Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - Is Kamala Harris a political meme stock?

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

Politics and social media were inextricable this week. Joe Biden announced his dropout via X and other social platforms — and after he endorsed Kamala Harris, the media rush to explain Brat memes began. Taylor talks to The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel about coconut memes, irony pilled posting, and the outcry of a generation frustrated by politics. Then, Taylor and Zach break down this week’s headlines, including a lifestyle influencer suing another lifestyle influencer for copying her aesthetic, a terrifying DHS robot dog, and Marc Andreessen’s hope that AI will save comedy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week is Kamala Brat? Mark Andreessen thinks that AI can save comedy. And an influencer is suing another influencer for stealing her aesthetic. And our main topic, I talked to the Atlantic's Charlie Warzel about Twitter under Elon, Kamala's meme potential, and more. This week was a really big week in politics and social media. You had Biden drop out, Kamala stepped in, and immediately the internet was completely overrun with coconut memes, brat remixes.

You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you. Charlie Worsal is here to break it all down with me. He's a staff writer at the Atlantic covering tech and online culture. Hi, Charlie. Welcome to Power User. Hey, thanks for having me. So this week, Biden announced that he was resigning from the presidential race.

He didn't do this on any sort of video platform or TV. He really did it on social media. I think most people saw this announcement on X or saw the X post cross-posted other platforms. It seems like despite what a lot of people have reported and maybe wished, Twitter still remains the place for breaking news. You said that it has the juice. Can you talk a little bit about what you meant and why is Twitter so relevant right now? Yeah, it's a real I regret to inform you. Twitter has the juice situation. What I meant by it was essentially that Twitter feels very vibrant in recent weeks and sort of essential to this conversation.

that helps shift the narratives in how we're understanding this political moment and that it feels more like there's been a long period of time where Twitter has kind of languished under Elon Musk's tenure or people, you know, left it in droves. And so what I was really trying to communicate is that Twitter is sort of like this cockroach that like is like kind of ugly and unappealing and a lot of people, you know, don't want it in their household or whatever. but it won't die. And that is really this feeling of observing the past six months, all of a sudden Twitter is kind of back. Why do you think that these more progressive or liberal political candidates, commentators, etc., are still using this platform that I feel like we all sort of acknowledged was a very right-leaning platform under Elon? I think it's super awkward, right? I feel it as a journalist myself, like someone who has, you know, been on the other side of Elon Musk's, you know, attacks or whatnot or attacks on the industry that I work in, I think it speaks to the centrality

of the platform in order to attract attention, right? Like in order to shift and change these narratives, you know, it's the quickest way into the bloodstream, right, of the political, you know, elite. It's the quickest way to get those things happening. Journalists, influencers, politicians, like everyone wants a little bit of that attention, right? Because it's their jobs to attract it and do something positive with it. inform people. And Twitter is just still this space because I think there's like this lock-in, right? People have these huge audiences that they've built up over this period of time. And then there's just like the instinct, right? Twitter is this like gamified amusement park style of like experiencing

the news. And I think for better or worse and probably for worse, a lot of people who have power are addicted to that feeling. So that's where they go. Yeah. You also wrote about sort of how Twitter's growing relevance is affecting Elon Musk's political power and power in Silicon Valley. I think when Elon took it over and everyone thought, okay, he's going to run this thing into the ground, it's going to be dead on arrival. People didn't have a lot of high hopes. As you mentioned, it still really remained politically relevant. Has that given Elon Musk more sway in more political spaces? You know, I don't know if it's given him, it may with people like Trump. Like I know he's closer to Trump now reportedly. I'm not sure about that.

