Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 447 - Our Social Dilemma ft. Former President of Pinterest Tim Kendall

Episode Date: November 19, 2020

Tim Kendall is the founder and CEO of the company, Moment. Moment is an app that helps adults and children use their phones in healthier ways. Tim is the former President of Pinterest -- at various points, he led product development, engineering, marketing and sales. Prior to Pinterest, Tim was Facebook’s Director of Monetization, where he led the development of Facebook’s advertising business. He was also featured in the documentary, “The Social Dilemma”. Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: https://drinklmnt.com/powerproject Purchase 3 boxes and receive one free, plus free shipping! No code required! ➢Freeze Sleeve: https://freezesleeve.com/ Use Code "POWER25" for 25% off plus FREE Shipping on all domestic orders! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Hey everybody, welcome back to Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast. Today's episode of the podcast is brought to you by Element Electrolytes. Yo, dehydration's a big problem. Dehydration's real. A lot of people think that if you want to be less dehydrated, you just drink more water. But let me tell you, from experience and from a bunch of people in my life, my girl, my mom, when you just drink a lot of moderate water, you pee a lot. And your pee is clear and you think you're hydrated, but you still feel like crap. But the thing is, Element has the perfect amount of sodium, potassium, magnesium to

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So when you go to Drink Element, that's drinklmnt.com slash power project. You can check out the value bundles. You get four boxes, whatever flavor you guys want for the price of three. And on top of that, you get free shipping. So please head over to drink l m n t dot com slash power project. Yeah, I think this falls in line with a lot of what today's podcast is going to be. And I just started recording. So maybe we can kind of just dive into that, especially for so people didn't hear the entire conversation that we just had. So if you want to break that one down for everybody real quick and we can just, yeah, we were just talking about James clear and atomic habits. And today we have, uh,

Tim Kendall on the podcast, uh, former, uh, former, uh, uh, Facebook employee. He helped kind of structure, uh, some of the monetization of the ads for Facebook. And then he later became president of Pinterest. And I think at some point, and I'll let him say it in his own words when he gets on the show here today, but at some point he just kind of realized some of the negative side effects of social media. And I think he kind of stopped agreeing with a lot of the things that the company was doing and a lot of the things that he was even maybe, maybe even setting forth, uh, in the name of progression of these kind of, uh, giant tech companies at the expense of people and, uh, at the expense of, um, kind of, uh, like duping people into staying on these networks for longer periods of

time than they should. And then I kind of started talking a little bit about James Clear and habits. And James Clear wrote a book called Atomic Habits. He talks about habits all the time. And he kind of mentioned how habits are, you know, they're not, it's not a finish line to be crossed. It's more of a lifestyle to be lived, especially when you're talking about good habits. The bad habits are, they're easy to do. They're easy to fall into because it's a trap. You know, you do get immediate benefit when you check your Facebook and your Instagram and your Pinterest and all these things, you, you do get what you're looking for. Um, sometimes you're, sometimes you're looking for, uh, uh, like struggle. Sometimes you're looking, you're, you're look, sometimes

you're looking for someone to say something negative, you know, cause you may have put up a post that's a little on the fringe on the the outskirts of what you normally talk about. And you might be like, all right, let's see who's out there. Let's see who wants to contend this. And then you get mad, but you knew that you were, it's all really fucking strange behavior in the long run, but it's a part of human behavior. So I'm really excited today to talk to Tim and kind of get to the bottom of some of this. You know, Mark, quick question, because I know I've fallen victim to this in the past. And as I've learned more about it, I've tried to pull myself out of giving it weight. But, you know, you've distanced yourself from your social media in the past few years,

I think, actually. But when you first started using it and you first started growing on it, and then you saw those likes growing, did you, was there ever a time where you're like, oh wow, it feels pretty good to get 5,000 likes. Did you ever actually have a good feeling associated with that? And then and over time, like you realized, huh, maybe that's not the greatest. Or were you always just kind of immune to it? So I'm a, I'm a big believer and proponent of that. Most things come from like really good intentions. The guy that made the like button, you know, he couldn't have anticipated the fact that people wouldn't like stuff. He was just like, Oh, this is like a fist bump in real life. You

know, this is like, Hey man, like that was fucking cool. But he didn't realize that when somebody got done finishing something that a lot of people wouldn't say anything or they would say something negative. And so I don't think he could foresee the fact that not participating and not hitting that like button is going to be really damaging to a lot of people. So you see 3000 likes, 5,000 likes, 10,000 likes, 2000 likes, 5,000 likes. And it's all, you know, kind of, you know, it's all within a range. And every once in a while, you get a really good one. And every once in a while you get one that's not received well, but every once in a while you get one that just totally bombs out and doesn't hit the mark for

whatever reason. And it makes you feel bad. It's made me feel bad, which feels so foolish to say out loud or to admit, but yeah, I can admit that. And then seeing the negative comments is super frustrating. And if you were to look at probably any of the posts that I've ever done, I don't think there's ever been one post where there's more negative comments than there are positive. There's, you know, there's always going to be more positive, even the one with like Dr. Bataar where a lot of people kind of flipped out. You can look at that one and you probably 51%, you know, we're positive 51%.

We're like, yeah, a lot of this is bullshit. So yeah, even, even like wearing a Trump hat or whatever, like, again, he's still got a lot of votes and they're still sorting this thing out. So this fight ain't over. But anyway, um, yeah, I, I've definitely felt the wrath of social media just like, uh, everyone else has. Otherwise I would still be on there. That makes sense. How about you, Andrew? Oh, absolutely. Um, but just like Mark said, uh, it's been way more positive than negative. Um, when I did Sarmageddon, uh, the YouTube side was like that. I mean, YouTube is different. Um, I still haven't figured out why it's, it's so drastically different than every other social media platform, I guess. In a good way or bad way? In a bad way.

I mean, in my experience, I should say. Because maybe because it's a little bit easier to just make like a fake account or something. Although I don't know how easy it is to make a YouTube account, like to have a burner or whatever, or it's just easier to hide behind the screen name. But when I did, when i did when i did storm regeddon the positivity i got on instagram was through the roof i still get dms today from people like thanking me for doing that series um you know like i it's it's crazy like a lot of support on instagram on youtube a lot of hate tons tons of hate. And at first I was like, ah, this is whatever

I can handle this. And then I would just catch myself throughout the day, like thinking about like a certain comment. And then I'm like, ah, but that comment doesn't bother me. And then I would think about it again. I'm like, ah, that guy's an asshole. Like whatever. Like he's, you know, just hating. And then I would think about it again. I'm like, okay, Like he's, you know, just hating. And then I would think about it again. I'm like, okay, this actually is an issue for me. Like I can't, I can no longer go in the comment section of my videos. So when I realized that, and it wasn't really like one of those things where like it caused

an issue and somewhere outside of, you know, or somewhere else in my life, it was just, I noticed that it was on my mind a lot. So when I realized that I'm like, all right, I'm just not going in my life. It was just, I noticed that it was on my mind a lot. So when I realized that, I'm like, all right, I'm just not going in the comments. And then like one or two people on Instagram kind of lashed out at me. And again, like I kind of like I responded and I just felt really like gross is the only way I can really explain it. So after that, I just didn't even bother. I just started blocking people. And thankfully, it was only like two people. So it wasn't bad.

People being anonymous is sometimes problematic, you know, because you can't like, I forget who we had on the show, but we had someone on the show that like knew someone that posted about them. And then you like showed up at the gym and he's like, yo, you know, what's the deal? You know, you really got a problem, you know? And the guy was like, like, yo, you know, what's, what's the deal? You know, you really got a problem, you know? And the guy was like, no man, you know, he got freaked out. Um, there's no consequence to just throwing it out there. And I think that all of us should be cautious when we make a comment. And if you are going to try to say something silly or funny and it's, and it's not a friend, it's not someone that knows your humor.

Then I would suggest, you know, putting a little emoji next to it or a ha-ha-ha or something because what you're saying could be really damaging. You could just be trying to throw something out there. People can be really mean and they can say stuff that you didn't even know bothered you really or it could be stuff that has bothered you from the time you were like a kid and, uh, they just shout it out and they just blurt it out. It doesn't cost them anything. It took them a couple of seconds to write it. And they were, maybe they were in a bad mood. Maybe they were completely messing around, you know? Um, but it can catch you off guard. You know, it could really

kind of throw you for a loop when somebody that you don't know is questioning your character, your morals, especially with something like Sarmageddon, or questioning your knowledge. You post something and say, hey, here's what I like to do with kettlebells. And someone's like, kettlebells are fucking idiots, man. There's no eccentric component to kettlebells. They can't build muscle. You're like, what? And that, that just like irks you.

Like it might not upset you, but you're just like, come on dude. Like fucking kettlebells are pretty cool. Like they work pretty good. A lot of people that use kettlebells are in good shape and they're jacked. So fuck off. But it shouldn't even get you to that point.

It's just like not even fucking read it. Right. It's really funny that, um, like we are three grown men and we're grown ass men grown ass men and we're still like we are also trying to figure out the best way to navigate this like andrew mentioned like i responded to those comments and i felt gross i've like seen comments that i've been like it me, it made me so mad in the past. Right. And

sometimes like, they'll, they'll still like, it'll still make me think and then I'll catch myself. But like, when I think about that, okay, we're trying to navigate this being adults, like goddamn kids that are growing up in middle school with all of this, with kids say stupid things on the internet, kids make fake accounts and they'll bully other kids and they'll, they'll talk about how they look like that is, that must be nightmarish. It's gotta be so hard. And then to go to school, you know, I know that we don't have school at the moment, but imagine somebody just fries you on, you know, on Instagram, someone says something really mean or something they thought was really funny. Maybe a bunch of other people gang up and say something that they thought was funny too.

