Tomorrow - 126: Paris Martineau is Not a Follower

Episode Date: August 3, 2018

Can Josh and Ryan blame their troubles on Mercury being in retrograde? Of course they could but they're not insane, so they won't. They're also too sensible to believe in your silly conspiracy theories. To that end they've brought back Paris Martineau, a staff writer for The Outline, to discuss what exactly QAnon is and why the media keeps drawing attention to complete nonsense. We also discover the fundamental flaw with how we built all of social media. Then to round out the week we end on an uncharacteristically happy note by listing everything that is currently good about the internet. It's not much, but it's something! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey and welcome to tomorrow I'm'm your host, Josh, with Polsky. Today on the podcast, we discuss McMansions, boomers, and Paris Hilton. I don't want to waste one minute. Let's get right into it. Okay, Ryan, hey, we're back. We're back. It's another week. We're still alive. Unfortunately, we're still here.

I'm still here, just like Joaquin Phoenix in the seminal 2008 film. I'm still here. I don't know what year that movie came out. It's probably 2012. Yeah. I don't think it's also a seminal I think is a... I mean, come on.

A lot of people hated that movie. And you know, Casey Affleck of course was accused of sexual harassment during the making of I think is a. I mean, come on. There were a lot of people hated that movie. And you know, KC Aflac, of course, is accused of sexual harassment during the making of, I'm still here. Uh, I kind of like the movie. I feel like that's one of those movies that got a lot of attention when it was out and that we never really need to discuss again.

I don't think so. It was weird is that what King Phoenix was in a movie called I was never really there. Yeah. Which is like, are you still here? Were you not here at all? Because we need to call. Did I talk about this last time?

I feel like I talked about this already. I don't think so. I don't know. It's like make a call on what you're status. You're there. You're not. Anyhow, we're still here. Another week, the Paul Manafort trial has begun.

I'm just trying to think of things, red letter things that have happened. Mercury is in retrograde, apparently, until August 10th. Now apparently, I don't know. Everybody says this is a bad thing. And I think it might be true. Now, of course, I don't believe in any kind of cosmic happenings because I'm not an event. I systematically muted everything related to astrology on my Twitter account and my life has improved so much. And also, it makes, when you do hear about astrology, oh, it's a little weird, fun Harry Potter-like personality thing. And then you can stop because people on Twitter

really, really take astrology seriously. They will break up with someone because their signs are in command. I'm like, astrology is a, it's got to breathe. Astrology is first off as a scam, one of the great scams of all time. But I mean, it's one of the most historic scams. So stupid. But also, and I know I'm gonna catch a lot of heat for this. Didn't all the astrologers say a couple years ago, like, by the way, we miscalculated all of it. This is what it would actually be, but we're gonna stick with what we've been doing.

You're like, you know, I mean, look, it's for entertainment purposes only. And if you're entertained by it, congratulations. If you're making relationship decisions based on it, I feel sorry for you. And it's so self-fulfilling because then you're like, Mercury's in retrograde. And then every time something bad happens,

you're like, well, Mercury. Mercury. It's not me. Well, so on that topic, I had something horrendous happen on Saturday night. I was driving on the Pennsylvania turnpike. We went to Pittsburgh. Laura had a book signing for her book and I was like, it'll be fun. We'll do like an old school, we'll go drive across Pennsylvania just like old times because we used to make that trip all the time

when we were like first together. Some of those Instagrams. And you know, first night is we stayed over in Hershey, which was extremely weird, but also the people at our hotel, we were at like a courtyard marry out. I don't want to dox anybody. I've been to that courtyard, man. But they were like, we stopped at this hotel in Hershey on the way out.

And we're, we check in late, it's like midnight or something. And the guys who were working in the front desk are like, we shouldn't tell you this, but there's some famous people here. I was like, oh really? Yeah, we can't tell you who they are. I was like, oh, okay. And then the cast of Phil Hanes.

And then one of the other guys was he's walking with all of it. He's like, actually, he's like, do you watch that show, Gypsy on Netflix? He's like, it's Naomi, sorry, what is her name? Naomi Watts, Naomi Watts and Billy Cretup. I was like, oh, are they filming something here? And then he was like, it's Naomi, sorry, what is her name? Nami Watts, Nami Watts and Billy Cretup. I was like, oh, are they filming something here? And then he was like, no, they're just here like vacationing in Hershey, PA.

I feel like I'm doxing them right now. I feel like this is really rude. It's like an us weekly dox. What happened to you guys about celebrity? So first off, I don't know, I guess Billy Cretup and Naomi Watts are a couple, which I didn't even know. That might be doxing. That makes sense.

No, no, no, no, it's, we, I mean, it's gossip. No, we're good at it. We're good at it. Oh, afterwards. We're like, oh yeah, this is like a thing. There are a thing now. So that was weird.

That was fine. We didn't see them. We were, we went to our room and went to sleep. Anyhow, Saturday night we're coming back. We're like, we'll do halfway again. We're on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I'm going, I don't know, 75, let's call it 75. The, by the way, speed limit in Pennsylvania is 75,

which I didn't know. I mean, I didn't remember it. I think they've raised it recently. Anya, whatever, on an empty road, nine o'clock at night, and we hit two deer who had jumped the median, the concrete median literally right in had jumped the median, the concrete median, literally right in front of the car, like we were going full speed. Holy shit.

And one second we were talking and listening to a song and then the next second we were slamming into two large animals. I hate this. No, it's horrible. It was horrible. But, okay, so like, yeah, so it was really bad and super scary and like we, the car went completely, we're fine. We were fine.

Nobody got hurt. Hate car crash. Didn't crash anything else, but it's fucking insane. I like, as soon as, like I saw the thing as I was hate, it was like, you know, like you have time, there's no reaction time. No. It was like, you know, you have time, there's no reaction time. It was like, you have time to have burned in your brain. That's it. I have a still frame of my brain.

Of the moment. No, I was in a terrible car accident as a teenager and I realized saying I hate car, everyone does. But I, like, wins, I can't. My whole body like reacts still because it's one of those things that's like burned into my brain forever. The only other time I've had an accident was, I slid on some ice a few years ago.

I literally just went around a turn. It was icy on the road and my car went into a guardrail. So I've never really, and it was like, I was going like 30 miles an hour or something, or 25. It was like a slow. This was full bore. And I was like, oh my God, we hit a deer. Laura was like, I think there were two.

I'm like, I don't say that. Also, that's insane. What are you talking about think there were two. I'm like, I don't, don't say that. Like, also that's insane. Like, what are you talking about? There were two. The car was completely fucked up. They claim it can be repaired. I don't see how. Anyhow, then, then as I'm, as we're,

so it was a huge mess and really upsetting and scary. But then we get, there were a lot of wonderful people who helped us and we got our car towed obviously and the tow truck driver while we were in the so sorry this is like a lot of personal stuff while we were in the tow truck I got a call from my brother and there was a death in my family which is very sad and then he's like you know Mercury's in retrograde and I'm like I don't know I it was the night of apparently the blood moon which I don't know but but here's the thing the blood moon fault the

the tow truck driver was like He's like it's a full moon tonight. He's like they were running because it's a full moon And and I apparently that's a thing. I don't know but It's so it's so it's really hard on two levels one is like Obviously, it's super fucking scary to be. One is like, obviously, it's super fucking scary to be in a car accident, especially at that speed. I mean, I've never hit anything at all at that speed.

I mean, I can't imagine. I don't know. Like, we definitely could have died, and I haven't thought that much about it, but like, there are lots of situations where people hit a deer going that fast and they fucking die. That's it. Like, the deer go through the windshield

or they swerve and the car's like so. The birds are very, very, very sick. to go over. That's it. Yeah. So we're very lucky. Yeah. Apparently they weren't, they were like maybe teenage deers, not full size. I don't know, they were like teen deers. And yeah, they're dead for sure.

But, so that's the other thing is, I like this horrible being a car accident, it's also horrible to have killed, I've never killed anything like that. I would, you know, I'm anti-hunting and mostly vegetarian, I eat fish, but, you know, meaning kill them is an accident. No, I, well, but, you know, they're dead. They're dead. And I've been there. Here's the fucked up thing, the thing that I can't stop thinking about, which is like,

had we been five seconds later? Had we hit that area five seconds later, or five seconds earlier, we wouldn't have touched them. Yeah. I don't think we would have, maybe if they had, if we had been five seconds slower, maybe we would have seen them and swerved. I don't know. I play all these weird scenarios out. And yes, that was really,

so that's how I started the week, basically. That was like, then Sunday we had to fly back because our car, my car is fucked. That sucks. I'm really sorry to hear that. But no, it's okay. But I was just thinking about the astrology sitting in my brother's bed and I don't put any stock in it.

