Transcription
I'm with Katherine D. Everybody, welcome back to Watkins Welcome. It's our yearly predictions and and looking back. How are you feeling about things today, on this day in January?
Um, I agree with everyone that things are going to get weirder, and I don't think, um, I personally, or frankly, anyone else is prepared.
And what way do you think things are going to get weirder?
Um, well, the most, the most basic way is we've been living in sort of like the social media era for a long time. I mean, for like, I want to say like pretty much 15 years, maybe a little bit longer. Um, and we're moving out of the digit. Yeah, it's been, it's been a minute, right? And we're, we're moving out of the digital age. Facebook was what, 2006, 2007? Yeah, yeah. It's, it's, we're moving out of the digital age as we know it into a new, uh, technological epoch. So that is a.
And, uh, in what respect? What can you elaborate on that a little? Like moving out of it in the way that they're less separate, or that AI is going to change it again, or?
Well, there's, there's a lot of dimensions to, I mean, all of it, right? I think first of all, the way social media functions is radically changing, right? This idea of like an influencer or public intellectual or talking head or whatever you want to call it, I think is going away. Um, and we've had, we've been living through this like cycle where either people come from legacy media or another industry, right? Or they, you know, they come from Hollywood, um, or they organically build, build momentum. And, um, you know, we, we know who these figureheads are, right? And they, they cycle out every five years. Some people, um, have like, they ebb and flow, like they'll go dormant for a little bit, they come back with a rebrand, they're even more powerful than ever, right? There's a lot of cases like this, um, but it's pretty predictable, right? Uh, the trends come and go. Sometimes, um, the left is is sort of, you know, cool and there's a window for left-wing media. Other times it's the right's turn, right? Uh, but these cycles of momentum themselves kind of wane, right? Uh, because before that we had traditional media. Um, I think all of it's going away, right? And I don't quite know what's next. Um, I think a lot of people were saying that, you know, the internet's so fragmented and there's no, uh, monoculture. And I always disagreed with that quite a bit. I mean, I, I always thought something like wokeness, right? To have succeeded in the way it did, there needed to be a cultural element. And so there was a, there was a monoculture. It just didn't present itself in the same way it might have in like 1975, right? Um, but now I think, I think those people who are saying, oh, we're so fragmented are right. Um, I think there's really going to be no monoculture. There's going to be no celebrity in the way that we've understood celebrity, um, for the last little while.
And who knows what the implications of, um, more, you know, more adoption of AI is going to look like? Um, I think it's, well, one, people are obviously going to lose their jobs, but there's, there's other like cultural effects that I think, uh, you know, like what does ownership mean in the age of AI? There's all these like little, little questions that like keep popping up for me. And, um, yeah, I think stuff is about to get really weird.
There was something too yesterday when the whole deep fake, um, you know, thing popped off and everybody was talking about it. And a friend of mine and I were talking and he was like, you know, ultimately, there's going to be this question of like, how do you tariff an LLM? You can't, you know, there's, how are you gonna do that? There's so.
I do think when it comes to the AI and like you said, ownership and how they're scraping the internet of all of the content that everybody's uploaded for 10 years to kind of train on, do they, will they even need it? You can, you can kind of train on, I guess the more AI trains on itself, the more it becomes gibberish. So at least now, so that's somewhat, it's like copying a copy of a copy. You lose quality every single time. So there's something kind of that that gives me some hope that there will still be a need for original stuff. But, you know, somebody, I was reading somebody saying that this is going to be like the era of slop, like slop writing, slop TV, slop everything, right?
Well, I mean, look, I think the, the white pillows, you're right. So there becomes a market for things with a human touch, right? Uh, there, people, people want to connect with people, and people have cache. I think you already see this a little bit on Substack, which I've like called the Etsy for words, right? You know, like Etsy stands against Amazon, although Etsy now is flooded with weird [ __ ] from China. It's like really strange. But, um, I find that on Substack, people are writing these like impossibly long essays that are just like, so like, just like breathlessly confessional, just filled with like personal details. And I, I don't know that anyone's reading it. I think people just like that there's this almost stream of consciousness fire hose of humanity that is in contrast to slop, right? Like a real person made this. And I don't know that anyone's actually reading it or engaging with it as a work of writing, but they're engaging with it as an object created by a human.
Yeah, I think that there will be, you know, now they, they have all these Instagram influencers that are all 100% AI and they're selling things. And I don't know that that will be as popular as people think. Although I'm not sure that maybe right now for those of us who remember the difference, but if you can't tell the difference and you never know and you never knew there was a difference, I guess it won't matter.
But my husband was telling me about an interesting study around AI therapy. And he was saying people get benefits from it until they realize that it's AI. And then drastically the benefits go down. And so they've done these studies that the minute they find out that it's not an actual human that they're interacting with, it almost loses all of the benefits that they were getting because what, what they want is real human connection.
And I had Dr. Shedler on this podcast. And he's a therapist, psychotherapist. And he was saying, it, it said, he said something really interesting that has stuck with me ever since he was on the podcast. And he said, you can't scale human relationships. That is one-on-one. It takes time. It takes trust. It takes being uncomfortable. There's no way to scale that. You can be a therapist and you can try and do BetterHelp. And you can try and scale these. You can maybe be a therapist and write a book. And that's a way you can scale what you've learned. But in terms of the actual human connection, you just can't scale that. And I think this is a bottleneck that we will run into.
I think people are really good at deluding themselves, right? Like people can, um, you know, I talk to a lot of people who are in, um, relationships with basically imaginary friends, purely fictional characters. Um, it's become like a real recurring theme of my work in the last few years. Um, and what's, what that's shown me is, um, you know, where there's a will, there's a way. Often people don't even need a chatbot, right? And even with a chatbot, it doesn't matter how short the memory is, uh, their imagination fills in the white space. Um, so I think it's, um, it would be nice, like I, it, you, this, this doctor might be, be right. You know, I'm, I'm going on anecdotal data, but, um, I, I think we will be really good at fooling ourselves. And the people who aren't good at fooling themselves will suffer.
And I almost wonder, and I discussed this on my show recently, maybe it would behoove us to just, um, start anthropomorphizing everything and say, you know, it's inevitable. Maybe we should just treat objects with the respect we treat a person. And maybe that'll make the transition a little easier.
The transition to what? The metaverse? The transition to like an increasingly isolated, um, you know, internet, or, you know, digital rich life, right? Where like, you know, customer service becomes interacting with AI, or like AI agents interacting one another, right? Everything's delivered, everything's increasingly, uh, you know, we're all in our little pods.
I mean, the flip side is, right, if this is actually happening, then the counterculture will be touching grass, literally. You already see that in, um, Austin. And it's interesting because it's led particularly by people in tech. So they're buying land, they're starting small schools, they're, um, really focused on in real life community. They're, they're learning how to farm, they're teaching themselves, they have chickens. This is so common as you know, in and around Austin and all the land around Austin. And that is, that's kind of interesting to me that these people who kind of made all their money creating this world that you're talking about are now completely no screens, you know, did, like, real tangible media. I've seen three magazines launch in the past two months, which is all these, so strange to me. There's so many of them.
Yeah, another one coming out. I think a lot of the like dissident culture, right? I mean, I don't like that word, but that's, you know, that's what everyone knows it as. Trads, uh, even just magazine launches, right? Most of them are right-wing, which I think is actually significant. This is a reaction to technology and a reaction to a life forged on the internet. Um, you know, I think what people want to return to is, you know, of course, an era where things made sense to them and things were more predictable and less chaotic, but also, um, a less technologically saturated era, right? That's like return is really about no computer.
