The Great Realignment
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Do you ever get mad at AI? All the time. No. I don't get mad at machines, which is why I think I'm good at using them. I've been doing this thing where I have it read our text thread and pull out...

all the links. I'm proud of it. It's amazing. Well, what I wanted to do is a series of things. I wanted to look for context of the link. The second thing I wanted to do is if it can't get context, I wanted to read the link and to come back and give me a headline. Then what I wanted to do is deposit all of the links into a document with clickable items that I can actually use.

And literally, like it keeps messing it up and I keep asking for it and it's like, sorry, I'm going to fix it for you, but it doesn't fix it. And I get really mad at it, just like I would get mad at like a stupid intern. Which AI are you using? The best one is still OpenAI. It's the best by far. I don't know. I'm finding Cloud is better than OpenAI for some stuff. Maybe because you like the things it tells you. You should try Grok.

I think it's extremely hardcore. It'll work extra hard. Make sure you're happy.

Should we get started? I want to talk about, we want to talk about realignments, whether we're in a great realignment right now. And these are usually tied in with politics, but there's instances where the cultural realignments take place alongside or even push it forward, political realignments. And at least the U.S. history is sort of filled with these realignments. I think the first one was really the Federalists against like the Jeffersonians. Federalists won that one, spoiler alert.

But more recently, I think the biggest realignment was probably the conservative revolution. Started with Goldwater, crested with Reagan. And we might be in the midst of one right now. And I think it started with the populism that we saw, probably going back to the Tea Party and even Occupy Wall Street. And now we've got this weird fusion in MAGA between the populists and

pitchfork people and the the the brahlig arcs it's a very it's a very strange coalition i mean most of these political coalitions are strange but there's obvious inconsistencies and contradictions embedded in them so while this is not a political podcast we don't want it to be i think if you're going to understand this landscape you have to touch on this this realignment because a key pillar of it is how tech is aligned with

the Republican political party in a way that is kind of unprecedented. So, Troy, you were one of the links that you had shared. You were taken with your idol, J.D. Vance's speech in Paris at an AI summit. Europeans love to have these summits, conferences, symposiums.

He is handsome. He's improved quite a bit. My sort of stylist, he's improved really rapidly as a politician. I think that's kind of admirable because he's done it under the hot lights. And I can't really believe that the attack line on him was that he was weird. I don't think he's weird. I might not agree with what he says, but I don't think he's weird. That was a strange attempt. I mean, if you listen to him, he's very weird.

Well, I mean, not what's weird.

I don't know. Is someone having different views? Anyway, when his... Sure, sure. Let's just wrap it all up by saying all of this stuff is just normal. Well, I mean, no, I think it's like disagreeing. Weirdness is different. We can disagree and I'm not advocating for JD Vance, but... But these people are in charge, so I think we should take them seriously and maybe if not... The thing that I admire about him is he's a bare knuckle kind of wrestler. Like he's...

I find that he kind of spars with media, but like with the best of them. And so he's, I just find that he's never kind of put in the corner. He's really, really a skilled debater. Yeah. Okay. But let's get to the substance of what he was. He was basically, he was going to Europe. I mean, I think this is important, right? Because-

Because you hire, you know, put in an experienced person in his vice president that has to go out and do, you know, a lot of the work.

And he's thrust onto the world stage and can stand up and hold his own. And I wish I had a job where, where whatever I say, it doesn't fucking matter. That would be great. I'd look like a genius too. Well, but I'm just, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters. Nothing matters. Nothing. You can say whatever. What are we, what are we doing right now? Alex? I don't know, man. I mean, I think we're giving, we're giving JD events a performance review and I'm saying, uh,

Yeah, he's very skilled.

And, you know, J.D. Vance went with a sort of simple message, I think, to basically don't regulate American AI companies because the government's got their back right now. And, you know, this was, I think, always implicit or explicit in the bargain. I think it was bigger than American AI companies. It was...

Don't regulate American tech companies with bullshit like the Digital Services Act and GDPR. Yeah, GDPR got a mention, Troy. Did you? Were you cheering? I mean, I was elated. I was elated. It's a shameful piece of legislation that has made life more difficult for people that make media. And that makes me sad.

Yeah. And he also made the case that I think is interesting, and this is where those contradictions of this great alignment and whether it continues where I think the rubber meets the road, where he was trying to argue that AI is mistakenly painted as anti-worker.

and that is actually pro-labor because they're trying to square the circle of the pitchfork populace, which I think of as represented by Steve Bannon. And then you've got the sort of techno libertarians, let's say Marc Andreessen. I know if those two are going to have a brawl, I know where my money's going. It's going to be on Steve Bannon like every day of the week because that guy has been in the joint firstly. And then also, yeah, he fights to win. He ends up, whether he wins or loses, he's got...

pieces of flesh under his fingernails. He's an evil genius, man. I don't know if Andreessen's salons have the same kind of energy. Yeah, it's going to be, I mean, I'll give J.D. Vance that. He's really good at memorizing whatever David Sachs tells him to say. There were some Sachs flourishes in that, that's for sure.

When they went into the black George Washington, that was ripped from an all-in episode. And look, I think we can all hate on GDPR, and I don't particularly love it, but Europe is allowed to regulate its shit as much as

anyone else's. So I think it's just, it's all very self-serving right now. And I know that we all like are really tired of having to press on a button, but, but like forcing other countries to deregulate, to deregulate themselves. It's pushing on a button. It's the most consequential UX blunder since I've met you, Alex. Right, right. So, so we're going to, they're going to use like, you know, their, these tactics to force

force countries not to regulate what happens within the walls of that country. I know that the internet makes that weird, but like there are also a lot of privacy laws and things that started in Europe that we wouldn't have, you know?

