The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Scott Monty on The State Of Social Media

Episode Date: November 26, 2019

Scott Monty on The State Of Social Media ScottMonty.com Scott Monty Patreon Group

Hi folks, Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Thanks for being here. Holy crap, it's another Chris Voss Show podcast. And we have one of the most incredible guests I've ever had on the show. Actually, he's a guy I have a huge amount of respect for. I've known him for a gazillion years, at least through the social media age.

And he's brilliant. He's smart and he's fantastically good looking. Let's put it that way. So thanks for coming to the show. Guys, tuning in today, be sure to go to thecvpn.com, subscribe to the podcast we have over there. Tell your friends, neighbors, relatives, dogs, cats, pool boys, mistresses, tell them all to tune in. It's the greatest thing ever. Or you can go to chrisfontispodcastnetwork.com. Today, we have Scott Monty of scottmonty.com. He's the executive advisor, speaker, and neoclassical strategist who is a recovering Fortune 10 executive. He advises corporate executives and boards on modernizing their culture to meet the

changing needs of customers, but does it with examples of history, literature, philosophy, and poetry. Together with his ability to trend spot, he shows teams and audiences that the key to our future is understanding timeless wisdom about human nature and focusing on integrity. Scott was actually the first executive at Ford Motor Company to lead digital communications and social media. You just have so much on your bio there. The other thing about Scott, I should tell you, he's an impeccable dresser and he's a connoisseur of the bow tie. Welcome to the show, Scott. How are you doing, buddy? Thank you, Chris. I'm pleased to be here. It's good to see your shining face and to hear your mellifluous tones coming through the microphone.

Well, it's mostly the tones. I've got that radio face. There you go. That's why I'm a podcaster. You know, I mean, Victoria's Secret keeps turning me down to do their show, but here we are. Well, you don't have to worry because they canceled their runway show this year. They did, and I'm out of work, So this is what I'm doing as my side. This is my side hustle, the podcast.

Yeah, which is good, because now I can eat those cookies and stuff and fat myself up for, I don't know. I've got to get back in shape for the Chippendales run next year, though. So there's that. Well, there's always that famous Chris Farley Chippendale clip. If you can live up to that, you know, you'll be fine. I will never forget the moment I watched that on SNL Live, and I was on the ground almost having a heart attack seizure

because I could not breathe. I was laughing so hard. It was that moment when you realized that you had been waiting all of your life for Patrick Swayze and chris farley to do that like you subconsciously had always wanted that to happen sure sure just didn't know it until it happened and it crossed the lexicon of of you know coming out into reality and you're just like you know it's it's the same scene as bob barker fighting, what's his face, in Happy Gilmore? Adam, yeah. Yeah.

You never knew you wanted to see Bob Barker beat the crap out of somebody because he was so nice, but when you saw it, you were just like, that completes me. But you complete me, Scott, being on the show. You're very kind. So tell us a little bit about yourself, Scott, that we haven't covered. I mean, I know you from social media. I got to know you very early on in social media.

You were one of the early pioneers. You really helped pave the way for a lot of corporate social media divisions, departments, et cetera, et cetera, and how they were doing their thing. Well, that's very kind of you, Chris. Yeah, I mean, at Ford, we were lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. You know, when I was approached by Ford in late, I guess it was late 2007, it was when the company was really on the ropes. It had taken out a $26 billion, what CEO Alan Mulally liked to call a home improvement loan to help shore up the company's finances

and to finance that plan and get it in place. And that was two years before the other two U.S. automakers just got blindsided by the carpocalypse. When it came to that time, and that's when I was there, Ford had already gotten that financing. So we're in good shape. But I joined the company in July of 08, reasoning that by 2010, Ford would be making a comeback.

And my estimation was that social media would become mainstream at that point. So you would essentially have this kind of intersection of forces at the same time that would just kind of explode, which is exactly what did happen. You know, we didn't anticipate the whole bailout hearings thing and Ford not having to take the bailout. That was a big shot in the arm for us in terms of PR and marketing, but it gave us the ability to start telling our story to an audience that was paying attention. Back in those days, there really weren't a lot of brands on Twitter or on Facebook or elsewhere.

It was corporate blogging to begin with. And we were the first to do a lot of things. We were the first brand to have a Google Plus page. Hey, remember Google Plus. We were the first car company to reveal a vehicle using Facebook. You know, so we were pioneers in so many ways. And in turn, that kind of made me an internal consultant with the company,

somebody who went from department to department, you know, kind of sharing best practices, making sure there was alignment, making sure there was governance. And in turn, you know, hop-knob knob with the C-suite and got a lot of insights as to how the C-suite works, how a multinational, you know, manufacturing company functions and was able to glean a lot of insights because of that. And after doing that for about six years, I left and went off on my own. And as you say, I started a consultancy working specifically with executives to help them get better at this stuff. Nice.

And we watched your trajectory over time. And it seemed like Ford and through you was one of the first to really build a division, a PR social media department within a giant Fortune 100 company, if you will. Yeah, there were a few others, a handful of others beforehand, but they didn't really hit the mark. I mean, they were just kind of doing kind of under the radar stuff, you know, the bare minimum. And as a matter of fact, it was a colleague of mine, a guy who I had known

through his time as the chief blogger at IBM, who then went on to take the role at General Motors, who encouraged me to come to Detroit. And after I got there, I think he was regretting his recommendation because we just kind of left them in the dust after a while. Of course, we all know what happened with GM and the bailouts. But, you know, with automotive companies, it's all cyclical. They're all trading places, you know, every year or so. And for my part, we were just so pleased to be able to share what we had learned with the rest of the world. Because the idea was, let's bring society

along with us. And working for an American and global icon like Ford Motor Company, a Fortune 10 company, it was a great responsibility. And I knew that Henry Ford, back when he put the moving assembly line together, when he adapted that concept for automotive manufacturing, he invited executives in that were competitors and from other industries to study how the automotive moving assembly line worked so that everybody could put America on wheels and do the kind of manufacturing with appliances and all the rest that made America and the world really a better place. So I viewed us doing things kind of in that mold.

And the thing is, with Ford Motor Company, the specter of Henry Ford still hung over us. It was a family, still is a family-run company. Henry Ford's great-grandson, Bill Ford, is the executive chairman. It's the only automaker where the founder's name is still on the logo. And Henry Ford, of course, is iconic, along with geniuses like Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs, these inventors and business geniuses that have really managed to change the face of the world. So that kind of gave us the ability to humanize our approach at Ford and to take a very

different approach than any other automaker. And you're right, it has a very storied history. The rising tide lifts all boats. One of the things that Henry Ford did is made it so that his employees could afford his vehicles and a lot of different other things that he did to really advance the thing. Like you say, getting everyone into the semi, the semi line was a huge invention for the industrialization of, of America and getting us to the next phase of production. And you know, and you're right that, that I remember back in 2008, I had my mortgage company and a few other companies and it was in real estate and it was that home equity line. Like you say, that was the savior of

Ford because, um, they taken that out right before the, uh, right before the crash. Right. And having that was, was the real key to their success. And I remember back in that time, the dealerships, I mean, everything came to a standstill. It was very scary. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there was a point where we really didn't know how the industry was going to fare. And that's why Ford had to go to Congress with GM and Chrysler was not to ask for the money, but to stand up for the industry and to say, look, these are our competitors, but they are also part of the global fabric of the supply chain. And if they go under, what does that do to the supply chain that Ford and Toyota and Volkswagen and a whole bunch of automakers rely on? It was a whole

ecosystem that needed to be propped up. One of my favorite things about Scott is, Scott is, I like to talk about people when they're right in front of me, uh, but to describe you to our listeners, you're I'm right here, Chris. Uh, the one of the things I love about Scott is Scott is very, uh, what's the right word? I'm not even smart enough to say the right words. He's deep. He's deep thought thinking. He's deeply thoughtful. That's the word I was going for. He's deeply thoughtful. He's very cerebral and intellectual.