And now you're going to school a couple days later with rumors flying around about you or just bad vibes. You just don't feel good about yourself and you probably wouldn't even want to go. Probably be paralyzed. Probably be like, you know what? Stay in the fuck home. Probably why a lot of these kids are getting severely depressed. And some, unfortunately, in that movie, I think the thing that was exposed the most in Social Dilemma, and I hope it's taken very seriously, is the suicide rate of teenage girls, like being like through the roof. And some of them even being younger, some of them even being like 10, 11 years old.

I just, I can't even, I can't comprehend that. That's just, that's just crazy, you know? And hopefully we can find some nice solutions to that. I, you know, I really want to know from Tim, like, are there even solutions? Like, you know, I mean, both of you guys have heard people say that you know like with everything else we're just gonna adapt and learn how to use it or learn how to work through our lives but will we ever really be able to adapt to having to be first off have access to thousands of people but then have thousands of people potentially have access to us can we yeah i don't know i mean you think about it like we were probably designed or made up for X amount of interaction, right? And we don't know how much interaction we're made for

with how many different people, because my understanding of how a lot of this stuff works is like, I'm a different person to you and Seema than I am to Andrew. I'm going to act differently when I'm with Andrew. I'm going to act a little differently when I'm with you versus when I'm a different person to you and Seema than I am to Andrew. I'm going to act differently when I'm with Andrew. I'm going to act a little differently when I'm with you versus when I'm with my wife versus when I'm with my kids. So you're 75 different people to 75 to 75 other, other people. And even to yourself,

you don't, you can't really know yourself that well. You'd have to go around and ask everybody to fucking survey everybody and get the truth about yourself to learn more about yourself and nobody's strong enough to do that shit um and that would be really hard for the person to even answer truthfully because they wouldn't want to be like ripping you apart stuff like that but now imagine trying to do that on a larger scale now i'm you know you know, 5,000 different people to 5,000 people that are out there. And it gets to really puts you in a very confusing position. And then there's also the narcissism of social media, which, you know, somebody taking a selfie of themselves,

a kid that's really young, that can barely say two words in front of any adults you know um it's interesting you know you're taking a selfie trying to make a trying to make yourself look the best that you can and filtering it and doing all these things that would uh i guess otherwise make you think somebody takes a picture with like sunglasses on the beach looking cool or whatever you're kind of thinking that person's pretty damn confident in themselves. But then you, again, there are different people. They're giving you a particular image. They're a different person to Instagram than they are to their mom and dad and stuff like that. You know, it's funny that you mentioned the, uh, like being a different person, 75 different people, you might've seen it already, but did you see the new video that What I've Learned posted on testosterone in men?

Oh, I got to check it out. I love that. That guy's got such good information. He's fucking awesome. But he posted a video a few days ago, and it was about the effect of social media on the testosterone of men. And then in there, he also cited a bunch of research that showed that currently humans kind of have evolved or have gotten used to being able to have access to an average of about 150 other humans, like really being able to deal with that. There is an average of the amount of people invited to weddings, weddings, the amount of like person to person interactions, it all ends up being close to one 50 something.

Right. So then, uh, when he, when he kind of expanded upon that, he's like, okay, well now we're, we have this massive amount that we're just not used to. It kind of makes sense that we just can't handle it. Like it's, it's overload. Yeah. I've heard, I think, I think from that same guy, I think I've heard him talk about it making you invisible. And what you're trying to do is be seen, right? You're trying to be seen by all these people, right? But it kind of makes you invisible and it kind of makes your, it makes your, you know,

quote unquote followers. It makes them faceless. You know, you and I are good friends. Like we've known each other for a few years now. You and I are good friends. We've known each other for a few years now. And even on my Instagram, when you like it, you're just another follower, right? You're faceless. You're in the crowd. I can't see you. Even if you make a comment, I ran into 10 times, but again, you're just a follower amongst however many thousands of people, you know, somebody might have following them. Yeah, no, it's, it's definitely an amazing thing that, you know, with what we're all able to do with social media, the amount of people that you're able to have an effect on, like, I mean, Jesus Christ, you've, you've been able to have an effect on hundreds of thousands and actually millions of people at this point. Right. But it's like, it's a double-edged sword. I think, I think honestly, though, it does skew more positive in, in our cases, but I feel like, uh, for people that are having to grow up with it and, and, and evolve with it, like I see TikTok and all that, like not like, oh, this is a kid's problem.

It's also a problem for us, too. I'm not saying it's just a kid's problem, but it is. It's confusing as hell. You know, what's interesting is there's a lot of like the elderly crowd. They're on social media nonstop because they ain't got shit to do a lot of them are retired my dad's on facebook all the time you guys remember how many uh posts my or how many things my mom would send you guys and share and like and comment on everything yeah older folks are on there a lot too and that would be interesting to talk to our guests about today too i think

maybe they're wiser and maybe they're older and also maybe they don't know all the functionality of it so maybe that's uh maybe it's a little safer for them because they don't know all the different uh you know rabbit holes that you can go down but um my dad's always like what is this you know and what is that my daughter uh was helping him the other day with something on his phone he like oh he couldn't figure out his alarm because he like updated his phone he's like it wants me to get this app or whatever. And Quinn's like, let me see the phone. She literally pushed one button.

She's like, there you go. It's set. He's like, my alarm's set for six o'clock every morning. She goes, yep. She's like, you don't need that app. She's like, it's all good. You're all set. He was so confused.

It was amazing. Oh, God. Dude, no, but that's another thing though i feel like um yeah a lot of older people are on social media but uh a lot of older people are also getting scammed like yeah right you know how much i've seen that from like like older relatives like and sema look at this i'm like nigerian prince that's the best right like all i have to do is give them my bank account information this is amazing they need to need a little bit of money from me so they can make more money yeah oh god

yeah that shit really works the one that i've been seeing the most is like a free like 25 amazon card or whatever it's like oh like like look you just you've been selected and it's just like mom like what were you selected for like how did this just all of a sudden come out of nowhere it's like well i don't know like okay like exactly if it's too good to be true chances are it is well not chances when it comes to the internet and social media networks it it definitely is so one thing to think the other thing you know we got to point out is that we were fans of social media, obviously. I mean, we use it, uh, this show, you know, is on YouTube and on a bunch of forms of social media. So we're huge fans of it, but it'd be great to, uh, get down with our guests today and, and figure out and talk about how to maybe solve,

or if there are solutions to, uh, some of this, some of the social dilemma that we, we face. Tim, great to have you on the show today. Appreciate your time. Yeah, great to be here. Let's just kind of dive right into it. So at the moment, you know, we're dealing with a pandemic. And I kind of mentioned on this show before that the ticket sales to COVID Part 2

would skyrocket around the holidays. And here we are. Looks like a lot of the country is going to go into a further lockdown. How do you think the lockdown plays into the hands of social media potentially potentially being even more dangerous than it already is? Well, I think that I mean, we've seen, so, so I run a company now. I mean, I was obviously in, in, um, you know, at the big social companies before, but now I run a company that really helps people, um, you know, sort of understand how much they're addicted to their phones and kind of helps them

be more deliberate about their phone use if they want. And I bring that up because what we've seen in our data, and we've got 9 million people who've downloaded Moments, so it's quite a bit of data in terms of phone usage. We saw just between sort of pre-quarantine, post-quarantine, you know, 20, 30 percent increase in just raw time spent. So, look, when we're at home and we're stuck there, we get bored. And so we, you know, we're now at a, our culture is at a point where boredom is really a bad thing. I think we're all somehow conditioned to be sort of scared of boredom. I certainly am. I mean, I'm trying to question that in my own life, but I think that's just the default.

And so we put these pieces of glass in front of our faces, it soothes us and it makes us feel better, you know. So, you know, I think it's not good. And I think that, you know, the longer that this goes on, I think it extracts a bigger toll on us psychologically. And that doesn't even begin to talk about what the sort of societal consequences are. I mean, I think that it's really clear, and the film, The Social Dilemma, touches on this. It's really clear that the politicalization of COVID is really being accelerated by social media, right? We're getting polarized into two groups. They're sort of the people who are, if we're pejorative, right,

it's like the alarmists and the deniers, right? It's like the people who are too freaked out and they're, you know, wearing gloves and masks everywhere and goggles and they're, you know, wearing gloves and masks everywhere and goggles. And like, we, we look at them and certainly for the denier group, we really demonize them as the other and the people who've got it wrong. If we're really worried and we're trying to be super cautious, we're demonizing the set of people who walk around without masks and say that the whole thing is exaggerated. And that wedge, I think what social media does is it just creates a much wider wedge on issues like COVID than we would have if we didn't have these sort of algorithmic systems dividing us. What was it? How did it come to be that you ended up working at Facebook? And I know this is years

ago, but if you could talk about that for a moment and also like, I would just imagine working for a company like Facebook, that must've been so exciting. Like the allure of it, it must've been, must've been wild. So if you can elaborate on that, I think that would be great. Yeah. Well, I went to college in Silicon Valley, so I kind of got the bug early around just the power of technology and just the excitement of being able to kind of create something really big that a lot of people could use out of almost, you know, out of nothing. So, you know, at the time that I was at Stanford, you know, those two guys over in the computer science department built this search engine

