure to cut or dramatically cut down this section. Don't let me leave it up, Brady. Don't let me leave it up. We're going to tear the world apart. I don't mean to. Hello, hello, internet listeners. Is there something that you want to learn?

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So thanks to Skillshare for supporting Hello Internet, and thanks to Skillshare for teaching people the skills they can use to make their lives better. A thing has happened, which we all know we have been waiting for it to happen. A bad thing that was inevitable, which is we have had now the first death as a result of a self-driving car. As in hitting a pedestrian, because people have died in their own cars already. There have been a bunch of these leading up incidences, I think some of which we've even talked about

on the show in the past, where someone is in a car and they're not paying attention, or there's accidents. But this is one where it was Uber testing a fully autonomous self-driving car and there was someone behind the wheel who was just like keeping an eye on the equipment and a pedestrian walking a bicycle across the street got hit by the uber and died and this to me is like the first like clearest example of someone has died from a self-driving car that was being autonomous.

And it's a car that is designed to be autonomous in the way that we're all thinking about, as opposed to the malfunction of a system, which is much more like an assistive driving system or like a lane maintaining system. Yeah. What do you think about this as a moment in time or as a news story that has occurred? It's a significant sort of moment, like in terms of being a milestone. I've seen footage of the accident and I've seen what a lot of people wrote about the accident. And like to look at it without knowing all the facts, like it does seem like this person was crossing the road in a way that wasn't like being super, super cautious. Like they did seem to be crossing the road in a way

that looked dangerous. But we're also told these self-driving cars can see everything off to the sides and know what's going on and predict these things. And so all the people who were saying, well, of course, no one could have avoided that. No human could have avoided it. How do we expect a self-driving car to avoid it? Well, I will hold self-driving cars to a higher standard,

but you can only hold them to so high a standard. If someone wants to die by jumping in front of a car, they can still do it with a self-driving car. So I think we have to realise people are still going to die at the hands of self-driving cars. I think this was just a milestone that was always going to happen. It'll slow things down. It does make me wonder if when the first person died from an actual car,

like, you know, back in the olden days, whether or not cars being on the road was stopped for like six months while people rethought the situation. Like, was it the same back then when the first pedestrian got hit by some five miles an hour automobile? Did everyone go, no, we can't have these things on the road and go up in arms? Well, there was no social media on which to share these stories. So like, who knows how information was spread back in those days of yore? Nobody. Nobody knows. I think it's interesting because this happened a little while ago.

And I remember when the first thing that could be even classified as a kind of accident with any self-driving occurred, which I think was like a Tesla system a couple years ago on the highway had an accident that became like the first story about this. thought it was interesting to see that that blew over relatively quickly and i feel like this story as well at least from the little bit i've been keeping an eye on it seems like it's blowing its way through the news cycle pretty quickly yeah i don't know if this is actually going to have any significant effect on the development of self-driving cars. You can find the video online that shows the camera in front of the car. And I agree that it's a case where no human driver could have possibly avoided that accident.

It's at nighttime. The woman walking the bicycle is walking across a highway where there's not a pedestrian intersection. And by the time she appears in the headlights, the accident is inevitable. Like there's no way, even if the car slammed on the brakes immediately, there's no way that you could possibly do it. But I feel like I don't need self-driving cars to be better than humans to be on the road? I feel like they just need to be equivalent to humans. That is my point of like, where can we start putting self-driving cars on the road? No, they need to be better. Okay. Why do they need to be better? And how much better? Because they need to be better because we're so bad at driving. Like our level is unacceptable,

basically. But they don't need to be infallible. They need to be more impressive than humans. And how could they not be? Because we're such bad drivers. They are already better. So I think this debate's already over. Yeah. I did see someone on Twitter make a joke or something like,

a self-driving car has killed one person today and people driving cars will kill 3,000 people today, right? Which is like, oh God. It's an unfair comparison in many ways, but I think it really does make a point that humans are terrible drivers. My feeling though is like, I'm happy with equivalency because I think the benefits that you get from the self-driving car then make that mental calculus of, is this better? It makes it clearly better even if the self-driving cars are only at human level. And I

feel like it's inevitable that they'll obviously keep improving over time. But you're right that it is a case where the story about the self-driving cars is like, oh, they have LIDAR, which looks in all directions and can see everything. It does raise the human expectation that like, oh, this car should always be able to see all pedestrians in all situations. I also wanted to mention this story because there's a thing that has been on my mind for a while with self-driving cars, which I find myself wondering, or maybe I should say re-evaluating my position on how fast this is actually going to occur. Because when I put out that humans need not apply video a few years ago, it felt like things were moving very quickly in the world of self-driving

technology and most people were not aware of it. And now that people know self-driving cars are a thing and that they exist and people are sort of waiting for self-driving cars, it feels like there has been just very, very slow progress in this field. And I wonder, like, is this a technology that is going through some kind of S-curve where there was no progress made for a long time and then in like the year 2000s things start to speed up and accelerate and then we hit like 2015 and it looks like the year 2000s, things start to speed up and accelerate. And then we hit like 2015 and it looks like, oh man, it's going to be here any day. And then all of a sudden it starts to really level off like the rate at which we're making progress in this area. And I do wonder if it is the case where it's a technological problem where the last 10 or 15 percent of the problem turns out to be you know 85 percent of

the actual work that getting a car to not quite human level is much much simpler than getting it to human level like getting it to that last 10 percent but i am aware that i feel like past me expected there to be more progress in self-driving cars by now than there actually are. And I feel like we've only seen the smallest scale tests of these things. So you think this last 15, 10% that we might be going through at the moment is purely going to be a technological hurdle? We haven't started running into the social and political side of things. You think it's all technology now. It's funny.

