Tomorrow - President-elect Effect

Episode Date: November 14, 2024

A week out from the election, the world is preparing for another 4 years with Trump in office. Early spikes in crypto and Bluesky numbers show where people are placing their money and clicks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey and welcome to tomorrow. I'm your host, Joshua Topolsky. And I'm your other host, Ronnie Mola. And we are back after the big, big, big election week in America, election night in America, America decides, America decides, America decided, and now we're back. They decided, and now Trump is back, and we're back. We're back, and everything is actually back.

We're experiencing the pre-Trump America, which is getting ready for Trump to become the president again. And so far, the stock market is loving it. Business is loving it. But nobody seems to be loving it more than the crypto, the world of cryptocurrency. In the last five days, Bitcoin has gone from like 75,000 per coin to it sits currently at 88, nine.

Let's just call it 89. No, it's over 89 right now. This is as of Tuesday, November 12th at 2.09 PM ET. 89. It could be up another 10,000 in like five minutes the way it's going. It's jumping, I get notifications about Bitcoin, which I own a small amount of, and from my Robinhood app. And I'm getting so many notifications

about its price jumps, because normally, it doesn't jump percentage points like this that often. I mean, it's like like these are huge leaps. I mean, over the last five days, it's up 17%. It's up 42% in the past month. It's up 101% year to date. Sorry, 140% in the past year, whatever. The point is in the past week, it's been like,

it's like 18, 19, 20% or something. So the market clearly sees that Dogecoin was on a run. I think we had a story on the site, something like Dogecoin traded more than, where is it? We have a great story. It was like Microsoft and Amazon or something? Yeah, Dogecoin traded more than Microsoft and Amazon combined. This was yesterday, Monday.

Same. Yeah, and Dogecoin is like not even a real thing. Like, you know, the trading volume was like- I mean, one could argue maybe none of this is a real thing. Well, I mean, more like, sorry, it's not Ethereum, it's not BTC, it's like, it sort of was started as a meme, you know, as a meme coin. And, you knowTC. It's like, it sort of was started as a meme coin. And now it's like, I mean, obviously it's being pumped

by Elon who refers to himself as the Doge father, which is one of his excellent jokes. That's so hilarious. He's gonna leave the Department of Government Efficiency in the new Trump administration. The OGE. DOGE, yes. Anyhow, but look, I guess like if I was a DOGE speculator,

I guess now I'm looking at DOGE going, why didn't I buy this when it was like a rounding error cost? Why didn't I buy like 100,000 shares of it for like a hundred bucks or something, you know, I don't even know what it's trading at at the moment. Like, let's take a look. Let's see what the numbers are looking like. It's 39 cents.

And while you're doing that, you just said like, this is kind of like pre-Trump America all over again. I was just looking back at Bitcoin prices and like around, I guess it was after he was first elected, like 2017, 2018. That's when like that first huge Bitcoin price ramp up happened. So it does feel like very much like we're catapulted into eight or whatever years ago. Yeah. Let's just say a year ago, you could have bought Dogecoin for 0.074 cents a share.

Now it's 0.40 cents a share. I'm sure, I don't know, like I'm not good enough in math to figure out how much it would have cost to buy 100,000 shares of it, but I guess you'd be like doing pretty well if you had. Maybe 100,000 is a lot. I don't know. I guess you could still and here's the thing that's so interesting, right? So, so there's a feeling I think in the air. I mean, certainly we're in like a speculation. We're in like speculation frenzy.

I mean, this is like tulip fever or whatever. I mean, this is just, there's just a belief that because of some of the things that Trump and his, you know, the people that are surrounding him talked about during the election, that these are gonna be, there's gonna be a huge like change in regulatory positioning and that, you know, suddenly the US is gonna be, you know, using Bitcoin to transact, you know,

like arms deals or whatever, I don't know. Which like isn't totally wild because obviously Trump has been boosting like crypto. He has like his own crypto business, world liberty, financial, like this does very much like, this is very much like in his best interest for crypto to do well. So it's not like out of nowhere,

not just like the idea that there's gonna be less regulation. Like he specifically has been like talking about crypto and seeing, and financially benefiting from it hopeful, I guess. I, I sure, I think so. I think, and, and, and there's no reason to think that there won't be like a change in a regulatory stance on this, you know? And like to some degree, I guess I'm a little curious, you know, everybody, everybody who's, who's really, really long crypto is like, if we,

if we just had less regulation and we had a more opportunity to kind of like bring crypto into the world of, of, you know, bring it into like more into the world of finance and into the world of, of actual like currency. There's like these huge opportunities to kind of like change the system that exists now. I guess I'm kind of like change the system that exists now. I guess I'm kind of curious to see what it looks like if it's tried and practiced on a grand scale. Right.

And you also had earlier this year, right, you could get ETFs with crypto, so it was much more easy to trade and like more liquid. So like, presumably something like that. But like, I would love if you kind of explained to me like, if all of this value that you know per bitcoin what do you say was like $89,000? $90,000 yeah. $89,000 you're right sorry $89,000 right now. That's all did its inherent value really go up that much? No I mean well this is the ultimate question of anything. Did Nvidia's inherent value really go up that much? No, I mean, this is the ultimate question of anything. Did Nvidia's inherent value really go up? I mean, is this, I mean, no, I'm not comparing the two

because there is- One sells a real thing. Well, you know, Bitcoin is in circulation in a way, right? It is now a part of the financial markets. And I mean, perhaps, you know, impossible to to remove, like it's not one of those things that can just go away now necessarily, right? It is kind of like tied up, which is why you see a lot of parity between

or a lot of parallels between market moves in like kind of your standard, your traditional markets and market moves in your, at the very least in the coins that are the most sort of popular in the coins that are the most sort of popular or the currencies that are the most popular, Ethereum and BTC being the two top ones. I think they're tied to the economic systems of the world now in a way that they weren't 10 years ago.

