Transcript 0:00 [rock music] Honey. It tastes just like it comes. And I just think that's really nice. Does it get him a job? Uh, he... 0:14 Okay, uh, don't, uh, skip ahead 15 seconds if you're reading Karl Ove Knausgård's, uh, Wolves of Eternity. Um, okay, they've skipped ahead. He gets a job, uh, as an undertaker's assistant. Huge. Yeah. It is, it is huge. 0:29 Yeah, so that's the possible outcome. Yeah. Don't we all wish to have that as our summer job at 19? Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure it smelt crazy in there. Yeah. [laughs] Um... [laughs] Formaldehyde, great smell. Yeah, yeah. 0:42 Uh, anyways. Well, look, the perfume, the niche perfume girlies, they're gonna find a way to make that- Mm-hmm... hot. Um, the Fragrantica girlies. Actually, um, at FWB Fest, which I talked- Mm... 0:54 about on the last episode, this is the festival I just came back from, I ran into Maxwell, who runs UFO Parfums. UFO, mm-hmm. And did our collaboration with Arena and UFO around this perfume, Knop. 1:08 And Maxwell was wearing Knop. Oh. So it was fun to run into them. That's so awesome. And they were like, "I'm wearing Knop." And I was like, "Come over here. [laughs] I wanna smell you." Um- [laughs]... 1:17 because, you know, it smells different on everyone. Um- Yeah. It wasn't like- And- It wasn't like a pie on the windowsill thing where you're like, you smelled it, and you're like... No. I don't know. 1:26 I think, like- Something subtle... Maxwell said that to me as, like the first thing. So I th- I think I sorta smelled it- Mm... as they told me. Mm-hmm. And then their partner, Sophia, was there. 1:33 Sophia was also wearing Knop. So I was like, "Well, now I have to smell you," 'cause it smells a little different on everyone. But this is my first time meeting her, so I was like, "Can I smell you?" Yeah. 1:42 Which in retrospect... It's like, that's what dogs do, you know? And it's... So that's nice. I'm not better than a dog, really. [laughs] You're no better than a dog. I'm not better than them. No. Um, okay, I, I, I do... 1:54 At the end of the last episode, I was talking about how I wanted to talk about music festivals on the topic of FWB. Yeah. I have not been to a music festival for probably a decade. But they were like... 2:06 So growing up in northern California, like, you know, in the middle of nowhere, bands I wanted to see when I was, like, getting into music, into, like, you know, modern music in high school after my classic rock middle school era, naturally. 2:18 Um, none of the bands I was getting interested in would, like, come through here. There's, like, a college here, but it's so small. 2:24 So I, like, when I learned about Outside Lands Music Festival down in San Francisco, I think it had only been going for, like, two or three years at that point. Uh, I think I first went in, like, 2010 or 2011. 2:34 But it was so cool to go down there, um, and then, and, and just, like, see all these bands at once and be exposed to it. 2:41 And, like, you know, so many formative memories, and, like, twisting my ankle, and, you know, choosing to see, uh, Justice over Neil Young, et cetera. Um, anyways, I, I was thinking about- Good choice... 2:54 good, good choice. Well, I, I did see Neil Young, actually, this spring at the Forest Hills- Mm... um, Stadium in Queens. Mm-hmm. 3:00 Which was really cool, but it's, it's one of those [laughs] things too where it's like I'm kinda checking it off, 'cause I'm like, you know... Who opened? Um, I don't remember. It was, like- Oh, so you had a good time. 3:11 I had a good time. Well, I had a good time. Yeah. Um, it w- the best thing, I think the best one was, was when he did, uh, Down By The River. 3:17 But, um, anyways, just thinking of, like, music festivals as this, like, curation thing, 'cause for me, like, that was what I was buying. I was like, "This is so worth..." Like, you know, I was, like, 15 or whatever. 3:29 It's, like, a 200-some dollar ticket. That's, like, so much of my, like, summer income. Um, but it was, like, so worth it, so efficient, 'cause I'm like, "I get to see all these people, and, like, learn about new bands." 3:39 'Cause this is, like, pre-Spotify. I mean, it's, I guess Spotify existed, but it was, like, both a way to discover new music, to see the people I really liked. 3:47 Um, and I didn't really think about it at the time as, like, such this important curat- curation thing. 3:53 And then even, like, within the scheduling of a music festival, how they're, like, curating it, so, like, oh, the people who come in with this t- you know, to curate it so, like, the crowd isn't too big at one or the other. 4:03 Uh, which I'm thinking about, like, uh, Chappell Roan at Lollapalooza, like, a, a week or two ago, where they had to, like, change it, so it was like Kesha had to take, like, a lesser slot, so Chappell Roan- Mm... 4:12 could do it. And then there was the aerial shot of, like, I don't know, 70,000 people. But I, I guess in the context of FWB, which is, like, such a, you know, tastemaker's summit, like- Yeah, it's 1,200 tickets sold. 4:26 1,200, which is a little. But I don't know that there's 1,200 people there. I would say it was- Yeah... probably closer to 1,000. Wow. 4:30 Yeah, I mean, I think we're really talking about music as curated taste, or music festivals- Mm... 4:34 curated taste, which I think was sort of lost in the age of, like, music festival is now, like, a branding opportunity- Yeah... or a marketing opportunity. 4:43 And I think that that's something that people are really missing. 4:47 Like, I've, I've read some writing about returning to these more niche music experiences, because at the same time, we have all of this discourse about- With capped ticket sales. 4:57 Yeah, but, like, people do wanna experience things IRL. Like, there is all this conversation about the loss of third spaces, and- Mm-hmm... or the perceived loss of third spaces. 5:06 Like, a music festival is an opportunity to get together with your community, but, like- Yeah... how much of a community can it be if you, like, have to walk past, like, 5:16 you know, eight pop-up brand activations- Brand mannequins, yeah... that don't really... that have, like, a tenuous relation to the culture that's actually being created. Mm-hmm. 5:25 The Pabst Blue Ribbon AR Apple Vision prototype. Yeah, like, you know, thank you for the Snapchat filter, Hennessy, or whatever. [laughs] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. 