Hello Internet - H.I. #128: Complaint Tablet Podcast

Episode Date: August 31, 2019

Grey & Brady complain about things. Sponsors: HelloFresh: tasty recipes & fresh ingredients delivered to your door - for a total of $80 off (8 free meals in your first month) go to hellofresh.com/hellointernet80 and use promo code hellointernet80 Audible: the largest selection of audiobooks and original audio performances anywhere - get a free audiobook and start a 30-day free trial by signing up at audible.com/hellointernet or text "hellointernet" to 500-500 Away: thoughtfully designed luggage for the way you actually travel - get $20 off a suitcase at awaytravel.com/hellointernet20 and use promo code hellointernet20 Listeners like YOU on Patreon Show Notes: Discuss this episode on the reddit Lulu's fundraiser Complaint tablet McDonald's paper straws cannot be recycled Uber ride preferences AT-ATs at Dulles Imran Khan at Dulles Black Stump Sold Dumb safety videos Every Frame a Painting: A Brief Look at Texting and the Internet in Film Ingrid Goes West

Grey, can we start on a sombre note before we get into the usual laugh a minute hijinks that is a Hello Internet episode? So some people will have probably already seen on social media and emails and things. But for those who don't know, I have the sombre and sad duty to report that Lulu, the Greyhound, my Greyhound, has passed. She's been discussed many times on the show. She's probably sat through 90% of the Hello Internet recordings that have been made. But with a heavy heart, Lulu has gone on to wherever dogs go to. She was about 12 and a half years old, which was pretty good for a greyhound. But age finally caught up with her, I'm afraid, and I'm sad to have to tell people that.

But everyone who's sent messages, lots of people have sent messages, whether comments on Twitter or emails and that, I've really appreciated it. People have been really nice about it all. And if you do nothing else, at least give thought to retired greyhounds next time you're thinking of getting a dog or giving to charity or anything like that because uh they're great great animals and lulu was the best of them do you have a

specific charity that you uh recommend that we should put in the show notes or a link for a donation please i've been running a just giving page that i sort of funnel any money i get through and one that can be associated with lulu and that's for the retired Greyhound Trust in the United Kingdom. We'll put that in the show notes. Yeah. It's very sad news. I was very sad to hear it. Audrey is fine. Everyone obviously is asking about Audrey. Audrey is the chihuahua, by the way, for people who get too confused. She's doing well. She's a little bit more clingy than usual, following us around the house a bit more than usual, but she has dealt with it very well and is going strong as always. I'm glad to hear that. Although it does break my heart to think about her not sitting on top of Lulu. It's like whenever I would come to visit, it was the most adorable thing I've ever seen.

So, yeah, that is very sad. She did use Lulu as a big mattress, so at least Lulu doesn't put up with that anymore. Gallo's humor is how you have to pull through. All right. What have we got? I have to start something for the show after that. Let me help with the transition.

It is very, very sad. And if you'd spoken to me a couple of weeks ago around the time it actually happened, I was a sad guy for a few days. But you know what? You got to move on. And we had a lot of happy times. And Lulu would want us to go on and talk about inane rubbish on Hello Internet. Okay.

We'll do it for Lulu. We'll push through. Let's push through. I was given a piece of feedback for you, Brady, over my travels this summer. Remember how many episodes ago you made a comment about what were people in the past like? How did they live? How did they love? Were they like us? Were they different? for the show that I have just messaged to you. And it is called the Complaint Tablet to Iyan Asir. And as the Wikipedia page describes it, this complaint tablet is a clay tablet from ancient Babylon, written 1750 years BC. And it is a complaint to a merchant from a customer and it is believed to be the oldest recorded example of a human complaining.

It is in the British Museum and I swear it speaks to me as like a hello internet monument. It is. It's written in cuneiform it's great to read the complaint because it could be written today and i think it speaks both to the spirit of our show and also to the fact that humans are always the same like with lines like what do you take me for that you treat me with such contempt? It's some sort of complaint about copper ingots, by the look of it. Just as in modern times, someone bought something and didn't get what they thought they were promised, and they are complaining about it. And it charms me to think that ancient Babylon, it rose and it fell.

But this guy complaining to a merchant, little did he know at the time that he was creating history, that this piece of clay would survive 4,000 years to reach us in the modern day and be the oldest known example of a human complaining. I see there's a little, as I mentioned here, a Squarespace. Even back then, they were only allowing a hundred on their RSS feed. Nothing's changed. Nothing changes. Very nice.

I feel like you've Kafka trapped me here now because I want to complain about stuff, but you're going to be like, oh, Brady. No, it is the exact reverse. This show is our own clay tablet of complaints and let us hope that thousands of years in the future, it survives as an example from the early 21st century of humans complaining. Well, if we're going to complain about anything, I think we should start with paper straws.

Oh, yes. A favorite, totally non-controversial topic of the show. Please, paper straws. Tell me about how great they are, Brady. Paper straws, which have taken the United Kingdom by storm. I think this is one of the great mistakes. This is on par with Brexit for me, this introduction of paper straws for crazy self-harm. Because the latest news story, the one I've put in the show notes, one of just many, is that apparently the paper straws that have been introduced at McDonald's are non-recyclable. So they can't recycle them. I accidentally went to McDonald's the other day and I may have accidentally ordered a chocolate shake. It happens to us all. You cannot drink a shake with a paper straw. They haven't got the stamina.

These things that take a long time to drink. I was less than a quarter of the way through my shake before my straw just fell to pieces. The other day I was at the baseball and I had a, what would you call them? Like a slush puppy, a slurpee, those like icy things. Yeah, like a slush puppy. They take a long time to drink, don't they? They require a lot of straw time. It's a long time to drink because if you try to drink them quickly, you will be punished with the freezing headache.

So you have to take your time with those. I was given that with a paper straw and it was a really big one too. Can you imagine trying to drink a really big slush puppy with a paper straw? It was unbelievable. It was disintegrating within moments. And there's bits of paper in my mouth and falling in my drink. And then I'm, I don't mind getting rid of plastic straws if you already had a solution in place. They do not have a viable solution in place. I see here, just skimming through the article that you've sent. it looks like McDonald's

was trying to combat the very problem you're discussing, which is you need some real pressure to be able to pull up a thick milkshake through that straw. And it seems like they have made their straws thicker to try to serve the purpose they are intended to serve. And this seems like it's been one of the problems for are intended to serve. And this seems like it's been one of the problems for actually processing these things. Well, they also don't do the job of getting the shake. So it's lose, lose. This is why it's so infuriating. Now it's a lose on every possible level, right? It's like, okay, well, you're not good at strawing. You make the drink taste worse. and now some portion of you are not

recyclable, which was the whole idea in the first place. I am looking at myself here, Gray, though. I am in moments of quiet reflection, thinking, is it me? Is everyone else handling this properly? And I have some weird drinking technique where I hold the liquid in the straw for too long and I should be blowing it back down between sips or something. Do I have some weird drinking technique that makes me ill-suited to paper straws? Is this a worldwide problem? To me, it feels like the world is ending because of these paper straws, but I don't see lots and lots of complaints about it. So if it's me, tell me.

