Some More News - Actors Strike, CEOs Whine, And EVEN MORE Making Money Online

Episode Date: July 14, 2023

Hi. Parker Molloy (@parkermolloy) joins Katy and Cody to talk about the Screen Actors Guild going on strike, the ultra-rich media CEOs who want your sympathy, and why there's no reason that social media companies have to show you everyone's awful opinion all the time. SAG-AFTRA on strike: https://apnews.com/article/hollywood-actors-strike-ca3e3eddc910f1e52d618e5e3c394554 Disney CEO Bob Iger says writers and actors not being "realistic": https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/bob-iger-writers-actors-strike-disney-ceo-1235669169/ Hollywood studios "endgame" is to let writers go broke: https://deadline.com/2023/07/writers-strike-hollywood-studios-deal-fight-wga-actors-1235434335/ Here's Parker's newsletter on social media curation: https://www.readtpa.com/p/against-the-eat-your-vegetables-approach Twitter starting to pay creators in their replies...as long as they're Twitter Blue subscribers: https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/13/23794189/twitter-blue-monetization-ad-revenue-sharing-payments And here's that stupid Elon Musk tweet about being on a deserted island: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1678805016189235200 Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh Subscribe to the Some More News and Even More News audio podcasts: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1 Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews

Why hello and welcome back to Even More News, the first and only news podcast. My name is still Katie Stoll. Thanks for still being that name of yours. Hi, Katie. I'm Cody. Welcome to the first and only thing you said. Yeah, just to that part. Not to the rest of the show.

No. And also, welcome to several time return guests. I don't know how many, but many, many times. A number of times. It's been a minute. A number of times. Writer of the newsletter, The Present Age, Parker Malloy. Hey. Hello, hello. times uh writer of the newsletter the present age parker malloy hey hello hello i am so uh so happy to be here we're happy to have you here the fourth time the fourth according according to

uh our silent producer jonathan jonathan is yeah being quiet although because he's being quiet he only put four in the chat so i don't know if that's you've been on four times and this is your fifth or this is your fourth time so get on that just his hand slipped and he hit four that's true yeah he was holding a baby this is the fourth this is the fourth okay more specific confirms thank you jonathan jonathan you are allowed to unmute yourself just so you know okay well we're gonna now it's better this way right first we're gonna chat about holidays oh i love holidays so celebrating them hearing about them learning about them for the first time july 13th though happy prime national national beans and frank Day. I don't like this one. It's National Hot Dog Month.

Shout out to Jamie Loftus. Shout out to Jamie Loftus. Why do you like Beans and Franks Day? I don't know. That just made my... Kind of. All I know is that I read it out loud, and I felt a negative emotion, and so I said I don't like this one.

I think it's Beans and Franks. I was imagining a big plate of beans cut up with hot dogs, to negative emotion and so i said i don't like this one uh i think it's beans and franks i was imagining a big plate of beans cut up with hot dogs on a hot day and it doesn't sound good well add a cold beer it's delicious what are you talking about what is going on wait well i also don't like baked beans specifically they're too sweet parker i understand not a huge fan uh you know i mean i'm i'm not a beans and franks type person i'm more a just drink diet dr pepper all day type of person real good i do like hot dogs though i'm from chicago so so that's kind of like our thing one of our things that

we're really weird about yeah i do like i don't know why i'm being like so uh so pro it aggressive about this because i aggressively pro frank yeah i also don't like frank i'm being like so uh so pro it aggressive about this because i also don't like franks and beans like it sounds like a tummy ache to me i don't know a tummy ache that you don't want on july 14th which is national nude day oh you don't want to have a tummy ache from franks and beans you don't want to be like struggling from with your digestion on national nude day national nude day yeah what is this okay the day originated i'm gonna tell you okay this day originated on a sports talk show new zealand called sports cafe on the show co-host mark ellis challenged sports cafe viewers to streak in front of then prime

minister helen clark the show ran an event each year inviting viewers to submit photos and video of themselves performing daily activities in the nude, which was continued on the internet, reprinted as World Nude Day or International Nude Day, until around 2009. So it's like an extinct holiday. Oh.

Are we not encouraging people to go nude? to get naked and run in front of people's houses anymore yeah yeah i guess again on the tales of beans and frank's day and also the fact that we're all boiling alive under the heat maybe those are two reasons why this one didn't really take hold oh well you know get nude get cool right cool off for know, get nude, get cool, right? Cool off. For a bit. Get nude and run through a slip and slide or something. Or like, you know, along these lines, get nude

and just go to the, run to the White House, run across the lawn of the White House. Yeah. Yeah. That could be fun. Patriotic. Nothing bad could happen from that. Nothing bad will happen to you. I saw that guy's willy, Jack. That's what I'll say.

He unmuted! Just chiming in for my Biden impression. Flawless. Nailed it. Spot on. I thought Joe called in. Now listen here, Jack. Parker, you've been on four times.

We've now established that this is the fourth. It's been a minute since we've seen you how are you what's going on uh you know i'm i'm uh i'm doing okay all things considered i mean the world is chaos and uh the world hates trans people more than it did last time the world really hated trans people last time so like as a trans person that's been that's been lovely um yeah i think you seem to seem to kind of keep going backwards on that front but aside from that actually pretty decent which you know that's good that's good aside from the awful part that you said yeah you know i mean that that's just sort of something that i've baked into like my expectations for the for the rest of my life. This is the track.

