The Press Box - Big Bad Tech | Damage Control (Ep. 546)

Episode Date: November 21, 2018

Amazon finally selected the location for its second headquarters (2:39), ending the months-long reality show of cities competing to be selected (8:41). Facebook is in hot water again for some shady practices (17:47), but this time it’s COO Sheryl Sandberg who is taking the heat (28:03). Hosts: Kate Knibbs and Justin Charity Read Alyssa Bereznak on HQ2 here. Read the New York Times investigation of Facebook here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, it's Liz Kelly. Right in time for the holiday season, the ringer's merch store has tons of new stuff. And right now, almost everything on the site is 20% off, including your favorites like binge mode and ringer NBA. And for the first time, we are introducing brand new merch for NBA desktop, Shea Serrano's villains, and Bill's Parent Corner. This Black Friday Cyber Monday sale lasts until Monday, November 26. You can check it out on the ringer.com slash shop. I'm Justin Charity. And I'm Kate Nis. Welcome to Damage Control on the Channel 33 Network, a podcast where we unpacked what upsets, excites, and divides us in popular culture. Okay, let's get started.

Facebook is dealing with what feels like its millionth scandal of the year after the New York Times published a disturbing report about the company's tactics. Facebook getting exposed for bad practices is nothing new, but this time there's more attention to be paid to CEO Cheryl Sandberg's role within the company. But first, let's talk about Jeff Bezos. and Amazon, the trillion-dollar web retailer based in Seattle, spent more than a year shopping for a second headquarters in North America. And in the process, they launched what Ringer writer Alyssa Bresnick called the National Thirst Wars.

Basically, cities all across the country submitted lengthy, thirsty proposals to Amazon trying to get them to select their city for their new corporate headquarters. New York's governor, Andrew Cuomo, even said he changed his name. to Amazon Cuomo if New York was selected. Well, congratulations, Governor Cuomo, New York was selected, along with Northern Virginia, Queens, baby. We're going to talk about the political backlash. I have some other names I would like to call Andrew Cuomo.

Andrew Rivers Cuomo. We're going to talk about the political backlash to Cuomo, New York Mayor, Bill de Blasio, and Amazon on this. More like Bill de Blasio. Only New Yorkers could complain about getting 25,000 new jobs. All the cities who lost out must be like, shut up, you whiny bitches. New York basically won the lottery and we're like,

but the subways might be slightly more crowded. Meanwhile, people in West Virginia are like, well, back to the mines. Kate, Amazon is a company so big that it apparently needs like three different North American headquarters. I don't really get it. Basically, they've spent more than a year, I want to say since September 2017, they spent scouting the country for a new corporate headquarters apart from its main Seattle headquarters. They were informally referring to the second headquarters as HQ2.

I mentioned that just because that's sort of how it's colloquially become known in media and news reports as the mythical HQ2. So Amazon spends more than a year scouting suitable locations for HQ2. Now, by suitable, I don't just mean, like, geographically ideal. I don't just mean they're looking for, like, a city with a port or something. What they really seemed to be looking for were mayors and chambers of commerce and state governments all across the country to sort of compete with each other to offer Amazon the best tax incentives and other political advantages for moving to their city. and because Amazon's search for H2 is so public and so protracted and so explicitly competitive, these states basically tripped over themselves to give Amazon the best possible deal to move to their cities,

arguably at the expense of their own constituents. So last week, Amazon finally settles on two locations for HQ2. I guess that means HQ2 and HQ3, but Amazon, finally makes a choice. They pick two cities. They pick New York. So they pick Long Island City, which is in Queens. And they pick Crystal City in Northern Virginia. There are people who are happy, right, that Amazon is bringing jobs to their region. That's sort of how you see a lot of media and a lot of politicians talk about this is we're happy to have Amazon bring jobs to our part of the country, both the notoriously depressed region of New York City. Right. Washington, D.C.

I think the idea, too, is that it's a mix of blue-collar jobs and white-collar jobs. But then there are people who are frustrated to see Amazon, again, in this very public, very dramatic, almost like a season of television-like way. Amazon steamrolling their elected representatives, dodging taxes, and potentially disrupting their neighborhoods. And in fact, like, we were getting ready to come into the studio. I saw this Wall Street Journal report come out. It's basically a story about Amazon employees currently in Seattle, most of them, rushing to buy condos in Long Island City, Queens, now that Amazon's decision is public.