I will accept it. I will tell you. It's not you, Brady. So I discussed paper straws with everyone who would listen over the past several months. And many people who wouldn't listen, but they were going to. And I say this camp breaks into two very clear groups. The people who are just trying to enjoy a delicious chocolate shake and don't also want paper and wood in their mouth at the same time. And then the other group of people never want to discuss the straws.

They only want to discuss the ocean and the environment. And having a conversation about the straw itself is basically impossible with this sort of person. And like, I want to put on record a thing that is like, it's so hard to express this idea. But listeners, listeners, if you're getting mad right now and you're thinking, I can't believe these two guys are complaining about the paper straws again, don't they care? Listen, I think we care more than the people who are ideologically on the environmental side of this. I too want an ocean that is clean from plastic. Like almost every human being can agree with this. And the thing that also bothers me about the straws is I genuinely think it's a moral bad to do these things that just look good

and feel like accomplishments when they're totally not. Right. When it's like, what is the pollution in the ocean? Actually, it's some ridiculous number, like 50% discarded nets from fishing. Right. It's like, hey, maybe we should start there before we start with the straws. And so it's like, I care about the environment. But this is such a frustrating thing where it feels like you're losing on all fronts. It's not a good straw. It's not recyclable. And it's not a significant portion

of the actual pollution that's out there in the world. It's like, start with the big things. Don't start with these little small things. And then people go like, oh, we got rid of those plastic straws. I'm helping. It's so infuriating. I do care about the environment. I do think you go a little bit too hard on this whole deal with the big problem. Let's ignore the small things. I think small gains add up, you know, and I think there's nothing wrong with doing the one percenters.

I don't mind getting rid of plastic straws. And, you know, yeah, it's not as big a deal as fishing nets, but I still think we should do it. And I think sometimes you're a little's not as big a deal as fishing nets, but I still think we should do it. And I think sometimes you're a little bit too dismissive of the small things for my personal taste. Yes, I will totally agree. There's a completely valid complaint. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things though, that I do just have in mind about this, which is, which sort of gets a little bit more abstract, but it is the idea that like everything that you want to do has some kind of political cost just in terms of, you know, how many bills can a legislative house pass in a year? Like the thing is, there are constraints around the system.

And I also worry about things like the paper straw irritating people so that they like push back harder on future plastic bands that might actually be more effective. Oh, that's a better argument. But like, I totally agree that small gains can add up. Like that's not the argument here, but everything happens within a system of constraints. And even like the mental space that this can take up in people's lives. Like how many topics can you get someone riled up to care about in a year? That number is not infinite. Or like how many things can you get action on? It's not an infinite number of things. And so it always feels to me like a squandering of attention and the resources that we have available to get something done. And there is a teeny tiny thing that you said, which actually makes me wonder. You said about like, oh, you have to drink faster with

the paper straws. I was wondering like, are the companies in on this? Is this actually a plan that they know when they roll out the paper straws, people actually just drink the drinks faster and then on average consume more drinks? I'm a little bit suspicious now about what the true motives behind this plastic straw ban are. Let me give something that is an opposite of a complaint. What would one call it? A compliment, I guess? Would that be the opposite of a complaint?

Yeah. I'm so unused to this idea, but let me try to give one. All right. So we have complained in the past about Uber drivers talking to you. Yeah. Perhaps one of the most torturous things a human being can have to endure. And this summer, for the first time, I saw something when I went to book my Uber rides. It was like the skies opening up and a shaft of light descending upon me from the heavens. And it was upon booking a ride, Uber popped up a little message saying,

what are your preferences for this ride? Would you like to have a conversation or would you not like to have a conversation? It's hard to think of days or moments where I have been more purely happy than the first time I saw that message. Like it's just an unexpected gift from the heavens. And I immediately set conversation to please don't talk to me. And I'm very happy about this now. Thank you, machine, for mediating this awkward exchange between humans where I have to pretend like I'm not listening to you and try to make as clear with my body language as possible that I do not want to talk to you. Now you, driver, can get a little message that says, please don't talk to this

person. Just take him where he needs to go. So thank you, Uber. I really appreciate it. I have some questions and observations. I mean, besides the fact it's just automating the process of making you look like a dick before the ride. No, no, it's not. No, it makes you look professional. I'm a professional passenger here. That's not being a dick. I completely disagree with your framing. If I was going to a meeting with you and I got to the meeting first and I said to the other guy, look, Gray doesn't like it when you look him in the eye. I think that would make you look weird in advance. Yeah, that's fine. But I would prefer that. That'd be great. As a general statement, please don't look directly at me. Here's my next question. If you had said,

I do want conversation, is the driver now obliged to speak to you? Does the driver have any say in this? Or do they just have to do what you want? Okay. So I've sent you the screenshot and the exact wording is your driver will be notified and may be able to accommodate your preferences. Conversation. And you've put quiet preferred. Are there multiple options or just is it binary? I think there were a couple and that was the least chatty one possible. There's no medium one like a bit of small

talk but nothing personal or i want to go deep i can't see what it is now but i do feel like there actually were several levels because they do the i think they were like three but one of them was definitely like oh i love to talk to people please chat with me you know which is baffling to me and i would pay good money to see the user breakdown of what preference people select who actually bother to fill this out. I would totally love to know how many people flip that box to say, oh, I love talking with the driver. That's great. That's what I'm here for. The ride, incidental. Conversation, primary. I also like that you can choose the temperature of the vehicle, like give them an idea that you like it cool or warm. I do feel a bit like already whenever I'm booking an Uber,

it's getting a bit complicated. And I do feel like, oh, not more steps and options. It's like turning into America. Like, do you want the small, super small, medium? Do you want cheese? Do you want Swiss cheese? Do you want American cheese? Do you want, what sauce do you want? We've got 19 different sauces and now Uber's doing it. Do you want a little bit of chat? Do you want Swiss cheese? Do you want American cheese? Do you want, what sauce do you want? We've got 19 different sauces and now Uber's doing it. Do you want a little bit of chat? Do you want heavy chat? Do you want no chat? Do you want how many bags have you got?

