Welcome back everyone. I am Cass PNC.
I'm joined as usual by my partner in crime, Mr. Bennett
Tomlin. How are you today?
I'm doing well. How are you, Cass?
I'm doing great. We're joined by one of our
favorite guests, Ed Zittron, who hosts the Better Offline Podcast
and writes Where's Your Ed AT and runs Easy PR Ed, How are you
today? I'm doing great.
I'm fantastic. Cool.
Well, we, we wanted to have you on again because as 2024 came to
an end, you put out an article and did a podcast about and you
made sure to separate the rot economy versus the
inshitification of everything. But this, this concept that
we're all being monetized and everything is getting worse at
the same time. And I think it's a really good
topic for us to have because you're in a sense, I don't think
you're necessarily more hopeful than Bennett and I.
And we've had a lot of guests on recently who are also quite
pessimistic about the possible future of not just like the US
and the Internet, but like, I guess the world.
But I think an important point you're making in your blog and
on your podcast is that we need to fight back, right?
I feel like that's a a point that has been missed in our most
recent recordings, which haven't been released as of us just
talking right now. But yeah, let's let's start
with. Are you like for for?
Me and for the people we've talked to recently, I'm quite
concerned that some of the people who you you don't mention
these people in your most recent stuff, but I know that you feel
the same way I do about them. But like Elon Musk, Marc
Andreessen, David Sachs, all of these people have the ear of
Donald Trump. They are going to be in control
of the FTC. You had Lena Khan on to talk
about how she's been actually going after some of these
companies and trying to make a difference.
But like, are you, what are you concerned?
Are you more concerned than like what?
What happens next? Ed, what do you think?
I am concerned and I think it would be foolish not to be.
It's not great having these people in power, but also these
people are extremely, extremely. They have very low, low self
esteem and very low attention spans.
And what they're going, the most likely thing is they're going to
start pulling back consumer protections and financial
protections. They want the FDIC gone.
Why? I actually don't know, but also
doing these things is like it's going to take some work and also
to what end? For more money?
They're going to get bored. Government is slow and boring.
There's so much stuff you have to do, and I'll move fast and
break things you can try in government.
It does not work very well. It takes forever.
Everything takes forever. No one really likes it.
I think it's going to be a lot like the problem with the first
Trump administration, which is what him putting a bunch of
judges in the things regulation, the way things will be changed,
are going to be bad. The fact that net neutrality is
out is bad. That's going to hurt people.
I think the fact the Chevron was repealed is really bad.
I think the fact that judges can now make the call over whether
an agency was right is kind of bad as well.
I think we're going to see a lot of things rolled back like that.
However, the first Trump administration really proved
that these people are very poor at governing and they're going
to have trouble doing all of the wackadoo things.
There's going to be the deputation is going to happen,
but it's going to be very focused in states where it's
going to be easy to do that for television.
It's going to fuck. It's going to be fucking
horrible. I feel for those people.
It's fucking disgusting. But back to the tech stuff.
I mean, these people don't even have goals, OK?
We're going to like make it easier for us to make money.
I think we already do. It's no, Yeah.
It's, I just want to push back on that 'cause I think the, the
suggestion that they don't have goals, you're not, you're not
wrong in some sense, but I think the, the goal ultimately
oftentimes enough. And I've noticed this with like
media, for instance, when they when these billionaires buy
media companies or Twitter, the goal isn't that they wanted to
operate better, it's to break it down and make it dysfunctional
on purpose. I actually don't think that's
what happened with Bezos, by the way.
I'm not sure. I think it took.
I think he bought it. Like, I think it, he bought it
like anyone, anyone would buy like, I don't know, like a
watch. He bought it like a watch,
maybe. And then it didn't.
It fell out of style. So he can't.
He's like, oh, I don't want to piss off Donald Trump.
Yeah, LA Times is an example of someone not doing this as well.
He's just a fucking idiot. He's just a rich fucking idiot,
a capricious moron who wants to kiss up two fellow capricious
morons. And that's the thing.
It's much easier to look at the world and say this is the plan.
The powerful are doing the plan now the plan is happening.
Ah, Bezos is finally doing the plan soon, is doing the plan
now. Look at the plan instead of
looking at it in the far more obvious way, which is these
people are just as emotional, capricious, and fucking thinly
veiled in the things they care about as anyone else.
I'm not saying it's less damaging.
I'm not trying to disagree with you that like I don't think
there's some broad conspiracy. That's not my suggestion.
My suggestion actually is that what happens is my, my
suggestion on Blue Sky was that basically what happens is
there's these high quality newsrooms that are doing really
good work and, and investigative journalism that costs a bunch of
money, right? And then when they do that work,
they just get disparaged and called liars by a bunch of
billionaires. And unfortunately, because those
billionaires have such increasing reach to the public
and lawyers that they can hire to just clog up the legal
system, they destroyed the reputations of this whatever
high quality newsroom until the point where it's like a
billionaire buys this high quality newsroom and then
ultimately stops funding the the high quality journalism and just
does whatever the fuck they want with it.
And that helps all of them. Right.
When did that happen though? I If you look at the Washington
Post, if you look at the Los Angeles Times, like I.
With the LA Times, the LA Times has been going through it for
years. I'm not saying the the new
owner, I forget his name, pardon me.
I'm not saying he's been a great owner and he is absolutely doing
things to make Trump happy and make his other rich friends
happy and killing stories. But look at the Washington Post.
The Washington Post in the last year, though they've been fucked
up on the endorsement, has done incredible work in tech.
Helpdesk is great, their tech journalism is great and Tashtiq
there are great journalists there and still great journalism
happening Washington. Most are some of the best
political journalism, just not sure what it is you said that
happened there. Well, they're not.
Allowed to do op-ed pieces any any longer, I mean.
And that, and that's fucking terrible.
I'm not saying that there's been no effect.
I'm saying that you were saying that great journalism was being
defunded. So a great, another great
example, and we're we're talking about large scale defunding when
it comes to like, like when it comes to a part of journalism is
op eds. So the idea that Bezos is now
telling The Newsroom how they can operate and what they're
allowed to report on. I mean, that is a defunding of
journalism. I also think a point I made
recently is that, for instance, my small town that I live in has
a local newspaper that I was like, oh, that's interesting.
Maybe I should make it get a subscription to this this small
town newspaper because I want to support local journalism.
Well, as soon as I looked into this small town newspaper, who
are they owned by? Chatham Management, like some
nasty large private equity firm that goes across the country
buying newspapers and making them Republican news outlets.
So the like the concept that it's not being defunded and
completely altered into large scale propaganda.
I think we're talking about the LA Times and Washington Post
directly. I agree with you on that 90%.
I think again, you are seeing you're seeing a grand plan where
the actual answer is when you buy a bunch of newspapers and
you run them as cheap as possible, what sells?
Slop engagement bait Shit that gets people riled up people buy
shit and share shit because it pisses them off, but also a lot
of these local outlets and it's in the TV stations as well.
They're just making the same fucking thing they're just doing
the same thing. I'm not actually saying you're
wrong yes, that is a direct example of what happens.
I just don't think that anyone was like and now the
conservatism ISM begins. Perhaps they once they own it,
they go I'm I'm racist. Why don't I add a little bit of
that mustard to the to the pie Dunaway put mustard in a pie.
