Modern Wisdom - #073 - Theo Watt & Eve Young - The Problem With Millennials

Episode Date: May 20, 2019

Theo Watt and Eve Young are the hosts of the Socials Minds Podcast and Copywriters at Social Chain. We talk about millennials and Gen Z like homogenous groups, but technology and innovation have made it problematic to index generations by 15 year gaps. A person who is 12 will have little in common with someone who is 27, as will a person who is 25 have little in common with someone who is 34. And yet, despite online platforms allowing you to target by age, world view and even household income now, there are those that still tar all millennials, all Gen Z, or worse, millennials and Gen Z together with the same brush. Theo & Eve lay out their issues with the current classification system for young people as a whole and explain exactly why it's not only inaccurate but also damaging to the members of that group. Massive thanks to Social Chain and Video Guy Ollie for letting us use their beautiful studio & podcast setup. Extra Stuff: Follow Eve on Instagram - https://instagram.com/evelilyyoung Check out the Social Minds Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/social-minds-social-media-marketing-answered/id1382785203 Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello friends, welcome back to the Modern Wisdom Podcast. Today I'm joined by Theo and Eve from Social Chain. Those of you who enjoy the podcast coming out of that particular headquarters will recognize them as the hosts of social minds. And today they're talking about a topic which I've wanted to sink their teeth into for a while, which is the problem with millennials. I wasn't really too sure what we were talking about today until we got into it, and so many of the points that they raised today about how people who were born between 1982 and 1996 are viewed and judged by the press and by society, and the implications for industry, for work, for

self-identity and a lot of other things were really eye-opening, like crazy eye-opening, considering I'm slapping in the middle of that particular age bracket, I found a lot of them applying to me. This was a really insightful episode. I can't wait to get back out to social chain, not least so that I can steal the amazing podcast studio. But yeah, enjoy this episode. I'd love to hear your thoughts. This is a very provocative and different topic. So please feel free to get in touch at Chris Wellex on all social media. but for now, please welcome Theo and Eve. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I'm joined by Eve and Theo from the Social Minds podcast here in my beautiful new studio. Welcome. Hello, hello. It's a review back again.

Well, I mean, today it's an adopted studio for me this, of course. How are you? You're good? Yes. Yeah, really, really good. We've got you something, haven't we? I've got you a sore ring because I know how much of a fan you are. Look at that. I was actually from Manchester as well, I believe, I'm sorry. Yeah. It's a Manchester, Manchester cake. I suppose you could call it a squidgy loaf. It is. So let me tell you about loaf.

Let me tell you about the difference between a cake and a biscuit. So cakes are not that applicable, biscuits are. And I think the reason for that is that cakes are not that applicable. Biscuits are. And I think the reason for that is that cakes are not seen as a luxury item because you would inevitably have to buy birthday cakes presumably throughout the year. And jaffa cake had to prove that they were a cake and not a biscuit to avoid the tax. And the way that you prove whether you're a biscuit or a cake is

cakes when they're left out go hard and biscuits when they're left out go soft Yeah, don't know where you go from there Did you know that burgers from McDonald's have to have the pickles in otherwise because of the amount of sugar They would be class as a cake Are you kidding? No. I feel like a very cake. I don't want to have a break. I think I was the one who said it.

Yeah. But I think I heard it off a guy, heard it off a guy, heard it off a guy, heard it, I've taken it as gospel now. Fine, truth. It's on the internet now,

which means it's true. Yeah, exactly. So what we're going to talk about today? Millennials. Millennials, we have to, we have to talk about millennials in a way that we don't talk about millennials at the moment. We need to see millennials differently, basically. And well, I suppose we could take it from the beginning. The theory around at the moment is that if you were born into 1982 or 1981, between then and 1996, let's say you are Classes of Millennial.

So right now, the oldest, 38, 37, the youngest, say about 24, 23. It depends on which definition you look up as well, which is another massive issue, because no one knows exactly where the timeline starts and where the timeline ends, which is causing a lot of confusion. So it's sent as Bureau starts at 1982 to 2000 and Pew Research is 1981 to 1997.

So the youngest millennial could be 23 or 24. It shifts, yeah. And then all this one could be like 37 or 38 and no one really knows where the boundaries lie. And if you believe everything you've read, if you fall into that bracket, you are lazy or very narcissistic, you're probably not doing very well for money, you're never able to afford a house. Eat too much avocado toast. Exactly.

It's all these stereotypes that come along that we, you know, whenever you see the word millennial, that you see, and it's as simple as that really. And our argument with this is that, you know, in whatever context would you group the sort of behaviors of a 38 year old or a 34 year old or whatever with that of somebody 15 years younger than them, because that's how long the millennial generational span is is about 15 years. Well, I mean, I definitely count towards the top end,

I'm 31, and I would count myself as a millennial, but you are right, there seems to be a negative connotation. So what defines a millennial, then, do you think in terms of their behaviors, in terms of how they act and stuff like that? Well, this is something that we've fought a lot about and we've fought back in a way that if you tell the millennial story, it's you've got this, you've got this group of people that fall into this generation who have been affected by major events.

So you've got things like people will always list the financial crash or list 9, 11, there's stuff like that. And also the way parents have been with their children, millennials have seen to be very, there's the term that goes around snowflakes that we always use. Yeah, so they're meant to be, like because that's a good point you brought up about, like, so things like the financial crash in 9-11, the launch of the first iPhone all happened right in the middle of the millennial timeline. So they're meant to be a little bit more savvy with career routes.

They don't follow traditional paths. They're more likely to go into entrepreneurship and things like that. They're less likely to get married. They're just a little bit more easy going in some aspects than their parents were. Exactly. And like you said, a bit nicer sister. A little bit self-obsessed. And if we focus on that snowflake angle that is always sort of tired with millennials,

it's basically because I'm sure you and a lot of your listeners would have seen the video that Simon Sinec did. So he was still is an office, I should say, on YouTube. And he put a video saying millennials in the workplace where for about 15 minutes, he basically tired millennials with this brush and said they're like this because of this. And one of the main points on that was that millennials are parents, they were very, they safe of us, you know, they wrapped us up in sort of cotton wool. And we were given medals and trophies for

coming last because it's about the participation that counts. So if you look at millennials, the idea is that we're very self-effacing, we're very much wrapped in cotton wool, we're very kind of butter wouldn't melt in some ways but you don't want to, you know, we take everything very much to heart in a way. So that's where this whole snowflake idea comes from. They're just stereotypes though. Exactly. Yeah. They said like the main problem is because it spans like 15 to 18 years, there's no, there's no way in hell all of those people are the same, like they're all narcissists or or none of them want to get married, or none of them kind of for the house.

