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Episode 244: Survival of the Grimmest (Patreon)

Published:
2022-08-11 13:54:45
Edited:
2024-10-11 00:15:56
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

Author Douglas Rushkoff joins us to talk through his enduring tech-poptism, Edge conferences with some of the worlds biggest villains, the failed potentials of the internet, and his new book “Survivial of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of Tech Billionaires.” 

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Comments

Ebalosus

NZer here (who has ironically been to the farm that Theil now owns): why do the billionaires want to build doom bunkers here? Our agriculture is heavily dependent on hydrocarbons, and there’s very little industry here. Like if you can build doom bunkers, why not just build them where they currently live? The only upside to billionaire doom farms here is that you can get a feel for how close to Armageddon by the number of private jets parked at Queenstown airport.

Kimble

goated guest

Lucy

Second also I’m gay

Ian Floetl

Never thought this would be an interview , considering his connection to discordianism, Xeni, and the occult movement of 2000s. Don't get me wrong I dig him a bunch but I would assume brace wouldn't.

Philipp K

That's really cool (being gay, not first).

Mads

Sixth and I’m homophobic

Chris Ryan

20 mins in and this dude’s enthusiasm is infectious

Cabral Comrade

TrueAnon VRchat sequel dropping when??

lkmewqa

RockaBracey

bill

Next guest: Virgil Texas

Oliver Crane

I just met a former member of Psychic TV a few weeks ago, she was really nice!

Char Kelly

The intro with brace yelling at Liz about what she was doing while he was in therapy 🤣….turn anon turning into a slate podcast

Le Michel diplomatique

I teach college and when he talked about his students having notes from psychs to excuse them from talking in class I wanted to grab him like I accost colleagues in the hall and like “WHAT IS GOING ON?!” Kids are not all right.

daniel

Thang GAWD

Char Kelly

Post-intro just turned into a hilarious mini couples therapy. Never change you two, never change

Jamie Gray

Aaron Swartz should've been the future of the internet

Ben Hansen

Cool episode. I’m absolutely loving the recent frequent coverage of tech & the internet

John Ransone

That Jesus Jones joke was the chefs kiss

Shane

one of the best episodes on social media (for lack of a better shorthand) so far. gonna send this to my dad.

Tom

Good witty opener today. Huzzah! Sweet guitar drop-ins, Yung! Lookin' forward to more *Things Women Are Saying About Brace* in future eps, Liz! Sweet interview at 8:48

Roger Peet

Excellent episode thank you

5k Race Warrior

Because engaging people based on fear and anger is heavily monetizable, and that's generally the right wing grift (both conservatives and liberals). That there's so many of them and that they're all hidden behind layers of proprietary bullshit to obfuscate their lack of profitability relative each other is hilarious. Like a bunch of playground dunces impressing each other with all their friends that just happen to go to other schools.

Char Kelly

Women do be saying things

Quasimoto Miyamoto

Please continue with the tech beat I can’t get enough of it

Tommy York

Oh man reading Cyberia in high school was transformative for me. I miss that techno optimism.

gen~

i love when you guys talk about this stuff

Jawn Feddermang

Brace repeating what Liz says with contempt is a whole vibe

Tommy York

Imo the worst example of the algorithm just mining human suffering are the dating apps, who've gotten closer and closer to their monopoly on millennial + zoomer romance, and have absolutely employed all the slot machine algorithms Rushkoff mentions. They're certainly not designed "to be deleted," but rather (and especially for men) continually upsell you on fancier and more expensive packages to better get ahead of other people swiping. They'll show you more attractive people to get you hooked or believing that you're doing better than you are to get you to upgrade, there's zero transparency so they get to securitize loneliness and isolation.

x

always nice to hear a guest that's my age

Matthew

Great ep

Madison Perry

I literally have been reading a book of his for years now (I’m slow) and didn’t even know he’s Marxist! Super cool dude and great talker

Evan Scott

I like this guest but his voice and cadence and affect are disturbingly similar to brace's

Evan Scott

Occasionally I forget if it's him or brace talking

Andrew Locke

Like the guest but this whole “if you don’t believe in god you’re going to rape children” thing is so tired and dumb.

