Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - A.I.s, Ruining Highs and How the Internet Dies

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

“Hey team, good luck titling an episode that is equal parts the history of cracked/rise of AI, sandwiches, and what to do if you find a bag full of drugs in the street.” - Daniel O’Brien“[Just call it] How Soren Helped Ruin the Internet and then Someone’s Great Night.” - Soren BowieDid you know we’re doing extra episodes on Patreon? Every other Friday at www.patreon.com/quickquestionThanks to AuraVPN for sponsoring this episode. Go to AURA.com/PROTECTION for a 14 day trial plus a check of your data to see if your personal information has been leaked online, All for FREE.

I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? I wanna hear your thoughts, I wanna know what's on your mind I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favorite? Who did you get? When do I be remembered? What's it up with? Where did all the boys go? Oh, forget it.

Saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien. Two best friends and comedy writers. If there's an answer, they're gonna find it. I think you'll have a great time here. I think you'll have a great time here author of How to Fight Presidents. And enough about me, because I'm joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bui, the birthday boy. Soren, happy birthday!

Thank you, thank you. I'm Soren Bui. I am the writer for American Dad. And whether you know it or not, all these fireworks, all these flags, you're celebrating me. You're celebrating my birthday. Red, white, and blue happen to be my favorite colors. And I appreciate all that you've done in hanging those across your balconies and what have you. Data brokers, ah, they're the worst.

They get your data legally from public tax records, credit card companies, cable, and internet providers, and they sell it to anyone who will buy. They can even sell it to scammers. They don't care. Your information is probably out there. Aura is a great way to try out a great VPN. We're thrilled to partner with Aura, the all-in-one online safety solution that helps protect your information. Aura is offering you a 14-day trial plus a check of your data to see if your personal information has been leaked online, all for free when you visit aura.com slash protection. I want to get this right because your birthday is July 2nd, famously. And that is more accurate and meaningful to the signing of the Declaration of Independence

than the actual 4th is. Is that correct? Do I have that right? Yeah, that's right. They signed on the second. Hmm. Nailed it. Yeah.

Love knowing stuff. Here's another great detail about the second. Exact middle day of the year. Because there's 365, you get one day that's in the middle because it's not even on both ends. A middle day. And it is the exact middle day of the year. Here's another great fact. Dave Thomas' birthday. Founder of Wendy's. a middle day and it is the exact middle day of the year here's another great fact dave thomas's

birthday founder of wendy's he and i have a kinship since my childhood i just knew i had the commercials you saw it in his eyes i was like ah we are brothers what a what a sweet and warm old man who i'm glad is dead because i'm i'm certain we'd not see eye to eye on a lot of social and political issues. Yeah, you can pretty much guarantee. That's the only thing you could see in his eyes. He probably had a lot of outdated views on the world. Yeah. And I will too someday.

I like my hamburgers to be square. And also, we used to just take Native American children and give them to whites when did we stop doing that? alright Mr. Thomas, go to bed now that's plenty that'll be enough I think there are too many totem poles in Seattle

alright Dave that's a lot I don't want to back that so what did you do There are too many totem poles in Seattle. All right, Dave. That's a lot. I don't want to unpack that. So what did you do for your burpee? Great question. I'm celebrating it actually this weekend. I'm going to Topgolf with some friends, people you know,

friends of the show, Sam Bergen, who I mentioned on the show before, and Joe Chandler and some other people. of the show, Sam Bergen, who I mentioned on the show before, and Joe Chandler and some other people. And then last night, Colleen took me out to dinner, a really nice dinner at a Michelin star restaurant. Oh, the bear vibes. Yeah. And we talked about stuff that wasn't children, which is not usually what happens is it's hard to get out of that mode.

You go on a date and you're alone. And the things you say are like this is so much better and then all you do is talk about the kids um yeah it's like a sitcom trope but it's true and this was the first time where we like talked about her work and uh i think now i've really really got a handle on what it is she does oh Oh, good. But yeah, we talked about work and we talked about some people at her work and we talked about the UCLA in general, because obviously pretty hot button issue. It's been in the news lately. And it was really fun. It was great. And we drank and I at some point the waiter waiter came was like do you want another one of those

uh with my drink and rattled the cup and i was like you know what what's stopping me and i had two drinks oh boy i know happy birthday indeed we got a dessert uh it was just great it was a it was a wonderful night and during the day i did all the things that i wanted to do because i'm on hiatus and no one can stop me uh i went to the gym and uh i went to whole foods and got a salad and talked to a guy about converting our garage into a more usable space cool yeah it's great from it to to what not an adu but like, but basically a better office than what I'm currently sitting in. I frame pretty well here, but this is, you've known in the past, this is not a nice space. I'm surrounded by a lot of cobwebs and crumbling walls and just general garage stuff like bikes and paint thinner. And this would be an opportunity to change some of that

separate one space just for storage and then have another space it's like a almost like a living area there'd be like a tv a couch oh a door that a big wide door that would open up so it's like you should an indoor outdoor space and then a little office just for me wow yeah that's some real fun birthday stuff i celebrated your birthday at sea. I'm on... Thank you. As I insisted. A week off from work, if you couldn't tell by the way I'm dressed.

