Episode 427: Framed: A Villain's Perspective on Social Media - An Unplugged Conversation - Dynamics Corner

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everyone to not another episode of Dynamics
Corner.
This is a new segment.
Dynamics Corner Unplugged andwe have an amazing topic today
and I'm just baffled.
I'm your co-host, chris.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
And this is Brad.
This episode was recorded onJune 5th 2025.
Chris, chris, chris, I likethat Dynamics Corner Unplugged.
What is Dynamics Corner,dynamics corner unplugged?
It's when we talk about a topicnot related to the dynamics
industry or the dynamicsproducts week.
With us today, we had a greatepisode about a book that we
recently read, called Framed avillain's perspective on social

(00:39):
media.
With us today, we had theopportunity to speak with the
author of that book, tim Orr.
Hello, hey guys, hey goodevening.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
How are you doing?

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yeah, it's evening over here, Chris.
It's evening over there, onthis side of the globe, how are
you doing?
Yeah, it's evening over here.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
Chris, it's evening over there On this side of the
globe.
How are you doing this evening?
Yeah, not bad.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
We finally got a hot one in New York here, very nice.
Interesting fact.
I recently, by saying withinthe last half hour, sent a
screenshot of the weather thatit's warmer up north than it is
here.
Oh interesting, wow, so it wasfive degrees warmer.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
we have the humidity because rainy season started,
but can you tell the difference,though, between five degrees
and other degrees, like 20degrees?
Uh, it depends on humidity, Iguess.
Right, I think it's thehumidity in the sun.
I.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
I think when it gets cold, like we talked about
negative 10, negative 20, it'sall the same thing.
So that's it's interesting.
So you have a warm one.
New York is the worst when theweather gets warm, by the way.

Speaker 3 (01:56):
Yeah, no doubt about it, but no, it's supposed to hit
like 89 today, so it's steamy,it is steamy, so it's steamy.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
It is steamy, it's interesting.
So I've been doing a lot ofthinking about some things,
chris, and it's relevant and,tim, that I was looking back at
what some people may say wassort of like the downfall of the
Internet or a pivotal point toit, and that was the inventing
of the infinite scroll.
I read in a book many monthsago with, I think was slow

(02:27):
productivity, talked about howuh azaraskan I think it was back
in 2006 invented the infiniteschool, whereas early on you
used half to um next page yeah,next page.
And now you just have thatinfinite scroll on your speed.
So, uh, it's.
It's interesting when, when Iread that, I thought about that
and it made me think about a lotof things.

(02:47):
But do you also want to knowwhat made me think about a lot
of things?
What's that?
What is that?
What is that?
I recently read a book and Iwill tell you honestly, I have
12 pages of questions and I'mnervous that I won't be able to
get to them all from theconversation.
The book that I read was FramedA Villain's Perspective on

(03:11):
Social Media.
Awesome, and with that, sir,would you mind telling us a
little bit about yourself?

Speaker 3 (03:19):
My name's Tim O'Hearn .
I began my career as a softwareengineer many years ago.
I spent most of my 20s actuallyworking in quantitative finance
as one application of my skills, but I think the most unique
side quest here was that Iworked on the underside of
social media, so thinking aboutsome of these unique paths of

(03:42):
breaking terms of service andprofiting from breaking the
rules, which ultimately led tome writing a book called Framed
A Villain's Perspective onSocial Media, which talks about
growing up with the internet,learning how to program and
break the rules, profiting frombreaking the rules and then
coming to terms with thisgigantic mess that is the
internet today.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
It is a gigantic mess and I will say when I was
reading this book, it is veryinformative, very well written.
So many things went through mymind when I was reading this
book and first it was a walkdown memory lane.
Even generationally, we'reslightly different, but I do
remember a lot of the pointsthat you had talked about and I
really had a lot of aha moments.

(04:25):
It made me go back to which youmentioned later in the book.
Early in the book you weretalking about instagram and bots
and stuff and I was thinkingthe first thought was, before I
talked about some other thoughts, was instapy.
And then I said, uh, instapy, Iused instapy to get followers
and to even to that point Iactually did a pull request for

(04:46):
instapy.
Wow, to add the multi-userlogging so you could have
multiple users and have thelogging to it.
So I actually go back inhistory.
I have a pull request forsomething that I did for instapy
to go no way.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
Yes, sir, it's still in your github I still in my
github.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
I looked it up I printed it out I have the issue
and the pull request number andI did quite a bit with Instapy
early on.
I knew nothing about Python,but I was able to figure out
what I needed to do to get itgoing.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
So you had me.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
Nostalgia.
Nostalgia was everything.
It brought me all the way backin the days when I started out
before the Internet, when we haddial up and I ran a bulletin
board with Fidonet and a coupleother things.
But before we get into it and,by the way, I do like your
stories, like with Cutlet, withShark Social and all the names
that you have it was great.
I really want to get into allof that.

(05:38):
What made you write the book?
I want to inspire you to writethe book.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (05:47):
Yeah, brad, I would say a lot of the motivation came
from reading other contemporaryworks that were supposedly big
tech exposes and always feelinglike something was missing, to
an extent also feeling like Icould do better, and, as I
workshopped more and more ofthis content, realizing that I
didn't necessarily have ascreenplay here, I didn't have

(06:09):
this wonderfulmade-for-Hollywood narrative,
but I had enough that hadn'tbeen told before, and so I was
motivated by the fact that if Ididn't capture this, it was
probably going to be lost,starting with MySpace and going
through a lot of thenitty-gritty of what even
happened on Instagram.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
It's interesting.
Go ahead, Chris.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
I'm sorry.
I'm curious why the titleFramed?

Speaker 3 (06:38):
A lot of the titles of these books were using terms
like framed, disrupted,irresistible.
You have a lot of these commonusage patterns for it, so I'm
like let me show that my bookfits in with these, but also
that it stands out almost as ameta commentary of contemporary

(06:59):
technology books.
Framed specifically isinteresting because, if you guys
remember early web 2.0, whenyou had any type of content feed
, there usually was a very thickborder, also known as a frame,
around each piece of content,and this was even apparent on
early Instagram, where it's likenow you don't see it as much

(07:22):
like even in this, the recordingstudio.
Here we have much, much thinner, kind of all the way stretched
to the screen, border typeframes.
In the past, these frames wereactually almost like an artistic
element, so I thought it was aplay on words as well as it was
a meta commentary on thesethings, in addition to a framing
being my perspective onsomething.

(07:42):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
No, it's great.
And, to go back to it, it was agreat framing and I think
you'll walk through and talkthrough the technology and what
was going on.
If anybody, I recommend readingit because it will take you
through memory lane and even, asI've mentioned, even
generationally.
You know someone with mygeneration working in the tech
industry, paying attention andworking with all of this.
Your viewpoint was a little bitdifferent, which was, I

(08:06):
appreciate it, because it was agenerational gap with how we
look at technology or what isgoing on and what we do with it
and how we adopt it.
So it's wonderful.
The other thing, and again I'llstart off with you know, some
levity type things before I getinto a lot of the questions, but
, chris, I want you to go towhendidmyparentsbangcom.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
Someone's going to do that right now.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Go to whendidmyparentsbangcom because,
tim, when did my parentsbangcom come into play?

Speaker 3 (08:41):
A long time ago when I was in college, to play.
A long time ago, when I was incollege, you began to see this
ease of use of like somebodylearning how to program and then
deploying a web app all byyourself.
So, going from I'm taking theseclasses on theory, I'm taking
calculus, let me just make awebsite that I can actually use.
That might also fit in with,like, a social tie-in.

(09:06):
So I created a website calledwhen did my parents bangcom?
I launched it in roughly 2014.
And the idea was that it was acalculator site based on your
birth date plus some otherinformation which would estimate
your date of conception, whichwas like, very interesting,

(09:26):
because everybody has a date ofconception and people like, when
you think about it, you're like, oh, like you're a Valentine's
Day baby, you're a Thanksgivingbaby.
I wanted to harness that whilealso practicing how to code a
front-end web app, and also avery early integration with

(09:47):
Facebook's API, so you couldlink your Facebook and pull your
birth date from that and thenshare the content on Facebook as
well.
Yeah it was great, that'sfantastic.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
The inspiration I think you had mentioned was from
you know when am I going to die, or whatever that was.
Yeah, death, clock Death clock,another one of those.
Like I said, it's interesting,a lot of good information in
here and, as I mentioned, goingback a lot to I'd like the
terminology, because, even goingback to when you're talking
about early days, in the onsetof some of the stuff, like with

(10:18):
the pimping MySpace, we talkedwhere you created MySpace and
the evolution of, as you talkedabout, we talked where you
created MySpace and theevolution of, as you talked
about, the MySpace counter, andthen moving on to Facebook and
having likes, and then the talkabout the dislikes, and then
even to the Twitter point ofhaving Twitter bots for
followers, and then obviouslyprogressing up to a big portion

(10:39):
of it you talk about isInstagram, which was great, and
also, I really am interested,interested.
I have to talk to you aboutthose apis uh, even the one that
you had to take down, uh, or uhthat you mentioned in the book
too.
So, um, on the top friends, Ithink api for facebook is what
it was that you had in thereyeah, sure as well, so with this

(11:02):
and I think we can jump into it, but someone that's reading it
or you think about reading itwhat is the key takeaway that
you think that you have for thebook?