I'm just like, that's going to suck. But maybe I can have some fun. And, you know, pretty strange. I'm not sure what the word I'm looking for is. I can't imagine like living with both this existential fear and heartbreak. both this existential fear and heartbreak like both of those things while also needing to live our lives and focus on the positives be like yeah i've got this going for me i've got a wonderful wife i've got you know people that love me and and and it's so important but it's exhausting it's so exhausting but yeah but the jumping back and forth, the yeah.

And like, what are the long term effects on all of us? But, you know, especially targeted communities. Yeah. I feel like we just we're just exposed to too much information these days. And everyone has an opinion on literally everything. That's that's the I mean, like the the the trending field on twitter is now terrified like i i barely look at twitter anymore because it's just chaotic and awful but like the trending tabs it's always like oh cool let's see what what's everyone gonna have like an opinion on

today and it'll be like dylan mulvaney yet again it's like why and uh yeah good times that's uh yeah well we're gonna talk a bit more about some of that social media in general on uh this show uh to the dylan mulvaney point this is something i've said before it's so frustrating it's uh not even a strong enough word the resentment against dylan the trans community like well like well you keep talking about it you guys keep making it a thing all of this should be blown over you don't want to see it fine but like keep talking about it and you're gonna keep seeing it well one thing that people one thing that people in in discussing specifically the dylan mulvaney sort of thing with like the reaction to bud light and uh nike or whatever

sort of other deals she had it was like the whole thing was over one post on her own it's like it's like when you guys do like ad reads for like the for this or you know the the other thing it's like that's what she did it wasn't like an ad campaign it was just like she didn't even do what we do because ours could be considered an ad campaign. This is like a one-off thing. You know, it was, it was her talking about the NCAA tournament.

It was, it was a March madness thing, which is hilarious that we're in July and CNN just ran another segment about this. Are people still mad at Bud Light? For context, ran another segment about this they're like are people still mad at bud light for context i was in the hospital and this baby that you just saw who is now quite large was two days old and i saw the first report about dylan mulvaney and bud light yeah that's a real good measurement um time measurement device you have there sitting in your lap i uh i saw this a clip of joe rogan's podcast i forget who was on some comedian was on and they were talking about this and it was like

one of those every once in a while that show where it's like you're so close you're so close to like getting what the problem is or like why why are all these freaks around me you know um and they were talking about the dylan thing and like yeah it just came out of nowhere and like why like why isn't it talking about her like the sort of thing and they they casually as they casually talk about it they kept referring to the commercial it's like yeah it's not this commercial right no no it wasn't a commercial and like i i thought it was for weeks i was like it's the bad about some commercial and i was like wait it was one post once on her personal like i mean feed and but like they but even like as they're talking about it and being confused by it they're still like talking about as though it was this commercial

or like ad campaign and you can't appear in the mountains they think it was a commercial and i was like when did you see a commercial on tv and they're like uh well i know it was one no i definitely saw on tv did you see it as a commercial or did you see fox news running a piece about it and they were like uh like right yeah but also but also if it was a commercial that's the thing too it's like if it was commercial it's also overblown i thought it was overblown when i thought it was a commercial that's the thing too it's like if it was commercial it's also overblown yeah i thought it was overblown when i thought it was a commercial and then i was like wait it's not even a commercial what are you fucking talking about i know that's the danger of me like trying to like own them on a point and it's like well now i'm meeting them on their terms right and so then so then i think you do a commercial and you're like see katie they're

doing the thing that you said would have been bad. But I always followed up with like, but even if it was, I did. Who cares if it was? Anyway, we're going to move on to other topics that are also frustrating. Ooh. How about that? Does that sound fun? Yeah. Hello, sexy ad watchers.

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slash some more news. Do, wait, do we actually have, we have tapestries? That's fucked up. And today we're going to start off with the SAG strike. SAGwaga. It looks like, no, it is, it's happening. It's not what it looks like. The entertainment industry's largest labor-related

shutdown in 63 years a couple days ago right up right before the the deadline to you know call it which was already an extension 12-day extension from the previous due date they decided to bring in federal mediator to try to work out a deal. But that did not pan out, nor did any of us actually expect it to. There's a lot that's been going on with this. I don't even quite know where to begin. Well, I will say that I watched right before we started recording. They did a press conference and Fran Drescher spoke and I did not have high hopes because before we even got into the negotiations there was this absurd clip of her saying you know trying to be positive saying like well you know we're negotiating for different things than the writers which is not true we are fighting the

same fight and our asks are very similar to the WGA and And then, you know, recently was in Paris with Kim Kardashian. Lots of other things that the optics look poor, but her speech was very good. And it kind of made me cry, which is not a surprise to any listener because I cry a lot, but it's an unsustainable career. And at this point in time time with the changes that have happened since well the entirety over the course of the time that I've been in LA and Hollywood and entertainment have made it so unsustainable and it's heartbreaking because you know there's there are so many stories that EDV told so many people deeply care about this art form who are not able to make a career and um the implications are huge for us culturally and for other sectors as well so anyway everything

is more expensive and uh the place the place where the industry is uh is worse and worse every year in terms of being able to live here so you're making less money and having to pay more money to survive in the place that you need to be successful and to make the money to do the thing um which is true like everywhere like things are just more expensive and housing is a horrible issue but you know who doesn't care the billionaires uh it is like some of these uh we can talk about some of these quotes they're just is wild how openly antagonistic and like almost like cruel and hateful these people are and in a way that's like some of some of these quotes from these executives i i read them like do you like movies like do you actually don't and Do you enjoy watching any of these things that you make so much money off of?

