Transcript 0:00 [upbeat music] Welcome back to Tasteland. I am your co-host, Francis Zehrer. And I'm Daisy Alioto. 0:12 And today we are talking with Mike Rugnetta, a writer, host, and producer of videos and podcasts. You may know him as the host of Never Post, uh, but he's been working in the industry for well over a decade. 0:25 He also consults as an audience development and digital marketing strategist and runs qualitative creator and media-focused research studies, which I am interested to ask him about. 0:36 But, um, yeah, Never Post is a good podcast, so I'm excited to chat with Mike. Me too. Um, I'm Daisy Alioto. Didn't you already say that? I can't remember. No, I don't remember. 0:46 I don't, I don't know if I said anything yet. It's the heat. The heat is getting to us. Did I say anything? I, I'll [laughs]... 0:53 I'm at the point where I will, like, go into, like, the living room and tell Ben, "Hey, dinner's gonna be ready in five minutes," and then we'll have a conversation- And it's breakfast time... about something else. 1:02 No, I'll just be like, "Dinner's gonna be ready in five minutes. Did I already say that?" Like, did it already come out of my mouth, or did I just think it? Yeah. 1:08 Is it, I mean, is this a result of, like, summer, summer derangement syndrome or, or just you getting old? Well, I'll tell you about my summer derangement on Sunday. So I went to a wedding in Boston. Mm. 1:19 Had a few drinks, well-spaced. Wake up- [scoffs]... in the clear. I feel fine. Drive home, takes a while, hit some traffic in Connecticut per usual. Mm. Um- Home of traffic, Connecticut... 1:33 Ben and I have started calling it Long Connecticut- [laughs]... 'cause I swear it gets longer every time we drive through. Mm-hmm. So there's traffic in Long Connecticut. It's fine. Get home, feel good. 1:46 I have a gift package from my favorite perfume company, DS & Durga. Mm. They sent me their new tennis perfume. Well, I think it's a reissue- Mm... 1:53 called Crush Balls, which is, has notes of tennis ball, green grass, rosemary, cotton flower, and florals. Mm-hmm. Great. Spritz that baby on. Get to my computer, 2:06 start going through, like, a massive financial modeling spreadsheet. Um- Okay, math brain. Okay... not for me, for another company. Okay. That I'm saying, "Okay, what can I learn from this?" 2:18 Going through it, all of a sudden I do not feel good. It's now, like, 6:00 or 7:00 PM, so I haven't had a drink in whatever many hours. Mm. So anyway, um, I'm like, "I do not feel good." I throw up, and I'm like, "Okay." 2:34 [laughs] Trigger warning. Trigger warning, I throw up. Um, so what was it? Was it the three very well-spaced drinks in Boston, Massachusetts? Was it the stop-go traffic? Was it the perfume? Spreadsheet. 2:49 Was it the spreadsheet? But long story short, I do believe in the scientific method, so I am wearing the perfume right now. [laughs] And we're gonna see if you throw up on the pod. Yeah. Okay. 3:00 And then tomorrow- That's my plan for tomorrow... you're gonna drive... You're gonna have three well-spaced drinks. [laughs] The day after that you're gonna drive through Connecticut, purposefully hitting traffic. 3:08 [laughs] And then finally on the, on the fifth day you'll, you'll look at a spreadsheet. I believe in science, Francis. I don't know what to tell you. Well, I don't, so, um, we're gonna have to agree to disagree there. 3:19 [upbeat music] Um, something that came out last week that I wrote about for Creator Spotlight was the TIME100 list, uh, focused on creators for the first time, which I was sort of surprised that they had never done one of those before. 3:37 But what it made me think of, which is what I always think of when I think of TIME Magazine and the internet and creators all in the same sentence, is their 2006 Person of the Year when they named you, yes you, yes you, Person of the Year. 3:49 With the little mirror on the cover of the- With the... Yeah... I was... It was so cute. It's iconic. Yeah. 3:53 And much ridiculed, I guess, but I, I was, I was interested to see, to go back and, like, see the vision of the internet it presented. I, I forget exactly who, the guy who wrote that write-up. 4:05 I think his name was Lev Grossman. Um, but I, I wanted to pull this quote from it and, and get your guys' thoughts on this 2006 vision of the internet. 4:13 So he says, "It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. 4:20 It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge, Wikipedia, and the million channel people's network, YouTube, and the online metropolis, Myspace. 4:28 It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing, and how that will not only change the world but also change the way the world changes." So we're 19 years on from that moment. 4:42 I think Lev just writes novels now. This is correct. [laughs] Good choice. Ouch. I mean, we just never r- Uh, I say we. I'm inclined to say we. I wanna interrogate that first- [laughs] Mm... 4:56 uh, as my, my impulse here because, like, I was a tech utopianist around this time. Like- Mm... I was excited about all the things that the internet would help us accomplish. I was a YouTuber for a long time. 5:08 Um, and, uh, I, uh, I think that, um, one of the things that we never did was we never considered that, um, people could suck. Yeah. Mm. Just never really occurred. 