January 1, 2025 • 35 mins
In this year's two-part finale, Ed Zitron enumerates the damage being done to billions of people by the growth-at-all-costs Rot Economy - and why you need to have solidarity with your fellow user.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Media.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
You are the victim of a con You have more
than likely said to yourself some time in the last
few years, even ten years, that you just didn't get tech,
or you getting too old, or that tech's gotten away
from you because you found a service or an app
or your computer annoying you or someone you love have
convinced themselves that their inability to use something is a
sign that they are deficient, that they've failed to keep
(00:26):
up with the times, as if the things we use
every day should be in a constant state of flux.
You're listening to Better Offline and I'm d Zetra, and
this is the two part episode that ends this season
(00:48):
of Better off Line, and it's about the true scale
of the rot economy and how the tech industry is
waging an endless, invisible war against the user and we're losing,
by the way, We're losing really badly. They're slowly taking
everything away, adding tolls and growth hacks around basically every
part of our lives. And they can't even give us
the dignity of making sure the things that make them
(01:08):
billions keep functioning. No, I don't know. They have to
twist them at every goddamn corner to make them more profitable,
because they know, in many cases that we have nowhere
else to go. Think about it, The tools we use
in our daily lives outside of our devices have mostly
stayed the same, right, buttons on our cars might have
moved around a bit. And I'm not talking about testa.
(01:30):
By the way, we generally have a brak and an
accelerator and a wheel and a turn signal. Boarding an
airplane has mostly worked the same way since I started flying.
Our trains are buses, restaurants, toilets, houses. They all have
the same mechanisms, and we're not expected to update them
or adapt to new circumstances. We don't walk into our
apartments and the door opens a different way for some reason,
(01:51):
the toilet still flushes. I believe just used it. Just
checked now what I'm getting into in this episode. There
are some exceptions. Some people really just don't try and
learn how to use the computer or a smartphone, and
they just kind of reject technology or they refuse to
pick it up because it's not for them. These people exist,
they are real, We all know them, and I don't
think anybody hearing this falls into that camp. Basic technological
(02:15):
literacy is a requirement to live in society, and there
is some responsibility on the user. But even saying that,
even if we assume that these people are very common
and this is the case, should companies really take advantage
of them? And the answer is no, of course. Now,
our apps and platforms, the things we use every day,
operate with a totally different moral and intellectual compass to
(02:38):
other things in our lives. Well, the idea of an
updates fairly nobleor that something you've bought can be maintained
and improved over time, that's a good thing. Many take
platforms see it as a means to further extract and exploit,
to push users into doing things that either keep them
on the app longer or take more profitable actions. We
as a society need to reckon with this, and we
(02:58):
need to reckon with how this twist. So it makes
us more paranoid, more judgmental, more aggressive, more reactionary, because
when everything is subtly annoying, we all simmer. We suffer
in these manifold ways. There's no digital world in physical world,
by the way they are and have been for some time,
quite the same thing. And reporting on tech as if
this isn't the case is a failure of the user,
(03:19):
failure of reality, and honestly a failure of curiosity. If
you're still doing this as a writer, you're full of shit.
And I want to be clear that I'm not just
talking about one single product or company. I'm talking about
most digital experiences. I'm talking about the digital interference with
constantly having to dodge the litley of buttons on every
app that are all there to distract us to offuscate
(03:40):
the path of the things we actually want to do.
I'll choose an example for you now. My British Canadian
listener is not going to love this. But as an
app called Sleeper, which I used to play fancy football NFL,
there are so many buttons to try and make me
do different kinds of sports gambling. All I want to
do is check my lineup. But no, no, no, no,
Sleeper must have a way to further monetize me. The
(04:01):
way that apps present information in ways that the design
to be illogical and unhelpful is just disgusting, and they
artificially force us to engage for longer with the apps
in question. It's not about providing a service, and I
sound kind of panicky and emotional. But I need you
to understand how common this is in your lives. Every
(04:22):
different digital experience is a small version of the little
pieces that make up an annoying day at work, except
for either paying for them or being actively monetized for
the pleasure. Let me give you an example. Back in
twenty twenty three, Spotify redesign its app too and I
quote the verge b part TikTok, part Instagram, and part YouTube,
which in practice meant replacing a relatively clean and straightforward
(04:43):
user interface with one made up of full screen cards
like TikTok and auto playing video podcasts also like TikTok,
and CEO Daniel Eck claimed that this would and I'm
quitting sky News here make the platform come alive with
different content on a platform that was built in sold
as a place to listen to music. And the tech media,
(05:03):
by the way, waived off this redesign without really thinking
about it. They ain't consider its significance. At the drop
of a hat, hundreds of millions of people's existence, their
experience of listening to music would change at the whim
of a multi billionaire with the express purpose of forcing
them to engage with completely different content than they sign
up for as a means of increasing engagement, metrics and
revenue for a public company. By all means, try and
(05:26):
pretend that this is just an app. It's just music, right, No,
people's relationships with music and entertainment are intrinsically linked to
their moods and their motivations, and no matter how you feel,
it's clear that Spotify, are company best known for fucking
and exploiting its artists, treats its customers, both paying and otherwise,
with a similar level of contempt, and they're far from alone.
(05:47):
Earlier in the year, smart speaker company Sonos released a
redesign of their app that removed their accessibility features, the
ability to edit song cues or play music from your phone,
and this was an attempt, in their words, to modernize
the interface, with Wired suggesting that these changes could potentially
open the door to adding a subscription service of some
sort to help. So nos is you never guess ailing
(06:07):
growth meta great example as well continually redesigns Facebook and Instagram,
the latest of which happened in October to focus Facebook
on gen Z users, and they're probably the most egregious
example of the constant chaos of our digital lives. Well,
we might complain about these things, we stuck with them
because the conditions of our investment in tech are that
(06:28):
we need accounts, we have the features that are customized
for us. The more time we put into it, the
more it becomes ours. But really, the more we become
owned by the companies. We have ways. We've set things
up that mier us further to an ecosystem, and that's
fine for a time. It's kind of like having to
buy specific outfits for specific occasions, except they might stop
(06:48):
fitting at random, and I don't mean based on your way.
They just expand and intract at random. We load websites
expecting something to go wrong, because it probably will. With
mobile websites that cover entire screens with pop up ads
that can break the entire experience. My favorite example, by
the way, is ign dot com, which is a site
that receives over one hundred and eighteen million unique monthly
visitors that will regularly crash your mobile browser. No really,
(07:11):
go and look up the God of War Ragnarok guide
right now and try scrolling on your phone. If it
doesn't crash your browser, I'll be very bloody surprised. Seemingly
every experience online demands our email address, and giving them
our email address adds another email to inboxes already stuffed
with two types of spam, the actual get the biggest
laser spam that immediately hits your junk folder, and then
(07:33):
the growth hack emails we receive from clothing brands we
wanted to discount from or newspapers we pay that still
feel it's necessary to email us three to five times
a day. Every app we use is intentionally built to
growth hack, a term that means moving things around in
such a way that the user does the things we
want them to do. As a company, dating apps gag
your best matches behind dollar ninety nine or more micro transactions.
(07:55):
Uber puts suggestions and massive banners throughout their apps to
try and convince you to use one of their other apps,
or maybe you accidentally hit them, which gives Uber and
a better chance to get you to try them. Outlook,
one of the most popular email platforms in the world,
puts advertisements in your email inbox that are near and
distinguishable from new emails, and they're actually at the top
of your inbox too and meta my favorite, They have
(08:17):
these video carousels previously just on Facebook, but they just
added them to Instagram that intentionally only play the first
seconds of a clip as a means of making you click,
giving them more clicks, more engagement, and more things to
trick the street with. What I'm getting at, and I
think you kind of experienced yourself, is that our digital
lives are actively abusive and hostile. Our ahaps are ever changing.