Speaker 3 (11:12):
We've missed a lot of this context on the history of
the web, meaning why it is whatit is today, and this push and
pull between people like us asusers, platforms like the
publicly traded companies today,and then that sneaky, pesky
layer of advertisers andplatform adjacent services.

(11:35):
Everybody wants somethingdifferent and in many, many
cases these wants and needs arenaturally conflicting.
There's only so much space onthe screen, there's only so much
money to go around, and wenotice these very odd patterns
of behavior and of informationretrieval born out of this.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
That's great and I liked how you talked about that.
Speaking of the space on thescreen, your history again, the
history of the internet.
You were reading on theScranton Times with the
advertising.
I liked as you went through itbecause I remember that time
personally and I remember beingso frustrated, even thinking of
some of the popular sites.
Now, as you scroll and the adspop up, they take and you jump

(12:18):
and then you read threesentences and go forward.
So it really goes to somethingthat you had mentioned in the
book that resonated as well,which is just a quote from your
book.
My eyes are getting old at thispoint, but my corruption of
screen grab no longer refers toimpulsively saving what appears

(12:38):
on a screen.
My idea of screen grab refersto the impulse to physically
grab the screen, the device,even when not beckoned by
vibration, sound which we'lltalk about some of these or
visual notification.
It is a cerebral clutching ofelectronics.
And when we talk about screengrabbing, you explained screen
grabbing originally a little bitdifferently.

(12:59):
What is screen grabbing?

Speaker 3 (13:02):
I see screen grabbing as most fundamentally the
practice of taking a screenshotof what appears on the screen.
So this original, you knowyou're taking a screenshot,
you're taking a grab, whateverwe have all these different
terms for it.
But in the chapter which I namedscreen grabbing, we really
begin talking about addictivetypes of behavior and antisocial

(13:26):
behaviors, problematicbehaviors born out of mobile
device usage, and the hypothesisthat I push there, which could
probably be a standalone book,is that a lot of these design
elements were actually borrowedfrom video games.
So some of the things that Iremember being so addictive of

(13:46):
growing up with even aPlayStation, to then much more
like World of Warcraft and othertypes of games that have a
reputation for hardcore gameplay.
We see a lot of this beckoningand a lot of this desire to play
and play more and ascend highscores that then was transferred
to social media apps.
I see that and I will add guys,that chapter was originally

(14:15):
probably three times as long andI just had to make a decision
is this book mainly around theaddictive nature or is it more
around the history?
And what I did there was somuch more there that I just had
to cut Is that like agamification?

Speaker 1 (14:33):
Is that the term?
Similar to that where, you like, you create an app that makes
it like a game, so you getaddicted to it because it's like
it's a game and be able to?

Speaker 3 (14:44):
Yeah, I to reduce it down to a word, I think we are
talking about gamification and alot of contemporary like
research.
Nobody has really addressed it,but for me, the way I grew up
and what I remember was for solong on these either early apps
like twitter or like late, wheneveryone was still using them on

(15:05):
their parents' desktop browser,you were still searching for
new stuff to do, like the newsfeeds weren't that good, you
were still like clicking throughother tabs and it wasn't
immersive, whereas at the samepoint in time, video games were
incredibly immersive.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
It is, and you experimented with a lot too,
because you went through a lotof the things that you talk
about and also with withpurchasing Twitter followers and
and keeping score on that, andyou talked about the scores with
with likes and it just, like Isaid, it just resonates with
what people look at right now.
They look at, they care aboutthe follows, they look care

(15:45):
about the likes, they care aboutall of that information versus
the depth of it.
Right, it's not the depth ofwhat you're doing or the depth
of what you have, but I can have, as you had what 5,000 fake
followers as a senior in highschool, which was a key point,
and then going through yourcareer.

(16:05):
Then you started targeting someof this more with advertising
when you were over at Cutlet andit's not advertising, excuse me
, but tracking uses.
Can we talk a little bit aboutthat?

Speaker 3 (16:16):
The term growth hacking comes up a lot, and it's
funny because I was recentlyasked to interview for a
position where it wasessentially called a growth
engineer.
So now we've had softwareengineers, devops engineers,
product engineers and nowsomething actually called growth
engineers and I said, hey, Idon't think I'm a growth
engineer.

(16:36):
I'm kind of like a backendPython guy.
Then I looked at the jobdescription and I realized that
the job description wasdescribing all of the things
that I did when I was thespecial projects lead at this
app called Cutlet, and what thatwas comprised of was these
persuasive technology systemsand analyzing the behavior of my

(16:59):
systems or the success of whatI did, based on these same
metrics.
So a lot of it was reduced tooh hey, tim, they're spending 5%
more time in the app comparedto version one Good job.
Or, hey, they're returning moreoften when you sent this push
request, or, sorry, this pushnotification versus this push

(17:21):
notification Good job.
So in this practice of growthengineering, a lot of what I was
doing, the only success metricwas improving these user
stickiness metrics, such as howoften they're active and how
engaged they are when they areusing.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
Got it.
So growth hacking?
So I'm just trying tounderstand all of this.
So growth hacking isessentially you trying to keep
them on the screen or trying tokeep them on the app as long as
you can.
Is that a fair statement?

Speaker 3 (17:56):
Yeah, it seems like when growth hacking has now been
rebranded as growth engineering, because I guess hacking is
also a dirty word.
Sounds professional, yeah, andeven I was like, wow, that's
interesting, this only happenedwithin the last week.
Also, my book is alreadypublished, so I see this role

(18:17):
and they're like, oh well, youcould do this, maybe you could
do that.
And I'm like geez, like growthengineer and it's all of these
things.
So a lot of it.
Yeah, it does come down torunning experiments on users and
your career essentially risingand falling based on the success
of those experiments.
The more mainstream approach tothis we see at all social media

(18:39):
companies, but they all justuse generic titles for their
employees because they have somany employees, right?
So if you have tens ofthousands of employees and some
of them do work on growth orconsumer facing products,
they're probably just calledsoftware engineers.
We're just seeing more, more ofthis like title.
You know more divergence intospecific titles at smaller

(19:01):
startups.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
It is a nice name for someone who wants you to be
addicted or draw to the appwhich you know.
I was reading some of thisstuff and I just think of the
dopamine rush, right, which youtalked about with becoming
attached to your phone orbecoming attached to the
vibration, to almost where it'slike it is the relationship when
you're having a text fromsomeone.

(19:22):
I think, yeah, I will keepsaying to everybody, like I said
, I'm I'm jumping around alittle bit because there was so
much in this book and I'd reallyfelt as part of your life the
way you went through it, becauseyou talked about so many parts
of like, even your datingrelationships with women and the
texting and the feeling of justgetting the buzz and the
vibration, which was where youassociated the buzzing, the text

(19:46):
, with your female friend'saffection.
It was a good comment that youmade.

Speaker 3 (19:51):
This is something where I really feel that I could
have carved out this chapterscreen grabbing and had a
standalone book, because theseare things that as soon as I
thought back to like what wasgoing on in my head I mean, to
understand what's going on in a14 or 15 year old's head is
tough to begin with, but tothink back to how I remember it

(20:12):
going down, so much of it waswas dating centric, you know,
and this is dating well, wellbefore what we think of modern,
you know, like app assisteddating.
This is really the beginning ofit, the first frontier, and
nobody else has written about itin the same way.
And, of course, in some cases Ilook like a dork, but in other
cases people have read it thesame way and they're saying, wow

(20:35):
, like, this makes a lot ofsense and maybe that is the most
the strongest association thatmost people have with their
phones.
Like, when you open your phoneor you turn it over, you unlock
it, what are you actually hopingto see?
Like what's number one?
A lot of people would say it'sthe equivalent of the risky text

(20:56):
or the old flame who decides torekindle things.
I don't think we're that fardetached from it.
We just have all thesedifferent ways, and a lot of
people are probably embarrassedto admit that.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
That is a great point as far as what you're going to
get or what you're going to seeor what you're going to feel, or
that like again, that dopaminerush that you become addicted to
and you almost become trainedfor those vibrations of those
things.
And then you're and you talkedabout, we all talk about is the
attention span that you'restarting to have now with all

(21:30):
these constant notifications, uh, and the, the alerts of those
notifications as well too.
Um, and then you did also somepretty interesting things.
Uh, you participated in thehackathon as well, early on at a
young age.
That was a very interestingstory.
It's quite impressive as well,too, to talk about that.
So, how was that working?

(21:50):
At the hackathon the internet,you get to see broadly what's
out there.

