Offline with Jon Favreau - Jon and Max Surrender Their iPhones

Episode Date: May 7, 2023

Introducing Offline’s Unplug Challenge! Jon and Max reflect on how their screen addictions have worsened their focus, hijacked their social lives, and even broken some bones. Faced with damning screen time reports, the guys take a big first step towards overcoming their compulsive smartphone habits. Offline Unplugged is a multi-week series that will invite hosts and listeners alike to rediscover the world that’s beyond our fingertips. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

So unfortunately, it is now time. I think you have to put your iPhones on the tray. I can't give you my iPhone because I didn't bring it in today. I'm going to have to take this. Goodbye. Goodbye. Any parting words? Do you want to say?

I'll miss you. Any hug goodbye? Yeah, I did. Here you go. I can't. I cannot watch this. That's really sad. Look at that.

Now, gentlemen, I'm going to give you my parting words Of the offline phone challenge And I'm going to move away from the mic Because it's going to be loud Allé cuisine! You are Appropriately nuts Yeah, appropriately nuts

I'm Jon Favreau, welcome to Offline You are appropriately nuts. Yeah, appropriately nuts. I'm Jon Favreau. Welcome to Offline. Hey, everyone. We have a very special Offline episode today, which is why the brilliant Max Fisher is here. Hi, Max. I am so excited. We have been cooking this up for a long time. I am really excited for what we're kicking off this week. Yeah, Max had this idea when you first started here at Crooked. The very first thing that I pitched to you for Offline when I came over to Crooked was let's make ourselves guinea pigs

in this six-week experiment for healing our own addiction to our smartphones and helping everyone who is listening heal their addictions to their smartphones. I think we're all kind of dealing with this. Yeah. So this is happening, people.

We've been talking about phone addiction since the beginning of the show, our collective addictions, my own personal addiction. Max wrote an entire book about the addictive quality of social media. And now 70 episodes in, we finally decided to stop talking about it and try to do something about it. We're hoping a lot of you will join us. Before we get into the specifics of what we're going to do, we should talk a little bit about why. How bad is your phone addiction, Max? So I've been thinking a lot about this because I think we all kind of take for granted. We like laugh about it. We're like, oh, haha, my dopamine receptors are fried. Haha, i look at my phone too much but when you actually like drill down and really like look

as we have been doing rigorously at your own screen time and especially you look at things like the number of times in the day you pick up your phone and especially what you were spending that time on it's it's like out of control i mean it really it just like we've all it just it's like out of control. I mean, it really, it just like we've all, it just, it's so normalized because it's happening to everyone. But it's like, I mean, we've talked about that it's like the specific chemical addictive, like physically addictive nature. But I think when you like, I know when I look at the cost to my like day-to-day life, that it is so easy to laugh off. It's like, it's real. It's a real cost. I mean, people who've listened to this show for a long time

know I hold my phone when I pee, which is gross. I check it in my car, which is dangerous. I read it during meals, before bed, when I wake up. And it's also just constant checking with no real purpose, especially now that Twitter sort of sucks. That's my drug of choice. But when I'm on Twitter now, it's like I'm not even,

there's nothing even going on. Now I'm just checking for the sake of checking. And also now, because I'm using Twitter a little less, I'm noticing like checking Instagram more, checking our Slack channels more, mail, text, weather, checking the weather many times a day.

For what reason? We live in Los Angeles. Anything to get that dopamine hit. That's right. Mail, text, weather. Checking the weather many times a day. For what reason? We live in Los Angeles. Anything to get that dopamine hit. That's right. I can't read anything that's very long. I haven't written in forever. Can't focus or even think freely without being interrupted

or interrupting myself, I guess. So yeah, it's an issue. And I felt like at one point when we first started the show, I had gotten a little better. When Charlie was first born and he first started to like talk a little bit, I was like, okay, I'm a little better spending time with him, putting the phone away. But I've sort of had a little bit of backsliding. I feel like there are like three really important things that I have learned about smartphone addiction, both from like examining it in myself, which you end up when you like

write a book on social media, you end up thinking a lot about like, what is my own relationship to this? And also just like, spending a lot of time with people who are studying it with neuroscientists, like looking at all these studies, and the like three things that I think we all kind of know are true. When you look at them together, you see the enormity of it, which is number one, we are all spending significantly more time on our phones than we want to be spending. You can look at, if you pull up your phone, you go to settings, you look at screen time, you can look at your average hours per day. I guarantee you will be terrified of that number. And it like, when people are asked like, how much time do you want to be

spending? It's always way less than that. So that is the like control that is being taken away from you. Number two, we are all spending that time on things that we know make us sadder, lonelier, more anxious, and that take away from the things that we care about and that we actually want to be doing that we actually find fulfilling in life. And number three, as a typical of addiction, and this is addiction, is that we usually fail when we try on our own to change that relationship on our phones and to have the kind of time on our phones that we want to have, we can't do it, which is why we are doing this so that people or that us, you and I, don't have to try to do it on our own. You mentioned checking your screen time. Let's start there. Let's both compare screen time.

