Mailbag #7: On Ads, The RSS Resurgence and More

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Mike Rugnetta (00:07):
Friends, hello, and welcome to Never Post. This
is a mailbag episode. It's theone for, I don't know, spring
twenty twenty five? How's thatsound?

Jason Oberholtzer (00:15):
Sounds beautiful. Spring has sprung.

Georgia Hampton (00:17):
Yeah. Spring is here.

Okay. Great. If you are new here, a mailbag
episode is where we respond tolistener emails, comments,
voicemails, and voice messagesabout our segments. Do you want
to get in touch with us and tellus your thoughts about our
thoughts? We want to hear yourthoughts on our thoughts.
All the ways that can get aholdof us are in the show notes. You
can drop us a line. I'm yourhost, Mike Rugnetta. Joining me

(00:40):
today in order of how uproariousI assume their go to karaoke
song is ascending. Hans Buto,never post senior producer.

Hans Buetow (00:52):
You've nailed it. Can I tell you something?

Yeah.
Sure.

I've never done karaoke, so I don't have Wow. I
don't have a karaoke song.

The maximum on uproarious.

Exactly. Oh my god. First runs. Of the gate.

Jason Oberholzer, Never Post executive producer.

The middle's a good spot for me because it
really depends on how my coverof D'Angelo's Untitled is going
to go over.

I think we should stop the recording because I
just wanna think about that

for a while. Swings wildly depending on the
room.

Yeah. Right. Georgia Hampton, never post
producer.

Yes. Let me be clear about something. I am a
performer first and a podcastersecond.

That's what that is.

And my performance of I'm With You by
Avril Lavigne. Oh. We're talkingI fall to my knees. I'm crying.
The whole room is crying.
It's very emotional.

I believe it. Now quickly, do you believe
Avril is still with us?

No comment. Okay. I think I think we need
more more intel first.

Very smart. It's one of those things, know, you
gotta do your own research.

So true.

Our perennial question, where do you fit into
this Mike Rugnetta?

I think that I am probably in the mid mid low. My
go to is Johnny Cash. Oh. I cando a ring of fire, which I like
because everybody knows thewords too. Yeah.
It's, you know, it can beuproarious, but there's an upper
limit to how uproarious I thinkring of fire can be. Fair.

Fair enough. Yeah. I've had people come up to
me after a karaoke performanceand shake my hand.

That's what I would have wanted.

Is that is that good?

I take it as good. That was after a
performance of Lips of an Angelthough by Hinder.

Oh, wow. Okay. So how

This is now. We're gonna abandon my bag.
Actually, this is now just akaraoke roundtable in which Hans
is unable to participate.

Hans, you can just you can just log off if
you'd like.

Georgia, are you a singer? Like, do you can you
sing?

I think I'm fine. I'm not like I'm not one
of those people who's gonna showup to karaoke early and be like,
me

me me me me. Like Do those people exist?

Oh, they super exist. At bar karaoke?

Oh, yes. Absolutely.

You hear the first few notes of At Last by
Etta James, you're like, oh,Jesus Christ.

Yeah. They're taking this seriously.

You there are other rooms for you to do that.

There's other places. But I mean, I did, like,
I did musical theater in, like,middle school. So I was never,
you know Mhmm. I can't readmusic. I never took voice
lessons, but I can belt when itis called for.

Got it. This is good intel. Let's talk about
some listener stuff.

It's a beautiful transition.

Oh, that god. Seamless. This

mailbag is also of note because it is our
first one as a member ofRadiotopia. And we got some mail
as requested from our longtimelisteners about what it means
that we are a part ofRadiotopia. And one in
particular I thought it'd beinteresting for us all to weigh
in on came from Malcolm Toll.Malcolm says, I write now about

(04:10):
one concern I have about podcastad networks. It unnerves me to
hear the hosts read out ads.
Paragons like The Verge have adeliberate firewall between ads
in the newsroom. It preventsundue financial influence and
bias from impacting reporting.Malcolm provides an example of
this that he thought wasparticularly odious, says that
he understands the sort ofpressures that places can be

(04:31):
under when they are parts oforganizations. Goes on to say,
could be wrong. I believe theonly ads I've ever heard on the
member feed are for the showitself.
That's sensible. But if theproducers are going to read ads
for other companies, I'd like tosee a discussion about the
practice in the audio industry.And that's what you're gonna
get, Malcolm, right now.

Let's go. Let's go.

I mean, I think this is something that we could
probably talk about, maybe notin a segment, but in something
else that we release and record.Just our experience with, you
know, not just to this show, butother shows that we've worked on
and been involved in about,like, how advertising works and
what those pressures are, atleast from my perspective as the
nominal host of the show who,you know, when they come to us

(05:14):
and they're like, okay. This adhas to be a host read. My name
is gonna be at the top of thelist. I also don't like it.
I just wanna be right reallyupfront about that. But I think
we have a broad remit in ourrelationship to say no to ads
just in general. So if we arebrought ads for things that we
don't like, then we can say, oh,no. We don't wanna advertise
that. We also have broad sort oflike permission to it's like

(05:37):
when they're like, we want youto read this ad and we want you
to include some of your personalexperience with this product.
We get to say, I don't have any.And then, you know, just read
the ad. And I think that overtime, we're gonna figure out how
that works, and we're probablygonna do some stuff that's
uncomfortable along the way.

Yeah. That seems fair. I think the other
thing that's important to pointout here is that Radio Topia has
handled this verycollaboratively Yeah. Yeah. And
sent us a huge list of things tosign no on essentially.

