Transcript 0:00 [upbeat music] Welcome back to Tasteland. I am Francis Zehr. And I'm Daisy Alioto. And Daisy, who are we speaking to today? Today, we're speaking with Nick Soucie. 0:15 He's a strategy executive and entrepreneurial builder exploring the technological, societal, and psychological forces that shape our identity, perception, and culture. Um, he definitely wrote that himself. Uh... 0:29 [laughs] We'll allow it. We'll allow it this once. Wait, did you think, you thought he was gonna hire a writer? Well, no, sometimes we- Oh, you mean as in that we didn't write it. Yeah, this is from his website. 0:39 Yeah, sometimes we put them in our own words. This is... You know, yeah, we're just parroting his own words. [laughs] Um, no, this'll be a fun one. Um, I- do you get ads for this thing Brick ever on Instagram? Yeah. 0:53 I've been getting them more and more, and I've been seeing, like, then people making, like, organic, not paid posts about how they got the Brick. Mm. I was like, this weekend, I was just feeling in the throes of, 1:05 of short form video addiction. Um, and I, I didn't buy it, but I considered it, and I was thinking about what I would lose if I, you know, blocked myself from using Instagram, et cetera. Mm-hmm. 1:18 Actually, as, as an ad- I mean, even before getting to that point, the thing with this, with Brick, right, is it's, like, a, 1:25 like, I don't know, little module you put on your fridge or whatever, and then it's an app on your phone, and you, like, tap it to the thing to lock your stuff. Yeah. 1:33 And then you have to untap it to unlock it, and as somebody who works from home, it's like, kind of what's the point, because, uh, it, I'm still just here. I'd have to like... 1:42 I, I, I could go, like, put it at a park in my neighborhood [laughs] and then I'd have to go to the park to lock and unlock my phone. Anyways, um, I was, I was considering what would I lose- The temptation is present... 1:52 I would lose maybe access to ongoing conversations in DMs. Um, but the main thing I would lose is just, uh, ad- [laughs] advertising, information about what shou- what I should buy. I don't think you need that. 2:05 I don't think I do, but, and this is where I had pause and why I even brought this up, I 2:11 was on Instagram yesterday, and I saw a story from this photographer I like who has this book that I, I've wanted for a long time because it's, like, about... 2:22 It's photo, it's like a photo book of people, um, where I'm from. It's Lost Coast by Kurt Heidelberg. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Uh, and it was like... I think it was released around 10 years ago, very sold out. 2:32 Sometimes you would see a secondhand edition for, or, like, a resold edition for like, oh, $600. Obviously I'm not gonna buy that. Um, but there was an Instagram story, second edition, so I pre-ordered it- Mm... 2:44 and I was like, "Wow, if o- if I was not on Instagram looking at stories for an hour, I wouldn't have got the opportunity to buy this book." Yeah. Oh, you're right. That's what it's all about. 2:58 Yeah, I think everyone's trying to figure out how to discover cool stuff without getting sucked into the algorithm vortex. Um- Mm-hmm. I guess the answer is, like, go to a bookstore instead. 3:11 Yeah, because I mean, some of these alternative networks, like Perfectly Imperfect, it's not like you're f- you're not learning about that stuff in real time in the same way. Mm-hmm. 3:21 Um, and I certainly have found out about cool stuff that's timely, um, also from being on social media. I think it would be hard for me to cut out Twitter and be aware of certain conversations, but I don't know. 3:38 Maybe it's just cope. If they- I think it's cope... if they change the platform again and it gets worse, I just don't know how many more, I don't know how many more X algorithm changes I have in me, Francis. 3:49 [laughs] I did... I, I heard that they're gonna, I don't know if this is a real one, but I saw that they're gonna get rid of likes and, and, and, like, retweets as signals to the algorithm. Yeah, it's Grok only. 4:01 And it'll just be Grok sorted. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Grok all the way down. That might get me to leave. Even, even if it's good, I don't care, just as an excuse. 4:08 Um, anyways, lest we talk about social media for addiction for too long, let's talk about friend of the pod, Greta Rainbow's latest piece in Dirt. Yeah. This was a really good one. 4:19 So this was a response to, I guess, a round table that The Cut's book gossip newsletter had done about the state of the braided essay. And 4:30 Greta, you know, talked to more writers whose work has sort of been classified that way. 4:36 If you don't know, a braided essay is an essay that's sort of a hybrid between a personal essay and a nonfiction essay on a topic that's researchable. 4:48 So somebody weaving in, you know, the biography w- of an artist with, you know, their experience first encountering that artist, et cetera. And- Let me... 4:58 To, to be clear too, I had never heard of this term until that Cut piece came out a couple months ago- Mm-hmm... whenever that was. Um, and maybe I'm just not very, uh, literate, but- Mm-hmm... I, I... 5:12 To me I was like, isn't that just like, that's just like an essay? Like, so many essays are like that. Do we really need to, like, brand it like that? Anyways. 5:18 Well, yeah, and I think that that is kind of like verbatim what some of the people we talked to were saying. But it went in some interesting directions. 5:27 I think if there is a thesis, it was basically, like, issues facing the braided essay are the issues facing creative nonfiction in general. 5:35 And, you know, some people, like Maureen Fisher-Kwan had some really interesting thoughts on the role that Substack and Substack monetization plays in this. Um, this was... 5:46 We were working on this for a while, but it sort of came on the heels of discourse around, uh, basically diary posts that Mike Crumpler had done on Substack, and conversation about does this type of writingAdd value. 6:02 Why is there incentive for this type of diaristic confessional writing that's not really edited with the reader in mind? So we, [laughs] we sort of called it like theater of... a theory of mind for the reader- Mm-hmm... 6:15 is what you learn when you learn how to write, and sort of similar to us, hopefully we have theory of mind for the podcast listener of like- Mm-hmm. Theory of ear... 6:24 can you-- If you're saying something, you should say it because you think it's interesting enough for somebody else. 6:31 Um- It's your job to do the service of filtering as the, as the producer of the thing, filtering- Yeah... out what the listener doesn't need or the reader doesn't need. 6:40 I mean, I had this thought the other day that I sort of tried to encapsulate in a tweet that was bas- basically just like a lot of the people that we term creators are actually consumers of the self. Mm-hmm. 6:49 It's just that they have to externalize their experience in order to consume it, um, because they have no way of integrating the self, uh, without performing the self, and like that used to be... 7:01 That idea kind of comes from like John Berger's Ways of Seeing and is very gendered. Like he talks about the way that like women understand themselves through performing their gender. 