Just do some self-humiliation here for the benefit of the people. I just want to say that mine is a little interesting. I'm going to actually go back three weeks because you can tell that as we have the week before this challenge, we're about to do some challenges here to try to unplug. The screen time actually went up. So Austin and Emma, the producers of this show, did something very canny. They've actually been doing a lot of kind of nefarious, brilliant

things in setting us up for this. They're drunk with power. They completely ambushed us on asking us for our screen time stats because I was doing the same thing. I was like, okay, when we get close to this, I'm going to try to be a little bit better so I could

be the A student. No, I did not get a chance to do that. I've been just standing at the buffet the whole time. April 16th through the 23rd, my average screen time was four hours and 50 minutes a day. Holy shit. Just on your phone. Just on my phone. Last week's average

was six hours and 12 minutes. Whoa. Whoa. And then this week so far, I'm back to four hours and 38 minutes. But again, we're recording this on Wednesday. Yeah. So I don't know what was happening last week, but I'll give you the, I'll get in the six hour, 12, six hour, 12 minute, uh, most used apps, uh, Twitter, 11 hours and 43 minutes on twitter that week i message five hours and 44 minutes

and that seems fine to me mail two hours and 54 minutes tells you how much work i'm doing safari because i still use safari as my browser weirdo uh two hours and three minutes instagram millennial shit right there instagram one hours and 55 minutes future which is the workout app that also has sponsored uh pod save america has my workouts on it one hour 54 minutes thank you future don't know about workouts uh and slack one hour and 24 minutes and then whatsapp one hour and 13 minutes spotify 57 minutes google maps 57 minutes nanit which is the the camera in Charlie's crib, 51 minutes. Postmates, 36 minutes.

And that's it. I wonder if there were a way where you could line up against those numbers. There's like two hours on this app, four hours on this app. If you could have in there, like, how many hours did you spend with like your family? Right. How many hours did you spend like talking to a person who was like a friend? That's a frightening. Right.

Do I have to talk to that person? And then I have to talk to that person in person, right? Not texting that person. It's being in a room. Well, I mean, this is the real thing because we know from studies that that time that goes into your phone, what that comes from is it's a little bit things like exercising and reading, which is an activity that I used to do in the past, but it's mostly, it's from socializing. It's from in-person interaction. There's a stat that we've talked about before. I think about all

the time that in 2014, for the first time, the amount of time the average American, so not even like, you know, Twitter brain poisoned, like smartphone addicts, the average American spent more time on Facebook owned apps alone than they did socializing in person. Just Facebook's app. And that has been growing every year. So that's what our lives are now. And that's, you know, that's what life is supposed to be. I mean, I think that it's really like the cost of this.

It really is like we're already in the metaverse. You know, like, yes, we have legs. We're not avatars. Right. But we're still, we're in the metaverse. know like yes we have legs we're not avatars right but we're we're still we're in the metaverse oh my god it's so much shittier than i thought it would be let's let's hear let's hear your screen time so my screen time let me go back a week uh four hours and 38 minutes okay average so uh about on par with yours uh over the course of the week my most use almost six hours on slack number one and we'll talk about that is my like nicotine patch for my twitter addiction which has been like helpful in the sense that being on twitter is horrible for you in many ways but it's still like it's still a smartphone addiction number two twitter four and a half hours uh number three tiktok almost four hours

yeah i have a i think i'm crippling tiktok addiction i've gone back and forth on tiktok where it's on my phone and then i worry about uh the chinese spying and i take it off my phone then i put it back on which is a great way to avoid yeah that's right yeah yeah well that will really stop the spies yeah there's no way around that it's brilliant it's off now because i was like what else am i what am i doing i mean if you want to know like the deep like shameful addiction picture of me on my phone it's me like sitting on my sofa uh when i'm like sat down with a book and meant to read and instead i'm curled up with tiktok deep into hour two and like the sun is set and it's dark

and like I haven't turned the lights on because I'm just like deep in my addiction. Yeah, yeah. Number four, Raya, a dating app

that is very social media like and also addictive. Boy, are we not going to get into that at all. Boy, is that off limits.

I miss, I miss Raya, I will say. You know what? Miss all the dating apps. You're better off, you know, Raya or having a family. I don't know. It's a tough one. Which one is better? Who's winning?

It's a tie. We'll call it a tie. Kamut, which is an exercise, like a cycling app. Instagram, Google Maps. That's a pretty useful one. Letterboxd, which is the one a cycling app. Instagram, Google Maps. That's a good one. That's a pretty useful one. Letterboxd, which is the one social media app I will actually say is great because it's like pre-news feed, pre-2008 social.

It's like Goodreads for movie reviews. Oh. You write a movie review. Your friends write movie reviews. You read each other's reviews. You do little likes. It's actually great. It's only movies.

It's only movies, and it's very small it has none of the like viral features but it's great because it's like it's a great place to do some writing but you don't like uh dunk on bad movie reviews exactly people to do better right right there's no right there's no like viral review yeah like main character like quote tweet like wow problematic review um and it's just, it's just a nice place to do like writing for fun. That sounds nice. I actually really recommend it. iMessage, Mail, Chrome. That's a browser that we started using

in the mid 2000s. It's like me and when I first met Emily and she was like sent me something on a Google Doc and I was like, what is Google Documents? Wow. You were just using your typewriter. I still use Word. I'm a Word guy all the way down.

I think the actual scary stat is not screen time. It's pickups. The number of times in a day that you... Can I see that? Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah you scroll down which anyone lou who is listening like pick up your phone go to settings go to screen time and then look at like it's like more activity and more details and then scroll down to the number this is the number of times in the day that you pick up your phone my average per day

is 108 oh my god which means if you're awake 16 hours a day, that's, what is that? Five times, seven times an hour? That's a lot. It's like every five, six minutes. What were your pickups? 108 per day. 108 per day?

Yeah. So like every seven minutes, I'm picking up my phone and then it will show you the first app that you check and it's usually Slack and Twitter. And I think that's the real marker for addiction because that's when you're you know you're standing in an elevator and it's like you start to have thoughts and start to like exist in the universe and you can't have that no so that's when you're like your brain that's my nightmare yeah uh 284 for me 284 pickups a day. Oh my god. Jesus. Are you okay?

No, I'm not okay. That's so bad. Can we, someone dial 911. Call an ambulance immediately because this is really... So, there's an obvious reason we're finally about to

do some offline challenges. Offline challenges. To help break our phone addictions now. And that is content. Obviously, these offline challenges will make for great social content, video, audio. We are in the content business. But beyond that, why did you think it was a good idea to try to ease our phone addictions now?