5:37 I think, like, I, I, I don't know the numbers, but I'd be curious to know if there's, like, more or less music festivals now than there was a decade ago, or, like, what the average attendance for music festivals are. 5:48 'Cause for me, it was, like, such a thing you do as a teenager, 'cause then you move to, or you know, you being me, then I moved to, like, Portland, Oregon, and all the bands I wanted to see come through there. 5:57 So then it's like I just pick... It's such a better experience, right? To, like, go to a-... specific artist show than to, like, pay $300 to go see the one artist you wanna see at a music festival. So I don't know. 6:10 That- I guess that's, like, why I stopped. Um, yeah. Well, I think W. David Marx would say there's more of everything, but more of it is kitsch. Mm. So it feels like there's less interesting stuff. Yeah. 6:23 I think, too, like, uh, uh, what... How long have you been using Spotify? Um, since college, I think. Mm. So over 10 years. Wow. I, I didn't start using until, uh, seven years ago, I think it was. You s- After college. 6:40 [laughs] Yeah. Start using, yeah. No, but it wa- well, it, it marked such, like, a specific- We're gonna get you some help, Francis. Don't worry... [laughs] some help. 6:46 I mean, you're, you're gonna, you're gonna get me some Apple Music. As I sip my Diet Coke. As you sip your Coca-Cola. Um, as you sip your brand name redacted. Um- Yeah, call me... no, but I... 6:55 'Cause it was such a part of my identity to, like, in college, to, like, be a, like, guy who knew about the newest music, and, like, I wasn't... 7:01 Like, I, I did, like, write for, like, the college radio blog, um, for a while. But, like- Wow... among my friends- This is just like that show Portlandia... just... Oh, my. You know, I did. 7:11 [laughs] I moved to Portland a year after it started airing, and then I left a year before it stopped airing. So, uh, uh, for better or for worse. Um, but no, like- That was very brave of you... 7:21 I was like, it was so important to me to, like, d- have, to have listened to every song before anybody else had, so I had the opinion about it and I could talk about it. Mm-hmm. 7:29 And then I started using Spotify, like, after college, when I was then, like, you know, working. Um, and I just stopped. Like, reading these books. Well, you also grew up. Yeah. 7:38 [laughs] Like, I think that that's, that's a behavior that... 7:42 Well, okay, so I don't wanna, like, blow up her spot too much, but my friend Kara Rota is working on a piece for Dirt about this idea of being a completist- Mm. Mm-hmm... 7:51 and the difference between completism and completionism. And I think young people who first encounter culture have a very, like, completion mindset- Yeah... towards it. 8:02 Like, they conflate fandom with needing to have consumed everything that's out there, which makes sense because when your brain is still being formed, right? Like prefrontal cortex, not formed until 25. Like- Yeah... 8:14 that is how you learn, um, by absorbing a lot of stuff. And then you get older, you have more experiences to, um, you know, compare to the culture you consume. You don't necessarily have to consume 8:28 all of it, because- Mm-hmm... your ability to form an opinion is no longer based on this sort of, like, style of fandom where you need to- Yeah... have seen every episode. 8:37 And, you know, you have more to say, so you don't have to fall back on, like, knowing more obscure facts than somebody else. Be- becomes more about depth than width. I mean, some people never grow out of it. Yeah. 8:45 And those people can be very annoying. But they also are useful. Like, you know, they're probably maintaining the Wikipedia page for whatever thing that is. Mm. [laughs] They have their uses. 8:54 So it all has to be, like, in balance. But I do think there's, like, this fandom maturation process that happens- Mm... that moves away from, like, that mindset that you had in college, which you... 9:04 understandable given the stage of life that you were in. Yeah. And given that, like, you also came from a place where you felt like, maybe you felt, like, a chip on your shoulder, that you had to stack up- Mm-hmm... 9:13 your cultural credentials to prove even though, though you didn't grow up close to it- Yeah... that you had consumed enough of it to actually have a worthwhile point of view. Um- Wait, wait, can I... for a second? 9:22 Mm-hmm. I never heard the word completist as a word different from completionist. What does that mean? Yeah. Well, Kara has her own theory. Should I... I should read it later. I wanna... We'll, we'll leave it. Yeah. 9:29 Okay. We'll leave it for the newsletter. But- I can't wait... 9:31 I'm looking forward to it coming out, because she makes some very interesting parallels between this style of fandom and the way that we, like, conduct relationships. Mm. Parenthood, and it's really beautiful. 9:42 It's, it's gonna be a banger. Yeah. Okay, that's really interesting, 'cause I feel like I definitely was a completionist, and now I'm less so. But 9:50 okay, well, I'll just have to, I'll just have to take it and read that one. Well, you are a Virgo. Yeah. So. Mm-hmm. Don't expose me like that. Um- You're exposed. Tom, don't edit that out. Don't edit that out. 9:58 [laughs] Okay. Uh, okay, I do wanna talk... We were talking, though, about, um, the Bad Waitress story- Mm... um, which I did read when it came out, uh, before- Well, everyone did. Everyone did. Well, that's the point. 10:09 Uh, but yeah, like, for that being such a success for Dirt and, like... Yeah, what was that like for that to be... Like, how did that happen? Was it just... It was, I mean, obviously, it was just so good. 10:19 Tell me about the Bad Waitress era. Yeah. So Bad Waitress came up as a sort of bridge between two, I think, conversations you and I are having that I think will be ongoing. 10:28 But, you know, going back to what we were talking about on the last episode about The Village Voice being unique in that they hired people with expertise, but expertise wasn't like, "I have a bunch of clips from, like, the Harvard Crimson." 10:40 It was like- Mm... "I worked in this industry." Um, and Bad Waitress was written by my friend Becca Shu. 10:47 It's been compared to early Bourdain writing in The New Yorker [laughs] about, um, you know, that came, became Kitchen Confidential. And actually, Bourdain was not just picked out of nowhere. He did- Mm-hmm. 10:59 His, his mother had a tie to The New Yorker, so that's why his essay was able to get- Nepotism makes the world go round. Nepotism makes the world go round. And look, Becca and I are longtime friends. 