I'm in vacation mode, forgive me. For my tone, I'm on island time. So I went out fishing yesterday on a boat, and I had a sandwich in your honor. Part of it is your honor. It's your birthday, so I'm eating a sandwich, your favorite food. But another part of it is I was on a boat, so I pack

a lunch for myself when I'm on a boat. And even though I'm not the biggest sandwich guy in the world, the sandwich is part of it. That's part of packing a lunch, because it packs better than other things. And it was a very exciting time for me because we don't have bread in the house almost ever because then I would make sandwiches. I would be too tempting to make sandwiches and you just don't need the carbs of bread all the time. the the carbs of bread all the time and so when i knew i was making a sandwich i had to make a special trip and get like a roll like a portuguese individual roll and i i spent the day before

fishing like preparing my buffalo like a grilled buffalo chicken sandwich with some fake blue cheese and some fake american cheese and some some vegan bacon on there as well and no rabbit food because it's just it's this is my special treat for me yeah and i just made like a perfect buffalo chicken sandwich to have uh for like a 10 45 a.m lunch because the the boat leaves at 7 30. and yeah also when you pack a sandwich you just that's all you're thinking about like you've got a sandwich just burning a hole in your cooler or whatever you you brought it in you all you can think about is like i got that whole sandwich waiting for me and so like you always end up eating it like before 11 it's just the way it is i've i've now made this mistake

multiple times where i've needed a sandwich and so i make it the day before and it usually involves like baking it or broiling it doing some kind of like cooking mechanism and i get so disappointed because it comes out perfectly and it looks great like all right now to wrap it in foil and refrigerate it until tomorrow where i will have it and it will be worse i need to get to a point where i know to make two sandwiches anytime i need a sandwich in the future so i can have one when i'm cooking and then yeah just have the other one later save that type of sandwich for when you're gonna be eating it right away that is not that's not practical to then like put that in foil and let it sweat inside there and get moist and cold and the way

the cheese kind of coagulates why don't you just make yourself a cold sandwich are those not appealing to you they're not appealing to me no all right um okay the the other thing that's like that i'm not super proud of with my sandwich obsession is that people are like oh you like sandwiches yeah like what's your favorite sandwich when they find out because they also will have one and i'll be like turkey they're like oh fuck you i don't you don't know what you're talking about but if you know but like turkey turkey from where whole foods wherever who cares i want i i do like cold sandwiches. And like, I think that there are times where like a cold sandwich cannot be beat. A hot sandwich can't touch it. And that's if you have exactly the right type of turkey. It's shaved really thin. You put on some, either some smoked or some regular, very thin cut provolone. Sorry, Daniel. Some shredded lettuce. That's important.

Mayonnaise or some sort of spread that they maybe, the fancy ones are always like, oh, we do mayonnaise. But instead we call it aioli and it's got sun-dried tomatoes in it. You're like, yeah, sure. Okay. That thing that's going to make my sandwich wetter. Give me that. And then like some tomatoes and onions like the combination of tomato with mayonnaise there's something magical that happens there you know from like

a wendy's chicken sandwich they're like there's something that magical that happens when tomatoes are right next to mayonnaise where like the taste together is nectar of the gods and so i getting a cold sandwich like that like i can i could eat that any day and be so so happy and i saw your sandwich on the boat because you did send me a picture of it and i was like that's a good looking sandwich that definitely looks like a hot sandwich did he go somewhere and it looks professionally made so i was like he went somewhere to get this sandwich now hearing no i did not you you made the sandwich. Now hearing that you made the sandwich yourself, big plus, that you made the sandwich the night before and then ruined it,

makes me, you've dropped down the, well, called the totem pole. We're talking about the totem pole today. Yeah, dropped down the totem pole a little bit. I wish we weren't. I wish we just let that drop. No, I'm bringing it back okay i did have the best sandwich of my life recently and it's like and like everything about the store is something i respect the place first of all is called lunch sandwiches

no frills about it it's just this place is called lunch sandwiches if you're googling lunch sandwich because you're thinking what are some good ideas for lunch sandwiches no frills about it it's just this place is called lunch sandwiches if you're googling lunch sandwich because you're thinking what are some good ideas for lunch sandwiches this place is going to come up and i really respect that they also they don't have their own uh like shop or storefront really there is a barbecue joint that they operate out of during the day before the barbecue joint is open and they only work they're only open three days a week and only from like 10 to 1 or 10 to 2 or something like that it's just a few hours of operation a week they just make sandwiches and all their sandwiches are so fuck i've only had one but shea had a different one and we both loved our sandwiches they they like even a small size is

maybe two and a half meals of sandwich and it's just so fucking good and i i have nothing but respect for a place that was like we make sandwiches come in here for sandwiches uh it's it's two o'clock we're done now we work six hours a week and then we leave goodbye yeah you know those places are gonna be the best because they're they don't survive otherwise there's a a place called galco's in los angeles that is like a store that has every single soda discontinued or not that you can imagine also some very rare weird candies but um it's in east la it's it's beautiful it's like oh it's it's it's some guy who grew up and was still like kept his childhood dream of being like someday i'm gonna have every single soda that there is and so he created this place but in the back they'll also

like make sandwiches it is not advertised outside at all it's just like oh and also we do sandwiches and you just know like you walk in there like yeah this must be good because there's no way this survives otherwise. Like this is a word of mouth place exclusively and it's working. And it was delicious. Oh, I also forgot to mention the turkey sandwich. You got to have like a great bread. You got to have like, that's like the basis of the whole thing. I love a shop that operates like some male bees where it's like, I was born, put on this

