TRASHFUTURE - Tales from the CryptoKittyKeeper

Episode Date: December 11, 2017

It's the spookiest season of all... the Boo-lidays. No guest this week - Riley (@raaleh), Abi (@AbiWilks), Milo (@milo_edwards), and Hussein (@HKesvani) talk about inspirational business dullards, how pictures of cats on the ethereum blockchain cost $100,000 and burn holes in our ozone layer while making like two tech dipshits rich for no reason, John Rentoul's circumscribed vocabulary, silicon valley seeding its dork parties with attractive women, and online journalism's continued descent into hell world. We also talk about getting so mad online, you go super saiyin (in this case, interpreted as grousing about Estonian folklore) Somebody buy us a damn crypto kitty Anyway like follow and subscribe to make us happy

I might have a drink actually fuck it yeah acid rain what do you want I mean do you want more absence scotch absent yeah all right hold on I couldn't get the one to lose properly so I'll get the other one this is this is trash 19th century philosophy podcast everyone drinks absence for two hours this is this is such a great intro and it's very well structured we're very good at audio welcome fellow Bitcoin investors this is now an alt-right podcast that's funded by Bitcoin I did I did actually invest in Bitcoin right small amount of Bitcoin what can be yeah about about how

to start your Neotropic health product business using only a white supremacy Bitcoin and a can-do attitude so what I'm trying to figure out is in the past in a couple of weeks everyone started talking about Bitcoin for some reason despite the fact that everyone who was extremely or even moderately online has known about it for years yeah and it became so upset that when I was taking the tube the other day there was a bunch of like mums who were trying to convince other mums to buy Bitcoin so I'm trying to figure out how did this happen why is everyone now investing into Bitcoin and at what point does Soylent

become a currency so it becomes a currency maybe when like like like like people who earn under the poverty threshold are just monetized and then repurposed they'll be on the Gal Gadot scholarship yeah I don't want to exterminate the poor I just want to move them into the blockchain but like yeah how did this happen and why isn't why is everyone now investing into Bitcoin considering that even from like an outsider who doesn't have brain genius not like us of course as an outsider who is not a brain genius like not very online it doesn't it doesn't look like this is particularly stable and it looks

like a perfect recipe no but did you not say CEO McAtheese the maths means that it can't crash did you see that tweet no this is impossible actually it's gonna go up forever until it's never gonna go down is this like the same kind of definitely definitely not something that was ever said in say 1928 it's the kind of math that Nicholas Nassim Talib does when he goes to the gym and he like harasses women on treadmills was this the famous inventor of the black swan like kind of an alt right like dipshit yeah so Nicholas Nassim Talib after the US election he was trying to prove that more manly like the

more masculine you are the more likely you were to vote for Trump because he's a kind of guy who will see an image drawn by our favorite anime artist Ben Garrison. Have you all seen the Antifa porn? No. The Gay Antifa porn. The only porn that I've seen this week is the Zootopia comic. I found it. Oh that's not it. There. You liked it. Oh I saw this yeah yeah no no so this was from a while ago yeah yeah okay you just made me think of it. Okay I thought that this was something new. No I'm sorry. So for listeners who haven't seen the the sexy Antifa stuff the first panel but there's a whole there's more than the cartoonist as a whole series. Oh my god. There's an actual manga. Yeah I know I've seen this. I like the guys kissing through the balaclavas and also the bulge at the front. They all have huge muscles in

giant dicks. Right so I remember this being posted and like obviously all the teams were just like yeah this is actually good or like this but unironically tag yourself and then some people were tagging themselves as like the black and white guy with alt-right haircuts who are making out. Some people are tagged themselves as the teacher but saying that the teacher had a boner in the second of course second panel as you do around young people. The people making out in the balaclavas is back right at the best. So anyway the Nicholas Nassim Talib story before we got didn't definitely didn't get it. Before we like

introduce ourselves. Nicholas Nassim Talib story is one where he got horny over seeing Donald Trump, an image of Donald Trump with like muscles and pecs and stuff so he went to the gym. Wait what? What image was this? The Ben Garrison image. Did Donald Trump used to be ripped? No he's never been ripped. Is it anime? Yeah as in Ben Garrison our favorite anime. Ben Garrison does hentai have done on Trump. So Nicholas Nassim Talib went to the gym. Donald Trump Vegeta hybrid. Nicholas Nassim Talib went to the gym and asked people he harassed women on treadmills to you know did you vote for Donald Trump and then he went upstairs

to where the men were lifting weights and he asked the same question and he used this very accurate sample a good baths brain genius formula to derive a theory that said that if you had more testosterone then you were more likely to vote for Donald Trump and if you look at like I think the tweet is still there but if you look at the mentions everyone's just like you're a fucking idiot and like you know this isn't even like a sample this isn't how like stop harassing women on treadmills. Nicholas Nassim Talib is such a brain genius that he's actually already investing in bitcoin at $250,000. He can see that far into the future. But so yeah so Nicholas Nassim Talib basically. Nothing can go wrong.