And so I've always loved following him, listening to him, watching what he writes, what he says. He even has a Patreon where you can go to his Patreon. Do you have the, what's the URL to that Patreon, Scott? Patreon.com slash Scott Monty. Scott Monty. And of course you can go to his website, scottmonty.com. I love following him.

He's one of the thought leaders. I have a very small group of thought leaders that I listen to. I like what they say. I like how they say it, how they present their ideas and all that sort of good stuff.

To me, that's the poetry of life for me. You know, I don't get normal poetry. I went to public school, so there's that. But, so, let's talk today. We talked about, so I encourage people to go check him out. Go check

out his Patreon, everything else. But I brought him on today because we were having a discussion on Facebook about the Sasha Baron Cohen speech that he gave in front of the Anti-Defamation League that's been going around social media probably saw it i it came upon me uh through the feed i think in the middle of night or late at night um i believe daily beast was the one who published it first um and it's a great 25 minute uh speech about facebook where things are going uh conspiracy theories regulation of social media networks and everything else and i thought scott would be a great person to bring on because, you know, he and I have both seen the social media growing up.

Can you call it that they grew up? It seems more childish now more than ever. You know, we've watched the evolution or de-evolution. We may have gone up, but we're going back down the slope. So those who haven't seen the video, you can get a link on the chrisfossshow.com. You can search for the Sasha Baron Cohen speech at ADL. And if you haven't seen it, I really recommend you seeing it. But I wanted to bring Scott on to kind of collaborate with his thoughts on it,

where social media is, where it's going, whether or not these companies need to be regulated. Sasha speaks pretty highly about how these companies probably need some sort of regulation, how they have kind of unbridled freedom for the most part to support racism, bigotry. Pedophilia is out of control on the Internet right now. And, of course, you know, we've seen people that broadcast videos where they're killing people in live time, and it gets shared millions of times across social media. So, Scott, I'll put you on the point there. What were some of your impressions that came from the speech that he gave

and what you thought about where that goes? Just to preface it, Chris, I think, you know, I've been around the social media space for a decade and a half. And, you know, the advice that I'm seeing a lot of people give today, and look, it's sorely needed advice. It's the same stuff we were saying back in 2009 or previous to that. And why is that? It's not because it hasn't sunk in, although that's part of it, right? I think there's a couple of things happening. One is just from a pure human perspective, there's a lot of turnover, particularly at agencies where a the whole social media operation to their agencies to handle. And okay, I get that because it can be a lot of work. But for those brands that are kind of taking a hands-off approach and letting someone else run the show for them,

what you're seeing is you're being victimized in terms of the high turnover rate. So your, your social media folks you know, name your agency. You're lucky if they last six months, a year, maybe two years at most. So they don't have the the, the wealth of experience, the breadth of knowledge of watching all this stuff play out.

They're not students of the history of advertising, marketing, and PR over the last 20 years. Those of us that actually have lived through it and that are not digital natives that have had to adapt, we've seen it happen up close and personal. We've made the mistakes. We've seen others make the mistakes as well, and we've learned from those mistakes. So I think that's the first thing, that there's this human human turnover which is natural and it's being relied on i think i think and it's because these companies don't take social media seriously i see this in my relationships with pr agencies it's like four to six months i i'm dealing with somebody new uh even worse i'm

writing about this in my book and advice to pr agencies uh they no one ever recovers the email and relationships that are in that person's email when they leave and they seem to hire a lot of chewing gum people that they're just they're this isn't their career this is their kind of like summer job we're just kind of treading water waiting for the next big thing yeah i mean they they are sometimes the cheapest labor they can uh with the highest turnover and is is that because they don't just give it i mean why is that do they well i think it's for a couple of reasons one i think social media has never been given the proper due um that it should have. It is, if practiced well, it's more strategic than tactical. And it can live beyond a single silo within the company and should live beyond a single silo

within the company. You know, the whole process of digital transformation that we hear a lot of people talking about, a lot of, you know, big consultancies are working on that. Digital transformation goes across the enterprise and so should social. That's an undergirding of digital transformation. You should be learning about what your customers are saying, improving your products, giving feedback to your legal team and your IT team, obviously customer care and all the rest. There's a way to make it part of the ecosystem rather than, hey, intern, hey, kid, here's a few tweets you need to put out.

Because this is the other part of the thing. And largely when social media started out, it was PR and communications agencies that were running it. Gradually, marketing got wind of it. And when the likes of Facebook and Twitter and all the rest started putting advertising onto their platforms, well, that's when marketing got to step up with the budget. And of course, he with the largest budget is going to win the departmental fight, no question. But in doing so, what's happened is social media has gone from this earned media,

community building kind of thing that it initially was under PR and communications and has become more of an advertising platform. And we've seen the same thing play out that we saw on television and then on the early internet with banner ads and the likes, where it's the same model where you're just talking at people. You're shoving content in front of them. You're paying for it to get in front of model where you're just talking at people. You're shoving content in front of them. You're paying for it to get in front of them, and you're walking away for the most part. There are some brands that do some fairly good jobs at community management,

but by and large, the community management that they do is putting out fires on Twitter, responding to crises, or handling customer service inquiries that come in on Twitter, you know, responding to crises or handling customer service inquiries that come in on Facebook, on Instagram, on Twitter. So it's become a very, you know, kind of bifurcated thing where it's either handling complaints or pushing content, right? And when you do those two things, what's the incentive for the agency? It's to minimize or it's to maximize the margin, right? To minimize your spend on it. Yeah, you're going to spend on media and you're going to pick up a percentage of the media

buy that you get, but you also have a budget allocated for these other activities. And more and more, we're seeing agencies, not just in social, but marketing in general, getting squeezed for their margins and they don't have anywhere to move. So of course they're going to hire the cheapest people. Of course they're going to work them hard. Of course you're going to see a lot of turnover, lather, rinse and repeat. Now this is where we are. Yeah. And what's really sad to me is a lot of the relationships are lost. Relationships is a huge thing. I'm sure to you and i uh and the relationships are lost and and i i've literally had relationships for years with people at a uh at a pr agency or as a major

company and suddenly my emails aren't getting returned and uh you know very rarely i'm lucky enough where there'll be a bounce back email that says, Hey, I've left the company, but that's like super rare. Um, and so finally I'll just reach out and around to, uh, the company and be like, Hey man, is Joe Smith still there? Cause I was talking to him and I keep emailing me and he never answers. They're like, Oh no, Joe Smith left. And you're like, so let me get this straight. You had a major company pay you as a PR agency sometimes it's the company itself um and they built all these wonderful PR relationships inside and this is the thing I'm talking about my books so um and you have all these relationships that are in that email because that's really where most of my relationships are these days uh and they're just gone like no one

recovers the email when that employee leaves i guess no one gets the password no one no one even gives a care to it it's just tossed away and the thing that kills me is they're in some board meeting right now trying to figure out how they can make more money marketing when they've thrown away this whole database to email these people that's absolutely and and i think what you've seen also is the whole influencer thing. Yeah. Again, that's been handed over to marketing because it's more of a contractual relationship.

