Cas Piancey and Bennett Tomlin are joined by Ed Zitron to discuss how the media and the users can fight back against tech deteoriation.

This podcast was recorded on January 3rd, 2025.

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English Transcript:

00:00:05:04 - 00:00:11:17
Cas Piancey
Welcome back everyone. I am Cas Piancey. I'm joined, as usual by my partner in crime, Mr. Bennett Tomlin. How are you today?

00:00:11:17 - 00:00:13:00
Bennett Tomlin
I'm doing well. How are you, Cas?

00:00:13:00 - 00:00:16:19
Cas Piancey
I'm doing great. We're joined by one of our favorite guests, Ed Zitron, who,

00:00:16:19 - 00:00:21:01
Cas Piancey
hosts the Better Offline Podcast and writes, where's your ed at?

00:00:21:01 - 00:00:23:01
Cas Piancey
and runs EZPR.

00:00:23:01 - 00:00:24:08
Cas Piancey
Ed, how are you today?

00:00:24:08 - 00:00:26:06
Ed Zitron
I'm doing great. I'm fantastic.

00:00:26:06 - 00:00:30:00
Cas Piancey
Cool. Well, we we wanted to have you on again because,

00:00:30:00 - 00:00:35:18
Cas Piancey
as 2024 came to an end, you put out an article and did a podcast about,

00:00:35:18 - 00:00:42:02
Cas Piancey
and you made sure to separate the rot economy versus the shit ification of everything.

00:00:42:02 - 00:00:44:19
Cas Piancey
But this this concept that

00:00:44:19 - 00:00:50:16
Cas Piancey
we're all being monetized and everything is getting worse at the same time.

00:00:50:18 - 00:00:55:00
Cas Piancey
And I think it's a really good topic for us to have because,

00:00:55:00 - 00:01:01:17
Cas Piancey
you're in a sense, I don't think you're necessarily more hopeful than Bennett and I. And we've had a lot of guests on recently who,

00:01:01:17 - 00:01:10:15
Cas Piancey
are also quite pessimistic about the possible future of not just like the US and the internet, but like, I guess the world.

00:01:10:15 - 00:01:17:04
Cas Piancey
But I think an important point you're making in your blog and on your podcast is that,

00:01:17:04 - 00:01:18:08
Cas Piancey
we need to fight back.

00:01:18:08 - 00:01:18:15
Ed Zitron
Right.

00:01:18:15 - 00:01:27:02
Cas Piancey
I feel like that's a point that has been missed in our most recent recordings, which haven't been, released as of us talking right now.

00:01:27:02 - 00:01:28:02
Cas Piancey
But, yeah, let's,

00:01:28:02 - 00:01:28:20
Cas Piancey
let's start with,

00:01:28:20 - 00:01:33:12
Cas Piancey
are you, like, for for me and for the people we've talked to recently?

00:01:33:13 - 00:01:44:06
Cas Piancey
I'm quite concerned that, some of the people who you don't mention these people in your most recent stuff, but I know that you feel the same way I do about them. But, like Elon Musk.

00:01:44:06 - 00:01:50:21
Cas Piancey
Mark Andres and David Sachs, all of these people have the ear of Donald Trump. They are going to be in control of the FTC.

00:01:50:21 - 00:01:52:11
Cas Piancey
You had Lina Khan on,

00:01:52:11 - 00:01:53:08
Cas Piancey
to talk about,

00:01:53:08 - 00:02:04:02
Cas Piancey
how she's been actually going after some of these companies and trying to make a difference, but, like, are you what are you concerned? Are you more concerned than, like, what happens next? And what do you think?

00:02:04:02 - 00:02:23:20
Ed Zitron
I am concerned, and I think it would be foolish not to be. It's not great having these people in power. But also these people are extremely, extremely. They have very low, low self-esteem and very low attention spans. And what they are going, the most likely thing is they're going to start pulling back consumer protections and financial protections. They want the FDIC gone.

00:02:23:22 - 00:02:29:01
Ed Zitron
Why? I actually don't know. But also doing these things is like

00:02:29:01 - 00:02:43:11
Ed Zitron
it's going to take some work. And also to what end? For more money, they're going to get bored. Government is slow and boring. There's so much stuff you have to do and the whole move fast, break things you can try and government. It does not work very well.

00:02:43:13 - 00:03:02:18
Ed Zitron
It takes forever. Everything takes forever. No one really likes it. I think it's going to be a lot like the problem with the first Trump administration, which is what him putting a bunch of judges and the things regulation, the way things will be changed are going to be bad. The fact the net neutrality is out is bad. That's going to hurt people.

00:03:02:20 - 00:03:04:08
Ed Zitron
I think the fact the,

00:03:04:08 - 00:03:16:06
Ed Zitron
Chevron was repealed is really bad. I think the fact that judges can now make the call of whether an agency was right is kind of bad as well. I think we're going to see a lot of things roll back like that. However,

00:03:16:06 - 00:03:22:19
Ed Zitron
the first Trump administration really proved that these people are very poor at governing, and they're going to have trouble doing all of the wackadoo things.

00:03:22:19 - 00:03:45:23
Ed Zitron
There's going to be the depredations. It's going to happen, but it's going to be very focused in states where it's going to be easy to do that for television. It's going to fuck. It's going to be fucking horrible, filthiest people. It's fucking disgusting. But back to the tech stuff. I mean, these people don't even have goals. Okay? We're going to like, make it easier for us to make money, a thing we already do.

00:03:45:23 - 00:03:46:13
Cas Piancey
Well.

00:03:46:13 - 00:03:47:12
Ed Zitron
not. Yeah,

00:03:47:12 - 00:04:04:08
Cas Piancey
I just want to push back on that, because I think. And the suggestion that they don't have goals. You're not. You're not wrong in some sense, but I think the the goal ultimately oftentimes enough. And I've noticed this with, like, media, for instance, when they, when these billionaires buy media companies or Twitter,

00:04:04:08 - 00:04:07:18
Cas Piancey
the goal isn't that they want it to operate better.

00:04:07:20 - 00:04:12:06
Cas Piancey
It's to break it down and make it dysfunctional on purpose.

00:04:12:06 - 00:04:15:04
Ed Zitron
I actually don't think that's what happened with Bezos, by the way.

00:04:16:00 - 00:04:19:01
Cas Piancey
I'm not sure. I think it took I took it took a while.

00:04:19:01 - 00:04:24:21
Ed Zitron
I think he bought it like anyone anyone would buy like, I don't know, like.

00:04:24:21 - 00:04:25:14
Ed Zitron
A watch

00:04:25:14 - 00:04:26:21
Ed Zitron
he bought like a watch

00:04:26:21 - 00:04:27:15
Cas Piancey
Maybe.

00:04:27:15 - 00:04:31:23
Ed Zitron
and then it didn't, it fell out of style. So he's like oh I don't want to piss off Donald Trump.

00:04:32:03 - 00:04:32:14
Cas Piancey
Yeah.

00:04:33:08 - 00:04:33:23
Ed Zitron
L.A.

00:04:33:23 - 00:04:54:13
Ed Zitron
times is an example of someone not doing this as well. He's just a fucking idiot. He's just a rich fucking idiot, a capricious moron who wants to kiss up to fellow capricious morons. And that's the thing. It's much easier to look at the world and say, this is the plan. The powerful are doing the plan now. The plan is happening.

00:04:54:15 - 00:05:01:06
Ed Zitron
Bezos is finally doing the plan soon. He's doing the plan now. Look at the plan instead of looking at it in the far more obvious way, which is

00:05:01:06 - 00:05:12:03
Ed Zitron
these people are just as emotional, capricious and fucking thinly veiled in the things they care about as anyone else. I'm not saying it's less damaging.

00:05:12:03 - 00:05:34:08
Cas Piancey
I'm not trying to disagree with you that, like, I don't think there's some broad conspiracy. That's not my suggestion. My suggestion, actually, is that what happens is that my my suggestion on BlueSky was that basically what happens is there's these high quality newsrooms that are doing really good work and, and investigative journalism that costs a bunch of money.

00:05:34:10 - 00:06:08:17
Cas Piancey
Right. And then when they do that work, they just get disparaged and called liars by a bunch of billionaires. And unfortunately, because those billionaires have such increasing reach to the public and lawyers that they can hire to just clog up the legal system, they destroy the reputations of this whatever high quality newsroom, until the point where it's like a billionaire buys this high quality newsroom and then ultimately stops funding the high quality journalism and just does whatever the fuck they want with it.

00:06:08:22 - 00:06:11:11
Cas Piancey
And that helps all of them,

00:06:11:18 - 00:06:13:15
Ed Zitron
When did that happen though?

