127: Digital Digital Letdown

A listener calls in with a harrowing tale of getting pressured into going to Disney World and then having a panic attack immediately afterwards. We discuss the prevalence of lockdown cabin fever leading to risky decisions immediately followed by intense regret. Then we get into The Social Dilemma on Netflix, and why we didn’t really like it. For the second half we are joined by writer Justin Charity for a reunion of Emily’s pod It’s Cool To Like Anime to chat about Psycho-Pass and more.

Notes

elemental article about covid transmission

criticism of the social dilemma

justin charity at the ringer

sound only at apple podcasts

travis scott x mcdonalds

psycho-pass season 1 trailer

ergo proxy trailer

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's eleven fifty three PM on a big nugget body
pillow and you're listening tonight Call. Hello, and welcome to Nightcall,
the College show for Artistrophe in Reality. My name is
Emily Aschida, and with me on the other line as

(00:21):
always are Mollylia Bern and Tess Lynch. And we're going
to be joined later in the show by Justin Charity
from the ringer to talk about anime Travis Scott pe
and on Twitter but uh not actively participating in it,
and uh yeah, a lot of a lot of other stuff.
It's a it's a wide ranging conversation, so stay tuned
for that. We have a night call that we want

(00:42):
to take right now from the happiest place on Earth?
Shall we roll it? Hey, nightcall, long time, first time. UM.
I'm just calling to tell you the story of how
I went to Disney World recently. UM. I live in
Florida and I was visiting some family up in the

(01:04):
Orlando area and we weren't while I wasn't planning on
going to the parts at all. I've been pretty as
far as airing on the side of caution goes, I've
been pretty extreme in terms of not leaving my house
for the most part rationally, so I think I'm not

(01:27):
like a gooraphobic or anything like that. But so I
get there to visit family, and they basically are like,
so there's this Florida resident discount right now, tickets are
really cheap. We won't bring this up to the kids
as a possibility until we talk to you. Will all go,

(01:49):
but only if you want to go. And I don't know,
in like some sort of lapse of judgment or feeling
like outnumbered, or you know that feeling of like, well,
all of these people think it's a good idea, I
guess maybe I'm being you know, extreme or something. So
I went and had a pretty good time. All of

(02:13):
the lines are six ft apart, there's like hand sanitizers everywhere,
there's like um plexiglass in between wine formations, so you're
not like breathing on everybody as you're waiting in line,
and most of the lines have been moved outside, but
none of that really changes the fact that like a

(02:33):
lot of rides are inside and you're just fucking touching
a lot of stuff, And there's like so many different
vectors of transmission at a park that like even at
percent capacity, which I think to holding it to it's
still like a lot of people in and out. So

(02:55):
I like, I went to the parks over the weekend,
and then last night, I like kind of woke up
in the middle of the night having a hard time sleeping,
and then just sort of in that like middle of
the night fashion started thinking about like all of the
different ways we could have gotten COVID by going to
the parks. You how, you know, temperature checks only cover

(03:17):
people who are like symptomatically sick and not those who
are asymptomatic, and you know how many things we had
to have touched. Anyway, bottom line is, I woke up
in the middle of the night last night and had
a full blown anxiety attack, which is actually the first
one I've experienced throughout quarantine. Um probably because up until

(03:44):
this point I've been extremely cautious, and then I felt
I was feeling like I threw all of that away
by going to the parks this weekend. You know, wanted
to give you an insider report of Disney World, which
is like a fucking surreal right now, and just like
wild to be there while everybody's like wearing masks, you know,

(04:07):
it just it feels super weird, but also to give
all of your listeners a warning that you know, if
you're considering doing something, like if you're maybe feeling like, well,
maybe everything is like safer out there, then I think
it is or you're kind of double guessing the way
that you've approached quarantining and being safe up until now,

(04:30):
and like feeling like you're being left out of stuff
because like things are reopening and people are going out
to eat and ship. I was feeling fine while I
was there, and then it all just hit me when
I got home and realized it was a terrible decision.
So I would recommend not going overall, and I would

(04:54):
also especially recommend not going if you're prone to anxiety
is because this was the worst one that I've had
in a long time. Thanks night call, have a good one.
Thank you so much for that call. That that is
definitely good advice to heed um to be more cautious.

(05:16):
Then it seems like when you look at the rest
of the world and you see how people are starting
to be a little bit less careful, I think it
can make you feel as though you're being overly vigilant
by continuing to quarantine I guess it depends on how
on where you're located, but um, I was curious if
you guys Molly and Emily have felt like looking at,

(05:38):
you know, how other people are operating at this stage
of quarantine, that you feel like there's a disconnect there.
I think that people have gotten really cooped up because
we've been in quarantine for so long, and especially with
the fires in California and Oregon, it has like doubled
down on those feelings of claustrophobia and have in fever.

(06:01):
So I definitely over the past like a few days,
was just like had this urge to get out in
the world, just desperately because I could not, and I
think a lot of people because they've been holding back,
then when they decided to do something, it is this
sort of like liberating moment followed immediately by intense guilt
and shame. My mom has some friends who it's like

(06:24):
they're very careful, but especially because they're older, and then
it's like they'll go to Burger King to get some
food and then just like have an anxiety attack of
like what if I just fucked myself over by going
to Burger King. What if I now get COVID from this,
like it's not worth it. I'm kind of of two minds.
I think that there is definitely stuff that I am

(06:46):
still there's no way I'm going to do it, and
I kind of looked down upon people who do it.
You know. I'm I'm in a college town right now,
and like college bar culture is just full steam ahead here.
And that is you know, obviously college age people aren't
necessarily going to be symptomatic or really you know, have
an have an extreme case of COVID if they if

(07:08):
they transmit it or if they get it, but you know,
it affects the rest of the community eventually in some way,
and that you know, it's hard for me to to
be like, oh, you know, they just you know, we
have to we have to continue with life. I will
say though, that like I do think that kind of
that that shame and the guilt feeling about doing something
like going to a McDonald's or a burger king or whatever.

(07:29):
I don't feel at all anymore. I have to say,
like going to a burger king or something. It's like
that's not going to be I don't think how you
contract COVID unless you are immune compromised in which case,
you know, like like the collar said, all of this
stuff applies doubly. But there was just this article that
came out, um was on Elemental, which is like a

(07:51):
medium blog, like a science and health blog. It was
chrending all day yesterday, but it was sort of this
most recent collection of findings about COVID and like, you know,
how much they differ from what was being reported early
on about how you know, how it would spread, how
you need to protect yourself and all of that. And

(08:12):
the big thing from it is that like the surfaces thing,
which is a lot of what the caller was calling about,
is not really necessarily the biggest risk factor. And the
way that they were conducting the studies early on is
not really an accurate representation of how like the pathogens
would be spread, the concentration they would be spread in.
Just like being able to really concentrate on not like

(08:34):
on the droplets thing on, just like not being in
close quarters with people who you're not an applied with.
That's all pretty controllable. I feel like, I don't know,
maybe it's because I've been out in the world for
a while now that I don't feel I feel like,
I know exactly like what I can and can't do,
and so like, yeah, like going to a get pick

(08:54):
up from somewhere, get fast food or something like that
is not necessarily the stuff that I'm feeling guilt to
your anxiety written about. I don't know, Okay, but what
about going to Disney World, Well, that is your own.
I have to say though that, UM, I was so
judgmental at the Honestly, the first like three months of quarantine,
I had very strong reactions about how I felt other

(09:19):
people were operating. And now that it's been this long,
I'm trying to not do that. And I think, like
the thing with Disney, I don't feel as though you
should feel guilt or shame about doing that because you
obviously made a call that you later realized was the
wrong call, and it's not the same. The only people