So for the next, I think it's six weeks, we are going to be imposing on ourselves a series of like hard, firm restrictions on how we can use our phones. And we'll be trying out a new offline challenge every week. Some of them are like going to be in the style of a digital detox. Some are more drastic. And a couple, I think, will turn out to be like outright devious as Emma and Austin use us as their like voodoo dolls to like torment us for their own amusement and for everyone else's amusement, which is great.

And then at the end of each week, we'll look at how effective it was, whether it improved our focus, made us happier. We were able to spend more time reading or writing and also how difficult it was to manage. And like the reason I wanted to do this is to make ourselves guinea pigs, basically, in this big running experiment to test out every viable method we could think up to try to retake control of those hours per day that we're losing to our phones. And partly the goal is to learn as we go what works and what doesn't, what changes as a result of these new restrictions every week and how we feel and how we like exist in the world. But mostly I wanted to do it to help each of us,

including you and me because we really need it because we're fucking degenerate addicts, but also everyone listening identify some particular set of changes that we can each make in our lives that will be manageable, that will be sustainable and will be effective at letting us like have the lives that we can each make in our lives that will be manageable, that will be sustainable, and will be effective at letting us have the lives that we want to have instead of the lives that these tech companies want to have to give us dopamine addictions to help them make a little bit more money. You can have a life without a phone. That's what we're going to find out. Thanks, I hate it. So I talked to a lot of people on this show about different strategies they use to unplug.

Johan Hari has a plastic safe that you put your phone in. Oh, wow. And then you lock it, set a timer, and then you can't get it out until the timer goes off. And then you have another phone that you use to browse TikTok, right? That's right. Then there's your burner phone. Ezra Klein, a friend of ours, completely unplugs

on Saturdays. No phone. That seems drastic. Oh my God. Sounds like the Sabbath. Yes. And people have talked about on the show less extreme strategies like putting your phone in another room while you sleep or no screens a few hours before bed, taking long walks without a phone,

setting a time limit on your phone for certain social media apps. Before we get into the challenges, which strategies have you tried in the past for unplugging? So when I kind of started my like deep dive into the internet and social media and smartphone addiction, which I think is around the same time you did like 2017, 2018, it wasn't yet common for people to have these like methods they use for adapting to their phone. So I was kind of like on my own in it. And it's now like, I mean, like you said, it's now strikingly common when you talk to people who are like really insidery, really in the tech world, like they all have these like esoteric, but very specific strategies that they use to manage the relationship to their phone because they know that like you have to do it otherwise you know your life has gone to it I ended up

something that was very targeted to social media just because that's what I was thinking about which was that I um first I took a like hard nine month break from social media because I was addicted not just to using it, but I could feel it changing like who I was really. And I like there was this like the moment that I was like, this is nuts. I have got to delete these apps off my phone. As I remember, I read this study that we've talked about before on the show that showed that people who used Twitter and Facebook, because the platform artificially amplifies the reach anytime you express outrage on those apps for because it serves their purposes, that you spend time in the apps, you become more prone to expressing outrage, even if you don't like it, and it makes

you unhappy. And then you become more prone to feeling outrage in your day to day life. Yes. And that was when I had this one was like, Oh, I thought I was using the social media apps, like for my own purposes and exploiting like viral whatever to like you know promote articles or to like yell at bad guys but i was really just a lab rat yeah who's just being like trained by like jack dorsey to make jack dorsey you're not in control of twitter twitter's in control of exactly right and when you see that and when you see that like i thought i was using the app but the app is using me, it was really scary.

And I deleted the apps. I took nine months off. I did not post anything because I knew my addiction was so strong. If I did not take that time off, whatever changes I made, I would backslide immediately. And then I came back and I imposed on myself this, like, very specific set of rules that I think we're going to talk about at a later show maybe that I still mostly hold to for how I use the social media apps. And it is like, I think it's made my relationship to them a lot healthier, even though I don't use them as much, so I don't get as much promotion out of them. But I never really thought until now as much about smartphone addiction on its own,

which is how I like moved all my Twitter and Facebook behavior and Instagram behavior over to group chats and friend slacks, which is great and much healthier, but I still am checking it 300 times a day. Yeah, no, I mean, I will certainly not claim that I have any kind of healthy relationship with my phone, as we all know. But I did set a time limit on Twitter, maybe a year ago, for an hour a day, routinely blow through that. I was going to ask if you ever had that. But at least it pops up and I know. And I'm like, when it pops up in the morning.

Yeah. Oh my God. I mean, like I get up at five and then there's a lot of Twitter early on in the morning. Yeah, I wanted to ask you, what's the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning? How long between when your eyes open and the phone is in your hand?

Like what's the amount of time? mean immediately eyes open and i check the time and if it's like it's in the fours i'm like you gotta keep sleeping you gotta get four i'm telling him it's terrible yeah so then if i'm if i make it to five starbucks opens at 5 30 and i want to walk to starbucks which i usually it's a nice walk in the morning and i try to just listen to a podcast on the way to starbucks and put the phone in my back pocket at five in the morning 5 30 5 30 yeah as soon as starbucks opens i am there i'm the first customer it's a it's a 20 minute walk round trip uh it's a large month starbucks it's great are you hearing they know me yeah yeah they know me it's great i love the folks there so anyway then i then i come back and then um i sit at my sit at my computer and then i start reading the news usually at that point uh dan pfeiffer has

texted multiple articles already he's also up early tommy is also up that that early as well roads as well everyone's like texting each other it's a whole yeah and then i try to work out and then charlie and emily get up at like seven and then so it's also like a couple hours to myself sure yeah you don't have any more sure right um so that's my that's but anyway so i did the twitter app time limit thing i have actually gotten better about when i am with family and friends in a social situation not checking my phone as much that that has improved i would like and i've had friends tell me that so it's not just really oh that's great and you think it was because of the restrictions that you put on the twitter app yeah i've actually a friend of a mutual friend of both mine and Tommy's was like, both of you were the worst.

