January 3, 2025 • 36 mins
In part 2 of the 2024 Better Offline finale, Ed Zitron tells you how to fight back against the growth-at-all-costs Rot Economy and its destruction of the tech ecosystem - by pushing the media to improve their coverage, telling everybody you know who's responsible, and remembering what it is you truly love about technology.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
A Zone Media. Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm
your host ed ZiT Troun and this is the finale
of this year. Even though you're hearing it in twenty
(00:24):
twenty five, I need you to just mentally imagine it's
twenty twenty four. I did my best, Okay, anyway, In
the last episode, I talked about the scale of the
rot economy and specifically the practical elements and the practical
results of growth at all costs thinking, And in this one,
I want to talk about how we fight back. Ideas
are powerful and things change as silly as it sounds
(00:45):
from the regular repetition, and the names of those responsible
and clear descriptions of the things they've done to us. Now,
you know, I've written and spoken a lot about the
rot economy, how the growth at all cost mindset fucks
things up, and it's what directly leads tech companies to
make their products worse. But what I've tried to do
in these episodes is quantify the scale, both the damage
it's caused and the billions of people it affects every day.
(01:08):
Everything I've discussed around the chaos and the pain of
the Internet is a result of corporations and private equity
firms buying media properties and immediately trying to make them grow,
each in wildly different ways, all clamoring to be the
next New York Times of Variety or other legacy media brand,
despite the fact that those brands already exist and the
ideas for competing with them usually are built on these
unsustainably large staffs and expensive consultants telling you to hire
(01:31):
more people. Almost every single store you visit on the
Internet has this massive data layer on the background that
feeds them data about what's popular or where people are
spending time on the sites, and will turn and change
things about their designed to subtly encourage you to buy
more staff, trapping you there also that more money comes
out no matter what the cost, even if it's harder
to find the things you actually want, even if the
(01:54):
data isn't personalized, it's still quite powerful, and it turns
so many experiences inside and outside shopping and social media
and the news into these subtle, horrible manipulations. Every single
weird thing that you've experienced with an app or service
online is the dreadhand of the rot economy, the gravitational
pull of growth that demands upon you the user to
(02:14):
do something something for the company. And when everybody is
trying to chase growth, nobody is thinking stability. And because
everybody is trying to grow, everybody sort of copies everybody
else's ideas, which is why we see micro transactions and
invasive ads and annoying tricks that all kind of feel
the same way in everything, though they're all subtly different
(02:35):
and customized just for that one app. It's exhausting. Now
for a while I've had the rot economy compared to
Corey doctor O's excellent incitification theory. I think it's a
great time to compare and separate the two because I
think they can live together quite well. And also Corey
is exceedingly smart, and I put a great deal of
value in his thoughts. To quote Corey in the Financial Times,
(02:57):
and certification is his theory explaining how the end that
was colonized by platforms, why all of those platforms are
degrading so quickly and thoroughly, why it matters, and what
we can do about it. And I'll link to these
in the show notes. He describes the first three stages
of the climb. First, platforms are good to their users,
then they abuse their users to make things better for
their business customers. Finally, they abuse those business customers to
(03:18):
claw back all the value for themselves. Now I agree
with Corey in some levels, but I believe he gives
far more credit to the platforms in question than they
deserve and sees far more intentional strategy than really exist.
I fundamentally disagree about the business customers even being some
elevated class in the equation. As we've seen in the
Google Ads trial, Google didn't really give a shit about
his business customers to begin with, and they've always sawt
(03:40):
a monopoly and made things worse for whoever it needed
to as a means of increasing growth. Maybe I'm just
playing semantics though. However, Corey's theory lacks a real perpetrator
beyond corporations that naturally say, all right, time for some initification.
Watch this again. I don't think it's that intentional. Maybe
it's an effect, Maybe it's a movement, maybe it's a
(04:00):
naturally occurring thing. Where the rot economy separates is that
growth is in and of itself the force that drives
companies to in shitify, while in hitification really fits across
companies and fits there neatly like Spotify and Meta in
their add focus business models. It doesn't really make sense
when it comes to things where there isn't a clear
split between business and consumers, like Microsoft or Salesforce, because
(04:21):
in citification is ultimately one part of the larger rot economy,
where everything must grow forever, whether it's intech or not,
and I believe the phenomenon that captures both is a
direct result of the work of men like Jack Welch
and Milton Friedman. Go back and listen to the shareholder
of supremacy if you hadn't. The rot economy is selfish
and potently neoliberal corporations are bowed down to like God's
(04:42):
the powerful only seek more at all times, at all costs,
even if said cost is that the company might eventually
die because we burned out any value it actually has,
or people are harmed constantly whenever they pick up their phone.
The rot economy is neoliberalism's true innovation, a kind of
economic cancer that we've he has few reasons to exist
beyond more and a few justifications beyond If we don't
(05:04):
let it keep growing, then everybody's pensions might blow up.
To be clear, corey is for the most part, Right
in Certification successfully encapsulates how the modern web was destroyed
in a way that nobody really has I'm exceedingly grateful
for Corey's work, and I think having him around is
so good for society. I was so happy to have
him on an episode a few months ago, and I
(05:26):
look forward to having him again. He's also a lovely fella,
and I really think that in Certification applies in a
wide ranging way to a wide amount of tech companies
and effects. There's also a great thing in the Vaults
newsletter that old link about in Certification within climate, for example,
Corey's brilliant. However, I believe the wider problem is bigger
and the costs are far greater. It isn't that everything
(05:47):
is in shitified. It's that everybody's pursuit of growth has
changed the incentive behind how we generate value in the world,
and software enables a specific kind of growth lust by
creating virtual nation states with their own digital deaths. While
laws may stop Meta from tearing up people's houses surrounding
its offices in one hack away, it can happily reroute
traffic and engagement on Facebook and Instagram to make things
(06:10):
in iota more profitable, and there's no government institution that's
sitting around thinking, huh is this bad? Is this bad
for people? Now? The rot economy isn't just growth or
cost thinking. It's a kind of secular religion, something to
believe in that isn't really connected to anything other than more,
And it's that everything and anything can be more, should
(06:31):
be more, must be more. That we're only defined by
our pursuit of more growth, and that something that isn't
growing isn't alive, and as a result inferior. I'm not
saying this is how everybody thinks, but I'm convinced that
everybody is burdened by the rot economy, and that digital
ecosystems allow the poison of growth to find new and
(06:51):
more destructive ways to dilute a human being to a
series of numbers that can be made to grow or
contract in the pursuit of capital. Almost every corner of
our lives has been turned into some sort of number,
and increasing that number is important to us bank account
balance is sure, but also engagement numbers follow us number
of emails sent and received, open rates on newsletters, how
(07:11):
many times something has been viewed, all numbers set by
other people that we live our lives by while barely
understanding what they mean or how they alter our behavior.
Human beings thrive on ways to define themselves, but metrics
often rob us of our individuality. Products that boil us
down to metrics are likely to fail to account for
the true depth of anything we are actually doing, or
(07:33):
anything they're actually capturing. The change in incentives towards driving
more growth actively pushes out those with long term thinking.
It encourages hiring people who see growth as the driver
of a company's success, and in turn investment research and
development into mechanisms of growth, which may sometimes be things
that help you, but that isn't necessarily the reason they're
doing it. Organizational culture and hiring stops prioritizing people that
(07:54):
fixed customer problems or even understand them, because that's not
really the priority, nor how one may of business continue
to grow. And I think the rot economies a social
thing as well. We're all pushed towards growth, personal growth,
professional growth, growth in our network and our societal status,
and the terms of this growth they're often set by
platforms and media outlets that are in turn pursuing their
(08:16):
own growth. And as I've discussed, the way the terms
of our growth is framed is almost entirely through a
digital ecosystem of warring intents and different ways of pursuing
and promoting growth, some ethical, but many not. Societal and
cultural pressure is nothing new, but the ways we experience
it are now elaborate and chaotic. Our relationships professional, personal,
and romantic a process through the fun house mirror of
(08:38):
the platforms changing in ways both subtle and evert based
on the signals are received and the people we care about,
each one twisted and processed the lens of a product
manager and a growth hacker who may not really care
about what we're doing other than that we're doing it.