I don't think they like art or TV or movies or stories. It's just like nominations they got yesterday. It's sort of like, yes, exactly. On so many shows, they fucking canceled or like removed from existence. Like some of the Pink Lady show, you can't even watch. They got Emmy nodons for that um but they want like the clout of the awards and then the money printing machine of owning they are making the company so much money off of the consumer these changes we pay for so many

different streaming platforms and individual tv shows and this that or the other so much more than we've ever paid. You know, and they're making, and they're getting it on all sides and they are reducing rooms to a smaller size. They're just cutting, trimming the fat and all in search of more and more profits. Yeah, and the least amount that they have to pay, the least, the smallest number of people they have to pay, the worst product they can produce.

I want to edit myself in real time. You can leave it in. I don't mean trimming the fat. That's the way they look at it. But what they're doing is killing the craft. Yeah, they're gutting the entire thing until it's an empty husk and you get garbage. husk uh and you get like garbage um like for example you get this bob eiger quote yes that is like uh what uh it's just this is disturbing to me the writers and actors going on strike in hollywood are not being realistic about their demands and like i pointed this out to the

accounts a variety and deadline are not doing a great job at reporting on this well i have a thought on that to interject which is that variety andiety and Deadline are owned by Jay Penske, a billionaire. I am not positive. Maybe Jonathan can Google this while we're talking. But he's got connections to the AMPTP. These are his buddies. He is from a race car family and had a lot of disdain for hollywood and print media but wanted to take oh like there's so much just for this guy that nobody ever talks about we know where these

quotes are coming from we know that the source is like that like he is the the reporting around the entire both strikes have been so it's been bullshit oh yeah uh just seeing like the sort of vitriol and like contempt they seem to have for the people who make the things that make them the money. It's really, really grotesque. One thing that as something of an outsider to all of this, as I'm not a member of any of the striking unions and not in that business, it's wild to me that the average everyday people on on like social media and just generally will side with the studios i know it's like why are you arguing for a worse product why are you you know oh they want to have more writers in the room it's it gets you a better show you know like they don't understand these things and it's this

it's built more on spite it seems than anything else that they're like i don't want these these fat cat writers and actors to it's because they get something yeah there's an element of this like uh oh well they're all woke anyway they're doing these woke shows and like ruining art and stuff like that it's like do you think that's exactly where it's coming from and like it's also like they're all these like twitter blue accounts who were like all the elites want you to do this and the elites want to see bugs no the elites are fucking like firing all these people making garbage and making millions off of it like these are the people that you're supposed to not like and uh i just we've lost the the script somewhere along the line well yeah and it happens it happens in

like like sports too you know there were when the um when the the baseball players union was like trying to negotiate with the owners recently and a year or two ago, it was like, there were so many people were like, all these players, they're all just millionaires and they're all, it's like, and the owners are billionaires. Yeah, exactly.

You know, they're doing that. And, and what, what the players were striking for, like considering a strike for was like trying to make sure that there were minimum salaries for like minor league players who don't make money. And that's,

you know, what this stuff is, you know well it's like we care about this sport we care about going to the movies you care about watching tv don't tell me you don't uh because so much of this is also not like to that point like it's not they're not like they're not on strike so that like tom cruise can make more money they're on strike for like background actors and and like struggling, like struggling actors starting out and stuff like that. So this is something that Fran mentioned in the or maybe it was one of the other people. Someone just said this in the press conference. One of the studios were like, they just are not even considering historic options that are on the

table. And they gave an example of one, which was using AI. So if you get hired as a background actor to come onto a set, you would get scanned. And so you'd get one day of work, and then they could use your likeness as a background extra in perpetuity. So background extra work is one of the only ways that you can get into the union and not most, most people don't understand that because it's tricky. It's kind of a catch. It's so hard to get into the union. You need a lucky break or you need to show up and do that job. And that was always been a path for actors. Like if you're doing a good job, if you're present and you're there every day, you can get spotted and say like, Hey, we need you to do this line. And then you get a voucher. This is how it works. This is the only way. So what you're offering is taking advantage of

somebody and giving away their route to actually becoming a professional just out of the gate that's an absurd offer you know and with with that which I think a lot of people just don't consider you know people from like like me on on the outside of this where it's like you've got like people don't consider that when you do something like that because I have seen people talking about that online they're like well screw these background actors who cares blah blah blah well once the studios screw over the the background actors that gives them more leverage over the the other actors who remain you know it's it's this thing where it's it's not it's only going to make things worse if the studios are able to extract more thing exactly yeah trick trickle up exploitation

yeah i mean i saw adam conover had a it was something he posted on social media it was video because he's he's been posting throughout the writer's strike you know he had he had something where he was saying that you know because this this had to do with the report that came out yesterday. Yeah. Yeah, about the, you know, where it was like, oh, we're going to starve them out, basically. Yeah, let's read that out loud real quick so everyone knows the quote. The end game, this is from the studios, mind you, an anonymous source. The end game is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses. Acknowledging the cold as ice approach, several other sources reiterated the statement.