The question is, yeah, is this value real? I think the market makes it real, right? The question is, is this value sustainable, right? Because I think we've seen a lot of cycles recently that are explosive, speculative periods that then come way down to earth and a lot of people find that they, what they bought at, you know, somebody here today,

somebody this week, right? Five days ago was like, damn, I better get in at 75 because it may go to 90 or whatever, right? You know, and I think a month ago, somebody was buying in at 62 and now it's at 89. And like, I think the question is, you know, the question is, at what point is there a limit? Is there a belief on a real limit?

And does it dip? Does it, you know, BTC, I mean, Bitcoin is very volatile. There's a ton of volatility to it. And once you've got everybody excited and buying into it in these moments of sort of like cultural excitement, this is like NFTs, right? Similar thing. Presumably lots of people spent money on NFTs

that now have negative value. Like people bought NFTs for like $5,000. They're like, this is gonna be worth $1 million and now it's worth $5. And the question is, yeah, what is the inherent value of Bitcoin? We don't know. I don't think there is like a basic floor, right?

And that's not, now there's not a basic floor for Nvidia either, but you could do some calculations where you're like, hey, they have this many, they're producing this many graphics cards, they've got this many in the warehouse, they're selling them with this much money, they're distributing them in these many regions and you can do a little bit of a calculation,

say there's that, and what's the actual monetary value of all this stuff. Right, it's a lot harder to do that with a currency. Well, yeah, pure currency that is not backed by anything. Historically, we back now, of course, we're not really in an era of having backed currency anymore. It's not like we've got a, it's not like, you know, right? It's not like we have a, there's some stockpile of gold that makes up all of the money that

the US has. That's not the case anymore. But was it ever? I don't know. I'm not an expert. But the point is the point is the speculation is off the charts right now, but that's true of everything in the stock market. I mean, we did a story about-

Especially Bitcoin. I saw someone suggesting it could go to like, obviously a Bitcoin bull being like, well, it's going to 150 and you know, just throw a number out there. Sure, why not? I mean, why not? I mean, fair, I think it's a completely fair idea that the numbers could go that high right now

because there's no cap on the speculation. And is it speculation? I mean, people are excited. They've got the most powerful government in the world is saying, you've got an incoming president who's saying, president elect, who's like, I love Bitcoin. I love cryptocurrency and I wanna make that important here. And they surrounded himself with people

who seem to agree with that. So I think there's something somewhat real there. There's also a lot of speculation. I mean, Luke Kawa wrote a story yesterday that was the stock market belongs to Wall Street bets again. And it's like, basically like all of these businesses that were very much like the Wall Street Bets faves have gotten a ton of pickup

because in some ways they're like, they are like kind of built on cultural hype less than like fundamentals of those businesses. GameStop obviously being the perfect example where it's financials, it's fundamental business did not look very strong, but it's cultural relevance to the audience that wanted to put money into it and wanted to sort of like resist the kind of path

that it was on, it was huge. But I just think it's like, but it is a form of speculation in a sense, right? I mean, anytime you see something going like up into the right like that, you mentioned the, you know, tulips before, like it just, it doesn't feel right to me. It doesn't, I know that doesn't mean much, but it just seems like, okay,

like not everything goes up into the right. That's just not how things work. They come down. No, I mean, over time on long enough timeline, the stock market does tend to go up to the right on a long enough timeline for the most part. I think the, part, I think, but I just think we're in a moment of like, it's total,

we're in like, I think with everything right now with the transition back to Trump, I think we are in a moment of just total, all bets are off, you know? And the speculation may be founded, may make sense, may be proven out with policy and with preference given to certain people and places and things. But I think we're sort of in that period of unknowns

with like the amount of change that America seems to be bracing for and the world seem to be bracing for. There's also this belief that, well, I mean, there's this belief that Trump is good for business. And- He's a business guy and he's good for business. It does feel a little like facile though, yeah.

Well, it does and I'm not sure that it actually is provable. I mean, my understanding is he drove up the debt hugely during his administration. He mishandled COVID, I think to a degree that, and I think this is irrefutable, that there was an enormous mishandling of COVID that had huge impact economically to the country. And I think that the inflation that we've been experiencing over the last few years, I don't think,

I think there's a lot of evidence to sort of prove this out, it has a lot to do with things like the mishandling of COVID and some of the policies have been put in place by his administration, right? So I think there's some, but he also did gave tax breaks to the ultra rich, you know, and to corporations. And that incorporate certainly the ultra rich

and corporations like that. And I'm not, by the way, I'm neither like, do I think that billionaires should, you know, pay their fair share of taxes? Certainly I do. I think that corporations should be taxed accordingly to their output and to their profit in a way that makes sense.

So a lot of other countries are more strict about this and it's seen as a less welcoming environment for businesses. I think there's a balance of like job creation and money that flows from those jobs back into the economy. There's a balance between that and the taxation you do on corporations. But I do think generally speaking in America, we have a pretty corrupt system

that favors the kind of tax, the favors like the corporations and the ultra rich when it comes to leniency on things like taxes and on sort of quote unquote, paying their fair share. And you know, the effective tax rate on a billionaire compared to like somebody who's a middle class, you know, middle class earner is like pretty out of whack. And so, but the feeling is whatever that environment is, is pro business.

Right. And that's why the whole stock the stock market as a whole, going up, everyone's like, it's gonna be good for business. And also, yeah, I've been just writing about, I was looking into like how all these big tech CEOs responded to Trump last time. And it's so night and day, like, I just, I forgot, you know, Sundar Pichai and Sergey Brin were, you know,

alongside protesters for, like, who were protesting the immigration ban. You had, like, Jeff Bezos saying that, like, Trump is, like, what do you say, an embarrassment or irresponsible or something along those lines. And then, like, they're inappropriate. And then, you know, I think all of them then went through a Trump presidency

where they saw how like vindictive and grudge holding he could be. I like, you know, like I think last time Amazon or Jeff Bezos accused Trump of withholding like a $10 billion contract with the Pentagon. Like, just all sorts of stuff like that. In Trump's latest book, he said he was... Mark Zuckerberg should go to prison for the rest of his life.

