The Chaser Report - The Bathurst 1000 Exploding Toilets | Ange Lavoipierre

Episode Date: July 13, 2022

Ange Lavoipierre joins Chris and Dom again to explore another uncharted zone of the zeitgeist, this time on the new app 'BeReal' which claims to be a new authentic social media experience. But is performing to be non-performative just as performative as the rest of social media? Find out in this episode of The Chaser Report, or i Ange's new podcast 'Schmeitgeist'. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chase of Report. Hello and welcome to the show. It's Thursday the 14th of July. We've got Chris Taylor. I'm Dom Knight and once again, Ange Lovapier, of the Schmitegeist podcast, the new podcast, looking at pop culture and why it is so from the ABC. Hello, Ange, hello, Chris. Hello.

And it is Bastille Day today, 14th of July. I actually love Bastille Day because I always grew up in a suburb where there was this French restaurant. that was dead, like eternally dead. It was a genuine surprise that it was still in business, year in, year out. But the one day of the year, the only day you ever saw anyone in there was Bastille Day. And I think it's sort of like that, you know, there's certain pubs that no one goes to except on Anzac Day for tour. Yes. And I once.

Well, Irish pubs in St. Patrick's. The Irish pubs and same thing. And I once spoke to where I live in Balmain, there's this pub. No one goes to. And yet you can't get in on Anzac Day. And I actually spoke to the owner. And he said, yeah, that day basically covers us for the rest of the year. They make that much.

And I assume for some slightly dead neighbourhood French restaurants, Bastille is the one day. People are interested in snails and d'A laurent and all these things. The Bathurst equivalent of this is the Bathurst 1,000, where very few people come except at one time of the year. And not to brag or anything, but my father works on local council. That's a massive brag. I know. And he is the water and wastewater manager. Well, he was until this year, and he retired.

Congratulations, Dad. And he told me that every year, the first thing that happens when the bikies show up and camp on top of the mountain, which is their little spot, is that they blow up the toilets with fireworks and low-key explosives. I wasn't sure how that sentence was going to end, Ange. It could have gone one of two ways. And I'm glad it went to parrotechnic way, I'm just going to say. Yeah, no, we'd keep things classy. So for the guy in charge of water, it's a big day.

It's just a heartbreaking day because he's crafted, lovingly crafted these toilets, you know, and then they get blown up by these thugs, these absolute bloody thugs. And then they go, oh, and I said, Dad, that's upsetting, you know what? Surely this is not, you know, and this is just the least of the damage that some of the guys do every year. And he's like, no, you don't understand. They bring in so much money to the town. So this is part of the budget. So Bathis' annual budget is, yeah,

we're going to get a shit ton of money during the Bath's 1000. We'll have to replace the toilet blocks again. They're budgeting for it. I would have been building more toilets to attract bikies from other parts of the country, maybe some international bikies. Like, it's almost a point of pride. You know, like there's certain festivals, I think, I guess bonfires and Guy Fawkes is akin to it.

But I think in China, ones, they build something incredibly precious and then set it a light on fire or explode. And I think this is the Australian culture equivalent where we spend a lot of craftsmanship on our toilets, knowing that one day some bikies are going to come in and blow shit up. It's like a burning man, but for toilets. Yes. I love that this is now, this is half the podcast on the Bathurst 1000. I think that we've just made a contribution to the culture.

And can I just say. that is needed. There's not enough discussion of the Bathurst 1,000 on Bastille Day. I've been to France on Bastille Day. You could, you would be hard-pressed to hear the word bathist, little low Bathurst 1,000 toilet explosions. And more's the pity. That's why France is not the country it once was.

Next time Albanese goes to Paris to meet with Emmanuel Macron, and they sit down and try to build bridges. This should come up, I think. Yeah. Sit down on the trines. Get him out there. Get some nuclear-powered submarines going up and out of the mountain. That's what I'd like to say.

Now, Andrew, we're going to talk about reality. Yeah, well, I've got this new app, right, which is a terrible way to start a conversation. But this one's, it's called Be Real. And it's a little bit different from the others in that. So it's a social media platform, and it insists that you take a photo exactly when it tells you to. And you're not allowed to edit it. You're not allowed to, like, retake it. You just sort of have to like, bam, take the photo.

And it might, you know. Wherever you are. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, you could be on the toilet, you could be, I don't know why, we keep coming back to this. You could be on the toilet, you could be cooking dinner, you could be, I'm usually at work at the moment. Again, cooking dinner, most of my Instagram is just photos of people cooking their dinner. So what's the, what's the catch here? What's the newness? You do see, like, I think what's really interesting is, is people being forced to just sort of show the weirdness and sometimes dullness of their lives and just sort of have to own up to that.