Changes to these platforms, even subtle ones, actively change the
lives of billions of people, and it feels that we
talk about it like being online is some hobbyist peersuit
(09:00):
rather than something that many people do more than seeing
real people in the real world. I believe that we
exist in a continual tension with the rot economy and
the growth of all costs mindset. I believe that the
friction we feel on platforms and apps between what we
want to do and what the app wants us to
do is one of the most underdiscussed and significant culture
of phenomena where we, despite being customers, are continually berated
(09:21):
and conned and swindled and fucked. I believe billions of
people are in active combat with their devices every day,
swiping away notifications, dodging intrusive apps, agreeing to privacy policies
that they don't understand, desperately trying to find an option
they used that has been moved because the product manager
has decided it needed to be somewhere else. I realize
(09:42):
it's tough to conceptualize because it's so ubiquitous, But how
much do you fight with your computer and smartphone every day?
How many times does something break? How many times have
you downloaded an app and found that it didn't really
do the thing you wanted it to. How many times
have you wanted to do something simple and found that
it's actually really annoying. How much of your life is
(10:02):
dodging digital debris, avoiding scams, ads, apps that demand permissions,
and endless goddamn menu options that bury the simple things
that you want to do. It's like I said, you're
the victim of a scam. You've spent years of your
life explaining to yourself and others that this is just
how things are, accepting conditions that are inherently exploitive and abusive.
(10:22):
You are more than likely not deficient, stupid, or behind
the times, and even if you are, there shouldn't be
a multi trillion dollar ecosystem built to monetize your ignorance,
and it's time to start holding those responsible accountable. I'm
(10:48):
fairly regularly asked why all of this matters to me
so much, so as I wrap up the year, I'm
going to try and answer that question, explain why it
is I do what I do, all right, I spend
a lot time as own as a kid. I wasn't popular.
Actually that isn't really accurate, because that would suggest I
had friends. I didn't really had friends. I had some
(11:09):
people I knew, like similar people who were existed to
be bullied. I'm not trying to be modeling here, I'm
just describing the terms. I was insular. I was scared
of the world. I felt ostracized, unnoticed that many teenagers do,
and I felt like I was out of place in humanity,
and it really like weighed on my soul and the
only place I found any kind of community or any
place I could build an identity was being online. My
(11:31):
life was an ear is defined by technology, and I'm
not ashamed of that. A lot of people talk about, oh,
people are online too much, not even necessarily talking about me,
or how the internet hurts you and it's this, and
it hurts you because of the platforms. But I believe
at scale, the internet is actually quite beautiful. Had social
networking not come along, I'm not confident I'd have made many,
(11:53):
if any, of the friendships I have today, or really
any friendships of any kind. For the first twenty two
two years of my life, I really struggled to make
friends in the real world for a number of reasons,
many of them my fault, by the way. But I
made so many online and that became a bridge to
making real friendships. I kept and I nurtured friendships, indeed
with people thousands of miles away, and my shyness that
(12:17):
I had as a person became less of an issue
when I could avoid the trouble saying hey, I'm a
part that really got in my way. Without the Internet,
I'd probably be like a resentful hermit. I'd be disconnected
from humanity. That'd be just these layers of scar tissue
over whatever neurodivergent or unfortunate habits had gained from a child,
and I mostly spent alone. I don't want you to
(12:37):
feel sorry for me. By the way, none of that
was about me being sad. It's actually really trying to
explain something joyous, and that's a big part of who
I am. Technology is a big part of who I am. So,
like I said, don't feel sorry for me. Tech allowed
me to thrive. I have a business, I have an
upcoming book, the newsletter, I have this podcast. I had
these wonderful, beautiful friends I deeply love, and if you're
(12:59):
wondering if it's you, it is you. I love you.
And these people have come pretty much exclusively through technology
of some sort, like a social network or a result
of a digital connection of some kind. And I'm immensely
grateful for everything I have, and I'm grateful that technology
allowed me to live this full and happy life. And
I imagine many of you feel the same way. Your
frustrations aren't just about the apps being bad, but the
(13:21):
internet has a goodness to it. It has a value.
Otherwise we wouldn't stick our hands in the box that
the bene jesiit gives us every morning. And Techer's found
so many ways to make our lives better, perhaps more
in some cases than others. But I'm not gonna lie
and pretend, and I don't love technology. I think that
that wouldn't serve you or serve anyone. And I think
(13:43):
this kind of noxious earth or texts bad. It isn't
all bad, but the people running it are. The rotten
economy has fucked up tex so badly. But in the
process of doing this podcast, of writing my newsletter, it's
just maybe intimately aware of thetuitous, avaricious and intentional harm
that these people are causing, that the people running the
(14:05):
tech industry have caused to their customers, and this horrifying
and selfish world they've made, and the ruinous consequences that followed,
the things that I've watched happen this year alone, which
have at times been in enumeration of about a decade
of rot. They've turned my god damn stomach. You know
what's also done that the outright cowardice of some people
(14:25):
that claim to inform the public but choose instead to
reinforce the structures of the powerful And a little side
note to my good friend Casey Newton right now, you
should all go and look up his thing about the
phony comforts of AI Skeptics where he bags on Gary Marcus.
Why are you bagging on Gary Marcus, Casey, you fucking coward.
This piece attacked AI's skeptics with the flimsiest stuff. Casey
(14:48):
Newton has an audience above one hundred thousand people that
he's ostensibly informing. This stuff hurts people. Having popular journalists
that won't enumerate the damage being done, that don't won't
give the honest truth about things. It's disgusting. It turns
my stomach. And as these two part episodes have shown
you the scale of damage done by people like Facebook,
(15:09):
like Mark Zuckerberg, Casey's good friend, it's disgusting. Okay, wheeling
that back. By the way, I don't know if they're
good friends, but I know they text. Anyway, back to
the show. I'll put my bitch first aside. Look, I'm
a user. I'm a guy with a podcast and a newsletter.
But behind the mic and the keyboard, I'm a person
that uses the same services as you do, and I
(15:31):
see the shit done to us and I just feel
poison in my veins. I'm not holding back, as you've
kind of worked out by now we're like sixty episodes in.
I don't think you should either. What's being done to
us isn't just unfair, it's last and us. It's cruel,
it's exploitative, it's morally wrong. Some may try and dismiss
what I'm saying as just social media. It's just how
(15:52):
apps work, and if that's what you truly think, you're
either a beaten dog or a willing or unwilling operative
for people running a con. I will never forgive these
people for what they've done to the computer. And the
more I learn about both their intentions and the actions
they've taken, the more certain I become that these people
are unrepentant, and then their greed will never be sated.
I've watched them take the things that made me human,
(16:14):
social networking, digital communities, apps, and the other connecting fabric
of our digital lives and turn them into devices of torture,
profitable mechanisms of abuse. And I find it disgusting how
many reporters seem to believe it's their responsibility to thank
them and explain why it's good that this is happening
to their readers. And let's run down the scumbags, shall we.
Sam Altman's a goddamn con artist. He's a liar and
(16:36):
a sleazy carnival barker who would burn our planet to
the ground, steal from millions of people, and burn billions
of dollars in pursuit of power. And I believe the
same can be said of people like Dario Amadayo Vanthropik
and Mustafasuliman of Microsoft. Tim Cook of Apple, he's a
wolf in sheep's clothing. He slowly allows the rock to
seep into Apple's products. Apple intelligence is goddamn awful. It sucks.
(16:58):
It gets in the way. The summer suck, Image playground sucks.
Everyone saying this doesn't suck is up their own asshole.
They need to look look at the actual products. They
don't work, and they've slowly been adding these bothersome subscription
options and they chip away at the user experience. The
one company that I really didn't want to do this.