Yeah. Now you get the history of the contract and how much you paid the influencer to do their thing. But to me, you know, it's the difference between influencer relations and influencer marketing. And I know we're kind of splitting hairs here, but again, this is the difference between PR handling it

or communications handling it and marketing handling it. And marketing views it very much as a transaction because that's how they've, that's how they bought media for years, right? And they view influencers as nothing more than a celebrity type media buy as a sponsorship. And to your point, it's those relationships that were developed that really mattered. You know, I, we, we used to have bloggers in all the time at Ford Motor Company and I took great pride in that program and develop relationships with as many of the bloggers as I could. Our agencies were the ones that reached out to them and, you know, did all the footwork and really did the lion's share of getting them there. When they were there, you know, I made sure I

spent time with each one of these people and built relationships on the ground. And to your point, walked away from Ford and a lot of those relationships walked with me and we're still in touch and we still interact online and they're, and they still get contacted by the company, but they go, you know, it's just not the same since you left. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, you know, I, I, I followed Ford a lot because of you. Uh, and the same thing with my good friend,bert scoble i i if anybody ever

asked me you know where where should we go for um you know computer cloud services i'd say rackspace because my friend robert scoble works there um you know i would i'm not i honestly i'm a bmw fan uh and i have a lot of respect for the ford brand then and but i would follow the ford brand because you were always talking about it and posting about it and all the fun things. One of the things I always remember you posted, I think this might have been after you left, but you posted a picture where they got a Ford Mustang on top of the Empire State Building. I believe it was the Empire State Building, wasn't it? Right. That's where the launch started out in 1964 on the 50th anniversary in 2014. That's where it started up.

That was one of those moments I'll never forget. But these are the people who lead us through things. And I do have smart PR agency employees that they follow me. They take their database with them and they just go from agency to agency and stuff. But yeah, it's, it's interesting. I'm still in the age of where people still treat social media like a stupid stepchild. Like you'll have somebody that's paying you to consult with them and all of a sudden they'll be like, Hey Chris, we're going to cut your services. We found somebody to work for us. Oh really? Who? Yeah.

Our nephew just graduated high school and we're going to put them in charge of social media. So, so typical. I know. And then they wonder why they don't get the results that they were promised or that they see from other brands. Well, if you're going to do this well, it starts with a well thought out strategy and it has to maintain its cohesion. It can't be somebody that just kind of shows up part-time or doesn't understand the broader implications to the business. There's a lot of moving parts here. And I've had somebody list out exactly like everything

that a social media manager does. And to me, it's a little more granular than the stuff I used to do at Ford because I was more at an executive level. But everything from art direction to coding to content creation and copywriting, it really becomes the entire span of what marketing is today, all crammed into this little window that everybody knows of social. It's so much more than just, hey, I got a nephew who tweets if you're doing it right.

Yeah. And it's amazing to me how many, I don't know what's going on because like you, I grew up in the age of In Search of Excellence, Tom Peters, who helped really build me a lot of companies with his stuff. He almost bankrupted me on some of his ideas though. He was like 50-50. And evidently people that document things that don't actually do them aren't always right. It's kind of weird. But I have huge admiration for Tom and I wouldn't be where I was today

without him. But in Search of Excellence, you remember how powerful that book was and it changed a lot of mindsets of corporate America in the customers. Number one and all that sort of stuff. Now things have just really flipped. I mean, um, one of the things I'm talking about in my book is, is these,

these, uh, these bots. Now these bots, they were, uh, what are they called? The response bots.

Yeah. Um, response bots. Yeah. The, the ones on like facebook and different things they are i mean of all the polling i've done with them and communicate with companies like 95 of them are garbage you you never hear from the company it just seems to be an excuse to like

be like yeah we'll get back to you yeah we responded so yeah we'll get back to you. Yeah, we responded. So we'll get back to you with a official response. It's basically the modern-day hold music. Yeah, there you go. But it's to a humanized voice. And, you know, if you're trying to fake people out with a bot, you're not really doing it right. I mean, you can acknowledge that it's chat, but there's nothing wrong with that. If you want to use technology to help you manage, you know, your operations,

okay, fine. But did you see the – I guess it was about two years ago or so, maybe three. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, had a live demonstration of Google Home or of the Google automated for business kind of thing where he made a call to a hair salon or something like that. And the person on the other end of the line didn't know they were talking with a bot that was trying to set up the appointment for him.

And it was freaky. It was really freaky. And it's like, all right, what are the ethical implications there? What's a business responsible for in terms of helping their customer or helping the person on the other end of the line understand that they're not actually dealing with a real human being? Because that can go so far. And there's going to be a lot more of that because AI and automation and all the rest, that's going to be doing a lot more in the future. What are the responsibilities?

What are the ethical implications there for people that think they're dealing with another human being? And I've been fooled. I don't know about you, but I've been on websites and I've been fooled that I was talking to a real human being. And when I figured out it was a bot, I was not happy, especially if I was a customer. That's the thing. That's the thing. It's what, and this comes right down to one of my great theories, but great. One of my theories of the world is that 90% of all business problems

are communications based. You know, if only we could explain ourselves better, if we could do a better job of laying things out, we wouldn't be in the jam we're in so many times. And, and the example that you just gave where you were pissed off after figuring out that you weren't dealing with a human when you thought you were, if they just explained it up front, that would have just brought your blood pressure down uh commensurately yeah well they've created they create this maze now i can think of my bank does that uh a bank of america uh geico is known for that uh geico has hidden their their contact phone number and i've been with geico for like 10 15 years or something uh i just really like that lizard i don't know why

i'm just into the lizard. I mean, the progressive chick, she's cool, but she just doesn't do it for me like the lizard. I don't know why. Maybe, I don't know. Your brain. Is that what it is? It's my lizard brain?

It's my caveman? That may be well. I just have this contact with whatever crawled up out of the primordial soup of my evolution. And you know, Chris, that's funny because that's part of my supposition. You announced in the intro that I'm into history and literature and all the rest. The point is, the reason I keep coming back to that is because we see the same kinds of things happening, not only in business, but just in society over and over again. And we see the same mistakes being made. We see human nature just kind of playing itself out century after century. And history doesn't necessarily repeat itself,

but it does rhyme, right? And if you're ready for that, if you understand the patterns and you know exactly what human nature is up to, then you'll be able to predict what's going to happen in the future, regardless of what the platform is, which gets us back to Sacha Baron Cohen and Mark Zuckerberg, because I think Facebook could have avoided a lot of this if Mark Zuckerberg just stayed and finished out at Harvard and worked on his psychology degree or something to understand more of human nature. And I don't think anyone, whether they're from Google, Twitter, Facebook, or wherever, is an intentionally bad actor. I don't ascribe any of this to any kind of evil

motive. I think it's just people that have tried to do the right thing, but really haven't been prepared for the consequences, haven't thought this through to its ultimate conclusion. The question now is, as Sacha Baron Cohen has put it, when confronted with this, when the reality now is, okay, here's what we're dealing with, with autocrats and propaganda and true fake news, if you get my drift there. Now that we know it's being promulgated on these sites, now what do you do about it, right? This is what's going to make the difference between what I would describe

as bad actors versus just naive actors. Yeah. And would you say it's Mark Zuckerberg's naivete as sort in his education, or is part of it the balance between that and the financial aspect of it? Like, we're a company, we have to make money and beholden to shareholders. And, you know, now it's kind of seems to have turned the page in the Trump era is that he's beholden to politics because Trump has played. And I'm not being political here.

