The James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan - Talking to James Hennessy

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

Today we take a break from talking about the boat to see if interviewing interesting people will generate more downloads and more advertising money for said boat. I spoke with James Hennessy about Elon Musk, Twitter, Crypto, NFTs, the metaverse, culture and aesthetics.James Hennessy tweets over here https://twitter.com/jrhennessy, and you can check out his Substack, The Terminal, here: https://www.theterminal.info/Join the James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan Sailing Club Patreon for more Catamaran Plan content, and contribute to another man's boat ownership: http://patreon.com/jdfmccann Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan. If you'd like to listen to bonus episodes, go sign up to the Patreon. That's patreon.clom. Clom? Ah, we f***ed it. Anyway, look, you'll find a way. Catamaran Home! If you're looking for flexible workouts, Peloton's got you covered.

Summer runs or playoff season meditations, whatever your vibe, Peloton has thousands of classes built to push you. We know how life goes. New father, new routines, new locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest. And Peloton has everything you need, whenever you need it. Find your push.

Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. I'm Jessie Kirkshank, and on my podcast, Phone a Friend, I break down the biggest stories in pop culture. But when I have questions, I get to phone a friend. I phone my old friend, Dan Levy. You will not die hosting the Hills after show. I get thirsty for the hot wiggle.

I didn't even know a thirsty man until there was all these headlines. And I get schooled by a tween. Facebook is like a no. That's what my grandma's on. Thank God Phone a Friend with Jesse Crookshank is not available on Facebook. It's out now wherever you get your podcasts. ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. ACAST.com. Hello and welcome to yet another episode of the James Donald Forbes McCann catamaran plan. On this episode, something a bit different.

Usually, we're very self-referential on this podcast, a podcast that exists for one purpose, so that I, James Donald Forbes McCann, can make enough money to buy a boat, looking to get about $500,000. We're quite a long way away. So on this episode, it's a long form, more traditional podcast interview with James Hennessy. I thought maybe as a way of drumming up more interest, more people listening to the podcast, getting more advertising money and getting that boat even sooner, it would be a good idea for me to start interviewing interesting people in a more traditional interview podcast format. So I reached out to James.

I sent him a direct message and he agreed to come on the podcast. And I think we had a great chat. I used to work with James at pedestrian.tv when I very, very briefly worked there. He sat next to me and I really thought he was a great guy. After that, he moved on to Business Insider Australia and he now runs a sub stack called The Terminal, which you can reach at theterminal.info. It's all about, and I quote, artifacts and esoterica in business, tech, culture and politics from James Hennessy. We discuss that. We talk about how he went from being a deputy head of pedestrian and then the head of business inside of Australia to having his own sub stack. And we had a very long ranging chat.

We cover crypto, NFTs, Elon Musk, the metaverse, tickety tock. And we speak more generally about culture and aesthetics as well. So please enjoy our conversation. When I did briefly work with you, I was deputy head of Pedestrian, so I did that for a few years. And then I moved over to being editor of Business Insider. So I did that for a few years as well. And basically, look, in total, I was an editor for how long? That's a really good question.

Basically five or six years, essentially. So I was there for a long? That's a really good question. Like basically five or six years, essentially. So I was there for a long time. Essentially, I got to the point where I was like, you know, I'm doing a lot of managing and I'm doing a lot of admin and I'm doing a lot of facilitating writing, but I'm not doing a huge amount of writing myself. So I had like a bit of a moment

where I sort of went back and read stuff that I had written years prior, like magazine work and even blogs that I'd written in 2014, 2013, even earlier. And I was looking at that and being like, I think I was a better writer then than I am now. What a beautiful point to get to. It was only because, you know, back then I was freelancing, I was doing whatever, so I had to hustle and put out a lot of work. And look, I think maybe I was probably talking down my abilities a little bit. I'm definitely hugely more informed than I was. No, look.

No, but I understand because when I got out of that, I was working somewhere. I was working at a place called Rip It Up before then, and then I came to Pedestrian, and I sort of had – I was in that news cycle churning. Yeah, totally. 6am. Yeah.