I didn't mention it because that is just not a thing that's even on my radar. I really just don't think that that is going to be any kind of significant barrier. I still think it is such a technological advantage if we can get it there, that there's no way that the places that say, oh, we're going to wait on self-driving cars. I feel like that is such a self-slowdown

that very few places will do that. Like it would be like banning cell phones because we're not quite sure how addictive they are yet. It's like, well, okay, good luck with that. But the rest of the world is going to totally leave you behind. And I think that, yeah, when we do get the self-driving cars, it'll be the same thing. That if some states or some countries say, hmm, we're going to hold off on this for a little while, it's going to be just such a tremendous economic advantage that they won't be able to do so. Fair enough. But yeah, I don't know.

I wonder if it's just going to take a lot longer than I expected. I hope it doesn't, but I'm a little worried that it might. Well, I'm finding every time I think it's going to take forever, it speeds up. And every time I think it's going to be tomorrow, it slows down. So I've given up altogether. I have this feeling almost like as soon as we publish this episode, again, it's going to be like, oh, and self-driving cars are here in three weeks. They're on sale, right? You can pre-order them now. I read an article in the paper this

morning that really disappointed me about self-driving cars though. They're talking about building into the interface for self-driving cars, things to keep people's attention, whether it's like, you know, games of Tetris or things like that, so that people will stay alert so they can take over the car in an emergency. That's not what I want my self-driving car to be. I want to be in the back reading the paper or working on my laptop. I don't want to have to be ready to take over in an emergency. That's an excellent point. And I think there is a way where we are actually in a little bit of a dangerous like local minimum right now with self-driving technology, because like my parents bought a

new car that has a lot of drive assistance stuff in it. So we can do things similar to like what Teslas will do, where you can tell it to stay in a lane and it will maintain its position within that lane on a highway, even if it goes around the corner. Or it will be able to, like you should, if you're trying to minimize the amount of traffic, like it'll keep an equidistance between the car in front of it and behind it on the highway. And it will do some limited accident avoidance stuff.

And it's very interesting to drive that and play around with that. But I really do think it does put humans in the worst situation where the car is good enough on the highway that you feel like you don't need to pay any attention at all, which must dramatically raise the possibility of an accident. Like I would love to see what the numbers are for what is the accident rate per 100,000 miles when lane maintenance is engaged on a highway. And I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if like minor traffic accidents go up because the person feels like I don't have to really pay attention. I can be doing something else. And I noticed that behavior in myself when I was driving that car. It's like, oh, I'm on the highway.

I feel much safer looking at my phone in a way that if I was driving a car without it, I feel like the phone doesn't exist for me if I'm driving a car without any assistance stuff. And I found myself like, oh, maybe I can just look at that text message and see what it was about. Or I want to change what podcast I'm listening to. I can flip over and do like a fiddly app switch on my phone right now because the car has got it on the highway. So I wouldn't be surprised if cars with that stuff are a little bit worse than cars without it. It's like, we need to push past here to get to exactly what you're talking about. Like I can sit in the back with a laptop and not have to care at all.

But if you need to have Tetris on the dashboard to keep a person mentally engaged, I think that's almost worse than not having that technology at all. There was a plane crash caused by a pilot basically saying these things can land themselves. I'll prove it and didn't look while landing and then crashed the plane and killed a bunch of people.

Pilots, no dares in the cockpit. No, no. We don't want that. That's no good. Gray, I've been going through the listener emails, you know, what people are doing, what people have to say and all that sort of stuff. I know you want to have the people feel like you're listening to them. You're looking through their feedback. I'm listening. I'm always listening.

Always listening. That's a little much. Well, no, not only when they want to be listened to and sometimes not then but go message for brady at gmail the number four is where these things should go and i will have a look from time to time including an email from ryan which was so interesting i sent him an email back asking for some more details and boy did he provide them. He wrote a very lengthy reply. Thank you very much, Ryan. But the main reason he caught my attention was he has gotten himself

a tattoo that I thought I should share with you. He already had tattoos and this is like he's kind of added this, as you'll see. I think these tattoos are sort of to reflect his interests. Sorry, I accidentally just sent them to my wife. Who found it really interesting and just replied with, oh, my God. Let me send them to you. I thought, why is Gray replying with, oh, my God,

and not just saying it out loud? I've decided that we should do this podcast via texting, Brady. There we go. Now, hopefully, you've got them too. Oh, my God. I've decided that we should do this podcast via texting, Brady. There we go. Now, hopefully you've got them too. Oh my God. We have a nail and gear tattoo that is connected to... Oh God.

Okay. USB symbol at the other end. And that's a representation of a certain kind of chemical connection, right? The hexagon with the three lines. Yeah. I mean, that card looks a bit like a benzene ring, but it can't be that because it's got a whole bunch of other stuff. I don't know what that is.

But yeah, so three symbols connected to each other, the nail and gear, the benzene ring, and the USB symbol. It's like a chemical compound that we don't know what it is. A USB symbol coming off it. And most recently, he's added quite a bold nail and gear to his inner arm. It looks very fresh, that nail and gear. Yeah. That picture you're looking at was very soon after it was done. He says, I really love the podcast. I'm a huge fan of you and Gray. The HO podcast got me through some tough times and I want my tattoos to be a sort of time capsule of what was important to me at each stage

in my life. It took about half an hour to have done. My friends liked the tattoo, although some of them got a bit confused when they asked me what the nailing gear was. And I went on a five minute tangent on a podcast about plane crashes and flags. So this is the thing, Brady. When you send me these, I get nervous. With the tattoos, there is definitely a way in which