5:19 It's like, you know, well, there's shitty people, but, like, they're shitty, so, uh, they won't sort of, they won't ever get into power. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Whoops. Yeah. Yeah. 5:29 M- My, my takeaway to the context I put it in of, like, bringing this TIME 2006 piece to TIME now publishing this creator list, which is, like, very much not you. It's 100 people. 5:40 [laughs] It's, like, specifically 100 creators. Specifically not you anymore actually. Yes, unless you are one of the 100, which- Yeah... none, none of us three on this, on this podcast are. We're not on the list at all. 5:49 You is not on the list at all. You, you, you is not on the list, Daisy. [laughs] You is... Look, it's, it's a big club, and you is not in it. [laughs] [laughs] No, but, but my- That's fine... 5:59 my, my takeaway, the, the way I ended it was that, like, the, the... 6:04 In 2006, you know, the internet was made up of people-And now it's, it's made up of corporations in that, like, the idea of a creator is sort of the person as a corporation. 6:14 I did, and I think I cut this out of the final essay- Some would say it's made up of demons, actually... made up of demons. The hell is empty, um, and, and the devils are- Online... on- Posting... on Twitter. Yeah. 6:24 [laughs] Are, are posting. The devils are posting. Touch fire. Touch fire. Um, no, but, uh, the, it's kind of a tenuous connection that I deleted, but I'm, I'm [laughs] gonna bring back here. 6:32 But the idea that in 2011 was when YouTube started using the word creator as a way to refer to YouTube users, and it was 2010 when the Citizens United decision passed that, like, for me, I mean, uh, 2010 I was 16, I wasn't thinking that deeply about politics. 6:48 Um, but I, it did for me bring up the phrase, like, uh, corporations are people, right? And like, I, I couldn't help but think of that and, like, the creator being another... 7:00 I don't know if it's two sides of the same coin, but certainly one side of the same however many sided die. 7:05 Uh, the idea that corporations are people and, like, what a creator is in the context of the internet, which is, like, a, a, a, a corporation or a- Mm-hmm... small business. Mm-hmm. Whatever scale. 7:16 Um, but, like, the, the, the kind of techno utopian community, one for all, all for one aspect of that, that 2006 piece gives way to this one for one corporations are people vision of the internet today. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 7:34 Well, yeah. And it's almost like it subsumes you, right? So even, like, participating, when you start to participate on platforms, you become the business of yourself. Mm-hmm, exactly. 7:46 I think with, um, 100% due respect to my pal Tim Shea, who is the person who is- Mm... credited with creating creator as a term- Oh... uh, for- I don't know, I didn't know about this. 7:57 Yeah, for, for people, you know, online. Things like- That's cool. I came up with the word taste, but- [laughs]... Tim sounds cool too. I, it's hard for me to divorce creator from content. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 8:08 And I always think of it as, like, if you're a creator, you're the one who's filling the boxes that get pushed out by platforms that the ads go next to. Yes. Right? Like, I think it's- This is right... 8:16 I think that we've been sold a lot of times the idea that you're the business, and, like, you're an independent creator, and you're here to make money, and you can become successful, and you can get famous. 8:27 You, you can get on the Time 100 creators list. Mm-hmm. Um, but, like, fundamentally, like, yeah, what you are is you're, um, you're packing in, uh, uh, contents to a blank area. What's in the box, Mike? 8:41 You're, you're a platform sharecropper. Yeah. Basically. [laughs] I mean, essentially. Yeah. Yeah. What's in the box? About, you know- Yes... 300 to 400 YouTube videos. [laughs] Mm. 8:50 Uh, you, you recently did a Never Post about platforms, which I listened to this morning. Um, a, a few quotes that I wanted to draw on- Shout out to Mike Peppy... 8:59 to, uh, against platforms, Mike Pe- if you haven't read that, Mike, two Mikes. Getting confusing, but, um- Too many Mikes... it's a book you would enjoy. 9:06 Uh, okay, so, um, gonna, this is kind of two quotes short, that were really close together. Um, "Asking what comes after platforms is a bit like asking what comes after cities." 9:17 And then about 30 seconds later you say, "It feels like the age of the platform is ending and has maybe even ended." 9:26 I mean, it's hard to think about what the internet is like without something like, without things that resemble Facebook, Twitter, Blue Sky, Instagram, Amazon, Google, right? 