You know, and now, like, all of these guys are like, okay, well, we have to behave a little bit differently. We're not... No protesting Trump this time. Let's roll out the welcome mat and let's be really like overly, overly, overly nice. And I mean, presumably they think his policies are going to benefit them. But also, I think it's just a matter of like pragmatism and like, let's not piss him off because we know, we know how like petty he could be. Yeah. Well, right.

I mean, in fact, you know, like, I guess if I... Ran a public company. If I were mega rich, which let me stress, I'm not. But if I were one of the mega rich and I ran a company that was the significant, you know, chunk of the US economy, and I mean, look, this is not defending, but I'm just saying I can understand the position. And you knew you had an incoming president

who not only was like a vindictive guy who had really like petty beefs with people that he would take his takes to like unusual places, but now is a person who not only has control of like the White House, but pretty what it's looking like is every branch of government. Right, and is emboldened. Very emboldened.

I mean, more emboldened just from having done it before. I mean, unless this was a stolen election, unless all of the election fraud that we heard about from Trump actually happened. We can't see those scare quotes. Yeah, there's a big scare quotes all over this. But I'm just saying, like, we heard a lot about the stolen election before the election

went for Republicans. But I will say, you know, unless, you know, that's all nonsense. I mean, unless that's, you know, obviously that's, that's, as far as I can tell, this was not a stolen election. This was like America said, hey, we want this guy back and we want him back. We want his people back in all of the parts of the government where we can put them.

For whatever reason, there are many factors. I'm sure everybody's gonna spend a lot of time and energy trying to figure it out. I would say he should feel emboldened because it seems like the country gave him a resounding thumbs up. Like the country said, yes, please, Mr. Trump, come back. Please come back and help us out.

Now, you know, we'll see. We got four years to see if this stuff all pans out. You got a lot of plans. You got a lot of plans. You got a lot of plans. You know, Lena Conn's gone, right? So there's gonna be, she was really tough on, you know, murders and acquisitions among big tech companies. I think they said murders and acquisitions.

Murders and acquisitions. That may become a new genre that we talk about in America. Murders and acquisitions. That's pretty good. If I were doing an M&A podcast, I would name it that. But I am not, alas. Not yet. Sounds terribly boring.

But I'm- Yeah, Lena Kahn trying to smack down murders and acquisitions. Lena Kahn trying to roll back all the, you know, just monopoly behavior. That's, so there's gonna be less, less of that, less pressure. Yeah, there are gonna be more mergers.

God, now it's really sounding like murders to me. What is going on? Okay, there's gonna be a lot more mergers and acquisitions. There's gonna be, the presumption is that there's gonna be a lot less regulation, less regulation around AI, which is obviously a big deal for the tech companies. Yeah, I think if there's a chance. Executive order on AI, right? If there's a chance for Skynet to be created,

I think we've got about the best environment possible right now for it. I think you've got, you know, US manufacturing in focus. So we need somebody to build these robes, the hunter killers and the various other types of humanoid style terminators. And then you've got like the Sam Altman's of the world and whoever else now that be

unbridled by these annoying pesky regulations. Although look, I mean, with AI regulation, we're probably really early in that game. But yeah, no, I mean, I think yes, it's so yes again, pro business, anti-regulation. I mean, I think yes, it's so yes, again, pro-business, anti-regulation. I mean, it seems- Lots of autonomous cars driving around soon enough. Lot of autonomous cars. There'll probably be some new laws passed that are like, it's legal for an autonomous vehicle to kill someone.

For murder and acquisition. Murder and acquisition on the road. You know, the belief is that all of this leads to, that all of this leads to a boom time. The idea is that without regulations to hamstring these innovators, without regulations to, without the FDA to tell you what you can and can't put in food,

we'll have some kind of boom of health and innovation and industry in America. And you know, maybe it's true. Maybe it's true. Maybe we don't need to worry about what we dump into the water. Maybe we don't need to worry about what we put into the sky. Maybe we don't need to worry about

what we ingest in our bodies. Maybe that- Drives on the road alongside us and whether it's sentient. Maybe it's a little bit more like, yeah, I mean, maybe it's, we just give that a whirl. I mean, this is one of those things where it's like, We don't know, because we haven't tried, Josh.

You know, we just gotta try. I mean, I think we actually have tried. That's why we have regulations. I think we were doing a lot of- Right in the first place, like factories. You know, it's why we had children working in factories. Like little kids were working in factories and getting their hands chopped off in like machines

because we had no regulations, right? There was no OSHA. There was no like child labor laws or whatever. You have to be able to get out of the factories, the triangle shirt waste factories. Yeah, that sort of thing. So, you know, there's, but we'll see. It's 2024 into 2025.

You know, anything is possible. It's weird, though, for something with stakes like that to be like, well, let's just see if they're right. You know, like it feels like it's like very high stakes to be like, well, we should just try it out. But I guess that's what we're doing. Yeah, maybe like all of this. We'll see what happens when he actually gets an office. This is, as I said, this is just like what everyone seems to presume.

And like, who knows? He's a little bit of a wild card also. Yeah, I don't know. At any rate, I'm excited to see if we end up in like a Mad Max scenario or not. I'm just, you know, I'm like, you know, I bought, I mean, as you know, I got a Toyota Land Cruiser recently. That's perfectly chic for the apocalypse

or like the Mad Max era. You know, I kid you not, but I talked a lot about how this was my apocalypse vehicle. I'm pretty sure I've even said it to you. I mean, one of my complaints about the Tesla was when I thought about a post-apocalyptic nightmare scenario. You know, like.