You're like really very, very part of the discourse. And when I had a bit of a snap and went on a holiday and I wasn't doing that for a while, the relief and the joy and the way that I was able to read really changed because it is a sick sort of, it's a constant. Yeah, absolutely. The immediacy is so much more important than the way one is writing yeah absolutely no totally so anyway so i got to a point where i was like look i'm not really i'm not writing enough but i do love writing so you know um so i said basically i set up a sub stack but i was sort of and this is while i was

while i was still an editor obviously i wasn't charging for at that time i was just writing sporadically whatever i wanted i was really enjoying it building up a um a database of free subscribers and then i sort of got to a point where i was like all right well what do i want to do next um and i basically after a lot of faffing around i came to the conclusion of look i'd like basically'm going to leave Business Insider, which I was enjoying on its own level, but again, wasn't writing as much as I could. No, that's good. Keep all those bridges.

That's a great... Exactly. That's a good exit interview. I've really enjoyed my time here. It's time for me to open a new chapter. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Also, shortly after I left,

Business Insider did leave Australia. So that bridge was actually burned oh yeah so anyway um i got so at the moment i'm not doing this up to take 100 full time i've pieced together a bunch of freelance work and consulting work and whatever but it is kind of what my core. And look, it wasn't just, as we were kind of talking about before, it's not just about the fact that I wanted to do it, but also like the environment is very amenable to it now, right? Like people are actually willing to pay for a newsletter, which is-

It boggles my mind. Yeah, absolutely. Because I am not, I mean, I'm very, I'm desperately poor. I've got two small children. I'm very, I'm desperately poor. I've got two small children. I currently freelance, I'm doing freelance SEO copy and comedy, neither of which is particularly like, these aren't big earners. They get the rent done in Adelaide,

which is even not a great deal of rent to have to pull down. But I'm shocked that Patreon, the percentage of people who participate in it like the number of paid subscribers versus total subscribers astoundingly high yeah no totally yeah there has been a big shift and it's not just weirdos you know it's reasonable normal human beings it is weirdos as well let's let's not forget the weirdos but they've always been willing to pay for we love and appreciate our weirdos We're happy to have them on board. But it does feel like that paid – like Substack is explicitly trying to make it about paid journalism

and saying this old model of journalism has fallen apart. You know, these things are mouthpieces for billionaires and political interests. Yeah. Here's Glenn Greenwald saying whatever he wants to say today. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you can pay to get that. Exactly, yeah, yeah. And you can pay to get that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think, I mean, you know, they call it, it's kind of like, broadly speaking, they're talking about it as like the creator economy, you know? Yes. So writing sort of came to that late. No, it's getting your titties out for words. Well, exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is the only first model. Or if you want to be less crass about it, it's sort of like the Twitch model, right? Yes. It's the same sort of thing. And it's surprising that it took so long for it to really catch on for writing. I feel like writing was at the end of the curve as opposed to like exactly. Absolutely.

Well, I mean, I think music still has not figured out a way to do it and may not. I think Kanye is the only still has not figured out a way to do it and may not. I think Kanye is the only person I know of who's tried to do it and I don't think it's been a particularly successful launch of all the things that he's done. Yeah. He's brought out the stem player and gone like, right, well, can I refinance what the internet has definanced?

Yeah. Potentially, that may. It may work. The problem with music is that, you know, the fundamental baseline product of music is songs and you can get that for one subscription. I'm not an opera man over here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

True. Sorry, I apologise for that. No, but you get the subscription service works so brilliantly as a consumer for music that I can't see it. Yes, absolutely. It's vastly exploitative for artists and they're not making as much money that they could. But, you know, there's a really cool small...

And they're trying to do it with, like, NFTs and stuff now because there are obviously fans that want that sort of... Man, I want to discuss Timberland with you, if at all possible, because I saw a thing that you posted of him and I went down a big wormhole. I did not realise that Timberland with you, if at all possible, because I saw a thing that you posted of him and I went down a big wormhole. I did not realise that Timberland, the reason he hasn't been making great hits anymore is he's just gone into a weird NFT, you've got to hustle reality.

It's repulsive. It's one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen. This man is the Mozart of, you know, making drum noises with your mouth. Yeah, yeah. And he's wasting his talent going like, you've got to hustle. You've got to get this NFT now. Yeah. It's bizarre.