And the example I always give, maybe they'll go next and say, hey, you should stop regulating your food supply the same way and do it the same way we do. - Well, wait a second. That is part of every trade negotiation. The food regulations in any of these countries

is part of trade negotiations. And I would guess this is just like, to me, it's just tech becoming just another industry that is tied in with the government. We act like these giant industries, whether it's financial services or even technology now, are not like in with the government. They are. I mean, the government negotiates on their behalf. They have trade missions and they trail along a bunch of... But they're in with the government, but there's a different criteria here. I mean...

there has been a shift in how integrated they are and how integrated the messaging is. Either way, I mean, I think this stuff is like, you know, there's a lot of things where they'll do like, they'll put one nice thing like, hey, GDPR is bad and mix it in with a bunch of other stuff like deregulate crypto. So, you know, it's fine. It's all very self-serving. Maybe it's because I'm in the middle of it here, but it's like, holy shit, like the hen house is open. Let's go. Let's go.

You know, I think that it's going to create an environment, you know, where we're already in a bubble, very likely that that stuff's just going to get overheated. And on top of that, like, I don't know how much this like self-serving of the tech billionaires agenda is going to benefit them over time as well. Because I think like the tides might be turning at some point when it's just so obvious that

That the messaging of the White House is actually being dictated by seven people that run the biggest technology companies. I think that's potentially bad news. Let's back up a little bit. The reason that this started for me, the notion of the realignment is you can see it in virtually...

sort of every aspect, you know, of how we live right now from U.S. politics to, you know, AI regulation to how we, you know, to healthcare, to climate, to how we work.

And I was sitting there watching JD Vance sort of scold European leaders about, you know, regulations impacting or inhibiting big US tech companies. And then at the same time saying, you know, that unlike the previous administration, we are not going to be focused on safety, that this is the most transformative technology ever.

you know, that we've seen, you know, in recent history. And we should be leaning into innovation. And, you know, take that for, you know, however you want. And then after that, he said, we are going to use it as a force for job creation in the U.S., which strikes me as...

as an inter it just kind of started to highlight the inherent contradictions of where we are with this kind of realignment i was thinking what is it that we're moving from and what are we going to what are we realigning to well what are they trying to push right like it's like trying to push the fusion of capital and labor doesn't like those coalitions rarely i mean the divide between capital and labor has been like forever well on one side you know you got to protect the popular forces that elected you and on the other side you got to get behind the money

I mean, I think on one side, this is not, I mean, protect the populace. I think on one side you have to, the narrative is full-on populism, but the actions are, you know, accelerationist, pro-corporation, and anti-populist. I mean, if...

Yeah, I mean, I agree with you, Alex. I think they're threading a very difficult needle here. Yeah, I mean, I don't think they're threading it. Well, I don't know. It's hard to say. You know how clowns draw a smile on their face to make themselves look happy? I mean, this is what is happening. It's a bunch of clown faces.

And people quibble with the results, but like, you know, the early actions are clearly, you know, they're taking red meat moves. Like the U S like populace hate, like this is straight from, by the way, there's just a regular playbook of waste, fraud, and abuse. I mean, my first job was for some,

It was a bunch of Republican speechwriters. I worked for the speech writing firm. Waste, fraud, and abuse was always, always the go-to for trying to attack some bureaucracy or government agency on behalf of some corporation that was paying us. You always go to waste, fraud, and abuse. And they're just rerunning a similar playbook because guess what? That works. People hate waste, fraud, and abuse. I guess the thing that I appreciated is

The mechanics of media and what Chris Hayes has written about recently and what's his book Sirens Call or whatever it's called. Oh yeah, I'm reading that now. I just believe there's a real appreciation in the GOP that kind of modern media mechanics have favored their tactics massively.

And, you know, it's in addition to, you know, the money in power by sort of forcing what's happened is forcing the big tech companies to sort of heal. There's an appreciation that that.

Right.

you know, shown just like that the left is sort of like flat footed here. Like they don't know what to do. Like it's an incredible time to be like the resistance is completely neutered.

But what is the mechanics that they're playing to is obviously spectacle, right? I mean, spectacle is great. Fights are amazing. You look at where the algorithms, you know, point you. A lot of times it's the conflict. And look, none of this is... It's a 10-year erosion of the authority of media. I mean, here's what I'm wondering is that so much of that was on the back of being...

the non-mainstream, the underdog, the silenced, right? Meanwhile, you know, they parade a bunch of billionaires. You know, we've got Joe Rogan there, which is... So they're quickly... And they're kicking out all the mainstream, so-called mainstream media from the press room. So they're creating an environment where the reality that people are experiencing is that they're no longer the underdog, no longer kind of...

punching up, but are fully in control. And I don't know how long that narrative holds like that, because at some point, you know, people might get wise to the fact that Elon Musk is in the White House with his kid, which... That was a spectacle. The internet has renamed this kid Kevlar Musk, by the way, because he seems to just...

carrying him around in public, but talking about how it's crazy that unelected bureaucrats are making all these decisions, him as an unelected bureaucrat. And we do have to look at the whole narrative and the way the... I think you can talk

Through saying like, look, there's all this mainstream media, there's TV and it's on the airwave and it's telling you all this stuff and it's controlling everything. But once you've changed that reality for people, how long does that message hold? How long does that message hold when eggs are still too expensive and Elon Musk is, you know,

I mean, the hope is that it holds for two years because historically, you know, if you're in power, you get shellacked in the midterms and then the control of all three branches goes away. I feel like we've always been teetering on this and it's been really smart to

And Bannon has talked about it, right? Like that the culture war is a way to, you know, galvanize a group of mostly young men to get angry about something. But in truth, it's a class war. And we're seeing Bannon like shift towards the more class war model because he doesn't like the billionaires. And I wonder if like there's like kind of like a third arc coming up here, which is going to be,

It's going to be really hard to talk about the elites when JD Vance and Elon and all these guys do come across. But it's worked. I don't know. I agree with you. I mean, it's working so far as they had a couple of extra percentage points in the election. Well, no, they won an election on the back of claiming that like...

billionaires were the ones who were not elites, but that, you know, journalists living in Fort Greene, like with two roommates were. So, I mean, I don't know, like a lot of this, you know, populist stuff is not,

It's really about messaging. I think what Troy is saying is really smart in that they have won the ability to put these messages, which are kind of tough sells, but they're selling pretty well. They're selling better than other cards.

