March 12, 2024 • 12 mins
Joe brought us a really interesting piece from The Honest Broker about how art is dead and we are all basically scrolling ourselves to death.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is one of the best, most interesting things I've
read in a very long time. I'm going to share
some of it with you. Ted Gioia who's us. He
writes a I guess it's a substack called the Honest Broker,
and he talks about art and society and books and
media and all sorts of stuff. But this column he
wrote got a lot of attention and and blew me away.
(00:26):
He's talking about how well. He says, I want to
tell you why entertainment is dead and what's coming to
take its place. If the culture was like politics, you
would get just two choices. They might look like this,
and it's fairly graphics have you, But I can explain
the graphics art one way, entertainment the other. One choice
between art and entertainment, right, That's that's kind of those
(00:48):
of us in the creative fields, whether professional years hobbies,
understand that. You know, there's there's a lot overlap.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
But yeah, where you really really make the money and
make a den is when you can combine the two, right, One.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
More freaking superhero movie ain't about art, for instance, It
just entertainment. But many creative people think these are the
only options both for them and their audience. Either give
the audience what it wants, the entertainment entertainer's job, or
else they put demands on the public. They challenge the public.
That's where art begins. But they're dead wrong. Maybe it's
smarter to view the creative economy like a food chain.
(01:21):
If you're an artist or striving to become one, your
reality often feels like this, and it's a little fish
labeled art being eaten by a big fish labeled entertainment.
Until recently, the entertainment industry has been on a growth tear,
so much so than anything artsy or indie or alternative
got squeezed as collateral damage. I would just say you
and I have talked about the fact that in the
(01:42):
movie business you have giant blockbusters and then you have
tiny indie films. The like mid sized art film is
gone from the major studios anyway. They just don't invest
in them anymore anyway. But Ted writs, but even this
disturbing picture isn't disturbing enough. That's because it misses the
single biggest change happening right now. We're witnessing the birth
(02:02):
of the post entertainment culture. But it won't help the
arts in fact, it won't help society at all. Even
that big whale is in trouble, the big entertainment whale.
Entertainment companies are struggling in ways nobody anticipated just a
few years ago. And he goes through a list. Disney's
in a state of crisis, Paramount laid off eight hundred employees.
Universal is releasing movies to streaming after just three weeks
(02:23):
in theaters. Warner Brothers makes more money canceling films than
releasing them for tax purposes. Wow. Super interesting story there,
But we don't have time anyway. The TV business also
hit all in twenty twenty three, after years of steady growth,
the number of scripted series has started shrinking. Don't worry,
we're getting to the point, he says. Music may be
in the worst state of them all. Sony invested one
(02:44):
point two billion dollars into Michael Jackson's song catalog they
never invest a fraction of that and launching new artists
in twenty twenty four, musicians are actually worth more old
than young, dead than alive. This raises the obvious question,
how can demand for new entertainment shrink? What can possibly
replace it? But something will replace it. It's already starting
to happen. Here's a better model of the cultural food
(03:05):
chain in the year twenty twenty four. You remember little
art was being eaten by entertainment. Well, a much, much
bigger whale called distraction is eating them both. The fastest
growing sector of the cultural economy is distraction, or call
it scrolling or swiping or wasting time or whatever you want.
But it's not art or entertainment, just ceaseless activity. The
(03:28):
key is that each stimulus only lasts a few seconds,
and it must be repeated. It's a huge business and
will soon be larger than arts and entertainment combined. Everything
is getting turned into TikTok, an apptly named platform for
a business model based on stimuli that must be repeated
after only a few takes of the clock. TikTok made
(03:48):
a fortune with fast paced scrolling video. Now Facebook wants
a place to connect with family and friends is imitating it.
So long Granny, Hello reels. Twitter has done the same,
and of course Instagram, YouTube and everybody else trying to
get rich on so social media. And this is more
than just a hot trend of twenty twenty four. It
can last forever because it's based on body chemistry, not
fashion or esthetics. Our brain rewards these brief bursts of distraction.
