November 3, 2022 • 50 mins
Twitter is now owned by edgelord supreme Elon Musk, and Josh has many, many thoughts on the subject. To explore and dissect the coming post-social media world we're all about to live in, Josh sits down with New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino, whose book 'Trick Mirror' explored all of the ways that being very online is bad, weird, and probably ruining our real lives. Discussed: Nathan Fielder, incels, italian cuisine, blogging.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:13):
Yeah, there's an amazing trending topic right now on Twitter
hashtag Trump is dead. And I thought, for just a
second while we were talking, is it possible? Could it
couldn't have happened that Trump died, And it appears to
be Tim Heidecker. He tweeted basically like misinformation about Trump,
(00:37):
and I think as like a kind of fun test
of Elon Musk's new freedom of speech doctorate or whatever
it is that's going on on Twitter. Needless to say,
I'm I'm both loving it and hating it. On the
one hand, I was like, Wow, that'd be so cool
if Trump died, because he sucks ass. I mean not
that I wish death on anybody, but if someone were
to die who was bad, I would obviously be not happy,
(01:01):
but not upset, I guess, is what I'm saying. Um,
obviously have to respect the dead and Trump, you know,
you have to be a dead Trump to me, would
get a lot of my respect, Like I'd say, hats
off to you, sir for no longer beat alive anyhow.
But but on the one hand, I'm like, Wow, what
interesting news that I'm not in any way excited about,
(01:23):
but funny, funny, situation with Trump dying and then on
the other hand, very upset because not upset, I guess,
but surprised to learn that perhaps Trump isn't dead and
just it's just a whole uh you know, pot pourri.
I would say, of of emotions, a real, real mixed
emotion situation. But anyhow, let's back up, because we're talking
(01:46):
about the now, and I want to talk about the
reason now, the back then, now then now from a
week ago. So for many months, Elon Musk, the CEO
of Tesla Motors, and the CEO of SpaceX, I guess,
I want to say, and the CEO of Starlink also,
(02:07):
I think. Anyhow, Uh, he's been threatening to buy Twitter.
It started a joke on Twitter. Of course, He's like,
I should buy Twitter, and all the Elon Musk fanboys
were like, yeah, Mr Musk, do it, you know, like
bring freedom of speech back to Twitter or whatever because
they think their freedom of speech doesn't exist or something
on Twitter because they can't say the N word. I'm
(02:28):
gonna and this is all gonna make sense in a second,
but that is the reason why they think there's no
freedom of speech on Twitter, is because they want to
say the N word, but then they say it and
then they get banned or whatever shadow banned or whatever
fantasy they think is going on their little intell brains.
But anyhow, they're like, Mr Musk, please buy Twitter. We
would love that. And then you know, Elon sort of
acted like he was going to and then was like, no,
(02:48):
he's not gonna do it, and then eventually made some
formal offer for Twitter. Then Twitter accepted his offer. Then
all these banks were like, hey, we're gonna give you
money for Twitter because you're Elon Muskus is a very
successful business man. You know what to do with the
social network if you got one. And then in the
midst of buying Twitter, Elon must was like, I'm not
(03:09):
buying Twitter anymore. I just want to make sure that
everybody has the lay of the land. Okay. Then at
some point he's like, I'm not buying Twitter anymore. It's
full of bots. Twitter sucks, It's terrible. Why would I
spend forty four billion dollars on that, which is what
he was going to pay for it. Then the Twitter
people were like, actually, you can't do that. You said
you were gonna buy Twitter, and now we have to
(03:30):
go to court. We're gonna take you to court in
Delaware Chancery Court, which is a court that nobody had
ever heard of until a couple of months ago, when
Elon Buss was like, I don't want to buy Twitter anymore.
They're like, we're gonna take you to Delaware chancer Recort
and you're gonna have to buy Twitter. And then, after
a couple of weeks or a month of getting ready
for the big trial for you know, Elon Must back
(03:52):
and now to buying Twitter. He's like, oh, okay, I
guess I'll buy Twitter because it turns out I'm gonna
lose this case. And if I lose it, either gonna
have to buy Twitter by force because I signed a
contract and that's what happens, or I'm gonna, like have
to lay out a bunch of money, like billions and
billions of dollars for nothing. So what seemed implausible, impossible, ridiculous,
(04:15):
absurd only a few months ago that the guy who
runs Tesla, who is like an edge lord on Twitter
was going to own Twitter, Elon must successfully completed his
purchase of Twitter dot com, also known as the Internet's
comments section. So now that I've given you all that background, Lyra,
(04:36):
I'm sure you're feeling like you understand the situation now
better than ever. Yeah, So Elon Mosque owns Twitter. He's
owned it for I don't know, a week, less than
a week maybe at this point. I mean when you
hear this podcast, he'll have owned it for like a
week or something. Let's call it that. He started by
(04:57):
bringing a sink into the Twitter lobby and then doing
a tweet that was like I met Twitter. Let that
sink in, which you know, in this grand scheme of jokes,
is like one of the worst ones, but you know,
a fair game, like you're trying, you know, he had
David Fielder write that one for him or whatever, as
alleged by a New York Times report that he has
(05:17):
like he wants Nathan Fielder to be his friend or something.
But if Nathan Fielder gave him that, that sounds like
Nathan Fielder prints. That's correct. That Nathan Fielder is doing
the ultimate troll where he's like, yeah, Elon, like I
like you, like you're cool, Like let me help you out,
like I'd love to write some jokes for you, and
then he writes like really bad dumb jokes that all
people who are legitimately funny, who aren't like an in
(05:38):
cell because I don't think in cells can be funny personally.
They're like, that's not funny, and Elon Musk is like,
this is cool. Nathan Fielder gave it to be. Nathan
Fielder was like, I mean, he wouldn't do muahaha or whatever,
but you know, in his mind, I would assume something
like that. Anyhow. So he arrives at Twitter, he takes
over Twitter, He fires the CEO, se fo, the head
(06:01):
of like trust and security, who I guess like all
the Elon Musk fanboys hate because she's a woman, and
like ban Donald Trump. And then uh, immediately, immediately, all
of these data tracking services, all these Twitter tracking services,
like we've seen a fifteen thousand percent rise rise in
(06:23):
the N word being tweeted on Twitter, and we've seen
like a three thousand percent rise and I've remect and
being mentioned on Twitter. And it's like, immediately these people
think that Elon Musk has like pulled the whatever the
rip chord of censorship that's been happening on Twitter, and
they can talk about all these dumb things and say
all these like rude things, and you know, talking about
how they hate the Jews and hate black people, and
(06:43):
so that starts like just spiraling out of control on Twitter.
So then, in addition to you know, the rampant N
word use and other horrible things um that spiked, Elon
Musk then retweets some bullshit story about Paul Pelo's see
some like completely unfounded, zero fact possessing story about you
(07:07):
know this Nancy Pelosi essentially kidnapping, an assassination attempt, her
husband was beaten with a hammer, And he tweets some
story about I believe it's like him having to prostitute
there or something, some ridiculous fantasy land Q and on
right wing conspiracy that's totally baseless in every way, shape
and form, not bounded by any sort of fact whatsoever.
(07:28):
And of course, you know rightfully, so there's an enormous
amount of backlash. But by the time the backlash is
happening and Elon Musk he did delete the tweet, hundreds
of millions of people have now seen this like total
like misinformation, bullshit. And meanwhile Elon Musk has tweeted some
message to advertisers which is like he's not he doesn't
want to let this become a hell escape, which obviously
(07:50):
isn't true because it's immediately a hell escape. I mean, listen,
if you're listening to this, you probably already know this
because you're very online. And how much more can I
say about this? But in the few days that Elon
Musk is own Twitter, it's very obvious that one he
doesn't know what to do with it, and that two
whatever he does with it is probably gonna be dumb
and bad. Uh. And three he'll be blamed for all
(08:12):
of it by his critics and loved for it by
his fans, which is great. So this sort of culminates
with some story that he's gonna start charging people from
blue check marks. So the idea that, like, what will
it be like when Elon Musk owns Twitter is like
quickly coming into focus. Right, people who are bad and
stupid and shitty feel emboldened. Elon Musk as a leader
(08:36):
is sort of bad and stupid and shitty in a
bunch of different ways about information. That's not to say
he's not a smart person, Like you can be really
smart about certain things but be dumb about others, Like
I certainly am that about all sorts of stuff. So
you know, it's it's sort of like watching the end
of Twitter to me in real time. And I've like
talked about it and I've written about the end of
(08:57):
Twitter and over the years, because I think it's always
been a social network that's kind of the most on
life support of all of the social networks in the
sense that it never really found its stride. Its best
moments are kind of the worst moments, right Like for Twitter,
the biggest it's ever been is when Donald Trump was
tweeting like a maniac on Twitter. I said before, it's
(09:19):
like the comments section for all of the content everywhere
on the Internet, and that is really what it feels like,
you know, if anything, as I look at what is
happening with Twitter in this post pandemic world, in this
like very online world where everybody feels, I think increasingly
this desire for distance from the discourse, like distance from
(09:41):
the always online state that we have lived in. I
see a kind of logical conclusion in the Twitter purchase
in Elon Musk owning it, which is that everything he's
done thus far in the short period of time, and
I mean everything, has been a signal that the people
who really like to use it are going to leave
(10:03):
or are going to not enjoy it and want to leave.
And in fact, there was a report a week or
two ago that Vice had that the super users of Twitter,
which is that of the users who create the content
that most people are interacting with on Twitter, are already
there's already attrition. They're they're already leaving. And to me,
what I've seen with Ellen owning it is that attrition
(10:27):
is only going to be accelerated, and it's not that
they're going somewhere else. I think there's an entire generation
of people who have used this thing that just don't
want to be anywhere at all right now. That they
don't want to be online. They don't want to be
in constant arguments with random people on the internet. They
don't see a utility in trying to make their point
(10:48):
in a sort of black hole of opinion where ideas
go to die, which is sort of what Twitter is.
I'm one of these people. I used to tweet all
the time. I was tweeting constantly until a few years ago,
and then sort of slowly ebbed away and more and
more like I'll sit down, I'll open Twitter, I'll look
at it. I'll even maybe write a tweet about something
(11:10):
or reached about to I'm about to retweet something or
comment on something that somebody said, and then I just
think it's the fucking point, you know, what's the point?
Like I'm yelling into the void. They're yelling into the void,
and nothing good is going to come of it. And
so in the midst of all of this, you still
have got this kind of specter of Twitter being that
people talking about like the town square and the place where,
(11:33):
you know, this is the global consciousness and where we
all are talking and experiencing life on planet Earth, and
how we're gonna you know, go to the become glowing
orbs of pure thought or whatever if we just have
enough discourse on Twitter. And and you know, I think
in a way this whole thing exposes kind of the
smallness of it, right, the kind of they the fragility
(11:55):
of all of it. And is it actually the town square?
You know? And if it's the town's where for whatever
reality we live in it, is it the place where
we're watching public hangings or is it the place where
we see the greatest philosophers of our time engage in discourse?