This is top, yesterday I was top 10 worst days of my life, period like I can fully attest to that. And yet, things keep getting worse so I don't wanna blame Mercury. I think I'm just gonna blame getting older, being broke and the Trump administration. I mean, Trump, that just covers most of it. I mean, Trump's definitely the top of the list

for just general feelings of bad feelings. Yeah, I honestly feel like everybody would accept, I guess like racist Republicans, I guess they're psyched. I don't know how they feel. Because, no, I don't even think so because they don't have fucking health insurance and all the shit. So maybe you have not, they sleep in your like, well, fuck brown people. But the rest of their lives suck. I don't know think so because they don't have fucking health insurance and all the shit so maybe at night they sleep and are like well fuck brown people

But the rest of their lives saw I don't know but like okay I remember when Obama was president. They don't even have Roseanne anymore. Sorry. I know really take it They take it everything from them I remember when Obama was president. I also don't remember feeling very often like fuck yeah This is my president. He's doing it like no, but I had a general sense of like, I had a vision of the future that like I was like, when I have kids and like, well, global warming, but we'll figure that out. Like I just had like a, like an optimism

and like it gave me a sense that like I could plan for the future and have a sense of certainty and I knew I wanted to stay in New York or LA. Now I'm literally making life decisions based on if I can leave the country. If that option stays open, deciding if I wanna have children at all, like this stuff is, I mean, I know people.

I'm fraying at the end. No, it's crazy. I know people I'm not talking about. No, I mean, it's crazy to think like I have people in my life who like have gotten married for like immigration reasons like, because they're scared. Because they're here legally better.

Well, I keep thinking, will my marriage be dissolved by Jeff Sessions' Liberty Religion Space Force or whatever the fuck he's doing? Definitely. And then will my kids that I adopt eventually be taken away? And I wish that I was being dramatic, but I think no, I'm making sense in being logical.

And everybody else is pretending that it's not happening as a survival technique. It's just like, it's just like things were not like this. It's like when you pass homeless people on the street, I used to get really upset. Now I've turned that off. The logical thing is to get really upset, not to turn it off and keep walking. That's fucking crazy. Well, you know, yes.

Of course, you can't be expected to handle all of the things. I know, but like yesterday I saw a guy and he threw up and he wasn't moving. And I walked past him and then I turned around and was like, no, and I checked if he was dying. And he wasn't feeling good. So I alerted a police officer and that was the most I could do. Right. But the fact that my instinct was, I was like, what is happening to me? Yeah. Well, listen, it's, no, I get it. I mean, it's, it's, at any rate, look,

I don't wanna make this like a Trump thing. No, I'm purposely trying not to feel things this week, so I don't know why we're talking about it. I'm sorry, it's my fault. But there is just a general dread that is hanging over everything now that is like, things that didn't seem like they were a problem. Now look, I'm not saying we'd have problems,

yeah, you know, two years ago we did. We had plenty of problems, but there was just a different tenor to the whole country and the whole world, you know? Here's an example of a new story. Google testing out a censored search engine just for China. I used to think like, well, China will develop as an economy and then it will open up because that's how, you know,

the arc of history, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, and Obama constantly repeated, I was like, that is what's gonna happen. I have faith, because I have faith in the wonderful people of China to feel entitled to human rights. And now, I'm like, no, maybe we'll all just start

censoring search and removing... I read them in square, so that we can remove our tariffs. I mean, I read an in squares. I mean we can remove our tariffs I mean I read an interesting piece you know I mean the thing about China that's so fascinating is that you know they their version of communism is extremely

fluid I mean they they're a place whatever they have to do right and there are places where they're it's like a it's a hybrid of capitalists and What do they have to do? Right. And there are places where it's like a hybrid of capitalists and like common communists. It's an oligarchy. Yeah. Yeah. And that's booming economy.

And you know, it's scaring the reason why you're seeing like these strong men, the strong men leaders and like this rise in sort of nationalism is like really is actually partially response to that, which is like, oh wait, we thought democracy was like a key part of a burgeoning economy. I'm the actual thing that would have to develop. Like where else is this to work? Yeah, right, like a good economy. A huge wealth creation for people

and all that stuff that China is doing. People are like, well, you've got to have free markets and all that stuff. And it's like, oh, actually, you can have like fascist rule and a great economy. And now everybody's like, wait a second. Maybe we've made a big mistake. Maybe democracy was actually not that great of an idea. I feel like I was just reading.

I'm trying to think of what I was reading. Well, I think the ultra wealthy are thinking that. And then they're regurgitating those ideas in repackaged, sellable ways. They're thinking like, they're putting in economics. They're thinking it and they're putting peopleitating those ideas in repackaged, sellable ways. They're thinking like, in their own economics. They're thinking it and they're putting people like Trump in positions of power where he's trying to do it. And like, you know, that's the road,

that's the scary road that we're all on and that's why, I mean, the China thing is interesting, Google, we saw it. How are we doing tariffs? How are we doing tariffs? Yeah, I mean. Isn't this like early, like 19th century economics that didn't work?

I mean, you've got totally, you've got some of the worst of all the ideas just happening all at once. But so the Google things interesting is Google was, you know, they resisted this for specific reasons. Obviously, Android has penetrated the Chinese market. But at a certain point, you're leaving money on the table and companies are companies. You leave money on the table, but maybe there's also an argument. They don't hire any ethicists, so that's not an argument. I'm going to be devil's advocate for a second.

Maybe there is an argument that I censored Google still cracks open a little bit of a window to something more, and maybe there is a way of there is a kind of opening up there that happens. Maybe, but I feel like that is the beginning of the erosion of the good thing, not the beginning of the erosion of the bad thing. Well it's hard to say, but I will say that it's imperative if Google wants to get to its trillion dollars. Well Apple just did. Yes. I don't say that it's imperative if Google wants to get to its trillion dollars.

Well Apple just did. Yes. But also, I'm gonna say, today when I saw that headline, I last night became fully certain that I don't wanna buy anymore Apple stuff and I don't think most people do. Really? I see that everyone's faunting over the Surface Go. Everyone I know who has a Mac, bitches,

and moans about it. I don't know a single person happy with their purchase. I am excited about the Surface Go, to be honest with you. People who have iPhones seem to be kind of into their iPhones still, but not in a way that, like most people, it's just like a, it's like Windex. Like if you switched it out with the other thing, I think that would be fine.

Look, they're just used to buying. I'm, you know, the other- Apple sucks. Literally yesterday I was like, should I switch back to an iPhone because I'm on- AirPods are silly. I'm on a couple of messages, a group messages now. You know, and it's like, I'm getting shit out of order, and I'm not missing messages.

And it is like, for, I mean, I've complained about this a million times, but it is very frustrating. And no one's coming over to anything else. I'm not going to get, I mean, yeah, a lot of people use WhatsApp, but I'm not going to be like, the guy who's like, oh, you guys want to talk in the thing that's super native and build into your phone? No, let's use WhatsApp instead. Like, people aren't gonna go for that. My eye might-

But the thing is, I use my iPhone. And I like having eye message, and I use an iPad, and I- Yeah, you're not gonna switch. But I don't use any of their services, other than purchasing apps and eye messages. Yeah. I use Google services for everything else.

Yeah, but that's fine. They're like, cool. We make all our money on apps and you being locked into our hardware. I understand, but if at some point I wanted to switch, it's really easy for me to just pick up an Android phone. I think I agree with you, except that I'm going to tell you that you're going to feel all fucked up with these group message conversations. Sure. But it's really annoying. But to have that be the one thing that I think your company is doing, like, that's working.

Well, they hijacked your phone number. They're not even doing it well. They literally I mean the one thing that like Fuck at hijacked people phone numbers and we're like we're stealing your phone number and now you're going to have to Like deal with that. Yeah, and now I've reached on their fucking Message platform. Yeah, it's extremely monopolistic. Oh, it's horrifying. Fucked up actually. And the thing is when they announced I message they said it was going to be an open system. Right. Like they're going to have open APIs and well so much for that. So it's Twitter. That's classic stuff. All right, what else is going on in the news though? Um, oh, a multiple, I mean, still bad, multiple, um, content services like Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube,

refused to ban Alex Jones and Info Wars. The other day I was walking down the street, I was coming from a haircut, which turned out terribly because that's the state of things in my life. And I saw someone had chalked on the sidewalk a giant mural for Info Wars and I stopped and purchased multiple bottles of Poland Spring and ruined it. Wow, that's good.