The electric grid wasn't going to be functioning. If the grid is not reliable, and like, what am I, like setting up some solar stuff? Like, it's just not, you know, you can't. wasn't going to be fun. If the grid is not reliable and like, what am I like setting up some solar stuff? Like it's just not, you know, you can't. It's easy to pour some. I get it. Look, I get it. You know, we're just going to pump your own with your own gas now. But I'm willing to take my chances with that. That's right. That's right. I'm going to start my own refinery.

No, but I mean, you know, gas is much more readily available. If you're on the run from cannibals or whatever, and you need to like get high-tail it out of town and your car runs out of juice, I can fill the tank up in a few, you know, in 30 seconds. In that case, I would have chosen something with better gas mileage than- Whatever, dude, here's my point.

Okay, I'm saying you're on the run, maybe you're a few miles ahead of the cannibals, but they're tracking you. I assume they have like some kind of like Darrell from, you know, the walking dead, he's got like tracker capabilities or whatever. And I'm trying to get away from them. And, you know, I run out of gas, but I got my extra can.

I'm all set. You run out of a charge in the Tesla, the cannibals have a lot of time to catch up to you, you know? And so I think you've got to really, you've got to use sort of cannibal, chased by cannibal thinking now. Will someone please think of like the cannibal zombies in this, you know?

No, first off, they're not zombies, they're just hungry. Second, because we've run out of food in this scenario, there's no more, I don't know, something maybe has happened, global warming, climate change. Someone put something in the food that we're eating. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, no. Like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was like, everybody has to have raw,

like there has to be raw milk in all food now or something. He's like, I want raw milk and stem cells in every food item that's out there. And heavy metals. And heavy metals. And then like people are like, you can't eat any of the food and it contaminates like the groundwater.

And I don't know, like whatever, everybody's starving. And so they have to eat people. And then they're chasing you across, I don't know. I assume there'll be new regions of America. There's gonna be like places where the cannibals are and places where the cannibals aren't maybe there'll be some strongholds. I mean, we've all seen the walking dead.

I've seen all these movies, yeah. But we know that zombies are pretty much not real. But we know the cannibals could be- It's a metaphor, it's always been a metaphor. It's a metaphor, exactly. So for humanity, for the fact that hell is other people. So my point being, getting back to my original point, I got this cool new Land Cruiser, which is very tough.

It's got a great Toyota engine built to last, it can off-road and it takes gasoline. It's a hybrid, but you know, sort of like- And it takes a lot of gasoline we've discussed, like for a hybrid. It's impressive for a hybrid, like to be that bad on gas. It's not like when you hear the word hybrid, you think like, oh, like 40 miles a gallon or something.

It's like half that. Yeah, impressive. Anyhow, the point is I'm ready for whatever happens and whatever's going on. If like they do the purge day or whatever, I guess I'm less ready for the purge day. I mean, like, you know, we have to remember that these are things that were like,

purge day was like suggested by Trump on the campaign trail. Now, like, I guess he could do it. I don't know. Like, I guess I don't know. I'm sort of maybe in some way a little curious to find out. Like, can Trump just say there's going to be a purge day? All right. Speaking of zombies, I'm on transition.

Yeah, I'm writing. Twitter, ex. Wow. Great transition. Thanks. I was proud of it. I love that. It sounds like people are actually leaving it.

I got data from similar web that said the Wednesday after the election, some of the 15,000 people deactivated their accounts just on like the web part of it. Obviously it could be much higher on mobile. And that was the biggest jump since Musk took over and they started measuring these sort of things when people started threatening to leave Twitter

because of Musk. So this was the biggest jump. And then you have like blue sky gained 700,000 users. But like when you plot it all out though, I charted it and Twitter is just humongous in comparison. And we always think of Twitter as being kind of like the dinky little social network. So like blue sky and threads compared to that are way, way,

way, way, way small, but they're like, people are actually leaving it. They finally got like fed up enough after the election to try these other ones. But like, I don't know, have you been on blue sky lately? I have been, I have actually on Blue Sky like last night maybe, because I'm getting a ton of new followers on that many, not compared to,

I have like 145,000 followers or something on Twitter. I don't really like, Twitter is just a really not fun place to engage in anymore, like for a wide variety of reasons. Yeah. I think the, clearly people are going, I think people are always gonna be leaving Twitter now. I don't think, my guess is they're not adding users faster

than they're losing them. Right, and I don't think everyone has to like necessarily just like deactivate their account. They just don't use it. No, just stop using. Like the rest of us. It's like active users versus people deleting their accounts. I think Threads has picked up a lot of users.

Blue Sky has picked up some. They're tiny still, they're brand new. Blue Sky is the most liked Twitter in its feel. I liked being on Blue Sky in the early days. I enjoyed it. And then threads kind of came around and it was like, okay, well, this is the one. The truth is like the thing about all these new networks

is like, it's very- They don't have the network effect of having a gazillion followers and people on it? Right, and also just like the people who were like, who built, the people who built the kind of like culture of Twitter, you know, and who participated in that moment in time when Twitter was this kind of like really interesting new experiment on with communication.

And like, it's where all of the politicians and the press, you know, media people and sports people and whoever ended up like sort of staking out their ground in conversation, that moment is over. That moment is over. The internet, no, I mean, the internet's just a different place, right? Yeah. Like discourse online is different.

The way, what these social media networks encourage and reward is different and how encourage and reward is different. And how they monetize is different, you know? And so there's a real, like, you can't go back. You can't go back to that moment, you know? I think TikTok has a lot more in common with Twitter in its sort of early and best days than anything else does. Because I think it's like, it feels like there's some kind of like, I don't know, experimentation happening with the content there and conversation happening with the content there

that I don't see happening on Instagram and I don't see happening on Instagram and I don't see happening on Facebook. And I don't see, I barely see it happening on Twitter. And I do think like, it's sort of like, yes, Blue Sky does a pretty good impersonation of Twitter. It does. If we think that Twitter, if you're gonna recapture the moment that was happening.

