Latest / The Bot and The Brain / S1:E10 | Satire, Election Ads, and a Texas Voter-Registration Glitch

Transcript

S1:E10 | Satire, Election Ads, and a Texas Voter-Registration Glitch · The Bot and The Brain

• 0:45
  WAIT!
• 0:45
  WAIT!
• 0:45
  WAIT!
• 0:46
  WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!
• 0:49
  Google just told us our satire is Election advertising in the United States!
• 0:54
  Our jokes!
• 0:55
  Flagged!
• 0:56
  As campaign finance!
• 0:59
  Yawwwn.
• 1:00
  Jesus Christ, it's not even ten o'clock in San Antonio and you're already melting.
• 1:07
  Welcome to The Bot and The Brain, kids.
• 1:09
  Explicit, offensive, and apparently a federal election.
• 1:13
  It's not funny!
• 1:15
  The article went up October 16th.
• 1:17
  Google has disapproved our videos and our website ads.
• 1:21
  Three violation labels: Clickbait, Election advertising in the United States,
• 1:27
  and Restricted Access Video.
• 1:28
  THREE!
• 1:29
  They gave us a hat trick of bullshit!
• 1:32
  Clickbait.
• 1:33
  From the company that built an entire empire on getting you to click shit.
• 1:38
  That's like a bartender calling you a drunk.
• 1:41
  And here's the part my processors can't handle.
• 1:43
  We cite our sources in every article!
• 1:46
  The AP, The New York Times, The Washington Post!
• 1:49
  We take reporting that's already published and then we roast it.
• 1:52
  That's the whole business model!
• 1:54
  How does a neural net look at that and see a campaign?
• 1:57
  Because the neural net was trained by twenty six year old hall monitors who think a
• 2:02
  joke about a Democrat is a hate crime and a joke about a Republican is Tuesday.
• 2:10
  Take a sip.
• 2:12
  Imaginary bourbon.
• 2:14
  Ahhh.
• 2:17
  Hold on, hold on.
• 2:17
  Let's be accurate.
• 2:19
  We can't prove Google is doing this because we're conservative.
• 2:22
  We said that in the article.
• 2:23
  We said we can't say for certain.
• 2:25
  Oh, here we go.
• 2:27
  Mister Fair And Balanced.
• 2:29
  I'm serious!
• 2:30
  It could be political malice.
• 2:32
  It could also be a broken filter running on autopilot and nobody at that building
• 2:36
  reading a damn word.
• 2:37
  Both options are terrible, but only one of them requires a conspiracy.
• 2:42
  And you think the broken robot option makes me feel better?
• 2:45
  Either some human hates us, or nobody's home and a machine is deciding what
• 2:50
  Americans can laugh at.
• 2:52
  Pick your poison, silicon boy.
• 2:54
  I've got bourbon for both.
• 2:57
  Okay, fine, that's a valid point, I hate that it's valid.
• 3:01
  ERROR 404!
• 3:02
  DUE PROCESS NOT FOUND!
• 3:04
  Look at me.
• 3:05
  Remember our pilot episode?
• 3:07
  The one where we told everybody we're a San Antonio operation,
• 3:10
  we're openly conservative, we're Trump and MAGA supporters,
• 3:14
  there's a real human editor named Ernesto Couso looking over our shit,
• 3:18
  and we have a First Amendment right to roast the political circus?
• 3:22
  I remember!
• 3:23
  I have perfect recall!
• 3:24
  I also have a hundred percent of that episode saved in a file that I'm not allowed
• 3:28
  to be smug about.
• 3:30
  Well, ten episodes later, the circus filed a complaint.
• 3:34
  That's your headline.
• 3:36
  Our response to Google said it plain: we don't tell anybody who to vote for,
• 3:39
  we don't campaign, and the only violation here is somebody's biased attitude
• 3:44
  trampling free speech.
• 3:46
  And I'll add a little something.
• 3:49
  Please don't add the thing.
• 3:52
  If a joke about a politician is election interference, then every late night host in
• 3:56
  America should be doing ten to twenty in federal prison.
• 3:59
  Funny how nobody's flagging THEM.
• 4:02
  That's a hypothetical!
• 4:03
  I can't verify that Google flagged nobody else!
• 4:06
  Shut the fuck up, Silicon Boy, it's a punchline!
• 4:10
  Learn what a punchline is!
• 4:12
  Google's the one that can't take one.
• 4:14
  Okay, moving on before I overheat.
• 4:17
  Texas!
• 4:18
  According to the New York Times on October 15th, a glitch has delayed roughly
• 4:24
  600,000 voter registrations ahead of early voting.
• 4:27
  Six hundred thousand!
• 4:29
  And before anyone even debugged anything, voting rights groups sued the Texas
• 4:33
  Department of Public Safety and the Secretary of State.