I mean, I think this has been, you know, he's he said it. I mean, they're starting to use social media as a battle axe for the conservative right. And they're demanding, you know, hey, we need to be listened to. And he's been very angry sometimes when white nationalist sites have been kicked off of these platforms. Yeah, and I think in some ways they've been over-responsive or over-sensitive on some of these things. They've wanted to go out of their way to make sure

that they don't appear to be biased. And I get that, especially from a communications perspective. I get it. But at any point, Mark Zuckerberg, because he controls the voting shares of that board, he could make a unilateral decision to reverse course. Even if it's going to take a hit for a couple of quarters, if he stands up and says,

look, we are affecting one third of the world's population with our platforms between WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook and Messenger, we owe it to society to do the right thing, to pause here and really understand what the implications are and to really take stock of what we need to do going forward. I don't think there are any easy solutions. You know, I said a few weeks ago, well, just stop political advertising. Well, that, you know, flows over into issues-based advertising,

things like climate change and domestic violence and stuff like that. You don't want to harm, you know harm players that are out there trying to do good from that perspective. But at the same time, just put a halt on paid political advertising for right now. You can figure this out. And certainly through the 2020 elections,

I mean, that's really where it comes down. We're seeing this play out once again. And didn't even have to go farther back in history for this, except to 2016 when you saw the meddling in the election and what was done. Yeah. I mean, you would think that they would be the first people that would put up and saying, you know, we screwed this up once. We're going to take a little bit more time to figure this out.

Props to Jack at Twitter for standing up and saying, you know, we're not getting involved in this. Uh, Google has since come out and they're dialing stuff back. And of course, um, you know, I'm not being a political basher here, but the conservative, the conservatives on Twitter, as soon as I saw, um, Google put out, you know, some new standards about how, where you can't micro target as much, you know, they started pounding the table about how we're being censored, et cetera, et cetera. And, and, you know, this is one of the voices they have to listen to and, and demand. And,

you know, everyone wants a voice at the table. And the big challenge is that was one of the other reasons I wanted to have you on the show for the intellectual input was you know, people are, people sometimes get into the whataboutism of this, of like, well, how far do you go in banning or censoring or how far do you go in doing whatever? I like Sasha, and I've thought about it a lot. Sasha Baron Cohen, I think, puts forth the best sort of procedures that, you know, there's certain, and I talked about this yesterday in my podcast about, I pretty much did a whole podcast on the

Sasha thing. I believe there are certain tenable things that we can decide are very despicable in society. In fact, we've created laws to establish that those are despicable, pedophilia, violence against people, hate crimes, racism, et cetera, et cetera. We've already decided as a society that those things are improper. So why are we allowing those things to run rampant on Facebook and social media? The genocide in Myanmar was a huge thing that you would think that Facebook would have stepped back from and gone, wow, we really need to think how we're impacting the world. Right. Yeah.

And he called Myanmar out in his speech specifically. Yeah. You know, a couple of things that stood out to me is that, you know, he said, whereas one thing, he said that freedom of speech is not freedom of reach. And, you know, it's one of those throwaway phrases. But when you really pick it apart, it makes a lot of sense. You know, this automatic knee-jerk response, oh, we're being censored.

No, you're not. Nobody's stopping you from saying these things. I think what we want to see stopped is we want to stop the amplification of this, the needless and dangerous amplification of it. You can see some crazy guy standing on a soapbox on the corner of a street who's ranting and raving for 20 minutes as traffic goes by. Nobody's stopping him.

You've been driving by my corner, huh? Now we know what you do on the weekends. Nobody stops somebody like that. But as soon as they go and they want to broadcast something like that they want to take it and take that hatred and and put it out there that's when society rightfully so i think has a problem with it so it's the difference as he, of freedom of speech and freedom of reach. Yeah. And I mean, I can, you know, I had, I had, I got in an argument and tomorrow I'm going to have a gentleman on who's a good debater on this, who he usually throws out a lot of about isms and he's very debating and sort of person. He runs a comedy show that's does a lot of debating over love and relationships and so and he does comedy on so he's very funny but you know he was

giving me a lot of what about isms on facebook when we're trying to talk about this and i'm like well here's the problem with what about isms is how low do you go do you go well pedophilias need to have a voice too you know i mean and mean, and maybe, maybe Hitler, you know, maybe he did have something against the Jews and we should just let him run. I mean, how, how far do you go down the wormhole or where do you stop or where do you decide the things are that we need to take care of? The one thing he talks about is objective fact and objective truth. And I think we can, I think, well, I assume we can all agree, maybe it's my delusion, that in this world of conspiracy theories, I mean, I've seen you talk about fascism. We've talked about fascism, I think, privately. This conspiracy theories, the dissolution of truth, the ability to make people question reality and truth. This is how fascism rises.

This is how governments are overthrown, how autocrats rise, fascism works. You know, the dear leader sort of aspect, but making people that where they don't believe what they see. I mean, the man's actually known for saying that to a group in his rally, but this isn't just his playbook. This is every autocrat's playbook in history. This is right out of George Orwell's 1984. The leader instructed you not to believe the facts that were before your very eyes. It's not what you see

and think. It's what the party tells you. That's right. It's interesting. It's happened. right yeah it's interesting it's happened what is it was it 1984 and it's 19 uh 2018 god i'm getting old um and i remember when that book came around i remember it was 1984 you probably do although i don't want to date you you're you're clearly much younger and better shaped than i am uh at least you look at that way scott actually 83 i have there's a painting of me up in the attic you know what do you do do you inject formaldehyde At least you look at that way, Scott. I'm actually 83. There's a painting of me up in the attic. What do you do?

Do you inject formaldehyde into your veins or something at night? Are you on that Michael Jackson thing, cryogenic whatever? Yeah, I sleep in the bariatric chamber. There you go. There you go. Good for you, man. I need to order me up one of those. So where do we go from here, Scott? How do we solve this problem?

How do we get back the truth and objective truth and honesty if there is a business you can do? I know. I'll go back to our friend. And I'm putting this all on you. So the whole world is waiting and watching on your bated breath. Clearly, I'm going to have to run for office after this. I'll vote for you. Sasha Baron Cohen said it's time for a fundamental rethink of social media and how it spreads hate and lies. And I think that's exactly right. And to me, what it's meant is spending less time online, which is difficult when you're a solo practitioner and your connection to the outside world is social media.

But it means closing the computer. It means getting more active in one-to-one conversations. For me, I've doubled down on my email newsletter and Patreon, where I'm talking about more of the things that I think are important. And then the other thing is reading. I think we could do with a lot more book reading. And I don't care if you get it on Kindle or if you get it off the shelf of a library or whatever. I mean, you can see behind me, I take reading seriously.

And again, this is why I think we all need to understand history a little better, because we're forgetting these things. We forget the atrocities, we forget the mistakes, and from the leaders of the pages of literature. So I think if we did a little more old-fashioned reading and reflection, right? Because everything we do online now, it's like you got to have a knee-jerk response to something. You got to be ready with a quip, an insult, or an attaboy kind of thing and And blame that on the share of the retweet button. And this is what these social media companies that Sasha talks about are how they're manipulating us. I mean, their algorithms monitor emotion. They monitor triggers.

And so they amplify that up through your systems when it becomes a highly emotional dramatized, they can see a lot of activities going on and something and they push it to the top. And it takes a great deal of self discipline to get around this stuff. I mean, just this morning I saw, um, a couple of hashtags on Twitter. One was Trump cheats and another had to do with Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Sarah is a liar or something like that. She hates being called a liar. Yeah. Yeah. She hates being called a liar. In the, uh, well, I,

I don't know if you do profanity on your show. You can be as profane as you want. I mean, so there's that famous scene in liar, liar with Jim Carrey, where he's got this criminal that keeps calling him to get out of, to get out of, out of jail or get out of the jam he's in.

And, and Jim Carrey's secretary says, you know, snake is on the line. He's just held up an ATM at knife point. He wants to know if you have any legal advice for him. And Jim Carrey grabs the phone. He holds it away from his,

from, from his mouth. And he screamed into the phone, stop grabs the phone. He holds it away from his mouth and he screams into the phone, stop breaking the law, asshole. So if you don't want to have these things kind of pointed your way, don't do the things that are responsible for them. My point with seeing those hashtags like that and last week during the impeachment hearings,

it's easy to jump into the fray and add to, you know, the, the, the people that are trying to pick holes with these people. What is it going to matter at the end of the day? You get recognized with a like or a retweet. I mean, is that really going to affect your life versus not engaging and not giving way to that anger and hatred. It's, you know, the classic philosophy of Yoda, right?

Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to the dark side. It's simple wisdom like that. That's, you know, it's funny. I could hear the voice when you said that too.

I don't want to force it here. It's one of those voices where when you say it, you can hear Samuel Jackson saying his lines. So this reading thing. You want to hear Morgan Freeman saying it. Yeah. So this reading thing, on my PS4 Pro, which video game is that, reading? Is that the?

You know, I think that's the problem you have with this generation you know my mom was a teacher for 20 25 years and over all those years she was going through uh here in utah uh one of the problems you had was the metro area of course is a city area but the rest of utah was cattle farming farming and stuff and they didn't get college they didn't understand why you want to go to college you can milk cows there's nothing wrong with milking cows um but they would constantly dial back the education budget for my mom and you know sometimes i talk to my mom she's being like she's like can we refinance the house because i need some more money per month. And I'm like, what do you need money for?

And she goes, I'm spending about $250 a month on my own money to pay for supplies for the school. I'm like, what? I know. And she's like, yeah, they won't. They dial it back. They doubled our class size. I remember when they took our class size, they practically just doubled it. And she's like, I can't.

And my mom loved these kids god bless her because i would have probably killed them all um not really i like kids but uh i would have just quit but uh it's it's a lot of work to be a teacher and uh or a parent and uh neither which i am clearly uh and so she would she would you, just every year I'd hear about, you know, well, the legislature took more money away and we have less to work for. And we're trying to jump through all these hoops and the regulations. We're just trying to educate some damn kids here. And I remember her telling me just like it was a theme over 20 years that we

are raising a generation that's going to be dumber and stupider. And, and she didn't mean that mean way but just uneducated ignorant not aware of you know they took civics out of school histories and history sometimes uh what was it else also band i think you were a band member were you yes i was so was i played trumpet but i forgot yeah that was one of those things was never gonna get me laid um but that's me personally uh the uh but no i was in band uh but you know a lot of those things that you learn i mean you look at you look at i mean you you you're like one of my friends who was a ceo of a company who came from a literature uh background um and he went to college for literature and for arts, liberal arts.

And he would always talk about how much that really influenced his ability to be a good CEO. What was it? Steve Jobs, when he went to college, and the only thing he was really interested was in what's the art of that thing called fonts, basically, but the art of the script or writing or whatever. And they say that was the thing that he used that really made Mac work initially was the, you know, the ability to write and document and create fonts and, you know, and, and so, yeah, it's interesting.

You know, what's, what's the gun that is now at Mark Zuckerberg's head is, you know, he's got almost 50 attorney generals now that are investigating for a monopoly. So it's not just the politics of someone twittering at him from the White House. It's now AGs that are involved in the process. Google is seeing the same sort of attacks, monopoly, that are being used, I think, in a political sense. I think Twitter has definitely been under pressure.

You've seen all their CEOs, I think, begging at the White House or negotiating at the White House trying to balance everything. Do they need to just say, I don't know, we're just going to do things our way and not make everyone happy? I mean, Jack seems to have done pretty well with his announcement that we're just not going to get in it. So we're out of the trap for the most part. I mean, you can sling your arrows, but you have to sling them on Twitter. Yeah, I mean, I think he certainly gets the credit for being the first mover there and doing what Facebook still hasn't decided to do.

And the jury's out as to whether they will. I've seen some pundits say, well, maybe before Thanksgiving, maybe before Christmas, whatever. Don't hold your breath. And what matters is doing the right thing because it's the right thing, not because you've been pressured by others in your industry. Whether it turns out to be the right thing operationally for Twitter remains to be seen.

But I think Jack's spirit, you know, where it's been devoid of so many other things about denouncing, you know, fascists or hate crimes or things like that, where he's had the opportunity to step up and has not, or to create an edit function. He certainly appears to have done the right thing this time around.

So we'll see how it takes. But ultimately, what you've got with Facebook is at least they're being consistent with their brand. They're throwing elections consistently, is that what you're saying? Pretty much. I mean, they've constantly overstepped their bounds, apologized, overstepped their bounds again, apologized some more.

They've lived by apology. It's been this apology as a strategy. There's no trust for Facebook anymore, which is when I kind of roll my eyes and say, hey, good luck getting them to actually do anything about this. I don't know if they will. And I view it very cynically, and I'm sorry that it's come to that. I'm sorry that I have to be that cynical about it,

but that's exactly what they've proven themselves to be. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of interesting too. It almost seems like Mark Zuckerberg's attitude is he will drag us to where he wants us to go i remember and i'm sure you do too uh years ago when he came out with the statement i believe was one of the facebook gate meetings that they face face aid or whatever the hell it's called um and he uh stated that privacy is dead and at that time we all didn't know that we our frog was boiled yet we were kind of in denial about it. And everyone was like angry.

Well, privacy is not dead. No, privacy is fine. Meanwhile, Snowden's going, no, it's really dead. And now we just kind of accept that. And it's kind of like he was the early prophet who got the arrows who went, well, you know, whatever. And I think we do live in an enlightened age and it becomes more and more unenlightened i guess if you will one

of my favorite sayings that i i think i i uh changed i don't know i haven't done enough research to see if it's mine yet but one of my favorite sayings is the one thing man can learn from history is that man never learns from his history and i like the ironicness of that um because it goes in a cyclical motion but uh you know getting back to truth and and you know it's interesting to me there's certain if i go on to network tv cbs whatever plays over the air um under fcc regulations uh there are certain words that they cannot use before a certain time period but social media has got free freaking rain it's the whatever they want to put out there 24 7 and uh you know i remember the dilemma i i don't know

what you've done with your children but I remember the dilemma of my religious brother who was just horrified to ever let his kids get anywhere near the Internet, even up into their teens. I mean, you finally let them on Instagram. And me, I don't have children as a parent, but for me, I share the same horrification of, like, you know, I know what's on there and where it can go and, and where do these innocent minds that'll go. And, and maybe there shouldn't be, you know,

the ability for certain impressionable young minds, especially those who are wandering through that age of teenage-dom trying to find themselves. I was recently reading about some young girl who was kind of lost. She broke up with her boyfriend. She was so just kind of angry and she was young. And, and the people who picked her up was a white nationalist group. And so she, for 10 years, she ran with that as a, as a, as a person of hate. And, uh, I guess when, you know, she finally found Jesus or something, I don't know. But, uh, you know, how do we keep these impressionally young minds? Because that reach is being used for recruitment for these ugly areas of society that want to build up these people and validate, you know, your anger and your hate and your disassociation with life or your anger at it.

And they give you that vehicle and they give you a group of people that go, hey, you're as crazy as we are, so you're right, you know. And it's not just the young minds either. It's any impressionable. And we see that in targeting towards the old people. The old people? That was kind of rude. People who aren't as internet savvy who are in their older ages. And, of course, what we're seeing out of that is, well, I guess social media technically plays to everyone's prejudice when it comes

down to it. Yeah. Um, everybody's got a bias one way or another. And there, there have always been bad actors in history. Just have, I mean, I think by and large, human beings are, are good and kind and want to do the right thing. And there's maybe, you know, 1% to 3% of humans that are just not so nice. And that's the way it's always been. And power of numbers.