And yet let's take a step back to the beginning
of the show. Apple's app store and its repeated support
(17:20):
of exploitative micro transaction laid mobile games built to create
gambling like addiction in adults and children alike. They make
billions of dollars off of them, and because Apple's products
are less shitty, they get a much easier time. Now
let's talk about two of my phase my besties. Now,
I hold Sundhar Peshai in a certain kind of esteem,
by which I believe that Sundar Pieshai of Google is
(17:40):
the Henry Kissinger of technology, a glossy executive that escapes
blamed despite having caused harm on a global scale. The
destruction of Google Search at the hands of Sundhar Peshai
and Prabagar Ragavan should be written about like a war crime,
and those responsible treated as such. And by the way, Prabagar,
if you're hearing this, hello baby, I love you. I
love saying your name, and I'm going to be saying
(18:02):
it forever. Now let's get to Microsoft. Satch in Adela
has aggressively expanded Microsoft's various monopolies, the most egregious of which,
by the way, is the Microsoft three sixty five Suite,
which is a monopoly over business software that everyone kind
of hates. The Microsoft prices to undercut the competition, effectively
setting conditions of most business software is either cheaper than
Microsoft or slightly better than Microsoft. Nadella has overseen layoffs
(18:24):
of tens of thousands of people in the last three
years alone, and despite his bullshit growth mindset culture, he
treats employees and customers as equally disposable. And of course
he's the guy that has made open AI happen, which
in turn means he's responsible for generative AI at scale.
And let's end with metas Mark Zuckerberg, who is a
putrid ghoul that has overseen the growth and proliferation of
(18:46):
some of the single most abusive and manipulative software in
the world. Meta has grown to a market cap of
one point five trillion dollars by intentionally making the experience
on Instagram and Facebook worse, intentionally frustrating and harming billions
of people, actively into fearing with the fabric of society.
These are the people in charge. These are the people
running the tech industry. These are the people who make
(19:08):
the decisions that affect billions of people every minute of
every day, and their decision making is so flagrantly selfish
and abusive that I'm regularly astonished by how little criticism
they receive. These men lace our digital lives with asbestos
and get told their geniuses for doing so because money
comes out. But the truth is I don't know or
care whether these men know who I am or read
(19:29):
my work, because I only care that you do. I
don't give a shit if Sam Ortman Mark Zuckerberg knows
my name. I don't care about their riches or their achievements.
I care that when given so many resources, such privilege,
and such opportunity to change the world, they chose to
make it worse. These men are tantamount to war criminals.
Except in thirty years, Mark Zuckerberg may still be seen
as a success, though I will spend the rest of
(19:51):
my life telling you the damage he's caused. I care
about you, the user, the person listening to, the person
that may have felt stupid or deficient or ignorant, all
because the services you pay for or that monetize you
have been intentionally rigged against you. You aren't the failure
the services, the devices, and the executives are. If you
(20:15):
cannot see the significance of the problems I discuss every week,
the sheer scale of the rot, the sheer damage caused
by unregulated and unrepentant managerial parasites. You are living in
a fantasy world, and I both envy and worry about you.
You're the frog and the part, and trust me, the
stoves on twenty twenty five will be the year of chaos, fear,
and a deficit of hope. But I will spend every
(20:37):
breath I have telling you what I believe in, telling
you that I care and that you are not alone.
For years, I've watched the destruction of the services and
the mechanisms that are responsible for allowing me to have
a normal life, to thrive, to be able to speak
with a voice that was truly mine. I've watched them
burn or worse, turned into these abominable growth vehicles, men
disconnected from society and humanity. I owe my life to
(20:59):
an inn. I've watched turned into these abuse factories worth billions,
if not trillions of dollars, and I've watched the people
responsible get glad handled and applauded. I will scream at
them into my dying fucking breath. I have had a
blessed life, and I'm lucky that I wasn't born even
a year earlier or later. But the way I've grown
up and seen things changed. Has allowed me to fully
(21:21):
comprehend how much damage is being done today and how
much worse is to come if we don't hold these
people accountable. The least they deserve is a spoken or
written record of their sins, and the least you deserve
is to be reminded that you are the victim. I
(21:50):
don't think you realize how powerful it is being armed
with knowledge, the clarity of what's being done to you
and why, and the names of the people responsible. This
is an invisible war and a series of invisible war
crimes perpetuated against billions of people in a trillion different ways,
every moment of every day, and it's everywhere a constant
in our lives, which makes enumerating and conceptualizing it difficult.
(22:11):
But you can help you Talking about the truth behind
generative AI or the harms of Facebook or the gratuitous
destruction of Google Search will change things, because these people
are unprepared for a public that knows both what they've
done and they're sickening loaths some selfish and greedy intentions.
Saying prabagar Ragavan is both very fun. Try it yourself,
(22:33):
Say prabagar Ragavan and the shower on the toilet probagar
Ragavan in an NFL game, And then when someone says
OHO's propagar Ragavan, you say, well, he's the guy who
destroyed Google Search. No, look, I get it, it's just talking, right.
But the way that people disconnect from these services and
take a stand starts with the clear discussion of the
problem and reframing. I don't get technology to prabagar Ragavan
(22:53):
destroy Google Search. It spreads through groups, organizations, and governments.
It gets somewhere. Most people, believe it or not, don't
know about the raw economy or about the people responsible,
and assume they got older rather than technology getting worse. Really,
this is a moment of solidarity. We're all harmed by
the row economy. We're all victims, and it takes true
opulence to escape it. And I'm guessing you don't have it.
(23:15):
I certainly don't. But talking about it, refusing to go quietly,
refusing to slow up down the slot willingly or pleasantly
is enough. The conversations are getting louder, the anger is
getting too hard to ignore. These companies will be forced
to change through public pressure and the knowledge of their
deeds and pressure on the media. Outlets you read and
listen to that choose willingly to prop them up. Holding
(23:37):
these people to a higher standard at scale is what
brings about change. Be the wrench in the machine. Be
the person that explains to a friend why Facebook sucks
now and who chose to make it suck. Adam Masseri,
By the way, it's Adam Massari, Mark Zuckerberg and the
rest of the growth team. Naomi Glitz another great one
as well, Javier Olivan, They're all in. Go listen to
the episode and tell your friends. Be the person to
(23:59):
explain who Probago Ragavan is and what his role was
in making Google Search worse. Say it, say his name
with your friends. Say it to the mailman. Be the
person who tells people that Sam Altman burns five billion
dollars a year on unsustainable software that destroys the environment
and is built upon the largest scale larceny of creative
works ever to happen. Or because he's desperate for power.
(24:19):
He is already a billionaire. He was already there. Because
every time you do this, you destabilize them. They've succeeded
in a decades long marketing campaign where tech people get
called geniuses for making things that are necessary to function
in society, and they're making them worse. You can change that.
I also want to be clear, I don't give a
shit if you signed me. It's cool if you say
(24:39):
where you found it, but I really don't care. I
really don't tell people. That's what matters. Tell everybody, spread
the word. You yourself can be a little better offline.
I don't mean that as a pump, but you know
what I mean. Spread the blood the word. Say what
they've done, Say their names, Say their names again and
again and again, so it becomes a contagion. They twisted
(25:00):
and broken and hyper monetized everything, how you make friends,
how you fall in love, how you bank, how you
listen to music, how you find information. Never let their
names be spoken without disgust. Be the sampaper in their
veins and the graffiti on their fucking legacies. I'm sick
of it. I'm sick of it, And if you're with me,
just tell people. Don't even talk about me. I'm not important.
(25:21):
What's important is that you know, and the others know too,
and you'll feel a lot of dread going into the
next year. But that's what the darkness wants. That's what
authoritarianism craves hopelessness, emptiness, and energy deficit that anchors you
to the earth. And I can't promise you that I'm
fixing anything with a podcast. I can't promise you what
I'm saying is going to fix you in any way.
(25:43):
But I hope it at least invigorates you. I hope
it makes you feel less alone. I hope you know
that others feel the way you do too, and that
someone somewhere is outraged on your behalf because I am.
Now we're going to get to the schmaltzy part, because
I have to. I'm a big emotional guy. Last year
in my life's being incredible. I've been very lucky to
do this show. It's allowed me to meet wonderful people
(26:03):
that I adore, and I'm going to talk about them now.