earth to impregnate the queen. And then as soon as that's done, I die. I don't live anymore. I'm gone. I did the thing I was supposed to do. You get the sandwich and you watch them turn the sign around that says closed. Like, we did the sandwich for the day. We're out of ingredients. There used to be a pizza place years ago near me that their thing,

they operate like Franklin Barbecue in Austin, where it's like, we make every pizza from scratch. We make 75 pizzas a day, and then we close, no matter what time it is. This is like the amount of pizzas we will make, and then that's it. Then we're done making pizzas today. Whether that's 2 o'clock or 10 o'clock, that's it. We have a finite amount of pizzas. We have determined that this is the amount that we can make while maintaining the sanctity of our ingredients and our energy that goes into

making the pizzas and when when we've reached our limit we just stop and that's it that anyway that place closed for some reason oh no i was replaced, if you can believe it or not, with a normal pizza place. I was going to say, I love that ethos. Like, I hate the ethos of if you're not growing, you're dying. That's what killed Cracked. It's like what kills like a lot of things in your life. They just keep like, how high can you pile the sand before it all topples over? And there's not a lot of people out there who are just like,

ah, this is good enough. We got to where we want to be. Let's just ride this out. Like let's stay in the black, but let's plateau. And I, I feel like that should be,

I feel like we should all operate that way. Yeah. Good enough is great. I don't think this is an exaggeration to say I receive between 5 and 15 robocalls a week

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all for free, when you visit Aura.com slash protection. That's A-U-R-A dot com slash protection. Certain terms apply, so be sure to check the site for details. That was always, not to talk too much about the old days at Cracked, but that was certainly like whenever we brought in some like a different, like

our ad sales team or like some other business person that is not our current business guy that we like, that person would come in and be like, and draw a circle on a whiteboard that was like here is your audience right now. And then they would draw a bigger circle around the circle. Now, how do we get these people?

And I want to be like, no, no, no, no, no. I like, I like our circle and they like everything that we do. So can't like, can't you just figure out how to monetize that? Because the circle that you drew is like 70 million people a month so like just each you you only know from drawing circles it's really hard that like all the people that fit in that circle it was really hard to get them all and in the beginning we were doing it one at a time and and like an article or a video that would go up on the site more people would interact or watch that than watch television like watch a television show and when it airs and so you're

like that circle that you're drawing i don't feel like the first circle you drew was fair that was a little tiny circle you drew and i think that circle should be bigger you can expand this circle though. If you do like March madness style brackets that get that, that focus on like expanding your brand into sports coverage. And we're like, but, but none of us want to do that.

And I don't think our, like your, your craft, which again, like really nice circles. I don't think, uh, like the design of your visual representation of marketing i don't think it includes what happens when the inner circle

shrinks because we've pissed off everyone in that circle you assume that the circle only gets bigger and that the the prime circle in the center you don't think that'll ever go away right um what because that's your graph about that they're trapped by all the new people coming in they can't get back out the door so you just keep them um yeah i that and it was not even like an issue of like hey why don't why can't you monetize this it was monetizing great that small circle it was doing great and then they're like yeah but you got to be making more like for yeah for for oh everything's fine we're doing fine we all have apartments we're fine we're living like right marketing people come in like justin

timberlake and social network you know a million cool. You know what's cool is a billion. Everyone likes Justin Timberlake's character in that movie, right? He was one of the heroes. We all thought he was cool and Facebook only got better as it got bigger. That was the takeaway from the Social Network, right? That's what it was. What a good product and continues to be.

Yeah, so yeah, not to harp too much on Craig, but that that was a huge bummer that it was like the goal was always like whatever we came in with, even when we would like beat our numbers for a month or a quarter. Like we get a little meeting where they would show us on the board like, hey, you guys did it. Like these were the articles that were like the top performers. These really went viral. These videos, these after hours, they keep killing it. So these are our new metrics. Like, this is your new benchmark. And you're like, what?

No, that was, we worked really hard to exceed that. And now that's the expectation. That's not fair. Every single muckety-muck who came in to crack various parent companies at different times, they all had the same, I assume it's the only thing they teach in business school, the same strategy that was like, what you're doing is great. Can you do more of it and cheaper? Hey, I went to business school. So like, and I'm your boss now.

So make more and cheaper. After Hours is like your successful show. What about doing it every day forever? Let's see how far we can stretch this. That's an interesting strategy. We thought about that. We can't. Yeah.

We would also get, we worked for a parent company at the time that uh had like a real specific strategy which was they were going to scrape searches to find out what people were searching for the most and then they could basically had an algorithm that could put a price on an article title so like how to boil an egg or something like that they knew how many people were searching for it and how many people would click on that through seo and then they could identify how much they thought like they would make with return on investment they would get from that article and it was pretty accurate they thought and so they were like we're doing this for every site every one of our sites we are going to apply this algorithm to it we're going to find out how many articles we can write on the on this particular

subject in its variations because no one's searching the exact same way, how to boil an egg, how to boil eggs, how to like, what do I do to boil an egg? And so like, you've got all these titles that are very, very similar and they all have like a similar price on them. And then you're, you're sending them off to people for people to write and they're going to be, I'd say a D plus article. Like it's never a great article, but. Right. Because they, the, the way the, the business operated was that you would sort of like the, the company would, would not for crack, but for their other properties,