I obviously think about tattoos in a different way than people who get tattoos think about tattoos. I think that way too. Yeah. Yeah. And even that comment from Ryan sums up what I've heard from a lot of people with tattoos where they want them as markers of a point in life. And I can't think about tattoos that way. I am tattoo-less, as I'm sure will be a surprise to no one in the world. It'll be a surprise to Ryan because he says in his longer

version of the email that he feels like he's on the same wavelength as you. Not about tattoos, though. Maybe just about other things. I feel like there's a lot of pressure all of a sudden, right? Because when someone puts a tattoo on their body and they say oh i love the show right now yeah what happens if you decide in the future that you're not such fans of us but nothing's ever going to change the fact he was a fan for i know i know this is exactly it like this is what I try to understand is this idea of it is a marker of a time. And so the future is not affecting the thing. Like tattoos, I feel like are the opposite of my mental framework. Because people who get tattoos, it does seem to be much more past focus. Like it's a marker of a thing that happened. And of course, I feel like I want nothing to do with the past. It doesn't exist anymore. I have no interest in it. It is gone. And it is only about the future. So when I look at tattoos, I can't not always mentally frame them from the perspective of what will future me think about this tattoo,

which then always leads me to the conclusion of, well, I don't have any idea what that guy is going to think about this. And then like, well, I can't make decisions for that guy in this way. So I'm like, I'm not going to get a tattoo. But when I've spoken to people who have tattoos and I try to explain my thinking about them, they look at me like I'm crazy and I clearly don't understand at all. So yeah. I mean, it can go wrong. I just sent you a tattoo that was doing the rounds quite recently that someone got a few days before all the news

stories broke about Kevin Spacey and he got a tattoo of Kevin Spacey on his arm. And then like, you know, all that stuff hit the fan. It's a bit like, oh, what does that mean now? That's the problem. There's a reason that most countries also decide that they are only going to put dead people on their money is to avoid this sort of problem. You don't want to put a living person on your money. And then that living person does something that you as a country don't like.

They start spilling the necessary lies of civilization. And they're like, oh no, we just put them on the $2 bill. I don't think Frank Underwood is a president you'd want to put on your American money anyway. So I think we were always going to be safe on that one. Well, Ryan's happy with it. He thinks it looks good.

And I think it looks good. It does look good. It does look good and we appreciate it. And we will try to keep this a podcast that is worthy of your tattoo. No, sorry, I shouldn't say that. That's what you don't want me to say isn't it can't say because no because look we're not going to be beholden to ryan that's not what's going to happen ryan we make no promises about the future quality of this show right brady feels happy about it i feel slightly uncomfortable

about it but i am glad that you are glad that's matters. You got to make decisions for you. You don't make decisions for me. Also, I had another photo from a viewer, a kind of what you do while listening to Hello Internet moment that really tickled me. Before I... Audrey, that's just, that's terrible. She's getting worse, Greg. She wants to be on the podcast.

But he is on the podcast. So here's one from Eden. I'm a student studying ecology. I'm currently working on research about differences in animal community structure that result from external factors around streams. One of the things this involves is collecting fish and measuring 24 different parts of the fish's body, which is amazing to me because I didn't know fish had 24 parts of their body. I tend to listen to podcasts while doing this as it is tedious work. Hello Internet is, of course, the world's greatest podcast, trademark. So I like to listen to you and Gray discuss those pesky flaggy flag ripples

while I work. I've attached slightly morbid proof of my claim. Keep up the work. So here's the picture the fish studier Eden has sent. Gross. I feel like I can smell all of those fish on that measuring tray through this photograph. That is a very fishy photograph. Nicely arranged in a pattern. We have some dead fish spelling out hi and some tiny little fish around a border making the hi logo all on a medical examining tray i love that i love that those little tiny little baby sardini ones make up the little dots of the border and the big fish make the letters i was originally going to say i don't believe this photograph because i don't see the mandatory

podcast logo in the image. And then it took me a second to resolve what I was actually looking at. Like, oh, right. The fish are the logo. I don't know what kind of fish they are, but they're freaky looking. Their eyes are scary. I think that's how things look when they're dead, Brady. You know, they passed on to the next realm and their eyes are all cloudy.

I've seen dead fish in the fish market and their eyes weren't as cold and dead as those ones. I'm very happy that people listen to the show. I'm happy that it gets them through tedious things in their life. And I'm happy that somewhere in the world, someone arranged a bunch of fish in a laboratory to spill out the HR logo. Sentences you'd never thought you'd say. Brady, when you bring stuff to me, especially when you bring stuff from listeners, I never know what's going to happen and i always feel slightly apprehensive nice sigh well yeah i'm sighing big because there is a plague that is spreading through the world brady and that plague's name is bitmoji yeah bitmoji yep and i know you know what bitmoji

are i know because you created one as well recently yeah i've had mine for a while i just never send it to you yeah because you know better yeah Yeah. I think that's why. Bitmoji, it's a company that's obviously decided regular emoji, not enough. And so what they allow you to do is you can create a little avatar of yourself and then this app will allow you to place that avatar in a bazillion situations. So it's like you're creating a custom emoji for

everything that's possible under the sun. Would you say that's a fair description of what the Bitmoji are? It's kind of fair. The only thing that's not fair about it, and I think this is a bit of a problem with the name maybe, is it's not like a replacement for emojis to me. It's just a different toy. It's just a different fun thing. Yeah, they're using the Apple sticker method. They're not really emoji. Like Bitmoji is a good name, but they're custom stickers.

But I think that when people use Bitmoji, they often start to displace the regular emoji. So what you could do, so people can better understand, if Gray said, let's meet at four o'clock and maybe I would send him an emoji of just a thumbs up instead i could send him this customized little brady that looks just like me riding a horse saying yes let's do it or something like that like these things are awful

they're terrible i would love to see one of you i'm gonna design one to look like you just to see if i can do it do not brady i am no i won't put it out there because it'll look so much like you that that would be unfair for spoilers, but I'm going to make one just as my own little project. Great. Have you tried to make one look like you? No, of course I haven't tried to make one look like me. I mean, look, here's this thing. These Bitmoji, they're just like a nightmare from an episode of Black Mirror. These are so close to the little avatars

in 15 Million Merits, which is still my favorite Black Mirror episode. I swear to God, when people send them to me, they make me sad. They really do. Like,

I was on a thread recently with a bunch of people and it's like, oh, it's supposed to be like a happy event and everybody's expressing their emotions through the Bitmoji. Maybe there's something wrong with me. But I feel like it sucks all of the genuine emotion out of the world. Like even emojis, regular emojis do this to some extent.