And I was just pointing out, you know, what is the kind of mechanics of our time, which is populism combined with a new structure of media driven by platforms and how and just how I think one side has done a much better job at a kind of like appreciating and harnessing the underlying, you know, power of that, you know, that type of message dissemination.

But isn't this like the same thing that has happened countless times when there's a new technology that fundamentally changes the landscape of media together with some sort of like

You know, environmental causes like financial distress or whatever that creates an opportunity for people to completely overwhelm the message, right? Like the printing press did that, the radio did that. And now it's kind of the late stage, the late stage completely decentralized internet is doing that.

You know, when you have like Theo Vaughn, like at the inauguration and you're, you're telling yourself like this place is the same place that it used to be. It feels really weird. Like you turn on the TV and I only do that when I go to a hotel, I turn on the TV and there's a bunch of people in suits sitting around the table and they each have like eight, 18 seconds to, you know, say what they want to say as, as like there's a Chevron going down at the bottom that feels completely archaic right now. People are not receiving their information like that anymore. And, and,

The Democrats were completely held back by norms, like this is how you do it. You put on a suit, you get behind the camera, you do the thing, you do the interview, you do this, whatever. And it's obvious what's happening, right? This is like, this is the printing press. This is like people being able to print pamphlets. What are you saying? You were talking about some like, you're our correspondent from like progressive YouTube. What's going on on like progressive YouTube?

I mean, I've, and I don't, you know, it's hard to get, to make any sense of anything because the algorithm puts you in a bubble. But there's definitely been, I feel like a rapid rise of interconnected thinking.

YouTubers that are just highly political. So, I mean, we've had like some of them in the US. - So let me just jump in. That's like a mirror of what happened really, I think, that powered a lot of this in the, in the manosphere, if you will. I mean, all these, there's these loose, loose coalitions, federations that help each other. They're on each other's shows. There's, whether it's explicit or implicit, but go on. - Yeah. And I think it's, it's, I mean, I think that's also always existed, right? And specifically targeted mostly at young men. Your life is shit.

Here's how you make your life better. So a lot of, you know, the content starts with, you know, the Huberman Health stuff and working out, but also goes quickly into conspiracy theories and anti-immigrant sentiment. Making quick buck. All that shit. Because you're kind of a guy, you want to, you know, you feel like you need to have reached a specific level. You feel like. Yeah, but just to get to the point. You're a high agency guy.

You had found that British guy. What was his name? Gary's Economics. Gary's Economics. Who was a little bit more thoughtful, right? Dimly lit kitchen.

I think he's great. I think he's like, he's like a good looking dude, grew up blue collar, managed to break through, went to the London School of Economics, made it, he's, he's, he's, he made a ton of money trading and, and he started this channel to, to tell people how to make it in the world and, and,

quickly shifted into understanding that the game is kind of rigged, right? So when you're kind of in a specific class, you might be able to do a little bit better than somebody else in your same income class, but there's no way you're going to break through. And he experienced that through his experience at the London School of Economics, et cetera. And he does these, and he's trying to build a political movement out of that. And he's gathering folks, including like ex-

right-wing YouTubers who are now shifting from this culture war to the class war. And I think it's being fueled a lot by the images. When you think about there's these images that are really incredibly powerful that they're using in media to see the richest man in the world standing in the White House or imagery like that that is so evocative and their

Their main message is moving from culture war to class war. And it's the Bernie Sanders message, essentially. The wealth gap is increasing. And that is the only reason why you're in the state you're in.

And it's talking directly to young men. And this stuff started popping up. Now, we have some American ones that have like really big that are on the left. You know, Hassan and Destiny are two big ones. Hassan Mehdi? Yeah. They're both very problematic characters. They also hate each other. And there isn't...

Yeah, it's kind of the left in America has a tendency of just like... Yeah, I don't think Hassan is resonating with forgotten males. I think that he's not the right character here. No, but if you look at somebody like Gary from Gary's Economics, I think that there is this new tone.

And look, it's the internet. When something works, people are going to start just like gathering around that. So I, you know, I don't know. Can we back up on, I think those are really interesting points. I want to back up on the YouTube thing because I,

you know, the stats that came out this week that talked about how YouTube on televisions, you know, was eclipsing consumption on mobile YouTube success, Alex, you know, if, if, if we went back to the early days of kind of like, you know, long tail content creation via blogs, et cetera. And

and that they were kind of a minor threat

to, you know, establish media. And then, you know, there was an emergence of a group of new types of digital publishers that challenged established media, people like BuzzFeed, Refinery29, Vice, etc. And, you know, many of those understood the distribution mechanics of the internet and got really good at kind of besting old school media in those environments. But interestingly enough,

They all kind of skidded out. Right. And and what I find interesting about the YouTube thing that we're going through right now is at the time, I would have never predicted that basically long tail video would come to dominate so much of the kind of information space spectrum.

And we're seeing this in YouTube where, you know, basically a colossal library of content created by amateurs is outperforming professional media. And especially, I mean, the news today that you were referring to is that... And it's moved to the TV. Yes, in the US, YouTube is consumed more on TV than any other device. That means it's just like, you know, we talk about like...

you know, behaviors and modality on this podcast a lot, but it means that that's the thing that you do with your family around you or with a group. Well, that's the lean back. I mean, that was always the thing. It was like, yeah, well, UGC is fine, but it doesn't monetize. And people still want to lean back. They want high quality.

That it's moving in either via influencers or sort of craft video makers or semi-professional content creators, that it has moved into the professional space the way it has is remarkable, I think. Remarkable. And then the other thing that's happening in parallel is sort of YouTube is finally, you know, like,

Traditional video media companies or network media companies are so bad with sort of productizing tools that make the creative group much more productive and making sort of community applications that make that really transform the nature of the product.

And what we're seeing with YouTube are things like, have you seen the community features that they've been building that allow you to kind of like, you know, roll together the energy of a community around your content or this new feature they've got called hype? Have you seen hype? Oh, I like that.

