How much would it take for you to tattoo a memecoin's name on your forehead? Taylor Lorenz (User Mag) tells us about the platform where crypto speculators pay strangers to do almost anything in service of pumping their coin's value: Pump.fun Go. But Taylor argues this is bigger than a weird internet rabbit hole — it’s a burgeoning ‘bounty economy,’ that’s quietly warping reality itself.
Then: Sriram Krishnan, the Senior White House Policy Advisor on Artificial Intelligence, is leaving the White House. Nitasha Tiku (The Washington Post) explains his impact, what this means for the future of federal tech policy and who is jostling for influence in his place.
Finally, Kyle Chayka (The New Yorker) on the ‘show’-ification of everything. Even the tech industry is getting into the game, literally. The Founders Fund just bankrolled a slick YouTube series where tech billionaires like Sam Altman and Palmer Luckey play Mafia, the parlor game. It’s bizarre. So why does Silicon Valley keep trying to make content happen, and who is it actually for?
Additional Reading:
- These 430 Viral Videos Are Being Preserved in a British Archive
- The Bounty Economy Is Breaking Reality - by Taylor Lorenz
- Top Trump artificial intelligence adviser to leave the White House
- Kareem Rahma and the Tyranny of Web Video Shows | The New Yorker
- Can Tech Legends Find the Liar? (Mafia Episode 1)
Download SAILY in your app store and use our code techstuff at checkout to get an exclusive 15% off your first purchase! For further details go tohttps://saily.com/techstuff
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Hello everyone. I'm just curious to start off with. Did
any of you hear about the latest project at the
British Film Institute Now? So there is an archive of
four hundred and thirty viral videos covering thirty years of
online culture. All of the clips come from Britain, but
I think you might know one of.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Them thirty bit.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
And that really hurt still, Okay.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
Thank you for playing Charlie Bitty.
Speaker 5 (00:43):
I forgot it was a British kid or moment in
British culture.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
World culture. Why has the internet never been so good again?
Speaker 4 (00:51):
It was an no one was broadcasting themselves. It was
like America's Funniest Home Videos in the UK. So it's funny.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
What would be what do you think it would make
it into the American Film Institute's Top videos of the
last thirty years? Do you think online videos?
Speaker 5 (01:07):
I think we have a lot of vines. I think
it would be a lot more than four hundred.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
I'm thinking of the little girl saying I smell like
I like, do you know this one? It's so good.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
There's another bridge from which which I like, with a
girl getting into the car with her mother. Interestinct.
Speaker 5 (01:35):
I think that one when I get into the car
with my mother when I'm visiting my parents. I literally
think of that every time. It's just like how every
time I take a shower, I think shower time or
diesel adderall diesel glass, whiskey.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
A glass of whiskey and diesel jeans.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm as Velo, and this is
the weeked Tech, where I'm sure by the world's most
plug in reporters to break down what's really happening in
tech right now. Today we're joined by Taylor Lorenz of usermag,
Kyle Chaker, who writes the Infinite Scroll column for The
New Yorker, and Atasha Tiku, tech reporter at the Washington Posts.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Welcome all, Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Taylor, your most recent newsletter was titled quote the Bounty
Economy is breaking reality. It reads honestly like a dystopian nightmare.
What's going on?
Speaker 5 (02:30):
I know, I feel like what in this tech landscape
right now is not a dystopian nightmare. That doesn't really
narrow it down. But yeah, I wrote about this service
that launched a week ago called Pump fun Go, which
I've just become obsessed with checking because it's kind of
like there was this viral platform called dremarket, which was
(02:51):
very short lived where you could pay anyone to do anything.
It kind of shut down. But pump fun is a
meme coin crypto site where you can go and spy,
they bet on meme coins, et cetera, and they have
they launched this service that allows you to pay anyone
to do anything, all in service of promoting meme cooin.
So you can pay someone to go run down the
(03:13):
street half naked screaming the name of the meme coin.
You can pay someone to pour chicken broth all over
your head shouting the name of a meme coin. You
can pay anyone to do anything. I mean sometimes people
are paying for good things too. They're also paying people
to clean up trash or help the homeless, or humiliate
the homeless, all in service of promoting meme coins.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Wait, it has to be related to the meme point.
Speaker 5 (03:36):
Yeah, it's all about promoting the meme coins.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Oh okay.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
I saw somebody say this is obviously going to end
up with assassins, and I did not realize though that
it had to be meme coin related.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
That's what.
Speaker 5 (03:50):
Someone shouting the names I mean that guy, I mean,
let's not forget the christ Church killing right where he
said subscribe to Beauty Pie, Like, I mean, it's not
that far off.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
My favorite was the tattoo that I was just scrolling
on it and there's like actually a tram stamp tattoo
of chill House, which is apparently a meme coin, And
there are lots of like AI generated images of people
like faking that they got this tattoo. But then this
was a video of a guy getting a chill House
meme coin tram stamp and it was real and that
(04:23):
was truck. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (04:24):
There have been multiple forehead tattoos as well. One guy
got the name of the meme coin spelled wrong, so
he didn't get paid out.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Oh my god. Wait, So on pump fun Go, is
it actually a platform to buy and sell meme coins.
All the idea is I own a meme coin and
then I pay somebody else to do something to get attention,
and therefore the price the meme coin goes up because
it's being talked about.
Speaker 5 (04:46):
Yeah. So pump fun Go again is a long standing
it launched in twenty twenty four platform where you can
buy and sell meme coins, and meme coins are so
tight again because they're sort of ti to memes and
language any virality is effectively good for the meme coin. So,
I mean, Kyle and New Yorker writer just mentioning the
(05:07):
name of one of these meme coins, fight the value, Kyle,
maybe time to get on and do some insider trading,
which is also I'm sure a big thing on these sites.
But so all attention is good attention on meme coins.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
But do you buy them? Sorry to be dense here,
but do you buy them on pump funk Go or
is that like a said, Okay, so it's such as
a trading platform for meme coins essentially, yes, yes, with
with a new product vertical to pay people to do
wild things to get more attention exactly.
Speaker 5 (05:35):
So they're sort of trying to integrate marketing of the
meme coins into the platform. This is not the first
time they've tried it. They actually launched live streaming at
the end of twenty twenty four and had to pull
it back almost immediately because people were borderline killing themselves
on the stream. They were torturing themselves. They were living
in the dark, you know, for days on end with
(05:57):
no light or food or I mean it was it
was very disturbing, and so they said, Okay, we can't
moderate this amount of live stream, so we're gonna pull back.
Now they have this bounty site. They claim it's being moderated,
but in their own launch video they show it being
used for political purposes. So I think their guidelines for
moderation are. Yeah, basically, somebody can't be actively slaughtering another person.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
I mean when I when I when I read your
when I saw the headline and read the first paragraph,
I thought, this is like a horrific curiosity. But it's
more than that. I mean, you wrote all these platforms,
pump fun polymarket, side Shift, which I don't even know
what that is, but maybe you'll tell us a building
new synthetic reality. We're an increasing number of the things
we witness irl or on counter online and not spontaneous occurrences.
(06:46):
Their commission performance is designed to generate attention, engagement, and
ultimately financial returns.
Speaker 5 (06:52):
Yeah. So I think that all of these platforms together
are just sort of part of this new age of
the attention economy. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote
about Sideshift, which is one of the more popular UGC platforms,
and I put sort of like poly Market, the explosion
of UGC, the explosion of things like dare Market and
then pump fund Go. Now, all of these platforms allow
(07:15):
you to pay random people, non influencers, to create events
that can then be monetized or that are being monetized.
So Polymarket I think is part of this, but UGC.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Which side generated content.
Speaker 5 (07:27):
Right exactly. And so you have these brands or influencers
or politicians now paying random people, sometimes unhoused people in
other states, extremely low amounts of money to go online
and post in service or post online doing or saying something.
And I just think that this is interesting because it's
affecting our world. I mean a lot I think in
(07:47):
the media has been written about poly market and the
way that it's manipulating sort of reality in these ways.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
But about George Santos last week and him saying he's
going to show up to the State of the Union
and then not allegedly betting on that betting on that information.
You're saying, this is now kind of like this is metastasizing.
Speaker 5 (08:06):
I think it's bigger than Polymarket, and I think I
think you can look at this cluster of platforms all
in the same realm. I was giving this example yesterday.
I work in downtown LA, and I was I saw
this guy doing this like weird chalk thing, and he
seemed kind of crazy, and I my first thought was, like,
is this promotion for like what is he? Is he
being paid? Is there a stream I'm like looking for
(08:26):
the streaming camera around him? Like, I think that there's
just a lot of things where if you're walking around
New York City, or you're walking around a major American
city or even a non major American city Minneapolis or something, right, like,
you see weird things taking place. You see these things happening.
You see these stunts, and often they're in service of
a meme coin. They're some person that's been hired to
(08:48):
do that for some reason. They're maybe they're trying to
make good on a poly market bet. And I think
it's affecting our physical world in increasingly notable ways.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Mine it was already so weird watching people doing these
like dances with no me y for TikTok stuff like
two years ago, and now it's like it's this was
like so beginner compared to where we are now, and.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
The TikTok stuff wasn't actually financialized directly. Like what's so
crazy with polymarket and pump fun Go and all these
other sites is that it's like there's an actual economic
transaction behind it instead of this like invisible race to
gain followers and then monetize it later.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Before you had to gain the followers and then monetorpe.
But now you can.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
You can skip straight to them, just go straight to
like mediating reality and wharping our sense of you know,
shared facts for money directly. Yeah, sounds sounds very healthy
for everyone.
Speaker 5 (09:38):
I will say, when I was writing this story, I
was like, I wish I was Kyle Chaker writing this story.
He would have some smarter things.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Is there?
Speaker 5 (09:49):
Like it's I still can't find the words to describe
this phenomenon.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Oh you did, Taylor. I think you put it. You
put it so well. I really, I mean, it flew
off the page. I mean, I love the id you
use the phrase disinformation as gigwork. You wrote, if you
build a system that can conjure any event into existence
for the right price, it will eventually conjure a political reality.