called Google. And I remember reading about it in the Stanford Daily and thinking, actually literally thinking to myself, like, what a bunch of idiots. You know how many search engines there are out there? Like, I got an idea. Let's pick a green field area, like an open field area, like search. I mean, it seemed like search was totally done. But what a great lesson, right? In that if you can build something that is two, three, 10 times better than what's out there, you can create a brand new market and a brand new opportunity and something that really changes a lot of people's lives for the better. And Google absolutely did that. So I was a big admirer of what, you know, at the time, this is early 2000s, mid 2000s, what Apple was doing,

what Google was doing. And I really loved the idea of kind of how these consumer services ultimately had to figure out how to make money. And I think Google to this day is still maybe one of the most elegant illustrations of how you take somebody searching for a weightlifting belt, for instance, right? And yeah, there are a bunch of organic searches and then search results. And then there are these paid results on the right-hand side. And it's this really wonderful way where uh the consumer gets value whether it's an ad or not right and and the company makes a lot of money um it's a lot of goodness uh and so um i 2005 2006 i'm in grad school at stanford at Stanford at this point. And because I was in grad school, I had a.edu email address, which allowed me... You really could only sign up for Facebook at

that time if you had a.edu email address, which is actually part of the reason why Facebook, I think, worked. Because there was this embedded verified system where there know there's only one mark bell at stanford.edu right no one could come in and say well i'm mark bell at yahoo.com which by the way anyone could go create so you had this parallel thing like myspace myspace had 54 jennifer aniston's in 2005 and so people were confused it's really really, I think it's really the inauthentic and false identity of MySpace that, you know, among other things that led it to sort of collapse on itself. So I was looking at a grad school to go work at a consumer technology company that was, you know, had the potential to get, to get big and interesting.

And one that hopefully was at a stage where they didn't quite know how they were going to make money. And I could kind of, you know, take my freshly earned MBA and, and help them, uh, help them figure that out. So they were looking for someone to kind of help them sort out what, you know, among the various options that they could choose to make money off this service. And they were about, you know, when I joined, I think there were about six, seven million users of the service, about 100 people at the company. And it was a trip. You know, Mark Zuckerberg was 20 years old.

I mean, he was a kid. We were years old. I mean, he was a kid. We were all kids. I mean, I would think I was 28 at the time. And, um, you know, we didn't know what we didn't know, but we knew we had something on our hands. And, and, uh, so that's how I ended up there and spent, you know, five years there. And really mostly what I focused on was really the first year was, Hey, how do we, how are we going to make money off this thing? Let's explore, let's build some prototypes, explore a couple options.

And then we ultimately selected advertising. And then, and then my job was to, you know, lead a team that built that and then, and then grew it. Was there a specific day that you remember, um, kind of saying like, ah, shit, I need to move on from here? Or you didn't have that feeling until later on working for other companies? Yeah, I mean, look, it'd be really cool. It'd be very poetic if I figured out that these things were like, you know, evil 10 years ago. But I didn't, I had no clue. I mean, the only reason, the reason I left is I really liked the early,

the early shaping of a company. And, you know, I think when I left there were probably 2000 employees and we were, you know, we'd started with business with zero in revenue and the business was on a $2 billion run rate. And you start to get to that stage and you get more cautious people who are, you know, have their hand on the wheel and, you know, they're, they want to figure out how to increase, you know, this and that one or two.

There's a bunch of rules at that point. A bunch of rules. Screw this. I don't like all these rules. And a bunch of, you know, incrementalists, I call them, right? Uh, and, um, it's just more fun to be at the beginning-ish. So I took a little time off and then joined Pinterest. And Pinterest was smaller than Facebook.

At the time I joined, it was about 15 people, no revenue. And distinct from Facebook, I really was in a position with Ben and Evan, the founders, to really shape the culture and help drive the direction of the company and grow it. So that was super rewarding and fun. And I think on the scheme of good for the world, I think that Pinterest is in this unique set where it's not really social media in the sense that it's really a tool about you.

It's really a tool that allows you to sort of figure out, you know, your hobbies, you know, curate sort of weightlifting routines or recipes, whatever. It's less about extracting your attention and then turning that into money through advertising. and then turning that into money through advertising. As a guy who was the head of advertising and you've built systems around this, being someone who did that, was there a point that you found yourself actually being affected by what you created? You're like, wow, this actually really works really well.

Like, ooh, ooh, this is, I'll click here, I'll click here. And then you're like, wait, this is damn, this is too good. Did that ever happen to you? Or are you kind of unaffected because you know of all the tricks? Oh, I think that's the scariest part about this stuff is that even if you are behind the curtain and you know exactly how this works, you're susceptible. I think it's sort of like a nutritionist being susceptible to sugar addiction. Just because you know the mechanisms doesn't mean that you don't want to have five more cookies after you've had one. And so I'm just as susceptible.

I mean, I guess on the margin, it helps to know. And this is less about then than now. I think sort of like, you know, when I have trouble, I have a total sugar addiction. And so sometimes when I am eating too much sugar, I'll pull out, you know, one of those books. There's that book, The Case Against Sugar, to remind me just how toxic sugar is. And then, you know, it gives me a little more pause the next night when I'm, you know, in the pantry looking for something post-dinner to eat. post dinner to eat and so i think there's a similar thing that happens with the with the phone where where you know i read the latest study that that talks about um you know shrinking gray matter around the the amygdala the animal part of the brain corresponding with usage

i gotta get these things out of my house I mean that's dramatic but there was you know even at the beginning of Facebook when I joined I joined because it was an engaging product and engaging

is a little bit of a is a little bit of a kind term for addictive. And that's why I knew it would be a good business because people couldn't necessarily help themselves. It preyed on these things in our brains that we often struggle to have willpower over, right? Our interest in popularity, our interest in comparison, vanity, voyeurism. I mean, those are potent levers in your brain that Facebook was even early days pulling on in a dramatic way. And I think that what's scary is that those levers really,

I mean, it's terrible still, but like they're really confined to impacting the individual sort of their mental health, right, causing depression and anxiety. You know, we've since moved on i mean facebook still pulls all those levers but now they have new levers because they got to get you to spend more time on the service so now it's like misinformation conspiracy theories um you know and and the thing that we talked about earlier with covet like trying to get people um pitted against each other like trying to get people pitted against each other.

Because a great engagement lever is inciting anger, and inciting anger between the two of us, right? Like self-righteous fueled anger. Man, I mean, think about the self-righteous. Well, I can think about my own self-righteous tirades that I've gone on where I think I'm right about something and someone else is wrong. I mean, I'll stay on the Internet, somewhere on the left, browsing a feed, looking for proof that they're right and the other person's wrong. And sort of at the same time, it's imperceptibly pulling each of you more to the extreme and farther apart. And it's great for business and really bad for society. really bad for society. I love what you're saying there. And I think we fall into a lot of weird, like, uh, societal norms that are, you know, would have obviously been on common because we don't

have, we didn't have phones and we didn't have the internet and stuff like that. But phone envy is kind of a funny thing. You see somebody like whip out their phone, they start poking around on it. You're like, Oh, I need to, I need to get, you to get my phone on. It just makes you, uh, yeah, it makes you think that you're, uh, you're like missing out on, on something. Uh, video games are extremely, uh, addicting in their own right. But I kind of, I don't know if you get the same feedback loop from a video game. I know that they are highly interactive with other people on there, but, uh, social media seems to be different. But I heard recently on Joe Rogan that people will play video games for so long and they'll play so, so much video games that they'll sit there in a diaper

because they don't want to get up and use the bathroom and stuff like that. Some kid, I know this is, this will sound crazy. Some kid, you know, sometimes you sit in a chair and you tuck your leg underneath. Right. Doing it right now. Some kid effing was playing a video game with his leg tucked underneath and his, he had to have his leg amputated. Oh,

leg like died. That sounds crazy, but I will send you, I'll send you the proof you put in the show notes but like that is the that's like the like if you need a an anecdote to illustrate the addictives the corrosiveness of something but yeah people in diapers uh the kid losing the leg and then you've got the people die right they they they don't sleep for days and then they have like organ failure. You know, um, what, what can we do? Um, what can we do about our, our children? I know

that you, uh, you developed an app and, um, congratulations on the app for a having 9 million people on there. That's, that's incredible. It's nothing to sneeze at. And then also, uh, um, I think I heard that, um, you're helping people get off their screens by about 30%. So congratulations on that as well. What are some things, I have children myself, and what are some messages and what are some things that I should be sharing with my children to, I don't know, just assist them kind of through this process? How old are your kids? 13 and 16. Okay. you do you guys have kids oh no yeah i have a a 12 year old and one new will soon to be newborn uh due out in february nice you made it hard on yourself huh yeah i mean soon yeah coming soon yeah and um well you know the number one thing that i tell people which is actually really unpopular and and i've gotten myself in trouble

in certain in in certain circumstances when i say this because it's like trying to trying to uh you know how in um sorry i was trying to come up with a clever weightlifting, uh, metaphor, but, but I actually think this is like the, it's a good metaphor. So what is it called when you go negative, right? You, you burn out, you get to a burnout point and then someone spot you. Yeah. Like a, uh, Yeah, like eccentric or go into failure or something like that. Yeah. So the strongest I ever was was in college. So I wrestled in college.