9:39 All of these things that are like, they are not just websites, they're platforms. They're massive- Mm... 9:43 pieces of infrastru- of infrastructure that, um, guide and inform our experience of and our ideas about the internet. And I say this as someone who, like, I graduated from college before YouTube existed. Mm. 9:57 So, like, I know what the internet is like, if not without these things, then, like, in the moments when they were still developing, there was still, like, the kind of primacy of the kinds of things that Lev Grossman wrote about when he said [laughs] that you were the person of the year. 10:13 You know, like, community and, um, individuality and, uh, collaboration around knowledge. So even having those experiences now I'm like, how? What comes after this? Yeah. 10:25 But nonetheless, it still feels to me like there is, you know, like my mom, who's, like, retired and, like, you know, isn't online really much. 10:37 Like, you know, she has social media accounts, but that's because she, like, wants to send me fun links on Instagram. You know, she's not super active. My mom is like, "Facebook's bad, right?" Mm. 10:46 Like, we should be, like Facebook needs to, like, get better. Uh, Facebook needs to, like, go away or, like, fundamentally change. 10:53 Like, oh, you know, like Google's business practices, there's, those data centers produce a lot of CO2, right? You know, like- Yeah... I think normal people are kind of coming- Mm... 11:02 around to this idea that, um, platforms represent something that is, uh, ironically, fundamentally antisocial- Mm... uh, given the fact that they are, we have labeled a lot of them as social media. 11:18 Um, and so I think that's where that tension comes from, where it's like, God, like, are we gonna live in the burned out wreckages of these things? Like, what does that look like? 11:26 But still it also feels like, uh, there's growing, um, there's a growing sense that, like, we, whatever that is, we gotta figure it out 'cause it's time. I don't know. Yeah. 11:38 Or maybe we'll just hobble along like this for the next 30 years. Do you think that the end of platforms and the end of ad supported, of the ad supported web are connected? Like, are platforms and display ads 11:53 inexplicably intertwined in their fates? Um, that's a really- Inextricably. [laughs] Sorry. We can, we can probably explain it. 12:01 [laughs] That's like, uh, that is a really good question, and one that I have not thought as much about as I should. 12:08 I think, um-I think that you can see that there is a lot of flailing at the moment about just how bad the ad n- the, how bad the ad market is. I see it. Yeah. I see it. 12:21 Like, the ad market, ad infrastructure, it's all really, really busted, and I think it's, you know, it's hurting, uh, it's hurting a lot of people. [laughs] It's causing a lot of trouble. Um, 12:32 and I think that you see, um, a lot of platforms struggling to figure out how to augment that or what comes after it. Yeah. Because I think that they know it just as much as, like, independent creators know it, you know? 12:44 The three of us definitely know it. Um, so I think that they are linked, but I do not think, uh, I do not think the death of one is necessarily the death of another, of, of the other. I disagree. 13:00 [laughs] Do, do you think that Facebook would allow itself... Would, like, if ads collapse, do you think Facebook would be like, "Well, it was a good run"? 13:06 I think that they're already saying that with the amount that they're putting into AI and the packages that they're paying to pick people off from Sam Altman's team. Yeah, I would actually- I think they know it's over. 13:19 Yeah. I agree that the investment in AI is s- at least partially an acknowledgement of the slow decline of the ad market, and that that- Mm-hmm... 13:31 is Facebook saying, "Well, if that's gonna go away, we gotta find another avenue. We gotta figure out where the money is, 'cause we're not going anywhere." Yeah, they're building the raft off Facebook Island. 13:41 [laughs] Well, but even, even, isn't even, like, some of the, some of the AI investment is maybe to replace creators, right? Mm-hmm. 13:48 And, like, have, make sure there's still a constant stream of content for, for AI to go next to, um, that, that they control fully. Yeah. 13:56 The co- the, the, the, they're gonna replace the humans packing the content box with the robot packing the content box. Mm-hmm. No, the robot packing the content box with robot-created content. 14:09 At a certain point, that box becomes worthless. Well, this- Yeah... these, this is what we were just saying And then robots to watch it. 14:15 [laughs] Exact- well, this is one of, something, um, Daisy has been talking about recently, is, like, the idea- Have I? Uh, yeah, of the AI agent consuming content, right? I don't know anything about that. 14:24 I'm just kidding. Oh, okay. Um, [laughs] so yeah. I mean, I've been thinking about this a lot, and I'm supposed to be writing about it, but, um... And I will. [laughs] Um- Get an agent to do it for you. Ooh. 14:36 [laughs] I would never. Um, so this, so there was a good piece I think, I think it was in Stratechery, about the death of the ad-supported web, the rise of the agentic web, and I think we, 14:50 it's easy to, [laughs] not to Frederick Jameson. Like, uh, it is easier to imagine the death of the ad-supported web than the platform-based web, right? Like, 15:02 even though I really do feel these things go together, I think I, I, there is a ton of arguments that they're not- Well, because there's a clear, b- like, m- a- like, a subscriber-based monetization is a very clear model, whereas, like, the, it's- Well-... 15:13 there's not really an alternative given to us for the platform-based web. It's hard to imagine... 