What temperature do you want the car? It's like, I just want the car for God's sake. I'll deal with this when the car gets here. Just get me the car. I want to stop pressing the phone all the time. I did forget about your option overwhelm in America. And I think that is a totally legitimate and genuinely draining thing to constantly experience especially when you're trying to get from one place to another at least with this you can pretty much just set it

once and never have to change the options the only one you flip like the bags so that's why it says on the bottom they're like confirm preferences because I did it too fast the first time, and it just popped up to say, like, oh, is this what you want the next time? There is one, which is, I think, too far, and I feel bad for the drivers, for people who do express this preference. And I think people who express this preference are total dicks. And it is people who want particular music to play in the Uber. So I know that I think with Android phones and Spotify, there's some way to have like an integration with your Uber driver that whatever you're listening to now when you get in the car plays through the car speakers. And I have had Uber drivers ask me about integrating whatever I'm listening to with their sound system of the car.

And I would always say no to this. And I always tell the drivers the same thing. Like, look, I'm just going to put on my headphones. You listen to whatever you want to listen to. This is your working space. You don't have to listen to what I'm listening to. You don't want to listen to 15 minutes of an audio book about truffles that just happens to be in the part where I'm listening to it, right? Like, just do whatever you do it, man. And I just, I cannot imagine, you know what, maybe I can, but I cannot imagine the

kind of person who feels like they want to push their preferences that far. That feels too far. We all have to have a line and that feels too far. Some people can be very pretentious about music. But you wouldn't do that, Brady, right? That's not- You agree that's too far? As an Uber driver though, I love the idea of getting like 20 different 15 minute samples of people's lives as they get in the car without actually speaking to them. So you just get 15 minutes of truffles, 15 minutes of reggae,

15 minutes of sport, 15 minutes of rap. Like it would be quite a funny thing. Like it'd be a good podcast. Like there's a YouTube live streaming channel in there somewhere, right? Of like some Uber driver setting up what my rides are listening to and streaming it. Like that, it feels like there's something there. That's not a bad idea. When I was in America this summer, visiting family, there was one thing my family could not stop talking about. Something that had changed their lives

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Let's do three quick bits of very quick machine gun follow up. Okay. I'll do them quick, but these are Hello Internet musts. Okay. First of all, the Mighty Black Stump in Adelaide, the Grenfell Centre, has been sold. Oh. Did we buy it?

No, I don't believe so. It was bought by a Singapore real estate investment trust called Soil Build REIT. Very exciting. They bought it for $134 million. I'm reading this article about it that makes me angry on two fronts. Theurbandeveloper.com, not only have they called it Grenfell Tower, which is not the right name.

Outrageous. It's Grenfell Centre. Grenfell Tower is the name of a building in London that had a great tragedy last year. Grenfell Centre is the name of a building in London that had a great tragedy last year. Grenfell Centre is the building. And they didn't once call it Black Stump in the article. Okay, I guess I have to accept that. The deal marks the $600 million plus sale of an Adelaide office tower in just over a year. Here's the one bit that could have been alluring. As part of the deal, Soil Build has also agreed to pay an additional $5 million

to secure an incoming tenant, in quotation marks. What? So they've paid a little bit extra to secure an incoming tenant. There's been a lot of talk about the Hullo Internet Museum being in the Marty Black stamp. I was going to say, is say is that us like i never know with you brady is this have you arranged something as usual without me having any idea what's going on yes gray the five million dollars will be landing in our bank account in the next few weeks because because let me tell you i will fly to adelaide for that for sure there is a rumor that it's an engineering company oh perhaps australia's great space race

is moving into the building perhaps perhaps i do believe that was 23 or so people who were who were on that project so look i'm just saying the building's been sold new management they might be open to new ideas to sort of bring people into the building. Right. The museum remains on the table. Especially if they have that kind of cash to throw around. Now this can be a serious project. You can't buy at-ats without some serious cash infusion. Well, speaking of at-ats, the next little bit of feedback involves Imran Khan, who is the Prime Minister of Pakistan.

He's also a former great cricketer, which is interesting to me, but not so much to you. He recently visited Washington. Now, there was this story, and I don't know, I'm not commenting on the rights or the wrongs of the story, but a lot of the reporting at the time he landed was that no US official was sent to the airport to meet him. He was instead met by his own people and then had to find his way to where he was going.

And so people were building this up as a bit of a, you know, controversy or a snubbing. Make of it what you will. I have no opinion on it. But what it did result in is Imran Khan and his little posse of fellow officials and the official who was meeting him had to lump their way off the Qatar Airlines plane they were on into an AT-AT

and then a bunch of people took photos of Imran Khan looking miserable in the AT-AT. And I was even seeing it being reported on Twitter and people saying, oh, my goodness, I can't believe Imran Khan had to ride on those depressing people movers at Dulles Airport. And I like that those AT-ATs have become like the symbol of being snubbed is that rather than like a red carpet and some official at the bottom of the staircase of your

plane, you have to get onto those. God awful. There's a whole bunch of pictures. If you Google Imran Khan and Dulles, you'll find a whole bunch of people, just people with their mobile phones taking pictures of him sitting on the ad ad. I'm looking at them now i do have to say you could turn this around and it would be kind of awesome if the ad at took him directly to his final destination then that would be be like props for dulles but no just having to change terminals in the AT-AT. Yeah. A much less delightful experience. They missed a real chance for fun and whimsy with that one. It could have been a great Dulles PR moment of, oh no, don't worry, we'll take you directly where you're going, sir.

Or they could have like a big golden AT-AT for like VIPs with like a big red carpet in it. They crack out the special AT special app whenever it's like ahead of state. They really could just have one that was, when we first discussed them years ago, that was the original idea that they were the mobile lounges, right? That you were supposed to be like relaxing in comfort in these things until your plane was ready and it deposited you directly onto the plane with no waiting, you know. So they could have one that's actually a mobile lounge with carpets and comfortable seating, a little barista to take care of you. I've got a better idea, Gray.

Okay. Like have a smaller one that just holds two or three people. So like an AT-ST? Yeah, two-legged. Okay. And it just walks two-legged around the airport. I mean, that does sound cool. I'm not going to disagree with you that that sounds cool.