One insider called it a, quote, cruel but necessary evil. Anyway, continue, Parker. It's like, oh, they're evil, evil. Yeah. Well, again, it's like, so you just so you don't like art you don't like stories you don't want you don't actually like television or movies cruel yeah this goes back to the uh the penske thing you brought up earlier like they have common cause these people don't respect writing or acting as a profession it is a endeavor. They don't think it's valuable.

They don't respect it. They legitimately believe, they're the only ones who legitimately believe it can be replaced with a computer. Yeah. You know, the one thing that I liked about that, this Adam Conover clip that I saw, he was saying like, you know,

yeah, okay, they're going to try to starve the writers out. And he's like, well, we've got funds. And, you know, we were taking up little odd jobs here and there whatever you know in different industries and then it was just like and also if if the studios win here it's like there's not a job to go back to the jobs won't exist in the future because yeah they're absolutely going to start trying to churn out more ai generated scripts and stuff i mean i saw earlier today the associated press uh struck a deal with open ai about uh giving them access to their old their archives and people are like well why why would they why would they want that it's like

oh you're teaching the ai how to write news. You know, like that is really, like that's scary. It's going to come and pop up into a lot of industries. And it's not that it's, you know, to argue that it's necessarily going to be bad probably isn't accurate. But it's inhumane to take people out of industries because I'm sure technology will get better. And I'm sure that it'll end up being one of those things that can happen where it's like there are some people working and they use AI to augment blah, blah, blah. Sure, it's a tool that could be useful. But the way that so many of the people who are in executive level positions in all sorts of industries are talking about AI now where they're like, let's just throw it, throw it in there. You know,

you had, what was it? Go, go media, I guess. Last week published some like star Wars listicle on one of their websites that was totally wrong. And they published it. Cause here's the thing. If someone asked me if someone was like parker uh use ai to to write some article i'd be like okay i'd do it i'd put my little prompt in i'd let it churn something out i'd look at it and i'd edit it myself to make sure that it looked correct they just took something straight from ai and put it on their website it didn't go through their editorial team it didn't it didn't see a human it just went straight up on their website

and it had like all sorts of weird factual errors in there which is so irresponsible that if someone was doing that for their own personal blog it would be bad but like a business yeah there's so much arrogance yeah it's um makes me wonder if they fact check their other articles right for real yeah yeah yeah it's a and that's like a good example just like that this sort of like the the the churning they want to happen the the conveyor belt sort of system that they want they've sort of been building for a long time too where like they want to they want to go into a room be like what if we got um a robert downey jr's iron man and like he talks to uh the guy like they do a scene like they they want to like it's like studio executives want to

be like what if a movie did this and then a computer makes it and then people sit down and watch it and like it doesn't matter if it's good doesn't matter if uh there's anything anything redeeming about it some of these you know you i it's almost like these streamings the streaming services especially like they're in the content they make in-house like there's some good there's some bad and there's there's some stuff that's just kind of like what is this and i i almost feel like they're trying to just see how bad something can be and like like what's the minimum viable product that they can put out they're like yeah let's get a second season of is it cake you know i mean which the thing is i watched the first

season and i was like okay it was it was content that that my eyes glazed over and i took it in and that was it and and you know without really even thinking about it and that's sort of that's what they want they want they want they just want your attention they want your eyeballs and you to glaze over basically yeah um and uh feel uh i guess content with their garbage they want you to just not even notice that it's going on to the next episode and so that you end up staying there for the whole evening and have the two of you seen um the the new season of black mirror which was no i haven't yet i haven't seen the last couple actually but okay the the first episode of the newest season that they put out is about ai actors and like being scanned into things and it was one of those things that netflix probably in hindsight was like

we should not have put this out right before trying to trying to negotiate because it it comes it it deals with a lot of those like life rights and you know using scans and putting people into content they don't want to be in and uh it was it was really interesting the rest of this season i kind of hate it but because i've heard the first episode is pretty good yeah but that that episode was targeting streamberry not netflix you know streamberry it's a separate thing it's the same font uh logo and sound when streamberry pops up but it's not netflix yeah you know that was uh that was the one good episode i think in this season the rest were very strange and i think that generally black mirror is kind of out of ideas or maybe our world has just gotten so weird that it's just like you're boring you know it's that the

veep thing when trump was still in office yeah you know jonathan in these notes you made a good point here that one of the major demands from both unions would be to have transparent streaming numbers so that residuals can be paid fairly but you know one of the reasons that they hide that data they don't want people to know is that oh probably it would be embarrassing to see the truth is is that there's so much there's so much great content there's just so much just content that's all they care about and who knows what people are actually watching like people up here where i live they don't know the shows that i like the good shows they don't know them sometimes it breaks through