they would generate this list of titles, like how to boil an egg, how to change tire, how to make Brussels sprouts. And writers could claim those titles and generate an article that satisfies the prompt in the title and they would get paid between six and fifteen dollars just nothing so it behooved writers to like if you wanted to make any kind of real money, make as many, pick as many of these titles as you could and write as many of these very short articles as you could that satisfy the requirements. So you can, you know, spend a few

hours writing 300 articles for $6 each and then make a little bit of money doing that. I think anyone listening to this or watching this show who has a functioning brain knows those articles probably aren't very good many of them probably not even like delivering on the simple premise of how to boil an egg or change a tire or cook brussels sprouts or whatever the case may be yes and the expectation was that won't become apparent to us because people will complain about those articles that was the expectation was it would be beta tested by the audience once it's live and so they they did this across lots of properties a golf property a travel one so like there's like travel related content that's doing the exact same stuff and then i there were a few

of us who were very young and didn't totally understand. And we were like seeing what was happening. And we were seeing, oh, this isn't good for the internet. Like this isn't good for the brands, these brands that have been created. And this isn't good for the internet as a whole. And so we'd write these, we're so dumb and young, but like we'd write these letters to like the higher ups or emails to these higher ups to be like, hey, I think this is, I think what we're doing is probably wrong. Like, I think that if we want to maintain like some integrity, we should be doing this differently. And we'd get these like one line responses from them.

They're like, okay, good thoughts. Like that was always the plan was to break the internet, like, or to like destroy it, ride this until it broke. And their plan was like, go get, get as many articles out there as you could get rich and then let it all fall down like get rich and get out i think the the thing about us that uh was the most naive was that the ceos that we were writing letters to we we thought we were telling them something they didn't know we thought we were ahead of the curve and we were writing letters to we we thought we were telling them something they didn't know we thought

we were ahead of the curve when we were saying like hey you're going to publish a whole lot of like poorly written articles under the ehow banner and if you if you do enough of them like for a while you're going to make money on them because people are looking for how to boil an egg. They're going to click on that link, and they're going to go to the site, and you are going to get the ad revenue for that. And so for a while, you're going to make a bunch of money from search engine optimization-based articles. But over time, the eHow brand will be tarnished because people, if you see enough bad eHow articles, then the next time you search how to cook Brussels sprouts, if you see an eHow as a top result, you're going to say, no, I remember eHow, they're bad, let me find something else. And then you're going to get diminishing returns for your business and you're going to lose

credibility, you're going to lose trust in the audience. And that is like my official report to you, CEO, as concerned employee here i don't think you realize this and none it had never occurred to any of us that they were like yeah we know but by the time the audience is pissed the company will have gone public and i will have made my money and now i can go somewhere else i stopped listening to you after the part where you said you're going to make a lot of money in the beginning. I tuned out because that's my whole goal is to make that money. And it was, yeah, I mean, and it was so interesting to watch them circle around Cracked like sharks, like, cause Cracked was clearly a

different editorial model where like, we worked really hard to make sure the articles were good at every turn. It requires so many hours from editors to make sure the articles are interesting and good. And you could just watch them on the periphery, just circling that site and getting angrier and angrier that they weren't using the model. Because they're constantly trying to throw that same algorithm into crack and be like, just run it on your system. Like, let's get all the sites doing it at once. You're, you're working against the general story of this company. And so it's just Jack, like Jack and Jason, like, and you holding back this store, being like, we're not going to do that.

Here's why. A revolving door of CEOs that were like, we love what you're doing but how do you do it at scale like why don't you walk me through the process of how an article gets made because they're always searching for the how they can automate something or make it go faster and you're like well i'm really happy to talk about the process we've got a writer who will pitch an article and the pitch looks like this and it has this many examples then we will take it to an editorial meeting where a team of people who are paid salaries go through every single pitch and we evaluate them and we write feedback and we kick it

back to the to the writer who pitched it and they work on it for time they work on it like we don't we we don't say turn it around tomorrow we give them as much time as they need to hand in the drafts of these articles then a well-paid professional person who trained for this will edit that article to get in getting it into shape and then one of our designers will make it look nice for the website and add visual jokes and all told this is often a five-week process that involves between four to seven salaried employees putting in many hours to do their job completely separate from the man hours of the writer who writes the article and the ceos you can just see the life drain from their eyes when they realize nothing about that process can be scaled or automated and uh their they their dream of making cracked faster and cheaper and still good uh

vanishes and so they just uh ultimately decided that the the still good part could be an afterthought right and they and so then they continue to do that with correct they would like they'd poke at it they'd just be like well let's let's do like short stuff you guys are doing like these 2 000 word essays like what is that all about we're like yeah that's what our fucking audience comes for every morning they go to this site the front page of this site to like check on what what's interesting if you go to reddit anytime you go to the today i learned section that's from an article that day on Cracked. Like, that's all that everybody's learning and getting valuable information and laughing throughout the site. And that was, like, they were so mad that we had to cater, that we would have the audacity to cater to our audience.