Take that in for a word. You know, listen. Because fuck them and that's the spot if I should do. They should buy some Poland Spring and blast it off their servers. You know, look, everybody is now, look, you see what's happening out there on the internet, okay? The right-wing groups are so well organized and so. And we're gonna talk about this as well.

And they're mobbed, and they're their mobs, their mobs of people that are just engineering chaos on the internet. And the problem is. And I see the issue with YouTube and with Facebook and with all these people with Info Wars, which is this. You could go look, these guys spread lies misinformation, they abuse the terms of service, they're, you know, they create harmful situations for the people that they target. We're going to

ban them, okay? The second that happens, you're going to have a wave of politicians and fucking right wing pundits and all these people that are trying to start talking about how Google is censoring and this and that. And it's's like they don't want that shit. They want to be left alone to run their business, right? They don't want to take a side. Google's job doesn't, you know, Google is not there to take a side. So, you know, that's what they want you to feel. Their side is like, we're just the internet. Yeah, they're just, you know, Facebook is like, we don't want to take a side. We want to let communities do the thing or whatever.'s like okay fine, but you know with no

Policy around it with no real actionable, but they take a side on nipples So you have to take a side on everything else. Well nipples are disgusting and offensive and if somebody sees a nipple They'll become a rapist I think we all know that so you can't let nipples at the end of the day if you take if you don't put porn in the app store And on Spotify and on Facebook then fuck you you have to take not to shit down. There's nothing more offensive than the act of creation, human life creation and nothing more precious.

No, nothing more precious than the life that's created. But just put gay porn on. Just strictly gay porn. No babies being made. That's a good point. That's a good point. I just want to see gay porn. I like it.

I love it. There's no breastfeeding. I just want to see gay porn. I like that. I love it. There's no breastfeeding. I love this. There's attempts. There's like this one little window in the sex world that the right wing and the right wing people in the Christians are worried about, which is like conception. Not like that, not anything else, not anything that goes around non-conception sex, disgusted by it.

The sexual act actually discussed it by a, but if an egg is fertilized, then they're very excited until it's a lie and get it out of my face. Until it's actual baby. You will, fair queens. Yeah, until it's a baby and then it's like, fuck this, fuck send them. Send them to a rack to be sure. You're choice to get born selfish. Exactly.

Right. You're a taker born selfish. Exactly. Right. You're a taker. Right. So anyhow, it's a great world out there. Wait, how do we get on that? I don't know, but we're talking about, how do we get on the topic of, oh, these, right, the platforms. Yeah, platforms.

It's like, I don't know, man. I guess it's just like, I just think that all of these things are just comment sections and like, you got to ban the people who suck in comments sections. And like, if Facebook is, if Facebook is a free product, I have selected partners. I can't go put my podcast, my, if I want you new podcasts, which I,

the only thing that will matter, the only thing that will matter, I can't put it on Spotify. I can't put it on Spotify. I make money. What's their main revenue stream is subscribers? Yeah. The only thing that would get Spotify to change their tactic is if

I capitalism is if the If they're subscribers on mass said we're canceling our accounts until you remove Fucking Nazis and Infowars or whatever's on there. Yeah, like on iTunes, like, can I get or on Apple Music? Are there like, can I listen to the Info Wars podcast? On Apple Music? Like you're on Apple Podcasts. On Apple Podcasts, yeah, but they know. But they know.

I think, no, actually it isn't. It's a submission based platform. But you can, I think, paste the feed. Let's see if you can pull it up through podcasts, the app podcasts. Yeah, I mean, hold on. I'm looking it up info wars, so that you at home don't know, but you can get Alex Jones. I see him fly there.

This is real news. What's that info wars? Info wars, freedom nuggets. A freedom nuggets. Is that real? These are one minute. Let's see what it's like. Let's just play it up.

You want to hear one? Oh, episodes are all unavailable. Okay, interesting. So even if it is the band from want to hear one? Oh, episodes are all unavailable. Okay, interesting. So even if it is the ban, it's info wars is one word, I think. I think this is also just a fully, yeah, I did one word.

I think this is also just fully broken. So I don't know. Cool. Graholic Jones show, info wars. Yeah. So, so, I don't know. It's only got a A3 rate rate. So it is odd, isn't it odd?

Like, wait, is there an InfoWars app on the App Store? Ooh, let's say InfoWars. Is there a Daily Stormer app? I mean, if they've got bright part, fuck them anyway. They have a Daily Stormer app, let me make sure I think they do. Nope, nothing for InfoWars. Would you have a Daily Stormer?

I mean, maybe it's just being slow. I'm googling, I'm googling now, or sorry, I'm in the fourth floor. Their interfaces are terrible. InfoWars official. That's available on. I don't think these are real. Okay.

Available on this available on Google Play. Yeah. I think there's fake dummy apps that try to get you to download it for the ad views. But that's really it, which the beautiful work iTunes letting those end. Can I report this? I'm reporting this. Yeah, I report it. How do you do this?

I report it to Twitter all the time just to bother them. I didn't even see the report button. Oh, here we go. Hold on. Flag is inappropriate. Hateful or abusive content. No, I'm not going to submit this. But in any event, they just have to ban them.

I'm, and it's, and yeah, look, the point is these fucking people don't want to deal with the fallout because they are scared and they should be because the people the right wing people on the internet are the most dangerous scarious mob of people on the internet they are like i was thinking a lot about this and i will talk to paris uh... we're going to have to pay us marina in a second

um... about q anon and things like that. But there's no question. Sarah Jung today was sort of attacked for some old tweets. She's a journalist who wrote some joke tweets about how why people are bad or whatever. And it's like, come on. Let's be honest, guys. You're pretty bad. Why people are not great. Not a good track record.

I mean, they're like, what are great bunch? Some why people don done some great things. Some people have it. We have to stop flipping out over tweets from 10 years ago. No, but that's what I'm saying, is that the whole of it now is a gamer gate. It's all about this mob. Like if you can get a swarm of people,

a mob of people and they figured it out, because it's a fucking game. Well, it's like don't quote tweet. Attention is attention is attention. We have to stop quote tweeting the fucking president and like fucking, oh, what did the whole system is predicated on like, it's the whole thing is a game. Yeah.

And who's really good. I mean, it's like, here's the deal. People who are good at games, a lot of the best gamers aren't great. Okay. I don't think it like breathe, like getting really good at a first person shooter is necessarily like, those are all the great people. You've got great skills and everything else. They get their good at all sorts of games.

They're good at all fucking sorts of games. Good at that. The gamer gay people are really care about gaming or whatever, but they're really interested in is attacking women and gay people and people of color and anybody who doesn't fit whatever, they're weird in-sell world is both to look like. But all this has its roots and like the kind of old school,

like nerd mob attack on the internet, like DDoSing is literally like a mob attack, you know, a denial of service attack is literally the same mentality. It's like brute force. And brute force is how they've like won a lot of really shitty victories. So anyhow, I guess the point of what I'm saying is,

what the fuck was I saying? The point is that none of these companies want to deal with brute force attacks. They just want to be, they want to make their money. So I think most people at Google are like, pro-info wars, I doubt it. But I think that most of them are pro not having to hear from a senator who's like,

why did you censoring speech on your platform? Because then they get into the regulation. It's also the people that run these things don't think any of this is a real threat because all the people who run, to be honest, the people who run these companies are so out of touch with reality. There's so many fucking Elizabeth Holmes walking around actual Silicon Valley at actually successful companies. I got to read them book. It's incredible. Have you read it twice? Oh my god. I've heard so many good things about it. It's incredible. But there's so many of these people walking around that are so out of fucking touch with reality and up their own asses that they're not even scamming you.

They're scamming themselves because it's so fun. And the fact that they don't hire ethicists and that it means the same shit with Washington where it's like, you're not listening to like people. It's going to eventually bite you in the ass, but it's biting me in the ass first and I need it. You don't stop. Yeah, stop biting. It eventually bite you in the ass, but it's biting me in the ass first, and I need it, you don't stop me. Yeah, stop biting. Yeah, it's like you're the turtle. The, be nice to the turtle's down below, buddy.

I, look, the reality is, movie pass is dying, reddit is hacked, the world is ending. Wow. But, none of these have any impact on me. You know what we have? What?

Paris Martin. Paris Martin. That's right. Our great writer, Paris, is going to be here in here talking about QAnon in the media and a lot of what we were just talking about. But yeah, but even much better terms. Yeah, and much she's with Paris Martinot. What happens if you play monopoly with real money? We've got to pay the price. Okay, I'll pay the price. There are no more watches in this completely reinvented game of an office.