And I think it's probably the former more than it
is the latter, and everybody's kind of like, yeah, I
don't want to watch the hanging. Like sure, some people
(12:17):
will still show up for the gore, but a lot
of people just don't want that to be a part
of their lives. And so, you know, as I'm sort
of contemplating the end of this era, which is a
post V two social media, like i'd say like Facebook
and Twitter are kind of V two if my Space
and friends to r V one of social media, Instagram, Facebook,
(12:40):
Twitter are sort of V two, and they sort of
like post V two world that we're gonna live in,
and thinking about all of this stuff and thinking about
the ramifications of not just Twitter, but this era of
social media kind of coming to a close. You know.
I thought about people that I know and that I've
observed who have actually maybe lived this and really thought
about out at and I started thinking about Gia Tolentino. Lyrah,
(13:03):
do you know Gia Tolentino. I do. She was big
on Twitter, and she was somebody who was like a
central character on Twitter, very online. I think Gia represents
a very online generation which I think I'm part of
for sure, And I think there's a whole generation of
people who were raised by the Internet. I talked about
these people all the time. To me, they're a real
demographic that's very different than most people. But then there's
(13:25):
a whole segment of that audience that is like, I
don't want to be on the Internet anymore. And I
think Gia, who wrote this amazing book Trick Mirror and
also again previously super Online, maybe like the vanguard or
at least, has been thinking a lot about what it's
like if you're not so online anymore, and what that
(13:46):
means for you as a human being on planet Earth.
So g is here. G is here, and we're going
to talk to her now about the Internet. Before we
(14:13):
get started, I just want to say that you have
done something on the Internet that has sort of like
broke my brain a little bit. About your name on Instagram.
Your name is Gia Tortellini. This is correct. That's like
your screen name, Okay, And so when I see your
name now, like wherever I see it, my brain is like,
your actual name is wrong and it should be Tortalini,
(14:33):
which makes no sense. So can yeah, yeah, it's it's
like it's op seck, it's you know, it's just a
better name. It's harder to find. It's also slightly unprofessional,
Like I really believe in that, and that's kind of
my stance on all of it. You basically quit Twitter
for two years. Can you talk about what spurred that
(14:56):
and you know the experience of what it's been like. Yeah,
I mean I had gotten on Twitter late because I
was in the Peace Corps until eleven and I didn't
get on Twitter until late, I think, when I started
grad school and I was starting to write for the Internet,
(15:17):
and I was outside New York. I didn't know anyone
in New York, and I had been without internet for
a year in the Peace Corps, and so it seemed
incredibly generative and interesting, and you know, I could see
all these things that I couldn't see from ann Arbor, Michigan,
and I could listen in on these conversations and whatever.
I wouldn't have a career if not for it. It
was my only connection to the media world. It was like,
(15:39):
I was quote unquote good on Twitter and good with
these mechanisms of self commodification and self broadcasting that have
become the center of the Internet. So I kind of
wrote that and I was having fun. And I remember
I was in the All Websites campfire. Everyone was making
jokes about how they wanted the Internet to burn down
all the time, and I was like, what are these
jaded people talking about. You know, it's like, the Internet
is so fun, get on my goog reader every day
(16:01):
and discover something new, you know. But then, you know,
that was like my first two years on Twitter was
feeling like that. I moved to New York to take
a job editing features for Jezebel and then got engulfed in,
you know, in a different kind of scale, right, a
website where you could run something and you know, this
was very new to me, where you could get a
(16:21):
hundred thousand people read reading it and yelling at you
very very quickly, and I found it exciting. I was
found it a little dangerous, you know. You remember Gaker
was constantly getting in trouble and we were always sucking up.
But it we had this total freedom, and it was
like the first time that I had really experienced how
intensely adversarial Twitter could be. And mostly I was like, well,
it's kind of a gauntlet. You figure out if you
(16:42):
can navigate it. If you can't, you can't. And then
I started working with The New Yorker in and around
the time that Trump got elected, I was like, Okay,
this whole Arab spring like promise of the global town
square where everything trends towards liberal democracy and increasing freedom,
the whole Obama era democratization of media that I had
been a part of, you know, all these people that
(17:03):
never would have had any entry into the field, like me,
you know, who were able to because of Twitter. The
full on identitarian backlash against the Obama era opening up
of culture that was made possible via the Internet was
hitting right around that. The first essay in my book
is about this. I was writing it to try to
go about answering one specific question, and that question was
(17:24):
why did the Internet feel so good ten years ago?
And why does it feel so so bad right now?
And you know, implicitly like, what are the ways in
which it will continue to get worse? Right anyway? So
I finished my book in early and like every year,
I would intervene in my seasonal depression during Super Bowl
weekend by taking myself to the beach, like in North
Beach and just getting high in reading books, like completely
(17:46):
by myself, not speaking to anyone for like three days.
And I did that, and I I just turned my
book in and the first book that I opened on
the beach while extremely stoned was Jenny O'Dell's How to
Do Nothing, Um, you know, which is an incredible book,
and it is you know, making the argument, you know,
basically against capitalist instrumentalization, this idea that everything we need
to do needs to be productive visible that in fact,
(18:09):
the actually important things in life are not quantifiable, they're
not efficient, they're caregiving and maintenance and all these things
that these platforms don't recognize even as as any part
of life at all, like these thoughts that cannot be
put onto Twitter basically. And I was like, okay, I
have to really change my relationship with the Internet. So
(18:29):
right then, I put blockers on my computer and on
my phone that I couldn't use social media for more
than forty five minutes a day. And and so I
would it would like it would actually block you because
like there's yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I do the nuclear
and well and it's it's called self control on Google Chrome,
and I use freedom on my you know, the super
Orwellian like I gotta turn on my self control and
(18:51):
my freedom. You know that on its own is such
a this topic sort of weird, but I needed it,
Like I can't stop looking at my stuff on social media,
so I have an app called Freedom or whatever which
allows me to be a person, not this thing on
the internet. Yeah, and then whence Freedom would stop working
because it's a glitchy app, I would be like, oh
my god, my freedom, Like what happened to my freedom?
(19:12):
And so starting I had already been really significantly trying
to curb my usage, and then in my book came out,
I had a best case scenario experience, but I found
it just horrifically um self alienating. I was always like,
it's okay as long as I can be completely myself.
It's okay, as long as as long as I'm not
(19:34):
manufacturing a different self for the internet. But then the
proportions that resulted from having a book that was that
was much more successful than I ever, ever, ever, ever,
ever had an inkling that it possibly even could be.
You know, it's like a book of nine word essays
like right correctly wrong. But oh mom had releases something
every year where he's like, these are the books that
I loved or whatever, and your your book is on it, right, Yeah,
(19:56):
and you know you will. You don't expect that you
don't And and it was just suddenly it was not
possible to be the fundamental way that I had always
believed in being in the world, which is just totally reciprocal,
totally open to anything. Like strangers would send me long
emails and I'd emailed them back, and I was just like,
this is no longer proportionately possible. And it made me upset,
(20:17):
making me feel like there was some reason to put
some sort of guard up, made me feel really bad
and weird and not at all like myself. And so
I started tweeting way less. And then the pandemic happened
six months later, and the feeling that I had had
since my book came out that I needed to get
off the Internet, that I was too visible, both in
terms of praise or negativity. You know, it proved itself
(20:42):
to be true. I had a big wave of sort
of being the Twitter main character in in mail down
May of the pandemic, there was this poem that went
(21:03):
viral about me that some old dude had written. Yeah,
and like in some literary magazine published it with the
title Geo Tolentino and now it's on no your meme
dot com. Like it was just like I need to
and I was still on it for work to some extent.
But then in August I was about to have a baby,
(21:23):
and I was like, you know, it's now or never,
because I'm going to be up all night, in the
middle of the night for for months, and I'm going
to be scrolling. I'm going to be reading something and
I don't want it to be Twitter. And so I
figured I shouldn't make a clean break now and see
how long I can stay off. And I'm still off.
I mean, there's so much there that you've touched on
that was such a long answer. I'm sorry, No, No,
(21:44):
it was good. It was good because you actually went
through like a million of the things that have been
on my mind and are sort of weighing on me
as I think about this idea of ourselves in places
like Twitter and how we view ourselves and what that
means like for how we live. I think we've built
an unsustainable system. Right. There's all this very altruistic language
around every social network about how it's this like lofty
(22:05):
thing that we're all hurtling towards Jack Dorsey's like it's
the you know, global consciousness, and people called Twitter a
town square and Mark Zuckerberg talks about how his pursuitent
life is to connect the world. But it seems increasingly
that the scale of those connections is like breaking people's minds.
It's like kind of ruining like humanity in a way.
And so you've kind of backed away from it, And
(22:27):
I wonder, like does something come out after this, Like
what is the next stage of this, Like does it
just metastic size? Does it get worse? Or like is
there an off ramp? Have you found the off ramp?
Like what what is your view on that? I think
that there is no off ramp within the economic concentatives
of the companies themselves, right, I mean, they literally cannot
be profitable unless more people spend more time on there,
(22:49):
and there's no way for that to be possible without
all of those things happening that break our brains, right,
you know, Like I always think about the way Patricia
lockwould put it in that great novel of hers that
just came out about the Internet. The attention moves on
the Internet like the shine on a school of fish.
What we're talking about is just the baseline logic of
capitalist accumulation, right where the teleological vision is perpetual growth,
(23:10):
perpetual increase, perpetual volume, perpetual scale. I don't want to
downplay you know, let's say me too our Black lives matter,
but I really think that the movements that have had
real teeth in the real world that have come up
off of Twitter and Facebook, like, they have all been
reactionary and they have far outweighed the positive consequences of
(23:31):
you know, the progressive gains that have been you know,
one on these platforms. The kinds of actual connection that
have been made are incredibly destructive. And you know, I
would think about during the protests in I got all
of my information about where to go off of Twitter
and off of Instagram, you know, but the action was
happening offline, and the effect overall is that of profound
(23:53):
isolation and loneliness and alienation. And you know, there's no
way that I can see any of these company is
doing anything but promising one and delivering the other. Right. Well,
I mean most of my friends have stopped tweeting, you know,
I'll say that, you know, there is a sort of
generational thing happening. I mean, I've had similar experience. I
haven't like full on left, Twitter or any of these
(24:13):
social networks, but like the amount of posting that I
do comparatively is way way down, Like I can barely
find anything to talk about. And I think there is
something that has happened driven by the pandemic a little bit,
the fact that we've had just so much Internet that
it almost feels like overwhelming. But but also it does
seem like there's sort of our maturing relationship with the Internet.
(24:33):
It's like, why does this need to be said in public? Yeah,
I mean right in your book, you quote Jason Cocky,
who's like one of the original bloggers on the Internet.