11:09 In fact, um, I've talked about this before, so sorry if you already know this backstory, but, um, I knew of the existence of this essay, Bad Waitress- Mm... for actually a couple years. Um, because it was... 11:22 she first sent it to me as her friend, and I was always telling her to pitch it out, until one day I woke up and remembered that I had a media company [laughs] and asked her. 11:33 [laughs] Asked her, begged her, if I could be the one to publish it. What makes it a Dirt story is, um, the tie-in to 11:42 digital culture, which is that it's also, it's, it's an account of her life as a waitress, but it's also a critique- Mm... of the way people talk about service workers 11:52 and, like, service work and creative work as if they could not be... That they're not the same, that they couldn't be embodied in one person. And then- Yeah... 12:00 you know, when people who work in culture talk about service workers, they have almost this, like-Noble savage approach where it's like- Yeah... 12:07 God bless these people doing this job that I would certainly never stoop to do. Mm-hmm. 12:11 And so she offers a critique of that, which I think is really important and is something that Anthony Bourdain was also bringing out in his early work, that, um, she, 12:25 she thinks, like, you know, we should have more food writing and re- restaurant criticism from people who have worked- Absolutely... 12:32 in restaurants and in the food industry, basically is what it comes down to, and that's, like, what The Village Voice was offering. And I think her, like, the meta-narrative there obviously is, like, this is... 12:43 this critique is offered in a long essay about what it is like to be a waitress and a writer. Um, and I think the fact that it's still our most popular article ever is a testament to the power of having people write 12:57 what they know. Yeah. Um, and- A view directly from the field. Exactly. So it continues to be something that I'm very proud of, and I hear often from people who say that it's their favorite Third Essay. Yeah. 13:12 Well, as some- as somebody who does run a media company and, like, you know, publish this and it sounds like you wanna publish more things like this, like, how do you, how do you, like, set up a system to, like, make sure you're getting these kind of stories? 13:23 And to me, like, it... 13:26 This, to me, is, like, such a, like, taste creation thing, where, like, you're trying to, like, create this, like, more objective reality than, like, s- some academic writing about the thing that they have just studied, right? 13:37 Like, is it about... 13:39 Like, is the challenge there, like, finding the person, finding the person in that field who is, like, a talented enough writer to do it, or is it the ta- challenge just, like, finding the p- like, finding the person who has the good story, um, and then just edit it, like, putting in a lot of work, a lot of work editing? 13:53 What's, like, what's the main challenge to, like, creating more of these stories, you think? Well, I think it's putting the word out there. 14:01 Like, I've done a lot to put the word out there when I'm interviewed and on podcasts and social media is that, like, I don't care who the hell you are. I don't care if you've written for other places before. Mm-hmm. 14:10 If you have something interesting to say, you know, I wanna hear from you. And- Pitch dirt. Pitch dirt, yeah. And then not just saying that but also, like, abiding- Mm-hmm... by it. 14:20 And I think people see, like, that we have given people their first byline, that we have published people that don't have, um, a lot of clips from other places or, you know, prestige places. 14:32 I really try to read everything that comes into my inbox. Yeah. And 14:38 I usually know within the first few sentences whether I'm interested or not, but I process those first few sentences before I process the name of the email or what- Mm-hmm... they've told me their experience is. 14:49 You just open it and read it. So I'm often making the decision prior to, um, actually processing this person's experience or who they are. Yeah. Um, and that's what's more important to me. 15:02 So I think if we were saying that and then we weren't abiding by it, like, that would be different. But I think we've abided by it enough, and obviously we do publish people who have, 15:12 um, prestigious clips and a lot of experience. Yeah. And I'm interested in that too, but 15:19 yeah, I think part of the, the benefit of being the person curating the content is, like, I can create a slate of content that, like, conforms with my values and, like, I deeply believe, like, people should have the opportunity to gain experience. 15:33 Mm. But also that, like, writers, people who identify wr- as writers are not the only people that can write or have something interesting to say. So- Yeah. Okay, well- Bad Waitress is an example of that, yeah. Yeah. 15:45 So okay, so Anthony Bourdain, like you said, like, was already, you know, kind of a wr- kind of a writer. Yeah. Wasn't plucked out of nowhere. 15:51 Um, we were talking about this, uh, starter pack that was on Twitter where it was, like, the Anthony Bourdain starter pack. I think there was even... Uh, brat was included in it. 15:59 You know, it was, it was a brat summer moment. That was crazy. Yeah, I think they were saying Anthony Bourdain summer. Yeah. 16:04 So Becca, who wrote Bad Waitress, also I think about a month ago wrote a piece for New York Times Magazine's Screenland about the meme-ification of Anthony Bourdain where, yeah, she talks about how, um, he's posthumously become a meme, but that this doesn't really happen to every celebrity. 16:23 Mm-hmm. Really only certain celebrities. I think Princess Diana is another example where it's like- This is parasocial. These, like, especially parasocial ones, right? Yes. 16:31 The parasociality that comes from the perception of this person being a celebrity of and by the people and for the people. Mm. And that the meme-ing of them posthumously has something to do with, 16:47 like, mechanisms of collective grief. Mm. But I think the further, like... I think you talked about sublimation last time when we mentioned- [laughs] I did. Yeah... 16:55 like, the essence, or a couple episodes ago we were talking about the essence starter packs. 16:58 Like, we can see the starter packs and memes getting sublimated further and further and further from the core of people who actually have a strong attachment to Anthony Bourdain, like, as more people jump on the bandwagon. 