Yes Nicholas Nassim Talib invests in bitcoin, wanks off to Ben Garrison anime and gets mad online. What's his job? Public intellectual stuff is going to fall apart. That's like I saw a tweet earlier that after someone was said that John Rental actually was making sense that Corbin's whole like speech was like a quote unquote public intellectual and I was like oh shit yeah public intellectuals should be executed. Like yeah maybe Palpat was right. John Rental is not a public intellectual he's something else. Before we go into talking about Nosferamelt, John Rental shall we introduce who the fuck we are. This is Trash Future, the podcast about how the future is trash, a podcast about inequality,

technology and socialism. I am Riley you can find me on Twitter at Raleigh. Once again Milo Edwards coming at you live from the dang bowl at Milo underscore Edwards on Twitter or you can find me deep in Moscow. My name is Hussain Kizbani and I'm here to say that memes testing's the only way. I'm everyone's that don't know how to follow that. And you can follow us at Trash Future pod where which is an account that I Riley control. I promise I don't just retweet with an eye and a fist. You can also follow, you can also follow our alt which is at ASI. I'm um S8MB.

Or you can, or you can follow our other alt which is at King of Last Week who is a social media, a Jupitarian social media. Hey so how is it, is he, what's going on with him? He went dark. Oh no. Oh man he went zero dark so he has even dropped into the sea. No he went tactical. No this very, this beautiful mind tweeted at us last week that his social media strategy was too complex to be explained within a tweet thread which is a theoretically limitless medium. It involves blocking anyone who tries to follow him.

Yes. Really? No Jupiter. I mean he is truly playing 14th dimensional chess. I genuinely find him very endearing. I thought he was nice. I mean nice is interesting. I mean the invitation's always open because I really need to kind of fix up my social media strategy. I have a lot of affection for my social media troll. It was like so impassistant ones. I feel like we have now two sort of people who have a permanent invitation to come on to the show. One is King of Last Week as we've discussed, the interesting person who has been responding

to our show tweets. And the second is the Zoonies. My favourite King. Who is my, I don't know what that means. Oh yeah. The Microsoft Zoon, their competitor with the iPhone that lasted for like two years. Someone who is using a Microsoft Zoon is listening to our show. Is there anyone who uses a creative zen? That's what I really like about the Holy Grail. Look right now the Zoon is the only one I know who listens to every show and I want this one so badly. Guys we have some like mad content to get to. Shall we get to the content? Wait, go back to King of Last Week for one second. My favourite King of Last Week was

when I accused him of being mad online. He was like, no, I'm not mad online. And I was like, you still seem to be mad online. And I tried to prove that he wasn't mad online by explaining Estonian folklore at great length. And I was like, well, that's one way. He accused me of not really knowing much about Estonian folklore, which is true. I don't know. The Estonian folklore? That was, I just, do you think he was, he was really an Estonian folklore expert? Well, no, because an Estonian folklore expert logged on and told him he was wrong.

Oh, that was good actually. Guys, we have content. Okay. Shall we, content? Okay. Do you want to start with Jay Shetty or? Yes, because our recording, so we did a bunch of riffs on Jay back in the days, back in the early old school trash future. Pre-Abby. On the last episode, weeks ago, the app that was lost. But Riley Brackett's good at audio. I lost it. So this will be Jay's second sort of appearance. Jay's second appearance. Well, Jay's second appearance in our hearts is first appearance in our listeners hearts. Yes. So anyway, so what, what, what did Jay do? Well, Jay Shetty, who I think is going to be a,

a quote friend, unquote of the show for a while, because he is the best way to describe him is an inspirational business dullard. It was a former monk, urban monk, urban, urban, sorry, an urban monk who sounds like a bar in fucking Hampstead, who then went on to become just work with Ariana Huffington in some undisclosed capacity, but whose Twitter presence is largely about telling people that they can do it and their attitude matters most and one person can change the world as the organizing doesn't matter and power and control over resources. That was also the thing. That was also the strap line for the Pokemon second movie. And I'm going to, and I'm actually going to do this this time. I'm going to cut in

the Jay Shetty video about how we turned out a million dollars. You're probably thinking who in the world says no to one million dollars, right? It might have been more, it might have been less, but either way, it was a lot of money. And I said no. So if you stick around, I'm going to let you decide whether you think I made the right decision or not. Ready? I am ready. It's a true story. So this lady calls me up. She sounds high profile, connected. She sounds like she knows what she's talking about. And she says to me, I love your videos, Jay. I love the energy you're putting out there. And then I'm like, thank you so much. And then she said, I think I have something you'd really be interested in. We want you to host a series all

about winning, all about success. It's to get people to gamble. It's all about instant betting these days. I'm thinking to myself, and why me? Because people listen to you. You can persuade them because they trust you. How much money would it take for you to do something that you really don't want to do? Something that you don't believe in? Something that your values and ethics are not aligned with it? How much would it take? A hundred dollars? A hundred thousand dollars? A million dollars? I'm glad I stuck to my principles in this event because I want to share what I learned from it. The first one is... I'm so excited to hear what Miley says in the bits where it cuts out. Okay. So that was Jay Shetty talking about how he turned down a million dollars. Same.