What does space sound like? What happens when you overwork yourself? Do you believe that work related stress has increased? It reflects the fact of how little value we place on the well-being of human beings. The Outline World Dispatch Every Monday through Thursday, we bring you a new story on the theme of power, culture, or the future. And picked from theoutline.com. Find us an Apple podcast, Google Play, Spotify,

your Amazon Alexa Flash briefing, or wherever you download your podcasts. Also, you can say, okay, Google, play me the news, and we're right there. Oh my God, yeah! Make your mornings a little weirder. Our guest today really what you think about it is Paris Martino. Do I say that right? Yeah, you always say it wrong in some way. You know, a lot of self-consciousness

names names. I'm very. I'm the exact same way. Are you? Well, it's like you don't want to spend some any on Paris Martino, who is our one of our staff writers focusing on the world of the future, which is really the world of the present, which I hope someday will soon be the world of the past if we have our, if we have our, we really have cover all three. But Paris, Paris is written, I mean, Paris is written on a number of topics, but I think with, has written recently with great authority and insight on several sort of online,

like sort of right wing, online madness, but particularly the QAnon movement. I guess that's a word for it. And you wrote early on a kind of like, you wrote like a guy, not a guide, but like what is this thing? Because Roseanne Bar had tweeted something about, I think that was the trigger for your first article on it. The first article for the outline. For the outline, yeah, sorry.

Which loves QAnon. Yeah, well, big fan. Now, I wrote about it back in December, actually. When it just, You wrote it up and select all. Yeah, for select all New New York Magazine's tech blog. And back then it was just a thing that I saw on Forge and a lot. And on Reddit that I found mildly concerning.

And I did not realize that it was going to still even be around in eight months, much less beyond cable news. Yeah, so literally signs behind the actual president. Yeah, but that's, but that's, but that's behind the actual president. Yeah, but that's, but that's, but the thing is that even like that has been going on for months now. So it's real though.

It's just the time. Like supporters have been showing up at Trump rallies or I think like that happened before John Benay pictures that Katy Perry context. There was like a, a Q and on supporter wearing like the Q shirt a month ago that like Trump pointed at and like had him be like a VIP behind, go backstage. And the whole universe is so funny.

Can you give us to the intrepid listener who does not know good thing? Give us a short version of possible of what QAnon is. First of all, I'll apologize if I'm breaking this news too because it's depressing and nobody needs to know about this. No, we should know, but we all have to. Is a bunch of people who, a bunch of people believe that a top secret government agent,

I guess, in the Trump administration is communicating with them secretly online through at first 4chan, then 8chan. The preferred, the only method of getting information to the people. I don't know, Kiwi Farms. Kiwi Farms, you know, I mean, it's close. But essentially this person goes by the name of Q, they claim to have top government clearance. And the core of the conspiracy theory is essentially like all the bad stuff about Trump is actually good stuff about Trump.

The Mueller investigation, he really isn't under investigation. He's actually just such a genius and so smart that he realized that it was Hillary and Obama who were colluding with the Russians and essentially is run for President to and pretended to be involved with Russia so that people would investigate him and then uncover the secret Democratic Kabul, which among other things, like collude with Saudi Arabia, ISIS, run a giant pedophilia, Kabul,

and eat a adrenal column, adrenal crome gland. I, let's not just miss it, because I wanna talk about the real motivation. So it's really quickly, this is a person who's online, Q. Yeah. Presumably, I'm assuming taking the name from the character on Star Trek, the next generation. They're actually taking it from the fact that they have Q clearance, which is a Department of Energy Top Secret clearance.

Okay. And the one of the parts I like best about this is that the Mueller investigation is like Trump actually is like Trump actually is like very pro-Moller investigation and that like it's actually the smoke screen that's like they're investigating Trump and Russia collusion, but it's a cover so that they can investigate

the real thing that is like Obama and Hillary Clinton running like this like, they have a cabal of like, they're like the deep state. What I said was like the central, probably most important part of it. It's essentially a catch all conspiracy that gets much crazier than that. But so the pedophilia,

so as we all know, the alt-right people, all the right wing people are obsessed with pedophiles. They're obsessed, Mike Cernovich, obsessed with pedophiles. I mean, you know, who knows why? You know, everybody believes that everyone is part of it. He's an accused rapist, you know, who knows why? You know, everybody believes that everyone is part of the thing. He's an accused rapist, you know, and has said rape isn't possible in a marriage and all sorts of stuff like that.

But like, but he's very interested in pedophiles and pedophilia and calling people pedophiles at any opportunity. Now this, what's interesting is that if you've ever read David Ike's book, The Biggest Secret, which I talk about all the time, and I know we've talked about, have we ever talked about? I have a copy of my office. I've talked about, how many times have I talked about David Ike's The Biggest Secret? More than we've talked about anything else.

Okay, so we've talked about the outline of the album. Part of it. So, so, so I, when I was like, fucking 12, I was like, yeah, conspiracies are awesome, conspiracy theories are awesome, and I read all the fucking Robert Anton Wilson shit, the Illuminati trilogy. Did you buy it? And because I did too, but I never bought it. I, when I was like, I mean, I was in 12, I was like 15. I bought the, there's the Illuminati trilogy

and then there's another one that's good, that's real. And then, you know, that's real. And then there's behold a pale horse and all these like, classic and then there's David, I graduated into David, I can, David Ike's conspiracy theory was something like every conspiracy, all of them are connected. They're all part of this thing and it's like reptilian shape shifters.

He's like, I think he may be the person who basically popularized reptilian, like the people who control the new world order, the Illuminati are like these reptiles who are shape shifters that use like underground tunnels to travel across the globe. But one of the interesting things and one of the things I always thought was the most,

so there's all this like Vatican stuff and you know, all these like religious and governmental powers that have pooled together. But the thing that I was interested in is that he talks about George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton and all these politicians how they would go to these like black magic sex ritual parties where they were using children. is how they would go to these black magic sex ritual parties where they were using children, they were doing these black magic sex rituals with children

where they would use the children through some life. The whole spirit cooking thing from pizza gate. I don't know, they were something where they would put information into the children. This is another John Beninth. They would use the children as storage for information somehow, like the horrible, the horrible things they'd done through some black,

magic, sex thing. But this is all, like, that's what this conspiracy is. Oh, it totally is. I mean, there's not reinvent. But what's interesting is that like, they do go to a retreat. Do you know what I mean? And so these people take the, like,

what is it called, that retreat that like, with the Aspen Institute or Davos? Yeah, Davos. Yeah, I mean, or no, no, not Davos. There is actually like one where they all go and they have like, they go to camp. They go to summer camp for weeks. Is it the one that John Ronson and Alex

of the Sun Valley? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not the other one. What's the other one? It's the Grove Bohemian Grove. Bohemian Grove. Yeah. But the thing is, there's like,

you could take, like you could be like, well, Beyonce's in the Illuminati, for example. Separate type of, Beyonce's in the aluminum, for example, separate type of, Beyonce's in the aluminum, let's all just assume this is true because you could take the fact that she's a powerful entertainment person who has tight control over her, both her business and her industry, and also has ties to multiple news agencies

because she helps them by blah, blah, blah. Like it is true that a lot of people have ties to each other. There are, of course, in every conspiracy theory. There's a seed of like, yeah. In order for you to paint it into. Yeah, I mean, I think people like by putting this energy into it, by doing what they, people in the Q&A conspiracy, like, oh, we were not cultists, we're researchers.

And by actively participating this in researching as a group, they dive deeper and deeper in, because like, oh, well, these sort of things match up. But also it's like, so one, it's like, the conspiracy theory itself is really old. Like the concept of this, like this global conspiracy where there's like child pornography or sex rings or whatever, like that's something,

it's not original, but the other thing is that it's clear to me that this is an elaborate joke. Like someone, the person who's doing it, oh, cute. Oh, yeah. that this is an elaborate joke. Like someone, the person who's doing it, oh, cute. Oh yeah. Like, or they're deeply mentally. No, no, no, no, no. I mean, I, yes, okay, I'll give it like a 10% possibility

that Q is not a group of college students having a fucking blast. Once in a while you get a real wacko, but most of the time it's a person who's just like, are you familiar with the story of John Titer? No. No. Okay, Google it right now. John Titer, this is John Titer. John Titer is a character who appeared on message, I think physics message boards in like the early 2000s, maybe mid 2000s, and he was like, I am a time traveler. It's a fucking amazing story.