We should do that. We should get people to pay to be able to ask questions. Right, or like the way you can pair your iPhone with your TV so you can use it as this really sophisticated remote control, or creation tools that use AI, like this thing called DreamScreen or DreamTrack that make creation of content that much easier for an amateur. It's just like it's only going to get more technical problems

more kind of video plus community and the tools are going to get better and better and better for amateurs to create content. And I think you're just, and at the same time, YouTube has done a remarkable job of creating a monetization ecosystem that basically trumps everybody in the market, which is in sense people to just put their energy there.

And I think that really, companies like NBC never saw it coming. That'd be my take. I think that's fair. Can we move on and talk about... Yeah, sorry. I just wanted to add that even movie studios right now are putting some of their old inventory on YouTube for free because they think it's probably better to get...

you know, pennies on the dollar of what they would charge, you know, a rental fee to put it up on a streamer, but they get more action there. Like the broad reach of YouTube, the thing that YouTube managed to do, which nobody saw coming, is that

you could that the audience would be so receptive to consuming such such different type of media it goes from like 10 second shorts to two and a half hour movies you know and i and and we always feel like you know and this was like something that that happened a lot in tech i remember that when i was at airbnb we were talking about the fact that a lot of people didn't believe that the

Airbnb customer would go beyond kind of the room sharing scale in the beginning. But then over time, you know, we kept this proving that the audience was nearly infinite. And if you built a good product, product could be universalized. So somebody that wanted to rent a $50,000 villa for their wedding or somebody that wanted to rent a $35 villa,

a room night would use the same product. Same thing is happening on YouTube where people will watch like, you know, scissors and paint on it. And some guy like, you know, you know, juggling watermelons. Yeah. And then, and then the broad, the broader point to Alex, I think is that the old ideas about what defines quality have changed.

And I think that that's profound. But also the tools have improved to narrow the gap between what a professional and a quote-unquote amateur can do. But the thing is, I think the thing that they missed, and we also...

You know, when HBO got merged into Max, people were saying, well, now I'm going to see some shitty, you know, reality show next to Succession, and it doesn't make any sense. And I think that that was very much an interface issue. The reason YouTube can afford to do this is

is because it's algorithmically based. Like my YouTube feed never feels completely out of whack. You know what I mean? And that's the thing that everyone missed because when you're used to linear programming, you might say, okay, well, the big revolution is on demand. That is still like categorized. Somebody's building boxes and putting pictures in and stuff has to look normal. Otherwise it looks pretty crazy. But if you say now it's a blank slate

And I can tell you, an interesting experiment is like open somebody else's YouTube. Like especially when you will go to an Airbnb and somebody might have logged in and stuff like that. That shit is completely different. It's a completely different experience. Although you got to admit their algorithm is extremely heavy handed. I mean, if you look for a donut recipe once, it thinks that you just want donuts for the rest of your life. I mean, it's not particularly good.

That is a very good segue because I want to talk a little bit about Chelsea Peretti's brother, Jonah Peretti. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying that. I'm sensitive. Came out with a new manifesto. Jonah has been good at manifestos over the years. This latest manifesto is the anti-snarf manifesto in which

Basically, you know, he goes through all the problems of these algorithmic platforms, the algorithmic recommendation systems and how they reward, you know, what he calls snarf content. And, you know, that is sort of lower quality content. I mean, you know, he breaks it down into it being stakes, novelty, anger, anger,

fear, and then while retention is there. But basically, you know, these are engineered to sort of divide us. And I think BuzzFeed grew up in a different internet and a different Facebook. And, you know, it was like 31 things only a middle child would understand. And that is obviously not panned out. I mean, the stock is down 94%. So Jonah's manifesto was a great case, I guess. I'm

It was a great case that I think he made against all the downsides of this. The solution, which was buried quite a bit, was that BuzzFeed itself will be building its own social platform. The details on this, incredibly hazy. I don't expect to get a better understanding of this. But basically, it's going to be a human curated social platform that is...

designed to bring joy and playfulness back to the internet. It is going to enable playful, creative expression. It's going to use, guess what, AI to give users agency instead of stealing their agency.

Troy, you know Jonah well. What did you think of this? Well, I mean, good for you, Jonah. I mean, I think that, you know, all media companies are struggling with how they insulate themselves from the whims of platforms. And it's, you know, you should have built it five years ago. You should have built it before. Well, you should have built it before TikTok built it.

But like, I don't know, taking away the crack pipe and handling, handing someone a, a clove cigarette doesn't seem to be a, a, a, a easy thing to do. I listened to this. I listened to the Peter Kafka interview on, on his show channels. Cause I thought I should probably listen to this to get ready for the podcast. And honestly, it was like some of the most inane shit I'd ever heard. Like there was no, there was, I, I mean, I, I, I, uh,

There's nothing against the guy, but there are no answers here. Also, you don't need things to be human correct. The reason that these, and he mentioned it, I mean, he mentioned all the hits, right? Because arrangement builds engagement and that's what you sell ads on.

If you want to create a social network, it doesn't need to be human curated. You can just tweak the algorithm so that it just elevates more positive shit. The problem is you don't have the scale. You don't have the scale. And if you don't have the scale, it's impossible to build a social network right now. Unless you can build scale, you're not going to mean anything. And coming up with a manifesto to say this is what we're going to build is...

I mean, he's doing it for investors, right? Like, there's no- Well, it's not working. No reason you would do that. Yeah.

I mean, the stock didn't move. It was actually down 4% since. Yeah, but I would have, I mean, I, you know, it went from me just ignoring this thing to thinking, oh my God, I would take all my money out of this. There's no money left, Alex. Why are we talking about it? Well, because we, because... A Canadian DSP just got valued at $2.5 billion. There's money out in media, but... Of the people that sit at the intersection of media and technology, Jonah is a

a very accomplished person and a good thinker. Sadly, he's in a situation where he's managing expectations of a market and he has three media brands that he has to say, look, they have purpose and we make content that has a place in the world. And by the way, we're also going to create a social network. I think that's hard to do, but you know, I, I,

Has this strategy been coming out there and says, we're going to build a social network that's full of happy shit? The manifesto was not a manifesto. It was just, we're building a social network. With no details on what the social network should do. Yeah, I think I would have rather. Is it federated? I mean, at least do that, right? There's nothing.