Yeah. Like without a doubt, like there's a way that they kind of suck out emotion in your expression but the bitmojis like more and more people are using them and because they're customizable for every situation you see them all the time and i'd like they make me sad and seeing people use them to express thoughts and it's like i hate them i hate them so much and they're creepy they're so creepy and i had to endure this longest hour of my life when my wife finally got sucked up in the bitmoji thing and she was creating her own bitmoji avatar she's good at them she's good at it she kept asking me does this one look more like me? I know that story.

Whenever she would show me one, it's like, that doesn't look like you. That looks like an uncanny valley nightmare version of you. The thing I don't get as well is that like almost all the women I know, their bitmojis look exactly the same. Whereas the men I know, like that kind of looks like them. And I don't know why that is. I can't figure out why it is. But like I know three or four women

who use Bitmoji all look the same. It could be any of them. Like my wife wasn't happy with hers. And I said, what do you think of mine? She's like, yes, yours looks just like you. Like angrily, she said. Like she was angry that I had more options or something. But I don't know why this has happened,

but it feels like it has happened. I'll tell you, that Bitmoji app is not short on options, though. My wife was doing this on the iPad so she could have like the full palette of everything that was possible. And I couldn't believe like the enormous number of options to be able to like... 19 different noses. Oh, 19. We would be blessed with but 19 noses to go through, right? There were hundreds of noses. She's like, is this one more like me or is this one more like me? Like, I don't like any of them. They all make me uncomfortable. It's all securely in the uncanny valley. Please never send this to me ever. It will make me sad. I don't like it. But they just keep spreading and people keep using them. I want them to go away, but they won't. It's too much. Like, it's too far. I feel like the constraint of but like 200 regular emojis is almost good for people.

It's like it's too adaptable. And then people use it for everything. And it makes me die a little inside every time I see one of them. Says the man who portrays himself publicly in videos with an animated stick figure and face and doing cute things. Yeah, in my YouTube videos, which are produced. Like I'm not, when we text Brady, I don't quickly in Inkscape whip together and exactly correct CGP Grey to be a response to everything that you do.

No, it's totally different. Don't even try to compare it like those things are the same. And also, I don't think the stick figure has like the creepy creepy dead eye uncanny valleyness of these bitmojis don't you agree with me aren't they unsettling in the way that they look no i don't agree with you they don't unsettle me go to bitmoji.com and look upon the nightmare that stares back at you from the top of that page i'm gonna make a cgp gray one i tell you what make a cgp gray one you actually physically cannot stop me like it's impossible i can't believe your wife didn't make one of you and said oh look i made one that looks like you because she respected my desires and she knows never to send me the bitmoji i don't even like

seeing her using the bitmoji talking with other people. I just like, I don't want to see them. They're creepy and they're weird. And my wife respects my desires, unlike my podcast co-host who's probably right now giggling on his phone, making a Bitmoji of me. I'm looking at the front page of the Bitmoji website and there's one that looks a bit like me. Maybe these are random. I have no idea which one you think looks like you. That really handsome one. The winking guy? Is that the one who you think looks like you? No, to the right, the far right. Don't you think that looks a bit like me? No, that doesn't look a bit like you. And if it did look like you, it would only

look like you in a nightmare world where we're all trapped and emotionally separated from each other, riding on bicycles all day long for pretend points. That's the way it would look like you. And that one on the left is the one that looks like all the people I know who use it. Generic brown hair girl. Bitmoji. Thumbs down. They're terrifying. Hello, Internet.

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slash hello and enter hello in the how did you hear about us section. This lets FreshBooks know that you came from us. So once again go to freshbooks.com slash hello and enter hello in the how did you hear about us section and get back many billable hours for your business. Let's go to a less controversial subject that won't upset you as much as Bitmoji Gray. Let's talk about Nazis. Brady. This is an interesting news story that's been doing the rounds. This caught your eye, didn't it? It did catch my eye. I feel like Bitmoji, Nazi pugs, things going on with Facebook, things going on with YouTube. I'm at a low point with my thoughts about people and the internet and what the internet

does to people and vice versa. It's all a terrible mess. There has been a sort of conclusion to a story which to me is a terrifying story. Let me try to summarize. It is a story about a Nazi pug, as in a little dog. This guy up in Scotland, Count Dankula is his online name. I don't know what his actual name is because Count Dankula is way easier to remember. He made a video for YouTube where he trained his girlfriend's pug to be excited and do a little Nazi salute upon hearing particular phrases.