and there's in the zeitgeist but for the most part it's like yeah there's too many things for for numbers to be high yeah they're making money off of their subscriptions you know and but what happens to their stock price when they have to reveal that no one's watching secret invasion or no one's watching i meanasion or no one's watching. I mean, we know a lot of people aren't watching these shows because they remove them from their services for tax purposes. They make more money removing them than from having them on. And I think, you know, that's the sad thing,

is that I think the WGA and SAG together are going to get a good deal. But the problem is that there's going to be a lot fewer shows and movies being made as these companies they have to have the realize they're gonna pull back yeah yeah they can't be spending hundreds of millions of dollars making lord of the ring shows well right because so much of the netflix model too from the beginning was just like make it fucking as many things as we can we're just gonna have so many things and uh it gives the illusion of like oh look this very popular platform it's like well we watch three of your shows and they're pretty good it's just not none of it's good um i i do want to give it a general

advice to uh because i know like you're uh katie the the people who own what uh deadline and variety they're like they all all want, uh, as much money as they want, but the social, to the social media interns who are writing these tweets, uh, you can, you can go a little harder on these people.

Um, you can, instead of sharing a Matt Damon quote where he's like, Oh, I don't know. It's like, we'll share the full quote where he says he supports the strike. Uh,

when Bob Iger is like, this is, these are unreasonable demands. Put his salary in the tweet. Let people know that Bob Iger, worth $600 million, thinks that these poor fucks are being unreasonable. That intern will probably lose their job, but take him for the team. Get a different bad job. I mean, they're probably going to lose their job anyway.

I mean, it's not as if any of these industries are stable i mean so one other point kind of just tied to this is uh did you see i think it was last week david zaslov um there was there was a a critical article about him in gq that was that was written that was just like how he became like what was it was like the most hated man in hollywood or something like that and someone from like zaslov's inner circle like reached out to gq and was like we need you to change that article and so they did and then the the guy who wrote it was like please take it down yeah right yeah like it's not yeah this is not he's like this isn't they i forget the specifics but yeah they they took out all these points and then and then they they try to frame it as oh there were some errors in it uh we need to do better job about uh proof

reader of fact checking and he's like nope nope nope there weren't you just took out the stuff it's it's and and that's and the thing is what they told what they said you know saying like oh this should never have made it to you know on online they mean that you know they yeah and that's kind that's how the system is is hurting everyone you've got all these all these companies are owned by just a handful of people you know own a hand handful of companies that own everything and you suddenly can't criticize them i mean it you see it happen when there are um media reporters at places like you know at fox news there's there's howard kurtz who is awful and you know when fox was going through the thing with dominion like the dominion

lawsuit he just didn't talk about it at all and on on cnn when brian stelter had his media criticism show whenever cnn would be like in like some sort of controversy he would just kind of ignore it and it's one of those things where it's like as this gets smaller and smaller and fewer and fewer there become fewer viable outlets to to actually meaningfully criticize things and that's absolutely you know this sort of consolidation is is really scary in that regard because that's you know these these companies are huge and powerful and didn't it turn out that the editor of gq has a development deal with warner brothers discovery does he does oh yeah it was the uh let's see yeah uh variety reported eq editor in chief will welch is producing a movie at warner brothers titled the great chinese art heist based on a 2018 gq article it's like there it. Didn't even have to look hard for that.

All right. We're going to take a quick break and then come back for even more. I love to. Hey there. It's me, Cody from a moment ago, but now I'm at Cody. How you doing?

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It's one of the two slashes, that's for sure. The URL slash, the slash that's used for URLs. The slash. If I say dot com slash something, you'll know which one it is. If I say dot com slash something, you'll know which one it is. And we are back as promised for even more news. Question mark. I think that that conversation dovetails nicely into this, especially. You know, right before the break, we were talking about these print.

How do you take people to task like the the these big companies owning and controlling the media so now let's talk about the current state of social media uh parker you recently had a post on your wonderful newsletter uh titled against the eat your vegetables approach to timeline curation why don't you why don't you tell us a little bit about that as a starting point here yes so so as as we know by now there is a meta launched its new threads social network which is instagram minus photos um but you could have photos and so i was on i was on threads hanging out with all the brands it's's like living inside a mall. So many brands are there. Did you sign up, Cody?

No, no, no, no. It is. I have no interest in that. And if I wanted to delete it, I'd have to delete my Instagram. Yeah, I know. That's weird. So absolutely not. It's absurd.

Yeah, it's all time. Okay, but you're hanging on threads. I can't resist. So I went on threads and hung out with Taco Bell and whatever. So so I'm on there and I see Maggie Haberman from The New York Times writing something. She's like, if this place becomes a place where where where people don't people don't have to see things they disagree with, it's going to fail. And and I was thinking about that and I was like, but why? Where did this idea that we all have to see things that we don't want on social media?