It doesn't seem very possible, but it would be cool. And just finally, an article that can't go by without us at least commenting on its existence. I'm quoting here from The Telegraph now. Aviation experts have criticized stupid safety videos after passengers forced to evacuate a flight last week were filmed carrying their wheelie suitcases on the plane's emergency slides and basically the upshot of all this is is when evacuations do happen now people don't seem to know what they're doing and they're blaming the poor safety videos safety experts warned the recent trend for humorous pre-flight

safety demonstration videos mean passengers do not know what to do in an emergency. British Airways revealed a new safety video in July last year featuring fictional character Chabadiji, played by Asim Chaudhry. Oh, yes. The video also features Michael Caine, Olivia Colman, Naomi Harris, Joanna Lumley, and David Williams. childry oh yeah the video also features michael kane olivia coleman naomi harris jaina lumley and david williams an aviation analyst said the stupid videos meant passengers struggle to know what to do when an aircraft is having an emergency landing and passengers are told they will need to

evacuate their heads are supposed to be ticking back to everything they saw in that video all i can remember now is someone laughing someone joking joking, someone being sarcastic, and Mr. Bean dancing around at the end. A British Airways spokeswoman said, the primary reason for our pre-flight video is always to communicate a safety message. Let someone make a note right now for how long is it from this article and this episode of Hello internet until the first time british airways does a brand integration like a commercial brand integration along the lines of spider-man with one of their safety videos yeah what do we think a year two tops i mean this one that you hate already is that it just happens to be a brand integration with like red nose day and comedy stuff to raise money for charity it's already

a brand integration yeah look everyone knows charities get kind of a pass no matter how much of a monster you are they have to blunt a little bit your cynical angry side where it's like oh it's for a good cause right whereas the spider-man movie is not a good cause right it's like another installment in a franchise that does a billion dollars regularly on opening weekend right it's not like oh we're trying to we're wearing red noses to make children laugh or you know whatever you know it's a different thing granted it is an integration but it's not the same level of crassness that just pure commercialism is. Yes. Now, here's the thing.

No one wants to believe this article more than me, right? You come across a story and you're like, I want to believe. But in fairness to the airlines, people evacuating with their wheelie suitcases, i'm not convinced that you can draw a straight line between that and the safety video it is a little lacking in rigor this article yes drawing a line between people not knowing what to do and the funny video it's just some dude saying oh i reckon you shouldn't have funny videos yeah but he's an aviation expert right now of course so yeah he's an aviation expert but it's a little bit like you know the tsa warning signs are unclear and so people are throwing

pennies into the engines before they board the planes it's like well i'm gonna bet this has far more to do with people who are less familiar with flying more than it has to do with anything in particular so i'm happy to dance on the grave of these dumb safety videos more than anyone in the world. But I feel like it would be disingenuous of me to go along and say like, oh yes, look at these dumb passengers carrying their wheelie suitcases. I can't draw a straight line to that. I think that's just a side effect of more people flying.

I will say this though, this new generation of safety videos that are trying to be really funny, and I'm talking about almost the second wave of funny safety videos, not the first wave of ones, they've gotten so meta that I almost do think that old fashioned safety videos are assumed knowledge. Like the jokes make sense because of the way safety videos used to be. And I do think it's gotten to a point now where the default position is, look, you all know how a safety video goes. You have to watch another one now. So to make it bearable, we're going to make it funny.

But we know you already know. Because like the way that they show the actual safety message like don't do this do do this do your belt up like this put your bag here don't do this on the slide has become so stylized and so abstract that if you brought an alien from outer space and sat them on the plane and said okay here's the safety message for what to do if there's a an emergency on plane, they wouldn't take any information from that. That is a good defining characteristic of what is the second wave of funny videos. It's a level of meta humor. Yeah, it does make it very abstract. And in addition to being just a

plain old commercial, that Spider-Man safety video from this summer it was very abstract about what are you supposed to take away from this yeah i didn't mention it last time but i think as a professional youtuber and explainer person if i was asked to like teach a course on how to clearly communicate information there is a frame from that spider-man video that i wanted to talk about last time which is like a master class in how to hide information that really matters it was a shot where they're like spider-man's chasing some dudes through the zoo they're showing you perhaps the only piece of information that really matters to any flyer, which is, where's your life jacket? It's in different places depending on what kind of seat you're in. And they had three different seats.

So three different shots of like, here's where your life jacket is. And they put it like on this panel that's like a map of the zoo and the different places in the zoo that you can go. But there are airplane seats. And then below it, it has a picture of where the life jacket is. And it's on the screen for like two seconds. So it's like technically we showed it. Yeah, exactly. It's like assumed, almost like it's assumed knowledge.

Like, ah, you all know there's a life jacket somewhere. And anyway, this plane isn't really going down. And it's, you know, we've covered our butts for legal purposes. Yeah. But like, I just found it an amazing obfuscation of the actual information

that you need to know. And it is that kind of meta joke of we're integrating the safety video into the whole world. God, I somehow managed

to get the whole summer, the whole summer of travel without ever seeing that BA video once. And now you've reminded me of it, Brady. And it's making my head all over again. Sorry.

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things that people you follow have replied to or liked. And I know there's a setting and, you know, you can change this and that, but it's not default and it seems to default back anyway. But it's got to a point now where when I'm on Twitter, because you know how, you know, attention economy and stuff like that, one has to ration out how often they're talking to people in the world. I have now gotten to a point on Twitter where I am so reluctant to like something or reply to something because I know such a massive proportion of my followers are going to see it. And I don't

want them seeing this little side conversation I'm having. By the way, I know I'm not the only one who thinks this because I recently got into some Twitter conversations with a few other Twitter people about it. So you probably saw some of the conversations happening because inevitably you see every conversation we have on Twitter. But I know other people feel this way too, but it's gotten to a point now where if someone says something and I've got a reply I want to make, whether it's like snarky or nice or anything, I have to really think it through now. It's like, do I want to put the spotlight on this person? Who is this person I'm putting the spotlight on? Do I have to research them first? Do I want to say, oh, that's a good point you made, and then go and look at their previous 20 tweets and find out they're like some puppy killer or something? Or do I want to give them the attention of an

argument? It's gotten to a point now where I almost don't want to reply or like anything. And I think it's taken away one of the nice things about Twitter, which is just that occasional ships passing in the night moment with a stranger. Now, you can't be just ships passing in the night moment with a stranger. Now, you can't be just ships passing in the night. 20,000 people have to be watching as you do it. And that makes me not want to do it. Okay, wait, I just want to clarify to make sure I understand. Because I remember seeing this with likes. Yeah.