(04:12):
The neurochemical dopamine is released, and this makes us feel good,
so we want to repeat the stimulus. The cycle looks
like this now probably worth mentioning. Right now, we're posting
this as I speak at armstrong and getty dot com,
so you can see it, read it, see the graphics
and the rest of it. But the stimulus is distraction,
the dopamine release is pleasure. The desire for more is reinforcement,
(04:36):
and the habit formation is the addiction. And that loop
goes around and around and around distraction, pleasure, reinforcement, addiction, distraction,
pleasure reinforcement, addiction. This is the familiar model for addiction,
only now it's getting applied to culture in the creative world,
and billions of people they are unwitting volunteers in the
largest social engineering experiment in human history. So you need
(05:00):
to ditch that simple model of art versus entertainment, and
even distraction is just a stepping stone toward the real
goal nowadays, which is addiction. Here's the cultural food chain
pursued aggressively by tech platforms that now dominate every aspect
of our lives. The little art is eaten by entertainment,
is eaten by distraction, is eaten by addiction. And there's
(05:24):
more detail and description. Go ahead, Jack, I have so.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Many things I could say about all this. My first
thought is, though, I've got to fight this in myself
and my own brain with every fiber in my being.
And I fight it, I feel like every single day.
But I need to continue to fight it. My son,
who is a sick, my youngest who is a sixth grader,
he talks regularly. He was talking yesterday about how the
kids mock him at school because he doesn't know the catchphrases,
(05:51):
and the catchphrases.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Change every week, right for kids.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
I mean, when we were kids, a catchphrase lasted years
and kids and we talked about television shows that you
were watching, or maybe a movie is saw. But they're
all about what the latest TikTok reels phrases like Henry said.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Even got mocked.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
He said, he said, I don't I don't have Instagram
or TikTok, and they all laughed at him for mentioning Instagram.
He got laughed at because it was such a like
an old person's thing to be on Instagram while the
other sixth graders are doing other stuff that I don't
even know what it is, Snapchat, I guess or whatever.
But anyway, he doesn't know any of the memes. They've
all known, but they never talk about TV shows.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Right, wow, so addiction meets tribalism. That's uh, that's lovely.
Are you the in group or the outgroup?
Speaker 2 (06:40):
But so just I mean, and TV shows weren't exactly
art when I was a kid, but they're closer to
art than whatever. The latest ten second meme is the
kids are watching on.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
TikTok right, right, so he writes on the tech platforms
aren't like the Medici's and Florence or those other rich
patrons of the arts. They don't want to find next
to Michaelangelow or Mozart. They want to create a world
of junkies because they will be the dealers. Addiction is
the goal. They don't say it openly, but they don't
need to. Just look at what they do. Everything is
designed to lock users into an addictive cycle. The platforms
(07:13):
are all shifting to scrolling and reeling interfaces where stimuli
optimize the dopamine doom loop. Anything that might persuade you
to leave the platform, a news story or any outside
link is brutally punished by their algorithms. It might liberate
you from your dependent junkie status, and that can't be allowed.
But wait, there's more. Apple, Facebook and others are now
telling you to put on their virtual reality headsets, where
(07:35):
you're swallowed up by the stimuli like those tiny fish
in my food chain charts. You're invited to live as
a passive recipient of make believe experiences, like a podslave
in the matrix. And then I'm going to skip ahead
because I thought this was good. And again I urge
you strongly to read this in your kids who are
eighth grade or more, have them read it. The virtual
(07:57):
reality headsets raise even more issues. Re wire UNI. I
need to jump in with there's no stopping this. Back
to you, Joe, Okay, thank you, du Even the dumbest
entertainment looks like Shakespeare compared to a dopamine culture. You
don't need Hamlet. A photo of a hamburger will suffice.
That's what a video is. Somebody twerking or a pet
looking goofy.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
That's what I was saying when we were all watching
Happy Days in the seventies. People, Joe and I age
TV show is a dumb TV show, but that is
hamlet compared to whatever the hottest reel is with a
catchphrase on it that all the kids are talking about
at school for my son, the can you Smell your
Dog's Fresh poop challenge or whatever?
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah exactly. Instead of movies, users get served up an
endless sequence of fifteen second videos. Instead of symphonies, listeners
here bite sized melodies, usually accompanied by one of these
tiny videos, just enough for a dopamine hit and no more.
This is the new culture in its most striking features.
The absence of culture with a capital C, or even
mindless entertainment. Both get replaced by compaul of activity. And
(09:01):
then he has yet another chart which I found interesting.
Athletics the slow traditional culture is it's slow traditional culture
fast modern culture than dopamine culture. Ooh. In athletics, it's
play a sport became watch a sport became gamble on
a sport. Journalism went from newspapers to multimedia to clickbait.