Yeah. No, we've all turned down a million dollars to appear in a gambling website's video because he has his values. But I want to inform everyone here that two tweets earlier, absolute honor meeting Mike Milken and being interviewed by James Morgan in front of 100 young leaders. For any listeners who don't know who Mike Milken is, and before I describe who Mike Milken is, I'll remind you that Jay Shetty just turned down a million dollars from a gambling website because it compromises principles. Oh yeah. No, my favorite thing about the turning down a million dollars video, right, is that he says, okay, so I turned down a million dollars. All right, not necessarily a million dollars. It might have been more. It might have been less. Brackets,

it was less. Like, if it was more, you would have said more. It was clearly a lot less. So for those of you who listening who don't know, Mike Milken literally invented junk bonds and destroyed the United States economy in 1980s, spent several years in prison for securities fraud. All inspirational business dullards from Jay Shetty to Richard Branson have literally nothing to say other than just, you know, a justification. I disagree. I think Jay Shetty has a lot to say. He certainly says a lot. I mean, what I like to do with Jay Shetty is I like to imagine that he is bane from the new Batman series and that because a lot of his tweets, like I've got one here and it's just, if this was in the dark night rises, it would be classic bane.

Fear comes from a lack of knowledge. Accelerate your learning. Eliminate your fear. It's important to figure out who you are not in order to figure out who you are. So we got a contribution from a listener of the show who wanted to remain anonymous and it was so bizarre that I had to, I was on the tube when I got this and I got out of the tube, like tube station free stops and where I was going because I had to look at it and process it and then find a place of Wi-Fi so I could send it all to you. And that was really difficult because Bond Street station is very patchy. What are you doing at Bond Street? Are you like secretly reg? I've got to go by like Christmas presents. Anyway, it's the classic Hussain Bond Street Wi-Fi riff that we

have. Well, what I was going to say is that when you're walking around the tube station as a brown man with a big backpack and you're on your phone, like people do get scared. Everyone just says Merry Christmas. And you have to be like officer. And you keep muttering to yourself about the Kaphir. Not a terrorist, just tweeting. Just shitposting. Just shitposting online. Anyway, so you got this contribution from a listener who worked at a company that Jay was linked to or associated with. And what he said was, shit you not. When I was there, Jay went on an away day and he made a thousand analysts meditate as urban monks. What is an urban monk? What is an urban monk? Wait, is it a monk to pull up his pants and learn to code?

It's a monk who is into crime, which is now cool. And even Tory MPs are trying to be cool with it. I mean, that's what it really is. It's kind of, it's just like nonsensical term, which was like Jay decided that because, you know, so the origins of Mr. Chessie also come from another listener who knew him from the place where they lived in North London together. And she told us that he used, like he was part of this kind of very well-to-do, like middle-class Asian families, who, you know, they used to like go around Harrow Town Centre pretending to be like bad boys, but making sure they'd get home at 10 o'clock so that their mothers didn't know that they had girlfriends. Relatable. So what ended up happening was that like Jay just did what every other like

rich North Asian, rich like North London Asian kid did, which was he went to university, got like a fairly, you know, mediocre degree. But instead of deciding to go become like an analyst and like getting married like everyone else, he decided to go become quote unquote a monk. So he basically just went on a gap here. What religion is he a monk of? It's a religion that you actually probably wouldn't have heard of. It's a success win mindset. All of the, all of the, all of the cassocks have box logos. Jay Shetty is a monk of mindset. He's a mindset expert. He was, he was trained by, he was trained by this very famous monk who only went by the name of Sir Novich. Who is so exclusive, he hangs up on reporters. So it just seems like he basically

just, he was trained by Stevens to go all himself. So he took, he took this like mindset bollocks, came back to London and then somehow convinced Ariana Huffington. Yeah. So she, so he just like hung out with Ariana Huffington, got some sort of job at the Huffington post, but no one was quite sure what that job was. But it was sort of bizarre that like the time that he was, Oh, he's not the other one. Well, do you like? Um, begins with an S. So there's another one. There's another guy whose job was just hanging around. Oh, that's not, that's way too vague. You're describing like every millennium. You're describing like half of the current cabinet with

that. Shingi. Who's Shingi? You don't know who Shingi is. I don't know who Shingi is. Shingi. That sounds like a disease. Digital profit. What the shit? You don't know who Shingi is. Shingi. Holy fuck. How do we know all about this? I'm AOL. I'm AOL's digital profit. So maybe every large sort of new media internet company has a guy. Okay. So like that's the thing. The listeners of trash future are going to come on a journey with us as we discover who Shingi is. Wow. So I'm on Google images right now and I can't believe you've not heard of Shingi. It's not clear what he does. I've read like really long pieces about him. He mostly has his mouth open. But basically I like who wrote Shingi content. I still have no idea what the point of him is. David Shingi.

There is no point to it. But how'd you get that gig? How'd you get like like just rock up San Francisco night? Well, I think I think it's like sort of symptomatic of this kind of weird tech journalism culture, right? Where you know this whole like the whole like mindset thing is really dominant. So it's like, hey, like you guys don't need to like join a union or like bother with collective bargaining because the only collective bargaining you have to deal with is the bargaining with yourself. Zips up hoodie. You don't need a union. You just need to be alpha. And that's really what it is. It's just like, you know, this is the playbook for people who

just adopt gorilla mindset with like less, you know, sexist terms, right? So the main thing I've got a friend who lives in San Francisco and they were telling me that all the big tech people go to like BDSM sex parties with like really expensive kit. Wi-Fi connection strap on. Oh, of course they do. I mean, I know we're friends to any listeners who I just know something deeply unsexy about like elaborate sex costumes. As the volle cell of this conversation.