15:16 yeah, like, your imagination will allow you to think about a web without ads, because we, most people have MacGyvered that for themselves. Mm-hmm. 15:22 But an, a internet without platforms, it's, like, literally, like, people's imagination stops because it's like, well, where do I go? [laughs] It's like trying to imagine a new color. 15:32 Yeah, like even the agentic interfaces, like, you... I, I mean, I don't use it on my phone. If I go to ChatGPT, I open it in my browser. Mm-hmm. 15:41 And I think, like, the browser company of San Francisco, [laughs] God bless them, they're working on some cool stuff. They have this new thing called Dia. Mm. It's supposed to be, like, a super responsive browser. 15:52 It's supposed to replace the need to go to any one destination on the web, even a platform. 15:58 But, like, I think this idea of, like, the agentic web being sort of, like, destinationless, like, it really is hard to imagine, because it's like, well, where is the content, and how am I finding it, and am I really just only ever interfacing in a chat box? 16:15 Like, that doesn't really make sense. That doesn't line up with my experience of what it means to be online. Um, and so I think, like, 16:26 that's the piece that's really missing in the discourse, 'cause it's the hardest thing to have a vision of the future about. And, like, I would argue, like, start, start proposing stuff, you know what I mean? 16:40 Like, if you're a creative person at your own media company, start proposing stuff, because now's your time to set the narrative. 16:47 But I don't think there's a winning narrative of what the post-platform internet looks like at all. 16:51 Like, you can say the agentic web, okay, there's gonna be AI agents creating content, reading content, disseminating content. Where do they go? What does that look like? Um, that doesn't feel like a place to me yet. 17:06 Mike, in that episode about platforms, there was this segment about how hentai explains a lot about platforms. 17:14 I know you didn't report on that, but I was wondering if, um, if you could give us a little summary of, of the takeaways from that conversation. Yeah, sure. Uh, the, the, the broad strokes are essentially, like, 17:26 everyone is, uh, subject to platform governance. Like, when you post on a platform- Mm... you have to follow the rules. And what hentai does is it exists at the edges of so many different, 17:41 um, like, genres and ideas about what media is for and which media is good and bad and why, and what sorts of people, uh, different kinds of media attract, that- Mm-hmm... 17:54 it indicates kind of how fluid, or helps us understand, gives a case study in how fluid platform governance is, and how- Mm... really, like, um, 18:06 you're kind of at the whims of these really big companies-And that though for a lot of people your experience may be easy and frictionless and you never have to deal with any, like, moderation problems, you know, you don't get in, in scare quotes trouble very often. 18:23 Like, the potential for you to get in trouble or to trigger some sort of, um, moderation action or just basically have to stare down the bureaucracy of a platform is just one sort of button click or decision away. 18:42 Um, and, uh, that... You can sort of spin that idea out into a lot of different ways, um, beyond platforms. Mm-hmm. So it's like, you know, that is also, it turns out, true of the government in general. 18:57 [laughs] Uh, and we've been sort of living through some of that, uh, very recently. Famously. It's like, you know, as soon as they decide that something is the case, well, suddenly it's the case. Mm-hmm. 19:08 Like, you know, the rules change. Um, and when the... You know, when they have power, they have power, and when you're powerless, you're powerless. 19:16 I think, uh, one of the really illustrative parts of the episode for me was, like, I forget if you were, uh... 19:22 I forget who- her name, who was reporting it, um, said, but, but that, that, you know, hentai is originally a way, a gray area way to get around censorship rules about penetration. 19:31 So if you use tentacles, then you get around those rules. And it reminds me of, like, on TikTok, people coming up with words- Sure, yeah... um, whether it's, like, around, like, self-harm or, or sex. 19:40 Like, something like, like... I, I can't even... Like, I mean, you'll see, like, S-E-G-G-S as a way of saying sex. Yeah, a corn- corn actress. Corn. Yeah. Yeah. Um- Exactly. Uh, what are the other ones? Unalive for kill. 19:52 Unalive. Yeah. I was trying to find that word. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's all... it's the... it's, it's all just hentai. It's the same thing of, as hentai- Yeah... 19:58 which is just the evolution of, like, a new gray area to avoid these rules. I... Yeah, Morgan Sung at, uh, KQED's Close All Tabs did some really great- Okay. She talked to a bunch of really great people. 20:08 And yeah, I had no idea that, like, hentai has this really strong history of, uh, it's extremely queer. Mm-hmm. It's really concerned with representation. 20:18 And yeah, all about this process of, like, getting around censorship so that you can communicate these ideas of, like, you know, the difficulty in figuring out where you belong, the difficulties in f- in feeling like a monster, the difficulties in just being, um, a different kind of body. 20:37 Uh- Mm-hmm... which, yeah, I mean, I definitely grew up under the, I now know, mistaken idea that it's just, like, a bunch of freak shit. Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. Which, I mean, maybe it is. 20:46 You know, I guess those things aren't mutually exclusive. Um- Mm-hmm. [laughs] So is the argument that the history of the internet is a history of censorship resistance? 20:55 I don't know if that's the argument that we were making, but I think it's an argument you could, you could make if you wanted to. Mm-hmm. I think, you know, a lot of... 21:02 the history of a lot of media, I think, is the history of trying to figure out how to use, uh, new forms to communicate broadly, uh, identifiable or relatable, you know, ecumenical stories. Um- Mm-hmm... 21:18 and so yeah, why should the internet be any different? 21:21 Yeah, I mean, the, the original, the origin of the internet, right, as being this way to protect information if one data center was, was bombed, then the information would still live somewhere else, right? It, it... 21:33 that's kind of the same thing here. It's like, it's a little different than censorship, but it's, like, still making sure that, like, the information lives on and is almost, like, Kudzu-like, like unkillable. 21:42 Y- yeah, right? Well, if we had, like, a... If the internet had stayed majority, like, peer-to-peer sharing, would hentai still exist, or is it too... Like, are the conventions of the genre too 22:01 inextricable from- Well, that, that's, like, almost pre-internet too, right? Isn't that also partially just, like, Japanese government censorship laws- Yeah... like, that aren't necessarily married to the internet? 22:11 Yeah, we've all seen the, the wood block print. Um- [laughs] Like, um- I'm ass- I'm gonna assume that I have. [laughs] Whatever you're picturing, I'm gonna assume. I guess, like, in any- [laughs]... 22:21 in any genre, you really can't separate it from the... You can't separate the medium and the message. Um- Famously. Famously. 22:30 Okay, last thing I wanna say about, about this before maybe we move on to something else, um, or about, you know, internet platforms. 22:36 Uh, I read this piece, uh, in the, uh, so-called failing New York Times earlier this week- [laughs]... about Live Aid. 22:44 Um, Bob Geldof, the guy who, who put Live Aid together, um, you know, it's the 40th anniversary, uh, he was asked by the interviewer... Let me find this. Uh, "You saw music as a platform to do things. 22:56 Could Live Aid happen today?" Uh, two paragraph answer here. "I don't think it's possible now. Society has changed. The web is an isolating technology. It knows what you are. It drives you. 23:08 It gives you what it thinks you want, and as you get jaded, it gives you more extreme versions of that. Now, music is free, and you get the news that you want to see. 23:18 The web is an echo chamber of your own prejudices, so you only hear the music that it thinks you like. It's a silo of the self. So I don't think music can survive being the spine of the culture as it was." 23:30 I thought this was really well said. That's like a flaming pitchfork of an answer. Geez. [laughs] Yeah. I mean, I have... I can react to that. I have, you know, I have feelings about this. I think, uh- Please do, yeah... 23:43 I think an important thing that we need to do when we see things like this and when we have these thoughts, 'cause I have these thoughts all the time, is I have to remember that I have agency. 23:51 [laughs] That, like, I am... I can do things, right? I am the... I control what I consume and look at and click on and browse. I control what I spend my time doing, and I am the ultimate sort of actor in all of that. 24:08 Mm-hmm. And so, um, I think we should always be a little-Just wary of talking about the internet doing things to people, um, because people choose, people, in a, in a manner of speaking, right? 24:23 People choose to do what it is that they're doing. Mm-hmm. That being said, 24:28 so much of this technology is tuned and designed with millions and billions of dollars of research behind it, hundreds of thousands, millions of hours and hours of data to just make it so that you can't pull yourself away, [laughs] or it's extremely hard to pull yourself away. 24:46 So you have agency, but the agency is like, it's sometimes it's hard to find in the darkened room of the internet where there's just a billion TikToks happening to you- Mm-hmm... over two hours. 24:58 Let me, let me say your own words back at you. Mm-hmm. Uh, this is something from the most recent episode of Neverpost. 25:03 You say, "Choice hasn't been obliterated online, but it has been subjugated by a set of technologies that seek to know, and through knowing, guide, and ultimately control outcomes online, mostly steering those outcomes to tech companies' economic and political ends. 25:18 Along the way, we, the grease in the gears of the machine, are rewarded with darling jackpots." Darling jackpots. You get a video of a capybara every once in a while, and it's all worth it. [laughs] Mm-hmm. 25:29 So I think it's... But so, but like I agree with this idea that it's like if you just let the internet happen to you, it will drive you into a place where you, it's hard to get out, and that's what it wants, right? 25:42 Because your attention is, uh, the thing that is profitable to many- And you're almost-... if not all companies... 