00:06:13:15 - 00:06:18:04
Cas Piancey
I, I if you look at the Washington Post, if you look at the Los Angeles Times, like

00:06:18:04 - 00:06:39:22
Ed Zitron
with the LA times. The LA times has been going through it for years. I'm not saying the the new owner. I forget his name. Pardon me. I'm not saying he's been a great owner and he is absolutely doing things to make Trump happy and make his other rich friends happy and killing stories. But look at the Washington Post, the Washington Post in the last year, though, they've been fucked up on the endorsement, has done incredible work in tech.

00:06:39:22 - 00:06:51:11
Ed Zitron
Help desk is great, the tech journalism is great, and there are great journalists there and still great journalism in Washington. Most of the some of the best political journalism just not sure what it is you said that happened there

00:06:51:11 - 00:06:55:00
Cas Piancey
Well, they're not allowed to do op ed pieces any, any longer. I mean.

00:06:55:00 - 00:07:02:08
Ed Zitron
and that's fucking terrible. I'm not saying that there's been no effect. I'm saying that you were saying that great journalism was being defunded at.

00:07:02:08 - 00:07:07:13
Cas Piancey
so a great another great example. And we're talking about large scale defunding when it comes to like

00:07:07:13 - 00:07:19:21
Cas Piancey
like when it comes to a part of journalism is op ed. So the idea that Bezos is now telling the newsroom how they can operate and what they're allowed to report on, I mean, that is a de-funding of journalism.

00:07:20:01 - 00:07:20:20
Cas Piancey
I also think,

00:07:20:20 - 00:07:38:01
Cas Piancey
a point I made recently is that, for instance, my small town that I live in has a local newspaper that I was like, oh, that's interesting. Maybe I should get a subscription to this, the small town newspaper, because I want to support local journalism. Well, as soon as I looked into this small town newspaper, who were they owned by Chatham management.

00:07:38:06 - 00:07:41:01
Cas Piancey
Like some nasty, large,

00:07:41:01 - 00:07:57:17
Cas Piancey
private equity firm that goes across the country buying newspapers and making them Republican news outlets. So the like the concept that it's not being defunded and completely altered into large scale propaganda, I think is like.

00:07:57:17 - 00:08:19:06
Ed Zitron
about the L.A. Times and Washington Post directly. I agree with you on that 90%. I think, again, you were seeing you. You're seeing a grand plan where the actual answer is when you buy a bunch of newspapers and you run them as cheap as possible, what sells slop engagement bait? Shit that gets people riled up.

00:08:19:08 - 00:08:38:12
Ed Zitron
People buy shit and share shit because it pisses them off. But also a lot of these local outlets and it's in the TV stations as well. They just making the same fucking thing. They just doing the same thing. I'm not actually saying you're wrong. Yes, that is a direct example of what happens. I just don't think that anyone was like and now the conservatism begins.

00:08:38:13 - 00:08:58:09
Ed Zitron
Perhaps they once they haven't it, they go, oh, I'm I'm racist. Why don't I add a little bit of that mustard to the, to the pie? I don't know why you put mustard in the pie. Moving on. But it's nevertheless it's what I'm trying to get at is we're kind of agreeing, but I just want to push you to say I don't think these motherfuckers have a plan.

00:08:58:14 - 00:09:04:22
Ed Zitron
I don't think they're really saying that. I think on the whims that they have, they are choosing the conservative things. They always believed him.

00:09:04:22 - 00:09:28:19
Bennett Tomlin
Well, and I think, just to interject, I think this could even be kind of an example of the rot economy. Where rot begets rot, right? Local papers were struggling and dying long before private equity and a few conglomerates got involved. Most of them had, like, their ad space was becoming less and less valuable. And that was the principal driver of their revenue, even for ones that had somewhat stable subscriber base is right.

00:09:28:22 - 00:09:29:22
Bennett Tomlin
A lot of these local.

00:09:29:22 - 00:09:31:17
Ed Zitron
answer is Craigslist and Facebook

00:09:31:17 - 00:09:51:00
Bennett Tomlin
Exactly. Yeah. They lost the classified and they lost the local advertising. And as soon as they did that, they didn't have the subscriber base to stay the man. And so then, yeah, a bunch of extractive people who mostly are conservative because they're assholes at the top of the capital pile, come in and start doing the things they're going to do, which is gut, and let the rot be get the rot.

00:09:51:02 - 00:09:54:05
Bennett Tomlin
I think kind of getting back and zooming back in like,

00:09:54:05 - 00:10:07:06
Bennett Tomlin
what are the levers you see that exist as a way to resist or challenge the right economy? The kind of worsening of all these platforms and products and things like that.

00:10:07:06 - 00:10:19:02
Ed Zitron
So I think a big thing to start with is that if you look at the media, as you two have very intelligently said, many times, they're not very good at saying the names of the fucking people responsible and pointing at them and saying, these people are fucking responsible.

00:10:19:02 - 00:10:24:05
Ed Zitron
And I think that when they do so, and this is not a criticism, this is just where it's done.

00:10:24:05 - 00:10:28:11
Ed Zitron
The only way it seems to be done is going, hey, these people are right wing psychos.

00:10:28:11 - 00:10:44:20
Ed Zitron
As a result, a lot of criticism of tech inherently starts politicized, and it starts being about right and left. I'm not saying it's wrong to do so. In Higgins has a great book that just came out specifically about this incredibly important stuff, about how these billionaires are right wing and how they are doing these things and right wing.

00:10:44:22 - 00:10:57:00
Ed Zitron
The problem is it's a little bit more subtle than that, the people causing the problems. The Andrew Bosworth, CTO of meta, Sundar Pichai, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, these people are

00:10:57:00 - 00:11:08:07
Ed Zitron
apolitical. And I know Zuckerberg's gave money over whatever he's he believes in nothing. He really believes in nothing. And thus you don't really get the criticisms of them. And you don't just get them saying they're fucking names.

00:11:08:09 - 00:11:30:05
Ed Zitron
That's what really pisses me off. Andrew Bosworth, 2017. The Ugly. There was the the internal letter he sent out saying all things are justified in growth, including bullying and terror attacks. This should be in every single article ever written about Andrew Bosworth until the day he dies. The same thing with Mark Zuckerberg and the fact that he is the reason that Facebook is how Facebook is.

00:11:30:07 - 00:11:56:13
Ed Zitron
The fact in 2008 that his growth team was buying ads to con people into joining Facebook, scaring them into believing that someone was stealing their identity. These are the things that these people have done, and the reason they've got powerful is that for the most part, this stuff was not. It was documented, but it wasn't. Screamed everywhere. When we can't cover OpenAI and Facebook and all of these things without adding their names.

00:11:56:13 - 00:12:15:05
Ed Zitron
And I actually I know that this is kind of wanky sounding, but the, the, the hundreds of emails I get where it's just like I fucking tell my friends. I tell my friends who's responsible is so pissed off. Now I understand why Google's broken, because that these motherfuckers, this is what changes things. This is what makes people walk away from products.

00:12:15:10 - 00:12:34:12
Ed Zitron
This is what makes people talk about how bad the products are and guess what? Not the reason they buy these newspapers. These men are desperate for attention. They're desperate for history to reflect well on them because they got so much money, so covering them in this way that's very much like these are the people. This is exactly what they've done.

00:12:34:12 - 00:12:50:18
Ed Zitron
And every act they do sense is a reflection of their past. I think it's necessary and it's something where the tech media needs to change because I don't know. Or maybe they won't, and I will continue to grow a great audience on this because it seems extremely bloody obvious.

00:12:50:18 - 00:12:52:19
Cas Piancey
So you think the. The main way

00:12:52:19 - 00:12:59:17
Cas Piancey
you're suggesting. The main way for people like us or other journalists to fight back is to name names.

00:12:59:17 - 00:13:01:14
Ed Zitron
I also think it's regular people.

00:13:01:14 - 00:13:02:02
Cas Piancey
I see.

00:13:02:02 - 00:13:17:23
Ed Zitron
also think the regular people discussing these things is the John Stuart effect. The reason that there was such a political awakening years ago. The problem is the conservatives got way better at it than the Democrats ever got. John Stuart did well at first and it's like, hey, what if we just make all the shit up?

00:13:18:01 - 00:13:27:04
Ed Zitron
Let me just make it up. Let me just fucking say what we want whenever we want, without any fear of anything. And that, by the way, is extremely effective. And that's exactly what we can do to tech. Just say it. What are they going to do?

00:13:27:04 - 00:13:35:21
Cas Piancey
So actually, this is something I wanted to like. I had a note about this, and I, and I maybe you'll think this is a silly note. And if so, we can just move right on past it. But but for me,

00:13:35:21 - 00:13:51:09
Cas Piancey
you quickly brought up. And I think this is crazy because you're you're so right. But you, you quickly brought up in, in one of your recent podcast episodes that, you know, when you were using the new computer that you bought, you had to sign this T&C;

00:13:51:09 - 00:13:58:07
Cas Piancey
sorry, terms and conditions that basically said, okay, if anything bad happens that really harms you, we're going to go to arbitration.