I remember that. I remember that. It's such a good story. It's such a good story. No, it's definitely a lot. He's like, I'm a time traveler. I was like, World War III has happened. I would travel back to collect evidence

on a certain government project. And he made all these predictions about things that were gonna happen. And people on these forums became obsessed with him. And they're like, who is he? Is this real? He's giving us some details that seem like it could be true. And it's this exact thing.

It's like somebody was having a fucking blast playing this character. I just want to know who has had this amount of time because there has been, I think, what is it now, like 1776 post in the QA on that. You would be surprised. I mean, it's basically Steve Paul's talk at 1777. Or I think it was a, maybe he's posted some sense then,

but he, or I'm calling it he, but I don't know the gender or anything, whether it's just one person, but the person calling himself Q, stop posting for about a month and people lost their minds. And they, he posted again, it was the. How many active members are of the community are there? So let's go to the subreddit right now.

I also believe, I also believe that there are people being handed those shirts at these Trump rallies. Like I saw a picture of two people wearing those shirts and they were old. Oh no, the majority of the believers of this, or at least from what I've seen, are older. It's like kind of a boomer thing. To Rosanne. I mean, it started out in Fort Chan, but now it's really like their subreddit has 50,000 viewers.

How many viewers is the mechanical keyboards read at half? Can somebody give me a number on that? It's our slash mechanical keyboards. I just want to hot sizes up. Yeah. the mechanical keyboards read it half. Can somebody give me a number on that? It's R slash mechanical keyboards. Oh, it's going to hot sizes up. Probably way fewer than 50,000. Probably like there are. There's like 300,000. On the mechanical keyboards? There are 288,000. What? Key-clackers. Wow. There are 2000. Yeah, well, let me give you a fucking example that I've scaled.

Let's talk about scale, because this gets to what Paris has been writing about. So there's 50,000 people on the fucking subreddit. There's too many on mechanical keyboards? 300,000. 300,000 on mechanical keyboards. What amount of their consciousness does it take over? Because it's more impressive that 50,000 people

are fucking wackos. Yeah, but I'm saying like, okay, but some people are just looking. And I mean, also how long is this subreddit been around from a candle keyboard? It's the one firm. All I'm saying is that that that QAnon subreddit is never going to get to 300,000. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Because it's going to be replaced by some other stupid thing. But the point is, let's talk about scale because this is what you wrote about recently.

Which is like, the Washington Post, you told me today, in the last how many days? Yeah, and yesterday, in like the last 24 hours, the Washington Post has written seven articles about Cuban-owned people. Oh my God. Okay, the Washington Post, one of America's most respected, major news publications, has written seven different articles on Cuban-owned,

and a Cuban-owned, been the last 24 hours. They've been written more before. So this is just to be clear, this is a two things that are happening. One is like, this is like, you know this is what all how all of Trump's like shit works. Like all of his rhetoric, all of this, the like when you wanna elevate his message,

like the easiest, it's like, oh, it's like Trump tweets, Bill Clinton, as we all know, is a, he's a well-known wifebeater, just ask Hillary. And then the Washington Post writes seven articles about how Trump said that Bill Clinton is a well-known wifebeater. Now look, Bill Clinton's done some fucked up shit.

As far as I know, he's not a wifebeater. And like, as far as I know, he's never beaten Hillary. But like, believe me, every fucking newspaper in the world would be talking about it. They would have written way more than seven articles about it. This is exactly what these people...

Yeah, and I mean, I guess, like, back up the reason why this is happening is because on Tuesday, evening some QAnon supporters were behind Trump at a rally in Tampa. Yeah. And that's already getting picked up by local news networks and going to cable. And then all of last night, that was the entire primetime coverage for CNN and NBC and

Fox. I mean, it's basically using influencer culture, which is the like thing of, if you well place a couple of the correct mentions, you can make a product, which no one had ever heard of, be trendy and cool and talked about and written up on refining. Right. 29 and the cut. And then teen vogue is covering it. And then someone's tweeting about it

and then every Instagrammer has to have it. And then everybody's got it. Before we all realize that the makeup sponge, the silly sponge, doesn't fucking work. But it doesn't matter because the Chinese company that was making it, it sounds like a place. It's influenced their culture.

But it's- It is, but it's the exact same thing to be like, if those queuing on people want to get seen, they have to go to the right place and all be extremely visible. Well, I think it's Trump. Trump is also look, this is in I guarantee you that who is his fucking CTO? The guy who's now running his campaign.

Brad Parscale. Yeah, Brad Parscale who's a complete scumbag and has done all sorts of weird shady shit I'm sure. I mean, we'll find some evidence of that. But like he's like an internet guy. You can be sure he's like, oh, let's post him on the Donald during Trump's 2016. And they benefit from everybody running around

and all of this chaos and whatever. So it's just the attention thing. It's like don't quote tweet assholes. That's really a good thing. Yeah, I mean, the thing that pissed me off so much about this QAnon coverage yesterday was that all of these outlets were covering it with such like

reverence. I mean, because they were salivating it. Yeah, I mean, who doesn't want to come and see the freak show of the internet horrors? Right. And what'd be like, oh my god, what is this crazy conspiracy theory? But really, you know, you're doing this. Yeah, nothing that you are writing has all this has been covered a million times before. Every one of those outlets had already written a guide to QAnon at some point in the last eight months. And doing it again is not doing anything other than just spreading this idea to work. But Vox gets clicks on its new explainer

and it gets clicks on I like QAnon and it gets clicks on I don't like QAnon and it gets clicks on why we're talking about QAnon and it gets clicks on video. This is the video. This is every media fucking trick. I mean, yeah, that's just the one I read. No, but this is all, no, no, I'm saying

but this is the trends are like one, it's like the misinformation, disinformation, confusion, the Trump wants to show, is like, this is perfect for him, this is perfectly suited to this moment. He wants this more than anything. He wants more than anything to just get a couple people going, like, wait a second, maybe there's some stuff we don't really know, this Mueller thing.

Maybe there's some stuff we don't really understand. Like, maybe it's not what they say it is, you know? But also, we can pass fucking a presidential executive order for a tax cut and nobody's gonna fucking talk about it. Well, like, we're all, like, you and I, right. Right. The other thing is that, that's the noise we all make. Yeah, the noise that all the Q add on, true, if you freeze me.

But the other thing is that it is part of the trend of the media, which is like you can't help yourself to the clicks. You just can't stop. But you can't stop. You need the traffic so bad because you're running a scale business. Or I think even worse is the people who genuinely believe that this is helpful. I saw today some tweet from a New York Times editor that was like, oh, for everybody who's saying, it's irresponsible for us to be reporting on QAnon or publishing these pieces. It's our duty as the free press to report on stuff

when a bunch of cute people show up at a rally. And I do this, it's been happening for months. Right, but again, it's quote tweeting the president being like, this guy's pretty bad. But it's like, you're at a moral conversation. Yeah, your paper is written about this before. It's just the only But it's like, you're at a moral fiction. You're at a moral fiction. Your paper is written about this before. It's just the only thing that it is causing is more people to be like, what is QAnon? And of course, yesterday QAnon was the fourth most searched thing on Google Trend.

Which is, and it's not people who are going there to be like, what's this crazy? I mean, literally, the people who went to the rally with the shirts on could not have gotten a better response. They have elevated the QAnon debate. I know it's like democracy dies in darkness or whatever, but like so did bad conspiracy theories. Like, you know what? Like you can just leave those on fucking fortune.

You know what you're talking about? Like we're not talking about myelinapolis anymore and it's because we kicked him off of every single platform and stopped reporting on him. Yeah, yeah. We don't have to hear his dumb fucking opinions anymore. it's because we kicked him off of every single platform and stopped reporting on him. Yeah. Yeah. We don't have to hear his dumb fucking opinions anymore. Yeah.

It's a dream. I'm waiting for the moment where Cernivitch goes that way and I hand full these other fucking people. By the way, I'm not saying I've got great opinions either, but you know, at least I'm not fucking spreading complete fucking lies. Like the idea that this is now a thing that we have to have like, I mean, I cannot believe they were running blocks on CNN and fucking MSN. It's insane.