That you'd see like, oh, Brady Heron liked this post. Yeah. But you're saying that now all of your replies can show up as posts in other people's timelines. In other people's timelines, yeah. So if you're following me and then some friend of mine says something about the cricket and I say, oh, yeah, wasn't that an amazing game of cricket? In your timeline, you're going to see Brady atting Billy blogs. And I've just replied to them. I haven't like put a dot in front of it or done anything to make it public. I've just replied, hit reply and said something to them. Now it's in your timeline. That is very interesting to me because

obviously I've been away for a while and I've been thinking a lot about, oh, how do I want to use these tools when I come back? One of the things that has been on my mind a lot is about like, okay, for me anyway, I don't think that like posting thoughts on Twitter is a thing that I really want to do in the future. Like just, you know, oh, just random thoughts about whatever, you know, or like, oh, a thing popped into my head. Isn't it funny? Let me say it on Twitter. I was thinking like, okay, I probably don't want to do that but i'm thinking like oh what what are the good parts of twitter and one of the things i was thinking about was the replies it's by far and away like one of the things that if i'm identifying like value that has been lost is that being able to just like reply to people i know about whatever

they're up to in their lives on twitter. And it was always, this is valuable precisely because it's not non-performative because it's still on the internet and it's public, but it isn't performative in the same way that posting or retweeting something is. And if they've changed it so that replies are posts that really does change the mental calculus of interacting with anyone i don't know if it's everyone or it's algorithmic i assume it's algorithmic and not all your followers get it and i'm also aware there are a subset of people who follow someone like gray who might want to see every single reply you say but i'm sure there's also a subset who don't. The conversation I had, I'll just give you a taste here. This is a conversation that got me thinking about it that

recently had Katie Mack started it, who's a big Twitter user. And she wrote, Twitter, please make it possible for me to occasionally reply to a stranger's tweet without algorithmically pushing the entire conversation to my unsuspecting followers' feeds. Not every little comment needs that kind of audience. Definitely changed how I use Twitter, and I don't think in a good way. It was nice to be able to reply to someone in a casual conversational way without thrusting them into a spotlight. Now everything feels like it's just a massive performance. That's a very interesting point about perhaps the intentionality of it. Although, again, I think that the people that you want to worry about most spouting off

thoughtless replies also don't put in a lot of thought by definition about those replies getting amplified out to a wider group. I kind of wonder, this might be slightly serious for complaining about technology corner, but in my travels this summer, I ended up talking to people who, let's say, run these kind of large platforms or are able to influence these kind of large platforms and like what they're doing with algorithmic decisions. And like a thing that came up a bunch is lots of these platforms feeling, I don't know a good way to describe it that doesn't like give my hand away here, but feeling that they are responsible for shaping people's opinions through the selection of what it is that they see.

And I felt very uncomfortable with some of this sort of stuff where it's like people are intentionally tweaking the algorithms to kind of get people to think what they think they should think. Well, hang on. That's a different thing. There are two different things there but if that's the case right just using this specific example of this everyone now being able to see all my replies and likes i mean everyone can see my replies and likes anyway if they go looking for them but in terms of having them sort of thrust upon them in their timeline the problem with this is and the reason it's counterproductive is one of the great criticisms that social media have now is that we're all sitting in these silos and we're reinforcing our beliefs among people who are like-minded and there's no cross-pollination and discussion between people with different ideas to us.

And you may argue that, oh, well, let's shine a light on these conversations that people were having between each other who aren't necessarily like-minded as we reach consensus and reach new understandings. But what's actually happening instead is the only people I will dare like or reply to are those same four or five people who are just like me, who I know really well, who think like me. I know they're safe. I know if I shine a spotlight on them, it's not going to come back and bite me in the ass in one way or another. So I feel more siloed than ever before by this trend towards pushing all of my interactions out into a bigger spotlight. And I'm cross-pollinating far less than I used to. I wonder how intentional

that is though. It's very interesting like just to think of it in this framing of like how intentional is it for putting pressure on people with audiences to be like you know make sure you're totally good you know 100% in every one of your interactions. Like, I don't like the feeling of that kind of pressure. Maybe I'm thinking about it too narrowly. And I am just thinking about it as someone with a slightly larger audience because of like the work I do. I think maybe I'm just this isolated case. And I should be thinking about Twitter more professionally anyway, and shouldn't be just replying to people willy nilly.

But the fun of the internet is a kind of serendipity. You get the best and the worst in the sort of wild west of the internet. And this is very unwild Westie. And it just bothers me knowing that people are thinking very intentionally about how opinions form and the people who use the platforms. And I want to be clear, like there's no maliciousness. I actually think there are the number of people who are genuinely malicious in the world is quite small compared to what people sort of mentally estimate. Everybody's trying to do things for reasons that they think are right. But it does still, and has made me a little bit uncomfortable, like the intentionality of those kind of decisions of like, how can we influence everyone on this platform away from this direction and like towards

this direction, even if it's meant for the best of all possible reasons. Well, I don't know. I feel a bit like they can't win in that case. If you're having a swipe at the actual platforms themselves, like they can't win either way because they're forever being condemned for being irresponsible and not doing enough to stop their platform being misused. And then once they, you know, so. They're totally in a lose-lose situation. This is also where I don't really understand why, you know, in the United States, oh God, I'm going to, people are going to be really angry. I forget what it's called, like the common carrier protection. Like I don't understand this weird distinction that these giant platforms have ended up in where they're both platforms and they're publishers and they sort of get both of these things. It is a very strange situation. And I completely agree with you that the moment they started curating of any kind, there was a lose-lose situation from then until the end of time. And there's no way to win, and there's always going to be complaints. So yeah, I would not want any of these jobs where

you have to make algorithmic or content decisions. Like those must be the most unpopular jobs in the world, but nonetheless, they are jobs with a lot of power or, you know, even these kinds of changes with Twitter, like it affects the conversation. These platforms really do matter and really do shape people's opinions. And so that's why there's going to be fights over precisely how they're controlled and used. Can I come back to text messages for a moment? Please, get us out of here, Brady. We went too serious. Let's go back. We need some paper cuts and some trivial nonsense.

So I've been watching a few shows on Netflix lately, like you do, and all these modern shows trying to reflect modern contemporary life are more and more incorporating text messages and text conversations into their TV shows, into the storytelling. If there's a couple of teenagers who are communicating, these days they'll do it by by text so let's have them in the tv show doing it by text and obviously i'm sure we've talked about this before but they have to show how do you illustrate two people having a text message and it seems to be the trendy way to do it at the moment is to have this little bubble floating next to the phone on the screen showing the text of what they're being of what's being written. My goodness, could they make it any smaller? Something has to be done here because I'm watching entire TV shows like where I'm having

to stand up and walk up to the TV and stand next to the TV reading it off the screen out to my wife so she knows what's being said as well, because they just make them too small. I think they're just out of touch with what people can read. I mean, my eyesight's okay. I was going to say, I mean, do you have glasses, Brady? Have you gotten your eyes checked lately? I don't wear glasses. And to be fair, if I'm thinking of the main room of your house, you don't have the world's largest TV and it is reasonably far away from your couch, which I find hilarious. But not unacceptably far. I mean, I do go into people's houses these days and think,