It's entirely too contrived. I'll agree. It's Riley reminding people once again that he does a comma. Fuck. It's one of his women. You can't say much about I meant. I was, I was, I was actually transitioning to some of the content beyond Jay Shetty. It didn't mean inspirational.

This happens on this show. Inspirational. No, I mean, you know what people sometimes have sex. I've heard it happen. Well, I have been to sex parties. I have never, I've never had sex. Were you just like the chaperone? I was making sure of everyone was okay. I did have sex, but I did not inhale.

I'd like to move on to a thing, but first I'd like to refill my Me too. And Abby's absent. So while Riley's away, I get to lead the show. So it's so dumb, but even though I know crypto kitties is a stupid nothing thing, part of me is like, ah, it's cats. That's how they get you. Yeah.

That's how they get you. And that's how the, that's how the future economy is going to be run. It's going to be run on like cats and, you know, we may think that Buzzfeed is about to crumble, but it's going to be run on people being superficially reassured by the like cutesy aspects of deeply terrifying things. I mean, maybe that's what's going to happen to Buzzfeed. Like once it gets rid of all its journalists, it's just going to become like a deposit tree for crypto kitties.

Pivot to crypto. I personally can't wait for trash future to pivot to cats. No, but okay, so the basics of what we're talking about here is that on the on the on the Ethereum blockchain network, hell yeah, but it doesn't sound fascist. Yeah, it does sound pretty. It's going to enable some fascism. It's already enabling fascism.

That's absolutely the case. A company has created a platform called crypto kitties, which is cute, which is really cute in Bay and like a trading card company and really like awkward and lovely and crypto kitties are basically just pictures of cats that have eyes and bodies and backgrounds and stuff origin stories. Yeah, and little captions generated by a company called Axiom Zen or something similar. Um, but the issue is, is look, we like Bitcoin is weird. I think we have to have a more detailed episode talking about Bitcoin.

But crypto kitties, well, it's on a crypt like a like a blockchain network is like a weird beanie baby offshoot of cryptocurrency pictures of the cats that with a hundred grand, some apparently. Yeah, yeah, essentially, yes, there are some pictures of cats, which are essentially like lines of code on this blockchain network that have sold for $118,000 normal. It's regular. It's a regular economy.

Yeah, it's fine. Crypto kitties is just cryptocurrency becoming anime. And so we've got, we've got, we've got this article open in front of us at the moment, um, which is essentially saying that your crypto kitties are a collectible code, line of code, essentially. And the rarity, what's interesting to me about this is the rarity of each crypto kitty is determined socially entirely. For example, a crypto kitty with a gold background or certain colored eyes

or a leopard print coat is considered rarer and is therefore more valuable. And people have sort of paying upwards of $100,000 for the rarest possible crypto kitties, which again are lines of code that off of a blockchain resolve into an image of a cartoon cat on your web browser. No more fine. I mean, you know, like, I want the human race to survive on the one hand, but on the other hand, I really don't think we deserve to. I mean, isn't this is a lot like

like Pokemon cards when like me was a thing. It's totally beanie babies. Yeah, it's crypto beanie babies. Yeah. So it's less like mew cards and people are paying $100,000 for a shiny. Very similar. Hey, so I had a shiny chara that I shared with my brother and he took it.

He took it to a birthday party and shared it and traded it for a bag of weedles. And I've resented him for a bag of weed or a bag of a bag of weedles. That's not weed. Yeah, it's not weed. Not as good at all. If he'd have got a bag of weed for it, that would have been more jokes. I've resented him for maybe like two decades now. Do you think that's going to like happen with like this generation and crypto kitties?

It's it. Well, it's entirely possible. Just like I resent you for like getting this line of code that generated a golden cat. Well, that's the thing is that Jordan Pearson on vice did an interview with the crypto kiddies people and he asked a few questions that I think are oddly telling. I'm not going to sort of fully quote the article here, but essentially the way crypto kitties monetizes is that it sell it originates kitties almost like mining Bitcoin.

No. So basically they they have they have like a sub routine that releases a new crypto kitty every 15 minutes, right, largely random characteristics. And in effect, they sell them for I think like $12. It's just stupid. Of course, it's stupid. The future is dumb. It's just

Well, maybe the future is trash. Does it is it is it killing the environment like Bitcoin? Yeah, sure is. Yeah. So I think I mean going back to my previous take, the human race destroying itself by becoming overly obsessed with trading virtual cats would be the most poetically fitting end to this whole mess. Yeah.

Yeah. I want to be against it, but on some level I just I can't say it's a bad thing. Milo Edwards, accelerationist, the current grid that runs just like the current grid that runs Bitcoin uses more energy than the entire country of Brazil. One of the interesting things on me is like conspiracy theory. Fred's are people who are like still saying that no Bitcoin is going to collapse and you need to put all your money in gold and them sounding like the most sensible people in the room. It's like, yeah.

Well, you know, I know that you have a swastika as you're at Avi, but actually maybe you make a point. Well, I'm going to say Bitcoin is going to collapse. I'm paying all my money in gold. They have inherent right about like the plot of the big short, too. Is it in this article in the electric bugle in this article? Jordan Jordan Pearson asks how much have you made from selling kitties? And the company says I can't comment on that.

Surprisingly, maybe this was. I can't comment on that. Holy shit, holy shit. Maybe this was the company that offered Jay Shetty. How much is the cheapest kitty? Can we buy a kitty for the show? We buy like a tragic kitty that just hates everyone. I mean, it would take longer than we have on the recording, but yes, in general, we can.