Yeah. Where we were able

to point out all the places that we might
have some sort of conflict ofinterest, things that we are
going to have to cover, thingsthat are on our beat, things
that we just don't like. And wehave a huge list of those we
sent over, and they said thanks,and they're not gonna send us
those things.

It's great. I mean, this is maybe one of the
things we could talk about if weever explain this at length, but
it's like a spreadsheet becauseit's all standardized. So every
ad has to slot into a basicallylike type, like a tag type.

Category.

Category. Yeah. That's that's the word. Uh-huh.
And, yeah, we just went throughand we're like, no supplements.
Just no. Just a blanket. Nosupplements. No. Thank you.
Yeah. And, yeah, they were like,cool. Sounds good. You know? And
then probably dozens of otherthings that we said no to.

Oh, I mean, this list, like, imagine a long
list and then times it by, like,800 of how specific you can get
about what kind of ads you don'twant.

Think about a list. Now think about a bigger
list than the list you'rethinking of.

This list is so unimaginably big. But

I think, you know, we are trying to be
thoughtful about it, and wewould hope that when we miss,
you guys will tell us. And, youknow, the list of things that we
don't wanna read ads for, likefinancial services and health
insurance Yeah. And just all thestuff that make you feel just
generally.

The other response we saw a few times to
our Radiotopia announcement wasfear on the part of the
listeners that we would get ridof what has been described many
different things, many differentways, the little sonic eye dent
at the end of every episode. Oh.You know the sound. I'll put it

crack this.

Right here. What would you all call I

think of it as the egg crack in my brain.

That's what it is. Yes. I completely agree

with that.

Oh, that's interesting. I I

think of it as the snap.

Yeah. It is it is, I think, mostly described
as the egg crack and genuinefear from the listeners that the
egg crack would go away to makeroom for the dulcet tones of
Radiotopia. Fear not, they areall there. We are cracking eggs
and singing opera at the end ofevery show. I always think of
that sound as like pulling out aquarter inch plug.

(08:16):
That's like a little wet.

Okay. I was gonna say. From an uncooked hamburger
patty? Yeah. Like

oh my god. Anyway,

it's not going anywhere.

Jason, you also got a bunch of outreach from
folks who wanted to let you knowthat there are in fact podcasts
of music, and how dare you notknow about them?

Yes. People wanted to let me know that I was
wrong. Can you imagine this? No.This is very helpful.
This is exactly what I askedfor. I wanted people to send me
things that were podcasts thatthey thought amounted to a
musical expression of the form.What if a podcast was music?
What if music arrived as if itwere a podcast? And we're gonna

(08:58):
list off some of the things Ithought were more interesting
that got sent in.
So thank you, everybody. One ofthe ones that seemed more
interesting was Ultima Thule, anAustralian radio show that seems
to have gone dormant at the endof twenty twenty four. So it
seems like we just missed thewindow on that, but let me know
if I'm wrong about that sinceyou all love to let me know when

(09:19):
I'm wrong about things. And someother examples people sent in
were real synthetic audio, astate of trance, song of the day
from the current, morningbecomes eclectic. Turns out
there's just a lot of stuff outthere that people believe to be
music that arrives via podcast.

I actually got a text, Jason, from my
brother-in-law, Steven fromBrooklyn. Hello, Steven. He's a
listener and a fan who feels badthat he doesn't write in and
only text me individually. Sonow I'm forcing him into the
show. That's good.

That's good. Yeah. You should

Yeah. Believe in bullying on the show.

Let's let's bully our families. So he suggested a
couple of VivaRONT Radio byJeremy Olander and Above and
Beyond puts out something calledgroup therapy. He said there
were a lot of these that he haslistened to over the years
because he listens while heworks. He listens to ambient
music while he works.

Okay.

And he pointed me interestingly, what I thought
was interesting, to the finalepisode of a podcast called
Anjuna Deep Edition. And so theypublish this in May 2022, and
they open it by explaining a bitabout why they're not doing
podcasts anymore.

Clip (10:27):
As you might have realized, the weekly Anjuna Deep
Edition mixes haven't beenappearing in your podcast feed
since episode 400 a few weeksago. Sadly, this isn't a glitch
in your app, and we are in factclosing down the podcast feed.
When we first launched the DeepEdition and our other radio
shows, there were very fewoptions for distributing those
kind of mixes. And so like manyother labels and artists, we

(10:48):
turned to podcasts. Today, thereare a whole host of music
specific platforms that host ourmix content, including YouTube,
SoundCloud, and Mixcloud, whereyou can find the Angunity
petition, along with AppleMusic, where you can find our
new Anguno Mix series, and onSpotify, where we've got various
other mixes along with all ofour new releases.
These platforms all cater formusic in a way that the podcast
feed sadly doesn't, in that themusicians and creators behind

(11:11):
the mixes can receive royaltiesfor their music being played. So
thank you so much for listening.

Suck. I mean, hard to argue. Do you guys know
Camp? Mm-mm. No.
It's like a French, like, artistresidency for electronic
musicians, and they have a radioshow sort of radio station,
really just a website thatcollects mixes that people do.
And it's all hosted on Mixcloud,which I've never encountered
before, you know, like, a coupleweeks ago when I found out about

(11:37):
this. Mixcloud rules. Okay. Sojust hearing this now.
It's like this I'm sure this isfrequency illusion. You know
what I mean? Like, suddenly,this is everywhere, but I'm sure
I just never encountered itbefore. But yeah. I mean, it's
compelling.
It's a compelling reason.