He says something like he didn't make any sense to
write my personal thoughts down, not on the Internet. Actual
reminded me of truth or Dare the Madonna documentary when
Warren Batty's talking to Madonna about how like they're filming
(24:53):
and he hates it because he's old and she's like
way younger than him, and she's making this documentary which
is really good for her, and they're filming everything thing
and he's like, there's nothing to say off camera. Would
you say something if it's off camera, which is exactly
what he was expressing. So there's obviously like these generational
sort of ebbs and flows of this, like the one
thing that I keep hoping for. And I think we
see a little bit with like the attrition of things
(25:14):
like on Facebook, where it's becoming more and more old
people and like boomers and fewer and fewer young people
want to be a part of it. Is it a
generational change that happens where people reject this? Yeah, I
think every generation has their social network, and the boomers
have Facebook, and you know, millennials have Instagram and and
gen z has TikTok or whatever else, right, Like I
(25:35):
think that that's Is that better? No? I think I
don't think it's better. I mean, I don't think it's
better until you know, I would be great if the
next iteration would be one in which proportions were gated.
You know, people are desiring some sort of online interaction
that will reflect rather than distort real life. And I
felt a little bit that way. I was a kid
(25:56):
that liked to be on stage and love to talk
to everybody, and I felt that I felt like, why
would I not like have my thoughts open to the
world and see who was interested. It's also part of
the personality of being a writer, you know. I mean
that's literally still my job. But I do feel like
there's been a big sort of mountain where there were
a lot of people who were like, why wouldn't we
do this, Why wouldn't we see what happens, what could
(26:17):
result if a bunch of people are looking, and who
we could become, and what and what we could make
of this? And then we saw it and we were like, no.
We took the algorithmic and economic incentive that had become
like an emotional one, this idea of what is the
maximum number of people that I could get to see
and applaud this right, it's a basic human desire in
(26:38):
a lot of ways that was just stretched beyond all
reason by the profit model these companies. And we saw
what it means, and it means every day on Twitter
there's a main character you know, like it It means
doc saying, it means getting swat teams sent to your door.
It means things that people actually don't want. I don't
think that you could make a social media company that
is as profitable as these companies would like to be
(27:00):
on any humane structure, Like there's no scale, it's humane
that fits with like the capitalistic model. Yeah, I don't
think that the fantasy of endless growth will ever will
ever map onto like any sort of healthy social network,
you know, I don't think it's really possible in any
industry with any model at all, but certainly not with
social media. On top of this conversation about how the
(27:22):
Internet is sort of breaking what we know of humanity,
how much of it is real? Right, because we talked
a little bit the beginning about Twitter and the scale
of its audience, and and you and I are people
in media, and we're surrounded by other people in media,
and in some ways those people do chart the conversation
for a much larger audience that isn't in places like Twitter,
(27:43):
and maybe isn't on Facebook. But is that real? You've
been off Twitter, you've been basically not using it for
several years. Did you feel in that time that, like
the things that were happening on the Internet, did they
crop up in your regular quotes around and I don't
you know, you're regular real life. Did it feel like
without Twitter that you were still exposed to the kinds
(28:05):
of things that were happening on Twitter, or did it
change like your perception of what actually is very real
in the world. I think getting off Twitter didn't change
because I think I had registered, you know, these things
where you're like, why the funk is everyone talking about
fucking shrimp and cinnamon toast crunch or whatever? You know,
like like those things always registered. They had been registering
(28:27):
for a really long time, you know. I think you
spend that. Actually, what you just cited is interesting because
it is like the six o'clock news story towards the
end of the broadcast where they're like shrimp and what
is it? Cinnamon toast shrimp and cinnamon toast crunch, And
it's like a little item about how some guy found
a shrimp in his cinnamon toast crunch, which, like there's
stories like that all the time. You did not cite
(28:49):
some big drama that was playing out, right, Like is
it stuff like that like that actually break through to reality. Well,
I it's a little more. It's a little more personal
in this respect because I had had several sort of
shifts in my attentional priorities kind of both intentional and not.
And I had written about internet ephemera a lot. I'd
written about sucking memes, you know, like I was just
(29:11):
writing about garbage all the time because I loved having
my face and garbage all day, you know. And then,
you know, as soon as COVID started, and my face
was in nothing but garbage all day, and I didn't
have this vibrant you know, rough around the edges, just
normal life, you know, to loom much larger than the Internet.
Every time I, you know, put down my phone, I
stopped being interested in Internet ephemera. I stopped being interested
(29:33):
to see if I could write eleven hundred words about
what some bullshit thing that a bunch of teenagers were
saying could mean about whatever, you know, Like I couldn't
write that kind of piece anymore. And I had always
blocked out a lot of things. I had always taken
a lot of pleasure and just not learning about something
that it didn't seem like I needed to know about.
I think that one of the brain diseases that Twitter
gives people is the idea they need to have an
(29:54):
opinion on everything. This is a disease that's also common
among opinion writers, like of which I was, and a
kind of one, and so I always it's just like
posters disease, posters disease, Bill, It's it's adjacent to posters ease.
I think it's like op end writer's disease, right where
you're like, what does this mean about this? It's like
sometimes ship doesn't have to mean ship about ship, and
you can just you know, like read a book and whatever. Right,
(30:15):
And so it's like what Britain says about it, unless
you really mean it, you don't have to write that.
You don't have to. And but that isn't that a
product of the hot take industrial complex? Like isn't that
are we We've accelerated the need for content so people
have to constantly come up with Actually, the hot take
industrial complex has has has folded a bit. People have
realized that, like, actually, you can just sit this one out.
(30:36):
Although I get on Twitter now and I see people
being like, hey, you can just sit this one out,
and I'm like, the real sitting this one out is
just nut saying yeah, not saying that. You know that.
I know it's you're right, The hot tache world has
somewhat imploded because and I think that's good. I know
it's definitely good because like the scale of content is
and this is feeds right back into what we're talking about.
(30:57):
Is this like belief that there is this sort of
infinite adience that you can go and grab, like if
you have a million people reading, maybe you can have
five million people reading, maybe ten million. And to your
point about the capitalistic sort of underpinions of it, there's
this demand for up to the level of, hey, you're
an op ed writer and you have to write something
about this, but down to I have to say something
on Twitter, right, there's like the machine demands yeah, I
(31:19):
mean and and literally the machine does demand it. Back
to the thing that you were talking about earlier with
the vision of the self. This is against something that
I wrote about in the book, but it's like the
greatest pleasure that I've ever had in my life are
moments in which my selfhood has dissolved, right, moments where
I feel a total dissolution of the ego. Whether it's
I'm like around my friends, or I'm out dancing, or
am I an acid or you know, like walking in
(31:40):
the park with my dog, just things where you feel
the boundaries of yourself disappearing. On the Internet, all it
does is sore those up and position you at the
center of a universe at which we are most certainly
not the center. And that was something that I've been
thinking about for a long time. And since getting off Twitter,
one thing I have not been able to spend any
less time on my phone. My brain did feel clearer
(32:03):
and better because I, you know, didn't have this useless
cacophony of you know, of ship that no one would
remember the next day. You know, I didn't have that
pointed in my eyes at all time. But I sort
of was secretly like, maybe I'll start having these amazing ideas,
like maybe my brain will start being incredibly original, like
genius will pour forth because I'm finally you know, And
it's like, no, I was actually any time to be
(32:25):
bored or whatever so we can generate. And if anything,
I was dumber being off Twitter because my brain wasn't
just kind of being sharpened by these little like razor sharp,
tiny useless irritants. But but were you off Twitter and
Instagram and everything else? Like I don't know what you use?
I mean obviously, like I said, you're on Instagram, you
don't post that I use. I use Instagram. I don't
follow celebrities like I follow my friends and then I
(32:45):
follow a lot of like National Park and dog and
meme accounts, but so Instagram is a pretty positive space
for me. Well, it's interesting on Instagram is I've actually
I feel allergic now almost seeing like regular Instagram images,
like I think there's something about again, maybe like the
deep Grape Juice boys, like yes, no, I want. I'm
like everything I followed recently has been like largely meme accounts,
(33:08):
and it is just I've been like putting these in
like a WhatsApp conversation that I have with with some
friends and family, and they were like, you have posters disease,
Like what's going on? Like all you're doing is like
putting these memes in here, and I'm like, yeah, just no.
I mean I like to think that they're great, but
I mean they're not mine, you know, I'm just borrowing.
But it's interesting though, that is a place where if
you go back a few years ago, pre pandemic, for sure,
(33:31):
Instagram was like you might follow people who like looking
at their content is some form of self harm where
you're like this person seems to be having like a
life that is so good and so enjoyable and so beautiful.
And my life by comparison, feel so small and ugly.
And I assume the mainstream user is still looking at
that stuff more, but I think that is still the
(33:53):
economic engine is like hot women on vacation being like
I have anxiety and like that's that's it now, right,
But there usage is dropping like precipitously, Like I mean,
somebody was just tweeting about I sound so deranged. I'm like,
somebody was just tweeting about Instagram's users are like kind
of going, you know, leaving the service. But that is true. Um,
(34:14):
the numbers are going down, and like, I guess where
I get to and perhaps you know where we can
conclude this exploration of what the funk is going on
on the Internet and what happens next? You know, is
it that okay? Well, all that attention just went over
to TikTok, and like on TikTok, not only is it
further reinforcement of some of the craziest ship that you've
ever seen in your life, and it all happening in
(34:36):
real time like video, Like you don't even get a
chance to like process it because like you're literally watching
it before you know what you're doing. Unbelievable decontextualization machine.
It's wild. But then it's also you know, the data
is being sold to like foreign entities and whatever is
going on, you know, like, you know, is it just
that it just we keep digging a hole, Like is
TikTok the next big world destroying hole that we are
(34:58):
digging for ourselves? Or is it the that we don't
just get better at this as a society. You think,
as long as it's being driven by capitalism, there's always
going to be something that is chipping away at our
identity and our humanity and our society. Yeah, I mean
I try to think about it in terms of like
what are the incentives of the company, and then what
are the incentives of the people on them, and and
(35:18):
the extent to which Like on TikTok, I mean, the
incentive of the company is to get as many raw
hours of video that can then be analyzed by powerful AI,
you know, to increase like repressive surveillance technology, you know
on weakers, Like it's like you know, I mean, it's
it's not sci fi like that's actually happening now that
(35:40):
that is exactly what's happening. I mean, that is the
mildest version of what's happening. But the the user's incentive
is also to upload as many hours of raw video
as possible that are watched by as many people as
possible and engaged with as many as people as possible.
And I think, like take offline capitalism, we know, to
whatever extent that still exists, I think that, you know,
(36:01):
we still do find ways to preserve basic humanity in
the grip of mechanisms that are incredibly dehumanizing, right, I
mean the real estate market, right, like just anything like
the workers at Amazon like managed to unionize and build
community in the middle of a machine that is literally
built to break them into the ground. Like I think
(36:22):
that people are always capable of of surprising themselves and
resisting the incentives that are presented to them. But I
also think that the you know, if the if the
company can only make money, if people engage in this
endless capitalist accumulation of growth, then people are going to
(36:43):
do it. Then that is going to be the controlling
behavior on the platform, and the dynamics that result from
that will be the controlling ones in culture, and we
will get Q and on, and we will get people
storming the capital and we will get constant conspiracy, we
will get the total dissolution of any idea of shared truth.