No, there's a lot of people that are kind of in that at the moment. And this is one of the things I try to get my head around in the newsletter, this weird culture of – this weird new crypto culture, definitely actually feels like a genuine well i mean like we're on the precipice of something i don't know exactly what sure sure something's happening what are you are you financially do you have skin in the crypto game um i have very minor skin in the crypto game um i'm not you a doge person or no no i, I hold like a little bit of Bitcoin and I sort of trade a little bit, but it's relatively small amount of money. And it's mostly because I got into it

because I was writing about this stuff a lot. And I thought, look, I need to actually invest myself a little bit and understand the process. Although even when I think about it objectively. Well, you're Hunter S. Thompson going, no, I just need to put the LSD in my body so I know what people are doing. But at the same time,

when I take a bird's eye view of it, it's kind of like someone that works at the Wall Street Journal, the AFR, being like, oh, I just need to buy a few stocks to get a fee for it. It's just like... That's why Albo needed that third house, just so that he could really bond with middle Australia. He doesn't want them.

Yeah. So, look, I'm pleased to say i've made an incredibly modest gain in my crypto investment which is which is to say that i haven't lost anything um i'm i i tend to swing the pendulum for me swings for me being like a pro or anti anti guy all the time every now and again i'm like i wake up and i'm like this technology has some applications or has applications and once we sort of push through the frontier of like absolutely horrifying sort of extractive scans, on the other side, we're going to have something worth thinking about. And then sometimes I look at it and I'm like, but when?

Like, when is this going to happen? My main metaverse question that I'd like to ask you as an expert on these matters is why does every metaverse thing look extremely shit yeah like we have wonderful video game technology there are whole rooms full of people whose job is to make really beautiful online spaces not a single metaverse person has figured that out yet yeah so i mean the there are two questions there. The first one is why is there like a dearth of like actual genuine aesthetic beauty? I think that just keeps being answered by the fact that nobody in this space has any taste whatsoever, right? I think that's a very, very easy question to answer.

They have no talent. They have no skill. They have no sublime impulse. There is no sublime impulse. I mean, you look at something like, you know, this is not exactly the metaverse, but you look at like the Bored Ape Yacht Club or whatever, and you look at it and they're repulsive.

There's nothing about it that, you know. And there's plenty of like, you know, street art and there's plenty of like punk art and stuff that's cool and grabs you, but you look at this stuff. Sure, but this is not agitprop. This is an issue. But that's why it's so horrifying when someone like Timberland is getting involved and having the apes rap because you go,

well, Timberland. Now, Promiscuous is a great song. That's a banger. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, harder, better, faster, stronger is him doing the drums on that. This is a man who has devoted himself to an aesthetic ideal. And is there something intrinsic about the folly of chasing immediate gains which maybe corrodes the aesthetic impulse?

Potentially. There could be something about the velocity of the guy. Because, you know, art has always been beholden to commercial impulses. And some wonderful art has emerged from like... Oh, when it's a wealthy Italian family, great things happen. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But also, like, also like there are other things like the metaverse is meant to be a massively multiplayer space and they're meant to be spaces where users which are built off user content right they're meant to be things where you can like in minecraft or whatever get in and

build build your own you know palace of sin palace in the middle of the digital world whatever it is you want to do and as a result it needs to it can't look like a the beautiful latest video game it needs to look fairly basic like you've made something crappy yourself these are fairly basic just so it can be a platform for that kind of level of creation but as a result you're right it does end up looking like something uh it just looks like it looks like completely like preschool garbage it's a hot garbage i don't understand the um i mean someone like a mark zuckerberg is trying to who understands design yes i mean he he knows how to you know you have a square with a curved edge and

people find that pleasing they do yeah and he's really trying to push it but these are i mean the they look like me's from the the week and this is like 10 to 12 year old yeah stuff yeah yeah no absolutely i was i was reading a great post about like how they just by their by its very nature just absolutely infantilizes everything right like and they want they want everyone to live and work and cohabitate and do everything in these sort of online spaces, which I don't think any evidence has been shown that people actually want to do that. It's so heartening to have you here because – well, to have you say that. Yeah, I feel no – I've never met a person who's excited by this. I don't think anybody wants this. Bosses don't seem to want it for their employees employees don't seem to want it friends don't wish to hang out there yeah

i mean what was the what was the the version the something hotel how about 2007 how about hotel we actually i mean we had it right we had a 2d version of that and people quickly decided after about three months um this is not very good. And the people that were left were like, you know, the strange people who are, you know, I firmly believe that there is an X percentage of the population who will always love, who the moment the concept of like a virtual chat space or a virtual sort of universe presented itself, were like, this is me, you know. And they've been in Habbo Hotel. They've been in Second Life. Obviously, Second Life is the other one that comes up a lot. I mean, there are positives to it.