It's not something that applies elsewhere. It's if you go to the movies and in the middle of it, they're like, you need to watch this short documentary on something else. It's going to be weird. You know, if you're watching TV and then the news cuts in for no reason and it's not something super important, it's going to be weird. Same thing if you're reading a book. You're not getting handed a newspaper halfway through. But on social media, there's this idea that not only should we have this stuff kind of fed into our feeds by default, but that it's the right thing to do,

that it's the moral thing to do, because we have to understand where people are coming from. And so I wrote about this. And I just, I mean, the opposite argument, that we don't need this. And really, the more control we have over what we see online, you know, of course course i think people should should read the news and and get outside their bubbles or whatever you know like understand the world but i don't think anyone's like understanding anyone better when just kind of like out of nowhere

it's like oh here's a breitbart article that I certainly don't think anyone's life is better for no experience this hell that we're all living through. Cody, go ahead. Oh, yeah. Well, because I think that they're like you're saying, like there is a benefit to like, yeah, get out of your bubble. Know what's going on in the world. Know some perspective and stuff. And you can choose to do that. But it is social media.

is social media and like to like sort of your point like if you're hanging out with your friends and being social and some freak pops up and it's like actually elon like this sort of like i don't need that i'm hanging out with my friends or i'm being social um and i think there is there is an aspect of like of pro-social behavior that like encourages like oh everybody come here like we're like we're all talking and whatever but it's not bad to just be like no i want to log on for an hour and just see stuff that i like um i think it's also an issue i mean every platform i think has this some more than others but just the um talking about this the other day the sort of ping pong effect like the emotional psychological ping pong of any any feed kind of like the one you're what you're talking about was like yeah everything do everything because that's good for you it's actually probably bad for you to see like oh here's this picture of

a cat here's this awful story uh here's this natural disaster here's this cute thing like the the constant stream of such conflicting uh emotional content uh is probably really damaging to our brains that's like that's not normal like that's not what we've ever experienced where it's like this but also this but also this but also this and it's just these this weird up and down uh back and forth of just like the most extreme stuff which isn't like exactly to your point about like opinions and stuff but right well one thing that like after because a lot of this started after the 2016 election that was when there was this big like okay we have to under because there was this idea that it's just like

oh people just didn't understand what which were trump voters were coming from and oh people didn't under these liberals and their bubbles you know like that sort of stuff but it's like no people understood they just don't like this you know well and you know maybe maybe some people in media didn't understand what was going on but i think generally people understood like the basic stakes of what were half what was happening sure to an extent i think so i agree with everything that's been said i earlier in a meeting this week just kind of started talking about how I don't know I might be done with all of it soon because I don't think it's healthy for us in any capacity. I mean, the best element of social media is its ability to be used as an organizational

tool. And that's undeniable. However, I think all of our lives in just about every other way are negatively affected from different elements of social media. And in terms of exposing yourself to other ideas, I agree. I think that that's good. Be informed and all this this stuff social media is not the way to do it i don't think i don't think that we are doing a good job of it uh i think people there's there's there's countless examples of different types of ways that it goes south i don't need to rattle them off we've lived through it but everyone's quality of life is worse. I do enjoy, even though it gets frustrating, talking to people.

Actually, personally, I've enjoyed the experience of talking to people that disagree with me. However, social media has muddled it up because they will say things that are not true. And, you know, you'll look at this, this, the other, and they'll quote this guy. What are his credentials? And it becomes this whole soup. And then it becomes a, well, you'll look at this, this, the other, and they'll quote this guy, what are his credentials? And it becomes this whole soup. And then it becomes a, well, you guys do it too. And we, you know, and so it feels like it turns up. You guys, well, that's, yeah, but it's like, everything comes back.

I'm like, okay, if you want to criticize the left, then you should probably be prepared to do that same introspection on the right. Those are countless conversations I have to that effect but just in general i do not see how it is helping us navigate this well because you like the conversations you're having sound frustrating a lot of the time but also productive in other times and pleasant other times and so on. And that's because it's actually social. There is an aspect of social media that is anti-social. And I'm choosing and allowing this. I'm saying like, I know this person and I trust them enough to not like be violent, to not be, you know, deeply offensive. Or like insulting or whatever, right? Because those conversations you're having with these people, if you had them on social media, they not have gone the same way no at all not at all

not at all and also like just a point of like oh if you don't see stuff you disagree with then you're bad or bad or it's bad for you whatever and like to a point it's good to expose yourself to other people's ideas and things you disagree with but also at a certain point i've disagreed with that for a long time uh i don't need to see it again right i've like i've read the thing i've looked into it i've thought about it i still disagree i don't need to see this shit until the end of time because i've already you know and maybe some new piece of information will change my mind uh which i'm open to but at a certain point sometimes it's like yeah, yeah, I don't need it. Who needs it? Give me my little jokes, you know? I mean, yeah, there have been things that I've written hundreds of articles on

where it's just like, I understand the topic well. And, you know, it'll be like articles that cover the right wing position on something. I will be writing about what their views are. I will summarize books that i've read written by these people so i understand their arguments but then it'll be like well if you don't want to see them all the time you're clearly sticking your head in the sand it's like i don't think so i think i know more more about this than some of the people who say they believe these things you know right and i do feel like some of that some of the that this is sort of the philosophy of like well you gotta