To me, I read, and we'll see what Jonah tells me. Troy seems uncomfortable. Is he like a friend? I'm sorry. No, no. I mean, I think that we here at the People vs. Algorithms podcast, we generally cheer. We're generous and we cheer for media. And we like it that someone has said, you know, listen, instead of being beholden to a platform, we're going to make our own.

And I thought the manifesto was kind of goofy, but like, I want to see him do something. If you care, if you care, if you care, then, you know, sometimes you need to give some tough love. You're wasting your time, your money. And also you wasted my time because I listened to that podcast for 35 minutes and I watched it.

And so that made me very angry. I thought you were in a good mood this week. I wasn't in a good mood. We got a comment from Brad Robertson, and I just want to put this in here. He said, I've enjoyed the increased content you three are pumping out. I don't think it's been increased, but it might seem that way. He said, there's been a greater shift. Maybe it's a realignment in the dynamic between the three of you that I enjoy even more. Who knew Alex could make me laugh so much?

Well, I mean, yeah, I don't know if it's with me or if you know anything about Alex, what's the gentleman's name, by the way, what, what, what Alex is extremely good at is throwing the second punch. Yeah.

Yeah. Watch, watch. Here we go. Watch. Respond. I just wanted to tell him. He just eviscerated Chelsea Peretti's brother. Look, I still love Chelsea Peretti. That is nothing. The fact that her brother has a terrible strategy. Keep her out of it. For sure.

I mean, I don't know. Maybe it works for them. I think it's just wild to just announce stuff with a manifesto and announce that with manifesto. That being said, I did receive some comments that people were worried that Troy and I are constantly at each other's throats. Troy and I love each other very much, like brothers, although he could be my father. But...

And part of the dynamic here is that we use this one hour to just like air our, you know, grievances and differences. Yeah, I mean, the nice thing that's happened, and I made a mental note of this, is that at times I want to write you, you know, off as a sort of like woke cuck.

And what I've been doing lately is I've actually been thinking about the things you've been saying. So I think it's a victory for tolerance. That's how we shift. That's how we shift. Just bring it back to the media. Right. And by the way, you really did go from being sort of sympathetic to a lot of things to being really harsh about this social network thing, which is a kind of Republican move, I would say. Yeah.

Oh, really? Well, you know, I don't subscribe to anyone's ideology. I just look at what's right. Didn't it sound like something somebody would have said in like 2011? No, it sounds like what Elon said at USAID. I think you're actually right with that, Alex, because I hear a lot basically, to

To me, there's too much nostalgia, I think, in the publishing business overall. And there's a lot of regret that I don't even know if it's regret. It's like, oh, if we only didn't fill in the blank. If only we didn't. Last night, I had a dinner that I did with my partners at Omida in which there's regular periods where publishing executives are like, well, if only we didn't do this. If only we didn't go along with the Google thing.

Because they're trying to, in this great realignment in these publishing companies, they're trying to realign themselves and they're trying to operate their existing business and rebuild a totally different business. So they have to continue on this traffic treadmill

to pay the bills while trying to build some like smaller, more like engaged business model. And it's really hard to do both at the same time. And this is like with Buzzfeed, it's like, this is an impossible task. It seems like. It would have been impossible. It would have been impossible. It would have been that,

BuzzFeed's entire growth and success was based on the fact that they adopted and they got into bed with all these social networks. And when media companies says, if only we would have done this or that, not only should you... If you had done it and all of your peers, if you had all gotten together in a dark room and said, we're not going to allow...

you know, Google to kind of search through our stuff and we're not going to allow. They would have had to organize all the media companies to get together to do this at once. Individually, it would have meant... Well, they would have ended up in jail. Yeah, exactly. So, individually, they could have... I guess this is a better move. Individually, they could have done nothing. And I actually truly think that, like, right now, even individual actions like BuzzFeeds are going to lead to nothing. The only thing, the only thing that could maybe make a dent is, like,

if these companies organized themselves around that, maybe adopted a centralized federated system and went out and said, okay, we're going to start doing this at scale because they have scale when they get together. The problem is at an individual level, nobody's going to throw a rock and put a chip in Facebook. Like that's crazy.

I just want to kind of try to summarize this a bit, but I would say Brian that. So I'm coming across. Well, no, but I think you would agree with this. Alex is that first of all, Brian's point that you have to have a foot in the past foot in the future in media is so true. He needs to manage, you know, the expectations of the market. He needs to keep revenue up on his existing media brands and he needs to make something new. The problem I have is that new products need an insight and,

And new social, there's never been a social network that was built on it on happy times, happiness, like the happy super social network. That's not a thing.

Do you remember Path? I miss Path. Path was really, really fun and I used it for a while. Really? But the idea that we're snarfy is not a new idea, okay? Like people have been complaining about social networks, amplifying negative sentiments for a long time. Tabloids, gossip. Yeah, and it's got a long history. Talk radio.

All content. I did a whole presentation of this one, a keynote presentation on what makes content addictive. And I think that, you

you know, media companies at their best understand why people need content, what compels them to consume it. And therefore what makes it, what makes it, you know, something that you really need, what makes it addictive. So I think that, you know, if you look at tick tock, it was based on, you know, some, some simple ideas, right. That if you flooded, uh,

a system with video content and had a single feedback mechanism and built an algorithm to create an experience based on that, that you could kind of create a delicious product and it worked. And what they then did is they spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying essentially floods, flooding it with, with new users and therefore content.

And so maybe Jonah has a plan. Maybe he's got a plan that's built on some new social mechanic that we haven't seen because he was too busy talking about snarf and about the brand positioning of his existing asset. Also don't call it fucking snarf. Like, can we stop with the acronyms? Like I really think like even DI is way easier to attack because nobody knows what it means. The thing I would, I would say is that the inside here that is often missed is that something like Tik TOK,

It wasn't a media strategy. It was a cognitive hack.