Grant Miner

There’s something about the Psychic TV folks way of thinking that’s so fun. There’s this old guy in Sacramento who had ties to Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth that calls himself a “chaos magician” and has recorded like hundreds of improvised rock/noise albums. Also, he delivers our alt-weekly, lol.

Living the Borgesian Kafkaesque Ligotti Horror Dream

There's so much writing about this shit. New Media Theory has been trying to uncover this shit. Tung Hui Hu's (can't remember his name) book "A Prehistory of the Cloud" is also great. Also I really doubt artificial general intelligence is possible given how we're going about it (hint: these idiots learned nothing from psychoanalysis)

Living the Borgesian Kafkaesque Ligotti Horror Dream

I also really think that the counter conquista project of authors like Borges show us where to focus on things to get rid of in technology. To focus on the decolonial readings of his very abstract short stories

bugsick

Believing that an atheist, materialist view of human beings can provide the basis for abusers to abuse others is stupid

A S

Religion/Spirituality as a weapon against technology is a funny idea. Religion IS a technology, and a technology of social control. It's just that more useful technologies were invented. Otherwise a winning episode. P.S. - Upon further reflection, this was not a winning episode. It's actually serving as a reminder of just how defeated "The Left" is. Materialism? Get that shit outta here!

michael benham

Stick to your beat pls or I’m unsubscribing. You guys are sooooo late to this tech bad thing

justdave

Heeey Scibbity bop, brace the man with the Belden plan, droppin in with hot chopped slop we all love. But Kitty cat Liz thinks she's too cool for school👉👉 c'mon mannn, loosen your caboose n' get groovin

TrueAnonPod

This is our beat, we decide our beat, all crime is our beat, everyone we don't like is a criminal, everyone we don't like is our beat.

Marina

Warning: long comment This is one of the best episodes of this podcast. I’m going to have to listen to it over and over again. Fantastic guest, and you guys are really pressing on a pulse that I think a lot of people are effected by but not entirely aware of. It all feels very raw for me right now. I’m trying to build my own business (not tech- I formulate personal care and home products), and the pressure to be active on social media is KILLING me. Few things are as horrible for my mental health than being on Instagram regularly. I cannot articulate just how much I hate social media. I just wish I could post food pictures on my personal page for my friends the way I did ten years ago. My online “home” is YouTube, and recently Patreon. But I also know that my small business, my baby I work so hard to grow, will fail unless I obsessively follow the latest sound bite trends on TikTok and stalk the Instagram algorithm changes. I hate hate hate it. I just want to make beautiful things with my own two hands, sell them, and make a living. Even if I kept up with my business socials and made content regularly (which I hate doing), I couldn’t even upload what I wanted to upload. It’s a waste of time unless it’s in the CORRECT screen ratio, with the RIGHT hashtags, and it has to use MY face to “tell the brand story”. I have to look pretty enough to be appealing, but “real” enough to be “raw and authentic.” I feel like I’m being forced sell my face and my personality for engagement, when I could be spending time formulating better products or thinking more deeply about what I want to add to the world. The ethics of online marketing and the absolute necessity of social media advertising is sucking the creativity and beauty out of us all. It is one of the most depressing subversions of what the internet could have been. I wish it could have peaked in like 2012 and never changed.

justdave

Yaaah Maaan, don't step on my man's beat. Or do me and the fellas gotta get rough after first period with ya? *combs already perfectly combed hair*

Zakir KH

Brace and the guest have voices so similar I sometimes couldn't tell who was who

Gulb

The Soviets really should have carved a giant hammer and sickle on the moon.

#1 Deep Thinker

It's bloody Doug Rushkoff!!! This is the best 🙏 please bring him and the Blowback bois back every few months for a check-in and hang.

Will

This ep was fucking gasoline

Kompromatic

The urge to leave mean, glib, and ultimately impotent and pointless comments online really fits in nicely with the discussion about narcissism. Thank you for your contribution

justdave

Gasoline dipped in lighter fluid with a hairspray chaser daddy-o

Juliette DeMaso

Please don’t associate remaining in school with validity. “These guys drop out of school after 19 and live to IPO” is an old trope now trotted out as slander propaganda, false humble bragging and icon-spinning. Academia is a festering compromised cesspit of soul killing capitalist conditioning, therapeutic state elitist optimization centers. As you pointed out earlier when Liz said “what has happened to these kids from K-12?”