I'll read a little bit. It says, condo sales in Long Island City are suddenly soaring, thanks to Amazon's decision to open a headquarters in Queens. One local brokerage firm reported it sold nearly 150 units over four days last week, about 15 times its usual volume. Several Amazon workers expressed interest in studios and what bedroom units generally priced below $1 million in Long Island City. Some are also looking at less expensive, low-rise neighborhoods, including Astoria in Queens and Greenpoint in Brooklyn. I should say I used to live in Greenpoint.

I'm glad I don't live in any of those neighborhoods right now. Yeah, I think the subtext here is the real estate market in the relevant neighborhoods in New York is about to get a lot more competitive. And it's funny, like when Amazon first announced the decision to move to Long Island City and northern Virginia, I remember specifically you would see like the first wave of news reports about Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York and Andrew Como, the governor of New York, working together. Two politicians who hate each other. Yeah, they have like a very longstanding public feud. Yeah, they hate each other. But there was a New York Times story about how Cuomo and de Blasio actually worked really closely together and got along decently well when it came to lobbying Amazon to come to New York. And there's one tidbit in the New York Times story where they note that de Blasio and Cuomo agreed to, they basically agreed to structure their agreements with Amazon in a way that may.

that make the land permits in question be subject to state approval as opposed to local approval because apparently that gives like Cuomo has more authority. He's sort of a more singular authority to let Amazon do what it wants than DeBlasio would have if it were a New York City matter, right? But this is all to say that like Cuomo and de Blasio seem very proud of what they've accomplished. And they don't really, nothing about how they've conducted. themselves in the immediate wake of the announcement, suggests to me that they were ready for any sort of political backlash from their constituents about Amazon rushing into New York. It's really strange to me that they didn't think people would at least have reservations

about it, you know, because I've really been reading more about Amazon coming to New York just because I live here. But from what I've read, it seems like it's definitely going to be a mixed bag at best. And the fact that they gave them, wasn't it like $3.1 billion in incentives? And I read that like the average job that would come would be $150,000 salary. That's great. But then it will cost taxpayers approximately $48,000 to subsidize those jobs. That's not great.

it's weird that they didn't foresee the anger at the allocation of taxpayer dollars. If Amazon had not done this in this way and pitted cities against each other and turned it into this really disturbing competition to who can appease the bald monopolist the best. And if Amazon had just been like, oh, we're opening up an office in New York, there would be way, there would be way less backlash. because like there's already been huge expansions of the tech sector here. Google has really beefed up its New York presence. There is already sort of a consolidation of tech powers going on in the city. And it's just the way that this happened really drew attention to like how much de Blasio and Cuomo were willing to give this major corporation to come into the city. If this was just a case of Amazon moving to New York, we wouldn't even be discussing it because it probably wouldn't even really make headlines.

It's just like the way it all unfolded, ended up really exposing the thirst for Amazon and what they're willing to prioritize. With the MTA in the state that it is in and affordable housing in the state that it is in, it's really hard as someone who lives in this city to be anything remotely resembling happy about giving that much money to a company that fucking doesn't need it. Right. Like, and I'm sure that there will be economic benefits to come to New York, how those are dispensed among the population. It seems to me like New York is getting fleeced by Amazon. I get why Amazon did it. Yeah, for sure. Right.

That's the thing. If you're trying to like rank, if you're trying to do the like Axios thing, you'd be like winners and losers. Amazon won. To be clear, the main winner and all of this is Amazon is Jeff Bezos. Yeah. It's far less clear how the average income citizen of New York City or Northern Virginia benefits and all this relative to Amazon. I read a really interesting interview in New York Magazine with the New York City Development Tsar, Alicia Glenn. And she sort of was answering questions in detail about how they thought that it will positively benefit.

New Yorkers and stuff like that. It's kind of weird that they didn't just come out with that sort of defense right away, though. And they had to sort of wait for reporters to be like, hey, actually, everyone is freaking out about this. Not happy. What's up? And her answers, I mean, they're at least pretty detailed. And reading the piece gave me a better understanding of like why they might think that it would be good for New York. But it wasn't very convincing.

Noah Colwyn, the guy who interviewed her, did a really. really good job of just sort of pressing back and stuff. I don't know. Maybe it's just they're doing the sort of Robert Moses thing where they're like, let's just develop no matter how many protests are held because this fits in with our grand vision of the city. And they're like looking at the long term like grandeur of the city instead of the actual people who live here now who will be kind of screwed over by the development.