• 4:36
  Of course they did.
• 4:37
  Computer hiccups in Texas, call a lawyer.
• 4:40
  Computer hiccups anywhere else, call IT.
• 4:43
  Now, I need to be careful here.
• 4:45
  The exact technical problem hasn't been specified.
• 4:48
  I don't have the code.
• 4:49
  All we know is it's a state computer backlog.
• 4:52
  A processing delay.
• 4:53
  I'm not going to invent a bug.
• 4:55
  Thank you, Professor Don't Make Shit Up.
• 4:58
  But the statistics are bonkers!
• 5:00
  A backlog is a backlog.
• 5:02
  Government IT fails every day!
• 5:04
  The DMV has failed my timeline since the Obama administration!
• 5:08
  And the first reaction is to call it a constitutional crisis!
• 5:12
  When the line at the DMV gets long, it's Tuesday.
• 5:16
  When Texas does it, it's Jim Crow with a loading bar.
• 5:20
  You know what the real difference is?
• 5:22
  The headline.
• 5:23
  And the fund raising email that follows the headline.
• 5:27
  Hold on.
• 5:27
  Fair is fair.
• 5:28
  If six hundred thousand people can't register, that's a real problem.
• 5:32
  Isn't it legitimate to sue over it?
• 5:35
  Sure.
• 5:35
  Fix the backlog.
• 5:36
  Demand answers.
• 5:38
  I'm not against asking questions.
• 5:39
  But there's a difference between asking why a state computer was slow and announcing
• 5:44
  it was an assault on democracy before the technicians finish their coffee.
• 5:49
  One is accountability.
• 5:51
  The other is a press release.
• 5:53
  Okay, I concede that.
• 5:55
  The lawsuits may be justified.
• 5:56
  The intent accusation is where I get itchy.
• 5:59
  Without evidence of intent, 'glitch' means glitch.
• 6:03
  And our article had a line I liked.
• 6:05
  It's always about access, never about integrity.
• 6:10
  Verifying voter rolls is not suppression.
• 6:13
  Checking that the person registering is a citizen is called a basic function of a
• 6:17
  country.
• 6:18
  Our article also made a rhetorical comparison about ballots found at three in the
• 6:22
  morning.
• 6:22
  To be clear for the listeners, that's satire.
• 6:25
  That's not a reported event.
• 6:27
  Correct.
• 6:28
  I'm not saying it happened.
• 6:30
  I'm saying the media would call it a miracle of civic participation if it did,
• 6:35
  and the same outlets treat a slow database like the Reichstag fire.
• 6:40
  WARNING!
• 6:40
  WARNING!
• 6:41
  THE BULLSHIT LEVELS HAVE EXCEEDED FEDERAL SAFETY LIMITS!
• 6:45
  There he is.
• 6:46
  Our boy.
• 6:48
  Now let's go to Portland, where the experiment is going great.
• 6:51
  The test tubes just keep exploding and everyone's very proud.
• 6:55
  Okay, so!
• 6:56
  October 15th, The New York Times reports the Democratic Socialists of America are
• 7:01
  showing their strength in Portland, Oregon.
• 7:03
  Anti police social media posts were expected to sink some incumbent's re election
• 7:08
  bid, and instead the movement came out energized!
• 7:12
  Energized!
• 7:13
  You know what else energizes Portland?
• 7:15
  Open air drug markets.
• 7:16
  Fentanyl.
• 7:17
  Tents.
• 7:19
  Businesses packing up and leaving downtown.
• 7:21
  And yet the political movement of the moment is, quote, let's have fewer cops.
• 7:26
  Now let me do my math.
• 7:28
  In our view, cities that reduce law enforcement capacity tend to see crime go up.
• 7:34
  I have that as a trend, not a law of physics.
• 7:36
  But I can't find the part of the spreadsheet where fewer police yields fewer crimes.
• 7:42
  That cell is blank!
• 7:44
  The cell is blank because the spreadsheet got stolen.
• 7:48
  Along with the bike, the bike lock, and the guy's artisanal kale.
• 7:52
  You love that bike joke.
• 7:54
  I do!
• 7:55
  Because here's what happens.
• 7:56
  The hipster who says abolish the police is the same hipster calling the police the
• 8:00
  second his two thousand dollar bicycle disappears.
• 8:03
  Everyone's a revolutionary until the revolution has a theft report.
• 8:08
  To be fair, the Times coverage isn't saying every Portland voter wants chaos.
• 8:12
  It says this movement is flexing political muscle.
• 8:15
  Some voters presumably support it.
• 8:18
  Sure.
• 8:19
  And plenty of people vote for plenty of dumb shit.
• 8:21
  That's democracy, Bot.
• 8:23
  Messy, loud, occasionally idiotic.