7:11 But I think the internet has made it so like it's everyone now. Like some- That's just what social media is... some of the worst offenders are men. Yeah. Mm-hmm. 7:19 Um, and it's very hollow because you have this mantle of creator, but it's like this person's not really creating anything. They're publicly consuming their own self-narrative, and I think like 7:30 that's why some of this stuff falls really flat and hollow. And it's like you could write about your sex life- They're building a personal brand. Yeah. It's like you're not Anna Urno. Like, 7:39 and people can write whatever they want, but nobody has the right for people to pay attention or pay money for it. 7:46 [upbeat music] Um, you posted something like a couple weeks ago, "Posts are the Cheetle of your identity." 7:58 [laughs] Uh, which I had to look up what Cheetle is, which I understand it's the dust left on your fingers after you eat Cheetos. 8:03 Um, but we were just talking about the Greta Rainbow's new piece in Dirt about braided essays, laptop, uh, nonfiction, and how like this, the... I don't know. 8:17 How, how, how, the, this, there's this genre of essay that's really just personal brand-building and doesn't really serve the reader at all. Um, and I thought that this was a good kind of pithy one-liner about that. Hmm. 8:29 Uh, I did not read Greta Rainbow's piece. I have, as of this morning, seen little chunks of it, uh, in my Twitter feed as Cheetles- Well, that's how it's meant to be consumed. Yeah. 8:40 That, that is the way that all, all essays are really meant to be consumed. Uh, so I, I saw a few good paragraphs. Um, but yeah. I think, um, 8:51 I don't know whether you are someone who partakes in Cheetos or Takis or any such snack that leaves this, uh, unremovable residue on your fingertips. Like, I just, um, 9:05 you know, I, I'm, I play the social game as, as we all do, right? But I just get this sense, uh, frequently that I'm just kind of leaving little bits of myself all over the internet, uh- Mm-hmm... 9:18 that is kind of now stuck there and perhaps not going to be removed, and I feel very hyper aware of that. And sometimes when I see friends or peers or folks just putting things up online, I'm just like... 9:32 Sometimes it gives me pause. Hmm. Like, w- who is this for? Why? If this is now here forever, like, how might you look back on this a year from now, 10 years from now? Like, feels like Cheetle. 9:46 Just we're just kind of sprinkling our little Cheeto dust all over the internet. 9:49 I would go further to say even, you know, any, any, anything you like, any way you engage on social media, any, any data that you input into a social media database, um, at all is, is microplastics of the self. Hmm. 10:05 It's training data- Exactly... as Matt Dryhurst would say. Mm-hmm. So Nick, I mean, you're asking all of these questions, like that you, you have about the self and posting, but like, do you have... 10:16 Have you come upon any answers in thinking about, like, what does this mean? Who is this for? Um, not necessarily. I mean, I feel like that's the weird 10:26 in-between space we exist in now, or at least there's, there's kind of, uh, choices to make, right? Like, I could fully disconnect from the internet and just be like, "No more Cheetle," right? Mm-hmm. 10:38 Um, or I could lean further in and be like, "Embrace the Cheetle," uh, be like, "I'm gonna spread this Cheetle dust fucking everywhere." [laughs] Um, so you know, I, I fall somewhere in between. You know, I think we, 10:52 as professionals of the kinds of things and spaces that we partake in, it's, I feel like it just comes with the territory. So there's no judgment behind it. Mm-hmm. 10:59 It's more just kind of poking fun at myself, if anything, which I feel like is most of what I do, uh, on the internet, so. 11:07 Well, given our age though, it's like we, we had the opportunity to establish an offline identity before we kind of came fully online, which is not, um, opportunity that generations that are younger than us have had. 11:22 And, you know, it's impacted people in like a number of ways. I think a lot of people would say it was ac- accelerated by the isolation of COVID. 11:32 Um, even in like that gooning article that went viral from Parker- I still haven't read it. All right. Well- Buckle up. That's some good bedtime reading... you can't hold, you can't hold off forever, Francis. 11:43 [laughs] Um- I'm imagining that article... tonight at 11:30 PM, Francis will be in bed just scrolling his phone reading about the goon squad. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, friend of the pod, um... Well, friend of the pod? 11:54 I would say friend of Dirt. Dirt contributor Daniel Kolitz wrote it. Mm. And, um, [lips smack] if you want to read Daniel's piece in Dirt, it's quite different. 12:02 Um, it's an ode to flip phone photography.We published a couple years ago. It's very good. But, um, you know, he kind of goes into how 12:11 if your whole life is online, it's, like, possible to develop a sexual identity that's, like, entirely image-based. Mm-hmm. Um, and that's like, it's just a very extreme version of what's happening to everyone, right? 12:25 Like, you're talking about how posts are sort of these residue of the self, but you could invert it and say, like, for some people, the self is, like, the residue of their posts, right? 12:41 Um, and like, what's happening offline is actually the residue of where people prefer to spend most of their time, which is online, 12:51 and that's a really big, um, it's a really big paradigm shift for, like, how we've understood humanity. 12:58 And I think people are saying AI will actually help us get offline, um, by automating the elements of the self that have to, like, quantify and signal in that space. But 13:12 it doesn't help if people don't know how to be offline, if they don't know how to take advantage of that time or build those relationships. Mm-hmm. 13:19 So maybe the next sort of era of, like, coaching and courses and thought leadership is gonna be, like, how to be offline. Mm-hmm. 13:28 'Cause like the last wave was sort of like how to log off, and now it's like, well, what do you do once you have logged off? 