(09:24):
Video went from film and TV to video to reels
of short videos, music albums to tracks to tiktoks. Images,
view on a gallery, wall of view on a phone,
scroll on a phone, communication, handwritten letters, voice, email, memo,
short texts, relationships, courtship and marriage, went to sexual freedom,
went to swipe on an app.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Those are all one hundred percent accurate. Back and again,
my overall theme being there's no stopping this. There is
no stopping this, there's only stopping it individually. I found
myself doomed scrolling for a horrifying amount of time on
Twitter yesterday. And I'm not going to say I couldn't stop,
because I was completely aware of it.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
But I told myself to stop once or twice before
I actually did. Yeah, And at one point, I like
swiped poorly and it didn't close, and so I scrolled
just a little more. That is an addict.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, Well, the number one thing an addiction is believing
you could stop whenever you wanted to.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
You just choose not to.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
But uh, I have to fight every single day, especially
at night. The I'm going to read from a book tonight. Yeah,
I'm going to read a book because if I open
up my phone.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
I feel like, well, I'm reading it.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
It's kind of for work, and it's kind of news
and blah, blah blah. But it just it ends up
not being a book is what it ends up not
being all the time. And I only have that muscle
because I grew up with it and had it until,
like I was in my forties before smartphones showed up.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
If you never had that much of reading a book
at night, how would you long for it?
Speaker 2 (11:04):
What would convince you that you should stop the dopamine
rush and sit down and plow through a book?
Speaker 1 (11:11):
What would make you think that's a good idea? And
it would feel unattainable? All right? Your final depressing yet
liberating a couple of sentences. I'm gonna get this tattooed
on my chest. Here's where the science gets really ugly.
The more addicts rely on the stimuli, the less pleasure
they receive. At a certain point, this cycle creates and headonia,
(11:33):
the complete absence of enjoyment in an experience supposedly pursued
for pleasure. What's that word and hedonia A N A
H G d O N I A A n h E. Well,
you know, being a hedonist and hedonia. I want to
pronounce it like that. Wow, that's a word I need
(11:54):
to memorize. Yeah, when pleasures no longer bring pleasure. You
just need them to not feel sick.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Huh, which is what happens with all addictions. They stop
working and then you're really stuck right right.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
So this is going to be posted either under hotlinks
or maybe we'll give it its own headline at Armstrongangetti
dot com. Again, I urge you to read it, share
it with the people you care about. I think it's important.
I know it is for me. I'm glad I reread
it because I started to drift.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
There's no stopping. There's no stopping Armstrong
This is one of the best, most interesting things I've
read in a very long time. I'm going to share
some of it with you. Ted Gioia who's us. He
writes a I guess it's a substack called the Honest Broker,
and he talks about art and society and books and
media and all sorts of stuff. But this column he
wrote got a lot of attention and and blew me away.
(00:26):
He's talking about how well. He says, I want to
tell you why entertainment is dead and what's coming to
take its place. If the culture was like politics, you
would get just two choices. They might look like this,
and it's fairly graphics have you, But I can explain
the graphics art one way, entertainment the other. One choice
between art and entertainment, right, That's that's kind of those
(00:48):
of us in the creative fields, whether professional years hobbies,
understand that. You know, there's there's a lot overlap.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
But yeah, where you really really make the money and
make a den is when you can combine the two, right, One.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
More freaking superhero movie ain't about art, for instance, It
just entertainment. But many creative people think these are the
only options both for them and their audience. Either give
the audience what it wants, the entertainment entertainer's job, or
else they put demands on the public. They challenge the public.
That's where art begins. But they're dead wrong. Maybe it's
smarter to view the creative economy like a food chain.
(01:21):
If you're an artist or striving to become one, your
reality often feels like this, and it's a little fish
labeled art being eaten by a big fish labeled entertainment.
Until recently, the entertainment industry has been on a growth tear,
so much so than anything artsy or indie or alternative
got squeezed as collateral damage. I would just say you
and I have talked about the fact that in the
(01:42):
movie business you have giant blockbusters and then you have
tiny indie films. The like mid sized art film is
gone from the major studios anyway. They just don't invest
in them anymore anyway. But Ted writs, but even this
disturbing picture isn't disturbing enough. That's because it misses the
single biggest change happening right now. We're witnessing the birth
(02:02):
of the post entertainment culture. But it won't help the
arts in fact, it won't help society at all. Even
that big whale is in trouble, the big entertainment whale.
Entertainment companies are struggling in ways nobody anticipated just a
few years ago. And he goes through a list. Disney's
in a state of crisis, Paramount laid off eight hundred employees.