Particular phrases you would expect nazis to say so he put together this video and he sets it up as a joke like it's yeah there is this little bit of a story that people always say when they upload videos to youtube with like oh i only expected a few of my friends to see a thing and then like it went viral and i had no idea that it would i'm not entirely sure that i believe that because that's like a standard story that everybody says like i kind of think that the guy did expect it was going to be a bit of a viral video but he sets it up in the beginning that like he is playing a joke on his girlfriend who the pug belongs to yeah that the pug is super cute and his girlfriend is always talking about the pug and loves the pug so much that like she's on vacation or something. And while she's gone, he's going to train the dog, right? On like

Zieg Heil, it's going to put up its little paw in a Nazi salute. Which you can almost see the dark humor of, can't you? Like this dog's the apple of her eye and he turns into this like, it's pretty twisted, but you see there is that twisted brand of humor that exists. Yeah, there is a twisted brand of humor that exists yeah there is a twisted brand of humor that exists and there's this weird thing where everybody feels like they need to like distance themselves a little bit from it like when i saw this video like it's funny like it's a funny joke and people have to pretend like it's not funny but guess what like part of humor is surprise

and unexpected juxtapositions of things right and? And so, like, he films a shot where it's, like, pretending like the dog is watching a Nazi rally on TV. And, like, that's a funny shot because, of course, like, the pug doesn't know anything about what's going on. Like, he's just setting up a frame. These are jokes. And he sets it up as a joke. But what has happened in the UK

is that the UK has less freedom of speech laws than the United States does. And there are more caveats. And this guy, Count Dankula, has been convicted guilty of, I forget exactly what it is, but it's like spreading obscene messages over the internet. He's been found guilty. As of the time of recording, the sentencing hasn't occurred. The sentencing is going to happen in a couple of weeks. But he is facing prison time over a viral video where he trains a dog to raise its paw

on particular commands. And I think this is just terrifying. I agree it's terrifying, and I want to hear more what you say about it. Just to be clear, though, it's not the fact the dog raises its paw that's got him in trouble. It's like the phrase he's repeating, isn't it? Yeah, okay, but so can we say the phrase?

Are you afraid to say the phrase, Brady? I think he should not have used that phrase. So one of the phrases that he uses in the video is he says... Hi, Future Grey here, stepping in for a moment. I wouldn't normally do this, but it is a special occasion. Since we recorded this episode, I looked into more of the specifics around this law and this ruling. And turns out that the judge did know it was a joke.

But the way the obscenity law is written in the UK allows judges to ignore that factor. It seems to allow judges to ignore all context around the literal words that are spoken in isolation from everything else, which seems to make it impossible to talk about the bad ruling of an obscenity case without also exposing yourself to the very same obscenity law that you're talking about. Which makes this just a rather breathtaking Catch-22-slash-Brazil-level law. So anyway, here we are. Future Gray is going back and cutting off past Gray. And thus, this very conversation becomes an example of what we end up talking about later in the conversation. In the video, Izzy says, and the pug sits up and looks interested.

Like he's obviously been giving the dog treats for that phrase. Right. Clearly, this to me is the thing where there's something I find kind of awful in the world where everybody's like, oh, well, I don't agree with the sentiment of that phrase. And it's like, of course, nobody agrees with the sentiment of that phrase. Who agrees with that? Nobody. Everybody feels like, of course, we want to distance ourselves from that. But the actual question here is, should you be able to put someone in prison for these actions? Prison, where we physically remove someone from society for what they have done. I think this is really one of the worst things in UK law I have come across in the years that I have lived here, because this is like such an incredible chilling effect that it comes down to like a judge thought that this is obscene and so finds him guilty of communicating obscenely over the internet. Man, if that's the

case, there are plenty of other UK YouTubers who should like be in prison over similar kinds of things. And everyone on Reddit. Yeah. Like next time Mel Brooks lands in the UK, straight to prison he's going to go because he made the producers an entire movie which is is nothing but nazi jokes right all the way through i don't know i find this genuinely terrifying because it opens the door to this idea that if the legal system doesn't like what you say it can put you in prison and what does it mean to say that something's obscene this video where a dude is training a dog to do the zig heil like i don't think we should put people in prison for that whether or not you think it's a funny joke whether

or not you think the guy should have done it whether or not we think like oh well i don't agree with the phrase that he uses in like a school marm kind of way like i don't think that that is justification to put someone in prison like it has such an incredible chilling effect on speech i don't know i find it just deeply deeply upsetting that this has occurred as always with these, like you find yourself like, oh, okay, I have to defend the guy who like made a video about a Nazi pug. But it's never the thing, like it's the system that it allows. Like it is a precedent of putting people in prison for saying things. That is really dangerous. I really don't like it. And it makes me deeply uncomfortable with the way the laws are in the UK.

I agree with you. You know, whether you thought it was funny or not, and the video was kind of funny. But you know, some people have problems with that really confrontational humor, like comedians like Frankie Boyle and people like that use and some people really enjoy it. I think it's ridiculous. I don't think he's committed a crime and it's an injustice. There are two caveats though. There are two things that I do feel more strongly about that I think we can be a bit lax about on the internet that I do think should be punished. One is if you are harassing an individual and I think a lot of that happens on the internet that I do think should be punished. One is if you are harassing an individual.

And I think a lot of that happens on the internet where people like say things and harass individuals and people like, you know, it's free speech. I can say whatever I want on the internet. And I think if you're targeting a person, I think that's unfair and I think we need to start getting stricter about that because I don't like seeing people being harassed like that. And the other thing is if he had been inciting people with what he was doing, if he was trying to incite, you know, anti-Semitism or something with the video, then I think maybe it needs to be looked at, but he clearly wasn't doing that. So this,

this does not apply to this person, but I think if you were making, you know, Holocaust jokes with the intent of inciting racial hatred, then that can start having like real world repercussions and people can start getting hurt. And when that happens, I think, you know, we need to protect people in society. I agree with you there, but I, I feel just extraordinarily cautious towards this idea. Individuals, I'll agree with you. Like if you are harassing an individual online, there's a place where there are some kind of repercussions there. Although again, in our society, when you talk about people who are public figures, all of that just goes out the window and we're like, oh no, then it's fine. Right. You know, like if a person's in public,

like, well, screw them. Like they don't deserve any protections, which like maybe makes sense and maybe doesn't. But even then, like starts to blur the boundaries of this. Like even that is not as crystal clear. incitements to violence but i also find like in conversations with people that there's a thing that happens where people do a kind of mind reading where they assume intentions of when people are are saying things and it's like my feeling is like a direct incitement to violence is a direct incitement to violence like Like it is someone calling like for an attack on a specific person or a specific group. Like I think what this guy got in trouble for is exactly that blurry boundary, what you're saying where it's like,