see everything you gotta see everything you disagree with that everything you agree with and all the all at once i feel like a lot of that um is sort of pushed aside from like the reasons that that is that can be good i think a lot of it and like the specifically with we'll get to this with musk and twitter is just because of uh time on site and attention if you constantly see things you disagree with then you're going to constantly be fighting with people and be arguing back and forth and back and forth and going back and checking did they respond to this do they respond to this do they like my point are they did they insult them can i insult them it fosters this animosity that makes the attention and the eyeballs there longer um because i didn't obviously like obviously like pleasant interactions on on

social media can keep you there too but you're probably going to be there longer if you're mad to that point they just paid out uh i guess a krasenstein and a bunch of other people with twitter blue for the revenue that was received for ads in the replies of their tweets and i we've said this for a long time ever since he bought it but there is an element of like well i want to foster discourse and i think we need to expand human consciousness to the stars and i think we need to really just come together and like and and be better you're incentivizing monetarily people pissing other people off so that they spend all the time in replies like you are like it's it's so frustrating this fucking guy specifically but because like that is what he's doing it's like if you fucking piss people off all day i'll give you more money than i was going to and uh like today he's like talking about

his like ai uh to find the truth or whatever and he's like my hero douglas adams bro douglas adams fucking hate you what are you talking about you are zaphod bebelbrox in your soul i know you fucking suck and like the idea it's this like i love douglas adams and i love star trek i'm such a oh the the future the possibility of humanity. Bro, you're making people pay money to talk in the public square and you're incentivizing them to piss each other off and yell all day. You don't care. You don't actually believe in this like idea of the future and the possibility of humanity. It's so frustrating.

How is that even financially feasible for this failing company oh yeah pay your rent bro pay your fucking bills dollars i'm sure you could have used that money man you're not doing so hot how is that sustainable yeah it's not um because again he's not paying his bills but also also like oh wow look at this krasenstein who got 20 grand uh since february for the replies in uh in uh in his in his tweets well krasenstein tweets all day all fucking day and interacts with the owner of the website all day and has like a million followers a an average twitter blue subscriber gets zero engagement because the tweets fucking suck. And they have no followers because the tweets fucking suck.

They're going to make five cents from this. But it is absolutely encouraging people, whether they believe what they're saying or not. 100% it incentivizes that. To say the most inflammatory thing and to get people to argue and to respond and to argue with them. It is pain for. It is antithetical to his his his professed philosophy and goal with the website it is just the opposite of that we might not want to talk about this there was a an elon tweet i hope i'm not saying one of the parody tweets that

might be him probably not whatever you got to make sure it has like all 14 uh like different pieces of flair or whatever. Exactly, yeah, yeah. He had this tweet where he's like, consider a thought experiment. If you were on a desert island, would you rather have a pallet of food or $1 billion? Actually, if you were on the island, a billion dollars wouldn't get you anything.

Makes you think. And it's like, what the, what, what are you talking about? He is, God. I think everyone understands that. Is this, right and it's like what the what what are you talking he is god i think everyone understands that it's this one is this right it's like yeah we know money's fake we fucking know it's stupid uh and it's like yeah it's like actually uh as a billionaire money doesn't really matter money's based on resource it It's just like he's an absurd person. I, a genius, would choose the food. Yeah. I would not want this money on this.

God, I can't even. God, he is. I can't believe SNL had him host. I can. I mean, yeah. But also, yeah, I can't. I know. He's a profoundly unfunny person but you know that's his biggest problem with

himself he knows so are you familiar with there's this website it is elon musk dot today if you're not it is interesting because what it is is it's it's just a list of things that musk has promised and just not followed through on it's like it's been 258 days since elon musk promised twitter would not reinstate banned accounts without first creating a diverse content moderation god uh yeah yeah remember that uh and it's been it's been 419 days since uh he was building a new litigation department at tesla for the purpose of suing people who accused him of offering a horse in exchange for sexual services wait this is great oh they included the bricks yes the dirt bricks

yeah he's never gonna do that to the people behind this yeah it is hilarious and uh car elevator to your home god there's some dodger stadium electric skates oh yeah that one like none of these ideas when you when you look into them because i didn't i didn't know what the dodger stadium thing was i looked it up and it was the worst it was a tunnel that would have gone from the local like metro station to the field that would go 150 miles an hour. But instead of just putting it on on a rail and having it go back and forth like that, it's like the law. It would have been like the Las Vegas thing that he has where you get in a little Tesla and they drive you from one end to the other. But this was supposed to go 150 miles an hour this sounds awful yeah yeah this this idea fell apart it's the same thing in

chicago here he had a deal where he was gonna do a um he was gonna make a an express an express tunnel from downtown to o'hare which i mean that's great except for there is a train line that already goes exactly there yep that same exact line and uh it fell apart after a few years but he goes from he goes from town to town he he announces things he gets good press for it and then he just moves on and people are still like say snake oil sales yeah people are like he is he is totally gonna take us to mars it's like why would you believe he'll take you to mars when he hasn't kept any other any other promise it's so because like then there's this ecosystem of like the teslanomics or like the tesla like whatever all these publications anything he

