New Yorker staff writer and bestselling author Jia Tolentino discusses how Big Tech companies profit off our emotions on social media, the pivotal moment that made her quit Twitter, and how improving people's actual lives could reduce time spent on the internet. And Hasan Minhaj talks to tech influencer Marques Brownlee about how to break free from technology and why so much of it sucks.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
My guest tonight is a stab writer at The New
Yorker and author of the bestseller Trick Mirror, Reflections on
Self Delusion. She's here to talk about social media companies
monetizing hate and how we can use the Internet as
a force for good. Please welcome, Gia Tolentino. So you've
(00:41):
written about social media companies and how they monetize rage.
Is there any way to Is there any way that
they could be incentivized to stop this?
Speaker 4 (00:52):
One way that I think about it is like did
corporations all throughout this, like the last century until the
seventies have any incentive to stop like poisoning rivers and
dumping their waist all over the place.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
They didn't.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
It's like cheaper to be shitty, right like they like
it is it is in their financial best interest to
just keep poisoning the river until someone makes them stop,
which we could, but like you know, it's in their
best in just for us to feel bad, right, Like
you never hear someone being like I had an amazing day.
I just sat and I scrolled for six hours, right,
Like it's like you only do that when you feel
(01:25):
you only scroll that long when you feel bad, and
when you do that, when you scroll for that long,
you feel even worse, and then you do it more,
and that cycle is the primary way.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
It's like cocaine.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
It is like cricket.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
It was fun, right, I'm chasing that first one. It's
just not going to come back, yeah, exactly. But uh,
it's interesting because I see stories pop up that give
me outrage, and I realized that they're designed to do
it like it took me a second. A friend of
(01:57):
mine whose leans a little right exted me this story
about how the LGBT community wants to ban natural one.
You know, you make me feel like a natural woman,
Marretha Franklin. And I did like two clicks of research,
and of course it was from a parody account, right,
(02:17):
but picked up from papers. And then the parity account
even said afterwards, like nobody called us for a.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
Comment, right, right, And then on no one check the
about page on the website.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
And then on the left, you know, I read an
article about the Missouri Senate making women's senators they couldn't
wear sleeveless shirts, and I was about to go ape shit,
and I went, oh, but the men afterwards, ties and suits.
It's just a dress code, but it was designed to
make me go bananas and it did.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
Right, I mean everything like if you are on a
social media platform, that what you see is governed by
an algorithm, which is basically all the major ones. It's
all designed to make you feel like the best person
possible and that everyone else is a dumb piece of shit.
Like that's that is, that is what gets us to
spend as much time on there as possible.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Yeah, I used to go that righteousness porn yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
And then you realize you don't actually want to see
these male log wickers wearing tank tops anyway. You don't
want to see it, and maybe we don't want to
see anyone's upper arms.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
So I just want to be able to say point
to someone as wrong and me as right, right, and
then you get off on it.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
And it's also like there's so many things to actually
be mad about, and a lot of the stuff that's
you know, it's like some celebrity sets something done. It's
like do do we care? Does does this matter?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Does? Like?
Speaker 4 (03:31):
I think one of the things that drives me personally
nuts about all of it is that there's no sense
of scale. It's like everything is presented as equally and
maximally enraging, when actually there are some things that matter
a lot. Most things matter very little or nothing at all,
and we're taught that, you know, we should all be
as mad as possible about all of it all the time.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Right.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Well, yeah, I mean, like you went off Twitter a
few years ago. Congratulations, thank you so much, thank you,
thank you.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
I'm so much.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
I how it would turn me into like a genius
and like a like a great happy person and it
you know, just I'm wasting just a little less time,
right right.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
But I mean, like I definitely like I'm kind of
exit only on there now and is that right. I
just like will.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Post stuff I need to post for you get in.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Day's or something. But that has made my life a
little definitely a little bit you realize that Twitter is not.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
The world, right, right, And I mean I got off
because like, I don't know if you had this experience,
but it was like as soon as the pandemic started,
you know, and my life shrank to you know, one
room in a weekly trip to the grocery store, and
the Internet ballooned to fill the rest of my existence.
And I was like this, this sucks, you know, like
the Internet is never supposed to be bigger than your life,
(04:42):
and when the pandemic made it bigger than actual physical life,
I was like, I gotta, I gotta get out of here.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Twitter is such a cesspool now, it's so negative, there's
is there any way to unravel this?
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Well?
