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The Death Of Subculture: Why Modern Pop Culture Sucks Now | David Marx · The Smart Cookies podcast

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David Marks is a culture critic and author of
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Ametora, Status and Culture in His Latest Blank
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Space, A Cultural History of the 21st Century.
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A bit of a depressing, if totally necessary and
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unputdownable read. David, welcome to the program.
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Thank you for having me. Cool surname, by the
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way. Do you perhaps know if you're in any way
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related to the Big Daddy Carl? I have done thorough
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genealogical research and I'm absolutely not
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related. Okay, still a cool name. Your book,
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amazingly written, by the way, is a methodical
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confirmation of the feeling I believe we all
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had for quite some time now that pop culture
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or culture in general has gone to shit and is
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now in the Lord's year of 2026, just a completely
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unsalvageable dumpster fire. Now, as an aging
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millennial myself, I'm obviously not impervious
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to romanticizing the state of affairs in my youth.
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the different subcultures we very seriously participated
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in, the film releases we were actually dying
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to see, the music we carefully curated on our
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little Chinese MP3 players. And so for a long
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time, it made sense to me that a large part of
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this kind of longing for the 90s was nothing
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more than simple nostalgia. Nostalgia that probably
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every generation has about how they were the
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last ones. that manage to tastefully produce
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meaning. However, like I said in the beginning,
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your book gives this simplistic view a bit of
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a trashing because in it you analyze the spiral
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of cultural misery of the last 25 years going
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systematically from the indie rock scene in New
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York in the beginning of the noughties to the
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incredible rise of the Hak Tua girl just last
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year. I'm curious though. If you could pick one
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specific moment when you realize we are now inhabiting
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this, what you call blank space, a space devoid
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of any cultural innovation, really, what would
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it be? I mean, I want to say that in the early
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21st century, I don't think it was immediate
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that things were going to go this way. Right.
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And even in the 90s. The 90s were really good
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from the perspective if you were into indie music
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or alternative music, that music was on the margins
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and then it became in the center. Then indie
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film went on the margins and became in the center.
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Things like indie comedy, I don't know if you've
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ever seen the show Mr. Show that was on HBO with
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David Cross and Bob Odenkirk, which was late
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90s. That was really incredibly innovative in
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terms of humor. I just felt like all these different
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art forms were kind of I was watching the Tom
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Green show myself. I was a big fan. Tom Green
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was, in some ways, maybe innovative. But basically,
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you got to the 21st century. I don't think it
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was immediate. I mean, the Strokes felt like,
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okay, they're doing the 70s sound, but they're
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kind of putting a new spin on it. Or DFA is taking
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no wave in disco, but it's a new sound. I would
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say about by 2010 or 11, there were multiple...
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new media pieces, including Simon Reynolds book,
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Retro Mania. And Kurt Anderson had also done
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this piece about kind of what was the defining
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fashion style of the 2000s. And nobody kind of
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had an idea. It just, it did feel like, okay,
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the culture is more interested in retro and in
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redoing things, not really changing the style
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so much. Something's a little off. It was kind
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of the feeling of 2010, 2011, but it wasn't a
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permanent despair. I don't think people were
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like, well, now it's over. And then as the smartphone
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showed up, I think there was a lot of optimism
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for a very long time about what YouTube could
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be or what blogs could be and how they could
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lead to this flourishing of niche content. So
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again, I think there was some optimism there.
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It's really where you hit about 2016 with the
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election of Trump and Brexit that you've had
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a long enough span where it's like, okay, wow,
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there really aren't that many new styles. And
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now all these technological tools that we thought
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would open things up have brought us Donald Trump
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and a lot of... the commercialized internet content
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the youtubers and influencers and these things
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that are very very commercial and then as we've
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gone in the last 10 years it's gotten darker
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and darker and i think that's why there was this
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trend over the last couple weeks where people
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were posting photos from 2016 because it really
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does seem like this last 10 years in particular
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were bleak that something kind of ended in 2016
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but what what i tried to show with the book is
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that at least these trends didn't just come out
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of nowhere i think they started around the turn
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of the century as a backlash to the 90s in a
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way. And then it just got worse and worse as
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time went on because of the specific economic
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and technological conditions. I thought you're
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just going to go with the sinister rise of the
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hipsters in the early 2000s. No, I mean, even
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hipsterism, I mean, it felt, I would say like...
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you know new new but it just you know american
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apparel and all that it had its own feel it had
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its own sound like that's what you want from
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a youth culture where you feel like something
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is new so i i mean i i wouldn't say that i loved
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it that i was like uh wow hipsters and what an
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incredible innovation and there certainly was
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a lot of critique at the time but it did feel
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like um You know, if 90s had grunge, then early
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2000s had hipsters. I mean, again, that's like
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the thing that we're looking for in our brains
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is some sort of difference that we can mark time
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with. Speaking of hipsters, I got to say, as
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a former journalist, I already harbored nothing
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but cold disdain for Vice magazine. And your
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book did nothing to remedy that. In fact, quite
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the opposite. They really shine as one of the
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book's clearest villains, don't they? Well, so
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I was in New York when they, I guess they had
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moved in 99 to New York, but when I got there
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in 2001, they were very much central to the downtown
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scene. And Gavin McInnes, one of the founders,
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was really the mascot of the of the brand. And
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also someone who was showing up in other magazines
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like Dazed and Confused and really had these
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friendships with whether it's Terry Richardson
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or Ryan McGinley, some of the big photographers
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at the time. And so advice felt very central
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and seemed it wasn't on that kind of trajectory
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of we're going to be a seven billion dollar company
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or 20 billion dollar company or whatever quite
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yet. But there was just a sense that it was it
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was central. And Gavin was doing things at the
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time. this infamous interview with New York Observer
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where he used all these bigoted terms for minorities
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and he was wearing pin badges from Nazi rock
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bands, et cetera, et cetera. And so there was
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this sense that he was trying to push the envelope
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ironically with all this right wing stuff. And
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then he did an article for the American conservative
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and he interviewed the American conservative
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for vice. So there's this kind of weird. right
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-wing turn going on with vice very early and
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he i think that eventually got him pushed out
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of the magazine but when he later founded the
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proud boys uh it seemed like okay that there
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was something going on there where he had found
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his transgressive aesthetic in right -wing politics
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rather than left -wing and it's not to say that
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that was what inspired 4chan or what's inspired
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kind of all the right -wing culture that exists
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now it's just that he got to that idea first
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and i wanted to make sure that people saw that
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that had happened in 2001, you know, post 9 -11,
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way before kind of 4chan shows up and comes to
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the same formula. Yeah, but there was also this
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gonzo buzz surrounding their quote -unquote journalism
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at the beginning because their writers were willing
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to inject themselves with Crocodile or something
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to get 15 bucks for the article. But I clearly
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remember how I just saw one of the titles one
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day about a guy who can't stop humping his neighbor's
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hedge and thought this is just fucking stupid
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now. Yeah, it was all like that. I mean, it was
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all counterintuitive and the articles felt honestly
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fake to me, like that they described ridiculous
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situations that didn't exist or I don't know.