I think my point of view with all of them
was like, use it as long as you still feel
(37:04):
like a human. And with me, I can still easily
use Instagram and feel like a human um, but for Twitter,
I couldn't anymore. You know, people either embrace not feeling
like humans, which plenty of people do and have, or
we back off. It's strange to feel like this ludite
(37:32):
quality coming out in me when I'm not that old
and I'm such a creature of the digital world. The
best of what people are looking for in these platforms
barely approaches the things that we actually want in real life,
right The kind of connection, the kind of love, the
kind of being seen, the kind of fun that people
(37:53):
are really really looking for. It only really exists in
real life. And I think people know that, you know,
probably if you talked to a fift year old right now,
like they both are deeper in it than either of
us ever were. And they also probably know that better
than either of us, do you know? And I wonder
if those two truths will sort of pull on each
other from opposite ends. Of the spectrum on people's minds,
(38:14):
you know, like the recognition of the harm and then
the participation in it. Sort of feels like what we're
doing with many things visa v this stage in you know,
American history. But I think what's amazing where you get to,
I mean, basically where you get to in that argument
is sort of like we have to alter the systems
(38:35):
that make the world function to change the way we
behave within the systems, like capitalism as a concept, or
at least the the version of it that currently exists,
where it is like such an insanely top down capitalism
where the people who are in the machine have so
little power to control like their actual fate inside of it.
It is like we have to like smash capitalism is
like sort of you know, like a fundamental I think
(38:58):
that's the answer to every single problem we have, Like
I'm a change and everything. I mean that that is
the answer. But but there's also a different way into
that answer. The way that I'm more think about that
is that I don't think we were at large would
have this kind of unhealthy compulsive relationship to the Internet. If,
for example, let's take the conversation around like representation. Right,
(39:21):
It's like the frenzy around representational change exists only because
the avenues towards material change are so cut off and protracted. Right,
It's like if all of these sectors of labor we're
not crumbling, and if economic stability were not in many
ways like tied, especially in case of emergency to visibility
(39:42):
on these platforms like your go fund me, if your
kids fucking shot in school. You know, Like it's like
the way that these platforms are are serving as sort
of poor substitutes for civic mechanisms and like financial layers
of security that have been hollowed out by the system.
You know. It's like I think that that if if
(40:04):
American life was better, the way that we would interact
with the Internet would be different. There's a raw and
desperate edge to this desire to establish like the attentional
equivalent of a tiny four oh one K or something right, Right,
We've dissolved the sense of like support of community, and
we're like looking for it on these vast platforms that
(40:24):
say they will deliver community and connection and support and
all those other things that if we had actual like
support and communities and like networks within our society that's
that are taking care of people, people felt valued in
their work by their politicians and by their government. You know,
like we would be both a lot less, No, I
(40:45):
mean to be a lot less to say, right, if
you had healthcare and you didn't have like this insane
student loan stuff, and you could like rent an apartment
and not go broke, like, you wouldn't have as much
to be posting about. Which but that's maybe the system
is that it Like, yeah, I think you and I
both are feeling probably pretty depressed about the current state
of the internet. It gives me a little glimmer of
(41:06):
hope because if people like us and other people are
feeling this and seeing and trying to act on it,
maybe there's the possibility that we actually can affect some
kind of change in the grander scheme here. And so
that if I can end this on a hopeful that
I think has given me enough fuel at least for
it in the next twenty four hours. Yeah, I have
(41:27):
faith in that too. I think even just like simple refusal,
like simple refusal, I've been thinking about it, you know,
I don't know, like with the abortion stuff like jury nullification,
Like I've been thinking more about like a simple quiet
refusal to participate in various things that are you know,
pitched to us as normal and ubiquitous and and necessary
(41:48):
like the you know, the reason I was able to
get off Twitter is because I accrued the professional freedom
that allowed me to not need it to get work.
Me seven years ago could not have literally afforded to
get off Twitter because I needed it to help me
get a job. But but I think there is something
to be said for like constantly evaluating what are the
freedoms that are available to me that I would like
(42:09):
to make use of that I am not making use
of in any direction. And I think there's yeah, there's
always more visa v. Social media than meaning Well, I agree,
And also I feel like, I don't know, more conversations
like this can maybe start to get I'm not saying
that I personally have any importance on anybody, but it's
like it's nice to talk to another person who is
(42:30):
aware of this thing that feels like it's just underpinning
all of the way that that the Internet functions, you know,
And like I think everyone I know, I want there
to be everyone know. I mean getting off Twitter as
part of it. But I do think it's also like
when you talked about the things where you kind of
lost yourself and you felt like those were like your
best experiences where you weren't thinking about yourself, like dancing
or walking the dog or whatever, like you're talking about
(42:53):
things that also were happening in physical reality exactly. I mean,
you didn't name a single thing that was like something
you were doing on your computer or on a phone own,
And so I do think there's again not to be
a lot, And I mean, what's so crazy as I
remember arguing with my dad when I was like twelve
about how the internet was going to change the world
and how important it was, But there is something that
is like that missing piece does seem to be what
(43:14):
is it like now to be physically around other people
and to have to engage in things that are not
like your words on a screen versus somebody else's. And
I think that's like a big part of the missing link. Well,
and I think everyone realized that there's there's so much
more space now for people to understand that post or
you know, not post pandemic, but at this point in
the pandemic where it's like there's no substitute for it.
(43:35):
Affirmation on the Internet at its most kind of thrilling
has always felt alienating to me. But love in real
life that feels real, you know, And there's nothing like unsurveilled,
un mediated presence the internet. It's best can only kind of,
you know, approach a shadow of that. And we're little
(43:57):
animals like we we are, and we need to we
need to go out into a field. Yeah and run free. Gia,
thank you so much. This is fascinating conversation. I really appreciate.
I feel like there's probably like two more hours of
stuff that we could have talked about, and so we'll
have to do this again sometime. Yeah, thank you for
having me, and I am very interested to see where
(44:17):
this goes, aren't we all? So what are you going
to do now? Well, I gotta pay for that blue
check mark number one. I gotta give him twenty bucks
a month to get keep my blue checkmark going. We
didn't even talk about this that he's like arguing with
(44:39):
Stephen King. Stephen do we talk about this? Stephen Kings? Like?
Are you joking? Like you should pay me to be
on Twitter? Like I'm not gonna give you twenty dollars
above and Elon Musk is like, Okay, how about eight dollars?
And it's like, dude, this is not how you run
a business. This is not how you come up with
the plan to save Twitter is like haggling with Stephen
king On on Twitter about the cost of a blue
(45:02):
check bark. By the way, like the idea of pain
a monthly fee to have a blue check mark on
Twitter is absurd. Anyhow, So what am I going to do.
I'm going to continue not giving a ship increasingly about
like the discourse on social media, because uh, what I
know to be true is that there are more important
things in life, and that doesn't it doesn't define reality,
(45:25):
you know. So I don't have a problem with remaining
Like I'm I still have a Facebook account. I never
quit Facebook, but I certainly don't fucking use Facebook, and
I don't think about Facebook. It's not part of my
diet every day on the internet. And so I think
increasingly like Twitter is gonna look like that, and Instagram
is gonna look like that, and then we'll find something new.
I mean, maybe it's TikTok, but maybe there's something else,
(45:46):
or maybe there's nothing. Maybe we just go back to
email and I'm fine with that. So, like the question is, like,
does Twitter fucking matter? Like, Actually, what I'll say is
it matters if we are like interacting with reality and
real people and not fighting with random people on the Internet.
That's unhealthy. But in the grand scheme of the reality
(46:08):
that we exist in, we think Twitter is important because
media people are on Twitter, and a few celebrities are
on Twitter, and a very very small group of people
like Elon Musk, thinks Twitter is important. He's a billionaire,
a very successful CEO. He loves to have people tell
him that he's got funny and cool ideas, and he's
(46:30):
on Twitter all the time, acting like that's the place
where all the stuff happens. But for most people in
the world, for most human beings in America and beyond,
Twitter is not the stuff that is happening. Twitter is
not the place where real things happen. The Internet and
technology are very very important and can do amazing things,
(46:51):
but at the end of the day, not everything should
be equally weighted, and increasingly, like stuff I see on
Twitter or stuff that you see on Twitter or Facebook
or Instagram needs to be taken as a giant grain
of salt, like that's not reality. Reality exists outside of that,
and we've got to grapple a lot more with that.
We think the value of information is how fast you
(47:14):
can get it. They're literally used to be this thing,
and people still do it. And it is someone commenting first.
Like when we used to publish blog posts on many
websites that I ran. You would write the story it,
put it up, and then somebody would comment as quickly
as possible first, meaning I was the first person to
comment on this story. Okay, Twitter does that at scale.
(47:36):
It's like I'm the first person to tell you, like
Michael Jackson is dead, how did he die? Where did
he die? When did I did he really die? You
don't know any of that fucking information? What is my account?
You don't know I have a blue check mark. Maybe
maybe not if you look at my bio to the
say I'm a reporter for the New York Times. Maybe
maybe I'm just a fucking guy. Maybe I'm an orderly
at the hospital. But like the point is you could
(47:59):
see it first. Michael Jackson is dead. What you know
about Michael Jackson's death is non existent. But like that
is like the core of misinformation. It is like I
can say some bullshit on Twitter or anywhere else, and
it can be spread around really quickly, so quickly and
so much that people think is real. It collapses the
context into a fucking bite size, little SoundBite. And now
(48:21):
that's the fucking thing that is broadcast out into the ether.
And like that is why it's such a destructive and
shitty and useless part of the Internet. It is, and
it is really truly like it is. So it's such
a refined and clear thing now to me that like
this method of communicating information to people is fundamentally broken
and bad. It is so fucking obvious, it is so clear.
(48:44):
And the fact that we would sit here and anybody
would sit here and defend it and want to be
part of it and really care about it is deranged.
Open it up. Let's see what people are talking about.
What's happening. Plastic recycling is a myth. Study says, that's
the first thing I see. Fans are freaking out over
Donald Phazon and his daughter's clueless costumes. Here's the fucking
(49:05):
article about Gretta Thunberg. Grettath Thunberg used to see her
goals to protect the plan from climate change, but now
she admits it's to overthrow the whole capitalist system, which
she says responsible for imperialism, oppression, genocide, racist, oppressive extraction.
Is um here, I am about to click on the
fucking article about how Gretta Thunberg actually wants to overthrow capitalism.
Actually a message to Elon Musk is trending, as is
(49:27):
Daniel Radcliffe. Daniel Radcliffe says speaking out against J. K.