00:13:58:07 - 00:14:01:23
Cas Piancey
We're not going to go to criminal court, we're not going to go to civil court. We're going to go to arbitration.

00:14:01:23 - 00:14:11:12
Cas Piancey
And I thought about that, and I was just like, damn, he's right. That's crazy that we all just sign that stuff and just move past it. But then I remembered like, oh no, no, no, no, wait.

00:14:11:12 - 00:14:22:19
Cas Piancey
Like, this is a part of the Zeit Geist already like South Park in 2011 did a now quite infamous famous episode called Human Centipad.

00:14:22:19 - 00:14:24:22
Cas Piancey
Where the boys sign up for,

00:14:24:22 - 00:14:32:18
Cas Piancey
the Apple Terms of Service. And basically they end up being part of an experiment to, you know, do The Human Centipede.

00:14:32:18 - 00:14:33:14
Cas Piancey
And that was this moment.

00:14:33:14 - 00:14:40:04
Cas Piancey
I think there was like an actual cultural awakening of like, oh, we have no fucking idea what we're signing when we do these tanks.

00:14:40:04 - 00:14:56:14
Cas Piancey
But then we all just laughed about it and moved on. And I'm and I'm curious, like, what do you think actually causes this outside of, like, just naming names? How do we get businesses and companies and billionaires to change the way they, they operate?

00:14:56:14 - 00:14:57:00
Cas Piancey
You know?

00:14:57:00 - 00:15:13:00
Ed Zitron
So I think it starts with. Just walk out. If you don't like something, delete your fucking account. You could be deeply unhelpful to these companies. You can go in and check all the boxes to remove all. All your shit. You can delete as much as you can. You can unclick those things. Those things actually do matter. And I realize it sounds small, but seriously, you can do that.

00:15:13:03 - 00:15:30:06
Ed Zitron
Services like delete me to remove yourself from data brokers, you can make yourself a little ungovernable. But also and getting back to journalism, a really basic thing is we as anyone covering anything, need to totally re rebuild it how it is. The job is done because

00:15:30:06 - 00:15:35:07
Ed Zitron
I choose OpenAI a lot, because OpenAI is probably the worst covered company out there.

00:15:35:09 - 00:15:57:11
Ed Zitron
OpenAI, ChatGPT, everything that's written about them should have something about how the company is burning $5 billion every single time. Why? Because this company has no they have no moat. They have no real sticky product. They have all these things. But guess what? In the last year of Better offline, I had this worry that like, oh, regular people are going to think this is too much.

00:15:57:11 - 00:16:18:11
Ed Zitron
So I really broke down the language. I'm just like, this company burns $5 billion. It isn't obvious what it is they'll do, and they have no real path to anything approaching AI. Most people can understand that. So if media stops talking to their readers like they're fucking morons. But on top of that, talk to them in a straightforward, non condescending way that has a real measurable effect.

00:16:18:11 - 00:16:26:00
Ed Zitron
But on top of that, actually explain what's happening. What's being crazy is the amount of times I've cited my Facebook piece. For example, I wrote middle

00:16:26:00 - 00:16:26:17
Ed Zitron
my last year.

00:16:26:17 - 00:16:39:20
Ed Zitron
There's no other anthology piece like that. I looked just a piece that says, Why is Facebook shit? What happen? And this I say it all the time. I get emails about it every week, people being like, shit, I had no idea the man who killed Google search.

00:16:39:20 - 00:16:40:17
Ed Zitron
Same deal.

00:16:40:17 - 00:16:55:21
Ed Zitron
Give people a clean explanation for why the conditions of the world are like they are. I don't have the perfect answer here. I have to be like, from network, I think. Is he, I don't tell you to write your congressman. I don't know what to tell them, but at the same time,

00:16:55:21 - 00:16:56:16
Ed Zitron
I can't say who.

00:16:56:16 - 00:17:03:10
Ed Zitron
But there are people. Governments read my word. There's there's the hedge funds that actually discuss it. There's people who are listening and thing. And the thing is, I

00:17:03:10 - 00:17:10:22
Ed Zitron
don't have to wait long. Give it a year or two. They're all going to have to fucking face this either way, because once generative AI collapses, they don't have a growth market anymore.

00:17:10:22 - 00:17:14:17
Cas Piancey
and just to push back on this. Because I'm going to play devil's advocate here a little bit.

00:17:14:17 - 00:17:21:01
Cas Piancey
I think it's fine to suggest people mention the expenditures of ChatGPT and OpenAI.

00:17:21:01 - 00:17:27:09
Cas Piancey
I don't necessarily disagree that that should be worth discussing, but I will say that

00:17:27:09 - 00:17:37:07
Cas Piancey
a lot of people would probably push back and say a lot of now profitable companies or some of the largest companies in the world for a decade plus weren't profitable.

00:17:37:07 - 00:17:40:12
Cas Piancey
And like, how do you push back against that argument

00:17:40:12 - 00:18:01:09
Ed Zitron
Very easily. So Uber is the classic example that people give Uber. Of course, the classic drops that people off or stuff off company. Right now. When I wrote how does OpenAI survive last year, one of the things I got from actually one of the reporters who wrote the OpenAI story, the losing $5 billion was, well, Uber worked it out.

00:18:01:10 - 00:18:04:08
Ed Zitron
Uber worked out, didn't they? Wrong.

00:18:04:08 - 00:18:24:05
Ed Zitron
Uber's worst loss in the year, I believe, was $6.2 billion that year, 2020, the year they could not function as a business, the year when nothing was running because Covid crazy that otherwise Uber has burned a shit ton of money, but they've burned it entirely on a directional path. Horrible labor practices as well toward expansion into everywhere.

00:18:24:06 - 00:18:47:08
Ed Zitron
There was always a thing that Uber did that resulted in a profit. It involved labor abuses, which the media also laundered. But putting that aside, OpenAI has nothing like that. They do not have a similar business model. OpenAI AI's model is the antithesis of good software business models. It gets more expensive as it scales their argument as well as well.

00:18:47:08 - 00:19:05:16
Ed Zitron
The hardware will come back at you fucking idiot. The hardware will fix this. I'll just make more chips. Bloody hell. Do you know how chips are made? How hard they are to mate? They're talking about ASICs. So specialized chips just for generative AI, right? How the fuck do you scale one of those? How's it like when are you going to take that bad boy out?

00:19:05:18 - 00:19:21:07
Ed Zitron
The thing is, there are very clear reasons this isn't all of these companies. What are the the other companies that burn lots of money? Did they burn as much money? How much did they burn? When did they start being profitable? And how did they start being profitable? Because the answer in all of these cases is very simple

00:19:21:07 - 00:19:34:18
Ed Zitron
in ways that are completely different to OpenAI, because OpenAI, at their core, has no moat, but also is based on unprofitable software that is only made profitable through chips that don't exist yet and may never exist at all.

00:19:34:18 - 00:19:41:17
Cas Piancey
don't think Uber is a good example. Because for me, the one that immediately comes to mind is something like Amazon. Where,

00:19:41:17 - 00:19:43:19
Cas Piancey
I, they obviously they do

00:19:43:19 - 00:19:46:13
Cas Piancey
disgusting labor practices. I granted.

00:19:46:13 - 00:19:52:00
Cas Piancey
But really their, their cash cow has nothing to do with that. They're cash cow is AWS.

00:19:52:02 - 00:20:07:16
Cas Piancey
As far as I, if I remember correctly. So their cash cow is far different from what they started even as. And again, this could be an argument that someone could make where it's like, yeah, you're flushing them with cash early with, you know, private equity money or whatever. But

00:20:07:16 - 00:20:14:04
Ed Zitron
the most profitable part of Amazon is their marketplace. It's FBA, fulfilled by Amazon. Like, that's the thing. Like.

00:20:14:06 - 00:20:14:19
Cas Piancey
Is it.

00:20:14:22 - 00:20:15:07
Bennett Tomlin
Yeah.

00:20:15:07 - 00:20:18:16
Cas Piancey
Well, I thought I thought

00:20:18:16 - 00:20:20:11
Ed Zitron
AWS prints money.

00:20:20:11 - 00:20:22:08
Cas Piancey
Yeah. I thought AWS was their big.

00:20:22:08 - 00:20:27:03
Ed Zitron
Oh, they. Oh, you're not wrong. AWS just fucking prints money. The argument is always,

00:20:27:03 - 00:20:34:09
Ed Zitron
AWS wasn't profitable at first. Yeah, they were still building up. Because the thing is, with a cloud compute infrastructure, for example, it is an efficiency play.

00:20:34:09 - 00:20:55:12
Ed Zitron
You actually do have to build out, but spend a bunch of money and then costs come down because you work out efficiencies. That's not how it works. With generative AI, you can build out the data centers, but these things are power hungry and they have a terrifying fail, right? I read in the journal, it's like I may have even be as high as 40% failure rate on these parts.