Yeah. It makes some sense.

One email I wanted to spend a little bit of
time on was one from Jam, whosuggested that they're a casual
music listener, but the firstthing that jumped to mind were
DJ sets and playlists, such asIsaac Varzim's Groovy sets,
Humano Studios guest sets,Boiler Room sets, made me want
to ask the question in the otherdirection. Rather than what

(12:13):
podcast might be music, whatmusic might actually be a
podcast and I nominate DJ sets.

Interesting. Yeah. Okay. In a way, opera.

You're right. The original podcast is

talk people talking about their problems.

Yeah. Sorry. The second podcast. First, had
cereal, then we had opera.

Traditional Italian opera.

That's actually the perfect answer. Oh,
my god.

So up next, in response to an email from Thales
Baretto in our last mailbagregarding our segment from last
year's live show at xoxo, whichis about TikTok shop. We
attempted to identify whichonline business might be the
most parasitic. And in Talis'swords, the question was, which

(13:05):
online business is able toprofit while being the least it
can be? Jason Mehmel writes inwith his contender, which is
PayPal. Jason writes, I'm surethere was some level of work to
make initial bank connectionsand such.
But at this point, it's just amiddle stop between whatever

(13:27):
banks are involved in thetransaction. Maybe that initial
work deserves credit, but it'sdevolved into being just a
membrane skimming from thetransactions moving through it.
I'd love to know if there arebetter methods now. I feel like
PayPal is an an entity thatseems vaguely evil to me, but I
know so little about.

PayPal, don't listen. PayPal, if you're
listening, just just fastforward. PayPal sucks. And
PayPal

All my homies hate PayPal.

Can only exist because payment infrastructure
in The United States is soatrophied and at under the
control of, like, corporateinterests and doesn't actually
benefit people. Whenever you,like, talk to someone who
doesn't live in The UnitedStates about just, like, sending
small bits of money back andforth to your friends, they're
like, just use your bank. Andour answer is, oh, you can't.

(14:18):
Well, yeah. We got PayPal, athird service that is like the
money mafia.

It really feels like that. Like, as someone I
don't feel like I interface thatmuch with PayPal. I don't know
why that is. Maybe just thetransactions I'm doing. But
usually, in my experience, themethods that are used are like
Venmo or Zelle.
PayPal kinda doesn't exist in mylife. So I I sort of defer to to
you guys.

Well, Venmo is just is owned by PayPal. So it's
just it's just another scan onit. It's just a yeah. It's just
one level on top of PayPal.

Also, isn't there just they have like a
really easy backdoor to get intoor something? I feel like I've
heard so many stories of peoplehaving like, their identity
stolen through PayPal, or liketheir bank information stolen
through PayPal. Somethinghorrible happening. The main
thing that

they do is they they have an even more sensitive
tripwire than, say, Visa does asfar as just saying, well, you
can't do that anymore. And thatthey are well known for if they
don't like something that you'redoing or just mildly suspicious
of you, just shutting youraccount down and taking all your
money, which, of course, is intheir interest

to So what I'm hearing is maybe this is
actually exactly the mostparasitic. It's pretty bad.
Maybe we just got it. Like,maybe this is it.

Yeah. Okay. PayPal, you can start listening
again. And that's why I lovePayPal. And that's why the

sponsor, PayPal.

It's it's just it's extremely convenient. And
honestly, their trust and safetyteam, I feel like they go out of
their way Above and beyond.Sure. Yeah. To make sure that
everybody who uses the service,like, really knows what they're
doing.

So to rewind to the beginning of this
mailbag, we're gonna get noadvertisers. Okay.

Good news. In our last mailbag, Toby called in,
and the voicemail got cut off.And then Toby called in again.

Hell, yeah.

Yes, Toby.

Toby (16:09):
Hey, Never Post. I'm so sorry about whatever happened. I
think what I was getting at ismy social media algorithm in
terms of specifically ads haschanged significantly since I,
like, medically transitioned.And so basically what happened
is I started noticing I wasgetting a lot more gun oriented
things, a lot more fitness. Iwas getting more ads for shitty
supplements.

(16:29):
And I was just curious about,like, the sort of gender
assigned at social mediaalgorithm idea.
What do you all think?
Is this, like, a legitimate
thing in terms of, like, yourads predicting sort of, like,
your gender?

So I would like to just remind everyone that we
accept pitches.

Yes. Toby.

And that we pay people to make segments and that
this is interesting.

Fascinating. So interesting.

Toby, call us back again.

Just call Hans. Just call Hans.

Just give me a

raise time.

Hans' phone number is Hi. Next up, in
response to our segment aboutsection two thirty with Mike
Masnik, my pal Guy, and Hans'pal Guy

Oh, Guy.

Called in.

Guy (17:16):
Section two thirty is a US law. Laws have jurisdiction, and
I wondered how section twothirty sort of related to the
Internet and the the globalentity. And I know you guys have
talked about, you know, this inother shows about, you know,
it's hard to know the Internetfrom other perspectives other
than The US. But I wondered if,you know, if there was anything

(17:40):
to say about if section twothirty does go away, how does
that impact the Internet inother places? Do other countries
follow it?
That would that make The US anoutlier, or would then they join
more countries that also don'thave anything like section two
thirty?

So Guy yes. Guy lives in Canada. Mike, I have a
question for you. I I wannapredict your answer just a
little bit and actually see ifI'm at all right about this.