you know, specifically if Twitter is the reason. But I do think the influence that he's had over the platform has kind of shifted the Overton window a little bit among some of these people who for a very long time have been flirting with, you know, like Edge Lord type stuff or like right-wing shit posting or whatever it is, right? And the great example of that is the Silicon Valley venture capitalists, you know, the Mark Andreessen's of the world, David Sacks, the guys from the All In podcast. I think what Musk has done being so trolly and being so openly supportive of right-wing candidates, you know, helping DeSantis launch his campaign for president using, you know, his platform and Twitter as the place to do that, I think it's given a lot of these people

in Silicon Valley this feeling that like if you express support for like MAGA policies or Trump himself, you're no longer, you know, going to be a pariah. Not even close. I mean, we've got J.D. Vance as his running mate now, as Trump's running mate, right? Right. And so when Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz last week announced their support for Trump that they're going to be backing him financially. And these are two of the biggest VCs in Silicon Valley for people that don't know. And Ben Horowitz said something about like, okay, you know, like we have to do this for America, blah, blah, blah, and then said like, sorry, mom.

We think Donald Trump is actually the right choice. And sorry mom, she's going to be, I know you're going be mad at me for this, but like we had to do it. And it was like, I thought that there was just such an indicative statement because it's like, oh, it's transgressive enough to seem like it's cool or whatever, but it's like, you know, it's not transgressive enough to actually like get him canceled, right, or get him disinvited. I don't think it'll even remotely get him canceled or that it's like cool. I feel like it's become the Norman Silicon Valley. Well, you know, it's funny because I've been talking to people, like the people who are making a lot of these tech products, right? And what they're telling me is like, no, it's not the case. It's like the

financiers. Of course, not among the workers. Yeah, not among the workers, but among the elite sort of like VC moneymen, right? I think they see it truly as like they're very risk-brained, you know. They have this thing of like, oh, what is the contrarian, you know, take that I can, like, where can I get in, you know, on the ground floor on this thing and look like a genius later? It's like, oh, yes, I defied the mainstream media. I defied all this. It's a really contrarian philosophy. And I feel like it, you know, it is a risk. It could backfire. Yeah. I mean, in a lot of ways, Elon Musk seems like the ringleader of this new right-word ideology in Silicon Valley. Of course, Mark Hendrison and Ben Horowitz have been leaning that way for a while.

They were pretty outwardly right-leaning even back in 2020, although they didn't endorse Trump back then. But I wonder how long this can last. If Kamala does succeed in beating Trump this November and the political landscape changes, will these people flip? because Kamel is also a product of the Bay Area and has a relationship in the tech world. And I'm kind of wondering what you think the effects would be of that type of administration on this. I mean, could that sort of nip all of this in the bud? And do you think that they will start, you know, cozying up to the current administration? Yeah. I mean, one thing I want to be clear with is I'm not sure whether or not he has power, right?

He has influence in the platform. And I think that there's a lot of, you know, among people who want to see the Trump campaign fail, there's a little bit of anxiety of like, is this network going to be, you know, used to Trump's advantage in some way, right? Yeah. So you're going to lean on the scales a little and change something. But to the point of what would happen, you know, in a Harris administration, I think regardless we're going to see this social media temperature and, you know, velocity probably drop a little, right? Obviously, it'll continue to stand. But there's something, and there's something very X or Twitter or whatever we're calling it specific about political elections and election seasons. And especially as they like ramp up into that last three, four, five months where it's just like the news moves on, the temperature gets going. The anxiety builds up. People need to check in. It's like I think I wrote in the piece like Twitter or X is in the doom scrolling business and business is booming at the end of these, you know, campaign cycles.

Yeah. What do you think Kamala's digital strategy looks like going into this election? It's really interesting because when, you know, you were actually like one of the first people to write about this in a, you know, for a national publication, the sort of the Kamala, you know, the coconut pilling of America among the extremely online. Coconut peeled, of course, is a reference to this speech that she gave a while ago where she made this funny reference. My mother used to, she would give us a hard time sometimes and she would say to us, I don't know what's wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? When I was writing about it yesterday, I was like, here's this great opportunity, right? Like, you know, they can find this way to attract this attention. And then, you know, I was like watching them rebrand with like the brat font, right?