And if you don't like it, what's wrong with you?
I get so angry. Let me be happy for a
moment and be happy for these people. They're absolutely wonderful.
A year in, I want to thank Sophie Lichtman and
Robert Evans for having faith in me to do this.
I stood alone in my kitchen in February and I
was like, pacing around, and I was like, I don't
(26:25):
know what I'm going to do, but I'm not going
to tell them because they contracted me and I mostly
worked it out as it went along, and they were
extremely supportive and I wasn't sure where I would take this,
but both of them told me to go as hard
as I needed to. However, I wanted to not once
have either of them said nah, or hey, Yed, I
don't know about this, or head, can you change this,
(26:48):
except in one episode's case, where it was actually the
pilots and it needed a re recording. It was not
good enough. But that's what they're there for. They've humored
these insane five hundred word rants that like eleven PM
on a Tuesday, where I'm like, I think that this
should happen, and then they've taken these concepts and being like, hey,
why don't you do this? But fundamentally they have and
(27:10):
all of cool so media has been insanely supportive, both
of the ideas but also the outrage and also the
true support they've given me to do this is creative
expression but also a value generating podcast has been incredible
and regardless of how you feel about what they do,
there really isn't anything out there like better Offline. It's
a result of having the kind of an army behind me,
(27:31):
both as part of the show and these people who
just show me incredible love, who I adore so much
and I'm so grateful for. And you're just gonna have
to sit there and let me list them. And if
you don't like it, you need to tell your friends
you love them instead. Pause the show, call your mum,
call your friends, tell everyone you know you love them. Well,
life is short, but let's start with the thanks. I
(27:53):
want to thank Mattisowski, Ian Johnson and Daniel Goodman for
producing the show. Mattasowski is the person who will hear
this first, and he also so here's the cuts between
them where I'm swearing and I mess up really obvious words.
He's They're all amazing, the actual iHeartRadio producers are angels,
all of them. They care so much about this. Daniel
Goodman as well, has been incredible getting me in this
studios in New York. There's gonna be a lot more
(28:15):
of that next year, as I'm going to be in
New York way more say hello. I of course want
to thank Matt Hughes for editing these scripts and riffing
on many of the ideas and supporting me unwaveringly. Matt
Hughes is the fifth Beatle. If there were five of us,
I guess the second Beatle. I don't know, but I
love Matt so much. He's a wonderful friend. But also
he's as angry as I am about this shit. We
(28:36):
cook together. It's wonderful. I also want to thank Casey
Kagawa right at the top, because Casey is actually the
person who really worked on the rot economy with me
back in February twenty twenty three. He has been someone
who's been formative more work. Love you, man, I love
all these people. I'm not just gonna say I love
you every time, but I've told all of you. Matt Weinberger,
of course, Kylie Roberson, Christina Warren, Tajanavn Shnovik, Phil Broughton,
(28:59):
Caleb Wilson, Hassan, They've all regularly helped me work ideas out,
even when I'm just rambling to them in signal. And
if you're not on this list, please reach out. I'm sorry.
What I'm gaina is that. Look, I'm lucky to have
so many wonderful people that I've been able to connect
with in my life. And whatever you hear or read
(29:19):
me say is only possible as a result of these
people that've given me this strength. And all of them
came from the Internet. All of them came from it.
All of them are a result. Every single person I've
listed there is someone I've met digitally. I'm not kissing
up to the platforms, but the concept of the Internet
has been so important to me, and I think it
has been to you too, And the anger in my
(29:40):
heart is that I see it being stolen from us.
I see it being taken away by people who make
so much money, making it worse. And the forces I
criticize they don't see beauty in human beings. They don't
see us as these remarkable things that generate ideas both
incredibly stupid and incredible. And they don't see talent or
creativity as something that's innately human. They see it as
a commodity to be condensed, to monetize and replicated so
(30:03):
that they ultimately own whatever value we have. Something you'd
only believe was possible if you were a disgusting management
consultant gargoyle with no connection to real people that should
be put in the carnival prism. Look, you deserve better
than what they've given you. You deserve better than what
I've given you, which is why I'm going to work
even harder in twenty twenty five. I'm lucky to have you.
I'm so grateful for this podcast. I'm it's a privilege
(30:26):
to do this, and I love hearing from you. Email
me at e that's e z or Z at better
offline dot com. I try and respond to every email.
I have a big following on Blue Sky. That's a
place to find me. I hear from a lot of
people thanking me, and each time I want you to
know it's extremely meaningful and I love it and thank you.
It means a great deal to me. You take it
even a second out of your time, let alone the
(30:48):
thirty minutes for this episode, or however it much ends
up being. I'm really lucky, and I hope I'm helping,
and I'll continue to try. I'll continue to do my
boat my bet here look whan key as it sounds,
this has been a very personal journey. The last year
has been personally and professionally crazy for me, but also
(31:11):
digging through all of the tech industry, trying to work
out why Facebook's bad, Instagram's bad, Google's bad. I did
this because I did not understand you. Hear on this
podcast me working things out. You hear my personal journey
with technology in the fact that my life is technology.
My life's kind of chaotic, but a lot of that
(31:31):
chaos is rained in by technology by being able to
digitally handle things. I don't know what I do without it.
I write o nine words per minute. My hand physically hurts.
I don't know how I'd get by without the digital
connections I have. I don't know what I would do
without this, And I don't know if you feel the same.
I don't know. And maybe I'm strange for being so online.
(31:53):
I don't mean I'm extremely online in the performative sense,
like I'm on Tumbler and I can tell you what
means the popular I mean I'm online talking to my friend,
I'm online, digging around on blue Sky. I'm online writing
business emails or writing scripts. It's how my life has been,
It's how I've done everything, it's how I've got everything,
and I'm so grateful for it. And then this last
(32:15):
year I've just been constantly reading the people sending emails
to each other, celebrating how much worse it's got, how
much more profitable it is, and seeing journalists that actively
see these people acting this way, these people who are
either making platforms worse or making things that don't work
very well that burn the environment, that burn billions of
(32:35):
dollars of cash, and clapping and being like, oh sir,
oh miss mister Altman, you're so good. Oh mister Amadi.
Please give me more broken anthropic products. I need them.
And it's fucking sickening to me. Build a real internet,
build something that matters, help people be stronger, be better,
have deeper connections, not this rot economy bullshit. And I
(33:01):
know I'm a dramatic person, and I'm not going to
get less dramatic. I'm sorry. If anything, it's going to
get more dramatic. But the outrage and emotion you hear
in me is because I've watched something that forms me
as a person get destroyed or poisoned, toxins dumped on
top of it. Its user's forced to slurp it down,
and it pisses me off. It pisses me off because,
(33:23):
as I've said in these two episodes, you can really
see the scale at which the rot economy hurts people.
But also, like I said, this is a personal journey.
Even though it's a business thing with like numbers and
such economic analysis and all this, a lot of it's
me trying to work out why something I love is
being hurt while the tech industry that really gave me
my life is run by people who don't seem to
(33:45):
care about technology or the people it serves. It fills
me full of anger because there's goodness here. There's greatness here.
The people I hear from every week, even every day. Now,
I'm really lucky I do so I hear from them
because of the Internet. They managed to get through the
noise to me, and it's lovely and I'm so grateful.
(34:08):
I promise you the next year is going to be wild.
I'm going to put my all into it. The first
week of January, you're going to get the most insane
CES coverage. Me Edward and Graso Junior and David Roth
of DEFECTA will be on the floor. We will have
two episodes a day, an hour and a half each
with a rotating cast of different people, including Robert Evans
(34:29):
and Gare Davis. You're going to have some really fun
coverage of the show. But what CES is going to
mean every year going forward is a bubble of sorts,
a bubble of how everyone's feeling about technology. I don't
think they're feeling good, but know this listener, you're who
I care about. Don't care about the tech people. I
(34:50):
care about the tech and how it helps you, and
if it hurts you, I want to hurt it back.
Thank you so much for listening to the last year.