17:08 They just have an attachment to the attachment, and you're trying to use this, like, cultural signifier to build your identity. Exactly. Exactly. 17:14 And I think what he signifies is, like, really powerful, which is, like, this is somebody who saw through the bullshit of seeing a place on TikTok and going to get a picture of, like, the perfect cheese pull. Yeah. 17:27 Um, you know, this is somebody who was talking about restaurants from the perspective of working in the kitchen. That was really valuable. But over the course of his life, he himself got further from that experience. 17:38 Mm-hmm. And Becca really brings out that, like- Inevitably... he didn't mind being famous in some ways. Like, he wanted that power. He probably wouldn't have done, you know, three TV shows over 16 years or whatever. 17:48 Yeah, and he did a lot of good with that power and what- Yeah... he was able to highlight. I mean, after Kissinger passed away, a lot of people were quoting from his biography where he talks about- Yeah... 17:57 the experience of going to Cambodia and seeing in real time the damage the US policy had caused. So he did a lot of good with that power. Um, it makes sense that people have this attachment to him. 18:07 There is a little bit of a cynicism ofThe memes kind of getting further and further and further away I think, well, okay, I think like- Yeah... 18:13 um, there's one of my favorite kind of like lines, mantras is the title, I think it's a quote from him too, but it's like a title of this book about the, uh, the artist Robert Irwin, and it's called Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees. 18:28 Mm-hmm. And I, I just love that line. I think about it all the time. Um, but I think that is kind of the way we're talking about, about Bourdain. It's like that's kind of what he did. 18:37 It's like this kind of authenticity of the way he approached everywhere he traveled and the people he traveled there is like kind of without pretense and like in a really honest way. 18:46 Um, and that is part of his magnetism and what makes him so appealing. 18:50 But then what the starter packs do is you're only seeing the name of the thing one sees, where then you're, you're like, but the, the further you get from like, you know, enjoying Bourdain and like watching his shows and like appreciating the way he's approaching the world, and the more you're just like, you know, using it as this like trading card online to like signify your identity. 19:09 It's like you're, you're, you're... it's the exact opposite of like seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees. 19:13 What you're seeing is that smoking cigarettes are cool, and you wanna signal that you smoke cigarettes and thus are cool, right? Yeah. 19:21 I mean, it's, it's this idea that objects can be a substitution for a person or like- Mm-hmm... I would argue a lifestyle. 19:29 And there is a slide in, there was a slide in my presentation at FWB Fest, which we referenced on the last episode, that comes out of a long, uh, project I did called What Is Lifestyle? Mm. 19:41 Where I trace the origins of the word lifestyle and what it's come to represent. 19:46 And I think there's a lot of parallels between the process of creating lifestyle and the process of developing taste, um, that I teased out as part of this presentation. 19:57 Um, so there's like one particular slide, and I think it's the one that you highlighted as one of your favorites. Yeah. Where, 20:04 in What Is Lifestyle, which I originally self-published and then I republished on Dirt, um- Naturally... last year. Um, I talk about a lifestyle, a lifestyle is the process of creation, consumption, and curation. 20:18 Um, and I say that like a thing, uh, a lifestyle's created when we ascribe meaning to it. It's consumed when we ascribe value to it, and it's curated when we tell a story about it. Mm. 20:29 Um, and I think taste is sort of the same way, right? 20:33 Like, we start to attach meaning to certain objects because they represent our taste, and then, you know, we consume more things that we think represent us, and that's when we sort of attach value to them. 20:45 And like, then we start to curate them and the, the stories that we tell about our taste publicly, and this is sort of the starter pack, believing that we can tell a story through these objects, but- Mm... 20:56 there is a limit to the way that a person could represent their taste or themself or their life or their lifestyle through a, an aggregate, uh, through a picture of a bunch of objects. Yeah. 21:08 Or like, you know, what's in my purse or whatever. And I think that that's kind of what you're getting at because, like, you've named it, but have you really created meaning with it? 21:20 Um, and the internet, I think, pulls us, pulls us, uh, towards like, incentivizes more towards naming things, showing things, collecting objects, and further away from telling- From doing anything... 21:33 a story from them that really- Mm... like, can be lasting. And one of the things, I meant to put this in my fest presentation, or I didn't have time to talk about it- Mm... 21:42 but it is in the original essay, and I think it does relate to taste. Um, [lips smack] there's this archeologist named Ian, I think Hodder or Hodder. He does these, uh, digs in Turkey 21:54 and, um, you know, they're able to... When you do a dig, when people died or are buried near their homes, you can do, you can analyze the skeleton, right? 22:04 And see how long this person lived, what they died from, but they're also buried close enough to their stuff so that you know, like, what their lifestyle was, like how much money and resources they had. 22:15 And they found that the skeletons, the people that had lived the longest, were not actually the people with the nicest homes and the most stuff and like, I say in the piece, like most access to the means of production- Mm... 22:26 as like Faber would say. Yeah. 22:28 But they had more, they were like over-indexed on objects that had meaning, so religious, talismanic things that, um, you could tell just weren't, weren't only consumed but were part of like some story that they were telling about their values. 22:44 A tool for living. Yeah. And those people lived longer. Um, so I think that there's like a lesson there about taste and collecting, curating objects that it's really not about like the breadth of what you have- Yeah... 23:00 or can name or like know about. It's the depth of your relationship to the things in your life or to go back- Mm-hmm... 23:08 to what you said, it's not about being the kid at the college radio station that's listened to, you know, every- Everything that came out last month... every Grateful Dead concert recording or whatever. 