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But I mean, it made sense as this is the center
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of youth culture, but that it was very nihilistic
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and empty. And I think that's another thing that
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I didn't really think about until I wrote the
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book, which is after 9 -11, earnest left wing.
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sentiment became a little bit taboo in the United
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States. And so I think Vice was kind of the perfect
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media for that time because it had a little bit
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of a right -wing edge, but also because it was
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very nihilistic and it didn't try to be particularly
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liberal or left -wing in a time when you really
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couldn't be anyway. And so I think there's a
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link there too. You just said that it was kind
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of nihilistic and empty. I was studying communication
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studies back home in Slovenia when I still lived
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there. And I distinctly remember how a professor
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of culture studies told us that we can't use
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these kind of loaded terms as like empty culture
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or nihilistic culture anymore. And you write
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about this in the book as well. Could you talk
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about this a little bit, this postmodern take
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where everything, any sort of like judgment is
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suddenly off limits? So in the late 20th century,
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I mean, I would say Pierre Bourdieu is kind of
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the start of this, but there is a lot of postmodern,
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post -structuralist theory that starts to deconstruct
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taste as a mechanism of class oppression. So
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that for a very long time, this is going to get
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very nerdy very quickly, but there was basically
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these ideas of taste that came from Immanuel
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Kant, that taste was this transgression. uh transcendental
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thing that was in your brain and had nothing
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to do with whether you took physical pleasure
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from it it was all these kind of conceptual ideas
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in which beauty was born and i think what bordeaux
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was trying to show was know that there are real
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life materialistic relations for taste and so
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anyone who had studied that or any of the things
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kind of post a lot of this american sociology
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post bordeaux so if they took any cultural studies
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or anything they just would have known This idea
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that there's something suspicious about high
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culture, that high culture is an oppressive class
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mechanism. And so as that happened, there was
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also at the same time a rise in the 90s of these
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bands who had a little bit of artistic and intellectual
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pretension. So let's say Radiohead is the perfect
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example, becoming quite popular. And so you get
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to Kid A in the year 2000, and it's this very
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abstract. almost theoretical album that everybody's
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calling you know the greatest greatest album
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of the 21st century and it's still on this list
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is definitely as one of them and so you get this
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kind of group of people who've been trained these
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uh critics who've been trained to think and be
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very suspicious of that and the same time the
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kids who are the people who generally like are
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the center of youth culture really aren't that
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interested in Radiohead or any of this 90s stuff.
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They like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera
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and NSYNC and Justin Timberlake and Backstreet
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Boys and all this. And so there's a group of
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critics who in the early 2000s really started
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rejecting this idea that we needed to have the
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biases against pop music that we did in the 90s.
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uh when i was growing up new kids on the block
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which were kind of the backstreet boys of their
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day came out and there was just no taking them
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seriously at all there was just junk music for
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teenage girls and and you know that wasn't it
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was never cool and there was no kind of even
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ironic appreciation of it but by the time max
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martin does i want it that way there's all these
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music critics going out of the way saying this
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is the greatest composition of the 21st century
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etc etc so So it was kind of just that annoying
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thing that critics do with a counterintuitive,
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like some of that was there. But it had an ideological
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grounding in this idea that if people like pop
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music, who are we to take that away from them?
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And, you know, if we have this, if there's some
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kind of pleasure you can take from bodily pleasures
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on these transcendental, overly intellectualized
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pleasures, like who are we to say that those
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are wrong? If there's classes of people who can't.
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understand those more intellectual forms of art,
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et cetera, et cetera. So I think that just the
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aesthetics and the fashion pendulum swing from
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Radiohead to Backstreet Boys just coincided with
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that ideology. And so then you get the thing
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that is known as poptimism, which is just a real
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openness and then almost like a feeling of superiority
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towards pop music and pop culture that who are
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we to say. keeping up with the kardashians is
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not as important as twin peaks or breaking bad
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or some prestige tv that they're they that people
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love them and we should just appreciate them
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and think about them um and there's a i mean
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in english there's a term reverse snobbery um
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that you use for when people do this but yeah
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just being like well i don't i don't like fancy
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stuff i'm like a person i'm of the people and
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i love keeping up with the kardashians All right.
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Back to the book. Unlike Vice magazine, Kanye
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West has sort of like a tragic hero arc from
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this total genre bending wizard, defining the
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sound of a generation and bending fashion and
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reality TV to his will to finally his public.
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It was a Jewish doctor, MAGA fueled meltdown.
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Why does he embody the era so well? Do you think
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since he was so influential? as a sort of a generator
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of culture for so long that he's actually one
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of its prime movers? Or is he more of a symptom
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of the system going haywire? He is both. I mean,
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I get a lot of feedback from the book where people
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are like, wow, you actually wrote about Kanye.
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And I think it's very odd to write about this
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era and not mention his early work. That was
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the was less controversial, maybe even non -controversial.
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And, you know, he has been canceled. I mean,
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he had even today he had a full page apology
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in The Wall Street Journal, I believe. But let's
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just put it. Let's just consider him canceled
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for the time being. But it doesn't change the
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fact that he was a prime instigator of something
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in the book, you know, that I call, you know,
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omnivorism in the sense that he was. obviously
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doing rap but even when he was doing rap he was
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interested in bringing together backpack rap
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and mainstream rap he was interested in bringing
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in the entire history of black music from jazz
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to doo -wop to gospel he was then interested
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in bring you know he wanted to be the fiona apple
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of rap so getting fiona apple's producer to produce
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him um bringing in adam levine of maroon 5 you
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know whatever just like looking across all of
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music and just having no barriers in his head
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and trying to bring it all together and then
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working with daft punk and uh doing kraut rock
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samples and i mean there's the he really embodied
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just this idea of endless curiosity of music
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and trying to bring it all together and then
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that became an interest in street fashion which
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became an interest in designer fashion and it's
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just very hard to say that he was not the one
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to bring the whole hip -hop world into designer
15:53
fashion and now you can't understand what's going
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on unless you understand that change so there
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was so for a long time he was the instigator
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and so then there's the question of just what
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happened to him in 2016 and there's obviously
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the kind of mental health side of this but i
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think also he just got to a point Because of
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his attitude towards the world, which was this
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incredible sense of entitlement and having a
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giant chip on his shoulder, he then just proceeded
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to get angrier and angrier. And then that went
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into some sort of... same kind of gavin mcginnis
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zone of i'm going to be right -wing and anti
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-semitic as the absolute taboo breaking thing
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and aren't aren't i more transgressive and cool
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than anyone else because i'm pro trump and no
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one else is and so i think there's a way to see
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it that way but also just went far beyond how
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you would do it in an ironic way i mean i think
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he really really was in that uh and then it just
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got worse and worse and he thinks he's playing
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these big pranks but they're just kind of um
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you know, literally beyond beyond the pale for
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society. I would say, I mean, the thing I do
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think about him as a symptom or just, you know,
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a representative person, I think Paris Hilton,
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Kim and he and Donald Trump all shared one thing,
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which is that they figured out the hack to getting
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attention. So attention is the hardest thing
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to get in the 21st century. And the hack is if
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you do something that breaks social norms. there's
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actually no punishment for breaking social norms,
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but there's massive reward, which is that everyone
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has to write about it and think about it. And
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so when Kanye grabbed the microphone from Taylor
17:29
Swift, not only did he make Taylor Swift bigger
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than ever before, but even if people weren't...