Yeah, you can send it back in time to 2007. 2007, 2008, 2009, like where there were these really explosive years of growth and of like, there was like horse eBooks and that's where like Drill, you know, Drill showed up. There was like weird Twitter and there was black Twitter and there's all these amazing pockets of culture that were happening there that grew up on that service.

You can't just recreate those somewhere else and you're not going to recreate the moment for sure. Right? Yeah, it's funny. I was, yeah, go ahead. No, no, go on. recreate those somewhere else. And you're not going to recreate the moment for sure. Right? Yeah. It's funny. I was, yeah, go ahead. No, no, go on. I was talking to Walt Hickey, our executive editor today.

And he pointed out this phenomenon. Are you familiar with that eternal September? It was like- No, but I'm curious about it. It's like, it's from like the, it was coined in the nineties for like, when kids would go to college and they would go online for the first time.

And so there would be, like, this onslaught of new people on, like, AOL and, like, the web in general and, like, on all these forums and whatever. And, like, they just didn't know, like, the rules of the road. They were naive and weird and didn't know, like, the correct behavior, and they would just show up every September and, like... It's just kind of like everyone who was there for a long time

was like, uh, September, uh, you know, the noobs are here. It kind of like everyone who was there for a long time was like, oh, September, oh, the noobs are here. It kind of feels like that keeps happening over and over and over again with Blue Sky, because there've been like these migration waves, like every time, I don't know, Elon Musk does something to piss someone off, or Trump wins the election or whatever,

or Elon Musk says, we're not gonna be in Brazil. Like tons of people start porting over. But now it's a situation, and they come there, and they're like, oh, I'm really excited to be here. I'm done with that other platform, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's so much nicer here. But now that's happened, like, like, 10 times, even, like, among the same people.

You know, journalists I follow will start using Blue Sky and then go back over to X because the, you know, the poll of more people there, eventually they go back. But like, they're like, oh, now I'm coming here and I'm so glad it's here. I'm here and it's great. It's like almost, it's like, it's like this eternal September but also kind of like Groundhog Day, like, I don't know.

Like it's tripping me out. It's mostly like, it's like, don't we, there's like no, it's never gonna have that cultural moment, but everyone's yearning so hard for it. Well, certain people are yearning and other people don't even remember it. And a lot of people don't remember. That's another thing. They don't know what they lost.

You've got to remember there's like a generational, there's a generation gap here too. Like, I think there's a reason why Twitter is so appealing to like a lot of politicians and news people. And it's because it's like, it's sort of like a vestige of like almost like a Gen X, like maybe early millennial Gen X. Microblogging.

Yeah, it's like an extension of like a live journal type of thing where it's like, I'm gonna share my feelings. Now people do that, but they take different forms. And like they're like speaking to like on a video is a very different thing. and like they're like speaking to like on a video is a very different thing. Like in some ways easier for people to articulate,

it is fact, this is a fact for most people, easier to articulate when you speak, when you're speaking to someone or you're speaking on video or whatever, cause that's what people do, they talk, right? Writing does not come supernaturally to everybody, like it does not supernaturally, but I mean, is not really natural to everybody.

Writing is like a learned practice. And Twitter, on Twitter, there are people who are good at it, who are good at Twitter, and there are people who are bad at Twitter. And it's not the same form of communication as some of these other things like, let's say TikTok has the poster child in my opinion.

And so that's a whole generational shift to a different way of- Are you saying it no longer matters to be good on Twitter? Yeah, I think it's an irrelevant tower. I'll take it off my LinkedIn. Well, I just think, yeah, please do. I think this idea that you can share things on Twitter, that a certain number of people will follow

and get out of, like they'll get something out of. You can have like jokes and stuff with people on Twitter. That's not like that's like, or blue sky or threads or wherever like this sort of text based medium is, is like where you've, you know, or mastodon or whatever. I mean, partially it's, it's so, so it's like, yeah, you can't recreate the moment and that people are expressing themselves differently

with different technologies. And it's a fragmented now. The fragmentation is the other one, right? There's people, now I'm like, yeah, you can't recreate the moment and that people are expressing themselves differently with different technologies. And it's fragmented now. The fragmentation is the other one, right? There's people, now I'm like literally, I'm like a guy who loved to post, used to love posting. I mean, same, I loved it. I loved Twitter. And yeah.

And now I'm like, one, I don't feel like posting. Now that may be my age and maybe what we've just gone through. I think it's the zeitgeist. I think that's a lot of people in different age groups just hate it. Yeah, my feeling is that there's something about sharing on the internet. I don't want to monetize my existence.

That's not something I have time to do. I want to grow up and be an influencer. That's my goal is to have a job as a person who puts content about like yourself or some kind of like you've got some bit or whatever. Like totally understand why you're posting all the time. Like for me, it was never a primary thing to do. It was always a secondary thing.

It was like a secondary surface to kind of like argue or discuss or make jokes or whatever. So it's a thing it's also like a different use case. It was secondary, but it was also like a good time. Like, you know what I mean? Like you enjoyed it when you were there. We haven't done anything. We haven't done, I mean, Gamergate won in so many ways. Like the trolls won, like they dictated,

they dictate the spaces now for the most part. You can't defeat, if an army of trolls wants to make your life a living hell, no one's actually figured out how to defeat them. No tech company has come up with moderation tactics that are effective and most of them don't even care anymore. We have designed these systems basically for like, to be harassment centers of harassment.

If that's how you wanna use them. And they've been like sort of shaped by the use cases of trolls. And in some ways like, you know, it might be good for, it's good for engagement. Like we took this idea of, there used to be this idea of the main character of the internet, right?

There'd be like the main, every day there was a main character and you don't wanna be it, right? There'd be like the main, every day there was a main character and you don't wanna be it, right? That's like some famous quote from somebody I can't think of who it is. But it's like, you know, the Justine Sacco who made like a horrible, you know, racist joke about Africa and then got on a plane.