Moving on. But it's nevertheless, it's what
I'm trying to get is we're kind of agreeing, but I just want to
push you to say I don't think these motherfuckers have a plan.
I don't think they're really sitting there.
I think on the whims that they have, they are choosing the
conservative things they always believed in.
Well, and I think just to interject, I think this could
even be kind of an example of the rod economy where rot begets
rot, right? Local papers were struggling and
dying long before private equity and a few conglomerates got
involved. Most of them had like their ad
space was becoming less and less valuable, and that was the
principal driver of their revenue, even for ones that had
somewhat stable subscriber bases.
Right, A lot of these. Little answers, Craigslist and
Facebook. Exactly.
Yeah, they lost Declassified and they lost the local advertising.
And as soon as they did that, they didn't have the subscriber
base to stay them on. And so then, yeah, a bunch of
extractive people who mostly are conservative because they're
assholes at the top of the capital pile, come in and start
doing the things they're going to do, which is got and let the
rot be, get the rot. I think kind of getting back and
zooming back in, like what are the levers you see that exist as
a way to resist or challenge the rot economy, the kind of
worsening of all these platforms and products and things like
that? So I think a big thing to start
with is that if you look at the media, as you 2 have very
intelligently said many times, they're not very good at saying
the names of the fucking people responsible and pointing at them
and saying these people are fucking responsible.
And I think that when they do so, and this is not a criticism,
this is just where it's done, The only way it seems to be done
is going, hey, these people are right wing psychos.
As a result, a lot of criticism of tech inherently starts
politicized and it starts being about right and left.
I'm not saying it's wrong to do so.
Ian Higgins has a great book that just came out specifically
about this incredibly important stuff about how these
billionaires are right wing and how they're doing these things
in the right wing. The problem is it's a little bit
more subtle than that. The people causing the problems,
the Andrew Bosworth, CTO of matter, Sundar Pashay, Sam
Ortman, Mark Zuckerberg, these people are in apolitical and I
know Zuckerberg's gave money over whatever he's he believes
in nothing. He really believes in nothing.
And thus you don't really get the criticisms of them and you
don't just get them saying their fucking names.
That's what really pisses me off.
Andrew Bosworth 2017 the ugly There was the the internal
letter he set out saying all things are justified in growth,
including bullying and terror attacks.
This should be in every single article ever written about
Andrew Bosworth until the day he dies.
The same thing with Mark Zuckerberg and the fact that he
is the reason Facebook is how Facebook is.
The fact in 2008 that his growth team was buying ads to con
people into joining Facebook, scaring them into believing that
someone was stealing their identity.
These are the things that these people have done and the reason
they've got powerful is that for the most part, this stuff was
not, it was documented, but it wasn't screened everywhere when
we can't cover open AI and Facebook and all of these things
without adding their names. And I actually, I know that this
is kind of wanky, sadly, but the, the, the hundreds of emails
I get where it's just like I fucking tell my friends, I tell
my friends who's responsible and so pissed off.
Now I understand why Google's broken because at ease, mother
fuckers. This is what changes things.
This is what makes people walk away from products.
This is what makes people talk about how bad the products are.
And guess what? Not the reason they buy these
newspapers. These men are desperate for
attention. They're desperate for history to
reflect well on them because they got so much money.
So covering them in this way that's very much like these are
the people. This is exactly what they've
done and every act they do since is a reflection of their past.
I think it's necessary and it's something where the tech media
needs to change because I don't know, or maybe they won't and I
will continue to grow a great audience on this because it
seems extremely bloody obvious. So you think the the main way
you're suggesting the main way for people like us?
Or other journalists to fight back.
Is to name names. I also think it's regular
people. I see.
I also think the regular people discussing these things is the
Jon Stewart effect, the reason there was such a political
awakening years ago. The problem is the conservatives
got way better at it than the Democrats ever got.
Jon Stewart did well at 1st. And it's like, hey, what if we
just make all the shit up? We just make it up.
We just fucking say what we want whenever we want without any
fear of anything. And that, by the way, is
extremely effective. And it's exactly what we can do
to tech. Just say it.
What are they gonna do? So.
Actually, this is something I wanted to like.
I had a note about this and I and I maybe you'll think this is
a silly note, and if so, we can just move right on past it.
But, but for me, you quickly brought up, and I think this is
crazy because you're so right. But you, you quickly brought up
in, in one of your recent podcast episodes that, you know,
when you were using the new computer that you bought, you
had to sign this TNC, sorry, terms and conditions that
basically said, OK, if anything bad happens that really harms
you, we're going to go to arbitration.
We're not going to go to Criminal Court.
We're not going to go to civil court.
We're going to go to arbitration.
And I thought about that and I was just like, damn, he's right.
That's crazy that we all just sign that stuff and just move
past it. But then I, I remembered like,
oh, no, no, no, wait. Like this is a part of the
zeitgeist already. Like South Park in 2011 did a
now quite infamous famous episode called Human Scent iPad
where the boys sign up for the Apple terms of service and
basically they end up being part of an experiment to, you know,
do the human centipede. And that was this moment.
I think there was like an actual cultural awakening of like, oh,
we have no fucking idea what we're signing when we do these
TNCS. But then we all just laughed
about it and moved on. And I'm, and I'm curious, like,
what do you think actually causes outside of like just
naming names, how do we get businesses and companies and
billionaires to change the way they, they operate, you know?
So I think it starts with just walk out.
If you don't like something, delete your fucking account.
You can be deeply unhelpful to these companies.
You can go in and check all the boxes to remove all all your
sheet. You can delete as much as you
can. You can turn, unclick those
things. Those things actually do matter.
And I, I realize it sounds small, but seriously, you can do
that. Services like delete me to
remove yourself from data brokers.
You can make yourself a little ungovernable, but also and
getting back to journalism. A really basic thing is we, as
anyone covering anything need to totally read rebuild how it is.
The job is done because I choose open AIA lot because open AI is
probably the worst covered company out there.
Open AI, ChatGPT, everything that's written about them should
have something about how the company is burning $5 billion
every single time. Why?
Because this company has no, they have no Moat, they have no
real sticky product. They have all these things.
But guess what? In the last year of Better
Offline, I had this worry that like, oh, regular people are
going to think this is too much. So I really broke down the
language. I'm just like, this company
burns $5 billion. It isn't obvious what it is
they'll do. And they have no real path to
anything approaching AI. Most people can understand that.
So if media stops talking to their readers like they're
fucking morons, but on top of that talks to them in a
straightforward, non condescending way, that has a
real measurable effect. But on top of that actually
explain what's happening. What's been crazy is the amount
of times I've cited my Facebook piece.
For example, I wrote middle May last year.
There's no other anthology piece like that.
I looked just a piece that says why is Facebook shit, what
happened and this I cite it all the time.
I get emails about it every week.
People be like shit I had no idea the man who killed Google
search same deal. Give people a clean explanation
for why the conditions of the world are like they are.
I don't have the perfect answer here.
I have to quote Ned Beatty, like from Network.
I think it is here. I don't tell you to write your
congressman. I don't know what to tell him.
But at the same time, I can't say who.
But there are people with governor who's read my work.