And I'm like, oh, this could get really corny very quickly. Like it's not yet, right? But it could, right, if they lean in the wrong way. And so I think it's like a fine line to walk. Like while there's a lot of enthusiasm, I think it, you know, like there's a lot of opportunity. But what I would say is like the biggest asset that she brings for, you know, like a digital strategy. It's that I think there's this opportunity to just attract like a massive amount of attention, right?

Because this campaign is playing out so like differently than it normally does, right? this, you know, sort of a president stepping down. Like, it's a historic situation. So there's tons of attention there. And I think just, like, the best thing that they could do is just try to, like, blot out the sun, right? Like, Donald Trump just spent the last week, or the last couple weeks, monopolizing the airwaves with, like, these iconic images and getting shot in the convention, Hulk Hogan's at the RNC ripping his shirt off and all this stuff. It's like, it's this attentional blackout. And now he's like totally on on the opposite. And I think when he has shown when he is not in the spotlight and is trying to be, he becomes more erratic, more angry, like the less

enjoyable version of himself. And I think that there's a real opportunity for the Harris campaign to just use this moment on all platforms just like a full attentional blitz. And just that's the biggest thing they can do. It's less like what it is. It's more just. that it's blotting out in the sun. I will say I talked to a bunch of people involved with digital strategy for PACs over the past 24 hours that have been trying so hard to do influencer efforts for Biden and get content creators, people with big followers to post for Biden. Nobody's wanted to do it.

I wrote about, especially Gen Z creators, have just been absolutely hands-off. But there's been so much excitement around Harris. And a bunch of people have said that already they're seeing people reaching back out saying, hey, what about that campaign you mentioned? You know, can we pick that up? I'd love to do something together. Can we collab with Kamala? So I do think it'll be interesting to see if they can seize on that. You wrote about this idea of the Hot Ones test for political fitness and how Kamala has this ability to connect with audiences online that Biden really couldn't reach. Can you talk a little bit about what you meant? What is the Hot Ones test? Yeah. So for those who don't know, Hot Ones is a YouTube interview show where celebrities go on and eat a series of increasingly spicier chicken wings and answer questions. very popular beloved so many people you know watch it on youtube it's become its own memeable thing

um and there was this joke that myself and other people were having online about joe biden you know your campaigns in trouble go on hot ones right and it was originally a joke and then it became this in my mind this sort of test right like if the biden campaign felt he couldn't reliably do that without either you know embarrassing himself or that he just wasn't even able to do it or that people wouldn't want him on or whatever, it shows this liability as a campaigner if you can't meet people in some of the most popular venues. And so that became like my theory of attention for him. And Kamala Harris is someone who I think could fit very easily in that. I think I've heard now that like Hot Ones is like an apolitical show that doesn't want to have political

candidates on. Anyway, that aside. I think what it speaks to is exactly what you were saying, right? Like, Kamala Harris has long been a, not herself an online figure, but has had a digital fandom that's been around it for a long time. I'm so sick of hearing, let's talk about Kamala memes. She's totally owning the internet. Like, Jenzy stands her. It's like, I think a lot of young, progressive online users, and especially when we did our Washington Post analysis of kind of who was the most heavily boosting of this, like, coconut pill, you know, content. it's young progressive Twitter and Instagram users that are not they don't agree with anything to do with her ideology. It's sheer practicality of like, let's just get Biden out so that we don't have Trump.

And it's sort of this compromise. And I really like this tweet from this girl, Claire Schaffer, who said, I could be totally wrong, but all I see in Kamala memes is Gen Z nihilism over a lack of choice in the political system. It's not really a sincere standing of a politician. The former is also worthy of critique. let's not complete that with the latter. And I kind of agree. I think it's fun and ironic and people can stand her now because everybody just wants Trump gone if you're young and progressive. But I don't know that once people get to know her policies, that she will be able to have this same

level of popularity. Like, there's a reason that these groups didn't coalesce around her in 2020. I think that's totally right. And, you know, I think back in like February, When New York Times columnist, Ezra Klein, wrote this piece and did this about, you know, we need Biden to step down, right? We need to have this open primary thing. A lot of the pushback was the same pushback that we saw. But a lot of the people that were in support of this idea of Biden stepping down, you know, well before it became an actual reality, we're focused around this idea of there needs to be some enthusiasm. A campaign that is just run out of like, suck it up. and we will march, you know, towards democracy for this reason.