I can't believe how far this show's gone, but work
my ass off to make it even bigger and better
for you. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The
(35:14):
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, m A T T O
S O W s ki dot com. 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
(35:35):
to chat dot Where's Youreed dot at to visit the discord,
and go to our slash Better Offline to check out
our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. 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.
A Zone Media. Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm
your host ed ZiT Troun and this is the finale
of this year. Even though you're hearing it in twenty
(00:24):
twenty five, I need you to just mentally imagine it's
twenty twenty four. I did my best, Okay, anyway, In
the last episode, I talked about the scale of the
rot economy and specifically the practical elements and the practical
results of growth at all costs thinking, And in this one,
I want to talk about how we fight back. Ideas
are powerful and things change as silly as it sounds
(00:45):
from the regular repetition, and the names of those responsible
and clear descriptions of the things they've done to us. Now,
you know, I've written and spoken a lot about the
rot economy, how the growth at all cost mindset fucks
things up, and it's what directly leads tech companies to
make their products worse. But what I've tried to do
in these episodes is quantify the scale, both the damage
it's caused and the billions of people it affects every day.
(01:08):
Everything I've discussed around the chaos and the pain of
the Internet is a result of corporations and private equity
firms buying media properties and immediately trying to make them grow,
each in wildly different ways, all clamoring to be the
next New York Times of Variety or other legacy media brand,
despite the fact that those brands already exist and the
ideas for competing with them usually are built on these
unsustainably large staffs and expensive consultants telling you to hire
(01:31):
more people. Almost every single store you visit on the
Internet has this massive data layer on the background that
feeds them data about what's popular or where people are
spending time on the sites, and will turn and change
things about their designed to subtly encourage you to buy
more staff, trapping you there also that more money comes
out no matter what the cost, even if it's harder
to find the things you actually want, even if the
(01:54):
data isn't personalized, it's still quite powerful, and it turns
so many experiences inside and outside shopping and social media
and the news into these subtle, horrible manipulations. Every single
weird thing that you've experienced with an app or service
online is the dreadhand of the rot economy, the gravitational
pull of growth that demands upon you the user to
(02:14):
do something something for the company. And when everybody is
trying to chase growth, nobody is thinking stability. And because
everybody is trying to grow, everybody sort of copies everybody
else's ideas, which is why we see micro transactions and
invasive ads and annoying tricks that all kind of feel
the same way in everything, though they're all subtly different
(02:35):
and customized just for that one app. It's exhausting. Now
for a while I've had the rot economy compared to
Corey doctor O's excellent incitification theory. I think it's a
great time to compare and separate the two because I
think they can live together quite well. And also Corey
is exceedingly smart, and I put a great deal of
value in his thoughts. To quote Corey in the Financial Times,
(02:57):
and certification is his theory explaining how the end that
was colonized by platforms, why all of those platforms are
degrading so quickly and thoroughly, why it matters, and what
we can do about it. And I'll link to these
in the show notes. He describes the first three stages
of the climb. First, platforms are good to their users,
then they abuse their users to make things better for
their business customers. Finally, they abuse those business customers to
(03:18):
claw back all the value for themselves. Now I agree
with Corey in some levels, but I believe he gives
far more credit to the platforms in question than they
deserve and sees far more intentional strategy than really exist.
I fundamentally disagree about the business customers even being some
elevated class in the equation. As we've seen in the
Google Ads trial, Google didn't really give a shit about
his business customers to begin with, and they've always sawt
(03:40):
a monopoly and made things worse for whoever it needed
to as a means of increasing growth. Maybe I'm just
playing semantics though. However, Corey's theory lacks a real perpetrator
beyond corporations that naturally say, all right, time for some initification.
Watch this again. I don't think it's that intentional. Maybe
it's an effect, Maybe it's a movement, maybe it's a
(04:00):
naturally occurring thing. Where the rot economy separates is that
growth is in and of itself the force that drives
companies to in shitify, while in hitification really fits across
companies and fits there neatly like Spotify and Meta in
their add focus business models. It doesn't really make sense
when it comes to things where there isn't a clear
split between business and consumers, like Microsoft or Salesforce, because
(04:21):
in citification is ultimately one part of the larger rot economy,
where everything must grow forever, whether it's intech or not,
and I believe the phenomenon that captures both is a
direct result of the work of men like Jack Welch
and Milton Friedman. Go back and listen to the shareholder
of supremacy if you hadn't. The rot economy is selfish
and potently neoliberal corporations are bowed down to like God's
(04:42):
the powerful only seek more at all times, at all costs,
even if said cost is that the company might eventually
die because we burned out any value it actually has,
or people are harmed constantly whenever they pick up their phone.
The rot economy is neoliberalism's true innovation, a kind of
economic cancer that we've he has few reasons to exist
beyond more and a few justifications beyond If we don't
(05:04):
let it keep growing, then everybody's pensions might blow up.
To be clear, corey is for the most part, Right
in Certification successfully encapsulates how the modern web was destroyed
in a way that nobody really has I'm exceedingly grateful
for Corey's work, and I think having him around is
so good for society. I was so happy to have
him on an episode a few months ago, and I
(05:26):
look forward to having him again. He's also a lovely fella,
and I really think that in Certification applies in a
wide ranging way to a wide amount of tech companies
and effects. There's also a great thing in the Vaults
newsletter that old link about in Certification within climate, for example,
Corey's brilliant. However, I believe the wider problem is bigger
and the costs are far greater. It isn't that everything
(05:47):
is in shitified. It's that everybody's pursuit of growth has
changed the incentive behind how we generate value in the world,
and software enables a specific kind of growth lust by
creating virtual nation states with their own digital deaths. While
laws may stop Meta from tearing up people's houses surrounding
its offices in one hack away, it can happily reroute
traffic and engagement on Facebook and Instagram to make things
(06:10):
in iota more profitable, and there's no government institution that's
sitting around thinking, huh is this bad? Is this bad
for people? Now? The rot economy isn't just growth or
cost thinking. It's a kind of secular religion, something to
believe in that isn't really connected to anything other than more,
And it's that everything and anything can be more, should
(06:31):
be more, must be more. That we're only defined by
our pursuit of more growth, and that something that isn't
growing isn't alive, and as a result inferior. I'm not
saying this is how everybody thinks, but I'm convinced that
everybody is burdened by the rot economy, and that digital
ecosystems allow the poison of growth to find new and
(06:51):
more destructive ways to dilute a human being to a
series of numbers that can be made to grow or
contract in the pursuit of capital. Almost every corner of
our lives has been turned into some sort of number,
and increasing that number is important to us bank account
balance is sure, but also engagement numbers follow us number
of emails sent and received, open rates on newsletters, how
(07:11):
many times something has been viewed, all numbers set by
other people that we live our lives by while barely
understanding what they mean or how they alter our behavior.
Human beings thrive on ways to define themselves, but metrics
often rob us of our individuality. Products that boil us
down to metrics are likely to fail to account for
the true depth of anything we are actually doing, or
(07:33):
anything they're actually capturing. The change in incentives towards driving
more growth actively pushes out those with long term thinking.
It encourages hiring people who see growth as the driver
of a company's success, and in turn investment research and
development into mechanisms of growth, which may sometimes be things
that help you, but that isn't necessarily the reason they're
doing it. Organizational culture and hiring stops prioritizing people that
(07:54):
fixed customer problems or even understand them, because that's not
really the priority, nor how one may of business continue
to grow. And I think the rot economies a social
thing as well. We're all pushed towards growth, personal growth,
professional growth, growth in our network and our societal status,
and the terms of this growth they're often set by
platforms and media outlets that are in turn pursuing their
(08:16):
own growth. And as I've discussed, the way the terms
of our growth is framed is almost entirely through a
digital ecosystem of warring intents and different ways of pursuing
and promoting growth, some ethical, but many not. Societal and
cultural pressure is nothing new, but the ways we experience
it are now elaborate and chaotic. Our relationships professional, personal,
and romantic a process through the fun house mirror of
(08:38):
the platforms changing in ways both subtle and evert based
on the signals are received and the people we care about,
each one twisted and processed the lens of a product
manager and a growth hacker who may not really care
about what we're doing other than that we're doing it.