Speaker 3 (22:07):
And I went to a good school, but not MIT.
So you're looking and saying,okay, what are the top jobs, how
much money can you make?
Whatever, and back in you know20, again, like 2013, 2014,
2015,.
It was a really exciting timeto be studying computer science,
I would argue, much moreexciting than today, where it's

(22:27):
kind of like the opposite.
I participated in hackathonsbecause I saw the hackathon as
this contest where you would bebrought together with
like-minded individuals and allof the cool companies that maybe
only would visit the campus ofUPenn of the top schools.
They would maybe give peoplelike me a shot, and going to

(22:50):
Penn Apps at University ofPennsylvania was one of these
really cool experiences for me,and I'm also happy to say that
some of the specific projectsthat I mentioned as far as
having inspired me, I'veactually reached out to some of
these people after publishingthe book and they've enjoyed it
too, and they've said, yeah,sure, I'll take a read and

(23:11):
whatever, because they realizethat people might not be talking
about it with this vastappreciation 10 years later, but
they probably should be,because there's a lot of things
there that again have beencompletely lost.
What a hackathon was 10 yearsago is nothing like they are
today.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
That's what I feel as well, too.
Speaking of reaching out, onething I found that was
interesting you did in the bookis you talked about how, years
later, speaking of reflection,you reached out to someone that

(23:49):
cyberbullying's a big topictoday, and you admittedly had
someone on the within the bookthat you talked about.
We can talk a little bit moreabout them with the artist the
music artist and how you reachedout to him after you know, as
you were writing this book,thinking back and talking about
how he felt with the bullying.
Can we talk?

Speaker 3 (24:09):
a little bit about that.
Thank you for pointing this oneout, because the title of this
chapter is probably the weirdestin the book.
I believe it's called Say Helloto my New Gangster Friend, and
the spoiler here is that I wasthe new gangster friend and it's

(24:30):
because I had become friendswith someone on MySpace and I
had entered into this juvenilecyberbullying relationship with
him before we even knew whatcyberbullying was Like.
This was at a point where theonly term we had to describe
this was maybe trolling, andessentially what I did was we're

(24:53):
talking 20, I don't know 2007.
At this point I found thisessentially EDM artist, so
somebody producing electronicmusic on MySpace, and for some
reason I decided right then andthere that I didn't like his
music and you know I get into itmore in the book.
But I, you know I was justsaying hey, you're stupid, your

(25:14):
music sucks, and these are justlike.
These aren't even cruelcomments compared to what you
see on the internet today.
But it was something, and thepoint is that it was my negative
, you know my attack, basically.
And then his attack back wherehe's saying oh, you know, this
guy doesn't, for example, useG's at the end of words that end
in I and G.
So he's a gangster, right.

(25:34):
He's kind of adopting some ofthis more like Ebonics based
speech or whatever, and I loverap music.
So it was true, if you lookedat my thing you would say here's
this kid in you know, scranton,pennsylvania, who's like 14
years old maybe and has like raplyrics and things of a culture
that is clearly not his.
Uh, meanwhile, this guy, eagleum, actually lives in the arctic

(25:57):
circle in norway.
So what a bizarre clash ofcultures.
And uh, for the book, Iremembered, just remembered,
just ragging on the guy and Iremembered our exchange and I
said you know, it would bereally useful, not just for the
book but also on a personal note, to reach out to him and be
like, hey, man, I'm sorry forbeing a dick, and let's like see

(26:20):
what we could do here.
And he was super receptive toit.
We sat down for an interview.
I apologized he had nothing toapologize for, but he apologized
anyway and I kind of built achapter around it.
I think that's a really uniqueone.
It's kind of like this notionof you know, the comeback or the
revisiting of it, theredemption, as we've seen.
You know, it's kind of like myredemption story, but also

(26:43):
talking about the extremelyharmful and potentially
far-reaching effects, because Iremembered it from 15 years ago.
He also remembered it from 15years ago, so it wasn't like a
passing blow.
We really went at it there.

Speaker 2 (26:59):
That's the point that I also wanted to bring to.
It is that story.
It just shows that theimportance of what you do
because again, the cyberbullying where you can write, as
you had mentioned, your music,sucks right.
It's bad to this artist onthere that you didn't have any
other reason to interact withbesides to comment, and again,

(27:21):
with the internet, in this typeof action you really don't see
the person on the other side,right.
So now with this, we can allsort of hide behind that
keyboard you know, be a keyboardwarrior, as I call them and say
things to someone, but to seethat 15 years later, when you
did reach out to him, you spokewith him, he remembered it.
It just shows that some ofthese things that you say or do

(27:42):
do have a lasting impact onsomeone, and that's something
that really resonated me do havea lasting impact on someone,
and that's something that reallyresonated me and I admired that
you actually did go back toapologize.
I don't know what his lifewould have been different.
Like you know, obviously, he'sstill doing music, but just to
just to know that someone says,hey, I'm sorry, I did that to
you must have been good for himas well too.

Speaker 3 (28:01):
Yeah and hey, I sent a free copy of the book to the
Arctic Circle there in Norwayand it was just very interesting
A part of growing up, this typeof redemption arc that you
don't often get.
I also visited Norway last yearso when we were originally
talking I was like hey, I waslike I didn't even know you were
based here.
I was just in Oslo, you know,reporting on a track meet and

(28:26):
you know I thought it would beworth reaching out.
He remembered it and I guessthe other ironic part, which I
do admit in the chapter, is someof it is really just part of
growing up and tastes changing,because now I listen back to his
music.
I actually think he was wayahead of his time and I listened
to music just like his almostevery day while I was writing
the book.
So that's the greatest irony.

(28:47):
It's like the music didn't suck.
It was actually great and it'sstill better than anything I
could do.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
That's great and that is quite ironic.
And again, I know we're talkingabout some of these points and
some of the chapters out oforder.
Again, just to go through,because, again, a lot of it to
me.
To be honest with you, I toldyou I have 12 pages of notes
because when I was reading thisI was so I couldn't put it down
because of the walk throughmemory lane.
I keep reading that toeverybody.
Just go through it.

(29:14):
And it brought back so manypoints of my life as these
things were occurring and it'salmost like music.
It made me realize that musicused to be.
You know, when you think ofmemories, you always think of
associations and a lot of timespeople have music and they think
of when a song was published orreleased and that tells you
what time you were in your life.
Okay, I remember doing this, Iremember this going on, but as

(29:36):
you were going through the storyit was.
It took a different twist forme because I remember my space,
even though I barely used it.
I remember the page counter.
It made me go back to thinkingabout, as I I said, running a
BBS sitting in the computer labon a VAX playing a MUDS.
You started talking about someof these other games, the
multiplayer games and Pocket Godbeing a big thing.
I did play Pocket God too, bythe way, when it first came out.

(29:57):
So it was a good walk downmemory lane for me too.
And it also took to me theevolution of technology and the
level of participation, becausethere's this strange thing that
goes on on YouTube now for meand I just don't understand it.
And I grew up playing sportsand then I remember pong.

(30:18):
Right, I played pong, I boughtthe pong machine.
And then I remember the Atari2600, playing video games with
my friends and doing things.
And then you have the multi uhshooter games or the
multi-participant games, as youtalked about I think it was
runescape you talked about inthe book.
You talked about a few of themand you start playing with your
friends.
But now we have thisnon-participative generation

(30:41):
that sits and watches peopleplay video games, they watch
people ski, they watch thingsfor entertainment.
They never really play, theynever really do, but they're
participating by watching.
That's wild to me.

Speaker 3 (30:59):
Yeah, it's almost something that I backed myself
into as I wrote the book.
But in conducting, you know,these basically basically
conversations at bars, whenyou're meeting new people or
even talking to your friends,like, hey, I'm writing this,
what was your memory of this?
That?
And the other thing, theclearest, most distinct
generation gap is definitelythis change from playing games

(31:24):
to watching other people playgames.
It's the most clear where somany people are like, yeah, you
know, I have this little cousinand he just sits there and
watches people play.
And I come with the point thatwhen I was a kid, if I went to
my cousin's house and I wasforced to watch him play games,
that was torture.

(31:45):
Yes, yes, that was a form oftorture.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
Give me a controller.

Speaker 3 (31:50):
It's unbelievable the amount of hours that people
sink into this.
You'd have to think thatthere's some relation between
this new trend and maybe less ofa critical thinking ability.
To some extent there has to bea correlation.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
I still don't understand it.
I know, chris you, you had somefun with youtube and recording
games as well, and I stilldidn't get like how people sit
and yeah, you know what, peoplewatch on youtube.