Yeah. It's been fascinating and depressing. I mean, you and I and any of the other people who worked at Cracked, specifically under our former parent company, Demand Media, that was big on the algorithm, search

engine optimization, generated titles. We have sort of a front row seat for the preview of where things have gone now with ai and it's all these companies who are jumping on ai and like google has i don't know if it's if it's just on beta testing or if it's everywhere still but now if you search things in in google instead of getting uh links relevant to your query even it was, even if those links were like the shitty eHow article written for $6 by a 19 year old, even that is gone now. And Google just sort of like

generates this AI response based on the algorithm learning that Google has been quietly developing for God knows how long as the algorithm has just sort of scanned every article that's ever been written on the internet and used its fancy algorithm stuff to comb those answers and give the answers to the audience so they don't have to go to another website. Google's pitch at this point, essentially, no one likes using the internet.

So instead of using the internet, just ask Google your questions and google will answer it for you i like this ignores the ethics of the fact that like the only reason google has those answers in the first place is because at some point somebody wrote human being wrote them and was maybe paid to write them using their expertise but like we had this front row seat for writing that's been on the wall for so long which is that people at the top the ceos and cfos and business folks they have since time out of mind have been trying to generate information without paying a single person they don't want any humans to to write or create content because they don't want to pay

anyone to do anything it's this this current ai craze that hurts writers everywhere it's just the latest evolution of the cassandra algorithm that dominated demand which was at the time you know they're paying six dollars for a 500 word article because they can have a robot do it for free. They absolutely would if they could have, and now they can. And so not them, but others are doing it. That's a, that's like a depressing rant, but it's just like a thing that I think about this. There's such a clear straight line to trace from what our CEOs were doing 100 years ago to what Google is doing now in this grand, insane pursuit to never pay anyone to make anything ever again. Yeah. It's short-sighted in the same way.

And I think that they're aware like we we go on we see this happening on the internet and your first instinct is like oh they don't know what they're doing like what's going to happen is that eventually new information will come about in the world because the world continues to move and no one's going to be there to write that stuff down for the algorithm for the this ai to take it from so the ai is not going to be there to write that stuff down for this AI to take it from. So the AI is not going to have that information. They're going to have only misinformation about it. And everyone who's creating this content is like, yeah, dude, we fucking know.

We're getting rich right now. And then who cares? It's the exact same argument we had 100 years ago where it's like, well, if Google AI is generating these answers, the answers are not going to be as good as if a human with expertise was doing it. So once I tell you that, what's that? You don't care about quality? Oh, I see. Oh, then yeah, your business model makes a whole lot of sense. Oh, yeah, that's smart for you.

Quality doesn't matter. Oh, interesting. Okay. My name is matter. Oh, interesting. Okay. My name is on this, you know. Yeah. I have this thing in me that I can't stand to do my very... Stand but to do my very best on things when my name is on it. So, I really... But don't you also understand that if you have movie scripts generated by AI,

they won't be as good as if a... Oh, you understand that too? Oh. Yeah. You're cool with making shitty movies for without having to pay someone oh i understand um does anyone with money care about quality anymore no okay oh rats rats for the future yeah biscuits yeah damn um yeah so that's the boat we're in. Uh,

I mean, there were a lot of other, a lot of other things that led to the fall of all these websites that people knew and loved. Um, some of it was user habit as well. Like there was a lot of things that led to the fall of these, but this was like a big one.

This was a pretty big one. Uh, and we were on the inside. We got to see a lot of it. And we, at the time I thought that we were, I mean, like I moved away from another website that I cared about. And I thought I was like another one of my passions that I liked a lot. And I was really trying to save it. And it became so clear that like, no one, no one wanted it saved. No one wanted it saved. And so I was like, okay, cracked is doing it right. I would love to work atacked. And so you were very instrumental in helping me get over there. I moved to Cracked and then they were still circling Cracked. But fortunately, like we just had a great, we had a great editor in chief who was like, we're not, we're not going to compromise quality. Yeah.

While we were there. And that was great. Yeah. Anytime that our parent company would put posters all over the building that was like, here's how many units of content we made this month. By this time next year, we will be making one million units of content. And then we would all simultaneously turn and look at our boss, Jack,

our editor-in-chief, and he would be like, not us, don't worry. Like, okay, phew. all of these company-wide mandates that just didn't apply to us because we had we briefly had uh this beautiful immunity we i can remember being in an all-hands meeting that means everybody all the different departments and all the different websites together you're our ceo sitting at a table with his feet up on the table and his board shorts on because he's going swimming later and being like guys it's a big deal we just wrote as many words as there are in war and peace

and i was like what is that measurement what on earth does that mean like in a day i think we wrote as many words as there were in war and Peace. And that means like across all of these different articles written by housewives in the Midwest who are writing for $10 an article. They wrote, there are the same number of words as there are in War and Peace. And it was like, oh, your metric's different than mine. Yeah, no, that makes sense as like a quality rubric i remember like that like famously uh when tolstoy handed in war and peace his editor was like i didn't want to say anything because you know you don't want to interrupt someone they're batting when they're pitching a no hitter but like jinx it when you wrote uh it truly was a peaceful war to close out the book

i was like counting it's so many words dog it's like the most fucking words of any book like i don't know if that's what you were going for it should have been because that's what makes books good this amount of words and like you just knocked it out of the park i'm not even going to edit it because i don't want to touch the amount of words yeah now i saw you use some of the same words over again i think that was a fine choice i mean you got to figure out there's only so many words right what are there 27 and you had to use some of them over and over again and that's fine my only pitch as your editor is because i know like the ending is is really tight um but just consider and that's the truth.