And the hardest meant, I think one of the hardest things we ever did is we did circuits where we would go negative on every station. And it was so, I mean it hurt like hell and it was also it was also um mentally so hard right because you knew every time you sat down at a station to go for the 30 seconds or whatever however long the station thing was that you were going to be in extreme pain. But guess what? We were the strongest we'd ever been when we started doing those kinds of circuits. I mean, that is how you get, at least for, at least for wrestling, that's how you get sort of this unfair strength advantage is if you're willing to pay that price. Um, so what I tell parents is if you really want to help your kids the number one thing is to look at your own usage and model what you want to see no i don't use my phone that much i

use it for work yeah yeah yeah that's that's a common refrain um uh another one is like no no they just should do what i say not do as i do um look like like the phone issue the phone addiction issue the phone issue with families i think so, it parallels a lot of the challenges that the world has with food and particularly sort of big food and big sugar and sugar issues, right? So one of the things that we've done is we've talked to a lot of endocrinologists who figure out how to take families where the kids are, you know, have serious type 2 diabetes and radically shift how the kid eats because they have to. And the endocrinologists consistently tell us that the families who just say, hey, kid, you're going to eat this, we're going to keep eating,

we're going to keep drinking Coke and sugar water and all this other stuff, but you're changing your diet. That doesn't help. The kid stays sick. It's got to be, there has to be this reckoning where the family says, okay, we're all not eating very well. The kid, this important member of our family isn't feeling too good. We got to systematically all shift to a new way of eating. It's going to suck, but we're going to feel better. And the endocrinologist will tell you that is the path by which sustainable change happens. And I think it's the same with the phone and technology use in a family.

You know, and I think this, I think, look, I think it really, my hypothesis, and I don't have data to prove this, I think it starts early in the sense that, like, I think when, you know, I have a four-year-old and a six-year-old and some days we're better at this than others. I think it's bad when they see us doing this sitting there looking at our phone. It's just like, that's, I mean, it's sort of like, you know, my, my, when my daughter was three, she was pretending to take work calls.

And that's because she saw me taking work calls. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with work calls. Nothing wrong with a work call. I'm just illustrating that they like, they mimic everything. And if over the course of the day, they see me in, you know, the kitchen or whatever doing this, this is is what adults do i think it was a big issue with smoking right it was like we saw celebrities with cigarettes in their mouth we saw our parents with cigarettes in their mouth got normalized what's the big deal probably there's

some some of that it's true with alcohol too an overuse of alcohol so it's a long-winded way of saying modeling i think is your biggest lever and then you know i think a con an ongoing conversation about you know what it's doing to their brain and and i mean i think that certainly mark at your kid's age like hopefully they've watched The Social Dilemma. And I think watching it as a family is good and talking about it afterwards. I think, you know, we've heard about friend groups watching it, peers watching it. Because, you know, if all at the same time, you know, a group of your kid's friends can say, Whoa, this is, this is what's happening to us. This is why we're all staying up until 1am in the morning, making sure that our

snap streaks stay up with each other. Like, wow, they're totally effing with us. That's not, that's, that's a bummer. I've lost my agency. I don't like that. Do you guys like that? No, That's a bummer. I've lost my agency. I don't like that. Do you guys like that? No, I don't like that. Let's fix it. Easier said than done. But one of the features in Moment, in our latest version, which we launched concurrent with a film, allows you to create a group. And it could be your family. be your family you could and some people create multiple groups they'll create a group with their family and they can see in their family like well first of all they go through a co they co-experience kind of a guided coach that walks them through these different exercises as a group but they also can see if everybody sort of opts into being in this group they can see how much each person the group uses their phone every day and how often they pick it up every day and um and that's powerful right that's accountability that's what you know it's like it's like how do you get the crossfit like dynamic going of like we're in

this we're watching each other we're holding each other accountable for working hard or like shifting habits yeah a shared sense of purpose yeah yeah you um you mentioned cigarettes a second ago and you know it is funny to go back and see some of the ads for like what doctors recommended the most which brand um we look at that now, we're just like, holy, what were you thinking? Do you think with social media that we will ever get to that point where it's like, oh my gosh, do you remember back in 2020 when social media was on everyone's phone? And like, wow, what were they thinking? I do.

I mean, that's part of why I've started to call it big social. What were they thinking? I do. I mean, that's part of why I've started to call it big social. Because there's big oil, there's big tobacco, there's big sugar, and now we've got big social. And I think there will be, I think we're already starting to see it, but I think there will be a really, over the next several years, a pretty profound reckoning around the impact that this is having on kids' mental health and even adults' mental health. You know, I think it's pretty clear from the data that, I mean, it clearly has a worse effect on children because their brains are still developing. But even on adults, you know, the research is pretty clear that overuse of the phone, you know, overuse is sort of depends on the individual, can absolutely personally depends on the individual can absolutely make you depressed. It can absolutely make you anxious. It definitely screws up your attention span. It definitely degrades your cognitive abilities. Um, so, you know, one of the things that I would love

is, and these are problems that we spend time thinking about at moment and try to brainstorm sort of possible solutions is, you know, one of the cool things about exercise as an example is that you do it. And then there are all these amazing feedback loops, right? You feel better almost immediately, depending on if you did the right workout or whatever. You start to look better after a few times. People start to, you know, tell you that you look better. You feel better. You sleep better. All these things happen. And then, you know, if you're looking at markers like, you know, And then, you know, if you're looking at markers like, you know, how much I weigh, what my body fat percentage is, what, you know, can I lift more this next week than I did this week than I did last week? I think what's going to happen, and we certainly are spending time thinking about this, is, okay, what are the ways that we can show you that if you overuse your phone, like we could illustrate, we could give that same kind of feedback loop to you where you spend 45 minutes on Instagram.

We're like, yeah, you just dropped your IQ five points for the next week. Good for you. You are now going to be, I'm making all this up. You're, you're now going to be 20% less empath, empathetic with your family for the next two weeks. Um, and then we've, we've talked about, I would love it if, if there were markers that we could correlate with phone use, right. It could, I mean, I've always hypothesized, but never been able to show it.

And we should probably at some point run a study, you know, about the impact of phone use and HRV variability or other things like that. A great person to talk to on that would be the author of a book called breathe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You should look into that book if you haven't. Yeah. James Nestor and I have been talking. Yeah. I would say that he would be, cause I read the book and thought, wow, we should, we should check. Cause I think the brief could be implemented.

The respiration rate. Right. Right. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. I think that is, um, Cause it's a coping, it's a coping mechanism. You coping mechanism you know you're not telling you're not saying hey you have to put that down you're saying hey look i know you're not going to put it down so here just breathe this way yeah yeah that's interesting or look what happens to your breathing when you pick it up versus when you don't have it you know i mean right um you know there are a couple of those devices that uh you can you can put on your belt loop that that measure your respiration rate throughout the day. Joel Jameson is the kind of the one who made heart rate variability famous and stuff.

We know him well, if you know, you have a hard time contacting people, but if you need contact info for anything, he would be great. time contacting people but okay if you need contact info for anything he would be great i just think if we had a marker that just said like you know it's you know sort of like what's the blood what's the blood glucose level equivalent for too much phone use and by the way probably just like glucose it'll vary depending on who it is i I would say that your ability to manage your blood glucose would change drastically from over-utilization of your phone. I would say that 100% guaranteed because your phone is impacting your sleep and it's impacting your breathing. And that's already been proven many times over. And your stress, which is all right. That's all linked up. It's all linked together. Yeah, it is. It is so remarkable. Um, I feel like I'm increasingly

realizing I'm probably a little late to the party. Just how much you can do all these great things on the health side. But if you're, if your psychological wellbeing and stress levels are high, right. It's just like, you know, oxidized stress just can cancel all that other good stuff out. One thing that I think that'll trigger men though is, because I think you could also figure out a correlation to his testosterone. There's a video I just saw the other day. I was talking to Mark and Andrew about that before this, and it was from this channel called What I've Learned.

And he actually linked a bunch of studies together in terms of the way men use social media and decreased testosterone in men. And I mean, if you think about it, with the rate that guys are using their phones and they're just sitting there on their phones all the time looking at people that are more successful and better than them, putting them in a negative mental state. And we know that that'll affect your actions, which can actually probably affect your testosterone. That'll make men think. That's right. can actually probably affect your testosterone. Yeah. That'll make men think, you know. That's right. No, that's a good call out.

Yeah, it's such a tricky problem. You know, I think that one of the things that I try to do is just is, is pick and actually the Apple, you got to kind of hack it, but like there is a way I've always thought it would be useful if this, I could make this thing, turn it into kind of a dumb phone half the day or all weekend. And you actually can do that in screen time. You go into down. So it's like, I'll spend 20 seconds explaining it. You basically go into screen time, set downtime. Let's just say there's

a feature within screen time called downtime. And you can say, hey, I want downtime to last from 6pm to 9pm, right? Because I'm with my family then. I just want my phone to be down. And then you can go into allowed apps, which is basically the apps that are always available, even if you're in downtime. And say, I'll keep my phone, I'll keep messaging, and I'll keep my calendar because sometimes I need access to those even when I'm in downtime. And then, and this is the hack, then you hand your partner or your wife your phone and you let them set screen time password. Because I, God, just there's got to be, you know, you got to eliminate the back door. Like we talk a lot at Moment, I talk a lot at Moment.

My team's probably sick of me saying this. It's like, look, you want to know the number one thing? You guys should tell me if this is true. What I have read is the number one thing to change diet is just get the effing food that you don't want to eat out of the house. You can't do that with this. Short of what I just described or some, some other hacks. Sometimes I leave this in the car when I get home.

That's a good one. Like what is the equivalent of like getting the sugar out of my pantry so that if I have an urge to eat sugar, it's going to require so much effort to get it. Like I got to get in the car. I got to drive to the store. I got to get the sugar. I got to bring it home.