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you know they weren't going to click the article
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or watch the segment because they like kanye
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and they want to support him they were they just
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want to see like what what happened why did he
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do that what's going on and so it's you could
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keep doing these awful things and you just force
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everyone to pay attention to you even if they
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support you or don't support you and at the end
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of the day that is lucrative and that is winning
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the media cycle and so you know Trump took this
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platform and took it to the presidency twice,
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which is if you just say things that are so far
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beyond what the social norm is, that everyone
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has to write about it and you just suck all the
18:08
oxygen out of the room and you win the news cycle.
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And then obviously there's a group of people
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who really respect you for it in the sense of,
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I like that they go out and say the things that
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you're not supposed to say. But at the same time,
18:20
you just dwarf, you make it where you're basically
18:24
you're the story and everyone else is the substory
18:26
to you. So I think in that sense, Kanye figured
18:29
that out pretty quickly, or he just lacks the
18:32
inhibition part of his brain that, I mean, Trump
18:35
has this too, where he just, he could just win
18:38
in our society because he doesn't have anything
18:40
stopping him from breaking norms all the time.
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Speaking of the Taylor Swift moment, there's
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one Kanye paragraph in the book that, despite
18:48
everything I already know about him, really made
18:49
me burst out laughing. And that's when, after
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this I'm -a -let -you -finish moment, he goes
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into self -exile to Italy to intern for some
18:59
designer or something. For Fendi, yeah. For Fendi
19:02
for 500 bucks a month, even though he's already
19:05
a superstar. I mean, say what you will about
19:07
him now, but at least he took fashion kind of
19:10
seriously for a little bit, didn't he? I think
19:13
he was just making copies or something. But I
19:15
mean, from, you know, the thing with internships
19:17
in general, and there's like internships have
19:20
gotten quite controversial because obviously
19:23
if you're wealthy, it's easier to take an internship
19:25
than if you're not. But you're really there just
19:28
to make connections. And I think Kanye got into
19:32
that world and Virgil, who was with him, Virgil
19:35
Abloh got into that world because they did that
19:37
internship. They met everybody and they were
19:39
brought back later to do real work. So it wasn't
19:43
like a real internship. I mean, I think they
19:46
talk about it as if it was very demeaning in
19:49
the sense that there was nothing for them to
19:51
do. But I think just being around, they built
19:55
up connections that they used later. It wasn't
19:57
like Daniel Day -Lewis, who took two years off
20:00
and was making shoes in Italy somewhere in some
20:02
village or something. I think they weren't there
20:07
that long, and I think he flew back to finish
20:08
his album or something. It makes sense. All right,
20:12
you write about a distinct moment in 2008 after
20:15
the Lehman Brothers crash and the whole Occupy
20:18
Wall Street movement when it seemed that culture
20:21
could have gone a different way, but instead
20:24
it turned even more towards this entrepreneurial
20:27
self -enrichment as the ultimate artistic value
20:31
thing. Becoming a billionaire was a sign that...
20:34
you really made it as an artist. And that's why
20:36
people like Jay -Z and Kylie Jenner and LeBron
20:39
James are so celebrated within the mainstream
20:41
today. Why do you think we went that way? I mean,
20:47
one thing was that if you look to the financial
20:49
crash, for a brief moment, it hurt everybody.
20:55
And then it really just hurt poor people and
20:58
bankers got rich really quickly again. And so
21:01
there was this idea that there was going to be...
21:03
a massive rethinking of society and culture because
21:07
everybody, everybody, including the bankers lost
21:12
all their money. And then as soon as the rich
21:13
people started making money again, and then the
21:15
market was going up, it was like, Oh, we don't
21:17
have to change anything. So I think the structure
21:19
of the economy didn't need a change and that
21:23
made the culture not need a change. And then
21:25
at the time, You know, Kanye and Jay -Z did Watch
21:29
the Throne, which was an entire album about just
21:32
how rich they are and how great it is to be super
21:34
rich. And so hip hop wasn't going to get off
21:37
that vector. And so I think there's a there's
21:39
a scene that's meaningful that you have Occupy
21:42
Wall Street. I think Occupy Wall Street had a
21:43
very clever, very sympathy inducing slogan, which
21:49
is like we are the 99 percent. I think most people
21:52
agreed with that. It was very smart. I think
21:54
that Occupy itself with the drum circles and
21:57
the weird anarchist leadership structure, etc.,
22:01
wasn't necessarily winning over normal Americans.
22:04
But Russell Simmons, the hip hop mogul, for some
22:09
reason, went every day. He was a real supporter
22:11
of it. And he tried to get the rappers to go.
22:15
uh and kanye he dragged kanye there but kanye
22:18
refused to say anything because he didn't want
22:19
to say any kind of give his statements of support
22:22
and then jay -z famously made rock aware t -shirts
22:25
that said occupy all streets and then when asked
22:28
would you give that money to the occupy wall
22:30
street protesters he said why would i do that
22:33
um and then kind of created a distance and said
22:36
if they're against entrepreneurism then i'm against
22:37
them so That was a pretty kind of scandalous
22:41
moment, but it was a real break that the culture
22:43
was that hip hop was the culture that hip hop
22:46
was still fascinated and really it staked itself
22:50
to to making money as kind of the ultimate marker
22:56
of success. And I mean, Jay -Z, I think it was
22:58
a huge part of that. And then Occupy Wall Street
23:03
just kind of got dwarfed by that. So it just
23:05
never caught fire. in in the popular culture
23:10
because because the leaders of the popular culture
23:12
weren't really uh syncing with it in a way that
23:14
i mean i think woodstock or the 60s counterculture
23:18
slightly different but at the time i mean you
23:20
look at the beatles and and then you look at
23:22
how they look in 1969 like obviously they're
23:24
getting kind of sucked into countercultural ethics
23:27
and and aesthetics and so you know that that
23:31
did not happen where there was a counterculture
23:33
and then it kind of flipped everybody Please
23:36
allow me to read this perfect encapsulation of
23:39
what we were just talking about, this turn of
23:41
the culture, where it all went. This is just
23:42
such a fantastic passage from the book. On the
23:46
July 31, 2011 episode of Keeping Up with the
23:51
Kardashians, Kim Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian,
23:53
along with Kendall and Kylie Jenner, pressured
23:55
matriarch Kris Jenner to address her light bladder
23:59
leakage. You can't be... Excuse me. You can't
24:03
be at a black tie event and peeing on yourself,
24:05
Chloe scolded. After receiving a diagnosis of
24:08
stress incontinence, Jenner didn't just seek
24:11
medical treatment. She contacted the Kimberly
24:13
-Clark Corporation, pitching herself as an influencer
24:16
for Poise, the leading brand in absorbent protection
24:20
products. Her philosophy was consistent. Let's
24:24
not make it a problem. Let's make money. I mean,
24:26
mic drop. That's all we really need to know about
24:29
the whole thing, isn't it? Yeah, but I think
24:31
that at the time that show was seen as bottom
24:37
feeding, to use the term that Trump used to use
24:39
about reality TV. But there was a sense that
24:42
it was the worst of the worst and everybody hated
24:44
them. And I think post Kim on the cover of Vogue,
24:50
which I dedicate more or less an entire chapter
24:52
to, because I think it's that big of a deal.