They are the sweeping generalizations, but the problem is that no other generation, our industry has sort of taken those stereotypes as gospel, and because they don't understand the generation, because no one really knows what they want or how to speak to them, they take the stereotypes as gospel, and they're using them to target them, but they're just completely wrong. So we've got to completely different take on it in a way. And that is, you know, we're probably skipping forward a little bit,

but it's, we feel that millennials, you know, that being millennials, we feel that millennials are less defined by the situations around them, stuff like 9, 11 and whatever, the less defined by these situations and more defined by this boom of innovation that has happened between say 1982 to present day, really. So if we can list it off, we'd, you know, the first Nokia phone I remembered came in the mid 90s and then from there it was, you know, we talked way before the iPhone, putting cameras into phones was a massive thing. Then video phones came and then you go on from there and you've got stuff like windows,

dial up, broadband, so. It was like every year you can remember it like we're probably all about the same age where we can literally remember a world before all of that and we watched it happen. Like literally year on year I was a little bit younger I think I went into secondary school when I got my first flip phone and I remember me sister getting a noh here when I was to the primary school and being really really jealous because her and her friends were playing snake and I wasn't allowed to. It was a whole it was a whole saga but yeah like literally every single year after that that when I was playing snake and I wasn't allowed to. It was a whole saga. But literally every single year after that, when I was in year eight,

someone brought in the first iPhone 3 and everyone was like, kooing over that. By the next year, everyone had iPods and that's where after that, there was something else. And then that big thing social media happened. Yeah.

Happily through that. So to sort of answer your question in kind of a succinct way, it is, you know, what the finds are millennial, it is the people who have lived through a vast speed of technological change. They're present and rocketed, exactly unprecedented. And it's that's, you know, this, that's the saying and sort of opinions around that there's been more innovation in the last five years than there has in the last 30 years. Believe that to some extent, because if we take...

So, at last 10. Forget about pre-1990. If we take, you know, let's take 1995, let's sort of say, dial up, as we remember it, the period between that and present day has seen unprecedented change. Absolutely. ...in technology. I mean, the world is evolving faster than our minds can to cope with it.

It's evolving faster than our social causes, our understanding of how society works, our laws. To be whoever a lawmaker is, if that was, I don't know how it works, I'm going to guess it will be the sort of thing which is actually done through the government. But if you were a private firm that was able to write laws as new technologies come along, like you're probably one of the richest companies in the world. Like, all you have to do is go,

oh my God, first we have to work out what's happening with this internet thing. Oh, shit, now they've got it in their pocket. Oh my God, now they're downloading music illegally. Yeah, I mean, it's just this monster that's grown so many different limbs. So have you read the cododling of the American Mind? No.

So that book is about is seminal by Jonathan Hate. It's about a seminal for what you're talking about now, as you can get. And for anyone who is listening, go back and listen to Jonathan Hate on Joe Rogan, fantastic podcast. And he talks about links between depression and anxiety and suicide in young girls and the advent of social media. There's this line around about 2008, and then another one around about 2012,

where there's marked differences in behavior and stuff like that. But one thing that you mentioned was to do with the awards for coming last, this participation, this kind of coddling, right? That's what Jonathan refers to it as. And personally for me, as someone who was born in 88, I never saw any of that. I feel like I, and I didn't hear about any of that until four or five years ago. So I think lumbering the millennials as they are, as they've been defined by the studies that you guys have looked at into

the snowflake generation, I think is erroneous. Like for me, there was none of that. So a perfect example of this is where you said people become hypersensitized, they take a lot of things to heart. If you have a look at purposefully exposing children who have a predisposition to allergies, to types of treats that have peanut dust coating, you reduce the chance of them having anaphylaxis in later life by 25 to 50%. What that means is that if you purposefully expose young children to a small dose of something which potentially is uncomfortable for them, later in life they benefit. What it means is that by the same thing goes for those higher rates of asthma in cleaner households,

if you disinfect the shit out of your house. Like vaccinations. Yes. Whereas you go to places like Africa, almost no asthma, because the house is exposed children to low doses of what it is that is going to protect and later in life. You're not meant to wash everything that you give

to a newborn baby. No. Or parents are always like, oh my God, make sure everything's really clean. Cover it up. You mentally leave some germs on. Well, that's a part of the way they build their immune system. Socially the same thing occurs, right?

This is, but this is exactly it. At the roots of this problem, is this need to put these conditions on what we call millennials? I mean, let's make no bones about it. It's very easy to use the term millennials and stuff like marketing and you know when a marketer sounds trendy exactly. It's also, you know, we can and we do define demographics, you know, in the same way that you've got Gen X's, you've got boomers. The problem seems to be with the focus on millennials under the spotlight. And that is setting a precedent for, we were speaking about it in terms of that. Now that we've done the whole millennial thing, let's call it that, and we sort of, what do they want? What do they like? Why do they feel like

they're in a shop? Exactly, yes, and all of that. And grouping 16-year-olds, what it would have been back then, grouping 16-year- 34 year olds and saying they are exactly the same. I'll be wildly, wildly on help for. There, you know, if you've got people at the start of their, you know, before they reach spending power on their guns, university, you've got people who are, you know, you're, you're telling me you're putting them in the same boat as people who are 34. Two kids, two dogs, mortgage. Exactly.

Yes. You know what it is, when you said before about so there's Millennial stereotypes which you say don't apply to you Maybe because you're on the older end of that spectrum and then there's the snowflake generation But I think the problem is that the entire general public and it may be like it's not so Bad in the marketing industry because if if you know it then like you know we're putting it to good use We know what the actual boundaries are but all this media attention that millennials get and the reputation that they've got just refers to the snowflake generation which people assume

is like teens and 20-somethings when it's actually not. So I think the majority of the time when people are saying all millennial millennial, they just mean young people. And they don't actually realize it stretches up to the age of 38. Yeah, especially seen as, like me and Dom, we're discussing this earlier on, there is an equivalent of a self awareness menopause that you go through between the age of around about 22 and sort of 30.

Some people never go through it, but the majority of people do tend to go through it. Dom said, when he was 23 and he was sober, going out his friends would give him grief. When he's 26 and sober, his friends look at him with admiration because there is this flipping of consciousness from the egocentric to the more mature. And there is a formative, the formative years is there referred to the end of that, like the final boss is a reduction in ego.

For most people, if you have a, I guess a healthy progression. Sure we can see that. Yeah. And what that means is that, I mean, the other thing is, well, millennial is such a, it's just such a buzz wordy term. It's the sort of thing that you can throw out. And now it is Gen Z.