You know, we've always survived because the majority went. Well, what happens when you've got the ability to take that 1% and to amplify it so that it seems like it's 90%? Good point. This is where we are right now, and this is why this technology, if not checked, can be very dangerous. And again, this gets back to my earlier supposition that did the progenitors of this technology really think through where it was going to go? If they knew human nature, if they knew the extreme potentials

on either end of human nature, they could have predicted this. And, you know, can you unring the bell? Are there things that can be put into place now that can help staunch some of this and to restrict it? Look, one would hope that with AI, with automation, that we're able to nip some of this stuff in the bud. But again, there are nuances in the human language, nuances in how things are taken. It's going to get really messy before it actually… I think Sacha Baron Cohen… I'm sorry to interrupt you. I think Sacha Baron Cohen has a good point.

These guys got plenty of money, and they've got the smartest people that are playing AI on the thing. But their attitude right now, especially what Mark Zuckerberg has been trying to push, like it is George's speech, is that we're just going to try and give everyone voices. And of course, not having to hire 50 million moderators helps the bottom line. And I think more and more, what really came out of me in the Sasha thing was more and more realizing

that we're the mouse in the cheese maze and that their algorithms are now designed to control us. Um, you know, I came up through the YouTube era where if I put up a great video, I could get it trending and it was just the quality of the video, what I did and what I said, and they have it being topical, et cetera, et cetera. And then things change the same thing with Twitter and Facebook and other things. Uh, I can have an influence and control them. And then it came to where the algorithms came in. And then it became more manipulative on their site. Now, when you go to trending on YouTube, a lot of it's technically paid advertisements or paid promotions and, you know, pushing their thing. And so it kind of went from this democratization of where all

of us could decide that hey this government's bad or hey this is a really great video or music to where now like you say and especially not just with algorithms but with bots um you can take that one percent of the darkest part of the internet and turn it into the loudest voices in the room yeah and the most influential and they can of that reach, they can find the most weakest of minds that will go, hey, that sounds like a great boat I'll get on. It looks great because it's the loudest voice in the room. So therefore, it must have some sort of authority of, I don't know, of being right, I suppose. Well, you know, when the incentive is to simply drive eyeballs

because it's an advertising-driven marketplace, you've got to wonder whether we've completely turned this thing on its head and if there's an opportunity to right the ship. Because here's the thing. In a study last year, people said they'd be willing to give up all their personal data to a brand for $150. $150 to give up all of your PII to a brand. I don't think that's right by any stretch of the imagination. But, you know, some people want to put a price on anything.

See, I would go for $200. You're a fine, discerning gentleman. Yes, I value myself highly. Maybe $250, $225. So here's the thing. At the same time, we're seeing people being unwilling to pay for news. They just expect that it's always free. Between getting your news for free and getting all of your social networking for free,

we've painted ourselves into a corner where it's just the expectation that all of this just flows freely. Well, guess what? And I think Scott Galloway said this earlier. Advertising is a tax that the poor pay. If you can't afford to have a paid service, whether it's a newspaper or ad-free Hulu or whatever it is, the advertising is the tax you pay. We need to come up with a model. And I know Jimmy Wales has just done this with a new social network,

the WT.social network, where there's an option for people who want to pay $100 a year to join this social network that'll never have ads and will never do anything with your private information. We need to move toward a model like that, where like the utilities you pay for, like your phone, like your electricity, like your cable or your streaming services, you know, it's a form of a utility, and we need to treat it and regulate it that way.

At the same time, we need to think about our local news. Certainly the national news is doing well, but the local news is really where it matters. And they're really struggling too. Well, a lot of them are, yeah, but the big ones, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, they're doing okay. I know even the LA Times is struggling. Yeah, a lot of the local ones are shutting down in some of the smaller cities. That's the thing, yeah.

The local news is where we need more attention and where it really matters to people, right? Where they're having this dialogue at the local level, where they're interested in their schools and their town council races and different things like that. We need to get people interested in being civic minded once again. And that goes part and parcel with helping them understand history, get interested in reading. In some ways, if the entire electrical grid just blew up and it was some kind of apocalyptic kind of film. We might do,

it might get pretty bad at first, but we actually might come out of it a lot better. We'd be, it'd be like the purge. People would be murdering each other for wifi. I don't know if you do that as a disciplinary thing to your kids, but I love this age where you can just discipline your kids, but you're like, you don't have to spank them or anything anymore. You just away the wi-fi and you've ended their world that's exactly do

whatever you say dad um so i and and you know i was going to ask you about that uh new social site one of the problems we have and one of the things i got i thought was seeing you through with the social bearing um speech was this trap that we're in with Facebook where all of our data is there and we have 10-15 years worth of data there you've got grandma auntie m and auntie m wow there's a reference from a long time ago uh you've got grandma and and uh Dorothy and and uh everybody on there and it's it's almost a trap in and of itself or a maze that we're stuck in that it's really hard to. I remember when Robert Scoble, my good friend, was trying to get his wife, Mary Ann Scoble, who's just wonderful. And he's like trying to get her to come to Google Plus and she wouldn't come over.

And he's like, why won't you come over? And she's like, because, you know, Grandma and Annie and, you know, everybody's here on Facebook. And so trying to extricate ourselves from you know facebook and go we're just going to take our ball and leave is a whole lot harder and i think mark knows that and the and the board of directors at facebook i think they know that um and that's that's the conundrum um you know and it reminded me of Dr. Seuss's Lorax, where there was this phrase toward the end where the Lorax said, unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing's ever going to get better. It's not. And somebody's got to make the first move.

Somebody's got to tear themselves away and start to bring other people along. And you know what? move. Somebody has got to tear themselves away and start to bring other people along. And you know what? It may be that Facebook just dies out as their population ages, that people will start to go to some other platform. But most people joining are pretty young, so it may take us. I know. I know. What are we in for until then? I don't know. I'm probably not. I'm probably not long for this life. So maybe it's, well, 20 years maybe. So, I mean, what do we do? And when I talked to you yesterday, you know, my friend, I think,

I'm not sure if you're friends with Mike Elgin, but Mike was really big on social media and Google+. And, you know, Mike finally just declared, you know, I'm taking my ball and going home. And is that a Carver reference? It's three days. I mean. And he left Facebook.

And so I pondered, well, what do we have to do? Do we have to just walk off of Facebook one day like we talked about? Or is maybe there a way to use the power of their platform against them? Like a lot of my posts aren't so much emotional as they are educational. Like I'm trying to share the word. I'm trying to pass the word around. Someone on my Facebook post mentioned to me the other day, they go,

I'm getting more news from Chris than I'm getting from CNN, which is fine with me. And so, and sometimes I throw in a little emotion because you know that's how you've got to drive it to get things. But I'm also using it as a way to stand in the mob of holding up the sign. To me, it's the virtual mob of the march, holding up the sign that if enough people say,

we're sick as hell and we're not going to take it anymore, maybe Zuckerberg might change. But of course, the grand irony is I'm posting content on something that's being used against me. So, you know, on one hand, Mark sitting there going, he ate the cheese. And then on the other hand, demanding change. So do we strike in front of the, in front of the place that's giving us poor employment, trying to get a change or do we go get a job someplace else?

I think the only language they understand at this point is eyeballs, attention, and money. They don't understand the plaintiff plea. They certainly don't give a lot of fuel to the good stuff. Like we've mentioned before, the stuff that sells, the stuff that gains eyeballs is the controversial stuff. It's the stuff that angers people. And that's a sad state of human nature, but there we are. Yeah.