24:54
There's been a kind of re -evaluation. of keeping
24:59
up with the Kardashians. And now it seemed like,
25:01
well, there are people who understand the time
25:03
and they're hustlers and entrepreneurs. And again,
25:08
who are we to criticize the Kardashians? So I
25:10
guess it's indicative of that value shift, which
25:16
is they came out and were ridiculed for this
25:20
kind of behavior, but then... It's really hard
25:23
to look now and say, what did they not get from
25:26
engaging that behavior? So, of course, at that
25:28
moment, they made money from Kimberly Clark Corporation
25:32
or whatever. But, you know, Kris Jenner is showing
25:34
up at the Met Gala not so many years later. And
25:38
Kim now, I mean, Skims is worth billions of dollars.
25:42
She can go out and say that the moon landing
25:44
is a hoax. And still the next day, everyone reports
25:47
on. her brand being this billion -dollar brand.
25:52
So it's really hard to look at how they didn't
25:56
win by doing exactly what they did. But it's
25:59
also because critics softened up and there was
26:03
a real acceptance of the Kardashian clan. Also,
26:07
it helps that the Jenner children went on, you
26:12
know, one of them to become one of the biggest
26:14
models in the world and another kind of her own
26:17
entrepreneur. They've kind of won the century.
26:21
And so we can think it's ridiculous, but who's
26:25
laughing now? Not me. When it comes to fashion,
26:31
I'm basically illiterate. So why was Kanye and
26:34
Kim being on the cover of Vogue such a big deal?
26:39
First, Vogue and Vanity Fair both had more or
26:44
less a ban on plays. ban in place on the Kardashians.
26:48
I think Vanity Fair's was maybe a little stricter,
26:51
but there was generally a sense that we're not
26:53
going to put reality TV stars and gossip queens
26:57
on the cover. And there's a sense that Vogue
27:01
was the center of designer fashion, but good
27:07
taste, and that if an advertiser was putting
27:11
something in the magazine, it had Anna Winters.
27:15
seal of approval that she really made sure that
27:18
the whole magazine was good and legitimate and
27:21
reflected the world's best taste. And so from
27:25
that perspective, putting a Kardashian on the
27:28
cover was quite controversial. And there's kind
27:34
of multiple theories about why it happened when
27:37
it did. I really believe that Kanye, because
27:41
he was so tied up with designer fashion and they
27:44
were married and he had completely changed her
27:47
style and updated it and was removing a lot of
27:52
the barriers towards why you would not have Kim
27:55
Kardashian on the cover. really talking in Anna
28:01
Wintour's ear all the time about how she needed
28:03
to be on the cover. And they ended up, you know,
28:05
being, being, being on the cover together, which
28:07
I think is important. It wasn't just Kim. There's
28:09
also people who say at some point Anna Wintour
28:12
realized that the culture had moved away from
28:16
being, you know, in her words, tasteful and they
28:20
had to put whoever was popular on the cover.
28:22
But the point was that there was, there was a
28:25
dam. the floodwaters were this hypercapitalist
28:29
reality culture. And there was a dam in the Conde
28:34
Nast publications that were still arbiters of
28:36
taste. And some, some, some point that dam broke.
28:38
And I think you can look at the Conying and Kim
28:42
on that cover as the exact moment when the dam
28:44
broke and you can never go back again. You already
28:48
mentioned this, but besides pop culture kind
28:50
of going down the drain, there is another pretty
28:52
depressing current happening at the same time.
28:55
And that's the internet disintegrating from a
28:57
kind of a hopeful and democratic techno -utopian
29:01
place full of... delightful niche projects to
29:04
this horrific platform AI slop driven economy
29:07
where we now have the cringiest, most socially
29:11
awkward evil dorks shaping our culture much more
29:15
than any artist possibly can. I mean, how does
29:18
Mark Zuckerberg actually have fans? I need an
29:22
explanation because I really sometimes I think
29:24
I'm going crazy here. I don't know. I don't know
29:27
if he has fans, to be honest. I mean, I think
29:29
he doesn't need. He doesn't need fans. He just
29:32
needs users. Elon Musk or Sam Altman. Well, I
29:37
mean, Elon Musk most certainly has fans. But
29:40
I think if you look at Facebook, it's a perfect
29:44
example of how this all works, which is at some
29:48
point Facebook was a site for elite college students
29:52
and then only young people, really. And then
29:55
it was for... kind of everyone. And then it was
29:58
for everyone's parents. And then it was only
30:00
for really media illiterate grandparents. And
30:04
now it's only for people who can't tell the difference
30:07
between AI and not AI. And it's mostly AI slop.
30:11
And somehow this company still exists and people
30:13
still buy ads on it. And he still makes billions
30:16
of dollars from this website that we all know
30:19
is dead and fake. And so it doesn't matter to
30:22
Mark Zuckerberg what's on Facebook. And the model,
30:26
I mean, I wouldn't say this is in his defense,
30:29
but just the model of these platforms was that
30:32
you're aggregating, you're only making money
30:35
through aggregation. You're not making money
30:36
through what a magazine used to do, which is
30:38
say, hey, brand, I'm going to make some really
30:40
cool content and you're just going to pay me
30:42
to make it look cool and get it in front of cool
30:44
people. And I can't really give you metrics on
30:46
that. I mean, it's just, it's all kind of imaginary.
30:48
I can give you fake numbers if you want, but
30:50
you're just going to feel good that you're in
30:52
this cool magazine. And the same with a TV show.
30:56
But when it came to the Internet, because it
30:58
was all precise, but also because you could target
31:02
these micro advertisers. So famously, the first
31:06
company to ever buy AdWords on Google sold lobsters.
31:09
Right. So these kind of midsize small companies
31:11
and a lot of scam companies, a lot of kind of
31:14
gray market companies. And so you make all your
31:17
money from aggregating these low rent advertisers.
31:23
All they want is just eyeballs. They don't really
31:25
care about branding or anything. And so the whole
31:28
ecosystem just takes things away from the idea
31:30
of taste or of curation or of caring about what's
31:34
on the platform. The way to make money is to
31:36
aggregate the worst users and the worst content.