Okay. They say I can't comment on that. But you can follow sales at kittysales.herouhap.com. We take 3.75 percent of every transaction. And also we sell kitties every 15 minutes. I've just got a stupid thing in my brain that says because it's cats, it's good. Getting lots of rough brain in your diet is always so the most expensive kitty ever sold was sold yesterday on December 7th at one hundred and seventeen thousand five hundred and thirty

two dollars and five cents for twenty dollars. It just won't be as good as fucking hell. But it's someone sold this for the price of a down payment on a house. Who's buying it? He's but here's things like he's like this will make me more money in the future. Maybe it's our good friend, Sean O'Grady, angry that millennials have too much money sitting at the office. He's saving all the money he's saved on not paying for millennials.

Or maybe it is to buy crypto. He said transitioning to one other topic he wanted to hit in the first segment. John Randall. I might pitch the new avocado taste article. Millennials are wasting their money on crypto. Yeah, you should do it. Can we start our own blockchain trading thing called like crypto. Crypto Sean O'Grady, where we create a new Sean O'Grady every 15 minutes with like

randomized dad opinions. And then you can like breed. You can breed your Sean O'Grady's together to create a new and rare. Rail cards are making sure. Rail cards are the real fascists. Speaking of like journalists with terrible opinions, has anyone seen anything from John Randall recently? John Randall's stick is like just pretending to forget what words mean for

reasons that are obvious. I need to himself. I'm going to pull up this tweet just so we can be in a move that's very on brand for me. I don't actually really know who this person is other than through the discussion we've had about him in our like trash. And I went on his Twitter to try and work out who he is. And I genuinely couldn't like I was like he seems to be like a like new labor blare eye. But then I was scrolling through and he keeps like retweeting Boris Johnson.

And I'm like, what is your labor? I can't even work out what your standpoint is. He was once accused of running the alt account Tony Blair fan, but I don't know if anyone ever confirmed it. So what was what was what did the art account do? It was called Tony Blair. I don't know had opinions on Tony Blair. I love this and Tony Blair.

Oh, he reached me Tim Montgomery. That should tell you everything to know. These are all my friends in the media. Yeah. He basically the John Rental thing is pretending that he doesn't know what the word neoliberalism means as a method of defeating Jeremy Corbyn. Let's scroll to his actual tweet. We're going to probably edit this bit out.

So what John Rental tweets and I'll say this initially is that Jeremy Corbyn makes a speech that is an on quote toward a post neoliberal world order. I anyone else understand all of the words there? I'm managing to understand the words. Post neoliberal world order. If you put it in human rights based multilateralism. If you put it into a Ben Garrison cartoon, I might understand it. So rebuilding human rights based multilateralism.

The magic the magic of the John Rental Twitter account is that he's also retweeted someone who's just written a poem in the shape of a Christmas tree. Like this man has no brand. There is no brand here at all. It's just random. It's like it's like he's like a Markov chain that's been made into a person. But the thing is he's not like Riley will laugh at anything which contains the words Markov. I love the Markov change up.

I'm worried that John Rental is not getting enough protein. And when I get up from my coffin at night, I always start with brain force plus. And with that, I think it's time to go into our trademark break and we'll see you on the other side. Things things go so quiet in the absence of Riley. Yes, imagine if it was just all three of us character. I know. Imagine what a serene podcast it would be. It's like so today on the news.

Brexit. Today on the Stalin was black actually. We must we'll be it'll be like it'll be like a monocle 24. It'll be a monocle 24 star podcast, but it'll be called Stalin was actually black. I mean, just like start off just like like a chud. Yeah, I mean, it's true. John John Rental did pretend he didn't know what like the world's like. Words like word or world or order meant brain to brain genius brain genius.

Brain genius Dracula John Rental. But in this case, the galaxy brain is actually just a brain made of those galaxy chocolate bars that they have like the tail in a corner. All of his haters were were kind of insisting that he was quite smart and listen to our words. And he was just like, no, I actually do not understand them. I was like, no, we know you're clever. We know you we know you can come on. You can at least know what human rights are.

There's I can there's I can alternate reality where the Serbian guy didn't drink the poison and he just began arguing that you can't commit genocide if you don't know what it means. The final Jagerbomb was one of many. All right. So we have a couple sources of hashtag content left before we put down the microphones and get like properly drunk. One of which is this article that was Abby or Hussein. One of you guys sent this to me.

I don't remember. One of you guys sent this to the group D.M. Which is that Silicon Valley is sneaking models into this year's holiday parties. That was who's head. There are the tiny Gundam Wing replicas. I mean, that's what's going to happen at the trash future Christmas party, right? We're just being models in. It's going to be us making Gundam Wing Rock Rock.

Fuck, I can't speak. Making Gundam Wing replicas while listening to take a knee my ass. Yeah, the the bottom line is essentially that Northern California modeling agencies are seeing record numbers of request for a beautiful quote guests at tech holiday parties. Despite the fact that the tech industry is famously rife with sexual harassment, nothing could go wrong. I just don't know how you don't notice. Like, how do you show up to the party?