(09:39):
I really judge or think should feel shame are the
people who are like anti maskers, who are going around
without a mask to basically be dicks and make a point. Yeah,
I think that it's worth for giving yourself for going
to Disney. I I guess maybe two months ago, UM
or maybe three went there was a socially distanced UM

(10:04):
like six of us were gonna have a glass of
wine for someone's birthday, and I went up the street.
It was just my neighbors, and I wore a mask
and then I sat down and we were all far apart.
We were outside, and because we were eating and drinking,
I took down my mask. Everyone took down their masks,
and it felt like I was like, I'm not super
comfortable with this, but I don't want to be wearing

(10:26):
a mask and make them feel bad. And then on
the walk home, my heart just started raising and I
was like, I'm not comfortable with the fact that I
did that. And and not to judge anyone who is
who's going out to eat or whatever, I do think
that that can put um weight stuff in a very
uncomfortable position with which we've talked about before. And I
think it might be like I might consider it a

(10:47):
little selfish, but I'm not going to really judge people
for doing it. But there's this sense of like you,
like the caller said, where you don't want to compromise
someone else's decision to like bring their kid to Disney,
and it's they're taking these safety protocols or whatever. You
don't want to be the one who brings everyone down,
and it's only after you do it that you're like,

(11:08):
oh shit, I made a mistake. And I think as
long as you realize, like, as long as you check
yourself and you think, like, you know, I won't do
that again, I'm gonna be more careful, then there's no
sense in really beating yourself up too much over it,
you know, I mean, Captain bring down over here. But um,
I'll judge people for doing stuff that is overly risky

(11:29):
and frivolous. I think, but if it's a mistake, like
if they really if they're like, oh, ship, that I
shouldn't have done it, you know. I mean, I think
going to disney World because you get pressured into it
and then feeling stressed out afterwards, is you know, completely understandable.
I don't think this person was, like, but going to
Disneyland takes a lot more steps and planning and consideration

(11:50):
than having a glass of wine with your friends in
a distance hanging in somebody's backyard. Like, yeah, that's true.
But if you if everyone's saying, well, here's what they're doing,
it's capacity almost everything is outside. When she walked through
the things that they were doing to keep people safe.
I could see there being this like sliding doors thing
where you're like, I know I should say no, but

(12:11):
I'm just I'm trying to like make a reasonable leap
that that's enough, that that's okay. And I think that
those weird You can make a judgment that rationally you
wouldn't think you would make when you're just like, well,
they're doing this, and they're doing this, and they're doing
this like I don't know, you know, nobody knows anything
is the problem. And I do think you can judge
people for I mean, clearly, like people are still having

(12:33):
gender reveal parties and setting everything on fire. I surely
judge those people. I judge people who are having big parties.
I judge people who are doing things deliberately. But I
I feel like everyone's had a moment where they just
made the wrong call. You know that's true for sure.
I mean it's just again, it's just all a matter
of what qualifies as dangerous or risky to you. And

(12:56):
I think that that is and that has been the
theme throughout the last half year. Is different at everybody
at different moments, and what feels to you is completely
reasonable and safe and rational to somebody else, maybe because
they haven't read the same articles as you or whatever,
like will seem like a major risk and super inconsiderate
and a horrible thing to do. And we're all living

(13:19):
in different, like at different stages of this, like understanding
and reality of like what this pandemic is, and a
lot of us are I don't know, I feel like
I'm I'm probably living in a place right now with
it that a lot of people were living in with
it a couple of months ago. I've kind of relaxed
to a point that I feel comfortable with with it.
Whereas like there were a lot of people who were,

(13:40):
I don't know, hanging out with friends on their porch
or something, and I was like, oh God, you can't
do that. But now I'm just like, whatever you like,
I don't I don't feel like judgmental about it at all,
And I would do it if anybody would have me,
you know, I don't know. I don't judge people for
hanging out on their porches or for hanging out with
friends in a group, usually in a pod. I do

(14:02):
think the normalization of eating at restaurants has been completely
Uh just know, people who are eating a restaurant. That's
the one thing where I'm like, no way, no way,
are you kidding me? Like, I was walking the other
day to get pick up, and I passed um, a
restaurant that has been operating on Vermont in Los Cila's

(14:23):
with plexiglass, you know, walls up between tables and stuff.
And I saw people, I saw a couple that I
know eating there, and I was like, man, it just
doesn't like fun. First and foremost, it doesn't look fun.
It was like, really, like, aside from the actual risk
involved the plexiglass thing, the entire esthetics of it, you know,

(14:44):
the everybody wearing masks around it while you're trying to
eat food, it's just not fun looking at all. It
doesn't seem fun. I get stressed out by the fact
that people have such like entitlement about being served by
servers because that's what yeah, or to be out of
the house, I guess. But you can be out of
you could be out of the house, you could have
a picnic. It's like the insistence on being served by

(15:07):
service workers and the fact that that's who's really at
risk are the service workers who have to deal with
hundreds of people every day. Again, I'm not necessarily putting
the blame on individuals who are like who would like
to have a nice dinner out. I'm putting the blame
on all the people who reopened early. Especially now in
l A we have this al Fresco bullshit program where

(15:29):
they put tables on the sidewalk that they're now running
out of money for, where again I'm like, well, why
didn't they just take that money and give it to
restaurants to shut down and pay their staff. I completely
agree with that, and I and again, and I think
it's a great distinction Molly to say that I don't
understand why people want to eat at restaurants right now, um,

(15:52):
but shaming them individually when they've been told that the
measures that are in place are relatively safe. Like, it's
a weirding to want to have dinner out when you
know that you're making a person who works there like
face the risk of you, you know, contaminating them. But
it's also hard to not say, well that that's not

(16:12):
a you know, that's not like a personal flaw on
their part. Necessarily it's a weird call, but it's a flaw.
It's a systemic flaw. I think It's also that thing
of the future being here and distributed unevenly where because
coronavirus has been dealt with in a better way in
other places, and because of social media, it's like people

(16:37):
see that people in other countries are back to normal
more or less in certain ways, and they're like, well,
why can't I do that? You know? I think in
l A, some of the feelings I have about people
eating in restaurants in New York, I have to remind myself, like, well,
they're down to like a one percent transmission rate versus
Los Angeles, which is not so it is different. Yeah. Yeah.

(16:59):
This was like an early problem I think with the
coverage of the disease and so much of it being
focused on New York, probably because a lot of media
is based in New York and this is an ongoing
thing we almost contend with is that, like the reality
of COVID in New York was not what it was
in the rest of the country at that time, and
then I think that a lot of people like the
measures that were being taken in certain places were like

(17:21):
New York measures a lot of times, and now people
are still in the New York reality of stuff when
like New York is not there anymore. And yeah, it's
like all everybody's kind of cycling through this stuff at
different times, and it just makes it it's hard to
know where you stand. And that this was also the
most dystopian week because the air quality is so bad.
It's like, you know, unbreathable essentially. And I just went

(17:42):
out for a drive because I was feeling so claustrophobic,
and all of the outdoor patios were packed. I was
just like, people are eating outside in you know, poisonous air.
It was shocking. Well, let's take a break and when
we come back, we will be briefly discussing the Netflix
documentary The Social Dilemma. Tess and I watched the Netflix

(18:14):
documentary The Social Dilemma, and we are going to fill
Emily in on it a little bit. This documentary was
going kind of viral for being about a lot of
the issues with social media, um especially Facebook. And Tess,
what do you think of The Social Dilemma? Well, let
me first say that everyone who was who had watched

(18:37):
this movie that I know it was like, it's so good,
it's so important, it's going to make you deactivate everything.
Like I didn't read anything critical of it until after
I tried to watch it, and then I I found
that I had to go find other people who didn't
like it because I hated this movie. I didn't watch