31:40
And that's why it's gone that direction. And
31:42
there was some point even when YouTube was. experimenting
31:46
with curation but they kind of had a page i think
31:49
where they picked cool videos and it just didn't
31:52
mean anything i mean i think people would were
31:54
still going towards more viral moments or the
31:57
the early uh youtube partner program people um
32:02
and at some point youtube had given all this
32:05
money to fancy creators to make fancy content
32:09
and then what happened was they all got outpaced
32:11
by the youtube native people and so you know
32:14
the platforms are really the more they get out
32:16
of the way of curation, the more money they've
32:18
made. So the lesson they learned is just let,
32:20
let, you know, whatever works work. And if that's
32:23
AI slop, then that's AI slop. They just, they're
32:26
completely uncultural people and completely agnostic
32:31
to what's on their platform. So of course this
32:33
happened. What do you think like stuff that is
32:37
curated online doesn't stick or doesn't reach
32:40
a broader audience? I mean, some of it does.
32:46
I mean, I think there's there's still some people
32:49
who are kind of famous for being good, good aggregators.
32:52
And, you know, a lot of newsletters these days,
32:55
I say, are very good at that, which is if you're
32:57
interested in men's fashion or something and
33:01
you read Blackbird Spy Plane, like he picks here's
33:04
some stuff that here's some brands you should
33:06
know, here's some items you should know, etc.
33:07
So I think that's going on a little bit in the
33:10
elite media sphere. It's just that. making money
33:14
on the internet again making huge sums requires
33:18
huge scale and huge scale just means you're not
33:23
curating for taste you have to curate for attention
33:25
and that means lowest common denominator and
33:30
so i mean one of the most most horrifying experiences
33:32
on the internet is if you open tiktok and you
33:35
haven't really registered yet you just like welcome
33:39
to tiktok oh you're a 40 something male And then
33:42
the videos it shows you are just like beyond
33:45
reproach. I mean, it's just, it's the most soft
33:49
core girls jiggling, you know, without bras and
33:54
you're just like, okay, okay. And you're like,
33:58
okay, not that, not that. Like, can I just see
34:00
something in my interest? But I mean, you'd have
34:01
to work so hard for it to not share you the worst
34:04
videos on the platform, but it just says, oh,
34:06
okay, well, these are the videos that are popular.
34:08
Uh, and so here, here you go. And so it's just
34:11
that, that mindset of, um, we're going to send
34:18
you the slop that all these other idiots like,
34:20
cause who cares? I mean, that, that, that is,
34:22
that's the way the internet makes money. And
34:24
so if you do curation, you're just already, uh,
34:28
you're trying not to be to scale things, but
34:31
the economy of the internet so far has been about
34:34
scale. It just, that's the way you make money
34:36
is more, more, more. Yeah, in the podcast space,
34:41
which is already a bit bro -y. Even my clips,
34:47
and I really try to have really smart people
34:50
on, but the clips that are doing the best are
34:54
the most quote -unquote controversial ones. Anything
34:58
else, people are just not interested. So it's
35:03
a bit dispiriting that way. Yeah, there's also
35:05
a ton of... these uh reels or tiktoks that look
35:09
like they're podcasts and they're not even podcasts
35:11
they're just fake podcast clips from people trying
35:15
to get famous saying ridiculous things then you're
35:17
like what podcast would they have said this on
35:18
it's like it's not even a podcast i mean the
35:20
whole you know yeah the whole ecosystem is is
35:23
rotten and i guess the thing that i mean it's
35:27
in some ways if you go back to the 80s or 90s
35:31
and you turned on tv If you were a kid trying
35:34
to watch TV in the United States on a Saturday
35:36
night, it was it was grim. I mean, there was
35:39
nothing on the TV that you would want to watch.
35:41
So it's not that, you know, all of culture used
35:43
to be great. Now, all of culture is terrible
35:45
that you could draw a parallel to the terrible
35:48
things that used to be on TV. And then the mainstream
35:50
culture now is it's a little bit less ethical,
35:54
less polished, much more toxic. but it's still
35:59
low quality. The difference was that in the eighties
36:02
or nineties, you had these alternative channels,
36:05
like an indie film cinema or something in which
36:08
young people anchored their identity to, I don't
36:11
watch TV. I go to this other thing. I don't listen
36:13
to pop radio. I go to this cool, you know, punk
36:17
punk club or something. Right. And so the problem
36:20
now is that everything is on these platforms.
36:23
They were all on Instagram. We're all on YouTube.
36:26
Everything's. from a search in Google, whatever
36:29
it is. And so you get this feeling that you can't
36:32
escape the mainstream in a way that people just,
36:35
just fully rejected. And so I think that's one
36:37
of the tasks of our era, which is that can we
36:41
find routines? If you're not into this stuff,
36:43
if you're listening and you love. a TikTok that
36:47
doesn't even match your algorithm. It just gives
36:49
you the worst things on the internet. Then you're
36:51
doing great and you don't need my help. But if
36:53
you're somebody who doesn't like this and wants
36:56
to go back and connect with people who have different
37:00
tastes and really get into that world, there
37:03
just has to not only be places for you to hang
37:07
out that are separate. And that could be a separate,
37:10
that could be a discord channel. I mean, it could
37:11
be a separate internet space, but you have to
37:13
start feeling good that you're in this good space
37:16
and you hate the other ones. There has to be
37:18
some sort of antipathy of what you're doing and
37:22
a real rejection of the other one. You can't
37:24
feel like I'm in a discord channel, but I understand
37:27
that all the cool kids are the best stuff is
37:29
somewhere else. And so I think that's the big
37:31
difference is that we just don't have a way to
37:33
think about our niche internet behavior as being
37:37
anything other than loser behavior. Which brings
37:42
us to the concept of omnivore monoculture. What
37:46
is that? Okay, so omnivorism is this idea that
37:51
starts, it's a term that comes out of sociology
37:54
in the 90s, but more or less it used to be that
37:56
wealthy people consumed high culture and upper
37:59
middle class people consumed middle brow culture.
38:03
everyone else can consume lowbrow culture or
38:06
these kind of ethnic subcultures. And the idea
38:10
of omnivorism was that upper middle class consumers
38:12
and wealthy people started consuming all things
38:15
and it became a little bit snobby to only like
38:18
high culture. And so, you know, if you watch
38:21
a show like The Simpsons, it's all written by
38:24
these Harvard graduates and it has jokes in which.
38:27
The father strangles his child. It has like really
38:30
stupid physical gags, but it also makes references
38:33
to Wittgenstein and, you know, gets on Lisa's
38:39
case for breaking the laws of physics and bashing
38:43
the very elite school Vassar, et cetera, et cetera.