Speaker 1 (32:16):
It's it's it is.
It is pretty fascinating.
I never quite understand, and Ihave young kids, you know, and
and I know my younger, youngerkid watches from time to time
people play games and I was like, no, how about you play the
game?
How about you and I play a game?
Right?
But at some point I think itwas like 10 years ago, brad, I
know what you're talking about.
So I had a YouTube channel and Ijust started playing games,

(32:39):
literally had like 10,000subscribers.
At that point I'm like, okay,this is not what I want to do.
I just wanted to play a gameand just record it and put it
out there.
But yeah, I never quiteunderstand that it's.
Maybe I'll never understand,but I like that you had
mentioned there's a correlationbetween no longer having any

(33:00):
critical thinking and justwatching someone play.
So I don't know, maybe itsounds like that's a possibility
, because then you're not beingput into the actual game
yourself and being able to thinkfor yourself, right, because
you get to learn hand-eyecoordination and all that stuff
and it's a huge benefit down theroad.

Speaker 2 (33:25):
Could some of it potentially be, though, that by
not playing and it's otherthings that people watch too I
think you mentioned skiing orsnowboarding, and you know
people watch other events is itsomething driven to where you're
not participating?
Therefore, you're not failing,but you watch somebody else do
it.
you can take the enjoyment of it, and that's what I started

(33:47):
thinking of as I was readingthrough what you were talking
about in the book on thisnon-participative generation
that we have on.
Why are they not participating?
What's the enjoyment inwatching someone?
I could see watching someoneplay a game if I was stuck.
So I'm playing a game, I'mstuck at a difficult spot.
Maybe I can see how didsomebody else get through that

(34:08):
challenging portion of the game.
But as I was reading this, I'mlike I think it all goes back to
that Everyone gets a trophytype thing that we talk about
Everyone.
You know the participationtrophy and and not learning how
to deal with failure or youremotions with that too.
So I wonder if that hassomething to do with it yeah,
brad, I'm with you on that,that's.

Speaker 3 (34:29):
I couldn't take it much farther than that.
But there has to be somerelationship there where it's
just so easy to watch but it'sactually hard to log in, load,
get in the lobby, get in a gameand then get your ass kicked.

Speaker 2 (34:42):
I can understand why that's intimidating for some
yeah, and you don't have to hearsomeone bully you and say you
suck if you lose and have todeal with that.
So again, a very big thing.
Another geez I do want to talka lot about APIs.
That's on my list too.
I don't know, We'll see howmuch time we have.
I could talk with you all night, all week, all year, and I hope

(35:04):
to talk to you more about somethings afterwards as well.
But one other portion of thebook that interested me is when
you talked about summing upeverything with.
I always pronounce namesincorrectly.
I should look it up, but even Iread the phonetics.
I'm poor at it, so you know,just put that into me being old.
The Plutchik diagram, yeah,yeah.
So could you explain a littlebit?
What is that?
Into me being old?

(35:24):
The Plutchik diagram, yeah, socould you explain a little bit
what is that diagram and what'sthe relevance within the book?

Speaker 3 (35:31):
Originally, I found that I had to think of these
terms or words to describe whatour baseline motivations were
for using the Internet forplaying video games, for logging
into Instagram, for playingvideo games, for logging into
Instagram and beyond dopamine,which I think is maybe a cop-out
at this point.
Everyone kind of knows that Ifound this diagram which is

(35:54):
called Plutchik's Wheel ofEmotions, and it's basically
this wheel where you have thesebipolar relationships between
positive and negative emotionsand also some other like derived
emotions that are kind of inbetween one and another.
And what I attempt to do in thebook is stitch together my

(36:14):
history, my usage patterns, andextrapolate that widely with not
just dopamine but thinkingabout what are the emotions that
I hope to feel when I'm onlineand why social media is so
uniquely positioned to take usthrough the full spectrum of
these emotions.
So essentially saying, oh, ifyou're like, basically okay, you

(36:37):
could be happy, but thensometimes, if you can be happy,
then you could also be sad.
Sometimes, if you could be likeanticipatory, sometimes you
could also be disappointed.
You have these differentemotions and of course we would
prefer the positive emotions,but also we have these maybe
desires for things like drama orfor sadness or for anger and

(37:01):
their intensities.
So sometimes it's like there'sanger, there's rage, right.
There's just, you know,annoyance, right.
These are all in the same andthey kind of get more intense.
So the more I read about it, Ifound that I was actually able
to go through specific thingsthat I've done on Instagram
mainly, and draw them to some ofthese emotions that would be
placed in distinct parts ofPlutchik's diagram.

(37:23):
And I think it's really uniquebecause also, some researchers
who have worked with Facebook orMeta have also come and
admitted that these platformsare not bad because they're not
introducing new emotions.
It's just that they reflectreal life where these emotions
good and bad are present.
So I found it prettyinteresting, but it did take a

(37:46):
long time to kind of form thatchapter.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
Yes, and then you went into it.
Though it's another interestingpoint that I hope to just maybe
talk a little bit of theoryabout is you mentioned that with
these emotions good or bad andyou had a good exercise and
you're good examples of take alook at your life, you have the
emotions and then put down whatyou expect for these, like you
had mentioned.
So the book has a good example,but people desire an emotional

(38:12):
roller coaster.
So now that you have thesefeelings identified, now the
emotional roller coaster thatpeople desire, uh, one there in
life what are your thoughts onthat?
I do have some comments on that.

Speaker 3 (38:28):
I was just thinking a little about this too many of
us expect life and relationshipsto play out more in this
dramatic, almost cinematic, uh,sense, where you have this
rising action, right, you havethe climax, you have the falling
action when you think aboutlike playwrights or how movies

(38:49):
are constructed.
We've been so overwhelmed withthese examples of really good
entertainment.
I believe that we're going togreat lengths for our own lives
and our own you know justmundane aspects of life to
actually kind of follow thatsame track, that roller coaster
of more of the extremes ofemotions.
And you could say on one endit's probably because we've been

(39:12):
desensitized with thisonslaught of different vectors
for entertainment, but also justhaving greater awareness of it,
we've definitely had just moreand more desire to go to the
extremes, and we see that forsure.
Where you used to have trollingand then you had cyberbullying,
and now we have like attacks onthe internet that get like

(39:33):
really really personal and gettaken too far, but the emotions
being drawn from there are quitesimilar.
So, yeah, I make the case likelook when it used originally
with video games, you wereeither really happy or really
sad because you either won thegame or you lost the game and
what ended up happening was whensocial media platforms first
came out, they were mutedcompared to what you could feel

(39:56):
in a video game, and this hasbeen captured by videos like
Boom Headshot, which is aboutCounter-Strike I'm sure both of
you guys remember that where youhave this crazed guy who is
almost channeling the image oflike a crack addict, like
someone who is so obsessed withthe game, so obsessed with
getting headshots, and basically, when he loses in the game he

(40:17):
becomes suicidal.
The point is that it took avery long time for social
networks, for their products, tocatch up to this extreme level
of emotion Along the way theyprovided all the other emotions
under the sun, because they domirror real life scenarios.

Speaker 2 (40:39):
I thought of two things when I thought of it.
I thought of movies like what'sa good movie?
Because a good movie rides theemotional roller coaster through
watching a movie and now youcan see, as you said, you're
bringing that same type ofattachment to it.
And do you think that thatemotional roller coaster, the
desire for that roller coaster,has anything to do with how
mature someone is emotionally tobe able to understand their

(41:03):
emotions, their, their feelingsand such?

Speaker 3 (41:06):
This is a touchy subject, but I would say, of
course and we often see itexpressed in more stronger ways
for those who don't understandsome of the social implications
of the internet as well.
So, for example, if you haveolder friends who just got on
MySpace or just got on one ofthese apps like Facebook, you

(41:27):
see behaviors that are veryunfiltered or that are almost
unlike who they are in the realworld.
So you'd say like, yeah,aspects of tech literacy
actually also come into playhere.
But if I was to the touchyaspect, that's not touchy.
Everyone's on the same pagewith that.
The touchier aspect today isthat, yes, I do have friends or

(41:50):
friends of friends, and you canalmost tell what podcasts they
listen to or what influencersare most strongly impacting them
.
Even when I was in my late 20sand now I'm in my early 30s,
it's actually that noticeablewhen you can see how people then
reflect that and then also see,under pressure, how do these

(42:13):
people really act.
And there's no, not to say it'sone gender, not to say it's
like one type of person.
The common denominator ispeople who spend way too much
time on the Internet engaged inthese like parasocial
relationships almost withinfluencers.
They're learning everythingfrom them and they're
representing their emotions inways that are very, very

(42:36):
immature, I think, compared towhat we would expect in the past
.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
That is funny.
That is one thing that I donotice with a lot of my
interactions.
That I do notice with a lot ofmy interactions.
You do realize like okay, isthat really your opinion, or is
it an opinion of the people thatyou listen to on a daily basis
or on a weekly basis?
You get to see that and it'swild.
It's like I know where you gotthat from.
I also heard that, right.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
Chris, right it is you become what you surround
yourself with.
As we say, it is the truth.
Whereas if you surroundyourself with an environment an
environment could be people,could be content, could be a
number of things you doultimately become what that is.
Whereas I always say, if youtake someone who's unhealthy and

(43:23):
put them with five healthypeople, give it some time and
that one unhealthy person willbecome healthy, it's a little
bit extreme.
I like to talk about theextreme and do the flip side.
Take five unhealthy people, putone healthy person with them.
They'll pick up the habits ofthe group that they're in.
So, to both of your points, it'swhat you consume yourself with,
which, to me, is a littleconcerning because I don't think

(43:45):
sometimes people understand theimplications of what they're
subjecting their children topotentially, and the viewpoints.
And also with social media, Italk with a lot of people.
We talk about Instagram.
You talk about Instagram beingthe biggest buzz and resolution
of revolution, which we'll talkabout where you just have a
picture, a snapshot in time ofsomebody's glorious life, where
I know people.
They took a picture, they weresmiling and happy in there, but

(44:07):
if you were in the room withthem beforehand, I can honestly
tell you they're throwing beerbottles at each other, which
brings me to Sorry.