Rowling was important. Not everybody in the franchise shares her
belief like that sounds like a great thing you're about
as I'm watching Entertainments the night to borrow like Daniel, Well,
(49:47):
that is our show for this week. We'll be back
next week on Thursday with even more what Future And
as always, I wish you and your family the very
very best.
Yeah, there's an amazing trending topic right now on Twitter
hashtag Trump is dead. And I thought, for just a
second while we were talking, is it possible? Could it
couldn't have happened that Trump died, And it appears to
be Tim Heidecker. He tweeted basically like misinformation about Trump,
(00:37):
and I think as like a kind of fun test
of Elon Musk's new freedom of speech doctorate or whatever
it is that's going on on Twitter. Needless to say,
I'm I'm both loving it and hating it. On the
one hand, I was like, Wow, that'd be so cool
if Trump died, because he sucks ass. I mean not
that I wish death on anybody, but if someone were
to die who was bad, I would obviously be not happy,
(01:01):
but not upset, I guess, is what I'm saying. Um,
obviously have to respect the dead and Trump, you know,
you have to be a dead Trump to me, would
get a lot of my respect, Like I'd say, hats
off to you, sir for no longer beat alive anyhow.
But but on the one hand, I'm like, Wow, what
interesting news that I'm not in any way excited about,
(01:23):
but funny, funny, situation with Trump dying and then on
the other hand, very upset because not upset, I guess,
but surprised to learn that perhaps Trump isn't dead and
just it's just a whole uh you know, pot pourri.
I would say, of of emotions, a real, real mixed
emotion situation. But anyhow, let's back up, because we're talking
(01:46):
about the now, and I want to talk about the
reason now, the back then, now then now from a
week ago. So for many months, Elon Musk, the CEO
of Tesla Motors, and the CEO of SpaceX, I guess,
I want to say, and the CEO of Starlink also,
(02:07):
I think. Anyhow, Uh, he's been threatening to buy Twitter.
It started a joke on Twitter. Of course, He's like,
I should buy Twitter, and all the Elon Musk fanboys
were like, yeah, Mr Musk, do it, you know, like
bring freedom of speech back to Twitter or whatever because
they think their freedom of speech doesn't exist or something
on Twitter because they can't say the N word. I'm
(02:28):
gonna and this is all gonna make sense in a second,
but that is the reason why they think there's no
freedom of speech on Twitter, is because they want to
say the N word, but then they say it and
then they get banned or whatever shadow banned or whatever
fantasy they think is going on their little intell brains.
But anyhow, they're like, Mr Musk, please buy Twitter. We
would love that. And then you know, Elon sort of
acted like he was going to and then was like, no,
(02:48):
he's not gonna do it, and then eventually made some
formal offer for Twitter. Then Twitter accepted his offer. Then
all these banks were like, hey, we're gonna give you
money for Twitter because you're Elon Muskus is a very
successful business man. You know what to do with the
social network if you got one. And then in the
midst of buying Twitter, Elon must was like, I'm not
(03:09):
buying Twitter anymore. I just want to make sure that
everybody has the lay of the land. Okay. Then at
some point he's like, I'm not buying Twitter anymore. It's
full of bots. Twitter sucks, It's terrible. Why would I
spend forty four billion dollars on that, which is what
he was going to pay for it. Then the Twitter
people were like, actually, you can't do that. You said
you were gonna buy Twitter, and now we have to
(03:30):
go to court. We're gonna take you to court in
Delaware Chancery Court, which is a court that nobody had
ever heard of until a couple of months ago, when
Elon Buss was like, I don't want to buy Twitter anymore.
They're like, we're gonna take you to Delaware chancer Recort
and you're gonna have to buy Twitter. And then, after
a couple of weeks or a month of getting ready
for the big trial for you know, Elon Must back
(03:52):
and now to buying Twitter. He's like, oh, okay, I
guess I'll buy Twitter because it turns out I'm gonna
lose this case. And if I lose it, either gonna
have to buy Twitter by force because I signed a
contract and that's what happens, or I'm gonna, like have
to lay out a bunch of money, like billions and
billions of dollars for nothing. So what seemed implausible, impossible, ridiculous,
(04:15):
absurd only a few months ago that the guy who
runs Tesla, who is like an edge lord on Twitter
was going to own Twitter, Elon must successfully completed his
purchase of Twitter dot com, also known as the Internet's
comments section. So now that I've given you all that background, Lyra,
(04:36):
I'm sure you're feeling like you understand the situation now
better than ever. Yeah, So Elon Mosque owns Twitter. He's
owned it for I don't know, a week, less than
a week maybe at this point. I mean when you
hear this podcast, he'll have owned it for like a
week or something. Let's call it that. He started by
(04:57):
bringing a sink into the Twitter lobby and then doing
a tweet that was like I met Twitter. Let that
sink in, which you know, in this grand scheme of jokes,
is like one of the worst ones, but you know,
a fair game, like you're trying, you know, he had
David Fielder write that one for him or whatever, as
alleged by a New York Times report that he has
(05:17):
like he wants Nathan Fielder to be his friend or something.
But if Nathan Fielder gave him that, that sounds like
Nathan Fielder prints. That's correct. That Nathan Fielder is doing
the ultimate troll where he's like, yeah, Elon, like I
like you, like you're cool, Like let me help you out,
like I'd love to write some jokes for you, and
then he writes like really bad dumb jokes that all
people who are legitimately funny, who aren't like an in
(05:38):
cell because I don't think in cells can be funny personally.
They're like, that's not funny, and Elon Musk is like,
this is cool. Nathan Fielder gave it to be. Nathan
Fielder was like, I mean, he wouldn't do muahaha or whatever,
but you know, in his mind, I would assume something
like that. Anyhow. So he arrives at Twitter, he takes
over Twitter, He fires the CEO, se fo, the head
(06:01):
of like trust and security, who I guess like all
the Elon Musk fanboys hate because she's a woman, and
like ban Donald Trump. And then uh, immediately, immediately, all
of these data tracking services, all these Twitter tracking services,
like we've seen a fifteen thousand percent rise rise in
(06:23):
the N word being tweeted on Twitter, and we've seen
like a three thousand percent rise and I've remect and
being mentioned on Twitter. And it's like, immediately these people
think that Elon Musk has like pulled the whatever the
rip chord of censorship that's been happening on Twitter, and
they can talk about all these dumb things and say
all these like rude things, and you know, talking about
how they hate the Jews and hate black people, and
(06:43):
so that starts like just spiraling out of control on Twitter.
So then, in addition to you know, the rampant N
word use and other horrible things um that spiked, Elon
Musk then retweets some bullshit story about Paul Pelo's see
some like completely unfounded, zero fact possessing story about you
(07:07):
know this Nancy Pelosi essentially kidnapping, an assassination attempt, her
husband was beaten with a hammer, And he tweets some
story about I believe it's like him having to prostitute
there or something, some ridiculous fantasy land Q and on
right wing conspiracy that's totally baseless in every way, shape
and form, not bounded by any sort of fact whatsoever.
(07:28):
And of course, you know rightfully, so there's an enormous
amount of backlash. But by the time the backlash is
happening and Elon Musk he did delete the tweet, hundreds
of millions of people have now seen this like total
like misinformation, bullshit. And meanwhile Elon Musk has tweeted some
message to advertisers which is like he's not he doesn't
want to let this become a hell escape, which obviously
(07:50):
isn't true because it's immediately a hell escape. I mean, listen,
if you're listening to this, you probably already know this
because you're very online. And how much more can I
say about this? But in the few days that Elon
Musk is own Twitter, it's very obvious that one he
doesn't know what to do with it, and that two
whatever he does with it is probably gonna be dumb
and bad. Uh. And three he'll be blamed for all
(08:12):
of it by his critics and loved for it by
his fans, which is great. So this sort of culminates
with some story that he's gonna start charging people from
blue check marks. So the idea that, like, what will
it be like when Elon Musk owns Twitter is like
quickly coming into focus. Right, people who are bad and
stupid and shitty feel emboldened. Elon Musk as a leader
(08:36):
is sort of bad and stupid and shitty in a
bunch of different ways about information. That's not to say
he's not a smart person, Like you can be really
smart about certain things but be dumb about others, Like
I certainly am that about all sorts of stuff. So
you know, it's it's sort of like watching the end
of Twitter to me in real time. And I've like
talked about it and I've written about the end of
(08:57):
Twitter and over the years, because I think it's always
been a social network that's kind of the most on
life support of all of the social networks in the
sense that it never really found its stride. Its best
moments are kind of the worst moments, right Like for Twitter,
the biggest it's ever been is when Donald Trump was
tweeting like a maniac on Twitter. I said before, it's
(09:19):
like the comments section for all of the content everywhere
on the Internet, and that is really what it feels like,
you know, if anything, as I look at what is
happening with Twitter in this post pandemic world, in this
like very online world where everybody feels, I think increasingly
this desire for distance from the discourse, like distance from
(09:41):
the always online state that we have lived in. I
see a kind of logical conclusion in the Twitter purchase
in Elon Musk owning it, which is that everything he's
done thus far in the short period of time, and
I mean everything, has been a signal that the people
who really like to use it are going to leave
(10:03):
or are going to not enjoy it and want to leave.
And in fact, there was a report a week or
two ago that Vice had that the super users of Twitter,
which is that of the users who create the content
that most people are interacting with on Twitter, are already
there's already attrition. They're they're already leaving. And to me,
what I've seen with Ellen owning it is that attrition
(10:27):
is only going to be accelerated, and it's not that
they're going somewhere else. I think there's an entire generation
of people who have used this thing that just don't
want to be anywhere at all right now. That they
don't want to be online. They don't want to be
in constant arguments with random people on the internet. They
don't see a utility in trying to make their point
(10:48):
in a sort of black hole of opinion where ideas
go to die, which is sort of what Twitter is.
I'm one of these people. I used to tweet all
the time. I was tweeting constantly until a few years ago,
and then sort of slowly ebbed away and more and
more like I'll sit down, I'll open Twitter, I'll look
at it. I'll even maybe write a tweet about something
(11:10):
or reached about to I'm about to retweet something or
comment on something that somebody said, and then I just
think it's the fucking point, you know, what's the point?
Like I'm yelling into the void. They're yelling into the void,
and nothing good is going to come of it. And
so in the midst of all of this, you still
have got this kind of specter of Twitter being that
people talking about like the town square and the place where,
(11:33):
you know, this is the global consciousness and where we
all are talking and experiencing life on planet Earth, and
how we're gonna you know, go to the become glowing
orbs of pure thought or whatever if we just have
enough discourse on Twitter. And and you know, I think
in a way this whole thing exposes kind of the
smallness of it, right, the kind of they the fragility
(11:55):
of all of it. And is it actually the town square?
You know? And if it's the town's where for whatever
reality we live in it, is it the place where
we're watching public hangings or is it the place where
we see the greatest philosophers of our time engage in discourse?