Like, you know, that's not an invalid thing. But I think there's this feeling, especially among younger people, of that's not a reason to get me out to vote, right? Just simply saying, you have to do this or it's, you know, an apocalyptic scenario is not necessarily positively motivating. It is negatively motivating. And so I think that there's a ton of frustration there. And I think that what you're seeing is all of this excitement is excitement. just in the sense that the political system has changed to some degree, right? It's just that, like, I think, you know, you wrote in your piece about all this a couple weeks ago,

the idea of, like, comparing it to a meme stock, right? And, like, the thing with a meme stock is this idea that, like, a small group of people who don't think that they would be able to affect change can band together and do something potentially ridiculous, but it doesn't really matter almost what it is. It's that change happened in some way. I totally agree. I think it's this idea of change happening through an online collective. I think Kamala is kind of the ultimate like meme stock candidacy in that way.

I also spoke to the 20-year-old comms director of Voters of Tomorrow, which is a Gen Z group of contact creators and other people that are sort of like activists in terms of getting out the vote. And one thing that she told me is that young people just want to feel excited. They have never had that Barack Obama moment where they felt excited to vote in election. Young progressive people were not enthusiastic about Hillary. in 2016. They were certainly not enthusiastic about Biden in 2020, but they sort of did suck it up and get on board. And I think this is the first election in a lot of their lifetimes, that they kind of

feel an excitement, like they feel part of the political system, or they feel like their voice was even remotely heard by a political party that I would say for the past eight years has had this like suck it up mentality. It's like vote for us or else instead of vote for us because X, Y, Z. Right. And to speak to that, there was this moment on Thursday night at the RNC where Hulk Hogan came out and he was doing this thing and people were like, oh my God, like, this isn't politics.

And it just like triggered me. I was like, but it is because politics is a big, dumb spectacle. Like it's about all these incredibly important things and yet it's also a big dumb televised media spectacle. And people having fun isn't something that should be sneered at. What you're seeing online with these people is a, like maybe it's not genuine fun, maybe it's ironic fun, but there's like a playfulness to it. There's a like, wow, politics doesn't suck today. And that's what you got to capture, like in a bottle and store

in the reserves and figure out how to harness towards something. Like, Kamala Harris might not be, like, you know, the exact vessel for it. But there needs to be more of this coming from the Democratic Party because as toxic as, you know, the MAGA online politics situation is, those people are having fun for them, right? Like, there is a sense of... They're having a great time. Yeah. Trolling, shit posting. And I feel like there's an excitement around...

I mean, I was just talking to a bunch of right-wing content creators that were at the R&C and just, like, the fun that they were having and the kind of creativity and the nonsense of it all. And I think that's why the dark Brandon meme never hit. Like, when you look at the sort of coconut-pilled, funny, like, drunk wine-a-a-mints about Kamala versus this dark Brandon meme, it's, you know. like the Biden campaign never actually understood what the dark Brandon meme even was, like, which is essentially progressive users co-opting this kind of like idea of like a dark Brandon

who kind of is secretly based by backing very progressive policies. And it was like, wait a minute, is Biden secretly based and cool? And then they very quickly co-opted it. Like they couldn't understand the irony behind it almost. And like his participation in it never really, it felt like this kind of weird negative meme, whereas like the coconut stuff feels very fun, as you're saying, and participatory. And what's interesting about it too is that those clips, those Harris clips that became part of the meme, they were clipped out by an RNC research account, right? So there is this thing to it of like, we're going to, like, you think that that's like owning us, right? Like, you think that's, that's a negative. We're going to spin this around into a positive, right? And that's