I know two reporters who, this is their entire thing on Twitter, they both were invited onto NBC for prime time shows to talk about QAnon and explain it to the masses. That's an audience bigger than probably anybody has ever heard of QAnon before. Oh my God. For sure. This track's very closely with other stuff that you've written on. I mean, you wrote about this thing,

what is it called, the Bradford Files? Yeah. Which is like a, I don't know, it's a kind of crazy MAGA Twitter account, which I had been interested in because it seemed like it had a huge following, but we ended up finding out that it was almost,

it was almost exclusively fake and due to like amplification. And it's really, I mean, this is just the playbook of both the alt-right and everyone on forechan in this whole troll culture, where you get to, you basically just convince the media and discovering you're someone who is important. And then you are important.

It's like a brute force. No, I mean, this is like, I mean, this is how Paris Hilton got famous. And this is the reason that Kim Kardashian is going to get into politics. And we're all going to say, Chris Jenner is a business genius. And we have to vote for her, for like, this is going to happen. So first of Paris Hilton, I mean, now she was born into a life of privilege. She's heir to the Hilton fortune. That's not how she got famous. A lot of people are. She's she got famous with the same publicist that the Trumps had and the Kardashians had.

She showed up to clubs and said, oh, there's gonna be Reese Witherspoon there with Paris Hilton. And when Reese Witherspoon wasn't there and you're already there, you took the picture of Paris and it existed. And then all of a sudden, Paris with someone who lots of pictures existed of.

And once you're friends with Harvey Levin and you say, hey Harvey, can you post just a couple times a week about Paris? Would it be a huge favor to me? Of course I will do that for you, Kathy Hilton. Then Paris Hilton is a celebrity. It's the same tactics that have been used

in celebrity culture are being used like to actually fucking fundamentally change human rights. Do you know what's the... Really insane because the people who are reporting on this are like tweeting this stuff out that get like thousands and thousands of retweets. They're screen-chatting shit from like 4chan or Reddit comments and be like, oh my god, look at what's happening.

And I'm like, these are literal stars. These are trolls who, they do this entirely just to get attention. Like it's very likely. And the more you feed them, the more they are going to do crazy stuff. It's very likely a large portion of that audience that is creating the queue and on content is like literally 16 year old boys. Absolutely. Yeah. And just like, and very old people have been watching YouTube videos and think that the third world war is coming. Yeah, remember the railions? Yeah.

Where are the railers? Yeah. And but here's the thing too, is that it's like all of this, what is our solution? Our solution is that Twitter announced that it's going to announce that it might consider a study to decide what might be bad about Twitter. Like, yeah, guys, it's really insane. And Jack, get it together. It's like, I don't need to keep using this. I hate to keep using this analogy.

It's like, Twitter, you're a bookstore. You can put mine comp in the window. You can put it on a shelf in the back or you can just not sell it. Or you don't have to sell it at all. And it's up to you because you run a private for-profit business and you get to decide what content is on is in the business. Well, they've decided. Well, everybody was really mad at them for a day or so when they kicked out of the media. I'm gonna kick Cernivic and Laura Lumer and other people. It's slightly different scale. I mean, scale but yeah, they could probably do it

But I mean they they've survived, but you know what Twitter takes a really hard stance if you say turfs are bad You'll get blocked from their website. Listen, no kill all Jews. You know, I mean listen Listen, there are alternate services gab is great if you want to get on there You talk about some QAnon stuff or talk about some of the, you know, what the Trump brothers are doing and how great they are. I mean, gab.ai. Yeah, that's the stormer. Check it out, Daily Stormers on there, you know.

But like, I do think it's like, I mean, I hate, I feel like I'm beating a dead horse. But you've written a lot about this, like, you know, the sort of deception that is possible with these platforms because of the kind of outsized. Like, people don't have literacy about like the platforms themselves.

Yeah, I mean, the issue is that we think of the online world as an extension of the real world. When we see, we rank ideas, they're important based on these metrics, whether it's like likes or YouTube views or whatever, and those metrics aren't sound. They're not, they are very easily manipulated. I mean, we rank ourselves on that stuff.

Why wouldn't we rank the news? We rank ourselves ideas, everything based on these metrics that inherently false. If my Twitter joke doesn't get any likes, I assume it's not funny, even though I know it was fucking funny. No, I, I, I, listen, I did a great meme the other day. I don't know if you've seen it. It's a venom meme. It's pretty good about me posting on Twitter.

Please share it. Check out Josh Wittipolsky on Twitter. But, you know, look, it didn't get retweeted. You know, Sony liked it. Wow. Casey Neistat liked it. Tons of followers. So two corporations.

Big people liked it. Big powerful. No one, they can fucking retweet it. Casey, if you're listening, Please retweet my great meme. Anyhow, but the point is, but it's true that we are like, we've now been like programmed to think. I've talked about this a lot like Instagram, the pressure I feel when I see people,

like people post on Instagram. I've got a shittin' alike. What would it mean if I do or don't like this? Cause like, I don't know if you guys are like, there are some people who just go in like everything. Like they'll like everything they see. I tend to be pretty selective, and sometimes I'll see a baby, you know?

And it's like, As one does. Yeah, you'll see a baby on Instagram, and you're like, do I like, do I have to like this? And I think like, if I don't like it, well, the person, the parent of this baby, know that I didn't like it, well, they think that I don't like their baby.

And it's like, that's a fucking crazy way to think. Like that's a crazy thought to have in your brain. But like, all of the internet is now predicated on like, yeah, like the algorithm has bubbled up this thing and therefore we think it's like important. Well, we assume that people with 50,000 followers must be doing something that we're not doing correctly because I only have 5,000 thought or whatever the fuck, you know.

Well, we're assigning worth based on like these preconceptions that really don't exist. because where it's essentially just like a chaotic sphere With his powered both by algorithms who knows why some things take off and some don't Also, like sometimes this isn't the audience like I did it I so I took a six month break from stand-up and I went at the last Thursday I went back and I did Congratulations. I knew set and I did three sets in a row how to go the go? The first one, fucking bombed, and I cried on the phone, and I said, John, I'm not funny.

Why am I doing this? I'm quitting this. He was like, go do your other sets, and then we'll talk later. My other sets, the first set was for a big mixed general public audience. Those two sets were pretty exclusively for gay men. And I fucking crushed, and it was like, oh,

because not everything is for everybody. Yes, sure. And not like my joke on Twitter might not be for the kind of people who follow me for real housewives thoughts. They don't give a shit about my thoughts about politics. Of course it didn't get due well. It doesn't mean it doesn't have worth or that you don't have worth. But the idea that if fucking Buzzfeed Joe posts his like, you know what I really like, this

trailer for Titans or whatever, and it gets 50,000 retweets, that doesn't mean it's a great thought. It means it was like well placed in the algorithm favors him. And he's got the nice profile picture with primary colors. Yeah, yes. So can I just say something about this, because I think you're making a great point.

The outline. No, but yeah, not for everyone. It's true. And it's true. That's true. That is true. It is true. But beyond that, but beyond that, it's like, look, the reason why all this has happened

is actually really simple, which is like, we, a long time ago, let engineers solve a central question about how things work. Humanity. They were like, what should be the metric that we treat as the most valuable on the internet? And it was like, the bigger number is better. Literally everything on the internet is like, the larger the number of things the better it is, your story did it do more traffic than the other,

so did it get more views, more clicks, more whatever, that's better. Because the computer just forget about quality. Not an artist. Forget about the quality. I mean, only recently have we even talked about things like time spent on a story, right? Yeah.

So it's like that translated into everything for the, I mean, that's BuzzFeed. For the economics of the internet, they were like, well, you just need to do a lot of it because like, it's not worth that much, but more, you can get bigger numbers that'll get you more money and it's like, okay, fine. But like, historically things that are like,

the best aren't like, like the best car is not the car for everyone. The best made car is not the every man's car. It's like a very special kind of car. The fastest car is not a car you would drive on a daily basis. Like that doesn't make any sense. So like there's all these fucking weird, like ways that we've changed our thinking about success.

Not saying like success can happen, of course, in the real world, you're like, oh, my business grew. I had one McDonald's, now I have a million McDonald's restaurants. That's a huge success. But it doesn't make it the best gourmet food. But when you start taking it down from, it's not like, okay, well, I'm a business owner

and my business has to get to a certain amount of revenue, it has to get to a certain size of audience or whatever. When it becomes more abstract, like you as a person have to get the biggest number on your comment. Like, we're sitting here in conversation. I'm not tallying a score for everything you guys are saying. Oh, I am, and guess his winning.