I think I think I think you got an A
plus plus for this one.
Speaker 5 (10:13):
Okay, thanks well. The disinformation as gigwork. I think I
took from a tweet, so let's not credit me too hard.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Well, mature immature poets borrow, mature poets steal, so that's okay.
Speaker 5 (10:23):
But I think that it's really concerning because like for me,
obviously all of this stuff is dystopiate and warping our world.
But literally in the launch video, in the first few
seconds of the lunch video and then throughout the launch video,
pump fund Go shows this market being used for political purposes,
and they show people, they say, you can get paid
to protest. They show people being paid to put up
(10:44):
you know, flyers to vote for someone, and already right now,
you can get paid to deny the results of the
South Korean election on pump fund Go because there's a
meme coin tied to election disinformation, and I think that
that's concerning. Like, well, again, I think the media has
done a great job covering polymarket, but I don't think
they've really covered the UGC stuff or some of these
(11:05):
secondary markets. And like I said, I think this is
just like all these growing economic systems need oversight and regulation.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
So the tailor saying the secondary market like the secondary
market for reality, so like, oh, it's just you know,
the meta economy of shaping our reality. It's fine.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
You know what's so interesting. I always think about this,
like how you know all these platforms like Instagram, whatever,
they just like didn't build a way for people to
make money off of the time spent on the platforms
for so long, and you know, this idea of just
like formalizing and making explicit like this two sided marketplace,
(11:48):
it's just the one thing they left left open and
hanging is being exploited and you just need a way
to match reality disorders.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
And brands, buyers and sellers.
Speaker 5 (12:01):
That's like what UGCE I mean, that's like sort of
the core of what UGC marketing is.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Yeah, but just like it already runs so much of
what we see online and also, like you said, increasingly
what we see in our physical world. And it's actually
kind of strange that nobody formalized and made explicit a
market for it until until now.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
It does remind me of that piece the feed is Fake.
I think that was what a New York magazine piece
that was kind of arguing that it's so much of
what we see in our social media is has already
been paid for, has already been manipulated, and I feel like, yeah,
like we get that, like there are commercials on television,
but in reality, like when you're walking around outside seeing
(12:44):
people performing these stunts for some abstract aim on the internet,
that's I don't know. That seems more insidious to me.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
I somewhat naively on the mean coin stuff. I mean,
the last time I was really aware of mean coins
was with Doge, and I kind of I mean, I
obviously haven't spent enough time on next I guess, but
I hadn't really they haven't real crossed my consciousness for
a while. I kind of thought the people were tapped
out on meme coins a little bit post Doge. But
what's what's the land what's the wider mean coin landscape
outside of pump fung go.
Speaker 5 (13:14):
They're incredibly popular. I mean, it's it's a again like
these are sort of very highly unregulated financial markets, so
they're just they're popular with econ. I mean, there is
a lot of crossover between the polymarket crowd and the
meme coin crowd. It's a lot of like hyper online
young men I would say that dominate these markets. They're
(13:34):
quite reactionary. A lot of the meme coins are like offensive, ridiculous,
they're tied to news events. But yeah, it hasn't gone away.
That the dose was sort of the beginning and and
I think it's just becoming more and more pervasive.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Kyle put this in the in the kind of wider
history of like rareity TV. I mean, you know, obviously
Big Brother Social Experiments and then Jackass and I guess
like ex Moore and more extreme reality TV. Now this
is sort of like distributed, self produced rareity TV with
more direct financial incentives. Like what's the where does this
fit within? But yeah, the media landscape the last thirty years.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
I mean, someone should do this like long term history
of real content and show how it goes from like
the kind of highly produced, highly orchestrated production like a
Big Brother to this completely decentralized like faux digital reality
that we experience now. I mean, I guess the through
(14:34):
line is that someone is always profiting from causing these
like narratives and structures to take place and by broadcasting
them as content. Like maybe it's that reality has been
in the process of transforming into digital content for quite
a while now, and we're just seeing an end point
of that where it's on an individual basis for individual actions,
(14:57):
and we're all like commodifying our existence in the world online.
Though I think like people have been doing this right,
like becoming a TikTok influencer, trying to get fans, trying
to convert sub stack newsletter subscribers. It's all a kind
of performance, and it does incentivize you to say and
do strange things. But the memecoin world is just such
(15:20):
a kind of like dirty and abjects and bizarre place
that I think this is a particularly lucky example. Well.
Speaker 5 (15:28):
I think it's like I think of influencers as like
effectively power users of the Internet, and I think a
lot of things, like the forces that they are subject
to or the behavior that they engage in eventually trickles
down to average users and is distributed across sort of
the wider Internet user base. And I think that's kind
of how it's going with this stuff, because I mean,
you look at Logan Paul, who used to run around
(15:49):
lassoing women or doing ridiculous like the stunt era of
YouTube was very similar. You might see someone pouring broth
on their head in the middle of a supermarket for
a YouTube stunt but as Kyle mentioned earlier, previously you
had to amass audience, then you had to monetize that.
It wasn't like you could monetize, like the actual event
itself wasn't being monetized. And now I think that that's different. Again,
it's sort of it's created this decentralized marketplace that is
(16:12):
warping everything we see the minute we step outside.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
This is also obviously an episode of Black Mirror. I
predicted this quite accurately. Are there any other Black Mirror
episodes that will have a good fortune of seeing come
true this year? Any predictions from our part?
Speaker 5 (16:26):
Well, that dog that robot bought, the metal Head episode
is like, I think that's already happening. To explain that tailor, Well,
there's a famous episode, it's I believe it's called metal Head.
That's a black and white episode of Black Mirror where
this woman is trying to get supplies from a warehouse
in this dystopian future and is hunted down by one
of these robot dogs. And I again, I think that's
(16:49):
happening in in in areas where these dogs are being deployed,
you know, in a conflict zones.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
So it's on where you can get paid by the
meme coins to fight the bought dogs.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Natasha, what's the are you are, your sources and people
you talkt your regular in Silicon Valley tapped into this world,
Like what's the kind of what's the tech industry taken
all of this?
Speaker 3 (17:13):
I mean, the investors are very tapped into this world.
They're very eager to monetize this, you know, get in
on these I guess commodification of more and more parts
of our lives. And I would say they have like
very little compunction about about being even associated with with
(17:33):
some of this stuff. And I think it's really interesting.
Andresen Horowitz as an investor in many of them, and
Mark and Dreesen has been talking about how there's this
massive gray area where if you are not if you're
not promoting a political candidate or a product explicitly, you
don't have to disclose anything. And you know, he's both
(17:57):
criticizing others for doing that and then also paying people
and doing it himself. I mean, in rees and Horowitz,
I think they're just about to announce their third class
of New Media fellows. You know, some of them, it's
like sixty five people a class. Some of them are disclosed.
Most of them aren't. And you know what they're doing.
(18:19):
It's not like they're making explicit videos to promote the firm, right,
They're just kind of pushing these ideas and you wouldn't know.
So to me, this is just a really natural fit
with the way that and there also happened to be
the biggest corporate donors so far in this election cycle,
which the New York Times had reported, So, I yeah,
(18:41):
it's just a perfect synergy.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
I guess it's like astroturfing technology, or it's the technology
of astroturfing, and the techicustry is leaning into that frictionless, scaled.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Astroturfic What is astroteph thing?
Speaker 4 (18:54):
Forgive me the famous word for like faked organic enthusiasm
for something right right right.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Well, later in the show, we're going to talk about
a venture backed show Mafia, featuring Sam Waltman, Palmer Lucky
and others in a very strange Founder's fund sponsored reality
TV YouTube show. But before that, we're going to go
to a break and when we come back, a top
AI advisor in the White House is stepping down at
the end of this month. But will anything change stay
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the podcast episode description box. Welcome back, Natasha. We've talked
about tech industry leaders in the White House, and one
of them is now leaving schru Am Krishnan. I mean,
in some ways I saw this story, I thought, who
cares if a White House advisor whose name most people
don't know is leaving? But in other ways it kind
(20:49):
of seems to intersect with this bigger story of a
power struggle within the White House about how technology an
AI is being regulated and the kind of AI industry
folks versus the kind of Susie Wiles and Poward Latnik
Camp and the MAGA people, and so yeah, what what
how much should we care about Shrem Krishnan's depart sure
and why?
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Yeah, I think the interest for regular people, for the
broader audience is the fact that it's representative of this
battle that we're seeing play out with. You know, recently,
when Trump was about to sign this executive order on AI,
and then David Sachs, who is who was the former
White House and cryptos are and Treu Ram's boss in
(21:32):
the White House, he intervened, Musk intervened. You know a
number of tech CEOs, So Sachs left recently, Treu Ram
is leaving at the end of the month. And I
think we're seeing that in this in this power vacuum,
other members of the Trump administration, in particular, Susie Wiles
and Treasury Secretary Scott Passant are both having a lot
(21:59):
more influence and pushing back against the the kind of
policy stance that the Trump administration had taken on the
AI market so far, which was you know, total support,
you know, kind of deferring to the industry itself, to
the representatives for the industry itself, you know, uh eagerness
(22:21):
to to help work with the data center build out
that they want to ensure that. You know, one of
the first actions Trump did in office was to repeel
the Biden AI EO and executive Order. But with the
with the release of mythos Anthropics latest model, most powerful
(22:43):
AI model, which is much more capable in cybersecurity, you know,
you're having this this split that we've seen since the
beginning of the of Trump to between his very wealthy
tech donors and the more you know in his MAGA base.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
And in fact, Shriram himself was he's a former andrews
In partner, right, yes, yeah, And when he was appointed
he was born in India, and he had spoken out
previously on basically how important legal immigration is for the
United States, and when he was appointed to the White
House role. Laura Luma came out and basically said, this
is the worst thing ever. He's you know, supporting illegals
(23:26):
and he ended up getting death threats.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Yeah, yeah, it was over.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
This story does have tentacles right back to the beginning administration.
To talk a bit about Yeah, talk a bit about him,
how you know him and this kind of Yeah, that
story you mentioned it began at Christmas in twenty four
I guess.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Yeah, yeah, Shreram, I've known shru Ram, I don't know
for more than a decade since he was at since
he was at Meta. I mean, he's worked at all
of the big social media companies Facebook, Twitter, even Snap.