Like probably most people that read the news, that pick a typical person on the street in Manchester. And most people are gonna know what a millennial is. Yes. I'll go, yeah, like young people. Yeah. You're like, okay. But if you said Gen Z, to be like, is that, young people. Yeah, you're like, right, okay. But if you said Jen's ed, to be like, is that a new computer game? Like, is that? And this is it. And this, this is one of the, this is another one of the interesting

byproducts of the millennial generation is that because, you know, if I can sit from my point of you and I've imagined many others, because there was so much emphasis on working out millennials, what makes them tick? That was the headland you'd say. What makes them tick? What do they actually want? That we've used this as a precedent to question Gen Z, even to the point where we see reports questioning Gen A. Now, technically Gen A is about probably seven, five years old, and we're already making assumptions about what they're like, the kind of world they would grow up with, we've got the world of augmented reality, virtual reality, voice. It's because people are trying to get ahead of ourselves. Yeah. Well, we don't want the same mistakes to happen again, happen with the millennial generation, where we spent so long trying to figure

them out that by the time we've actually figured it out, we were already on the Valkyrie. There's spending time going, yeah, they were all like, there's another one already. But I think we're making a mistake there, because like we were saying earlier, about the speed of innovation that happened in the millennial timeline is not gonna happen again. It's already slowed. If you look at before the millennial generation,

innovation was more invention, and it was quite slow, you know, you had the computer and then the first Apple Mac and then all of a sudden it was like boom, boom, boom, new products for consumers and now it's like, okay, now we're expecting voice to kick off, we're expecting VR to do the same thing, but it's not going that quickly. It's taken a little bit of a dip. Yeah, I don't think it'll have the same effect as Millennial Generation did. You think it's been like a real state shift through the Millennial generation and now it's just different flavors of the same cake?

Yeah, that's why they were so hard to figure out because nothing like that had ever happened before. Or the new technology that came in, that's what shaped their mindset and opinions like slap bang in the middle. So I older Millennials differ so much from younger Millennials because if you grow up with the influence of a smartphone and social media, you can't underestimate the effect that's going to have on you. You could put a, you know, you could get an empty room and put a bit of masking tape down, down the line of the room and say, right, everybody born in the 20th century stand on this

side of the room, everybody's drawn on the 20th to 1st century stand on this side of the room, everybody's drawn on the 20th to first century stand on this side of the room. Or sorry, I should say anybody who sort of grew up formatively in the 21st century stand on this side of the room. And that is what we are, that is what we're looking at. And like like we said, you know, we've covered briefly on the innovations that happen just to sort of reiterate that. I mean, okay, so we had smartphones. So sorry, let's start second and we're beginning. We had mobile phones, you know, that were bricks back then in the mid-90s. Exactly. Yeah, they, you know, and they were still on wires and we still called them mobile phones. And then you had camera phones and you had video phones and you had MP3. Sony Eric, so do you remember that one?

Sony Eric, so we've got this innovation that's happening rapidly in communication, which extends to broadband, social media, because let's not forget, before Facebook and Instagram, it was Bebo and Myspace and whatnot, and it was all of that. So while all this is going on, you've got changes in media, so DVD, VHS, which is going Blu-ray, and then audio as well. So it's all, this rapid period of change is what has shaped this generation. The problem when we talk about millennials

is we always talk about a disconnect between millennials and brands or millennials and other generations. You know, we put the spotlight on them, we sort of push them into the corner of the room and say, you are this, this, this, this, this, because of this. And I think essentially, like we've thought, what we're saying is that it's not, you know, it's not about, the Millennial

Generation had 9-11. We had atrocities like 9-11. Gen X had, you know, the invasion of Afghanistan, the fall of the Berlin Wall, you know, before that we had World Wars, the Vietnam War. Gen Zed will have Trump. Every generation has their sort of societal kind of catastrophes, financial crashes, whatever. It doesn't, you know, I cease to believe that that place is such a part in the millennial construct as it does the Gen X construct, as it does fairly other generation. They agree. And how you are.

Yeah. I do agree. I think when you're talking about millennials and you lump them in a corner, it does, it does hack a little bit as like a derogatory term, which is, which is, which is probably not, not very nice, like considering that that's where you come from. And that's Simon's neck thing. It will be in the show notes below the video that you're neck thing. It will be in the show not to below. The video that you're talking about, it just lambasts anyone who's part of that group and says that you've got this incredibly kind of transactional value that everyone's very easy come easy go, like that they treat careers, like they treat tender and like swiping left and right on it. And there's something about, there's something that romanticises the

old ways that things are done, like having a job for life, staying with a partner for life. And I did a podcast with Daniel Sos, Netflix comedian. We talked about, he talked about the fact that back in your parents' generation, you would have only known, you know, apart from the people at work, you'd maybe only known 50 people. Like you'd have had a connection with 50 people. So really, like if you were having a bad time with your partner, like you gotta stick it out and make it work, so you don't know

where the fuck anyone else is. Like where the fuck am I gonna find an alternative? Like I don't know, like there's no one else at church. Like and that's it, and you're like, well, if there's no one at church, I'm screwed. So the same thing occurs for that, but obviously one of the key factors has been this serendipitous communication where you have a greater reach that's always on. And what that's enabled people to do is to be able

to, they're emancipated and they're freed from the previous constraints geographically, temporarily, as well. Like you can speak to someone who's in America, who's in Australia, who's got instant communication, all these sort of things. And it's allowed people to be freed from the previous confines that they had. But also we don't know what that,

we didn't know what that meant for people. We didn't know what it was gonna enable people to be able to do. And there was no model that was pre-written. So you're right, it does feel a little bit like the old guard that, usually the people that push the millennials have a poor degree, a poor moral compass rhetoric.

That old guard that are pushing it on us, where the people that were supposed to guide us through it. Exactly, yeah. And they didn't. And you're like, okay, was there a point at which social media came along where you came before Instagram and said, you should maybe stick to trying to post virtuous

and things that represent your integrity as opposed to displaying your life in a way that is a highlight reel. No one ever said that to you. No, no. No one ever said you should, from No, no. No one ever said you should from the beginning that you have a smartphone, consider your time and your attention and look at the cognitive tricks that are being played on you. No one ever said that to me either.

It took ages for the internet to be around. For people to even start to talk about chat services like MSN, for being like an area that children should be safe around. Yes, yeah. Are you like it lately? It does feel a little bit like the people that push the narrative of millennials at this kind of the squalor sewage of low virtue narrative are they were the people that were supposed to guide. They were the ones who raised it.

Yeah, absolutely. All that you're doing basically, it's Frankenstein's monster. You were supposed to be the people that helped us through this. And on top of that as well, it just smacked massively of bitterness. I think a lot of the time. You can't help it with every generation now. Yeah. It's not things like every youth. Yeah,'t have that happen to every generation now. Yeah. Not think like every youth.