Like, and those type of speed bumps, you know, by design, right? They don't let us put those in place. It's just so easy to pick this up and go down a rabbit hole yeah you can make the barrier of entry of utilizing it uh any harder uh even just something as simple as shutting it off you're like i gotta turn it back on it takes a couple seconds to kick back on or i think that's a good one putting it in a drawer um yeah there's a story of a guy uh who loves cookies who like didn't want to get rid of cookies completely who put them in his garage and put them on the top shelf and he had to use a ladder to get his cookies and it's like great you know it takes uh you know three minutes

or two minutes for him to get cookies but he's got to really think about it like do i really feel like going down and getting the cookies and you know going in the dark and climbing up this ladder and so whatever way you gotta whatever way you gotta figure it we have a box in our house that we can throw the phones in and there's a it has a charger i mean you can buy stuff like this nowadays has a charging thing and the thing's locked up you know it's got a code on it and everything it's like putting your phone in jail yeah Yeah. Actually, this is in the film. And the reason that the filmmakers learned about this was that when they came to do my interviews, they're like, well, what are you doing right now? I'm like, well, I'm playing with this thing called the kitchen safe, which basically it's what you're describing, Mark, except it's a timer on the top. There's no code.

So, again, get rid of the back door. Right. on the top. There's no code. So again, get rid of the back door. This safe does not open until this counts down from one hour. And so my wife and I were playing with putting that in there. And then it's called a kitchen safe because it was originally for food. And now this company, which is in the Bay Area, I think they sell a lot more of these, these kitchen safes to people who are trying to protect themselves from their phones or keep themselves away from their phones. It's a tough, tough issue. Yeah. You lock the phone up and put the phone in jail and it might free your brain up to do some other cool stuff. Well, I do. I don't know if any of you guys have taken long stretches. Sometimes you can feel it even after an hour. But I feel like it's kind of it can be this one way I market. It's sort of the new meditation.

Your brain does feel better and clearer. And I do think your psychological well-being is enhanced if you can take a break from this thing? Yeah, I've personally taken some time away from it. And also, I don't have social media on my phone. Yeah, that helps. And I haven't even creeped at it in a long time. I just got rid of it. And luckily, I have a team that can post for me and stuff. Yeah, that's great. I just got rid of it. And luckily I have a team that can post for me and stuff. So yeah, that's great. It's just, it's just helped a lot. I mean, I wasn't, I was doing

better with it anyway. I wasn't having a hard time coping with it. I did in the past run into some speed bumps here and there, but I just learned like, you know, this is not what I want to spend my life doing. You know, when I'm, when they bury me in the ground or whatever they do to my body I don't want them to be like, him he was like really good at scrolling remember he just sat over in the corner he just fucking scrolled all day like not really something i care to be known for so yeah yeah what do you think uh sorry what do you know about humans that just absolutely thrive on like the negativity on social media. You know, you mentioned it earlier how, you know, these platforms are kind of designed to help you find what you're looking

for. And when you're looking for, you know, a confirmation bias, you'll find it. And when you're looking for somebody who's totally completely wrong because they're going against your bias, you will find it. But even when we don't look for that, we'll post, you know, a picture of us working out or something. And the one comment that stands out the most is the asshole that's like, oh, your form's terrible. Why is it that we focus on that negativity so much? Well, I suspect, God, this is out of my depth but but you know if if i had you forced me to answer this um i mean it's it's it's evolution it's it's basically you know our we're by design and natural selection we're our brains are designed to be sort of well-liked in the tribe.

And sort of our survival as, you know, over the thousands of years in which our brain was evolving, our survival was sort of predicated on, you know, making sure that we were well regarded in, in, in the tribe, in the group. Uh, however big that was, it certainly wasn't millions of people. It wasn't even thousands of people, right. It was like tens or, you know, maybe a hundred people. Um, and our brain is, is programmed to sort of see, you know, pick out, Oh, that that guy that guy's got a problem with me i better uh i gotta figure that out i don't know that's what i've read about this about this issue just in terms of the you know the the negativity our brains um really do obsess on

the negative feedback or whatever versus you know all the all the positive we certainly don't weight those weight those equally yeah sounds so ridiculous sometimes the positive feedback's not a threat right and so you're but but the negative feedback is a is a is a threat um there's this amazing book that I read a few years ago by an evolutionary psychologist named Robert Wright, and it's called Why Buddhism is True. And he talks about a couple of sort of modern phenomenon that are just like don't make any sense. But you understand why people behave the way they do, but they're illogical. a couple of sort of modern phenomenon that are just like don't make any sense but you can you understand why people behave the way they do but they're illogical and the best one of the best examples is road rage which is you get cut off and the reason that's so frustrating is that you

don't want to be crossed you know from an evolutionary standpoint you don't want to be crossed. You know, from an evolutionary standpoint, you don't want to be confronted or disrespected by someone in your tribe. And so, and you need to show the rest of the tribe that you are dominant. So you speed up and you flip the guy off and you cut him off. And as you know, these escalate into, you know, sometimes they escalate into shootings and awful things. And his point is that it's completely illogical in modern society. You're never going to see that guy again. And the people around you that your brain is thinking you need to assert your dominance to, you're never going to see them again either. No one is actually ever going to know about this incident except for you.

And so there is this opportunity he talks about, right, which is like you can sort of understand, okay, my brain is doing this because that's how it was originally sort of designed through evolutionary psychology, but responding in the way that instinctually I am programmed to respond is actually completely at odds with how modern society works. I'm sure with like, I'm sure with where you work, you know, you probably, you probably appreciate criticism and conjecture that's how we end up with knowledge and you know through error corrections and stuff you do but i have i still have to i feel like i still have to talk myself through the you know okay i get i get

negative feedback i i still have an instinctual like anger defensiveness denial you do get better right at like it like okay now denial is coming up now anger is coming up now defensiveness is coming up and the way i get better which is my ultimate goal is to internalize this and take it at face value not deflect it and and try to understand it So try to set ego aside, but God, I don't know. I, you do get better Mark. You're right. But it's still hard. Yeah. It's like some 25 year old kid at your work gives you an idea and you're like, who the fuck's this guy? Like seriously. But then when you think about it more, probably go home, you unwind, you're not thinking about work anymore. And you're like, as much as I hate to admit it, that damn kid's right.

Yeah. That is a good idea for us to go towards that. I think, you know, what you mentioned about getting crossed, I think is important. And I think another thing that happens to people is, I think that they think when they get a bad comment, that that in some way means that they're doing a bad job or that they did something wrong. Yeah. They make a post on YouTube and you try to maybe explain, you know, in our case, how to do a certain lift or, and then somebody else has information that's the complete opposite and they take a giant crap on you. And I think that our interpretation of that sometimes is that, oh, well, we must have done a bad job. Like that sucks. And it makes you feel bad about the situation. But each person will probably have their own interpretation of like what that negative comment, you know, does to set them off or how to respond to it.

And one of the things I love to do is I love to, I'm not on there anymore, so I don't get the opportunity to do it anymore. But I used to respond with like just complete nonsense i would like find something in like the declaration of independence and i'd copy it and i'd paste it back to the person just as like and once people started to see that repeatedly they were like oh he's telling the guy to fuck off yeah yeah yeah that's good i haven't heard about that that's a good that's a good tactic yeah just i don't know do something weird do something funny yeah i've definitely adopted into fun yeah it's it's a good tactic. Yeah, just, I don't know, do something weird, do something funny. Yeah, I've definitely adopted that.

Trying to end it fun. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. I use that sometimes on the podcast Instagram account. It's great. Tim, what are your thoughts on having X amount of followers or X amount of likes being today's digital currency almost? It does hold some weight, and I don't know if you and your team even bothered, but if Mark Bell or the podcast, if we reached out and it's like,

I've never heard of this guy. What's his social media looking like? Oh, he has 100 followers. I'm going to pass on this one. I'm not saying you guys did that, but obviously... Well, obviously not. I'm here. Yeah, totally. So hopefully you guys did ignore our 100 followers. You guys have a pretty popular podcast too. Thank you for saying that. So what I mean is it does still hold some weight today, but what are your thoughts on that?

your thoughts on that well my thoughts on it personally is i can't handle it so i don't i'm not a post i i look at social media every once in a while i don't i don't know that that quitting is quitting social media is the answer for everybody. I think some people, um, I think some really controlled moderation is reasonable as a consumer of social media. I think people, if they want to be a, if they want to post on social media, right. And, and develop a following and so forth. I just think you really got to, uh, basically understand your psychological resilience. And if you're not a psychologically resilient person, it's not going to go down a good path. I don't, I don't think, I think it's going to, I think it's going to, um, it's going to be a negative spiral. Um, you know, and that's why I haven't,

I've tried it as a person or whatever to not engage in that because the few times that I have, you know, this would be a stupid picture of like, it's a picture of something. Or an article, right? An article will get written and maybe it's in part about me or it's about me and I'll post it. And I will go back to that article to see how many likes it has. I don't know, 50 times that day. That is not, uh, that is not psychological resilience. That is, that is obsessive behavior. And, and it's, it's,

it's defining my esteem through via external means. So it also, it also doesn't change the news about you. It only changes your own interpretation of yourself, which is probably not going to be beneficial in any way. Exactly. So, look, I think it's tricky. It's not going away, though, right? So, I haven't been asked that question before.