You know, people understood that if you hype, there's this, I think it was in this old TV show called Max Headroom. Oh, I liked Max Headroom. Yeah, me too. I think at some point they had these things where like ads would blast into your face running at like 100 miles an hour. And it turns out that like you can overload the cognitive system and then it's very hard to let go of it. That's

It's not a media strategy. And most social networks are built on that. Okay. Like if you keep people in a heightened state of like mental arousal, you will maintain their attention for longer. All right. Irrespective of the media. Okay. Today, you know, it's a culture war thing or it's a class war thing, or it's like the amount of content that is being created right now that is just like, you know, if we looked at it 10 years ago, which feel like insane, you know, and then, and then you find out that people watch this stuff at 4X because

Because our brain are like incredibly susceptible to this like, you know, media firehose that we're creating. So if you're, you know, try to separate your cognitive hack strategy, which is like how are we going to get people to engage with this for as long as possible? And your media strategy, which is like, oh, we're going to push out happy content. These are two different things. And so if you're building a social network based on a media strategy, that's dead in the water.

Like it makes, you know, I think it's pretty obvious to me. So you can ask him that, Brian, when you talk to him tomorrow. And I'm giving you another chance to pitch your other show. Okay, great. I'll do it. What is it? What is it called? What is it called? The rebooting show. The rebooting show? It's out when? Yeah.

Tuesdays. Yeah. Be out on Tuesdays. So next Tuesday, you can listen to Chelsea Peretti's brothers on Brian's other show. Other show. His other family. It's going to be great. I'll bring all of your critiques and we'll see if I get any answers. I'm mostly interested in... Honestly, because it's hard for me to discuss a product that doesn't exist. Like, I have no idea. Like, it doesn't exist.

And there's no, there's not even like a demo video. There's not even a PowerPoint. There's no thesis around like what doesn't work. Yeah. I'm more interested in talking with Jonah. I haven't talked to him in a while. I've done several podcasts with him because he's been sort of, he's had his hands in this from the start, right? I mean, I admire him, but he's still operating the business, right? And this has been a long run and a lot of ups and a lot of downs. And I think BuzzFeed may

Maybe it's obviously diminished now, but it was in its time, at least it was looked at as a very consequential time. Isn't it probably, maybe, isn't it? And I don't know that because it's got HuffPo and a few other things in it. Yeah, now it's got a collection of sort of, I don't consider it HuffPo. Isn't it like a decent...

media business? I mean, except forgetting the stock market or the valuation stuff. Like, isn't there like a decent small media business there? It's not. You can go look at the financials. It's three brands. It's a news brand, it's an internet culture brand, and it's a food brand. Tasty, HuffPo, and... I watch a lot of Tasty content, even. Yeah. Let's move on, Brian. Where do you want to go next in the great realignment? Do you want to talk... We have seven minutes. Do you want to talk AI? We have seven minutes? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, we only have seven minutes. Can we talk about the Super Bowl real quick? Okay. Where do you want to go? You don't want to talk about the Super Bowl? I'm happy to talk about it. All right. So, I mean, the Super Bowl, I'm sure you guys all watched it, right? I mean, the Eagles won, which it was a boring game. Congratulations.

- Oh, thank you. - I made myself watch the Super Bowl because I haven't been able to let, like, you know, at some point a sport clicks for you. Like I've had this experience with rugby. I had this experience with tennis and with Formula One where like later in life, I kind of got it and I was like, oh, I get why people watch this. Baseball, basketball, same thing. - Are we really doing this? - Football. - Are we really doing? - Football, I still have. - No one gives a fuck about your sports tastes.

But I just want to say, I still watch it. It's a very long, it's a very long game. It was a terrible game. It's a terrible, it is the greatest game in the world, but it was a terrible game. Yeah. So it drew 128 million viewers. The spots went for like $8 million. I like it.

I don't like it as a football. Yeah, I think the championship games are way better. It's on a neutral field. It's filled with corporate like suits. Like it's just a weird environment. The game lasts too long. There's too many breaks. And so it's always like a strange football experience. It does remove something not having a home team and a thing like that. That tension kind of feels like it. Right. But it's a spectacle. It's the carnival of capitalism, which I love personally. Yeah.

Was there a spot that stood out for you other than Alex? I thought you pinpointed the really truly good. One great spot was the seal. This made me want to burn down everything. I thought it was hilarious. Alex seal is a seal. Get it. I know I've been in, it's a big idea. You've sat in those meetings. So many people had to say yes to this. And then seal had to say yes to this. And I'm like, at some point,

The CFO had to say yes to it too. Maybe it's more, I don't know. Maybe it's because of the times we live in to see all these celebrities just do tricks for a few bucks is hard to watch. Yeah.

Did you see the OpenAI commercial? Because I was mostly focused on the AI stuff. You know, Agent Force was out. I think most people still don't know what Salesforce does in America. It was produced in two days, apparently. I don't know what led to that. I thought it was a great spot. I loved it.

What did you like about it? Well, it just tried to set open AI in a hysterical context of great innovation, right? Like there was the wheel. That's the part that rubbed me the wrong way because I'm like, you guys have been like overselling the reality. This is, we talked about this last episode in my, like you've been overselling the reality to normal people. Like let's not talk about some like future state and like, okay, great. But like normal people,

I'm with Brian on this one. I think the messaging has either been like, you know, examples of slice of life examples of how people use AI. And most of the time it's either icky and I think Apple's being responsible for that or it's showing an unrealistic example of what would actually happen, right? Or it's like,

trust us the future you know we're going to cure disease and put people on mars and and and you're like neither of those things feel relevant to me and you've been saying it for two years you actually really really difficult creative problem actually alex because you can turn features into human benefits in a spot to say look it helped my kid with homework it turned the lights off it got me an airline ticket all of that or you can say this is an important consequential