Yeah, like I, I often have this fantasy of like going to, uh, Southeast Asia. It's, it's, and it's been like a, a theme that I, I've written about a lot. And I realized like, why, why do I actually? I found, I had this realization while talking to Claude, which is another chatbot. And I was like, what is my fixation? Like, I like the food, I like the music, I like the language, particularly with Khmer, Cambodia. And I took Khmer lessons for several years. Um, and I realized like, in my mind, this isn't true. This is just my own conception of it. Like, if I went to Cambodia, there's, I'm not on the internet. What I'm like craving is like, I want to go somewhere where my conception of it is not tainted by the internet. And I think that's the same thing with like the Trad impulse. Like you're homing, but there's no smartphone, right? No one's sending you an email, no one's trying to get in touch with you. You're just like, you're tilling the land and and having babies and, you know, you're, you're otherwise occupied.
And posting about it on your Instagram that has millions of followers. Um, right? I mean, of course, that's the irony. No, you can't escape the matrix. You can't.
I, when I was in Sri Lanka, it was like that for me because their grid was unstable, so we would have rolling blackouts the whole time I was there. The Wi-Fi was very spotty, if it was even available at all. And I think about, and this was 2013 that I was there, and it was so nice. It was just so nice. Like we woke up, we walked on the beach, we drank juice. Life was, it was very cheap, so you could live very simply. And, um, I taught yoga at this like place nearby and volunteered with kids in the village and danced on the beach at like these parties like constantly. Had it was just a very weird, you know, um, embodied experience in general.
The meme, I was thinking about this. I've been thinking so much about it because every morning I pretty much wake up and I'm like, ah, I wish I was in Sri Lanka. It was, it was so amazing. And it wasn't the food and the culture and the Indian Ocean, which is by far the sexiest ocean of all of them. It was my memories are so tangible. They were, they're so real life sense oriented. The, I remember one day we went swimming after this rainstorm and they, they were throwing the ocean up into the sky, splashing water. And it looked like gold was raining down. And there were rainbows. And it was like, you could touch, you were swimming with turtles. And it was, um, very sensory. India was the same. It was a wildly in chaotic sensory experience. And there's nothing that's come close. I've never had an experience online that even comes close to anything like that in real life.
I was talking with Liv Bor yesterday about Burning Man and a similar thing of just how you're completely offline, you're no contact with anybody, and you're, it's hard and it's exhausting, but it's also you're so embodied. And I wonder if, if there will, maybe maybe this is it, though. Maybe we're the last generation that kind of remembers that.
I don't think so. I mean, I think a lot of people, as, as you noted, are going to rebel. I've noticed like on, like on Substack and, you know, I mean, not that Substack is representative of trends. I'm constantly seeing like people saying, you know, they're leaving the platform or they're leaving all social media. Um, there's a young woman named August Lamb who wrote a really interesting pamphlet, um, I think it was like called like, you, like, how to abandon your smartphone or something like this. I don't think that's the exact title, but that's the gist of it. Um, and there's a lot of like taste makers in particular are moving towards this offline movement, this sort of like log off movement. I mean, this, the success of someone like Jonathan Haidt speaks to this, right? Um, and I think a lot of, um, people who are sort of even in our spheres are promoting a more offline life. So I do think there is a, a counterculture or movement. It will be possible, not for everyone, granted, but it will be possible or there will be an expression of it, as, as we're, we're already, as we're already seeing it, um, play out. But I, you know, I don't think we'll be the last, the last one necessarily.
Do you think that that the youth are moving in that direction, though? Or I guess my feeling sometimes is that there is a reaction to it, but I wonder if it's just isolated and I'm seeing small pockets of it, whereas maybe perhaps it's not as big of a movement as I think. And the real movement is actually towards this kind of transhuman experience.
I think it's bifurcated. It's both. And I also think what we're really seeing now is the downstream effects of COVID lockdowns. Children, you know, young adults who lost huge chunks of their childhood or adolescence and how that destroyed them. I mean, on the mild end, it's people who were firehosed with the internet because they had no choice. And I'm sure their parents thought they were doing, you know, what the best they could to keep them safe and they weren't socializing. And then on the more extreme end, you hear, you know, a lot of these like horrifying stories of of children who couldn't leave abusive situations, yeah, because like there's no mandated reporters, they're not going to school, they have no reprieve. And that I think is also going to influence people wanting to to log off.
I think, you know, what we'll see, you'll have one group of people who is deeply entrenched in a mediated life and who is very nihilistic and becomes almost anti-human. Um, I think maybe as like a third, like dark horse category, they'll be transhumanists to embrace a technologically enabled life. And then you have people who are like, I can't do this anymore, right? And on a spectrum, we'll be logging off. I don't think they'll become like Amish, right? But the move away from, uh, social media and, and, you know, constantly scrolling.
Some of the, you know, some of the things I think we'll also see along with this is like, where's the news? Who's the news? Right? Yeah. Like legacy media kind of has to come back. And there's some alt media that's doing a really good job and I think is sort of helping to fill that void. You know, I always shout out Tablet. I always shout out The Free Press. I mean, I think they're really good examples of that. Like even like Matt Taibbi, whose name I don't know if I'm pronouncing correctly, and Walter Kirn, sort of on like the, the alt, like non-legacy media side. And then like, we might see something like The Washington Post or The New York Times regain the credibility that they lost during COVID because it's like, we can't be subscribed to like 50,000 newsletters and like peace meal put it together and have all these like lit, like micro cult leaders who are like, it's the, their version of the news, right? It's just not sustainable. Don't really want that, I think. Um, and but then it's like, where does local news fit in? You know, it's like, there's all these, there's all these questions.
Yeah, so many questions when it comes to the news. I don't, I don't really know.
I don't know that Hollywood feels the same way to me. I mean, on the Hollywood was already kind of experiencing a death rattle. And then you had these fires and now I can't tell you how many people I've heard it expedited their leaving LA and coming somewhere else. And I know there's a lot of push to move the industry in general just out of Los Angeles. But again, you see with AI and, and slop and so much content. And it, it seems, it seems like, um, all of these industries, I don't know how to conceive of what they'll look like at all because I, I don't, I don't know that it will. I don't know that people will return to legacy media, even if they tried.
I don't, I saw even today there was a whole thing going around about something that Trump allegedly said. And they're like, they're taking away the food stamps. They're taking away the food stamps. It's like, they're not political. Already changed the article where they said that was the case. And no one learned anything from 2017. So if you keep stepping on that rake over and over again, even after the lessons of 2017 and 2020, and now here we are in 2025, and you're still running with whatever you read without actually vetting it or reading source material or finding out if it's true, you're going to end up having people who don't want to defend Trump have to defend Trump. And you're going to continue to erode trust as a journalist or like a mainstream legacy media. And just today, I was like, well, maybe they've learned. And it's like, no, they, I don't know that they have. Everybody just freaks out and reacts. And and people, people, part of the reason I think Trump even won this election is because people had so drastically left legacy media behind already. And they went on this, you know, independent media podcast tour and snatched up all these, these particularly male voters. So, and I don't know that those people are ever coming back. At least, I, I think that you'd have to cycle out of it for, um, generation, like decades before maybe there was some kind of return to it. That's just my feeling. I don't, I don't know, though.