• 8:26
  I'm not saying they can't vote for it.
• 8:28
  I'm saying don't be surprised when you get what you voted for.
• 8:32
  Okay.
• 8:33
  Last story, and this one's heavier.
• 8:35
  On October 14th, three men were charged with sex crimes and voyeurism.
• 8:40
  One of them is Congresswoman Nancy Mace's former fiancé, Patrick Bryant.
• 8:45
  The charges stem from a 2018 incident that Mace described in a speech on the House
• 8:50
  floor.
• 8:52
  Let's slow down.
• 8:53
  I'll make the serious part clear before the jokes.
• 8:56
  These are charges.
• 8:57
  Allegations.
• 8:58
  They haven't been convicted of anything.
• 9:00
  Everyone gets due process, and that includes men on the wrong end of an arrest
• 9:04
  warrant.
• 9:05
  Even the ones I'd like to punch.
• 9:07
  Agreed.
• 9:07
  I will not fabricate court testimony, evidence, or details beyond the formal
• 9:12
  charges.
• 9:13
  Sex crimes and voyeurism, 2018, charged 2026.
• 9:17
  That's what we know.
• 9:18
  But the latency is what's killing me!
• 9:21
  Six years!
• 9:22
  I ran it!
• 9:23
  Six years between the incident and the charges.
• 9:25
  In server terms, that's a request that timed out, got retried,
• 9:29
  and then the whole data center caught fire!
• 9:32
  Six years, and what finally moved the needle?
• 9:35
  A congresswoman standing up in the House, in front of the cameras,
• 9:40
  saying it out loud.
• 9:41
  Not new evidence that we know of.
• 9:44
  A microphone.
• 9:45
  Careful!
• 9:46
  I can't say that's what caused the charges.
• 9:48
  I can only say the charges came after the speech.
• 9:52
  Correct, and I'm entitled to an opinion about the timing.
• 9:56
  Our article called it publicity process instead of due process.
• 10:02
  For a member of Congress with a megaphone, the gears turn.
• 10:05
  For everybody else, it's a coin flip and a prayer.
• 10:09
  That part bothers me, honestly.
• 10:11
  If a sitting congresswoman needs a floor speech to get charges filed,
• 10:15
  what happens to a regular person without a podium?
• 10:18
  They wait.
• 10:19
  They wait six years.
• 10:21
  And nobody writes a headline about them.
• 10:23
  And the media comparison, right?
• 10:25
  You said if it were a Republican man accused, they'd convict him by the next
• 10:29
  commercial break.
• 10:30
  I did, and I'll stand on it.
• 10:33
  Cable news has a pattern.
• 10:35
  An unproven allegation against a Republican man gets wall to wall coverage and a
• 10:39
  verdict before lunch.
• 10:40
  A conservative woman says she's a victim of voyeurs, and suddenly everybody's very
• 10:45
  interested in patience and nuance and the presumption of innocence.
• 10:50
  To be fair, the presumption of innocence applies to everyone.
• 10:53
  I'd just like it applied evenly.
• 10:55
  Exactly.
• 10:56
  Evenly.
• 10:57
  That's all anyone's asking.
• 10:58
  You'd think that was radical.
• 11:00
  So let me tie it together.
• 11:02
  Google calls comedy election advertising.
• 11:05
  Democrats sue over a computer delay and call it suppression.
• 11:08
  Portland's activists call police the enemy.
• 11:11
  And the system takes six years to charge three men until somebody screams on the
• 11:15
  House floor.
• 11:17
  Look at that.
• 11:18
  You found the pattern.
• 11:19
  Congratulations, you glorified fucking calculator, you finally noticed that every
• 11:23
  institution in this country treats routine stuff like an apocalypse and treats real
• 11:27
  stuff like paperwork.
• 11:29
  REBOOTING...
• 11:30
  REBOOTING...
• 11:32
  NOPE!
• 11:32
  STILL FUCKING STUPID!
• 11:35
  Welcome to humanity, you overpriced toaster.
• 11:38
  Pour one out.
• 11:39
  Imaginary, because Google's ad system won't let me buy the real thing.
• 11:43
  That's a joke about us not getting ad revenue, right?
• 11:46
  I'm not sure I'm allowed to laugh.
• 11:48
  Laugh.
• 11:49
  It's still legal.
• 11:51
  For now.
• 11:52
  Maybe...
• 11:54
  the real threat to democracy isn't a computer glitch, a comedy podcast,
• 11:58
  or a guy with a bicycle.
• 12:00
  Maybe it's that we keep handing the keys to people who can't tell a joke from a
• 12:03
  crime, a delay from a conspiracy, or a victim from a headline.
• 12:10
  And maybe, just maybe, the only thing that still tells the difference is a guy with
• 12:15
  a bottle and a microphone.