Like, just a few more words at the end of it. Like, you finish the book and then just say, like, and that's the truth. Or, and I really mean it. Or, to be continued? That's just, like, just off the top of my head. Three more words to just, like, to really push us over the edge. Leo, I'm loving, I'm loving the story. I'm just thinking, like, how do we push us over the edge leo i'm loving i'm loving the story i'm just thinking like

how do we push this to the edge how do we make this at scale like you've done a nice job with this book but this is just one book how do we make this book at scale here's the circle of writers that of audience members that read your book and that's great but here's a bigger circle do you think you could do war and peace as spitballing here but do it march madness style bracket where like war is one division peace is another division and then you just sort of like seed who's gonna go against whom i think it could be really great i great. I think you're, and in fact, I'm going to tell you now, we got to do it because I already sold the idea to Old Spice. So we're going to be doing it.

Old Spice is really into war and peace brackets for March Madness. Yeah, man. So the internet's dead it's crazy to sometimes think that uh you and i and others are still having the same conversation and fighting the same fight that we thought we escaped from the internet when it was like the the the pre-version of algorithms that were trying to destroy content and then we've moved to to tv and as everyone you know one of the reasons that we were on strike last year for 148 days was because studios see the potential in ai to replace writers with shittier but much much cheaper content content that they could just generate with machines.

It's crazy to have these same conversations. Not that I'm in the room with CEOs now or anything like that, but to be aware that these conversations are still happening and at a larger scale and in a medium that seemed more sacred than the internet was when we were making stuff on the internet. It seemed like TV was untouchable. And it's just not. And we're just having this debate again.

And I think we'll just have it forever. Well, it's a matter of like... Until people stop liking money. Yeah, I think that's the issue. I mean, and I like money. There's nothing wrong with money. I get why people enjoy it. I also think that...

Yeah, I can enjoy that. But it's like this question of monetizing art, or a lot of this is not art. I mean, a lot of it's just like monetizing information or monetizing something, entertainment. That's it. Monetizing entertainment. And like, how do you go

about doing that because the people who are making the entertainment have to get paid and so you're like okay i figured out a system like the idea of commercials during a free show a free broadcast of a show you're like oh we solved it but there's always going to be people who are like yes but more like how do we get more how do we keep going more and so like they're getting and the obviously like the the foregone conclusion of that is how do we get more until we break this until the system can't hold anymore and then and then what do we do we'll do something else and so like no one's ever beholden to the type of content you're creating who is trying to make that money they're just like do it more do it more do it more and then like at a certain point this thing will break ah that was the end that's that's as far as we could go let's let's try that on another system let's go try that on paintings or whatever um i have no more to say on this good

show i think it's listen i think people are very curious to hear about like the downfall, not necessarily like the, what happened with content farms, like exactly what was going on. And we were there, we saw a lot of it. And then also kind of like what happened with crack. We didn't really get into like the real downfall of cracked here, but like some of it,

you could see like the writing on the wall a little bit. What happened then with, with crack too. And how the expectations out began to outweigh any sort of loyalty to employees who are making good content because the expectations were just money and so they were like well then you guys are dispensable yep well well can I tell you a quick story

yeah please okay great and then we really gotta start the show let me see if I can if I can work this story into the framework of our actual show Daniel have you ever found a pile of drugs in the street and called the police?

No, that does seem like something I would do if I found drugs in the street, though. But I did not. The closest thing to illegal material, when I was much younger, we lived near uh a forest a really small like wooded area the audience knows what forest means daniel we went to a series of trees and ground uh we went there and we're just like exploring climb trees and find caves and stuff and uh uh an experience that is common to a lot of people around my age is we came across pornography

because I thought this was just like our unique experience. I got older and it turns out like woods porn is a very familiar touchstone to people of a certain age. It's like a box full of pornography and like our younger listeners don't know what i could be talking about pornography used to be magazines it used to be like like uh magazines let's see websites used to be magazines magazines used to be pornography and you would put it in a box in the woods because i guess you were ashamed uh to be seen in your house You couldn't keep it in your house. You couldn't keep it in the woods. And we came across, like, the evidence of, like, a very sad person that breaks my heart because it was, like, a...

specifically a pit of gay pornography that someone had tried to make a fire with, including there was a nearby hairspray can to really make the fire. So this is either a hateful person who gathered up gay pornography and decided to burn it as a sign of hate, to burn it as like a like a sign of hate or what we suspected someone who is uh scratching their their secret desire uh a closeted gay individual who um is uh as a result of being in new jersey

in the 90s was what did perhaps did not feel particularly welcome uh and i struck with self was trying to like took it out to burn it yeah it was trying to like tamp down this this aspect of his personality in like a very tragic way it was like if i just if i burn all of this that i'm never going to be tempted again and i can i can live a quiet life that that doesn't bother anyone that is the narrative that we created anyway i'm 12 years old and there's like a pile of charred gay pornography and a can of hairspray and there and even at that age we were like yeah we shouldn't tell the cops about this we shouldn't even tell our parents about this this we should just like leave this here because i don't know maybe the person who wants it will come back and be relieved that it's not all burned up. I thought you were going to say you called the cops on gay porn.

And I was like, Daniel. No. No. We had, because at this point we had seen more pornography in the woods. So we come across a bunch of magazines and we're like, oh boy, I know what this is. And then you look through and you're like, oh, there's not much in here for me, I don't think. But good for them. I would still, I mean, even at that age, I would have been like, this is naked people.