Yeah. Every single generation will look at the generation below them and think, oh, what are these ones doing now? I think you're kidding. We start doing it. Yeah, we start doing it. You know, we have to put on say, Gen Zep, the young, you know, the people who are younger than us.

Everyone's getting to know it. The only difference, I think, with Gen X's opinion of Gen Y to Gen Y's millennials, Gen X's opinion of Gen Y has spread out to everyone. So now even millennials, like criticizing other millennials, like their peers, I have friends who they probably know that they are in the millennial generation, but they'll go, oh, I'm not millennial, I'm not like that, I'm not a snowflake, I don't go out for brunch. That kind of stuff. And it's like, well, you're actually stereotyping yourself and actually you are a millennial. And we're talking about this all for brunch. It's because I'm a...

Yeah, I've got... No, you're the worst of the lie, though, that's so true. I'd take a hard-line stance on this in a way, because I feel, you know, it's exciting. This, if I sort of want to use the word millennials sparingly, but young people at this time of technological change, this was an exciting time. And this was us finding it out for ourselves. It was like, you know, your parents generation

or their parents generation discovering rock and roll. This was our rock and roll moment. It was like, wow, I could be anybody you'll want to be and post on my Facebook and post on my people and do whatever. Now, the problem I see with from my own observations with the millennial generation is that past generations have been able to define who they are themselves in a sense. So we think about Gen X, Gen X is

the, you know, they're the alternative generation. It was MTV and it was this and that. Now millennials, they've sort of had this label just put on them, pushed on them unwillingly. And that's sort of stuck to the point that a millennial can't shift this reputation that's been put on us. But you won't sit up with boomers, you won't sit up with Gen X. I doubt you'll see it with the generation that comes out of the Gen Z. That's why people get so disillusioned with it as well. They become so separated from their own generation because they feel like these labels and these stereotypes have been put on them against their will.

It normal wants to be categorized against that will. And of course like, yeah, like everyone, like we like belonging to groups though we feel, you know, affinity used to certain like like, nationalities or football team or hair color. But all of a sudden, like, someone tells you, oh, you're a millennial, which means you're this, this, this, this, and this, you go, wait a minute, why a demographers, then marketers deciding who I am. So a lot of people have, yeah, kind of, the irony of it. I think that's the irony of it in advertising is that the disconnect with this generation in a sense has come from the fact that it's not about, you know, let's find out who they are. It's about let's find out who they are among ourselves.

Yeah, but it's like they're all talking about them. It's like a boardroom. Like, stick to it. Yeah, exactly. You imagine like a boardroom where everyone's talking about them and there's not a millennial in sight and they're all over there watching, going, what are they talking about? Yeah, some guy in a smoking jacket sat on a chest of field sofa somewhere.

Yeah. Telling that, yeah. 100%. Like, accusing people of not having any moral virtue and being snowflake. Yeah, you are totally right. But the worst thing is they say that the best lies are the ones that have some truth in them. And there is degrees of truth, like we all know that friend who treats relationships and their career very transactionally has junk values, doesn't spend

enough time outside. And it's the fact that there are elements of truth, but by exaggerating it, by exaggerating this rhetoric, it means that everybody can cast it off and say, well, that's not me, because it's so overblown that even the most cutting and accurate statement will still have a couple of bits that don't apply to you. And that doesn't help people to understand themselves. And it's why I think one of the reasons, potentially, why you're seeing this resurgence now of introspective work of the headspace meditation, some Harris is waking up up and, you know, next door to the offices that we're in is the Manchester Buddhist Compassion

Centre, where you can go and meditate. It's like that's city center, Manchester, right next to a trendy office and all this sort of stuff because I think that when people are being dictated poor values about themselves, that they don't think that they align with, it's very messy signals. And what they're trying to do is work through, okay, well, maybe I am this, or hang on. And then before you know it,

you have to go away and find out yourself. Yeah, Yeah. I think what's really bad, like a bad side effect of that, especially for our industry, is what a lot of marketers and brands haven't realized is that all of that has bred like a subgroup of this generation of people who actively do the opposite of what their generation is stereotyped to do. So people who are of the millennial age but don't use social media, the people who, you know, started buying vinyl records and they'll do things very sustainably and they'll act similarly to how their grandparents said because that's the new call.

And it's like the people who are targeting, like, this age group are doing so by like the majority of the stereotypes and actually there's a really, really large portion of them that are acting completely targeting this age group are doing so by the majority of the stereotypes. And actually, there's a really, really large portion of them that are acting completely oppositely because they don't want to be tired of the same brush. There is a caveat to all of this as well. And that is that whether we like it or not, these stereotypes still work in advertising. And I know this was something you touched on in the past episode. Chris, I think with Rory Sutherland and let's say one campaign for instance the a lot of people

I'm sure have seen it the British Army's campaign that you know, snowflakes we want you that went around, play on the Lord Kitscher, status that he did and And it was that the, after they broadcast this advert that, you know, it was appealing to the gamer who stays up for 48 hours at the time and these people, you know, your agility, your endurance, the army actually found that their recruits doubled within a month, basically, within a month, basically. That really surprised me. Exactly. Absolutely hated the campaign.

It was a massive backlash to this campaign. Snowflakes, we want you to join the army. It's a fact. You know, it comes to the army. We need millennials. And it worked. And yeah, I mean, that's just... Prejapiri.

It's one of the circular mad things about advertising, right? Like, that you can do something that's inflammatory. So I have no idea I would love to see Gillette in whenever their next earnings goes. Yeah. After they did the most recent advert. And it is going down that risky route of kind of a meta-cognizant look at what culture is and the manipulation of culture by it, like, culture for culture's sake almost,

looking at it with a pure bird's eye view. It's a high-risk strategy, and like, that's evidently worked, but then you think, okay, so it's doubled recruit, but what's it done for the British Army at standing in society as a whole long term? Is there potentially going to be some downstream effects of this that are a little bit more negative? They might not be so clever. And then the Gillette thing as well, I'm sure that sat around that boardroom table, someone said, and maybe half the room would have gone, yes, I love it. Men are going to really connect with this on a deeper level. And it could have gone well, but it got 10 to 1 ratio of dislikes to likes on YouTube. So

what does that say? I don't know, I don't know what that's translated to in terms of sales. But yeah, the manipulation of the meta narrative about millennials is a dangerous game to play. What do you think is going to happen as we move forward then with Gen Z? Because that's is that people after 96, 98? Gen Z said they say 96, 97, yeah, born after that. So I've made the oldest Gen Z about coming up to 22. I was a Gen up to 22 or 23 depending on your definition because as I said, there's like a few different reasons, things you can do. But on that as well, just to add on that, the US, I can't remember who, the organization in the US, only class, only really recognized boomers as a official generation, as an official demograph.