He was actually an investor in Crypto before he like
through Through and recent Horoitz before he switched in this role,
(24:05):
and he was based out in the UK. And I
think you know, the UK has a very uh, a
very different approach to AI safety. They're they're very concerned
with you know, these kind of existential threats, potential for
catastrophic harms. You know, we've talked a little bit on
the podcast before. Well, i I'm now I'm confusing it.
(24:27):
Taylor and I have talked a lot about this about
the influence influence of effective altruism. But I think that
you know, he came back to the US very much
armed with uh, with this top concern from from Mark Andresen,
which is like the AI doomers and their push for
more oversight and regulation and wanting to fight back against that.
(24:50):
And yeah, it's just a you know, really interesting cultural
battle because now.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
We see you know, Susie wat Ales who.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Who's coming in you know, without this technical expertise, and
Scott Bessett who might be hearing from the banks who
have access to mythos and you know, want to make
sure that their platforms are secure. So that yeah, there's
this real, this real power struggle. But so far, I
think we've seen that once you leave as a special
government employee, once you leave office, you can still have
(25:22):
a lot of influence, like David sax seems to still.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Very much be in the mix. Not to mention Elon
exactly exactly.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
So it's a.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Revolving door, except you get to not actually have to leave.
You can sort of be you don't even barely, I mean,
you're sort of even even more. You can have a
foot in both camps and have less sort of ethics
and regulatory exposure, but still have the same amount of
influences like best best of all worlds.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Yeah, when people were kind of harping on you know
what is in what was in Sachs's current portfolio with
Crypto n AI, you know, kind of showing those conflicts
of conflicts of interest, I was just like, well, once
he's out of office, I mean that's when.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
You can really start.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
I mean, you are you know now like Buddy Buddy
with Jensen Wong, you he just has so much more
clout and influence and reach than he had before.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
And I mean that's what you.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Need for deal flow. So I think, like any conflicts
of interest we saw while they were in office, it's
it's just going to.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Really take off.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Now. Kyle Taylor, have you been following the White House
drama of a sure, I'm well the I'm sure the
whitest story, yes, But what are your thoughts here?
Speaker 5 (26:35):
I just have to say that Strogram what he basically
does nothing and he kind of just shows up at
all of these companies Like I mean, I also have
sort of covered this man and known him for over
a decade, you know, through work stuff. It's just like
he always like you know, he'll be at Snap at
an opportune time, he'll be Meta at an opportune time.
(26:56):
He'll go to andres and where it's an opportune time
sort of to make money. He's sincophant, so he will
just say anything that they kind of want to hear.
And I just I don't think he's principled. I don't
think he has any real value. I just it's just
remarkable how this man has been able to position himself
in order to sort of profit off everything by standing
(27:16):
for nothing. And I mean, at least David Sachs, whether
you disagree with him, has an ideology behind him. Som
just sort of just shows up. And I just I
just think it's funny because he kind of ineviatively. He'll
show up for a couple you know, for a year
or two, and then he has to move on, and
I just think, what's the point, you know, I just
think he's always at the scene of the crime.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Well, at least during the Trump administration, he was the
one writing you know, some of that like anti woke EO,
the AI Action Plan, but he was w under rafting it. Sure,
But again, like he doesn't believe in anything. He'll just
like you know, under Trump one point zero, he was
sort of like more you know, progressive or seeming like
(27:59):
I just think he doesn't.
Speaker 5 (28:01):
He doesn't. He'll just do and say anything. He's just
kind of one of those people that will just go
along with anything and do and say anything. Again, he's
a singer fan, that's all. That's the best way I
feel like to describe him personally. That's my view of him.
Speaker 4 (28:15):
I feel like the revolving door thing has evolved and
gone faster and tighter and is now more plugged into
the tech industry. Like I mean, there is this overall
conjunction of artificial intelligence and government that I don't think
we really saw with social media, Like we weren't talking
about Facebook being integrated into into the United States government
(28:36):
quite as much as we're talking about you know, Claude
and chat GYPC.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
That's a great point, Carl, even from a sthetic point
of view, like when you thought, if you ask, what's
a single image of tech and government from the like
twenty twenty twenty era, it's like Mark zucker Book sweating
in his suit saying we still add so right, and.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Now it's like but I was gonna say, I thought
like the quintessential image was they did the town hall
and Mark Zuckerberg was interviewing Barack Obama. So it was like, actually,
I would say that that like how we sell ads
is much later there was that or yeah, or maybe
like Jack Dorsey and his stay Woke shirt. That's that
(29:18):
was like a little bit more like when the Dems
and and tech were we're we're in cahoots. But I
I think, like, you know, that's such a good point, Kyle,
because the thing that really stuck out to me is
when they started doing like the Trump administration when they
did their trip to the Middle East, Like who did
they bring with them? You know, Sam Altman, shri Ram,
(29:39):
Like you know when they went to China.
Speaker 4 (29:42):
Oh yeah, China, like Jensen Huong flying in.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Yeah, Like our geopolitical politics are defense strategy. I mean
you it's it's really hard to even think of an
area where biotech, you know, like drugs at the FDA.
It's it's hard to think of an area that's volatile
and important where they're not trying to have some influence.
Speaker 5 (30:04):
I think these AI companies also there's more opportunity for
government business and military contracts. I mean you mentioned like
the HHS or they want to get in you know,
they want to get their hands in the Pentagon money.
I don't think that those business opportunities were as available
to the social media companies.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
No, no, military internal Facebook was happening.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
Yeah, I mean, I think getting rid of getting rid
of the employee pushback, you know, like silencing, firing, marginalizing
the employees who objected to it, even though there were
there were always ties from the start of Silk and
Valley to now. But yeah, I think you're you're right, Tailor,
and right now they're also just like searching for growth everywhere.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
To your point about the sort of value that tech
companies could derive from government and going back to the
early twenty tens era, I mean, the Democrats seem to
understand the power of social media before the Republicans, Blue
State Digital and all of this. Like no, I mean, no, no, no,
Tailin'm wrong.
Speaker 5 (30:58):
I mean maybe Barack Obama leverage the Internet obviously in
the early days, but actually the Democratic establishment was quite
behind on social media. I think that they kind of
I think they sort of surface level bought into it.
But I think that the Democratic base like the institutional
power has got on Twitter. Early, you know, Democratic senators
were tweeting, but the base and the Democrats was primarily
(31:20):
consuming institutional media. Even today, they're still more loyal to
institutional media. Whereas that, you know, the Tea Party was
like a very like internet driven reactionary movement. The Republican
base has always been sort of more hyper online, especially
the MAGA movement which grew from the Internet.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Are there any true opponents of the tech industry, like
Steve Bannon who still have influence with Trump?
Speaker 3 (31:39):
I mean, Steve Bannon is like he has been on
a very focused anti big tech, anti tech you know
about AI, and I haven't seen that really affect the
Trump administration's decisions. But is his ability to rile up
the MAGA base I think is still there. And you know,
(32:02):
we're seeing this now. We're seeing it a little bit
when they tried to do a moratorium on state laws
or when they tried to penalize states for passing regulation
against AI. You have a lot of small government state
legislators that part of the Republican base really pushing back.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
So sure, I'm also got credit for for drafting the
EO preventing States from regulating the AI. Well before Sharon
was a White House advisor, he was a podcaster. He
and his wife had a podcast, and there was a
time when everyone wants to podcast, but now everyone wants
to show. We're on that with Kyle and others after
(32:43):
the break, stay with us. Welcome back, Kyle. You and
I had a chat last week about the showification of everything.
We talked before the break briefly about how True had
(33:04):
a podcast. There's a there's a big, very strange thing
this week with a Founder's Fund sponsored YouTube show of
tech people including Stammeltman play Mafia that I want to
talk about. But you've read about this in your column
for The New York this week, not not in reference
to the to the Mafia YouTube show, but kind of
to the showification of everything. What was your kind of
(33:26):
what drove you towards this piece.
Speaker 4 (33:28):
Yeah, the Founder's Fund video. I should have put that
in there because it is a perfect example that everything
is a show. Now. That's how I began this column
on the internet. Everything is now a show. It's not
just a post, it's not a selfie, it's not a
single video, it's not a podcast. Everything is a show
and The purpose of the column was to review this
(33:50):
new show or rebooted show, which is Kareem Rama, the
guy behind Subway Takes the extremely viral TikTok series. He
has real launched this older show or series that he
had on TikTok called Keep the Meter Running, which was
he would jump in a cab with a New York
City taxi driver and have the taxi driver take him
(34:11):
to wherever the driver wanted to go. So now Kareem
has turned that back into this YouTube production, which is
kind of a higher end thing. There's more staff on it,
there's more resources in it, and they're like twenty minute
episodes released every Wednesday on YouTube. And this is a
show like this, putting out a bunch of media every
(34:32):
week at the same time on the same day is
a television show. And so I kind of wanted to
approach it as that and see what this kind of
internet television looked like compared to what we had as
regular television. And I don't know. My conclusion with Keep
the Meter Running on YouTube was it's not quite short
(34:53):
form video. It's not quite long form video. It's not
quite comedy, it's not quite drama or heartfelt and I
just felt kind of bored by it.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
I might say, Kareem, you quote a Kareem in the
piece talking about how in this a couple of years ago,
how you didn't even need a show anymore because the
clips are the shows. So it's kind of ironic now
he's making a show again, but they're kind of the
relationship between clips and show and hype marketing seems to
have been internalized by the VC industry more than anybody
(35:24):
else in the world.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
Right yeah, I mean, this whole ecosystem is evolving as
we speak. I mean, so we've been hearing a lot
about the clipping economy, like these these people who grab
clips from a video podcast or a performance or whatever
and try to make little bits of it go viral.
And I feel like the show is like the source
for the clip. Now and you have people like Kareem
(35:49):
putting more and more resources into more and more elaborate shows,
and founders fund did this by putting a bunch of
tech I mean, some tech billionaires to play a party
in front of I don't know, eight to ten cameras
in this and.