Without any context and got on a plane. For 16 hours. That is the nightmare. Was the main character on Twitter. People were like, you know, it was like, you know, it was like she was being like absolutely destroyed and canceled and harassed and whatever. And you know, maybe deservedly so in this case, I, you know,

but the point is we've built systems around like that kind of mob sort of mob activity. Like everything's sort of a mob activity. Like Reddit's like basis for existence is a sort of a mob activity, like Reddit's like basis for existence is a sort of like mob rule. Yeah, as you said, it's engagement, whatever engagement that might be. Engagement, right, and now you've got,

that's why, and I've talked about this before, but the For You pages, it's all about engagement bait. It's like trying to hook you. It's like, it's good for threads if somebody posts something stupid and a ton of people post responses in anger or telling them they're stupid or other stupid responses to it.

That's like good business. Cause they can go, look at the time spent on these posts. Like, and when they talk about monetizing, and they talk about putting ads on it, they can go to advertisers and say, look at how engaged our user base is here. There's 10 minutes. Even though they're engaged in the worst way possible.

Doesn't matter. Engagement is engagement is engagement, as they say. And nobody says that, but I'm coining it here on tomorrow. And so anyway, yeah, so you've got to make this different kind of decision, this different calculation about posting today. I also think there's a posting fatigue that is happening. I think it is inevitable that some generation, I hope,

soon will be like posting is uncool and boring. I feel like there's like a New York Times piece like every few weeks that talks about like, teenagers being Luddites and being like, you know what, I just want to flip phone or like, I'm going to reject this and not do this at all. And I'm always like, that's pretty cool, but it's always smaller.

I feel like when there's a trend piece about, when there's a trend piece about, you know, when there's a trend piece about what teenagers are doing, you have to take it with a grain of salt. Right. Because- Means it's already over. A New York Times writer doesn't actually know what teenagers are doing.

And it's like some story that's been passed through like a bunch of different like sources that, yeah, all the kids are using like old digital cameras now. It's like, yeah, it's like, no, maybe this writer's kid was an arena like, right. And I'm not saying the New York Times is not credible, but I mean, that's, that's the other thing is the info flow of it. Oh, whatever. I don't want to get into it now, but just we've got a real, we just have a real shift going on on like how we think of the stuff on the internet. And- Yeah, I mean, and you know,

just a very contentious run up to this election, you know, it's just, I think everyone's like exhausted, exhausted by it, exhausted by the platforms that made it happen, exhausted by, yeah. Just to go back to blue. You know, we're talking about blue sky, you know, I think like at the end of the day, no matter how many people join it.

They can't go back in time. For me personally, I just, on a personal note, I'm just like, I don't, when I'm done with the day, I'm like, I don't feel like I wanna like sit online and engage anymore. Like I feel like it's lost a lot of its fun. And maybe other people feel differently. Like if you own the platform, maybe you people feel differently. Like if you own the platform, maybe you'd feel differently.

Maybe, or if like, yeah, if you're getting like confirmation bias, if you're getting like positive reinforcement from people you forced to follow you who are fanboys or whatever. Yeah, it feels great. I'm sure it's awesome, I guess, I don't know. But- I wouldn't know anymore. I'm no longer Twitter famous.

Well, right, I mean, just the effort to maintain such a thing in a space like Twitter feels like unfun. And in blue sky, it's like, yeah, I'm sure there's lots of great people that are saying lots of great things, but the putting for me, and again, I'm old and I've been doing this a long time. And I'm like the effort to like reestablish

like me as a poster somewhere, it's just like not a top priority to me. Like we put stuff out every day, the content every day that I'm involved in and I'm happy to be involved in and excited about and I think we're doing really good and interesting things and that for me is enough to be part of. I mean, it definitely feels more rewarding when you do something like that,

then the quick dopamine high of some likes on Blue Sky or Twitter, presumably. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe if I became like massively popular in one of those services now, like a brand new, like if I became like a TikTok guy, oh God, just thinking about the effort I put into.

Even those words just make me cringe. Well, just like I'd have to do so many, I'd have to post so much and I'd have to post so much. I'm already so tired. I just wanna be left alone to play Death Stranding. Just let me sit in front of my television and play Death Stranding and try to forget my worries. Yeah.

Is that too much to ask? And maybe the future is not the internet. Or the future of like social interaction is not the internet. Or the future of social interaction is not the internet. Is the future the internet? The future of social interaction, like that sort of fulfilling, communicative, connecting space. I do feel like Twitter was that for a while,

where you could find like-minded people, you could have in jokes. You could sort of like... I felt like I'd established somewhat of a community like for all its ills. But now it just like, I feel like I'm posting into the ether and like everything's so fragmented and disconnected and everyone's over it. I don't know.

Posting to the void. Posting to the void. Yeah, I mean, I think it's like, I don't know. I think the internet could be, you know, heading to a place that's like where it's less, where it's less relevant. But what does the election tell us? I think what it tells us is maybe the things

that are becoming relevant actually, like somewhat reflect more like mainstream replacements. Like if Joe Rogan is really influential, which obviously he's influential to a certain audience, he's like a radio guy. He's like doing what Rush Limbaugh did, in essence. Right, but he's doing it on a podcast and something you could watch on YouTube.

Well, he's certainly doing it, he's certainly doing it on a potentially grander scale. But in terms of the actual practice of it, it's very similar. Similar, it is a guy talking. Yeah. But at a scale that it never was able to be before. And then just like how you could just pick up

just pieces from it, segments of it. I mean, like that's the way like the internet works now, right? Everything's much more small. Right, I guess I'm just saying like, there are parallels. Like, are we shifting from like one set of gatekeepers to a different set of gatekeepers?