(18:58):
the last ten minutes because I simply could not. It
was not what I expected at all. We've talked a
ton on this podcast about the dangers of social media,
about the dangers of being addicted to your phone, how
it's so dystopian, how you know certain social networks, especially
are prone to reading grounds for conspiracy theories that can

(19:19):
be very dangerous, interfering with elections, all this kind of stuff.
And instead of a nuanced and intelligent view of, um,
the dangers of that kind of thing, I found that
this was like an after school special for people who
might have thought like Facebook was good for them. You know,

(19:41):
it was shocking to me that people like this. I
feel like the audience for this is people who are
I guess less informed about how social media works then
we are, because it did feel very one oh one
in terms of like, hey, you know, they changed the
photos so that you'll come back more, and they change
the headerers because they want you to be refreshing. It's

(20:04):
very addictive. Did you know it's crazy too, because so
they're The format of this documentary is different. UM, it's
a lot of interviews. They interview a number of former UM, Facebook, Google, uh,
all kinds of you know, venture capitalist people and designers
and engineers who then many of whom then moved on

(20:26):
to work at the center of humane technology. That people
who basically worked at these companies and then felt like
they were complicit in some horrible unraveling of society and
became kind of like whistleblowers. And those interviews are interesting
and worth watching for sure. But then there's this whole
other part of the documentary that we're dying to tell

(20:47):
you about, Emily, because there it's wild. There there's a family.
It's like a dramatization of how a family can be
affected by social media over use, especially that children in
the family. And um this is also this leads to
scenes where three different Vincent car tizers with different hair

(21:08):
dues are in like mission controlled hairlines, yes and different
and like one's kind of the like more relatable Vincent
car tizer and wants the like really polished Vincent car
tizer and they're manipulating. UM. One of the actors from
the family from these dramatizations as if like they're you know,

(21:30):
they're like, we gotta get him to get log onto
Facebook right now. How are we going to do that? Like, oh, well,
we'll send him a notification that his ex girlfriend is
dating someone else. And then it becomes this this really
melodramatic kind of thing of him becoming like a withdrawn um,
like he starts to look into joining fringe groups from

(21:52):
this fake political party called like the Extreme Center or something.
It's the wildest thing. I live in the Extreme Center totally.
It feels like a Black Mirror or something. But the
overall effect is more like refor madness, yes, like a
refor madness about social media. It's like social media is bad.

(22:14):
I mean that's always the knock on Black Mirror though, right,
is that it's just like like, did you know the
Internet is trying to kill you or something? And I
think that there can be episodes of Black Mirror that
are like that, But the best episodes of Black Mirror,
and also just any conversation about this stuff in general,
cannot stop at the idea that there is a mega
corp that is trying to completely overtake your attention span.

(22:39):
There has to be some sort of examination of how
I think how individuals operate within this and like how
it's it's kind of beyond the technology, Like some of
it is like genuine social phenomenons that are like augmented
by technology, and like that stuff is more interesting to
me than you know, I mean obviously like Cambridge Analytica
and stuff like that with ebook is really bad and

(23:01):
his like drastically impacted global politics over the last few years.
I think that that's like a different story almost then
how individuals get addicted to social media in different ways,
because it's I think hastill a lot to do with
just how human beings are and not so much of it, like, um,

(23:21):
the qualities of different platforms. Yeah, and they deal with
like the addictiveness. They use this phrase about, um, if
you don't know what the product is, that means you're
the product, which I shared for the first time at
the Porn Awards from a guy who worked in anti
porn antip you know piracy in helping porn stars not

(23:43):
have their work get pirate ID. But you know that
was one of the knocks on like the YouTube clones
for porn and and anything that is like that where
you're like, oh it's free, It's not really free. You're
paying with your own personal data. But I do think
now that I'm thinking about it, I'm like, these are
a lot of basic things that we know. Maybe we
are just not the audience for this. Maybe the audience

(24:05):
for this is like your grandparents. Hey, hey, Emily, there,
I would agree with you. Other than you know, I'm
not to say that everyone needs to be as deep
into this and as interested in this world as we are.
I think by making by trying to get broad appeal

(24:28):
for something that deals with topics that I think a
lot of people do find very dry, and by dramatizing
like this, you know, it is obviously a lot of
people are are being drawn in by the premise of
this and they're being really shocked at what it's portraying.
But I also kind of just disagree with documentaries doing this,

(24:49):
you know. I mean, even if it is enlightening people
that they're addicted to their phones or whatever, I think
it it almost kind of obscures a lot of the
points that it could ache. For instance, the you know,
one of the Google guys I think is saying like
I'm just so addicted to checking my email. I'm checking
my email all the time, and it's you know, it's
like that dopamine hit, and it avoids talking about how,

(25:11):
especially in Silicon Valley, the culture is that you need
to check your email constantly and why is that? And
how do we change that and address that? So it
presents these interesting ideas and then yanks you away from
them to refocus you on something that's way less intriguing
to me. And it's sounds like it's treating all these
things like, you know, like email for example. It's funny

(25:34):
to like think about them talking about an email addiction
in this documentary, but like that that it's all compartmentalized
instead of part of like a larger Yeah, like you're saying,
like that this ties into a workplace culture like other
things contined to like social culture. Like it's culture exactly,
and it's strange. I think the dramatization has bothered me

(25:55):
so much because it doesn't present an alternative to you know,
I guess it does present the alternative. It's either that
you use your phone and you're on social media or
you completely disconnect because you have to basically treat it
like heroin. You know, if you if you take a
tiny bit of like a you know, glance at your Facebook, like,

(26:15):
you're going to be hooked because the algorithm is so
advanced that it knows exactly how to keep you engaged,
how to keep you engaged as long as possible, and
you have no agency in this interaction. You are just
the you know, the little, you know, point of data
that's going to get whisked along into the storm. I mean,
that is kind of one of the more condensing parts
of it is they're like, you know, these these things

(26:37):
are changing human behavior, They're conditioning users to behave differently. Um.
And the one of the points was just like, oh,
the AI revolution is here, but this is the AI.
This is the AI that controls our world. Yeah, And
they do make the point that AI is evolving faster
than the human brain can. However, I mean, it's that's

(27:01):
all true. But I think that the reason that this
became so popular so quickly is because of quarantine, when
there is no other choice to make a lot of
the time if you want to interact with other human beings.
And so we're all very sensitive to the fact that
our engagement has gone way up. But if we disconnected
entirely and we're not living in a commune or whatever.

(27:24):
Then what that means is that you are then having
to like basically, you know, seek out alternative forms of
communicating with people. Then those people are using and I
don't know that that's that healthy either right now. You know, well,
this is like the whole thing with TikTok. You know,
it's there's there's a lot of evidence that TikTok is
just basically a personal data scraping tool and a face

(27:47):
recognition software, and uh, you know, a whole generation of
young people is now in this data base because of
this like that. You know, there's a lot of evidence
to suggest this, and I think a lot of people
believe that, and everybody has made the calculation in their minds, like, well,
that could be the case, but I want to hang
out with my friends. You know, you make that calculus

(28:09):
whether it's right or not. Like everybody's sort of making
these decisions for themselves. And that's why I'm always like
a little bit like you're not unwillingly being pulled into
X y Z social network. You're making a decision because
like for pleasure reasons, for work reasons, for for efficiency reasons,
you've made the choice that that's I make a lot
of choices conversely in my life that are not at

(28:32):
all time effective or anything because or like an actively
inconvenient because I want to sidestep a certain network for
whatever reason. And you can do those two. But I
also make a ton of decisions that totally put tons
of my data on the Internet. Like, you know, it's
not not clean in any way, but they're all decisions
at the same time, Like I don't know, and you

(28:52):
can't be clean because everything is scraping your data. You know,
cookies are scraping your data. Just anything you do you
online is scraping it. So the option of completely dropping
off the internet, especially right now when people are stuck
at home and can't you know, just go live their lives,
it seems extremely difficult. What I really would like to