Speaker 1 (44:16):
So that goes back to I love this topic because that
goes back to the social mediaeffect of everyone's daily lives
.
Because you know, when you aregoing through social media and
you're going through watchingthese people, you get fed with
the same similar things, and soit takes away from an
opportunity.
You know, especially if youdon't have the emotional

(44:37):
intelligence, it takes away anopportunity to look at other
side of the story or othercontent, Because then you
eventually gets fed.
That's the only thing you knowmoving forward and it becomes
your identity, unfortunately,and you see that all the time
with all the people I've everinteracted with.
So I had to finish that becauseit's like man.

(44:58):
That makes sense to me.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
No, it is, it is, it's good.
I'm sorry.
Like I told you, I'm superexcited about this and I'll
probably miss half the stuff andI'll probably be out of the
place.
I'll keep apologizing, butthat's just the way I am,
because I'm nervous and I'musually never.
Chris knows me.
I'm never nervous when I talkto anybody anywhere about
anything, not just on thepodcast, which does take to an
interesting point, and you had aviewpoint in there and it made
me really think a lot, becauseit's so much easier now for

(45:23):
someone to say to their childhere's a phone, go sit there,
I'm going to cook dinner.
And then they get stuck on thisphone and you have a great
perspective on it.
And it's a tough topic, I think, because you hear a lot of
people talk about it.
I think you said you don'tthink anyone should have access

(45:46):
to the internet until the age of14 or in some notion of that.
Let's jump into that a littlebit more.

Speaker 3 (45:53):
I think one of my direct quotes was to give a
child a cell phone redefineschildhood.
I'm very, very strongly maybeeven more so than when I wrote
that like in that camp where Ithink the restrictions should be
like almost like governmentenforced, like it should almost
be illegal at some point.

(46:13):
So, yeah, I believe thatproblematic usage now starts
when children are younger, and Ihave opinions on how I grew up
and the environment.
I come from where, even thoughthe iPhone was out when we were
in seventh or eighth grade, itwas a couple more years before
people had iPhones, and part ofthat for me was socioeconomic

(46:34):
differences where I went to apublic middle school and then I
went to the private high school,and at the private high school
I was then bullied for nothaving a modern phone, whereas
when I was in the public middleschool people were saying, oh,
whoa is that your cell phone?
And 80% of the class didn'thave one.
So now we're saying, as costshave come down and parents

(46:56):
obviously both parents obviouslyhave cell phones, there's this
opportunity for kids to beexposed earlier and earlier as a
replacement for child care orhow to entertain or enrich your
child's upbringing usingtechnology.
And why I say I feel morestrongly now than when I wrote

(47:17):
the book is because I live inNew York City and I see so much
on public transportation.
I live in a really niceneighborhood by schools and I
can kind of see these thingsplaying out both on the
socioeconomic.
So much on publictransportation.
I live in a really niceneighborhood so I buy schools
and I can kind of see thesethings playing out both on the
sides of the socioeconomicsspectrum.
But then also what parents areactually doing, how they're
dealing with unruly kids on thesubway and unfortunately most

(47:41):
people do seem to be defaultingto give them an iPad, give them
a cell phone and queue somestuff up and let's go.
If they're watching SesameStreet, that's not a problem.
The issue is that they're notwatching Sesame Street.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
It's the access to the internet.
Man.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
It's the crazy things , it's the crazy access that
they have and, to your point,you can play it out and you even
talked about it.
I just want to just go back towhat we were talking about
before, and I want to talk aboutthat at the points is again a
quote from your book.
I believe social media has noplace in a child's life until
age 14.
I strongly support banningsocial media access nationwide
for anyone under 14, adding inenforcing ID restrictions will

(48:22):
come at a cost of technologycompanies, but it must be done.
Nobody should be using socialmedia before they're in high
school.
The most addicting contentpersonalized auto-playing videos
on TikTok and video games withgambling elements and
microtransactions should also beage-restricted.
I can't agree with that anymore.

(48:42):
The only thing I will say is Ithink you might leave it a
little bit later than highschool or to a point where you
can teach them will say is Ithink you might leave it a
little bit later than highschool or to a point where you
can teach them internet literacy.
I think we really need to havea curriculum on internet
literacy because I seeindividuals now and you also
mentioned in your book thosethat you can visibly and again
in New York City.
I spent a lot of time in NewYork City in my career, in my

(49:03):
life and I can tell you some ofthe strange things you see on
the subway.
I can only imagine what it isnow.
I think I vowed not to go backand I haven't been there in many
years, not to mention duringthe summer.
It stinks, it's hot.
You want to get out of there.
But they have to have literacyon the Internet because they're
forming and shaping their values, their beliefs and what they

(49:26):
know based on an influencer, so,in essence, they're becoming
left behind.
I've had the opportunity to haveconversations with individuals
that are in high school, withinmiddle school and even in
elementary school, and you canreally tell those that their
parents had them read books whenthey were growing up or spent
story time reading time, versusthose that just gave them a

(49:47):
phone and said, okay, watch theinternet and I?
It's the generation that'sbeing born today.
It's amazing because I knowfirsthand that I could see a
child of two years old using aniphone.
They know to hang up the phoneand then, if they're on the
phone with the facetime and thisis at two years old they turn
the phone around so thatsomebody could see, not them,

(50:07):
but what's in the room.
And it's just it's natural,it's becoming an, it's just
exactly, it's becoming natural,it's become an attachment to
them.
And these, I tell everybodyagain, to put it loosely like
these are the people who changein my diapers when I'm in the
future, which is you just need arobot to do that for you, brad,

(50:29):
at that point no.
I think we do.
I think we do have to have theage restriction or content
restriction.
I mean, there is a point,because the amount of stuff that
people see on the internet isit's scary.
Yeah, I think it's actuallyscary.

Speaker 1 (50:42):
I think majority of that.
Now, as a parent myself, one ofthe things that my concern is
usually the access to theInternet, because, no matter how
much you do, some filtering andthings like that somehow would
eventually make it to themanyway.
So it's always.
It's always different.

(51:02):
It's an interesting balance asa parent myself.
It's an interesting balance asa parent myself.
And even then, as your kids goto school, there are schools out
there that requires them tohave a tablet or a laptop, which
also gives them access to theInternet.
Yes, they block a few thingshere and there, but essentially,

(51:30):
if they have YouTube kidsoption to watch content,
eventually things will stillfilter through.
It is an interesting balance.
It's hard for me to kind of like, okay, where do I fit in here
as a parent?
Now, the biggest thing for meis the education component,
making sure you're educatingyour kids of like, okay, these
things are bad and these onesare okay, and you kind of build
that trust system, right, thathopefully your kids don't

(51:52):
actually go anywhere else.
But lucky for them, or luckyfor me or unlucky for them is
that I'm in the tech world, so Ikind of know how to get through
that.
But not every parent has thatopportunity through that, but
not every parent has thatopportunity, so it'll be.
Yeah, it's a slippery slope, Iguess, when it comes to
technology it is.

Speaker 2 (52:13):
It is, and it's important to remember the reason
why, as Tim had mentioned,where people are looking to draw
your attention, to give youthat emotional roller coaster
for you to stay, and it doeshave an impact.
Another thing that, anotherquote from your book that I
thought about, and to tell alittle story about it as well,
as you said, this made merealize that LinkedIn is

(52:34):
probably the most trustednetwork.
Everything that supportseverything that happens on
LinkedIn gets taken moreseriously than anywhere else.
Users are on their bestbehavior.
Is this still the case?
This made me think of somethingrecently, and I'm going to tell
you the answer is no, all right, because I stopped using
Facebook, probably eight yearsago, because it got too too, too

(52:59):
much for me.
Right?
I got tired of the cliffhangerposts like, oh, I can't believe
this happened to me, waiting for15 000 other people to say, oh,
what happened?

Speaker 1 (53:08):
is that one of the reasons why you stopped using
facebook is because there's toomany cliffhangers.
Like I stopped using facebookbecause it was too distracting.
You're building a career andthen, and at the same time I had
family members were upset thatI'm no longer in facebook for
them to follow what I do in life.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
So they say Facebook's the old person thing
anyway.