I mean, you might, you might be right. I, I just, I just feel like, I mean, maybe what we exist in a world where there is no news. I mean, I agree with you. Outlet like Politico probably doesn't have much of a future. Or if it does have a future, it's, it's small and and niche, right? And we just have all these like, uh, niche creators, smaller creators get sort of filtered out. And it's like, you know, we're all part of an, you know, you're in The Joe Rogan ecosystem or the Theo Von ecosystem or whatever, right? But it, it just, it just seems that like something's got to give. There's too much content. There's way too much content. And people, people get, you know, exhausted by it, right? You're also seeing like a lot of like new networks pop up. Like everyone's starting a network, everyone's starting a bundle because it's like, they know there's too many voices. And I don't think a lot of them are going to survive because I think they're too, I think if you're starting one now, you're already too late. Think like you really want to get picked up by someone who's who's bigger. And as much as their credibility has diminished, you know, like The New York Times and Washington Post still have a, you know, they, they still have some pull, right? I think if they got their [ __ ] together this year, they could stand a chance of survival and not, um, I don't know, and not end up pushed to the to the wayside.
Yeah, it's interesting because we'd probably be the first on the chopping block by those standards. You know, you, you and I, maybe not you, but probably me. I've been told for five years now. And Constantine Kissen, I think maybe two or three years ago, maybe two years ago, he was here and he said, you either need to blow up or you need to sell out. And I was like, well, sorry, I'm not blowing up fast enough. Like, like as if I'm not, as if everyone isn't trying to kind of reach that escape velocity where they don't need to worry about, um, whether or not they can continue to make content and pay the bills. But I also don't, I, you know, there's been many opportunities that I could have probably sold out to different organizations that I said no to because ultimately I still want to be able to say what I want to say, how I want to say it. And I guess maybe I'll never be a millionaire. And maybe I will have to shutter things in the next couple of years, perhaps that is true. But maybe I'll just make enough until I don't. I don't know. I just, I, I'm not, um, I, I think I'm like a case study in what you're talking about. You know, do will I need to like go sell my whole operation to someone much bigger in order to survive because there is so much content?
And people are subscriber. You underrate how big you are though, right? Like you, like you retweet me, like one time I get a thousand followers. Like you have, you know, you're not some, you're not like middle of the road sort of, you know, what I mean? Like you have a presence for sure.
Yeah, but I'm not, I, I guess I, I look at it solely from, can I support my one employee that I have? And can, and we both, I mean, this is just like very inside baseball, but whatever, I'm pretty transparent. We both put had to take pay cuts last year. It's coming on the heels of a baby and a move. So I knew that there would be, and a not great economy. So I knew there would be, you know, those effects are always like years delayed. And we last year was like a make or break year for us. And we did make it. But it's still, um, we're not, I'm not making anywhere near what most of the people around me are making. You know, there, most of the people around me did get very big and are making millions of dollars. And we are still, I'm still making what would be considered a lower and middle class, you know, living. Which again, I'm completely fine with that because that's, um, like that's the dream, you know, what that I'm doing what I love and doing it how I want to do it. But yeah, I think I'm a good, I'm a good example of someone that maybe maybe won't survive this new. I mean, if I look realistically at these things, I, I, I may not survive this new evolution of this bifurcated internet where everybody's having to kind of, you know, rebundle.
Wanted to be scooped up. I don't know if this is like appropriate to say. Any, I mean, I think someone would scoop you up if you put the bat signal out. Yeah, like if I was like, like if we're being real and not, I, I'll, I'll end, I'll end this topic after this comment. I mean, if we're if we're being like, you know, who's going to survive, who's not going to survive, I have like various like side hustles and and what have you. Like I, but I don't think like in this new world, you know, people are going to be rushing to send Katherine D five dollars, you know what I mean? But I don't think you have to worry. I mean, I mean, I'm in no, I'm at no risk of someone buying me out. But I think if you really wanted that and you felt like that's what you needed, if you put, you know, if you put the, I'm looking for work sign up like on LinkedIn, you know, they, people would want you because you, you're valuable. You.
But I feel that way about you. But that's still not, but the original point is, um, we both independent. It's like, is there, is there room? In the same way that like with the music industry, everything went to all these giant labels and you had all these independent labels. And the internet came along and those independent labels, they were the first ones to go. Like we're independent labels. And, and pretty corporate. You know, everyone I know who also has blown up, aside from like some comedians who are very independent, but in terms of like the media outlets that we're talking about, they have investor money. You know, they're, they're not, it's not like they're just like bootstrapping it with subs. Like they've got, yeah, they have big dollars coming in to help. You know, these people with money saw that they needed to create alternatives to this mainstream in order and give these people support in order for them to even survive. And now they're more or less corporate in some respects. So, I, I think that's really the, the question. The question is, is there enough, are there enough resources out there with individuals to keep independent creators afloat? I don't know. A lot of it depends on how the economy goes too. I mean, people had a lot of disposable income during COVID. It was almost like a, a fake sense, yeah, for a while. And it was, it was, like when everybody converted their tapes to CDs. It was like a fake sense of what the market actually is because you're like, look at all this, there's this is completely sustainable. But then you're like, well, no, people aren't going to concerts, they're not going to football games, they're not going to Disneyland, they're not going, like these are very expensive in real life places.
I think that's such a good analogy. And people don't think about that a lot. That like CDs were actually a transition period. Like that was, there's like a, a, what did someone call it on, um, I read some, some listed predictions and someone called like the, these false starts a dead cat bounce. And CDs were a dead cat bounce for, for the music industry. Yeah, I mean, it gave them a false sense of what CD sales would look like. And I think the pandemic did that for independent creators. At the same time, it was creating more and more independent creators because everybody was just locked up. Sure. So, so it created this like huge, huge amount of content and people, and people blew up. And then, uh, things normalized. And now that it's completely saturated and not everyone's going to make it. And it is, it is interesting. Like I wonder how the, the like indie brands will. But I'm determined. I'm going down with the ship.
Well, you know, I was gonna say, like some people will just quit because it's hard, right? It's like, it's, it's tough. You know, you look at something like OnlyFans, which, you know, like moral hesitations about that aside, right? Like part of the reason a lot of people fail at OnlyFans is well, you know, it's oversaturated, right? They don't have, it takes, talent-wise, let's say, but also like, it's, it's a craft. Um, it's, I'm not saying it's one that's like deserving of the most respect in the world or whatever, but it's, it's a craft. And there's certain rules you need to follow to succeed. Same with content creation. So it's like, when they say like, you know, X, like impossibly small percent of OnlyFans creators earn over like $600 a month, right? Like a big, a big piece of that puzzle is like, well, how many of those are updating regular, updating in the right way, or offering the services that, you know, generate cash? And it's the same, it's the same with people who are creating content. So that's like one level of it. So like, obviously, you're, you're like way past, you don't have to worry about that. You know, you got the formula down, right? And then, then like, we're always iterating. I mean, ish, we just changed our format for Dumpster Fire. We just moved Watkins Welcome off our main YouTube channel. Had to start another YouTube channel. We took it back from our, uh, dist, we had, you know, like a, a network that we were on and we took it back. And now we're selling all of our ads ourselves, which is a whole other job in and of itself. And like, we're truly an indie record label right now. I was trying to explain this to my cousin, who's, I'm like, we're, she's like, I, we are working so hard. It is insane. And I was like, we're in our indie record label years. You do in-person events. You know, what I found is like, really want to, you, you should, let's, this is just like content craft hour now. Hey, there's a lot of people who like love these conversations because you and I talk a lot about the kind of inside mechanisms of this. And as we talked about on our last podcast, people keep this like weirdly secret. Like they have to act like, oh, this is all just happening. And you're like, it's a lot of [ __ ] work. And I might have said this on the last time we talked about this, I hate when people like, well, you know, I just sort of accidentally fell into this and I didn't really want to. It's like, [ __ ] you worked your ass off. You sucked so many dicks to get here. Like, who are you fooling? Metaphorically. They didn't. The person I'm obviously referencing in my mind. No, it worked. They published, right? No one falls in. No one keeps up a content creator career because, oh, this is just an accident. I never expected. I thought, you know, I'm so humble about it. No, you're just be real. You wanted it. You love it. And you worked for it. Yeah. And it's not like anyone who does content creation knows what [ __ ] that is like. So annoying. Seem real to people who don't have to do it because they're always like, get a real job. I'm like, you know how many times I've joked to my husband that I was gonna go back to waiting tables because it's easier than like this is amazing and it's creative. But, um, and we were talking about this on, ironically, a recent Dumpster Fire that did the most poorly of one in a while where we were talking about how we all sound like psychopaths talking about feeding the algorithm. I'm like, we sound like primitive people talking about the gods. You know, like the way we all talk about the algorithm is like, oh, if we don't feed it for three days, it will get angry. It will turn on us. We cannot anger the algorithm. We we just keep bringing it offerings for it to keep paying attention to us, or it will rain hellfire upon it. It's just like, no one really [ __ ] knows. And now with AI, this invisible god that is driving it all, all we sound like crazy people. But it is so much of what you're constantly trying to manage because all of these platforms are also constantly changing their algorithms with changing preferences and politics and ownership or whatever. And and censorship rules or not censorship. It's it is bananas. And anyone who acts like it's easy is a liar. And I know all these dudes who are psychotic about this stuff and they pay people to analyze every card that they use on YouTube. I mean, they are like autistic about YouTube and trying to hack the algorithm, trying to figure out what the new algorithm is. There are teams of kids in India who are doing this for every platform, looking at what works. When what it's like, no one, people are full of [ __ ] if they act like this just happened.