At the Travis Scott Second Life concert, no one was crushed. Everyone had a similarly bad time. But, you know, that's the portion of the population that are really – and, like, the people that get married in Second Life or whatever, you know, again, that's not going to be the experience of everyone. Yes. But there is some sort of alienated person who's very uncomfortable with having a flesh.

Absolutely. Yeah, exactly. They want to upload their consciousness to the singularity. They're ready to do it. But I'm not convinced that there's a lot of people that that represents obviously the average person. And look, when you think of like the reason any of this stuff is happening is because the major tech platforms you know facebook and whatever they've seen massive user attrition

they've seen young people don't like being on facebook it's it's a pretty unpleasant website all around but then they look at something like fortnight places where they actually want to be exactly and that that was the travis scott concert but the other part obviously the part about fortnight is that like there is something that actually brings people to fortnight to then start doing the socializing which is a game it's like a game that's like is built by this vast um which was like almost accidental in the way in a huge amount of popularity okay but it's it's fun the output is fun you go there you you shoot you build you play multiplayer you have a nice time. You win, you whatever.

You win. Whereas like I don't... I'll take your word for it. It seems fun. It seems fine. Yeah, well, exactly. I mean, it's not for me, but obviously it is for a lot of people. But the alternative that Facebook or Meta or whatever is giving us right now is,

well, come to this space purely because in an abstract sense, you love being in an online space there's nothing here for you apart from sort of just being there well i guess this was the this was the joy of facebook to begin with is that it didn't i mean no social network actually exists other than being a place that people want to come to and use their ego to populate it so it's it's a real if you build it they will come thing and i guess they're banking on but the people will come yeah exactly um i mean i don't even i don't know how to arrive i don't know where it is yeah well at some point they'll just give us all a big button on the facebook feed going click here now click it and enter the metaverse yeah uh obviously you need to really use

it you need to get yourself a vr headset or whatever i don't know if you're inclined to do so i you know there's a long david foster wallace um passage where he writes about uh the the importance of not getting one so that he um does not become addicted to a special new kind of pornography yeah is that you yeah i just don't need i just don't feel like i need that in my life like i have enough screens that would take me to very degenerate I'm really trying to live a good life and the thought of having a total 3D space it's like

There are so many vectors of temptation in our lives and why add another one If I can start curbing them now Exactly, put your foot down right now TikTok, you know they say this shows you whatever you want and I know so many people on TikTok and then I go oh it's just girls dancing though and people go no no tiktok is an infinity of it's wikipedia it's um the you know the works of rembrandt whatever tiktok is everything and it

shows you what you really really want you know and i i frankly i don't want to know what the i quite like the fact that the instagram algorithm has only pegged me as a man who likes looking at maps and, you know, chesty broads and violins. Like, that's what I get on the search function where I wouldn't like any of those things, but it knows, hey. You do actually, yeah. You like to look at this.

You're lingering. Yeah, yeah. The Elon Musk trying to buy Twitter thing. There have been some interesting takes, but the one that really I did enjoy is whether or not he bought it just because of his penchant for the Babylon Bee people. So they do their trans tweet, and then they get their account on Twitter taken down,

is my understanding. But they're given the right to have their Twitter account back if and only if they delete that tweet. And you may know better than i i i can't think of another social media platform that has that level of demanding supplication like instagram will just take it down and say you've been a bad boy we're not we're not having that anymore but i didn't realize so twitter will demand participation in yeah is that right i'm pretty sure that's the standard the standard twitter policy is that if you have an offending tweet it won't just remove it it'll make you delete it

this is fascinating this is a this is what to me sets twitter out as an interesting company is that i mean you could in a negative sense you could view that as sort of like this is the red guard thing like we don't want to just control what's on there we want you to bend the knee and you we'll put you in the airplane position until you come around and see that you've done the wrong thing. But then also there's something lovely about if you're off Twitter, it's not just that a faceless, you know, someone at Facebook has decided they don't like you.