Juliette DeMaso

also (sorry I’m unloading) the mental diagnosis language, a la “narcissistic, sociopathic, psychotic” is a great way to entrench therapeutic state panopticon. I’m trying to urge my fellows to get away from these linguistic off roads; I think they keep us from accurately identifying both the pathology of ghoulish behavior and those subject to it, by medicalizing, using disease (or disorder) labels. It ambiguates the cause and effect.

Zzz

Liz goes off Re: weaponized narcissism through social media … so many people have become socially amputated — it’s so infuriating

Nick

Best ep in a while. Thanks guys

#1 Deep Thinker

Been there too. If you can, get someone else to take that psychic damage for you. For a while I was a campaign manager, and doing it for a day job was less mentally corrosive than later trying to juggle running a business with online self-promotion. Lots of good social media VAs overseas too if that's your price bracket.

Jonathan lees

And you may as well laugh at all this

A Sentient Katamari of Bad Life Decisions

Something important to remember about online experiences like what Zuckerberg wants: take it from someone who's coded this stuff, it's all smoke and mirrors. You won't *actually* be surrounded by thousands of others in a seamless, simultaneous experience, but you'll feel exactly like you are.

Dry wall Eater

I wouldn’t say the “one thing we have over robots is religion or spirituality” but it’s emotions and human connection which translates to religion/spirituality for some people

Jonathan lees

The next big thing blackouts and live music

daniel

This is why Marx's idea of fetishism is so compelling

daniel

Yeah. Same tenor, same energy, sam nasallyness. Sounded like he was talking to an older version of himself

daniel

They're aren't just talking that tech is bad

no

It's naive to pretend that the designs of tech billionaires will be hamstrung by the infrastructural limitations of the public internet. In AWS and other cloud computing services, they have already begun building their own private internet. It facilitates collaboration between elites in shared datacenters, provides optimized computing resources for machine learning/AI, and interfaces with the public internet only when necessary. That's the infrastructure that enabled every mind-bending social media app and ad service, and it is only just getting started.

Samuel Bridgeland

Psychic TV are a great band. Wasn't expecting to hear them plugged. Coil is the better TG spinoff though.

will michel

re: monetizing sleep, i straight up dreamed an entire trailer for the new season of stranger things right before it aired

no

I get that understanding the technology isn't as sexy as podcasting or media critique, but it helps to understand the material reality that enables these systems of control. Also more interesting than 2 hrs of idealist psychobabble

justdave

If it swims like duck, donates food and clothes like duck, has community like a duck. I was raised by total nihilists and religion was always a joke- but as I grow I enjoy those ducks more and more

no

Yeah. None of the dropouts actually built or advanced the tech. Like Bill Gates getting his start on a MIT computer, the majority of the tech flows outward from the military and government. As we speak, companies are being trained in data storage methodologies pioneered by the NSA, often by former government contractors. That also flows to the universities.

michael benham

Wait this is a podcast that I pay for right? That has a comment section where I can leave my thoughts? If it were me, I would want my listeners to share whether they liked the ep or not. I’m sure they appreciate your swift defense though.

justdave

When Papa Brace needs his crew by his side *starting to cry* we'll drop whatever were doin, whether its workin on cars, leaning on stuff, talkin to dames or just all of us sitting on one big couch- we'll be there anytime buddy *combs slighlty messed up hair*

Mickey Soltys

Nothing wrong with being Rockabilly. They had the punk attitude . Jerry Lee Lewis is punk as fuck.

Michael D Boyson

Oh man, if y'all think that made up mythology (i.e. religion) is the answer then holy shit is that even worse than the current technocracy. Y'all just conveniently forget about the past few centuries of religiosity nonsense and the ilk it bore? Running from the material to the immaterial is just as ridiculous as believing that everything can be solved with an app. You don't fight stupidity (technocracy) with higher order stupidity (deities/mythology). Accept your cosmic insignificance. It's freeing.