'Cause, like, we have people that are just, like, walking around. 13:37 Like, I saw a TikTok of this girl, and she... 13:41 You know how, like, people will do a TikTok, um, on the street, like somebody wants to show their outfit, so they, like, prop their phone on something and back up to show their outfit on the sidewalk when, like, other people aren't around? 13:51 This girl had been walking around for half an hour looking for a place to do that. It's like you actually just don't know how to spend your time. Wow. 14:00 Um, like, the primacy of getting a photo of yourself at the heart of the experience of just going for a walk, um, it's not new, but it's become, I think, a lot more insidious and just almost like, well, of course. 14:17 Of course, if there isn't a photo, it didn't happen. Um, so I don't know where we go with that. Yeah. I do feel like, um, it's hard to turn off the online brain, even in physical space, I think, for many folks. 14:33 I find myself slipping to this sometimes too, where, you know, I'm kind of moving through the world and experiencing it, thinking about, uh... 14:42 It's, it's easy to fall into the trap of like, "Oh, this thing that I'm seeing or this thing that I'm doing right now is really cool. I should record this or capture it- Mm-hmm... or document it for this space," right? 14:54 Um, and there's nothing wrong with that, I think, to some degree. But, uh, to your point or story, Daisy, I think it's really easy to just, like, only be switched on in that mode, where you're- Mm-hmm... 15:03 still kind of always online even when you're not online. Mm-hmm. Uh, you've never fully disconnected. Um, I think... Yeah, I think presence, true presence is really tough, uh, for a lot of folks now. 15:20 How do you think about presence in marketing? 15:22 Because I've noticed, like, the, the backlash to Friend, a lot of the companies that sort of jumped on it were ones like Heineken, who have always tried to, like, rely on a sense of presence of like, "Oh, share a beer with your friend," or da, da, da in their, the narrative of their company. 15:39 Um, but I think, like, we've also probably offline talked a lot about, um, individuality and agency being a big theme in marketing for the last, like, five to 10 years, and I'm curious if you're seeing, um, glimmers of more, like, 15:56 a collective, um, community-oriented messages in brands and how they're showing up. Yeah. I mean, I feel like part of my whole thing is all, all things that can be true, all are true at once. 16:13 Like, I think there- [chuckles]... is more of that happening as a result of the current kind of meta or dominant paradigm, um, and probably will be more of that. 16:22 I mean, it's, it's hard to even answer this without acknowledging that just, like, community has long since been a, a buzzword now that has completely lost meaning as a result of this. So that feels very in the air. 16:37 Mm-hmm. 16:38 Um, but I also think the opposite's true and probably will continue to be even more so, where, um, leaning into irony and cringe and performance and, like, that's been very present, and it feels like that's not going away anytime soon either, so. 16:54 Um, but I say that both for brands and also for people, um, consuming such brands, so. It does feel like this trend of trailers for startups is kind of speedrunning the cringe cycle. Mm-hmm. 17:09 Um, all attention is good attention, which sort of feeds into your thesis, which I spend a lot of time thinking about, which is, um, you know, if you wanna make a dent in the monoculture, start a war. Mm-hmm. Is that... 17:23 I'm, I'm phrasing it wrong. Like, can you explain? I'm gonna go on Substack and click edit and change the title. No, I don't think- So if you might wanna make a dent in monoculture, start a war. [laughs] No, dent... 17:33 I don't... Dent is, like, maybe mixing some metaphors here. But can you, can you talk about, uh, in broad strokes what this piece was and how you've performed it live? 17:43 'Cause I did see you perform it live at a Drake symposium. [laughs] Okay. Well, first, I feel like one needs to explain what is a Drake sym... six- sixposium, not symposium. [laughs] I'm sorry. [laughs] Excuse me. 17:56 Uh, uh, so our dear friend Ruby Tullo, uh, started... Is this the third or the fourth year now? 18:03 Three or four years ago, he started, uh, the Drake Sixposium every October, which is hopefully- Yeah, I was gonna say, this was a year ago. I know. 18:11 Um-And every October, he curates a number of different folks, uh, to talk about Drake from a very academic and media theory and philosophy kind of standpoint. It is very funny and also very, um, 18:29 thought-provoking. Um, and so yeah, a lot of interesting folks give all their hot takes on Drake, um, some, some funny, some very serious. And I, previous to this, uh, one last year, 18:42 had already been thinking a lot about really feeling how much every time I open up my phone, it feels like everyone's just fighting about everything, um, and was thinking a lot about war literally and metaphorically. 18:57 And the more that I was digging into, uh, kind of the history of war and also media and the, the relationship between those two things, it was becoming more and more clear that 19:10 for all of history, there's this, this strange and funny relationship between those two things, where the more kind of conflict and tension, uh, things that resemble war or are actually war that happen, the more that people kind of come together. 19:24 Mm-hmm. Um, 19:26 it seems counterintuitive, uh, but I think those dynamics are for sure playing out on the internet, uh, more and more it seems through politics, through news, through, in this case, uh, music with the, the great, 19:43 the great beef to end all beefs, uh, between Kendrick and Drake, uh, which is what I talked about. But 19:49 ev-every dimension of culture, uh, I talked about too, also in Hollywood, uh, some of the biggest kind of monocultural moments. 19:57 Uh, I was using kinda Google search volume as a proxy for how to measure like the amount of people in one time and space together online. Mm. 20:06 Um, and even, so even in Hollywood, it's like the biggest moments of the past few years were like, uh, Chris Rock, uh- [laughs] Will Smith slapping Chris Rock. Will Smith, yeah, the, the slap. 20:19 Yeah, I was on a Future Commerce podcast last week, and I was telling this story, and I said, uh, "Will Smith slapping The Rock-" [laughs]... 20:28 which I think actually would've been very funny, but- I can't believe we got front-run by Future Commerce, but you've been on their podcast before, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not a special good. 20:33 Um, uh, anyways- It's not special... long, long story short, if you wanna make a dent in monoculture, start a war. But when I had- [laughs]... 