It's just like looking at your phone while we were all hanging out. He's like, now you're a little better. I feel like since I became more deliberate, I feel my smartphone addiction imposing itself on so many aspects of my life. But the two things where I feel like I am able to, if I like work at it and I'm conscious at it,

keep it out, are in-person socializing. And although I'm like, as I say that, I realize I'm aware of where my phone is at all times. I know exactly where it is on the table, which is also classic addiction behavior. And exercising, like long hikes and long bike rides. I like still sometimes I'll like be on a hike and be like, I should check Twitter as I'm like walking down this cliff, which is incredibly dangerous as well as like really unhealthy. But I'm like generally pretty good at it.

No, that's how I broke my shoulder two years ago. Really? It was in the middle of the pandemic and I was on a jog around the neighborhood. Yeah. the pandemic and i was on a jog around the neighborhood yeah and i looked down at my fucking phone and i tripped on the sidewalk and i put my arm out and i thought i dislocated my shoulder and it's actually shattered wow yeah had to get surgery your smartphone addiction literally shattered your shoulder holy shit yeah it was bad it was bad i'm worried about you i know i'm worried about me too so I'm better in social situations.

But the fact that my screen time is so high and my pickups are so high is because alone is the dangerous time. Right. Because when I am alone, it is just all phone all the time. Right. Right. And I think that's the real challenge because what I'm hoping to get out of this is, like, being able to be alone and just be alone with your thoughts or read something or you know just yeah that's what i need i i that's the really good way to put it i the aspect of this that i have been thinking about is like since we were looking

at those screen time stats that like four hours a day has just been like reverberating in my head because like let's say two hours of that is like actually things that you need to be doing or that you want to be doing you like have to be on your phone for something and the other two are just from like addictive behavior which like honestly looking at that app breakdown like i think it's probably a lot more yeah than two hours but like two hours is probably a pretty good rough estimate for the average smartphone user, the average person. And like, that's an eighth of your waking life. If you were awake 16 hours a day, that's the equivalent of every eighth day of your life disappearing, just like wiped out. And like, what does that take

away from? Like, what are you losing? Every study finds that it's the same thing. It's like socializing, it's talking to people and like the like the surgeon general vivek murphy has been like on this big national tour yeah this week talking about the loneliness epidemic and the like it's all the like loneliness epidemic which is like the smartphone addiction is a big part of it it always gets couched in terms of the costs that they like cost to your mental health. And they'd like basically every physical health problem that you can possibly have goes up when you spend more time alone,

but also the, like the loss of that social interaction, like that social interaction is just what life is. You know, that's like, that's what like life is supposed to be and like the core of it. And like, what is meaningful,

like spending time with people you care about. And we are all losing that. Well, and you and I have talked about this before, but we've talked a lot on the show about the sort of personal addictions to technology and screens and phones and social media and what that does to you personally. And then we've also talked a lot about democracy and how the internet has shaped the media and democratic institutions. And I do think that's the connection. There's a connection there, which is that in a world where we are just on our screens, outraged all the time, scrolling all the time, it promotes outrage, it promotes short-termism. All the things that sort of degrade democracy over time, I do think, you know, you can trace back to. It's not only the fault of our phones, but you can trace just to us. And it like, I have also just been thinking more about just what it like means for what life is. Like I'm 38, which means I have been thinking

like for really the first time about my life as like a finite, discrete thing and like what I want to do with that time. And like, I look at these screen time numbers and I think about like the last five or six years and I have been so addicted to my phone and like it really makes me mad like I don't want to look back and be like this is what I spent my life doing or like hunched in a corner scrolling TikTok longer than I wanted to or like getting mad

at tweets that I saw that I didn't like and I like I'm really fed up that it is so hard to retake that eighth of my life that is being siphoned away from me for fucking corporate profits and I like I'm really fed up that it is so hard to retake that eighth of my life that is being siphoned away from me for fucking corporate profits and I know it's easy if you are like me to blame yourself and like I struggle with impulse control in other aspects of my life so it probably is like a little bit on me and like you and I like clearly have some like addictive tendencies that makes this like a little bit worse but we are all fighting against some like addictive tendencies that makes this like a little bit worse, but we are all fighting against some like very powerful forces and they're winning. And what we're losing are relationships and experiences and time with other people. And even when we're not actively on our phones,

we're losing something. Like you mentioned reading, like that feeling of lost focus and concentration that everyone has, like that's real. That really traces back to the amount of time you spend on your phone, that fire hose of dopamine that's real. That really traces back to the amount of time you spent on your phone. That fire hose of dopamine that your brain is not designed to absorb changes how your mind works. I used to love reading books. Do you remember books? No one will believe that because how much I talk about it, I don't read, but I used to love, love books. Yes. I like throughout my teens and my twenties, like before smartphone apps apps got really addictive and like also before I got like really like fell into my job. So again, it is like a little bit on me.

I always had a book with me. I was putting down like 50, 100 pages every day. Like any free moment I had, I was reading and I took so much away from that. Like personally and professionally, it was so enriching. And now I really struggle to concentrate on a page of text. I feel that phone pulling me. I tried to read a little bit, read a book before bed last night, and as I was reading the book, I was like,

oh, I want to also read a little bit of this other book that I've been meaning. Like the same mental processes that make you switch between apps. I was like, I want to read the first chapter of this book, and now I'm going to read the first chapter of this book. I'm like, why don't I just stick with the same fucking book? Right. Because I'm like, cause my brain's broken.