(29:16):
happen is for new platforms to come up that are
made by people that are not evil. Yeah, I mean,
there needs to be less of a monopoly for sure,
and more competition. And we do the evil test though,
like realistically, like what's the evil test on people who
are running in a business? I think that there's always
going to be a downside to anything like this. You know,
it's just if there are more of them. I mean,

(29:38):
for instance, I always think of Twitter as being kind
of you know, there could be an alternative to Twitter
with better moderation or like more safeguards for you know,
abuse and stuff like that. It's just that there isn't,
and that when things pop up, they're the only real
hope that they have for being successful is to be
acquired by one of the bigger companies. And so I

(30:00):
think you don't even have to pass an evil test.
You just have to like proliferate in that marketplace and
give and let people say like, hey, this is a
better experience for me without it being absorbed by something
that can make it, you know, part of the monolith. Yeah,
and I think we've said this a lot, but maybe
just going back to message boards, having things that you

(30:20):
check less constantly, that have more moderation so that there
are just like down times between reading Twitter all day. Yeah.
I mean again, we talked about this on our Bonus episode,
but like we have to remove to like Twitter is niche,
like Twitter is not Facebook, and the level of like
people who are on it and people who are in it,

(30:41):
it's big, you know, it's certainly a big service, but
it's not. It doesn't It already is an alt to
something which is Facebook. You know. I do agree, like
we should have more choices as far as that goes,
but like we already I don't know. I I don't
have total faith in the idea that like just more
like you know, we need more els in the world
and then we'll eventually like land on something virtuous. I

(31:01):
don't think that that's the case. UM. I just wonder.
I mean, it's when you think about how powerful these
companies are. Uh. And again, like you know, I've always
wanted to find something that offers like you know, certain
things that Facebook offers, but it's not Facebook. UM. And
there have been things proposed from like the Wikipedia had

(31:22):
an offshoot and l O and it's just the the
migration doesn't happen, UM, and it just never becomes anything.
But I do wonder, like, you know, if you're on
Facebook for one particular group and you see that a
lot in UM in like really active groups like like
podcast fan groups or UM parenting groups or whatever, where

(31:43):
people say, I'm only on here for this, if that
group could splinter off onto like a different site that
had different, a whole different way of operating. Would that
be enough to draw those people away from Facebook? Like
for me, it would be you know, if you just
went to like a list server or something. Yeah, yeah, no, totally,
I think, I think. And that's the thing, Like a

(32:03):
lot of people don't realize that those options are out
there for them, or they don't like it. Just takes
a kind of critical mass of people to be like, Hey,
we're gonna move this chess enthusiast group to yeah, who
list servan It'll be fine, and then you'll need to
check Facebook like one third as much as you do now,
you know, Like, uh, we're not at all. I think
the people can make these decisionsmselves. We are now joined

(32:35):
by Justin Charity. Justin Charity is a writer at The Ringer.
He is the co host of Sound Only on The
Ringer Network. Great podcast. Highly recommend it. Hi, Justin, what's up? Hello?
Oh my god? This is exciting. I'm star struck by
all of you. I feel like we've been trying to
get you on Nightcall forever. I just feel like I

(32:57):
feel like if there's going to be a Justin Charity
episode of Nightcall, like you know, we just have to
prepare the world like it gets hot. Um, So we
were just talking about the social network and not that
this is the main reason that we wanted to have
you on the podcast. There's plenty of other stuff to

(33:18):
talk about. But and I'm sure that you're sick of
being bugged about this, but you are one of my
friends who was not on any social media at all anymore.
He took the viv chastity, the valve chastity. When did
you do this? I don't you know what it is.
I don't remember when it's specifically, it was vaguely around
the time of whenever Kanye was releasing YEA. I just

(33:42):
remember that. I remember like that was the last phase
of Twitter discourse. That was around four was the Yea discourse?
Who was that the last straw? You know? I didn't
have that many strong opinions about YEA, if I remember correctly.
Was it more about the fandoms surrounding Yea? And then
wasn't about Kanye. It was just sort of anti climactic.
I think by that point it was probably several other things. Yeah, yeah,

(34:07):
in the discourse was just sort of like the epilogue
of my time on social media. It is a pretty
like intense concentration of a lot of things that are
wrong with how especially like art and celebrity gets discussed online,
like anything having to do with Kanye can get you know,
just to uh real quick. I didn't even like I

(34:32):
was kind of tuned out for the discourse. I had
to say. I think there was something in my brain
that just like flagged. I was like, this is exhausting.
I'm not going to engage with this. And then I
realized I think I had assumed you were still on
Instagram or something, because you used to do all sorts
of like bake good stuff and cooking on Instagram, which
was always great. And then I realized you weren't even
on Instagram anymore. I was like, dang even all the way,

(34:52):
Oh my god, I'm like dramatic. That's the problem is
that I'm dramatic, right, So I had to be like
another thing because I deleted Facebook and I lead it Instagram.
I think I deleted something else. I can't even remember.
Did you delete them all at once? Were you like
one day that's it? Yeah? In one week? And then
they do the thing where they try to sweat you

(35:13):
out so they're like, listen, your account will be around
for a month. It's just in case you want to.
It's like the worst breakup ever. Yeah, that's the one
that I really that's the only one I've totally unplugged from. Yeah,
I'm sorry I cut you off, but I just to
go back to what you were saying a second ago.
You're on Reddit now or did you like you segued
to read it for No, I didn't say. I joined

(35:34):
read it maybe like a year after I left Twitter,
um because I kind of i'd never understood read it.
Like back during the thing, I remember it felt like
a decade ago where people were really really hyping read
it and trying to explain read it to me, and
it all wait, my eyes glazed over, and I think
I just got into this. Oh you know what it was.
It's the amateur boxing subreddit that I sort of like

(35:55):
followed enough that I was like, I should just make
an account. Like. I actually like the structure of conver
stations on Reddit, even if there are plenty of reasons
not to like particular subreddits. Um. Something about the conversational
structure and the anonymity structure Reddit feels a bit healthier
to me. Even though I know that healthy is not
exactly read it's reputation. I love Reddit. It's a message

(36:18):
board exactly. Yeah, and that's why I'm like, why am
I not more into Reddit? Like that's the context of
Internet conversation I grew up with and feel most comfortable with.
I have a Reddit account, I guess I've never posted
on it, and I mostly just lark on a few
different subreddits. But uh, tests, aren't you a big Reddit lurker.

(36:42):
I'm giant Reddit lurker. I learn on Reddit for like,
I set aside about an hour every evening from I
reddit lurking. Yes, teach me how to reddit because I
and I still feel like I don't do it right
because I read to you know what I mean. I've
I've maybe posted on Reddit five times. Ever, I've only
posted I think twice. But I I find it less

(37:02):
addictive and less um like social media. When I pick two,
I don't have like a curated homepage even I just
picked two or three boards that I like and one.
I mean, they're both pretty popular with the legal Advice
and the am I the Asshole are my two mains.
Am I the Asshole? Often that's that gets viral enough
that it spreads to other other networks corners of the Internet.