oh, when someone's making jokes and it's jokes that are to incite violence, like that's kind of clearly what the judge was thinking in this case is like, oh yeah, this guy's making jokes, but he's making jokes. And this is like promoting hatred in the UK. You can't pin that on me, of course, because I think that judgment is absolutely ridiculous. Oh, no, yeah, no, I agree with you. I know that in the case of Count Dacula that the judge decided it wasn't like a joke and how anyone could watch that and not think it was a joke is completely beyond me. I wasn't saying that you were saying that. I'm simply saying that, so you read the section of the law that he gets convicted under,

and it's one of these things where it's like, oh, it's illegal to communicate like obscene language across the internet. What does that mean? And that's why I think like the standard has to be incredibly high. Like a person has made a statement that any child could agree right is like a direct threat against a particular person and it's not like oh well this person is contributing to like a general overall feeling in society this way like through their jokes and the fact that they joke about a thing means that it's not serious and so that they're contributing in this way like i think that's a path down towards crazy town and the only result

then is like oh everybody has to just say things that are perfectly acceptable online like the other thing is i also just feel bad for this guy because his whole life has been on hold while this trial has been waiting to happen. And it's been like a year and a half or something before it has actually gone to trial. And this is a thing where I have these bad feelings about the internet where it's like these little storms happen and it's like a person becomes an un-person even before anything official has occurred. So even though this guy hasn't gone to trial, it's like, oh, his whole life has been destroyed for the past year and a half while this is occurring because nobody wants to hire the guy who is waiting for his trial about inciting hate on the internet to go through. And it's like, oh, even if he wasn't ever punished,

like he has still been totally punished in the meantime. It's like a terrifying thing in society that that can happen. It's like you get swept up in something and so much of your life is destroyed. And even if in the end it's like, oh, we're going to overturn that case and we're not going to put you in prison and don't mind about it it's like well the internet never forgets and now no one will ever want to associate with you because you are this person even though like many people don't think you did anything wrong like it just it's terrible for uk law and for people who make anything on the internet in the uk. I'm not condoning it, but I do wonder in the back of my mind if it could be the making of him because he's a pretty funny guy.

He could become like a really funny, successful YouTuber now. Again, I'm not saying he wanted the attention, but now that it's happened, I hope it becomes the making of him for his sake. Even if like everything turns up roses for him in the future somehow, it doesn't change the fact that it's like, okay, well, who are we going to bring up next on this obscenity law? Just start picking YouTubers in the UK. Or like you said, like so many people who are just leaving comments on Reddit. I don't know. It's like such an incredible overreaction. Do you have this fear because you're worried that it'll affect you one day? Because quite often I thought your fears boil down to that somehow. Like are you scared one day someone will take something you've done

in the wrong context and you'll end up in hot water? Or are you really just being quite, you know, noble here and just worried about the world in general? I don't know how to say this very well in the context of this conversation, because we've just been talking about Nazis, right? But the ability to express thoughts is extremely important. And the power to suppress what thoughts people are allowed to express is terrifyingly powerful. It worries me on a society level. Like when you ask, oh, am I personally concerned? Not really. I produce the most G-rated content in the world. And the podcast has a million hours of context around it. And I don't think, aside from our opening up the wound of

the necessary lies of society, like I don't think we say anything that's terrible on the show. So I'm not personally concerned, but I really do feel that there's something like dangerously corrosive here. I always try to stay away from specific political examples because I don't think that that is very instructive, but I will mention one that came up like in a conversation with someone. So this is like in an American context. But the conversation was around the idea of this person basically wanted to make it illegal to deny the fact that climate change was occurring. Like you shouldn't be able to express this idea online.

It should be against the law. The reasoning was it's so potentially harmful. Spreading misinformation around this may be the end of the species, right? May be the end of all life on Earth. They're like, this idea that there's no climate change is so terrible, we should put it into law that people are not allowed to express it. It's like, okay, that's absolutely terrifying. Even if you agree with that, that opens the door to the idea that you're ceding power to a government to tell you what you're allowed to think. Hey, newsflash,

your team isn't in charge right now. So how would you feel if a law was passed that said, oh, you're not allowed to express the idea that the climate is changing? Then suddenly it's like, oh, I don't like that idea at all. Like, yeah, of course. This is why you have to defend the ability to express ideas and thoughts in the broadest possible form. And so I feel like any incursion into this territory is just like a big danger. So that's why like I feel these stories very strongly. And it's like, yes, I will agree with you that there are tiny areas that we can carve out direct incitement to violence, like attacks on a particular person. But even then, I feel like we need to define that very tightly.

What do we mean by that? It's like there's a cleanliness monster that is going through the world, making everything have to be clean and safe. We can't even make jokes about the Nazis because the Nazis are not clean and safe, right? So let's just put some antiseptic over this and just make it go away, right? And I think it's bad. Like, I think it's really bad for society. And there's something about it that just seems like it's getting worse. And The Producers is a perfect example.