You go on social media, particularly TikTok and Instagram, but I'm thinking especially of Instagram here, and you approach everything with a high, high, high degree of skepticism. You're like, well, this has been edited. This, you know, you've probably been saving this photo for months. It's like a beautiful photo. Oh, you probably crafted this message, this caption that goes along with it. We're all kind of like... I feel like you know me far too early.

Not just you. I'm still sitting on a photo from four years ago. I'm just waiting for the right day to drop. the right joke for it, yeah. Exactly, you know, and, you know, we're all guilty of it, but Be Real doesn't kind of let you do that. And it's kind of taking off in a big way, particularly in the US, it's starting to take off in Australia.

It is particularly big with Gen Z, no surprises there, or maybe some surprises, because I think... That is a bit of a surprise. So this is just no filters, no editing, no curation. Yeah, and I think there's... But more than that, it's a raw reality. It's also no interest, it's saying. it's sort of, no, I'm not saying that as a joke.

Like, the whole challenge seems to be to deliberately capture blandness as a counterpoint to the fake excitement that's often presented on these platforms. I think because my life is quite boring at the moment. That doesn't mean that everyone else's is. Like, you know, us on Be Real wouldn't be that interesting. But if you're kind of like out every night of the week with friends and all your friends are also on there, then that's, and you're doing interesting stuff and every day is a bit different or whatever, you know, then that is, you're quite.

an interesting person to watch on video. Hang on. So is that kind of like a cumble brag? Like, yeah, you know I didn't fake this photo. I just happened to be in Ibitha on the beach. Totally. This is the real me. Totally. Yeah. It's a flex. I hate it already. Yeah. No, no. If it's just going to be full of people, oh, I was forced to take this shot because it told me I had to take it. Oh, and I just happened to be hanging out with these glamorous people at a VIP event. No, I'd vomit. It doesn't look, like, I think, because they all end up being quite unposted. Like, a lot

of the photos are quite, you know, shitty. Like, they're a bit, like, blurry or, like, out of focus. And, like, it takes your photo at the same time as it takes whatever's in front of you. And so you kind of, you know, it's hard to do two things at once. And so you, like, your face is not often doing what you would want it to do. But it's really quite liberating to have this permission to go like, oh, whatever, everyone's just putting their first draft out. Blap, there's my first draft and everyone just puts theirs out as well. And yes, maybe they might be on, you know, the beach and Abitha and I'm, you know, sitting at the office. First draft of a perfect lifestyle. Yeah, yeah. But I think.

think there is something quite nice about that and and it is you know I think it runs against this this dumb narrative that we have about you know quote unquote young people right which is like oh they're also vain and they're also like online and they're you know they're really curating their you know and this kind of like fake online um curation narrative that runs about young people which is this is not it this is not it like the reason that 50% of it's not it they're still very online. Sure. They've just switched to a different platform.

Yeah. No, no, that's a good point. And in a way, how much notice do you get? Like at the same time every day, like can you plan to be, you know, on the top of the Eiffel Tower? You get,

nah, it'll just come whenever it comes and it says you've got two minutes. So you just have to like. Oh, you've got two minutes. You've got two minutes. I could get a photo shit together in two minutes, I reckon. If I was in bed in my jogs and you gave me two minutes, I reckon I could get up to do something vaguely presentable. Yeah, I think they've done the two minutes.

it's so that people don't have to see you in your jocks. Right. It's the Taylor Clause. The Chaser Report. Now with Extra Whispers. I quite like it and I kind of see why people are into it. I happen to not have enough interesting people in my life at the moment who are like doing something different every day that this app makes a bunch of sense for me.

But I could see how it would have been really great 10 years ago and I would have like, I would have frothed it. I would have thought it was the best thing ever. And, you know, you can kind of see this pattern overall with that generation really rejecting the carefully curated perfectionist version of being online. Because it is exhausting and shitty and damaging for our mental health. And people are really gravitating towards going, you know what? Well, here's like a photo dump.

He is just like whatever I took and, you know, deliberately bad selfies or like distorted vision. Like it's kind of a trope now. It's a thing that people do knowingly and like kind of as a bit of a joke. Like it's a little bit funny as well. And yeah, it's like the next, it's kind of the next generation of how you represent yourself online, which is just a little bit closer to the truth, which I think is not a bad thing. Do you think it's just something Gen Z would do in addition to the more traditional ones or a complete replacement?

I think, you know, we love to generalise about generations, but I don't think, you know, there's always going to be, like in the same way that there were millennials who were not overly preoccupied with being too perfectionist and curated online. I'm sure there will be plenty of, you know, zoomers who don't care to, you know, show their like make up free, ugly first thing in the morning, be real selfie with, you know, share that with all their friends. They're going to be people who are more self-conscious than that, but it is a pattern. Like, it is an observable pattern for sure.