20:33 first, uh, given this talk and also put this up online, you know, I, I knew what was gonna happen, which was this was already a trajectory that's happening. 20:33 It's only gonna get more of this, and also that most people don't read anything, Substack articles and otherwise, and will just read the title, and their takeaway from this will be like, "Oh, I should start fights on the internet to get attention," uh, which has also been true of f-friends and peers, uh, what they've done as a result of interacting with this piece. 20:33 But, you know, the, the main point at the end was that I do-- I am also seeing things around the ends of wars, the ends of beefs and conflicts also- Mm... kind of having similar results. 20:33 Um, the biggest recent one being Oasis's, uh, reunion. Mm-hmm. 20:33 So my, my hope, even though I knew it wasn't ever gonna happen, was that people would actually read this and be like, "Maybe we should stop fighting on the internet." Um, but that has proven to not happen so far. 20:33 No, we all held hands and sang Kumbaya. Yeah. You don't remember? I, uh- You were there. Will Smith slapping Chris Rock. Will Smith, yeah, the, the slap. 20:33 Yeah, I was on a Future Commerce podcast last week, and I was telling this story, and I said, uh, "Will Smith slapping The Rock-" [laughs]... 20:34 which I think actually would've been very funny, but- I can't believe we got front-run by Future Commerce, but you've been on their podcast before, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not a special good. 20:39 Um, uh, anyways- It's not special... long, long story short, if you wanna make a dent in monoculture, start a war. But when I had- [laughs]... 20:45 first, uh, given this talk and also put this up online, you know, I, I knew what was gonna happen, which was this was already a trajectory that's happening. 20:54 It's only gonna get more of this, and also that most people don't read anything, Substack articles and otherwise, and will just read the title, and their takeaway from this will be like, "Oh, I should start fights on the internet to get attention," uh, which has also been true of f-friends and peers, uh, what they've done as a result of interacting with this piece. 21:15 But, you know, the, the main point at the end was that I do-- I am also seeing things around the ends of wars, the ends of beefs and conflicts also- Mm... kind of having similar results. 21:28 Um, the biggest recent one being Oasis's, uh, reunion. Mm-hmm. 21:32 So my, my hope, even though I knew it wasn't ever gonna happen, was that people would actually read this and be like, "Maybe we should stop fighting on the internet." Um, but that has proven to not happen so far. 21:43 No, we all held hands and sang Kumbaya. Yeah. You don't remember? I, uh- You were there. 21:49 So as we were starting this podcast, um, [clears throat] Ruby sent out a newsletter on Friend, which I think the Friends marketing has-- it's, I wouldn't call it monocultural. 22:00 I don't think it's that huge, but, uh, the scale of the marketing in New York, certainly large, and the, the vitriol against it and people drawing on it, et cetera. 22:08 It's, it's definitely a marketing campaign designed to, um, designed for war, right? Like the white, the white ads in, in the subway. You can draw on them, et cetera. Um, but 22:21 I wanted to read a paragraph from Ruby's re- it's a, it's quite a long review of Friend. Um, he... Here, one paragraph: "Let me be clear, Friend is not a neutral technology. 22:32 It has, beknownst or unbeknownst to it, a specific perspective on the world, phone on, notification on, text-based interaction. 22:40 Through its dissemination, it formalizes this particular way of understanding the world, one that has particular values and will ineluctably export models of sociality onto us. 22:51 And if we're not careful, such devices will slowly substitute sufficiency for significance, function for friction, simulation for sensation." 23:01 Um, which I think ties well together everything we've been talking about since you and I started recording, uh, Daisy- Mm... 23:09 even before Nick came in, of this like, like Friend being this thing that requires you to, to have phone still to- Yeah... to be like so plugged in, um, besides it being a, the, a canvas for, for social media war. 23:25 What do you think about, like, Taylor Swift obviously tried to kinda take a shot at Charli XCX on her new album, but it felt like it didn't really make that... I mean, people were- I already forgot about that... 23:36 talking about it. Yeah. Like i-is it because like Taylor Swift is already so monocultural that like that doesn't really move the needle? Hmm. 23:48 I, um- Like her engagement obviously was a way bigger story than that, and that runs against the thesis of starting a war. Yeah. I do wonder. 23:56 I, I've, uh, I'm, to be honest, not super tapped in on Taylor Swift stuff, so I've not been closely following the Taylor and Charli beef. But I do wonder, uh, to pull it back to the original analogy, like had, 24:15 had the Kendrick and Drake thingKind of been more Drake, uh, maybe attacking Kendrick if that would've played similarly. I mean, it kinda did in practice. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 24:28 Like, obviously there were many, many people in support of Drake versus Kendrick. Well, Drake is better- But- I guess better now It's a punching down that's not interesting. 24:38 Yeah, that, that's kinda what I'm wondering is if, if the- Right... perception of punching up versus down plays a role, uh, as it does in, say, how people respond to, like, comedy or something. But- Mm... maybe. 24:49 I don't know. Mm-hmm. Well, it's like the... even the Friend campaign. It's like the Friend campaign itself isn't what's interesting, it's the backlash against it that's interesting. 24:57 The Friend campaign was almost like a war on our attention, though. I think, um, 25:04 it's interesting to see s- how some people are responding to it, whether they like Avi or not, whether they like Friend as a brand or not, or even the product or not. 25:14 It, it really feels like the media itself is the product in many ways. Mm-hmm. I feel similarly- Yeah... about Cluley. Yeah. 25:22 Um, I think they're running similar-ish playbooks, and I see a lot of VCs kind of pushing for that, uh, as a, a playbook for other startups, but- Distribution over product. Yeah. 25:34 And, you know, I think, I think, I'm, I'm not quick to judge. I, I'm a- I'm actually very curious in the long run how this plays, um, for both Avi and Friend as separate entities. 