You're like 90 percent male companies like super models. It's like an arrested development episode, basically, isn't it? It's like getting all these models to show up at like a fucking Uber party. It's like getting a load of seals to show up at like Buster's birthday party or something. Oh, because Abby and then Michael Blue, unfortunately, I have an answer for you as to how that happens. Okay, that the models have all been given names as to who they know in the company. I said they're like guess the guests of employees.

Yeah, they're all guests like Ted's Ted's hot model fans. I'm like Ted's extraordinarily like sexy friend. Anyway, you can't touch me or it's two hundred dollars. They're deep. They're deep cover it that they're like they're like a James O'Keeffe. It's like ring that tip jar up. I mean, like the most kind of surreal thing about this was that this was literally a storyline from like Silicon Valley season one, like the first fucking scene of Silicon Valley season one

involves a bunch of tech dickheads going to this party wearing togas where they're trying to flirt with these good looking women only to eventually find out that oh, we were models and we were paid I'd be more surprised if they weren't doing it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, you've got to make a living in this world. And, you know, if you can do that by talking to nerds, no, no, no, no, just be more surprised.

I mean, to be honest, kind of that's what you're doing currently talking to nerds. Not totally earning any money. This is basically like it's just like it's like Wolf of Wall Street for nerds, isn't it? Like at least at least like the Wall Street days they were open about the prostitutes that they'd hired to be at the party here. It's like, no, the nerds can't tell the idea. We have to tell them that the women are there because they really like them. Tell me, tell me more about your blockchain.

The ascendancy of the nerds is incredibly annoying because these are all people to whom I, the owner of a relatively competitive magical gathering deck, desperately want to give a swirly. Yeah. But like in all series of problems with like nerd supremacy is they think because they suffered in school that they have a right to do whatever they fuck they want. Fuck that. As they form a libertarian team nerd, you can probably like... We haven't introduced the trash future listeners to my past yet.

It's an origin story. And I'm sure the Riley origin story will come up at some point relatively shortly. All I'm saying is that some of us joined Al Qaeda and some of us went to like became libertarian. But they're just like a fuck single mums. At least they got laid sort of. It's just this attitude of like... I was actually in SEAL Team 6. I didn't even hear that.

What I always love is the sort of extreme assurances that the agencies give that this isn't prostitution, which I should almost say like sex work is real work. It's good. It probably is sex work sometimes. But like if sex work is real work and we should protect sex workers, it's we should not protect people exploiting sex workers. No one should be put in a situation where they think they're just like making chat. I mean a lot of these women who do this stuff, they're all kind of like...

Yeah, a lot of the arguments against sex work are just arguments against work. It's like, oh yeah, well a lot of these women work in quite bad conditions and like, you know, they don't always get paid right or something, they get cheated about it. But it's like, well, go off. Oh boy, you're going to... Let me tell you about this thing called capitalism because we are going to shut yourself. Sex work is work and work's awful. I mean, I imagine that most of the women who do this are kind of like jobbing actresses or

jobbing musicians or something like that. But it will put them in a situation where there will be, you know, it's probably as like tough. Entitled predatory male nerds who have held resentment that they got a swirly when they were 16 years old by the guy. And they hate women. They hate women because women laugh at them when the women turn them down. They really hate women. As someone who women still laugh at.

Valsel, Valsel, Valsel, Valsel, Valsel, Valsel, Valsel, Valsel, not all men. Yeah, I have to be very careful when introducing myself. So in the same way that people are very eager to introduce themselves as vegans, I'm very eager to introduce myself as a voluntary celibate. And just leave it at that. I do eat beef, but I won't fuck it. So basically a bunch of like sort of nerds who've described themselves as damaged because they weren't popular in high school now have to get exposed within an already culture that's like

famous for sexual harassment to do holiday parties with a bunch of models. We're going to say up, up, up, up, up, no touching. Yeah. And so that's going to go fine, right? Who else had a great take about that? They're cocky. You also had a great take on holiday parties today. I love holiday parties.

Holiday parties are comma good. Wait, did I have a take on holiday parties? Yeah. I'm sub-tweeting everyone in the Accenture right now. So shout out to our boy, Sam Dis, who is comma good and also featured on The Apprentice this week if you watch The Apprentice. So he did a tweet, which basically said that the whole of the UK is currently filled with boozy men who all wear the same salmon pink coloured T.M. Lewis shirt.

And what was the other bit? I think then they've all got their Christmas jumpers from Amazon Prime. Yeah. And have all been trying to sort a gram of Coke for like a week. So this is pretty much describing every kind of management consultant in London as one of our hosts who may or may not have been associated. None of us are in management consulting, is the thing. No one on this table is associated with management consulting.

So and the funny thing is- No one on this podcast would be involved in managing consulting or the taking of recreational drugs. No, we don't do any of that. No. So that was my take on Christmas parties, which is that they are all filled with people who work in management consulting firms who all do blow in bathrooms. They all wear the same salmon pink coloured shirt. Yeah, but they don't even do big lines.

They do like three bumps and then give the rest away to like the people they meet who are like inspiring. How would you know how management consultants do their drugs at Christmas parties? I know a lot about management consultants. Like they're like, oh, you're so inspiring. I work in management consulting with the real heroes of the youth. Have a key of this ketamine. So my favourite thing about going to Christmas parties is that I get to do my Christmas party

trick. Do you know what the trick is? What is it? Right, so I go into a room full of people who are enjoying themselves. I forgot that this is a sex podcast. Anyway, no, they're all talking and I'm saying, guys, sit down on the floor and just meditate. You're doing it. Riley's actually on the floor right now. So thanks to our boy Jay Shetty for that.