Quintel technology and company. And we are the leaders. And not only that, I'm a real sucker for someone who creates a kind of beautiful brand identity and then kind of figures out how to articulate around that. I enjoyed that too. I thought the execution, the graphic design was great. But there is a thing lost where you're saying you have like

fucking you know the snack brands doing these things that feel very different even there was like a toilet paper brand that said the entire ad was a countdown and say you know essentially told people to go take a shit while the ad was playing and it was for toilet paper great right like subversive type of let's try something different yeah well did you great idea did you did you take a shit

Great idea. I mean, I actually was doing that during the game. Yeah, that's more interesting. The thing is like when you're open AI, couldn't you have done something more interesting like have a special chatbot or have the AI like respond in a special way and ask people to go, hey, if you go to the chatbot now, we're going to put this up on the billboard somewhere instead of showing another one of these tech like

Like they literally like are supposed to be science fiction movies. It's a good point. It's sort of like the, there was two examples I would give. One was there was an ad that had that John Denver Country Road song on it. And then they had the whole audience at, they played it in the stadium and everyone sang along. Right. So that nice idea. And then there was the spot, the Bill Moore, the Bill Murray Yahoo spot, which didn't really talk about Yahoo, but got you to email Bill Murray.

Yeah. And Bill, Bill something at Yahoo.com. And then there was, I emailed him and there's back and forth and, and, but like, those are fun, but they're a little bit sort of gimmicky. I think, I don't know how many people do it. I'd rather, you know, from where I sit, I'd rather just a good, a good idea that is sort of contained within the spot and stays with me after like the seal ad. Yeah.

Like I don't, I can't remember what the seal ad was for though. Do you remember? - Exactly, exactly. - That's a foul. - Exactly. - Was it an ad for a seal? - It made me physically sick. - Who was it? What was it for? - I don't know, some Gatorade shit? I don't know. It was terrible.

But apparently, like we're talking about it. No, I think that maybe it's because I've seen so much of it and it's very much like the type of messaging that exists within these companies is that it's all like very, you know, either highly emotional, you know, let's tap into kind of what it is to be a human and it's just like humanize the technology or let's put ourselves in a place where we're kind of defining what's coming. And I don't think that's,

I don't think that's as relevant anymore. It feels like it washes over people, and I think they don't care. Yeah. By the way, the seal ad was for Mountain Dew. There you go. One thing on the A, I think it's showing the benefits because I do think a lot of these commercials are more effective when they actually show the product these days. I like the Super Bowl because it's like the one time of the year that Americans invite people.

the brands into their lives and say, okay, we're going to like, not only we're going to pay complete attention to you, you are going to be stars. We're not going to avoid you, but here's the thing. You've got to entertain us. You can't, you've got to entertain us and we're going to talk back and we're going to, we're going to rate you. I'm going to make fun of you. And some of you might lose your jobs because you've wasted a lot of NFL women in foot flag football spot resonated in my home. I thought it was really well done too. And the Nike one was good.

as well, if you want like an ad that had a message. One of my favorite ones was the Harrison Ford Jeep one because it really did feel like Harrison Ford would drive a Jeep, right? While Seal, I don't think, drinks Mountain Dew Lime. I have a hunch. It's weird that there are so many celebrity shows.

Last night, actually on the dinner, I want to talk about AI use cases real quick. I'm always asking people, how is this moving your business? How has it changed? And then this B2B publisher, they're using an AI call center. They replaced their call center. So they took all the transcripts of their calls that train the AI. And apparently these, and I'm wondering if I've spoken to an AI customer service agent, because they add little touches. They do little coughs.

And you hear the keyboard going in the background. So I like that. You sometimes also hear kind of like they call that room tone from the background to make it sound like you're talking to someone that's within a room that has more people in it. So it has performed better than their outsourced solution before. Boom. That's it. Better or worse. So don't think just because you hear the person coughing that they're a person.

So I asked Ana, my wife, if this would bother her, because I was like, man, I think I've spoken to one of these robots thinking it was a human. And she was like, no, I don't care. It gets the answer, gets the answer. I thought it was interesting, because I was like- That's interesting. I was kind of offended by the idea that like, when I sent my otter to that meeting you were in, Troy, you got offended. Well, I don't like it when you send a robot and you don't come yourself, and then it's taking, it's recording everything. What's the point?

What's the point otherwise? Yeah. I mean, it's a new reality. I've been actually surprised by how comfortable people are. Because also, you know, these jobs are being completely dehumanized. And, you know, we're used to talking to these folks and... They're just a script anyway. They're just a script. And so I think replacing those things with robots is just going to happen very naturally. And, I mean, especially when the benefit is, like, the thing picks up instantly. The thing just...

All of that stuff is going to feel like a huge benefit and it's going to impact a lot of jobs. - Well, Trey, we were talking about it. I don't know if we can talk about this. Can we talk about this? You were talking about this company that does AI for leads.

Yeah, I mean, it basically takes any connection point you have to a consumer, like when they fall out of a funnel, whether you have their email address or their phone number. And then you kind of map out a set of ongoing communications via SMS, email, potentially phone calls. And it's all just this kind of orchestrated outreach strategy, all of it managed by a

by AI and yeah, all those sort of lifelike little features are built into it where there's pauses and, you know, kind of human, it's just like human type tics and things that make it feel like it's real humans.

I wonder what happens to our little ecosystem when all these apex predators are released from every single brand that know that you want to sell something. We're just going to be like, it's going to be impossible. This thing is going to just get impossible. When you have these like unsatiable. Well, sales is going to be impossible, right? I mean, like imagine what LinkedIn is going to do. Well, you're going to need your own personalized Iron Dome.

Yeah, I recommend people watch. There's a science fiction short film on YouTube, YouTube once again, called the Solstice Five. And it's kind of shot like a documentary and it's of these giant spaceship and it tells the story of a planet that's made entirely out of oil. And these two companies send these

automated robots. And this AI just becomes just completely obsessed with trying to mine as much as possible. And all these ships start creating themselves until the planet is completely taken over by AI just trying to serve the mission of getting more oil out of the ground. And I think it's a good parable for what's going to happen to our digital lives.