I'm so glad you mentioned that, that, that feeling that you can't get 30 seconds without a dopamine hit. That's not naturally how our brains work. Right. That's the phone. And it like, so I am doing this for me because I like really want to get that back.

And I really want to be able to like read a book by the end of this. But I think this like big journey that we are about to go on is for anyone who feels like you need to reset your relationship with your phone and take back the things that matter to you in life yes so there's a reason that we are doing this so publicly uh public shaming is a useful tool as we've also talked about on this show we're doing a lot of things also you can be useful right yeah public shaming of ourselves, frankly. We are leaving our digital fates and mental health in the capable hands of Austin and Emma and Caroline.

Capable and malicious hands, frankly. Like some Bond villains over here. Some of these challenges you'll be able to do at home yourself. Some of them will be a little more difficult for you to do. But we want people to join us in this, which is the other reason we're doing it publicly. And again, we don't want to leave it to ourselves because then we would just. No accountability. No accountability.

All right. So when we come back, Max and I will be presented with the very first Offline Challenge. All right, we're back. And joining us to serve as our Offline Challenge guide, Crooked Media's own social media maven, Carolyn Dunphy. Greetings, chefs, I mean gentlemen. I will be your

offline challenge chancellor. What is happening? Now as chancellor, I will present a new phone challenge each week. I will set the rules

and I will see to your many successes as well as failures. Oh, that's going to be failures, mostly. A lot of failures. Are you ready for your first challenge? No.

I guess. I guess. For those listening at home, know that we are doing a very low-budget version parody of Iron Chef. So please check out the offline YouTube. Now that that shameless plug is over, back to the script.

The first challenge is flip phones! Oh no. Look at those things. What do you use those for? I think you're gonna LOL at this challenge.

Do they have Twitter on them? They have T9 texting. When was the last time you T9 texted someone? 2003. Well, welcome back. That's 20 years ago. Freshman year rolling right back. I believe Blink-182 was in its prime.

Summer Girls by LFO was out and everyone was wearing terrycloth bucket hats. Can we put some third eye blind over in the studio right now? Oh, do you want to put jumper on? Because that's going to be your next week.

Is that going to be my ringtone, actually? Yeah, it's like... That's how I'm going to listen to music now. I wish you would step back from that, my friend. I will say that my transition

away from T9 texting, my next phone, so when I joined the Carrie campaign in 2004, got a BlackBerry. Oh, you had the BlackBerry. And the BlackBerry was an addiction that I actually missed. Do you miss the BlackBerry? Yeah, because the typing on the BlackBerry,

easier than the iPhone. That actually might have been like the perfect moment. We should have just like frozen things. I'm like a Luddite, but for the BlackBerry era. Yeah. And I think you guys should take your phones right now. Okay. Look at the keyboard.

Does it matter whose phone it is? You mean that's my phone? That's your phone right now. But I already have a phone. See, but the thing is, we're going to be switching in those iPhones for these phones. The fuck we are. And these are not just any flip phones.

They are the F1 Sunbeam, who are not sponsoring this segment famously not but we will ask anyways so these have weather they have alarm they have alarm clocks so I mean you wake up at 4 so you won't need that

and we have Google Maps on there so although we are crazy at Crooked Media we're not cruel. We know that you just moved here. So you actually need to know how to get around. Well, I need to be able to show up at work. Yeah, you need to know how to get here.

I would be like deep in like the Santa Monica Hills just like wandering around. Just walking around like a sim in a closed off room being like, where to? Tom Hanks and Castaway, a t-shirt wrapped around my head. Please come into the office with Wilson. Wilson! Wilson! I am going to be Wilson at the end of this.

I am definitely going to be shouting at a volleyball to show me some more TikTok videos. I can't wait. So what do we do with these things? Who talks to people on the phone? Like a phone call? I feel like this week is going to be not even using any kind of phone

because this seems useless. But have you ever played the game Snake? Because that's just a lovely time. Okay, so I am actually really excited about this because it's a heartbreak with the smartphone. It's a way to test like, what does it really feel like to be off of like the super addictive smartphone stuff?

And this is the thing that a lot of like, especially really young people, like a lot of kids are doing. Because it's like you grow up with this smartphone, you see how poisonous it is. And it's like, I think it's telling that that's the generation that is like, let's go for the flip phones. Let's go for the like old style brick phones. And it's like, it's going to be terrifying, but I think it's going to be cool. Yeah, I am so excited too. So excited.

After hearing your Twitter usage, you need this. I know I do. I am here to help you. In the words of Jerry Maguire, help me to help you. What are your pickup numbers going to be on the flip phone? Probably not less than 200, I bet. Yeah, I think so. At the early conception of us building out what these challenges would be,

one of the things that we wanted to throw at you would be a mini game like Mario Party. We're not going to do that because we're not cruel. We're crazy. There's a difference. But there is something to be said about typing a full sentence out on T9 or trying to tweet something out on T9 because you have to hit that like this baby over and over and over. I have a vague memory of this. Yeah.

Yeah. It's going to be like Thumper. Are we going to be writing like Ernest Hemingway at the end of this? This is like short, brief, turf little sentences. I can only hope that you're just going to be sitting at a cafe

writing long essays about your experience and how you've healed and overcome. Or you could just drink as much as Ernest Hemingway and that worked out for him. I probably will drink a lot.

Yeah. I'm going to substitute one addiction for another. I'm gonna be like him out on the Florida coast on a boat hunting German U-boats by the end of this week. Yes. A lot of rum running. Hanging out with the Castros. Exactly.

I guess it is. Like, I'm gonna have to learn what happened. Like, what am I gonna fill those four hours a day with? I am excited to figure out that. Yeah. It's gonna be terrifying. It's just like staring into the abyss. You're gonna have to figure out hobbies yeah maybe one of you guys can paint you don't know you don't know what's on that other side yeah picking up a book you're just

you're just having a conversation yeah midweek i am imagining the b-roll that emily is going to capture is that you're going to be in your bedroom surrounded by 30 books, and you're like, I've read the first chapter of each one of these books. I have been trying to read Hilary Mantel's A Place of Greater Safety for like two months, like 800 pages, and I really, I'm going to do it this week. Wow. I'm excited.