Speaker 1 (53:30):
It is.
My parents are on it more thanme.
That's not why I got rid of it.

Speaker 2 (53:32):
I got rid of it because it became a meme
infested.
You know, originally it was agood idea.
You could see, keep up withfamily.
That was a way they could showpictures of kids that were
growing, such like that.
But your question there, oryour point, is I don't think
that's the case anymore and itreally hit me.

(53:53):
I was quite active and have beenquite active on LinkedIn.
I'm not saying it's bad.
It's probably the only socialmedia tool that I use now
because I did find a lot ofvalue of it.
Get out of it because there wasa lot of content.
I've been tracking what I seein my feed and, again, I know
the feeds are curated.
You have the option to put thefeed in timeline order or based
on what the aggregator wants.
I still argue that the timelinefeed still has some aggregation

(54:15):
.
But what hit me some weeks agoand it actually was great
because it coincided when I wasreading this book I saw a happy
birthday message on LinkedIn andI said to myself we have now
moved from Facebook to LinkedInand LinkedIn has become Facebook
to me and I'm now payingattention to what content am I

(54:39):
seeing on LinkedIn?
Many people are sharing goodhow-to articles, business tips
and all those types of things,but I'm also seeing a lot of
look at me, I'm here and suchlike that.
So what are your thoughts onLinkedIn now?
Yeah, Even in the time that youwrote this book because you

(54:59):
wrote this book last year, Ijust wanted to frame it up you
spent last year and I think younoted when we spoke before and
when you also noted the book youtook time off from work to
write this book, so you focusedon this book for one year.
Honestly, I'll tell you you cantell, because it's really well
written and the points resonatewell and I love the timeline.

(55:20):
But even since writing thisbook, what are your thoughts on
LinkedIn today?

Speaker 3 (55:25):
Brad, I think it's an important point to bring up,
because what you say is true asfar as the enshitification of
LinkedIn or just a degradationin quality in what you see in
your LinkedIn feed, do I stillhighlight this app as the most
trustworthy compared to othersocial media apps?

(55:46):
Yes, but do I think it's abastion of high quality content?
Absolutely not.
So, between writing this bookand this chapter was definitely
written, I would say, late 2024.
Um, it's changed, and I willalso say that for me now, having
to go into promotional authormode, where I'm connecting with

(56:09):
different podcast hosts,different journalists and even
some academics, you can imaginethe composition of my feed has
changed quite a bit and withthese changes, I've noticed the
same thing in that there'sdifferent types of content
creeping in.
I've noticed the same thing inthat there's different types of
content creeping in because itis one of these spaces where the

(56:30):
loudest people are defining alot of the content that I see
there Because, frankly, like Igive the example of my mom's,
linkedin was hacked.
A lot of people do use LinkedInquite regularly, or they check
messages or they have like pushnotifications at least.
Well, I know, I know they dobecause they talk about my posts
there, but the point is thatmost people will never ever ever

(56:53):
create a LinkedIn post.
So we look at who's actuallycreating these posts and it's
basically this iteration on whatwe were seeing on Twitter or
Facebook.
So you're you're right on thereand my feelings have changed
significantly Still trustworthy,but the content itself a lot of
it is throwaway content.
Or, if I do see content that Iwould love to, if I would love

(57:17):
to have a confrontation there, Ihold back because it is a
professional representation ofme and I don't necessarily want,
uh, people to know that I willsay there were examples, um, at
my last job where people werelike, hey, man, you should
probably cool it with like these, like diatribes on on linkedin.
So I see all of it but yourpoint is, your point is, like,
really true here are you sayingall the influencers?

Speaker 1 (57:40):
and there's more influencers on linkedin, then,
because they're the one who putsout the content the most.
Now there's short videos inthere and all that stuff.

Speaker 3 (57:47):
Yeah, I can't believe they did that with short videos
.
That's like, because even ifyou say I don't want to see this
, you only block it for like aweek.
There are some ways you couldhave like custom CSS to like
continuously hide it from yourfeed.
But yeah, the influencers there, the issue is that there's
pressure to have something outevery week.

(58:09):
And for my book, let's say, youknow, at this point I've done
30 podcast appearances.
I've had a couple announcementsthat I think are worthy of a
LinkedIn post, but if I was tosay, how can I even come up with
a once a week post that isrelevant to all of my whatever
2000 connections, it would bereally hard.
So you see people reaching forcontent that isn't original and

(58:32):
then, in some cases, justblatantly ripped off other
people's posts where we'reavoiding the engagement and this
confrontation that I thinkwould make it much more exciting
, like the things to actuallysay like hey, you're wrong, and
here's why I see that with someof the smartest people I follow
there, but for the masses we seethat it's still this like
tiptoeing around, really gettinginto like interesting

(58:55):
discussion and stuff.
And I, as an aside, I do thinkit's a shame we don't have
anywhere on the internet wherewe can have fiery debates that
don't result in doxing orthreats.

Speaker 2 (59:07):
It is unfortunate.
I think you should be able tohave a healthy discussion.
I call it.
You can have healthy discussionwithout making it personal.
And some people.
Some people fail to realizethat you and I can have a
disagreement, but it goes backwith most people argue to be
right Instead of most peopleargue to be right instead of
most people argue to beunderstood.

(59:28):
But they make it to be arguedwith their right, where
sometimes it's just OK.
Tim, I understand your point ofview.
This is my point of view.
We don't agree, but we can havea healthy discussion about it
while we feel it.
But, it's not personal, whereyou're like, OK, well, you think
that then you're stupid, or youknow all these other personal
things You're like, okay, well,you think that then you're
stupid, or all these otherpersonal things.
I think, unfortunately, I thinkLinkedIn will go that way

(59:49):
because, as you had mentioned, Inoticed, most of the content
that I see now is verysuperficial and, as you called
it, is throwaway, and I thinkwhat has really had a detriment
on what we see and hear on theinternet is AI.
I think now a lot of peoplegenerate content with AI and the
AI is generating content on theinternet is ai.
I think now a lot of peoplegenerate content with ai and the
ai is generating content on theai.

(01:00:10):
I'm just afraid of where we'regoing to be no, so ai for
content?

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
right, like you just ask ai or whatever and then just
spit whatever it comes out andthen you just repost it.
My concern on linkedin rightnow and I'm not I don't know if,
if this is happening, when nowis the bots?
Are there any bots that youguys are aware of that may be on
LinkedIn, or maybe that's thelast place right now that

(01:00:35):
doesn't have it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:37):
I have been seeing it more and it's been mentioned to
me a few times.
People have said, oh, you didthis Instagram automation thing.
Have you heard of these agentson LinkedIn that do XYZ?
And somebody actually showed mea demo a few months ago.
So I know they're out there andI can see the business value in
all types of Instagram sorry ofLinkedIn engagement bots that

(01:01:00):
are borrowing basically featuresfrom what we remember from
Instagram.
I've seen it on some podcaststhat I've been on, where the
host will post their thing,their most loyal followers will
like it and a few will commentfor visibility.
But I've noticed that some ofthe comments for visibility,
chris, are absolutely generatedby AI and almost certainly left

(01:01:26):
in a automated manner.
So they were also left by atrigger, not by a human clicking
or typing.

Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
So that's the crazy part I have to share a little
bit of, so I played a little biton this.
There's a product in Microsoftcalled Parautomate.
Parautomate is very simple touse and you can actually connect
to.
There's a connector forLinkedIn, so you can actually
get some set, some triggerswhere, if this person responds

(01:01:56):
or something posts, you can thenadd a prompt within your
Parautomate where you cangenerate a AI driven response
and then post it back.
So there is a possibility.
Now it requires someone tostill do that, but not like it's
a.
It's not like a fully automatedagent.

(01:02:16):
It stands alone, as far as I amaware.
But you can do that becauseI've used it to just extract
information.
So I'm sure, uh, there's anoption for you to kind of
respond back as well I'm sureyou could do something.

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
Yeah, talk with tim.
He talked about his days ofscraping his screens with python
and uh and doing those types ofthings.
It goes back to the same thingwith the insta pie.
You talked about the messages,with even putting in emojis or
putting in variable words.
I do think.
I think everything goes thatway because individuals are
going to be drawn to where themasses are and the masses that

(01:02:51):
don't want the noise are goingto move and those will follow
them.
But then you still have thatgamification that we talked
about is how many followers doyou have on LinkedIn?
How many followers do you haveon Instagram?
We talked about Twitter.
It just goes evolutionarythrough.
It's not evolutionary, itprogresses through each of the
applications where most of thepeople are how many likes do you
have?
How many comments do you have?

(01:03:12):
How do you get the algorithm toshow your content more to
others to see?
It's a wild game.