Internet Lefty

He married his 13 year old cousin lol

Jonas Weir

Y’all should do a full episode on Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth

no

Maybe this guy can't find a CEO who knows how AI works because none of these CEOs develop anything. They are vestigial showmen, we've seen that Elon codes python at a 7th grade level. They just hire former NSA contractors to train their data scientists between lines of blow, or they wait for software that dumbs it down with bright colors and corporate memphis art.

no

^ L

TrueAnonPod

saying you have a soul is like doing a Voigt Kampf test to figure out who doesn't :)

Shiv

I love Serious Liz but Liz excited about BB and Elvis having a dance-off?? 🥰best

Shiv

I blanched when Xeni name fell from his lips! But he’s a good time

no

Saying you have a podcast should get you 5-10 years in prison :)

kctoo

DR hasn't said anything new in a decade. His whole "touch grass" attitude is so tired and honestly feels like a grift at this point. The fact that he still gets to dine with tech oligarchs but people like Byung-Chul Han don't should be a dead giveaway. All this guy does is provide a non-actionable feel-good pressure release valve for the tech serfs. He's doing what the Yippies did to the New Left movement of the 60s. He's a distraction for us and a useful tool for the tech CEOs.

no

Just my opinion, but the dark cowboy should be bagging and tagging people on sight if they've dined with Thiel. That's what we pay him for.

Jim Veil

You have to be talking about Lob!

no

Please go easy on Brace. He just started attending black church and he's very excited.

Max Jones

Everyone needs to stop autoprotagonizing 🤨

Friend of Pangolin

Are we permitted to think about or dare believe in the spiritual, Oh Great Atheist One?

Michael D Boyson

Absolutely. Also, don't put words in my mouth. Never claimed to be 'great' nor above anyone else. I didn't address you as an individual. I addressed a flawed system. Nothing more.

Kompromatic

Telling people they are cosmically insignificant is a great organizing tool

Cole Heideman

Yeah a good chunk of this ep just felt like it was him trying to justify like "oh I was there but I'm not like them and really they don't like me and even though they invited me and I went they didn't REALLY invite me and.."

A S

Are we permitted to think about the sceptical, Oh Great Credulous One? I was a fool to unlearn my "Reddit Atheism".

Dry wall Eater

And “bannon loves my book 🤣 crazy right “

a clash of purple

Atheism sucks, religion is super cool. Religion has demons, it's super tight. Unironically, nobody actually believes in God or whatever in the ontological sense, *especially* people who claim to be super-religious. It's only literal-minded dullards who think that's the point. When Brace and Liz make appeals to spirituality and the supernatural, the point is to place humanity, the ecosystem, and human life and decency into the realm of the sacred. The current organized regime of godlessness (not the same as atheism in general or secular humanism, to be clear) was never primarily about freeing people from the tyranny of the church, it was about giving a certain type of industrialist psychological permission to rape and pillage the planet and everything living on it. (Though evangelical Christianity is a better vehicle overall than Dawkins-style atheism for that.)

a clash of purple

stfu. "A distraction for us." You're just some asshole posting on the internet, what are you getting distracted from. Podcasts are not political activism, and commenting on podcasts is definitely even less political activism than that. You're a fat little piggy rolling in the mud just like the rest of us.

Shiv

please i miss those crazy kids

no

All I'm saying is it didn't take AI behavioral models to make us eat chocolate and bananas farmed by slave children. If we've got souls, they've been rotting for a long time.

Of course

Yeah, I get that the tone and posture of this episode is off-putting, not bad, just annoying and unsatisfying. Much prefer Ep 147 w Jodi Dean, esp starting at 30 min with networks, internet, etc.

A S

So God/etc. isn't real but it's good to pretend it is? The atheist worldview makes you an evil capitalist Earth rapist (unless you're one of the good ones), even though the Christian worldview is even more conducive to oppression/environmental plunder? If spirituality and religion are just metaphors for human decency why bother?

lin hou

Oh I've always assumed Brace is rockabilly 🤷‍♀️

Lionel Boyd Johnson

The music this ep was really tight, thanks Yung Chomsky!