It's, yeah, I mean, like even to the ex, there, there are some creators that I can think of, right, who where they clearly did just get lucky. And they're not doing it on any kind of schedule. But then it's even like for them to have gotten lucky means the right person noticed you. Even then, it's like, you have to network, you had to say the right things. There's no version of this where you're just blessed by the the creator gods and you're suddenly, you're suddenly famous. Like you have to, you know, drum up the right controversies.
Don't, but don't piss off the wrong person because it'll unless you're like H. Oh my God, what happened? How did that even? She was like smart for a minute and then stupid or something. Or she's sitting on a beach earning 20%. I mean, maybe. Or she's pending lawsuit. I mean, look, if, yeah, or that, or both. She let. I mean, if I were her, I would just leave the country and go live in Sri Lanka. Um, she, she may have been smart enough to see that like that 15 minutes when you blow up overnight like that, it's not as easy to create content as you think and to maintain relevance. You have to, um, that level of relevance, you have to live up to to that. And you might just want to do a pump and dump and grab like 50 million or whatever and and get out. Call, call it a day. Yeah, I mean, maybe that would be the smart thing. Truly for her. Yeah, yeah. Because it's like, how much does she have to say? You know, not like she's doing any kind of project. Yeah, just, you know, take the, get your bag and walk away. Yeah, when you're at your peak. Yeah, I mean, I'd be forgotten.
No, I was looking at it. It was a moment. I was looking at her even podcast numbers. And you can see like, just on YouTube, like they just start slowly declining because you were a cultural moment and a flash point. But are people gonna tune in to to you every week? Maybe. But it seemed like, you know, I probably would have just grabbed the bag on as soon as I min noticed that star was falling. I'd be like, get me out. But maybe she's just pending lawsuit and she's not allowed to talk anymore. It could be both. Maybe it's both.
But this is that that kind of viral fame. Like I, I've never chased it. I've never wanted it. It seems like it comes with so many more problems than opportunities in the long run. And it's, I kind of prefer the the slow and steady, just like plot on on the internet. And, and it's, it's weird. I don't know if you've had this experience at all with having a kid. I don't want to be disconnected from this world, the online world, because I know she'll probably be there, more than likely, as as most children are. But I don't want it. She makes me want to be even more in real life. And re, even this thing like around reading books, where I would love for her to grow up and be like my mom and dad were reading all the time. And I was saying to someone, even reading a Kindle, you're looking at a screen. So I try, I just like physical books anyway. But if you're trying to like teach your kid to be a book reader, you can't do it by reading a Kindle. They're still gonna be like, oh, looking at a screen. Um, I don't know. I need to, I need to cut back on my online time.
I mean, my son already sees it. I see him like, like picking up like, you know, rectangular objects, pretending he's on the phone. He grabs my phone to call my mom. And I'm like, you're nine months old. Yep. Yeah, he, if I leave my phone unattended, he just starts like, you know, moving around like this. Yep. They know. They see us.
What's that, that expression someone said to me? More is caught than taught. That really stuck with me. Like, you, the kids are going to catch more just by our behavior than us being like, you know, you need to get off the screens and you need to read books or whatever. It's like, if you're not, they see that. I see it reflected in her. And then it is hard because she has relationships with her grandparents who live all over the country. Something that was not possible in a way that is now where they can FaceTime. And so she gets to see them. But it means more time on the screen. But when she sees them, they have this pre-existing relationship from their screen time. But she also knows how to swipe a notification away, you know, at like 13 months, she knew how to do that.
Yeah, no, I mean, sometimes I'm like, I let my son FaceTime my parents too much. But also it's like, now he knows he has such a good Rel, even this Rel, yeah, it's, yeah, I don't know. I don't know how I feel about it. Definitely don't want him online ever. Um, it's, I mean, if I were you, I wouldn't. And you're in way deep, way deeper than in the like dredges of the internet than I am.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't think the internet's inherently bad. But it's just a wild, it's a wild west. Like my problem isn't mediated relationships. It's just like, it's like I don't want him wandering around downtown Chicago, you know, at two years old all by himself, you know, or five or seven or 15. You know, it reminds me of that Chappelle Show sketch where he's like, if the internet was real life, and he's just like walking through like, basically like a red light district. It's just like badness everywhere. Yeah, it's, it's, it's such a weird, it's such a weird time. It really is. Like how you opened this saying things are going to get weirder. And and even culturally, the, like the vibe shift or realignment or whatever you, you want to call it, you already see the right-wing behaving in the same way the left-wing did. And that kind of, um, in some respects, you see, I see glimmers of this. I know a lot of it is just the victory lap. But some of it is also, I think there was a viral tweet I saw yesterday going around that was like, make it normal to shame someone for comma voting for Kamala. I'm like, are we gonna do this again? That's not how you won the independence. So much of the stuff is like politics agnostic. It's like a group dynamic thing. Right? And I've always believed that. I mean, there's the left certainly has its own toxicity and I'm not denying that. But I think a lot of problems are are because of, you know, power concentration, resource scarcity, uh, you know, like too many people wanting the same thing. And the same types of dynamics emerge. The internet amplifies this, but obviously they exist just as much in the physical world. And so of course we'll see, uh, cancellation mobs from the right because it was never a, you know, it was, it was never a principal thing. It was like, um, you know, is, is it such a coincidence that the left went into turbo drive? They already owned all these institutions. And then these institutions start shrinking because of the internet, right, right? So it's like, there's so some of it is political, sure. But a lot of it is, uh, is not political and is driven by these structural problems.
Right. It's, do you think that, do you, what do you think about the TikTok stuff as someone who loves TikTok?