Like, this is stuff I'm not allowed to see. And now I get to see it. So I'm going to dig in. We're going to see what we've got here. Okay. A lot of stuff I don't care for. But it's certainly interesting. Is that what it's supposed to look like oh no

um so uh i i recently called the police on a pile of drugs i was walking to the store at night i i frequently do this my children will go to bed and then afterwards that's when i will do my grocery shopping. It's a thing that I picked up during the pandemic because I didn't want to be around people. And I also knew when they would be replenishing the stores. And that was around the time when everything was completely depleted, too. So I knew when new toilet paper was coming, what day, and I would be there that night as it was getting in. So this is just a habit that I've maintained for no reason other than habit.

And so I go at night, I was going to the store and walking there and I see, I've told you before, connoisseurs will know that my wife, Colleen, will pick up trash when she walks anywhere. And so I occasionally do this too, because i love her and not the world but uh i saw this bag of garbage like right up next to the curb on not a very busy street and it was like huge bag and i was like fucking somebody just sat here i'm sure of it in their car ate their food or whatever just dropped it out of their car and left so i'm getting very angry as I'm walking up to it. And as soon as I get there, standing up next to the bag is this beautiful ornate glass bong.

And I was like, whoa, that's not fast food. Or do they give these away in Happy Meals now? And so I just sort of like look a little bit in the bag, but it's dark and I can't really see what it is in there. But there's like a lot of stuff that does not look like food at all. And I was like, okay. I leave, I go to the store. And as I'm coming back, the bag is still there.

So I take out my flashlight on my phone and I kind of look in there. And it's just like a lot of, I can see weed, first of all, in there. There's like these really nice looking buds inside of like a sealed container. There are several different bongs. And then there were some other devices I've never seen before. Nice looking buds inside of like a sealed container there were several different bongs and then there were some other devices i've never seen before nice looking buds nice looking that should have been the name of our podcast nice looking buds it is a nice haircut you have no daniel i got it i didn't mention it earlier but you're looking sure i don't like it we'll talk about it later and uh and so there's there is some other stuff and i can't tell what all of it is

there's also like some big containers. And I don't mean like what you would just keep a little bit of weed inside of. Like big, long ones that are opaque, so I can't see inside of them. And I'm like, I don't think I should be digging in this. I also don't want to leave this here. Because for a lot of reasons. One, it's right next to my son's school. And there's camps that happen every morning right there.

So tomorrow morning, somebody's going to find this on their way to camp. The other thing is that I'm not entirely sure anything in here is actually illegal. And this looks like several hundred dollars worth of stuff. And I would want this back. So I was like, is it possible? Like, if it's not illegal, like, would you just go to the police and be like hey i actually left all my like a bunch of weed paraphernalia on the side of the street did anyone turn that in the same way you would with your wallet or whatever yeah um and so i was like i don't

really like the police but i feel like maybe they should be called here i don't want to be the one holding this bag i don't want to be the one holding this bag. I don't want to be responsible for it. And that's the only person I can call that I know will just take it. And so I called the police on a bag of drugs, legal drugs, I think. And they came pretty quickly. These two guys showed up in an unmarked police car. pull up they get out they're like give us your id i was like i've seen this video so many times on youtube where i can say why and then they will say because we need it and i will say no you don't do you have am i being detained like all that shit but i was like i don't want to do all this and so i just gave it to them they write down my information

and they're like so you're just walking you found you found this? And I was like, yeah. And this guy looks at me and he goes, okay. Like, like maybe he doesn't believe me. Like maybe there's more to this story. What were you doing out? I was grocery shopping. It's 1045 at night. Yeah, this is when they bring the toilet paper back.

All right, come down to the station, you fucking freak. I don't think these drugs have anything to do with you, but I don't know, man. No, but we have to get you off the streets. You're no more important than these drugs because you're a freak. And so they like, they write down my information and they're like, okay, thank you. And then they'll turn to each other and they're like, should we dig into this? I thought that was such funny phrasing. But they're like, should we dig into this? I thought that was such funny phrasing. But they're like, should we dig into this?

And as I'm leaving, I'm like, oh, I should get these cops' names, like, just in case. It's like I get their names and go on my way and go home. And as I'm lying in bed that night, I'm just thinking like, what would have been a better choice than having the police come and collect that? Because the only thing I can imagine that that will actually make its way back to its owner is if this stuff, when all looked pretty brand new, had been stolen. Somebody panicked or whatever, like, kept it out of their car while they were parked and then drove away and, like, accidentally left it there.

And that now whatever the store is said hey this stuff was missing uh this stuff was stolen and it gets returned to them that is the only circumstance in which that makes it back to who it belongs to i wonder what would have happened if uh before the cops left you were like now is this the same as like finding an envelope full of cash if no one claims this in 90 days do i is it mine? Or like, what do you guys do with it? I definitely, when they showed up, I was like telling them, it looks like about $400 worth of stuff in there. It was mine.