So, I mean, I know what sort of my personal answer is. I think my advice to anyone who's engaged in it is just to understand the system and the system at play so that we generate more content for them and spend more time on their services so they make more money. more money. You know, one of the things that I think the film tries to assert, and what I certainly believe is that when you have an attention extraction system like Facebook or any of these big social companies, and then the business model is basically just monetizing that attention, you know, it doesn't end up in a good place for people's mental well-being or for society. So I don't know exactly how it plays out, but I think that in a world where the business model isn't how do i get everyone to spend more time on the service tomorrow um i'm not sure you have kind of followers and likes and all of this in the system right because what's been built today doesn't, does not take into account the, the well,

your wellbeing. It takes into account the vibrancy and the growth of the system and then the revenue of the company. And I think that there's an opportunity to really build a company that, and, and services that really are like, okay, this is for your benefit, your well-being. I talked to the COO of Instagram a year or two ago,

and they were seriously considering, and I don't think they've done this, but getting rid of likes, making them not as visible. Has that changed at all? Have they tweaked the visibility of it? So they did run some tests or some test groups on it, maybe even in different countries. And I remember seeing screenshots of people showing there were no lights. Hey, they're gone.

And then at some point, I think they did roll it out here to where they didn't show it, but you could still kind of like you said, use the back door to see it. And then eventually they're just like, ah, you know what? Screw it. We're just going back to normal. Yeah. I mean, I think the reason they even considered it is they understood that there was a cost.

They understood it was corrosive. They understood that it really screwed with people's brains and instincts. people's brains and instincts. Um, so look, if, if they, if they were to segue off their business model to a different model, maybe some of that stuff, uh, goes away or evolves, or if, you know, someone else comes up with sort of a better system that, or a better service that keeps us connected in the same way that social media does today without the badness, some of those things go away because their business model is different. It's not predicated on you spending more and more and more time each day. Mm-hmm. I subscribe to a lot of what Gary Vee preaches, which of course is post, post, post. And then when you're done with that, post some more.

And I give it the okay, I give it a pass because like, oh, this is for work. This is for the podcast. So in your opinion, is it just up to the individual to be able to separate that, hey, this is for work? I do, the more time I spend on the podcast accounts, the less I spend on mine. So I am trying to be as honest as possible, but you know, I mean, can we get away with that?

Like, you know, I am trying to grow the podcast, but at the same time, I'm also not trying to, you know, drop the IQ. Like you said earlier, you know, I'm trying to still be present with my family and stuff. Yeah. It's, I guess it goes back to that work-life balance. It's tough. I mean, I think it's tough for anyone in any kind of media. And I'm not saying like people should feel bad if they're in media.

But the difference between, I won't take your podcast, but you guys are ad supported. But let's just say like the difference between, let's just say the difference between Joe Rogan and Facebook is that, and the reason that Joe Rogan's not a $100 billion business is that Joe Rogan isn't powered by an all-knowing algorithm that personalizes the Joe Rogan isn't powered by an all-knowing algorithm that personalizes the Joe Rogan show to all 10, 20 million of his listeners.

So, in a sense, it's not like Facebook is so much worse than Joe Rogan. One could argue, right? It's just that they're just better at what they do. For purposes of just, we're just measuring, we're measuring media on how good of a job it does extracting time and attention from the user base. So what is that? How does that go back to your question? Um, so what is that? How does that go back to your question?

You know, I, I think it probably, if, if I were in your position, I would just be thoughtful about the kinds of posts that I provide. I would be thoughtful about the interview. I might take breaks. I might be clear with, with my audience that I'm taking breaks for this reason. I might be clear with my audience that I'm taking breaks for this reason. You know, I think it's David Asprey. I saw him do a, you know, he was posting every once in a while a social media fast. I mean, I'm not saying use that, but I but i'm saying like hey we're taking a break for i mean even gary v who who i had to i had to uh he's a lot he's really entertaining and engaging but uh he's a lot uh he was talking about um taking a month off last year he was trying to get a movement of people who were going to take December off

from social media, not, not to hurt the social media companies. It was really just like, Hey, let's just give each other, let's give all of our, you know, give us a break. So I think there's, I think there's a way to look after your audience in a sense where it's just like, and, and I'm not suggesting not suggesting you you be paternalistic about it right like there is there is this case for like independent will it's like it's not your job to make people's decisions for them but i think you can be um you know i think you could be a good host, right. In the sense of saying like,

Hey, maybe we take, we're not going to post over Thanksgiving or we're not going to, I don't know. And here's why we think it's good to have breaks every once in a while. And I need a break. And yeah, I think that might be how I handle it.

Yeah. I think what we'll do is we'll just be like way less entertaining so people can like stop coming to our social medias. And I was like, no, no, no, this is for your guys' own good.

I promise we don't suck. I mean, the other thing is, is sorry, I'll, I'll just say this last thing is measuring, you know, you're measuring,

and I don't, this might not be possible, but like what you, what you guys are really trying to do is get your audience to be healthier. You're not trying to get them to spend more time. And so if you really are, and you guys feel mission driven in that sense, figure out a way to measure the, the, the progress towards the mission, which is like of the people who are really engaged

by the podcast and the surrounding content, how's their health and well-being? How's their strength? How's their, right? Because then it's like, look, if you're improving that, you got to feel, I don't know, you got to feel pretty good about what you're doing, I think. And I'm sure you are improving that. It'd be interesting to know by how much and with whom and that might help you get even better at your content. I like that a lot. We, you know, we've shared a lot of information over the years about diet and nutrition and strength. And then we've had a lot of people kind of with testimonials and stuff of, of what it's done, but kind of, you gave us an idea, you know, taking those quotes and taking those testimonials and

resharing them would be great. And then other people will be inspired and excited by it. Hearing that somebody lost 50 pounds, a hundred pounds. But I'm saying Mark, even one step beyond that, which is like run a poll. Right. Like, you know, you've got a big audience. You can just take a slice and you can ask a thousand people today and you can ask them in three months, like, how's your health? Is your health getting better because of, you know,

Mark Bell's power project. What's the impact. Right. Some of the stuff I've used to do is, uh, like on a, on a weekend, I would post on like Friday and I would just post a picture and it would just say, have a good weekend. It might be a small little note in there. And then I was off for the weekend, you know, and, and then I, we still do that a lot on my own social media because I don't want my employees like working on the weekend and being all obsessed about what gets posted and so forth. So I think, you know, I think people could, I think planning is critical. I think that when we just kind of let ourselves do whatever we want, we end up doing whatever we want. And it doesn't really fall in line with maybe what we need.

It's just what we want. And so if you schedule stuff, I mean, it's a little meticulous to schedule social media, but maybe you just kind of say like, Hey, you know, every Wednesday, I'm just going to make a, you know, I'm, I'm just going to make a quick post on Wednesday and a quick post on Friday, Tuesday, you know, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, I can be on there a little longer or something, you know, just have some sort of agreement. But I love the social dilemma, how they pointed out, like, talk to your children. And this is stuff I do all the time with my kids is I try to ask them questions. I say like, you know, OK, I understand you want your phone, but a non-negotiable for

me is I don't want you sleeping with your phone. You know, I want your phone out of your room. My phone is out of my room. And you know, if you're having a hard time understanding it now, you'll be able to understand it when you're a little older. I just, I want to make sure you get proper rest and proper sleep. You have school tomorrow. I want you to have the ability to learn and the function. And I know that if I had a phone in my room, I probably wouldn't go to sleep. You know, I probably fall asleep with the phone in my hand. So little boundaries like that. But then also asking them, hey, what's reasonable?

You know, how long can you have the phone for? Like, let's just talk about it. Okay, you want it for six? How about can we go for four hours or three hours? Like, let's find some middle ground and come to an understanding. Yeah, I love that. And I think that dialogue, I mean, I'm a fairly new parent with a four and six year old, but even with a four and six year old, you'd think I would have more control, but you know, it

turns out you don't have a lot. But that dialogue is so powerful, right? It's empowering to them. It's hopefully how they will interact with other people in terms of like, let's co-create a solution as opposed to like the, you know, dictatorial mandate from the parents. You know, I'm having you on,

go ahead and go ahead and see me. Are we at a time? Oh, I was really curious about this and I, I really liked your comparison with sugar because you see how, you know, the sugar industry, it's, it's, it's an addictive substance type 2 diabetes obesity all these things have formed and it's sugar has kind of been masked nowadays from like in terms of

health foods they still use a lot of sugar but they mask it to be healthy um so the comparison made with social media right now i was really curious because you know there are people on the side and even the social dilemma there's the feeling of like doom and gloom like we're heading towards this bad place we really gotta change course we gotta course correct right now but then there are also some people who are like oh we can figure out how to use this better we can figure out actually you know like we can adapt to it. Now I'm curious from your point of view. Um, do you feel that we can like, yeah, like apps like moment or amazing screen time, the password thing that you mentioned, those are all amazing things.

Uh, but is there any way that we can actually, um, or like depend on these companies, like with the amount of money that's behind them, just like with the beyond the amount of money that's behind the sugar industry to really make changes for our actual benefit? It's the right, it's the right question. Um, I think based on what we're hearing from them today no and so i think what you're going to see is is probably regulation that um you know in the same way that that um that tobacco has been regulated in the same way that uh you know think about think fossil fuels, right? And its evolution in auto manufacturing from like total dependency on the, you know, standard combustion engine to now a mandate to get to zero emissions, right? With incentives and penalties. And so one of the things that

people ask a similar kind of question, which is, well, what should we do? Like, what do you want to do to solve this problem? And I really think the leaders of the company and then the leaders of government and social, you know, sorry, consumer advocates need to get together. And I think, you know, hopefully in a, in not an adversarial way and agree on the facts on the table, which the facts on the table are that there are some really bad implications for society. And this is absolutely having a toll, taking a toll on our mental health.