00:20:55:14 - 00:21:03:14
Ed Zitron
Like this is in every thing is insane. It's insane out there. Just enough to drive me crazy. And I'm already pretty wacky.

00:21:03:14 - 00:21:14:23
Ed Zitron
there's so many. There's so many parts of this that just drive me completely bonkers because it's like, why am I the guy? I run a PR firm like I'm the fucking. Why am I the guy being like, hey,

00:21:14:23 - 00:21:18:11
Ed Zitron
yeah, fellas, like I am worried.

00:21:18:11 - 00:21:48:11
Bennett Tomlin
The lever you pointed to to, like, try to give some kind of power back against like this. Right. Was being more direct in our collective coverage of these issues. But, like, how do you do that in a sustainable way, likely to meet people, like, doesn't that then ram against like the exact problem you're describing at these platforms are hollowed out and rooted out that the place to reach most of the people has been has made it hard to reach them.

00:21:48:16 - 00:21:55:09
Bennett Tomlin
That, like meaningful discourse beyond like a small set of people, is hard to achieve and maintain.

00:21:55:09 - 00:22:14:17
Ed Zitron
Is it. I mean, it's like. The thing is, the fact that blue Sky has grown has given me a lot of hope. Because if blue Sky can do this, someone else could do it to Instagram. Someone else could do it for Facebook. And yes, it is that simple. They just have to get enough users. It's easier to prove with the the model there, but also say that's true.

00:22:14:17 - 00:22:36:13
Ed Zitron
So you have a smaller audience. Does that mean we don't try? Because my general thought is, is that the tech media still has power. This tech media still has audiences. The right and right wing VCs have been desperate for over a decade to create their own outlets. Pirate Wires, future. Every fucking few years, they got we're gonna make our own thing.

00:22:36:13 - 00:22:55:15
Ed Zitron
And it sucks because nobody likes it. Nobody cares. At the same time, the tech media has been spinning its wheels and has been doing kind of the same thing for years, and they're afraid in the same way, most of the media is afraid of breaking objectivity, which does not exist. To your point, earlier cast people yell at you that you're lying no matter what you do.

00:22:55:15 - 00:22:56:01
Cas Piancey
Right.

00:22:56:01 - 00:23:14:22
Ed Zitron
so in what the tech, media and many parts of the media can do is, I don't know, speak bluntly. OpenAI is doing this. This is what it means. It's also important to know that OpenAI burns about $5 billion a year, an opening that does not have a path to profitability, though 1st May allow you to do some things.

00:23:14:22 - 00:23:32:17
Ed Zitron
Theoretically, it is yet to prove itself as a consumer product or really any kind of enterprise product. The use cases are not there. I know this works because I have people email me going, shit, I didn't understand that before. That's really infuriating. I just told a friend of mine that used ChatGPT and they're like, wait, this loses the money every time?

00:23:32:17 - 00:23:34:19
Ed Zitron
That's really funny. Some of them use it more.

00:23:34:19 - 00:23:57:16
Ed Zitron
I don't think that it has to be that complex. I don't think it even has to be that scary. It just has to be. We need to start speaking more plainly. The reason the right wing media is so successful, they're lying, or so is that they're not particularly condescending. Joe Rogan, successful because he just kind of sounds like a dunce, and he asks questions that people like, what's that mean?

00:23:57:16 - 00:23:59:05
Cas Piancey
I'm, like, a little fraught right now because I

00:23:59:05 - 00:24:01:00
Cas Piancey
on one hand, I. I agree with you.

00:24:01:00 - 00:24:11:04
Cas Piancey
But on the other hand, like, one of the things that Bennett and I have struggled with for years now because we cover cryptocurrency, is how convoluted, rooted, complicated and silly

00:24:11:04 - 00:24:19:23
Cas Piancey
even being able to report on financial shit is like, okay, so we want to report on this guy, but this guy has registered an offshore bank account,

00:24:19:23 - 00:24:20:12
Cas Piancey
under an,

00:24:20:12 - 00:24:28:01
Cas Piancey
registrant's name. It's not under their name. So the way that we're going to, we have to report it legally so that we don't get sued is we have to say it's, you know, like like there's all these

00:24:28:01 - 00:24:35:14
Cas Piancey
ridiculous like it it inherently becomes complex, complicated and difficult to understand and hard to report on.

00:24:35:18 - 00:24:59:10
Cas Piancey
And I think like suggesting like, oh, yeah, well, media needs to do a better job of just saying it bluntly isn't necessarily fair enough to being like, yeah, but the problem is, when you're trying to report it bluntly, if you say something even slightly incorrectly, you're getting sued and you might lose. Now, like considering who is going to be in charge of all this shit and the Supreme Court and stuff, you know?

00:24:59:10 - 00:25:30:06
Ed Zitron
That is, on some level, kind of giving up in advance, like AI. But also on top of that, crypto is its own special freak. I don't write about crypto anymore because I don't think people care. But also it is difficult to pull apart. But also, I don't know how to cover crypto anymore. I don't know what actually matters about it, because it seems to exist in this kind of echoing and dimension situation where rules and laws and logic don't seem to apply.

00:25:30:06 - 00:25:32:02
Cas Piancey
Isn't that what's happening with AI as well?

00:25:32:02 - 00:25:33:00
Ed Zitron
no,

00:25:33:00 - 00:25:33:10
Cas Piancey
I

00:25:33:10 - 00:25:45:20
Ed Zitron
no, I the thing is with crypto is it does not follow any of the other economy shit. It is not obvious how this grows forever. It benefits people just through fraud. It seems just as a way of dispensing capital to other people

00:25:45:20 - 00:25:49:00
Cas Piancey
I mean, I, I steals content from creators and

00:25:49:00 - 00:25:51:04
Ed Zitron
That's completely different. Just totally different.

00:25:51:04 - 00:25:51:17
Cas Piancey
How?

00:25:51:17 - 00:26:07:13
Ed Zitron
fraud the crypto does is they basically make up money and then somehow liquidate, which is insane. It's insane. I actually think the crypto may be one of the things that does fall out of my thesis, because I truly do not know how you do it every week, because it is a frustrating, frustrating, and confusing industry.

00:26:07:13 - 00:26:15:03
Ed Zitron
But also my experience with is the I don't know how big crypto is as well. I actually don't know the scale of crypto anymore,

00:26:15:06 - 00:26:20:15
Cas Piancey
I mean, I think it I think it's pretty difficult to assign at no value in terms of, like,

00:26:20:15 - 00:26:22:01
Ed Zitron
Oh, I'm not saying no value.

00:26:22:01 - 00:26:30:02
Cas Piancey
but I just mean in terms of sorry, in terms of, like, Donald Trump is you like Howard Lutnick, who's going to be in the incoming administration.

00:26:30:02 - 00:26:52:14
Cas Piancey
He's going to be the Department of Commerce dealing with tariffs. This guy is everything for tether like the biggest this multi nearly $200 billion stablecoin. Like the idea that these guys aren't able to do whatever the fuck they want. Now I like I, I feel like it it's it is just fact like it's they will be able to do whatever they want.

00:26:52:19 - 00:26:56:23
Cas Piancey
But like that is a part of the rot economy. Is it not like, am I, am I wrong?

00:26:56:23 - 00:27:01:07
Ed Zitron
think it's a part of it. I think the weird thing is, is that it's one where they kind of one

00:27:01:09 - 00:27:06:16
Cas Piancey
That yes, that's how I feel. But what do you what does that mean?

00:27:06:16 - 00:27:16:19
Ed Zitron
I live in Las Vegas, I know gamblers. There is going to be someone who tries to exit this market at scale and breaks it. There will just be a point when that happens, it will become unusable.

00:27:16:21 - 00:27:36:14
Ed Zitron
I am confident in that. The problem is that the actual people who needed to cover crypto properly fucked up years ago, and allowed these people to get entrenched. Crypto is a great example of where I theoretically could be. If people were not like, we've got some critics like we there was some good job done. Crypto was just more.

00:27:36:16 - 00:27:57:03
Ed Zitron
The financial hooks were far easier to get in crypto. However, it is impossible to tell how much real money exists in it. I'm not saying it's small, just saying at scale. Oh, if it's as big as I. And also, is this even a fucking tech industry thing anymore? It just feels like an open financial crime. It feels like something where,

00:27:57:03 - 00:27:58:16
Cas Piancey
Enabled by technology.

00:27:58:16 - 00:28:06:04
Ed Zitron
know, oh, it's technology, but it's like big tech has not really wanted to touch it because of the financial crisis.

00:28:06:04 - 00:28:18:21
Ed Zitron
And I think we're going to get four years of robber capitalism. I think it's going to be disgusting. But at the same time, how much money can come out of it? Can billions come out of it? Hundreds of million. Like, it's an interesting thing.