I'd want it back. Both flashlights on me. And I was like, no, come on. This isn't like saying bomb in an airport, right? Where like I get in trouble for nothing. Yeah. I'm not in trouble for knowing how much things cost, right? And so I didn't know. I mean, the other option was I could have just left it there. And somebody who would really want something like that would have like a very it's like winning the lottery for them yeah they could have suddenly this great great new adventure or it would be a child that finds

it tomorrow morning okay yeah cool i think getting getting it off the street is definitely the the right move it's a shame that there's not like this this invention is impossible a non-partisan non-federal non-cop lost and found for like just some kind of community run

resource that you're not allowed to snitch on or narc on and the cops aren't allowed to prosecute anything just our own little hamsterdam where someone can go to like a bulletin board and be like missed connections i saw a coyote got scared and i dropped six hundred dollars worth of drugs on the street and i really wanted those drugs i i would really like them back uh and to not be in jail for having them yeah i mean obviously we haven't thought this through all the way but some sort

of like narcotic co-op i think is a really great idea where it's like yeah a revolving door of moderators like you just do it when you can and occasionally these things show up and occasionally no one takes them home and that's like why you do it in the first place like you're like oh not all this stuff ever gets picked up and then it gets just disseminated among the co-op itself and i think that is a great idea some impartial group that you could just like turn these into and be like hey this will at least get used now this will be this will belong to somebody as opposed to throwing it in the trash or burning it which they would probably do at the police station i would also like this for my bike was stolen in college because i because because bikes get stolen all the time and i rode my bike to a

friend's house and normally lock it up but didn't think i needed to because just i drove right into her backyard left the bike there went inside we spent the whole time in the kitchen making a cake i came out someone had walked into her backyard taking the bike and left and i don't i didn't call the the cops about that because fuck cops but there's a part of me that really wanted to like put a bullet in somewhere that was like listen i know you stole my bike the i attached a lock to the bike but it's not locked up to anything but there is still a lock on it you probably don't want that because you can't cut through it i have the key to it and i want it back also it's a shitty bike the pedal keeps falling off i carry the tool with me to get the pedal back on

there i just want you you you are probably unhappy that you stole a lemon you're not in trouble with me i just want it back i'm sure you don't want a shitty bike and you're just going to leave it somewhere or throw it into the water because we agreed that would be an interesting thing to see. But just just you and me. If you took my bike, let's just you and me talk. No cops. You're not in trouble. We don't need to fight about this. I want my bike more than you do.

Just give it back to me and we can walk away. I will give you something. There should be something like that. I mean, you think about that when you find wallets on the ground and you're like, oh, I found somebody's wallet. Oh, this was a wallet that was stolen because all the cards are spread around it. And like, yeah, but it's like they didn't. You can't just give that back afterwards. A system in which you could system in which like you steal something

you got what you wanted from the circumstance but understand that everything else that you don't want from that like purse or wallet is super valuable to the person and they would love to have those things back i had a wallet stolen when i was in california and uh i'm sure the person who stole it was like, ah, good, cash, and a credit card. I can use this for a little bit until it gets shut down, which will happen quickly. You don't need my driver's license. I need that. It's such a pain in the ass to get another one.

My social security card was in there. You're not going to do anything with that card. I mean, I'm not going to do anything with it either, but I don't have one now because it was in my wallet that got stolen and like again we're not going to we're not going to involve the cops you can just mail me my social security card because i might get hired somewhere and they're going to want a photocopy of it and that would be convenient for me you can have whatever you stole from me and spent we're cool give me my license because it's a pain in the ass to get a new one yeah so you just you cost me a trip to the dmv and that's a whole day like yeah if i could just

have that back it's not doing you any good my a library card i i've already had to go back in there and get two new ones I would love not to have to do that again they don't like I'm on thin ice at that library already just give me the card back do you know how hard it is to do things without your credit card driver's license and social security card

it's I'm going into bars with a passport you jerk I'm with you. I understand. I believe in the ethos, don't put all your eggs in one basket. You're absolutely right. But I did this one time.

This is a lesson learned for both of us, I think. Yeah. All right. I would love that system. Maybe that's how we save the internet. That's some sort of operation like that. I think people would be visiting there every day yep i think we've pitched craigslist oh yeah well that's our show

soren's gonna wrap it up hey everybody thank you for memory last time you did such a good job this you've been listening to quick question with soren and daniel but of course you know that already you can follow daniel or i on blue sky just go search our names we didn't check in on blue sky we didn't mask them or anything um and you can still follow quick question on x at qq underscore soren and dan or something along those lines you can also follow us on instagram we could watch this podcast or many of our other ones on youtube you can see daniel and i in the flesh uh does that have to mean live i think you could just see our flesh you can see our flesh on a screen and you can do that on youtube if you go

to youtube.com slash qq podcast i bet and uh if you've enjoyed listening to our theme song, that's by Merex. And you can find their music at merex.bandcamp.com or you can go find their music anywhere you stream your music from. We are engineered and basically powered entirely by Gabe Harder. Gabe Harder is someone you will never find.

He is a mystery. Oh, he's also half responsible for the theme song to our bonus content. If you want to join our Patreon, you can give us money and you get a new theme song that's partially written by the Lunch Money Criminals and partially written by Gabe Harder. And we also do bonus content there. It's videos that you can watch and it's Daniel and I asking questions from you the listeners and I believe that that's everything

yeah I've got a quick quick question for you alright I wanna hear your thoughts I wanna know what's on your mind I've got a quick quick question for you alright the answer's not important I'm just glad that we could talk tonight

So what's your favourite? Who did you get? When will I be remembered? What's it out there? Where did all the bad weeks end? Oh, forget it I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers

If there's an answer, they're gonna find it. I think you'll have a great time here. I think you'll have a great time here.