And it probably all comes back to the attention extraction business model. So how do we co-create a path to a sustainable business model? Like what is the solar or clean energy equivalent of advertising that will allow something like Facebook and others to continue. So we don't destroy a lot of economic value, but it doesn't wreak havoc on our mental health and on society. And I don't know exactly the details there, but I do believe that governments and companies together can create a path out of it in the same way that we are. And it's slow. Some might argue we're creating a path out of fossil fuels. It's slow, but we are creating a path out of it. We're creating a path out of it because

climate change is an existential threat. Many have said that AI, unchecked artificial intelligence, is also an existential threat. And we're seeing it play out right now in social media, in this social media experiment. And so the big social business model is broken. And so I think we've got to get to alignment around that. I think the film helps with it, certainly with consumers getting to alignment around that. And then it's like, okay, we're running social media on fossil fuels. What's the path out of this? And how can governments create sufficient incentives and penalties to get us to, you know, a new world order. That's what I think is going to have to happen.

And I don't know exactly the details. I think what you said earlier about the markers, I think, could be really beneficial. Because if you think about cigarettes, if you think about, you know, what happened with cigarettes, the Surgeon General warning about pregnancy and things like that, I think could be really beneficial because you think about cigarettes, if you think about, you know, what happened with cigarettes, the surgeon general warning about pregnancy and things like that, I think massive taxes on it. Right. Like, yeah, it just got so expensive and then we realized it just killed you. Right. I think some of that's helpful and just having more information out there and

letting people really kind of make, make their own decisions still. But are you starting to see any ad dollars going towards, like, are any of these companies responsible? Is Facebook responsible for any advertising that is anti-social media, just like the alcohol companies, you know, talking about responsible drinking and not drinking and driving and so forth? We haven't seen that yet. But I, but I, well, it's interesting. You mentioned that, and this is not the exact same flavor, but I don't know, it's kind of the same flavor. So

my, my dad still reads the print newspaper because he's almost 80. So my dad still reads the print newspaper because he's almost 80. And he's following moment and what I'm up to, like a parent would who's retired and has some spare time. And he sent me, he got the Wall Street Journal on Monday morning, gets it every day. And it was wrapped in an ad from facebook the whole paper and guess what the ad says it says he sent he sent me a picture we support updated internet regulations basically it's like and it's a look we could be cynical and say it's

a pr stunt and it probably is in part like clever PR. But what they're basically saying, it is like the, it is like the alcohol company saying, look, we don't want to be, we don't want a bunch of people driving around killing each other drunk. And so it's kind of saying, look, we, we think there is room for regulation says, look, we want to be, we want to, we want Facebook and other companies to be held accountable on foreign election interference, protecting people's privacy and data, and enabling safe and easy data portability between platforms. That doesn't hit all the issues that we talked about, but it's a step. I mean, God, can you imagine a year or two ago, think, you know, Facebook running an ad

saying, please regulate us. So we're moving there, right? There's a lot of pressure on them. And, you know, it was a hearing yesterday in the Senate with the CEO of Facebook and the CEO of Twitter, and they were pushed on a lot of different issues. Interestingly, they were both asked if social media was addictive, their services were addictive. Jack Dorsey said they can be, which I liked. I felt like that was the intellectual, intellectually honest answer. Mark said, he said two things. One was that it's inconclusive whether it's addictive or not um but then said we certainly don't want it to be addictive

so in that point that i mentioned earlier about co-creating a path out of this if you really if we take him at his word that he doesn't want this to be addictive and we can agree on a set of facts that show that there's risk there you know maybe there's a maybe there's a solution i feel like social media should come with like a a skull and a crossbone but i don't know if it would uh kind of deter people enough but now that i think about it with cigarettes, the commercial advertising of the body bags and all that stuff, I mean, I think it would be useful to put a mandate on these social media companies to have advertising

that talks about the death rate of teenage girls and stuff like that. And I think why not pull on the heartstrings of Americans so they understand the weight of this situation. This is a real fucking problem. This is a real thing. It's not going away. Yeah, absolutely. I'm totally aligned with that.

Thank you so much for your time today. Really, really appreciate it. And any way that we can help support or get behind it any further, let us know. Where can people find you and where can people find out more about what you got? Yeah. So if you just go to the app store and search Moment, the app will come up. You can learn more about kind of the broader company at inthemoment.io.

And I don't really have much of a social media presence. I was going to say you guys do have an Instagram platform. We do. We do. I can't even remember the handle. I think it's at moment app. Right. In the moment app. Yeah, in the moment. There you go. Thank you. I'm glad you know it.

Great. Have a great rest of your day and thank you so much. Yeah. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Damn, that was badass. That was so much. Thank you, sir. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Yeah. Damn, that was badass. That was so good. That was some cool shit, man. Yeah. It was, I guess,

it's good to hear that, I guess, one of the guys that created that stuff. I think he really outlined really well all the issues that we're having to deal with.

And I downloaded that app while we were on the show, and it looks really cool. It looks very, very, very useful. Yeah, it's giving you some transparency, it sounds like, with family members or with a partner. They can look and see how much screen time you have, and I'm sure they're not able to look at every single thing you do. But I think that's great. You know, it's a good step in the right direction. We probably have to kind of police each other with this. I kind of like when I think about situations that are hard to get out of, I like to think of the Elon Musk way of doing things.

Like Elon Musk is like, hey, distracted driving is here to stay and people are probably going to be more distracted. So why not just have the damn car take over for you and have it, you know, drive down the street. Now that presents its own, uh, hurdles and its own, uh, inconveniences and stuff like that and, and dangers. Um, but I think it's a step in the right direction. And the same thing with social media, rather than thinking about, hey, we got to really get rid of this, or we need to stop this,

or we need to take a month off from this. Those are all decent suggestions and they might fit someone's lifestyle. But for the most part, I think, you know, humans are very adaptive to things and we are designed to be able to handle and cope with a lot. So the real truth of it is don't be such a pussy and also learn a lot about yourself so you know how to cope with this stuff because it shouldn't be that hard for you to cope with it. It really that's that's the for me. That is a big reason why I've been really seeking out a lot of personal development over the last several years because I'm'm like, none of this shit should bother me. Like I'm doing pretty good in life. Things are advancing really well. And I can't even believe that any of that stuff bugs me at all. So that's why I was like, well, it's not people. It's not YouTube. It's not the, it's not the people of

YouTube. It's not the people of Instagram. It's me. I need to change my interpretation of what's coming at me and why someone might've just had a bad fucking day. The dog might've got hit by a car or something. And I say something silly or stupid and they think I'm an arrogant asshole, you know, and they got to, they, we, they have that right to say that, you know, we got, you know, freedom of speech. They got the right to kind of say whatever they want. I put myself on the line and put myself, uh, kind of in harm's way. And so I got to take whatever the good and the bad that comes along with that. I sell products, you know, and I, I, you know, give people information. And when you do stuff like that, you got to take the good and the bad with it and you got to learn how to deal with it yeah um and this this this says a lot about tim

but i was i was kind of worried that i would leave this conversation just feeling like crap for using social media as much as i do but the way he you know carried himself and the way he worded things um you know he didn't and it's probably with practice right like if he comes in and he's the guy that just shits on everybody for being on Instagram or something like he, you know, he wouldn't be who he was or who he is. And so like just the way he put things, it's like, okay, yeah. Like, like you just said, Mark, it's really like ultimately up to me to like kind of police myself and, you know, treat it responsibly. Um, so I, I just, I don't know. I just, it feels good getting a lot of good information today and also just kind of like being able to reflect and look at my usage and just kind of go about it in a little bit smarter.

anytime you hear me say that say hey please just shut that down you know shut that off you know and don't let that reflect who you are like you you we you and i already discussed this you don't want that for yourself you know that doesn't make you feel good remember we had that conversation so shut your phone up and shut the fuck up and you know let's get back to doing whatever we were doing yeah and i i really like that his views on, you know, how you can treat social media with your kids, you know. When I did a follow-up interview with Matt from Acton Academy, I can't pronounce his last name. And he basically said the same thing. He's just like, you know, if you tell your kids, you know, we can't be on social media all day long, but then you're on your phone. They see that more than they see your words, right? And so him putting it that way.

And then what Matt said, he was just like, ask your kids because everyone's answer is it's for work. So ask your kids, hey, what goes through your mind when we're about to watch a movie and I answer an email? He's like, they might say like, oh, I don't even notice. Or they might say, yeah, I kind of don't like it. So then you already have your answer. But even if they're just like, I don't know. He's like, do it and just pay attention to them.

Like even open up like a fake email and pay attention to your kids and see how they react. It's like, then you'll have your real answer. He's like, and that's more powerful than, you know, telling them what they should or shouldn't do, you know, do as I say, not as I do. So him saying kind of the same thing, it's looks like we're, we're kind of, you know, we're going on the right path. So say, be respectful of your children. And, you know, if you tell them that you do it for work, then you may also be devaluing why they use it. And you're devaluing the fact that they use it to communicate with friends where they play games on it. Those are all things that are there. They have a high value assignment to them. The value assignment to that particular thing at the moment in their life is probably more

important than the value assignment that we place on an email or that we place on a text message coming in from somebody else. So I would say, you know, just be, it's hard because you're trying to, you know, you're trying to, when you're being, when you're being a parent, there's situations where you just like yell, you know, where you have to just yell, like they're jamming a fork into a light yell, you know, where you have to just yell like they're jamming a fork into a light socket, you know, and you don't have time to explain stuff. But for the most part, without there being immediate harm or danger in the way, you always have time to explain stuff. And so you could say, Oh, I'm sorry. This is actually,

this is really important email. I'm going to explain it to you in a second. Even if you don't want me to, I'm going to explain it to you in a second on what this is about, but this is like really massively important to our finances and to our situation. But let me do the email and say, I know that sometimes you're on your phone as well. And you're communicating with your friends and trying to set up a play date or whatever. I know it's important to you. This was really important to me because, you know, we're going to be moving into another house or we're going to be, we got plans, you know, down the road and you can actually explain it. Or you could say, Hey, you know what? You're right. I don't need to answer that email right now. I apologize.