(37:25):
The Legal Advice is my favorite forever. I've talked about
it on the podcast before, just because it it. There
was this one post about bats that I got in
trouble for because there was there was like a ton
of misinformation. It was an abandoned house that had a
bat problem and it was going to be condemned, and
there were a bunch of questions about that, and then
in the comments people were like fearmongering about bats. And
then we had a few bat defenders call into the

(37:48):
pod and be like, test, don't get your information from Reddit,
and I didn't listen. I still do. I followed the
Bats every Hour Twitter account, which one of the main
things keeping me on Twitter is these accounts that post
a picture of a bat. There's one that does a bat,
one that does a rat, and one that does a cat. No,
there's also as Yes, but the Bats every Hour it's

(38:13):
like they also are are pro bat activists, so they
have a lot of bat facts that are like bats
don't actually give you rabies, uh people think they do,
and like vampire bats only eat like a teaspoon of
blood and it's from cows. Mm hmmmm, I don't need
to fear bat. It's like that pr It's like, that's

(38:33):
like Katie Golden's bird bird Activists birds rights activists, except
for real Bat's got a bad rap this year. We
gotta come rep for the bats. We got bats here.
It's pretty cool. Yeah, I feel like I feel like
that's the thing though, Like you were talking about, like
those sorts of accounts keep you on Twitter, and I
feel like that's a big key difference with like Twitter

(38:54):
versus a reddit or something like when I'm on Reddit,
I'm usually specifically looking to find out about one top
bick and I can really hone in on it and
then get lost in a three posts long thread and
just read every single thing. But what I'm thinking of
most recently is terrace House, that I had that kind
of relationship to a Reddit where it's like, um, like,

(39:17):
you know, anytime a new episode, would watch a new episode,
then I would go and and read the mega thread
for that episode and just read every single person's opinions
about it, which felt very cozy. It felt like, I
don't know, back in the old days on like TV
without pity or something, shout out terror Terror Ariano, Like,
I used to just go and read thousands and thousands

(39:38):
of posts about like Battlestar Galactica episodes and stuff, and
that was my Internet. And there is something kind of
nice and chill about that with with Reddit, and you're
not going to accidentally run into other information that gets
you off track or angry about something else or something.
You're like there to read about this one thing. Yeah. Well,
justin You Are So Sound Only, which originally started as

(40:03):
an AVA podcast for when Ava was the first one
on Netflix. You and Michael Peters did. It wasn't like
a recap. It was like you guys, you guys go deep,
Like every cap doesn't do it justice, I feel, especially
because we didn't do per episode right. We sort of
clustered the episodes into batches of six specifically to what
it being too too like beat for beat recappy right,

(40:28):
which is easy to do, I imagine. But yeah, and
then we just yelled for four hours at a time
about the saving Galleon and it was great and I
lost my voice by episode two unfortunately. It was just
it was great. It was ecstatic. I have to say,
having edited you on podcasts, because you came on a
couple of times on my short lived anime podcast back

(40:50):
in the day, like you have a great podcast voice,
but like there are peaks around the peaks, so you
can't get strain this. But yeah, uh, but then you
guys brought it back recently. How many weeks now have
you been back? Six? I think we're on episode six.
We talked about Travis Scott this past week. That's the thing.

(41:11):
It's not an anime podcast now, and that's sort of
the pitch is that this is not an anime podcast,
and we're well, you had one, uh, you had like
your first real anime episode, and I feel like it
was like four weeks in or something like that, so
it's diffuse. It's like wrapped the Internet anime all that.
So Millennial Ship, did you talk about the Travis Scott burger? Yes? Yes,

(41:37):
and the merch okay here, okay, didn't if you buy
the Travis Scott merchandise, because I seriously considered it. And
I'm thirty three, so let's talk about this because I
didn't just listen to that episode and Mico was was
clowning on your big time for getting the shorts. I
believe I wanted to that they sold out. I wanted
to get Okay, So Travis Scott was selling what they're

(41:57):
like seventy dollar Jim short and there's a red pair
and they look like they're just extremely mid nineties sort
of overdesigned, and I almost I could have bottom because
I just I spend time in mccaren park, you know,
in Brooklyn, and you know I do jump squats. I
could do some jump squats in those shorts. You know,
it could have worked for me. And then they sold

(42:19):
out within the day, and then all the other merch
is not good, Like Travis Scott is one of those
rappers who has that kind of way too busy, millennial
rapper aesthetic. And there's exactly one article of clothing of
of that whole merch bundle from McDonald's that I thought
I could pull this off. And then the rest of

(42:41):
it is like, come on, dog, I pay taxes. I'm
too old for this, okay, But did you have the burger? No?
And that's the thing, like I I go to McDonald's
maybe like once every other year, and like it's not time,
you know what I mean. I operate like an animal.
It's not time for me to do my McDonald's pilgrimage.

(43:03):
Even if Caxus Jack sends you you're not No, I
don't know. I'm just not in the move. May I
ask what this burger was because I'm I'm out of
the loop. Yeah, explain what's I forget what's on the
burger now? I'm just quarter pounder with bacon on it.
It's just like a burger they already have on the menu.

(43:25):
It's so funny. It's just like the Travis Scott burger.
It's just like a bacon cheeseburger. It's a whole because
you have the fries, but then you get barbecue sauce
for the fry. And it's funny because the commercial for
it is so it really wants you to be impressed.
Counter to what Molly just said. It really wants it's

(43:45):
like pitching you on the idea of a hamburger, like
you've never heard of it. So it's like, what if
you went to McDonald's and you got a sandwich in
this in some bread, but then there's meat and then
there's sauce on it. Wouldn't that be nice? Tell him?
I have a seen It's like, wait a minute, this
is not I don't am I being sold something I
already have, is how I feel about. That's what's so

(44:07):
funny about it to me is that it's so like postmodern.
It's like you're ordering what Travis Scott orders that McDonald's exactly.
It's not like a special burger they made for him.
It's like, this is what Cactus Jack orders when he
goes to McDonald's, and you can go and do it too.
I feel like Kanye was gonna do that gap promotion

(44:28):
where he was going to like make a bunch of
khakis and sell them, you know, cargo pants and like
sell us cargo pants, and then Travis Scott like leapt
ahead of him in norm core by being like, I've
branded a regular burger. I'm gonna fucking put golden arches
on merch like, and you're gonna buy it. You're gonna
pay top dollar for It's a move, but Michael noted.

(44:51):
Michael noted that it's way more likely that I would
buy those shorts, those seventy dollar shorts than it than
it was that I would buy the A, which itself
feels like a drag of me in some way that
I haven't really even unpacked yet. I don't think it is.
I don't think it is. I think that I mean,
what is it? I would love to just like camp

(45:12):
out and watch like an Adam McDonald's and see what
it looks like if somebody does come into order the
Travis Scott Meal like, how do you ask for it?
Like what do you? What do you say? And are
you embarrassed when you do that? Or are you like no,
this is cool? Like I think all the people, especially
all of the team, all the zoomers who do it,

(45:33):
they're gonna be like every every zoomer I've ever interacted
with in Rainbow six Siege team voice chat, you know
what I mean, Like they're all the sort of I
worry that there's just gonna be this onslaught of suburban
kids wearing the worst clothes you can imagine, sort of
with really over elaborate slang, really really really selling the

(45:54):
bit to the cashier at McDonald's who was just so
profoundly irritated. The number of people whom Cactus Jack has sent.
I saw a TikTok of somebody ordering it that was
really funny where it was like he was like they
were filming it. I think a lot of people will
probably film themselves ordering the burger, but it was like

(46:16):
this teenager and he goes in without a mask and
he's like cactu shacks at me, and then the cashier's like,
you have to wear a mask. Uh, here's a mask
for you and put it on. He's like catch jacks
at me and they're like what He's like me, give
me the Travis Scott burger. And then this woman in line,
who's like a Karen starts just like going off at

(46:40):
him and being like, what's wrong with you? You sound
like a fucking dork um, and she like chases him
and his friends out of McDonald's and she's like, you're
such a fucking dweam. That's actually like that's a good Karen, Like,
I mean whatever, I don't care about kids, order in

(47:00):
the Travis Scott mell McDonald's. But that's actually like a
funny like you're funk out of here. It was so funny,
especially because she kind of looks like from behind she's
wearing like yoga pants and a tie die sweatshirt. And
then she turns around and it's like a different type
of woman than you expect, and she's just like what
are you doing? What's why are you filming in here? Like? What,