It's just boomers. Just the, and the word boomers comes from that everybody was having kids after the World War. So it said this was the population boom, these are the boomers. You've lumped so 50 years of people in together. Exactly, different things. Different things someone being born today

and someone that's 50 years old. That's it, yeah. You can see the floor in the system. To answer your question for Generation Z, I don't know what's going to happen, but what we're trying to make happen and what we hope will happen is basically learning from the mistakes that were made with the millennial generation. We don't want to assume that just because, let's say, a group of people spanning 15 to 18 years are exactly the same, just because of let's say a group of people, spanning 15 to 18 years are exactly the same,

just because of their age. So what marketers should be focusing on now is their mindset and their behavior. So if you look at things like Facebook pixels ability to track absolutely everything you do, based on a click, based on a purchase, based on your cookies, they know a purchase, based on your cookies. They know everything whether it's your plan for the weekend or what play you want to

see next week. They know absolutely everything. And when there's that much detail out there that tells you who your customers are and what they're doing, why are we still paying attention to how old they are, like that says anything about the way that they act and the way that they behave. We can still use demographics loosely, but the point is it's not the most important thing that we should be focusing on. I agree in ways, there's still a place for age definitely in marketing and there will be that, I think what we're talking about and what it is that focus on targeting

more narrowly, aren't we? Yeah, definitely. Just not be like smarter with it. It's like, don't just blanket target everyone. Don't pay attention to stereotypes. It's all about your unique audience. And age will always play a part, but I don't think it should be the most important thing.

But for me, the wide of the wide of theme as well with Gen Z is I, to answer the question as well, I don't think there's going to be much change. I think we're all, you know, as a society, this goes outside of marketing and advertising. I think we're waiting for Gen Z to be completely different. And they're going to be this and they're going to be that and they're there. But you'll see a lot of the traits that are supposedly in Gen Z, cross over to the millennial traits. They are entrepreneurial, they are ambitious, of course they are, because that innovation has slowed. So we were saying yesterday, you know how we were saying earlier about every year for the millennials, there's a different piece of technology.

Now, every single iPhone regeneration, or Samsung, depending on if you're Android or iPhone, every single regeneration is pretty much the same. They're just charging a lot more for not much innovation. It's because even they have no room to grow. The biggest software hardware companies are forced to just slow down the old models so that you buy the new ones because there just isn't that much. Innovation is happening. It's just not happening as quickly as it was before.

So when we expect generation to be completely different to us, we're assuming that something massive is going to happen, like another digital revolution, and it's just not the case. Yeah, no, you are right. That's a really, really good point. I think social media was, I guess you could call it a technological revolution, but it was on existing hardware, right? But certainly for me, one of the things that I am most concerned about and as a good avatar for someone who's regularly in contact with people that are 18 to 21, and some of them I'm heavily, heavily invested in, especially our managers that work for voodoo events, I want

them to be the most efficient, the best that they can be, not only for the fact that it makes us more money, but also just that I take personal pride in creating these monsters of their age who go out into the workforce and just walk all over everybody else because they've had this crash course in intensity on how to be efficient and how to behave and how to have discourse with professionals and customers and all this sort of stuff. And what I see from a lot of them is that social media, forget the technology of technology was simply the root, it was the delivery mechanism for the virus, but the virus itself was social media.

And I know that that's an inflammatory term to use for it. There's a lot of good that comes from social media, but I think that for the vast majority of people, at least at the moment, I think it's netting a negative. I think that one of the podcasts I've done recently, someone analyzed, an allergized Instagrammer's swimming through sewage, looking for a diamond. You have this serendipitous connection with people,

and once every couple of months you might make a really, really good connection and you're like, that's exactly why I do it, but it's a gambler's fallacy. It's like how much cost have you sunk into this in order to turn this around? And you think, well, can I have my cake and eat it too? Can I have the serendipitous connection? And have the things that I want, which is keeping up to date with my family and knowing the real stuff whilst evading all of the sewage. And I think that that overall situation, that environment for people's formative, people's formative years to be growing up in, I know certainly and it may be different for yourselves, I know that you're a little bit less

on your phone as than I am, but for me, certainly, my capacity to be able to read and focus on a book which is a little stimulus has, versus 11 years old to now, it is so much less. Like I have to work. I agree with that, yeah. So hard to sit there and not even just not fidget because my body is conditioned to a particular level of stimulus that a piece of paper with non-moving words that are in

black and white. It can't match up with, and it's been the last year has basically been spent on a morning retraining myself to be able to sit and look at something that's not triggering dopamine every couple of seconds. So on our most recent episode of social minds, we had a guest in from Iceland with a CBT therapist called Dr. Fielder Helgodotte. Well done. It's a good name. It's a good name.

But hard part over. She was telling us about some research that came out in January that actually says, you know, we always say that social media is causing depression to earn to that reputation because there's been like an uplift in reports of people, more people being diagnosed and half of that's because more people are aware that it's happening and they're more open about reporting it or like going to the doctors. And half of it probably is to do with social media. But she said that what they found is that people were more likely, especially young girls, were more likely to turn to social media

when they were already diagnosed with depression. So it wasn't actually, there's a correlation there for sure, but social media wasn't actually the cause, it was the symptom. Yeah. Coping mechanism. Yeah, definitely. But like you were saying about being able to, you know, stop and focus and read a book that I've noticed that myself.

It, because you're so used to just being switched on all the time. And, um, Dr. Fjell, they're actually said that it's very important for our brains to have idle time, um, like we need to be bored for the brains to develop properly, especially in young people. Like we just need time to do nothing, and it's something that no one gets these days, because we just don't know about you, but I feel guilty when I'm doing nothing and just sat there because you're expected to always

be switched on. The rhetoric that's been pushed and I've mentioned on the podcast that I did with Don, we've mentioned Gary Vaynerchuk and Gary, if you're still listening, first off, I'm very surprised after what I said about you in the last episode. But then on top of that as well,

like the hustling grind mentality mixed with always on communication is a dangerous combination. Like, industriousness can be taken to an extreme. Now, flow by mehile, check mehile, that's my difficult one to get out. In the book Flow, what he talks about is the fact that human beings have the greatest sense of satisfaction when they are doing something which pushes them physically or mentally and is both challenging and

worthwhile. So those are the things that you need to be able to do. You push yourself to the limits of your competence, doing something challenging and worthwhile. And that's why he says that people who have a propensity towards being industrious, if I'm going away on holiday, very difficult, because at work, you have inherent challenge, you have a feedback mechanism that tells you how well you're doing and you have goals. Those are the three main things that you need. On holidays, just completely unstructured. Like, you don't win an award for being the best sunbathe or like, and I think that this is why a lot of people, when they go away on holiday,

especially young guys who feel like they have something to prove, will turn towards some form of game who can drink the most drinks tonight, who can kiss the most girls tonight, or girls could do it in a slightly more different way, or it's like who looks the best tonight, who's got the nicest dress, who's got the best. How many landmarks can we hit in one day? Yeah, do you know what I mean? Because you want to try and provide this sort of structure.