Just, uh, my phone made a noise. I reacted to it. I'll try to get better. And obviously, I mean, I don't have kids. And I think you actually mentioned this before too, Mark, along with like explaining why you're doing what you're doing. You know, parents can educate themselves on really what the risk to their children are, and then have a deep talk about that, like straight up. I mean, like there was all this, the statistics about depression, hurting yourself, et cetera. But there's also like a clear, you know, you, you lose the ability to pay attention to things for long periods of time.

Like your, your attention span goes out the window. You're, it's like, there are a lot of other things that happen to an individual's intelligence that you could probably look up and explain so that, you know, now they're not just blindly using it when they are using it. They're using it with the understanding of, wow, if I do this too often, it's really going to affect this, this, this, and this. And then they can even start to make the decision for themselves to back away from it rather than it's just like, I'm just following what my dad does or just doing what they're saying. They know. And it's a awareness that you're trying to you know deliver it's not

shaming you know so i think i think when it comes to video games i think that people that don't play video games really think that video games are complete waste of time they think they're completely useless and people that play video games get it and they understand that that's actually really not true. And that video games, while they may seem like mundane or they may seem kind of meaningless to some, they have great application for entertainment. I mean, it's not any different than sitting down and watching a movie. However, they can be more addicting than that. So you might end up kind of playing a game, you know, quite often or whatever. But I kind of just, I hear that and see that even in my own family, when a kid is like on a tablet or something like that, and they're like, Oh, they're playing those stupid video games again. And it's like, it's, it's not really a good way to handle

it. And that's not going to be productive to help your kid to go outside and play. I think give them other options. Say, okay, you played on the tablet for a while. I know that you love those games, but you know, I kind of was looking at the clock. You've been doing that for like two hours. Let's go do something different. You want to go for a walk. You want to throw around a football. You want to go, you know, whatever it is that you, you know, can do with your, your kid, but, you know, give them a whatever it is that you you know can do with your your kid but you know give them a different option and if you just sit there and say well all they do is play those video games all day long it's because you're probably not presenting uh other options and same thing

goes with their food you know um last night you know it's just jake and i here at the beach house and i i cooked up some dinner and I, I made some meat with some chopped up green beans in it with a little bit of a, like sweet potato, kind of like a monster mash almost, and just mix it all up. Didn't give him another option to eat anything else. Cause a lot of times he'll want to eat like McDonald's or whatever. So I just handed it to him and he ate it and he was like, that was amazing. You know, so when we're, when we get other options, a lot of times we'll go for them. A lot of times we'll go for options that are like in our best interest if they're still, if they still taste good or if they're still fun and entertaining. So try to give those options to your children as well to be able to pull them off the phone.

Yeah. And then just back to video games for a second. Um, we, when we did a podcast a week or two ago, when we talked about like video games the whole time, which was an amazing podcast, um, I did a poll on, on our YouTube channel, just seeing like, Hey, do you play video games or are they a complete waste of time? And it was like 50, 50, it was really close. I don't know where the results ended up at, but the last time I checked, it was like 50 50 it was really close i don't know where the results ended up at but the last time i checked it was like they were neck and neck and i was like i was pretty surprised because like you know i gave a couple options it was like i wish i could play more or yes

absolutely the best uh no they're a waste of time or no but like i really would like to get back into it i can't remember exactly and yeah it was 50 50 with people saying love them and hate them. So it's kind of weird. And then what you're saying about like, Oh yeah, there he goes playing those stupid video games. It's like, how terrible would it be if the kid was like,

Oh, you're just on Facebook all the time. Anyways, it's like, Oh, that would crush you. They think the same thing. Yeah.

Yeah. And it is just another form of entertainment, but man, that's crazy what uh tim was saying about that kid having to get his leg amputated that's nuts yeah like honestly though i'd probably say that you know especially for i mean older and younger people the prolonged use of uh social media is probably worse than prolonged playing of video games you know i would agree so it's just like we we got to catch ourselves you know so yeah and one thing i really dug real quick one thing i really dug about the the moment thing was the social pressure like

they're using that weapon of you know social media pulls those levers of social pressure uh posting likes all that type of stuff for a moment also uses the social pressure of your peers seeing how addicted you are to your social media to pull you off of social media pretty awesome you know yeah i was gonna ask um did you make your sleeves smaller on that shirt no are you sure i did not because he sewed him up you're looking jacked right there yeah no just keeps getting more jacked it's an xl oh guys i was gonna say i uh you know how tim mentioned how in the screen time you can set a password for like you know uh for whatever so i did that with with my friend brian um he set a password on mine. I said a password on his, I forgot the password for his,

and there was quite literally no way for him to do anything. Like if he, the only way for him to get it back to normal is to get a new phone. I've used all the four number codes that I could remember. And I literally don't remember it. So like he's just stuck with it. Yeah. You're a terribly good friend though. Yeah, I guess I am. He's probably read a lot of books and had a lot of human interaction since then. I mean, he hates you, but his life's probably a little bit better. Yeah. All right, Andrew, want to take us on out of here, buddy? I will. As I do that, today is November 18th, 2020, and we have another niece.

My brother and sister-in-law just had a baby a couple hours ago. Yeah. Congratulations. So congrats to them. We're 10 weeks out on our end. Like, holy man, that's going to go fast. It's almost meat day. Yeah, gosh, yeah, for reals. Um, okay.

Uh, everybody, thank you for checking out today's episode. Um, if you guys got any, any value out of it, please share it with a friend. Um, everybody's on social media these days. Uh, you definitely know somebody that can use, uh, some of this information. So please share it with them. So that way, you know, you don't have to be the one that says you shouldn't be on social media anymore. Just let us do that for you. With that being said, please follow us at Mark Bell's Power Project on Instagram, at MB Power Project on Twitter. And then, yeah, we're on LinkedIn. We're on pretty much all the social media platforms right here on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn. Yeah, wherever you are, that's where we're going

to be. You can follow me at IamAndrewZ on Instagram. And then because of Nsema, we're now on Clubhouse, which we'll probably start messing with. It's an exclusive app at the moment, but it seems like it's going to be freaking awesome. So look for myself on there. I think it's at IamAndrewZ as well, or if not, it's my name. I don't even know exactly how that works. Uh, and SEMA, where are you at? And SEMA and Yang on Instagram and YouTube and SEMA and Yang on Twitter. Oh yeah. And SEMA and Yang on clubhouse. When we start to use it more, it's pretty dope. All voice. Very cool stuff. We got the bicep board launching in just a couple of days. It will be a November 23rd along with a lot of our sales.

You can check out some of the other new stuff that we have on the website. We have a backpack that you can store some of your meals in some of your prepared meals. I didn't seem to show on it right there. Some of your meal prep can go right inside there along with your, all your favorite gym clothes, your slingshots, all that stuff. So so we're gonna have some massive sales coming up i think it's like 30 off or something crazy and we're doing it for a whole week so uh going over to mark bell slingshot.com and enjoy all that stuff over there and then also the multi-sport belt just

released today actually yeah multi-sport belt just dropped um, actually. Yeah, multi-sport belt just dropped. In addition to that, we have briefs, but we sold through them pretty fast. Wow. I'm so pissed. I forgot I didn't get any. Yeah, they went pretty damn quick. But we'll reload on them, but it will take a little while. And then still working on some supplement stuff.

And I put an order in. So we're talking about mid to late January for Mark Bell's Steak Shake. I can now say that because we put a trademark in for that. There we go. It makes it a little easier to talk about that. I also got another trademark for another product I can't quite talk about just yet. But anyway, excited to start to drop a supplement line. I have a whole line of stuff, pre-workout, post-workout, sleep stuff. But first thing that's going to drop is the steak shake. And the steak shake is a combination of whey protein, egg, or whole egg meat egg whites um collagen and uh beef liver heart pancreas

ball sack yeah everything yeah tone else oh good stuff and forget everything you think you know about a uh like a meat-based protein shake because this is, this tastes in this. So good. Trust me. It's amazing. Yeah. I think that, I think that eggs have the most bioavailability in terms of amino acids. I think beef is second and whey protein is first.

They used to rate, they used to give them a rating and I think whey protein was like 110 or whatever on this rating system that they had. But all the, all the proteins that are utilized in there will be easy to digest and absorb. You'll be able to absorb all the nutrients from it. And on top of that, we made it taste good. I think that people are thinking steak shake. They're like, what the fuck's going on with this thing? Is this going to taste like a

cheeseburger or something? We didn't make a cheeseburger flavor. We made chocolate and vanilla so far. And if people want it and they want a cheeseburger flavor, maybe we'll think about making the In-N-Out Burger Shake or something. Let's do it. We'll figure it out from there. But anyway, I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Thank you guys so much for listening. I think today's podcast was really, really important. It's something that means a lot to me. And I hope that you guys share it with other people because I think that this topic is important and people need to learn how to cope with social media. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. Catch you all later.