I mean, I think like, obviously we have an information crisis in this country and in the world that no one seems to be able to solve or even want to solve. But like at some point, does it just funnel up to, you know, the difference between a Joe Rogan, I mean, there's no difference between Joe Rogan and Rush Limbaugh in the sense that they both are,

they both are traffickers of a lot of misinformation. And I think Joe Rogan is doing it with probably less malicious intent in some way. Like an every man just kind of dummy. Joe Rogan legitimately believes a lot of the things he says and believes a lot of the ideas that people say to him on his show and it's not like malicious. Rush Limbaugh was a malicious person.

He had a political agenda. I don't think Joe Rogan has a political agenda. And I think that like, there probably are instances where you can be like, oh, well, actually he made a good point about something that I agree with. And then there's probably instances where you're like, whoa, that's crazy. Like, no, don't take ivermectin to treat your,

I mean, ivermectin is like one of the things that like, by the way, R.F.K. Jr. We gotta get more ivermectin into the- That was the COVID horse thing. What was that? COVID horse treatment or whatever horse treatment. I don't know what you call it, but the, anyhow, the point is the, but Joe Rogan becomes a gatekeeper in some way,

right? He becomes like a New York times. He becomes like, uh, CBS news. And, uh, so that's interesting because he doesn't, there's no rigor, right? Right. There's no rigor. And now there's this, and we've now we've trained like a closer to the ground. Like, like the, what Elon Musk keeps saying, like you, you are the ground. Like what Elon Musk keeps saying, like you are the reporters. Yeah, right. It'd be amazing if you could- Citizen reporters.

Citizen journalists, yeah. The problem with citizen journalism and the problem with like Joe Rogan heard it from a guy or whatever is the consequences at that scale are really huge. Like it's one thing to like go to your like, go to your like, you know, local diner and you hear people talking about,

I mean, I hear this all the time. I mean, I was just talking to a friend of mine about like when I was in, last time I was in LA, which was just post like the worst of the pandemic. And I heard some of the craziest vaccine theories ever, like definitely like heard from a guy. You were like, let me put this on the internet. Yeah. Yeah.

And you know, and it's like, that's always out there. It's just when you can like broadcast it. But I think the combination of like, the combination of the, you know, I heard it from a guy, plus the broadcast potential greater than anything you've ever seen is like a really- No rigor, lots of scale.

Right, huge twist on the gatekeepers. No less of a gatekeeper, no less of a person who is like telling you their sort of this is what I believe to be true and what I think you should believe to be true. But it's also under this. His is more under the veneer of not being a gatekeeper, or like not being gatekeeper. Like, okay, I think that's the idea behind X. Like, okay, everyone's a journalist, everyone's a subject expert. And now there are, there are no gatekeepers, but there are, there absolutely are, as you're saying. But like, I think the veneer is that

now we don't have them, but we do. Right, well, I think the... I don't think the New York Times is like, we're gatekeepers. I just think that they're in a traditional, I think they're in a traditional mode of like, we are experts in more fact checking, and we do this professionally, and we've done it for

100 years and this is how you do it. So I think it's like a very, it's a very distinct, there's distinct differences and I think assumptions. All right. I think we're at, look, I mean, I might be rambling and possibly we should, I think we should do a hard pivot. Not unlike America to feature or bug feature bug. You know, America being at the forefront of the crypto revolution, like us being first to decide that this is, this is happening, this is a big, important thing.

America being like at the forefront of the cryptocurrency revolution. Is that what you're asking? Yeah. Feature or bug? Is that what you're asking? Yes. We should have a POV, I think, as a nation. We should have a POV on crypto. I don't know. I don't know. It's really hard to tell what the future holds in terms of its actual importance in the global economic system. I think money is... All money is a story. All money is, you know, all money is a story. You know, all money is a narrative device. Like what we think of as, you know, actual currency is one point was just some like vague idea.

And also speculation. Yeah. It's also speculation. So yeah, I think, yeah, I mean, maybe feature. I guess feature, I'm gonna call it feature. That's what speculation, yeah. It's also speculation. So yeah, I think, yeah, I mean, maybe feature. I guess feature, I'm going to call it feature. That's what I'm doing. I'm going to say I would prefer to do like, you know, the Apple stance here, wait to see if it works out

for other people, for other countries, and then try it out. So I'm going to go for bug. That's where you're, that's where you're. Not leading the way, but doing it the best. Yeah, interesting. You're saying leading the way, but doing it the best. Yeah, interesting. You're saying bug. Bug.

Huh, you think we should take a wait and see approach. Yep. Haven't we waited and seen? You don't think we've seen enough. I don't think we've seen enough, or what we've seen is not compelling enough for me. Fascinating, fascinating. All right, what else falls into the feature of bug today?

Our favorite pet topic, Amazon getting into, Amazon is the latest tech giant to get into smart glasses. Oh yes, yes, Amazon is creating smart glasses to help their delivery people. Yeah, like if you little, on the side of your glasses, make a left here, make a left turn here, and then go into the building and up these stairs to make it faster to deliver, which is like an actual,

you know, like kind of a useful sounding use case to me. Right, right. I actually think this is a feature. It may be the first place where I've heard about like, I mean, my guess is somebody at Amazon who studies deliveries, like all they do is like, how do you make deliveries more efficient, has like figured out some, there's some like 5% or 2% or whatever efficiency without having to look at your

phone and tripping or having to look at a GPS or whatever. So my guess is like, this is probably knowing their, you know, psychotic. Supply chain efficiency. With efficiency and with cutting costs and with whatever, cutting corners. Like, I'm sure this actually is a huge feature for them. And like, you know, maybe the only time I've heard yet

of anybody implementing like smart glasses in a real world setting. And to be clear, like everyone is like, everyone's thinking about smart glasses. Apple is now thinking about it. Like we have Meta, Google, you name it. But I think this is a place where I can go, yeah, I think like maybe it makes sense to,

for Amazon, this actually is almost like maybe they have the killer app, right? Maybe they have the killer app. Right. Tiny face computer for Amazon. It's a tiny, it's a tiny face computer. That's exactly right. And it's going to work out for them, I think. And I'm excited about that.