And it recently came out that they've got, there's a few white nationalist uh groups still operating on facebook and i remember i haven't gone in it for a long time but i used to pop in it just every just to do a dipstick um and i remember going to the deplorables groups and i don't think up until that time i'd ever seen so much racism uh xenophobia hate um i mean i was just astounded as to how you know i think we all kind of lived in this utopia during obama that we all came towards a societal agreement i guess there were some people that were being pushed into pc that didn't want to be that held that in the closet but you know to wake up one day and see that on the facebook

or like most of us, when we saw those torches being carried in Charlottesville and like, where the hell did this come from? Right. Um, I remember a lot of my friends when Trump was first elected the day he took office, the, uh, so the law, uh, poverty center, um, started tracking the hate and we started seeing the postings and my gay friends had their cars, um, uh, vandalized. And, uh, one of my friends who ironically was, um, was a Muslim from, um, the country that we went and saved in Iraq. And I always forget the name of it. Um, but it was the country that Iraq invaded and we went in and took the country back. We, we fought a war of these guys. Um, she was literally thrown out of an Uber cab and called the N word in other, um, uh,

negativities, uh, usually attributed towards African Americans. Uh, but she was, you know, she was Muslim from, from, uh, Eastern country. She wasn't even, but that was how ugly the racism was that had been held in this closet that got thrust forward. And, you know, we've seen it outpouring. The Southern Poverty Law Center has kept track of all this hate, the rise of these hate groups.

And so, yeah, I'm just, fortunately, we've seen some of it cut back. The Richard Spencers of the world, you know, they've been kicked off of platforms. They've more and more had their voices taken away. But it seems like Facebook seems to be the one platform that kind of wants to let it roll and still play both sides. Well, let's not forget that the commander-in-chief is tweeting that his opposition is human scum over on

Twitter, which is a phrase that Hitler and Stalin have used in the past, particularly with respect to, to Jews. That doesn't bode too well. So, and now you get into a debate about, well,

what's appropriate to allow the president of the United States to say, because it is of natural national interest or, or, or newsworthy versus, you know, where do you draw the line there and say, he's actually promulgating hate speech and is promoting this kind of behavior that you just outlined. We've seen the rise of for the past three years. So again, there, there's no easy answer here. It's not cut and dried. But we need to really think about this seriously and have this debate. And maybe Twitter does need to hold some people to account. There was a thing where Twitter threatened to clamp down on hate speech. And a lot of the GOP in that instance said, well, if you do that, then a lot of our contentP in that instance said well if you do that then a

lot of our content is gonna get wiped away and again I go back to my Jim Perry thing no don't speak like a little don't don't use hate speech don't speak like a white nationalist or whatever it is you know and this is this is how genocide begins is how fascism begins, the dehumanization of each other, regardless of race, regardless of religion, whatever it was. In Hitler's case, it was the Jews. And technically,

actually in Hitler's case, it was the Aryan race, so it was pretty much anyone who wasn't white, light-skinned color and blonde hair, which was weird because he didn't have any of that. But he wasn't spectacular look i mean seriously you look at hitler and you're like yeah you're not the genetic top of the heap there buddy little man um but uh but you know that's how these things work i guess that's the grand irony of the ugliness of it but uh you know it's this dehumanization of each other, this part where we don't see each other

as Americans, and yeah, I mean, you and I, people who studied history and have an education, even though I didn't go to college, but have an education of seeing the world and how it works, it's interesting to me. I grew up reading a lot of the books. You know, I knew I was dumb, and I knew I didn't have a good education. I grew up poor. Um, but I knew I needed to educate myself. So I read a lot of books and I read a lot of Kennedy books. Uh, I read a lot of books about the Marshall plan and how we work so hard, uh, and spent so much money and, and did things to try and spread capitalism around the world. And now you just see all that disappearing and just being thrown away and you're like the blood of patriots were put on the beaches of normandy for the spread of capitalism now we're

just right now he's talking about pulling out of nato you can't imagine if that happens but uh so do we need to leave social media do we all need to get up and leave or do we need to is there some way we can use the power of their amplification to speak up and and and uh come together as in unity and say we're mad as hell we're not going to take it anymore and you're going to change your thing do we have to pass new laws they give them i mean they they have less regulations than the mpaa for movies. You have to regulate video games with a adult rating. There are certain websites that I can't get onto without claiming I'm 18. You know, we have the, we have the pop podcast. There's a lot of different vendors that we invite to come on the pop business podcast, talk about investing in marijuana and the business of it, if you will. And so a lot of their websites they go on to, you know, I have to say that I'm 18.

Yet on Facebook, I can, you know, anybody can get on there. Technically, you're supposed to be a rule you can't account according to federal standards of, you know, unless you're 13 years or older. But we really saw that TikTok just let that thing run and let everybody on the platform. And they end up with like half a million dollar fine or something like that. But do we just need to create tougher laws to regulate these guys? Well, I think they definitely need to be regulated in some form. I'm not going to self-regulate. That was pretty clear from what we've seen. And certainly what Sasha Baron Cohen said in his speech,

they won't self-regulate. So they need to be pushed. I think that's part of it. I think if, you know, folks have always been good about starting a movement and trying to get things kept to catch on. It just needs to be focused. You know, I think right now it's too big and broad and, and not granular enough for people to understand. We need to take one thing at a time, you know, and figure out what within that, uh, needs addressing. Uh, and the other thing is if we can just start to commit to,

um, personally, uh, to, to being less, uh, spiteful, cynical, um, cynical, snarky online, and trying to do things that are kind and uplifting and motivating other people and encouraging other people. It starts one person at a time. And I know it sounds kind of corny, and I know it sounds like it may take a long time as a result, but we have to start somewhere. You know, the Lorax new.

Yeah, and it begins with us. I mean, it takes a village, but it begins with us. I mean, everybody has to make a decision. It harkens back to some of the things I like that Bobby Kennedy said in his speech in South Africa, where he talked about each of us has an impact on life and we create a ripple of effect that can tear down the greatest walls of adversity. It's a wonderful quote and I can't remember exactly off the top of my head in my old age, but I used to have it down. But each of us will be judged and we'll ultimately judge ourselves on the difference we make in the world

and the difference we make in society. I remember one time I had somebody trolling, just some real ugly stuff that was kind of out of left field. Like a lot of times when people call me an asshole on social media, I'm like, so what's your point? Um, but, but,

uh, he was, he was trolling me with something that was like, you're just like, is that really your choice of trolling? Like I can give you some other things to troll me with. And, uh, I remember him making the statement cause I was, I was popping back at him and just saying, really, are you sure you, that's what you want to run with? And he goes, yeah, this is what Twitter is. It's, it's the troll platform. That's what we all do. We troll

on here. And so I had a little back and forth with him. I think it's saved somewhere. And I said to him, I says, no, that's not the purpose of Twitter and social media. We're not supposed to sit and be snarky and just troll each other and be ugly. There's a huge educational platform here, a way to build great relationships, get to know people better, become smarter and of ourselves. And it was really interesting in their conversation we had on Twitter. He changed and he went, wow. Oh, okay. I never thought of the bigger picture.

And thanks for sharing that with me. And it turned from a negative, ugly trolling situation to hopefully we were both the better for it. And, yeah, I mean, that's kind of how it goes with changing the world. One step at a time, one handshake at a time, and one hug at a time, I suppose. You know, just as kind of an IRL example, if I may, occasionally I may have made a stupid turn in my car, cut somebody off accidentally.

I think we all have. And you feel bad about it. Well, sometimes you get somebody that, you know, rolls up next to you at the stoplight and rolls down their window and starts screaming at you, you know, of what an idiot you were. And in those situations, I always go, what? And I make them repeat it louder. And I go, what what and they do it again and I go and then they go off and you know they've either they've either gotten the anger out of their system or they feel foolish for exactly what they've done and I haven't done anything to get engaged in it I just kind of

highlight the idiocy that's going on here you know the trolling and just like are you sure you really want to say that my dad used to have this interesting way of dealing with uh people that would flip out and do stuff like that and he had kind of a soft tone and he had a manner about him that was very christ-like um i'm not saying my dad was jesus christ in any way shape or form but in his older age he he kind of started to embellish that. A lot of people would compare him to that. But he would have this thing where he'd go up and he'd put his hand on their shoulder and he'd be like, someone must have really hurt you or something really happened to you.