(08:38):
They're adapting not to us, not to our conditions or
our needs, but to the demands of investors and internal
stakeholders that have reduced who we are and what we
do to an ever growing selection of manipulatable metrics, things
that don't really tell them anything other than how to
knock us around to make us do more. It isn't
that you don't get tech. I must insist you understand this.
(09:00):
It's that the tech you use every day is completely
and utterly insane. Every app has a different design, Almost
every design is growth hacked to optimize your activity on
said app, with each app trying to make you do
different things, with some apps having entire growth hacking teams
that continually evaluate what you do and what your friends
are doing, and perhaps find new ways to mash them
(09:21):
together so they can make more money come out. It
doesn't matter if the experience sucks. That's not what they're
there for. They're not there to make things better. I
want you to realize that this is in almost every
application you use. I know I'm repeating myself, but it's important,
and I'm not saying this to complain, But it's because
I believe, as I've hinted that previously, that we're in
the midst of the largest scale ecological disaster of our time,
(09:44):
because almost every single interaction with technology, which is required
to live in modern society, has become actively adverse aial
to the user. These issues hit everything we do all
the time constantly. We're constantly interrupted, and I believe it's
so much bigger than social media and algorithm though I
must be clear they're absolutely a big part of it.
(10:13):
The average person's experience with technology is one so aggressive
and so violative that I believe it leaves large parts
of our society with a low level trauma. I know
it sounds dramatic. Some of you hearing this may scoff
at the idea. Even after all, you're smart, right, you
know about this information, You know about what these companies
are doing, and thus most people do right wrong. Most
(10:37):
people don't think about the things they're doing at all,
and they're just trying to get buy in a society
that increasingly demands we make more money to buy the
same things, with our lives both interfered with and judged
by social networks with aggressive algorithms that feed us more
things based on what we'll engage with, which might mean
things that piss us off or actively radicalize us. People
are nagged constantly by these goddamn notifications and average forty
(11:00):
six a day. Some useful some advertisements, like say Apple
telling us that there's a nail by a college football game,
regardless of whether we've interacted with any football contact ever,
or a Slack message saying that you haven't joined a
group you were invited to a week ago, or Etsy
letting you know that you can buy things for an
upcoming holiday. It's all the time, it's everywhere, it's constant,
it's relentless, and the more time you invest in using
(11:22):
a device, the more of these notifaications you get, making
you less likely or capable of turning them off. After all,
how well are you doing keeping your inbox clean. How's
that going? What's that? What was that? You get twenty
five emails a day, many of them from a different
company owned by Williamsonoma. Damn, that's crazy. But the indignities
don't end there, because these people also have to be
constantly aware of scams and outright misinformation, both on social
(11:45):
networks that don't really care to stop it and on
the chum box advertisements below most major news publications, and
if you don't know what that is, those are those
weird little stories at the bottom promising miracle cures are
trying to sell you weed or well fake weed from
Chu Chin Chong. Plenty of people who read and write
about technology have this insipid amount of privilege. They assume
(12:06):
that it's natural that you'd know that there are entities
out there trying to scam or trick you, And I'd
argue that most people don't. Most people are just trying
to get by, and to most people, a video from
rumble dot com may as well be the same thing
as a video from CNN dot com. And most people
would believe that every advertisement is somehow verified for its
accuracy versus the truth, which is it's sold at scale
all the time to whoever will pay money. I want
(12:29):
to give you a really good example, and this one
turns my fucking stomach. This one really pisses me off,
and I want to just say what I'm about to say.
CNN dot com. It's on nbcnews dot com and it's
also on the Verge. Nill Patel, you need to fix
this shit. It's disgusting. But let's talk about CNN dot com,
a website that had five hundred and ninety four million
visitors in October twenty twenty four. At the bottom of
(12:51):
CNN when you scroll down, it's something that says paid
partner content, including things in publications like finance Buzz that
tell you about the and I quote nine dumbest things
smart people waste money on finance Buzz immediately when you
click through, asks you to turn your notifications on, you know,
so that they can ping you and they have new
articles and each bullet on the story leads to one
of a different kind of affiliate marketing arm of the
(13:13):
company trying to sell you car insurance and credit cards,
where they get a little smidgeon of commission every time
someone buys something. And you offered the chance to share
your email address to receive and I quote vetted side
hustles and proven ways to earn extra cash sent to
your inbox, which I assume includes things like the advertorial.
I was led to where they were telling me that, yes,
you could make money playing online bingo in games such
(13:36):
as Bingo Cash against other people. And I saw that,
and I said, that doesn't sound true at all, so
went and looked them up. Papaya Games, developer of Bingo Cash,
was sued in March by rifle gaming company Skills for
using bots in allegedly skill based games that are supposed
to be between humans, and the Michigan Gaming Control Board
issued a season desist ordered against the company for violating
multiple gaming laws, including the Lawful Internet Gaming Act. Quote
(14:00):
the lawsuit. Papia's games are not skill based, and users
are often not playing against live, actual opponents, but against
Papyah's own bots that direct and rig the game so
that Papyah itself wins its users' money while leading them
to believe that they lost to a live human opponent.
This is a website and its associated content that had
prime placement on the front page of a major news outlet.
(14:21):
As a normal person, it's reasonable to believe that CNM
would not wilfully allow advertisements for websites that are in
and of themselves further advertisements masquerading as trustworthy third party entities.
It's reasonable that you, as a normal person, would believe
that finance buzz was a reputable website and that their
intentions were to share great deals and secret tricks with you.
If you think you're not this stupid, your privileged, and
(14:42):
need to have more solidarity with your fellow human beings,
it's disgraceful if you hear this and you're like, huh,
stupid idiots, God damn you. People are being screwed. People
are being screwed right now in this way that you
might scoff at, that you might look down your nose at,
but this is serious, and this is horrible. And companies
(15:03):
like outbrain and Taboolah who make these chumbox advertisements, they
make millions and millions of dollars doing this and really
putting aside any privilege you might have, or maybe you don't,
maybe you get what I'm talking about here. Why wouldn't
you think that the content on one of the most
notable media outlets in the entire world is trustworthy. Now,
(15:25):
nothing I'm saying is meant to be polemic or pessimistic
or describing anything other than the shit that's happening in
front of my eyes and your eyes and the eyes
of billions of people. Dismissing these things as just how
it is as we have for years, allows powerful people
with no real plan and no real goals other than growth,
to thrive, and sneering at people dumb enough to get
(15:46):
tricked by an Internet and tech industry built specifically to
trick them, suggests that you have no idea how you
are being scammed because you're smug and arrogant. And I
realize I'm possibly making up a person to be angry at,
But I've had a few conversations recently with people who
had this reaction, and it sucks. We all learn things
for the first time, and it's like, if you never learned,
(16:07):
how would you learn? And I'm trying to, I guess,
make up this person. But if anyone listening have that attitude,
it's important. I need you to stop trying to explain
away how fucking offensive using the Internet and technology has become.
I need you to stop making excuses for the powerful
and consider the sheer scale of the cycle wrap fucking
happening on almost every single device in the world, and
(16:29):
consider the ramifications of the difficulty that the human being
using the internet has trying to live an honest, dignified,
and reasonable life. And maybe you're in the middle ground.
Maybe you didn't judge them, maybe it just wasn't you.
Either way, it's I think it's important to put this down.