25:46 I think it's probably a net win for Avi because even if Friend fails, he's gonna leverage- Mm-hmm... his ability to create massive amounts of attention for anything he does next. Mm. 25:56 And I think that is only gonna play to his favor, um, for launching a new product, raising money, like that feels net positive probably for him. I think for Friend as a brand and a product, I have 26:08 skepticism, but I am very curious to see if generating attention by any means necessary can translate to product sales. Hmm. 26:18 Um, I, I mean, I, I follow what Avi's been sharing, and it seems like the sales are relatively low, so we'll see. But, you know, as someone who works in brand a lot, 26:30 I think, um, it'll be interesting to see if this kind of attention at all costs paradigm continues and how that plays for brands. 26:38 'Cause I think where a lot of where brands-- the idea of a brand started in a product sense was, like, trust. 26:45 Like, when you are presented with many options on a shelf in a grocery store or whatever, which is the one that you know that you can trust of all the options for whatever your emotional and functional purposes are. 26:57 And so if the whole premise now is that you can do anything you want just to get attention, doesn't necessarily engender trust, and in many cases, just the complete opposite. 27:10 Uh, so I think, you know, depending on the brand and product, that may or may not matter. In the case of, like, a technology and how you spend, like, intimate time and communication, 27:22 I could see that not working in, in the favor of, like, how you build a brand and try to sell a product around that. But I, I really don't know. I, I'm genuinely curious. Like, I'm, I'm not a Friend hater or lover. 27:36 Like, I'm, I'm so curious. Uh, I'm so fascinated by Avi and, and Friend and kind of what it's sparking in the conver- the, like, cultural conversation right now. 27:47 Well, I also think depending on the stage you're at, an early stage startup, like, the product is attention. Um, I think it really depends on what you're building. But, um, 28:02 you know, there are stages of startup, like pre-seed and seed, where arguably you're being judged on your momentum and not your ability to monetize. And so if you have an investor that in... 28:12 s- in that stage, obviously anything that increases attention to the product increases, um, 28:19 another investor coming in and doing a subsequent round, which increases, uh, the odds that the earlier investors will get a payout. But I think 28:32 whether that's actually, like, the best thing for the founder or the product in the long term is extremely debatable. 28:37 Avi sort of like parlayed the attention that he was getting from the Friend out-of-home advertising and spending a lot of money on the domain into actually having the first touch of the product not be the Friend necklace, but the Friend interface and chat and the personality of that chat online. 28:56 Um, and then trying to kind of like sell people into the Friend necklace once they get used to interacting with Friend digitally, and I think that's really smart. He probably could have started by doing that. 29:07 But whether it's enough when you have, like, Claude and other LLMs, um, that are more established is... it remains to be seen. Yeah. 29:17 Uh, I think, Nick, I mean, what you were saying about brands being initially premised in trust, right? The... 29:21 And then the type of brand building we're talking about now, attention capture is premised not in trust, but entertainment, right? 29:27 And I think, like, I'm-- I can still think of modern software brands, you know, relatively new, like Linear, right? 29:35 Um, that's a brand that it has-- it's project management software for engineers, basically, and they've built a strong brand premised on trust and quality. 29:43 Um, and I believe they've even been profitable for some time, so maybe they can, you know, afford to do that. They're not, like, struggling to, to capture market share in that same way. 29:51 But then this, like, Cluley Friend brand building we're talking about is about attention capture, which means it's about entertainment, which isn't necessarily about building trust. 29:59 It's just like, it's more of, like, burning trust, potentially even the longer you look at it, right? Yeah. Well, I think two things are coming to mind. 30:08 I think, one, uh, I'm not actually timing this, but I do have this, like, little ticker in front of me next to the record thing. 30:14 And, you know, we've spent at least five minutes talking about Friend now in, in a limited amount of time. We have, like, less than an hour to talk to each other, right? 30:23 And we're already spending-A significant portion of that just talking about friends. 30:27 So I think there is something to be said about, you know, we, we could talk about anything, we could talk about any brand, and we're talking about this. So- Mm. [laughs]... 30:35 I do think there is, uh, something to be said about the power in being able to shape... capture people's attention and shape where... 30:45 how they pay attention to that, even beyond the moment of, like, I saw, you know, the graffiti on this, um, subway ad or whatever, uh, we're still talking about it. 30:55 So I think from a marketing standpoint, like that's, that's such a huge step one that most people can never even get over. So I think there is a great deal of power in that because to me, 31:08 attention is the first step in how you shape people's not just attention, but their beliefs and actions and whatnot. I was- The- Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I was gonna say, the other thing too is 31:19 to me there's a difference between capturing attention and like, uh, monetization of product. I think there are certain realms where capturing attention is the point and is monetizable. Mm. Um, [lip smacks] 31:34 whether that be, you know, the Drake and Kendrick war, that converts to streams. All you need is attention, you get payouts, right? Same th- It's the same premise for social media. 31:44 Like, you get crater payouts by just saying crazy shit online that gets a lot of attention. Um, I think even what you were describing about shareholder value, Daisy is similar in that sense. 31:56 Um, I think politics to some degree is operating under a similar premise. Like, people are not... Some people are, but many people are not necessarily voting with their dollars, right? 