Lionel Boyd Johnson

Holy shit, you guys are TrueAnon listeners? "...get someone else to take that psychic damage for you..." You've got to be kidding me, maybe do something else instead? "Lots of good social media VAs overseas too if that's your price bracket. " Did I stumble into the wrong comment room?

Adam

gen x is back babay

Alex Gullen

Wow, great episode. This was so thought provoking on many levels and the quality of guests keeps surprising. Liz / Brace have superb analytical and articulation skills!

a clash of purple

Like I said, nobody believes in God anymore. He's dead. Forget all that philosophical shit. It's irrelevant. Practically speaking, religion is a part of your sectarian identity, the community that you belong to, and it's very often something impressed upon you whether you like it or not. Do you think DAESH fighters believe in God, or anything at all? When they massacre Kurds and Shi'ites, do you think they stop to question their victims as to whether they're true believers or not? Did the Nazis give a shit whether someone with a Jewish-sounding name might not actually believe in their heart of hearts? I don't believe in the temporal reality of the Christian God or whatever, but I'm a Christian (of such and such specific domination) whether I like it or not because that's how I was raised and that's the family I come from. It's very difficult to sever that bond, no matter how hard you try; I refer you to the various unhappy Jew-hating Jews who try to become Nazis. It's like an ethnic identity. You can't stop being white or stop being black just because you want to, no matter how much you dislike having that identity. *You* don't get to make that call. Changing that sort of thing requires something like the Cultural Revolution (and that was part of the goal of the Cultural Revolution, to change the character of Chinese society and make it more atheistic). That's the point I'm trying to make. There's no reason to be an outspoken militant atheist or whatever unless you just want to argue with people. Most people aren't "true believers," no matter what they tell you, and they're not motivated by their belief in God or whatever. Now, if you tell me to fight religion because it's an institution which furthers the goals of capital and hierarchy, then I'm onboard with you (and a surprising number of the true believers who do exist would tend to agree with you). But when people get snotty and say, "Well there's no scientific evidence, religious people are just stupid and gullible, unlike me!" I usually tune them out.

a clash of purple

Yeah, but if the slave children don't have souls, who cares if they suffer? That's one of the points made in this very episode. Basically, capitalists are monsters because they abuse the people around them, and they rationalize their atrocities by saying that everyone is as soulless and heartless as they are. But the ruling class isn't evil because all humans are evil, they're evil because they're the ruling class and the maintenance of hierarchy requires the administration of regular and systematic atrocities upon their subjects. Misanthropy is a reactionary concept. The moral basis of class struggle is that people deserve decent lives and that capitalism is an unjust system because it harms the innocent and rewards the cruel. If people are all just nasty back-biting monsters as bad as Jeff Epstein or Peter Thiel, then there's no justification for communism (and no hope of a positive resolution of the class war).

a clash of purple

If it makes you feel any better, I have it on good authority that immediately after conducting this interview, Brace, Liz, and Yung Chomsky formed a troika, put Rushkoff on trial, convicted him of associating with known class enemies, and summarily executed him by firing squad. Rushkoff has been replaced by an A.I. hologram who will continue to teach his classes so his students' education is not disrupted.

no

Yeah man, I get it. I'm just saying the implication that social media/AI is some demonic force which has the power to embed this capitalist ideology in our (westerners) brains and rot our souls (and not just a marketing platform that predicts our responses to the content it serves) is giving the techbros a little bit too much credit. What rots our souls is quietly suckling at the teet of empire our entire lives while justifying it to ourselves. Social media just accelerates the marketing of those imperial spoils. It's only changing our interpersonal relationships with other westerners by causing us to treat eachother with the same callousness that we already show to subaltern peoples and nature itself.

Kinder Kuchen

The quality of the means limits the quality of the ends.

A S

I suppose if your "Christianity" is simply a mental grouping of good (you, your friends and family) and bad people (me, ISIS, the Nazis), and God is when you live, laugh, love, I WOULD be an asshole for arguing. Enjoy your day!

yerrak

If I had a dollar for every time I prefaced something with “I don’t wanna be all Woo Woo but…”

Sam G

Great episode! I love that y'all speak to the spiritual side of things as well.