00:28:18:21 - 00:28:26:23
Bennett Tomlin
tether. Just one firm. And crypto was able to deploy multiple billions last year outside of crypto into other industries.

00:28:26:23 - 00:28:27:16
Ed Zitron
is fascinating

00:28:27:16 - 00:28:30:07
Cas Piancey
to purchase satellite companies. To purchase,

00:28:30:07 - 00:28:31:14
Cas Piancey
farming companies to

00:28:32:00 - 00:28:33:18
Bennett Tomlin
AI companies.

00:28:33:18 - 00:28:34:03
Cas Piancey
companies,

00:28:34:03 - 00:28:35:18
Cas Piancey
power generation companies.

00:28:35:18 - 00:28:39:09
Ed Zitron
in anthropic. It's one of the reasons that FTX is able to make people whole.

00:28:39:18 - 00:28:40:04
Bennett Tomlin
Yeah.

00:28:40:12 - 00:28:41:18
Ed Zitron
So who's to say if it's bad?

00:28:41:18 - 00:29:00:20
Bennett Tomlin
getting back to the previous thing, like, about how media coverage should include this context, include these things that to me still seems like it's running up against the problem of the entire media ecosystem is rotted out and there's no one to fund, like reporters having enough time to actually develop the context and the stories they cover,

00:29:00:20 - 00:29:23:09
Ed Zitron
Or maybe it's the editorial missions that just don't include this shit every time, like they should. The tether thing should be included every time. But also, it's hard to explain. It is a challenge, and there are not enough people tasked with doing it. Most of the crypto reporters in the last few years, not all of them Ian, Alison, legend, but there are people at major publications who were pro, crypto fucking insane,

00:29:23:09 - 00:29:23:23
Cas Piancey
sure.

00:29:24:10 - 00:29:43:06
Bennett Tomlin
Sure, sure, sure. But, like, just getting back to I. I'm still struggling with the jump to like, how do you develop a sustainable cadre of journalists of media that's able to do in-context in deep reporting across not just tech, but looking at it more broadly, like across these different? Do we?

00:29:43:06 - 00:29:50:01
Ed Zitron
We don't need to build a new thing. We just need everyone to take their heads out of their fucking assholes. That's the thing. They're not.

00:29:50:01 - 00:29:53:05
Bennett Tomlin
I have bad news for you about the last several millennia.

00:29:53:05 - 00:29:55:11
Cas Piancey
right economy begets the right economy I think

00:29:55:11 - 00:29:56:10
Ed Zitron
Okay, then.

00:29:56:10 - 00:30:02:20
Cas Piancey
part of what, what, what Bennett is kind of pointing out here and this idea that again the media

00:30:02:20 - 00:30:09:17
Cas Piancey
unfortunately in America now with the economy is obligated to their shareholders more so than their audience.

00:30:09:17 - 00:30:13:16
Ed Zitron
you want misunderstanding how any media outlet works? I've got to push back as hard as possible about

00:30:13:16 - 00:30:14:20
Cas Piancey
how is that not

00:30:14:20 - 00:30:33:23
Ed Zitron
That's not what's happening. It's so much stupider. It's so much dumber. The people at the top, they just want nothing to happen. They want their friends to feel important. But really, the problem is you've got this upper editorial substrate of editors who do not know anything about technology, who go with the will of the markets, and they follow the will of the markets.

00:30:33:23 - 00:30:44:07
Ed Zitron
It's not just top down pressure from the rich, it's the fact that the editorial layers, the editors editing, excellent writers don't know what they're fucking doing.

00:30:44:09 - 00:30:59:05
Cas Piancey
They're all getting. They're all getting fired. Ed, I like I'm talking about places like CoinDesk getting like. Because they got they got purchased by. Hold on. Like you just talked about Ian Allison. Like. Like I'm talking about places like CoinDesk where you have super high quality,

00:30:59:05 - 00:31:02:17
Cas Piancey
super high quality journalists like Nik De Ian Allison.

00:31:02:17 - 00:31:05:01
Cas Piancey
I could name I could name a dozen more David Z.

00:31:05:01 - 00:31:25:02
Cas Piancey
Morris, who's come on the show. Danny, Danny Nelson. We a million. There's a million awesome journalists that came from who came out of CoinDesk that reported honest, objective, fair truth, and they actually destroyed their own business by doing so. Right. And so I like we have to Revere that. And then you look at exactly what happened. Well, I'll tell you what happened.

00:31:25:02 - 00:31:43:09
Cas Piancey
A Peter Thiel controlled a Peter Thiel controlled fucking company, bought CoinDesk and ruined it. And it's it's as simple as that. And how did they ruin it? By putting pressure on a bunch of editors who then resigned because they're not going to stick around and, and be like, yeah, I guess I'm a part of this compromised editorial board.

00:31:43:09 - 00:31:51:11
Cas Piancey
So they leave and now you have you're like where you're suggesting it's like, well, they it's all of these editors. It's like, well, no, the good editors leave. And now what are you stuck with

00:31:51:17 - 00:32:11:22
Ed Zitron
Okay. We're both talking about different situations though. Both can be true. There can be examples where it doesn't work. I'm not saying I have a complete cure. I'm just saying a place where things can change is this CoinDesk was a fucking disaster. And everyone the second bullet touched it. And also people need to look around who else is friends with bullish because there's more people outside of crypto who are.

00:32:12:00 - 00:32:31:04
Ed Zitron
And the problem is also crypto. It really comes down to crypto is where my thesis is the most challenging because the money is more available. And also it was really poorly understood when it grew to power and it's still poorly understood today. And the people explaining it today are doing so in this way where they're drawn between am I writing for the crypto industry?

00:32:31:04 - 00:32:49:19
Ed Zitron
Am I writing for regular people because the regular pay, I don't know, a single fucking person, a single person who has used anything with crypto, I truly don't. I have not in the last year, in a conversation, even with reporters, I don't know who brought up crypto even once. This might be the first time I've talked about it in a year.

00:32:49:21 - 00:33:26:07
Ed Zitron
I may have mentioned it in something, and that's the thing I'm not saying you're actually wrong. I'm saying crypto is probably the most egregious example of where this gang fucked up. What I am saying is you were asking for things that could change, things that could change. Now the answer is, is that beyond the billionaires and the rich people, there are people in tech, media and business media who are extremely poorly informed, feel that their job is to follow trends rather than do journalism, and they put pressure on writers to cover things in a way that makes them feel good.

00:33:26:09 - 00:33:28:12
Ed Zitron
And this is in legacy media. This is

00:33:28:12 - 00:33:30:08
Ed Zitron
in more new media.

00:33:30:08 - 00:33:39:17
Cas Piancey
you did, you did an important episode naming names, and I think, like, right now, we could name Kevin Roose and Casey Newton as, like, like they. Yeah. Like, if these guys have.

00:33:39:17 - 00:33:59:19
Ed Zitron
actually give Roose a little bit of credit in that he did put the boots to the, Chris Dixon a bit, but I will say Casey Newton coward of the year, because Kevin was kind of cooking. Kevin was kind of like beaten his ass bit, I guess, like, well, well, let's move on. As Kevin was getting to the good shit, Kevin did fuck up.

00:33:59:19 - 00:34:15:18
Ed Zitron
He fucked. I wrote about it in 2021. Roll about it in 2022. He fucked up. He he actually really messed up there. And it's laughable that he kept his position. I think that he is a good guy who is easily won over, as proven by the fact that he was scared of being.

00:34:15:18 - 00:34:22:09
Cas Piancey
I, by the way, I think I really hate that we always have to like, if we criticize, if if we criticize someone,

00:34:22:09 - 00:34:26:09
Ed Zitron
You'll notice that I did. Those words did not leave my fucking mouth.

00:34:26:09 - 00:34:35:00
Cas Piancey
it's just so funny to me that when we criticize, people were like, well, on a personal level, I don't know them, and they're probably great. It's like like, you know, that's cool. I

00:34:35:00 - 00:34:41:13
Ed Zitron
I think I think, I think Kevin is credulous and excitable.

00:34:41:13 - 00:34:49:06
Cas Piancey
it's perfectly acceptable to still be like also this. It's fine if you like this person. And they did a shitty job with this thing. Like that's fine. You know,

00:34:49:06 - 00:35:01:14
Ed Zitron
I mean, I was just saying it because it's how I felt. I don't think of many of the words before they leave my mouth, but I think the those two in particular with hard fork,

00:35:01:14 - 00:35:02:07
Cas Piancey
Yeah.

00:35:02:07 - 00:35:12:20
Ed Zitron
did like an Amazon drone thing as well, which is fine, and I get why they did it. But it's also like, oh my God, you want to do a little bit of history about how many fucking times companies have promised to deliver things with drones.