To exist in modern society requires you to use these
devices or otherwise sacrifice large parts of how you'd interact
(16:50):
with other people. You need a laptop or smartphone for work,
probably both for school or for anything. Really, you need
messaging apps otherwise you kind of don't exist. And as
a result, there's this societal monopoly of sorts, or maybe
it's more of a cartel in the sense that for
the most part, every tech company has accepted these aggressive
anti user positions, all in pursuit of growth. The stakes
(17:13):
are so much higher than I think anyone realizes, especially
in the tech media, and I don't know why they're
not more willing to discuss the scale. They can pick
the issues, they can say this is bad, and this
is bad, and then they can run glossy coverage for
Zuckerberg or Musk. But it's bad. It's worse. It's worse
than a lot of things, and just it's undiscussed, and
(17:34):
they feel almost like I'm saying something obvious. But I've looked.
This isn't being put down like this. No, one's just
pointing at the everything, the bad ex and look the
extent of the damage, the pain, the frustration, the terror.
It's so constant, and we're all, in some level just
kind of numb to it because discussing it requires accepting
(17:56):
that a vast majority of people live poisoned lives thanks
to their phones laptops. And this isn't even an anti
technology position. I want it to be better. And as
you'll hear soon, I do love the computer. But we
really need to get into this and we need to
realize we all live in the ruins created by the
rot economy. Were the only thing that matters is growth,
(18:17):
growth of revenue, growth of business, growth of metrics related
to said business, growth of engagement of clicks, of time
on the app of purchases, of microtransactions, of impressions of ads,
of things done that make executives feel happy and make
the growth team see the number go up. It's goddamn sickening. However,
if you want to feel better, I'm pretty sure that
(18:37):
after I stop speaking here, there's going to be an AD.
And I am one hundred percent confident that this ad
follows it will align with everything I've been saying. It
won't be for something that has a kind of an
ironic context considering my work. You're going to chuckle and
shorten because of how right I am here, not because
the thing that follows is completely disgarden and we're back. So,
(19:14):
as you know, as a listener, I'm a dickhead, and
if you haven't been listening, you probably work that out
by now you're twenty minutes or so in and you've
heard me get pissed off. But I was trying to
work out as I wrote this script, how would I
frame this, How would I really show you the scale?
So I went on Amazon dot com, the Everything Store,
(19:35):
and I bought the best selling laptop at two hundred
and thirty eight dollars, Aceerus Spire one with a four
year old seller on N four five zero zero processor,
which I'd consider fairly representative of how millions of people
interact with the Internet. I also believe it's a powerful
illustration of the damage caused by the rot economy and
this abusive, poisonous and exploitive way in which the tech
(19:56):
industry treats people. In a very practical sense, So I
opened this piece of sheit up and it really you're
gonna hear as I discussed this the anger that I experience.
So I hit on on it and it took one
minute and fifty seconds from touching that power button for
the laptop to get to a setup screen. It then
took another minute and a half to connect and begin
downloading updates, which then took several more minutes. After that,
(20:19):
I was faced with a licensing agreement where I agreed
to binding arbitration to use Windows. Another twenty four second pause,
and then I got shown a screen of different and
I quote ways I could unlock my Microsoft experience with
animations that shut it and jerked violently. It really didn't
feel good. It was just immediately you could tell this
thing was cheap. Now throughout using this thing, this cheap
(20:40):
track pad on this laptop, it would just miss the
occasional click. And at this point I was forced to
create a Microsoft account and hand over my cell phone
or another email address to receive a code, or I'd
not be able to use the laptop at all. Each
menu screen takes three to five seconds to load, and
I'm asked to customize my experience with things like personalized ads,
tips and recommendations with every option on by the ford,
(21:00):
by the way, and then I had to sign up
for another account, this time with ASA. At one point,
I'm simply shown an AD for Microsoft one Drive and
their cloud storage product with a qrco to download it
on my phone, and then I'm told that Windows has
to download a few updates, which I assume are different
to the updates I did before. Now I'm not just complaining,
I just I'm trying to explain how much stuff happens
(21:24):
when a regular person who cannot afford a MacBook, who
cannot afford a nice Dell laptop, just buys the first
one off of Amazon, as we all do with different products. So,
by the way, at this point, around twenty minutes have
passed just to get to this screen. It then took
another thirty three minutes for the updates to finish, and
then another minute and fifty seven seconds to log in,
(21:45):
at which point a screen popped up, telling me to
set up a browser and discover the best of Windows,
including finding the apps I love from the Microsoft Store,
and the option to create an AI generated theme of
my browser or for my browser. Even the laptop, by
the way between each screen felt like it was just
shaking visually, like the animations jutted viciously. You just get
(22:08):
this constant sense that this thing sucks from the moment
you use it. And so I finally at this point
got to my new laptop, my beautiful new Asa laptop
that's stunk. And then I opened the start bar, which
is ostensibly a place where you'd have apps, right, apps
that you'd use on the computer, and I saw some
of the things like Outlook, an email client that's not
(22:30):
actually installed and requires you to download it. You click
it and it then downloads again. At an option for
a travel website called booking dot com, just an ad
along with a link to LinkedIn another ad for Microsoft property.
One app Clipchamp, was installed, but immediately needed to be updated,
which did not work when I hit update, which then
forced me to go find the updates page, which then
showed me at least forty different apps called things like
(22:52):
sweet Labs, Inc. I do not know what any of
this stuff was. It's just so strange. I tiped Sweet
Labs into the soar and it took a little shaky,
juttery like the animation's hitched a bit. And then it
opened this giant menu with half of it dedicated to
Mark Twain's birthday, and which had two different Mark Twain
(23:13):
related links, a quiz of the day in four different
games available for download. At this point, by the way,
I've been able to do nothing on this computer. I
could have loaded Edge, but I'll get to that in
a minute. I also should be clear that the computer
was pausing slightly every time I typed a letter. Every
animation felt so clunky and juttery. Even moving the windows
around didn't feel smooth. It's just slow. It felt cheap.
(23:35):
And the operating system, previously something I'd considered to be
the thing that operates the computer, it's actively rotten. It's
full of ads, sponsored content, suggested adds, and intrusive design
choices that make the system slower and actively upset the user.
Now at this point it's important to add what operating
system it is. I'll get to that shortly, and the
reason I'm explaining all of this in such agonizing detail
(23:58):
is that this is the experience that I believe is
more indicative of the average person's use of the computer
than anybody else's. It's this, It's Windows, the crappiest, shittiest Windows.
And though it's tough to gauge how many of these things,
these crappy laptops are sold to make it a best
seller on Amazon, laptops in this price point, which use
a specific version of Windows called eleven Home in S mode,
(24:21):
dominate Amazon's bestseller lists, along with apples significantly more expensive
MacBook Air and Pro series. It's reasonable to believe that
a large amount of laptops sold in America match this
price point and spec There are two similar ones on
best Buyers best Sellers, or at least they were at
the time I wrote this script, and as of writing
this sentence down, which would have been very beginning of December,
(24:41):
multiple different laptops of this very specific specification are on
the front of Target's laptop page. And if I haven't
made it completely clear, this means that millions of people
are likely using a laptop that's burdensomely slow, full of
targeted advertising. And content baked Inton operating system in a
way that's either impossible or difficult to remove for millions
of people, and it really could be tens of millions
(25:03):
of people considering the ubiquity of these laptops. The experience
of using the computer is both actively exploitative and incredibly
incredibly slow. Even loading our MSN dot com, the very
first page you see when you open a web browser
in Windows Home S immediately hits you with ads for eBay,
QVC and QuickBooks with icons that sometimes don't load. By
(25:25):
the way, about Windows eleven Home in S mode that
you might not have heard of. This it's a special
version of Windows where you can only use apps from
the Windows Store, and on top of that, it's supposedly
more efficient. I've used quite a few of these laptops now,
and they're the slowest, won keyest pieces of shit ever.