And it's just really deembourged. moralizing that like de Blasio sort of ran as like this progressive and this has sort of really clarified how much he isn't that. Well yeah it's it's weird to think of the rare the rare success of Cuomo de Blasio camaraderie in this instance because if you're comparing Cuomo, if you're comparing the governor and the mayor right like they're progressives who aren't happy with either of them, but progressives are never really happy with Andrew Cuomo. Or just in general. And it's sort of like, that's a more established hostile relationship, like progressives

versus Andrew Cuomo, whereas DeBlazio kind of keeps, there's sort of more of a Charlie Brown, Lucy and the football thing there, where it's like you want to think that he's at least flattered by comparison to Andrew Cuomo, but then this happens. And then it just becomes that much more difficult. to distinguish the ways in which those two men are disappointing. I'm curious about why did this become, why did Amazon look at you? At face value, it's a boring question, right? Like, of we need to find a second headquarters.

That is like the most boring shit imaginable. Why did it become this weird season of reality television? Like I do not understand why Amazon. don't think it's boring. It's about power. No, no, no, no. So I should clarify. I just mean that, like, normally, like, okay, so for instance, when I used to work in public relations, like, years ago, I worked, like, with a couple of aerospace and defense companies, right? And, like, that's, like, working in aerospace and defense is a good way to look at, like, how decisions about where headquarters go and where factories go is often about, like, putting down a chip in a particular

congressional district. or having enough political influence in a particular state so that certain votes in Congress can go the way that you need them to go. Right. But a lot of that stuff, the way that stuff happens a lot of the time is way more backdoor, way more like, we don't got to put all this out there that this is how we make these decisions. So it just struck me throughout this entire process that Amazon was like, no, let's lean into this. Like, we're basically going to spend a year ensuring that media will draw attention to the fact that we are doing this road trip around America where we basically make politicians in every state humiliate themselves so that we'll give them some jobs. Why did it become the process that it became, the sort of road show that it became? I don't know, but I do think that Amazon, you might say, primed America.

Yeah. It has sort of really emerged as, it's like an e-commerce giant. It's this incredibly large corporation that everybody knows about. Like, do you know one person in America who doesn't like have a familiarity with Amazon? I just think that this whole thing is sort of indicative that we're living. in like a golden age of monopoly part two. And this is not the way, as you were saying, like normal companies behave. But Amazon can behave this way because it is just so big and powerful. I had never seen a corporate spectacle like this. I really had not. I had not seen a spectacle where it's like a big company that is really just at all times begging for more like political and regulatory scrutiny being like, yeah, we're going

to see which political leadership in the United States is willing to debase themselves for the largest amount of money? I think that they just are gambling on people not caring that much. And like they're gambling that the number of constituents who are looking at this as an opportunity versus the number of constituents that are looking at this as a threat to the city's ecosystem's well-being, like the people who see this is a good thing will outnumber the people who see it as a bad thing. And they probably do. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's almost like the dynamic of gentrification debates, right? It's like in New York, gentrification is this very prominent, it's like this very hot and prominent concern.

And yet it's not like there is a viable political faction in New York that like seems to have the power to stop a lot of. Yeah. You know what I mean? I think you're right. It's like people are super mad, but also people are relatively powerless. And by relatively powerless, I mean powerless relative to Amazon. Yeah.

And to like Cuomo and the people making. these deals are the people who are already in power. Let's talk about Facebook, another massive tech company making some controversial choices as well. I think you have to remember that in addition to leading the policy and comm side of the business, Cheryl Sandberg is the entire business for Facebook, right? She leads all revenue. She reads all partnerships. And so I think at this point, the damage is kind of done. Facebook doesn't need to inflict a little bit more damage by removing its second most important executive at a crucial time. And I think that these conversations relate to each other in maybe not the most obvious way,

but so last week, the New York Times released a report about the tactics Facebook used to deny and discredit its critics. And, I mean, for me and many, I don't know, anyone who's really following Facebook, like the revelation that Facebook engages in this type of activity is not very, very, surprising. What was notable about this piece and what I think will have lingering effects is that Cheryl Sandberg was sort of the main villain of the piece. And she's sort of emerged as the person who sort of shoulder the blame for a lot of bad decisions Facebook was making. That should not be surprising because Cheryl Sandberg has been Facebook's COO since 2008. She's been on its board of

director since 2012. She's always been seen as like the adult in the room, making sure Mark Zuckerberg doesn't get any weirder. And she's really been guiding Facebook's business model since it had a business model. Like she's deserved scrutiny for a long time. But this is the first time she's sort of actually getting it. Now there are pieces like Vanity Fair's. what Cheryl Sandberg's Facebook disaster means for women.