Speaker 5 (36:04):
Got no views and it flopped.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
It is I mean, as Austin and I were texting
about this. It is one of the most off putting
pieces of content that I have ever seen on the Internet. Like,
I do not want to see Palmer Lucky pretend to
be a goofy, silly guy playing a game that's like
more suited to a school field trip in high school.
Speaker 5 (36:30):
This is not the first time that vcs have tried
to create shows. Let's not forget Suri Ram who were
just talking about, had a show for years on the
Andrews and Horwitz YouTube channel that could not break two
hundred views. Okay, they've constantly They had their Clubhouse show
right that Andrewsen had, Like they have been trying to
create content forever. They these these unfortunately for some reason,
(36:50):
even though they invent the technology. I mean, I think
for a lot of reasons, mainly that they're out of
touch billionaires, but like these people cannot understand like media
like sort of base, Like I mean, and recent has
been trying desperately, but they just discovered the term new media,
something that I think peaked in popularity around two thousand
and eight. Like they really are behind and it's and
(37:12):
it's interesting to me how bad they are at content. Meanwhile,
you have this like massive private equity firm TPG doing
a huge partnership with CIA to actually invest in creators businesses,
which makes a lot of sense now that CA is running,
you know, heading pretty more into digital. So I just
I think there are actually smart investors in this area
that really understand media. It's just they're not in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Natasha, how do you, I mean, how do you see
the aesthetics of the of the like Silicon Valley show machine.
I mean that that game of Mefia was so it
was just so flat, and it kind of felt like
somebody who had kind of extrapolated all of the principles
of what like should make a capital s show and
(37:58):
then like tried to do it and it was just
it's like it was I don't know, it was. It
was like almost devastating, how depressing and flat it was.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Well, I haven't seen it yet, but I have to
say this was not at all the reaction from within
the tech industry. People loved it. They said it was based,
you know, they said it was like more authentic than
anything else they've seen.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
I mean, I think that it's I think what Taylor's
saying maybe about everything.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Well, no, there's been some they have they have come
up with a new There is a whole ecosystem now, right.
I know, Kyle, you said it's not the showification doesn't
count one offs. But every launch video, every funding announcement,
every product update is its own. I mean, I saw
(38:43):
this recent launch video. I reached out to the to
the kid who had done it because it looked like
a little Wes Anderson film and I couldn't even tell
what the I couldn't even tell what the product was
going to be at the end. So, like Taylor says,
I agree, like they discovered it late. They have a
lot of money, they're trying. They're not getting the broader viewership,
but I think we're increasingly seeing that that doesn't necessarily
(39:08):
matter for them because they have the money they want.
They want cultural clout, they want influence, they want to
be able to, you know, have deal flow from from
founders in the industry, and for that it's working. Like normally,
if you're a business, you have to get it's not
but they're not. But the point it's their marketing budget.
(39:28):
It's just their marketing budget.
Speaker 5 (39:30):
But I'm saying they have yet to create a show.
First of all, they don't have a machine, right, they're
just hiring random people like Willy Nilly. They're getting c
list you know, digital marketing people right to create that.
They're hiring ad agencies. And it's like, I agree with you.
I think the launch video stuff is more downstream of
Cluely and them sort of realizing like marketing matters actually,
(39:51):
and so like let's make marketing videos. Taylor roy Lee
started this AI. He was sort of this guy who
went viral for saying she on everything. He's a young
guy who started this AI assistance tool call cluy and
he basically just like introduced the concept of marketing to
Silicon Valley like two years ago. And I do think
that he had like, you know, his his staff was
(40:13):
making like four tiktoks a day. It was sort of
a meme. And he made this a lot of very
viral launch videos. And I think that's also like when
they realize like, oh, a good launch video can help.
Speaker 4 (40:23):
Now.
Speaker 5 (40:24):
It's not like the VC industry has never been good
at marketing. I think there's just this small cadra of
reactionary vcs that constantly want to engage in marketing, but
because they're so out of stuff, with culture. They haven't
made anything that average people outside Silicon Valley hype circles consume.
And yeah, they're all excited about Mafia. They all were
very excited saying the same like, you know, glazing around
(40:47):
Mark Andreesen's Clubhouse show, which ultimately made no impact. And maybe,
as Natasha said, it's fine because it's just about deal flow,
but they haven't made a show that's really broken through.
I think outside Dwarkesh, the outside people have.
Speaker 4 (40:59):
The surreal thing is like it's so fancy and expensive looking.
I think, like, I think it's part of this broader thing,
this like race toward more and more quote unquote authentic
content with higher resolution and more cameras and red wine
production value and red wine, and it's like they are
turning these tech CEOs into influencer type characters. They're cultivating
(41:22):
this like intense parasocial presence for them. And I just,
I mean granted, were like turned off by the content,
of course because it kind of sucks and is weird,
but it's like why Sam Altman should have better things
to do than to play this game on camera, Like
I want to actually be thinking about I don't know
(41:43):
a post ai economy. I don't want to see him
being silly and approachable because he's not well.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
There are a couple of comments on the on the YouTube,
which which rose to the top, one with Sam does
not want to be the last man standing in a
game of deception played in public because people were speculating
he could have won, but not to and somebody else
for actual real world villains doing collabse like this is crazy,
you know, I guess it's not for us, Like that's
the thing, like Natasha to your point, like this is
if this is getting the insider crowd excited and you know,
(42:12):
helping found us fun with its positioning and its deal
flow with young founders and stuff. I guess that's the
point where it's it's not supposed to be like a
widely circulating cultural product.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
Yeah, I mean, I don't want to say that, you know,
it's it's exclusively deal flow. I actually think you know,
like before Indrees and Horowitz brought all this stuff in house,
they had thet the guy who's running their new media thing,
Eric Tornberg Mark Andriesen was an investor in his podcast network.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
I think I might have been one.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
Of the only listeners to these podcasts, but they explicitly
talked about like it was called upstream. You know, they
wanted to see these ideas and they have. They have
so much more cultural influence than they used to have.
Like I really felt like the VC industry was kind
of falling off. They have been able to change young
people's mind about defense work. They have been able to,
(43:03):
you know, rehabilitate Palmer Lucky's public image. They do these
sizzle reels now for like just defense startups with all
of this kind of you know, Apollo like to the
Moon Graphics. I mean, there's Palenteer merch I would say
that Natasha. They don't have a mass I'm not saying
(43:24):
they have a mass audience, but they have managed to
there are a lot of people coming, young people coming
into the tech industry that reflect some of the views
that they've heard on X. I mean there's a reason
they know on X.
Speaker 5 (43:38):
On X yeah, sure, they've bought the I think X
has been the most successful way that they've like ownership
of the platforms and the way that they've been able
to seize control of our algorithms has been far more
influential than all of their little like dumb high production
marketing stunts, which I think have not hit. I just
don't see the evidence that those have really gone far
(44:01):
to change opinion. Whereas controlling a social media platform and
putting these ideas and aligning themselves with the MAGA movement
and hopping on these broader cultural shifts, I think that's
been far more successful for them.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
I think if you talk to young people in the
tech industry now, like they have this reflexive like animus
against woke, against you know, feminism, against the idea of
of you know, some of the DEI efforts that that
the industry used to at least spout.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
So so you create some of the content produced by
the tech industry for engendering this sort of shift in no.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
I would say, I see what you're saying, Tol, Like,
I don't think these formal I mean, it's just the
same as what Kyle was saying about the new show.
You know, it's like, first of all, it's a constant unbundling, rebundling,
like desperate search for authenticity and when you have too
much money and and no kind of.
Speaker 4 (44:55):
It shows.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
Yeah, really shows.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
But I would say exactly like the fact that they
have so many podcasts, I mean. Mark Andriesen talks about
how he started pushing his podcast because he didn't want
legislators in DC to listen to The New York Times.
He wanted them to listen to him, And now he
hears that legislators do listen to his podcast. So it
doesn't really matter whether or not they have broad broad
(45:25):
public support or broader public support. They've they've managed to
shift shift to the perception of the tech industry among
young people coming into it.
Speaker 4 (45:36):
It's an interesting evolution in the format too. I think
like this, this broadcasting of a game, like like live
streaming a game, is this like tabletop RPG kind of
trope where you are watching the people you like play
a game in front of you, and you're like consuming
their enjoyment of a game. And so this Mafia thing,
it's like they're not talking directly about technology necessarily. They
(46:00):
are like performing a character that they exist as in public,
and they're like manipulating each other and like doing this
kind of quote unquote badass activity. So I feel like
it provides us like branding aura that almost has nothing
to do with their actual jobs or functions. It's just
like making them seem cool and relevant. To a certain audience.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
Well, I think I kept thinking about how, like the
early profiles of Mark Zuckerberg would talk about him playing civilization.
I mean, I think it's supposed to be like, you know,
they're there, this is a way that's not going to
affect their stock value, but for them to look deceptive powerful,
you know, like Sun sou Art of War, you know,
(46:42):
all that kind of stuff in public without you thinking like,
oh wait, they're doing that like on on me through
their products and platforms and you know, weapons that they're building.
Uh So I feel like it hit the right audit,
which is small.
Speaker 5 (47:02):
I just want to say one thing, which is that
like I think that they have also like drifted onto
these like broader trends. Like I just think like if
you because you can look at any industry and they're
a lot less like quote unquote woke than in twenty
twenty or twenty twenty one, and so I think that
like they just again it's not so much that they're
good at producing content, but I do think they're good
at reading the tea leaves and amassing power and amassing
(47:25):
Internet power and like recognizing that Maga was an amassing power.
I mean there was that viral clip of Mark injuries
and also on some podcast where he was a Joe
Rogan where he was talking about how he had a
meeting with Biden and Biden said that he was gonna
camp out all Ai or some ridiculous time. That's probably
not true, it's not but yeah, but but but the
(47:46):
point is is like they recognize that Trump would be
advantageous to them very early. They used platforms like the
All In podcast, which we haven't mentioned here, and like
these other sort of like network to a mass a
lot of power, and I think that that has been successful,
and maybe the Mafia is sort of just a continuation
of that broader network economy of pushing these ideas.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Well, we're out of time for this week, so I
have a bumper edition of Worst Weeks in Tech for
next week. But in the meantime, thank you all so
much for joining us today for tech stuff. I'm Oz Valoshin.