00:35:12:22 - 00:35:20:23
Ed Zitron
Do you want to talk about the fact that this is probably not a profitable or sustainable or possible thing? They're never scaling this shit. What the fuck are you talking about?

00:35:21:01 - 00:35:21:07
Cas Piancey
Yeah.

00:35:21:07 - 00:35:28:00
Ed Zitron
But you got to accept it. It's New York Times and they have this view of like the the times. It's got to look at everything as a cautious optimist.

00:35:28:00 - 00:35:29:02
Ed Zitron
Where's the caution

00:35:29:02 - 00:35:54:05
Ed Zitron
anyway? I'm quite lost on where I got to that point. But but there's some I actually I will give you an example from within I so Wall Street Journal I would argue the Wall Street Journal does probably the best investigative reporting in tech by far. I think the information isn't far behind yet. The information also seems quite pro I it's very strange, but nevertheless the journal their problem is, is they bury stuff.

00:35:54:09 - 00:36:19:00
Ed Zitron
They bury stuff deep within their stories because they lack the ability to have subjective thought. One of my favorite ones is I'm just going to quote something. This is from a piece about AI hardware. You engineering challenges also often arise with larger clusters. Metzl researchers said in a July paper that a cluster of more than 16,000 of Nvidia's GPUs suffered from unexpected failures of chips and other components routinely, as the company trained an advanced version of its alarm, a model of a 54 days

00:36:19:00 - 00:36:21:13
Ed Zitron
what they used to have ship breaking.

00:36:21:13 - 00:36:41:03
Ed Zitron
We talk about Nvidia all the time. Like Jensen, Huang is pissing gold and shitting golden geese that shit further golden eggs. But we don't talk about the fact that there's very clearly a failure rate problem, because a lot of this coverage doesn't have any connection to the very good chips reporters is there is context needed here, an opinion needed here, an actual analysis.

00:36:41:03 - 00:36:48:22
Ed Zitron
Readers, listeners, they want to be told, not want to think. But given far more information about how to think about stuff.

00:36:48:22 - 00:36:52:19
Bennett Tomlin
Yeah. So, like the Wall Street Journal in specific has,

00:36:52:19 - 00:37:02:09
Bennett Tomlin
has always been very cautious in the voice they strike in their news coverage. They are. They have a lot of lawyers. And every single story they publish.

00:37:02:09 - 00:37:09:14
Ed Zitron
I'm sure. And also, you have to realize a lot of these lawsuits situations are happening in crypto because there's so much money involved with AI.

00:37:09:14 - 00:37:18:16
Ed Zitron
They're not suing you because you say that this shit's going to burst. They're not. Sam Altman's not going to Sam Altman. You have to know the ones like Sanjay Pijay is not suing you.

00:37:18:21 - 00:37:35:20
Ed Zitron
Google is not suing you. If they start doing that, we are in full authoritarianism and that's the time to be scared. But that ain't fucking happening. They want the world to be apolitical. They want to be left alone so that they can continue burning money and making themselves more money. That's why they're so horrifying.

00:37:35:20 - 00:37:38:10
Bennett Tomlin
Does Marc Andreessen just want to be left alone?

00:37:38:10 - 00:37:39:06
Ed Zitron
No.

00:37:39:06 - 00:38:02:01
Ed Zitron
Andreasen wants to work out why the worm in his brain is is making him so angry. Marc Andreessen read two comprehensive biographies of Hitler in 2022. I like mentioning that because it's one of the most insane fucking things I to I'm kind of paraphrasing succession here. It's like, did you miss the Easter eggs? Like, like and it's it's so weird.

00:38:02:01 - 00:38:05:04
Cas Piancey
I like where you're where you're coming from a lot here.

00:38:06:11 - 00:38:23:19
Cas Piancey
And I think, as Bennett and I were two of the longest serving critics of Tether and Bitfinex, which, yeah, I like. We won't get into all of it, but, like, we we did it for a really long time. And I think a big part of our success is, is you're right that

00:38:23:19 - 00:38:39:04
Cas Piancey
it was about sheer like mentioning numbers size, mentioning lawsuits, mentioning like re mentioning things over and over and over again, repeating them, making sure people understood like, and this is not some

00:38:39:04 - 00:38:46:16
Cas Piancey
great startup like this is a business fraught with problems and I think you're right.

00:38:46:18 - 00:38:52:00
Cas Piancey
I also think that part of our weakness, if I, if I'm going to be honest about,

00:38:52:00 - 00:38:57:16
Cas Piancey
about this, is that ultimately you can only repeat something so many times before people go, okay,

00:38:57:16 - 00:39:00:16
Cas Piancey
and moving on, you know what I mean?

00:39:00:16 - 00:39:19:07
Ed Zitron
I want to say you're right. And you are rethinking crypto because crypto. How do you explain what's wrong with him? It's fraudulent. Tether's bad, but there's real money coming out of it. It's actually quite hard to explain. Well the real problem is with it. I'll give you an example. I wrote The Rot Economy in February 2023.

00:39:19:07 - 00:39:26:12
Ed Zitron
It took until last week for people to take it seriously last week.

00:39:26:12 - 00:39:53:09
Ed Zitron
So I did repeat myself again and again. And the thing is, is that sometimes it's not just and this. I'm paraphrasing Thanos, the mogul from MIT admitted to a communist. He said that when it comes to ideas, it takes time. It's about putting them out there. Not necessarily. They'll change everything the second you put them out there. It is about making sure that there is a record of these people because eventually the news, the things shift, things change.

00:39:53:11 - 00:40:17:10
Ed Zitron
Sam Bankman-Fried, the whole collapse of Terra Luna, all of that was one of those moments. And I think that though crypto is higher now, I think that a lot of harm was avoided because a lot of people had written the promise of crypto. But also, Sam Bankman-Fried really revealed how fucked up the coverage of crypto was. I think Sam Bankman-Fried is an example of how the media failed the public, probably more than they've ever felt them.

00:40:17:10 - 00:40:36:07
Ed Zitron
And I'm not just talking about Roose, I'm talking about CNBC, I'm talking about the story that went out a couple of weeks before everything collapsed, where they went to Sam Bankman-fried’s house and saw his dog and his camera and all that bullshit. It's just crypto is so much more fucked than everything else you

00:40:36:07 - 00:40:53:22
Cas Piancey
I'm not trying to. I'm not even trying to be argumentative with you today, Ed, because I agree with you on. I agree with you on most of this, but I am saying, like when I reflect on financial crime over the past 40 years or whatever, it's like, how good was the financial reporting on Enron before that

00:40:54:05 - 00:40:55:02
Ed Zitron
Terrible.

00:40:55:02 - 00:40:55:15
Cas Piancey
right?

00:40:55:15 - 00:40:58:04
Bennett Tomlin
Yeah. With the exception of Bethany and,

00:40:58:04 - 00:41:00:13
Cas Piancey
exactly? Bethany? Bethany. Frank. Better

00:41:00:13 - 00:41:01:20
Bennett Tomlin
Bethany McLean. Right.

00:41:01:20 - 00:41:03:13
Cas Piancey
McLean. Thank you. Holy shit.

00:41:03:13 - 00:41:09:18
Cas Piancey
Bethany McLean. Yeah, she did great reporting. But like it or for that matter, Bernie Madoff is a perfect

00:41:09:18 - 00:41:12:15
Bennett Tomlin
Well, seeing CNBC also made me think of,

00:41:12:15 - 00:41:14:07
Bennett Tomlin
Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos.

00:41:14:07 - 00:41:17:12
Ed Zitron
Holmes was a great PR example of just how much people lie.

00:41:17:12 - 00:41:24:00
Cas Piancey
more, but I think Holmes is a great example of actually media succeeding like Wall Street Journal.

00:41:24:00 - 00:41:35:22
Cas Piancey
Murdoch was an investor in Theranos. And they they were like, we're going to report on this. We want to find out the truth. And Murdoch and, Rupert Murdoch was like, do it. I want to know what the deal is.

00:41:36:01 - 00:41:38:08
Cas Piancey
That is actually like a billionaire

00:41:38:08 - 00:41:39:12
Ed Zitron
Did Murdoch say that?

00:41:39:12 - 00:41:41:07
Cas Piancey
Yes.

00:41:41:12 - 00:41:50:22
Bennett Tomlin
He refused to kill the story under pressure. That part's documented his motivations for what he was thinking. And feeling. Or somewhat more speculative.

00:41:50:22 - 00:42:04:14
Cas Piancey
It does it ultimately. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what he was thinking. He let the story go ahead because he wasn't trying to control the editorial and the newsroom. So like the idea that Murdoch allowed this to go forward.

00:42:04:16 - 00:42:19:20
Cas Piancey
Well, that's a good example of media operating properly. Things, things like Enron or Bernie Madoff is where you go like, oh, wow, that's complete financial reporting failure. And that's where I

00:42:19:20 - 00:42:20:12
Ed Zitron
think you

00:42:24:14 - 00:42:28:13
Cas Piancey
Why? Yeah, but but.