But obviously what happens when you have what could be maneuvered towards a very virtuous goal, which is I'm going to constantly be looking at assessing myself and finding out where I can improve and this and the other. It's very easily twisted and bastardized into constant self-reflection with negative mind talk, inability to switch off and a desire to always have stimulus. Like if you got, I think the study that I heard recently was that 75% of people take their phone to the toilet and the only thing I could think was I can't believe it's that low. You know what I mean? It's what you do when you're on the toilet. Like, it shouldn't be.

And the time on your own is super, super important. Deep work by Karl Newport is the Bible on this. We'll be doing a book review on Deep Work and digital minimalism coming up soon. But if you want to check it out, the link will be to the Amazon shop in the show notes below. But Deep Works, just the Bible on this, about the fact that it is psychologically,

neurologically and philosophically a good thing to do to focus on one task for a significant period of time. And it's a skill that's increasingly being missed in the 21st century. I think it's just like common sense. So that's why we're being old-gold by older generations because they can see like the what's gone wrong. But I agree with this to an extent, but I feel, and Israel coined the generations again, I feel this bastardization of social media, well, relevant at times, I feel this is the same as sort of saying, you know, the counter argument,

so that will always be well, you know, the people who are on their phones 24, 7 are going to make them the best coders in 10 years time when it matters and stuff. So, and while I agree with the fact that maybe there is less of a focus on books, I feel it's still, you know, the medium of getting information and getting knowledge has changed. And I think one of the things that we do are open eyes to a campaign and, you know, in all sort of areas is that social media, for all its wrongs, has allowed us to act in a meaningful way. If you can take it at face value, there is the whole narcissistic element to it. You see influence and marketing and you think, oh, narcissism, narcissism, narcissism. But I'd have to question that without social media, would we be as in tune

to the world? Would be cares much about the environment? Would we be, would we get to this point now where we are so, you know, that sense of connection with society where we are so aware, so hyper aware of that there are many different walks of life. However, people feel, I think it's I think it's you know well, well, you could look at the person on the bus who's just looking in their phone I think it has turned us into better communicators away and made us more open as well I think we have a coming more aware to the mistakes that we've maybe made like you said like we were failed Like by our parents or by the people who created this technology. No one educated us on safe use of it.

And now we're sort of getting to grips with teaching ourselves. And I like to think of it like a car, like the first car, like how long was it before they got seatbelts installed? And like you wouldn't, you wouldn't do that. How would you, you need to learn how to drive the car, you need to, you know, put your safety measures in. Like I know if I'm going to feel shit about myself, I'm not going to, I'm not going to follow people who are posting things that are going

to make me feel shit. You just have to curate your feeds and know how to use it and turn to it for positive things. And like, it can be so helpful for like productivity and like you said, awareness about so many causes. We just have to train ourselves to use it for good. I think, I think young good. I think young people definitely do. I think it's to answer the question the way that as well is I think a characteristic of Jen said it's funny the irony of it has become a very millennial thing to say, you kids, you're addicted to social media, all you do is watch YouTubers and rappin toys, and who wants to do that? You play with fidget spin, it's what you're doing.

And that in itself has almost become a kind of millennial trait. So we are just, you know, going back, we're already bashing out of the ones. I get it. I mean, to go on to what you said about the, about the car analogy, it's perfectly correct. And what really there should be given for people who were the patient zero avatars for the advent of all of these technologies,

where the technology came before the best practices for healthy use did, and before the legislation did. We should be giving compassion. There should be a degree. And I feel that myself, like I have because for me, my mobile phone was a conduit for my business, which meant that I started to get into the rhythm of using it and then the tactics which are used by particular social media apps to keep you on infinite scroll, auto playing videos, red notifications, etc, etc. I've now become a victim of those particular cognitive tricks and I'm now having to undo the work that was done. But if you're someone who's coming through in Gen Z screen time on an iPhone, only came out six months ago, where it allows you to track the time you've spent on individual

apps. If you haven't got it turned on, I urge you to do so just so that you can have a lot of going to your settings, have a look at screen time, and it'll be very revealing as to where you've spent your time. Crazy revealing, right? But then, so perfect example here, and this is within the same window, right? We're talking same device. Did you have an iPhone when you needed to download an app that allowed you to use a flashlight? So, you didn't, it wasn't always in the dock at the bottom. You needed to download an app, or you had to turn your video camera on

with the flash activated. Yeah. And then it took them a while to realize, hang on, this is something which people need, this is a feature which we need to add. You think now, why would you not swipe up from the bottom of the turn, you flash light on? Whereas in the past, you had to scroll,

find flashlightapp.iox, and press that, And then it was like a little flashlight and you press that. So even within the window that we're talking about of technology, we have seen something come about which was needed and then be internalized by the company that's creating the technology. And the same thing is occurring with social media that it was this monster that's come about. And before, you know, Tristan Harris and the human say that, the human technology and all of this movement towards understanding what the attention economy is and how it manipulates people, that's only just starting to catch up with what's actually being going on for a long time.

And I think the industry knew it's just starting to trickle down. To say, to say, to the government, the moment, isn't it? Yeah, they've just been playing the light shot. They've been playing the light shot. Yeah, everyone's playing to catch up. And you're so right, it's because the innovation comes before the rules around it. Like, people are constantly playing catch up. It's like, here's a new thing. Okay, we've got to regulate that and here's something else.

And now we have to put rules on that. We've just constantly catching up with this. Yeah, although I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing sometimes. I think it's that experimentation. Yeah, that makes innovation so exciting. I like to compare it to literally anything that we've invented. It's always had flaws and it's always had dangers before people figure out, oh, actually, that we need to amend that bit and we'll make changes here and make it better. It's literally like anything else. So, yeah, I don't think it's a bad thing. If rules have been put in place beforehand, if someone was able to predict, oh, there's going to be this big thing that's going to come along and change everything and it's going to make people

sad and still all their attention and still their data, they'll be like, okay, that's not a lot to happen. And we wouldn't be where we are. We'd have lost that one so much. On the social point, I want to throw something at you, Chris. How much of that manipulation of social media, how much of the development innovation whatever you want to call it, how much of that you think is placed on it by the platforms and how much of it do you think is just us as a society sort of placing our own needs and wants and desires on this technology that's been able to. Like believing that the technology is an oracle or some panacea fits to all of our problems.