Jay, you're good. Anyway, I'm ashamed. I did actually go to a Christmas party. You went to a Christmas party. This is a good segue into the next segment of a certain digital media company called BuzzFeed. Oh, I bet that was fun. Yes. I was really hoping it was going to be the Essex police round up the black people.

And then an email came through and then it wasn't. No, but it was fun because everyone would just be. No, well, everyone got the email as they were on the way to the Christmas party. So you can imagine. So the history of what happened behind this, we've talked about this on the show before. And as I've mentioned before, like there are only certain things I can say thanks to non-disclosure agreements. But the stuff that is.

I'm worse than I am when I say them. There was that time when the editor did smack in the office. So the things that are in public domain, BuzzFeed UK are cutting the cutting. They were cutting 20 members of staff after the main office in America wasn't, didn't meet its revenue targets to go public. That number extended to 45 people this week. And BuzzFeed staffers were notified of this an hour before their Christmas party. The Christmas party normal and regular.

Yes. The Christmas party is usually organized by the office. And the office will usually book a good venue and they'll put up a spread and everything. This time around, the office basically said, we'll give you a small subsidy to organize your own Christmas party, because we didn't feel that it was good optics to do that effectively. Weird. Weird, but also normal and fine. So a Christmas party at BuzzFeed UK 2017 was really lots of people sitting around in a

circle drinking and well, getting really hammered and trying not to cry. Why is that essentially? Well, that's because, you know, they're gutting their whole news team. Because media is dying. And because media is dying, but also because as we've said on the show, I don't know if this was in the outtakes, but BuzzFeed UK is probably like, once it gets rid of all its editorial stuff, this is probably going to become like a depository for like crypto kissies.

Yeah. All news is going to be sponsored by like, Oh, you were trying to help me to the next segment. Great. Okay. Cool. Yeah. So one of the models that could take and it hasn't like in the article that we reference like BuzzFeed was one of the websites that didn't do this, but that's not to necessarily say that they probably weren't in the future is this new phenomenon of unpaid contributing writers promoting material. Yeah. This is something I wanted to get into.

Um, so this was on this big size all around. I love not paying people for this. This was on Vanity Fair. No, this was on the outline. Sorry. It was tweeted by our friend, Maya Kossoff, who works at Vanity Fair. Friend of the show, Maya Kasa. Follow her on Twitter. And the title of the article is how brands secretly buy their way into Forbes,

Fast Company and HuffPost stories. HuffPost being the former employment of our boy Jay Shetty. Our actual, our personal Jesus Jay Shetty. And so the article, like the article is pretty long, but like the general summary is that news brands have kind of like all editors and news brands have been communicating with PRs of like companies or like from companies directly to run articles or run kind of features. Basically promoting products without... Advertorial that's not marked as advertorial.

I guess that's a simple way. Monocle invented advertorial, that's what I don't know why. What an achievement. Yeah, no, great. Hey, maybe there's another great kids podcast is actually an advertorial for Jay Shetty. Maybe this is another like wonderful candidate for trebuchet into the sea. But the thing about, the thing about this model, because like I think the advertorial stuff and like the non kind of marked advertorial, that's been a debate that's been running around in Britain, like in digital media, like for the past few years.

The thing this article sort of shows is how covert this is. So like, you know... See AM do it as well. Yeah. So how covert can it be? So in one of the examples, the writer emailed one of the authors at Forbes to ask like why, like if he was kind of doing like this non-disclosed PR or like, you know, this like hushed up PR.

So before we continue, can we say like, largely the culprits in this are Forbes, Huffington Post. Yeah. So the things, the organizations named in this article, the Huffington Post, Forbes, isn't the, I think the Wall Street Journal is mentioned in this, but I'm not sure. See AM does have the Contributor Network. I don't know if it's... So that's just, I want people to understand what we're talking about. I think, I think like the closest because I'm guessing most listeners will be more associated with the Huffington Post.

But basically someone writes an article and you think they're giving less sincere opinion and they're actually being paid by a company to say something's good. We really could have done with Uber on this show. Uber Butler, who hopefully will be on next week, who basically just like blew this whole thing, like wide open with his article this week about how he turned his shed into like the number one restaurant in London thanks to TripAdvisor and also how the internet is bad. So the thing that like, I guess the thing that people can most associate with is the Huffington Post stuff in that anyone who has ever written online has probably written for the Huffington

Post because it's so easy to do. Jay Shetty actually was a major Huffington Post contributor. Yes. And I was also... Jay Shetty, who advocates being moral and sticking to your principles and not encouraging gambling and also rehabilitating Michael Milk and the greatest financial criminal in US history. So the Huffington Post has always sort of been known for running contributor things. So we don't pay people to do the content. They don't really have a screening process.

When I used to do stuff for the Huffington Post on the contributor blogs network, they would very rarely edit anything. So you'd end up publishing a piece of a ton of typos. This has gotten the Huffington Post into trouble a fair few times. Sounds to me like you're just lazy. Yes, maybe. You don't have success mindset. Fact check your own articles and also represent yourself in court.