But they're cheap. And it's not just the crappy hardware either,
(25:50):
it's every part of the operating system, which feels like
it's built to hound you to use some sort of
Microsoft product, or some sort of product that Microsoft or
the laptop manufacturer has been paid to make your set. Well,
one can hope that people buying these laptops have an
awareness of anything. The reality is they're being dumped into
a kind of tjmax version of computing, except Tjmax clothes
don't sometimes scream at you to download TJ maxplus will
(26:12):
stop functioning because you use them too fast. Now I
say this, haven't shopped there in a while, but I
assume this is still the case. Again, this is how
most people are experiencing modern computing. And it isn't because
this is a big business. It's because laptop sales have
begun to fall, and they've been falling for over a decade,
and manufacturers and Microsoft need as many ways to grow
(26:32):
revenue as possible, even if the choices they make are
actively harmful to the consumer. Also, I swear to God,
if your answer here is get a MacBook Air, there
are only six hundred dollars. I beg you. I plead
with you to speak with people outside of your income
bracket at a time when entire election was decided in
part because everything's more expensive. At this point, said person
using this laptop can now log onto the Internet, by
(26:54):
the way, and begin using websites like Facebook and Instagram
and YouTube, all of which that have algorithms we don't
really underst but they have been regularly proven to be
actively and deliberately manipulative and harmful. And I know I'm angry.
I mean whatever. You listened to this show and this
is the finhale of this year. You know how pissed
off I am. But the picture I'm trying to paint
(27:15):
is one of terror and abuse. The average person's experience
of using a computer starts with aggressive interference delivered in
a shoddy, sludge like frame, and the wider Internet opens
up to said user, which has already been battered by
a horrible user experience by the way, They're immediately thrown
into this heavily algorithmic feed of some sort, each different
feed built to condom in a unique way, feeding whatever
(27:36):
holds their attention and chucking ads in there as best
they can as they browse the web, websites like the Vergin,
NBC and used feature stories from companies like world Trending
dot com with advertisements with bizarre toys written in the
style of a blog so intentional in their deceit that
the page in question has a huge disclaimer at the
bottom saying it's an ad as they're clunky, shuddering, shitty
(27:57):
laptop hitches between every scroll they go to ESPN dot com.
When the laptop slows to a crawl, everything slows to
a crawl. Why why, god damn it is everything so
fucking slow? These people say, I'll just stay on Facebook
or Instagram or YouTube. At least that place doesn't crash
half the time or trick me. Sadly not, The biggest
trick that these platforms played wasn't the algorithm, but the convenience.
(28:21):
In an internet it's so horribly poisoned by growth capitalism,
these platforms show a degree of peace and consistency, even
if they're specifically engineered to manipulate you. Using the computer
in the modern age is so inherently hostile that it
pushes us towards core part authoritarians like Apple, Microsoft, Google
and Meta. And now that every website is so desperate
for our email to show us ads and to push
(28:43):
stuff on us, it's either harmful or difficult for the
average person to exist online. So of course they're going
to go to the big box websites they feel comparatively safe,
even if they're not. When every single website needs to
make as much money as possible because they're private equity
or head which fund or massive corporate owners need to
make more money every year without fail. The incentives are
(29:04):
building the Internet, veer away from providing a service or
information and towards putting you the listener in silent service
of a corporation. If you're technologically savvy in reading this,
by the way, sit down and think. Think for a
second about the amount of effort you've put into mitigating
the problems with the Internet and modern computing. Fresh in
stores of windows and new machines, avoiding certain websites because
(29:25):
you've learned what the bad ones look like, not interacting
with random people in your dms because you know that's
what a spambot looks like, and so on and so forth.
Think about it. I know a lot of you are
very technologically savvy, but you're instinctually ducking and weaving around
an Internet and digital ecosystem that continually tries to interrupt you.
You're batting away pop ups and silencing notifications, knowing that
(29:47):
they all want something from you. And I need you
to realize that most people are not like you, and
you too are actively victimized by the tech ecosystem as
a result, And like I said a few weeks ago,
I believe that most people are actively can cast by
their daily lives because most people's daily lives are on
the computer or their smartphones, and those lives have been
stripped of dignity. When they look at the media, the
(30:09):
best they'll get is a degree of hmm. Algorithm bad
is bad? Is computer? Is Facebook? Not good? Actually, I
take it back. You don't really get that either. You
don't really get you know how bad Facebook and Instagram are.
You don't even get the media really covering it. It
drives me insane. Yet it's so much more than just
(30:29):
the algorithm. It's almost the entirety of the digital ecosystem,
from websites to apps to the devices we use every day.
The fact that so many people likely use a laptop
that's equal parts unfit for the task and stuffed full
of growth, hacked poison is utterly goddamn disgraceful because it
means that the only way to escape the poison is
to simply have more money. Those who can't afford a
(30:52):
three hundred dollars at least phone or a six hundred
dollar laptop are left to use this offensively bad technology,
and we have at society scale simply accepted that this
is how things go. The result is that everything's a
chaotic mess. By everything, I mean almost every digital experience,
like I've been saying. And if you still believe the
digital world has no bearing on the physical world, you're
(31:13):
a dumbass. Everything you do, for the most part, goes
through absent websites. It's impossible to avoid, and it gets
harder to weighe through if you aren't wealthy enough or
lucky enough to have someone teach you or own a
powerful enough device, which is not something that really happens
in school. In any case, they're not really loading you
up with the most powerful stuff. Nor do I believe
that schools are sitting there and telling people not just
(31:36):
how to use the computer, to make sure the computer
doesn't use you. Yeah, even on the expensive devices, you're
still a victim of algorithmic and growth hack manipulation, even
if you're aware of it. Knowing allows you to fight back,
even if it's just to stop yourself being overwhelmed by
the mess, and means that you can read things that
can tell you what new horrors we can avoid next. Still,
(32:00):
the target, and you're still receiving hundreds of marketing emails
a week, you still receive spam calls, and you're still
unable to use Facebook or Instagram without being bombarded by
ads and algorithmically charged content. And I realized in this
episode I've kind of brought the hammer down that I've
called imaginary or real people dumbasses attack people that are listening.
I'm not really angry at you. I'm not. I know
(32:23):
it might sound like that, and it really isn't. The
conditions of society have adjusted so that we've just accepted
how bad things are. That we've just said it sucks,
but you know, it's everywhere. So what you're going to
do about it? And I'm angry about it because I
feel like my peers in the tech media don't take
it seriously either. They've just become numb to it like
(32:43):
we all have, and it sucks. We shouldn't become numb
to this. If we just had toxic dump in the streets,
and who knows what the upcoming EPA, whether we will,
we'd say something right. If we were getting burned by
random things, we would be upset, we'd be like ough ouch.
But because these little attacks, these little indignities are so
(33:04):
subtle and so common, they're everywhere. It's kind of hard
to talk about. It's kind of hard to have language about.
And in the next episode, I'm going to talk about
why that language is so important, about how fighting back
is discussing and raising these problems. And I don't mean
with your congressman. I don't mean with elected officials, though
(33:27):
that might work, that might help. It's about having a
continual societal conversation. It's about the next time that you
or your friends says I just don't get how the
computer works, stopping your someone saying no, probably not. It's
that they keep changing how the computer works to make
it work against us. It's why I've been so annoyed
(33:48):
the last year. And in this two part finale, I
want you to remember that you're the victim. You're the
victim of a con and I can't wait for you
to hear the next episode to come in a few days.