my goodness, your TV is ridiculous, how big it is. And also I know a lot of people watch things on an iPad up against their face in bed, myself included, but just normal TV watching, watching some Netflix, like half the time we just like throw our arms in the air and say, oh, we'll just have to guess what that text conversation was about. Because there's no chance we can read that. They're tiny. They're doing it tiny. I know this is an old man complaint. Brady, this doesn't sound like an old man complaint at all. These text messages are too small. Doesn't sound like an old man complaint in the least. I'm going to wildly disagree with you there. Do you ever notice this? I guess you never watch these shows. You have a pretty epic TV,

and I guess you watch on your iPad a lot. Yeah, we did get a pretty big TV, and I think we're not as far from it as you are. The size of your TV, I don't think you're as far from it as safe. Those text messages are like the Hollywood sign for you guys. Yes, we can read them most of the time. I guess my complaint is I'm thinking of, I think it was the epic and sadly defunct YouTube channel, Every Frame a Painting. I think they did a video going through a bunch of different samples of texting in movies. Okay. Just to show how people do it and the thing that i'm much more aware of is i often think in movies like do people care like

has someone put effort into this movie and the worst effort is simply showing it the actual phone on screen with whatever text message has been written in there. Often hilariously at the bottom of a completely brand new text message conversation, right? Where no words have ever been exchanged before between his husband and wife. And they're just sending one iMessage into a blank void. And it's like, oh, come on, guys. But I think you have to show the phone if you're making like a real film. Like you couldn't do that in like Star Wars, could you?

You couldn't have like someone look at their communicator and have some text on the screen, like a speech bubble. And you couldn't do it in The Godfather, something like that. Like if it's real, you have to see the real thing. I think there's a certain level of trashiness you have to reach before you can use bubbles popping up on the screen. I actually, I'm going to disagree with you there. I think even in a modern, like, quote, serious film, you know, like you're watching some David Fincher film, text messages, the ideal way to do it is for us all to agree that text messages are a kind of closed captioning. And don't put bubbles up on the screen you know

unless you're making like a chick flick and that's in the style of the movie like it's not entirely serious i think you can just frame your character so that there is some blank space next to them like a wall and you can just write out the words on that wall. You can dispense with all the chrome of what text messages look like, because all of that will be out of date eventually anyway and make your movie look ridiculous. And just treat it like it's a kind of closed captioning. And I don't think that breaks immersion. The problem is the two ends of it. The extreme laziness of just showing a phone, which often isn't very clear to read. And then on the other end, the way too over the topness where they're trying to be flashy about look at our text.

Aren't we so clever showing the text message, right? Like through this animation my particular annoyance in this is when they use like youtuber 101 after effects skills to track the motion of the phone with the bubble and it's like guys guys a thousand times too flashy for a movie so my request to all filmmakers is just write the words on a wall and i think you can do that in a way that doesn't break immersion. That, though I haven't seen it, I'm sure would be able to be done well in The Godfather 4 when they have cell phones. I think you could do that even in a serious movie. Okay.

Do you not think so? Do you think it has to be on the phone if it's a serious movie? I still feel like I'd want to see it on the phone if it was like The Godfather. I think it would break immersion. But, you know, I was going to say, you know, Martin Scorsese wouldn't use that, but then someone's going to show me some film where he did. So, I don't know. What you say makes sense. I don't mind them coming up in bubbles, just the bubbles are too small for me. You're right, it does date the film. You're right, that After Effects tracking thing can look silly. That's a real noob filmmaker move. I mean, that's exactly what was happening in the thing I've been watching. I've been watching, there's no point not saying, I've been watching sex education on Netflix and that's where they've

been using it. And that's where I found it too small. And they do have the after effects bubble tracking the phone as it moves in their hand and stuff. So if people want to go and check out the example of what I mean. Yeah. And you can judge for yourself if the text is too small. But I'm having a hard time thinking of it now, even though I've watched a hundred million of these YouTube essays on the language of cinema. There are things in movies that just don't directly portray real life. And we kind of understand this is a movie and this is yeah how movies communicate things and i i genuinely think the text message can be a new kind of thing like that that we just agree that they're captions i mean subtitles for

people speaking other languages that does happen in the godfather movies and in star wars yeah although not with chewy but with Guido and everyone else. That's a good point. Look, you can't subtitle the funny characters because then that ruins the joke, right? Whatever R2-D2 is whistling about, it's way funnier if you don't caption him than if you do. So you just leave that out of there. Yeah. Although, wait a minute.

Didn't they caption Chewie in Solo? I think they did. I think they did caption him. No. I think they did. I think they did caption him. No. I think they did. I think they did in the scene where they first meet and Han Solo is trying to speak the Wookiee language. I think they captioned Chewie.

Did they caption them in the Star Wars Christmas special? I don't know. And I don't want to find out. On my many journeys this summer, you know what I saw a lot of? Away suitcases. The word is getting out about Away and how amazing their suitcases are.

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love the suitcase. I think they're beautifully designed. They help keep everything organized. They're just a fantastic suitcase. So once again, go to awaytravel.com slash hellointernet20 and use promo code hellointernet20 during checkout. Thanks to Away for supporting the show. I need to take a drink before this next one, Brady. Go on. Nice. Yes. Refreshing. Yeah. go nice yes refreshing yeah i've been drinking a lot of sparkling water no no need to brag this just like coffee is a thing that my wife introduced to my life and then it becomes like a vital fluid of existence.

And I mentioned this a while back, like, man, I've just been drinking so much sparkling water. So much sparkling water that I worry about hypohidrosis as a side effect. So like for sure, switching from regular water to water with bubbles in it, I think has multiplied my water intake by five. Well, I don't know why. It's a thing that I've mentioned to people and has been this like topic

of conversation sometimes where I have discovered that everybody who drinks sparkling water says the exact same thing. They say, oh yeah, once I started drinking sparkling water, I drink way more water than I used to in the past. Like, without exception, this is what everyone says. And I've talked to people who end up like, I don't know, some kind of drug aficionado installing custom sparkly water creation systems in their home, like built into the bar

so that they can always have on tap, like the maximum sparkle at any moment. That's cool. It does sound very cool. It is a thing that I've been wondering about, like, well, you know, now that we have air conditioning, maybe this is the next step. So like, I talked about this with so many people. And then I started commenting about like, it's really weird that it's such a universal experience. And then someone told me, they go, oh, don't you know that there's salt in sparkling water? Oh, because it's mineral water. Yeah.

So like I have drank basically a liter of sparkling water in the time that we have recorded this podcast so far. And if I look on the back of it, it's like, oh, yeah, there's 0.04 milligrams of salt in this sparkling water. And I've been checking it up, like different bottles have different amounts, but there's always some. That doesn't seem like much to me. Well, here's the thing. Like, I looked at regular water or mineral water and it doesn't have salt in it. But this stuff does. And so I thought, well, let me Google around on the internet and see what the deal is.