There's Pete, there's hedge funds that actually discuss it.
There's people who are listening and think.
And The thing is, you don't have to wait long.
Give it a year or two. They're all going to have to
fucking face this either way because once generative AI
collapses they don't have a growth.
Market anymore and just to push back on this because I'm going
to play devil's advocate here a little.
I think it's fine to suggest people mention the expenditures
of ChatGPT and open AII. Don't necessarily disagree that
that should be worth discussing. But I will say that a lot of
people would probably push back and say a lot of now profitable
companies or some of the largest companies in the the world for a
decade plus weren't profitable. And like, how do you push back
against that argument? Very easily.
OK, so Uber is the classic example that people give.
Uber, of course, the classic drops that people off or stuff
off company right now, when I wrote How does Open AI survive?
Last year, one of the things I got from actually one of the
reporters who wrote the Open AI story, though losing $5 billion
was well, Uber worked it out. Uber worked it out, didn't they?
Wrong O Uber's worst loss in the year I believe was $6.2 billion
that year, 2020, The year they could not function as a
business. The year when nothing was
running because COVID. Crazy that Otherwise Uber has
burned a shit ton of money, but they've burned it entirely on a
directional path. Horrible labour practices as
well toward expansion into everywhere.
There was always a thing that Uber did that resulted in a
profit. It involved labour abuses, which
the media also laundered. But putting that aside, Open AI
has nothing like that. They do not have a similar
business model. Open A is model is the
antithesis of good software business models.
It gets more expensive as it scales.
Their argument as well as well. The hardware will come back Ed,
you fucking idiot. The hardware will fix this.
They'll just make more chips. Bloody hell, do you know how
chips are made? How hard they are to make?
They're talking about ASICS, so specialized chips just for
generative AI, right? How the fuck do you scale one of
those? How's it like when you're going
to take that bad boy out? The thing is, there are very
clear reasons this isn't all of these companies.
What are the the other companies that burned lots of money?
Did they burn as much money? How did much did they burn?
When did they start being profitable and how did they
start being profitable? Because the answer in all of
these cases is very simple in ways that are completely
different to open AI. Because open AI at their core
has no MO, but also is based on unprofitable software that is
only made profitable through chips that don't exist yet and
may never exist at all. I.
Don't think Uber is a good example because for me the one
that immediately comes to mind is something like Amazon where
they obviously they do disgusting labor practices I
granted, but really their cash cow has nothing to do with that.
Their cash cow is AWS as far as if I remember correctly.
So their cash cow is far different from what they started
even as. And again, this could be an
argument that someone could make where it's like, yeah, you're
flushing them with cash early with, you know, private equity
money or whatever, but. The most profitable part of
Amazon is their marketplace. It's FBA fulfilled by Amazon.
Like, that's the thing. Like, is it?
Yeah, Oh. I thought AI thought AW.
AWS prints money. Yeah, I thought AWS was their
big. Oh, they print.
Oh, you're not wrong. AWS just fucking prints money.
The argument is always US wasn't profitable at first.
Yeah, they were still building up.
Because The thing is, with a cloud compute infrastructure,
for example, it is an efficiency play.
You actually do have to build out a bunch, spend a bunch of
money and then costs come down because you work out
efficiencies. That's not how it works with
generative AI. You can build out the data
centres, but these things are power hungry and they have a
terrifying fail rate. I read in the journal it's like
I may have even be as high as 40% failure rate on these parts.
Like this is in everything is insane.
It's insane out there just enough to drive me crazy and I'm
already pretty wacky. There's so many, there's so many
parts of this that just drive me completely bonkers because it's
like, why am I the guy? I run a PR film like I I'm the
fucking why am I the guy being like, hey, yeah, fellas.
Like I have more age. The lever you pointed to, to
like try to give some kind of power back against like this rat
was being more direct in our collective coverage of these
issues. But like, how do you do that in
a sustainable way likely to meet people?
Like doesn't that then ram against like the exact problem
you're describing? That these platforms are
hollowed out and rooted out? That the place to reach most of
the people has been has made it hard to reach them?
That, like meaningful discourse beyond like a small set of
people, is hard to achieve and maintain.
Is it? I mean, it's like, The thing is,
the fact that Blue Sky has grown has given me a lot of hope
because if Blue Sky can do this, someone else could do it to
Instagram, someone else could do it to Facebook.
And yes, it is that simple. They just have to get enough
users. It's easier to prove with the
the model there. But also say that's true, say
you have a smaller audience. Does that mean we don't try?
Because my general thought is, is that the tech media still has
power. This tech media still has
audiences. The right and right wing VCs
have been desperate for over a decade to create their own
outlets. Pirate wires, future.
Every fucking few years they got we're going to make our own
thing. And it sucks because nobody
likes it. Nobody cares.
At the same time, the tech media has been spinning its wheels and
has been doing kind of the same thing for years.
And they're afraid in the same way most of the media is afraid
of breaking objectivity, which does not exist.
To your point earlier cast people yell at you that you're
lying no matter what you do, right?
So in what the tech, media and many parts of the media can do
is, I don't know, speak bluntly, Open AI is doing this.
This is what it means. It's also important to know that
Open AI burns about $5 billion a year, and Open AI does not have
a path to profitability. Though O1 may allow you to do
some things theoretically, it is yet to prove itself as a
consumer product or really any kind of enterprise product.
The use cases are not there. I know this works because I have
people e-mail me going shit, I didn't understand that before.
That's really infuriating. I just told some friend of mine
that you ChatGPT and they're like, wait, this loses the money
every time. That's really funny.
Some of them use it more. I don't think that it has to be
that complex. I don't think it even has to be
that scary. It just has to be.
We need to start speaking more plainly.
The reason the right wing media is so successful, they're lying
also, is that and not particularly condescending, Joe
Rogan's successful because he's kind of sounds like a dunce and
he asks questions that people like.
What's that mean? I'm like a little fraught right
now because I on one hand, I, I agree with you, but on the other
hand, like one of the things that Bennett and I have
struggled with for years now because we cover cryptocurrency
is how convoluted, complicated and silly even being able to
report on financial shit is. Like, OK, so we want to report
on this guy, but this guy has registered an offshore bank
account under an registrant's name.
It's not under their name. So the way that we're going to,
we have to report it legally so that we don't get sued is we
have to say it's, you know, like, like there's all these
ridiculous, like it, it inherently becomes complex,
complicated and difficult to understand and hard to report
on. And I think it like, suggesting
like, oh, yeah, well, media needs to do a better job of just
saying it bluntly isn't necessarily fair enough to being
like, yeah. But the problem is when you're
trying to report it bluntly, if you say something even slightly
incorrectly, you're getting sued and you might lose.
Now, like, considering who is gonna be in charge of all this
shit and the Supreme Court and stuff, you know?
That is on some level kind of giving up in advance like I, but
also on top of that, crypto is its own special freak.
I don't write about crypto anymore because I don't think
people care, but also it is difficult to pull apart.
But also I don't know how to cover crypto anymore.
I don't know what actually matters about it, because it
seems to exist in this kind of echoing NTH dimension situation
where rules and laws and logic don't seem to apply.
Isn't that what's happening with AI as well?