Toddy Todd

Great episode for when you wanna go out and drink n drive

Grace Olson

wish this wasn’t a locked ep! I wanna send it to my doomer friends. guess I’ll just have to keep gifting people copies of Team Human

she's all rat

Narcissism and debilitating insecurity are two sides of the same self-obsessed coin. Makes sense that the majority of people are suffering from one or the other to some degree, when the psychological benefit of being part of the collective, the community, of gazing at others instead of our navels, has been totally diminished.

Melvin

Mmm my weekly fix

NYCM&AHole

This episode made me think of these lovely lyrics Folded time to meet our end Murdered our only home Too proud to comprehend Now Gaia reclaims her thronе We are all We'rе all condemned Back into the primordial soup, we descend

K H

Very good guest. If you do the opposite of what we say, never have them on again. Why do sciencers science? To contain all the containers I think, because new understanding is as great a thrill as the love of your life. Did Newton or Einstein have a confrontation where someone wouldn't accept evidence and drive them into a life of scientific pursuit? Almost certainly not, and Douglas was projecting a lot of the derangements of Twitter feuds onto people that crave understanding of the world outside themselves. I'm a proponent of ai because I stopped assuming that humans were the arbitrary or necessary end point of life on earth. I had the epiphany when George Carlin did a bit that the purpose of humans was to create immortal plastic that outlives us all. Every step is an intermediary step. Just because we bring something about doesn't mean we were meant to see it anymore than the progenitor creature of the modern eye was meant to see a telescope. That is another way to describe the drive for scientific advancement, to see as far as you can outside of what you are or what you were meant to. Unfortunately ai is really not anywhere near transcending human consciousness. Probably in part for the same reason everyone else's life is full of bullshit. Because everyone is constantly lying and bullshitting each other to sell bullshit, or the people with all the money are driving the direction of projects for anyone knowledgeable enough to work these problems. If you've had to use a doctor or lawyer or plumber then you know a huge number are just bsing to collect a check. Imagine instead you need an expert neural network engineer. If Elon couldn't get his shit to work when he genuinely needs it to and has the money to spend, then it's probably not happening anytime soon and Brace can save his EMP cannon for shooting Amazon drones and curing tictok poisoning.

pq

Really phenomenal episode. "The intangibles are what make this dimension worth inhabiting." Perfect

John

Just pre ordered this dudes book. 25 day wait. Can’t wait. Great guest.

Nicolas

Is it the audio tech or did Liz sound way more Valley Girl in episode 18?

#1 Deep Thinker

Nah mate, you're right where you belong 😉 time for some deep thinks 🤔

orc

Damn this Rushkoff guy is based

Gingee

do you talk to your therapist about that?

Bri

Narcissism is the lack of ability to build internal validation so the ego relies on external validation to know that it’s good or okay. That’s why when a narcissist becomes so defensive when confronted by someone about a mistake they made or harm they caused. The ease with which someone can use social media to build an echo chamber really increases the ability to access external validation and therefore reinforces those narcissistic behaviors. Which obvi that gets in the way of any sort of meaningful dialogue with people because everyone is on the defense and equates being wrong with “being bad”. If we aren’t able to own up to our mistakes, then we can’t continue to grow. I used to be way too online and had to get off all other social medias other than here because this was happening to me and I basically had a huge cringe mental breakdown moment and was lucky enough to have someone I really admire reach out and be like “hey girl you’re not okay” and that kind of snapped me out of that defensiveness. Which to be honest, i probably wouldn’t have had that awakening if it were just some stranger on twitter and not someone I had already associated as “admirable” and therefore valuable to me. Also, I agree with Liz about the cultural narcissism of the United States. I think a lot of it comes from settler colonialism. All of the power and wealth in this country exists with no internal validation because white people relied on exploited labor of others to create it. So I think it’s really there on a deep deep level and has just been continued to grow with the reinforcement of stuff like Hollywood, social media, ect.