23:18 [laughs] It's, it's also about the depth of your relationship to Jerry Garcia or you know, what that means to you and how you live your life. Yeah. Yeah. I think 23:28 that's like a way, I think that's a way, like, I often approach things, like new interests. Like, I got into watching soccer two years ago. Mm-hmm. 23:36 And so I like start- I was like, you know, on Instagram, all my reels became soccer. 23:41 Uh, and then like I'm on The Athletic and like reading so many articles, I'm like, "Oh, I'm gonna read, like what, what's happening in the Bundesliga? What's happening in La Liga? What's happening in the Premier League?" 23:49 Et cetera. Um, and then it's like, I feel like that's a way of like approaching a topic, but then like you ultimately have to like find that like spiral of interest down into the specific thing to like- Mm-hmm... 23:59 build the lasting thing. I don't know. I mean, [laughs] roots are a great metaphor here, right? Like, I started following Arsenal, as we talked about [laughs] in the first episode. Um, yeah, I don't know. 24:10 To me, it's like that, that's like a natural process though, of like, of like absorbing something into your taste and like your way of living is likeIt start-- Maybe that's just for me, though, is like it starts with the width, and then you get the depth and, like, lose a bit of the width. 24:25 Yeah. I mean, I saw this when I worked at HODINKEE, which is like a watch... Started off as a watch magazine- Mm-hmm... 24:31 became a watch retailer, and it's actually just gone back to being a magazine, but the most interesting people that were interviewed, or even the most interesting commenters, obviously were, 24:41 were not typically the people with the most watches- Yeah... but they might have a small collection of two or three that were meaningful to them. So they would have, like, 24:50 a Tudor and, maybe that they bought themselves as, like, a professional milestone, and then, like, a Casio, and then maybe, like, a Rolex or an Omega- Yeah... 25:01 or something more expensive that they had inherited from a relative, and, like, that was it. Maybe even at one point they had even more, and they got rid of them. 25:07 They pared down to these three, and those people always had the more interesting stories or interesting things to say about watches than the person who was like, "You know, I have, I have 10 Rolexes"- Mm-hmm... 25:20 or, "I have, like, five Panerai, and I only wear Panerai." So, um- Like, width itself is, like, not necessarily the mark of a novice, but, like, width- Yeah... without depth is the mark of a novice, or, like, a tourist. 25:33 Exactly. Exactly, 'cause like you said before, when you're first getting into something, you have to read a b- lot about it. Yeah. And so maybe you get caught up, and you go out and buy as much as you can. 25:44 But as you learn more, you're able to be more confident in your ability to establish meaning with things and know what's important, and then, you know, you sort of pare down, and, um, you know, maybe that's completism versus completionism. 25:58 Mm-hmm. Oh, I can't wait to [laughs] I can't wait to read this article. I know. Uh, okay, wait, speaking about watches, um, AI wearables. So as this- Mm... 26:08 as this episode comes out, we're now a little removed from the friend.com- Oh... uh, you know- FriendGate... debacle. Friend, FriendGate, yeah. 26:16 Um, but, okay, one, one thing I liked, um, Tyler Denk in his Big Desk Energy newsletter- Who? Uh, uh, uh, who? Um, but he... So he wrote about the AI thing, the FriendGate. Mm. But there's this line that I wanna quote. 26:29 I mean, I'm, I'm paraphrasing, actually, but he says, like, the AI, the Humane AI pin, you know, the, the previous AI wearable debacle, "The Humane AI pin is perfect. 26:37 It'll replace the pin I've already been wearing for years," which is, like, nobody... The point is, right, nobody... Who's wearing these pins? Like, it's not, like, something you just, like- Politicians... 26:46 easily strap on. Yeah, po- like, it's politicians. Yeah, take off the American flag lapel pin- The American flag, [laughs] put the Humane... put on Humane. Put on the Esperanto pin. 26:50 That's great offset for the US government. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um, but- Hmm... okay. Did you know that Esperanto speakers have a soccer team? I... No, I... Wait, I- [laughs] What do you know about Esperanto? 27:01 'Cause I, all I know is that- What?... it's, like, the failed universal language. That's all I really know. What do you know about Esperanto? That's all I know. I just told you. 27:07 My, my [laughs] I have neither width nor depth on Esperanto. Okay, well, I mean, this is another story that I was gonna write at one point. Um, but yeah, so basically, like, there are, um... 27:19 You know, like in the Olympics, you can have certain teams that are, like, stateless peoples- Yeah... or, you know- Oh, I didn't know that... from, from states that have maybe not been acknowledged. Yeah. 27:28 So yeah, there was, at one point, there's, maybe still is, an Esperanto soccer team that plays internationally, and, um, is for, I think it's for people who are, like, sort of stateless or, or identify- Wow... 27:40 more with, like, the, the Esperanto movement. [laughs] I shouldn't laugh. Um, and they would go play, like, um... I don't wanna name one of the other teams and speak out of turns. Yeah. 27:48 I think some of this stuff is fluid, but, like, like a South Sudan or something- Yeah... where... Um, and yeah, I think that they were pretty good at one point. So I talked to somebody who was on the team as, like- Oh... 27:59 I was doing some research for, um, potential article, I think. I was gonna maybe pitch it to Victory Magazine, which is, like, an amazing- Mm... sports magazine, if you haven't seen them. 28:09 But, um, yeah, the point [laughs] the point is, um- Well, so Esperanto-... is you can have subcultures about language... yeah. You can have subcultures around language as well. Yeah, absolutely. 