You must choose your own point of principle at which you're not to participate anymore. And this is a very beautiful um you know i know it's some sort of honor and no absolutely because you're like you're right because it doesn't come up so and other people have brought this up is that tiktok used by you know a great much greater proportion of younger users in the US, right? And I think it's very easy to say that TikTok's influence on the discourse, the way people think, younger Americans say, is far greater than what Twitter does.

Obviously, Twitter has influenced a lot more of the elite strata because they're asking people in the elite professions and politics who use it. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know. Tom Holland does not have... Well, one of the Tom Hollands has a TikTok and it's not the one who wrote Dominion, the history of Western civilisation.

Well, yeah. But the proles, if I can be correct, are using TikTok. Right. And TikTok's sort of moderation policies are unbelievably strict and arbitrary. Incredibly arbitrary. Obviously, and the way this normally comes up in the media is talking about

the China stuff. The China angle is very clear. If you post about the Uyghurs, your content will vanish, whatever. That's one conversation. But on the other side of it is that, and it happens all the time, if you post a bit of offending content your that the tiktok could be deleted instantly and your account can also be deleted and your only option is to make a new one until they figure out you've managed to delete

that as well so you're right it is that weird kind of like so like it's very easy to be silenced and censored on tiktok and have absolutely no reason why it happened. They don't ever tell you why. And then have no real system of recourse, which I partially understand with the sheer scale that they're operating at. Maybe it's not possible to provide consistent avenues of recourse. But then, yeah, and you compare that with the Twitter thing, which, yes, it has that really kind of funny thing where it makes you sort of suffocate or accept their terms to return to the platform.

But also, like, all these conversations are so much more public and so much more. Well, there's a sense at which Twitter self-consciously wants to be the platform of free speech and comes out and goes, no, we are the free speech platform. Exactly. Everything is fine here. And so then they are held to a standard. You're right, yeah. The thing I find really interesting about it is that, so I mean the way that Elon Musk talks about it and Jack Dorsey did as well before he left,

and it's one of the internal missions. They have this thing called Project Blue Sky. And basically the concept is they want to turn Twitter into a protocol rather than a website. So turn it into basically the equivalent of email, right? It's this protocol that's out there in the ether and then you can make – and then Twitter would just become like Outlook. It's one way of accessing it. Well, it would actually be a platform rather than, I mean, it would be unsuitable. It would be unsuitable.

Whereas at the moment it's in that grey zone. And it's one of those things where, and I think that's one of the things that Musk sort of wants to do. It's kind of yet to be seen whether it's even possible to do that in a way that's compelling. Because the other platform that does this is Mastodon. I don't know if you've encountered that one. Yes.

Only as an alternative to Gab. Yeah, yeah. Like those were the two that really branched out. Exactly. These are the two other animal-based micro-groups. So, I mean, Gab's gone off on a fun, weird... Do you get that man's emails? I do actually get his emails, yeah. How was the pivot from this is a free speech platform

to I am building the kingdom of God? That was a fun... no Jews allowed or whatever my good talk about a man who's just quietly getting on with his anti-semitism they just it's an incredible way of illustrating the different ways you can do it it's like you know

Twitter is it's thing it's like a monolith people say it's got like a progressive left-wing bias, which reflects the progressive left-wing bias of much of Silicon Valley. So what do you do when you go, okay, I'm going to create an alternative? You can go the way of like Getter, which is that other big one, and say we're making the free speech platform. You can go the GAD one, which is we're not making a free speech platform.

We were making a free speech platform. However, we're getting ready for the Christian genocide. Exactly. And we're going to need to be able to talk to each other. So we are making an explicitly sort of like right-wing alternative. We don't really expect anyone who's not of our sort of persuasion to sign up or have a very good time if they do. Or there's this way that, you know,

Twitter wants to do ostensibly, which is, or Mastodon did as well, which is like, let's just take the actual company that runs it out of the equation altogether, make it a completely neutral playground or protocol that you can then access and do whatever. But in the case of Mastodon, I don't know if you've ever used it,

but it's just incredible. It's got all these different instances and, like, you can host servers. And the moment you sort of introduce that sort of element, you're like, well, people are not going to use this. I feel like there's something, when you run a platform of this scale that Twitter is at, I think everybody accepts, except for, like, real, if you're a real free speech fundamentalist,

you would say it's great. We should have a platform where there's absolutely no moderation whatsoever. Yes. People should be able to say whatever you want and society can sort of work itself out through brute force essentially, right? And there's a lot of people that believe that, great.