I think you should also try to say, I'm going to read this book this week. He just shared his. Do I have to pick a book? It's hard to pick one. Anna Karenina. Like I said, I have 10 that I've gone through the first chapter of.

Whatever it is, 800 pages, I think that will do. It's never too soon to reread The Chaos Machine by Max, for sure. There you go. But buy another copy. That might be my last book that I read. We love a shameless plug. Once again, watch the YouTube. Came out nine months ago.

What is wrong with you? I'm telling you. Okay, so I also want to set the precedent that in this battle, and by battle I mean challenge, there is going to be a winner and loser. Okay. You want to be that winner because you will get advantages or small perks for the next challenge. Oh.

You get an out. Wow. This is exciting. So you can't mess up. Okay. Okay, so how do we know you're, what's the. Well, very much like Santa Claus, we will be seeing you when you're sleeping. We'll know when you are awake.

And we will be filming you. Wow. Over the course of a week. At least me and my crooked goblins will be filming you unsuspectingly. In my home? In your home. In your home. I mean, I know that Emily's supposed to be filming me.

I don't know what's happening with Max. What was in that employment contract? What did I sign? Wait, you didn't know about the cameras? They're in everyone's homes. It's an, you know, it was because of the pandemic. It is a content company. Okay, sure.

Yeah. Want to make sure everyone's working. Exactly. It was a pandemic thing. They just want to make sure no one's going like this with their keyboard. Lovett's got 30 monitors at his house. He's watching all the time. He's a security guy, though.

He's always been a... Yeah, that's his du jour. So we also have midweek testimonials where you're going to come in kind of like the real world. Oh, cool. And be like, listen. It's a real reality show here. You know, we're day three. Yeah.

I'm losing my mind. I'm twitching. I'm twitching. I'm leaving. I'm going to the bar. Scratching day three. Yeah. I'm losing my mind. I'm twitching. I'm twitching. I'm leaving. I'm going to the bar. Scratching my face. Yeah. You're just going to have straight jackets eventually.

I can't wait. No, I'm going to be enlightened. By the end of this week, I'm going to be like floating in a cloud like the Buddha. I hope so. I'm really excited. Take up meditation. I do Headspace, who is also not sponsoring this segment. Also, where am I going to get the Headspace?

It's not going to be on the fucking phone. No one was able to meditate before smartphones, famously. Did not exist as a practice. You're correct. No one has ever meditated before iPhones. That is absolutely correct. So unfortunately, it is now time. I think you have to put your iPhones on the tray.

I can't give you my iPhone because I didn't bring it in today. I'm gonna have to take this. Goodbye, goodbye. Any parting words? Do you wanna say? I'll miss you. Any hug goodbye?

Yeah, I did, so here you go. I can't, I cannot watch this. That's really sad. Look at that. I just started sweating. Got that offline phone case right there. I hope everyone saw that. You can buy that at the Crooked store.

We love a shameless plug. We love a shameless plug. It's crooked.com slash store. There you go. There we go. Crooked.com slash store. Now, gentlemen, I'm going to give you my parting words of the offline phone challenge. Okay.

And I'm going to move away from the mic because it's going to be loud. All I could see! You are appropriately nuts. Yeah, appropriately nuts. Oh, this is fantastic. We love someone that's just at the borderline. I would say high-functioning psychopath. That's how we try to hire here.

Yeah, exactly. Are you going to be giving up your smartphone? No, no, no. I have boundaries unlike you. You have some self-control? Okay.

What does that feel like? Although I don't exhibit it, I do have self-control. You wouldn't believe it. Amazing. Thanks, Dunphy. It's been great. You're going to do fine.

You were fantastic. Yeah, well, okay. You're going to do fine. Six weeks we're locked in here with you. Yes, Dunphy. It's been great. You're going to do fine. You were fantastic. You're going to do fine. Six weeks we're locked in here with you. Yes, unfortunately so. See if I make it a day. Going to really shake things up at Offline. I can't wait. I'm excited.

It's going to be really fun. All right, when we come back, Max and I will talk about our upcoming week of misery, plus what's the deal with Blue Sky, the latest and greatest Twitter alternative. And we'll also talk about our upcoming week of misery. Plus, what's the deal with Blue Sky? The latest and greatest Twitter alternative. And we'll also talk about the most offline episode of Succession ever. Also one of my favorites. And we're back.

Sorry, can I just... The very first thing we did when we went on break within like three seconds was you reached over and you picked up your flip phone. This is fucking F1 sunbeam. Right. It hasn't set up yet. There's nothing to see.

There's nothing to see. I just picked it up. Yeah, it just started scrolling it. I'm already wondering. Really incredible to see. Is someone trying to see. I just picked it up. It just started scrolling it. I'm already wondering. Really incredible to see. Is someone trying to reach me? Has there been news? There might be notifications on it. What if Donald Trump dies this week? What if someone DM'd you? What if Donald Trump

is dead right now and we don't know? We could be missing out on that. What kind of a news company are we? Austin, has Trump died in the last eight seconds? Yeah. We're probably getting a note. Austin probably ran to go. He's not here anymore either. He's on the news. He's all abandoned us.

All right. Now that we've each lost part of our soul, how are you feeling? What are you dreading most about the next week? And what are you looking forward to?

So I am literally sweating. The experience of watching the phone drift away out of my, it was like watching like my arm. Yeah. Like walk out of the room.

It was really kind of intense. It's very disorienting. And I think it is going to be, I think it's going to be hard. I'm going to like get in my car and there's going to be no Steely Dan. Yeah. And like.