Speaker 4 (04:57):
I think that as long as these companies the primary
way they make their money is for us to spend
as much time as possible on them. And the best way,
as you were saying in that segment, for us for
them to ensure that we spend as much time on
them as possible is through all of the emotions that
make us feel as bad as possible, self righteousness and
anger and you know, everyone getting as mad as possible
(05:21):
as a group about something you're going to forget about
the next day. As long as that is the economic model,
there is no hope. But I think, you know, again,
as with the corporations that we're you know, making all
the fish dye in the rivers, you can make them change.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
We could regulate this.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Right if we put pressure on our government.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Or yeah, I mean I think our government.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Is like, how does also nursing at the teet of
big tech.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
I think, like one, I think one thing that's necessary
is for people to remember that we can you know,
we don't have to feel like yeah yeah, like the internet.
We all feel insane on the Internet. We all feel
so bad all the time. And that's just the way
it is, right. I think that I think that we
it is we are capable of getting as mad about
(06:09):
this as people did about in the environmental move in
the seventies, right, like we're we are capable of generating
pressure and putting it on lawmakers and there you know,
there are things like you could end automated recommendations, right.
Automated recommendations are the reasons that you know, a mom
of two in Cleveland, you know, starts looking up smoothie
(06:30):
recipes for her two year old and ends up believing
that wayfair is shipping, you know, like orphans in their things,
and you know, the wild designed theoreticalize exactly right, and
and so much of that, so much of that is
automated recommendations because that and people have been recommending for
years for that, you know, simply ending those those are
(06:52):
one of the biggest reasons that the Internet has gotten
so much worse, so much less fun, so much less surprising,
is because these companies just identify the kind of person
you and then funnel you towards, you know, whatever the
worst version of that person is.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
YouTube is bizarre. You know. One time I made the
mistake of going like, what is this globalization? Like globalists?
What do they mean by globalists? And I became an
anti semi Right, it's been like fifteen minutes.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
Yeah, it's amazing how well it works, you know, and
there are things like, you know, you could end legal
immunity for these companies if violence is caused by something
that was generated on these platforms. The worst that actual
offline life is the more people spend on the internet, right,
And we just have really done very little in terms
of public policy to make actual life better for people, right,
(07:38):
to give people more money and more freedom, and to
give people free public spaces to hang out so the
only place so it's not like the only place they
hang out is the internet. You know, We've done so
little to improve actual life that I think is one
of the things that drives people over and over to
just be like yeah, you know, like for hours time,
(08:00):
and I mean I feel like a boomer saying that,
but I feel like that that would help a lot.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Well.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Also, it's like I feel like social media originally was
designed or its intention was to connect, right, to connect people,
But instead I think it's kind of put us in silos,
and it's given us this existential like do I exist?
You know, I mean even on selfies, I feel like
are are just a constant question of do I exist?
(08:26):
I exist?
Speaker 4 (08:27):
Right?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Right?
Speaker 3 (08:28):
And you know it's interesting, but there's anger. You know,
people make money from our anger, they get clicks from anger.
But there's some good anger on the internet where people
are organizing, right, you know, So how do you not
how do you differentiate? But how do you keep the
good anger and get us away from the the shitty.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
Angle what you were saying about connection, It's like we
the version of connection that is generated through hate is
not a kind of connection that makes sense in real life.
It's it's only a kind of connection that is incentivized
and sounds good on the internet, right, like in real
life where we actually like, oh I want to spend
six hours like phase deep in, you know, in the
(09:12):
business of someone I hate, no, right, like we form
we do our business based on like affinity and the
things that we care about and the things that we
like positively want. And I think about, you know, as
much as I think the Internet as it's structured right
now is kind of inevitably an existential and civic that
negative that there are still these things. I mean, you
think about the protests summer twenty twenty, They wouldn't have
(09:35):
turned into what they became, right with like a quarter
of Americans, you know, hitting the streets at some point
if it wasn't for like a continual stream of videos
on Twitter of police brutalizing the protesters at the police
brutality protests right like these, there is still like radical potential.