But I think most people, whether they're left or right, don't necessarily believe that. I think people agree that there's, some things shouldn't be allowed in sort of public discourse, whether it's, you know, ISIS recruiting, or whether it's like child pornography, whatever it may be, right? So obviously, even in Musk's sort of like free speech utopia,

and I'm sure Elon Musk would probably agree with that to a certain extent as well, there has to be some guardrails, right? But I feel like the moment you start putting guardrails in, and you have what is essentially a gigantic open-air internet forum where everyone is sort of having at it and doing what they want, and it becomes sort of like an online society, as Twitter is. Twitter is sort of its own online society

with its own sort of power structures and systems. It becomes about a negotiation of interests, right? And as with any sort of, like, political system, whether it's in real life or whatever. And I feel like decisions will have to be made within that sort of negotiation, which will inevitably be controversial. No matter which way the pendulum swings

or who is affected if some major group is affected in some way by some decision and i don't know if if elon musk wants to be the guy that sort of holding the bag at the end of that kind of negotiation yeah there was that great i forget who it was someone someone who used to run a social media website did that big long thread about like look this is the day-to-day yes yeah i saw that yeah it was very long so you certainly want to be a part of that yeah but i mean is then the end point i mean these are these are private companies fulfilling a role that used to be done publicly yeah like in terms of what's defamatory uh you have you have judges you have the ability to sue you can you can vote in new people for new laws so i mean tiktok might have an easier way of doing that because it's so obviously connected to the chinese communist party yeah

but i think maybe some form of state ownership um and the extension of the franchise and oversight to you know the minister for twitter yeah it's maybe a more comfortable home for in the long run like if it's going to be violence and speech is violence and whatever sure give it to the people who have the monopoly on violence yeah to sort out and then you know bloody revolution can yeah no totally i i think um and i think this is where the conversation will inevitably go as well because you know it's i don't think anyone will unless you're like a really massive elon musk fanboy of which there are many people it's a it's a it's a large part of society makes a good car yeah well you know um i like his girlfriend's songs

two of them two of them are great i think most people would say look if even if you're a free speech maximalist the idea that it's one really rich guy that's sort of the safeguard of free speech, and he's the one guy holding back the hordes of censorship. You would not find that a totally amenable situation. You would prefer that it was something a little bit more stable. Yeah, I mean, there are Randian people out there who would say that's only the great men of history can be trusted to oversee these things. But I think the fact that that person then has to hire a bureaucracy of people to sit at a computer and say yes or no.

And enforce it, yeah. It becomes that sort of bureaucratic negotiation of interests, which is what society is. But again, that's what ends up sort of holding the game. I just think the best we can do is to have those people visible and, you know, like in the way that Japan in the lead-up to World War II when the government didn't want war and the people did, you could go out and find a minister and usually shoot them.

But there was some form of visibility. Like, we have an elite, and I think this is what the post-liberal sort of Matthew Schmidt's compact magazine, First Things People, really got in a way that the, you know, sort of normie evangelicals didn't, I think, which is that we had an elite, we had the waspy people in charge of society. That has now been replaced by some sort of, I don't know,

like whatever that Silicon Valley power behind the Democratic Party thing is, that seems to be the taste-making elite respectable opinion you can have on prestige media and prestige television. And that is invisible at the moment to many people, or it looks normal. And you've got to put those people in a shiny hat or something. They need a hat. It's okay to have an overlord, but show us where they are.

Sit behind an elevated desk or whatever. Yeah. No, I think you're right. And I think, you know, even the things about, again, like it came with masks, but obviously it's come up from all sorts of different institutions. This idea of, you know, algorithm transparency or trying to make yes bring some legibility to how algorithms work um let people pick through the code and and tell you what they find in there and you know facebook

has tried to this is not the algorithm transparency this is more about the visible elite um they tried to do that with their like supreme court or whatever i can't remember what it's called in actuality but it's like their panel of people who outside of this facebook structure who make decisions and they're normally like you know academics and experts from within you know whatever the world of well and then some of the decisions that were they were popping out were i mean were genuinely fascinating and ethically like i mean it's like you know something that you get from Peter Singer, where I remember the, I mean, the big one that jumped out at me was the,

was the white nationalist, white supremacy divide, that it was like to have, to have ethno supremacy is a, is a band idea. We can't have that. But to argue for an ethno state is fine. It's actually okay. You know, if you want, if you want to say that Japan's a good country,no state is fine yeah um is actually okay you know if you want if you want to say that japan's a good country we're not going to take that away from you but then there must be so you have to have uh so that i guess you can only have the

virtues of of self and oikos so oikos is fine but but uh bigotry is not i mean it was it's just it's great yeah i think the more of that that we can express there. It's beautiful to watch that stuff unfold and basically have them try to be like, we're not, we don't operate like a state. We're a platform. We're not a publisher. We're not anything. We're just kind of a space where people are.