Yeah, I have like a list of things. Spotify is going to be tough. Yeah. Which is in the car, on walks, everywhere in my house. Postmates, again, the cricket office is in a food desert. So Postmates happens a lot. Can you order Postmates on the computer?

You text someone for you, yeah. My WhatsApp conversations. I have plenty of conversations on WhatsApp. Don't know what's going to happen there. It's kind of amazing to realize that there are a lot of things that the smartphone is actually incredibly useful for, like Google Maps or exercise apps, but also those are not the things

that are at the top of actually filling your time with it. It's actually a very small proportion of your time doing the things that you really need the phone for. Bananit and Charlie's Crib. Again, I guess I'm supposed to watch my child. Charlie's watching himself this week. Uber?

Am I going to get rides places if I need them? I guess I'm just driving everywhere. Driving everywhere but with no sense of direction of where you're going. I am looking forward to reading, thinking,

and having conversations. I really am too. I think that the first couple of days, I think I'm going to be reaching for this phone a lot and looking for that dopamine hit. And I am actually really curious to see what happens when I don't have the phone to give me that hit. And it's like, am I just going to like completely go into like the DTs? Probably. Or will I like come out the other side of it in a couple of days and maybe start to like see the full spectrum of the rainbow you know yeah well i i don't have high hopes for myself like we said we do want everyone to join these challenges with us obviously going out and getting a flip phone is maybe not the uh best or most practical challenge for all of you to start with but if you've ever done that in the past or

you want to do it now or you want to something similar, send us a voice message at offline at crooked.com. You can also talk about offline challenges you're interested in, ideas for us, comments, complaints, and we promise there will be other challenges down the line where it will be much easier for all of you to participate. All right, before we go, there's a new Twitter clone in town. It's always a new Twitter clone. It's called Blue Sky Social.

This is it. This is the one, just like the last one was the one. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is on the board. I've heard of him. It's currently an invite-only beta version. A lot of media personalities, celebrities, politicians have already joined. And the posts are known as skeets, which I feel is a problem. I mean, we're talking about it. It's working.

What do you think about Blue Sky? Come on, man. People are like, no, this is the one. And maybe they're right. And maybe I'm being a cynic. But I just feel like we've had so many clones come along. And all of the big Twitter addicts are like, no, no, this is the one I'm jumping over.

But I feel like it just becomes another thing for people to post about on Twitter. I have a reveal here for everyone. Are you on BlueSky? As of late last night I am on BlueSky which is perfectly timed because now I don't have a phone. Yeah, there's no skates. A friend said

this is a loser question but do you want a BlueSky invite? I have some extras. That is a loser question. And then she also said, and I, and I saw love it on Twitter asking for one. And I, I can give,

I can give one to love it as well. Got the hookup. What'd you charge him? Uh, what's your, what's your, what's your finder's fee? So it's 11 hour,

both on blue sky, but I was scrolling through today. It's basically just, it's like Twitter. It's, it's the, the pros, I guess if you want to call them pros are, is that it's as close it's it's the the pros i guess if you want to call them pros are is that it's as close to twitter as any of the clones that i've seen it

just looks the same format everything else and but the cons are it's like people still there's not a lot of people there people still don't really the culture like there's a culture at twitter it's not a great it's not a great culture but it's a culture people don't know how to act on blue sky so people are posting as they would on twitter but it's a culture. People don't know how to act on blue sky. So people are posting as they would on Twitter, but there's a lot of like. Is this landing? People are almost overcompensating and being too nice. Oh, because they said like, look, we're like the good social media app.

Right. So it's being nice and being like, hey, how are you? It's like, what is going on here? It's kind of a weird Twilight Zone neighborhood feel right now. But I'm not going to know for a couple of days. Like this weird, like a nether, like the space between the space. Yeah, I don't know about it. I don't know.

But a lot of people are on and it looks a lot like Twitter. But then what everyone's doing with all these clones is they go back on Twitter and they talk about their experience on the other app. They talk about being on Blue Sky. Look at me. I'm on Blue Sky. Great. I'm really impressed. No more toots. That's all skeets.

I mean, it does. If Twitter, I feel like the only way that one of these would take off is if Twitter fully collapsed. Yes. Which is on the table. Right. Right. All right. Finally, we got to talk about last week's episode of Succession. Oh, man. So offline. Which is titled Living Plus. If you haven't seen it yet, what is wrong with you? But also we're about to spoil it. So now's a good time to stop listening if you haven't seen it yet, what is wrong with you? But also we're about to spoil it. So now's a good time to stop listening

if you don't want it spoiled. All right. So obviously a lot of important plot developments in this episode. Now only four left in the series, but it's basically about the Waystar launch,

product launch of a gated retirement community called Living Plus, which Shiv calls prison camps for grannies. And this launch, which was scheduled well before Logan died, gives Kendall another idea for how he can blow up the Gojo deal. They drive up Waystar's stock price so that Matson can't afford it

by getting Living Plus a tech valuation. And he does the whole tech pitch. He does the investor conference, Steve Jobs thing. And Cousin Greg has the whole like tech pitch. He does the like investor conference, like Steve Jobs thing. And cousin Greg has such a great reply when he's like, I'm going to get a tech valuation, which is I think it's hard to make houses seem like tech because we've had houses for a while now. But but Kendall notices something in the Living Plus promotional material that promises personalized longevity programs or he calls live more forever. And then he decides this is the killer app. And then he makes up a bunch of very inflated numbers,

projections for growth, does the C-list parody of a Steve Jobs presentation. And then all of his siblings and the other people at the company think it's going to be like a fucking disaster because every time Kendall does something in public, it's a disaster. But then the reaction from investors and from the press and on Twitter starts to be quite good. And so then they all hail Kendall as a genius. I thought it was one of the maybe one of the best satires of Silicon Valley I've seen on television.