Alright.

That the torch is being passed. Two thirty does
affect it at the moment becauseso many places have to deal
with, do business in, and besubject to American laws.
However, that source of powerhas been shifting over the last
ten years maybe to the EuropeanUnion who is coming and being

(18:31):
much more strict with all sortsof places that The US is
currently choosing not to bestrict at all, especially with
the demise of net neutrality.Like, the European Union is the
only one who is actually doingthis and are shaping

the Internet for the rest of us.

Am I sort of right?

So, I mean, the important thing to remember
about net neutrality is thatthat is not a content level
decision. Right? That is or orit is content level insofar as
its content that goes throughinfrastructure, which the EU is
trying to regulate both both ofthose things. But the
infrastructure is like acompletely different thing.
Right?
The cables are where the cablesare, but the information is

(19:05):
everywhere. So I think there isa way to think about this where
we get two Internets,essentially, and we see a larger
version of what already existswith, say, the right to be
forgotten, where every year Ithink it's every year. The EU
gets, like, 50,000,000 requestsfor results on Google to be

(19:26):
removed or to be downranked, andGoogle adheres to or accepts,
like, half of them. I think itis. But that only happens in the
EU.
Right? There's no right to beforgotten in The United States.
There's just the Internet worksin two different ways in two
different places. There's achance that that happens. I
think it's probably reallyunlikely.

(19:47):
The, like, bigger thing toconsider is that most of the
largest Internet players right?And really, we're talking about,
like, social media is reallywhat is what is to be considered
here. They're all US companies.They will have to abide by US
law. And so in their if sectiontwo thirty goes away, right,
they have basically two choices.
They can moderate everything.They take the path of, like,

(20:11):
we're gonna look at everything.We're gonna approve it before it
all goes up, where everything'sgonna get the green check mark.
Everything's treated very, veryequally that way. The things
that I've seen written aboutthis is that other countries,
especially other authoritariancountries, look at that and they
say, oh, so you are looking atevery post.
Great. When you come acrossposts that say Erdogan is bad,

(20:33):
could you take all those down?Like, you you're already doing
it. You're already looking ateverything. Like, why don't you
just don't take it all down?
What happens then? Do theyagree? Do they stop offering
their services in thosecountries because they don't
wanna get involved in thatsituation? Do they offer a
different version of theInternet in those countries? You
sort of end up at the twoInternets again.

(20:53):
The other outcome is they say,okay, two thirty goes away.
Okay. We can't moderateanything. We don't moderate
anything. We're not gonna lookat anything.
That means the Internet, as MikeMasnik described it, becomes a
cesspit for everybody whoengages with it. Until the EU
then says, well, you can't thereare certain uses or posts. There
are certain kinds of contentthat just cannot be seen here,

(21:15):
and so fix it. Does that thenmean, you know, there's now two
versions of the Internet again?There's the one in The US that's
not at all moderated, andthere's the one in The EU that
is moderated to theirregulations.
You know? There's so many thingsthat have to happen before we
know what happens, but those arethe two sort of, like, branching

(21:36):
paths that I've seen otherpeople talk about as far as what
is the rest of the world like ifsection two thirty goes away in
The United States?

Well, our most recent relevant example is
GDPR, which is now fairly old.Yeah. But American companies
ended up just by and largebecoming GDPR compliant across
the board because it's more of ahassle not to have been. So that
was EU taking the lead andeveryone just opting into the
ease of just following along.

Yeah. Yeah. So I think the answer here is

no.

Up next, Jay wrote in about my conversation
about having fun on the Internetwith Kyle Chaeka. And Jay said,
I gave some thought into theways that I combat algorithmic
fun. And this is what I've comeup with. And here's a fabulous
list of options. Disable autoplay or auto preview.

(22:36):
I always manually select thenext thing. Yes. I do this too.
It's amazing. Click on thesubscriptions tab on YouTube.
I also do this. Very smart.Whenever possible, sort only by
chronology. Yep. Whichinteresting.
I hadn't even thought of that.Whenever possible, use RSS in

(22:57):
quote unquote quiet apps.Subscribe to newsletters when
it's important to me, and RSS isunavailable. I often find cool
stuff tag surfing on Mastodon,Tumblr, Bandcamp, maybe soon on
Blue Sky. Whenever I go to thelibrary weekly, which wow.
Nice. Thank you. I will grab onecomic, one jazz CD, and one

(23:21):
movie I've never heard of.

And do them all at the same time,

Clip (23:24):
I assume?

Multiple screens, full While

watching a Subway Surfers video.

That's a really beautiful practice. I really
love this. And then finally,they say, anthologies. I enjoy
buying things in bundles onitch.io. We're supporting
anthologies on Kickstarter, andthat's a fun way to discover new
creators.
This is a wonderful list.

It's beautiful, Jasmine. It's

Tag surfing on Bandcamp rules. I cannot
recommend it highly enough. I doit almost every day.

I want more of these. Where else are people
finding intentional interactionswith their media and attention?

And then Sam also called in with message
about this segment.

Sam (24:07):
I have to say, I have gone back to using RSS feeds for
pretty much all of my Internetconsumption. And I actually spun
up my own RSS server on a webserver that I have. And since

(24:28):
then, I have been using that andit is so much better. Oh, I know
exactly what's there. I wantexactly what's there.
And I don't have to deal withsome algorithm getting in my
way. And it's great.

Mike, I want you to go first.

Mike's Alright. Punching the air that rules so
hard. Yes.

All time. Mike, I see the floor to you.