Universal is releasing movies to streaming after just three weeks
(02:23):
in theaters. Warner Brothers makes more money canceling films than
releasing them for tax purposes. Wow. Super interesting story there,
But we don't have time anyway. The TV business also
hit all in twenty twenty three, after years of steady growth,
the number of scripted series has started shrinking. Don't worry,
we're getting to the point, he says. Music may be
in the worst state of them all. Sony invested one
(02:44):
point two billion dollars into Michael Jackson's song catalog they
never invest a fraction of that and launching new artists
in twenty twenty four, musicians are actually worth more old
than young, dead than alive. This raises the obvious question,
how can demand for new entertainment shrink? What can possibly
replace it? But something will replace it. It's already starting
to happen. Here's a better model of the cultural food
(03:05):
chain in the year twenty twenty four. You remember little
art was being eaten by entertainment. Well, a much, much
bigger whale called distraction is eating them both. The fastest
growing sector of the cultural economy is distraction, or call
it scrolling or swiping or wasting time or whatever you want.
But it's not art or entertainment, just ceaseless activity. The
(03:28):
key is that each stimulus only lasts a few seconds,
and it must be repeated. It's a huge business and
will soon be larger than arts and entertainment combined. Everything
is getting turned into TikTok, an apptly named platform for
a business model based on stimuli that must be repeated
after only a few takes of the clock. TikTok made
(03:48):
a fortune with fast paced scrolling video. Now Facebook wants
a place to connect with family and friends is imitating it.
So long Granny, Hello reels. Twitter has done the same,
and of course Instagram, YouTube and everybody else trying to
get rich on so social media. And this is more
than just a hot trend of twenty twenty four. It
can last forever because it's based on body chemistry, not
fashion or esthetics. Our brain rewards these brief bursts of distraction.
(04:12):
The neurochemical dopamine is released, and this makes us feel good,
so we want to repeat the stimulus. The cycle looks
like this now probably worth mentioning. Right now, we're posting
this as I speak at armstrong and getty dot com,
so you can see it, read it, see the graphics
and the rest of it. But the stimulus is distraction,
the dopamine release is pleasure. The desire for more is reinforcement,
(04:36):
and the habit formation is the addiction. And that loop
goes around and around and around distraction, pleasure, reinforcement, addiction, distraction,
pleasure reinforcement, addiction. This is the familiar model for addiction,
only now it's getting applied to culture in the creative world,
and billions of people they are unwitting volunteers in the
largest social engineering experiment in human history. So you need
(05:00):
to ditch that simple model of art versus entertainment, and
even distraction is just a stepping stone toward the real
goal nowadays, which is addiction. Here's the cultural food chain
pursued aggressively by tech platforms that now dominate every aspect
of our lives. The little art is eaten by entertainment,
is eaten by distraction, is eaten by addiction. And there's
(05:24):
more detail and description. Go ahead, Jack, I have so.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Many things I could say about all this. My first
thought is, though, I've got to fight this in myself
and my own brain with every fiber in my being.
And I fight it, I feel like every single day.
But I need to continue to fight it. My son,
who is a sick, my youngest who is a sixth grader,
he talks regularly. He was talking yesterday about how the
kids mock him at school because he doesn't know the catchphrases,
(05:51):
and the catchphrases.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Change every week, right for kids.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
I mean, when we were kids, a catchphrase lasted years
and kids and we talked about television shows that you
were watching, or maybe a movie is saw. But they're
all about what the latest TikTok reels phrases like Henry said.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Even got mocked.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
He said, he said, I don't I don't have Instagram
or TikTok, and they all laughed at him for mentioning Instagram.
He got laughed at because it was such a like
an old person's thing to be on Instagram while the
other sixth graders are doing other stuff that I don't
even know what it is, Snapchat, I guess or whatever.
But anyway, he doesn't know any of the memes. They've
all known, but they never talk about TV shows.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Right, wow, so addiction meets tribalism. That's uh, that's lovely.
Are you the in group or the outgroup?
Speaker 2 (06:40):
But so just I mean, and TV shows weren't exactly
art when I was a kid, but they're closer to
art than whatever. The latest ten second meme is the
kids are watching on.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
TikTok right, right, so he writes on the tech platforms
aren't like the Medici's and Florence or those other rich
patrons of the arts. They don't want to find next
to Michaelangelow or Mozart. They want to create a world
of junkies because they will be the dealers. Addiction is
the goal. They don't say it openly, but they don't
need to. Just look at what they do. Everything is
designed to lock users into an addictive cycle. The platforms
(07:13):
are all shifting to scrolling and reeling interfaces where stimuli
optimize the dopamine doom loop. Anything that might persuade you
to leave the platform, a news story or any outside
link is brutally punished by their algorithms. It might liberate
you from your dependent junkie status, and that can't be allowed.