You think about what people are doing with abortion access
right now on the internet, you know, forming these underground
(09:56):
networks and getting people to travel across state lines and
making sure anyone can get pills them. You know, I
try to remember that, you know, we still can and
will try to be human on you know, within a
mechanism that wants us to be less so and we
can keep doing it.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Well let's Seeah, it's like the Wild West. But the
leaders are billionaires and I mean everything, I feel like,
every single thing, every conversation I've had here. I feel
like boils down to Citizens United, because as long as
people can line politicians pockets, they're buying policy and our
votes don't. I mean, your vote counts, and don't.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
Our votes just simply don't count.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Yeah, but it's it's very frustrating. It doesn't. It's clearly
not right, like you know, but of course they name
it Citizens Unit. It sounds beautiful. Let's hold for the siren.
I'm just kidding to show that I'm in show business
and I know how things work.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
Well, yeah, and I think part of it. I mean,
we see this pushback now, right, there is a fomenting
sort of pushback and a dissatisfaction, and you know, the
hope is that it bubbles over into actual pressure on
lawmakers to do something. But you know, for a long time,
we accepted the general model of Silicon Valley, the move fast,
break things sort of move faster than regulation could ever
(11:13):
get you. We accepted that as like, oh, that's amazing,
we could you know that that will result in us
pressing a button and getting like, you know, a car
at our doorstep, and you know, and any kind of
food we want, Like we've we for a really long
time accepted the conveniences that the internet economy provides us sluts.
We're such little thoughts are convenient, and then they just
(11:33):
and then they just snap those little handcuffs of anger
around us, and here we are.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Yeah, you go like, uh, iPhones are made by child labor.
I'm gonna, well, you know, let's stay yeah, yeah, less
click to or yeah or Amazon. You know, I'm gonna
you know, I was like, no, no one's boycotting Amazon.
It's too convenient.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
Yeah. But the thing is you can And I think
that like the real first step in all of this
is remembering like we I mean, I have to have
it's very ORWELLI and I have a program called self
control on my computer and a program called freedom on
my phone, and those things because I have neither and
both and both of those things lock me off of
social media for like fifteen hours a day. And I
(12:15):
have needed to do that because I'm such a little
slut for all the things that makes me mad. And
it does work, like you can just refuse to participate
in little little bits until maybe suddenly your life has
changed a little. And I would I would recommend you know,
it's it's worth a dry.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Yeah, definitely. I mean they say, like, of course nobody
can sleep because you're on your phones. You've got to
turn the screens off, and I'm like, yeah, but also
no that.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
I prefer to drop my phone on my forehead seven
times and that is when I go to sleep.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Oh okay, how do we fix the Internet? Is there
any hope in all of this?
Speaker 4 (12:56):
Yeah? Yeah, I think in regulation, and I think in
public pushback, and I think in all of us spending
less time on our phone. Whether that means refusing convenience,
you know, certain things that are convenience, I think it
means I think all of these things are possible, but
we have to maybe accept that in order to resist
(13:19):
social media, in order to resist the constant surveillance that's
hitting us on our phone, that all these companies are
like tracking and reselling to other companies to make money
off of everything we do, we have to maybe we
have to maybe refuse a little bit of the cheap
pleasure and the convenience that the phone gives us. But
I think we can all.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Right, of trick mirror is invariable.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
If you're like me, your life is both owned and
ruined by technology. So I want to talk to someone
about how to break free from it all. Even though
I've made a career of standing in front of screens
and flailing my arms, I have.
Speaker 5 (14:09):
A secret to tell all of you.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
I hate technology. Every new gizmo and gadget claims to
be highly useful and easy to use. But if that
were true, then why are we so frustrated by technology
all the goddamn time? I decided to sit down with
Marquees Brownlee aka MKBHD, who's been heralded as the greatest
tech reviewer on planet Earth, bringing us endless videos of
(14:32):
the newest high tech piece of shit. But could he
convince me to join his technomania cult? Marquez, you are
like the Kim Kardashian of technology. What you say moves product,
and you do have a lot of junk in your
trunk to review.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Has that been said?
Speaker 5 (14:48):
Or are you just yeah, I'm proposing that. I like
that you have dedicated your life to reviewing technology.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Why there's a quote you've probably heard. Any sufficiently advanced
technology is indistinguishable from magic if you have a certain
expectation and the tech actually gives you that output you expect.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Yeah, like that?
Speaker 2 (15:10):
That working? I love that.
Speaker 5 (15:12):
And when it doesn't work, what does it feel?
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Incredibly frustrating to me?
Speaker 5 (15:15):
It feels like an abomination to society.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
It's correct.