(34:08):
Thank you for listening to Better Offline.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song
is Matasowski. You can check out more of his music
and audio projects at Mattasowski dot com.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
M A. T.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
T O s O W s ki dot com.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
You can email me at easy at better offline dot
com or visit better offline dot com to find more
podcast links and of course my newsletter. I also really
recommend you go to chat dot Where's Youreed dot at
to visit the discord, and go to our slash.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Better Offline to check out our reddit. Thank you so
much for listening.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For
more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Media.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
You are the victim of a con You have more
than likely said to yourself some time in the last
few years, even ten years, that you just didn't get tech,
or you getting too old, or that tech's gotten away
from you because you found a service or an app
or your computer annoying you or someone you love have
convinced themselves that their inability to use something is a
sign that they are deficient, that they've failed to keep
(00:26):
up with the times, as if the things we use
every day should be in a constant state of flux.
You're listening to Better Offline and I'm d Zetra, and
this is the two part episode that ends this season
(00:48):
of Better off Line, and it's about the true scale
of the rot economy and how the tech industry is
waging an endless, invisible war against the user and we're losing,
by the way, We're losing really badly. They're slowly taking
everything away, adding tolls and growth hacks around basically every
part of our lives. And they can't even give us
the dignity of making sure the things that make them
(01:08):
billions keep functioning. No, I don't know. They have to
twist them at every goddamn corner to make them more profitable,
because they know, in many cases that we have nowhere
else to go. Think about it, The tools we use
in our daily lives outside of our devices have mostly
stayed the same, right, buttons on our cars might have
moved around a bit. And I'm not talking about testa.
(01:30):
By the way, we generally have a brak and an
accelerator and a wheel and a turn signal. Boarding an
airplane has mostly worked the same way since I started flying.
Our trains are buses, restaurants, toilets, houses. They all have
the same mechanisms, and we're not expected to update them
or adapt to new circumstances. We don't walk into our
apartments and the door opens a different way for some reason,
(01:51):
the toilet still flushes. I believe just used it. Just
checked now what I'm getting into in this episode. There
are some exceptions. Some people really just don't try and
learn how to use the computer or a smartphone, and
they just kind of reject technology or they refuse to
pick it up because it's not for them. These people exist,
they are real, We all know them, and I don't
think anybody hearing this falls into that camp. Basic technological
(02:15):
literacy is a requirement to live in society, and there
is some responsibility on the user. But even saying that,
even if we assume that these people are very common
and this is the case, should companies really take advantage
of them? And the answer is no, of course. Now,
our apps and platforms, the things we use every day,
operate with a totally different moral and intellectual compass to
(02:38):
other things in our lives. Well, the idea of an
updates fairly nobleor that something you've bought can be maintained
and improved over time, that's a good thing. Many take
platforms see it as a means to further extract and exploit,
to push users into doing things that either keep them
on the app longer or take more profitable actions. We
as a society need to reckon with this, and we
(02:58):
need to reckon with how this twist. So it makes
us more paranoid, more judgmental, more aggressive, more reactionary, because
when everything is subtly annoying, we all simmer. We suffer
in these manifold ways. There's no digital world in physical world,
by the way they are and have been for some time,
quite the same thing. And reporting on tech as if
this isn't the case is a failure of the user,
(03:19):
failure of reality, and honestly a failure of curiosity. If
you're still doing this as a writer, you're full of shit.
And I want to be clear that I'm not just
talking about one single product or company. I'm talking about
most digital experiences. I'm talking about the digital interference with
constantly having to dodge the litley of buttons on every
app that are all there to distract us to offuscate
(03:40):
the path of the things we actually want to do.
I'll choose an example for you now. My British Canadian
listener is not going to love this. But as an
app called Sleeper, which I used to play fancy football NFL,
there are so many buttons to try and make me
do different kinds of sports gambling. All I want to
do is check my lineup. But no, no, no, no,
Sleeper must have a way to further monetize me. The
(04:01):
way that apps present information in ways that the design
to be illogical and unhelpful is just disgusting, and they
artificially force us to engage for longer with the apps
in question. It's not about providing a service, and I
sound kind of panicky and emotional. But I need you
to understand how common this is in your lives. Every
(04:22):
different digital experience is a small version of the little
pieces that make up an annoying day at work, except
for either paying for them or being actively monetized for
the pleasure. Let me give you an example. Back in
twenty twenty three, Spotify redesign its app too and I
quote the verge b part TikTok, part Instagram, and part YouTube,
which in practice meant replacing a relatively clean and straightforward
(04:43):
user interface with one made up of full screen cards
like TikTok and auto playing video podcasts also like TikTok,
and CEO Daniel Eck claimed that this would and I'm
quitting sky News here make the platform come alive with
different content on a platform that was built in sold
as a place to listen to music. And the tech media,
(05:03):
by the way, waived off this redesign without really thinking
about it. They ain't consider its significance. At the drop
of a hat, hundreds of millions of people's existence, their
experience of listening to music would change at the whim
of a multi billionaire with the express purpose of forcing
them to engage with completely different content than they sign
up for as a means of increasing engagement, metrics and
revenue for a public company. By all means, try and
(05:26):
pretend that this is just an app. It's just music, right, No,
people's relationships with music and entertainment are intrinsically linked to
their moods and their motivations, and no matter how you feel,
it's clear that Spotify, are company best known for fucking
and exploiting its artists, treats its customers, both paying and otherwise,
with a similar level of contempt, and they're far from alone.
(05:47):
Earlier in the year, smart speaker company Sonos released a
redesign of their app that removed their accessibility features, the
ability to edit song cues or play music from your phone,
and this was an attempt, in their words, to modernize
the interface, with Wired suggesting that these changes could potentially
open the door to adding a subscription service of some
sort to help. So nos is you never guess ailing
(06:07):
growth meta great example as well continually redesigns Facebook and Instagram,
the latest of which happened in October to focus Facebook
on gen Z users, and they're probably the most egregious
example of the constant chaos of our digital lives. Well,
we might complain about these things, we stuck with them
because the conditions of our investment in tech are that
(06:28):
we need accounts, we have the features that are customized
for us. The more time we put into it, the
more it becomes ours. But really, the more we become
owned by the companies. We have ways. We've set things
up that mier us further to an ecosystem, and that's
fine for a time. It's kind of like having to
buy specific outfits for specific occasions, except they might stop
(06:48):
fitting at random, and I don't mean based on your way.
They just expand and intract at random. We load websites
expecting something to go wrong, because it probably will. With
mobile websites that cover entire screens with pop up ads
that can break the entire experience. My favorite example, by
the way, is ign dot com, which is a site
that receives over one hundred and eighteen million unique monthly
visitors that will regularly crash your mobile browser. No really,
(07:11):
go and look up the God of War Ragnarok guide
right now and try scrolling on your phone. If it
doesn't crash your browser, I'll be very bloody surprised. Seemingly
every experience online demands our email address, and giving them
our email address adds another email to inboxes already stuffed
with two types of spam, the actual get the biggest
laser spam that immediately hits your junk folder, and then
(07:33):
the growth hack emails we receive from clothing brands we
wanted to discount from or newspapers we pay that still
feel it's necessary to email us three to five times
a day. Every app we use is intentionally built to
growth hack, a term that means moving things around in
such a way that the user does the things we
want them to do. As a company, dating apps gag
your best matches behind dollar ninety nine or more micro transactions.
(07:55):
Uber puts suggestions and massive banners throughout their apps to
try and convince you to use one of their other apps,
or maybe you accidentally hit them, which gives Uber and
a better chance to get you to try them. Outlook,
one of the most popular email platforms in the world,
puts advertisements in your email inbox that are near and
distinguishable from new emails, and they're actually at the top
of your inbox too and meta my favorite, They have
(08:17):
these video carousels previously just on Facebook, but they just
added them to Instagram that intentionally only play the first
seconds of a clip as a means of making you click,
giving them more clicks, more engagement, and more things to
trick the street with. What I'm getting at, and I
think you kind of experienced yourself, is that our digital
lives are actively abusive and hostile. Our ahaps are ever changing.