But wait, there's more. Apple, Facebook and others are now
telling you to put on their virtual reality headsets, where
(07:35):
you're swallowed up by the stimuli like those tiny fish
in my food chain charts. You're invited to live as
a passive recipient of make believe experiences, like a podslave
in the matrix. And then I'm going to skip ahead
because I thought this was good. And again I urge
you strongly to read this in your kids who are
eighth grade or more, have them read it. The virtual
(07:57):
reality headsets raise even more issues. Re wire UNI. I
need to jump in with there's no stopping this. Back
to you, Joe, Okay, thank you, du Even the dumbest
entertainment looks like Shakespeare compared to a dopamine culture. You
don't need Hamlet. A photo of a hamburger will suffice.
That's what a video is. Somebody twerking or a pet
looking goofy.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
That's what I was saying when we were all watching
Happy Days in the seventies. People, Joe and I age
TV show is a dumb TV show, but that is
hamlet compared to whatever the hottest reel is with a
catchphrase on it that all the kids are talking about
at school for my son, the can you Smell your
Dog's Fresh poop challenge or whatever?
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah exactly. Instead of movies, users get served up an
endless sequence of fifteen second videos. Instead of symphonies, listeners
here bite sized melodies, usually accompanied by one of these
tiny videos, just enough for a dopamine hit and no more.
This is the new culture in its most striking features.
The absence of culture with a capital C, or even
mindless entertainment. Both get replaced by compaul of activity. And
(09:01):
then he has yet another chart which I found interesting.
Athletics the slow traditional culture is it's slow traditional culture
fast modern culture than dopamine culture. Ooh. In athletics, it's
play a sport became watch a sport became gamble on
a sport. Journalism went from newspapers to multimedia to clickbait.
(09:24):
Video went from film and TV to video to reels
of short videos, music albums to tracks to tiktoks. Images,
view on a gallery, wall of view on a phone,
scroll on a phone, communication, handwritten letters, voice, email, memo,
short texts, relationships, courtship and marriage, went to sexual freedom,
went to swipe on an app.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Those are all one hundred percent accurate. Back and again,
my overall theme being there's no stopping this. There is
no stopping this, there's only stopping it individually. I found
myself doomed scrolling for a horrifying amount of time on
Twitter yesterday. And I'm not going to say I couldn't stop,
because I was completely aware of it.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
But I told myself to stop once or twice before
I actually did. Yeah, And at one point, I like
swiped poorly and it didn't close, and so I scrolled
just a little more. That is an addict.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, Well, the number one thing an addiction is believing
you could stop whenever you wanted to.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
You just choose not to.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
But uh, I have to fight every single day, especially
at night. The I'm going to read from a book tonight. Yeah,
I'm going to read a book because if I open
up my phone.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
I feel like, well, I'm reading it.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
It's kind of for work, and it's kind of news
and blah, blah blah. But it just it ends up
not being a book is what it ends up not
being all the time. And I only have that muscle
because I grew up with it and had it until,
like I was in my forties before smartphones showed up.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
If you never had that much of reading a book
at night, how would you long for it?
Speaker 2 (11:04):
What would convince you that you should stop the dopamine
rush and sit down and plow through a book?
Speaker 1 (11:11):
What would make you think that's a good idea? And
it would feel unattainable? All right? Your final depressing yet
liberating a couple of sentences. I'm gonna get this tattooed
on my chest. Here's where the science gets really ugly.
The more addicts rely on the stimuli, the less pleasure
they receive. At a certain point, this cycle creates and headonia,
(11:33):
the complete absence of enjoyment in an experience supposedly pursued
for pleasure. What's that word and hedonia A N A
H G d O N I A A n h E. Well,
you know, being a hedonist and hedonia. I want to
pronounce it like that. Wow, that's a word I need
(11:54):
to memorize. Yeah, when pleasures no longer bring pleasure. You
just need them to not feel sick.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Huh, which is what happens with all addictions. They stop
working and then you're really stuck right right.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
So this is going to be posted either under hotlinks
or maybe we'll give it its own headline at Armstrongangetti
dot com. Again, I urge you to read it, share
it with the people you care about. I think it's important.
I know it is for me. I'm glad I reread
it because I started to drift.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
There's no stopping. There's no stopping Armstrong
Hosts And Creators
Joe Getty
Jack Armstrong
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