Speaker 5 (15:17):
Yeah, here's my problem. My brain is melting right now
because I have to juggle one hundred apps just to
communicate with eight people. When I was in college, there
were three ways to get a hold of me. Okay,
call me if you're confident, text me if you're shy,
email me if you're smart. Now it's one hundred apps.
I Message Friends, Android, annoying Friends, Signal, pretentious college friends, WhatsApp,
(15:41):
annoying family members, Instagram, DMS, corny randos, Twitter, DMS, angry
political randos, evite psychos, paperless posts, liberal psychos. That's just messaging. Marquez.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Yeah, so you do have the option to not try
any of the things you don't.
Speaker 5 (15:56):
Want until I go to a restaurant and you go, hey,
can I get a menu?
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (15:59):
And they go, oh yeah, just scan the QR code
and I go, no, no, I went to this restaurant to
avoid being on my phone. And then they're like, oh,
you have to also pay through your phone. In order
to do that, you have to create a username and password.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Oh, Okay, so do you see what I'm saying?
Speaker 5 (16:13):
You just made this. I'll have the tuna melt six
steps harder.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
There's a Goldilock zone of like going a little bit
into tech and seeing real benefit before going too far.
But we got to try a whole bunch of bad
ideas before we find one or two cool things house
and might.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Like Marquez wanted to prove to me that tech could
be useful and user friendly by doing what he's known
for a product demo. Secretly, I suspected it would turn
into an episode of this shit Doesn't Work. These new
tech enhanced products were a smart toothbrush, smart hover shoes,
and a smart printer. And of course, all of these
(16:51):
were supposed to be as easy as one, two three.
Speaker 5 (16:54):
Sure, right, let's.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
See lean sally forward to move forward, slightly backward, to
go backwards, and step off to get up. Okay, smart toothbrush,
it's got a ton of sensors and it might be
able to shed some light on something you can do better.
Speaker 5 (17:06):
All right, let's see how easy it is? Sure, look
at that sticker reminding you how easy it is. You're
gonna plug it in right here, right, all right? What
is it yeah, all right, back to the future.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
I can't believe there's the straps just twist me. Yeah,
where are you opening up? Somewhere around there we go.
Speaker 5 (17:25):
There's a tab, you know, because the sticker says effortless.
Wait wait wait wait wait, why is it going to?
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Why is it possessed.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
It?
Speaker 2 (17:33):
I connect this to app right, alright, app store app.
Speaker 5 (17:36):
The problem is that I just don't want my dentist
to have even more info about me. Oh yeah, because
I haven't been brushing the full happy birthday.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Oh sorry.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
It says do not turn the power off until the
initialization is complete. This takes about six minutes, So you're
just gonna stay here for six minutes.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Where do I apply?
Speaker 5 (17:54):
So if I apply through?
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Yeah, so we have to make an account. We do
have to type a wife password. There's your key word.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
See kind of type.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
By the way, there's capital work.
Speaker 5 (18:06):
I have to switch between uppercase and lowercase and then down,
you know.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Relationships time because of stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
One, I'll set up my own account. You're gonna use
your full government name. Yeah, I'm gonna do exactly what
it asked me to. I cook my book, man, I
give it a password and then you just straighten your feet.
How do you feel? I feel like a baby giraffe
to connect with the pass one? Yeah? You want a
password again? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (18:26):
Can you sign it to me?
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Unable to register your user? Please try?
Speaker 3 (18:29):
This is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Try again.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
What does it say? Now? It doesn't work? You know what? Man?
Speaker 1 (18:33):
How do I get off?
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Uh?
Speaker 5 (18:35):
You know it's not your thing. It's my thing.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Bro Oh you don't to Please try one more time?
Third time? It doesn't work.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Log and fail, log and fail? And where what is
the print? Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, let's have our final products,
shall we?
Speaker 5 (18:54):
I mean, shit doesn't work.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
It doesn't work.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
It didn't work.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
I felt like I had just proved to Marquez that
his entire life was a lie. But he had a
slightly different perspective.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
The goal of tech is really to just work every
time and be as easy as possible. So I would
just say to have patience with the things that don't
work yet, because maybe they will soon hook print users
just good blocks s gruners are doing.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
So maybe the way to fix shitty modern technology is
by becoming more patient and understanding users. Why did you lie?
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Here's an app?
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Ope and can.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Cloth as you can close. This shit doesn't Why? Thank
you Marquez. Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast
universe by by searching The Daily Show wherever you get
your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Watch The Daily Show weeknights at eleven.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Ten Central on Comedy Central and stream full episodes anytime
on Fairmount Plus.