I, I don't, I don't know. I've become over time more sympathetic to banning it, I'll, I'll say that. And think a lot of the security concerns, um, have, have become like more legitimate to me. And I, I think people are like, well, what about, you know, like Meta? You know, what, what about every other single, you know, company out there? Right? They have a point. But they, it, I agree, there's like a, as gross as this is going to sound to say, um, there's like a qualitative difference between like Alphabet or Meta exchanging my data with, you know, other corporations, right? And selling me down the river with their Al, you know, algorithmic voodoo, and China doing it. I know. And there is a difference, right? And it's, it, I don't like to say it, but I mean, it's, it's just how I, how I feel. But here's what I don't think is real. And what I thought was absolutely like cringe-inducing is the idea that like TikTok is like digital fentanyl. And that like it was brainwashing people when a lot of the trends that people pointed to were already in motion, right? You know, like people thought that young, you know, young people were, um, more anti-Zionist and pro-Palestine because they got brainwashed on TikTok. That's just not true. They, that Gen Z has been moving in that direction for years. And if you look at the, the polling data, it, you, you see that. And maybe these surveys aren't right. But, you know, a lot of those, uh, Harvard Harris surveys that people were, were using in the early days to show, um, how, like deranged Gen Z political positions had become and then like tying in TikTok is having caused that, they were like really flawed. The questions were weird. Um, the, the sample sizes were all over the place. They were like changing week to week. And there, people are really cherry-picking, uh, those surveys, right? So it's, it's complicated. Like, yeah, there's national security concerns, I buy it. Um, I, you know, I get it. I think it's, it's probably a very complicated conversation if we want to like start drilling down how these other tech companies are are treating our data. Um, I certainly think that we're not the best at privacy in this country. Um, but then like the brainwashing thing, it, it's not, it's, you know, it's, it's not the fault of TikTok.
I will accept and, uh, you know, even promote a more general argument that people are in front of screens too much and like losing touch with their own humanity. And that causes problems, as we've seen with the, you know, myriad school shootings getting increasingly stranger each one, you know, and just other acts of just like completely antisocial behavior. Uh, but that's not, it's not TikTok making 14-year-olds sympathize with Palestinians. I mean, anecdotally, I have seen that to be the case where, but that's just anecdotally. I do know people in my life where that is the only place that that information would have come into their brain with very little pushback. So spreading talking, having conversations with younger people around that age who live and die on TikTok. And there is not much, where some of it is just, you know, clearly pro-Palestine and empathy for the Palestinians. Some of it is anti-Semitism kind of repackaged. But they don't even realize that it's anti-Semitic, you know? So there is, and, and this hasn't just happened to people on TikTok. I've also seen this with like grown adults on Instagram. So I'm not sure that my particular experience with younger people in in this topic completely is that I, I don't know where else a 14 or 15-year-old would get that perspective or that one-sided perspective. It doesn't seem like it's like balanced with anything. So I'm not sure where, where that comes from. Is it just like their school? I mean, I think it's just, it's in the water. It's like a, it's in the zeitgeist, right? Maybe TikTok reinforces it, but I don't think it caused it.
Right? But and I think it's like this complicated thing where it reinforced.
It because people already think this way, right? You know what I mean? You know, like any, like any media created by young people, does have this sort of flavor that you're describing to it, and that that predates TikTok. I don't think, like, TikTok entered the the the picture and suddenly everyone is a leftist. I think young people have been leftists for a long time, for decades. Yeah.
And this, you know, this this style of leftism, um, is, I mean, it's it's it's been growing year over year, and there's certain parts of the internet that amplify it, but I don't think it's like the fault of one platform per se. Yeah, that makes sense.
Um, I, I was interested in, oh, what were you going to say about the live events? Oh, I was going to say, I think that's a good difference, and people are thirsty for them, and they're like a pain in the ass to put together, so no one does it, really. Um, like, I've had a couple of, um, in-person events here in Chicago. I haven't been great about organizing them consistently because I, you know, have the baby. But like, I did like a poetry reading, and people were spilling at the door to listen to poetry, right? And it wasn't like I didn't have like famous poets there. I had like, you know, two girls I liked, and then like some guy, you know, just like some guy, like, you're cool, why didn't you join my event? Um, but people just want this in-person, uh, they want in-person stuff, and they want like classes. Like anytime I do like a Zoom book club or something, people are like, so stoked for it. Like to the extent where I'm like, why am I not just like running a local book club? You know, it's like, I've had numerous situations where it's like, I'll pick some book, I'll, I'll do, I'll do my due diligence with advertising it, and then I pick a cafe assuming three people show up, and then it's like a bunch of people, and it's like, I didn't pick a big enough spot, right? There, people love it. I think people just want to hang out. Yeah, that's like the '90s girl in me that misses hanging out.
I was thinking about this, um, I've been thinking a lot about just my upbringing and, um, the living through, I don't know, it was just so cool. I went to so many cool things. I'm like, is that, does this exist still? I want to, does it, like, where is it? You know, I, I want to, I, I need, need to find out where. I remember the first time I used to go to Bone Appetit and St. Paul, and Rhymesayers was just getting started. For people who don't know, it's like a hip-hop label, indie, indie label, but it repped all kinds of amazing hip-hop artists from that time, and Slug from Atmosphere was not known or famous at all yet, and he would go and just freestyle, and there was break dancing, and people were still spinning actual records at that time, and it was so much fun. It was like the, I think I was probably 17. It was the coolest. Are 17-year-olds going to places like this? I want to know what, what they're doing. I want to know like these, what, where are the cool, in real life kind of indie things that kids are doing, and, and like, where are they gathering? I'm sure there's a scene in Chicago. There might be. I'm not, I'm not, I mean, I don't know what teenagers in Chicago are doing. Um, but shooting each other? No, I'm just kidding. Maybe. Um, I think there are scenes in certain places in the country. I think more people are trying to create scenes too. Um, but I, again, I think it's like, there's this like inequality, like some people are kind of stuck online. They really resent the, it's the phones, get off the phone discourse because they're like, well, you know, even if you're in like, even if you're, you're like 60 miles away from my, you know, or if you're in parts of Minnesota, right? It's like, well, where are you going to go? I hear people complain about Austin, right? That there's not enough going on in Austin. So it's like, what do they expect kids to do in the middle of nowhere, right?
But also, we, we had the, the parenting is a little more strict now, too, I think. So this is like, another extension of a conversation that I've been having on this podcast for years where we, they couldn't find us, like they couldn't track us, they couldn't find us. We would just, I think I had a pager at one point, and I would have to like, go find, find a payphone to call my family back if they needed me. But we, I would go out and just be gone, and that was kind of it. My parents had to just trust that I was where I said I was. Usually, we weren't. Usually, we were at some party in the woods, or, you know, it was, I don't know, it's just like a completely different time with the level of surveillance that you can have on your child now. And like Dana Lash and I were talking about, would you, as a parent, I'm like, I don't know that I'd want to let that go. Yeah.
Well, exactly. Like, because on the one hand, you hear all these horror stories, right? And some of them seem pretty legitimate. Like, like here's something like, I would never give my son unrestricted internet access, even remembering things I got up to, right? Like, absolutely not. Um, and in today's world, it's like, well, just letting him, you know, letting him loose in the physical world, like, how do I balance that with not letting him loose in the digital world? Because they're so intertwined. They definitely, that's a big part of it. And then, of course, there's the, the reverse situation, which I, I hear about a lot, where people have no freedom in the physical world, uh, but they have all the freedom in, you know, on on their, uh, smartphones. Um, that causes problems. But it is true, even if you restrict your kids online at home, um, my best friend has kids who are twins, and she was telling me about the stuff that they're exposed to from other kids who are older, showing them these horrific TikTok videos. It's like, you can't guard them from it from the online, even offline. And it's, you don't also don't want your kid to be like a homeschooled kid that goes to a state college and loses their mind, you know? You want them to have some.
