The Chaser Report - The Enshitification of Everything™

Episode Date: August 8, 2023

We said the world had gone to shit, and our dear listener's had the impudence to correct us on it. Enshitification™ is the property of Dominic Knight PTY LTD. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. And Dom, we're going to have a bit of a deep dive into why we should be optimistic about the future. Yes, now, earlier in the week we recorded a podcast, essentially reacting to the true observation that things seem to be perma-crap, really. Things are just not looking good at it at the moment. Some people emailed us on podcast at chaser.com today when reacted to that. So is the world getting better or worse?

What advice did you give us to cheer us up or make us even more depressed? We'll find out after this. Okay, so the first email we got, which shows you that our podcast listeners are a bit lazy, which was like 10 a.m. in the morning after it got launched. was from Matthew Oronzen, who said, look, you know, yes, yes, yes, yes, the world's terrible. But that he developed a far more optimistic perspective after reading the work of the complexity theorist Peter Turchin. This is one of the things that I find most disturbing about all the remals that we got, Charles. Just about all of them had a bibliography.

Yes. Like, who are these geniuses who are listening to our podcast? And why? And it's giving us reading. You're wasting your time. You're wasting your brain cells. Go and read. I'm, because of the enormous wages on offer in the glamorous world of podcasting,

I'm doing some university teaching this semester. I do not need more reading for this podcast. Thank you very much. So apparently Petter-Turchin has a sort of big data approach to history and sort of examines demographic shifts over time. And basically what this Petter-Turchin guy has worked out is that essentially over the past sort of decades and decades, presumably centuries, we've sort of reached this point in human civilization where the wealthy have just accumulated all this wealth and power.

Haven't they just? And just sort of fuckwittedness and being a total ass on social media and all that sort of and that historically has happened from time to time. There's been waves of, you know, probably the Louis XIV. Oh, he was shit on Twitter. Oh, my God. guy. Yeah, and, you know.

And Mary Antoinette, let them eat cake. Yeah. Although that was shared a lot, that tweet. Yeah, it was a good, it was. I mean, it was sort of good shitposting. It went viral. But, and I mean, Nero. Nero?

I mean. Enjoy this video of me, of me playing the violin while the city burn. Good sharing, Neuro. And also, a little bit like Q in a way, because didn't he accuse everyone of being a pedophile or something? Oh, probably. Yeah. So, you know,

there's been all these sort of waves of, but then they are sort of countermatched by these chaotic periods where power is, the accumulated power and the centralisation of power is contested and things like the New Deal is brought in under Roosevelt. Oh, okay, so there's a rebalancing. Yeah, and there's a rebalancing of power. And that those periods can actually last a long time. They can last centuries where you sort of have a decent. centralisation of power.

And his argument is that we are about to, you know, we're at the sort of pinnacle period where we're just about to head into a sort of period where... So the insidification of the planet is at a point where there'll be a backlash. So, Charles, as people in our mid to late 40s, are we going to live to see it? I don't know that we are. Well, I think the whole point is that this Matthew guy who emailed us has completely missed the mark on why we're being depressed.

I think I knew all that about, you know, the insidification of the world being bad and that there's clearly going to be a backlash. My regret was just not getting in on the grift early enough. Oh, yeah. And, you know, the hoping that the incitification, you know, all these things like climate change are going to press up. There's literally physical barriers pressing up against the continuing incitification of the world. I think that's, I think my next book is going to be called The Insidification of Everything.

I love that word. Yeah, there's a great. Great word. Being shittification. Yeah. Coming soon. So, like, but pushing up against it. And, you know, like, I just wanted to get in on that at the ground floor.

Good. Because, you know, I don't know, like, lots of people are going on strike. I mean, in Australia, but in the US, it's just incredible. Like, everyone's on strike at the moment. Hospitality staff, they're getting lippy. I don't know whether you follow the anti-Works subreddit. You know, you're just going, you know, workers are. rising up. I don't want that. I want reliable

service for low cost. You know, like... Don't worry, Charles. The last time there was a workers' revolution, it turned out to just been run by lazy intellectuals who then killed everyone, killed all the genuine workers. Well, I'll tell you what, I reckon those lazy intellectuals are our listener base, given the bibliographies. I must say, because Peter Churchill, to me, Charles, that just reminds me of Christianity, right? Oh, it sucks now, but just think of the rewards down the track. No, no. I want it to not suck today, Fed of Turchin. Jesus Christ, if he was using big data. Okay, then we had, no, you've got to, you've got to read out the one that you

SMS me. I SMS to me that you're a screencap because it was so enjoyable. Hi, this is from Sam. In times of extreme adversity, all we have to cling on to his optimism, wrong. If you can no longer remain optimistic, it could be an indication that it's time for your, when he means you, but he wrote your, it's time for you to vacate the space and your position and platform others, and give them the space to express their positions, ideas and beliefs that can serve as solutions to existing challenges. This is basically telling us very politely to just fuck off and give someone else to go. I know, it is the world's politest sentence that means fuck off.