Changes to these platforms, even subtle ones, actively change the
lives of billions of people, and it feels that we
talk about it like being online is some hobbyist peersuit
(09:00):
rather than something that many people do more than seeing
real people in the real world. I believe that we
exist in a continual tension with the rot economy and
the growth of all costs mindset. I believe that the
friction we feel on platforms and apps between what we
want to do and what the app wants us to
do is one of the most underdiscussed and significant culture
of phenomena where we, despite being customers, are continually berated
(09:21):
and conned and swindled and fucked. I believe billions of
people are in active combat with their devices every day,
swiping away notifications, dodging intrusive apps, agreeing to privacy policies
that they don't understand, desperately trying to find an option
they used that has been moved because the product manager
has decided it needed to be somewhere else. I realize
(09:42):
it's tough to conceptualize because it's so ubiquitous, But how
much do you fight with your computer and smartphone every day?
How many times does something break? How many times have
you downloaded an app and found that it didn't really
do the thing you wanted it to. How many times
have you wanted to do something simple and found that
it's actually really annoying. How much of your life is
(10:02):
dodging digital debris, avoiding scams, ads, apps that demand permissions,
and endless goddamn menu options that bury the simple things
that you want to do. It's like I said, you're
the victim of a scam. You've spent years of your
life explaining to yourself and others that this is just
how things are, accepting conditions that are inherently exploitive and abusive.
(10:22):
You are more than likely not deficient, stupid, or behind
the times, and even if you are, there shouldn't be
a multi trillion dollar ecosystem built to monetize your ignorance,
and it's time to start holding those responsible accountable. I'm
(10:48):
fairly regularly asked why all of this matters to me
so much, so as I wrap up the year, I'm
going to try and answer that question, explain why it
is I do what I do, all right, I spend
a lot time as own as a kid. I wasn't popular.
Actually that isn't really accurate, because that would suggest I
had friends. I didn't really had friends. I had some
(11:09):
people I knew, like similar people who were existed to
be bullied. I'm not trying to be modeling here, I'm
just describing the terms. I was insular. I was scared
of the world. I felt ostracized, unnoticed that many teenagers do,
and I felt like I was out of place in humanity,
and it really like weighed on my soul and the
only place I found any kind of community or any
place I could build an identity was being online. My
(11:31):
life was an ear is defined by technology, and I'm
not ashamed of that. A lot of people talk about, oh,
people are online too much, not even necessarily talking about me,
or how the internet hurts you and it's this, and
it hurts you because of the platforms. But I believe
at scale, the internet is actually quite beautiful. Had social
networking not come along, I'm not confident I'd have made many,
(11:53):
if any, of the friendships I have today, or really
any friendships of any kind. For the first twenty two
two years of my life, I really struggled to make
friends in the real world for a number of reasons,
many of them my fault, by the way. But I
made so many online and that became a bridge to
making real friendships. I kept and I nurtured friendships, indeed
with people thousands of miles away, and my shyness that
(12:17):
I had as a person became less of an issue
when I could avoid the trouble saying hey, I'm a
part that really got in my way. Without the Internet,
I'd probably be like a resentful hermit. I'd be disconnected
from humanity. That'd be just these layers of scar tissue
over whatever neurodivergent or unfortunate habits had gained from a child,
and I mostly spent alone. I don't want you to
(12:37):
feel sorry for me. By the way, none of that
was about me being sad. It's actually really trying to
explain something joyous, and that's a big part of who
I am. Technology is a big part of who I am. So,
like I said, don't feel sorry for me. Tech allowed
me to thrive. I have a business, I have an
upcoming book, the newsletter, I have this podcast. I had
these wonderful, beautiful friends I deeply love, and if you're
(12:59):
wondering if it's you, it is you. I love you.
And these people have come pretty much exclusively through technology
of some sort, like a social network or a result
of a digital connection of some kind. And I'm immensely
grateful for everything I have, and I'm grateful that technology
allowed me to live this full and happy life. And
I imagine many of you feel the same way. Your
frustrations aren't just about the apps being bad, but the
(13:21):
internet has a goodness to it. It has a value.
Otherwise we wouldn't stick our hands in the box that
the bene jesiit gives us every morning. And Techer's found
so many ways to make our lives better, perhaps more
in some cases than others. But I'm not gonna lie
and pretend, and I don't love technology. I think that
that wouldn't serve you or serve anyone. And I think
(13:43):
this kind of noxious earth or texts bad. It isn't
all bad, but the people running it are. The rotten
economy has fucked up tex so badly. But in the
process of doing this podcast, of writing my newsletter, it's
just maybe intimately aware of thetuitous, avaricious and intentional harm
that these people are causing, that the people running the
(14:05):
tech industry have caused to their customers, and this horrifying
and selfish world they've made, and the ruinous consequences that followed,
the things that I've watched happen this year alone, which
have at times been in enumeration of about a decade
of rot. They've turned my god damn stomach. You know
what's also done that the outright cowardice of some people
(14:25):
that claim to inform the public but choose instead to
reinforce the structures of the powerful And a little side
note to my good friend Casey Newton right now, you
should all go and look up his thing about the
phony comforts of AI Skeptics where he bags on Gary Marcus.
Why are you bagging on Gary Marcus, Casey, you fucking coward.
This piece attacked AI's skeptics with the flimsiest stuff. Casey
(14:48):
Newton has an audience above one hundred thousand people that
he's ostensibly informing. This stuff hurts people. Having popular journalists
that won't enumerate the damage being done, that don't won't
give the honest truth about things. It's disgusting. It turns
my stomach. And as these two part episodes have shown
you the scale of damage done by people like Facebook,
(15:09):
like Mark Zuckerberg, Casey's good friend, it's disgusting. Okay, wheeling
that back. By the way, I don't know if they're
good friends, but I know they text. Anyway, back to
the show. I'll put my bitch first aside. Look, I'm
a user. I'm a guy with a podcast and a newsletter.
But behind the mic and the keyboard, I'm a person
that uses the same services as you do, and I
(15:31):
see the shit done to us and I just feel
poison in my veins. I'm not holding back, as you've
kind of worked out by now we're like sixty episodes in.
I don't think you should either. What's being done to
us isn't just unfair, it's last and us. It's cruel,
it's exploitative, it's morally wrong. Some may try and dismiss
what I'm saying as just social media. It's just how
(15:52):
apps work, and if that's what you truly think, you're
either a beaten dog or a willing or unwilling operative
for people running a con. I will never forgive these
people for what they've done to the computer. And the
more I learn about both their intentions and the actions
they've taken, the more certain I become that these people
are unrepentant, and then their greed will never be sated.
I've watched them take the things that made me human,
(16:14):
social networking, digital communities, apps, and the other connecting fabric
of our digital lives and turn them into devices of torture,
profitable mechanisms of abuse. And I find it disgusting how
many reporters seem to believe it's their responsibility to thank
them and explain why it's good that this is happening
to their readers. And let's run down the scumbags, shall we.
Sam Altman's a goddamn con artist. He's a liar and
(16:36):
a sleazy carnival barker who would burn our planet to
the ground, steal from millions of people, and burn billions
of dollars in pursuit of power. And I believe the
same can be said of people like Dario Amadayo Vanthropik
and Mustafasuliman of Microsoft. Tim Cook of Apple, he's a
wolf in sheep's clothing. He slowly allows the rock to
seep into Apple's products. Apple intelligence is goddamn awful. It sucks.
(16:58):
It gets in the way. The summer suck, Image playground sucks.
Everyone saying this doesn't suck is up their own asshole.
They need to look look at the actual products. They
don't work, and they've slowly been adding these bothersome subscription
options and they chip away at the user experience. The
one company that I really didn't want to do this.