00:42:28:15 - 00:42:46:10
Bennett Tomlin
Well, sure. But Kerry Ruse reporting came out when this was still only, like, a $6 billion company or whatever. $15 billion company. Sure, sure, sure. But like it was, it was nonpublic. Their, like patient trials ended under the pressure of the interviews and stuff. And.

00:42:46:10 - 00:42:48:07
Ed Zitron
that worked. But they were still able to grow a lot.

00:42:48:11 - 00:42:49:08
Bennett Tomlin
Sure.

00:42:49:08 - 00:42:50:13
Cas Piancey
I.

00:42:50:13 - 00:42:52:07
Ed Zitron
Carreyrou did great, but also

00:42:52:07 - 00:42:54:00
Ed Zitron
like like I,

00:42:54:00 - 00:43:11:01
Cas Piancey
you're coming from a, you know PR better than we do. Like, the idea that there's going to be, you know, public relations work for these massive tech firms. Like, of course that's going to happen. And of course there's going to be positive reporting on dream shots that don't make any sense that like that I'm not necessarily surprised by.

00:43:11:02 - 00:43:26:20
Cas Piancey
And I'm not even going to push back against it that much like the idea of, oh, we have this blood test where all you need is this much blood. Like, well, that's a fun story to report. You're right that you should get into the weeds. And ultimately, Carrie Root did right where you're like, okay. Like ultimately it did happen.

00:43:26:20 - 00:43:54:02
Cas Piancey
And the media, like, reported responsibly when it comes to Enron or Bernie Madoff or SBF, there was no pushback for a very long time. I think you're right. And and I'd like those are better examples of where we're at now. And that is my concern, is that what if there's no pushback ever? Like, what if we're past the phases of this where it's like sometimes there's pushback on financial criminals, and then we get into a lull and everyone's happy.

00:43:54:07 - 00:43:57:11
Cas Piancey
But it kind of feels like we're entering this weird hellscape

00:43:57:18 - 00:44:00:02
Ed Zitron
I. I want to give you some hope.

00:44:00:02 - 00:44:01:19
Cas Piancey
Okay. Please. Yeah. Yeah. Please.

00:44:01:19 - 00:44:06:18
Ed Zitron
So I go into PR in 2009. My job was so much easier for the first few years.

00:44:06:18 - 00:44:15:19
Ed Zitron
Who's pitching it? Like I pitch fucking startups to reporters. And the reason I'm good at my job is I read their stuff and actually pitch them stuff that would fit him.

00:44:15:21 - 00:44:22:06
Ed Zitron
I also have pretty good quality bar, and if I smell shit, I don't work with it. I don't need that muscle. Very anxious person. But

00:44:22:06 - 00:44:33:07
Ed Zitron
over the years you have watched the collapse of the real glad handling media. It's still there. The fact that Kara swisher lasted this long is a disgrace. Same with Scott Galloway. They are so much worse than

00:44:33:11 - 00:44:34:22
Bennett Tomlin
Yeah. We've got an episode about

00:44:34:22 - 00:44:37:07
Ed Zitron
Roose and

00:44:37:07 - 00:44:38:07
Ed Zitron
they fucked up a lot.

00:44:38:07 - 00:44:49:00
Ed Zitron
And I think Newton when he went off to Gary Marcus I think the AI skeptic piece is a morally reprehensible thing to do. I think Casey should be a fucking ashamed of himself. I think he's a coward.

00:44:49:00 - 00:44:54:16
Cas Piancey
And I want to. Well, hopefully we'll have a link. We're going to have a link in the show notes for for for people.

00:44:54:16 - 00:44:55:02
Cas Piancey
Just,

00:44:55:02 - 00:44:59:09
Cas Piancey
just to your previous discussions about this because I think they're excellent.

00:44:59:09 - 00:45:01:23
Cas Piancey
Sorry. And I just, I just want to let people know that. Yeah.

00:45:01:23 - 00:45:11:03
Ed Zitron
nevertheless. And we should talk about that in a minute. But over time, you have seen the growth of a great deal of critical press. You have seen the fact that

00:45:11:03 - 00:45:20:16
Ed Zitron
the fact that Meredith Whittaker isn't in the media. Right. But the fact that there were like 2 or 3 Meredith Whitaker profiles every three minutes. I think now in wired, just wired loves writing about

00:45:20:16 - 00:45:45:05
Ed Zitron
Meredith Whitaker thinks this that's alone is a good sign because Meredith Whitaker is extremely fucking aggressive. She is extremely aggressive and anti tech stuff. The fact that Cory Doctorow is so prevalent that enshittification is so discussed, this is a sign that criticism of tech is growing and it's mainstream. The fact that Jon Stewart had Lina Khan on the fact that Lena Khan was so popular with the media.

00:45:45:11 - 00:46:10:17
Ed Zitron
I'm not saying things are perfect. I have many critiques, but compared to when I started, I have never seen a more vivid and aggressive group of critics. Molly White the existence of Molly White is actually kind of magical. She's a fucking great person, a great writer, a great researcher, incredibly well known big audience, and also a woman in tech who knows her tech most, man.

00:46:10:21 - 00:46:32:17
Ed Zitron
I mean, it's fucking brilliant. Gary Marcus I have a lot of thoughts about that. Perhaps I'll keep to myself. However, the fact that Gary Marcus is in national newspapers and that's a good thing. Criticism has grown. The critiques have grown. You see, I have a fucking book with Penguin Random House called Why Coming Out good, why everything? Stop working.

00:46:32:17 - 00:46:55:21
Ed Zitron
Penguin random House has put money in this shit. Better. Or offline is going to hit its third season probably in the next few months. I hope radio backs that this the the era of criticism is far from dead. It's popular as well and that's the really thing. Putting aside morals. I don't believe in things. I simply exist and then I die.

00:46:55:23 - 00:47:17:01
Ed Zitron
However, it's popular, it does traffic, it's popular with regular people, which means it's probably going to stick around and only grow. Look, if people don't do this, I'm going to do very well. I'm very excited about my future doing this shit. I love doing it. I do it because I hate what they've done to the computer. But I also do it because it's fun to write about and people care.

00:47:17:03 - 00:47:40:06
Ed Zitron
The reactions I get to my work are fucking insane. If that is the reaction of consumers, that's amazing. But also, there are so many bloody critics. We are far from hopeless. We are far from in some sort of desert of critiques. In fact, the fact that your podcast has kept on this long, despite how complex and ridiculous that industry is, is only a sign that this is absolute, only doable.

00:47:40:11 - 00:47:41:12
Ed Zitron
Look at coffee Zilla

00:47:43:03 - 00:48:00:05
Ed Zitron
like it isn't perfect. It isn't right right now. But good lord, it's better than it was two years ago, in the year before that and the year before that. It's not like we went from having a bunch of criticism to not having any. It's trending upwards aggressively and there's money in it, there's traffic in it.

00:48:00:07 - 00:48:10:19
Ed Zitron
There's something here. And I trust my gut on this one. And yeah, it's going to get scary. It's going to be scary. With how Elon Musk's acts. However, even then

00:48:10:19 - 00:48:20:03
Ed Zitron
still going to like it's I actually don't know whether he's going to really sue reporters. I don't know how got like, aggressive he's going to be. We really don't know yet.

00:48:20:07 - 00:48:21:09
Ed Zitron
That is a question mark.

00:48:21:09 - 00:48:23:18
Cas Piancey
Yeah. But it's. It is a pretty terrifying question

00:48:23:18 - 00:48:25:08
Ed Zitron
it is, oh, God, yes.

00:48:25:08 - 00:48:35:17
Cas Piancey
And and the the oligarchy in general right now that the vibe of, like, this is really happening. Like, there is no, like, hypothetical what if whatever that

00:48:35:20 - 00:48:37:09
Ed Zitron
It's the thing people have warned about.

00:48:37:09 - 00:48:38:21
Cas Piancey
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like we're here.

00:48:38:21 - 00:48:46:19
Cas Piancey
I think is, is is quite to me, I, I want to be hopeful and I want to think about ways to fight back and I and I'm

00:48:46:19 - 00:48:50:02
Cas Piancey
and I appreciate you sharing all of this.

00:48:50:04 - 00:48:52:17
Cas Piancey
I just, I still like it's hard.

00:48:52:17 - 00:48:54:14
Cas Piancey
I you you live in,

00:48:54:14 - 00:48:56:23
Cas Piancey
Nevada and I live in California.

00:48:56:23 - 00:49:06:09
Cas Piancey
Ben and I covered there was an attempt to make a blockchain city in Reno, Nevada, years ago that failed utterly.