Fuck off and die. In the history of... And I don't disagree with it. I mean, that would be a good solution. The reality of this is, podcasting is a very crowded space. If people want to listen to a more optimistic podcast, they're welcome to. But what I've learned is that we should be more depressing

because people email us to try to cheer us up when we whinge about the existence of everything. I do like his PS though. The PS is great. You should read that. If you want to offload an avocado, I would take one even though I don't have a bath, let alone a pool. So, I mean, he's, he's, arguing for the power of optimism.

That's pretty fucking optimistic to write after you told us to basically go away and platform others. This podcast, Charles, we used to platform others. We tried this. Remember, we had guests. We had young people, we had interns, we employed a whole of interns and people would email us going, how dare you not pay your interns? They're like, I am paying the interns a fuck done, far more than they're ever worth.

Isn't that why they're not here anymore because we couldn't afford to pay them anymore? Because you didn't want them to work for free. No, I didn't want them to work for free because I'm not a fucking asshole. Yeah, that's right. However, they're all doing other things now because essentially the business model was broken. No, they're really successful because I platformed them. Don't do that. I want to kick the ladder out from underneath them.

I think the whole point of this podcast should be to sort of bring the ladder up and stop young people like Gabby and Alexa's huge now, isn't he? I'll tell you what happened to the fucking people we platformed. Gabby Bold is in a sold-out musical at the Hayes Theatre. It's called Murder for Two. Try and get a ticket if you're in Sydney, but you probably won't because it's a fucking disaster. to jug into it.

Alexa Volovich is the biggest YouTuber in Australia, having been platformed and given a whole lot of money to make videos by fucking stupid-ass-me. Well, I mean, this is the problem is you were holding him back from fulfilling his true destiny to be far more popular than the Chaser. He was distracted by his enjoyment of what the Chaser does. But the thing that launched his YouTube channel was a video that I funded. And he said, oh, can I put it on my YouTube channel? And I said, yes. Oh, and they didn't want to rest here on our YouTube channel.

It went completely horrible. What was holding him back was posting his stuff on our show. Yeah, okay. So then, I mean, he's so successful that when my son found out that I knew my fucking intern, he was like more impressed with me because suddenly knew somebody who knew somebody successful for once. Wow. And then Loughlin is my most boring intern.

Sanders directing George Miller movies. I don't know. He's George Miller's PA or something on the latest George Miller movie. Alex is on Wikipedia. Yeah, fuck off. His videos have been viewed more than 388 million times. Shut up! Wow, Charles, you really...

This is, I mean... We talk about Mark Humphreys and how you created Mark Humphreys and he surpassed you. Wow. No. This is a serial situation. He's out Mark Humphrey, Mark Humphries. So there you go. So, Sam...

Yeah, so the point is, don't do that. Just... And also, why would you be... optimistic about the idea that other people can succeed more than you. Yeah, wait until it happens to you, Sam. Then you'll be less chipper about it, okay? The Chaser Report, less news, more often. And then we have Kelly, who's giving us a reason for hope and says,

Kaya, good-day, chaser team. And coming from W.U.W.A. I don't know we had listeners in W.A. That's fantastic. Hello, Berth. Sorry, you live in such a shit place. From the Nunga Nation, fantastic. What does she have to say? This is a very long essay. In fact, there's a lot of names.

I haven't read any of these names. She recommends Von Hildebrand's series of essays called The Art of Living. I don't trust a Hilderbrand since I started reading Joe. Frankly, I think that's why. Well, in fairness, I think this is von Hilderbrand. Von Hilderbrand, yeah. Joe, von Hilderbrand. That does sound more Prussian, doesn't it?

Yeah. But it's interesting because I think a lot of the suggestions are fiction. Yes, which I do find fiction. GK Chesterden, I like GK's Chesterden. Yeah, Iris Motor. But the thing is, like, okay, but that's fiction. Like, by definition, it's not true. Okay, so, oh, I'll cheer myself up by reading something that's not true.

I hate... Well, that literally is the definition of why, like, it's not true. Oh, I'm feeling good because I've read something that's not true. But also, Charles, I don't want to read fiction, because every fiction, every novel that I read is more successful than mine. I've written three novels. The only novel that can cheer me up is my own novel. Every novel you've referred me to it is a novel that someone else has gotten published,

which is memorable than mine. You get very depressed if you read your novels. I'm going to write another one, loosely inspired by Charles. That's my concept. And it's called the inshitification. Enshittification of everything. So, look, thank you all for your attempts to cheer us up. It's been very enjoyable hearing all of your theories about why everything doesn't suck.