And yet let's take a step back to the beginning
of the show. Apple's app store and its repeated support
(17:20):
of exploitative micro transaction laid mobile games built to create
gambling like addiction in adults and children alike. They make
billions of dollars off of them, and because Apple's products
are less shitty, they get a much easier time. Now
let's talk about two of my phase my besties. Now,
I hold Sundhar Peshai in a certain kind of esteem,
by which I believe that Sundar Pieshai of Google is
(17:40):
the Henry Kissinger of technology, a glossy executive that escapes
blamed despite having caused harm on a global scale. The
destruction of Google Search at the hands of Sundhar Peshai
and Prabagar Ragavan should be written about like a war crime,
and those responsible treated as such. And by the way, Prabagar,
if you're hearing this, hello baby, I love you. I
love saying your name, and I'm going to be saying
(18:02):
it forever. Now let's get to Microsoft. Satch in Adela
has aggressively expanded Microsoft's various monopolies, the most egregious of which,
by the way, is the Microsoft three sixty five Suite,
which is a monopoly over business software that everyone kind
of hates. The Microsoft prices to undercut the competition, effectively
setting conditions of most business software is either cheaper than
Microsoft or slightly better than Microsoft. Nadella has overseen layoffs
(18:24):
of tens of thousands of people in the last three
years alone, and despite his bullshit growth mindset culture, he
treats employees and customers as equally disposable. And of course
he's the guy that has made open AI happen, which
in turn means he's responsible for generative AI at scale.
And let's end with metas Mark Zuckerberg, who is a
putrid ghoul that has overseen the growth and proliferation of
(18:46):
some of the single most abusive and manipulative software in
the world. Meta has grown to a market cap of
one point five trillion dollars by intentionally making the experience
on Instagram and Facebook worse, intentionally frustrating and harming billions
of people, actively into fearing with the fabric of society.
These are the people in charge. These are the people
running the tech industry. These are the people who make
(19:08):
the decisions that affect billions of people every minute of
every day, and their decision making is so flagrantly selfish
and abusive that I'm regularly astonished by how little criticism
they receive. These men lace our digital lives with asbestos
and get told their geniuses for doing so because money
comes out. But the truth is I don't know or
care whether these men know who I am or read
(19:29):
my work, because I only care that you do. I
don't give a shit if Sam Ortman Mark Zuckerberg knows
my name. I don't care about their riches or their achievements.
I care that when given so many resources, such privilege,
and such opportunity to change the world, they chose to
make it worse. These men are tantamount to war criminals.
Except in thirty years, Mark Zuckerberg may still be seen
as a success, though I will spend the rest of
(19:51):
my life telling you the damage he's caused. I care
about you, the user, the person listening to, the person
that may have felt stupid or deficient or ignorant, all
because the services you pay for or that monetize you
have been intentionally rigged against you. You aren't the failure
the services, the devices, and the executives are. If you
(20:15):
cannot see the significance of the problems I discuss every week,
the sheer scale of the rot, the sheer damage caused
by unregulated and unrepentant managerial parasites. You are living in
a fantasy world, and I both envy and worry about you.
You're the frog and the part, and trust me, the
stoves on twenty twenty five will be the year of chaos, fear,
and a deficit of hope. But I will spend every
(20:37):
breath I have telling you what I believe in, telling
you that I care and that you are not alone.
For years, I've watched the destruction of the services and
the mechanisms that are responsible for allowing me to have
a normal life, to thrive, to be able to speak
with a voice that was truly mine. I've watched them
burn or worse, turned into these abominable growth vehicles, men
disconnected from society and humanity. I owe my life to
(20:59):
an inn. I've watched turned into these abuse factories worth billions,
if not trillions of dollars, and I've watched the people
responsible get glad handled and applauded. I will scream at
them into my dying fucking breath. I have had a
blessed life, and I'm lucky that I wasn't born even
a year earlier or later. But the way I've grown
up and seen things changed. Has allowed me to fully
(21:21):
comprehend how much damage is being done today and how
much worse is to come if we don't hold these
people accountable. The least they deserve is a spoken or
written record of their sins, and the least you deserve
is to be reminded that you are the victim. I
(21:50):
don't think you realize how powerful it is being armed
with knowledge, the clarity of what's being done to you
and why, and the names of the people responsible. This
is an invisible war and a series of invisible war
crimes perpetuated against billions of people in a trillion different ways,
every moment of every day, and it's everywhere a constant
in our lives, which makes enumerating and conceptualizing it difficult.
(22:11):
But you can help you Talking about the truth behind
generative AI or the harms of Facebook or the gratuitous
destruction of Google Search will change things, because these people
are unprepared for a public that knows both what they've
done and they're sickening loaths some selfish and greedy intentions.
Saying prabagar Ragavan is both very fun. Try it yourself,
(22:33):
Say prabagar Ragavan and the shower on the toilet probagar
Ragavan in an NFL game, And then when someone says
OHO's propagar Ragavan, you say, well, he's the guy who
destroyed Google Search. No, look, I get it, it's just talking, right.
But the way that people disconnect from these services and
take a stand starts with the clear discussion of the
problem and reframing. I don't get technology to prabagar Ragavan
(22:53):
destroy Google Search. It spreads through groups, organizations, and governments.
It gets somewhere. Most people, believe it or not, don't
know about the raw economy or about the people responsible,
and assume they got older rather than technology getting worse. Really,
this is a moment of solidarity. We're all harmed by
the row economy. We're all victims, and it takes true
opulence to escape it. And I'm guessing you don't have it.
(23:15):
I certainly don't. But talking about it, refusing to go quietly,
refusing to slow up down the slot willingly or pleasantly
is enough. The conversations are getting louder, the anger is
getting too hard to ignore. These companies will be forced
to change through public pressure and the knowledge of their
deeds and pressure on the media. Outlets you read and
listen to that choose willingly to prop them up. Holding
(23:37):
these people to a higher standard at scale is what
brings about change. Be the wrench in the machine. Be
the person that explains to a friend why Facebook sucks
now and who chose to make it suck. Adam Masseri,
By the way, it's Adam Massari, Mark Zuckerberg and the
rest of the growth team. Naomi Glitz another great one
as well, Javier Olivan, They're all in. Go listen to
the episode and tell your friends. Be the person to
(23:59):
explain who Probago Ragavan is and what his role was
in making Google Search worse. Say it, say his name
with your friends. Say it to the mailman. Be the
person who tells people that Sam Altman burns five billion
dollars a year on unsustainable software that destroys the environment
and is built upon the largest scale larceny of creative
works ever to happen. Or because he's desperate for power.
(24:19):
He is already a billionaire. He was already there. Because
every time you do this, you destabilize them. They've succeeded
in a decades long marketing campaign where tech people get
called geniuses for making things that are necessary to function
in society, and they're making them worse. You can change that.
I also want to be clear, I don't give a
shit if you signed me. It's cool if you say
(24:39):
where you found it, but I really don't care. I
really don't tell people. That's what matters. Tell everybody, spread
the word. You yourself can be a little better offline.
I don't mean that as a pump, but you know
what I mean. Spread the blood the word. Say what
they've done, Say their names, Say their names again and
again and again, so it becomes a contagion. They twisted
(25:00):
and broken and hyper monetized everything, how you make friends,
how you fall in love, how you bank, how you
listen to music, how you find information. Never let their
names be spoken without disgust. Be the sampaper in their
veins and the graffiti on their fucking legacies. I'm sick
of it. I'm sick of it, And if you're with me,
just tell people. Don't even talk about me. I'm not important.
(25:21):
What's important is that you know, and the others know too,
and you'll feel a lot of dread going into the
next year. But that's what the darkness wants. That's what
authoritarianism craves hopelessness, emptiness, and energy deficit that anchors you
to the earth. And I can't promise you that I'm
fixing anything with a podcast. I can't promise you what
I'm saying is going to fix you in any way.
(25:43):
But I hope it at least invigorates you. I hope
it makes you feel less alone. I hope you know
that others feel the way you do too, and that
someone somewhere is outraged on your behalf because I am.
Now we're going to get to the schmaltzy part, because
I have to. I'm a big emotional guy. Last year
in my life's being incredible. I've been very lucky to
do this show. It's allowed me to meet wonderful people
(26:03):
that I adore, and I'm going to talk about them now.
And if you don't like it, what's wrong with you?
I get so angry. Let me be happy for a
moment and be happy for these people. They're absolutely wonderful.