Because suddenly I'm wondering like, wait a minute, is this the nicotine version of water? They're putting something in the water that makes me more thirsty the more I drink it. And then this explains the universal behavior in everyone. And I was unable to find any satisfactory answer about, I don't know what we'd be looking for, like the quenchiness of drinking sparkly water versus drinking regular water. So I figured I would take this big,

big important platform that we have here, Brady, to ask the Tims, if there is anybody who's like a professional water researcher, I have here, Brady, to ask the Tims, if there is anybody who's like a professional water researcher, I like you, Brady. I think that doesn't seem like it's a lot of salt. But I have to know, am I not actually getting anywhere by drinking sparkling water? Do they put the salt in there to make me drink more? And if the answer is no, then why on earth does everybody drink so much more sparkling water? At least with the coffee. The coffee, I totally know. Oh, there's an addictive drug in there. That's why I drink so much of it. Great. Nice and clear.

But the sparkling water, I don't understand what the situation is here. And now I need to know. I need to know. And I need the Tims to help find the answer to this. Can someone do a study? If a study doesn't exist, I want an answer. You haven't asked me. I know why sparkling water is consumed more. I'm sorry, Brady. Can you tell me the answer to why sparkling water is consumed more? Because it's got bubbles. And bubbles are fun. Like, I'm not even joking. It's like having a lemonade or something it's like why do they put bubbles in coca-cola and all those soft drinks and that like i think they do that because it just it makes the drinking experience more pleasurable it feels nicer in your mouth and

tickles your lips and like it just feels it's nice mouthfeel and like water which is the most boring drink in the world how can we make it more exciting but keep it still keep it like you know healthy and not full of sugar and stuff well let's at least chuck some bubbles in there that doesn't hurt anyone it's just a pleasant experience it's like a little massage for your lips every time you have a sip i find this answer unsatisfying but perhaps not wrong yeah and the other interesting thing is like okay so your comment about regular water being boring is totally true in ways that i cannot explain regular water also has a high variability in pleasantness and satiation. Even in my own home, using the same water filter from the same water source, sometimes drinking water just feels kind of gross in a way that is hard to articulate.

And sometimes it's the most refreshing drink in the whole wide world. It's also about temperature. When I go downstairs and I want to have a drink and I look at the tap and think I could have a glass of water. And then I open the fridge and I look, oh, there's a can of Diet Coke or something. I always end up going for the Diet Coke or the lemonade or something. And it's not just because of the nice sweetiness. It's because it's going to be bubbly and it's going to be ice cold when it hits the back of my throat. And I want that feeling of the cold. And sparkling water does that too. It gives you and i want that feeling of the cold and sparkling water does that too it gives you the bubbles and it gives you the cold hit i do i do think the sugar is doing

the heavy lifting in that comparison for why do you grab the one versus the other do you know what great i honestly honestly think it's not the heavy lifting it is sometimes a factor. It is oftentimes a factor. But sometimes I just want something. I want it to be so cold it almost hurts. And the bubbliness is just nice. It's nice. You know, why not make drinking water nicer by making it cold and bubbly? I know there's a reason, and I'm sure having carbon dioxide makes certain valves open when they shouldn't and things like that. And, you know, so go ahead, read it.

You may be totally right. It may just be a kind of habit reward loop, but I really want the Tims to go deep on this one because the salt is making me suspicious and the universality of the response is also making me suspicious. And the universality of the response is also making me suspicious. And the amount of water that we buy is at the maximum that will be delivered to our house on a weekly basis. And we're still burning through it. How much are you weighing? More than I used to. That's what happens. It's got to go somewhere. It's good to be drinking so much water.

The dose makes the poison. I'm worried about how close am I getting to that somewhere. It's good to be drinking so much water. The dose makes the poison. Like I'm worried about how close am I getting to that dose. 90% of my consumption at this point is coffee and sparkling water. I'm not a doctor, but I feel quietly confident in saying you are a long, long way from being anywhere near the point where you are going to poison yourself with water. I hope so, Brady. I hope so. Do you feel up for a bit of sports ball corner? I've picked one that I think's in the grey wheelhouse. Dread it. Run from it. Sports ball still arrives. This one, I felt passionately about for an hour or two, and I thought,

this is one for gray okay gambling on sport particularly football is like just gone crazy big business in the uk like to a point that i think is concerning but that's a talk for another day i'm sure before you go any further because i never i never really quite understand the gambling situation in the uk but but like I see those licensed or I presume that they're licensed. Oh, like out, yeah, like little shop fronts. Yeah, like these shop fronts that are clearly sports gambling venues. Are those like the only legal way or? No, that's the tip of the iceberg.

It's all apps now. There's a million different apps. Everyone does it on their phone. Okay, but so gambling online on sports in the UK is legal. Yes. And huge, huge business. You can't watch football now without a million ads for it telling you to get your app and do this. And you can bet on everything. It's not just betting on who's going to win. You'll bet on like little micro events within a game, like who's going to get the next corner kick or who's going to do this and do that.

So it's like up to your eyeballs with betting, right? Okay. And an interesting fact I read when I was reading a bit about this was that in England's, not the top tier, the Premier League, but the next one down, which is called the Championship, I think it has 22 or 24 clubs, teams, and all of them have like a shirt sponsor, like a name emblazoned across the front of their shirt that someone pays to have. So it could be Coca-Cola or Toyota or something. Okay. And they're usually pretty prestigious things.

You pay a club a lot of money to have a sponsorship on the shirt there. 16 of the clubs in that English division, their shirt sponsor is a betting firm. It's an online betting firm, which I find remarkable. And anyway, the story that brought it to a head for me and the moment I said enough happened last week. And that was one of these teams in the championship division, Derby, Derby County, they're called. And they have managed to sign Wayne Rooney, who was a footballer even you may have heard of. Yes, I've heard of Wayne Rooney.

He played for Manchester United and he's at the twilight of his career now and doing this thing these players do at the end of their career where they cash in by signing for a few other clubs. He's just played a season or two over in America for, I think, the Washington DC club where he's earning loads of money. And they can say, look, we've got Wayne Rooney playing for us. So what he's done is he's signed and agreed to play for Derby next season. And even though they're in a lower league than the top league, he's an older player now. And part of the deal is he's going to start taking on coaching responsibilities and things like that as he prepares for the next stage of his career.

Right. What emerged in the hours that followed the announcement was that the way Derby was able to get all this money to buy Wayne Rooney for a season was there the betting firm that sponsored their shirt had stumped up the money and it just so happens this betting firm is called 32 Red they're one of the bigger ones they're one of the more famous ones and here finally we're getting to the point of my conversation sorry it took so long no no we're following the shaggy dog it's fine exactly here's where the shaggy dog upsets Brady.