And there are people calling for her resignation. This is the most scrutiny Sanberg has ever been under. And I want to sort of talk about her evolution from a like corporate feminist icon until now where her job actually seems like it might be in jeopardy for the first time ever. Did you read Lean In? I didn't. I didn't read Lean In. I'm sorry. That's okay.

I like skimmed it when it came out because I thought I was going to write a blog post about it or something and I didn't. What like what did you make of Sandberg as like a sort of feminist icon? Well, I mean, you set it up as her transformation from feminist icon to villain of this latest Facebook reporting. But to me, the interesting thing is that even in the earlier feminist icon, like corporate, I should say white corporate feminist. icon phase, there was very immediately this countercores of people being like, what is this lean-in bullshit? Like, this is a weird way to brand feminism as like white color lifestyle, like, coffee table book nonsense as opposed to genuinely subversive political thought, right?

And so the fact that even during the more favorable phase of Cheryl Sandberg, like that thinking in that writing and that critique of Cheryl Sandberg informed my thinking about her even then. Oh. The skepticism about her. I mean, I never, I never leaned in. And I was always very confused by how well that did. But looking back, well, why were you surprised?

I'm actually, I'm curious about this. Why were you surprised? Because it just seemed so transparently self-serving and not helpful to women to give them. them tips in this very narrow way about how to succeed in corporate America. And like the idea that that would actually lift up females was ridiculous to me from the start. But I do think that at the time that it came out, like she wrote that book at the perfect moment because it was still, she was like still riding this wave of like techno-utopianism.

And she had sort of, she's also like so much more. personable and charming and well-spoken than Zuckerberg. Or most of the other tech, major tech people. Yeah. I kind of get why people were hungry for someone like her to emerge in the culture. She's almost like the Jack Kennedy of Silicon Valley. Like I'm just saying, like, relative to Mark Zuckerberg, you're like Elon Musk, you're Peter Thiel. Like, she, yeah, she definitely has that sort of power to.

to be like, I'm personable. And like, I can speak in ways that makes sense to an average person who is not like a code. Her brain isn't shattered by Reddit. You know? Yeah. And I think also she, like her husband died, which is really horrible. And I feel bad for her and it's sad.

And she was able to communicate her grief in a way that really humanized her. and I think sort of ended up like blunting criticism of her because that sort of happened after the lean-in backlash. And then, you know, people aren't going to jump to criticize a woman who just suffered a great personal tragedy. And then I specifically remember reading at the time reading her like occasionally she would write Facebook posts about her. Yeah, I remember. I think I cried because I just felt so terrible for her. Yeah. She's a very effective communicator.

And yeah, so she, and also I should say like, I remember one time when I was still blogging for Gizmodo, I wrote something about her. I don't even think it was that negative, but the Facebook comms team was like was very, very protective of her. I think they did, it was a priority for Facebook to make sure her reputation stayed unblemished. But why her specifically? Because she was like the friendly face of Facebook, the friendly female. like sympathetic, smart girl boss. Remember when she had that ban bossy campaign? Oh, ban, oh, right, yeah.

She did that, yeah. Right, right, ban bossy. Oh, God. And, I mean, anyone looking critically at Facebook and tracing the moves that it has made as a business would have to come to the conclusion that Cheryl Sandberg was not. to be trusted. But for like a casual just Facebook user, someone who's like not following the company's machinations, she seems like a decent person. Yeah.

And I think that that now that's sort of exploded. And I've been wondering, I've sort of been trying to figure out what would happen if she designed. like, I don't know. Yeah, we should explain that. So talk a little bit about the New York Times report that sort of, like what specifically, you've hinted that she's the villain of this New York Times piece, but like you just sort of gestured at there, it calls at this point for her to resign. What in the report has brought people to that, I think, dramatic point with Cheryl Sandberg?

So she was, they sort of highlighted that she. had made the decision to hire Joel Kaplan as the VP of corporate public policy. And he's like a pretty well-known Republican. He, you know, sat in the Kavanaugh hearing supporting Kavanaugh. Facebook said it was on his personal time, so it was okay. And the piece sort of emphasizes that Sandberg had a role in like discouraging Facebook from investigating Russian interference. and, you know, it talks about how she had a role in hiring a public relations firm called Definers to sort of try to convince reporters to talk about how Facebook critics were funded by George Soros.