So I'm going to say feature for the first time ever. I agree. This is my first, well, maybe not, but yeah, I agree on smart, tiny smart face, smart face. Smart smart glasses. What smart face? They should call them smart face, actually. I think that's so good and bad. I actually think like smart face might be way better than dumb.

Like maybe no smart face is actually maybe a better name for smart glasses. Smart face. Yeah, I think you're onto something. At any rate, OK, Smartface is actually maybe a better name for smart glasses. Smartface. Yeah, I think you're onto something. At any rate, okay, what else? 700,000 new Blue Sky users, you know, the election pushing people to other platforms. I'm looking at a report on the verge right now,

by the way, it says 1 million people have joined Blue Sky in the past week. Oh, wow, okay, so that's up from 700,000 that got in here this morning. A million is such a silly wow. OK, so it's up from 700,000 this morning. A million is such a silly number. I know it all has to start somewhere, but it's a very silly number, a million. It's like we're talking in the hundreds of millions

on other services and the billions when it comes to Facebook. Feature a bug that people are leaving Twitter for Blue Sky? Yeah, that we're getting more like spread out, more traction on these like smaller platforms. You know, I, it's a, I guess it's a feature. I can't see how it's a bug.

I mean, it's a bug for Twitter, I guess. It's their bug, but I think like it's a feature, generally speaking, that people are finding other, finding other social networks where they might be happy. I just think it's irrelevant. I think like feature- Because they're not gonna be happy even when they get there.

It's like, yeah, it's like feature bug, whatever, you know, we're, we got bigger problems. Right. You know, learn to code. In that case, I'm gonna go for bug because ultimately it's not as fulfilling as you want it to be. And it doesn't matter. Okay. All right. I accept it. I'll take it. All right. Do we have any nasty Elon Musk

tweets that we got to put in the bracket? You know, I'm not even going for nasty ones anymore because there were so many nasty ones. It's just like, I kind of been doing like thematic Elon Musk tweets. Like, let's see what we got this week. And these are kind of, he always tweets the same thing over and over again, themes. There is a, he's retweeting like him speaking on, I guess, a documentary that he's on. And he says, becoming multi-planetary will greatly increase the lifespan of our civilization. And it is the critical next step to becoming multistellar. You know, this is a drum he's been banging for a while.

You know, if we want our, like, our civilization to last a longer amount of time, we have to go to other planets. Yeah, whatever. I mean, I don't think that's true. And also, no one's going to another planet. No one's going to Mars. I mean, we're not, not for, like, not for 100 years, maybe. I mean, we're not for like, not for a hundred years maybe.

I mean, we don't have, I mean, I'm glad like, oh yeah, cool. I come up, I think come up with ways for us to leave. I mean, I'm not like negative about it. I think if Elon Musk has a plan for interplanetary travel that's like more realistic than whatever we've been doing or faster or more efficient, like I think that's awesome. I think the, I think selling current humanity on like, we gotta get off earth is a very,

like it's a very, it's a very, it's a very like fast fashion take on planets. Like I think it's like, let's move on as opposed to deal with what we got. It's like in order, I mean, and maybe that's the belief like we're gonna, we're like, you know, we're like the, spoiler alert, we're like the aliens from Independence Day, you know, who go, you know, from one planet to another,

like sucking up all the natural resources, and then like, it becomes like a husk of itself or whatever. Like I think maybe that's who we are. Maybe that was, you know, maybe that's the storyline. But I think it's the wrong attitude to have about the planet, the planet Earth. I think we should basically be like for the foreseeable future, for my life and my kid's life and her kid's life and so on and so forth for many generations,

we've got the planet, you know, and we're not gonna get a new one anytime soon and we should probably also put a lot of efforts into solving the problems that we have here. Right. So, you know. Right, and I think that this whole line of thinking sort of lets him off the hook for like like, you know, destroying the planet,

which leads me to his next tweet. Oh. No, it was just a tweet of a bunch of rocket launches, like pictures of a, you know, SpaceX launch, and shows the schedule of it, and he says, nonstop rocket launches. And, like, I can't imagine something so as horrible for the environment as just like constantly like using up

all that fossil fuel to send. Nonstop rocket launches. Just send rockets nonstop into space. If he was really good with electric, he'd make an electric rocket. See that? It's almost like this wasn't the point. See that hot shot.

The saving of the planet. I mean, I think like they're honestly very tame for him. I guess things, I guess now he's not worried about the huge threat to democracy that. I'm sure he's got like other horrible tweets. I just can't read them all or stomach them. I think of those tweets, I think the interplanetary one or whatever is the worst tweet on a philosophical level, though I think it will pale in comparison once we actually do this bracket,

which will we ever actually have the bracket? But like- We already have the winners, can we have a bracket? Yeah, I mean, no, no, no. Like when we create the master list of the bad tweets, I think that one pales in comparison to some of the others. But I do think, yeah, just his idea that our planet is so kind of disposable, you know,

because we have like his push to go to Mars, which is totally unlivable and horrible and would sounds like a terrible place to be, just so that we could, you know, crap this place up. Could be cool. I mean, have you ever seen Total Recall? I have read a book about like a city on Mars, it's called the City on Mars Mars and it just sounds not cool

and horrible. Wow, read the original title. Well, you know. What's it about, The City on Mars? It's about like taking at face value the idea that we would have a civilization on Mars and kind of like debunks it all and how horrible it would be

and how you'd have to live like 20 feet underground in a hole and have no oxygen. Well, we've all seen The Martian, great film starring Matt Damon, one of the greatest thespians of our time. And I think we got a good sense of what it would be like to hang out there by yourself. Awesome. Very fun gardening. Yeah, that does sound fun. All right, we got to wrap up.

We got to get this show on the road. Anything else? Anything that I've any stone we've left unturned, Ronnie? Not one. OK, great. Well, that is our show for this week. We'll be back next week with more tomorrow. And as always, I wish you and your family

the very, very, very best. Thanks for watching!