Speaker 5 (20:13):
This has been a Comedy Central podcast.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
Wow.
You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
My guest tonight is a stab writer at The New
Yorker and author of the bestseller Trick Mirror, Reflections on
Self Delusion. She's here to talk about social media companies
monetizing hate and how we can use the Internet as
a force for good. Please welcome, Gia Tolentino. So you've
(00:41):
written about social media companies and how they monetize rage.
Is there any way to Is there any way that
they could be incentivized to stop this?
Speaker 4 (00:52):
One way that I think about it is like did
corporations all throughout this, like the last century until the
seventies have any incentive to stop like poisoning rivers and
dumping their waist all over the place.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
They didn't.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
It's like cheaper to be shitty, right like they like
it is it is in their financial best interest to
just keep poisoning the river until someone makes them stop,
which we could, but like you know, it's in their
best in just for us to feel bad, right, Like
you never hear someone being like I had an amazing day.
I just sat and I scrolled for six hours, right,
Like it's like you only do that when you feel
(01:25):
you only scroll that long when you feel bad, and
when you do that, when you scroll for that long,
you feel even worse, and then you do it more,
and that cycle is the primary way.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
It's like cocaine.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
It is like cricket.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
It was fun, right, I'm chasing that first one. It's
just not going to come back, yeah, exactly. But uh,
it's interesting because I see stories pop up that give
me outrage, and I realized that they're designed to do
it like it took me a second. A friend of
(01:57):
mine whose leans a little right exted me this story
about how the LGBT community wants to ban natural one.
You know, you make me feel like a natural woman,
Marretha Franklin. And I did like two clicks of research,
and of course it was from a parody account, right,
(02:17):
but picked up from papers. And then the parity account
even said afterwards, like nobody called us for a.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
Comment, right, right, And then on no one check the
about page on the website.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
And then on the left, you know, I read an
article about the Missouri Senate making women's senators they couldn't
wear sleeveless shirts, and I was about to go ape shit,
and I went, oh, but the men afterwards, ties and suits.
It's just a dress code, but it was designed to
make me go bananas and it did.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
Right, I mean everything like if you are on a
social media platform, that what you see is governed by
an algorithm, which is basically all the major ones. It's
all designed to make you feel like the best person
possible and that everyone else is a dumb piece of shit.
Like that's that is, that is what gets us to
spend as much time on there as possible.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Yeah, I used to go that righteousness porn yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
And then you realize you don't actually want to see
these male log wickers wearing tank tops anyway. You don't
want to see it, and maybe we don't want to
see anyone's upper arms.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
So I just want to be able to say point
to someone as wrong and me as right, right, and
then you get off on it.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
And it's also like there's so many things to actually
be mad about, and a lot of the stuff that's
you know, it's like some celebrity sets something done. It's
like do do we care? Does does this matter?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Does? Like?
Speaker 4 (03:31):
I think one of the things that drives me personally
nuts about all of it is that there's no sense
of scale. It's like everything is presented as equally and
maximally enraging, when actually there are some things that matter
a lot. Most things matter very little or nothing at all,
and we're taught that, you know, we should all be
as mad as possible about all of it all the time.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Right.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Well, yeah, I mean, like you went off Twitter a
few years ago. Congratulations, thank you so much, thank you,
thank you.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
I'm so much.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
I how it would turn me into like a genius
and like a like a great happy person and it
you know, just I'm wasting just a little less time,
right right.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
But I mean, like I definitely like I'm kind of
exit only on there now and is that right. I
just like will.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Post stuff I need to post for you get in.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Day's or something. But that has made my life a
little definitely a little bit you realize that Twitter is not.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
The world, right, right, And I mean I got off
because like, I don't know if you had this experience,
but it was like as soon as the pandemic started,
you know, and my life shrank to you know, one
room in a weekly trip to the grocery store, and
the Internet ballooned to fill the rest of my existence.
And I was like this, this sucks, you know, like
the Internet is never supposed to be bigger than your life,
(04:42):
and when the pandemic made it bigger than actual physical life,
I was like, I gotta, I gotta get out of here.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Twitter is such a cesspool now, it's so negative, there's
is there any way to unravel this?
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Well?