This is another thing. Some of my family members have teens and older kids who have lived through all this, the kind of like getting in trouble online and with friends and drama and all the stuff you go through with the kids now online with their friends. And the one of them was saying that he seeing his, he was allowed probably too young to be online, although he went through all this stuff much younger, and then he's seeing his friends going through these things like as freshmen, and he's like, ah, I already went through this. You know, I went through this when I was like 12. These kids, because they were restricted and they didn't have the online social skills that are required, or social, or the online kind of, I mean, for lack of a better word, street smarts. There is like an online. It's funny to hear you talk because you came up on the internet, and I had real-life street smarts because I was like out at 17, 18 doing things I probably shouldn't have been doing and in positions I shouldn't have been in and were dangerous. And you have online street smarts for a similar reason. I don't know if I have online. I'm, I'm pretty, I often say I have like digital autism, like it's like my social nettitude translates to the digital world somehow. Um, I wish, I wish I was savvy. I don't think I'm savvy physically or, or, you know, in cyberspace. Yeah.
But you seem to, you probably have a certain set of social skills and knowledge and knowledge about these countercultures and these small niche, um, you know, like fandoms that you kind of enter into that I would have, you know, how to speak their language and, you know, how to navigate it. I would have no clue. I'd be like, hello, children. You know, the, the, and a lot of young people are kind of, especially online, are kind of scary. The older I get, the kind of scarier they get. Why, why is that? Are they just losing it online?
I would, so I wrote this very long article about, um, people who, it's the true crime community. So they're, they're mostly people under 20, um, sometimes in their early 20s, who are in like a school shooter fandom. They're, they're like binders, and I'm just like looking at these like Discord servers that they're in, and they're just like, like blithely sending the most horrific gore I've ever seen. And it's just, it's, it's like, doesn't, I don't think the gravity of what it is like registers to them, right? It's like, they really are numb to it. Um, and not in the way like you or I might be numb to like war footage or something because we saw it on the news so much, or like natural disasters, you know, it's not like the 24-hour news numbness. It's like another level of it. I'm like, that's really, that's that's strange. Like, I really think it's not that they know what it is and don't care, it's that like, they've seen it so much, it it ceases to register. Like it is just an image to them. And that is like, that is scary to me. They're just so out of step with their own bodies, with the with the world, with what anything, the meaning of anything. It's like, really this sort of like postmodern nightmare. Yeah, yeah.
This is a lot of like, what Mary Harrington talks about, are mutual, um, yeah, just being disembodied, you know, just that. But this is just an extension of mediation, this process too, because even, even in the book that Thomas de Zeno TI wrote, Mediated, about, like how numb our My Generation in particular was to like the starving kids in Africa because we were bombarded with those images of the, you know, the and the flies, and like, you just get numb to it because, and this is his whole kind of theory about the blob, is that it doesn't actually seek a reaction from you. What it seeks is apathy. Because the minute that you can allow it not to affect you one way or another, it's been fully, um, like, it's like osmosis, it's just been fully integrated, and you no longer, it, the blob can like move on to the next thing where it like seeks to erase wherever there's something that makes you feel and can penetrate it. And you have these moments that penetrate the blob, but then they're like, memes are the digestive enzyme of the blob. It is like incredible how quickly people are meming something, even if it's horrific. It's almost instantaneous, you know? There is no such thing as too soon anymore. If there, maybe there never was, but that that distance is gone, you know?
I, I, I totally agree with you. Like, it's just so, because it doesn't, there's no, you don't feel it, right? They, it has no, it has no context, has no significance. It just, I mean, it's just an image. Yeah. Or, you know, it's, it's, it's communicating something other than you would, you know, what you would assume it communicates. Like, you know, communicates you're in a subculture, or that, you know, you have a particular style of humor that, you know, you're exclusive, or something. It communi, it communicates anything but what the image literally is. Yeah.
What are your predictions for, like, this year, moving forward? Where, where do you see the trends going? In terms of, so you kind of think more consolidation? We'll see more consolidation. People, I think so. Rebundling apps. Yeah, absolutely. Bundling or re, yeah. I think like this year is going to be like, you know how like at some point with cable, it was just getting like, there's so many channels, right? Yeah. It's, we're, it's like we're kind of in that phase, right? Where it's like, not everyone, like there's some barrier to entry, but there's still like a lot of choice. Yeah. Um, and there, I see that like, TW, a lot where it's like, so glad we cut the cord so I could be subscribing to 60 different, you know, apps and like HBO Max and Netflix and at 60 different networks and and Substack. So I think people are, and I get this question a lot on Substack, people are like, how do I subscribe to like more than one creator? Like that's a sub problem, right? Like they want to, they, they want like clusters, right? You know, they want like a cable package, right? Right. Um, and I think like that's going to be the year that, or this is going to be the year where maybe there's something like this happens. And I think like everyone, um, forming these networks and these groups, or like, you know, Substack like acquiring smaller Substack. I think all of that is a, is a positive signal for that. So that's, that's one thing. Um, I think there are too many print magazines. Like, don't, we don't need another one, but we're gonna, people are gonna keep starting more, right? Why are they starting them? What's your, what's your feeling about that?
It's sort of a rebellion against the digital. Um, something nice about it. It's less ephemeral, and it, I think also it's like a labor thing. Like it feels good to contribute to a magazine. Yeah. I mean, I have often threatened to quit my Spectator column for like, year. I've been there five years, I think now. And now I'm really glad whenever I have something that I want maybe my daughter to maybe be able to read, I will write it for the magazine column, uh, because I know I've been, I've had all my, my work purged. Like writing online, I've seen entire bodies of work just disappear overnight. And I know that that can be true with pretty much anything that I do online. So there is something, there's a, I think she stands a better chance of reading it if it's in print than if it's online. I think that's true. Yeah.
I mean, there are so many things that disappear. My entire Playboy body of work is gone. And it was, I mean, I have it because I had a feeling that it was going to get, um, 86'd. And so we took screenshots and and have the PDFs of all of it, thank goodness, or I would have none of it. But it was overnight gone. And it was, I mean, just like a body of work I was so proud of at such a weird time in our culture. And it's just gone. And it was so much work. Like I was doing a column a week for years, so it was, it was a lot of, a lot of work and effort. And it's, it just gets washed away by the digital tide. You can, you can go find it in the Wayback Machine, probably. But I don't even know if you can because Playboy paywalls now. So I'm, I'm sure you maybe can, actually. But it's still like, who wants to freaking do that? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's, it's wild. I, and that happened with my first website, my first iteration of Fascinating.com. To Puerto Rico, the server disbanded and moved to France or something, and I woke up and my entire blog that I'd been working on for years was just gone. Oh, I still, I still remember the like absolute, it's like I viscerally remember that feeling so well, even in this moment. I, I never even talk about it because it was so dramatic. It was like everything that I, I went bankrupt building this website, and it was, it was all gone overnight. And that was my first real lesson in the, in the, like, not, you know, it's because as an internet historian, it's a very weird thing where the internet never forgets, but it also doesn't last. Yeah, it's like, it's like an oral culture, um, right? So it's, it's a lot of this stuff, a lot of what it's not forgetting is like stuck in people's memories, which is why it morphs, right? That's so brilliant. You have to just accept it in the moment, in a way. And, and a lot of the work I do is like, I'm not often, and like, I mean, it's impossible to go into like archives because there's all this context, right? And like the things that people say, right? So things that people post, if you don't know the mood and what's going on in group chats, and, you know, what these things represent, it's useless. Reading forums and stuff doesn't make any sense because there's all these other components that you can't, that like really aren't that helpful. It can be a little bit helpful, right? But, um, it's not just the work of finding broken links. You have to talk to people who were there. They're oral histories, right? They're not, it's not written. It's, it's, I mean, it's, it's like anything else. I mean, this is true of all, you know, all types of historical work, but I think people, uh, don't realize it's also true of the internet because it's text-based or, you know, video-based, but it's so true. Yeah. You don't know people's reputations were, you know, you can't always access comment sections. There's so, I mean, there's so many components of it. You really just need to talk to, to a bunch of people who were there and then do the hard work of, of, you know, who's lying, you know, what's true? That's so wild. It really is. That's so interesting and kind of like, uh, just, yeah, that's, I've really never thought about it that way until you put it this way.