38:46
So you get these cosmopolitan liberal people
38:49
want to consume high and low. And so that's called
38:51
omnivorism because it's like eating. meat and
38:55
vegetables you're eating. You're consuming high
38:58
and low culture from around the world. At some
39:01
point, that became its own little world and it
39:06
grows and grows and grows where different things
39:08
go in. And as I was talking about earlier with
39:11
the cover for Vogue that has Kanye, a hip hop
39:16
star, Kim, a reality TV star. now in this design
39:20
world, that becomes part of that omnivore monoculture
39:23
too. And so now you have almost everything in
39:25
there. And the only thing that really wasn't
39:27
in there for a long time was country music. So
39:29
hip hop had absorbed everything else. And then
39:32
you get to Lil Nas X and Old Town Road, and suddenly
39:36
you've got a hip hop country crossover. And now
39:40
you've got Shaboosie, I guess that was last year,
39:45
two years ago now, with... tipsy and so you know
39:51
it's just now it's normal that hip -hop and country
39:54
are unified so you have this monoculture in the
39:57
sense of globally everybody's kind of consuming
39:59
the same things but it can be anything so that's
40:01
different different from a monoculture from the
40:03
50s or something where everything had to be the
40:05
same so it's not that everything has to be the
40:08
same you can bring in all these different references
40:09
you can have bad bunny from puerto rico you can
40:11
have um you know people from europe participating
40:15
you can have k -pop you can have labubus that
40:18
are from a hong kong designer made by a chinese
40:21
company etc you can have that in the monoculture
40:24
but it still feels like everywhere you go you're
40:27
going to everything's going to kind of sound
40:29
the same and feel the same and everyone's going
40:33
to have the same references and so it's this
40:35
globalized uh stew but the stew kind of has the
40:38
same flavor everywhere you go and i mean one
40:40
example of this is that it doesn't matter what
40:43
kind of music you listen to, more or less, I
40:46
mean, any kind of new popular music from around
40:49
the world will have some sort of drums that are
40:52
from trap music. The trap drums are now kind
40:55
of the template for what drums sound like. And
40:58
so it's things like that. It's just that, you
41:00
know, you can add... bollywood indian instrumentation
41:05
on top of it but it has to be trap drums and
41:07
same with you know k -pop you can have this kind
41:09
of specific korean sound but it has to have flourishes
41:13
like american electronic music and so uh so we're
41:16
just in this omnivore monoculture and because
41:19
anything can go it's kind of hard to create an
41:22
alternative to it because you can't say uh well
41:26
you guys don't like this thing so i i have to
41:28
do it over here because in theory the omnivore
41:31
monoculture can absorb everything so in some
41:33
ways if you're into something and it's not being
41:35
absorbed it means it must be bad and so i think
41:37
it actually is more powerful in a way than the
41:39
original monoculture because it's very hard to
41:41
resist yeah and it like you're right it extends
41:44
to spaces and even faces to a certain degree
41:48
right um i moved to tokyo from berlin but at
41:52
a certain point i realized that all the cafes
41:54
that were all the new cafes had the same look
41:57
all of a sudden. You know, this kind of minimalistic
42:00
white walls, kind of barren looking, yeah, minimalism,
42:04
whatever. And it's like, what are we doing here?
42:07
And they all have basically the same menu and
42:10
the same feature of grinder, sorry, et cetera,
42:16
et cetera. But yeah, and then Gia Tolentino has
42:19
this idea of Instagram face that there was actually...
42:22
Through plastic surgery, women were kind of all
42:24
getting the same face. And in that article, it
42:29
talked about how 80%, I think something like
42:30
80 % of the women brought in a photo of Kim Kardashian
42:34
or someone who looked like Kim Kardashian and
42:36
wanted to look like her. So it really is also
42:40
a monoculture of looks and aesthetics that goes
42:44
from the human body to the architecture and design.
42:49
Taylor Swift, another billionaire, by the way,
42:51
is a perfect kind of representative of the ultimate
42:54
triumph of what you call poptimism. I don't think,
42:58
I don't know if that's your term. In the last,
43:00
what, like 15, 20 years, she just seems completely
43:03
indestructible. Sometimes I feel like she's going
43:06
to be everywhere I look until I croak or something,
43:09
like some sort of a medieval monarch. Why is
43:12
that? Why does she look successful? I mean, so
43:16
some of it is she does really connect with a
43:20
huge group of people, mostly women. I mean, it's
43:23
very gender stratified, her fan base. We live
43:28
in a world in which I used to call this, you
43:33
know, we used to have kind of a mass majority,
43:35
you know, so if you have mass culture, you had
43:37
every everybody in that majority all liked something.
43:39
Now it's really like a mass plurality where I
43:42
don't know if even most people like Taylor Swift,
43:44
but. If you're going to have a group of people
43:47
like an artist, she has the largest group behind
43:49
her. So she's just the most reliable and can
43:53
activate her fans the most. And so she is very
43:58
smart about how to monetize that and how to run
44:01
her career. And her music is engineered to be
44:06
very pleasant for the people who buy it. And
44:11
I don't think that she's... So artistically,
44:16
there's nothing offensive about the music she
44:19
makes. I think it's just the offensiveness is
44:21
more. That's a nice way of putting it. Yes. Yeah.
44:23
It's just that the offensiveness is that it doesn't
44:26
seem to take many risks and it seems to often
44:28
be based off of formulas that already exist rather
44:31
than creating new ones, which is something I
44:33
would not say about Beyonce. I think Beyonce
44:35
takes a lot of risks and has a lot of music that
44:38
sounds very new. And so. She's just really good
44:42
at what she does. It was interesting because
44:44
this last album kind of showed how strong she
44:49
is in the sense that even her fans were a little
44:51
mixed on it and didn't like the lyrics in particular.
44:57
But the New York Times gave it glowing, glowing
45:00
reviews. And so there was a disconnect where
45:02
it seemed like a lot of the top critics were...