(47:23):
what the funk is wrong with you? She doesn't funk
with Travis Scott. I mean a lot of people, don't
you know, there's a backlash. Yeah, So I wanted to
talk to you specifically because you are an anime friend
and you talk about animal on your podcast, and I'm
pretty sure you won't talk about this on your podcast
anytime soon, just because it's old and there's no real

(47:44):
reason to talk about it. But I started watching Psycho
Pass this past week, which we can explain for Molly
and Tests, but is kind of like it's actually too
much of a nightcall show. It's almost like two on
the Knows. I feel like a lot of the episodes
that I'm watching, it's just like this is just like

(48:04):
the exact stuff that we talk about every week. It
almost makes me feel like, oh, like like a little
bit self conscious. It's like they've already covered this ground,
like all the stuff about like avatars and stuff and
in some of the early episodes. But it is a
show that I started watching because of the Halo, which
we discussed a couple of weeks about back the Amazon

(48:25):
Halo that is like a it's a fitness tracker or
like physical activity tracker that also is supposed to claims
to be able to track your tone and your mood
and you know, I guess for your own elucidation about yourself,
but then who knows, you know what that data could
actually be used for and the concept of psychopaths and

(48:47):
you can, yeah, fill in anything that I forget is
that this happens in like a near future where everybody
has a thing called a psycho pass, which is their
level of like their crime coefficient. So it's sort of
like Minority Report. It's like a pre crime type thing,
but it's basically like based on your psychological state, your

(49:09):
emotional state, uh, and you know, whatever level of trauma
that you've been through and haven't been gone through therapy
for like how likely you are to be a violent
criminal or just like any kind of criminal, I guess,
And then uh, based on that, like this police force
can uh they have these weapons that specifically only shoot

(49:31):
people who have a high enough crime coefficient. So it's
like super super dystopian. Like there's a little bit like
I feel like Watchman did something kind of like that
in its first episode, where there's like a gun that
you have to have like permission to use. So it's
like supposed to be this utopia, this utopian world that
this show takes place in, but of course it's all

(49:52):
super super dystopian because there's just this idea of like
this this system that tracks your yeah, your your emotional
instability and thus you likely had to do a crime.
You watched this like it's this is old. This is
like from or something I watched the first season like back,
uh maybe a few years after the first day or

(50:15):
the first season. Yeah, wait, what made you want to
go back to just the had you been meaning to?
I've been meaning to watch it and from for a
while because um Eric thum Our, our mutual friend, is
a big fan of it, and I was really into
an am really into Medico Magico, which is the same
writer that's like a dark magical girl anime, and Psychopaths

(50:42):
is more like a noir thriller type thing, but they're
kind of about the same stuff. They end up kind
of existing in similar territory. Yeah, it made me. It
made me think about just like I mean, you guys
talked on a recent episode just about like getting the
you know, I mean, no, no, it wasn't a episode.
I think you and I were just talking about like

(51:02):
getting into an anime, like half of it is just
like buying into a concept like that, like a like
a sci fi conceit a lot of times yeah, yeah,
and and it being a conceit that is just I
don't know. Unlike a lot of other media, I feel
like anime shows don't even really bother to do that
much upselling of the concept. It's just like you really

(51:24):
buy episode one, have to be prepared to put up
with some dumb sh it and it and a lot
of times it works, so a lot of times it doesn't. It.
Psychopass is just something that I remember the first episode
of Psychopaths feeling, so I don't know, and I think
that concept that show just gets over the top. I
remember psychopath feeling like it gets really over the top
about it's otherwise like you feel like you should be

(51:46):
watching a procedural but it's so much Yeah, it goes
to like the worst case scenario of every single corner
of society. Really, like ask like somebody who like works
ungodly hours at a drone factory and then like goes
crazy and kills people at the drone factory. By programming

(52:08):
the drones to kill. Like it's just all like it's
taking every single box of like society to your point
about concepts. So it's like it's hard to go from
watching something like Psychopaths to watching I don't know, if
you wait and watch the season of Sherlock, you'd be like, really,
this is all you got. I just watch Psychopaths. Yeah,

(52:30):
you don't go hard enough. Yeah, Um, is there anything recently?
I know you've been super into Black Lagoon, but any
any shows you've been into more? I mean that's the thing.
I watched TV so sporadically, and this is true of
even just like my animate consumption, I go through weird
not weird. I think a lot of people do this,
but I otherwise don't watch a lot of television except

(52:53):
when I get to those seasons where it's just like
I'm gonna watch eight anime series for no reason, um,
and they're all going to be from the mid two
thousand's through you know, the past decade, um, Like when
I first watched psychopath Yeah, this is great, Like I
first watched Psychopaths and Ergo Proxy, which is also feels

(53:14):
like a nightcall show. Ergo Proxy is I've never watched
Aergo Proxy, you know, what's what's the deal? I don't
even remember. It's just it's one of those shows where
everything feels sort of um, like techie and dystopian, and
it's like, one thing that's sort of weird about the
show is that Paranoid Android is the in credits music

(53:35):
for it. Um And I remember not liking Ergo Proxy
when I first saw it, But it also has a
vibe to it, and it's like the perfect kind of
binge watching vibe where it's you don't really feel like
putting up with an anime premise so much as you
feel like just sort of letting yourself wallow in a
certain aesthetic, yeah, certain musical like color, yeah, moodiness aesthetic

(54:00):
sometimes or just something really like soft and cute. Sometimes
you just want to be in like a cutie show
for a while a rom com Um. Black Lagoon is different.
Black Lagoon is so um. It's like mid adds anime
action and it has frankly, like really good race comedy.

(54:21):
It's the same thing that I like about it, uh,
because I don't know, it's like anime and Japanese video
games sometimes have such a weird stilted conception of race
when they're working with like American characters especially. But I
really like how Black like Black Lagoon has a really
good neo Nazi arc where it's just like the characters

(54:42):
are fighting neo Nazis on a boat, okay, and it's
just really good. And the the show has a lot
of stuff like that where it's actually surprisingly effectively multicultural
in a way that has edged to it, but not
in an ill intentions way that edge usually, you know
what I mean. It sort of feels like a gritty
we are the world like vibe to it in a way. Yeah,

(55:05):
Like it's picking up like the right stuff from more
global action entertainment or genre entertainment or something. Doesn't watching
really Dystopi and stuff make you want to curl up
in a ball, though I don't know, I don't think so.
There can be something kind of comforting about some stuff,
And I think there is something about when it is

(55:25):
in the medium of animation that makes it kind of
go down easier. I'm not always going to be in
the mood for like I mean, I still have never
finished watching The Leftovers, like that just got so dark
for me that it was just like not fun to watch.
I understand that it gets really amazing in later seasons,
but it was such a bummer. I was like, why
am I doing this to myself? I had that thought

(55:46):
at certain points in Madmen. There's something about anime where
it's like there could be like grievous bodily harm, okay,
but we're talking about this more is like an idea
than like me putting myself through this as a piece
of entertainment. So it like doesn't I mean, it's obviously
like can be troubling and upsetting at times, but it

(56:07):
just is like a different kind of experience. I don't know.
I don't know how would you qualify that. I don't
I don't know how to describe that exactly. That to me,
it's usually actually something about performances in anime that usually
helped psychopaths especially. I just remember feeling like some of
the performances feel strangely disconnected from what you're watching. And

(56:30):
I don't know, there's always there's so many levels at
which anime is like reminding you not to take it
too seriously, unless it's a kind of show that really
wants to be taken that seriously. I guess right, But yeah,
something like Psychopaths is like a good encapsulation of that,
right where it's it's premise feel super convoluted and self serious,
but at the same time it's execution just feel so