a little bit of, you know, maybe even the genesis of like the dark brand and things. But there was something just really inauthentic about all of it because of the fact that, like, you had somebody who it was just, it was not believable that they were in these spaces, like, doing this, right? Yeah. Like, Kamala Harris projects someone who, like, if you showed them some weird tweets or whatever about them that she would think it's funny, right? Can you imagine trying to explain a super cut brat remix of some weird stuff that happened with Joe Biden? and like to him it would be this like really like hey can we sit you down let's walk you through the history of this whole thing and there's this and yes there's this this this pop artist and oh like it would take 45 minutes and so that like that kernel of like inauthenticity it's not only hard

to parse but i think it just it it pisses people off like these same people who are just like what what are we doing here like this is how you're trying to attract my vote like with this totally contrived situation. So yeah, I think that the liability of that is now gone. Yeah, well, it just goes back to what you were saying about the hot ones test of like just not being able, like, can you seem organic and authentic in these online spaces? No one was buying that Biden was secretly this, like, based edge lord, like, who would do anything possible. Like, he couldn't, you know, I think he could barely get a sentence out of the debate. And so it sort of just read very, as very inauthentic, as you said. What's interesting is that he actually was, if you go back to the Biden administration,

like Onion Joe or whatever it was, right? Like the ice cream cone and the Corvette and all that stuff. Like there was an authenticity around that, right? Which was that he was kind of like at his peak in the, in the 70s, rad dad, you know, at the like flipping burgers on the barbecue and kind of like, or like weird uncle, right? Like unpredictable Uncle Joe. And so there was an authenticity there. And then you can, like, age out of that. Like, that's sort of what I was trying to get at with this idea of, like, an intentional, like, Biden was an intentional liability, which was that anytime he made a public appearance at this point, he was basically creating an attack ad against himself. And that's just, like, a bad place to be. Yeah, not what you want as a leading presidential political candidate.

All right, Charlie, well, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. We'll be back to talk about the big news stories this week after the break. All right. I'm here with my showrunner, Zach Mack. We're going to talk about some of the big stories this week. All right. Okay, so I'm obsessed with this influencer lawsuit. These two Texas-based content creators, Sydney, Nicole Gifford and Alyssa Schill, I hope I'm saying that right. They're both in the fashion niche. So they met up to talk about a potential collaboration. Right after the meeting, Alyssa blocks Sydney, and then suddenly starts posting a lot like Sydney, like basically copying her posting style, her fonts, like basically posting kind of almost identical content. to Sydney's. So Sydney is now suing Alyssa, saying that she has violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which is designed to protect copyright holders from online theft. Sydney alleges in this lawsuit that Alyssa used really similar beige and gray neutral color schemes, fonts, camera angles, basically mimicking Sydney's whole vibe. And she says that she even recommended products

from Sydney's Amazon storefront. Sydney's asking from between 30 to 150,000,000, thousand dollars in damages for mental anguish and copyright infringement, basically arguing that this caused her a loss of income. I think this is really interesting because it's kind of like can you steal someone's whole vibe? Like, I know you can steal copyrighted content, but in this case, it doesn't sound like she lifted her exact content. She just kind of took her aesthetic. Yeah, just borrowed her aesthetic. Insert, soldier boy meme. He copied my whole flow bar for bar. Oh, shit. Word for word, bar, but for bar.

Listen, I don't know a lot about copyright law, but it seems loose, right? Like, it's just like, aesthetic is so vague and ephemeral, and it just feels like so many people are doing that constantly. I was watching a movie the other night, and it was like, it so clearly wanted to be Fight Club. And I looked and it came out, like, the year after Fight Club. And I'm like, oh, yeah, of course. Like, you know, it's just like, this happens constantly in culture, constantly. I just don't know that she has a case. It reminds me of Emma Chamberlain.