25:49 you're almost taking away that agency again, though, by saying what the internet wants rather than, like, what X company- Sure, yeah... what X executive at X company et cetera, right? 25:56 As a kind of, like, a gross metaphor for the entire complex of, like, Facebook- Yeah... and TikTok and, you know, even The New York Times to a certain degree, right? Mm-hmm. Um, 26:07 and, uh, I do, I think that you, I think that it, on the one hand, it's a regulation problem. On the other hand, it's a literacy problem. Mm-hmm. 26:15 That it's like you have to know how to recognize those things when they're happening, and you have to develop skills to counteract them. 26:23 You know, we did a Neverpost about, uh, a while back, I think about a year ago, about, like, the challenge of finding new music online, uh, because three of us on the show are, like, huge music nerds, and the- Mm-hmm... 26:36 a couple of the rest of us on the staff are not. 26:38 And so the ones of us that are music nerds, we're like, "Yeah, here's the, like, insane, arcane, ridiculous process that we all go through in order to find new music that we like. Everybody should just do this." 26:50 [laughs] Mm-hmm. And uh, you know, everybody else at the table looking at us like, "Are you... That's ridiculous. I have Spotify." [laughs] "It will just show me what I wanna listen to." Mm-hmm. 27:00 But, you know, to respond to this, to the quote, is that it's like, yeah, within bounds, right? And in such a way that it might be, you, there might be things that you're missing out on. 27:11 Um, and you sacrifice, you know, maybe a little bit of your agency, um, in order f- to have the, the easier experience where you don't go as deep. 27:20 Um, in something like music, like, is that really fund- fundamentally, like, a societal ill? Uh, probably not. Um, but- Mm-hmm... is it reflective of, like, larger, more serious problems? I think probably. Yeah. Mm-hmm. 27:33 Evidence of, of many societal ills. Yeah. Sorry, that was a very long-winded- No, that was great. I can... Yeah. 27:39 [laughs] Uh, to your point, right, uh, these are, this, like, two things that we just did segments on, so I'm, like, thinking a lot about them. Exactly. Yeah. 27:47 Well, I'm curious to learn more about Neverpost, like, how big... You're a year and a half old. You know, how big is your staff, and what is the alchemy of being ad versus member-supported in terms of 28:01 keeping the show going? Yeah. Uh, so, uh, we're real small. I mean, depending upon how you count it, it's like there's less than 10 of us, so, like, there's- Mm-hmm... six-ish of, of us. Um, and, uh, we 28:18 don't make any money. Um, none of us make any money from the show. The show makes money. Uh, like, we get a ad check every once in a while. Uh, we have a few hundred members. 28:31 We make a few thousand dollars, uh, every month. But, like, that doesn't pay for the amount of time that six people spend to make the show. Uh, so we mostly have been funded by client work. 28:44 Uh, we all work together on other client shows, just, like, big corporate projects, um, that we rely on, uh, in order to be able to create the time to make this show. Mm-hmm. Um, so, you know, the, the, the 29:02 alchemy is, um, we spend a long time with a chunk of lead, uh, in front of us, applying various electrodes to it, and it has yet to turn into gold. [laughs] Well, that is, that is the story of the internet as well. 29:18 Uh, yeah, I mean, in that way, it's like we're not, we're not unlike thousands and thousands and thousands of other people. Mm-hmm. Um, we didn't go, we're not going into debt to make the show. 29:30 Like, we don't, we haven't taken out any loans. Like, no one has, there's no advances. Like, we're just gonna do it for as long as we can, um, and then when we can't do it anymore, we're gonna stop. 29:41 Um, and I'm a big fan of projects that stop. I like things that stop. Yes. You've had a few of them in your time. Yeah, I have. And, like, it's, I love ending stuff. I think ending things is great. 29:51 Um, and- Yeah, tell us about the arc of the podcasting industry vis-a-vis the internet. Just in general? I don't know if like- Well, from your, uh, from your, like, you know, 15 years or so in the industry, correct? 30:01 Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Personal history. Yeah. Uh, I mean, so I, the first podcast that I started was around 2014. Uh, it was called Reasonably Sound. Mm-hmm. 30:10 Um, and I did not realize when I was making it, like, how-Big of an audience it had? I had no clue. 'Cause I was also making a YouTube show at the time. And so like on YouTube at the time, I was like, "Wow." Yeah. 30:22 Was that the Idea Channel? Idea Channel, yeah. Yeah. I was like, "Oh, well we got like 300,000 views on that one." So like that was okay. That was just all right. Mm-hmm. 30:31 Um, and uh, Reasonably Sound I started with, uh, it was actually with Hans Butow, who's the senior producer of Neverpost. Uh, we went to college together and worked together for a long time. 30:42 He was at American Public Media, and they reached out. They were starting a podcast network, and they were like, "Hey, do you wanna try it? Do you wanna try this?" I was like, "Yeah, sure." 30:49 And um, the show would get like 20,000 listeners. Uh, it's like 20,000 listens. Which like, yeah, is pretty good, right? Yeah. Like, that's not, that's not... Those are good numbers. 