This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis and Melissa Slaughter.
(48:27):
It was executive produced by me Julian Nutter and Kate
Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrian Novel for iHeart podcasts Our
Engineer with Bihiit Fraser jack Insley makes this episode, and
Kyle Murdoch Wrotel theme song. A special thank you to
Taylor Lorenz, Kyle Chaker, and Natasha Tiku. Please check out
all the work they put out into the world. We're
lucky to call them friends of the Pod.
Hello everyone. I'm just curious to start off with. Did
any of you hear about the latest project at the
British Film Institute Now? So there is an archive of
four hundred and thirty viral videos covering thirty years of
online culture. All of the clips come from Britain, but
I think you might know one of.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Them thirty bit.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
And that really hurt still, Okay.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
Thank you for playing Charlie Bitty.
Speaker 5 (00:43):
I forgot it was a British kid or moment in
British culture.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
World culture. Why has the internet never been so good again?
Speaker 4 (00:51):
It was an no one was broadcasting themselves. It was
like America's Funniest Home Videos in the UK. So it's funny.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
What would be what do you think it would make
it into the American Film Institute's Top videos of the
last thirty years? Do you think online videos?
Speaker 5 (01:07):
I think we have a lot of vines. I think
it would be a lot more than four hundred.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
I'm thinking of the little girl saying I smell like
I like, do you know this one? It's so good.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
There's another bridge from which which I like, with a
girl getting into the car with her mother. Interestinct.
Speaker 5 (01:35):
I think that one when I get into the car
with my mother when I'm visiting my parents. I literally
think of that every time. It's just like how every
time I take a shower, I think shower time or
diesel adderall diesel glass, whiskey.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
A glass of whiskey and diesel jeans.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm as Velo, and this is
the weeked Tech, where I'm sure by the world's most
plug in reporters to break down what's really happening in
tech right now. Today we're joined by Taylor Lorenz of usermag,
Kyle Chaker, who writes the Infinite Scroll column for The
New Yorker, and Atasha Tiku, tech reporter at the Washington Posts.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Welcome all, Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Taylor, your most recent newsletter was titled quote the Bounty
Economy is breaking reality. It reads honestly like a dystopian nightmare.
What's going on?
Speaker 5 (02:30):
I know, I feel like what in this tech landscape
right now is not a dystopian nightmare. That doesn't really
narrow it down. But yeah, I wrote about this service
that launched a week ago called Pump fun Go, which
I've just become obsessed with checking because it's kind of
like there was this viral platform called dremarket, which was
(02:51):
very short lived where you could pay anyone to do anything.
It kind of shut down. But pump fun is a
meme coin crypto site where you can go and spy,
they bet on meme coins, et cetera, and they have
they launched this service that allows you to pay anyone
to do anything, all in service of promoting meme cooin.
So you can pay someone to go run down the
(03:13):
street half naked screaming the name of the meme coin.
You can pay someone to pour chicken broth all over
your head shouting the name of a meme coin. You
can pay anyone to do anything. I mean sometimes people
are paying for good things too. They're also paying people
to clean up trash or help the homeless, or humiliate
the homeless, all in service of promoting meme coins.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Wait, it has to be related to the meme point.
Speaker 5 (03:36):
Yeah, it's all about promoting the meme coins.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Oh okay.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
I saw somebody say this is obviously going to end
up with assassins, and I did not realize though that
it had to be meme coin related.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
That's what.
Speaker 5 (03:50):
Someone shouting the names I mean that guy, I mean,
let's not forget the christ Church killing right where he
said subscribe to Beauty Pie, Like, I mean, it's not
that far off.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
My favorite was the tattoo that I was just scrolling
on it and there's like actually a tram stamp tattoo
of chill House, which is apparently a meme coin, And
there are lots of like AI generated images of people
like faking that they got this tattoo. But then this
was a video of a guy getting a chill House
meme coin tram stamp and it was real and that
(04:23):
was truck. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (04:24):
There have been multiple forehead tattoos as well. One guy
got the name of the meme coin spelled wrong, so
he didn't get paid out.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Oh my god. Wait, So on pump fun Go, is
it actually a platform to buy and sell meme coins.
All the idea is I own a meme coin and
then I pay somebody else to do something to get attention,
and therefore the price the meme coin goes up because
it's being talked about.
Speaker 5 (04:46):
Yeah. So pump fun Go again is a long standing
it launched in twenty twenty four platform where you can
buy and sell meme coins, and meme coins are so
tight again because they're sort of ti to memes and
language any virality is effectively good for the meme coin. So,
I mean, Kyle and New Yorker writer just mentioning the
(05:07):
name of one of these meme coins, fight the value, Kyle,
maybe time to get on and do some insider trading,
which is also I'm sure a big thing on these sites.
But so all attention is good attention on meme coins.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
But do you buy them? Sorry to be dense here,
but do you buy them on pump funk Go or
is that like a said, Okay, so it's such as
a trading platform for meme coins essentially, yes, yes, with
with a new product vertical to pay people to do
wild things to get more attention exactly.
Speaker 5 (05:35):
So they're sort of trying to integrate marketing of the
meme coins into the platform. This is not the first
time they've tried it. They actually launched live streaming at
the end of twenty twenty four and had to pull
it back almost immediately because people were borderline killing themselves
on the stream. They were torturing themselves. They were living
in the dark, you know, for days on end with
(05:57):
no light or food or I mean it was it
was very disturbing, and so they said, Okay, we can't
moderate this amount of live stream, so we're gonna pull back.
Now they have this bounty site. They claim it's being moderated,
but in their own launch video they show it being
used for political purposes. So I think their guidelines for
moderation are. Yeah, basically, somebody can't be actively slaughtering another person.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
I mean when I when I when I read your
when I saw the headline and read the first paragraph,
I thought, this is like a horrific curiosity. But it's
more than that. I mean, you wrote all these platforms,
pump fun polymarket, side Shift, which I don't even know
what that is, but maybe you'll tell us a building
new synthetic reality. We're an increasing number of the things
we witness irl or on counter online and not spontaneous occurrences.
(06:46):
Their commission performance is designed to generate attention, engagement, and
ultimately financial returns.
Speaker 5 (06:52):
Yeah. So I think that all of these platforms together
are just sort of part of this new age of
the attention economy. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote
about Sideshift, which is one of the more popular UGC platforms,
and I put sort of like poly Market, the explosion
of UGC, the explosion of things like dare Market and
then pump fund Go. Now, all of these platforms allow
(07:15):
you to pay random people, non influencers, to create events
that can then be monetized or that are being monetized.
So Polymarket I think is part of this, but UGC.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Which side generated content.
Speaker 5 (07:27):
Right exactly. And so you have these brands or influencers
or politicians now paying random people, sometimes unhoused people in
other states, extremely low amounts of money to go online
and post in service or post online doing or saying something.
And I just think that this is interesting because it's
affecting our world. I mean a lot I think in
(07:47):
the media has been written about poly market and the
way that it's manipulating sort of reality in these ways.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
But about George Santos last week and him saying he's
going to show up to the State of the Union
and then not allegedly betting on that betting on that information.
You're saying, this is now kind of like this is metastasizing.
Speaker 5 (08:06):
I think it's bigger than Polymarket, and I think I
think you can look at this cluster of platforms all
in the same realm. I was giving this example yesterday.
I work in downtown LA, and I was I saw
this guy doing this like weird chalk thing, and he
seemed kind of crazy, and I my first thought was, like,
is this promotion for like what is he? Is he
being paid? Is there a stream I'm like looking for
(08:26):
the streaming camera around him? Like, I think that there's
just a lot of things where if you're walking around
New York City, or you're walking around a major American
city or even a non major American city Minneapolis or something, right, like,
you see weird things taking place. You see these things happening.
You see these stunts, and often they're in service of
a meme coin. They're some person that's been hired to
(08:48):
do that for some reason. They're maybe they're trying to
make good on a poly market bet. And I think
it's affecting our physical world in increasingly notable ways.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Mine it was already so weird watching people doing these
like dances with no me y for TikTok stuff like
two years ago, and now it's like it's this was
like so beginner compared to where we are now, and.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
The TikTok stuff wasn't actually financialized directly. Like what's so
crazy with polymarket and pump fun Go and all these
other sites is that it's like there's an actual economic
transaction behind it instead of this like invisible race to
gain followers and then monetize it later.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Before you had to gain the followers and then monetorpe.
But now you can.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
You can skip straight to them, just go straight to
like mediating reality and wharping our sense of you know,
shared facts for money directly. Yeah, sounds sounds very healthy
for everyone.
Speaker 5 (09:38):
I will say, when I was writing this story, I
was like, I wish I was Kyle Chaker writing this story.
He would have some smarter things.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Is there?
Speaker 5 (09:49):
Like it's I still can't find the words to describe
this phenomenon.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Oh you did, Taylor. I think you put it. You
put it so well. I really, I mean, it flew
off the page. I mean, I love the id you
use the phrase disinformation as gigwork. You wrote, if you
build a system that can conjure any event into existence
for the right price, it will eventually conjure a political reality.
I think I think I think you got an A
plus plus for this one.
Speaker 5 (10:13):
Okay, thanks well. The disinformation as gigwork. I think I
took from a tweet, so let's not credit me too hard.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Well, mature immature poets borrow, mature poets steal, so that's okay.
Speaker 5 (10:23):
But I think that it's really concerning because like for me,
obviously all of this stuff is dystopiate and warping our world.