That's it. That's I mean, that's all I have to say
is punching the air. Sam, thatrules. I I fully I think I don't
wanna call it a resurgencebecause it never really went
anywhere, but the refocusing,let's say, on RSS has been a
long time in the making, and Ithink it's only going to
continue in focus as peoplerealize what the current way of

(25:16):
getting information has done tothe information environment and
to our brains. And we're gonnago back to calm, as the last
comment said, quiet ways ofgetting information in organized
streams in particular places andnot having to just sort of,
like, live underneath thewaterfall.

God. Yeah.

It's real simple. It's real simple.

One other email I wanted to take a look at
here for your sake, Georgia, Thepayment about this piece
involves pretty much exclusivelyTitanium Daydream.

Let's go. Yes.

You wanna tell the folks what Ethan wrote
in to say?

Absolutely. It would be my pleasure. Ethan
writes in that they are also ahuge fan of Titanium Daydream,
which is fabulous news for me.Ethan, get in touch. Would love
to talk to someone else who'swatching.
But they also write that what'sinteresting is that I think it
both shows what's incredibleabout TikTok and the problem
with algorithmic content feeds.I'm thrilled that an equation

(26:18):
somehow produced the numbersthat served this incredibly
niche and esoteric video seriesto me. But the big caveat is
that its weekly output scheduledoesn't work well with the
platform. You either have todiligently check-in on the
account every Tuesday, which Isometimes do, or pray the
algorithm brings you the nextepisode. So far, I haven't

(26:39):
missed any episodes.
But this randomness gives thecompletionist in me a bit of
anxiety. They go on to say thatthis is true for a lot of other
serialized content on TikTok,which this is exactly how I feel
about Titanium Daydream.

So do you are you a Tuesday viewer? How do you
engage?

I kind of have the the other approach, which is
just that I regularly use TikTokand kind of hope Yeah. That it
will bring Titanium Daydream tome. I also do I will say this. I
follow that account on Instagramas well. And so that account
will post on their story like,hey, the next episode is up.

(27:20):
So that I can be like, oh,right. And maybe go on TikTok.
TikTok's algorithm knows I likeTitanium Daydream, and I will
Mhmm. Always see it. I I alsohave not skipped an episode.

It is funny as a counterpoint to the
intentional Internet we werejust championing a moment ago. I
have stopped following newaccounts on TikTok even. I am
just entirely to the algorithmbehold them. I I don't even like
things anymore. I forget toheart them.
I just watch something and I'mlike, for sure, more of this
will get back to me because Ihave watched it, and I let the
numbers do their thing. I havenothing in the middle anymore.

Yeah. I think a lot of this speaks to the kind
of fundamental dishonesty of thealgorithm whose promise was,
hey, don't worry about it. We'regonna bring you the stuff that
you like. And then it justdoesn't. It just simply doesn't.
It just brings you stuff that'sclose to the thing that you
like, so that you spend moretime letting content happen to
you as you turn into a puddle onyour couch. And I think it
speaks to the intentionality andthe specificity of RSS where you

(28:16):
get to say, I like this. Bringmore of it to me. And RSS just
says, okay.

Done. I love you.

Alright. On that, we're gonna take a break. We're
gonna listen to some ads. ForPayPal. Okay.

(28:54):
We are back. Hans, we had somepeople write in about the just
unbelievable number of camerasin the world.

It is a shocking number of cameras, and I
appreciate that everybody getsthat. Pat wrote in. Pat Reddick
wrote in to say that they reallyappreciated the AP footage that
I referenced from April 2006. Ifound this video of how how
amazing it was that there werethree traffic cameras being put
up in New York City, and theydid whole these whole cloth
things. And Pat says a littleover three years later in

(29:23):
02/2009, I was in a first yearcomputer science studies
lecture.
And even by that point, thesurveillance state felt like a
given. So my jaw nearly hit thefloor when the professor told an
anecdote about how he had led apush to stop the administration
from installing cameras allaround the university. I
remember him telling the storylike his view that the idea of
cameras everywhere was a creepyprospect with little upside was

(29:45):
obviously correct and, like,everyone in the room would
agree. Meanwhile, I'm sittingthere like, you mean we have a
choice in this matter? We canopt out of this?
Honestly, I hadn't even noticedthat the university lacked
cameras. I had just assumed thatthey were like everywhere else.
I remained involved inuniversity life until 2016, and
they did not install any camerasI was aware of during that time.

(30:05):
And I think that timeline makesa ton of sense. So in the
research for the piece that Idid, I had written an entire
section that I wanted to put inthat I thought I was gonna put
in using the research ofShoshana Zuboff, who's a
sociologist from Harvard.
And she has this whole thingabout surveillance capitalism
that she does, which is aboutthe industry, the money that

(30:27):
gets put into surveillance allover the place. And she actually
puts the rise of cameras intothe late nineties, mid to late
nineties with Gore. And there'sa we'll put a link to it in the
show notes, but she's got thisreally great talk where she
tells these anecdotes of beingright around that time and being
in conferences and having peoplebe like, the information is

(30:48):
everything. We need to surveil.We need to surveil.
And so, like, you're exactlyright to have noticed it at that
moment that that was really whatthe ascendancy was. And a lot of
it was in response to to nineeleven, but it started even
before then.

And I feel like we're only just now starting to
see what the people who wantedthe cameras might want to and be
able to use them for. Yeah.Twenty years ago, they were
like, we should install. Weshould build a horrible machine.
Yeah.
And in 2025, they're like, weshould turn the machine on.