31:01 Uh, to give a sense of like how that compares now, so Neverpost, between 3,000 and 5,000 people listen to every episode. Mm. And we are in the top 1% of all podcasts- Mm... uh, with that, with those listenership numbers. 31:14 Um, and so that is maybe the best way that I can describe the arc of things. Like early on- Mm... 31:19 in podcasting, I would look at 20,000 and like, though that was a lot, I would be like, "Well, that's like, I guess that's good." Compared to, 'cause you were comparing it to YouTube. Comp- comparing it to YouTube. 31:29 Mm-hmm. Now I would look at 20,000 for a podcast and I would be like, "Wow, that's ins- that's crazy." How do they do that? [laughs] How do they do that? Yeah. Um- Good for them. 31:36 [laughs] And at the same time, yeah, like the, as previously discussed, like the ad market gets more and more saturated. Mm-hmm. You have to take on more and more sort of just like... 31:46 There's just, like anything else, there's just, uh, there's more infrastructure, so there's more that you have to just try to do. Um, you know, sponsored series and feed drops and things like this, right? 32:00 Guesting on other podcasts- Yeah... and having other people on your show. 32:04 And um, it's, uh, the other thing that I've noticed in the, the span of time is that as listenership has decreased it or, or decreased or balkanized, um, the ad market has slowed down and rates have gone down. 32:19 Audiences also don't really move. Um- Hmm... in order to get someone to move from one show to another, uh, it's really hard. It's just really, really hard. Which I completely empathize with, 'cause I feel the same way. 32:32 I'm like, I, my day's full. I got, there's enough for me to listen to and to experience and to watch and to read. Like, the idea of adding something else, it means it's gonna replace another thing. Yeah. 32:45 Attention is a zero-sum game. I like that. Yeah. Yeah, really. And like, you know, I got, I have, I got a job, I got a kid, I got, there's all, just all kinds of stuff I gotta do. Um... No, I think attention is 33:00 a lot less fungible than the people who have designed the internet believe, these platforms. And I obviously can't help but think about that a lot being in the media business. 33:14 I think this is something the media business understands that Silicon Valley does not. Hmm. I think they view it as 33:21 energy that follows this sort of like, the properties of physics where it can just, you know, if it drops somewhere, it raises somewhere else. It could be swapped. Mm. It's... 33:32 But, and, and that is sort of true, but attention is very unique. Um, 33:38 and when I wrote my piece called Attention Is What Makes Us Human about AI and what it can and can't do, one of the points I tried to make is like, when people, people pass away, we're already seeing, like, um, this came up on the most recent podcast, Francis, you brought up Alexis Ohanian's, um, edited photo or video to show his- Him and his mother. 34:02 Yeah... yeah, his deceased mother, hugging him. From the static photo, you could very credibly create a chatbot based on your history of talking with somebody. The thing that you cannot recreate in grief is attention. 34:18 You cannot ask an AI to replace what somebody was paying attention to or would pay attention to in the future because it is such a dynamic part of the human experience. 34:31 And so, like, I think we wi- we miss talking to people when they're not in our life anymore, but we really miss, um, being a part of what they pay attention to or being privy to what they pay attention to. Um, 34:47 and I think there's just this like, you can see embedded in these platforms is the erroneous assumption that 34:56 if, if you put slop on somebody's feed, they will take the attention that they've been paying to the reporters that they follow or the writers that they follow or the weird Twitter accounts that they follow and transfer it to that. 35:07 Um, some, some will, some won't, and either way it's not the same attention. Um, you know, you see it in dating right now. Um, people have treat- created these gamified dating apps with the assumption that like, 35:24 you could stop paying attention to your interaction with one person and then swap that attention for somebody else. It's not true. 35:31 Um, you know, even people that leave relationships and immediately get into a relationship with somebody else, it's not the same attention. 35:38 Um, so I think what we're seeing is like that erroneous assumption is really, um, like the, the shoe is falling down on that. Um, you, you could even... I know I've been talking for a while. 35:53 I think there's even an erroneous assumption in the way that the Trump administration has miscalculated the MAGA response among their base to not releasing the Epstein files. 