Because of where my mindset is at the moment, I do have quite a negative view of Silicon Valley and what they've done with regards to manipulating technologies Anyone who has read much of Tristan Harris's work will Understand just how subversive and malicious some of the strategies are that people have that have been used the guy that created Scrolls says it's the single greatest regret of his life. Yeah. Because you think about just how many... So a perfect example of this. Have you seen the film The Big Short? No. Parts of it.

On the film The Big Short, it's about the 2008 financial crash. It is a fictional adaptation of what actually happened. In it, this guy says that before he came to work on Wall Street, he built bridges. He said he worked out, he built this particular bridge which shortened a very highly congested route. over the lifetime of this bridge, which was about 100 years, he'd saved billions of hours for people. That's how long he'd saved. And I often think about what converse has been done through social media. And you think, right, okay, like, if you were to look at how much time has been spent on that, and again, there are positives which come out of it. But in my belief, we are netting a negative and the problem is that in 10 years time

I believe that there will be more control in place that may either be in terms of best practices that are socially enforced That may be in terms of legislation that may be in terms of the way that the platforms actually self-manage and self-regulate or whatever it might be. But the problem is that millennials and Gen Zed, they've been the canary in the coal mine for this. So they've been the people that have gone in first. They're the vanguards, they're their point. They're on point in this particular invasion into a new realm of technology that no one's ever seen before. And I think that really calls for a lot more compassion for some of the problems that people are dealing with. Like my mum and dad don't have a problem with social media. Like my dad's got the largest font, sorry, dad. My dad's got the largest font available on his phone

and he loves to, he'll send me photos of the dogs and stuff like that But like I have no concerns about whether or not my dad is up on Facebook until or YouTube until two in the morning But my business partner's two-year-old son who has a Amazon Kindle to watch Despicable Me on I Get nervous when I see him around it Because I think I wonder downstream, and I'm constantly like tapping on Darren and Colleen business partner and his wife about like, make sure you're being careful. Like the unbelievable parents. But it's a powerful technology that I think we need to be careful as we move forward with. I think one positive thing that will come out of

that, like my my sister's recently had a baby and she's the same, she's always asking me like, oh, like when should we let this child have, you know, an iPad? Because you see them that they're playing with iPads and it's like when do they get their first phone? Like should they be allowed social media when they're like pre-teen age? And it's one of them, like, you're right. Like we went in first.

We're definitely the guinea pigs. Patient zero. Exactly. and you're right, we went in first, we're definitely the guinea pigs. Patient zero. Exactly, but hopefully we'll have something then to learn from and we'll just have to like anything else teach our kids how to use it, how to use it responsibly, to use it in moderation. And how to like reap its rewards without

I don't wanna be a ludic about this either. I don't wanna be saying like there are fantastic benefits, but it's at what cost and can we mitigate the costs. And to look back, you know, we spoke about people that have gone awa, wasn't that long ago that there was conscription into the army? I'm complaining about the fact that this oracle of all knowledge in my pocket that always on and allows me to connect with anyone at any time, sometimes saps my attention. Like, I'm aware that there is relatively across all of time, probably not that big of a problem. But as we close towards what we want to be an ideal society, we need to narrow down the fidelity and the resolution at which we're looking at

the problems. So saying, well, this is much better than it was 50 years ago. Isn't an argument? No. How much better could it be? Because if you're comparing stuff to how it was 50 years ago, he doing what your census people did and you're just lumbering all of this, not only all of the people, but the entirety of the world. Yeah.

Yeah. Companies publish your on your profits. They don't publish like century on century profits, because it wouldn't be comparable. Sure. No, it's so right. I think it's interesting. I think we are, you know, going back to that point about Gen Z, I think we are starting to see, I don't want to say pulling the reins on innovation a little bit, but like we said,

where there's been so much technological change. I mean, the innovations we talk about nowadays are very much to do with artificial intelligence and stuff like that, which has been around for a lot longer than we think. And for me, a very big difference with that is they are not as consumer facing as social media

once was. I suppose it's, you know, not everyone's not going around saying, oh, I'm just doing a new AI thing. Oh, man, have you seen this? This is AI. You know, it's less and less so like that. Yes, it's being served to us in more sort of guerrilla ways, you know, chatbox and stuff like that. But, um, now I do, I do agree with your point. I've, for me, I feel, you know, something that sort of represent Gen Z and definitely Gen A is just like we became the sort of Canary, you know, in the coal mine, you can say, we, we found a way to regulate this ourselves, I think. And I think that's not what we must not get away from too much. Is that yesterday's gonna be casualties.

There's gonna be a lot of problems with this. But I think Gen Z and Gen A's greatest benefit will be then finding their way into the world and regulating this technology, how they want it to be. And I think you are seeing a shift where platforms and governments and whatever, maybe they are not necessarily right about everything. And I think consumers are starting to see that. And that's to explain itself in many ways.

I think consumers are taking back a degree of control. Yeah, definitely. I think it's a bit of a multitude of factors. The platforms are having, they're being forced to make new features like screen time. And the new guidelines around the safe use and usage, policy and stuff like that. They're being forced to put those changes in place. So while that's going on, consumers as you write, they're also getting a little bit stabier, because they've watched, they're going to watch all the consequences of them, and they're going to watch it happen to us. And another funny thing as well is that you're seeing features that have come out, you

know, that somebody, you know, a group of sort of directors or heavy work at, you know, Facebook have sort of dreamed up and said, oh, yeah, the world needs this. You see a lot of consumers saying, oh, actually, fuck off. Do you remember when it's too, do you remember when it's too, no we don't, I'll take that feature and I'll hack it to do that. Do you remember when Instagram updated a bunch of people's apps?

Did you see this? It must have happened in here. Yes. Did you see this thing? I know what you're gonna say. So Instagram sent out an update. I think it was to around about 10% to 20% of users. And it completely, imagine the apps completely gone and imagine a story's feed that you

have to move through individually one by one and you can't navigate. And they released this update to like 10 or 20% of users and just all hell broke loose. It was meant to be a very, very, very small task to like less than 1% of users. It came out over the Christmas break and I was on our Twitter and I had to report on it and about an hour later, I had to amend the reports because I said, oh my God, Instagram massive updates, changes into tie-in.