But literally in the launch video, in the first few
seconds of the lunch video and then throughout the launch video,
pump fund Go shows this market being used for political purposes,
and they show people, they say, you can get paid
to protest. They show people being paid to put up
(10:44):
you know, flyers to vote for someone, and already right now,
you can get paid to deny the results of the
South Korean election on pump fund Go because there's a
meme coin tied to election disinformation, and I think that
that's concerning. Like, well, again, I think the media has
done a great job covering polymarket, but I don't think
they've really covered the UGC stuff or some of these
(11:05):
secondary markets. And like I said, I think this is
just like all these growing economic systems need oversight and regulation.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
So the tailor saying the secondary market like the secondary
market for reality, so like, oh, it's just you know,
the meta economy of shaping our reality. It's fine.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
You know what's so interesting. I always think about this,
like how you know all these platforms like Instagram, whatever,
they just like didn't build a way for people to
make money off of the time spent on the platforms
for so long, and you know, this idea of just
like formalizing and making explicit like this two sided marketplace,
(11:48):
it's just the one thing they left left open and
hanging is being exploited and you just need a way
to match reality disorders.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
And brands, buyers and sellers.
Speaker 5 (12:01):
That's like what UGCE I mean, that's like sort of
the core of what UGC marketing is.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Yeah, but just like it already runs so much of
what we see online and also, like you said, increasingly
what we see in our physical world. And it's actually
kind of strange that nobody formalized and made explicit a
market for it until until now.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
It does remind me of that piece the feed is Fake.
I think that was what a New York magazine piece
that was kind of arguing that it's so much of
what we see in our social media is has already
been paid for, has already been manipulated, and I feel like, yeah,
like we get that, like there are commercials on television,
but in reality, like when you're walking around outside seeing
(12:44):
people performing these stunts for some abstract aim on the internet,
that's I don't know. That seems more insidious to me.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
I somewhat naively on the mean coin stuff. I mean,
the last time I was really aware of mean coins
was with Doge, and I kind of I mean, I
obviously haven't spent enough time on next I guess, but
I hadn't really they haven't real crossed my consciousness for
a while. I kind of thought the people were tapped
out on meme coins a little bit post Doge. But
what's what's the land what's the wider mean coin landscape
outside of pump fung go.
Speaker 5 (13:14):
They're incredibly popular. I mean, it's it's a again like
these are sort of very highly unregulated financial markets, so
they're just they're popular with econ. I mean, there is
a lot of crossover between the polymarket crowd and the
meme coin crowd. It's a lot of like hyper online
young men I would say that dominate these markets. They're
(13:34):
quite reactionary. A lot of the meme coins are like offensive, ridiculous,
they're tied to news events. But yeah, it hasn't gone away.
That the dose was sort of the beginning and and
I think it's just becoming more and more pervasive.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Kyle put this in the in the kind of wider
history of like rareity TV. I mean, you know, obviously
Big Brother Social Experiments and then Jackass and I guess
like ex Moore and more extreme reality TV. Now this
is sort of like distributed, self produced rareity TV with
more direct financial incentives. Like what's the where does this
fit within? But yeah, the media landscape the last thirty years.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
I mean, someone should do this like long term history
of real content and show how it goes from like
the kind of highly produced, highly orchestrated production like a
Big Brother to this completely decentralized like faux digital reality
that we experience now. I mean, I guess the through
(14:34):
line is that someone is always profiting from causing these
like narratives and structures to take place and by broadcasting
them as content. Like maybe it's that reality has been
in the process of transforming into digital content for quite
a while now, and we're just seeing an end point
of that where it's on an individual basis for individual actions,
(14:57):
and we're all like commodifying our existence in the world online.
Though I think like people have been doing this right,
like becoming a TikTok influencer, trying to get fans, trying
to convert sub stack newsletter subscribers. It's all a kind
of performance, and it does incentivize you to say and
do strange things. But the memecoin world is just such
(15:20):
a kind of like dirty and abjects and bizarre place
that I think this is a particularly lucky example. Well.
Speaker 5 (15:28):
I think it's like I think of influencers as like
effectively power users of the Internet, and I think a
lot of things, like the forces that they are subject
to or the behavior that they engage in eventually trickles
down to average users and is distributed across sort of
the wider Internet user base. And I think that's kind
of how it's going with this stuff, because I mean,
you look at Logan Paul, who used to run around
(15:49):
lassoing women or doing ridiculous like the stunt era of
YouTube was very similar. You might see someone pouring broth
on their head in the middle of a supermarket for
a YouTube stunt but as Kyle mentioned earlier, previously you
had to amass audience, then you had to monetize that.
It wasn't like you could monetize, like the actual event
itself wasn't being monetized. And now I think that that's different. Again,
it's sort of it's created this decentralized marketplace that is
(16:12):
warping everything we see the minute we step outside.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
This is also obviously an episode of Black Mirror. I
predicted this quite accurately. Are there any other Black Mirror
episodes that will have a good fortune of seeing come
true this year? Any predictions from our part?
Speaker 5 (16:26):
Well, that dog that robot bought, the metal Head episode
is like, I think that's already happening. To explain that tailor, Well,
there's a famous episode, it's I believe it's called metal Head.
That's a black and white episode of Black Mirror where
this woman is trying to get supplies from a warehouse
in this dystopian future and is hunted down by one
of these robot dogs. And I again, I think that's
(16:49):
happening in in in areas where these dogs are being deployed,
you know, in a conflict zones.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
So it's on where you can get paid by the
meme coins to fight the bought dogs.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Natasha, what's the are you are, your sources and people
you talkt your regular in Silicon Valley tapped into this world,
Like what's the kind of what's the tech industry taken
all of this?
Speaker 3 (17:13):
I mean, the investors are very tapped into this world.
They're very eager to monetize this, you know, get in
on these I guess commodification of more and more parts
of our lives. And I would say they have like
very little compunction about about being even associated with with
(17:33):
some of this stuff. And I think it's really interesting.
Andresen Horowitz as an investor in many of them, and
Mark and Dreesen has been talking about how there's this
massive gray area where if you are not if you're
not promoting a political candidate or a product explicitly, you
don't have to disclose anything. And you know, he's both
(17:57):
criticizing others for doing that and then also paying people
and doing it himself. I mean, in rees and Horowitz,
I think they're just about to announce their third class
of New Media fellows. You know, some of them, it's
like sixty five people a class. Some of them are disclosed.
Most of them aren't. And you know what they're doing.
(18:19):
It's not like they're making explicit videos to promote the firm, right,
They're just kind of pushing these ideas and you wouldn't know.
So to me, this is just a really natural fit
with the way that and there also happened to be
the biggest corporate donors so far in this election cycle,
which the New York Times had reported, So, I yeah,
(18:41):
it's just a perfect synergy.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
I guess it's like astroturfing technology, or it's the technology
of astroturfing, and the techicustry is leaning into that frictionless, scaled.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Astroturfic What is astroteph thing?
Speaker 4 (18:54):
Forgive me the famous word for like faked organic enthusiasm
for something right right right.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Well, later in the show, we're going to talk about
a venture backed show Mafia, featuring Sam Waltman, Palmer Lucky
and others in a very strange Founder's fund sponsored reality
TV YouTube show. But before that, we're going to go
to a break and when we come back, a top
AI advisor in the White House is stepping down at
the end of this month. But will anything change stay
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exclusive fifteen percent off your first purchase. See details in
the podcast episode description box. Welcome back, Natasha. We've talked
about tech industry leaders in the White House, and one
of them is now leaving schru Am Krishnan. I mean,
in some ways I saw this story, I thought, who
cares if a White House advisor whose name most people
don't know is leaving? But in other ways it kind
(20:49):
of seems to intersect with this bigger story of a
power struggle within the White House about how technology an
AI is being regulated and the kind of AI industry
folks versus the kind of Susie Wiles and Poward Latnik
Camp and the MAGA people, and so yeah, what what
how much should we care about Shrem Krishnan's depart sure
and why?
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Yeah, I think the interest for regular people, for the
broader audience is the fact that it's representative of this
battle that we're seeing play out with. You know, recently,
when Trump was about to sign this executive order on AI,
and then David Sachs, who is who was the former
White House and cryptos are and Treu Ram's boss in
(21:32):
the White House, he intervened, Musk intervened. You know a
number of tech CEOs, So Sachs left recently, Treu Ram
is leaving at the end of the month. And I
think we're seeing that in this in this power vacuum,
other members of the Trump administration, in particular, Susie Wiles
and Treasury Secretary Scott Passant are both having a lot
(21:59):
more influence and pushing back against the the kind of
policy stance that the Trump administration had taken on the
AI market so far, which was you know, total support,
you know, kind of deferring to the industry itself, to
the representatives for the industry itself, you know, uh eagerness
(22:21):
to to help work with the data center build out
that they want to ensure that. You know, one of
the first actions Trump did in office was to repeel
the Biden AI EO and executive Order. But with the
with the release of mythos Anthropics latest model, most powerful
(22:43):
AI model, which is much more capable in cybersecurity, you know,
you're having this this split that we've seen since the
beginning of the of Trump to between his very wealthy
tech donors and the more you know in his MAGA base.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
And in fact, Shriram himself was he's a former andrews
In partner, right, yes, yeah, And when he was appointed
he was born in India, and he had spoken out
previously on basically how important legal immigration is for the
United States, and when he was appointed to the White
House role. Laura Luma came out and basically said, this
is the worst thing ever. He's you know, supporting illegals
(23:26):
and he ended up getting death threats.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Yeah, yeah, it was over.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
This story does have tentacles right back to the beginning administration.
To talk a bit about Yeah, talk a bit about him,
how you know him and this kind of Yeah, that
story you mentioned it began at Christmas in twenty four
I guess.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Yeah, yeah, Shreram, I've known shru Ram, I don't know
for more than a decade since he was at since
he was at Meta. I mean, he's worked at all
of the big social media companies Facebook, Twitter, even Snap.
He was actually an investor in Crypto before he like
through Through and recent Horoitz before he switched in this role,
(24:05):
and he was based out in the UK. And I
think you know, the UK has a very uh, a
very different approach to AI safety. They're they're very concerned
with you know, these kind of existential threats, potential for
catastrophic harms. You know, we've talked a little bit on
the podcast before. Well, i I'm now I'm confusing it.
(24:27):
Taylor and I have talked a lot about this about
the influence influence of effective altruism. But I think that
you know, he came back to the US very much
armed with uh, with this top concern from from Mark Andresen,
which is like the AI doomers and their push for
more oversight and regulation and wanting to fight back against that.