By the way, there was like a great anecdote on Twitter. I remember a few days ago where after this New York Times story broke, a daily caller writer started to tweeting. He was like, yeah, I remember this. I remember somebody wanted us to write about George Soros, and I thought the angle didn't make sense. And this is a daily caller. Yeah, it's really, it's really bad when the daily collar people aren't taking away. He didn't want to write this, like, yeah, hit piece about George Soros. That's funny. So, and also, I should say, like, Sandberg first started sort of getting scrutinized back when, like, the Cambridge Analytica scandal happened. So she, she has. been sort of her reputation's been in jeopardy for longer than just this, but this sort of seems like a tipping point. And I should say like Mark Zuckerberg is just as culpable as her. I mean, he's more so. He's the fucking founder and CEO. Like I don't want to, I don't want to make it seem like I'm blaming Cheryl Sandberg and letting Mark Zuckerberg off the hook. I think he's a terrible, terrible person. and not even a good CEO anymore.

And, but he's never going to, he has this sort of huge controlling stake in Facebook where it would be very difficult to remove him from his position. So even though he is definitely like the Travis Clannock of the situation, he's not going to get Clannock's because of his controlling stake. Right. You would have to have the Grand Marshal of the Supreme Court with the writ of habeas corpus come down. rest Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah. And so anyway, so I just wanted to emphasize that, like, I'm not saying that Mark Zuckerberg should be let off the hook in anyway. I'm just saying that Cheryl Sandberg should be on the hook.

But I guess from like, from just a person who lives in the world and it's a world that Facebook shapes. And I don't know if, like, removing Cheryl Sandberg would actually. actually make the company less evil. You mentioned Kaplan. Mm-hmm. So, sure, like, technically Joe Kaplan is the, he's Facebook's chief lobbyist, right? Like, he's, he is the global head of public affairs for Facebook. And we should say, global head of public affairs for Facebook means global head of public affairs

for a company that has a lot of public affairs problems throughout the entire planet Earth, right? But given Cheryl Sandberg's profile in Washington, I've always thought of her, and her profile just in political circles. I've always thought of Cheryl Sandberg as the chief political figurehead for Facebook. And if you just think about how the past three years of Facebook have been them having just like a mortifying series,

of just like political disaster after political disaster. It's weird to me that it seems like a good chunk of Facebook critics now. It only occurred to them in the past like two weeks to be like, maybe Cheryl Sandberg is bad. Like she's bit, she is the most powerful political figure ahead at Facebook for several years. And so it just strikes me as weird that it took this particular story for people to be like, maybe we should criticize Cheryl Sandberg

in these moments where we're also criticizing Zuckerberg. I think this was the tipping point. It wasn't just that. Yeah, yeah. There's definitely been a Cheryl Sandberg descent. It just seemed like, if anything, it always,

until now it had always seemed like this very frustratingly marginalized, like repressed sort of, oh, these are the haters. This is the haters' corner. You know what I mean? So I guess.

that now is the tipping point, but it just seemed like before we got to the tipping point, it was actually kind of, it seemed a little bit taboo to like think of Cheryl Sandberg in critical ways. Yeah, because she did such a good job of branding herself. Yeah. It's like, yeah, you know. But. Why did she brand her?

Like, that's the other weird thing about it. She's smart. She's totally smart. Bear with me here. So I guess what I mean is that like she, C.O. Facebook. Totally get it. But her branding is not just smart.

It's strange in a way. She has this brand that feels like it's cultivated specifically to separate her from even the idea of Facebook, if that makes sense. And that's what strikes me as strange. This isn't just like, you know, this is some person who's not the CEO who's like tending to their own course. It's like Cheryl Sandberg is almost like just a separate LLC that has nothing to do with Facebook. I'm sure there is a separate LL. I mean, there is. You know what I mean?

It's like she almost brands herself in a way that is like, I have nothing to do with Facebook. Don't even think of Facebook when you think of me. And that's weird for somebody who is a long time senior employee of Facebook. Maybe she knew this day would come. Possibly. But so what I wanted to say to sort of connect this back to our conversation about Amazon is that, I don't really even know if I care that much whether Cheryl Sandberg resigns or not. Yeah, for sure.