It's Wynton, because she's been silent the entire time. Wow. Wow. That's very rude to everybody, except for Wynt when. But no, it's like it'd be like the idea, the equivalent of us sitting here going like, you know, I like that one, didn't like that one. She scored like, Paris scored like six great points in this conversation, but four of them were really stupid. It's like, no one thinks like that. Humans don't wear it like that. Brains don't function like that. We don't operate. We operate in like

a much less friction-filled, much more fluid way of behaving with one another. The internet does not represent that in any way. Yeah, but yet we keep shoving ourselves into this system that is totally not compatible with the way we are offline. Because we're, because there's no better answers than we're addicted. Yeah, and so I feel like most of these issues come from the fact that we don't understand like I'm saying we as like Generally people on the internet don't understand how the internet or anything relating to technology works Like that's like how algorithms work or even the fact that the things that are showing up in your Twitter feed or on Facebook are

Coming because of x-y and z factors. Yeah, I don't have people understood that Not everything is equal online. Like the entire argument we're having whether it's over Facebook or Twitter, shadow banning conservatives or things like that. The algorithms are constantly shadow banning lots of people. Yeah. If we're using this definition of shadow banning, which is slowly deranking, shadow banning the actual term doesn't happen on Twitter, but you know.

I love the idea of shadow banning. I like the idea of people thinking that they're like, I love the idea. It's like when Roadrunner, when when Wiley K. O.D. runs off a cliff, but his feet are still going because he thinks he's on ground. That's like, that's like the right, the shadow bed. It's like part of it's like you think you're active, but actually nobody can see you. But no, you're just thinking of what, what do you like about that? I think that's fucking great. I think that's the best internet actually. If we all just were shadow bands.

It's truly like you're in your bubble. Like if all, if all the following and followers and likes and all of that were gone and you didn't know and nobody else knew, I would say. I would say, you just existed. I would say, I was just, I was just, I was just, I was just,. That would be the grossest. I was just, grossest. Yeah, grossest. I was just saying, what would it be like if tomorrow,

if you looked at Twitter and you could not see number of retweets, number of likes, follow accounts at all? What would the conversation be like? It would be beautiful. Well, you wouldn't know. No verification badges. Like, no one would be able to know who is a story. It would be the Wild West, but I'd kind of love it. That's the Westworld. Yeah, that wouldn't know no verification badges. Like no one would be able to know it. It would be the wild west, but I kind of love it. That's the west world. Yeah,

that's the west world of the internet. It was like that at one point. It was so beautiful. There was a point where Twitter was kind of like that. It's just somebody. Yeah, make that run. But there were a wave. If you were there were way fewer people. Okay, so listen, so we've been talking a lot about how horrible and depressing the internet is. I was thinking what might be fun to wrap up this conversation. And let's is there more by the way that we should know about QAnon or

There's never media about the media come nobody should know nobody should know anything about it really it's band QAnon stop talking Talking about it unless how many more articles do you think the Washington Post will do before this week is out on QAnon? Oh, I'm sure at least three probably three and you think the same for okay, I'm excited to see next week We'll check in and see which one of you won, which one of you won this competition, and then you'll get a prize. I don't know what it will be. So I was thinking what would be fun

is for us to talk about things on the internet that you love to talk for a minute about things on the internet that you love. I posted about something today that I found, thanks to the mechanical keyboards community actually that was like this cool thing. I was going to like Tumblr and I was like actually this is like I should do a quick post on this because it was really interesting. Is this like old Soviet computer concept which is super awesome. And yeah let's talk about I want to hear Paris tell me about

somebody else needs to go first because I think I'm going to be an internet depressing place. Right. Things on the internet that you look by. It can be things that use the internet to connect as well. Like it doesn't have to be like going on the web. Could be like, oh, I love like PSN because I play this game with people. I'm just saying something that uses connectivity and internet protocols. Okay, it could also be stuff on the internet.

Stuff on the internet being, and I know there's a lot of bad stuff, but I have curated a wonderful list of YouTube creators that are really thoughtful and either tackle really big issues or really insignificant things and really thoughtful long form ways that they put effort into and I don't even know if they make money but I feel like I've connected with ideas and they're being presented to me in ways that I probably wouldn't have consumed them otherwise and I've created like a nice little feed.

And I can, I mean, I can give recommendations of different ones, but I do, every morning, I like, put it on and I listen to some of them philosophy based, some of them are about like how we consume media. And you love Jordan Peterson's channel. Oh, God. That's a big piece of that. I'm a big Pete head.

No, like contra points is really good. I like, Lindsey Ellis is like my favorite film at like commentator, PBS studios makes a meeting and commentant. I mean, all that stuff, I mean, there's music commentary, there's, there's just, there's so much bad stuff on there, but there's also like really good stuff

and I don't have to see any of the bad stuff because I have YouTube Premium. Curated. And it's curated and I don't fuck around with it. What is YouTube premium? Is that YouTube red? You pay for? Yeah, it's $9 a month. Is that what you use for music too?

No. What do you use for music? I use Apple music. I've been wanting to leave Spotify because I don't like, it's not giving me like, I feel like I'm not finding good new music on there anymore. I'm trapped in some weird bubble now and it's just like serving me shit. I'm trying to pivot it over to Apple Music lately. Yeah, so I've been thinking about,

I have an Apple Music subscription, I have both. Same. But I don't use, I mainly use Spotify, this is sort of a tangent, but then I was looking at Google Play Music and I know they're doing something. Aren't they bringing all of this together where it's going to be like YouTube premium

and Google Play? And I was like, maybe this is the, but then it's just like, I don't know. It's so much effort. I don't want to subscribe to a third service. Yeah, throwing YouTube into the mix is just too much fun. Every time I've used Google Music, it's, it's really handful. Okay, so you, but I like that. I also want a plug. I like duo-lingo, um,, it's really handful. Okay, so you, so that's like that. I also want a plug.

I like duo-lingo, Veneto and TinyCards. Duo-lingo's for language. Veneto was to learn to sing on key. Wow. And TinyCards is, it's language, but it's also anything you want to learn in Flash Card-based. Those are apps. Those are apps that I really like because I can just take

like 10 minutes out of my day and feel like I'm doing something productive and learning something. I learned most of Swedish. Really? Just from Duolingo and I can watch television in Swedish now. Oh, that's cool. That's cool. No, but that's why John bought it me a trick to stuck them. Oh my God, that's amazing.

Oh my goodness. Yeah, I'm pretty sure you really get out of here. I guess, yeah, no, I'm thinking of things. This may be only partially in the category, but this week I got Philips Hue lights. Oh my God, I love Hue. I know, I'm a really big like a lecturer head. Did you get the color one? I got Phillips Hue lights. I'm really, I love, yeah. I love, I'm a really big like a Lexa head. Did you get the color on top? I got the color on top.

So I'm gonna buy some. I got a starter pack. I'm halfway done outfitting my house and it's incredible. I can just walk in and tell Alexa to turn my living room orange or something. It's magical and fantastic.

It's so great. And also, I guess, every night before I go to bed, I should probably read an actual book or something, but lately I've just been reading Ask Reddit, which is, I don't know, a fairly normie thing to enjoy. What is Ask Reddit? It's a subreddit on Reddit where it's just like people pose questions and then thousands of people

kind of respond. Yeah, it's like, it's like, it's like, how come doors always get squeaky? No, you can try that. No, believe I'm curious to know what kind of questions it's here. It's for, let's look at what's going on right now. It's like, what is your favorite song

that contains no lyrics? Or what do people not take seriously enough? What's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen in person? I mean, there are, yeah, there are sometimes these questions. I try and sort by like the top ones of the weeks, there are ones that actually have good replies on that.

But it's just nice to just read small personal things. I know some people who are telling me they read, there's like a, there's like a reddit called like relationship questions or relationship problems. Oh, our relationship is some kind of guys. Our relationship, yeah. And it's like, you should follow, there's an our relationship's bought on Twitter that posts all of the best ones. I mean, I, I heard a couple of them and I was like, that's not real.

This is not real. Not really happening Like anyhow, okay, that's good ask Reddit. I did not I don't really see that's funny I don't look at Reddit that much I was a pretty active in the mechanic. Well, not pretty active But I was like a mechanical keyboard. I remember mechanical keyboard nerd So I was pretty active there But like I just realized they've had a redesign reddit has and I'm like, oh, this is like a huge, I was like this is a huge improvement like card. I always actually apps. Yeah, the same.

Yeah, they have the most annoying mobile site. It's like use the app. Use the app. No, not a wall. The app not a wall. Oh, that's the app. Okay. I use it over the reddit. I don't know. What else? So, so Paris, what else besides apps? I guess, um, besides that and Phil too. Oh, Phil too is good. Yeah. I like our, this is an outline ask answer, but I really like our good tweets channel in Slack.