And I think it's probably the former more than it
is the latter, and everybody's kind of like, yeah, I
don't want to watch the hanging. Like sure, some people
(12:17):
will still show up for the gore, but a lot
of people just don't want that to be a part
of their lives. And so, you know, as I'm sort
of contemplating the end of this era, which is a
post V two social media, like i'd say like Facebook
and Twitter are kind of V two if my Space
and friends to r V one of social media, Instagram, Facebook,
(12:40):
Twitter are sort of V two, and they sort of
like post V two world that we're gonna live in,
and thinking about all of this stuff and thinking about
the ramifications of not just Twitter, but this era of
social media kind of coming to a close. You know.
I thought about people that I know and that I've
observed who have actually maybe lived this and really thought
about out at and I started thinking about Gia Tolentino. Lyrah,
(13:03):
do you know Gia Tolentino. I do. She was big
on Twitter, and she was somebody who was like a
central character on Twitter, very online. I think Gia represents
a very online generation which I think I'm part of
for sure, And I think there's a whole generation of
people who were raised by the Internet. I talked about
these people all the time. To me, they're a real
demographic that's very different than most people. But then there's
(13:25):
a whole segment of that audience that is like, I
don't want to be on the Internet anymore. And I
think Gia, who wrote this amazing book Trick Mirror and
also again previously super Online, maybe like the vanguard or
at least, has been thinking a lot about what it's
like if you're not so online anymore, and what that
(13:46):
means for you as a human being on planet Earth.
So g is here. G is here, and we're going
to talk to her now about the Internet. Before we
(14:13):
get started, I just want to say that you have
done something on the Internet that has sort of like
broke my brain a little bit. About your name on Instagram.
Your name is Gia Tortellini. This is correct. That's like
your screen name, Okay, And so when I see your
name now, like wherever I see it, my brain is like,
your actual name is wrong and it should be Tortalini,
(14:33):
which makes no sense. So can yeah, yeah, it's it's
like it's op seck, it's you know, it's just a
better name. It's harder to find. It's also slightly unprofessional,
Like I really believe in that, and that's kind of
my stance on all of it. You basically quit Twitter
for two years. Can you talk about what spurred that
(14:56):
and you know the experience of what it's been like. Yeah,
I mean I had gotten on Twitter late because I
was in the Peace Corps until eleven and I didn't
get on Twitter until late, I think, when I started
grad school and I was starting to write for the Internet,
(15:17):
and I was outside New York. I didn't know anyone
in New York, and I had been without internet for
a year in the Peace Corps, and so it seemed
incredibly generative and interesting, and you know, I could see
all these things that I couldn't see from ann Arbor, Michigan,
and I could listen in on these conversations and whatever.
I wouldn't have a career if not for it. It
was my only connection to the media world. It was like,
(15:39):
I was quote unquote good on Twitter and good with
these mechanisms of self commodification and self broadcasting that have
become the center of the Internet. So I kind of
wrote that and I was having fun. And I remember
I was in the All Websites campfire. Everyone was making
jokes about how they wanted the Internet to burn down
all the time, and I was like, what are these
jaded people talking about. You know, it's like, the Internet
is so fun, get on my goog reader every day
(16:01):
and discover something new, you know. But then, you know,
that was like my first two years on Twitter was
feeling like that. I moved to New York to take
a job editing features for Jezebel and then got engulfed in,
you know, in a different kind of scale, right, a
website where you could run something and you know, this
was very new to me, where you could get a
(16:21):
hundred thousand people read reading it and yelling at you
very very quickly, and I found it exciting. I was
found it a little dangerous, you know. You remember Gaker
was constantly getting in trouble and we were always sucking up.
But it we had this total freedom, and it was
like the first time that I had really experienced how
intensely adversarial Twitter could be. And mostly I was like, well,
it's kind of a gauntlet. You figure out if you
(16:42):
can navigate it. If you can't, you can't. And then
I started working with The New Yorker in and around
the time that Trump got elected, I was like, Okay,
this whole Arab spring like promise of the global town
square where everything trends towards liberal democracy and increasing freedom,
the whole Obama era democratization of media that I had
been a part of, you know, all these people that
(17:03):
never would have had any entry into the field, like me,
you know, who were able to because of Twitter. The
full on identitarian backlash against the Obama era opening up
of culture that was made possible via the Internet was
hitting right around that. The first essay in my book
is about this. I was writing it to try to
go about answering one specific question, and that question was
(17:24):
why did the Internet feel so good ten years ago?
And why does it feel so so bad right now?
And you know, implicitly like, what are the ways in
which it will continue to get worse? Right anyway? So
I finished my book in early and like every year,
I would intervene in my seasonal depression during Super Bowl
weekend by taking myself to the beach, like in North
Beach and just getting high in reading books, like completely
(17:46):
by myself, not speaking to anyone for like three days.
And I did that, and I I just turned my
book in and the first book that I opened on
the beach while extremely stoned was Jenny O'Dell's How to
Do Nothing, Um, you know, which is an incredible book,
and it is you know, making the argument, you know,
basically against capitalist instrumentalization, this idea that everything we need
to do needs to be productive visible that in fact,
(18:09):
the actually important things in life are not quantifiable, they're
not efficient, they're caregiving and maintenance and all these things
that these platforms don't recognize even as as any part
of life at all, like these thoughts that cannot be
put onto Twitter basically. And I was like, okay, I
have to really change my relationship with the Internet. So
(18:29):
right then, I put blockers on my computer and on
my phone that I couldn't use social media for more
than forty five minutes a day. And and so I
would it would like it would actually block you because
like there's yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I do the nuclear
and well and it's it's called self control on Google Chrome,
and I use freedom on my you know, the super
Orwellian like I gotta turn on my self control and
(18:51):
my freedom. You know that on its own is such
a this topic sort of weird, but I needed it,
Like I can't stop looking at my stuff on social media,
so I have an app called Freedom or whatever which
allows me to be a person, not this thing on
the internet. Yeah, and then whence Freedom would stop working
because it's a glitchy app, I would be like, oh
my god, my freedom, Like what happened to my freedom?
(19:12):
And so starting I had already been really significantly trying
to curb my usage, and then in my book came out,
I had a best case scenario experience, but I found
it just horrifically um self alienating. I was always like,
it's okay as long as I can be completely myself.
It's okay, as long as as long as I'm not
(19:34):
manufacturing a different self for the internet. But then the
proportions that resulted from having a book that was that
was much more successful than I ever, ever, ever, ever,
ever had an inkling that it possibly even could be.
You know, it's like a book of nine word essays
like right correctly wrong. But oh mom had releases something
every year where he's like, these are the books that
I loved or whatever, and your your book is on it, right, Yeah,
(19:56):
and you know you will. You don't expect that you
don't And and it was just suddenly it was not
possible to be the fundamental way that I had always
believed in being in the world, which is just totally reciprocal,
totally open to anything. Like strangers would send me long
emails and I'd emailed them back, and I was just like,
this is no longer proportionately possible. And it made me upset,
(20:17):
making me feel like there was some reason to put
some sort of guard up, made me feel really bad
and weird and not at all like myself. And so
I started tweeting way less. And then the pandemic happened
six months later, and the feeling that I had had
since my book came out that I needed to get
off the Internet, that I was too visible, both in
terms of praise or negativity. You know, it proved itself
(20:42):
to be true. I had a big wave of sort
of being the Twitter main character in in mail down
May of the pandemic, there was this poem that went
(21:03):
viral about me that some old dude had written. Yeah,
and like in some literary magazine published it with the
title Geo Tolentino and now it's on no your meme
dot com. Like it was just like I need to
and I was still on it for work to some extent.
But then in August I was about to have a baby,
(21:23):
and I was like, you know, it's now or never,
because I'm going to be up all night, in the
middle of the night for for months, and I'm going
to be scrolling. I'm going to be reading something and
I don't want it to be Twitter. And so I
figured I shouldn't make a clean break now and see
how long I can stay off. And I'm still off.
I mean, there's so much there that you've touched on
that was such a long answer. I'm sorry, No, No,
(21:44):
it was good. It was good because you actually went
through like a million of the things that have been
on my mind and are sort of weighing on me
as I think about this idea of ourselves in places
like Twitter and how we view ourselves and what that
means like for how we live. I think we've built
an unsustainable system. Right. There's all this very altruistic language
around every social network about how it's this like lofty
(22:05):
thing that we're all hurtling towards Jack Dorsey's like it's
the you know, global consciousness, and people called Twitter a
town square and Mark Zuckerberg talks about how his pursuitent
life is to connect the world. But it seems increasingly
that the scale of those connections is like breaking people's minds.
It's like kind of ruining like humanity in a way.
And so you've kind of backed away from it, And
(22:27):
I wonder, like does something come out after this, Like
what is the next stage of this, Like does it
just metastic size? Does it get worse? Or like is
there an off ramp? Have you found the off ramp?
Like what what is your view on that? I think
that there is no off ramp within the economic concentatives
of the companies themselves, right, I mean, they literally cannot
be profitable unless more people spend more time on there,
(22:49):
and there's no way for that to be possible without
all of those things happening that break our brains, right,
you know, Like I always think about the way Patricia
lockwould put it in that great novel of hers that
just came out about the Internet. The attention moves on
the Internet like the shine on a school of fish.
What we're talking about is just the baseline logic of
capitalist accumulation, right where the teleological vision is perpetual growth,
(23:10):
perpetual increase, perpetual volume, perpetual scale. I don't want to
downplay you know, let's say me too our Black lives matter,
but I really think that the movements that have had
real teeth in the real world that have come up
off of Twitter and Facebook, like, they have all been
reactionary and they have far outweighed the positive consequences of
(23:31):
you know, the progressive gains that have been you know,
one on these platforms. The kinds of actual connection that
have been made are incredibly destructive. And you know, I
would think about during the protests in I got all
of my information about where to go off of Twitter
and off of Instagram, you know, but the action was
happening offline, and the effect overall is that of profound
(23:53):
isolation and loneliness and alienation. And you know, there's no
way that I can see any of these company is
doing anything but promising one and delivering the other. Right. Well,
I mean most of my friends have stopped tweeting, you know,
I'll say that, you know, there is a sort of
generational thing happening. I mean, I've had similar experience. I
haven't like full on left, Twitter or any of these
(24:13):
social networks, but like the amount of posting that I
do comparatively is way way down, Like I can barely
find anything to talk about. And I think there is
something that has happened driven by the pandemic a little bit,
the fact that we've had just so much Internet that
it almost feels like overwhelming. But but also it does
seem like there's sort of our maturing relationship with the Internet.
(24:33):
It's like, why does this need to be said in public? Yeah,
I mean right in your book, you quote Jason Cocky,
who's like one of the original bloggers on the Internet.