No, no AIAI. The thing is with crypto is it
does not follow any of the other rock economy shit.
It is not obvious how this grows forever.
It benefits people just through fraud, it seems, just as a way
of dispensing capital to other people.
I mean, it's AI steals content from creators and then that's.
Completely different. Just totally different.
The kind of fraud that crypto does is they basically make up
money and then somehow liquidate it, which is insane.
It's insane. I actually think the crypto may
be one of the things that does fall out of my thesis because I
truly do not know how you do it every week because it is a
frustration, frustrating and confusing industry.
But also my experience with is the I don't know how big crypto
is as well. I actually don't know the scale
of crypto anymore. I mean, I think.
I think it's pretty difficult to.
Assign it no value in terms of like.
Oh, I'm not saying no. Value but I just mean in terms
of sorry in terms of like Donald Trump is you like Howard Lutnick
who's going to be in the incoming administration.
He's going to be the Department of Commerce dealing with
tariffs. This guy is everything for
Tether, like the biggest, this multi, nearly $200 billion
stable coin. Like the idea that these guys
aren't able to do whatever the fuck they want.
Now I like, I feel like it, it's, it is just fact.
Like it's, they will be able to do whatever they want, but like
that is a part of the right economy, is it not?
Like am I am I wrong? I think it's a part of it.
I think the weird thing is, is that it's one where they kind of
won for now. Yes, that's how I feel.
So now because. What do you what?
Does that mean I live in Las Vegas?
I know gamblers. There is going to be someone who
tries to exit this market at scale and breaks it.
There will just be a point when that happens.
It will become unusable, I am confident in that.
The problem is that the actual people who needed to cover
crypto properly fucked up years ago and allowed these people to
get entrenched. Crypto is a great example of
where AI theoretically could be if people were not like we've
got some critics like we. There was some good job done,
crypto was just more. The financial hooks were far
easier to get. In crypto however, it is
impossible to tell how much real money exists in it.
Not saying it's small, I'm just saying at scale if it's as big
as AI and also no. Is this even a fucking tech
industry thing anymore? It just feels like an open
financial crime. It feels like something.
We're enabled by technology. And they, oh, it's technology,
but it's like big tech has not really wanted to touch it
because of the financial crimes. And I think we're going to get
four years of rubber capitalism. I think it's going to be
disgusting, but at the same time, how much money can come
out of it? 10 billions come out of it, and
hundreds of million like it's an interesting thing.
Tether, just one firm in crypto, was able to deploy multiple
billions last year outside of crypto into other which is.
Which is fascinating to purchase satellite.
Companies to purchase Farming companies to purchase.
Companies. AI company power generation
companies invested in Anthropic. It's one of the reasons that FTX
is able to make people whole. Yeah.
So who's to say if it's bad? Getting back to the previous
thing, like about how media coverage should include this
context, include these things that to me still seems like it's
running up against the problem of the entire media ecosystem is
rotted out and there's no one to fund, like reporters having
enough time to actually develop the context and the stories they
cover. Or maybe it's the editorial
missions that just don't include this shit every time like they
should. The tether thing should be
included every time. But also it's hard to explain.
It is a challenge and there are not enough people tasked with
doing it. Most of the crypto reporters in
the last few years, not all of them Ian Allison, Legend, but
there were people at major publications who were pro
crypto. Fucking insane.
Fucking crazy. Sure, sure, sure failed on
crypto. Just getting back to I'm still
struggling with the jump to like how do you develop a sustainable
cadro of journalist of media that's able to do in context in
deep reporting across not just tech, but looking at it more
broadly like across these different do we?
We don't need to build a new thing, we just need everyone to
take their heads out of their fucking assholes.
That's the thing. They're what?
About the last several millennia.
The rot economy begets the rot economy, I think is.
OK then part. Part of what what, what Bennett
is kind of pointing out here and, and, and this idea that
again the the media, unfortunately in America now
with the rot economy is obligated to their shareholders
more so than their audience. You are misunderstanding how any
media outlet works. I've got a push back as hard.
What is possible about that? That's not that's not what's
happening. It's so much stupider, it's so
much Dumber. The people at the top, they just
want nothing to happen. They want their friends to feel
important. But really the problem is you've
got this upper editorial substrate of editors who do not
know anything about technology, who go with the will of the
markets and they follow the will of the markets.
It's not just cop down pressure from the rich, it's the fact
that the editorial less the editors editing excellent
writers don't know what they're fucking doing.
They're they don't. They're all getting fired.
At what are you talking about? Who I'm.
Talking about places like Coindesk getting like all
because they got they got purchased by hold on, like you
just talked about Ian Ellison, like like I'm talking about
places like coin Desk where you have super high quality, super
high quality journalists like Nick D Ian Ellison.
I could name, I could name a dozen more David Z Morris, who's
come on the show. Danny.
Nelson.
A million, there's a million awesome journalists that came
from came out of coin desk that reported honest, objective, fair
truth and they actually destroyed their own business by
doing so right. And so I like we have to Revere
that and then you look at exactly what happened.
Well, I'll tell you what happened.
A Peter Thiel controlled a Peter Thiel controlled fucking
company. Bought Coindesk and ruined it.
And it's, it's as simple as that.
And and how did they ruin it? By putting pressure on a bunch
of editors who then resigned because they're not going to
stick around and, and be like, yeah, I guess I'm a part of this
compromised editorial board. So they leave.
And now you have you're like where you're suggesting it's
like, well, they, it's all of these editors.
It's like, well, no, the good editors leave.
And now what are you stuck with? A bunch of them talking about
different situations though Both can be true.
There could be examples where it doesn't work.
I'm not saying I have a complete cure, I'm just saying a place
where things can change is this. Coindesk was a fucking disaster
and everyone the second bullish touched it.
And also people need to look around who else is friends with
bullish because there's more people outside of crypto who are
and the problem is also crypto. It really comes down to crypto
is where my thesis is the most challenging because the money is
more available and also it was really poorly understood when it
grew to power and it's still poorly understood today.
And the people explaining it today are doing so in this way
where they're drawn between. Am I writing for the crypto
industry? Am I writing for regular people?
Because the regular, I don't know a single fucking person, a
single person who has used anything with crypto.
I truly don't. I have not in the last year in a
conversation, even with reporters, I don't know who
brought up crypto even once. This might be the first time
I've talked about it in a year. I may have mentioned it in
something. And that's the thing.
I'm not saying you're actually wrong.
I'm saying crypto is probably the most egregious example of
where this is getting fucked up. What I am saying is you're
asking for things that could change, things that could
change. Now, the answer is, is that
beyond the billionaires and the rich people, there are people in
tech media and Business Media who are extremely poorly
informed, feel that their job is to follow trends rather than do
journalism, and they put pressure on writers to cover
things in a way that makes them feel good.
And this is in legacy media. This is in more new.
Media you did a you did an important episode naming names
and I think like right now we could name Kevin Roose and Casey
Newton as like I'd like they. Kevin Roose, Yeah, like these
guys have. I actually give Roose a little
bit of credit in that he did put the boots to the Chris in a bit,
But I will say Casey Newton, coward of the year, because
Kevin was kind of cooking. Kevin was kind of like beating
his ass back. He's like, well, well, let's
move on. As as Kevin was getting to the
good shit. Kevin did fuck up.