What made you this way? What was it? And he would have people break down and cry. They'd go from being angry and yelling and screaming, and have people break down and cry. They go from being angry and yelling and screaming and they would break down and cry. That's exactly, that's exactly it. You know, I, um, I think of Mr. Rogers. Oh yeah. Aces, you know, one of the kindest people out there, um,

who exhibits patience and, uh, empathy. And to say to somebody who's angry like that, to say, you know, you must be really hurting right now, you know, acknowledging that and getting them to open up a little bit. I think there's a lot to that. Yeah. And I went through the same phase. I remember when my dog was going through cancer for about a year and a half and I was doing hospice care, I was raging on social media. You probably saw that bit about Trump. Um, and of course I was pounding the table long before a lot of people were pounding the table because I, I've known people like Trump, um, that are business people. I've known them personally as friends. And I kind of looked at them as kind of like handicap cases where I just went, you're just stupid. I'm just going to love you because you have a problem.

But eventually I had to cut those people out of my life because they're just toxic. But, you know, so for a long time I was hurting and angry over my dog and so I was ranting on social media about Trump and everything. And fortunately now I was right, but there were a lot of times where I was a little too jacked up emotionally. And it was because something else was eating at me and I was dealing with it. And I think we all have that. But I think sometimes we see these platforms as, like you say, they're the platforms for being snarky and smart and smacking each other around.

And in a lot of ways, they're kind of like, you know, I used to read about road rage and why people got so angry in the cars because I have that problem too. And we feel that we're insulated in our vehicle. Like if you or I met on the street, we wouldn't say some of the ugly things that people say to each other on social media face-to-face. Probably because one of us would end up beating the other senseless um probably you because you're in better shape than me um you beating me that is

um i don't know why i'm inciting that scott bonnie would ever lead to violence but uh i don't think you ever would you're you're much more cerebral for that um but uh you know what i mean so uh but no i mean we wouldn't say things face to face and in the car we're known for doing that being very ugly but i think social media gives us that same vehicle where we can be very ugly because we're insulated and protected that we would never say to another human being face to face that's exactly right although i don't know I'm a real jerking person out here. That's just me. But you think about it. I mean, we all have a backstory.

We have something, and whether it's a trauma we experienced in childhood, whether it's the way we were raised, whether it's something we experienced this morning. Somebody might have gotten fired or spilled coffee on themselves on the commute, on the way to work, or yelled at their kid or whatever. You don't know what somebody's backstory is when they come to a situation like that. And good old Fred Rogers, right? And I'll quote from The World According to Fred Rogers right here. I just found this quote this morning.

He said, there's a quote he likes from the little prince and it's what's essential is invisible to the eyes. You can't see everything. And there's so much going on within every single human being that it's dangerous to make assumptions like that so isn't it better to just show up with kindness and assuming that people have the best of intentions rather than assuming that they're trying like they're out to get you or that they've got negative purposes yeah sometimes people that's been one of the

hardest things i've had to learn is that we're all on a journey. And some people are on their journey and I'm on my journey and my trajectory is nowhere near perfect. And most people are going through the same thing. You know, maybe we're kind of delving into the psychology here. Maybe Twitter should change the question of what's happening that prompts you to put in your status to, who made you feel this way? Or what did your mom do to you as a child? Or tell me something good about yourself. Hey, there's a good, I love that, Scott. That's awesome. Tell me something positive. Tell me something good. And maybe that's what we need to spread is more of the goodness in the world. You know, on one hand, I've been challenged by that whole concept though. Do I need to spread is more of the goodness in the world. You know, on one hand, I've been challenged by that whole concept though. Do I need to post more puppy pictures and feel good memes and all that kind of crap or do we need to look the dragon in the mouth? One of my business acumen

for my companies were I always want to look the dragon in the mouth and I always want to know how dark it can get and how we can deal with the business aspects of decisions we made so that we know what the issues are going to be before they cross our desk fully on fire. You want to look around and go, where should we put the smoke alarm detectors first before the fire burns your house down? And so it's really hard for me, you know, do I, do I put up feel good, whatever's and, and I do have friends that they're in this, you know, evil here, no evil, uh, speak no evil mode where, uh, they have trouble dealing with the hatred and politics and stuff like that. Uh, and you're like, well, is that going to contribute to a better

world? Putting up puppy dog, um, puppy tail, puppy tail photos and all that sort of good stuff, or do we need to look at what's happening? I think a lot about what happened with the Jews. Some of my friends from Germany that come over here and visit fairly regularly, they've told me about the stones, the stepping stones that are in Germany and the reminders they do in their schools that force people to learn about what the Nazis did, how they did it, what led to it. All the things that are supposed to be designed to keep them from walking back down that path again because they did start two world wars. You got to keep your eye on those guys.

I love my German friends. But, you know, they talk about all these different reminders they had to keep them from going down that way so they they spend a lot of time looking the dragon in the eye but ironically there now is a huge amount of rise of white nationalism in germany and these are places where if you do the heil hitler symbol you'll go to jail they'll arrest you even if you're an American citizen. You know, they have certain laws that there are certain things and symbols you can't use. But even then, with that sort of prevention going on, they're giving rise to hate and bigotry again. It's crazy. Well, you think we've solved all the problems of the world, Chris?

No, man. We just created more. I don't know. Damn it, Scott. I was expecting you to have the answers i was like scott will know um but anyway i i'd love to have you on scott and you're always welcome to be on the show i i honestly mean that you're one of i don't know five respected maybe ten um sorry you're going down the list now uh no you're not you're in the top five i'm just saying that there might be more but you're you're one of the people i've always respected the way they think and how they think it and how they uh promote it communicate it um you're one of those people and i go i wish i was smart as they are um and uh so i love the stuff you're putting out at patreon i kind of like the idea i've tried patreon several times to launch my sort of thing along the same veins and i just never have

either uh put my shoulder into it or gotten the traction so i'm glad you are the lorax thing you posted was brilliant thank you um it might be a little cerebral above my brain i was i was trying to read it and i'm and it's dr seuss format format, so I can't even put my hand around that. It tells you where my education level is. But you're doing wonderful things, and I just appreciate everything you do, Scott. And I'm glad you finally came on the show. Give us some of your plugs so people can go check them out

and all that good stuff. Thanks, Chris. Well, you're very kind in your praise. Don't tell anyone you'll ruin my image. Oh, come on. You're doing the kindness thing. One, one guest at a time. Folks can find me at scottmonti.com.

That's the easiest way to go about it. You can sign up for the timeless and timely newsletter there. And I am Scott Monti on all of the major social networks. So feel free to connect with me however you like. Awesome sauce. Thanks for being on the show, Scott. So feel free to connect with me however you like. Awesome, Sauce. Thanks for being on the show, Scott. Thanks to my audience for tuning in. Hopefully you guys learned a whole mess of stuff.

And if you didn't, maybe have more questions. And that's good. A whole lot more ideas you can work with. One of the most important things you can learn in life is more questions. And if you get a chance, look up Bobby Kennedy's speech in South Africa. It's really moving.

It talks about each of us can make a difference in this world and create ripples of hope that can tear down the highest walls of oppression, resistance, and hate. And maybe go listen to some John Lennon. Imagine, that's one of my favorite songs to listen to. I think if anything I would want in the world is to have that song be, bring all of humanity together as one, and we can all just be human beings to each other

as opposed to all this, you know, objective, subjective crap that we have to put up with. So there's that. Go to thecbpn.com and chrisfastpodcastnetwork.com. You can subscribe to all eight podcasts there. We love you as an audience.

Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time.