(31:22):
Yeah. For

that 02/2006 AP article, I found a New York
Times article also that wastalking about that same event
from February. And in that, theybasically were like, yeah. It's
kinda weird, I guess, but, like,the quality of them is so low,
and the data is so big, and youhave to actually go to, like,
pull the data out of the camera.So I don't think it'll ever get
big. We laid the groundwork backthen, and all we had to do is

(31:47):
fix those small.
You really didn't think cameraswere gonna get better? You
really didn't think connectivitywas gonna improve? Like, that
was the only way it was gonna belimited, and now here we are
exactly like Mike says. Chrisalso wrote in, and I really I
think this is a really strikingcomment. Chris works at Walmart
and says that there are cameraseverywhere.

(32:08):
The self checkout area alone hasat least two cameras per
checkout spot. One is to look atyour face as a customer, and the
other is to watch your scanningtechnique waiting for when you
make a mistake or you might betrying to steal like the carrot
technique. There are very fewspots where there is not a
camera of some kind. In fact, Itend to take notice of where
there is a blind spot or a weirdlack of cameras. I feel

(32:30):
constantly watched because I'mbeing constantly watched.
That's true. But I also knowfrom talking to coworkers and
customers that they do notreally feel this way, which is
very interesting. But also,like, I can't say that. That's
deeply relatable. Like, that'swhat my whole piece was about.
Like Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. You normalize it. Yeah. I know
I'm constantly being watched,but I rarely engage with that
knowledge.

Yeah. I don't have feelings about it. And and it
took me a lot of looking at itto actually have have any
feeling.

I wanna briefly return to this self checkout
thing. Because just the fact ofthe normalization of of watching
yourself. Because I even thinkof this at Target. Right? Like,
the self checkout camera isshowing you yourself.
Like, you can look at it. You'rewatching yourself there. And

(33:21):
what's interesting to me is,like, I have a lot of friends
whose impulse when they see thatis to, like, take a picture of
themselves, like, with theirphone of the self checkout
screen that's showing them.Yeah. And it's I don't I just
find that's, like, such aninteresting reaction in the
conversation of thisnormalization of just like, yep.
That's me, and here's me, andhere's my phone, and here's the

(33:41):
screen.

Taking the power back. And now I'm the
you're I'm making content out ofyou. So yeah. You're the
commodity.

Have you guys tried to buy a power tool at a
like a Home Depot recently?

Oh, you know, haven't.

In the in the hardware aisle where, like, you
know, the angle grinders orwhatever are in the Home Depot,
there are cameras now and thensmall little screens that again
show you what camera what thecamera that you're on. And that
picture is sent to a buildingsomewhere else. I don't I don't
know where in another statewhere there are people who just

(34:16):
sit there and watch.

Clip (34:17):
Woah.

It is an outsourced company that looks
specifically at the tools inHome Depot to make sure that no
one steals them. And I onceheard a man, like, talk to
someone through the camera to,like, explain because someone
was, like, trying to pick upsomething, and they was like,
hey. You can't you're not gonnabe able to pick that up. You
gotta go get someone.

If you

pull harder, you're gonna set the alarm off.

Woah. Oh my god. This actually transitions
perfectly into the voicemailthat Carl sent us about an
experience that he had at alocal restaurant regarding
cameras.

Carl (34:52):
I was just in New Haven last weekend and I went to a
really great vegan restaurant orvegetarian restaurant called
Claire's Corner Copia, whichI've been to a couple of times.
And it's this really homey,really cute little restaurant
with like drawings of farms onthe walls. And really, I mean, I
think kitsch in a fun way decor.And as I was kind of looking

(35:15):
around enjoying my vegan Frenchtoast and taking in the
environment, I noticed thecamera. I was like, okay,
that's, I guess, normal.
Normal for a little restaurantto have a camera. As I was
looking around enjoying more ofthe decor, I noticed another
camera and another camera andthen two more cameras. And by

(35:35):
the end of my sort of aestheticscan, I've identified 11 cameras
in a small dining room

Too many.

Carl (35:44):
Of a small restaurant in the middle of New Haven. Mean, I
was bothered, obviously, by allthese cameras. But the biggest
question for me was how canthere be this many cameras
covering so small a space? Andthis sort of like surveillance
ideology is so invisible thatthe owner of, like, a homey

(36:05):
vegetarian restaurant in NewHaven can think it's good and
appropriate to to surveil fromevery angle possible everybody
in the restaurant at once.

I saw this happen on my block with Ring cameras.
The exact same thing. Whenpeople ins people install a Ring
camera, and they're like, I canI can finally see all of the
horrible nonsense? They becomeBatman. And they're like, you
know, I must surveil Gotham fromthe rooftops.
And then they install anothercamera to get this angle, and
then a third camera to get theother angle, and then a fourth.

(36:35):
And then they're just watchingit all day long to be like,
who's that person that walked byin this? And I like I had to
leave. My block had a grouptext, and I was like, I had to
leave. I left it becauseeverybody was going insane about
just, like, normal city shitthat happens on every block.
And I think I think it issurveillance ideology. I think
people get addicted to it.

Yeah. Once you pop, you can't stop.

I can just one more camera. Just one more. But
agree. Yeah. Jason.

I just back to this rest how many different
types of behavior are youpolicing in that restaurant?
Like, I don't know. Put one bythe door. If someone ditches,
you'll be able to, like, seetheir face and make this is the
guy who ditched. Don't let themback in.
Like, are they eating weird?What do you need to know?