(56:51):
patently absurd that you're never gonna feel that oppressed by it. Yeah,
it's like a thinker not necessarily like I am then
I'm gonna take this whatever idea this show is trying
to get across and apply it directly to my life
or anything. It's more like, let's take it. Yeah, to
take it's like let's take an absurd premise, drive it

(57:13):
all the way to its logical endpoint, and do it
with the most like melo drama and you know, just
like like it's yeah, it's just like emo performances in
every sense of the word, uh, from every character, Like
everything is just a way way dialed up. But I
think the other thing that does a lot of favors

(57:34):
to anime series, like something like Psychopaths, for instance, has
multiple I think it has three seasons, but in general
it's sort of stuff that's not you know, five hundred
seasons stuff like Dragon Ball, right, Like it's not that
uncommon for an and for something that's popular to get
a single season and for the story of it to
be something that needs to be sort of open and
shut in a single season, and I think that that

(57:57):
creates this dynamic where a lot of series feel like
it's the people working on it getting every idea they've
ever had about this premise out and leaving sort of
nothing on the field. I think that's the thing too.
It's just there's so much of a sense of yolo
to a lot of these sort of high concept shows

(58:19):
that it feels like it's harder to get out of
live action television sometimes when it's sort of the vibe
of live action television is that, oh, you're driving towards
some sort of seasonal cliffhanger, and then the momentum of
this is sort of indefinite, as opposed to an anime
series that's like one to three seasons and you're just
sort of like, we have to we're going to exhaust

(58:40):
this concept. Yeah, there's yeah, there's not this sense of
like where it's like it's not like the same. I
guess it's just like a completely different system of like
pitching stuff to networks or studios or whatever, Like you
don't have to necessarily come in with this idea of
what happens in the sixth season when you're pitching an anime.

(59:00):
I don't imagine. I don't don't want much about it.
But like I it doesn't seem like it's kind of
coming out of that same sort of logic where it's like, okay,
walk us through the third season, like you know, you
have to know the fates of all these characters in
the first season. Like it's yeah, I don't know, it's
I I've I've talked to a lot of people about
how that is can be really frustrating, you know, within
the American television system, and and I feel like that's

(59:23):
that's one thing that maybe creatively is like I don't know,
more open ended or less like structured or rigorous or
something about h Japanese animation. I don't know. I feel
like also just like British television shows that will do
like just you know, a one off in America, Yeah,
it's like the similar idea. It's like, like, what's a

(59:45):
good idea, let's do it for like, but it's like
it's kind of the inverse because that in that case,
it's just like this is a sixth episode idea, Like,
that's all that we need to communicate this. Sometimes it's
a sixth episode idea. Sometimes it doesn't have to be
a ten season idea. You can really just like get
what you're going for, and if it's a really high
concept thing, especially it's like maybe you exhausted in one season. Yeah,

(01:00:09):
what's the last show non animated that you got into?
Over over Lockdown, Over Lockdown. I haven't watched I don't
know that I've watched any Oh, you know what, I
just rewatched a ton of Grays with my girlfriend. That's
the only watching TV, which I loved in college. I
fucking loved Gray's Anatomy, and I loved it as much

(01:00:29):
of fun revisiting Gray's Anatomy from the beginning of the show.
I loved how you called it Grays to show familiar insiders. No,
that's great, Yeah, I I kind of. I have a
hard time watching stuff in Lockdown too, Like I feel
like the dominant sort of assumption has been like, oh,

(01:00:52):
there's nothing to do, so you're just gonna watch every
TV show or go through entire series that are like,
you know, eight seasons long or something. I have never
I think I started off lockdown, being too anxious to
like sit still through anything and even still now this
is a bad habit that I don't like. Like I
try to be more strict with myself about this, but

(01:01:13):
now just because like everything is crazy, I don't care
as much. I have to have my phone or something
else to do while I'm watching something. And I used
to just be like I was, I was on the screen,
experience the cinematic event or whatever. Uh, And now I'm
just like doing it, like I'll go in and out.

(01:01:33):
I'll I'll go to the bathroom without pausing it. You know.
I'm just very inattentive. Now. I feel like I thought
I was going to be super into because I play
video games, and I thought that at the start of
all of this of like lockdowns and whatnot, that I
would I just sort of assumed, like I'm gonna play
so many video games. I can tell I'm gonna lose
so much time to this, and I haven't. I don't

(01:01:54):
have the appetite for it, and I don't even know why.
Like the yeah, this all again, it's like the asumptions
I had about what my media consumption would be like
in the work from home tyranny I've just been wrong.
Like I started baking a lot. Then I started learning
some programming, but I have not gamed a ton or
anything like that, which is, oh my god, we have

(01:02:14):
to talk about the programming. Justin's a code or now, uh,
Justin learned to code? I did, and it's like I
actually do, like contrary what we're saying before. I have
a Twitter account now because I needed, um, you need
a Twitter account to have uh access to Twitter api.

(01:02:35):
And so, like I was writing this, I've been writing, um,
some small programs to like I had been writing some
programs to comb Twitter for tweets about Q and on
or basically like comb the q and on hashtag for tweets,
and that ended up like with the spreadsheet of thirty
q and on tweets, And so now I'm doing like
all of this stuff where I'm trying to like data

(01:02:57):
mine it. And this is all just like as an exercise,
but it is also kind of funny, like staring at
thirty three thousand q and on tweets and a spreadsheet
and seeing like rhetorical patterns and actual tweets and in
people's profiles and stuff like that and the sort of
distinction between the people who are tweeting in the hashtags
and serely versus the people who are like this, this

(01:03:19):
is awful, Like we have to we have to put
an end to que and on. These are the worst people.
What's the ratio of like sincere Q and honors to
Q and on critics when you look at it. I
don't know yet. I haven't analyzed it yet. I spent
a lot of time sort of generating different searches to
tweak the kind of results that I was getting. I
don't know. I'll let you know next week. I want

(01:03:39):
to know this weekend. Yeah, I'm reading up this screenshot
that you you sent me of the of the scraped tweets.
I guess, uh yeah, it's like it's really hard to tell.
Like I mean, I think like a lot of this
stuff is like is it. Did you also get people's

(01:04:00):
um like profiles from this? There bioptions? Yeah, they're bios.
Like everybody who says like family, God, country, constitution. That's
the main thing at a glance, that's super obvious before
I even like start parsing it, right, is that a
lot of evangelical And it's funny. There's like a New
York Time story from yesterday. Um, that's an author who

(01:04:22):
is writing about this sort of connection between evangelicals and
Q and on. But it's so super obvious when you
start looking through the profiles of a lot of Qunan
people that the people who don't just have this sort
of trust the plan, you know, Q and on slogan
earring the explicit Q and on slogan earring they otherwise
mostly tend to have like Christian evangelical signaling. Although I

(01:04:46):
have noticed a lot of wellness, wellness oriented white ladies
getting into Q and on over the past month or
so especially, it's gotten really crazy, really yeah. Um, and
then somebody sent us a message. I think she might
leave a call about it. But a lot of like
Facebook mom you know, natural mom message boards, they go

(01:05:10):
along this path from like, you know, anti vaxing to
five G conspiracies to Q and on save the children,
right and the children to save the children thing, because
then people start getting an arguments being like what do
you not want me to save the children? Um. A
lot of times recently actually in the past couple of weeks. Um,

(01:05:32):
I still am in mom groups on Facebook, which I
would like to not be on anymore. But I am.
And one of the tops suggested pages of like one
of the bigger mom groups has been a trump um
page and it says like similar topics, you know, topics
similar to the one that the group that you're in.
And because it's like an l a local mom's group,

(01:05:55):
we're mostly liberal, but there is a small portion of
the people who are in that group that are, like
Molly said, um, it starts off with being like, I'm
not an anti vaxxer. I just think we should be
asking questions, and then it gets more into like a
defensive like I don't like the term anti vaxxer, but
I'm not vaccinating. Then it goes to five G and