The condition of the deal was that Wayne Rooney's number on his shirt, like his official playing number, is going to be 32. They've like essentially bought the number. And here's where you'll call me naive or silly, but I feel like the shirt numbers are one of like the few remaining sacred things that, you know, have some reason behind them, sentimentality or serendipity or things like that, or they used to be associated with the position you played.

That seems to be less the case now. And I know shirt numbers have been used for marketing and sport for a long time. Michael Jordan famously wore number 23. And now that you can buy Nike products with 23 all over them. But that was kind of the horse leading the cart. Yeah, yeah. This feels like the cart leading the horse where he's agreed to wear a shirt number.

And not just the shirt number of a company, but the shirt number of a company but the shirt number of a gambling company this like industry this insidious industry that's ruining lives and families and things like that it felt dirty and low and wrong you know i can sympathize with you here brady i really can't i'm not gonna poo you on this one right because i can see that you're looking at the numbers so much on the players shirts and they become associated with the players that it's part of like the sacredness of the game yeah and like kids will wear the number of their favorite players on their shirts like when they buy their replica shirts that they kick the football down at the park. I want to be like Wayne Rooney where I grew up. I'm going to get a Derby shirt with number 32 on it because that's what Wayne Rooney wears. And now it's,

oh, it's 32 because it's 32 red. Get your app now. Place a bet. Get $5 credit on your first bet. I can understand that this feels like it's over the line. And even in our modern world, there are some sacred boundaries. The safety video in an airplane that's supposed to inform you how to save your life. And those boundaries get crossed and we never go back. And I think it's also just, I don't know, like the gambling industry is, it's a strange industry. This is coming from a man who like i love las vegas you know this the city built on losers but i you know i don't gamble myself but there's something about the gambling industry where what is occurring it's so naked and raw it's like the mechanism just exposed and and you're looking directly into it whereas the sparkling water industry it's a little bit more obfuscatious like what's occurring with

the addiction here but the the gambling one is just like it's so clear the numbers are all out there for you that you are totally gonna lose and. And then on top of that, like the problem here is, is also the implicitness that kids love sports. And it's the start of gambling at that much younger age. In the same way, I think, you know, if there was a cigarette company called Black 18, I'm not sure, I don't know how this works. But like, I don't think that that would be a thing that could happen in the sports world at this point. I think there'd be too much pushback on something like that. But maybe I'm wrong. I don't know.

What, cigarettes? Yeah. I mean, cigarette advertising has been banned in sport for a long time. So I'm not wrong about that. The cultural acceptance of this is just no way. Like at the moment, you can go back and watch like old sports footage from the 80s and 90s and there's cigarette advertising all over everything. And it seems like almost funny now. And I think that's what it's going to be like with gambling

in 10 years it's going to be can you believe that they're allowed to advertise like this in sport like it's it's so reckless i mean all advertising is naughty but it's so naughty the way they make the gambling look like it's like guys together having fun. Sometimes you watch an ad for these gambling things during a football game and it looks more like an ad for having pizza with your mates and having a good time watching football than squandering away your family's mortgage payments. So not a fan of the gambling industry then Brady? Just lately no. It's become too much. I don't mind gambling i will occasionally bet on like a horse race once every couple of years and i'll have a flutter at a

casino and stuff like that i'm not like you know real puritan about it but i think that gambling and sport our phones have made it so easy yeah to just constantly be constantly placing bets. And it's not become like a treat or an occasional thing or an event. It's just become like checking your tweets. And that's where I think it's gotten dangerous. Like I know people who gamble on sport and it is just like that. It's just like quickly between drinks, I might as well get out my phone. I'm bored. Let's have a quick 10 pound bet just to fill the time i guess that's also the issue that there's so much to bet on in sports like yeah like there's all of these little events i've long been in favor of you should be able to bet on politics but like in

the united states betting on politics is illegal but i think part of that is is like well it only happens every two or four years some political race so you can't be taking out your pocket every couple minutes and placing another bet on like the over under for district seven or whatever yeah that's an interesting distinction with the sports gambling i think it is right that you can't bet on elections actually because the people placing the bets are participating in the result so if i've bet on party a to win the election and then i go out and bet on party a just to fulfill a bet then a i'm fixing the result admittedly only minutely but i'm fixing the result of my bet and it's corrupting the purpose of the election. Just the same way that athletes participating in sport aren't allowed to bet on

the sport they're playing in. Like the footballers aren't allowed to bet on who's going to get the next corner, because then they can just like rig that part of the game. So the sports thing is like, I'll totally grant that. Yeah, you can't have, I think as we've discussed on the show, you can't have the players betting on the outcome. That just seems like it's too much. I think on the sliding scale of how much control you have over the outcome, there's a huge difference. Yes, there is. Whereas the control is basically totally within the realm of the sports player and is divided by one one millionth when you talk about voting itself obviously that's true intellectually i agree with you right like intellectually i agree with you and i understand why it's not legal but there's some part of me emotionally it's always

like why can't i bet on an election outcome there's some part of me which feels like this this seems like a dumb arbitrary barrier you can bet on election outcomes for other countries, can't you? You could bet on the outcome of a US election here in England, couldn't you? The United States does many things by citizenship, not by location. So it might not actually be legal for me to bet on US elections, even if I was abroad. So I don't know the answer to that question. But yeah, I'll have to investigate and get back to you on that, Brady.S. elections even if I was abroad. So I don't know the answer to that question. But yeah, I'll have to investigate and get back to you on that, Brady. Okay. I'm also very willing to bet that the overlap in the way people bet and the way people vote

would be incredibly high. I think you'd end up with like a 95% overlap. you'd only get a tiny 5% differential of people who want to hedge their bets, right? So they feel like they win either way. Like they get to vote for the party they want, but they bet on the party they don't want winning. So at least this way they get money as compensation for an unhappy outcome. But I think the overlap would be huge in the same direction. So I have a little bit of possible homework for the Tims, something to watch before next time, if you're up for it, Brady. But there was a movie that came up in YouTuber circles quite frequently as a movie to watch called Ingrid Goes West. Have you seen Ingrid Goes West?

I have not, no. Okay. I'm going to put this as homework as like perhaps an interesting movie to talk about simply because sort of relates to the modern world and to social media. And I think it might be just something interesting to touch upon for next time it's not exactly like a like a chick flick episode here but it's this is like chick flick adjacent for uh for ingrid goes west so i'm going to put that down as some homework if you are interested brady and if the hello internet listeners are interested

for next time or you know when we get to it