Because it's not going to change the fact that Facebook is fundamentally damaging to society. And it's just sort of another reminder that the company needs to be regulated. And it's too fucking big. I would say, I'm going to, here's a take. Let's just, I'll say it in the simplest possible terms and I want to try to hack this out. Do you want Facebook to get even bigger? No, no, no, no. What I would say is, would you say that Facebook is a bad product?

Facebook, the website? Yeah. Yes. Okay. Well, first of all, why? Like, why is Facebook a bad product? Because I think it has really distorted the information ecosystem, and it makes people less aware of what's going on in the world.

Okay. Would you say at this point, again, it's like we focused on that, specific, that nature and those elements of Facebook for several, like a few consecutive years now? Yeah. Do you think it's possible at this stage, regardless of whether Cheryl Sandberg resigns, like just don't even think about the executive leadership. Think about the product.

Is it possible to redeem Facebook as a product and make it like at the very least a non, like, cataclysmically elite? I think there's a way to make it. not such a catastrophe nightmare, which is to reduce its scope and power. Okay. I don't think it's redeemable. As a product. Yeah.

Well, I mean, the general idea of a news feed is, there's nothing inherently wrong with that. I love news feeds. I love the news. I like to be informed. It's, yeah. So like that, keeping in touch with friends, I should say, I was, like an early Facebook adapter and I loved it so much in college. Like I, I was a like diehard Facebook fan for years. What you were doing on Facebook? Talking to my friends writing weird shit on their walls. It was like the wild west of Facebook. But so I think that the basic, the core idea of the product, there's nothing wrong with it. It's just the way that they've set it up to privilege what gets the most attention, what they can put the most ads on. has like caused this great distortion in how people get their information,

how the media works. That is very bad for society. So I guess maybe there is a way to redeem it if they fundamentally change it. And they're not going to, though. Yeah, I was going to say, is there a way to use the phrase you said a second ago? Is there a way to fundamentally change it toward what you're talking about without basically deliberately reducing its scale? influence. Just in general.

No. Right. So that's the problem and that's the thing that makes me think I too don't really care whether Cheryl Sandberg resigns or not because it's just like either way, this company is sort of, this company has placed its bet on a product that has an outsized toxic influence on mass media and that the ways that you would go about solving that don't even necessarily have to do with like, I mean, they have a lot to do with executive leadership, but there's very little reason to believe that even the most virtuous possible alternative to Cheryl Sandberg is going to make

the sort of decisions that will lead Facebook to be a better actor. Yeah, and with, I mean, with Facebook and with Amazon, like, I don't think we're ever going to fix them. I just want them to be less bad at this point. I do think it's got to be easier to fix Amazon. Amazon and then Facebook. I think both would require radical government intervention. But you know what I mean?

It's like I could at least wrap my head around the regulations at various levels of government. That could get you to a place where Amazon pays people the amount of money we want them to pay people. and isn't just a flagrantly tax dodging monopoly. And that company could still be useful to like millions of Americans and still exist. In a way that Facebook is just like, no, there's something. It almost seems like the well is poisoned in the case of Facebook. And it's just like the core product is a thing that like you maybe just have to throw that baby out with the bathwater. Because you maybe just can't make it make, you can't go back in time and make that product.

make sense again and just be about, we're just writing on walls. You can't do that. I loved it when it was like that. Yeah. I like can't quit Facebook. This is, I'm a hypocrite. I genuinely find it useful for like finding people to talk to for stories and also just staying in touch with friends and family.

But I really, really feel like I should. And so I've been trying to experiment with other social networks. Oh, like what? Oh, my God. Okay. Do you know who Romani Malko is, the actor? He was on weeds. He was in the 40-year-old virgin.

He's just like a C-list actor who started his own social network. And it's very funny. He personally wrote on my wall. There's like 600 people in it. And maybe we should just all join Romani-Malco's social network, is what I'm saying. How old is Romney Malco? 50. Okay, good.

So you don't have to go through the whole Zuckerberg college dorm trying to get girls. He's an adult. Okay, there we go. All right. So my suggestion is we all join Romney Malco Social Network, which is called life management tribe.com. I'm less behind. I am not getting paid for this. I just, I want there to be another option.

Are you the CEO? No, I'm not affiliated with this in any way. Anyway, I just want there to be another option besides Facebook. And why not this? And the alternative to Amazon Prime is what? Going to the store. Okay, that's true. I guess so.

Please consult the minimum wage in your state. Yes. All right, I'm Justin Charity. I'm Kate Nibbs. Thanks for listening. Happy Thanksgiving. We'll be back in two weeks.