It's interesting. And I think it's great to move away from the incredible, given that people can, Now, there are all these apps that make you look more beautiful and actually restructure your face. It's probably good to go away from that. How mass market is this, Ang, like, is this, are there hundreds of millions of users of this thing? Or is it really just sort of new? Definitely, I think, tens of millions, for sure. Oh, wow.

It's like, it's been getting a lot of buzz this year. And, yeah, people have said, oh, you know, the next Instagram. And whether or not that turns out to be the case, it's hard to say. Because, you know, these things really need to kind of catch fire. Like, there needs to be a critical mass. Yeah, right. But I'm wondering whether to go on it or whether my life is so incredibly tedious. I think it's worth giving it a go, but you've got to like find out that there are people,

that there are people. I probably wouldn't know anyway, it was on it. Yeah, yeah, it's true. And then you've got to be that a million. Yeah, so it would only really be of interest if you know the people. It's no point following randoms or even, I guess celebs might be interesting. There is a, like a, like there is a random column. Like you can toggle over to like not just people who you know, but people who are, you know,

just posting or whatever, and it is kind of like, you remember chat roulette? Yes, yes. It's like a non-horny chat roulette. That's where Dom and I met. That's right. How old chess team, how do you get to do that? See, it's funny he raised that

because that's sort of the best touchstone for fad, like social media, phenomena. And I'm not entirely sold on this yet. Yeah, totally. These are my two issues with it. One, I'm not convinced it's a million miles away from how a lot of people I know are currently using Instagram. I'm always amazed at what people think passes for content on Instagram,

especially in stories, but not so much the photos, but just random, just sort of, yeah, they are kind of a bit out of focused, a bit nothing, just a beach here, a shop front there. And I go, is that really content? So it seems, A, that's sort of already happening a little bit, that kickback against the perfectly crafted shot is already happening on the traditional platform. Yes. The second point, and this isn't, criticism is more sort of an observation that I think all of these things,

I kind of like the spin that it's, oh, it's this really sort of political, deliberate attempt to move away from the perfection of Instagram. But I kind of see just as much archness and calculation in moving to something that's not that. Like, you're almost owning the flaws in the same way people have owned the perfection in the past. Yes, it's another kind of construction. You always just rebel against what came first. And I sort of kind of think, yeah, it's new, but you'll spin on it I'm not buying. Yeah, I mean, look, this is just my spin, by the way.

I don't think, like, Gen Z is kind of getting on there and using this and going like, hmm, isn't this, like, aren't we being dialectical? Like, no, like, I think they just actually really prefer it. Like, they're, you know, they're like kids a lot of the time. And they're... It's a new toy. It's a new toy and it's fun. Like, I don't think they would do it.

Like, there would be no worthy argument you could make to a 16-year-old to convince them to use this app. You know what I mean? So there's nothing worthy about it for them. They're just like, no, this is better. I reckon people would be making the same argument you're making that. I reckon there would be people telling themselves, oh, it's more authentic. But it is.

But I don't think it is. No, no. I think it's just, I think it's fake authenticity. Does everyone you know have to take the photo at the same time? because I'm interested in that, that I'm from the whole world simultaneously having to say what they're doing. Yeah, I don't know. I think it must stagger it because otherwise, I don't know.

Yeah, I think, but I think you each get it, from what I can gather, you get your push to like your prod to do the thing at a different point in the day to other people who you're friends with. And once you've posted your thing, you can see what they've done. And that's like your ticket to ride. Like you get to see if you, so it's like honesty for honesty. but you can see like it really is genuinely it's quite like it's oddly magnetic if you go to the like if you scroll through and start to see like people literally all over the world just like

peek into their little lives and you can like and you know they haven't been edited you know they haven't done a retake it's just like first crack and it it feels like a glimpse that you don't get anywhere else I cannot sound less boring and checking Facebook again so I think on that level No one's trying to sell you anything as well because, like, you don't have the time to construct a thing. Like, oh, my comedy show is coming up. Like, here's a ticket link. That's, I wonder how long before people worked out how to use it to sell things. Maybe, yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure, you know, you just have to carry.

I just happen to take this picture of a shoe. Carrying your QR code with you everywhere all day. So that when, yeah, maybe. I mean, I'm sure that, you know, nothing is true in 2020. In 2022, then, you know, eventually this will be monetized and perverted like everything else. If it's popular, it'll be monetized. But at the moment, I genuinely, if I reach for it, I cannot find a comparative in my mind for, you know, another experience like it at the moment on the internet.

Yeah, right. Sounds great. Angie, you should do a podcast about this. I may or may not be doing episode 10 of Schmidgeist on this topic. But as you can hear, I am still researching. There you go, guys subscribe to it via your podcast app of choice. Thank you very much, Chris. Thank you, Angie is from Road.

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