And then try to pluck these sort of like moral values from the ether that sort of, but that align with whatever the external pressures happen to be. Dear listener, I'm just going to interrupt the interview for a moment to let you know about the James Donald Forbes McCann

Can Moran Plan Patreon. If you're enjoying this episode of the podcast and you'd like to hear more things from me, exclusive things, you can sign up to the James Donald Forbes McCann

Can Moran Plan Patreon And for a very small amount of money, I think as low as $5 a month in Australian currency, you can hear ever so much more and help me get on the journey to boat ownership. Okay, now that I've let you know about that. ACAS powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. I'm Jessie Cruikshank, and on my podcast, Phone a Friend, I break down the biggest stories in pop culture. But when I have questions, I get to phone a friend.

I phone my old friend, Dan Levy. You will not die hosting The Hills after show. I get thirsty for the hot wiggle. I didn't even know a thirsty man until there was all these headlines. And I get schooled by a tween. Facebook is like a no. That's what my grandma's on. Thank God Phone a Friend with Jesse Crookshank is not available on Facebook. It's out now wherever you get your podcasts. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com

Let's get back to the interview. This kind of idea that culture is stuck and that there is no sort of forward motion in culture. This is the, it's always, 1990 was always 10 years ago. Exactly, yeah, it's that sort of thing and the way it's because you used to be able to divide culture into you know 10 year blocks which was never like particularly uh entirely accurate a lot of it was sort of imposed by cultural analysts and the media and whatever but you know you if you go to someone what was the what was the 1960s what What was the 1970s?

They could picture a person in a particular kind of dress, listen to a particular kind of music, you know? Yes. And then after, and not coincidentally, after the internet came and sort of like shattered monoculture and that became a little bit more disparate what were the 2000s kind of harder to picture what were the 2010s almost impossible to picture i mean i couldn't tell you exactly yeah you could probably think of something like the big movies the big musicians big artists and whatever but that it would it bleeds much more into it bleeds yeah and it's

so far forwards and backwards and you know the 24-hour media culture, the internet, everything moves very, very quickly. Everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame and then recedes into nothingness. You know, we're basically two years into the 2020s and it hasn't really asserted itself as a decade with a clear identity either. Well, I can only make one point there, is that the main thing that does define it is a virus from a year

that wasn't even in the 2020s so that's exactly that's disgusting to me that's what happened have you seen uncut gems it just it came out as my first child was being born okay so i never got around to it great film um but one it's set in 2012 so this is one of the really interesting things in setting something as sort of as a period piece within the same decade and trying to like date it and one thing because you know it is of its type it's based around an nba game that actually took place in the 2012 season right and the movie came out in 2019 or whatever so one of the things it does to sort of age it is that it's constantly like showing text message conversations on screen using sort of the iphone interface of 2012 which wasn't that long ago but is like radically

different to what it is now and it was this really strange kind of like i was watching that and like feeling like a very like a weird nostalgia right like you look at that you remember the sort of like the life you let you remember the sort of like the life you'd live through sort of like the computer interface. And you look and you're like, that is, that's 2012. That's fucking 2012. There's no broad cultural markers for me to really think back to. You could play me the hits from that year

and I probably wouldn't place them as being of that year. But I saw like, I saw a specific- You saw a computer screen, you saw an ios and you went i was taken back i was transfixed to another time exactly yeah yeah um well that that i mean that's maybe the greatest artistic shift as well that i hadn't thought about is when i i think it was ios 7 yeah was the first sort of flat one and then every ios since then has looked exactly like ios 7 there's it was the end of history yeah exactly for ios, exactly. But before then, it's also the first post-jobs moment. And not to say that only great geniuses can drive history and move it,