32:07 Kind of voting with their attention and their, uh, their, their vote. 32:12 But I think, like, selling a physical good to me is a different thing, um, if, if you can actually convert the attention capture to, "I will now open up my wallet and buy this thing." Oh, totally. Yeah. 32:26 I think that was hard mode. Um, and I think he realized that. Uh, I think, I mean, not to start a gender war, but I do think going viral only acquired prestige in Silicon Valley when men started doing it. 32:41 I think there's, like, assumption if, like, a man goes viral with his product, there's skill involved, whereas like if a woman does, it's like, "Of course, like, women go viral all the time just for like posting a selfie." 32:52 Um, and so I think I have a lot of hesitation around stunt marketing because I feel like I could do the same thing and get a very different result than the Clueless founder or Avi. Um, and I think... 33:08 I don't know if it's holding me back, I just feel really strongly that that's... it's not the way, um, that I see women growing their products right now. 33:17 Um, and I think everyone who has been around the block and been a f- male founder for a while, like, intuitively knows that, like, vir- going viral as a female founder is probably more of a liability than it is an asset. 33:29 Yeah. I, I mean, I think I, I agree with what you're saying, and I think also just because the nature of going viral has... the vibe has shifted, as they say, like I think once upon a time, going viral was a marker of 33:45 success or something, and I think now going viral is kind of like, "Oh, what did they... What happened?" Like, [laughs] "What went wrong? Uh, are they getting canceled?" 33:55 Like, I think it, it pulls so many other questions about why that might be happening. Um, n- kind of in the vein of, you know, Yancey Strickler's Dark Forest thing. It's like to be so visible is to be threatened. 34:10 You know, I, I, I see that a lot, um, in brand world. But- Mm... again, like from a, from a brand and marketing standpoint, 34:19 I feel like there's this assumption that, you know, whatever a dominant playbook is, is what everyone should do, and that's just not how you build brand. 34:28 It, it's one option, but I think depending on what type of brand and narrative and story you wanna tell and how you want people to remember or perceive you, uh, there's so many different levers at your disposal. 34:42 Um, just kind of goes back to the trust thing. I was at, um, [lip smacks] I was at The Sandbar launching- I was just about to ask you about that. Yeah. Uh, shout out Sandbar and Mina. 34:55 Um, but you know, I think the whole premise of Sandbar as a product is like it's so internal in your stream of conscio-consciousness stream. Can you explain what it is? Yeah. Okay. It's hardware and software. So yeah. 35:08 This, this is not Sandbar, but as a, just a reference point. So Sandbar is a, a ring- Mm-hmm... as hardware, and then there's the... This, this is a s- This would be Sandbar ring, and then you have, um, [lip smacks] 35:23 Stream, uh, which is like the software side. It's kind of your- Mm-hmm... ChatGPT. 35:28 Uh, so you, you can like speak, whisper into the ring, uh, and it will listen and kind of capture your stream of consciousness thoughts into- Mm... your phone. Um, 35:39 the way that Mina describes it is the, the ring as a form factor is like the mouse for your voice. Mm-hmm. As, as the metaphor. Um, but the, the premise of it I, I love. 35:51 Like, it's how can you close the gap between just capturing thought, whether it's creative or anything, into something that we'll remember and you can kind of edit with no screen, right? 36:03 It's, it's the opposite of, uh, Ruby's friend review in, in many ways. Mm. Um, it's supposed to keep you present and attentive to physical space, which I love. 36:14 But anyways, my, my point being from a brand building standpoint, you know, there's something so intimate about the idea and the gesture and the kind of purpose and values around it that for-A brand and a product like Sandbar to then come out of the gate and be like starting wars on the internet to go viral feels so antithetical to the type of 36:38 brand perception you'd wanna build around something like that versus, you know, last night was so intimate, it was so familiar, um, and like those are the kinds of qualities that you'd want associated, I think, with a brand and a product like that, so- Mm-hmm 36:55 ... I think those choices matter a lot. Speaking of war, you did a project about the Wor- War of the Worlds. Um, you sent me a copy. I immediately defiled it. Um- [laughs] 37:10 Can you explain a little bit more about what that was? Sure. Um, so s- some, some context, um, for those not familiar. So Orson Welles 37:22 in 1938, almost 100 years ago, uh, gave this radio broadcast of War of the Worlds, this adaptation of H.G. Wells' book about alien invasion, and, um, 37:34 you know, instead of presenting this as a fictional story through the radio, he presented it as if it was live news. 37:41 And as the story goes, allegedly people heard it and believed that aliens were invading the earth, and panic, mass hysteria and panic, fleeing their homes, um, 37:52 you know, jumping out of windows, committing suicide, all the, all the tales. 37:56 And, uh, and then Orson was subsequently mi- mini canceled by 1938 terms and apologized, and then went on to become, uh, one of the greatest Hollywood directors of all time. Um, 38:10 and that's, that's kind of the story that I hear a lot. When I was working on this piece, I was kind of asking a lot of friends and peers, like, "Are you familiar with this story?" And every American said yes. 38:22 I think that was interesting to see, uh- My mother when I was a kid told me a story- Yeah... about her father working at a gas station at that time and, like, observing the people panicked coming and buying gas and such. 38:33 S- uh, wait. Say, say more about this. I'm so curious. That's- that's really all I know. I just remember- Okay... 38:37 when I was a kid she was like, "Yes, like, your, your grandfather worked at this gas station, and, like, this, this story came on the radio and, like, it was, it was a fake." And, like, a- and she... 38:46 I think she told me that he knew it was, it was a story. 38:48 Like, af- like, at first he was kind of confused, but then kind of realizes it's a story, but there's, like, people coming to buy gas who are, like, so panicked and, like- Yeah... on the run. Yeah. Interesting. 38:59 Interesting. So anyways, uh, you know, why, why am I talking about this thing that happened almost 100 years ago? Uh, it's... 39:07 I still hear it, this story frequently referenced, even more so now because it is one of these early stories of, like, fake news- Mm-hmm... before we had a, a word for it, so it feels very much kind of in the 39:19 cultural conversation. And I myself have referenced this story many times in my own writing and research about, you know, media and our relationship with being on the internet and all these things. 