A year in, I want to thank Sophie Lichtman and
Robert Evans for having faith in me to do this.
I stood alone in my kitchen in February and I
was like, pacing around, and I was like, I don't
(26:25):
know what I'm going to do, but I'm not going
to tell them because they contracted me and I mostly
worked it out as it went along, and they were
extremely supportive and I wasn't sure where I would take this,
but both of them told me to go as hard
as I needed to. However, I wanted to not once
have either of them said nah, or hey, Yed, I
don't know about this, or head, can you change this,
(26:48):
except in one episode's case, where it was actually the
pilots and it needed a re recording. It was not
good enough. But that's what they're there for. They've humored
these insane five hundred word rants that like eleven PM
on a Tuesday, where I'm like, I think that this
should happen, and then they've taken these concepts and being like, hey,
why don't you do this? But fundamentally they have and
(27:10):
all of cool so media has been insanely supportive, both
of the ideas but also the outrage and also the
true support they've given me to do this is creative
expression but also a value generating podcast has been incredible
and regardless of how you feel about what they do,
there really isn't anything out there like better Offline. It's
a result of having the kind of an army behind me,
(27:31):
both as part of the show and these people who
just show me incredible love, who I adore so much
and I'm so grateful for. And you're just gonna have
to sit there and let me list them. And if
you don't like it, you need to tell your friends
you love them instead. Pause the show, call your mum,
call your friends, tell everyone you know you love them. Well,
life is short, but let's start with the thanks. I
(27:53):
want to thank Mattisowski, Ian Johnson and Daniel Goodman for
producing the show. Mattasowski is the person who will hear
this first, and he also so here's the cuts between
them where I'm swearing and I mess up really obvious words.
He's They're all amazing, the actual iHeartRadio producers are angels,
all of them. They care so much about this. Daniel
Goodman as well, has been incredible getting me in this
studios in New York. There's gonna be a lot more
(28:15):
of that next year, as I'm going to be in
New York way more say hello. I of course want
to thank Matt Hughes for editing these scripts and riffing
on many of the ideas and supporting me unwaveringly. Matt
Hughes is the fifth Beatle. If there were five of us,
I guess the second Beatle. I don't know, but I
love Matt so much. He's a wonderful friend. But also
he's as angry as I am about this shit. We
(28:36):
cook together. It's wonderful. I also want to thank Casey
Kagawa right at the top, because Casey is actually the
person who really worked on the rot economy with me
back in February twenty twenty three. He has been someone
who's been formative more work. Love you, man, I love
all these people. I'm not just gonna say I love
you every time, but I've told all of you. Matt Weinberger,
of course, Kylie Roberson, Christina Warren, Tajanavn Shnovik, Phil Broughton,
(28:59):
Caleb Wilson, Hassan, They've all regularly helped me work ideas out,
even when I'm just rambling to them in signal. And
if you're not on this list, please reach out. I'm sorry.
What I'm gaina is that. Look, I'm lucky to have
so many wonderful people that I've been able to connect
with in my life. And whatever you hear or read
(29:19):
me say is only possible as a result of these
people that've given me this strength. And all of them
came from the Internet. All of them came from it.
All of them are a result. Every single person I've
listed there is someone I've met digitally. I'm not kissing
up to the platforms, but the concept of the Internet
has been so important to me, and I think it
has been to you too, And the anger in my
(29:40):
heart is that I see it being stolen from us.
I see it being taken away by people who make
so much money, making it worse. And the forces I
criticize they don't see beauty in human beings. They don't
see us as these remarkable things that generate ideas both
incredibly stupid and incredible. And they don't see talent or
creativity as something that's innately human. They see it as
a commodity to be condensed, to monetize and replicated so
(30:03):
that they ultimately own whatever value we have. Something you'd
only believe was possible if you were a disgusting management
consultant gargoyle with no connection to real people that should
be put in the carnival prism. Look, you deserve better
than what they've given you. You deserve better than what
I've given you, which is why I'm going to work
even harder in twenty twenty five. I'm lucky to have you.
I'm so grateful for this podcast. I'm it's a privilege
(30:26):
to do this, and I love hearing from you. Email
me at e that's e z or Z at better
offline dot com. I try and respond to every email.
I have a big following on Blue Sky. That's a
place to find me. I hear from a lot of
people thanking me, and each time I want you to
know it's extremely meaningful and I love it and thank you.
It means a great deal to me. You take it
even a second out of your time, let alone the
(30:48):
thirty minutes for this episode, or however it much ends
up being. I'm really lucky, and I hope I'm helping,
and I'll continue to try. I'll continue to do my
boat my bet here look whan key as it sounds,
this has been a very personal journey. The last year
has been personally and professionally crazy for me, but also
(31:11):
digging through all of the tech industry, trying to work
out why Facebook's bad, Instagram's bad, Google's bad. I did
this because I did not understand you. Hear on this
podcast me working things out. You hear my personal journey
with technology in the fact that my life is technology.
My life's kind of chaotic, but a lot of that
(31:31):
chaos is rained in by technology by being able to
digitally handle things. I don't know what I do without it.
I write o nine words per minute. My hand physically hurts.
I don't know how I'd get by without the digital
connections I have. I don't know what I would do
without this, And I don't know if you feel the same.
I don't know. And maybe I'm strange for being so online.
(31:53):
I don't mean I'm extremely online in the performative sense,
like I'm on Tumbler and I can tell you what
means the popular I mean I'm online talking to my friend,
I'm online, digging around on blue Sky. I'm online writing
business emails or writing scripts. It's how my life has been,
It's how I've done everything, it's how I've got everything,
and I'm so grateful for it. And then this last
(32:15):
year I've just been constantly reading the people sending emails
to each other, celebrating how much worse it's got, how
much more profitable it is, and seeing journalists that actively
see these people acting this way, these people who are
either making platforms worse or making things that don't work
very well that burn the environment, that burn billions of
(32:35):
dollars of cash, and clapping and being like, oh sir,
oh miss mister Altman, you're so good. Oh mister Amadi.
Please give me more broken anthropic products. I need them.
And it's fucking sickening to me. Build a real internet,
build something that matters, help people be stronger, be better,
have deeper connections, not this rot economy bullshit. And I
(33:01):
know I'm a dramatic person, and I'm not going to
get less dramatic. I'm sorry. If anything, it's going to
get more dramatic. But the outrage and emotion you hear
in me is because I've watched something that forms me
as a person get destroyed or poisoned, toxins dumped on
top of it. Its user's forced to slurp it down,
and it pisses me off. It pisses me off because,
(33:23):
as I've said in these two episodes, you can really
see the scale at which the rot economy hurts people.
But also, like I said, this is a personal journey.
Even though it's a business thing with like numbers and
such economic analysis and all this, a lot of it's
me trying to work out why something I love is
being hurt while the tech industry that really gave me
my life is run by people who don't seem to
(33:45):
care about technology or the people it serves. It fills
me full of anger because there's goodness here. There's greatness here.
The people I hear from every week, even every day. Now,
I'm really lucky I do so I hear from them
because of the Internet. They managed to get through the
noise to me, and it's lovely and I'm so grateful.
(34:08):
I promise you the next year is going to be wild.
I'm going to put my all into it. The first
week of January, you're going to get the most insane
CES coverage. Me Edward and Graso Junior and David Roth
of DEFECTA will be on the floor. We will have
two episodes a day, an hour and a half each
with a rotating cast of different people, including Robert Evans
(34:29):
and Gare Davis. You're going to have some really fun
coverage of the show. But what CES is going to
mean every year going forward is a bubble of sorts,
a bubble of how everyone's feeling about technology. I don't
think they're feeling good, but know this listener, you're who
I care about. Don't care about the tech people. I
(34:50):
care about the tech and how it helps you, and
if it hurts you, I want to hurt it back.
Thank you so much for listening to the last year.
I can't believe how far this show's gone, but work
my ass off to make it even bigger and better
for you. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The
(35:14):
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, m A T T O
S O W s ki dot com. 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
(35:35):
to chat dot Where's Youreed dot at to visit the discord,
and go to our slash Better Offline to check out
our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. 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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