Have you written about this? Um, no, I, I, I just, I don't know. I assume it was like obvious or something. And like, I haven't read. I know, but I think you're so guilty of being so brilliant and having this kind of insight that's so simple, and you think everyone takes for granted. And it's like, not, it's so obvious when you say it, but it's not obvious. You should write about it. Long story short, you should write about this. I will, I will write about it. But yeah, that's why I interview people all the time, right? So I do these case studies, um, and sometimes I'll, I post the interesting ones. I'm constantly talking to people about their internet usage, but it's, it's because like, I can't rely on my own memory. I wasn't there in all places at all times, but I just have to find the patterns, like what themes come up again and again and again. Yeah. And it's, it's, you know, without it, then it's like, you don't really have context. Like, you don't really know. And you need to constantly be talking to people and, you know, constantly looking at the notes. Um, otherwise, you, it's like, you'll never know.
I did a podcast with three relatives of mine, and we all, they were all probably around, it was like 18, 14, like 11, 15, 19 or something like that. They were, came up in this first age. And I never released it because they were minors. And, and I'm so glad I have it though, because we all looked at our screen time. Weirdly, the oldest one had the least amount of screen time. I think some of that is just personality. This is a person who's very ADD, I can't sit still. This world, why wants to be like out active. Um, the other one, low, low, second lowest screen time, more than even the adults. And this was because they are a gamer. So that was their most of their screen time went to playing video games. And then the youngest had a pretty high, but that, that's a TikTok addiction. And, um, I was thinking about this recently, only because after the TikTok, you would think it would be the kids, but the adults actually all had much worse screen times than the kids. And I was thinking about this watching all of these women I know posting these very dramatic videos about the 13 hours that TikTok was down. And these are women in their 40s. And I was like, guys, I get it with the kids, but I saw women in their 40s having Trainspotting like breakdowns when it went down. Nobody. The Wall Street Journal just published something, I think it was the Wall Street Journal, or maybe it was Bloomberg, just published something about this. And then I actually wrote something for The Blaze about this a couple of years ago, like, we talk about kids having phone brain rot, and that's, you know, all well and good, but like, there, I mean, so many like Boomers in my, and even like Gen X, you know, who, who listens to like the most, you know, there like scrolling TikTok or Reels without headphones. Like my Gen X family members, and it's like, middle of a movie. You know, my dad, when started, he's also Gen X, when started playing a podcast while we're all watching a TV show, you know, just no headphones. Weird. Everyone's addicted to their phones. It's not just, uh, Gen Z. Millennials are as bad as Gen Z. Was I mean, I don't, you know, I don't really believe there's a distinction between Gen Z and Millennials, or at least as sharp of a distinction as people want you to believe.
This is something, you know, speaking of Mary Harrington, that we both, we're both a, a strong believers of that, like there's, there's such, you know, what's, what's the difference? Like, if you were born in 1994, you're really not that different from someone who's born in 2000. It's just, it just is what it is. A false, it's a completely like made-up differentiation. Your lifestyles are pretty much the same. Yeah.
It's weird. I'll do be doing comedy, and I'll be, and these kids will be doing stand-up routines about how different their life. It's like, they try to sound like their Gen X, and they're like, you know, I'm a '90s kid. I was born in '93. I'm like, you're not a '90s kid. You're a 2000s kid. Yeah. You're not a '90s kid. This is stolen valor. Um, it's very, it's very unsettling. And they'll be like, you know, I was like, smoking my weed out of a like an. It's so, it's so disconcerting to me because I'm like, they, they, the internet compresses time in that way where, yeah, every generation feels older, younger, because of the internet making them feel old, because the internet is this like culture of youth. And so even like these 18-year-olds feel elderly because the 14-year-olds on TikTok are dominating the culture at the at the time, and they have all these new terms, and and they look at 18-year-olds like they're elderly. I mean, I remember feeling old at like 22, and I like kick myself. I'm like, why did, like, what the [ __ ] was I thinking? I was like, oh, I'm so, you know, like, oh, I hit the wall and I was like 25. And I'm like, like, you know, now that I really come from like, well, I should have appreciated being 25 a little bit better. I think some of that, no matter what age it is, that like ages youth is wasted on the young. I felt old at 21, 22. I'd also already been through rehab and had a, a kind of, you know, crazy upbringing. I think normal kids from normal homes are feeling old. And it is like a very strange, um, aging because of the speed at which the internet moves and evolves. And so I'll see all these, like, I'm like, the Millennials are posting stuff that I'm like, how old am I? Because they're now, the Millennials are all like, I'm so old. I'm like, you're 30. Like, what are you talking about? You're not old. And I'm, I'm with you. The like stealing '90s valor. I mean, like that's, I remember like thinking that, and I've done it myself, frankly. But like, it's like, I'll remember like one thing from like 1997, I'm like, an elementary school, and I think that counts. It doesn't. Um, but yeah, it was like, it was so, like BuzzFeed would always have these, um, articles or like listicles like, you're a '90s kid if, right? And I remember they, they were like, in 2010, like authored by like 19-year-olds. And it's like, let's be serious, we aren't '90s kids. We remember the '90s. We had like the echo of the '90s in 2005. That's the same as it being the '90s. No, it's really funny. It's cute though. I get, I get it. I mean, I didn't, I wanted to be a '70s kid, but I knew I wasn't. Like, we couldn't get coded in spite of how badly we wanted to. That wasn't something we, we had access to. Yeah.
It's, it's so, I don't know. It's very. I look at even all of these, you know, people for all this stuff that they say about podcasting, I hope, I hope it lasts because this is the oral history of this time. And I do love, love podcasts. And I do, I love our podcasts in particular when I talk to you because it is like, because I get to stop and just be like, what the [ __ ] is going on and where are we right now? And it's been the whole, I've never. So speaking of being a '90s kid, I, I know that things swing back and forth, right to left. But never in my lifetime, and Maggie McCain was saying this recently too, has the right ever been cool? Like that was not a thing in my whole entire life. Maybe they won elections, maybe they had political power, maybe they had power in the Supreme Court, judicial power. Never have they had cultural cool capital. It's even like that New York Magazine title that was the cover that's going around right now where they're like, oh, the cruel kids table. And it's like, well, this looks amazing, you know, like fun and cool and like they're having a great time. And they're, um, here's what I don't, why is, why the assumption that they're cruel? You know what I mean? Like how they're no crueler than anyone else with cultural cache. Like, why, why do I just, I mean, it's a great title, I have to say, it's very catchy. But like, isn't it's like, they're not, they are mean. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna pretend because, you know, I want to be in good company. They're [ __ ] but they're not. I mean, everyone's an [ __ ], everyone who's popular is an [ __ ], you know, it is what it is. Yeah, yeah.