When Emma Chamberlain blew up in 2018, you had this entire class of content creators that blew up really by mimicking her style on YouTube. Not to say that they weren't original, like, people like Summer McKean and stuff. Like, they're definitely their own personality, but they were in that sort of like Emma genre. What's interesting to me is that neither one of these people are household names. I mean, if this girl is getting copied a lot, I can't even imagine what it would be like to be someone like Julia Fox, you know, or like one of these real trendsetters that gets just

ripped off left and right. But I do think that it'll be an interesting case to litigate. And especially when it comes to like copying exact products or camera angles or aesthetics, it's like how much do you own? How much of your digital vibe and identity do you actually own? Right. I would probably argue almost none. And I get the sense that the smaller you are, the more you want to hold on to protecting your own aesthetic, right? Obviously, Julia Fox, people know who she is so they can attribute her aesthetic to her. And if they see someone kind of encroaching on that, it's easy to call that out. And also, even if someone now takes Julia Fox's aesthetic, she's household and name enough to be fine on her own.

This is probably all they have. They really have to guard it. Yeah, she only has about 250,000 followers on Instagram. But it's tough. I don't know that you can. I don't know that there is like a good case and I just think this happens all the time, especially within fashion. There's just so much mimicry. I mean, there's that famous Pablo Picasso quote, good artist copy, great artist, steal.

Yeah. I don't know if this stealing influencer is a great artist, but I do think that they had a similar vibe anyway. And it'll be interesting to see what kind of precedent this case sets for more of these disputes because I think more of these disputes will come up. I mean, we all copy each other, right? That's kind of like you said, it's the nature of fashion and creativity and art. I think it's just a matter of, like, how much are you lifting? And the fact that she was supposed to collab with this girl and then the girl blocked her. To me, that shows like some level of intent.

Yeah, this is a tough one. Catch me just jacking your style next week. Another stat that came out this week was this survey that Passion Fruit wrote up saying that over half of U.S. adults would be a full-time content creator if they could. This was a survey conducted by this influencer marketing platform, so they definitely have an interest here. But they surveyed thousands of people and found that the majority of people between the ages of 18 and 60 said that if they could make a living as a full-time influencer, they would do it. I think this just speaks to like that most people still think that this is an aspirational career, which it's kind of not. I also think most people just think

being an influencer is super easy. And all you get to do is like, have fun and occasionally talk to the camera and try on cute outfits and go to fun events and they think that's sort of all it is. I genuinely think they think that being an influencer is incredibly fun and easy and who wouldn't want that? Who wouldn't want a fun and easy job that you just get paid for showing up? Yeah, I want a fun and easy job. Exactly. And that's not me saying that this job is easy. I just think that is people's impression of it. I agree. I think it's actually grueling and miserable and hard and it's really hard to make a living online. But I do think it's still aspiration. I guess what stood out to me, and again, this is like a survey conducted by an influencer marketing company.

But just there's been so much correction in the past few years. I mean, this industry is hard. It's essentially like a gig work industry, but for social platforms almost. And I feel like the bubble would have burst by now, but you still see people aspiring to this career. Totally. I mean, you had you had Lily on the other week who's sort of a big time influencer. And she's just straight up said, I make $200,000 a year. $200,000 a year is a great salary, but it's not, you're not rich if you're living in L.A. or New York. You are not a rich person in those cities. And rent, groceries, those things will still matter if you're making 200K. Yeah, especially if you're trying to raise your family on that. Right. For sure. I would, I would take it, though. Same. So Chris Best, the co-founder of SubSec, interviewed venture capitalist Mark Andreessen for his newsletter. And they had this long, kind of meandering conversation about AI and content, et cetera. By the way, comedy needs a renaissance, like, very badly. It's basically died. And so, you know, it could be the way the story gets told is, like, AI saves comedy.