The same case, aren't you? And to be honest, it's too liable. And to be honest, like the Huffington Post has had problems with this. They've had to take blogs down before because they've let stuff run that has obviously been like a person attacks on people or like have libeled people. And like, these are kind of like teenagers or like, you know, people in the early twenties who know nothing about like libel law and stuff, right? So this is the network that these kind of advertorial people are coming from.

Now, in one of the screenshots, which is the Katie Natopoulos at BuzzFeed, I'm just pulling up now, one of these PRs kind of says something along the lines of, Hi, Katie, is it possible to hire you? Now, Katie works at BuzzFeed as a journalist. Is it possible to hire you to write something in BuzzFeed or elsewhere? It's tech based and newsworthy dot dot dot. A new brand slash product launched by Vodafone aimed at under 25s to give this kind to give them more data.

So Katie replies, Sorry, you can't pay me to write for something at BuzzFeed. But if you think it's useful, why don't you pitch something to my email? The PR responds, OK, thanks, Katie. I'll get something across to you. Do you write for anywhere else also? And is there any way that we could hire you for coverage on a side pitching for stuff on BuzzFeed?

So Katie responds back saying, Yes, you can hire me to write a story about whatever you want for the New York Times for $10,000. That's the going rate. And this PR goes, oh, wow, dot dot dot. I'm a little bit out of budget, unfortunately. Sad face emoji. I guess we'll have to work with the pitching part.

So I think that summarizes the whole. I've been I've been offered money to write back things for like IPRs before. What stuff have you been offered? I don't even like just fucking products. Just like I don't remember like a dating a dating app. I think it's the one. I think like so when you when you're like a fairly well know, because I've had this too, but it's mostly vape companies.

So like one time I made this joke about being like the king of vapes in Westminster or something like that. And like this vape company liked it. And then they DM me and were like, Hey, can we send you like a bunch of our new products for you to review? I don't vape. And like every time I try to I end up like having a coughing fit. But I was like, yeah, sure.

So there's been this massive box of vapes in my office. Oh, Hussain, you have to become a vape reviewer. That is like the most on-brow thing for this podcast now. The point that I was going to say was that like if I got off to review vapes, I would do it. Like I recently I get offered sometimes to like get free stuff sent to me from Instagram from like Russian companies that they they never offer me any money. They just offer me free shit. And I'm like, I don't want this.

Recently the weirdest one I got recently was someone offered me like like unspecified handmade leather products. If I were to post about them on Instagram. And I was like, I don't don't know if I need those. And another person who just offered to send me desserts in the post. If I like put a picture of me eating these desserts on Instagram. And I'm like, at this point is that. That's the thing.

So I've never had like because my I don't really use Instagram. So I've never had people say like, can you like not only use this, but take a picture of you using at the same time. But you know, Abby, me, like other journalists who have been on, like we have been approached by people to kind of and given free shit and everything. And there is like a discussion around the ethics around that. But the difference here is that like these are journalists and these are editors who are being offered money.

Some of whom are taking it to basically run these under the guise of actual journalism at a time when like, you know, trust in media is like at all times. I feel like that's going to be the thing is people aren't going to like trust anything they read. So they just pick a favorite reality, which might be like, well, this is why I only read shown and jumps. So yeah, I only read games, workshops, white dwarf. Actually, the, I'll shit what they called the space marines. The space marines are liberals.

My mom's a little like that. Like she, she doesn't, she doesn't, she decided she didn't trust the MSM entirely, literally. So, I mean, she just trust the wildest conspiracy websites you've ever like. Well, I mean, I, here's the thing today on the day of recording, Ian Miles Chong, noted, oh boy, intersectionalist posted a picture of Donald Trump dressed up as the God Emperor of mankind for more hammer 40,000. And I was like, I mean, I mean, kind of.

Yeah. I mean, the God Emperor of mankind in more hammer 40,000 survives on the sacrifice of a million innocents a day. He rules a sort of, you know, religiously, religiously driven fascistic, globe-spanning, like not globe-spanning, universe-spanning empire in order to hold bay the forces of chaos for no other reason than cause. So, you know, he was right. He's a centrist liberal. I think that gives, that gives Trump way too much agency.

More like Ian Meltol's. Trump is a smear, right? Ian, Ian Miles Chong decided to harass me on the internet for being a hypocrite, for being a... Wait, really, Abby? Someone decided to harass you on the internet? No, I was a hypocrite because I wrote about being a sexual violence victim, and then two days later, a friend of mine was exposed as a sexual harasser.

And Ian Miles Chong was like, hey. He's like, yeah, he's like, I'm going to prove how much I respect and care about women right now. I'm going to do something, I'm going to do something regular, normal and respectful. And he's like, Abby, you're tweeting about sexual assault and you think you're so smart, but I bet you don't even know the first thing about Estonian folk. Hey, guys, we're at an hour and a half. Yeah, he's a horrible little worm. Ian Miles Chong, come on, trash.

Show yourself. A lot of those comics portray Antifa as like firm, buttock, just sexy motherfuckers. A lot of them portray Ian Miles Chong as normal looking and with good teeth. But Ian Miles Chong, I would fucking crush you in real life, bitch. All right. Ian Miles Chong, come on, trash future. Anyway, I only won't be sexy and you won't.

I hear my bell ring. Shall we say goodbye, motherfuckers? Bye. Means testing is good. Bye, everyone. Later, bitches.