We are going to explore this further up. I also got a whole lot of invoices today, so that's another reason to be pessimistic. We are doing talkback. Yes. So, so Dom and I are having a bit of an argument about how to do talk back successfully. We're not sure. The question is, do we do it over Zoom, which would make it a lot easier and probably a little bit more fun because we could actually see everyone? And people would just join randomly and then go away again and it would be kind of weird.

And we can promote it through social media and share the link. Yeah. But I kind of. feel like we also should put out our phone number so that we can actually have so it's old school style people can just... Then it will be engaged in turn off call waiting and people just keep trying to like it through. Yeah, exactly.

I kind of like the mess of a communal Zoom. Anyway, we'll choose one of those two methods, whatever it is. No, no, but I don't, why wouldn't we just do both? You want to do both at once? Why don't we just set up the... Well, we'll just see which one's better. See which one's better. Okay, we'll try it.

We do a Zoom, but we take the occasional call. This is on Thursday afternoon. I'm going to do it's on Thursday afternoon. So even if you don't want to say anything, you can just tune in and watch what we do. Thursday, 3pm. Oh, wait a minute. Are we going to do it a lot? Oh, yeah, I suppose, yeah, if you, yeah, you can tune in on the Zoom.

You'll hear, we won't publish it straight away. We'll edit it. We'll make a lot of edited. We'll make it look on it. Yeah, yeah. But if you want to sort of see it being recorded in real time, just, yeah, jump on the Zoom. Unless it fills up, in which case, if you don't say anything, we'll kick you off. I think we've got it like 100.

100 spots? 100 spots. What are the odds we get 100 people, we'll get 100 people. I think we're getting at 3pm on a Thursday afternoon. We might. 3pm this Thursday, should be in time. We need to set a topic for the first ever call in sort of whatever it's called, talkback radio, let's call it Talkback Radio.

Let's call it Talkback Radio. Is everything shit? Okay. So that's the topic. Yeah. That's the topic. Is everything shit or is it the inshitification or everything? Is everything terrible?

Yeah. Or are there room, is there a reason to be hopeful? I'll give you an optimistic reason, Charles. I'll give you something exciting that's happened since we last. So, because I was going to suggest a different topic. Oh, what's your topic? Which was bad boss stories. Oh, that's just regular talk back.

Yeah, because that's what Triple M, when we were at Triple M, they always said, if in doubt, what you do is you just open the lines. My boss is a bullshit. And you say bad boss stories and the lines light up. And we did, in fairness, we did actually do that a few times. And it was always great radio. Everyone's great radio. Yeah, particularly those who worked for you.

Okay, so here's a counter example. Here's proof that the good things can happen in this world. I am. Okay. This is incontrovertible. Is this sarcastic? No. The best thing that's happened in 2020, officially,

is that the Matilda's won last night. Yes. Two-nil. They beat Denmark. Sam Kerr came out on the pitch. She slipped over and kneeling. She just self-forgeted, but she apparently can still walk. Here's the thing, Chuck.

It got the highest ratings of any television program in the entire year. It beat Origin. It even got more than the AFL grand final last year. Got 2.3 million viewers. on seven and more on Optus as well, probably five more. It's an absolute TV juggernaut. Everyone, and that's not even including the people who watched it at live sites or pubs that are not included.

So the real audience is probably something like three, four million. Yeah. People actually watch women's sport, which but no one thought it was going to be so popular. It's a juggernaut. Fuck everything else. Let's just watch women's sport. The men have had their turn and told them Matilda's all the time. We need the Matilda's paying every week forever.

Well, it is, I mean, it is true. It is just genuinely better. I wouldn't say this with every sport, right? But I think that women's soccer is definitely always better than men's soccer because you know that Australia has a chance of winning. Yes, yes. There was an amazing moment in the Men's World Cup where for the first, I don't know, 10, 15 minutes or so,

we were actually beating France. We scored a goal and then they destroyed us. But we're probably going to play France on whenever it is. next Sunday. Yeah, later in the week. Yeah. Well, Saturday, probably. There's every possibility that we'll beat Fran.

There is. That would never happen in men's soccer, ever. That's true. Any hope that we have would be false hope. Yeah. I went to the only time the men have ever made it out of the group stages in the Men's World Cup. Yes. And it was horrible.

It was, we played Italy. Yes, it was depressing. And at the last minute, someone dived and they got a freak, you know, they got a freak kicking one. That's right. Yes, I remember, it was the incitification of your enjoyment. It's right. Saturday night, Saturday 5pm, Australia versus to be determined at the time of recording. In Brisbane.

And it is going to be, even though it's in Brisbane, it's going to be absolutely wonderful. Do you know what it's going to do? It's going to break the record of the last game. Good things can happen. We'll talk about this when we have our Zoom. Our Giers from Roe, we're part of the Iconaclass Network. Catch you tomorrow.