says like he said this and it's happening and they never follow up there's never any sort of like look back like remember when he did that if when tesla totally implodes people won't be like they won't a sizable amount of people would still be like that's not elon's fault it's the woke lefts they didn't give him a chance they tanked him no he's a fucking man good go go for it i also like it's frustrating too because like i remember uh in my younger more foolish days i guess being like cool do rockets and stuff that's cool oh like electric cars that's neat oh solar panels excellent like all these sort of like endeavors were like i like go for it that's cool

but every day since then it's just like not just like the disappointment or like the oh he that he didn't do that but like his practices and his philosophy and like his actions and everything he says like oh wow so off so off on you i i used to think he had good intentions and now i'm just like i think he's just a really evil dude yeah that's right like it's like there's an element of like oh i used to think that like you wanted to do these things well which makes it even more evil like like all billionaires and people chasing profits over people you know, not a fan. But to pretend to self-style yourself. Man of the people.

One way specifically to make money is extra bad, you know, and that is to abandon it. You know, you get it. We've all lived through it. But this, I think, feels like a good place for us to wrap things up. Delete your accounts, everybody. Delete your accounts everybody delete your post forever until we all get eaten by the sun whatever see that's that's the depressing thing about about this threads thing it's like people are like this is a this is a privacy nightmare and it's just like i already had a facebook account back in the day and i already

have an instagram and and so it's one of these things where it's just like well you know i see the asteroid coming i might as well have a burger and a cigarette you know like these things were just like well parker you specifically are niche in what you cover and and what you talk about it's pretty important that you check out these spaces and i probably will eventually i've just threads have emerged at a time where i have truly been questioning my own desire and it is inextricably linked to our work as well but i've got a team of people and what's i'm just negotiating my relationship to it um and how to keep it more of a pleasant experience and it's hard because sometimes i'm like i want to start posting about

this and i'm actually telling myself to take a step back because it is not healthy for my nervous system and i'm not prepared for the pushback i'm not prepared for it anymore i don't want it i don't want that ugliness i want to protect myself i went a full month without posting on twitter uh yeah recently and only just started again just posting links to my articles and not reading any of the replies at all and that's the only like that was the the compromise i had to make with myself was like i can do do this, but I can't use, I can't use Twitter to interact with people anymore. How I used to, which, which sucks because it's like, it's why I loved it. But yeah, I missed the old version though. I missed what it was to me at one point.

Exactly. And it's like, and I, so I, I went through, I think what you're talking about going through right now, where you really have to question how much you want to put yourself out there anymore, because I don't know, I go through all this stuff and I just think like I feel too old to keep hopping from one social media platform to the next to try to build up some some following that may or may not help my career. And more of these are getting getting to be image and video and and i'm not young and cool enough to do cool videos you know like the amount of time it takes to craft that type of post exactly i can i like send it out my little tweets and just you know the fuck do i care

about that i want to get out of the house yeah yeah i remember when that was a thing like well it's like one of the things where it's like it used to not exist at all and like not that long ago yeah and we've sort of like accepted like well this is like how it is like this is amazing like this is a tool we're gonna use and but then it's like been gnarled to the point where it's like actually what if we don't want to use this anymore there's the return on my the investment of my time is not good also i've just noticed a slow decline and me doing other things that i enjoy very much like reading for pleasure and uh you know doing whatever being outside going and being active doing stuff stuff. Literally cleaning my house. So we've got a finite amount of time.

How do we want to spend it? Being mad online. Being mad online about clearly. And then making 20 grand from your mad rules. If you're one of the five most popular whatever. Get millions of followers and make sure that one of them is elon musk make a deal with the devil and you can make a little tiny bit of money tiny bit of money this has been great you're such a fun guest thank you i love coming out here doing this

it's always fun all right let's book her again let's's do it. Number five. We can wait till after. Oh, Jonathan's showing up for a thumbs up. Jonathan's turning it. Oh, my. The baby's so asleep. Oh, my God. That baby is so asleep. That's the most asleep baby I've ever seen. It's the cutest thing I've ever seen, you guys.

He is out. Very asleep baby. Yeah. Just delicately, like, popping in. I was really nervous because at a certain point i had to like jump out of the room to get him a bottle because he was getting a little fussy and then like halfway through the meal he just passed out and then i chimed in with a comment and i'm like really hope someone didn't just say that exact thing because i missed the previous part but i'm talking

like this because the baby's just so it's dancing golf it's like a rag doll i'm sorry that just i just want to be held like that and then cradled to sleep he looks so peaceful all right well i'm single that's not happening um parker please tell our listeners where they can find you and promote your stuff yeah you you can find me you can find me in the wind no um where we are i'm on the internet social media but you know you can uh the the best place to find me is really my my newsletter which is called the present age it is at read tpa.com and from there it's like i have links to all my other stuff so if you're on a social network that i'm also on follow me there and if not who knows but read my newsletter and send me emails and i will

write emails back excellent that sounds better than all social media is email now yeah all social media is email now pretty much sounds like a potential merch thing okay okay okay we're done we're wrapping this up i feel like i'm forgetting something that i always say at the end of the show it's not coming to. It's not coming to me. It's not coming to me. There's nothing. While I have you here, I guess I'll just say that I love you very much. Much. Bye.

Much.