Oh, I'm so glad to see you. It's gone from a scrolling feed. So bad. Exactly. I got the phone. I know. Stop talking about the apps. It's been used for even more. Adam was right. Listen to that, mate.

We don't care. We don't care about this update. It went from a scrolling feed to scrolling that way. I know that speculator and that we've been doing about, you know, will stories overtake the news feed. It felt like it was happening. Literally within the hour it had been taken down. Paul's and I knew when he came in.

Oh my God, I'm really sorry that test was not meant to go out to as many people as it did. And we were all left going, is that what they're going to change? Is it happening? It's like, if the film doesn't go that way, what are you doing? It's that redesign. It's like Twitter brought out doesn't go that way, what are you doing? It's like a set of redesign, it's like Twitter have brought out this new public beta testing thing where they've actually invited everyday people, you know, not just tech insiders

who are connected to every single website. Yeah, I think Twitter's actually being really positive. If you want to look at a platform that's making changes for God, take a look at what Twitter's doing because they're being so inclusive of their updates and they're not just blasting people with horrible spam stuff. Did you listen to Jack Dorsey on Joe Rogan?

I didn't know, I will, I will. It's definitely up to watch this. He's done a second one, he came back on a second time. I did it. So he did a first one and Rogan doesn't usually, what I particularly like about Joe Rogan, the reason I think he's a good podcaster is he just puts his stuff out, like he's effective

at what he does, the reason that he's the's a good podcaster is he just puts his stuff out. Like, he's effective at what he does. The reason that he's the best podcaster in the world is because he asks the question that you would have asked if you'd had half an hour to prep for that one section. And then he asks it straight away by riding the crest of now at all times and constantly asks the best questions. But one of the other reasons that I think he's so good is the fact that he just doesn't care what people think. He doesn't check the comments on YouTube. He he's so good is the fact that he just doesn't Care what people think it doesn't check to comment some YouTube it doesn't really respond stuff like that But one of the few times Alex Jones was one of them and Jack Dorsey was another one

He got so much backlash because people wanted him to go after Jack Dorsey about why are people getting banned? Why is my lolleyunoc list but hmm band wise Saga and of a card band why you de-platform people. There appears to be a left-leaning bias and all this sort of stuff. So is that right? Fuck it. We're going to have Jack back on again. Then Jack brought his head of the safety team, which is basically the woman that presses the band button. And he brought in Tim Poole, who is like the Ben Shapiro,

or he's like the heist Gracie of cutting people down in fast debates, like a scalpel precision, how he's able to deploy this stuff and he came fully armed, like, study after study after example, after example, after example. And during the conversation, sometimes with this, especially when you see Silicon Valley in there, you want to stick it to the man, like fuck the machine. And part of me wanted that kind of cathartic pleasure that you get from seeing someone who's

successful just gets smashed all over by someone who's witty. Like there's something that I enjoy about that. But what ended up happening was a very But what ended up happening was a very, Tim continued to be militant throughout. Like it's parting words were, I still don't like you guys. I still don't believe that what you're doing is for the greater good. And I still hope that Twitter goes down,

but thank you for your time in coming on. That was essentially what you said. But throughout the whole conversation, Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and the woman whose name I can't pronounce, so I'm not gonna try, who was his head of the safety team, they basically said we don't understand what this technology really needs and we are learning as we go the same way that you guys are. Can we have a little bit of compassion back? And there's some things that seem like there's maybe some double standards that are maybe a little bit more critical, but this degree of compassion overall, I think for people that have had to deal with high degree of technological

change, a lot of financial ups and downs, and the advent of social media, you also, I can't say that I want that for us, but it's not also allowing the executives and the people who are in the marketing departments to also be given the same amount of freedom. Yeah. And I think it's harder to forgive some more than others. But yeah, I'd like to say I'm a really big fan of what Twitter's doing because they would admit that they're not perfect and the whole time they're just being transparent. They're just, they are really trying to be like open and honest and inclusive with their

users. And yeah, they'll get things wrong, but I believe you have better intentions than some others. Who goes on Joe Rogan to speak into millions of people as the CEO of a company twice, and then the second time knowing that Joe is basically bringing in your crypto night, with another person who is the person that is like public anime number one, essentially, to just have discourse and to try and be as open as possible. I mean, that, that for Twitter will have done more than any advertising campaign can have done. And obviously, what did we say before high-risk strategy? Yeah. Like, you could have gone on and just fluffed it,

because especially at the beginning, they're being very, very militant. It's quite sort of fricty and they're just constantly having to swallow this stuff from Tim as he's just unloading start after start after start. And you think after a while you begin to see that they're just human beings again the same. Do you know what I mean? Like the Jack Dorsi didn't know what Twitter was gonna become. And to a degree, I don't believe that Mark Zuckerberg did. Like, he'd look at him in those Senate hearings and he's just a guy that made a website and is now like, oh my God,

like just looking up at the sky. I made this joke earlier on. He looks like a lizard, not a man. He turned a man to lizard. Well, I mean, maybe that's what that degree of fear does. Yeah, just like clammy and so pale and scared. Very, very damp. Yeah.

I go back to my point because you're completely right. And my stance on this will still be, OK, like you said, you know, this is the medium of delivery. This is the media. This is technology. This is whatever society, you know, this is the medium of delivery, this is the media, this is technology, this is whatever. Society, you know, for the large part, we have sort of put, you know, what we want to see onto this, you know, we, the, the, the, the, the news feed, for instance, you know, and the scrolling, for instance, probably started off as a good idea.

Well, this is, we thought, right, make a bit of money on it, but. The problem is, the features wouldn't have stayed if they weren't effective. Exactly. It's natural evolution for the features wouldn't have stayed if they weren't effective. Exactly. It's natural evolution for the features that exist on the technology. The same thing for the reason that the next episode countdown happens on Netflix is that it improves retention. Some more people watch the rest of the series if the countdown occurs and if it doesn't, if it was the other way round, if it was the other way round, they wouldn't put it on.

So your own choices, determine the root of the technology, I think the criticism is, we didn't choose our own cognitive biases and you are triggering something that's there in the back of the brain when I want to be able to be thinking about it with this bit and you like Okay, so but guys it's been absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much for playing on So next time I will be on that couch. Yeah, we'll sit here He said some add up. He said some add up. The three of you that he got for the very mic. Yeah, well, like, tiered, that way.

I love it. Guys, link to Social Minds podcast will be in the show notes below. Link to all of the stuff for Social Chain will be there as well. Don't forget to press share if you enjoyed this. And if you've got any comments about what we've brought up today, find them in the comments on YouTube. Really appreciate it. Guys, thank you again.

Thank you. Thank you. YouTube really appreciate it guys thank you again thank you