(08:38):
They're adapting not to us, not to our conditions or
our needs, but to the demands of investors and internal
stakeholders that have reduced who we are and what we
do to an ever growing selection of manipulatable metrics, things
that don't really tell them anything other than how to
knock us around to make us do more. It isn't
that you don't get tech. I must insist you understand this.
(09:00):
It's that the tech you use every day is completely
and utterly insane. Every app has a different design, Almost
every design is growth hacked to optimize your activity on
said app, with each app trying to make you do
different things, with some apps having entire growth hacking teams
that continually evaluate what you do and what your friends
are doing, and perhaps find new ways to mash them
(09:21):
together so they can make more money come out. It
doesn't matter if the experience sucks. That's not what they're
there for. They're not there to make things better. I
want you to realize that this is in almost every
application you use. I know I'm repeating myself, but it's important,
and I'm not saying this to complain, But it's because
I believe, as I've hinted that previously, that we're in
the midst of the largest scale ecological disaster of our time,
(09:44):
because almost every single interaction with technology, which is required
to live in modern society, has become actively adverse aial
to the user. These issues hit everything we do all
the time constantly. We're constantly interrupted, and I believe it's
so much bigger than social media and algorithm though I
must be clear they're absolutely a big part of it.
(10:13):
The average person's experience with technology is one so aggressive
and so violative that I believe it leaves large parts
of our society with a low level trauma. I know
it sounds dramatic. Some of you hearing this may scoff
at the idea. Even after all, you're smart, right, you
know about this information, You know about what these companies
are doing, and thus most people do right wrong. Most
(10:37):
people don't think about the things they're doing at all,
and they're just trying to get buy in a society
that increasingly demands we make more money to buy the
same things, with our lives both interfered with and judged
by social networks with aggressive algorithms that feed us more
things based on what we'll engage with, which might mean
things that piss us off or actively radicalize us. People
are nagged constantly by these goddamn notifications and average forty
(11:00):
six a day. Some useful some advertisements, like say Apple
telling us that there's a nail by a college football game,
regardless of whether we've interacted with any football contact ever,
or a Slack message saying that you haven't joined a
group you were invited to a week ago, or Etsy
letting you know that you can buy things for an
upcoming holiday. It's all the time, it's everywhere, it's constant,
it's relentless, and the more time you invest in using
(11:22):
a device, the more of these notifaications you get, making
you less likely or capable of turning them off. After all,
how well are you doing keeping your inbox clean. How's
that going? What's that? What was that? You get twenty
five emails a day, many of them from a different
company owned by Williamsonoma. Damn, that's crazy. But the indignities
don't end there, because these people also have to be
constantly aware of scams and outright misinformation, both on social
(11:45):
networks that don't really care to stop it and on
the chum box advertisements below most major news publications, and
if you don't know what that is, those are those
weird little stories at the bottom promising miracle cures are
trying to sell you weed or well fake weed from
Chu Chin Chong. Plenty of people who read and write
about technology have this insipid amount of privilege. They assume
(12:06):
that it's natural that you'd know that there are entities
out there trying to scam or trick you, And I'd
argue that most people don't. Most people are just trying
to get by, and to most people, a video from
rumble dot com may as well be the same thing
as a video from CNN dot com. And most people
would believe that every advertisement is somehow verified for its
accuracy versus the truth, which is it's sold at scale
all the time to whoever will pay money. I want
(12:29):
to give you a really good example, and this one
turns my fucking stomach. This one really pisses me off,
and I want to just say what I'm about to say.
CNN dot com. It's on nbcnews dot com and it's
also on the Verge. Nill Patel, you need to fix
this shit. It's disgusting. But let's talk about CNN dot com,
a website that had five hundred and ninety four million
visitors in October twenty twenty four. At the bottom of
(12:51):
CNN when you scroll down, it's something that says paid
partner content, including things in publications like finance Buzz that
tell you about the and I quote nine dumbest things
smart people waste money on finance Buzz immediately when you
click through, asks you to turn your notifications on, you know,
so that they can ping you and they have new
articles and each bullet on the story leads to one
of a different kind of affiliate marketing arm of the
(13:13):
company trying to sell you car insurance and credit cards,
where they get a little smidgeon of commission every time
someone buys something. And you offered the chance to share
your email address to receive and I quote vetted side
hustles and proven ways to earn extra cash sent to
your inbox, which I assume includes things like the advertorial.
I was led to where they were telling me that, yes,
you could make money playing online bingo in games such
(13:36):
as Bingo Cash against other people. And I saw that,
and I said, that doesn't sound true at all, so
went and looked them up. Papaya Games, developer of Bingo Cash,
was sued in March by rifle gaming company Skills for
using bots in allegedly skill based games that are supposed
to be between humans, and the Michigan Gaming Control Board
issued a season desist ordered against the company for violating
multiple gaming laws, including the Lawful Internet Gaming Act. Quote
(14:00):
the lawsuit. Papia's games are not skill based, and users
are often not playing against live, actual opponents, but against
Papyah's own bots that direct and rig the game so
that Papyah itself wins its users' money while leading them
to believe that they lost to a live human opponent.
This is a website and its associated content that had
prime placement on the front page of a major news outlet.
(14:21):
As a normal person, it's reasonable to believe that CNM
would not wilfully allow advertisements for websites that are in
and of themselves further advertisements masquerading as trustworthy third party entities.
It's reasonable that you, as a normal person, would believe
that finance buzz was a reputable website and that their
intentions were to share great deals and secret tricks with you.
If you think you're not this stupid, your privileged, and
(14:42):
need to have more solidarity with your fellow human beings,
it's disgraceful if you hear this and you're like, huh,
stupid idiots, God damn you. People are being screwed. People
are being screwed right now in this way that you
might scoff at, that you might look down your nose at,
but this is serious, and this is horrible. And companies
(15:03):
like outbrain and Taboolah who make these chumbox advertisements, they
make millions and millions of dollars doing this and really
putting aside any privilege you might have, or maybe you don't,
maybe you get what I'm talking about here. Why wouldn't
you think that the content on one of the most
notable media outlets in the entire world is trustworthy. Now,
(15:25):
nothing I'm saying is meant to be polemic or pessimistic
or describing anything other than the shit that's happening in
front of my eyes and your eyes and the eyes
of billions of people. Dismissing these things as just how
it is as we have for years, allows powerful people
with no real plan and no real goals other than growth,
to thrive, and sneering at people dumb enough to get
(15:46):
tricked by an Internet and tech industry built specifically to
trick them, suggests that you have no idea how you
are being scammed because you're smug and arrogant. And I
realize I'm possibly making up a person to be angry at,
But I've had a few conversations recently with people who
had this reaction, and it sucks. We all learn things
for the first time, and it's like, if you never learned,
(16:07):
how would you learn? And I'm trying to, I guess,
make up this person. But if anyone listening have that attitude,
it's important. I need you to stop trying to explain
away how fucking offensive using the Internet and technology has become.
I need you to stop making excuses for the powerful
and consider the sheer scale of the cycle wrap fucking
happening on almost every single device in the world, and
(16:29):
consider the ramifications of the difficulty that the human being
using the internet has trying to live an honest, dignified,
and reasonable life. And maybe you're in the middle ground.
Maybe you didn't judge them, maybe it just wasn't you.
Either way, it's I think it's important to put this down.