It's like, oh, 15 years after World War II, we can make an entire movie that makes fun of the Nazis. But 60 years after World War II, jokes about the Nazis are forbidden. They're so dangerous, we can't possibly even speak them aloud. I don't think that's good for society. Here's a topic, Brady, where I feel like I need pushback. Where am I wrong here? Or do you agree? I do fundamentally agree. So I don't want to be the person who now gets up here and talks against free speech. The only thing that I don't like about the way you argue this point, it doesn't mean I disagree with the point. It's just I don't want to be the person who now gets up here and talks against free speech. The only thing that I don't like about the way you argue this point, it doesn't mean I disagree with the point. It's just, I don't like your stylistic argument. And that is, I always feel like the people who are

like the scumbags of the world who are putting all the scum out there that I hate, the dirty stuff, I acknowledge their right to do it, right? So I'm on your side. But I sometimes feel you kind of clothe them in righteous garments when you talk about defending like their right to express thoughts and ideas. Like this is just people taking a dump everywhere. And I feel like you're kind of using this argument of let's have a free debate. You make a lot of these people sound better than they are. I don't deny their right to exist and do these things, but I wish you didn't make them sound so noble. Yeah. I mean, the reason I talk about thoughts and ideas is because I feel like I'm trying to

keep it generic. Yeah. But I think by doing that, you're bringing a lot of scumbags into the fold of nice people. Yeah. But that's the problem of letting people express all of their thoughts and ideas is guess what? Some people have terrible thoughts and ideas. I don't think these people taking a dump all over the place are expressing thoughts or ideas. They're just like taking a dump. But they are thoughts and ideas. They are concepts expressed with language. I don't think that there is a way to draw a circle where we can say, we all agree these patterns of words are good. And these patterns of words are terrible. No, no, no. I think we can do that. I just don't think we can ban them. I think it's fair to sit around and start weighing things and saying,

that's a good idea. That's an interesting thought and idea. That's a smart thing you said. You there who just wrote, you're gay. That's not a good thought or idea. That's not constructive. You're an idiot, but you're allowed to do it. YouTube comment more frequently said than that one, right? And it's like, yeah, I'll sit here and agree with you like 100%. Like it adds nothing. It's no good. It's not Plato. But I think it's too easy in a conversation to pick a particular thing that we can say like, oh, we all agree that this is no good. But if you're trying to craft laws, I think it's really hard to craft a law that can define what do we mean by this, and that then as an additional layer can be enforced in a reasonable way. And Count Dracula is a good example of this, where, okay, if this is the law of the land in the United Kingdom, how is it that like, just this one guy got swept up by this law? And meanwhile, like, there are actual Nazis, like expressing actual Nazi thoughts. And that's cool. Like, okay, well, then you have some kind of bizarre,

selective enforcement of this. I'd love to know the story behind this. There must be a bigger story. It is amazing, isn't it? This guy got done with all the other stuff that's out there. It's weird. I think it's because it was a viral video, so it becomes a bunch of attention and then someone files a complaint and now it starts getting run up the chain. I feel like for my old days as a teacher, I understand very well the concept of a small thing, the instant someone makes an official complaint about it, oh God, now it's going to be run up the chain and no one can stop the machine

that keeps making this a bigger deal than it actually is. Even if no one involved in the chain wants to keep escalating it, there's an incentive at every level to keep escalating it. So I feel like this can just be the random weather of the internet. But so that's why I do want to be clear. I'm not saying everybody has an equal contribution to the conversation, because obviously they don't. Some people are really smart and they can contribute more to conversations. Some people

are really stupid and they don't have very much to add at all. Anyway, as I said, I agree with you. You just asked for some pushback. And my pushback is the way you frame your argument. I think cloaks these people in garments of righteousness, that they're entitled to the garments, but I just feel a bit like... Let me just say the reason that I do say it as thoughts and ideas, is it's just like when I made those videos about the voting systems a long time ago, that there's a reason I don't talk about specific political parties. Because as soon as you talk about specific political parties, the only thing people want is whatever voting system gets their guys into office.

That's the one that seems the most fair. And you need to have a system where everyone can agree that the election is fair before the election takes place. When I'm talking about thoughts and ideas in the public realm, we need to talk about them in the most abstract way. Because if we start talking about like, what do we do with good ideas? And what do we do with bad ideas? Like the conversation about how do you manage conversation is already poisoned

because everybody has in their own head, like the idea of what a bad idea is. And then, so we should do bad things to bad ideas. Like the idea of like, oh, which side of a debate do you want to not allow to speak? So that's why I try to talk about it in general terms, because I think that is the only sensible way to try to think through the topic. And yeah, of course, whenever you're discussing freedom of speech and you are defending it, you are by definition having to defend the most fringe of fringe people. That's just the nature of this conversation. And I think it's why free speech defenders are often at a bit of a disadvantage because like by necessity you're like the guy who has to defend

the nazi joke when it would be much easier to just join in with a sanctimonious crowd and be like he should have phrased it differently like i don't appreciate that joke at all and i don't think it's good for the world i do think he should have phrased it for his own good like how many more people do you have to see step on the landmine before you think, hmm, maybe I won't walk into that minefield? How many people do you have to see get blown up? To take it in a slightly adjacent way, I'm reading a book, which is about the court case that happened with Gawker a few years ago with the Hulk Hogan sex tape and Peter Thiel was funding this lawsuit against Gawker. It's an interesting book so far, but part of what they're talking about as well is this effect that gossip columns have on people's ability to think in public.

And it's like, oh, people start worrying when there's a gossip column that's going after the technology sector. That it naturally has people close ranks much further than they otherwise would. Like, they're much more reluctant to express any ideas in public because they're worried about it being twisted because, like, that's what the gossip column does. And that's what I mean when I say, like,

I think there's something dangerous in this kind of law that is, like, even if you're a million miles from making Nazi jokes, like you said, it's you feel like, ah, the boundary of acceptable conversation has been moved. And so if I want to stay far from that boundary, I need to move even farther in to only acceptable things. You know, so it's like, I want to stay 100 meters away from that boundary. And we keep pulling that boundary in further and further. It has more of an effect than just the people at the very edge. And I just don't think that that's good for public conversation. Fair enough. Sorry about that.

I didn't mean to rant for so long. No, it's all right. You're a passionate guy. This whole time I've been ranting Brady, the dead fish and the HI logo have been looking at me from my computer screen. I never close that image. It's still there.