28:19 Esperanto, though, like, before we move on from this, it was, it was, like, in... Was it in the '80s or, like, the '60s? When was it? It was this, like, international language- I actually think it was post-World War II. 28:27 I think it was part of the whole- Okay... like- Like globalism... uh, internationalism- Yeah... movement. Let's see. Oh, yeah, 1887. What? Yeah. It's, it's, it sounds like, uh, uh, I don't know. 28:44 They say it maxed out at two million speakers. Two million speakers. That's... Well, [laughs] you know, back in the- It's considered a constructed language... back in the 1800s, there was a lot more. 28:51 I mean, what- Aren't they all?... what language isn't constructed? Exactly. But yeah. Geez. 28:53 I guess it was more like, you know, I don't know, purposeful over a short period of time and not, like, evolved, developed, um- Okay, well, we might have to do an Esperanto episode... to a planned community. 29:02 [laughs] I haven't been on this Wikipedia- We might have to learn Esperanto... Wikipedia page in a while, and it's, uh- Yeah... it's a rich text. Mm-hmm. Is [laughs] can you, uh... 29:12 Is there an option to translate it to Esperanto? Oh, you know, I think I got into this. Now I know how I got into this. [laughs] Huh. Because, okay, well, first of all, Duolingo used to have Esperanto. 29:23 I don't know if they still have it. Second of all, so when they created that micronation, Rose Island- Mm-hmm, I'm not familiar... they proposed using Esperanto as the language. Okay. 29:33 And I think I, if I could trace back how I went down this rabbit hole, I think it must have been 29:42 around the same time I started getting interested in micronations because I did at one point, um, go to Lithuania for Playboy Magazine- Oh. [laughs]... at the time. Rest in peace. At the time that- Right... 29:53 Playboy was still publishing print. Oh, no. Yeah. And I wrote an article about, uh, Užupis, which is a micronation in the capital of Vilnius. 30:01 And so I think I must have been down the same rabbit hole that led to Esperanto because there's, there's a whole correlation between these, like, universal languages, statelessness, like, idea of what is a state, um, that dovetails with people that become super interested in micronations as well. 30:16 Mm-hmm. Um, and also cryptocurrency, as I've recently learned. Yeah, so I think the interesting thing about rabbit holes, I don't know if you're somebody who goes down-A lot of them... rabbit holes? Oh, no shit. 30:26 [laughs] I mean, so I, when I did my presentation for FWB Fest about- Yeah... taste, I wasn't quite sure how to end it because I did not- Mm... wanna end on a definition of taste. So but I ended up, um, coming... 30:40 I can't remember if it, if I found this or, um, Kat, who does community management for Dirt helped me out with some research for my presentation. So shout out Kat. Mm. 30:49 Um, but I ended up e- ending with this quote by Joseph Brodsky about developing taste as a reader, and he says, "The way to develop good taste in literature is to read poetry. 31:01 Like the proverbial proletariat, you stand to lose nothing. What you may gain are new associative chains." And so 31:10 I associate rabbit holes with associative chains because you start in one, and that leads to another, and that leads to another. Yeah. But I like this idea that, like, poetry is almost like associate chains as a medium. 31:22 Mm-hmm. Like, and that if you absorb a lot of poetry, you get good at making these associations, and then by extension you get good at developing your taste. Yeah. 31:32 I also have to say, that's kind of the perfect way to end a presentation at a ostensibly, you know, crypto, uh, you know, founded festival. [laughs] But you don't need me to tell you that. Think about that. 31:42 Blockchain, yeah, I know, you're so right. I didn't make that connection on stage unfortunately. Um- You made it... [laughs] No, you made it on chain. [laughs] Yeah. Well, I peaked- Oh, what can I say?... 31:51 with my Kanye West reference. Yeah. Kanye. [laughs] Uh, okay. Did I say Conde West? You might have. [laughs] That's what, that's what I heard. That's dark. That's like a, that's like a 2015 rapper name. 32:02 No, that's like a 2024 rapper name. Um, some kid. I don't... Are kids still on SoundCloud? That's like a, a GQ intern that moonlights on SoundCloud. A J- [laughs] Yeah. Notice me, Sam Hine. [laughs] Oh my God. Hi, Sam. 32:15 Shout out to Sam. Um- I know him... what's up? Okay, speaking of people who are definitely listening, uh, Walden. Walden's definitely listening. Yeah. 32:22 Um- Uh, so he just wrote this great article, uh, that I really liked in Dirt, AI Typography, about the, uh, much misaligned, I don't know, leave it up to interpretation, friend.com. Yeah. Walden is my editorial fellow. 32:36 I do think he could, um, single-handedly turn the Conde Nast business around. So- [laughs]... you know- Watch out, Anne... I can't hire him right now, but you should. Mm-hmm. 32:46 And, um, he wrote this excellent piece for us about, um, whether there is an emerging AI typography, because what we saw in like the last cycle of the internet is like certain visual cues that are meant to sort of become shorthand for, um, the legitimacy of something- Mm-hmm... 33:07 within a certain platform. So like blue. 33:10 Like there's been so much good writing about blue and like Facebook blue and then how many other startups wanted to sort of create this like subconscious association with the s- success of Facebook by like- Yeah... 33:21 using blue. And um, and then, and then we also see typography as well, like Helvetica for a long time has been this shorthand for the legitimacy of a business- Mm-hmm... 33:34 that this is clean, well-designed, minimal, which is what web pages were meant to be until we had the backlash, which is like, I'm signaling I'm interesting by doing like web brutalism- Yeah... 33:46 which is kind of the opposite of that. 33:48 So I sent Walden out into the world to talk to people who would know whether there's an emergent AI typography and aesthetic, and the same week that he was writing this, um, Friend put out their- [laughs] What a gift... 34:04 internet trailer-... what a friend they were to him... whatever you wanna call it. And um, 34:07 where they're showing their, their AI wearable, which is, um, listens to your conversation and texts you basically, and by a beautiful, uh, coincidence ends on a still image, I think, of, 34:23 I don't remember, a forest or something, and it just says- Mm... "friend." Yeah. And so we were like, well, we gotta figure out [laughs] what font this is, right? This is the perfect lead. 34:31 So a little bit of time has passed now, but, um, this is what, what, uh, Walden ended up finding. "Despite looking like a print typeface, that font, Georgia, is actually digital native. 