justdave

I'm going to do this actually, you seem nice (you should check out Jack mallote- native american anti imperialist painter from where I live -he's dope)

jethiexoxo

Why him and brace sound similar lmaooo

Trevor McDonald

I listened to this episode while I sat in the shower sick with food poisoning. Then I took a shower again and listened to it again because no matter how ill I feel it’s nowhere near as grotesque as whatever brain diseas theil has

Alexander Johnson

I've never owned a smart phone & have been dependent on T9 for a while. I've been wondering recently how much that's made my psyche & verbal behavior different from my peers. I have changed some of my speech habits & word choice because they don't come up in the T9 dictionary. Also, not being able to stream music/podcasts while out and about puts me in a different head space than someone with a smartphone I assume. It'd be great if some academics pursued comparing smartphone/dumbphone users to see if there's significant differences. Anyone know about studies like this?

#1 Deep Thinker

Have you guys thought about getting Conor Habib on for a Coomers In The Mist Redux?

#1 Deep Thinker

Or David O Reilly for some AI art chats?

Peter Annee

Regarding where the obsession with data comes from: I have two ideas. One is that liberalism and fascism and prima facie different ideologies (its seems like liberalism may inevitably lead to fascism, but that aside…). Liberalism sees knowledge as power, in part, against irrational ideologies like fascism. Accumulation of data, it thinks, will disprove faulty racial science etc. Another idea is very much connected to the idea that the tech lords are trying to recreate the womb. Data is a weapon against the irrational and unexpected forces in life. With enough data one can be completely sure of any outcome, be sure that they won’t die or suffer the next day etc. As to the deeper origins of this impulsive it is probably related to the death drive. Paradoxical yes, but “living in a soulless world” and a return to the womb are types of death.

Magnus

Our economies literally cant grow anymore

Marina

Thank you! Yeah, like I said in the comment I made above- it blows my mind that some of my friends are truly enthusiastic about social media content creation. God bless them- I don’t know what their secret is, haha!

Marina

I think what Deep Thinker meant is that some people genuinely love social media management. I know lots of people that are passionate about using social media as an avenue to communicate, and they’re gifted in content creation. I also know that it’s not my gift, and I find it very difficult. The time it takes me to make a single TikTok is 5x the time it takes them because that digital creative process comes so naturally. Also, if you read my comment, I never said I automatically wanted to pass off the task to someone else. My comment was more so a societal critique on how I believe we are forced to sell pieces of ourselves online in the form of “content”, because everything nowadays comes down to “marketing”. To be clear, I would like to pass off social media management to someone else as soon as I can, but I would only hire someone who is passionate about it. Furthermore, I will ensure I pay them as much as I possibly can for their time, and invite them to weigh in on the overall direction of the company if they wanted to. I have absolutely no interest in exploiting another person, which I feel like you may have been implying (could be wrong).

Red

Great episode and interview guys!

Tom

What crimes did Daniel Dennett commit? Why did Rushkoff lump him together with Epstein? In the late naughties, Dennett appeared in panel discussions with some unappealing types like Hitchens (war on terror hawk) and Sam Harris (nasty no-talent faker). It brought the philosopher some mainstream fame in what appeared to be an effort to explain atheism. It was supposed to be motivated by the need to counter right-wing fundamentalist Christians that were resurgent then under Bush The Stupider. (That whole thing looks like bad politics in retrospect. You don't convert many people by lecturing them about how bad their religion is, regardless how bad it may if fact be.) Dennett's philosophy is materialist, i.e. it doesn't need the supernatural. I think Dennett's overall thinking is compassionate and pro-social. His understanding of how we collectively think is consonant with Gregory Bateson's conception of mental processing taking place in networks of minds as much as in any one mind. His account of memetics (ideas that Dawkins walked away from) insists on the importance of the values ideas convey. It all seems very compatible with values Rushkoff expressed in the pod ep. Among others Douglas Hofstadter has made a strong case for souls being compatible with materialism and determinism. We don't need anything supernatural like immortal souls, after lives, or omniscient gods to have them. The enemy isn't materialism or atheism. It is radical individualism. It's ok if the universe is meaningless. What matters are the meanings we make together.