36:04 I really think they're like, "They will stop paying attention to this conspiracy, and we can replace it with something else." It's like, no, you can't. 36:12 [laughs] Those people are paying attention to Epstein-For a reason Mm-hmm And the reasons might be really bad and stupid, but they are paying attention to that, and you cannot throw out a hunk of meat about some other conspiracy, like- Yeah... 36:26 you know, water seeding in the clouds, whatever, and they're not gonna just run and bite on that because you said, "Replace your attention with something else." 36:35 And so I think if there's, like, a downfall of a lot of the stuff we hate about the internet and politics in this moment, it'll be from the hubris of the failure to understand 36:46 what attention really does and what it means and, um, how non-fungible it actually is when you understand the nature of humanity. I'm doing a huge nod. I got a big, uh, big... [laughs] Yeah, he's nodding. Guys- Yeah... 37:00 he's nodding so hard. [laughs] I'm almost off. I actually, I'm concerned his head's gonna roll off. Yeah, my neck actually kinda hurts. I'm gonna stop. Yeah, I- Do you want a green ribbon? [laughs] That's what I use. 37:08 [laughs] How much do you think als- how... I'm curious how much you think it, um, malice [laughs] factors into it too. 37:18 Because sometimes I feel like there is no actual assumption that people will spend the amount or kind of attention on a lot of slop. Like, I think that, that there's no assumption that people are gonna do that. 37:31 There's an assumption that you'll be able to trick them to do it for a short amount of time- Mm... uh, for ver- for, like, a minuscule moment. That's, like, enough to get maybe a 10th of a cent for an ad. 37:41 And the nice thing about slop is that you can generate just oodles and oodles of it with no labor. 37:47 And so, uh, you get to fill up the internet with it, and so, you know, the, the amount of attention might be smaller, but there's more instances of it if it looks close enough to something that's real. 37:58 Or do you think it's all, like, the ass- like, is someone somewhere assuming, like, "Oh, yeah, someone will like this and, uh, pay attention to it?" Hmm. 38:06 I think that's Bannon's kinda flooding the zone in action, and the thing about that is, like, he's right, but he's not... The whole point about flooding the zone is not that people pay attention to something different. 38:20 It's, like, you actually erode their ability to pay attention at all. To pay attention. Mm. Yeah, and so, like, that means they can't pay attention to your values either, um, which is, I think... Well, whatever. 38:34 We ta- [laughs] I think we talked about this with Cole, and then it, maybe that part got cut. Like, um, 38:40 there's a lot of younger politicians who would like to become the next Trump, and they have not been very good at capturing the attention that he captures. Hmm. And I think the issue is, like, 38:53 if, if you're a narcissist and you embrace the flooding the zone media, um, model or, like, you know, the media strategy, whoever comes next, they're not, they won't have any traction, right? 39:10 Because you basically are saying, like, "I'm the last person that you'll [laughs] pay attention to," um, or, "I'm the last thing that you'll really pay attention to," right? 39:18 And I think there's a lot of media companies that would be happy with that as well. I think, you know, The New York Times would be happy being the last media company. Yeah. 39:26 Um- I, I think the, what, what you were talking about earlier, Mike, with, like, even, like, your mother getting tired of, you know, is Facebook bad, et cetera, like, maybe that's the risk that these, you know, the, the vague they we're talking about, m- media makers flooding the zone, et cetera- James Band seller. 39:43 Let's just-... like, that's the risk that's run Yeah, yeah. Yeah. [laughs] That, but that you, that you, like, um, 39:49 you know, run out of patience, and people, like, people just decide, like, "Oh, this entire platform is something that I can't give any of my attention to because all the fragments of attention it's been demanding from me are, like, you know, turning into some sort of, like, mental poison that I'm beginning to be able to name and, and feel and see," right? 40:07 Yeah. Like, maybe that's the risk that's run, is, like- That's a good point... a total plat- like, o- on a platform by platform basis, abandonment, um, based on, like, pure fragmented poisonous content. 40:18 I did have recently a really interesting experience where I was... What was I looking for? I was trying to figure out something. 40:24 There was something I needed to fix in my house, and I was googling around to try to figure out what to do, and I did not trust anything that I could find 'cause it all- Mm-hmm... it was all recent. 40:35 Uh, I couldn't find anything that was older that was clearly written by a human, and I was like, "I am just gonna go check out a home renovation look from the, home renovation book from the library." 40:47 [laughs] And that was the first time that I- Whoa... that I, yeah, that I had done that because I was like, "I don't, I don't wanna fuck up my house, uh, and I don't trust any of these things that I can find. 40:58 Uh, this all just sort of, like, stinks of LLM." And I think that's sort of what you're, what you're getting at where it's like the, like, the trust level- Yeah... is low at the moment. [laughs] Yeah. Right. 41:10 This has been a very nice episode, and we are excited- [laughs]... to see you next week. This has been Teslan. Mike, thank you for coming on. Thanks for having me. Thank you, Mike. Appreciate it. All right. Ciao. 41:23 [outro music]