34:43 It was designed for Microsoft in 1993 by the legendary Matthew Carter, and as the yin to the yang of Verdana, the first Microsoft sans serif screen font." And then he goes on to say, 34:57 um, which I thought was an, a great pull quote, "What a shrewd choice of graphic design then to deliver this message in a typeface that feels familiar, rather demure, and yes, even a little bit friendly." 35:11 So he comes out of this with the thesis that like within AI, typography is going to function as it has histor- historically functioned in trying- Mm-hmm... 35:24 to get people used to new technologies, which is gonna like try to signal to you simultaneously that this is innovative, but it's also familiar. Mm-hmm. 35:34 And the stakes for seeming familiar with a wearable that's gonna purport to be your friend are even higher because this typography also needs to seem friendly. Yeah. 35:45 Um, which isn't necessarily the case for AI technology that's not going to be used, um, personally. Yeah. And he also, yeah, makes ties to the fact that like some of these AI chat agents are named like people. 35:59 So like Claude is your friend, right? Mm-hmm. And so like let's look at the way Claude is marketed and like what does their logo look like in typography. So you should read the full piece, but- Yeah. It's really good... 36:10 that's a pretty good summation. 36:11 This, so the, the AI, I think the same week AI Friend, [clears throat] excuse me, I think the same week, uh, Friend came out was when Meta announced that they were shutting down their, uh, like their like pseudo celebrity character things- Mm... 36:24 which I played around with a few months ago. Um, and it was, it was so bizarre. It was this thing where like you can go to like a-There, there's like 20 Instagram profiles or whatever. 36:36 And most of these-- Some of these had just like, you know, regular, normal people, like some anonymous model, um, under the name. Other ones had, like, MrBeast was, like, the content creator archetype. Mm. 36:46 But it, like, wasn't called MrBeast. So it was this really weird thing, uh, where you could tell that they're trying to, like, make... you know, put this, like, friendliness on AI and, like, introduce this to people. 36:57 But each account, like the, the one with the most followers I think was, like... it was, like, Kendall Jenner, and it was, like, the influencer friend. But again, it wasn't Kendall Jenner's name, but it was her image. 37:05 Um, and you're me- meant to, like, talk to these people, and they're like, you know, a GPT or whatever, like, uh, designed to, like, speak in this way and, like, give you this kind of perspective. 37:15 But then you try it and, like, I don't know. Like, I, I tried, though I was like, "Okay, let me engage with this, like, earnestly." 37:21 And I talked to, like, the writer character and, like, trying to help me come up with a better subject line for the newsletter I was writing that day. 37:27 And it was, like, the same as if I was just using ChatGPT to do that, uh, which I've done sometimes when I'm, like, stuck. It's like, "Give me 10 ideas for subject lines," and, you know, that's like a starting point. 37:37 Um- Mm. But they shut it down because obviously people just wanted to talk to these as the celebrities they were, like, imaged as. Like, so that was, like, a, a failed way in making this... like, making AI tech work. 37:49 Um- I... If I had to guess, though, I think they're probably folding that into some other parts of the business. Yeah. 37:55 I mean, my perception is there's more opportunity in the short term around creating AI software that's gonna be used on, like, the enterprise level that, like- Yeah, no doubt... 38:03 you can force, like, an entire company to integrate rather than getting individual users to use it off the bat and- Mm-hmm. But I also think that that was uniquely... 38:12 a uniquely poor use case because of that celebrity confusion, where it's like- Yeah, yeah... 38:16 you're not benefiting from the fandom of, like, really catering to this parasocial relationship where this person's gonna answer as Kendall. You're just hamstringing it by, like, leading them along. Totally. Yeah. 38:27 Well, so- It's a dog food situation. Yeah. Another w- ano- [laughs] another, uh, Meta AI related thing, I think it was in an interview with Rundown AI, which is, like, a big AI newsletter- Mm... um, on Beehive. Uh, they- 38:41 Mm. Z- Zuck was saying, like, basically... 38:44 I forget exactly, but he's saying how, like, it wouldn't make sense to, like, totally put, like, um, human minds in a computer, like, as an AI or whatever, or, like, try to translate, transfer somebody's consciousness into a computer because he's like... 38:58 You know, he's saying in his, the gold chain and tan that everyone talks about these days. He's like, "We are more than just our minds, you know? 39:06 Like, we are bodies, and we are active, and we do things," which I, which I thought was really interesting 'cause it seems like that, like, you know, the whole Meta thing seemed to be going away from that. 39:16 And that, I don't know. Like, all these kind of tech overlords, your Musk with Neuralink. Um, I thought it was really refreshing and kind of endearing to see one of these people 39:26 say, like, "Actually, we're bodies too," uh, especially as somebody who spends most of my weeks [laughs] sitting at my computer staring at it, writing. Um- Yeah. I mean, I think that's part of the backlash, right? 39:38 And if you are an incumbent, um, technology company, and then you can also form narratives around the backlash to something that you kinda helped create. Like- Yeah... I think he's... 39:57 I mean, there's... Facebook's one of the most established tech companies in the world, but there's always the opportunity for him to try to position it as contrarian. Yeah. Right? 40:08 And I think a lot of tech CEOs are constantly trying to walk that line, where it's like, if your competitor's a little further ahead, then you become the contrarian, and that's your- Mm... 40:21 you know, that's your special sauce, where it's like, oh, people are coming back to Facebook because Facebook seems really human compared to, like, what Google's doing with Gemini. Yeah. 40:31 Um, but I think it's really hard to measure- With what? Even agreeing with X. It's hard to measure the success of this stuff because- Yeah... it's kind of just sentiment. 