Like when multiple AIs are trying to sell this stuff. So now that we have to go into WhatsApp because of Troy, like I'm face-to-face with my HOA group more, and they're like advocating for these robot guards to be like patrolling around the perimeter. So then it's like coming for like security guards too. There we go. Because they've got cameras and they can do it all. So let's get into Good Podcast. Good Podcast.

Maybe we can bring this a little more down to earth. You know, I was sitting here, I'm on Shelter Island, and I noticed that there's a lot of red cardinals in my, they're called northern cardinals, I think, in my yard. And they're extremely beautiful. And they don't, they're non-migratory. So they're here all year round. And I really, really appreciate them. And then I looked up

you know, what the significance is. And it says, many people see cardinals as symbols of loved ones who have passed away. So, you know, maybe it was like my dead father outside the window looking at me, but I thought that was kind of a nice thing. The red cardinal is a nice product, but that actually isn't my choice this week.

In an email, I did get a couple emails about this character. His name is Hugo Hamlet. And I've sent it to you guys before, but he's ever-present in my Instagram feed now. And I think he's really, really extraordinary. Yeah.

It's a combination of, you know, his kind of positivity and his kind of like pop, you know, philosophy kind of vibe that he gives up. But his facial expression, his hair, the way he messes up words and plays with language. He actually helps. He can pull it off with an American accent. Yeah, it turns out you can book him. I mean, Theo Vaughn does.

Well, if you go to his site, you can have him join you with like a spiritual reading, which I think we should maybe consider. Is that his business model? I think it's part of it, yeah. It's like a webinar. He does a webinar, Brian. If you want also another good product, there's an app called Merlin by Cornell Lab. I love that. It's a cool, cool app. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. You run it on your iPhone and then you just press record. And using AI and using your location, it records all the bird sounds and tells you the birds that are in the space. So it's like you put that out in your garden, you leave it running for like half an hour. Wait, what is it called? Verlins? Merlin. Merlin. Or like the wizard, whichever way you want. That guy, Troy, I like him. He's just like...

on the edge of insufferable for me. So like, like maybe like a drink that's too sweet. I can only have a sip. And if he was like taking up more space on my feed, I would have to just burn it all down and start over. Once a week when you share it in the WhatsApp. It's like, it's like a, it's like a Bailey's, you know, it feels nice, but you're kind of done with it after it for a while. All right, guys, I got to run. See you later.

Bye. See you later. Bye. All right. Are we finished? Do we, we usually just have a little, what do we refer this? Recap? Recap. Oh, this is where, when Alex leaves, we can talk about it. Emily Sundberg, by the way, is, we were way early on that. We had Emily on like when? Six months ago? Longer? Might've even been longer. She's getting like, she's, it's funny because she's getting a lot of the, you know, she's getting the photo shoot treatment from the New York Times.

I'm so happy for Emily. She's doing great. Air Mail wrote about her too. So she's got the sort of vibe of being the it publication. I think it's like very telling in some ways because...

I mean, she's like a one person operation, like running a sub stack. And, you know, this, you know, it just says that like, you know, the media is, it's getting, it's getting smaller. I mean, I was struck last night at this dinner, two different executives who are C-level executives at big media companies at different points just expressed, God, I wish this company was smaller. Yeah. Yeah.

And because a lot of it, again, is like operating the existing business and building a new business. Emily does a few things. First of all, she kind of merchandises a kind of fake lifestyle that you want to read and be part of. She's also really good at scoops. And, you know, sort of her DMs are always open and people feed her a lot of information. So she gets a lot of stuff early and that's cool. Yeah.

And I think she writes with a kind of social media flair that makes it really easy to read and really consumable with lots of links. And it's fun to read every day. So people like it. And it's a little bit stylish. And yeah, the East Coast media types have kind of embraced her as being an important new character. So she's super hardworking.

She's a cool cat and I'm very, very happy for her. So way to go, Emily. I'll be interested to see if it becomes the business of Emily Sundberg or if she uses this. I mean, she's talked about it, about building a bigger media platform and whether this ends up becoming graduating into more than a sub stack. Well, she's conscious of that. And I use you as an example for her all the time, which is,

Cautionary?

or someone who's, you know, going to, you know, take a piece of equity in the company and help you turn it into a business, professionalize your ad sales, you know, kind of grow the IP that's distinct from your, you as a human being. She doesn't want to be, you know, I don't think, I don't want to speak for Emily, but she, she doesn't want to be a, what's her name? Alex from, you know, the podcast company. Yeah. She doesn't want to be the kind of

you know, the big famous person behind the media brand she, she wants, or that is the media branch. Well, but they're doing the photo shoot of you. I don't know what to tell you. Like that might be the, the problem of that is there's so much leverage in the individual and these businesses that it's completely, you end up trapped by that. Even if that's because you know that like you want enterprise value, if you like, and you can't, if it's just you, like, I think about that with Mr. Beast, like,

I mean, like the entire company goes to zero if the guy gets hit by a bus or picked up by the FBI for something. Right.

Goes to zero. And that might just be the reality of a lot of these businesses. Did you see that Fox bought, News Corp, I guess, bought Red Seat, which is like a, it's a, I guess it's like the back end. Sort of like a right wing influencer management company. Yeah. Yeah.

It seems like a good hedge and you'll probably be looking into Shapiro's company.

Yeah, there supposedly are. If you're Fox, you need to diversify those cable dollars and make sure you have a foot in the next thing. That's it for this episode of People vs. Algorithms, where each week we uncover patterns shaping media, culture, and technology. Big thanks, as always, to our producer, Vanya Arsinov. She always makes us a little clearer and more understandable, and we appreciate her very, very much.

If you're enjoying these conversations, we'd love for you to leave us a review. It helps us get the word out and keeps our community growing. Remember, you can find People vs. Algorithms on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and now on YouTube. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you again next week. All right, Troy, I got to go. I got to go to the airport. Bye. Have a good trip. Bye. Bye. Bye.