Well, that's my thing is that I'm like like, to
Carl's point, who's watching?Like, what are they why do they
need this? It's too much. It'sjust undeniably too much.

Noah Hertz writes in in response to
George's piece on the impendingonce and future never resolves
TikTok ban Yes. To brag that hedeleted TikTok off his phone.
Well well well.

Well well, Noah.

Noah, who you all might remember from the David
Social segment.

Yes. Right. And so interestingly, Noah
remarks that he doesn't reallythink his average screen time
has come down all that muchsince he deleted TikTok off the
phone. Oh. He was hoping thatthat would be the case.
He just replaced it with usingInstagram more. But he finds
that the average scrollingsession on Instagram is far far
shorter than it was on TikTok.

Mhmm. Because it sucks.

Yeah. Because it's bad. Yeah. But your body
still needs the same amount ofraw

feed. Scrolling.

Yeah. Now it says they learned a lot of cool
stuff, saw lots of cute funnyvideos. Thanks to TikTok, but
also felt like they spend a lotof their time watching whatever
slop was being fed to them. Nowthey think they're getting more
out of Instagram than it'sgetting out of them, which they
stopped feeling like withTikTok. So I guess that's

(38:53):
progress.
Congratulations, Noah. Thank youfor bragging, and I hope that
you continue to love whatInstagram is giving you. But
it's a post script, which Ifound particularly interesting
here. In light of some otheremails that came in, Noah
included a picture of himlistening to Never Post on a

(39:14):
classic iPod.

Oh my god.

I'm seeing more and more classic iPods, pictures
of them refurbished and modifiedand jailbroken and whatever in
the feed, and I support it. Ifully support. Yeah. I think it
rules.

Oh my god.

And this leads me to some emails we got
harkening back to last summer'sSound Files of Summer episode,
where we talked about ourevolving strategies of music
curation and how we stored andstreamed and lost and deleted
and refound files of music inour lives. We got an email from
Lenny who might not be using theiPod Classic still, but is

(39:51):
trading USBs with their friends.Living in Canada where music
streaming services and phonedata plans cost a lot more than
The US, it's common to drive orvisit places where you lose cell
service and there are no radiostations. Old phones, ancient
iPods, and visor holders full ofCDs are our friends during these
stretches. I often wonder ifother places have similar
experiences, especially with therise of cheap Android phones and

(40:13):
SD cards for storage.
This is basically becoming ourreject modernity use old gear
and old protocols episode.

Yeah. Really is. I love

the idea of a like a file swap. Yeah. Like you
go to a place and you bring yourUSB, your thumb drive, you swap
files. Sounds great.

Lenny's final contribution to the Sound Files
of Summer discourse is to tellme for the second time in this
podcast that I was wrong aboutsomething.

You should reconsider being wrong so much.

I went on the record as a person who used the
star ratings on iTunes. Myfavorite songs were five stars.
My least favorite were one star.Lenny tells me that this is
wrong, and that the on the gomusic management system that
works the best is one star foryour best music, five stars for
the ones you wanna delete sothat you can quickly mark a song
to delete without taking youriPod out of your pocket, which
is some next level behavior,Lenny. You keep up literally

(41:10):
everything you're doing upthere.

Ronald wrote in in response to the segment that
I made about real photos thatlook like AI and what this does
to sort of like our sense ofbeing able to know things and
what the truth is and what isreal. Ronald wrote, thought you
might want to know that AI isalready well and truly
contributing to the erosion ofthe foundations of modern

(41:35):
scientific inquiry. Academicwatchdog blog Retraction Watch
recently published an article onvegetative electron microscopy,
a borderline nonsense phrasethat began making its way into
publications apparently becausean AI algorithm spliced together
words across the gap between twojustified columns in an article

(41:56):
from 1959. Holy shit. Regardlessof its origins, the phrase is
almost always an indicator thata paper was produced by a
publication mill.
One set of authors claims to usethe phrase to define a specific
analytic technique, but I'm notenough of an expert in
microscopy to adjudicate thisclaim. If you're trained in the
STEM fields, searching GoogleScholar for vegetative electron

(42:18):
microscopy with the quotationmarks is good for a chuckle or
maybe a looming sense of dreadas one of humanity's best tools
for fashioning truth fromfalsehoods falls into
fabrications. One of my favoriteresults, this article, and we'll
put a link in the show notesfrom 2022, which was low key
corrected in June 2024 to removethe offending phrase and to
renumber most of the citations,which were apparently wrong.

(42:42):
See? Hilarious.
Please help. I'm scared. Ronald,

right there

with you. I think, you know, it's you wanna
believe that this sort oftechnology is used for fun, you
know, in with a bunch of quotesaround it to make weird silly
pictures that you couldn't makeotherwise, you know, and maybe
people don't know what the costof that is. But, yeah, it's
everywhere.

Yeah. Yeah.

Whoops.

Whoops.