(24:50):
And yeah, it's just a you know, really interesting cultural
battle because now.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
We see you know, Susie wat Ales who.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Who's coming in you know, without this technical expertise, and
Scott Bessett who might be hearing from the banks who
have access to mythos and you know, want to make
sure that their platforms are secure. So that yeah, there's
this real, this real power struggle. But so far, I
think we've seen that once you leave as a special
government employee, once you leave office, you can still have
(25:22):
a lot of influence, like David sax seems to still.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Very much be in the mix. Not to mention Elon
exactly exactly.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
So it's a.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Revolving door, except you get to not actually have to leave.
You can sort of be you don't even barely, I mean,
you're sort of even even more. You can have a
foot in both camps and have less sort of ethics
and regulatory exposure, but still have the same amount of
influences like best best of all worlds.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Yeah, when people were kind of harping on you know
what is in what was in Sachs's current portfolio with
Crypto n AI, you know, kind of showing those conflicts
of conflicts of interest, I was just like, well, once
he's out of office, I mean that's when.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
You can really start.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
I mean, you are you know now like Buddy Buddy
with Jensen Wong, you he just has so much more
clout and influence and reach than he had before.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
And I mean that's what you.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Need for deal flow. So I think, like any conflicts
of interest we saw while they were in office, it's
it's just going to.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Really take off.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Now. Kyle Taylor, have you been following the White House
drama of a sure, I'm well the I'm sure the
whitest story, yes, But what are your thoughts here?
Speaker 5 (26:35):
I just have to say that Strogram what he basically
does nothing and he kind of just shows up at
all of these companies Like I mean, I also have
sort of covered this man and known him for over
a decade, you know, through work stuff. It's just like
he always like you know, he'll be at Snap at
an opportune time, he'll be Meta at an opportune time.
(26:56):
He'll go to andres and where it's an opportune time
sort of to make money. He's sincophant, so he will
just say anything that they kind of want to hear.
And I just I don't think he's principled. I don't
think he has any real value. I just it's just
remarkable how this man has been able to position himself
in order to sort of profit off everything by standing
(27:16):
for nothing. And I mean, at least David Sachs, whether
you disagree with him, has an ideology behind him. Som
just sort of just shows up. And I just I
just think it's funny because he kind of ineviatively. He'll
show up for a couple you know, for a year
or two, and then he has to move on, and
I just think, what's the point, you know, I just
think he's always at the scene of the crime.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Well, at least during the Trump administration, he was the
one writing you know, some of that like anti woke EO,
the AI Action Plan, but he was w under rafting it. Sure,
But again, like he doesn't believe in anything. He'll just
like you know, under Trump one point zero, he was
sort of like more you know, progressive or seeming like
(27:59):
I just think he doesn't.
Speaker 5 (28:01):
He doesn't. He'll just do and say anything. He's just
kind of one of those people that will just go
along with anything and do and say anything. Again, he's
a singer fan, that's all. That's the best way I
feel like to describe him personally. That's my view of him.
Speaker 4 (28:15):
I feel like the revolving door thing has evolved and
gone faster and tighter and is now more plugged into
the tech industry. Like I mean, there is this overall
conjunction of artificial intelligence and government that I don't think
we really saw with social media, Like we weren't talking
about Facebook being integrated into into the United States government
(28:36):
quite as much as we're talking about you know, Claude
and chat GYPC.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
That's a great point, Carl, even from a sthetic point
of view, like when you thought, if you ask, what's
a single image of tech and government from the like
twenty twenty twenty era, it's like Mark zucker Book sweating
in his suit saying we still add so right, and.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Now it's like but I was gonna say, I thought
like the quintessential image was they did the town hall
and Mark Zuckerberg was interviewing Barack Obama. So it was like, actually,
I would say that that like how we sell ads
is much later there was that or yeah, or maybe
like Jack Dorsey and his stay Woke shirt. That's that
(29:18):
was like a little bit more like when the Dems
and and tech were we're we're in cahoots. But I
I think, like, you know, that's such a good point, Kyle,
because the thing that really stuck out to me is
when they started doing like the Trump administration when they
did their trip to the Middle East, Like who did
they bring with them? You know, Sam Altman, shri Ram,
(29:39):
Like you know when they went to China.
Speaker 4 (29:42):
Oh yeah, China, like Jensen Huong flying in.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Yeah, Like our geopolitical politics are defense strategy. I mean
you it's it's really hard to even think of an
area where biotech, you know, like drugs at the FDA.
It's it's hard to think of an area that's volatile
and important where they're not trying to have some influence.
Speaker 5 (30:04):
I think these AI companies also there's more opportunity for
government business and military contracts. I mean you mentioned like
the HHS or they want to get in you know,
they want to get their hands in the Pentagon money.
I don't think that those business opportunities were as available
to the social media companies.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
No, no, military internal Facebook was happening.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
Yeah, I mean, I think getting rid of getting rid
of the employee pushback, you know, like silencing, firing, marginalizing
the employees who objected to it, even though there were
there were always ties from the start of Silk and
Valley to now. But yeah, I think you're you're right, Tailor,
and right now they're also just like searching for growth everywhere.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
To your point about the sort of value that tech
companies could derive from government and going back to the
early twenty tens era, I mean, the Democrats seem to
understand the power of social media before the Republicans, Blue
State Digital and all of this. Like no, I mean, no, no, no,
Tailin'm wrong.
Speaker 5 (30:58):
I mean maybe Barack Obama leverage the Internet obviously in
the early days, but actually the Democratic establishment was quite
behind on social media. I think that they kind of
I think they sort of surface level bought into it.
But I think that the Democratic base like the institutional
power has got on Twitter. Early, you know, Democratic senators
were tweeting, but the base and the Democrats was primarily
(31:20):
consuming institutional media. Even today, they're still more loyal to
institutional media. Whereas that, you know, the Tea Party was
like a very like internet driven reactionary movement. The Republican
base has always been sort of more hyper online, especially
the MAGA movement which grew from the Internet.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Are there any true opponents of the tech industry, like
Steve Bannon who still have influence with Trump?
Speaker 3 (31:39):
I mean, Steve Bannon is like he has been on
a very focused anti big tech, anti tech you know
about AI, and I haven't seen that really affect the
Trump administration's decisions. But is his ability to rile up
the MAGA base I think is still there. And you know,
(32:02):
we're seeing this now. We're seeing it a little bit
when they tried to do a moratorium on state laws
or when they tried to penalize states for passing regulation
against AI. You have a lot of small government state
legislators that part of the Republican base really pushing back.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
So sure, I'm also got credit for for drafting the
EO preventing States from regulating the AI. Well before Sharon
was a White House advisor, he was a podcaster. He
and his wife had a podcast, and there was a
time when everyone wants to podcast, but now everyone wants
to show. We're on that with Kyle and others after
(32:43):
the break, stay with us. Welcome back, Kyle. You and
I had a chat last week about the showification of everything.
We talked before the break briefly about how True had
(33:04):
a podcast. There's a there's a big, very strange thing
this week with a Founder's Fund sponsored YouTube show of
tech people including Stammeltman play Mafia that I want to
talk about. But you've read about this in your column
for The New York this week, not not in reference
to the to the Mafia YouTube show, but kind of
to the showification of everything. What was your kind of
(33:26):
what drove you towards this piece.
Speaker 4 (33:28):
Yeah, the Founder's Fund video. I should have put that
in there because it is a perfect example that everything
is a show. Now. That's how I began this column
on the internet. Everything is now a show. It's not
just a post, it's not a selfie, it's not a
single video, it's not a podcast. Everything is a show
and The purpose of the column was to review this
(33:50):
new show or rebooted show, which is Kareem Rama, the
guy behind Subway Takes the extremely viral TikTok series. He
has real launched this older show or series that he
had on TikTok called Keep the Meter Running, which was
he would jump in a cab with a New York
City taxi driver and have the taxi driver take him
(34:11):
to wherever the driver wanted to go. So now Kareem
has turned that back into this YouTube production, which is
kind of a higher end thing. There's more staff on it,
there's more resources in it, and they're like twenty minute
episodes released every Wednesday on YouTube. And this is a
show like this, putting out a bunch of media every
(34:32):
week at the same time on the same day is
a television show. And so I kind of wanted to
approach it as that and see what this kind of
internet television looked like compared to what we had as
regular television. And I don't know. My conclusion with Keep
the Meter Running on YouTube was it's not quite short
(34:53):
form video. It's not quite long form video. It's not
quite comedy, it's not quite drama or heartfelt and I
just felt kind of bored by it.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
I might say, Kareem, you quote a Kareem in the
piece talking about how in this a couple of years ago,
how you didn't even need a show anymore because the
clips are the shows. So it's kind of ironic now
he's making a show again, but they're kind of the
relationship between clips and show and hype marketing seems to
have been internalized by the VC industry more than anybody
(35:24):
else in the world.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
Right yeah, I mean, this whole ecosystem is evolving as
we speak. I mean, so we've been hearing a lot
about the clipping economy, like these these people who grab
clips from a video podcast or a performance or whatever
and try to make little bits of it go viral.
And I feel like the show is like the source
for the clip. Now and you have people like Kareem
(35:49):
putting more and more resources into more and more elaborate shows,
and founders fund did this by putting a bunch of
tech I mean, some tech billionaires to play a party
in front of I don't know, eight to ten cameras
in this and.
Speaker 5 (36:04):
Got no views and it flopped.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
It is I mean, as Austin and I were texting
about this. It is one of the most off putting
pieces of content that I have ever seen on the Internet. Like,
I do not want to see Palmer Lucky pretend to
be a goofy, silly guy playing a game that's like
more suited to a school field trip in high school.