(01:06:15):
then it falls off a cliff. And I think there
are a lot of moms in particular, and probably other
parents as well, but who are like kind of private
about those things when they talk to you in person,
but on their Facebook pages, on their social media, they're
pretty public about Q and on stuff, which is has
been interesting in terms of like school school board dynamics

(01:06:37):
and stuff like that when that becomes more public. Somebody
sent me some crazy photos from a Q and on
Saved the Children rally in Santa Monica in Santa mon
There was one in Hollywood too, not that long. This
one in Santa Monica. It was just like it looked
like midsummer. It was like all these white women wearing
like white dresses, like standing on the beach with these

(01:07:00):
save the children signs. It was the creepiest thing I've
ever seen. Yeah, it's alarming. I hate that this kind
of misinformation dynamic too, is the it feels like the
definitive problem of the age, right, and it sort of
feels like it paints people who are like naturally a
guest at that stuff into this corner of being sort

(01:07:20):
of ridiculed. Is like wanting to censor everybody. But it's like,
what is the actually, you know what I mean, It's
it's sort of yeah, it feels like nothing about our
politics is conducive to figuring out what to do about
those people, you know. I mean. I've been working on
a podcast episode for one of my other podcasts about

(01:07:43):
the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and just how
that disseminated as a conspiracy theory in the early twentieth century,
and it kind of makes me feel like a lot
of the things we say about that it has to
be this moment that makes people be like this. It's like, no,
people have always been like this. Uh, even when things
get debunked. That makes some people double down and be like, oh, well,

(01:08:06):
they want us to think it's fake, and that's you know,
we know it's not really fake. I think I mean
more like the tools of dissemination though, right. I think
the thing that makes it feel like such a palpable
political anxiety is just the fact that it's so in
your because these platforms have so many of us on them,
because they're the seven generators of content. There's just something

(01:08:27):
that feels like it's being thrown in your face constantly
about that these people want to save the children. Yeah,
and like disagreement or dissent is the only thing that
can justify like staying on these platforms a lot of times,
especially with Twitter. So there has to be some sort
of element of something that you're pushing against, whether that is,

(01:08:51):
you know, the standard narrative that that Q and on
is not real, or to you know that you should
get your kids vaccinated, like like if you don't have
something like it's basically like we're working our way down
the list of like things that are fairly seemed like
fairly common sense and and and kind of what abouting
them in some way? Uh like, there will always be

(01:09:14):
a community that is going to try to poke holes
and something that everybody takes for granted and that like
can often just look like conspiracy theory theories. But it's
just like this act of contrarianism basically kind of for
its own sake, because otherwise, what are you going to
talk about? Yeah, and it just feels like it's like
the kind of thing of if you're in a conversation

(01:09:34):
that you don't know how to end with somebody and
then you just keep bringing up stuff that you didn't
actually want to talk about. It feels like that sometimes.
I don't know that's that's actually like a very vivid
way of putting that. I think, well, yeah, as long
as you're on Twitter, it's like you can only post
nice things about stuff that you enjoy for so long

(01:09:55):
before it's like, okay, what am I fighting against now here?
Which is like good and bad? Let's look good and
bad thing about about that platform? Specifically, we talked about
all this stuff a lot, I feel like, but I've
always thought that, um, like you remember the I want
to say, first wave sort of social media coverage where
it was like, you would see those pieces right, where
would be I don't know, a Slate columnist being like,

(01:10:17):
I I left Twitter for three days, Here's what I
learned in the wilderness, right, and everyone be like, he
quit Twitter for three days? Right? And I always felt like, um,
those pieces are kind of silly, and people made fun
of them. But I feel like an assumption that was
always embedded in those pieces was that the problem with
Twitter was that the problem with Twitter is other people. Right.

(01:10:37):
The problem with Twitter is that people say things you
don't like, and the idea is that it's a house
site because of other people. When I think, actually, like
I love reading Twitter. The thing I dislike and the
thing I distrust and the thing that it needs to
be stamped out about Twitter is one's own impulse to post. Right,
That's the actual problem. Like, the best version Twitter would

(01:11:00):
be a word. The best version for a person, for me,
at least, of Twitter is one in which you can
if you want to see somebody's tweet, right, if you
want to see what somebody is saying about something, you
can find it. But you're liberated from the ability and
thus the impulse to post. I think that's the actual
bad thing. Yeah, it's like the faulk feeling of responsibility

(01:11:21):
that if you're not posting, then you're not participating in
a meaningful way, both on the platform and in the
world in general. And that is like this completely fake
dynamic that that site and the way of communicating creates. Um. Yeah,
I mean it seems like you found the perfect solution,
which is to not be on Twitter, but to create

(01:11:42):
codes to scrape Q and Q and to just read
thousands of quew and on tweets. That's really that's really
what the ideal social media diet is. Thirty three thousand
q and on tweets. You're like, I want to go
right right to the part where I feel crazy. But
that's the entire that's the entirety of it. You can

(01:12:04):
you can just get that super concentrated espresso shot of
queue and on Yeah, I mean that give me that
Travis Scott burger of the mind. Oh, don't forget the sprite.
That's the most insulting thing about the Travis Scott commercial,
by the way, is that he's like, and by the way,

(01:12:26):
just you know, the Kuda grass. The thing that really
makes this reflective of me, my my personality and Brandon
ethos is that you have to be sure to drink
a sprite with with this meal. It's a good sprite.
It was the best sprite McDonald's sprite. I can't even
it's been so long. Crazy taste, yeah to me, Yeah,

(01:12:51):
I haven't had sprite since. To be honest, I had
a sip of sprite the other day. I was like, what,
because if you go too long, like the idea of
sprite and the reality of sprites are really lemon disjointed. Yeah,
it just it tastes like like battery acid in a way,

(01:13:15):
you know, because if you're if you're used to, if
you if you're kind of idea of like the citrus
soda was formed on sprite, and then a long time
passes and you're drinking like actual like lemonade for instance,
and then you reintroduce sprite. You're like, this is not citrus.
This is like acid. I don't drink a lot of soda,

(01:13:38):
but the sprite, Like I'll have a root beer, a
coke or whatever and be like this is fine with me.
But the sprite was a bridge too far. I don't
have a surge. I like how sodas taste like battery acid.
That's what I liked about them. That's also what I
like about grapefruit juice. Yeah, I mean ting for instance,
like a grapefruit soda I can deal with because it's

(01:13:59):
it's closer to the flavor of the fruit than a
sprite is close to the lemon lime personally. I mean,
lemon lime is like a muddled flavor anyway. Grapefruit is
very specific. Yeah, lemon lime is completely abstracted by by sprite.
Like when you actually have something that's lemon lime, it's
a completely different things like like sweet and sour mix

(01:14:20):
or something in a in a bar, It's like, that's
lemon lime and anything like sprite. Well, yeah, come on, guys,
because sprite is a similacra exactly. I knew exactly this. UM. Well,

(01:14:41):
thank you justin for joining us. Normally we ask where
people can find you, but we've established pretty strongly that
nobody can find you anywhere except of the Ringer dot
Com em lane. I exist in the wire, didn't Yeah,
the president in the wired UM and you are as
you mentioned, U sound only on the Ringer Network on

(01:15:04):
wherever one gets their podcasts anything else, No, it's it. Thanks,
thank you so much, justin tell them come back sometime
and you know you can be part of the Night
Call anime and thank you for listening to Nightcall. You

(01:15:25):
can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you
get your shows. You can also follow us on social media.
We are on Twitter at Nightcall Pod, Instagram, and Facebook
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(01:15:47):
night Call one to four oh four six night leave
your thoughts, concerns, conspiracy theories. We're always looking for a
new ones and we'll see you all next week