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
This talks about LinkedIn algorithm, and that's
true.
This talks about LinkedInalgorithm.
I mean, one of the things thatI have found out in the way you

(01:03:43):
get engagement is that yourfirst connection also be shared
to the other.
You know similar things, butyou'll never reach to someone.
Like, if I post something, youknow dynamics, right.
You'll never reach to any ofthe Oracle because it's not a
Microsoft thing, right?
So it can only be seen bypeople that are also interested

(01:04:06):
in Microsoft, which kind oftakes away that welcoming of
like hey, let's have aconversation, why this product
is better than that product, andso forth.
So it's fascinating thatthey're still gatekeeping, in a
sense.

Speaker 2 (01:04:25):
Tim, does this make you want to bring back shock
shows, shock social?

Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
It's funny because we see the same opportunities to
profit now, many years later,and it's the exact same where
anybody doing this on LinkedInis doing what I did on shark
social, either on the scrapingside or in the programmatic
growth side.
It's really the same thing.
As Chris says, like we havethese desires and we know that

(01:04:53):
the money is there as you scale,whether it's one account or
whether you scale it tothousands of customers.
So I do think about it a lotand I do think about maybe there
is a little bit of envy forthose people who are doing it
currently.
However, I will state thatanyone doing it currently,
including on LinkedIn, isviolating LinkedIn's terms of
service, so they're vulnerableto legal action or shutdown

(01:05:16):
pretty much at any time.
The scraping stuff would takelonger to adjudicate or whatever
, just because it's much harderto prove, but any of the
automation stuff is just like aslam dunk.

Speaker 2 (01:05:29):
I'm happy that you said that, because you do cover
terms of service, of a lot ofthese services in your book when
you talk about it, which isgood, so that people understand
I know a lot of people don'tread the terms of service,
understand the terms of servicebut you made a good point in
your book to talk about.
Again, your book was primarilya big talk about the social
media, I think because it is sobig.
It was so big was instagram intheir terms of service, and and

(01:05:51):
then even how the terms ofservice have changed, sure, and
then, um, oh, there was anotherterm that you talked about.
If you look at the wikipediapage how the definition of it
changed over time, it will comeback to me, I think, as we get
to it, which is good, so it'sstill mind-blowing.

(01:06:12):
About the book, I definitely,again, I did tell many people
about it as well and to just getsome other viewpoints on it and
to just take away from not totake away from the content of
the book great content of thebook.
But I also went and looked atyour blog as a result of this
and one thing that I found wasinteresting is the article that
you talked about why to Hire aCopy Editor.
I forget the title, but it wasthe concept of it that I want to

(01:06:35):
talk to you about.
A little bit too Sure as far as, as you're going through this
book process, you know what'sinvolved in the book process.
And to go back to your blog,why would you hire a copy editor
?
I can self-publish using Amazon.
I can self-publish with Wordand using Grammarly and such oh
the other tools to come up withthe content of a book.

Speaker 3 (01:06:54):
To write a book and self-publish it takes almost
this delusional level ofself-belief where you have to
wake up every day and nobody'sthere to pat you on the back or
to encourage you.
You have to have that internalbelief that you are doing
something worthwhile and thatyou are good enough to share
this with an audience.

(01:07:14):
So, naturally, if you take itall the way through to having a
book that's ready to publish ora manuscript that's worth
pitching to someone, you thenhave to admit at some point that
maybe you wrote something thatisn't so good or that needs some
work.
And this was the really uniquepart for me where, towards the
end of last year, I started tothink you know what I got to get

(01:07:36):
this book out Like it's now ornever.
So that led to you know, ofcourse, like planning to leave
my job and everything like that,and eventually exploring these
different opportunities, bothfor developmental editing, which
is like much more broad andmuch more, you know, expensive,
and then copy editing, which isto give somebody my 145,000 word

(01:07:58):
manuscript, pay by the word,and say what can we do here?
And the thing that I think it'sa very traditional space in
that with AI or with Grammarlyor some of these tools, you get
instant feedback, but whenyou're working with a copy
editor, they're not going togive you feedback within five
seconds, five minutes, fivehours, in some cases even five

(01:08:20):
days, and for the initialarticle, sometimes it was as
long as two weeks just to getthe initial feedback.
So, brad, I'm glad you broughtit up, because this journey also
involved learning what it meantto be an indie author with very
little support and also what itmeans to promote an indie book

(01:08:43):
while not falling into the sametraps that I highlight in my
book right when it would be likea paradoxical for me to say, oh
, and I use this, that and theother thing to sell my book.
So does it suck to see that someof my competitors purchased
fake Amazon reviews?
Yes, like that keeps me up atnight to see that I played by
the rules and I know I wrote thebest book.
I know that my book is the bestas far as my indie category in

(01:09:04):
the couple of months that Ipublished it.
I'm so, so sure of that To seesome of my competitors who I've
reached out to just because I'ma friendly guy and I'm curious
and I did purchase their booksand to say, hey, how did you
manage to get exactly 50five-star reviews on the day
that your book was published andhave them and, and you know,

(01:09:27):
have them come up with all thesereasons?
I'm like, hey, like, maybebefore you answer you should
read my book and understand likeyou are talking to a villain,
not in an intimidating way, butin a way that if you have
something to hide, I will exposeit.
And that's the ironic part,right?
Is that?
Like I'm being friendly?
But when somebody lies to myface, then in the indie author

(01:09:48):
community I can say, yeah, well,why are you now at 42 reviews?
I thought you were at 50.
It's because slowly and slowly,they're getting found out.
So, to take it back to copyediting, it's a lonely pursuit
and it's also one where you haveto balance your own knowledge
of what's out there withtrusting a professional and
paying a professional to take itto the next level.

(01:10:09):
Ultimately, I found a copyeditor who was wonderful and, I
think, who charged me a veryfair rate, gave me great
turnaround and gave me greatfeedback beyond copy editing,
sometimes just saying hey, tim,this doesn't make any sense and
being willing to say okay, Iwrote something that doesn't
make sense, let's work with this.
Reviewing her comments so shewould provide this is finished,

(01:10:34):
edited, and this is with everysingle comment and potential
justifications For each one ofthose chapters.
It could have taken me up totwo hours to review and
understand every one of thosechanges, so it was also like I
was paying for lessons inEnglish as well.
It was really cool.

Speaker 2 (01:10:51):
That's good.
I'm envious.
I always talked about wantingto write a book or something.
I never come up with a topic orsomething, but I'm envious for
those that do it and to readabout your story and to hear
about your story, how you wroteit, and also that you um, uh,
all that you put into it is alsoadmirable as well, and I'm
happy to hear that you'replaying by the rules, even as a

(01:11:12):
villain, because with all ofyour history of what you had
done, going through, um, all thedifferent companies that you
work with and some of thehistory that you talked about,
uh, with those is is uhinteresting.
Did you hear from anybody afteryou wrote the book by some of
those companies?
I know you have the company andyou didn't name the name.
You changed the name, obviously, but has anybody reached out to

(01:11:32):
you to talk to you about someof the stories that you told in
the book, about some of yourexperiences?
You reached out to somebody,but did anybody reach out to you
?

Speaker 3 (01:11:40):
There has been some organic outreach.
So those kinds of emails whereyour first reaction is how did
you even find me?
Or what motivated you to do so?
There have been some reallyinteresting conversations, brad.
The most interesting one isdefinitely from people like you

(01:12:02):
who said, hey, this wassuggested to me by the Amazon
algorithm, and then I noticedthat I did the same thing with
Instapy Instagress.
I was active in this space,running a marketing agency or
doing something there.
I've had several people whowere previously unknown to me
come out and say, yeah, I wasactive in that era and it is

(01:12:24):
crazy that you're the onlyperson to write about this.
That's been the mostinteresting for me.
For Cutlet, I would say thatthere's really no surprises
there, like the way things wentat that company.
The people who I was close with, they've read the book and
they're like this.
Generally speaking, they likedit.
I haven't heard from, like youknow, the management and you

(01:12:49):
know, for other things, ofcourse, there's this deep desire
not to engage in some type of,you know, confrontation with
meta or with big tech, but forpeople involved in the platform
integrity side of things, maybeto read this book and to reach
out and say whatever.
Unfortunately, my book was, Iguess you would say, sandwiched

(01:13:11):
or bookended by traditionallypublished social media books
which are having much largerimpacts.
So, like Careless People, thatgets published and that's like
this insider's take on why metais bad, right.
So it's a relief to me becauseit means there's no shot.
I'm getting sued now becauseall the focus is on that and I

(01:13:33):
had to take out insurance andstuff like I'm like, just in
case let's do this, that and theother thing, um, careless
people comes out.
I'm not getting sued anymore.
But also I think the shame isthat there are probably
thousands of readers forCareless People who actually
should place Careless Peopleaside and read my book and they

(01:13:55):
would get way more enjoyment outof it.
And that's the irony ofmarketing, right, that's why
things happen On the other side,the other part of the sandwich,
if you will, the other slice ofbread, was Super Bloom, and
Super Bloom, I think it's byNicholas Carr, who wrote the
Shallows, which is one of theoriginal kind of, you would say,

(01:14:17):
whistleblowing things aboutwhat the internet is doing to
our brains.
So the point is that I'm in acrowded space and I believe that
if I had the same resources asthese books.
I would be right there andpeople would be having the same
conversations and my ratingright now would not be 12, 5 out
of 5 star reviews.
As you said, brad, sometimes wewould disagree on certain

(01:14:40):
topics and part of me does longfor that.
Part of me longs for a largeraudience to see my book and say
this guy is wrong or I don'tagree with it.
Here's why, you know, these arethings that I definitely long
for and some of the outreach has.
I'll say this all of theoutreach at this point has been
totally positive.
I'm thankful for that, but I dodesire maybe a little bit more

(01:15:03):
diversity there.