Speaker 4 (04:57):
I think that as long as these companies the primary
way they make their money is for us to spend
as much time as possible on them. And the best way,
as you were saying in that segment, for us for
them to ensure that we spend as much time on
them as possible is through all of the emotions that
make us feel as bad as possible, self righteousness and
anger and you know, everyone getting as mad as possible
(05:21):
as a group about something you're going to forget about
the next day. As long as that is the economic model,
there is no hope. But I think, you know, again,
as with the corporations that we're you know, making all
the fish dye in the rivers, you can make them change.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
We could regulate this.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Right if we put pressure on our government.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Or yeah, I mean I think our government.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Is like, how does also nursing at the teet of
big tech.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
I think, like one, I think one thing that's necessary
is for people to remember that we can you know,
we don't have to feel like yeah yeah, like the internet.
We all feel insane on the Internet. We all feel
so bad all the time. And that's just the way
it is, right. I think that I think that we
it is we are capable of getting as mad about
(06:09):
this as people did about in the environmental move in
the seventies, right, like we're we are capable of generating
pressure and putting it on lawmakers and there you know,
there are things like you could end automated recommendations, right.
Automated recommendations are the reasons that you know, a mom
of two in Cleveland, you know, starts looking up smoothie
(06:30):
recipes for her two year old and ends up believing
that wayfair is shipping, you know, like orphans in their things,
and you know, the wild designed theoreticalize exactly right, and
and so much of that, so much of that is
automated recommendations because that and people have been recommending for
years for that, you know, simply ending those those are
(06:52):
one of the biggest reasons that the Internet has gotten
so much worse, so much less fun, so much less surprising,
is because these companies just identify the kind of person
you and then funnel you towards, you know, whatever the
worst version of that person is.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
YouTube is bizarre. You know. One time I made the
mistake of going like, what is this globalization? Like globalists?
What do they mean by globalists? And I became an
anti semi Right, it's been like fifteen minutes.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
Yeah, it's amazing how well it works, you know, and
there are things like, you know, you could end legal
immunity for these companies if violence is caused by something
that was generated on these platforms. The worst that actual
offline life is the more people spend on the internet, right,
And we just have really done very little in terms
of public policy to make actual life better for people, right,
(07:38):
to give people more money and more freedom, and to
give people free public spaces to hang out so the
only place so it's not like the only place they
hang out is the internet. You know, We've done so
little to improve actual life that I think is one
of the things that drives people over and over to
just be like yeah, you know, like for hours time,
(08:00):
and I mean I feel like a boomer saying that,
but I feel like that that would help a lot.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Well.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Also, it's like I feel like social media originally was
designed or its intention was to connect, right, to connect people,
But instead I think it's kind of put us in silos,
and it's given us this existential like do I exist?
You know, I mean even on selfies, I feel like
are are just a constant question of do I exist?
(08:26):
I exist?
Speaker 4 (08:27):
Right?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Right?
Speaker 3 (08:28):
And you know it's interesting, but there's anger. You know,
people make money from our anger, they get clicks from anger.
But there's some good anger on the internet where people
are organizing, right, you know, So how do you not
how do you differentiate? But how do you keep the
good anger and get us away from the the shitty.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
Angle what you were saying about connection, It's like we
the version of connection that is generated through hate is
not a kind of connection that makes sense in real life.
It's it's only a kind of connection that is incentivized
and sounds good on the internet, right, like in real
life where we actually like, oh I want to spend
six hours like phase deep in, you know, in the
(09:12):
business of someone I hate, no, right, like we form
we do our business based on like affinity and the
things that we care about and the things that we
like positively want. And I think about, you know, as
much as I think the Internet as it's structured right
now is kind of inevitably an existential and civic that
negative that there are still these things. I mean, you
think about the protests summer twenty twenty, They wouldn't have
(09:35):
turned into what they became, right with like a quarter
of Americans, you know, hitting the streets at some point
if it wasn't for like a continual stream of videos
on Twitter of police brutalizing the protesters at the police
brutality protests right like these, there is still like radical potential.
You think about what people are doing with abortion access
right now on the internet, you know, forming these underground
(09:56):
networks and getting people to travel across state lines and
making sure anyone can get pills them. You know, I
try to remember that, you know, we still can and
will try to be human on you know, within a
mechanism that wants us to be less so and we
can keep doing it.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Well let's Seeah, it's like the Wild West. But the
leaders are billionaires and I mean everything, I feel like,
every single thing, every conversation I've had here. I feel
like boils down to Citizens United, because as long as
people can line politicians pockets, they're buying policy and our
votes don't. I mean, your vote counts, and don't.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
Our votes just simply don't count.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Yeah, but it's it's very frustrating. It doesn't. It's clearly
not right, like you know, but of course they name
it Citizens Unit. It sounds beautiful. Let's hold for the siren.