But the funniest moment to me, which Business Insider pulled out, is this moment when Mark Andreessen says that he has basically thinks that AI can save comedy. He thinks that comedy is kind of on the decline right now. And AI, basically people being able to generate endless content could maybe bring it back. I just thought that this. portion of the interview was kind of hilarious and out of touch. I generally disagree with Mark Andreessen on everything, like he says, politically. But I do agree that generative AI is going to allow us to create a lot of our own custom content. I just don't think that we're experiencing any sort of like decline in comedy right now. No, I don't think we're having a lull in comedy at all.

I listened to some of this interview and it sounded like one of the points he was making was specifically around like comedic animation and how you won't need an entire animation studio. You can just animate your own like version of South Park or something like that very cheaply. And for that, great. I love TV, comedy animation and I do see AI's potential for that. But yeah, I don't think comedy is like fundamentally broken or just generally in need of saving. A hundred percent. Also, what drives me crazy about these conversations and I wanted to just like reach through the

screen and like shake someone. is who is paying for it? Like every time they talk about like, it's going to lower the bar to create for creativity. It's like, okay, great. So now all those amazing animators are amazing creative people

that we're getting salary jobs doing this stuff are just producing endless content for free. Like, who is going to support an industry? Like, are all of the creative industry just going to be people, one man bands basically making content for free, hoping that it'll go viral so that it can like get them some sort of career or fame?

It just seems like a very broken. system and there's a lot of economic questions that I feel like weren't addressed in that conversation. It was very like, we welcome, you know, AI innovation. And especially as a creative person myself, like, I love that the bar for creation has been lowered. Like, I love that I can use these Adobe tools to produce better photos and videos and things like really easily in a way that I probably would have had to hire someone for a couple years ago. But people need to make a living and creative people need to make a living. This sort of reminds me of Jimmy. Kimmel a long time ago talking about kind of like the death of the late night show and

him just saying, you know, I'm one of many late night shows now. And eventually everyone is going to have their own late night show on YouTube, like with just a micro audience. You know, like anyone can be a late night host now that YouTube exists. But the more you have that, yeah, the smaller the audiences get and the less, you know, the less money it generates. The harder and harder it is to monetize. Yeah. It's, it's. It's just impossible to monetize. So I don't know about AI and comedy. I also wonder what Mark Andreessen considers comedy.

I mean, this is a man that just came out in support of Trump and is fully red-pilled and cannot seem to. I'm very interested to know, you know, what his comedic sense is. He, like, laughs at Elon tweets, you know, and I... Yeah, he said comedy is dead in this interview. And I'm like, for who, how. Someone should tell him that Elon said comedy is legal. Yes. Now on X.

One of the most terrifying developments in the robot world this week is the Department of Homeland Security bought these dog-like robots. They look like the dogs from Black Mirror. You've probably seen them. They're these little robot dogs on four legs that can run around and go into dangerous environments, whatever. But they equip these dogs with these antennas that can essentially shut down smart home devices in a home. So a lot more homes have these smart home-enabled things that can apparently be used for booby-traum. So the idea is to have these dogs that you can kind of send into dangerous situations that will shut down the technology at you, you know, in a smart home and essentially render it into a dumb home so that these tech-enabled booby traps won't get the police officers, I guess, that are trying to come into the home. The dog can also, I guess, provide video and audio feedback to officers before entry.

And it carries this onboard computer that can do a DDoS attack against it. any internet-enabled device in a home. I mean, the future is here, right? This is like a scene straight out of minority report. And it's weird. I don't know what to say other than it feels very weird and futuristic. I can't wait for the next time I get swatted, or one of my family members gets swatted for like this robot dog to come through the door

instead. Like, I feel like it's just, it seems like a disastrous idea. but at the same time, police are so volatile. They literally just shot a woman for holding a steaming pot of water in her hand recently. So I don't know. I don't know that these dogs would be that much better. It seems like the dogs at least don't have guns. Right.