Yeah. We have this channel where we just post good tweets and they're very good. We have admittedly, we have two rooms with bad tweets and good tweets. Now, I will say often when I'm done with a day, and you'll, I think you're good. Oh yeah, no, because Josh will just, he'll be like 11 p.m. on a Thursday and Josh will be like,

let me respond to all of the messages in Slack general that I have missed. Yeah, I miss a lot of the general conversations and I'm always like, great shit in here. This is basically highly entertaining. Good tweets is a room that's highly entertaining to go into after a day or two of tweets have accrued in there and you're like, just, you feel like you're getting exposed to so much good mainline internet. Yeah, because there's so many people here who are extremely online and varying ways. Yeah, that's true.

All right, those are all good things. I like our good tweets room too. I'm trying to think of what I will also plug. That if you go to your local library and you get a library card, you can get free ebooks and movies and audio books, free basically all of their content and all of them use different apps so you'll have to ask them to help you set it up your account.

But once you do free books, there's so many and you can get DRM free eBooks which I've gotten really into using my Kindle with that actually using the Kindle Store and that has been very rewarding. Oh yeah, there's this, if you guys have heard of Argot.fail. No, no. It's like this. Is it like it's a it's only a Google website but it's invite only and it is really popular in academia and it has like every academic Ask text you could ever imagine. It's called arg.fail. Yeah but there's like a

million a's. But I was invited to it like years ago, and I love it because I think it's good. How do you get in, right? I think like one of my professors at the time sent it to me. But I'm never, I'll never be invited though. Yeah, if you, if anybody has one, then invite. I'd like it invite? I can, yeah.

You heard me out. I've had a Heidegger. That sounds great. It's really nice. Yeah, there's nice things on the internet. There are sometimes nice things on the internet. The best thing about Reddit is so much of Reddit is nice and productive and well thought out. And then there's the little sliver that is queuing on another.

That's why I have like 10 Reddit accounts for the varying beats that I've ever had. You don't have to go. I don't have to look at any of this part of the internet. She's like, yeah, she got lucky. She's got lucky. I want to make a separate one for TV shows so that I don't have to see shit when the season's over I got don't want Westworld posts coming up in my credit feed right now like I'm over it I don't want to talk about fucking right, yeah, yeah, I'm trying to think of things like on the internet so It's really hard. It's tough. Well, I mean obviously like the I like all you know, okay Here's one thing I love first off. I'm getting back into Tumblr. Really? Is Tumblr cool again?

I think Tumblr is cool. I think, I think, I'll say this. The worst thing that came in up Tumblr was like overlape being overly woke. Annoyingly woke. Yeah, but I'll take it. But I feel like I've got a bunch of different sort of Tumblr. Like, I see different Tumblr.

It's like, I've, I fall a lot of design people on tumblr and just like weird like People who just post like weird old art and design and it's like really super interesting Is this where you found your quickpost from today? Uh, it is no no no no the quickpost today was from was from mechanical keyboards but but But so like I really have been getting back into one of the things the things I like about Tumblr is it's a free form. Like post content is free form. It's like it can be the size of a tweet or it can be like a blog post or it can be like a photo essay

or it can be like I really love the fact that like I think there's a real lack of creativity and social media. It's one of the things I think is really lame. Like one of the reasons we built the stuff we built the outline was like, because I think it's a lack of creativity in media and general and it's like, everything just looks the fucking same,

like Twitter's so fucking boring to look at, you know? Like, yeah, so, but I'm saying, but like Tumblr's like really visual. My only issue with Tumblr is the whole re-blog, comment, re-blog, fracturing, and then if you delete your post, you can never delete your post because someone re-blogged it like that whole. Well, that you can never delete your post because someone reblogged it.

That whole, I don't love that. But otherwise, yeah, I agree. Tumblr is like so. It's definitely true that if you put up a Tumblr and then you wanna take it off and somebody's re-blogged it, you're basically like, sorry, that's there. But that's actually interesting. It's kind of refreshing.

Changes the dynamic. Anyhow, so I've been getting back into my Tumblr. I was gonna say Tumblr and Feedly, because I have such a love feed. Oh, Feedly is great. I love our curated feeds there, where I can just, when I'm in my, for downtime, I'll just read Feedly, and I have this design,

it's kind of like design, tech sort of feeds that are like weird, similar to Tumblr. But I love that, I love like looking through that. And then I'll say this, like I know it has a lot of problems, but I think Pinterest is pretty great. Like I love collecting things together. Like Pinterest has a lot of problems, but it's like such a great shortcut for like,

oh that's a weird chair, like I'm gonna say if that's a like living or like this. Similar like the Instagram, I don't know, archive feature that you've been doing. Oh my God, They're really good. Especially because now you can, it'll show like, oh, show me more photos like this. Yeah, I've found, I've been looking at the Instagram Explorer to have a lot more. Although I'm sort of like anti-Instagram because like, one, first of I find it some with

boring lately, but two, it's obviously Facebook product and I'm like, IGTVs, come on. Oh my God. IGTVs. The fuck are, they're trying to be YouTube. I see, okay. And failing. Okay. God, I know. What is that? The fucking, they're trying to be YouTube. I see, okay. And failing. Okay. They're not doing what they did to my channel.

You know what, all I want is, let me put links in the fucking comments. Let me put links in the description, okay. For a reposts. Yeah, well, reposts, I think probably raised similar issues to the, yeah. Well, if they did it internally though, they could make it possible you could pull the thing

like a tweet, you know, like you pull the content. Now it's just like a copy of the picture. Anyhow, I'm trying to think about things like on the internet. Obviously, the mechanical keyboard is a Reddit community. Um... Have you heard of .bsp, Josh? I feel like this would be okay. So this is one thing that I enjoy on the internet and it's on Twitter.

It's this account that is run, I guess, by like a bot or something, but they take, it essentially trolls the gold source engine from Valve, which is now empty and has no actual players on it. Then we'll take screenshots of just a bandend video game environments that used to be full of players and used for something. And every single day you will post a new screenshot and like a forgotten world. Yeah, this is right up my alley. Really, really cool.

I've made an interview this guy. Yeah. But it's really great. Every single day you just get to like see a window. There's the thing that nobody knows. That's the kind of shit that we're at Internet of Femre. It's like, it's still like good. It's like, oh, the good Internet.

Yeah, especially because it's so many people had to spend so many hours building these worlds and designing them, just like you would, I don't know. Have you ever been to make a master list of good internet things? Well, we did. I did in, at the end of 2016, we did a post that was huge, it's called, like, the best things

on the internet, wherever, oh, we should do one this year. We're, we didn't do another one last year. We should make it a thing. We did just a huge list of things. Just like random shit, like this tumbler, or like this weird game, or it was, yeah, like it's stuff. That's awesome. Yeah, I like it.

It's all some outline content. Just made me think of the McManchons blog. Oh, the McManchons. Oh my God, there's something. Yeah, so good, really good. I used to love this, and then we're gonna wrap up, but I used to love this website, which I thought was like the best and most specific thing

it was called celebrity blackberry sightings. And it was just pictures of celebrities who were holding blackberries. And it would like identify the model of the blackberry. So it's like Rihanna with like a blackberry bold or whatever, and it's like, this is so fucking great. That's like the Joshua Tepolsky version of, have you guys ever seen that Instagram account

called that dress from Zara? I believe it's the name. Oh yes. It's really good. There's a specific, I think, blue dress from Zara. It's just photos of people in the world wearing that dress. That reminds me, I will, I will promo one of their Instagram

thing, which is, I think it's called bootleg wiki. Bootleg wiki is a Instagram account that catalogs weird bootlegs of fashion stuff or weird, it's like a Nike logo, but it's like Gucci, it's like got a Gucci font or something, it's just weird like Mishmash, like mash up whatever. Bootleg Wiki, okay.

Paris, any final thoughts on QAnon? It sucks. I Upset, yeah, I said they were still talking about this August people. Yeah, let it die. Seriously. All right. Well, thank you for coming on I know You to come all the way from your desk and now you've got to go back because you're working on seven more QAnon stories for the online Of course got a beat The Washington Post. Can we do like Y is QAnon? Yeah, we can do Y when how? When is QAnon?

What time is the QAnon bowl? What isn't QAnon? What time is the QAnon bowl is what I've been looking for? Yeah. Alright, Parris, you're free to go. Thank you. See you then. Well that is our show for this week, we'll be back next week with Mort's Barrow. And as always, I wish you and your family the very best, though I've just looked at their

follow or count on Twitter and Instagram and it's pretty bad. Thank you.