I'm just kidding to show that I'm in show business
and I know how things work.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
Well, yeah, and I think part of it. I mean,
we see this pushback now, right, there is a fomenting
sort of pushback and a dissatisfaction, and you know, the
hope is that it bubbles over into actual pressure on
lawmakers to do something. But you know, for a long time,
we accepted the general model of Silicon Valley, the move fast,
break things sort of move faster than regulation could ever
(11:13):
get you. We accepted that as like, oh, that's amazing,
we could you know that that will result in us
pressing a button and getting like, you know, a car
at our doorstep, and you know, and any kind of
food we want, Like we've we for a really long
time accepted the conveniences that the internet economy provides us sluts.
We're such little thoughts are convenient, and then they just
(11:33):
and then they just snap those little handcuffs of anger
around us, and here we are.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Yeah, you go like, uh, iPhones are made by child labor.
I'm gonna, well, you know, let's stay yeah, yeah, less
click to or yeah or Amazon. You know, I'm gonna
you know, I was like, no, no one's boycotting Amazon.
It's too convenient.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
Yeah. But the thing is you can And I think
that like the real first step in all of this
is remembering like we I mean, I have to have
it's very ORWELLI and I have a program called self
control on my computer and a program called freedom on
my phone, and those things because I have neither and
both and both of those things lock me off of
social media for like fifteen hours a day. And I
(12:15):
have needed to do that because I'm such a little
slut for all the things that makes me mad. And
it does work, like you can just refuse to participate
in little little bits until maybe suddenly your life has
changed a little. And I would I would recommend you know,
it's it's worth a dry.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Yeah, definitely. I mean they say, like, of course nobody
can sleep because you're on your phones. You've got to
turn the screens off, and I'm like, yeah, but also
no that.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
I prefer to drop my phone on my forehead seven
times and that is when I go to sleep.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Oh okay, how do we fix the Internet? Is there
any hope in all of this?
Speaker 4 (12:56):
Yeah? Yeah, I think in regulation, and I think in
public pushback, and I think in all of us spending
less time on our phone. Whether that means refusing convenience,
you know, certain things that are convenience, I think it
means I think all of these things are possible, but
we have to maybe accept that in order to resist
(13:19):
social media, in order to resist the constant surveillance that's
hitting us on our phone, that all these companies are
like tracking and reselling to other companies to make money
off of everything we do, we have to maybe we
have to maybe refuse a little bit of the cheap
pleasure and the convenience that the phone gives us. But
I think we can all.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Right, of trick mirror is invariable.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
If you're like me, your life is both owned and
ruined by technology. So I want to talk to someone
about how to break free from it all. Even though
I've made a career of standing in front of screens
and flailing my arms, I have.
Speaker 5 (14:09):
A secret to tell all of you.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
I hate technology. Every new gizmo and gadget claims to
be highly useful and easy to use. But if that
were true, then why are we so frustrated by technology
all the goddamn time? I decided to sit down with
Marquees Brownlee aka MKBHD, who's been heralded as the greatest
tech reviewer on planet Earth, bringing us endless videos of
(14:32):
the newest high tech piece of shit. But could he
convince me to join his technomania cult? Marquez, you are
like the Kim Kardashian of technology. What you say moves product,
and you do have a lot of junk in your
trunk to review.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Has that been said?
Speaker 5 (14:48):
Or are you just yeah, I'm proposing that. I like
that you have dedicated your life to reviewing technology.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Why there's a quote you've probably heard. Any sufficiently advanced
technology is indistinguishable from magic if you have a certain
expectation and the tech actually gives you that output you expect.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Yeah, like that?
Speaker 2 (15:10):
That working? I love that.
Speaker 5 (15:12):
And when it doesn't work, what does it feel?
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Incredibly frustrating to me?
Speaker 5 (15:15):
It feels like an abomination to society.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
It's correct.
Speaker 5 (15:17):
Yeah, here's my problem. My brain is melting right now
because I have to juggle one hundred apps just to
communicate with eight people. When I was in college, there
were three ways to get a hold of me. Okay,
call me if you're confident, text me if you're shy,
email me if you're smart. Now it's one hundred apps.