But also, like, what if it comes into your house and disables something that you really need? I mean, yeah, I guess I would rather a robot dog coming through the door than several armed policemen, you know, if I had to choose. I just think it's only a matter of time, too, that before these. dogs get armed. I'm pretty sure they are armed in other parts of the world. And also, I think it's really scary the way that a lot of these Department of Homeland Security and police forces are embracing technology. It reads very Terminator-esque to me. And yeah, I feel like we're closer and closer to Black Mirror every day. Police state vibes. I mean, this is Robocop. Please put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply.

I think you'd better do what he says, Mr. Kenny. This is actually Robocop where the police are corporatized and they infuse new cutting edge, dangerous technology into their police force and it wreaks havoc. This is literally the plot of Robocoff. Yeah, well, Robocop's, I guess, long been reality here. But yeah, it's kind of, it's kind of weird. I also, I'm like, how many people are booby-trapping? When I think of booby-trapping, I think of home alone, you know? It's like, what, how are you booby-trapping using?

I'm sure there are ways, but I don't know if it's like... You just think of like a paint can, like swinging in and knocking this robot over? Yeah. I'd like to see the police fight that. Keep the change, you filthy animal. Yeah. The last thing I wanted to talk about, and I know that Charlie and I got into some of this before, is just this crazy media frenzy around Kamala and Brat.

There was this CNN segment this week that was truly one for the ages. You had Jake Tapper, Caitlin Collins, who, by the way, is a millennial, and another woman whose name I cannot remember. She looked to be a woman that's not Gen Z. And they're all sitting around this table trying to explain Brat and Kamala to their audience. The singer, Charlie X, CX, tweeted last night, Kamala is Brat. Kamala has branded her Kamala HQ Twitter page with the same aesthetic of the album. That's another Gen Z word, aesthetic. It has a color.

Chartreuse is the color. So it's the idea that we're all kind of brat and Vice President Harris is brat. This segment just read as parody to me. It reminded me of when I went on Morning Joe five years ago, actually, to explain what meme accounts were. And I just wonder when people in cable news are going to learn about the internet. Like, when is it going to happen? They have young people on staff. I think the cords will be fully cut before that happens.

There's also a moment in this clip where they refer to aesthetic as a Gen Z word. and I'm just like, aesthetic is not a Gen Z word. It's just a word used by anyone with, like, taste, I guess. Yeah. It's weird, too, because Jake Tapper himself is pretty online. I'm like, you guys know better than this. You guys are on there. I see you on there every day posting.

There's no way you don't know what Brad means. At least the phrases that they're trying to learn through Kamala are forward focus, right? They're like phrases that are coming out now, whereas like with Biden, we had to like kind of re-remember, like, oh, what does Allie Cat mean again? You know, like, we had just sort of like... He was saying stuff from, like, the 40s. Like, I didn't know what he was talking about ever. Also, I mean, just, yeah, it's really crazy.

I do think that they're, you know, the Kamala campaign is on this, like, razor edge, like, this, like, knife sedge of, like, will, you know, will they go too far? Will they jump the shark? Katie Natopoulos had a good piece this week, basically, saying, like, don't acknowledge it too much because then it becomes cringe. So we'll see how it goes. forward. I feel like this frenzy is just once something's reached cable news,

you know that it's not culturally relevant anymore, so I feel like this meme might be on the way out at this point. I feel like CNN and all of these cable news companies just need to listen to the like Gen Z producers and production assistance. They're probably running the show's

TikTok account and not actually producing the show. Yeah, potentially. All right, well, thanks so much, Zach. That is a wrap. for this week. All right, that's the show. You can watch full episodes of Power User every week on my YouTube channel at Taylor Lorenz. Power User is produced by Travis Larcuk and Jalani Carter.

Nishat Kerwa and Zach Mack are executive producers. Our video editor is Brandon Kiefer. Power User is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you like the show, give us a rating and review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen. We'll be back next week with another episode of Power User. See you then.