He thought I wrote about it in 2021, wrote about it in 2022.
He fucked up. He he actually really messed up
there and it's laughable that he kept his position.
I think that he is a good guy who is easily won over, as
proven by the fact that he was scared of being by.
The way I think I I really hate that we always have to like if
we. Oh, I'm not saying that.
You'll notice that. I'm not saying that about Casey.
You'll notice that I did. Those words did not leave my
fucking mouth. It's just so funny to me that
when we criticize people, we're like, well, on a personal level,
I don't know them and they're probably great.
I know, I know, Kevin like. You know, that's cool.
I. Like, I think, I think, I think
Kevin is credulous. It's, it's and it's.
Perfectly. Acceptable.
It's perfectly acceptable to still be like also this.
It's fine if you like this person and they did a shitty job
with this thing, like that's fine, you know?
I mean, I was just saying it because it was how I felt.
I don't think of many of the words before they leave my
mouth, but I think the the big those two in particular.
Yeah, with hard fork. Yeah, they did like an Amazon
drone thing as well, which is fine.
And I get what I did it. But it's also like, Oh my God,
You want to do a little bit of history about how many fucking
times companies have promised to deliver things with drones?
Do you want to talk about the fact that this is probably not a
profitable or sustainable or possible thing?
They're never scaling this shit. What the fuck are you talking
about? But you've got to accept it.
It's New York Times and they have this view of like the the
Times is going to look at everything as a cautious
optimist. Where's the caution anyway?
I I quite lost on where I got to that point, but but there's
actually, I will give you an example from within AI.
So Wall Street Journal. I would argue that Wall Street
Journal does probably the best investigative reporting in tech
by far. I think the information isn't
far behind yet the information also seems quite pro AI.
It's very strange. But nevertheless, the Journal,
their problem is is they bury stuff.
They bury stuff deep within their stories because they lack
the ability to have subjective thought.
One of my favorite ones is I'm just going to quote something.
This is from a piece about AI hardware.
New engineering challenges also often arise with larger
clusters. Meta researchers said in the
July paper that a cluster of more than 16,000 of Nvidia's GPU
suffered from unexpected failures of chips and other
components routinely as the company trained an advanced
version of its LAMA model over 50 four days.
What? They used to have ship breaking.
We talk about NVIDIA all the time.
A Jensen Wong is pissing gold and shitting golden geese that
shit further golden eggs. But we don't talk about the fact
that there's very clearly a failure rate problem because a
lot of this coverage doesn't have any connection to the very
good chips reporters. There is context needed here, an
opinion needed here, an actual analysis.
Readers, listeners, they want to be told not what to think, but
given far more information about how to think about stuff.
Yeah, though like the Wall Street Journal in specific has,
has always been very cautious in the voice they strike in their
news coverage. They are.
I agree. They have a lot of lawyers and
every single story they publish. I'm sure.
And also you have to realize a lot of these lawsuit situations
are happening in crypto because there's so much money involved
with AI. They're not suing you because
you say that this shit's going to burst.
They're not Sam Altman's not going to Sam Altman.
You have to know the ones like Sundar Pichai is not suing you.
Google's not suing you. If they start doing that, we are
in full authoritarianism and that's the time to be scared.
But that ain't fucking happening.
They want the world to be apolitical.
They want to be left alone so that they can continue burning
money and making themselves more money.
That's why they're so horrifying.
If Andreessen just want to be left alone.
No, Andreessen wants to work out why the worm in his brain is is
making him so angry. Marc Andreessen read 2
comprehensive biographies of Hitler in 2022.
I like mentioning that because it's one of the most insane
fucking things I to. I'm kind of paraphrasing
succession here. It's like, did you miss the
Easter eggs? Like like I and it's.
It's so weird. I like where you're where you're
coming from a lot here. And I think as Bennett and I
were two of the longest serving critics of Tether and Bit Fenix,
which, yeah, like we won't get into all of it, but like we, we
did it for a really long time. And I think a big part of our
success is, is you're right that it was about sheer like
mentioning number size, mentioning lawsuits, mentioning
like re mentioning things over and over and over again,
repeating them, making sure people understood like this is
not some great startup, like this is a business fraught with
problems. And I think you're right.
I also think that part of our weakness if I'm, if I'm going to
be honest about about this, is that ultimately you can only
repeat something so many times before people go OK and moving
on. You know what I mean?
I. Want to say you're right and you
are always thinking crypto because crypto.
How do you explain what's wrong with it?
Is fraudulent tethers bad but there's real money coming out of
it? It's actually quite hard to
explain what the real problem is with it.
I'll give you an example. I wrote the Rot economy in
February 2023. It took until last week for
people to take it seriously last week.
So I did repeat myself again and again.
And The thing is, is that sometimes it's not just, and
this, I'm paraphrasing Darreno Somoglu, he's from MITMIT
Economist, he said that when it comes to ideas, it takes time.
It's about putting them out there.
Not necessarily they'll change everything the second you put
them out there. It is about making sure that
there is a record of these people because eventually the
news, the things shift, things change.
Sam Bangman freed, the whole collapse of Terra Luna, all of
that was one of those moments. And I think that though crypto
is higher now, I think that a lot of harm was avoided because
a lot of people had written the promise of crypto.
But also. Sam Bankman Freed really
revealed how fucked up the coverage of crypto was.
I think Sam Bankman Freed is an example of how the media failed
the public probably more than they've ever failed them.
And I'm not just talking about Ruse, I'm talking about CNBC.
I'm talking about the story that went out couple weeks before
everything collapsed, where they went to Sam Bankman Freed's
house and saw his dog and his Camry and all that bullshit.
I'm. Just.
It's just crypto is it's so much more fucked than everything
else. You.
I'm not trying to. I'm not even trying to be
argumentative with you today, Ed, because I agree.
With you on I. Agree with you on most of this
but I am saying like when I reflect on financial crime over
the past 40 years or whatever, it's like how good was the
financial reporting on Enron before that shit went terrible
right? Yeah, with the exception of
Bethany and. Exactly.
There's always the exceptions. Not Bethany McLean.
Great. Bethany McLean.
Thank you. Holy shit, Bethany McLean.
Yeah, she did great reporting. But like or or for that matter,
Bernie Madoff is an A perfect. Example of like CNBC also made
me think of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos.
Holmes was a great PR example of just how much people lie well.
I think Holmes is a great example of actually media
succeeding. That's like Wall Street Journal.
Murdoch was a an investor in Theranos and they they were
like, we're going to report on this.
We want to find out the truth and Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch was
like, do it. I want to know what the deal is.
That is actually like a billionaire who.
Did Murdoch? Actually, Yes.
He. Refused to kill the story.
He refused to kill the story. His motivations for what he was
thinking and feeling are somewhat more speculative.
Ultimately, it didn't know that. Ultimately, it doesn't fucking
matter what he was thinking. He let the story go ahead
because he wasn't trying to control the editorial and The
Newsroom. So like the idea that Murdoch
allowed this to go forward, well, that's a good example of
media operating properly. Things, things like Enron or
Bernie Madoff is where you go like, oh wow, that's complete
financial reporting failure. And that's where I get.