Walden Pod

I've listened to every TrueAnon episode, and this is the first one I didn't make it through. Rushkoff seems like a huge dumbass.

Friend of Pangolin

@Michael, If I'm a devout religious person than what you wrote is far more personally offensive than me making a wisecrack on you. Some people devote their lives to their belief in what you call mythology. My point in calling you "great atheist one" was to highlight how dogmatic atheism can be. Atheism is a belief system too. What I get from this episode is whether you believe in a religion or atheism we end up creating and worshiping gods either way. Under capitalism atheism raises tech billionaires and technology to god level and many people end up worshiping them.

Jessie Cherbak

No way! I read Media Virus years ago, but still more than 10 years after it was first published in 1995. Liked the cover and picked it up on a whim from my local library. I remember thinking , “This guy would really get a kick out of YouTube and Facebook”

Laika

S tier episode

Cee Eff

Really enjoyed this episode. Didn't expect to come away from it as (relatively) hopeful as I did

Billy Thunderhawk

The music on this one is exceptional, even by Yung Chomsky standards. Way to go man!

Yana Lysenko

Can someone explain what the team’s hatred for QR codes? It’s actually a pretty funny running hatred but I must have missed the episodes where they explain why.

00000000000000000000

I would explain it to you but it's in a format indecipherable to humans; you'll have to wave your phone over the answer to see what it says.

DH

Because they suck

00000000000000000000

I don't understand why going Luddite is so "impossible" according to the hosts and guests. Says who? Who says technology only goes in one direction?

Milo

Bravo!

Flesh Colored Subaru

True Anon fans continue writing the longest fucking comments for 0 heart buttons pressed

SF

Great episode with a really interesting dude.

SF

Come on man you know what they mean

SF

uh huh, that’s nice

Ry Mar

Really good episode, and the production on the YC music was the best I've heard so far

Zoe Hart

im obsessed. definitely made me want to buy the book.

SF

Grow up.

SF

schizoposting from kctoo

SF

It’s just a shame that every time TrueAnon (or Chapo) do an interview episode half the Patreon comments are outraged schizoposting about it

Mauve_Avenger

If someone smears it, no more food for anyone. Sorry! Them's the breaks!

Connie

Most Amish men here in Pennsylvania use computers and smart phones, take ubers, etc. Was on a job site recently where an elder confiscated this young guy's phone because he was addicted to looking at instagram models. The women are still prohibited from technology, of course. Anyway, if I get cut off one more time by a buggy running a red light because Abe got sloshed in the Sheetz parking lot and is passed out in the cab I'm gonna lose it.

Calum Anklesaria

Brace sounds like he’s talking to his brother or childhood friend in this ep

jeff

Google search doesn’t suck now because there’s too much in the algorithm, it’s because the web is bloated with SEO content and exploits the algorithm for exposure. I’m sure today’s algorithm used on the internet from 10 years ago would be amazing. That said, it’s definitely true no one really knows the whole scope of what’s in there anymore.

Mugiwara

I loved this ep!! The energy was electric and I feel you were all so gleeful when you got into big ideas :)

Jon Hoh

Grew up in Lancaster. Will never forget the smell of standing behind an Amish family of 14 at a random Turkey Hill. So many children, all using electronics, yet the concept of a shower was out of the question.

Alexandra M

Please unlock this one! For the good of humankind etc etc

David Lyttle

Hannah Haddix? I've met her she's fucking rad

Oliver Crane

Yeah! She was bartending at a Jon Langford show this summer, I had followed her on Instagram after seeing her artwork

Katherine Moss

God it’s so nice to hear this feeling/observation being confirmed. Like the dumbing down or being infantilized by all these people trying to “save” us. I agree with releasing this for public. Also, a small note, I was listening to some podcast that had a I believe blind person talking about how those QR codes actually allow them to “read” a menu.

Emma

No she absolutely does.

Nicole S

truly one of my favourite episodes! gave me some hope and motivation for these trying times :)))

Hollz

Brace so astute on the point of how internet used to be a source of freedom and now it’s a form of deep mental and societal entrapment…. Yea