but the Tim Cook era has been as free of innovation as possible and that there basically has not been a big crazy person making decisions at these companies since then. You say what unit, like the iPhone 9 or whatever come out, or the iPhone 10 or whatever, you probably couldn't place it. But you look back you say what you did like the iphone 9 or whatever come out or the iphone 10 or whatever you probably couldn't place it but you look back at yourself you're like oh this has got a real coherent there's a depth to it and it's kind of you know maybe that is kind of sad in a way that's the only way we can sort of situate ourselves in history is by looking at like a computer a different but i love it because even personalities because i i i

realize that it's um i mean, ideas have accelerated. Things that people have said, you know, five years ago now, unimaginably hateful now or whatever. But the people saying those ideas have not shifted in the way that they would have in the past. Like the thought that you would have a pop star who stays, you know, you get two albums and you're out on your ass was, I think, the 1970s. Cyndi Lauper, huge star.

The woman had two songs and she was done. No one knows what the follow-up was. But that everybody at the start of Facebook, all the pop stars who were right at the start of that Web 2.0 thing, a Katy Perry, a Beyonce, a Lady Gaga, a Rihanna. These four, Adele, you could go on, but they have maintained the cultural hegemony throughout they would all have different talking points now

and have very different things that were important to them as things passed through them they would denounce what they said before but those are those people in the pantheon there's an ossification of an elite there you get the sense that Dua Lipa

no matter what she does how beautiful she is yeah how many great songs she has there's no breaking through to like exactly that kind of like pop culture like gerontocracy that sort of rules yes yeah i was actually i was actually thinking that with regards to like rihanna as well being like i remember like you know listening to her billboard hits in like 2005 um yeah and she's like she's still kicking still and it's still a big event when she's got a new album uh but you know and like even the the classic rock but i mean they seem eternal now yes but like they had very objectively pretty narrow periods of cultural dominance people go david bowie wow five decades of great music you go ah murder of suburbia had a song on it you know what are we fucking talking about exactly who's going

back and listening to 90s bowie 2000s bowie one song off black star you know you have a little maybe a little peak at the end but uh people disappear and now i think i mean beyonce will just keep having hits until she's dead yeah There is a total, which especially is, you know, something could be said about the fact that most of those people, they're all women, actually, all those big stars. Some rappers can keep going. Yeah. But there's a much higher, I mean,

like Jay-Z has not continued to have a successful mainstream music career. No, definitely. Kanye does not have hits anymore. No. But you sense that Lady Gaga will never be, she will be 105 years old and she'll be going, this is, Tony Bennett's still alive and we're still coming out with the good stuff.

Look, at some point I have to let you go. I have no idea how I can use any of this to buy a boat other than I'm frozen out of the elite on the internet and there'll be no cracking through now. Okay, well, absolutely not. You can never join it. But if you do manage to find the boat, I think I'm entitled to one trip, one short A to B trip.

We'll discuss that off air. Well, I don't want to publicly acknowledge that people are allowed on the boat for coming on the podcast or else it'll just be full of people who want to get on the boat. But perhaps discreetly in a private capacity, I would love to have you on the boat. Okay, of course. Thank you so much.

Forget I said it to you. People won't see that I'm winking, but very good. That's the end of the chat. Thank you to James Hennessy. Go and sign up for The Terminal, his wonderful substack that I read, and he also has a Twitter account that you can find at JR Hennessy on Twitter.

You can find me on social media as well. If you look hard enough, I'm sure you'll do a good job of that. And the Patreon, getting that money for the boat. Oh, if you've never listened to this podcast before, go back and listen to some previous episodes. It's very boat-centric stuff. And together, we can achieve me owning a boat. All right. Thank you all. Catamaran ho. Have a good one. Keep it real.

Believe in yourself. Ciao. Ciao. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. I'm Jessie Cruikshank, and on my podcast, Phone a Friend, I break down the biggest stories in pop culture. But when I have questions, I get to phone a friend.

I phone my old friend, Dan Levy. You will not die hosting the Hills after show. I get thirsty for the hot wiggle. I didn't even know a thirsty man until there was all these headlines. And I get schooled by a tween. Facebook is like a no. That's what my grandma's on. Thank God Phone a Friend with Jesse Crookshank is not available on Facebook.

It's out now wherever you get your podcasts. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts. Everywhere. Acast.com.