To exist in modern society requires you to use these
devices or otherwise sacrifice large parts of how you'd interact
(16:50):
with other people. You need a laptop or smartphone for work,
probably both for school or for anything. Really, you need
messaging apps otherwise you kind of don't exist. And as
a result, there's this societal monopoly of sorts, or maybe
it's more of a cartel in the sense that for
the most part, every tech company has accepted these aggressive
anti user positions, all in pursuit of growth. The stakes
(17:13):
are so much higher than I think anyone realizes, especially
in the tech media, and I don't know why they're
not more willing to discuss the scale. They can pick
the issues, they can say this is bad, and this
is bad, and then they can run glossy coverage for
Zuckerberg or Musk. But it's bad. It's worse. It's worse
than a lot of things, and just it's undiscussed, and
(17:34):
they feel almost like I'm saying something obvious. But I've looked.
This isn't being put down like this. No, one's just
pointing at the everything, the bad ex and look the
extent of the damage, the pain, the frustration, the terror.
It's so constant, and we're all, in some level just
kind of numb to it because discussing it requires accepting
(17:56):
that a vast majority of people live poisoned lives thanks
to their phones laptops. And this isn't even an anti
technology position. I want it to be better. And as
you'll hear soon, I do love the computer. But we
really need to get into this and we need to
realize we all live in the ruins created by the
rot economy. Were the only thing that matters is growth,
(18:17):
growth of revenue, growth of business, growth of metrics related
to said business, growth of engagement of clicks, of time
on the app of purchases, of microtransactions, of impressions of ads,
of things done that make executives feel happy and make
the growth team see the number go up. It's goddamn sickening. However,
if you want to feel better, I'm pretty sure that
(18:37):
after I stop speaking here, there's going to be an AD.
And I am one hundred percent confident that this ad
follows it will align with everything I've been saying. It
won't be for something that has a kind of an
ironic context considering my work. You're going to chuckle and
shorten because of how right I am here, not because
the thing that follows is completely disgarden and we're back. So,
(19:14):
as you know, as a listener, I'm a dickhead, and
if you haven't been listening, you probably work that out
by now you're twenty minutes or so in and you've
heard me get pissed off. But I was trying to
work out as I wrote this script, how would I
frame this, How would I really show you the scale?
So I went on Amazon dot com, the Everything Store,
(19:35):
and I bought the best selling laptop at two hundred
and thirty eight dollars, Aceerus Spire one with a four
year old seller on N four five zero zero processor,
which I'd consider fairly representative of how millions of people
interact with the Internet. I also believe it's a powerful
illustration of the damage caused by the rot economy and
this abusive, poisonous and exploitive way in which the tech
(19:56):
industry treats people. In a very practical sense, So I
opened this piece of sheit up and it really you're
gonna hear as I discussed this the anger that I experience.
So I hit on on it and it took one
minute and fifty seconds from touching that power button for
the laptop to get to a setup screen. It then
took another minute and a half to connect and begin
downloading updates, which then took several more minutes. After that,
(20:19):
I was faced with a licensing agreement where I agreed
to binding arbitration to use Windows. Another twenty four second pause,
and then I got shown a screen of different and
I quote ways I could unlock my Microsoft experience with
animations that shut it and jerked violently. It really didn't
feel good. It was just immediately you could tell this
thing was cheap. Now throughout using this thing, this cheap
(20:40):
track pad on this laptop, it would just miss the
occasional click. And at this point I was forced to
create a Microsoft account and hand over my cell phone
or another email address to receive a code, or I'd
not be able to use the laptop at all. Each
menu screen takes three to five seconds to load, and
I'm asked to customize my experience with things like personalized ads,
tips and recommendations with every option on by the ford,
(21:00):
by the way, and then I had to sign up
for another account, this time with ASA. At one point,
I'm simply shown an AD for Microsoft one Drive and
their cloud storage product with a qrco to download it
on my phone, and then I'm told that Windows has
to download a few updates, which I assume are different
to the updates I did before. Now I'm not just complaining,
I just I'm trying to explain how much stuff happens
(21:24):
when a regular person who cannot afford a MacBook, who
cannot afford a nice Dell laptop, just buys the first
one off of Amazon, as we all do with different products. So,
by the way, at this point, around twenty minutes have
passed just to get to this screen. It then took
another thirty three minutes for the updates to finish, and
then another minute and fifty seven seconds to log in,
(21:45):
at which point a screen popped up, telling me to
set up a browser and discover the best of Windows,
including finding the apps I love from the Microsoft Store,
and the option to create an AI generated theme of
my browser or for my browser. Even the laptop, by
the way between each screen felt like it was just
shaking visually, like the animations jutted viciously. You just get
(22:08):
this constant sense that this thing sucks from the moment
you use it. And so I finally at this point
got to my new laptop, my beautiful new Asa laptop
that's stunk. And then I opened the start bar, which
is ostensibly a place where you'd have apps, right, apps
that you'd use on the computer, and I saw some
of the things like Outlook, an email client that's not
(22:30):
actually installed and requires you to download it. You click
it and it then downloads again. At an option for
a travel website called booking dot com, just an ad
along with a link to LinkedIn another ad for Microsoft property.
One app Clipchamp, was installed, but immediately needed to be updated,
which did not work when I hit update, which then
forced me to go find the updates page, which then
showed me at least forty different apps called things like
(22:52):
sweet Labs, Inc. I do not know what any of
this stuff was. It's just so strange. I tiped Sweet
Labs into the soar and it took a little shaky,
juttery like the animation's hitched a bit. And then it
opened this giant menu with half of it dedicated to
Mark Twain's birthday, and which had two different Mark Twain
(23:13):
related links, a quiz of the day in four different
games available for download. At this point, by the way,
I've been able to do nothing on this computer. I
could have loaded Edge, but I'll get to that in
a minute. I also should be clear that the computer
was pausing slightly every time I typed a letter. Every
animation felt so clunky and juttery. Even moving the windows
around didn't feel smooth. It's just slow. It felt cheap.
(23:35):
And the operating system, previously something I'd considered to be
the thing that operates the computer, it's actively rotten. It's
full of ads, sponsored content, suggested adds, and intrusive design
choices that make the system slower and actively upset the user.
Now at this point it's important to add what operating
system it is. I'll get to that shortly, and the
reason I'm explaining all of this in such agonizing detail
(23:58):
is that this is the experience that I believe is
more indicative of the average person's use of the computer
than anybody else's. It's this, It's Windows, the crappiest, shittiest Windows.
And though it's tough to gauge how many of these things,
these crappy laptops are sold to make it a best
seller on Amazon, laptops in this price point, which use
a specific version of Windows called eleven Home in S mode,
(24:21):
dominate Amazon's bestseller lists, along with apples significantly more expensive
MacBook Air and Pro series. It's reasonable to believe that
a large amount of laptops sold in America match this
price point and spec There are two similar ones on
best Buyers best Sellers, or at least they were at
the time I wrote this script, and as of writing
this sentence down, which would have been very beginning of December,
(24:41):
multiple different laptops of this very specific specification are on
the front of Target's laptop page. And if I haven't
made it completely clear, this means that millions of people
are likely using a laptop that's burdensomely slow, full of
targeted advertising. And content baked Inton operating system in a
way that's either impossible or difficult to remove for millions
of people, and it really could be tens of millions
(25:03):
of people considering the ubiquity of these laptops. The experience
of using the computer is both actively exploitative and incredibly
incredibly slow. Even loading our MSN dot com, the very
first page you see when you open a web browser
in Windows Home S immediately hits you with ads for eBay,
QVC and QuickBooks with icons that sometimes don't load. By
(25:25):
the way, about Windows eleven Home in S mode that
you might not have heard of. This it's a special
version of Windows where you can only use apps from
the Windows Store, and on top of that, it's supposedly
more efficient. I've used quite a few of these laptops now,
and they're the slowest, won keyest pieces of shit ever.