Speaker 5 (36:30):
This is not the first time that vcs have tried
to create shows. Let's not forget Suri Ram who were
just talking about, had a show for years on the
Andrews and Horwitz YouTube channel that could not break two
hundred views. Okay, they've constantly They had their Clubhouse show
right that Andrewsen had, Like they have been trying to
create content forever. They these these unfortunately for some reason,
(36:50):
even though they invent the technology. I mean, I think
for a lot of reasons, mainly that they're out of
touch billionaires, but like these people cannot understand like media
like sort of base, Like I mean, and recent has
been trying desperately, but they just discovered the term new media,
something that I think peaked in popularity around two thousand
and eight. Like they really are behind and it's and
(37:12):
it's interesting to me how bad they are at content. Meanwhile,
you have this like massive private equity firm TPG doing
a huge partnership with CIA to actually invest in creators businesses,
which makes a lot of sense now that CA is running,
you know, heading pretty more into digital. So I just
I think there are actually smart investors in this area
that really understand media. It's just they're not in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Natasha, how do you, I mean, how do you see
the aesthetics of the of the like Silicon Valley show machine.
I mean that that game of Mefia was so it
was just so flat, and it kind of felt like
somebody who had kind of extrapolated all of the principles
of what like should make a capital s show and
(37:58):
then like tried to do it and it was just
it's like it was I don't know, it was. It
was like almost devastating, how depressing and flat it was.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Well, I haven't seen it yet, but I have to
say this was not at all the reaction from within
the tech industry. People loved it. They said it was based,
you know, they said it was like more authentic than
anything else they've seen.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
I mean, I think that it's I think what Taylor's
saying maybe about everything.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Well, no, there's been some they have they have come
up with a new There is a whole ecosystem now, right.
I know, Kyle, you said it's not the showification doesn't
count one offs. But every launch video, every funding announcement,
every product update is its own. I mean, I saw
(38:43):
this recent launch video. I reached out to the to
the kid who had done it because it looked like
a little Wes Anderson film and I couldn't even tell
what the I couldn't even tell what the product was
going to be at the end. So, like Taylor says,
I agree, like they discovered it late. They have a
lot of money, they're trying. They're not getting the broader viewership,
but I think we're increasingly seeing that that doesn't necessarily
(39:08):
matter for them because they have the money they want.
They want cultural clout, they want influence, they want to
be able to, you know, have deal flow from from
founders in the industry, and for that it's working. Like normally,
if you're a business, you have to get it's not
but they're not. But the point it's their marketing budget.
(39:28):
It's just their marketing budget.
Speaker 5 (39:30):
But I'm saying they have yet to create a show.
First of all, they don't have a machine, right, they're
just hiring random people like Willy Nilly. They're getting c
list you know, digital marketing people right to create that.
They're hiring ad agencies. And it's like, I agree with you.
I think the launch video stuff is more downstream of
Cluely and them sort of realizing like marketing matters actually,
(39:51):
and so like let's make marketing videos. Taylor roy Lee
started this AI. He was sort of this guy who
went viral for saying she on everything. He's a young
guy who started this AI assistance tool call cluy and
he basically just like introduced the concept of marketing to
Silicon Valley like two years ago. And I do think
that he had like, you know, his his staff was
(40:13):
making like four tiktoks a day. It was sort of
a meme. And he made this a lot of very
viral launch videos. And I think that's also like when
they realize like, oh, a good launch video can help.
Speaker 4 (40:23):
Now.
Speaker 5 (40:24):
It's not like the VC industry has never been good
at marketing. I think there's just this small cadra of
reactionary vcs that constantly want to engage in marketing, but
because they're so out of stuff, with culture. They haven't
made anything that average people outside Silicon Valley hype circles consume.
And yeah, they're all excited about Mafia. They all were
very excited saying the same like, you know, glazing around
(40:47):
Mark Andreesen's Clubhouse show, which ultimately made no impact. And maybe,
as Natasha said, it's fine because it's just about deal flow,
but they haven't made a show that's really broken through.
I think outside Dwarkesh, the outside people have.
Speaker 4 (40:59):
The surreal thing is like it's so fancy and expensive looking.
I think, like, I think it's part of this broader thing,
this like race toward more and more quote unquote authentic
content with higher resolution and more cameras and red wine
production value and red wine, and it's like they are
turning these tech CEOs into influencer type characters. They're cultivating
(41:22):
this like intense parasocial presence for them. And I just,
I mean granted, were like turned off by the content,
of course because it kind of sucks and is weird,
but it's like why Sam Altman should have better things
to do than to play this game on camera, Like
I want to actually be thinking about I don't know
(41:43):
a post ai economy. I don't want to see him
being silly and approachable because he's not well.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
There are a couple of comments on the on the YouTube,
which which rose to the top, one with Sam does
not want to be the last man standing in a
game of deception played in public because people were speculating
he could have won, but not to and somebody else
for actual real world villains doing collabse like this is crazy,
you know, I guess it's not for us, Like that's
the thing, like Natasha to your point, like this is
if this is getting the insider crowd excited and you know,
(42:12):
helping found us fun with its positioning and its deal
flow with young founders and stuff. I guess that's the
point where it's it's not supposed to be like a
widely circulating cultural product.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
Yeah, I mean, I don't want to say that, you know,
it's it's exclusively deal flow. I actually think you know,
like before Indrees and Horowitz brought all this stuff in house,
they had thet the guy who's running their new media thing,
Eric Tornberg Mark Andriesen was an investor in his podcast network.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
I think I might have been one.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
Of the only listeners to these podcasts, but they explicitly
talked about like it was called upstream. You know, they
wanted to see these ideas and they have. They have
so much more cultural influence than they used to have.
Like I really felt like the VC industry was kind
of falling off. They have been able to change young
people's mind about defense work. They have been able to,
(43:03):
you know, rehabilitate Palmer Lucky's public image. They do these
sizzle reels now for like just defense startups with all
of this kind of you know, Apollo like to the
Moon Graphics. I mean, there's Palenteer merch I would say
that Natasha. They don't have a mass I'm not saying
(43:24):
they have a mass audience, but they have managed to
there are a lot of people coming, young people coming
into the tech industry that reflect some of the views
that they've heard on X. I mean there's a reason
they know on X.
Speaker 5 (43:38):
On X yeah, sure, they've bought the I think X
has been the most successful way that they've like ownership
of the platforms and the way that they've been able
to seize control of our algorithms has been far more
influential than all of their little like dumb high production
marketing stunts, which I think have not hit. I just
don't see the evidence that those have really gone far
(44:01):
to change opinion. Whereas controlling a social media platform and
putting these ideas and aligning themselves with the MAGA movement
and hopping on these broader cultural shifts, I think that's
been far more successful for them.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
I think if you talk to young people in the
tech industry now, like they have this reflexive like animus
against woke, against you know, feminism, against the idea of
of you know, some of the DEI efforts that that
the industry used to at least spout.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
So so you create some of the content produced by
the tech industry for engendering this sort of shift in no.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
I would say, I see what you're saying, Tol, Like,
I don't think these formal I mean, it's just the
same as what Kyle was saying about the new show.
You know, it's like, first of all, it's a constant unbundling, rebundling,
like desperate search for authenticity and when you have too
much money and and no kind of.
Speaker 4 (44:55):
It shows.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
Yeah, really shows.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
But I would say exactly like the fact that they
have so many podcasts, I mean. Mark Andriesen talks about
how he started pushing his podcast because he didn't want
legislators in DC to listen to The New York Times.
He wanted them to listen to him, And now he
hears that legislators do listen to his podcast. So it
doesn't really matter whether or not they have broad broad
(45:25):
public support or broader public support. They've they've managed to
shift shift to the perception of the tech industry among
young people coming into it.
Speaker 4 (45:36):
It's an interesting evolution in the format too. I think
like this, this broadcasting of a game, like like live
streaming a game, is this like tabletop RPG kind of
trope where you are watching the people you like play
a game in front of you, and you're like consuming
their enjoyment of a game. And so this Mafia thing,
it's like they're not talking directly about technology necessarily. They
(46:00):
are like performing a character that they exist as in public,
and they're like manipulating each other and like doing this
kind of quote unquote badass activity. So I feel like
it provides us like branding aura that almost has nothing
to do with their actual jobs or functions. It's just
like making them seem cool and relevant. To a certain audience.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
Well, I think I kept thinking about how, like the
early profiles of Mark Zuckerberg would talk about him playing civilization.
I mean, I think it's supposed to be like, you know,
they're there, this is a way that's not going to
affect their stock value, but for them to look deceptive powerful,
you know, like Sun sou Art of War, you know,
(46:42):
all that kind of stuff in public without you thinking like,
oh wait, they're doing that like on on me through
their products and platforms and you know, weapons that they're building.
Uh So I feel like it hit the right audit,
which is small.
Speaker 5 (47:02):
I just want to say one thing, which is that
like I think that they have also like drifted onto
these like broader trends. Like I just think like if
you because you can look at any industry and they're
a lot less like quote unquote woke than in twenty
twenty or twenty twenty one, and so I think that
like they just again it's not so much that they're
good at producing content, but I do think they're good
at reading the tea leaves and amassing power and amassing
(47:25):
Internet power and like recognizing that Maga was an amassing power.
I mean there was that viral clip of Mark injuries
and also on some podcast where he was a Joe
Rogan where he was talking about how he had a
meeting with Biden and Biden said that he was gonna
camp out all Ai or some ridiculous time. That's probably
not true, it's not but yeah, but but but the
(47:46):
point is is like they recognize that Trump would be
advantageous to them very early. They used platforms like the
All In podcast, which we haven't mentioned here, and like
these other sort of like network to a mass a
lot of power, and I think that that has been successful,
and maybe the Mafia is sort of just a continuation
of that broader network economy of pushing these ideas.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Well, we're out of time for this week, so I
have a bumper edition of Worst Weeks in Tech for
next week. But in the meantime, thank you all so
much for joining us today for tech stuff. I'm Oz Valoshin.
This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis and Melissa Slaughter.
(48:27):
It was executive produced by me Julian Nutter and Kate
Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrian Novel for iHeart podcasts Our
Engineer with Bihiit Fraser jack Insley makes this episode, and
Kyle Murdoch Wrotel theme song. A special thank you to
Taylor Lorenz, Kyle Chaker, and Natasha Tiku. Please check out
all the work they put out into the world. We're
lucky to call them friends of the Pod.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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