Speaker 2 (01:15:06):
I don't have any.
My outreach is not going to benegative, it's going to be on
the positive side because, as Ihad mentioned, and there's just
so many, so many nuggets in thisbook that you talked about the
mom being hack story I thoughtwas a good story as well.
It was just, it is.
That's another I don't want tosay sense of irony, but it is
some irony, because here you aretalking about how you're a

(01:15:27):
villain in higher, like takingfollowers and scraping screens
and, uh, attention grabbing andsuch Uh.
Another story that goes back tois when you talked about the
Trump riots, on how you weresearching for the Trump riot.
Um, if you would jump into thatfor a moment.

Speaker 3 (01:15:45):
This is true.
Many years ago, when DonaldTrump was elected the first time
, I lived in downtown Chicagoand at that point in time, on
Facebook, if there was a verypopular Facebook live video,
there was something of a heatmap so you could kind of see
where the crowd was forming orat least where this creator was.

(01:16:06):
It was very clear that on thatNovember day that there was
something of a protest or a riotin the shadow of Trump Tower,
which is right on the WackerDrive in downtown Chicago.
So I showed up and I was like,hey, you know what, I'll go on
Facebook Live and I made a videowhich is like I don't know an
hour, an hour and a half long,where I kind of did this like
street style interview, but alsoI was just taking in the sights

(01:16:29):
and sounds.
Right, this was pretty new andI was literally 21, 22 years old
, so quite, quite young and none.
I didn't have many strongopinions, I'll put it that way.

(01:16:50):
Um, when it came to, uh, findthis video and talk about it for
the book, what I was reallymeant to address was influencer
culture and this concept of like.
Okay, I was there, I was kindof making a mockery of the
protest.
But then how does that relateto other types of influencers
who just, you know, it's just aface on a screen and we just
abide by what they do?
What I noticed when I searchedfor the video, which was titled
Trump riot, was that if I typedTrump and riot in my search box,
the video didn't appear.

(01:17:19):
Even late last year,algorithmic interference based
on certain keywords.
Where on Facebook I wasn't ableto search for a video that was
mine.
It wasn't even exposure toother people's content.
I couldn't search through myown content because it included

(01:17:43):
the word Trump, and the casethat I made Brad was like riot
is a bad word.
If there's any word I shouldn'tsearch for, it's probably riot,
but instead it was the wordTrump.
That I couldn't search for waslike this shadowy interference
in searching for my own content.
That actually happened and it'shard to provide the exact proof
in the book, but you could see.
There are two of the fewscreenshots in the book.

(01:18:05):
You could see.
It's there, you could see inone.
The video doesn't appear in thenext the video's there.

Speaker 2 (01:18:16):
It leads to making you think how much of the
information we see is controlled, and I don't.
I don't want to take away fromwhen you talk about your story
with the book.
I think it's an excellent bookand I think if someone is
looking for a book to read, thisis definitely worth whatever
the price of it is.
I have it on the Kindle so Ican take it with me everywhere.

(01:18:38):
I have a lot of books, I doread a lot of books and this is
a very well-written, verywell-informative book, and if
you grew up in the arts, as youcalled it right, or even earlier
than as myself, you'll take awalk down memory lane and you'll
have this aha moment as welltoo.
But to go back to what I wassaying, is it made me think?

(01:18:59):
That specific point of yourbook made me start to think of.
Now we're talking about thispassive society that's having
content serve to us.
We may be thinking that we'relooking for something, but now
how much control is there on thecontent we see?
Then go back, chris, to thepoint that you were making
earlier.
What are your viewpoints basedupon the information that you

(01:19:20):
see?
And now you can say I canidentify that person.
We can almost shift a cultureor a generation just by limiting
the exposure to the contentthat they have.
I could make myself clear Idon't know but that's kind of.

Speaker 3 (01:19:37):
Again, this is what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (01:19:38):
This is what I got from your book.
I don't know if you can tellthe passion of things, but
everything I read in your book Iwas able to expand upon and
really take a deeper look thanthe words that you had put on
the paper, which is that's why Isay I liked the way that it was
written, because that's what Igot out of it.
I got more than just readingthe pages.
I got a life emotion right Togo, with the emotion of

(01:19:59):
rollercoaster saying wow.
That really demonstrates howour content is being curated so
that we see what someone wantsus to see or think we want to
see, and not seeing somethingelse, therefore maybe limiting
the way we shape our opinions orforcing us to shape our
opinions a certain way.

Speaker 3 (01:20:19):
I appreciate your take, I can ramble, I'm sorry.
Yeah, I appreciate your take onthis and that's one part of the
book that's hard to explain.
When people say who is youraudience, it's essentially every
person who's ever been on theinternet.
If we're being honest, and whenwe think about the more
impactful things, the moreconsequential aspects of

(01:20:40):
software design what you bringup here with algorithmic
interference and how thisaffects information retrieval
algorithms, it's probably themost important part of the book
because it lends itself toconspiracy theories.
But when an author who didn'tset out to write anything that
was political at all when I canfind something just by

(01:21:01):
happenstance it suggests thatthere probably is something
bigger going on here and ifthere is enough care put into
how they construct the feed orhow they manipulate the feed
they being either motivatedadvertisers or the platforms
themselves it can have a majoreffect on.
It's essentially this statelevel propaganda machine and

(01:21:26):
that's like that's really reallyscary, really really important,
and it's unlikely we get anywriter coming with a better
perspective than this justbecause it's so hard to
understand what's being done.

Speaker 2 (01:21:40):
It is, it is.
It is a great book.
I could talk to you all nightlong.
I know you may have some thingsto do, but we do appreciate you
taking the time to speak withus this evening.
I enjoyed the book.
I appreciate the book.
Again, it's framed Villain'sPerspective on social media.
It's available.
I know you have it on Amazon.
Where else can someone orderthe book?
I?

Speaker 3 (01:22:00):
know it's available on Amazon.
Do's approved for widedistribution through Ingram, so
it should be able to be orderedthrough places like Barnes Noble
as well.
Excellent, excellent so.

Speaker 2 (01:22:11):
I encourage everyone to read it.
It's a very good andinteresting book, and I'd love
to hear feedback as well.
Tim, I know you'd like everyoneto reach out to you as well.
If someone would like to learna little bit more about you or
get in contact with you to talkabout the book, what's the best
way to get in contact with you?

Speaker 3 (01:22:26):
I prefer emails.
I'm old school in that respect.
You can find my email addresseven within the book if you scan
the QR code, or through mymailing list, which is
timohernbeehivecom.
My blog, which has longer formposts going back almost 10 years
, is tHearncom and my primarysocial media site is LinkedIn,

(01:22:48):
so anyone looking to connectwith me there just included a
connection note.
Happy to discuss the book, youknow.
Happy to hear what you've gotgoing on.

Speaker 2 (01:22:57):
Thank you again for taking the time to speak with us
.
I appreciate it.
Thank you for writing such agreat book, and I do hope that
you get up there past those thatyou sandwiched in between that
you had mentioned about, becauseit is, uh, it is definitely an
interesting read.
I hope to see you do anotherbook in the future, too.
Maybe you can do a continuationof even what has changed, uh,
since you had published thefirst book.

(01:23:17):
I think it would be a goodfollow-up yeah uh, thank you
again for your time.
Look forward to talking with youagain soon.

Speaker 3 (01:23:22):
Thanks Brad, thanks Chris, thanks guys Take care.

Speaker 2 (01:23:24):
Ciao, ciao, bye.
Thank you, chris, for your timefor another episode of In the
Dynamics Corner Chair, and thankyou to our guests for
participating.

Speaker 1 (01:23:35):
Thank you, brad, for your time.
It is a wonderful episode ofDynamics Corner Chair.
I would also like to thank ourguests for joining us.
Thank you for all of ourlisteners tuning in as well.
You can find Brad atdeveloperlifecom.
That is D-V-L-P-A-L-I-N-O, dotI-O, and my Twitter handle is

(01:24:12):
matalino16.
And you can see those linksdown below in the show notes.
Again, thank you everyone.
Thank you and take care.

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Episode 427: Framed: A Villain's Perspective on Social Media - An Unplugged Conversation

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 427: Framed: A Villain's Perspective on Social Media - An Unplugged Conversation