45:06
could not find a single fault with it, even though
45:09
the fans could find a fault with it. And because
45:11
the fans could find some fault with it, it opened
45:14
the door for some critics who I think had shut
45:16
their mouth for a long time because they were
45:18
scared of the fans to start saying, yeah, maybe
45:20
this isn't actually that good. Scared of Swifties,
45:23
not the most gangster demographic. Yeah. I mean,
45:26
I just, I recently, well, I don't know. I just
45:29
had. uh a channel called swift swiftologist swiftology
45:34
or swiftologist uh say how much he hated my book
45:36
and i was like okay here here it comes and i
45:40
i got one dm on instagram that was like taylor
45:42
swift is gonna kill you um i was like uh -oh
45:45
um but the flood never came so it was only it
45:48
was an empty empty empty mess if you're a swifty
45:51
and hearing this please don't don't uh i'd like
45:54
to try to attack me yeah all right david um why
45:57
do you reckon that nothing really sticks anymore
46:00
for example i'm a pretty massive tv nerd i studied
46:03
screenwriting i still watch all the shows that
46:05
needed that need to be watched but good even
46:08
even fantastic as they might be they just don't
46:10
have the same impact as shows uh from the past
46:15
did i mean i just watched the second season of
46:17
severance recently and it did have a considerable
46:19
amount of buzz On the other hand, The Sopranos,
46:23
something that was made a quarter of century
46:25
ago, has an entire ecosystem that's still very
46:28
much alive out there. I mean, there's Reddit,
46:31
there's meme accounts on Instagram. There's new
46:33
books and podcasts and documentaries all dedicated
46:36
to a show that stopped airing in 2007. What's
46:41
going on there? I mean, another example is Nathan
46:45
Fielder's The Rehearsal, which I thought got
46:46
really good reviews and people were very... excited
46:49
about it but i've after it aired i've heard almost
46:51
not no no people talk about it and when i bring
46:54
it up it's like i think it's one of the great
46:55
things of the 21st century an example of where
46:58
you can take a format like reality tv and do
47:01
something interesting with it people like oh
47:02
yeah that was great you know they had completely
47:04
forgotten about it um i i think that one part
47:09
of this is the degree to which viewing is now
47:14
completely voluntary and i was just i i've been
47:17
talking to a friend about we just kind of like
47:20
to um nostalgia each other like did you see did
47:24
you watch adventures of pete and pete or did
47:26
you see eerie indiana or whatever but you know
47:29
today i was like did you watch the facts of life
47:31
and the thing about the facts of life which is
47:33
this 80s sitcom which wasn't good I don't remember
47:37
it because it's good. You remember it because
47:39
it was on. You just watched so much TV because
47:42
you passively had nothing else to do but flip
47:45
the channels and watch something. And so I think
47:48
that created obviously communal culture, but
47:51
just more repetition in your brain. And so, so
47:54
much of lasting memory and the power of something
47:57
to take on what in my second book. uh status
48:01
and culture i talk about this more but this idea
48:03
of historical value that that we care about it
48:06
as um something we want to take with us that's
48:09
in the canon i think you have to have that repetition
48:12
and so it can't just be like at what you know
48:14
it comes out everybody watches it and they move
48:16
on they don't think about it again it has to
48:18
be something where you go back and watch it all
48:21
the time and you know when i was even in the
48:23
90s i would tape every episode of the simpsons
48:26
and then when i was bored i would just re -watch
48:28
these like 10 video cassettes of you know every
48:31
simpsons or twin peaks i had you know video cassettes
48:35
of of all of them and so it wasn't just that
48:37
i watched twin peaks once it was that i watched
48:39
twin peaks like you know five times or six times
48:42
before i graduated from high school uh and you'd
48:45
watch the same movie over and over again and
48:47
so that repetition is key so i think sopranos
48:50
is one of those that that reached that and then
48:52
obviously with memes and with just the fact that
48:54
the show was so iconic and they created these
48:58
characters that didn't exist before and these
49:00
kind of catchphrases um that all helps you know
49:03
even a movie like mean girls i think it is in
49:07
the canon right people go back to it and reference
49:09
it and it uh you know launched the careers a
49:12
bunch of people so it doesn't even have to be
49:14
necessarily that it's quality it's just i think
49:17
it has to be some sort of repetition and severance
49:20
didn't have that and it also ultimately attracts
49:24
a kind of person who watches things and then
49:26
moves on to whatever the new buzzy thing is um
49:30
rather than uh some sort of really loyal person
49:35
who wants to watch it over and over again and
49:36
honestly i i mean i've only seen a bit of severance
49:40
but in most of these shows i don't want to watch
49:43
over and over again i can't imagine going back
49:45
and watching even the shows i liked right Yeah,
49:49
that does resonate. I never thought of that,
49:51
but it makes sense. Like in the 90s in Slovenia,
49:54
we had a whole host of like kind of B TV shows
49:58
like Renegade or MacGyver, you know, that we
50:01
would watch over and over again. That's how we
50:03
learned English. And I still have a soft, even
50:05
though they weren't good shows, I still have
50:07
a soft spot for them, you know, and Severance,
50:09
like you said, I'm never going to watch again.
50:10
It was a good show, but I'm never going to watch
50:12
it. Yeah, but I mean, we just don't. any more
50:15
if you if you're not watching linear tv like
50:18
the chance of you saying i'm just gonna watch
50:19
this really less than mediocre show that i don't
50:23
care about why would you do that you would just
50:25
watch there's so much content that you could
50:27
like and so yeah my entire childhood i mean golden
50:30
girls is a was a show about four elderly women
50:34
that i watched all the time because there was
50:37
nothing else on tv and every time i watched it
50:39
i did not enjoy it but i i i know the theme song
50:44
by heart so it's just there's there's no experience
50:46
like that or i mean even even more than that
50:49
when nickelodeon started they didn't have enough
50:51
children's programming to be an entire day and
50:54
so at night they did nick at night which was
50:56
just 50s tv show reruns and so i no no no this
51:01
is pre -tnt and so I watched so much Leave it
51:05
to Beaver and Dennis the Menace, My Three Sons,
51:08
Donna Reed Show. I mean, all of these old black
51:10
and white sitcoms, I mean, family dramas, whatever.
51:14
I don't even know if they're sitcoms, which I
51:16
have no interest in. But I understood the world
51:19
so much more than I think a kid today would because
51:22
I was forced myself to watch these shows. And
51:25
just nobody today would ever go back and watch
51:27
Family Ties. Or, you know, any of these just
51:30
the same kind of shows from the 80s. It's just
51:32
you don't have the opportunity to do so. Defining
51:36
ethos of pop culture in the 90s was pretty simple.
51:40
Don't sell out. You're right how Pearl Jam, one
51:43
of the biggest bands on the planet at that time,
51:45
actually began to refuse to film. music videos
51:48
and stop doing interviews because they were becoming
51:51
too popular for their comfort. I mean, that's
51:53
the complete opposite of what we have now when
51:56
people do the craziest shit to get noticed on
51:59
TikTok for 15 seconds. Do you think we could
52:01
ever bring this attitude back? I think it's already
52:06
happening in certain ways. Pitchfork, I believe
52:10
the last two albums of the years are not on Spotify.
52:13
So that seems like a very interesting thing where
52:18
musicians are realizing the less accessible they
52:21
make their music the more valuable it is but
52:24
are people still reading pitchfork do they have
52:27
an impact no but i think i think pitchfork it's
52:30
not necessarily the pitchfork was the only one
52:31
who appreciated these albums i think it was just
52:33
a sign of these are albums that that people care
52:36
about um right so i do think that there is a
52:41
sense of there's two I guess there's two parts
52:45
of selling out. There was the part of we don't
52:48
want to make our art look commercial. I think
52:52
it's very difficult right now. And it seems very
52:55
pretentious to be doing something where you're
52:58
like, we don't care about the money. We're just
52:59
doing it. Nobody really buys it. But then there's
53:02
another part, which was by making a music video,
53:05
you put your music in front of every teenager
53:12
in America. rather than specific people who really
53:15
cared about it or had an alternative radio station.
53:17
And so you were limiting distribution. The Pearl
53:21
Jam was saying, we don't want to be in front
53:23
of everybody. We only want to be in front of
53:25
these specific people who really care. And that
53:30
is something that is possible. I think people
53:33
are starting to do. And so there was an article.
53:38
It felt tongue in cheek, but I think there's
53:39
there's kind of a point to it that Kyle Chayka
53:42
did in the New Yorker a couple of months ago
53:44
that was saying low follower counts on social
53:47
media platforms is cool. It's like cool to have
53:50
a low follower count and a high follower count.