What did you think? I agree. It was really clever the um the way in the pitch that he took something that already existed and said actually it's tech now and by the way it's going to literally give people immortality and we were going to double revenue and everybody knowing that that number was completely made up and complete bullshit is like a really classic silicon valley thing like there's this story that renee di resto who who is a long, like, like former tech venture capitalist, right?

We both talked to this story that she tells about going to one of these big tech conferences by Y Combinator, which is like Paul Graham's big tech accelerator. And hearing all of these pitches where people are like, I invented a robot that will like do like Zooms with you. And it's like like gonna revolutionize work and we're gonna have triple profits and like looking at these charts and it's like the clearly it's made up she just talks about there's like there's not even a y-axis on the chart it's just a line going up and seeing and looking around everybody like applauding and buying in even

though it's just like obvious emperor no has no clothes like completely made and like part of that is the culture of the valley that just like everyone is high in their own supply everyone has convinced each other that they're the masters of the universe and it's like we're gonna do houses so now it's gonna like like quadruple value but it is also this very there's like a particular economics behind it which is like if you are a tech investor you actually don't care that the numbers are bullshit and you actually love that the numbers are bullshit because you don't care that it's never going to come true. Your play is just put in a bunch of money

and then go public on Wall Street a year later, sell all of your shares by telling Wall Street, Living Plus is going to give people immortality and we've reinvented houses as tech, which is where that comes from. It's also interesting that, and I've seen this, and I'm sure you've seen also interesting that, and I've seen this, and I'm sure you've seen this in your reporting,

and I've seen this in tech companies too, which is like, it starts with someone has developed a new technology, right? Like this one was 100% bullshit, but a lot of tech starts with some kind of technology. And then you have to sell it, right? Because you want the valuation, and you want people to,

and selling goes to the founders, right? Most of the time. And then the founders at some point bring on marketing teams. And so, so much of tech over the last several years, decade, has become marketing. And marketing is, a lot of it is bullshit by design. And so all of these tech pitches play to, as Kendall did, the lowest common denominator hopes and dreams of everyone. Right. So it's like live forever. And it's interesting what they did is because motivations are complex. Right. And yes, these people want money.

You could tell. But also like the Roys are all rich beyond their wildest dreams. Anyway, they're not in this for the money. They're in this for like their dead father's approval, but also for power, for winning the game. And so. Well, the timing I thought is kind of ironic because Elon Musk just did one of these conferences for not the exact same reason, but he was also trying to pump up the stock price of Tesla because it had been declining for a while. So he did this big, literally, I think just a month or two ago, did a big investor conference where he promised all of these big, huge things. But because the tech bubble is starting to burst a little bit or starting to shrink, investors didn't buy it. So it's kind of an interesting contrast with... And the show has

been building to this moment for a long time. Jerry had this moment where she said, tech is coming, the money is going to wash you away. And it's funny because that is where the show has been building to this moment for a long time. Like Jerry had this moment where she said like tech is coming. The money is going to wash you away. And it's funny because that is where the economy has been for the last 20 years. But as we've talked about, like that moment is actually just now ending. Yes. Like the Gojos of the world actually don't have their stock prices tripling anymore. And like when Elon Musk tried to do his big conference to like drive up the stock price, it actually didn't work. It's actually not quite clear that we still live.

I mean, it works perfectly for the show, but that we actually still live in that world. It reminded me most of all the different tech companies. It's it was like a Theranos story because basically like Kendall has now defrauded investors. Right. Like spread disinformation. Right. And I also thought that it was very interesting because you see some of these tech companies and you're like all right there's a lot of smart people there

maybe the founder is high on his own supply like how could no one think it's bullshit and in that episode everyone does think it's bullshit right right like they know they're all making fun of kendall they think he's gonna flame out you know uh roman decides not to do the presentation at the last minute because she tells him it's crazy right and yet as soon as the markets right and the people and twitter and mass audience decide they like it everyone's like the price you're a genius i always knew this guy was a genius which is exactly what happens it's a great point there's no no one thinks that there's an actual product at the end of this because that's not why you do these launches. The reason you do these

launches is to drive up the price in the short term, which has worked in the past, but maybe doesn't work anymore. And so the timing is also ironic because it's like Mattson, who is clearly supposed to be a little bit of an Elon Musk character, sending

the tweet in the middle of the presentation that blows up his own position and that like plays right into Kendall's hands which I was glad they did anyway because like Matson has been so invincible through the whole series like he needed to falter a little bit and have some foibles to make it like a little bit more interesting but it was like I thought a fun way to bring in like yeah he's on Twitter but it's like he's blowing up his own deal with it and they really are as cynical as every character is in that show they really they still have a little bit of being high on their own supply because their father just died and kendall and roman are like i mean i think it would be great to cheat death maybe we could do something where we can

get people like we don't have the technology this isn isn't that at all. But if we head down that path, maybe we could do this, which is, again, what happens. The rich might get that technology. You and I won't get it. But the people who were selling their company for $194 billion, $192 billion, they might live forever. Live more forever. the most offline sentence of the whole series so far is he's like, it's like physical social media in the real world. Yes.

Yeah. That's amazing. All right, Max. Good luck this week. Maybe I'll be talking to you because I have nothing else to do. I hope we'll find our way back to the office.

I don't know how I'm going to get here. I think I'm late for my next meeting, but no one's... Who knows? No way for them to reach you. No one can get me. Yeah. Okay. Bye, everyone. We'll see you next week.

All right, guys. Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau. It's produced by Austin Fisher. Emma Illick-Frank is our associate producer. Andrew Chadwick is our sound editor. Thank you. Gajewski, who film and share our episodes as videos every week. And a special thanks to Caroline Dunphy for guiding Max and I through these challenges.