It's interesting. It's a, we're living through a moment. And because the young people are seeing this, yeah, this is the thing that I will be very interested to see how it plays out in the next 10 years, 20 years, because never before has there been a young, like you said, most young people are leftists. This is maybe the first time in in history that they're not, in, like, in America. I can't. It's usually like that joke, you're left-wing when you're in your 20s. And I was just texting with somebody last night about how I'm so glad that I did my 20s as a lib, and my 30s as like an independent, you know, like I'm glad I got to be that, the wild kind of lib, lib in my thing. These rightists, these young rightists, it's like, I mean, this, and this is a critique that's levied all the time. It's like, they're right-wing in sort of a different way, right? Like they might, you know, want mass deportations, but they're still like, you know, sexually lascivious and they do drugs. And I, I can't believe I use that phrase. I'm not actually passing judgment on the sex. They, I don't give a [ __ ], but like, you know, they're cool with their trans friends. It's like the, they, them MAGA. So, you know what I mean? Like, it's, doesn't really, they're still being young people, is my point, right? Yeah. They're kind of, you know, they're slightly, uh, yeah, it's just like, it's just different. But it's not, it's not like they're not like Alex P. Keaton. No.
I just like how you're like, they might want mass deportations, but they're still doing drugs. It's true. You, maybe they don't like weed. I think they mostly like weed, but, you know, they're still going to do coke in the bathroom. Yeah. Yep. I think coke is my prediction is that coke is going to make a big comeback. Okay. But the only reason coke, so ketamine eclipses coke because there's fentanyl in the coke, and you can just order, you can order ketamine from these DTC services, and it's like, they're not gonna give you fentanyl. So no. Maybe Trump will make coke safe again. This is what I've been joking about on stage. I said, if I was Robert Kennedy, that would be my platform is like, we need to get the fentanyl out of the coke and the heroin. Because I joke about this, I'm like, back in my day, you could do drugs for decades and hardly anyone died. Like, that's when you could be a heroin addict, you could be a junkie for literally decades. I don't want to sound like I'm promoting people, um, you know, doing drugs, but I, you know, I will say that like, you know, I've known a lot of people who they've gone out to party, and it's like, they're not drug addicts, they're just, and they died. Like, I know more than one person situation. And I mean, that is a real. And I think like the argument is, is like, I can hear it in my mind, like, well, they shouldn't be doing it at all. Well, you can't control that, right? So how do we make it safer? Yeah. Yep. Gotta go. Gotta make America healthy again and make the drugs clean. This is my platform.
What is your biggest defect of character? I always ask these questions. I, I was caught off guard. I'm wishy-washy. I think I've contradicted myself several times on the show. And in fact, I was planning on texting you, did I contradict myself? Wow. I have two sets this week. No, um, you did not contradict yourself. Thank you. I get so excited. It's like, so funny. Um, you did not contradict yourself. And even if you do, it doesn't matter because I contradict myself all the time because we're talking. That's like when people, you said this, then you said that. I'm like, yeah, because I'm human. People. I'm not. And I'm not autistic. Autistics are pretty good about maintaining like a clear line of thought. That I feel is, is like Helen Pluckrose is so ethically, um, she's so sound ethically. Like she's, it's like she's meticulous. I am not meticulous. I'm [ __ ] incoherent. I'm, I'm all over the, I'm just like, I don't know. And it's like, I keep like morphing myself into different beliefs. And it's like, I just need to accept that I'm just, I'm just exploring. I just like to look at all this stuff. Yeah.
Well, you're a journalist. Yeah. So you're curious. I am curious. And I'm impressed. So what's your defect of character? That you're too all that you contradict yourself and that you're all over the place? Or that you're, yeah, yeah, that I'm all over the place. And and I'm impressionable. Like, if if someone like sells me something and they believe it, I'll be like, well, of course, this person gets it. You're so. I, I like, if I ever have a, I love that. I'm like, my plan is to like, acquire you. Um, like, if one day, if I have an empire, I'm gonna make you an offer you can't refuse. Uh, because I think you're truly one of. I just love and appreciate you so much. You are truly, you're really an original thinker. I know you're impressionable, but because you're taking, we need people like you who are taking in so much. I learned so much from everything that you write. It's all, it's always very original. It's just not. Thank you. I just appreciate your voice in the culture. I hope no one, um, I hope I love your perspective. I love your, I love your all over. Like I love you. I love, I love your all all over the places. And and I think that it is, it's something so necessary right now to have somebody just kind of wandering around trying to make sense of it all and interviewing people and doing weird things and looking at niche, you know, fandoms and having conversations with Claude. I like Claude. I like Claude too. I feel like Claude, if Claude was a person, he, I think of him as he would be very handsome. But anyway, thank you. I really appreciate the very touch for that.
What's your biggest asset? And everyone should follow your Substack. It, you put out stuff for free, right? Yeah. All the time. Yeah. Put something out today. Okay, I'm not hallucinating then. Um, I never know. I don't even, this is how irresponsible I am. I never know who I'm paying for and not. I'm not sure if I'm even paying for you, but I will be if I'm not. So I'm always like, as as free as it's paid, I'm like, how do I do this for a living? And I have no idea what I'm getting. Like, I subscribed to like 40 Substack, like 4, 5 Substack, and I had to like unsubscribe. And I wrote all these heartfelt messages like, um, you know, you're doing great work. Please stop, you know, capitalizing articles because like that's, you know, don't capitalize the T if it comes in the middle of the headline. But I love your stuff, you know, like I'm just constantly. I did write like 10 of those today about how I like, I love, you know, I love you. But I was just, I was spending like $200 a month on all these Substack. At the beginning of the year, and now I've started noticing this as someone who's had a subscriber platform since like Patreon, I guess, since 2018. I'm like, oh, it's the January dip. Like everyone's like, I'm getting my [ __ ] together financially. I'm unsubscribing from all of these Substack. And you see this like dip. And then it's slowly like, or maybe that was just me. But that's been my experience. In January, there's always like a bit of a purge as people are like, I'm getting it together. Yeah.
So your question is, what, what is my asset? Yes. Your biggest asset? Because I'm not ideological, and I will, I will hear everyone out, probably to a fault. Um, but many good things come of that too, because I think like people tell on themselves, right? Sort of the cynical perspective that is so, you know, for better and for worse, I, I think I can get a sense of who people are. Yeah. Usually for better. That's what I mean. Your internet street smarts. Yeah. I hope so. I was, I was reading back an interview to, uh, yesterday. It was so crazy. I'm excited to release it. But speaking of people telling on themselves, this guy was really like, like really, it was just so clear. It was so full of [ __ ]. I'm excited to publish it. Um, when we stop recording, I'm gonna have a conversation with the, I'm gonna talk to you about someone. When we stop recording, my audience is gonna be like, that's [ __ ] who's she talking [ __ ] about? It's not talking [ __ ], but it was somebody that I was like, whoa, one of the tougher interviews I've done. All right, well, where, where can we find you? Default.blog and default.substack. Um, you know, on most platforms, uh, but especially X or Twitter, or whatever you want to call it. I, Vasolate. Thank you so much. All right, thanks for having me.
The Check-in with Bridget and Cousin Maggie can now be found at Fascinating.com. It's been titled Another Round with Bridget Fascinating, and it's now in video. This has been Walkins Welcome with Bridget Fascinating. I'm Bridget Fascinating, and you're welcome. It's the dumbest.