39:31 And it wasn't until about a year ago that I was actually doing more reading about this story and came to realize that the story that we've been telling for 100 years is, like, kind of wrong. 39:40 Like, it's not totally right and factual, um, and became very interested and borderline obsessed with, like, well, what had happened, and 39:51 why did we have this collectively false memory, and what are the conditions that allow for this kind of phenomenon to happen, and what does it say about today and, like, our current relationship with media? And, um, 40:09 you know, what, what actually happened was at this point in time, 1938, it was a very historically significant time. Uh, middle of the Great Depression, horrible economic times of, of hardship. Uh, 40:24 it was the year before World War II started, so kind of a lot of geopolitical tension and fear. Uh, you know, Nazis and fascism's spreading across the world. 40:35 Uh, and three, it was when the radio as this new technology became more of this m- mainstream consumer object. Um, 40:44 the radio was invented prior, but it wasn't something in people's homes that you now see, like, photographs from then where, like, you have the family in the living room and they're sitting around the radio- Mm-hmm... 40:53 and listening to whatever. It was then that that was starting to happen. And, um, all of those things combined, the newspaper industry was taking a beating where, uh, more people were buying radios, 41:11 listening to the radio for the news, buying less newspapers. Advertisers do what advertisers do. They, like, follow the people to the radio, uh, broadcasters away from the newspapers. 41:22 And then also it's the middle of the Great Depression, and so all those things combined, newspaper industry was doing worse. 41:30 And for that reason, uh, the newspaper industry hated the radio broadcasters, and they were doing as much as they possibly could to make the lives of radio people a, a living hell, uh, especially in, in government. 41:44 They were throwing their weight around trying to get all of these, uh, laws and regulations put in place to cancel the radio, ban the radio, destroy the radio. 41:53 And, and they were quite successful for a number of years putting real laws in place where, uh, the radio broadcasters were very restricted in being able to share the news basically. 42:05 Um, they could only share news for, like, five minutes a day. They had to direct people to buy the local newspaper for more news. Um, you know, r- th- these were, like, real laws. And so, um, 42:20 it did so happen that Orson Welles gave this radio broadcast of War, of War of the Worlds saying that aliens were invading the Earth, uh, and people did hear it, but the scale of it was very s- relatively small.Um, you know, it was out of this CBS broadcasting station in New York. 42:39 I think people probably around New York and New Jersey and maybe some other places heard it. 42:44 Uh, but we're talking like a few thousand people, and then the, the amount of people that heard and were genuinely like, "Oh, fuck, aliens," were probably quite small. Hmm. Um, however, the newspaper 43:00 people heard this story and were like, "Aha, what a, what a golden opportunity," and ran the story across like every newspaper around the country saying that this new evil, magical radio technology was brainwashing people into believing that aliens were invading the Earth, uh, as another step in their attempt to ban the, the radio. 43:25 And so that is the story that went viral by 1938 standards, uh, and is the story that we've been repeating and remembering, you know, 100 years later to today. 43:38 And so I think I'm so fascinated by this story for so many reasons because it- it's-- to me, it says so much about our current relationship with media specifically, but also just 43:52 every level of this stor- every layer of this story mirrors so much of today, um, from like are we heading towards a, you know, a, a recession or dep- or economic depression? Are we on the verge of World War III? 44:05 Is TikTok gonna be banned? People are worried about, you know, people believing everything they hear on social media and podcasts, widespread panic and hysteria about AI psychosis. 44:16 It's like it's all the same shit over and over again. Um, and I'm so like 44:23 tickled by the fact that there's so many lessons in this story, and the only thing that we remember and keep repeating is that aliens were invading the Earth. Um, I think that says a lot about human beings. 44:36 Like, to me, this is a story about like the human condition, so yeah. 44:41 And then you get probably my grandfather telling my mom this story when she's a kid to scare her, and then she telling it to me when I'm a kid to scare her, and it's like this, uh, this fake news passed down generations. 44:53 Yeah. It's just... it's, uh, so interesting about how we mythologize new and unfamiliar technologies. And like I said, I mean, this story is still being referenced semi-frequently 45:06 as a proxy for, you know, social media and now AI, and it's, it's like we don't even understand what the story's trying to tell us, you know? 45:17 We're, we're just kind of actually feeding into more of the mythologizing of new technologies for better and, and for worse, so. Mm-hmm. 45:26 Um, last time I saw you, you were telling me about this book, Haunted Media, which I bought and I have here, but I have not- Ooh. -begun reading it yet. Uh, sorry, Daisy. [laughs] No, I collect dust. It's all right. 45:38 But this was, um- I hold up a DVD of Titanic. [laughing] But, but this is very much related to what you're talking about, right? Tell me-- Tell us a little bit about the ideas in this book. Yeah. O-okay. 45:48 Well, this is o-o-well, this has been one of my favorite books for a while, and I, I just keep coming back to it because this book, uh, Haunted Media by Jeffrey Sconce, big, big fan, um, is basically about how... 46:03 He, he's exploring how every w- new wave of electric media since the telegraph has followed a similar pattern of these like strange spiritualist beliefs that have emerged around each one, uh, and how it's manifested has changed, but the pattern is quite similar. 46:20 Um, and it starts with the telegraph. 46:23 And for example, with the telegraph, when the telegraph was first invented and started to be, uh, you know, a-adopted and, and just kind of enter the mainstream awareness, along with it came, uh, the start of like the Western spiritualism movement of seances, mediums. 46:45 Hmm. Uh, and yeah, it's, it's so interesting. 