But they're cheap. And it's not just the crappy hardware either,
(25:50):
it's every part of the operating system, which feels like
it's built to hound you to use some sort of
Microsoft product, or some sort of product that Microsoft or
the laptop manufacturer has been paid to make your set. Well,
one can hope that people buying these laptops have an
awareness of anything. The reality is they're being dumped into
a kind of tjmax version of computing, except Tjmax clothes
don't sometimes scream at you to download TJ maxplus will
(26:12):
stop functioning because you use them too fast. Now I
say this, haven't shopped there in a while, but I
assume this is still the case. Again, this is how
most people are experiencing modern computing. And it isn't because
this is a big business. It's because laptop sales have
begun to fall, and they've been falling for over a decade,
and manufacturers and Microsoft need as many ways to grow
(26:32):
revenue as possible, even if the choices they make are
actively harmful to the consumer. Also, I swear to God,
if your answer here is get a MacBook Air, there
are only six hundred dollars. I beg you. I plead
with you to speak with people outside of your income
bracket at a time when entire election was decided in
part because everything's more expensive. At this point, said person
using this laptop can now log onto the Internet, by
(26:54):
the way, and begin using websites like Facebook and Instagram
and YouTube, all of which that have algorithms we don't
really underst but they have been regularly proven to be
actively and deliberately manipulative and harmful. And I know I'm angry.
I mean whatever. You listened to this show and this
is the finhale of this year. You know how pissed
off I am. But the picture I'm trying to paint
(27:15):
is one of terror and abuse. The average person's experience
of using a computer starts with aggressive interference delivered in
a shoddy, sludge like frame, and the wider Internet opens
up to said user, which has already been battered by
a horrible user experience by the way, They're immediately thrown
into this heavily algorithmic feed of some sort, each different
feed built to condom in a unique way, feeding whatever
(27:36):
holds their attention and chucking ads in there as best
they can as they browse the web, websites like the Vergin,
NBC and used feature stories from companies like world Trending
dot com with advertisements with bizarre toys written in the
style of a blog so intentional in their deceit that
the page in question has a huge disclaimer at the
bottom saying it's an ad as they're clunky, shuddering, shitty
(27:57):
laptop hitches between every scroll they go to ESPN dot com.
When the laptop slows to a crawl, everything slows to
a crawl. Why why, god damn it is everything so
fucking slow? These people say, I'll just stay on Facebook
or Instagram or YouTube. At least that place doesn't crash
half the time or trick me. Sadly not, The biggest
trick that these platforms played wasn't the algorithm, but the convenience.
(28:21):
In an internet it's so horribly poisoned by growth capitalism,
these platforms show a degree of peace and consistency, even
if they're specifically engineered to manipulate you. Using the computer
in the modern age is so inherently hostile that it
pushes us towards core part authoritarians like Apple, Microsoft, Google
and Meta. And now that every website is so desperate
for our email to show us ads and to push
(28:43):
stuff on us, it's either harmful or difficult for the
average person to exist online. So of course they're going
to go to the big box websites they feel comparatively safe,
even if they're not. When every single website needs to
make as much money as possible because they're private equity
or head which fund or massive corporate owners need to
make more money every year without fail. The incentives are
(29:04):
building the Internet, veer away from providing a service or
information and towards putting you the listener in silent service
of a corporation. If you're technologically savvy in reading this,
by the way, sit down and think. Think for a
second about the amount of effort you've put into mitigating
the problems with the Internet and modern computing. Fresh in
stores of windows and new machines, avoiding certain websites because
(29:25):
you've learned what the bad ones look like, not interacting
with random people in your dms because you know that's
what a spambot looks like, and so on and so forth.
Think about it. I know a lot of you are
very technologically savvy, but you're instinctually ducking and weaving around
an Internet and digital ecosystem that continually tries to interrupt you.
You're batting away pop ups and silencing notifications, knowing that
(29:47):
they all want something from you. And I need you
to realize that most people are not like you, and
you too are actively victimized by the tech ecosystem as
a result, And like I said a few weeks ago,
I believe that most people are actively can cast by
their daily lives because most people's daily lives are on
the computer or their smartphones, and those lives have been
stripped of dignity. When they look at the media, the
(30:09):
best they'll get is a degree of hmm. Algorithm bad
is bad? Is computer? Is Facebook? Not good? Actually, I
take it back. You don't really get that either. You
don't really get you know how bad Facebook and Instagram are.
You don't even get the media really covering it. It
drives me insane. Yet it's so much more than just
(30:29):
the algorithm. It's almost the entirety of the digital ecosystem,
from websites to apps to the devices we use every day.
The fact that so many people likely use a laptop
that's equal parts unfit for the task and stuffed full
of growth, hacked poison is utterly goddamn disgraceful because it
means that the only way to escape the poison is
to simply have more money. Those who can't afford a
(30:52):
three hundred dollars at least phone or a six hundred
dollar laptop are left to use this offensively bad technology,
and we have at society scale simply accepted that this
is how things go. The result is that everything's a
chaotic mess. By everything, I mean almost every digital experience,
like I've been saying. And if you still believe the
digital world has no bearing on the physical world, you're
(31:13):
a dumbass. Everything you do, for the most part, goes
through absent websites. It's impossible to avoid, and it gets
harder to weighe through if you aren't wealthy enough or
lucky enough to have someone teach you or own a
powerful enough device, which is not something that really happens
in school. In any case, they're not really loading you
up with the most powerful stuff. Nor do I believe
that schools are sitting there and telling people not just
(31:36):
how to use the computer, to make sure the computer
doesn't use you. Yeah, even on the expensive devices, you're
still a victim of algorithmic and growth hack manipulation, even
if you're aware of it. Knowing allows you to fight back,
even if it's just to stop yourself being overwhelmed by
the mess, and means that you can read things that
can tell you what new horrors we can avoid next. Still,
(32:00):
the target, and you're still receiving hundreds of marketing emails
a week, you still receive spam calls, and you're still
unable to use Facebook or Instagram without being bombarded by
ads and algorithmically charged content. And I realized in this
episode I've kind of brought the hammer down that I've
called imaginary or real people dumbasses attack people that are listening.
I'm not really angry at you. I'm not. I know
(32:23):
it might sound like that, and it really isn't. The
conditions of society have adjusted so that we've just accepted
how bad things are. That we've just said it sucks,
but you know, it's everywhere. So what you're going to
do about it? And I'm angry about it because I
feel like my peers in the tech media don't take
it seriously either. They've just become numb to it like
(32:43):
we all have, and it sucks. We shouldn't become numb
to this. If we just had toxic dump in the streets,
and who knows what the upcoming EPA, whether we will,
we'd say something right. If we were getting burned by
random things, we would be upset, we'd be like ough ouch.
But because these little attacks, these little indignities are so
(33:04):
subtle and so common, they're everywhere. It's kind of hard
to talk about. It's kind of hard to have language about.
And in the next episode, I'm going to talk about
why that language is so important, about how fighting back
is discussing and raising these problems. And I don't mean
with your congressman. I don't mean with elected officials, though
(33:27):
that might work, that might help. It's about having a
continual societal conversation. It's about the next time that you
or your friends says I just don't get how the
computer works, stopping your someone saying no, probably not. It's
that they keep changing how the computer works to make
it work against us. It's why I've been so annoyed
(33:48):
the last year. And in this two part finale, I
want you to remember that you're the victim. You're the
victim of a con and I can't wait for you
to hear the next episode to come in a few days.
(34:08):
Thank you for listening to Better Offline.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song
is Matasowski. You can check out more of his music
and audio projects at Mattasowski dot com.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
M A. T.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
T O s O W s ki dot com.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
You can email me at easy at better offline dot
com or visit better offline dot com to find more
podcast links and of course my newsletter. I also really
recommend you go to chat dot Where's Youreed dot at
to visit the discord, and go to our slash.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Better Offline to check out our reddit. Thank you so
much for listening.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For
more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Ed Zitron
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