I Message Friends, Android, annoying Friends, Signal, pretentious college friends, WhatsApp,
(15:41):
annoying family members, Instagram, DMS, corny randos, Twitter, DMS, angry
political randos, evite psychos, paperless posts, liberal psychos. That's just messaging. Marquez.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Yeah, so you do have the option to not try
any of the things you don't.
Speaker 5 (15:56):
Want until I go to a restaurant and you go, hey,
can I get a menu?
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (15:59):
And they go, oh yeah, just scan the QR code
and I go, no, no, I went to this restaurant to
avoid being on my phone. And then they're like, oh,
you have to also pay through your phone. In order
to do that, you have to create a username and password.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Oh, Okay, so do you see what I'm saying?
Speaker 5 (16:13):
You just made this. I'll have the tuna melt six
steps harder.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
There's a Goldilock zone of like going a little bit
into tech and seeing real benefit before going too far.
But we got to try a whole bunch of bad
ideas before we find one or two cool things house
and might.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Like Marquez wanted to prove to me that tech could
be useful and user friendly by doing what he's known
for a product demo. Secretly, I suspected it would turn
into an episode of this shit Doesn't Work. These new
tech enhanced products were a smart toothbrush, smart hover shoes,
and a smart printer. And of course, all of these
(16:51):
were supposed to be as easy as one, two three.
Speaker 5 (16:54):
Sure, right, let's.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
See lean sally forward to move forward, slightly backward, to
go backwards, and step off to get up. Okay, smart toothbrush,
it's got a ton of sensors and it might be
able to shed some light on something you can do better.
Speaker 5 (17:06):
All right, let's see how easy it is? Sure, look
at that sticker reminding you how easy it is. You're
gonna plug it in right here, right, all right? What
is it yeah, all right, back to the future.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
I can't believe there's the straps just twist me. Yeah,
where are you opening up? Somewhere around there we go.
Speaker 5 (17:25):
There's a tab, you know, because the sticker says effortless.
Wait wait wait wait wait, why is it going to?
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Why is it possessed.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
It?
Speaker 2 (17:33):
I connect this to app right, alright, app store app.
Speaker 5 (17:36):
The problem is that I just don't want my dentist
to have even more info about me. Oh yeah, because
I haven't been brushing the full happy birthday.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Oh sorry.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
It says do not turn the power off until the
initialization is complete. This takes about six minutes, So you're
just gonna stay here for six minutes.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Where do I apply?
Speaker 5 (17:54):
So if I apply through?
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Yeah, so we have to make an account. We do
have to type a wife password. There's your key word.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
See kind of type.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
By the way, there's capital work.
Speaker 5 (18:06):
I have to switch between uppercase and lowercase and then down,
you know.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Relationships time because of stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
One, I'll set up my own account. You're gonna use
your full government name. Yeah, I'm gonna do exactly what
it asked me to. I cook my book, man, I
give it a password and then you just straighten your feet.
How do you feel? I feel like a baby giraffe
to connect with the pass one? Yeah? You want a
password again? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (18:26):
Can you sign it to me?
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Unable to register your user? Please try?
Speaker 3 (18:29):
This is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Try again.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
What does it say? Now? It doesn't work? You know what? Man?
Speaker 1 (18:33):
How do I get off?
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Uh?
Speaker 5 (18:35):
You know it's not your thing. It's my thing.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Bro Oh you don't to Please try one more time?
Third time? It doesn't work.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Log and fail, log and fail? And where what is
the print? Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, let's have our final products,
shall we?
Speaker 5 (18:54):
I mean, shit doesn't work.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
It doesn't work.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
It didn't work.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
I felt like I had just proved to Marquez that
his entire life was a lie. But he had a
slightly different perspective.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
The goal of tech is really to just work every
time and be as easy as possible. So I would
just say to have patience with the things that don't
work yet, because maybe they will soon hook print users
just good blocks s gruners are doing.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
So maybe the way to fix shitty modern technology is
by becoming more patient and understanding users. Why did you lie?
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Here's an app?
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Ope and can.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Cloth as you can close. This shit doesn't Why? Thank
you Marquez. Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast
universe by by searching The Daily Show wherever you get
your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Watch The Daily Show weeknights at eleven.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Ten Central on Comedy Central and stream full episodes anytime
on Fairmount Plus.
Speaker 5 (20:13):
This has been a Comedy Central podcast.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
Wow.
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