46:50 But I, I think one thing that Jeffrey Sconce talks about that I think is related to this War of the Worlds story is he draws a distinction between a technology and the concept of a technology- Hmm... 47:05 uh, which I think we're very bad at not conflating, uh, with our current modern technologies, where- Absolutely... in the case of the telegraph, it's like the idea of disembodied communication. 47:17 It's the first time that you could speak in real time across long distances. That, I, that as like I... as a possibility did not exist before then. I mean, it did in the... like, like mail a letter, right? 47:29 But it's not a, not real time communication. And so with that technical ability then came a new concept with the technology of disembodied communication, which then manifested as like 47:43 disembodied communication with spirits, right? 47:46 Um, and so you kind of follow this lineage of new technologies beget new concepts of technologies beget new kind of, uh, how they manifest in the cultural discourse or action of then, you know, seances and mediums to now, you know, a lot of interesting is happening today. 48:07 Um, but yeah, I, I think it's, it's similar with the, uh, with the War of the Worlds story where, you know, this idea of like communication not through the written word. 48:23 I mean, we're talking about this, uh, this is being talked about a lot now as we return to an oral culture or a, a post-literate society, right? 48:32 Um, I think a lot of the conversation around the radio is very strikingly similar to the conversations happening today about-This move away from the written word as kind of this objective, uh, non-emotional experience in how you receive information through the medium- Mm-hmm... 48:48 versus through radio. It's, it's instant, it surrounds you, it's immersive, it's emotional. 48:54 You're kind of just like swept up in the moment of, uh, how the medium is communicating to you, uh, or how the information passes through the medium. So, uh, you know, I think the, 49:09 the idea that aliens were invading the Earth was obviously not true, but I do think there was something about the form of that story fit the moment of this constant fear of invasion of the Germans or the Japanese or whatever coming in overhead and- Mm... 49:28 you know, harming you or taking over your physical space, which did ha- you know, happen. Like Pearl Harbor only happened about a year or two after that. Like the... 49:39 It really captured the moment of what people, I think, were feeling, uh, whether... Even if it wasn't factually correct. 49:46 But I think it says a lot about why certain myths take hold because they are the correct form of the emotional moment, and how these mediums are also the correct form of how they're delivered. 49:58 Um, and I see that happening a lot now with their relationship with social media or podcasts- Mm-hmm... or AI, and I think we have a hard time separating the technology from the kind of myth of the technology. Mm-hmm. 50:10 This, I, as, as many things have since I saw it, this makes me think of Eddington, and how Eddington is bas- is, is a movie about like the phone and like about the intimacy- Mm... 50:18 and quickness of, of phone technology, right? 50:20 Like, there's one thing I'm thinking of specifically is like when the Joaquin Phoenix character in this moment of like stress, and I think it's like after this confrontation in the grocery store over masks, he goes, um... 50:34 I might get, be getting the exact moment wrong, but he goes and he sits in his car and he films like, um, you know, a short form video just like this, uh, where he's, he's so passionate and he announces that he's gonna be running for mayor. 50:45 Um, and it's this like ability to capture this like raw emotion instantly, and then instantly broadcast it, right? Like, that's what characterizes so much of the phone. I also think too, I, I, I, um- Mm... 50:57 more and more when I've like been in spaces where it's like, oh, I've seen that person on the internet, or I was like at some... This Colin and Samir conference, and there's all these, you know, creators there. 51:07 It's like, "Oh, I've seen that person on the internet." I'm like, "Wow, they're a lot shorter than I expected," right? 51:10 There's like the intimacy of s- looking at somebody basically eye to eye or across the table on a phone where like there's this like equality. You're kind of like... 51:20 A- again, whether it's like height or whatever it is, there's just this, this level of intimacy and familiarity, um, that like the phone produces, which then like to your... 51:30 It's the same, goes back to the same thing as the War of the Worlds. It's like this like- Mm... this trust and this like, um... Yeah, because it's visual and auditory, it creates- Yeah... this moment of, of intimacy. 51:41 The, um, funny story. So the-- 51:46 within a few days of kind of debuting this project at a FWB Fest as a talk, and then, you know, I had made these newspapers, um, literally the day of or the day before Amazon dropped, uh, a new War of the Worlds adapt- adaptation with Ice Cube- [laughs] 52:06 I did read about this... which I did not know was gonna happen. Obviously. Um, so obviously I feel super validated that I was right on the money with the cultural zeitgeist knowing that the story was relevant. 52:16 Um, and I was also, uh, you know, start a war brain was starting to go off being like, "Do I have to get into a beef with like Amazon and Ice Cube to make this thing go viral?" 52:25 [laughs] Um, but, uh, you know, if you've seen the movie or read the reviews, it's, it's really getting, uh, you know... It- apparently, it's one of the worst movies ever made. I did watch it. It was, it was a spectacle. 52:39 I highly recommend watching it. Um, but to its credit, what I loved about it was it's the only War of the Worlds adaptation that I've seen that really got it right, that the War of the Worlds is not actually a story... 52:57 The war is not a story of humans versus aliens. It's actually a story about a war between mediums. Mm. Mm. 53:04 In the case of, uh, my War of the Worlds adaptation was, you know, it's really a story about the war between the newspaper and the radio- Mm-hmm... or the written word and the spoken word. 53:14 And in the Ice Cube Amazon version, uh, the whole thing is shot as if it is, um, like a mediated experience. It's all takes place on FaceTime calls and Zoom, uh, calls. It is all screens. Wow. 53:32 And I think the execution did not land for anybody- [laughs]... from what I've seen on Rotten Tomatoes and Letterboxd. But, uh, I was maybe the only person watching this being like, "Damn, they actually get it." 53:45 [laughs] Oh. So this is my rave review for, uh, Ice Cube's War of the Worlds. I think that's a great place to end. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on Tasteland. Thanks for having me. This was great. Talk to you soon. 54:00 [outro music]