I think you have I think you have one part of the Theranos
story wrong. Did you read any of the press
about Theranos beforehand? Because the reason Sheranos was
able to do what they. Did came out when this was still
only like a $6 billion company or whatever, $15 billion.
Company, OK, so just 6 billion Sure, sure, sure.
With National it was. Not public there like patient
trials ended under the pressure of the interviews and stuff.
And then that worked, but they were still able to grow a lot
that I guess I think Carrie Rue did great.
But also like what? Like I.
You're coming from a you, you know, PR better than we do.
Like the idea that there's going to be, you know, public
relations work for these massive tech firms.
I like, of course that's going to happen.
Of course there's going to be positive reporting on dream
shots that don't make any sense. I that like that I'm not
necessarily surprised by and I'm not even going to push back
against it that much. Like the idea of, oh, we have
this blood test where all you need is this much blood.
Like, well, that's a fun story to report.
You're right that you should get into the weeds.
And ultimately, Carrie Root did right where you're like, OK,
like ultimately it did happen. And the media like reported
responsibly when it comes to Enron or Bernie Madoff or SPF.
There was no pushback for a very long time.
I think you're right. And and like, those are better
examples of where we're at now. And that is my concern is that
what if there's no pushback ever?
Like, what if we're past the phases of this where it's like,
sometimes there's pushback on financial criminals and then we
get into a lull and everyone's happy.
But it kind of feels like we're entering this weird hellscape
where. I want to give you some hope.
OK, I actually. Really do, please.
So I'll go into PR in 2009. My job was so much easier for
the first few years. He was pitching it like I pitch
fucking startups to reporters and the reason I'm good at my
job as I read their stuff and actually pitch them stuff that
would fit him. I also have pretty good quality
bar and if I smell shit I don't work with that.
I don't need that on my soul. Very anxious person.
But over the years you have watched the collapse of the real
glad handling media. It's still there.
The fact that Kara Swisher lasted this long as a disgrace.
Same with Scott Galloway. They are so much worse than.
Bruce And we've got an episode about them.
Bruce. And Newton are, they've fucked
up a lot. And I think Newton when he went
off to Gary Marcus, I think the AI skeptic piece is a morally
reprehensible thing to do. I think Casey should be a
fucking ashamed of himself. I think he's a coward.
And I want to, well, hopefully we'll have a link.
We're going to have a link in the.
I'm showing about this now. But for people, just just to
your previous discussions about this because I think they're
excellent. Sorry.
I just want to let people know that.
Yeah. Never let and we should talk
about that in a minute, but over time you have seen the growth of
a great deal of critical press. You have seen the fact that the
fact that Meredith Whitaker isn't in the media, right, But
the fact that there were like two or three Meredith Whitaker
profiles every 3 minutes. I think now in Wyatt, just Wyatt
loves writing on Meredith Whitaker thinks this.
That alone is a good sign because Meredith Whitaker is
extremely fucking aggressive. She is extremely aggressive in
anti tech stuff. The fact that Cory Doctorow is
so prevalent, that insertification is so discussed.
This is a sign that criticism of tech is growing and it's
mainstream. The fact that Jon Stewart had
Lena Khan on, the fact that Lena Khan was so popular with the
media. I'm not saying things are
perfect. I have many critiques, but
compared to when I started, I have never seen a more vivid and
aggressive group of critics. Molly White.
The existence of Molly White is actually kind of magical.
She is a fucking great person, a great writer, a great
researcher, incredibly well known big audience, and also a
woman in tech who knows her tech.
Most fucking men I make. It's fucking brilliant.
Gary Marcus I have a lot of thoughts about, but perhaps I'll
keep to myself. However, the fact that Gary
Marcus is in national newspapers, and that's a good
thing. Criticism has grown.
The critiques have grown. You see, I have a fucking book
with Penguin Random House called Why Coming Out called Why
everything stopped working. Penguin Random House is putting
money in this shit. They're offline.
It's going to hit its third season probably in the next few
months. IHeartRadio backs that this the
the era of criticism is far from dead.
It's popular as well. And that's the really thing.
Putting aside morals, I don't believe in things.
I simply exist and then I die. However, it's popular, it does
traffic, it's popular with regular people, which means it's
probably going to stick around and only grow.
Look, if people don't do this, I'm going to do very well.
I'm very excited about my future doing this shit.
I love doing it. I do it because I hate what
they've done to the computer. But I also do it because it's
fun to write about and people care.
The reactions I get to my work are fucking insane.
If that is the reaction of consumers, that's amazing.
But also, there are so many bloody critics.
We are far from hopeless. We are far from in some sort of
desert of critiques. In fact, the fact that your
podcast has kept on this long despite how complex and
ridiculous that industry is, is only a sign that this is
absolutely doable. Look at Coffeezilla.
Yeah. Like it isn't perfect, it isn't
right right now, but good Lord, it's better than it was two
years ago and the year before that and the year before that.
It's not like we went from having a bunch of criticism to
not having any. It's trending upwards
aggressively and there's money in it, there's traffic in it.
There's something here and I trust my gut on this one.
And yeah, it's going to get scary.
It's going to be scary with how Elon Musk's acts.
However, even then, still going to work.
Like it's I, I actually don't know whether he's going to
really suit reporters. I don't know how they got like
aggressive. He's going to be.
We really don't know yet. That is a question mark.
Yeah, but it's it is a pretty terrifying question it.
Is Oh God, yes. And the and the oligarchy in
general right now that the vibe of like this is really happening
like there is no like hypothetical what if whatever
that we. It's the thing people have
warned about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like we're
here. I think is, is, is quite to me.
I I want to be hopeful and I want to think about ways to
fight back and I and I'm and I appreciate you sharing all of
this. I just, I still like it's hard.
I I you, you live in Nevada at I live in California.
Bennett and I covered there was an attempt to make a blockchain
city in Reno, NV, right, years ago that failed utterly.
I don't know how much money is left in all of that.
I think there's still some semblance of something, but it's
not what it was going to be. But here in California now
what's happening is they're doing something called
California Forever. And it's brought to you by like
Marc Andreessen and, you know, all these tech Bros.
And the concept is quite similar in that it is going to be a
smart city. It is going to exist South of
the Bay. So they hopefully don't have to
deal with, you know, things like societal issues like homeless
people and drug use and things that come with not having hyper
wealthy individuals in your neighborhood.
So they're hoping to fix that by creating their own city of
strictly hyper wealthy people. And I can't help but feel quite
pessimistic about like, these are the people in control of the
reins of power. Like they they're the ones now
whispering in Trump's ear. And while voicing criticism is
of course necessary and I'm all for it and that's what we do, It
does sometimes feel like you're screaming into a void.
Don't you feel like that sometimes, Ed or no?
Sure. Like, of course, when I started
the show, I felt like that. Just the punk music.
Yeah, yeah, punk's hopeful punk. Punk is not ever accepting the
fact that he's never pretending that things are great.
But the message and the verve and the rhythm and everything
behind punk music is the fuck this fight back.
You can look at these things and be scared.
It's fair to be scared. It's fair to feel pessimism.
OK, Accept that. So we just fucking give up.
We assume that nothing will work.
Hell no. We have to at least fucking try.