He says something like he didn't make any sense to
write my personal thoughts down, not on the Internet. Actual
reminded me of truth or Dare the Madonna documentary when
Warren Batty's talking to Madonna about how like they're filming
(24:53):
and he hates it because he's old and she's like
way younger than him, and she's making this documentary which
is really good for her, and they're filming everything thing
and he's like, there's nothing to say off camera. Would
you say something if it's off camera, which is exactly
what he was expressing. So there's obviously like these generational
sort of ebbs and flows of this, like the one
thing that I keep hoping for. And I think we
see a little bit with like the attrition of things
(25:14):
like on Facebook, where it's becoming more and more old
people and like boomers and fewer and fewer young people
want to be a part of it. Is it a
generational change that happens where people reject this? Yeah, I
think every generation has their social network, and the boomers
have Facebook, and you know, millennials have Instagram and and
gen z has TikTok or whatever else, right, Like I
(25:35):
think that that's Is that better? No? I think I
don't think it's better. I mean, I don't think it's
better until you know, I would be great if the
next iteration would be one in which proportions were gated.
You know, people are desiring some sort of online interaction
that will reflect rather than distort real life. And I
felt a little bit that way. I was a kid
(25:56):
that liked to be on stage and love to talk
to everybody, and I felt that I felt like, why
would I not like have my thoughts open to the
world and see who was interested. It's also part of
the personality of being a writer, you know. I mean
that's literally still my job. But I do feel like
there's been a big sort of mountain where there were
a lot of people who were like, why wouldn't we
do this, Why wouldn't we see what happens, what could
(26:17):
result if a bunch of people are looking, and who
we could become, and what and what we could make
of this? And then we saw it and we were like, no.
We took the algorithmic and economic incentive that had become
like an emotional one, this idea of what is the
maximum number of people that I could get to see
and applaud this right, it's a basic human desire in
(26:38):
a lot of ways that was just stretched beyond all
reason by the profit model these companies. And we saw
what it means, and it means every day on Twitter
there's a main character you know, like it It means
doc saying, it means getting swat teams sent to your door.
It means things that people actually don't want. I don't
think that you could make a social media company that
is as profitable as these companies would like to be
(27:00):
on any humane structure, Like there's no scale, it's humane
that fits with like the capitalistic model. Yeah, I don't
think that the fantasy of endless growth will ever will
ever map onto like any sort of healthy social network,
you know, I don't think it's really possible in any
industry with any model at all, but certainly not with
social media. On top of this conversation about how the
(27:22):
Internet is sort of breaking what we know of humanity,
how much of it is real? Right, because we talked
a little bit the beginning about Twitter and the scale
of its audience, and and you and I are people
in media, and we're surrounded by other people in media,
and in some ways those people do chart the conversation
for a much larger audience that isn't in places like Twitter,
(27:43):
and maybe isn't on Facebook. But is that real? You've
been off Twitter, you've been basically not using it for
several years. Did you feel in that time that, like
the things that were happening on the Internet, did they
crop up in your regular quotes around and I don't
you know, you're regular real life. Did it feel like
without Twitter that you were still exposed to the kinds
(28:05):
of things that were happening on Twitter, or did it
change like your perception of what actually is very real
in the world. I think getting off Twitter didn't change
because I think I had registered, you know, these things
where you're like, why the funk is everyone talking about
fucking shrimp and cinnamon toast crunch or whatever? You know,
like like those things always registered. They had been registering
(28:27):
for a really long time, you know. I think you
spend that. Actually, what you just cited is interesting because
it is like the six o'clock news story towards the
end of the broadcast where they're like shrimp and what
is it? Cinnamon toast shrimp and cinnamon toast crunch, And
it's like a little item about how some guy found
a shrimp in his cinnamon toast crunch, which, like there's
stories like that all the time. You did not cite
(28:49):
some big drama that was playing out, right, Like is
it stuff like that like that actually break through to reality. Well,
I it's a little more. It's a little more personal
in this respect because I had had several sort of
shifts in my attentional priorities kind of both intentional and not.
And I had written about internet ephemera a lot. I'd
written about sucking memes, you know, like I was just
(29:11):
writing about garbage all the time because I loved having
my face and garbage all day, you know. And then,
you know, as soon as COVID started, and my face
was in nothing but garbage all day, and I didn't
have this vibrant you know, rough around the edges, just
normal life, you know, to loom much larger than the Internet.
Every time I, you know, put down my phone, I
stopped being interested in Internet ephemera. I stopped being interested
(29:33):
to see if I could write eleven hundred words about
what some bullshit thing that a bunch of teenagers were
saying could mean about whatever, you know, Like I couldn't
write that kind of piece anymore. And I had always
blocked out a lot of things. I had always taken
a lot of pleasure and just not learning about something
that it didn't seem like I needed to know about.
I think that one of the brain diseases that Twitter
gives people is the idea they need to have an
(29:54):
opinion on everything. This is a disease that's also common
among opinion writers, like of which I was, and a
kind of one, and so I always it's just like
posters disease, posters disease, Bill, It's it's adjacent to posters ease.
I think it's like op end writer's disease, right where
you're like, what does this mean about this? It's like
sometimes ship doesn't have to mean ship about ship, and
you can just you know, like read a book and whatever. Right,
(30:15):
And so it's like what Britain says about it, unless
you really mean it, you don't have to write that.
You don't have to. And but that isn't that a
product of the hot take industrial complex? Like isn't that
are we We've accelerated the need for content so people
have to constantly come up with Actually, the hot take
industrial complex has has has folded a bit. People have
realized that, like, actually, you can just sit this one out.
(30:36):
Although I get on Twitter now and I see people
being like, hey, you can just sit this one out,
and I'm like, the real sitting this one out is
just nut saying yeah, not saying that. You know that.
I know it's you're right, The hot tache world has
somewhat imploded because and I think that's good. I know
it's definitely good because like the scale of content is
and this is feeds right back into what we're talking about.
(30:57):
Is this like belief that there is this sort of
infinite adience that you can go and grab, like if
you have a million people reading, maybe you can have
five million people reading, maybe ten million. And to your
point about the capitalistic sort of underpinions of it, there's
this demand for up to the level of, hey, you're
an op ed writer and you have to write something
about this, but down to I have to say something
on Twitter, right, there's like the machine demands yeah, I
(31:19):
mean and and literally the machine does demand it. Back
to the thing that you were talking about earlier with
the vision of the self. This is against something that
I wrote about in the book, but it's like the
greatest pleasure that I've ever had in my life are
moments in which my selfhood has dissolved, right, moments where
I feel a total dissolution of the ego. Whether it's
I'm like around my friends, or I'm out dancing, or
am I an acid or you know, like walking in
(31:40):
the park with my dog, just things where you feel
the boundaries of yourself disappearing. On the Internet, all it
does is sore those up and position you at the
center of a universe at which we are most certainly
not the center. And that was something that I've been
thinking about for a long time. And since getting off Twitter,
one thing I have not been able to spend any
less time on my phone. My brain did feel clearer
(32:03):
and better because I, you know, didn't have this useless
cacophony of you know, of ship that no one would
remember the next day. You know, I didn't have that
pointed in my eyes at all time. But I sort
of was secretly like, maybe I'll start having these amazing ideas,
like maybe my brain will start being incredibly original, like
genius will pour forth because I'm finally you know, And
it's like, no, I was actually any time to be
(32:25):
bored or whatever so we can generate. And if anything,
I was dumber being off Twitter because my brain wasn't
just kind of being sharpened by these little like razor sharp,
tiny useless irritants. But but were you off Twitter and
Instagram and everything else? Like I don't know what you use?
I mean obviously, like I said, you're on Instagram, you
don't post that I use. I use Instagram. I don't
follow celebrities like I follow my friends and then I
(32:45):
follow a lot of like National Park and dog and
meme accounts, but so Instagram is a pretty positive space
for me. Well, it's interesting on Instagram is I've actually
I feel allergic now almost seeing like regular Instagram images,
like I think there's something about again, maybe like the
deep Grape Juice boys, like yes, no, I want. I'm
like everything I followed recently has been like largely meme accounts,
(33:08):
and it is just I've been like putting these in
like a WhatsApp conversation that I have with with some
friends and family, and they were like, you have posters disease,
Like what's going on? Like all you're doing is like
putting these memes in here, and I'm like, yeah, just no.
I mean I like to think that they're great, but
I mean they're not mine, you know, I'm just borrowing.
But it's interesting though, that is a place where if
you go back a few years ago, pre pandemic, for sure,
(33:31):
Instagram was like you might follow people who like looking
at their content is some form of self harm where
you're like this person seems to be having like a
life that is so good and so enjoyable and so beautiful.
And my life by comparison, feel so small and ugly.
And I assume the mainstream user is still looking at
that stuff more, but I think that is still the
(33:53):
economic engine is like hot women on vacation being like
I have anxiety and like that's that's it now, right,
But there usage is dropping like precipitously, Like I mean,
somebody was just tweeting about I sound so deranged. I'm like,
somebody was just tweeting about Instagram's users are like kind
of going, you know, leaving the service. But that is true. Um,
(34:14):
the numbers are going down, and like, I guess where
I get to and perhaps you know where we can
conclude this exploration of what the funk is going on
on the Internet and what happens next? You know, is
it that okay? Well, all that attention just went over
to TikTok, and like on TikTok, not only is it
further reinforcement of some of the craziest ship that you've
ever seen in your life, and it all happening in
(34:36):
real time like video, Like you don't even get a
chance to like process it because like you're literally watching
it before you know what you're doing. Unbelievable decontextualization machine.
It's wild. But then it's also you know, the data
is being sold to like foreign entities and whatever is
going on, you know, like, you know, is it just
that it just we keep digging a hole, Like is
TikTok the next big world destroying hole that we are
(34:58):
digging for ourselves? Or is it the that we don't
just get better at this as a society. You think,
as long as it's being driven by capitalism, there's always
going to be something that is chipping away at our
identity and our humanity and our society. Yeah, I mean
I try to think about it in terms of like
what are the incentives of the company, and then what
are the incentives of the people on them, and and
(35:18):
the extent to which Like on TikTok, I mean, the
incentive of the company is to get as many raw
hours of video that can then be analyzed by powerful AI,
you know, to increase like repressive surveillance technology, you know
on weakers, Like it's like you know, I mean, it's
it's not sci fi like that's actually happening now that
(35:40):
that is exactly what's happening. I mean, that is the
mildest version of what's happening. But the the user's incentive
is also to upload as many hours of raw video
as possible that are watched by as many people as
possible and engaged with as many as people as possible.
And I think, like take offline capitalism, we know, to
whatever extent that still exists, I think that, you know,
(36:01):
we still do find ways to preserve basic humanity in
the grip of mechanisms that are incredibly dehumanizing, right, I
mean the real estate market, right, like just anything like
the workers at Amazon like managed to unionize and build
community in the middle of a machine that is literally
built to break them into the ground. Like I think
(36:22):
that people are always capable of of surprising themselves and
resisting the incentives that are presented to them. But I
also think that the you know, if the if the
company can only make money, if people engage in this
endless capitalist accumulation of growth, then people are going to
(36:43):
do it. Then that is going to be the controlling
behavior on the platform, and the dynamics that result from
that will be the controlling ones in culture, and we
will get Q and on, and we will get people
storming the capital and we will get constant conspiracy, we
will get the total dissolution of any idea of shared truth.