Whoops. Some folks also wrote in about my
segment on blocking, where Ispoke with Caroline Cinders
about what it feels like toblock people and what the
technology is for and itsusefulness and the kind of
ambivalence that you can feelaround blocking. Alex Posten
says, please forgive thefollowing tortured metaphors. I
will. Like a lot of people, Ibegan the process of jumping

(43:30):
ship from Twitter after the Elontakeover and finally permanently
deleted my account after thechanges to the block function
were announced.
Blocking, IMO, is the mostimportant safety feature for a
social platform, and when safetyfeatures don't function
properly, people get hurt. IfKia pushed an update to my car
telling me that going forward,my airbags would only sort of
work, I'm shopping for a new carthat day. To paraphrase a line

(43:53):
from doctor who, blocking isn'tself care, it's pest control.
And so far, as I'm aware, nobodyhas built a better mousetrap
than blue sky. The nuclear blockshould be the standard for
social media.
I'm sure the of blue sky willcome eventually, but for now,
I'll just sit back and enjoy thesound of my own voice and the
voices of folks I actually wannahear instead of listening to all

(44:13):
the rats skittering behind thewalls. I mean, I will say the
blue sky block is incredible.It's really great. One wonders
whether or not it willeventually be nerfed in some way
or another as brands show upbecause, you know, if Blue Sky
wants to make money from brandpresence and they want if they
end up wanting to do in lineadvertising, you're right. They

(44:35):
almost certainly will not allowyou to block as effectively
those accounts as they do, youknow, other posters because
that's gonna be part of theirbusiness model.
But fingers crossed, you know,whatever solution comes along,
it doesn't detract from what isyeah. Like, a really, really
just incredibly effectivemoderation tool. Ellie also

(44:57):
wrote in on a difficult decisionto block or to not block someone
that she knows in meatspace.

Elli (45:04):
You know, I think often we think about blocking as a tool
that we can use for harassment,like you like you mentioned on
the show. But the only reason Ihaven't blocked this particular
person that I'm thinking aboutis that they are, to some
extent, still within my existingIRL social network. Right? And

(45:26):
this is somebody that had sortof career power over me for a
while and is still, to myknowledge, relatively well
regarded. And so, you know, Ithe the thing that's kept me
from blocking her for so long islike, what if she finds out?
And then she's like, what beefdoes Ellie have with me? And,

(45:50):
you know, could that haveconsequences in my career or in
or or could that be a reasonthat I don't get an opportunity
later? What does it mean toblock someone when you can't
block them in real life also,you know?

Yeah. This is extremely

relatable. We're all staring at each other
uneasily right

Jason doesn't know I have him muted on
everything.

I was gonna say, is this is the case for
mute. Right?

Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Unless you don't
like, it depends upon, I think,how well you know the person and
how likely it is inconversation. They're gonna be
like, oh, you saw that thing Iput.
Right? Like, whatever whatever.Sure. Like, you can always say,
like, oh, no. Like, I haven'tsigned in in a couple days, and
there's some, you know,plausible deniability.
But, yeah, there's the case formute. I also like there are
people who I haven't unfollowedbecause I'm like, I don't I feel

(46:42):
some pressure to be, like,continuing to follow this person
that I like, you know, reallyhave no interest in seeing
anything that goes on with them.Mhmm. But I justify it to myself
where I'm like, well, I'm like,think the creepiest way to put
it is, like, keeping tabs onthem. See what they're up to.

Yeah.

Make sure I'm not where they are.

Is this your version of a vegetarian
restaurant full of cameras? Andfinally, as a tradition rounding
out the mailbag and update tocool graffiti that people have
sent us. I

think isn't it funny graffiti? I think it's
funny tags.

Right? Okay. Yeah.

It used to be single word graffiti. Its purest
state is single word graffitithat you found funny. And Hans,
I think there's a name in hereyou might recognize.

Oh, Steven Heil.

Eagle eared listeners might recognize from
earlier in the program, StevenHeil. Yeah. Who spotted in
Brooklyn, a purist's one wordanswer, which is okra.

Yes. Scrolled on just a regular brick wall.
Yes.

And then for those of us who are allowing
more words in these things, abeautiful bathroom wall that
says watch Star Trek the nextgeneration.

Toby (47:53):
Solid advice.

I didn't get a picture of it, but I will. And
then I will formally submit itfor the next. But I saw a tag
also in Brooklyn yesterday. Veryartfully. Clearly, someone spent
a lot of time on it.
It said, oh boy, enema.

Oh boy.

That's great. That's great. There's a lot more
graffiti in the mailbag. I'mgonna save some of it for next
week because we are running outof time that we have for this
week to talk. But there's onemore graffiti I wanna talk about
before send us all home.
And that is friend of the showTalia has found us another
Garfies.

Woo. Oh, no. Woo.

It looks like it looks like this is forever. This
is a big titty Garfies.

It sure is.

A big titty Garfie holding a bomb? A bomb?
Yes. Absolutely.

I did

a little bit

of research. Now that there's two Garfies.
This is apparently a thing inMelbourne. Most specifically,
there are Garfies everywhere.Garfies across Say right.
Melbourne. Sorry, everyone. Forthose of you who are new to
Garfies, it is Garfield withtits doing things.

Big tittie Garfield.

They're apparently all over Melbourne,
and I have no idea why. And noone else does.

I actually like it less when you do that.

But to remind our listeners that we do accept
pitches. Yes.

We the line is open, and we're ready to listen
to you.

Toby. Toby.

Okay. That's what we got for you in mailbag. Thank
you everybody for writing in,calling in, sending us your
voice memos, sending us youremails. Thank you friends for
the conversation. We're gonna beback in the feed one week from
today on April 9.
We'll see you then.

Bye.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Crime Junkie

24/7 News: The Latest

Stuff You Should Know

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Mailbag #7: On Ads, The RSS Resurgence and More

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Crime Junkie

24/7 News: The Latest

Stuff You Should Know

All Episodes

Mailbag #7: On Ads, The RSS Resurgence and More

Crime Junkie