It is scary. But the thing I just said about
critiques and more, that was me trying to say critics.
And I tried to save it, but it didn't work.
Anyway. I think I just said about
critics and how we've never had more.
That is only going to increase as things get more challenging.
And yeah, it is scary. Yeah, there are things that
could go horribly wrong. I'm not going to lie and be
like, everything's going to be fine.
Nobody will be her, but we have to, if anything, have an
emotional shift where it's like in our small parts of what we
do, we have to fight back. We have to at the very least
document what is happening in detail with what we believe in
it, with the context that matters to give people
something. Because guess what?
If we as people who have any kind of audience feel some lack
of hope what how our listeners feel.
Yeah, how do they? Feel so no, I will not sit here
and and just be like, Oh well, nothing, which I fuck that.
I don't know if it'll work, but I should fucking try.
And for for guys who are so pessimistic about this, you do
seem to be trying very hard and you still continue to try.
So I understand your pessimism. I really do.
I deeply, deeply do. But the best thing you can do is
keep going because you know what?
The only other choice is giving up.
This is honest, honest to God why I wanted to have you on
because I I felt like after it it we had two brilliant minds on
Joey Palatano and Sean. Tuffy.
And we were discussing just this administration and just there
was nothing good to say, you know what I mean?
There's, there's, there is nothing positive to say other
than like maybe they self implode and even that's going to
be a disaster, you know, and, and, and so I think we need to
have someone on to say, yes, that's all true.
We're not denying that, but it's OK to try to fight back and talk
loud and and be the the the voice of like the voice of
reason amongst a world of crazy. I don't know.
Clarity. Yeah.
Because you want to know why the the right has been so effective
with media. It really is much more simple
than racism. It's because there are a lot of
people who have a worse experience living than they
should. Most.
There are tons of people, young men, tons of them both, plenty
of people who just feel like the world is kicking them in the
nuts all the time and you want to know how that's done?
Tech. Tech is a great weapon for it
now, but they don't know really where to push it.
They go to the left, centre left things and they have a bunch of
people saying positivity stuff, which is good and we should hear
that, but doesn't really seem to address their problems, doesn't
really seem to address them. I agree with that.
Even like they're smart. There is a lot of condescension
in the media and that sometimes is not the Libra.
When someone reads a big story of facts and they have no idea
what the fuck to do with that, they feel stupid and why
wouldn't you? You have a bunch slop of facts.
So they go and they listen to Joe Rogan and listen to Theo
Von. They go, wow this guy, he asks
really obvious questions. When I spoke to Zephyr teacher,
an expert on anti corruption, now my first question was what's
corruption? There are so many questions that
media fails to ask and so many ways in which they fail their
readers and their listeners by not just being like, you know
what, yeah, your shit sucks. Here's why.
Here's something that you experienced when I did never
forgive them. And I did that laptop bit.
I what I did was I got a cheap ass laptop and I ran through
exactly how dog shit it was, how much you advertise to how slow
this was. And extrapolate from there that
hundreds of millions of people very likely have this experience
that I have never got such a response to.
I thought it was a pretty obvious idea when I did it.
I'm like, this is just going to seem like what the fuck?
My agent emailed me and people go, wow, that was so good.
And the reason was is because instead of just being like and
every computer is fine because that's, if you look at the
reviews of the Acer Aspire 1, they're good.
They give them high scores. They treat these things as if
the premise of people's existence, that people know
regular people know fucking sucks.
They treat it like it's normal. And that does isolate people.
And then over on the right, you've got people giving them
extremely convenient excuses. Migrants, the woke, the trans in
the bathroom, what have you. Things that make them feel
better. I'm not saying that's right, but
it's far more effective than being like, well, when you look
at the facts, actually, your life's very good.
The economy is great for you. You should be happy.
The will stancil brain is so much more fucking common and
it's everywhere in the media. And guess what?
If you talk down to people and you don't actually teach them
anything, you go, you should know this already.
You should. You don't explain these things
as they're human beings because guess what?
Just because you're a real smart motherfucker doesn't mean that
you know everything. This is this is so it So I had
an opportunity to talk to Allison Morrow at CNN and she
published this piece and one of the things I said to her was,
you know, when I started covering crypto and like being
critical of it. One of and I know you'll
appreciate this because you're in Vegas.
One of the things that I was, I felt like I was trying to do was
convince these people that what they were doing was going to
cost them money and they were going to lose money and stuff.
And that suddenly at some point I realized I was yelling at
gamblers in a casino on a slot machine and telling them like,
yo, that slot machine, you're going to lose money at it.
And they were like, do you think I don't understand what a
fucking slot machine is, my guy? They're addicted to stuff.
Yeah, and, and, and for like I had to have the recognition to
be like, I'm not doing this effectively.
If I'm trying to reach out to the people in the casino, I've
lost, I need to reach out to the people not in the casino yet and
tell them what the casino is offering for real versus like,
OK, I want to try to stop these people from hurting themselves
already when they're they're fully aware of what they're
doing. And I and I think you make like,
yeah, like there's a compelling point of like, we're almost in
that part of the cycle with media as well.
I agree with you and I want to take like a slight aside from it
as well. Yeah, what I'm really getting at
is the one of your things you've done well and something I did
when I wrote about crypto is crypto.
The condition of crypto is not really about tech, it's about
society. It's about the fact that wealth
accumulation in the modern world is bordering on impossible.
It was meant to be. You go to college, you work
hard, get married, you have 2.4 children, you buy a house, it
works like clockwork. Then it was like, we'll do day
trading. The media did a dog shit job of
stopping people day trading in the 2000s.
I'll just give money to my financial advisor.
Not that the media ever really explained what one of those was,
what it did, what good look like, what bad look like.
OK, well I'll work really. I I'll go to college, I guess.
Oh, I went to college and I still can't get a job.
Well, my shit's more expensive. But I read the news and the news
says that actually my shit's better than it was, But I feel
bad. In the case of crypto, it was I
can't accumulate wealth, so I'm going to go in the big illegal
slot machine and I'm going to fucking try because I'm
desperate and scared. And by approaching people and
going new, new, new idiots would touch this new.
You couldn't possibly or alternatively being like, if
you'd invested in the theory of 1000 days ago, you could have
made this much money. Both of those are wrong, as is
the humouring of the idea of crypto was some sort of valid
thing. There is probably some value to
saying yeah if you want to try a big illegal slot machine this
might work. If you get lucky in the way that
people often are not, or if you have some way in early on a
project, sure. This is honestly just a scaling
of allowing people access to cons.
That's what it is. Because people feel conned by
society. So there is now a legal con you
can join. And now that Lina Khan is gone
and now that the SEC no longer has Gensler, well, they'll be
allowed to sell more cons to more people and more people will
lose money. But it's rarely explained as a
financial and social and psychological condition.
It's rarely explained in a way that actually has empathy for
the people involved. I was on crypto groups in
telegrams and Rutger Hauer speech and then Blade Runner,
things I've seen. But it's like you'd see guys in
India and the Philippines screaming, they'd be like, I've
lost, I put my money into this. I need this to work the
desperation off of these people. How does that that is more
indicative of the problem than anything.
And journalists don't seem to have this inherent.
And this is something I said in the piece.
Well, there's no love for the user.