53:52
And I think it says something, which is just
53:55
that if you're somebody who's in the know, but
53:58
you're really bad at social media, you may actually
54:00
have very few followers. And if you're someone
54:03
who's really good at making viral video, but
54:06
you don't know anybody. you may have millions
54:08
of followers. And so people are starting to read
54:11
these numbers and notice that to get to a million,
54:15
you have to go far beyond just being a popular
54:18
person. You have to be someone, either you're
54:20
massively popular in the pop culture and people
54:22
are following you. But in most cases, if it's
54:25
somebody I've never heard of and they have a
54:26
million followers, it just means they're really,
54:28
really good at making online content. And that
54:32
is not a high status activity. And so I think
54:35
there's a sense that, Being a little more scarce
54:39
and just connecting with your group and being
54:42
hard to get. I mean, in fashion, it's everything.
54:45
But I think in pop culture, it's starting to
54:47
become a way, too. So I don't know if completely
54:50
not selling out or not seeming like you're commercial.
54:54
There's no value. There's no ideology that I
54:57
think it matches to at the moment. But I think
54:59
certainly limiting your distribution is something
55:04
that's going to happen more. There's a hopeful
55:07
note at the end of Blank Space where you say
55:09
that just a small vanguard of artists can potentially
55:12
turn around the value system within the space
55:16
of cultural production. However, I have to say
55:18
I'm a bit of a pessimist here because if I look
55:21
at who's creating art these days, who's being
55:24
creative, it's usually either Nepo babies or
55:28
trust fund kids with rich parents. The rest of
55:31
us are too busy trying to afford groceries. So
55:33
it does look pretty grim out there at the moment.
55:36
Yeah. I mean, I, I think that the, I mean, this
55:40
was a hard book to do in the sense that I spend
55:43
300 pages outlining, outlining these massive
55:46
structural reasons why everything has turned
55:49
out the way it is. And at the end to say, okay,
55:51
here's like five easy tips that you can do at
55:53
home to fix everything. So I don't want to be
55:56
naive about the challenges and, you know, Nepo
56:00
babies and rich kids and. People have mastered
56:06
the algorithm. They all have an advantage over
56:09
everyone else. I'm not going to take that away.
56:12
I would say, however, that if people get together
56:17
with this mindset, and it really does have to
56:19
be collective. It can't just be one person fighting
56:21
the system. If you have everybody with the mindset
56:26
that there's something rotten about these central
56:29
platforms. a rejection of the people who are
56:33
trying to be big on them and movement to something
56:37
else and a real support of that community, I
56:39
think that it could just organically move attention
56:42
away and make it seem less cool. And it's already
56:46
happening. I mean, just if you go to Instagram
56:48
compared to five years ago or six years ago,
56:51
six years ago, your Instagram was you watching
56:54
stories from everyone you know. And because of
56:58
that, everyone was posting stories. And so you
57:01
got to see everyone's lives and you could kind
57:03
of catch up with them. I would say now it's,
57:06
in my sense, in my case, I would say only 25
57:10
% of the people I know are really posting. And
57:12
then the platform itself is sending me just movie
57:15
clips or, you know, reels. I mean, it's just
57:19
the experience is completely different. The platform
57:22
itself has already had to adapt from the fact
57:25
that people are just not volunteering all this
57:27
content to it the way that they used to. They
57:29
are moving away. That people are moving away
57:31
from the platforms and living life somewhere
57:34
else that's maybe not for the screen. And so
57:38
the problem is everyone's moving away, but they
57:43
just consider their life away from Instagram
57:47
to be. lesser than the life that they're living
57:51
online or something. And that's the crazy part.
57:54
And that's what you have to have the mindset
57:55
flip about is that no, no, no. When we're off
57:58
of the platform and having fun and doing things
58:00
and making things, that is where the real culture
58:02
is. And this other thing is actually the fake
58:05
culture. So when the internet started, that's
58:08
what it was like because the internet was so
58:10
pathetic in just that it was mostly text and
58:14
really ugly. And so you would have some sort
58:17
of fake representation of reality on the internet.
58:21
People talking about, oh, we went to a show last
58:23
night and it was cool, but it didn't replace
58:26
the show itself. But at some point in the 2010s,
58:29
the internet replaced real life as society. And
58:35
so I think we have to, if we're going to abandon
58:37
the internet and go back to having real life
58:40
society, we just have to start feeling like that
58:42
is real life and that's where it's happening.
58:44
And I think that's the thing that would kickstart.
58:48
I think our ability to fight back against where
58:51
we are now. Yeah. I mean, even when we have real
58:56
life fun, now we have this kind of impulse, this,
59:00
you know, this diktat in our mind that we need
59:03
to record that we're having fun and we need to
59:05
blast it out on social media. Otherwise people
59:08
will think we're not having fun and we're living
59:11
lame lives. That's the really hard bit because
59:14
I recognize it within myself. I'm having fun
59:17
and I'm like, whoa, I need to record this. People
59:20
need to know that I have a cool life. It's depressing.
59:24
I would say in most cases that is true. I would
59:28
say there's also more a naive or simple thing,
59:31
which is just that I was on a plane. I just went
59:35
to Paris. On the way there, I flew thin air and
59:39
I flew over the North Pole. And at some point
59:41
they said, hey, you can see the aurora. in the
59:44
northern lights if you look out the window and
59:47
so i looked out the window and it's incredible
59:48
but then in the instantly it's like i gotta get
59:50
a photo of this of course and it's not just like
59:53
to post to be like look how cool i am that i
59:55
saw the aurora but it's you know i want to i
59:58
want to capture this and i want to show it to
1:00:00
my friends to be like it was really cool i was
1:00:02
on a plane i saw aurora so uh just the fact that
1:00:05
we have this tool that lets us permanently capture
1:00:08
things it's really tempting it's just it's a
1:00:10
lot to ask to say I'm going to go somewhere and
1:00:13
see something incredible. I'm not going to take
1:00:15
it with me forever. Well, David, thank you so
1:00:20
much for your time. The book is fantastic. I
1:00:23
recommend everybody get it and read it. Find
1:00:25
bookstores everywhere, I suppose. Thank you.
1:00:28
Yeah, it's a little bit hard to get outside of
1:00:32
the US, but I know they started distributing
1:00:34
it to the UK and you may have to order it from
1:00:38
the US, but it's out there. Yeah, I downloaded
1:00:42
it on Amazon. You can get like a Kindle version.
1:00:45
Yeah, that's very easy. Also, I went to the biggest
1:00:47
English bookshop in Tokyo here and they had it
1:00:50
as well, Kinokunaya. Oh, they did? Okay. Yeah,
1:00:52
they did. Yeah, exactly, in Shinjuku, yeah. Okay,
1:00:55
good. Okay. Yeah, that was cool. All right, David,
1:00:57
thanks a mil. Thank you. Thank you very much
1:01:01
for listening. Please subscribe to the podcast
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