40:37 And I think that leads to, I mean, or, or branding or storytelling- Mm-hmm... as we talked about a couple weeks ago. 40:45 I think that sort of leads us to something else that you and I were thinking about, which is attention as a limited resource in the attention economy. 40:52 Him going out there, you know, looking cooler [laughs] than he's looked before- [laughs]... saying comments that could be taken as almost anti-AI or- Yeah... being one of the only people who's not, like, 41:06 giving a, an un... you know... [sighs] Is he's, he's making it feel human. He's, he's making, he's... It's not, it's not even what he's making AI look like. 41:15 It's just that he is a relatable vehicle for, like, the message. He's, uh, well, a more- Yeah... relatable vehicle than ever before for the message he's peddling, for the products he's peddling. Right. 41:24 And he's not peddling it as unambiguously good for everything- Yeah... which people read as, like, a more nuanced, intelligent take. Mm-hmm. 41:32 Um, but what I wanted to talk about with attention is something that I was thinking about yesterday [laughs] just in the airport. Um, you know, I looked... 41:44 Like, my, my feed just, like, explodes with people talking about what was happening in the Japanese market before- Yeah... Japanese stock market before, um, US stock market opens. 41:54 And I look over and my husband has the Wikipedia page [laughs] for the Japanese stock market open. He's like, you know, learning in real time. And, um, 42:04 and then, you know, also part of my feed talking about how all the cryptocurrencies were- Mm... 42:09 were diving with, um, US stock sentiment because it's like, you know, it's supposed to be this asset that wasn't beholden to the stock market, but actually they're correlated. Kind of. 42:18 And like, yeah, gold is less correlated. Like, people who make an argument for Bitcoin as like gold, it's like, well, gold doesn't go down when the S&P 500 goes down- Yeah... but Bitcoin does. 42:31 Um, so but all of this is, like, speculation too because the US market has not in fact opened. But people are already saying, "Oh, you know, the Fed's gonna have to uh-"Cut rates to correct this. 42:42 They overplayed their hand, whatever. Um, and you know this isn't my expertise, but this is- Yeah... like my, lay- my layman's story of what was happening. Mm-hmm. Simultaneously, 42:52 so I'm watching this happen, I'm watching all this speculation of what's gonna happen. When the US markets open, people are selling off, people are selling off their cryptocurrency. 43:02 Then you have all the other people that are like, "Buy the dip, hold," [laughs] you know? 43:06 And at the same time, like, Polymarket and some of these betting, um, platforms that are consumer-facing where people are, um, can bet on, like, political and pop culture outcomes. Oh, yeah. I love these. 43:17 People are trying to extrapolate from this who's gonna get the vice presidential, um, nomination or, from the Democratic Party. Yeah. And it's, like, going back and forth between Shapiro and Walz. And so... 43:30 And the thing is, like, I think you have people making real trades based on what they think the market's going to do, and it just underscores that, like, in a capitalist system, like, the source of truth, 43:44 it's not about what's true or false, it's about what the market believes, right? Mm-hmm. Like, it's not about whether unemployment, like, whether unemployment is high or not, it's what people believe. 43:54 I mean, this is sort of the vibe session- Yeah... thing that Kyla Scanlon talks about. And so people are not trying to say, "These stocks are doing poorly," they're, or they're not doing poorly. 44:07 They're trying to say, when the market opens, what will the market, which literally does not exist- [laughs]... it's not really an embodied entity. Yeah. What will the mar- what will be the market's truth? 44:17 What's the mass impression? Yeah, and how do I anticipate it? So that is, like, capitalism doesn't run on true or false, it runs on what is the market gonna do? 44:27 In the other end of the system you have communism where it's not about what's true or false, it's what the state believes, the state being another entity like the market that could be made up of people but is not an embodied entity. 44:39 Yeah. And then you have democracy or things in the middle like democratic socialism, where it's not about what's true or false, it's what the population believes. Mm-hmm. 44:48 Which is actually the closest to human sentiment but can also lead to outcomes that are based on a lie. Yeah. And 44:58 where people fall [laughs] on the spectrum of their affiliation or the belief in, like, what makes the most effective system, again, is not about what people think 45:10 is most effective at, like, people making decisions based on the true, what's true, objectively true and what's objectively false. But it's like, do you want the market to decide? 45:19 Do you want the population to decide or do you want the state to decide? And I think that that, that does impact culture, [laughs] right? Yeah. Like, how could it not? 45:27 And the betting culture around what the market's gonna do or who's gonna be selected as vice president, and we're recording this after we found out that it was indeed Walz. Yeah. 45:36 So congratulations to everyone who made money off of that. That speculation becomes a form of culture as well. Like, that's- Yeah... how all the crypto stuff became a conference with music. Yeah. Right? 45:49 People came in for the speculation. They built a culture around it. Like, WallStreetBets started off as a way to say, like, "Fuck you" to Wall Street. Yeah. It became a subculture 46:01 with its own, like, media and, like, influencers and stuff. So I don't know, I think those distinctions are important. Mm-hmm. And I felt like I was watching that play out because, like, actually 46:16 it didn't end up being as bad as people thought it was going to be. Um- Yeah. Yeah, basically bounced back like- At least in the US... mid that 12th time... it's, like, not a Black Monday situation. Yeah. 46:26 Um, but the belief that, you know, there's a risk, this could carry out throughout the summer and, you know. Yeah, sets the tone. Yeah. Creates the culture. Yeah. 46:36 Creates the conditions in which people wanna do one thing or not and like- That's the attention economy for you, people. That's it. That's the attention economy, and we will be back talking to you about it next week. 46:47 [upbeat music] It tastes just like it costs. Ooh, honey.