There's no concern for the user. There's no thought of like if
someone reads this, if someone reads this and makes a bad
decision, I've hurt them. It goes back to when I was
reviewing video games. I used to fucking crush shit.
And I used to say when I'd get in a lot of trouble for it was
actually 30 quid, £40 mate. Like that's a lot of, we get
these games for free, but people pay for these.
This might be the only game they can afford this year.
Do you want it? And do you want them to buy some
shit? And they'd be like, you're being
dramatic. And perhaps I was.
But it needs to get back to who are we actually writing for?
Who is this for? What is the net effect of what
we are doing every day? Because people feel fucking
hopeless and people are aware that the media is not really
serving them. The right wing media feels like
it's serving people. Yeah, it's serving them to their
like, but it has the appearance of it.
Andrew Tate is famous because he offers grown men things that 13
year olds want. Sex, boobs, cigar, money, pile
of money, strong man, strong man lift all the time.
Not gay, not Nope. No, that's not what this.
Is kiss man? No, it really is like the the
not gay song from from a pop star.
Have you ever seen it? But that's the thing.
It's like this very basic thing, and it works because guess what?
When you look at the rest of the media, it's like, OK, I'm a
miserable motherfucker and I have no hope.
Where am I going to look? Oh wait, convening excuses over
here. And this isn't even a new
phenomenon. MGTOW has been around a long
fucking time. The media needs to start
operating on a principle of how about this?
Regular people are reading this and making decisions.
The result of what I write. My last question is, you talk
about this easy solution that the right offers for a lot of
this stuff. And generally I would say that
Bennett and I are left-leaning, but Crypto Critics Corner is
just a podcast about. Crypto.
And whatever, what do you think is the way to like, what is the
alternative to that simple like blanket like, Oh yeah, we'll
blame the immigrants or we'll blame the whoever, like they're
the problems. So what is the alternative to
that? Like how do you have a simple
forthright statement that you can counter that with?
Because I think especially with something like crypto, it's
quite difficult to have a counter to something like that.
You know what I mean? I'm.
Going to speak a little broadly because crypto is just its own
freaky condition and also the damage has been done so
thoroughly that it's going to take decades to work it out.
When people failed on crypto, they failed society and people
are losing money all the time and the rich people are getting
richer because of it. It's a disgrace, like really
disgusting. But on a wider scale, what these
people on the right do is they do sell hope that there are
answers and some of them are made-up.
But what they actually do is they talk to their people.
And I must be clear, I'm not advocating for any of these
people. But what actually is a really
good place to start? One of my least favorite things
is people saying Joe Rogan's bad.
He's a fucking dumbass and the people he brings on are
sometimes bigger dumbasses than him.
He's a pretty good interviewer. It's a well produced show.
It's high quality. It don't know if the contents
high quality, but it's well mastered.
But also, Joe Rogan will sit there and go, why'd that happen?
Yeah, that's crazy. Guess what?
That's how most people, even the most intelligent people you are,
are. They don't know.
Not everyone knows everything. So if you start from this
position of hey, I should ask questions that seem very
obvious, we'll help your reader and we'll help you list them.
On top of that, the right wing people sell hope, horrible hope,
corrupt hope. But something that there is an
answer, there can be answers that you are not bereft of
industry. And they use that to mechanise
anger. But guess what?
There is actual space of positive masculinity and
positive masculinity and was like, oh, you're turning gay.
If only. If only it was that easy.
Jesus Christ. Seems like I had more fun.
I love clothes, seems like I love them.
I could dress more interestingly, it'd be way more
fucking fun. But the point is, men in general
are so scared of discussing their emotions because they're
cowards. They're cowards.
But also men can't even discuss hope or inspiration.
These things have been taken from the US by the right because
the left is not all of the left. I think some of them are like
Hassan is, and I've agreed on everything, but he gets people
in interest. And he had a really good
interview on Pod Save America, which is a sentence I never
thought I'd say. And what he did was he blank,
blankly explained the errors that were made in a way that was
very digestible. But fundamentally, if we want to
fight back about against this, we have to give people hope, but
we also have to treat them like human fucking beings.
And the things we make need to speak to their problems and
actually what's happening to them.
Rather than this, I should write about the markets.
What the where's AI going? Who gives a fuck if you can't
prove where it's going? Say it could go here, but here's
where it could also not go. When you describe the things
you're describing, describe them in terms that actually apply to
a person to be reading it. Oh, but the business people are
reading it. I do public relations of B to B
products as well. Guess what?
Same funk. They're also human.
You wouldn't believe it. You wouldn't believe that the
business people also read stuff and want to explain to them.
Simply. Matt Levine is one of the best
living financial writers and his stuff is so straightforward and
so fun and so human. It's brilliant.
And yeah, it's written. Fucking traders and financial
perverts just like me. I'm the perverts side.
But the point I'm getting to slowly is hope, excitement,
caring. These are things out of the
media right now on the left in the centre, it doesn't feel like
many people writing about tech actually give a fuck about the
computer. And guess what regular people
do? Regular people love the
computer. They wish the computer wasn't so
annoying. They wish the computer was it.
They want to go back to Facebook working and Instagram working.
They still get value out of these things, even though they
fucking suck. So coming at it and saying,
listen, this thing you experience every day that pisses
you off, I have an answer. I have a person look at this
asshole. But also, you're not stupid.
You are not stupid for feeling bad.
Do you know how annoying it must be for someone who's struggling
to pay their fucking bills to read ACNN article Going well,
actually, the economy's great. Is there a is there a problem
with the economy? Oh fuck you.
God damn. What a disgraceful,
condescending way of looking at people.
And it's how a lot of the media works.
And it's a disgrace because it could be so much better and so
much good would be done because guess what?
A lot of these corporations, they really don't want bad
headlines. They're fucking terrified of
them. You think the CEO of the
company's sitting there looking at the numbers?
No, they look at CNN and USA TODAY and if USA TODAY says
they're a fucking bell end for doing something, they'll freak
the fuck out. Their wife, who they barely talk
to, We'll e-mail them through their assistant that this
article came out and now they're embarrassed.
And now Tarquin and Krebtin, their children are at school
being made fun of. And that's the thing, I know I'm
saying a lot of random stuff, but fundamentally the way that
we as communicates, whereas people in the media treat people
needs to be more human and needs to approach the real fucking
consequences of these things. Perhaps Tether isn't bothering
people. Perhaps Tether doesn't really
scare the average person. But you know what does?
Some poor mother fucker inside the Celsius lawsuit in the
bankruptcy thing talking about how they they fucking lost
everything. The emails I got when I wrote
about fucking Celsius and it's like Molly White and the things
she's found. The responses I got were like
fuck I finally get this. This is horrible.
It's no longer just crypto perverts who are losing their
money. It's real people who were conned
by something that seemed honest. That is what is lacking the
actual consequences and acting as if there are them, rather
than what you hope will happen in an industry and what you
would like the world to look like.
Well, it seems like it's good of a place to wrap it up as any.
Make sure to check out Better Offline and Where's Your Ed for
your podcasting and newsletter needs and.
Betteroffline.com That's where I put all my links because there's
too many of them now. And thank you very much for
joining us, Ed. My absolute pleasure.
Love coming on?