I think my point of view with all of them
was like, use it as long as you still feel
(37:04):
like a human. And with me, I can still easily
use Instagram and feel like a human um, but for Twitter,
I couldn't anymore. You know, people either embrace not feeling
like humans, which plenty of people do and have, or
we back off. It's strange to feel like this ludite
(37:32):
quality coming out in me when I'm not that old
and I'm such a creature of the digital world. The
best of what people are looking for in these platforms
barely approaches the things that we actually want in real life,
right The kind of connection, the kind of love, the
kind of being seen, the kind of fun that people
(37:53):
are really really looking for. It only really exists in
real life. And I think people know that, you know,
probably if you talked to a fift year old right now,
like they both are deeper in it than either of
us ever were. And they also probably know that better
than either of us, do you know? And I wonder
if those two truths will sort of pull on each
other from opposite ends. Of the spectrum on people's minds,
(38:14):
you know, like the recognition of the harm and then
the participation in it. Sort of feels like what we're
doing with many things visa v this stage in you know,
American history. But I think what's amazing where you get to,
I mean, basically where you get to in that argument
is sort of like we have to alter the systems
(38:35):
that make the world function to change the way we
behave within the systems, like capitalism as a concept, or
at least the the version of it that currently exists,
where it is like such an insanely top down capitalism
where the people who are in the machine have so
little power to control like their actual fate inside of it.
It is like we have to like smash capitalism is
like sort of you know, like a fundamental I think
(38:58):
that's the answer to every single problem we have, Like
I'm a change and everything. I mean that that is
the answer. But but there's also a different way into
that answer. The way that I'm more think about that
is that I don't think we were at large would
have this kind of unhealthy compulsive relationship to the Internet. If,
for example, let's take the conversation around like representation. Right,
(39:21):
It's like the frenzy around representational change exists only because
the avenues towards material change are so cut off and protracted. Right,
It's like if all of these sectors of labor we're
not crumbling, and if economic stability were not in many
ways like tied, especially in case of emergency to visibility
(39:42):
on these platforms like your go fund me, if your
kids fucking shot in school. You know, Like it's like
the way that these platforms are are serving as sort
of poor substitutes for civic mechanisms and like financial layers
of security that have been hollowed out by the system.
You know. It's like I think that that if if
(40:04):
American life was better, the way that we would interact
with the Internet would be different. There's a raw and
desperate edge to this desire to establish like the attentional
equivalent of a tiny four oh one K or something right, Right,
We've dissolved the sense of like support of community, and
we're like looking for it on these vast platforms that
(40:24):
say they will deliver community and connection and support and
all those other things that if we had actual like
support and communities and like networks within our society that's
that are taking care of people, people felt valued in
their work by their politicians and by their government. You know,
like we would be both a lot less, No, I
(40:45):
mean to be a lot less to say, right, if
you had healthcare and you didn't have like this insane
student loan stuff, and you could like rent an apartment
and not go broke, like, you wouldn't have as much
to be posting about. Which but that's maybe the system
is that it Like, yeah, I think you and I
both are feeling probably pretty depressed about the current state
of the internet. It gives me a little glimmer of
(41:06):
hope because if people like us and other people are
feeling this and seeing and trying to act on it,
maybe there's the possibility that we actually can affect some
kind of change in the grander scheme here. And so
that if I can end this on a hopeful that
I think has given me enough fuel at least for
it in the next twenty four hours. Yeah, I have
(41:27):
faith in that too. I think even just like simple refusal,
like simple refusal, I've been thinking about it, you know,
I don't know, like with the abortion stuff like jury nullification,
Like I've been thinking more about like a simple quiet
refusal to participate in various things that are you know,
pitched to us as normal and ubiquitous and and necessary
(41:48):
like the you know, the reason I was able to
get off Twitter is because I accrued the professional freedom
that allowed me to not need it to get work.
Me seven years ago could not have literally afforded to
get off Twitter because I needed it to help me
get a job. But but I think there is something
to be said for like constantly evaluating what are the
freedoms that are available to me that I would like
(42:09):
to make use of that I am not making use
of in any direction. And I think there's yeah, there's
always more visa v. Social media than meaning Well, I agree,
And also I feel like, I don't know, more conversations
like this can maybe start to get I'm not saying
that I personally have any importance on anybody, but it's
like it's nice to talk to another person who is
(42:30):
aware of this thing that feels like it's just underpinning
all of the way that that the Internet functions, you know,
And like I think everyone I know, I want there
to be everyone know. I mean getting off Twitter as
part of it. But I do think it's also like
when you talked about the things where you kind of
lost yourself and you felt like those were like your
best experiences where you weren't thinking about yourself, like dancing
or walking the dog or whatever, like you're talking about
(42:53):
things that also were happening in physical reality exactly. I mean,
you didn't name a single thing that was like something
you were doing on your computer or on a phone own,
And so I do think there's again not to be
a lot, And I mean, what's so crazy as I
remember arguing with my dad when I was like twelve
about how the internet was going to change the world
and how important it was, But there is something that
is like that missing piece does seem to be what
(43:14):
is it like now to be physically around other people
and to have to engage in things that are not
like your words on a screen versus somebody else's. And
I think that's like a big part of the missing link. Well,
and I think everyone realized that there's there's so much
more space now for people to understand that post or
you know, not post pandemic, but at this point in
the pandemic where it's like there's no substitute for it.
(43:35):
Affirmation on the Internet at its most kind of thrilling
has always felt alienating to me. But love in real
life that feels real, you know, And there's nothing like unsurveilled,
un mediated presence the internet. It's best can only kind of,
you know, approach a shadow of that. And we're little
(43:57):
animals like we we are, and we need to we
need to go out into a field. Yeah and run free. Gia,
thank you so much. This is fascinating conversation. I really appreciate.
I feel like there's probably like two more hours of
stuff that we could have talked about, and so we'll
have to do this again sometime. Yeah, thank you for
having me, and I am very interested to see where
(44:17):
this goes, aren't we all? So what are you going
to do now? Well, I gotta pay for that blue
check mark number one. I gotta give him twenty bucks
a month to get keep my blue checkmark going. We
didn't even talk about this that he's like arguing with
(44:39):
Stephen King. Stephen do we talk about this? Stephen Kings? Like?
Are you joking? Like you should pay me to be
on Twitter? Like I'm not gonna give you twenty dollars
above and Elon Musk is like, Okay, how about eight dollars?
And it's like, dude, this is not how you run
a business. This is not how you come up with
the plan to save Twitter is like haggling with Stephen
king On on Twitter about the cost of a blue
(45:02):
check bark. By the way, like the idea of pain
a monthly fee to have a blue check mark on
Twitter is absurd. Anyhow, So what am I going to do.
I'm going to continue not giving a ship increasingly about
like the discourse on social media, because uh, what I
know to be true is that there are more important
things in life, and that doesn't it doesn't define reality,
(45:25):
you know. So I don't have a problem with remaining
Like I'm I still have a Facebook account. I never
quit Facebook, but I certainly don't fucking use Facebook, and
I don't think about Facebook. It's not part of my
diet every day on the internet. And so I think
increasingly like Twitter is gonna look like that, and Instagram
is gonna look like that, and then we'll find something new.
I mean, maybe it's TikTok, but maybe there's something else,
(45:46):
or maybe there's nothing. Maybe we just go back to
email and I'm fine with that. So, like the question is, like,
does Twitter fucking matter? Like, Actually, what I'll say is
it matters if we are like interacting with reality and
real people and not fighting with random people on the Internet.
That's unhealthy. But in the grand scheme of the reality
(46:08):
that we exist in, we think Twitter is important because
media people are on Twitter, and a few celebrities are
on Twitter, and a very very small group of people
like Elon Musk, thinks Twitter is important. He's a billionaire,
a very successful CEO. He loves to have people tell
him that he's got funny and cool ideas, and he's
(46:30):
on Twitter all the time, acting like that's the place
where all the stuff happens. But for most people in
the world, for most human beings in America and beyond,
Twitter is not the stuff that is happening. Twitter is
not the place where real things happen. The Internet and
technology are very very important and can do amazing things,
(46:51):
but at the end of the day, not everything should
be equally weighted, and increasingly, like stuff I see on
Twitter or stuff that you see on Twitter or Facebook
or Instagram needs to be taken as a giant grain
of salt, like that's not reality. Reality exists outside of that,
and we've got to grapple a lot more with that.
We think the value of information is how fast you
(47:14):
can get it. They're literally used to be this thing,
and people still do it. And it is someone commenting first.
Like when we used to publish blog posts on many
websites that I ran. You would write the story it,
put it up, and then somebody would comment as quickly
as possible first, meaning I was the first person to
comment on this story. Okay, Twitter does that at scale.
(47:36):
It's like I'm the first person to tell you, like
Michael Jackson is dead, how did he die? Where did
he die? When did I did he really die? You
don't know any of that fucking information? What is my account?
You don't know I have a blue check mark. Maybe
maybe not if you look at my bio to the
say I'm a reporter for the New York Times. Maybe
maybe I'm just a fucking guy. Maybe I'm an orderly
at the hospital. But like the point is you could
(47:59):
see it first. Michael Jackson is dead. What you know
about Michael Jackson's death is non existent. But like that
is like the core of misinformation. It is like I
can say some bullshit on Twitter or anywhere else, and
it can be spread around really quickly, so quickly and
so much that people think is real. It collapses the
context into a fucking bite size, little SoundBite. And now
(48:21):
that's the fucking thing that is broadcast out into the ether.
And like that is why it's such a destructive and
shitty and useless part of the Internet. It is, and
it is really truly like it is. So it's such
a refined and clear thing now to me that like
this method of communicating information to people is fundamentally broken
and bad. It is so fucking obvious, it is so clear.
(48:44):
And the fact that we would sit here and anybody
would sit here and defend it and want to be
part of it and really care about it is deranged.
Open it up. Let's see what people are talking about.
What's happening. Plastic recycling is a myth. Study says, that's
the first thing I see. Fans are freaking out over
Donald Phazon and his daughter's clueless costumes. Here's the fucking
(49:05):
article about Gretta Thunberg. Grettath Thunberg used to see her
goals to protect the plan from climate change, but now
she admits it's to overthrow the whole capitalist system, which
she says responsible for imperialism, oppression, genocide, racist, oppressive extraction.
Is um here, I am about to click on the
fucking article about how Gretta Thunberg actually wants to overthrow capitalism.
Actually a message to Elon Musk is trending, as is
(49:27):
Daniel Radcliffe. Daniel Radcliffe says speaking out against J. K.
Rowling was important. Not everybody in the franchise shares her
belief like that sounds like a great thing you're about
as I'm watching Entertainments the night to borrow like Daniel, Well,
(49:47):
that is our show for this week. We'll be back
next week on Thursday with even more what Future And
as always, I wish you and your family the very
very best.
Host
Joshua Topolsky
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