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and it will get you a fully featured 15-day free trial for your computer. That's backblaze.com slash hellointernet. All right. Enjoy the rest of the show. I got to get going. So there was a full page ad in my copy of the times sunday times this morning mark zuckerberg kind of apologizing to the world but in that kind of you know weasley way where he's not really apologizing and is also blaming other people

right like the way a spider who's pretending to be a person would apologize. He's got a terrible signature, by the way, Matt. Oh, does he? Well, that's because spiders riding inside of human suits have a really hard time with that finger dexterity. That's an interesting theory, because it is kind of spider-like. In fact, I took a photo of it to send you, so I'll show you. Maybe this is wrong. Maybe this is me bullying a public person, but I always just get the feeling that Mark Zuckerberg is like, there's a spider riding around in a robot that's shaped like Mark Zuckerberg.

That's just the feeling. Like whenever he talks, whenever he moves, it's like, there's not a person in there. There's a spider in there. Here's my question. All right. Facebook is in a new controversy to do with data and stuff like that. And we can talk about it in a minute if you want. But my overall question is, because this is going to keep happening to Facebook, because they're a company that seems to cause a lot of controversy. Is Facebook too big to fail now? Is Facebook going to be with us forever? It's interesting. If you had asked me a month ago, I would have said no, that I think Facebook is too big to fail. But Facebook has done an amazing job of collecting some of the worst PR in the world in a short period of time, just at the wrong time zeitgeist wise that people are super receptive to it like i think the idea that hey maybe all of this social media is bad for us was really coming to fruition earlier in the year and then it's like oh right around that time facebook had some of the worst PR in the world. And then they have this most recent scandal.

It just might be a perfect storm of things to drive a stake through the heart of Facebook. But that being said, I think even if it were to happen, we are at a technological point in time where there is always going to be a natural monopoly for a social network. If you strike Facebook down, something else will just grow up and be stronger in its place and will be functionally equivalent to Facebook. I mean, there has to be one, doesn't there? For a social network to actually work the way it should, there sort of has to be one, doesn't there? Otherwise, we're not networked. Yeah, 100%. I'm really convinced that it's not just Facebook.

I think that the big tech companies exist in no small part because we're at a technological point where there are these natural monopolies. I think that search and video are a kind of natural monopoly that Google has, that there will be a super big video site. I think it's almost inevitable. I almost think that like Amazon is kind of at a logistics

and server running kind of natural monopoly that makes it almost impossible for any other company to compete with them. I think we really are in a weird phase of the world where that is a truth. And so these big companies exist. And even if we were to somehow break them up, it would just take a couple of years before the thing that replaces

them is just as big because everything is pointing in that direction. But yeah, you're 100% right. The social network is the most strong version of that. Like definitionally, there almost has to be one. Do you use Facebook anymore? I haven't used Facebook in any meaningful way in years. In any meaningful way, but do you use it in non-meaningful ways? Yes, I do use it in a non-meaningful way, which is that I have a CGP Grey business page, right? Because if you're a public person, Facebook doesn't let you have a personal web page. You have to have this business page.

Actually, I don't even know if it still works but i did have set up like an if this then that trigger that would just automatically post stuff from the website onto that page yeah and so when i say like i haven't used it in a meaningful way that's what i mean like i haven't logged into facebook in like six months at a bare minimum yeah and even then it would be just to like check on a thing. I pretty much checked out of Facebook the instant they started that you need to pay us to send out your posts to the people who follow you on Facebook thing. That was for me the day Facebook died. I was like, okay, well, I don't use Facebook on a personal level anyway. And so if the only thing that I use it for is on a business level, and now

you're playing the mafia game of like, oh, it's a nice business page you have there sure would be a shame if something happened to it then it's like okay i'm out i'm out i'm not really going to play this game i'm not going to participate in this so no i haven't used it personally and ever do you yeah i mean i have pages for all my different projects that i maintain yeah i go on there every day and have a look just to check what my friends are up to. And I don't post a lot of stuff myself on there unless I'm doing like something amazing, like going to Antarctica.

And then it's like, yeah, look how amazing my life is. I don't post when I'm spending three weeks in a row sitting at a desk editing videos. Right. And that's the social media effect where everybody's life seems a million times more amazing than yours because you only ever see the most amazing things they do. Yeah, of course.

You're contributing to making the world a worse place by doing that, Brady. You have to post your mundane days as well. I think it's a problematic company. But I almost feel like it's too big to fail. Because I look at, you know, although I don't reach all my followers, because of the mafia thing you mentioned, I do have, you know, followings of all these Facebook pages. And it seems like I can't just throw that away, can I? Like, ignore it. So, I mean, I can, but I'm unwilling to.

You totally can, right? I mean, I'm willing to bet that if you dig into your analytic data on YouTube that Facebook is a much smaller portion of the views than you might expect that it is. Yeah, I think you'd be right. If that is the case, I would certainly encourage you to not waste your time on it. Because if you're tracking like how much time do you spend on Facebook and how many views does that actually translate into? I bet that equation would show very fast that Facebook is not worth actually spending any time on. I would definitely say I don't waste time on it. I do probably waste time on it,

you know, looking at my friend's puppy. But I don't waste time on it. I do probably waste time on it, like, you know, looking at my friend's puppy, but I don't waste time, business on it. Like, if there's a new number file video, I'll just go in, say, hey, everyone, there's a new number file video, I hope you like it. Here's the link, and then leave. And I won't hang around reading comments and, you know, it's

perfunctory. Facebook. Terrible. I like this Mark Zuckerberg spider thing, you've got me thinkinguary. Wow. Facebook. It's terrible. I like this Mark Zuckerberg spider thing. You've got me thinking there. we have much to complain about we do have much to complain about. We do have much to complain about, Brady. We may need another 100 episodes, Gray. Oh, Brady. You can't do that to the people.

You can't do that to the people.