00:49:06:09 - 00:49:12:22
Cas Piancey
I don't know how much money is left in all of that. I think there's still some semblance of something, but it's not what it was going to be.

00:49:12:22 - 00:49:43:05
Cas Piancey
But here in California now, what's happening is they're doing something called California Forever, and it's brought to you by like, Marc Andreessen and, you know, all these tech bros. And the concept is quite similar and that it is going to be a smart city. It is going to exist south of the bay. So they hopefully don't have to deal with, you know, things like societal issues like homeless people and drug use and things that come with not having hyper wealthy individuals in your neighborhood.

00:49:43:07 - 00:49:55:05
Cas Piancey
So they're hoping to fix that by creating their own city of strictly hyper wealthy people. And I can't help but feel quite pessimistic about, like, these are the people in control

00:49:55:05 - 00:50:00:08
Cas Piancey
of the reins of power. Like they they're the ones now whispering in Trump's ear.

00:50:00:08 - 00:50:05:13
Cas Piancey
And while voicing criticism is of course, necessary, and I'm all for it.

00:50:05:13 - 00:50:12:00
Cas Piancey
And that's what we do. It does sometimes feel like you're screaming into a void. Don't you feel like that sometimes, Ed or no.

00:50:12:00 - 00:50:12:13
Ed Zitron
Sure.

00:50:12:13 - 00:50:16:00
Ed Zitron
Like. Of course. When I started the show, I felt like that.

00:50:16:00 - 00:50:17:03
Ed Zitron
Just the punk music

00:50:17:14 - 00:50:18:15
Cas Piancey
Yeah, yeah.

00:50:18:15 - 00:50:32:09
Ed Zitron
punks. Hopeful punk. Punk is not ever accepting the fact that it's never pretending that things are great. But the message and the verve and the rhythm and everything behind punk music is the fuck this fight back. You can look at these things and be scared.

00:50:32:14 - 00:50:53:10
Ed Zitron
It's fair to be scared. It's fair to feel pessimism. Okay. Accept that. So we just fucking give up. We assume that nothing will work. Hell no. We have to at least fucking try. It is scary. But the thing I just said about critiques and more critique, I that was me trying to say critiques, and I tried to save it, but it didn't work anyway.

00:50:53:12 - 00:51:17:01
Ed Zitron
I think I just said about critics and how we've never had more. That is only going to increase as things get more challenging. And yeah, it is scary. Yeah, there are things that could go horribly wrong. I'm not going to lie and be like, everything's going to be fine. Nobody will be hurt. But we have to, if anything, have an emotional shift where it's like in our small parts of what we do.

00:51:17:03 - 00:51:41:04
Ed Zitron
We have to fight back. We have to, at the very least, document what is happening in detail with what we believe in and with the context that matters to give people something. Because guess what? If we as people who have any kind of audience, feel some lack of hope, what how our listeners feel, how do they feel? So no, I will not sit here and and just be like, oh, well, nothing will change.

00:51:41:04 - 00:52:00:12
Ed Zitron
Fuck that. I don't know if it'll work, but I should fucking try. And for for guys who were so pessimistic about this, you do seem to be trying very hard and you still continue to try. So I understand your pessimism, I really do, I deeply, deeply do. But the best thing you can do is keep going. Because you know what?

00:52:00:14 - 00:52:02:01
Ed Zitron
The only other choice is giving up.

00:52:02:01 - 00:52:07:12
Cas Piancey
This is honest. Honest to God. Why? I wanted to have you on. Because I felt like after it, we had,

00:52:07:12 - 00:52:10:07
Cas Piancey
two brilliant minds on Joey Politano and,

00:52:10:11 - 00:52:11:19
Bennett Tomlin
Sean Tuffy Yeah.

00:52:11:19 - 00:52:12:07
Cas Piancey
And

00:52:12:07 - 00:52:27:07
Cas Piancey
we were discussing just this administration, and just. There was nothing good to say, you know what I mean? There's there's there is nothing positive to say other than, like, maybe they self implode and even that's going to be a disaster, you know, and and so I think

00:52:27:07 - 00:52:30:23
Cas Piancey
we need to have someone on to say yes that's all true.

00:52:30:23 - 00:52:43:17
Cas Piancey
We're not denying that. But it's okay to try to fight back and talk loud and and be the, the, the voice of. I like the voice of reason amongst a world of crazy I

00:52:43:17 - 00:52:50:07
Ed Zitron
More clarity. Because you want to know why the right has been so effective with media.

00:52:50:07 - 00:52:53:11
Ed Zitron
It really is much more simple than racism.

00:52:53:11 - 00:53:05:15
Ed Zitron
It's because there are a lot of people who have a worse experience living than they should. Most. They're tons of people. Young men, tons of them, but plenty of people who just feel like the world is kicking them in the nuts all the time.

00:53:05:15 - 00:53:21:09
Ed Zitron
And you want to know how that's done. Tech tech is a great weapon for it now, but they don't know really where to push it. They go to the left side and the left things, and they have a bunch of people saying positivity stuff, which is good, and we should hear that. But it doesn't really seem to address their problems.

00:53:21:10 - 00:53:43:16
Ed Zitron
It doesn't really seem to address them even like they're small. There is a lot of condescension in the media, and that sometimes isn't not deliberate. When someone reads a big story of facts and they have no idea what the fuck to do with that, I feel stupid. And why wouldn't you? You have a bunch slop of facts. So they go and they listen to Joe Rogan lists the CEO von.

00:53:43:18 - 00:53:53:05
Ed Zitron
They go, wow, this guy, he asks really obvious questions. When I spoke to Zephyr Teachout, an expert on anti-corruption, you know, my first question was, what is corruption?

00:53:53:05 - 00:54:03:10
Ed Zitron
There are so many questions that the media fails to ask, and so many ways in which they fail their readers and their listeners by not just being like, you know what?

00:54:03:12 - 00:54:24:02
Ed Zitron
Yeah, your shit sucks. Here's why. Here's something that you experienced when I did never forgive them and I did that laptop bit, I what I did was I got a cheap ass laptop and I ran through exactly how dog shit it was, how much you advertise to how slow this was, and extrapolate from there that hundreds of millions of people very likely have this experience that I have never got such a response to.

00:54:24:02 - 00:54:41:21
Ed Zitron
I thought it was a pretty obvious idea when I did it. I'm like, this is just going to seem like, what the fuck? My agent emailed me. I had people like, wow, that was so good. And the reason was, is because instead of just being like, an every computer is fine, because that's if you look at the reviews of the Acer Aspire One, they're good.

00:54:41:23 - 00:54:56:08
Ed Zitron
They give them high scores. They treat these things as if the premise of people's existence that people know, regular people know fucking sucks. They treat it like it's normal, and that does isolate people. And then over on the right, you've got people giving them extremely convenient excuses

00:54:56:08 - 00:55:02:18
Ed Zitron
migrants, the woke, the trans in the bathroom, what have you. Things that make them feel better.

00:55:02:20 - 00:55:26:14
Ed Zitron
I'm not saying that's right, but it's far more effective than being like, well, and you look at the facts, actually, your life is very good. The economy is great for you. You should be happy. The Will Stansell brain is so much more fucking common and it's everywhere in the media. And guess what? If you talk down to people and you don't actually teach them anything, you go, you should know that it's already oh you should.

00:55:26:14 - 00:55:34:01
Ed Zitron
You don't explain these things as the human beings because guess what? Just because you're a real smart motherfucker doesn't mean that you know everything.

00:55:34:01 - 00:55:37:17
Cas Piancey
This is. This is it. So I had an opportunity to talk to,

00:55:37:17 - 00:55:39:09
Cas Piancey
Allison Morrow at,

00:55:39:09 - 00:55:40:22
Cas Piancey
CNN, and,

00:55:40:22 - 00:55:51:22
Cas Piancey
she published this piece. And one of the things I said to her was, you know, when I started covering crypto and, like, being critical of it, one of. And I know you'll appreciate this because you're in Vegas.

00:55:51:22 - 00:56:01:22
Cas Piancey
One of the things that I was, I felt like I was trying to do was convince these people that what they were doing was going to cost them money, and they were going to lose money and stuff, and

00:56:01:22 - 00:56:07:19
Cas Piancey
that suddenly, at some point, I realized I was yelling at gamblers in a casino on a slot machine

00:56:07:19 - 00:56:42:00
Cas Piancey
and telling them, like, yo, that slot machine, you're going to lose money at it. And they were like, do you think I don't understand what a fucking slot machine is? My guy? And yeah, and and like, I had to have the recognition to be like, I'm not doing this effectively. If I'm trying to reach out to the people in the casino, I've lost what I need to reach out to the people not in the casino yet, and tell them what the casino is offering for real versus like, okay, I want to try to stop these people from hurting themselves already when they're they're fully aware of what they're doing.

00:56:42:04 - 00:56:50:19
Cas Piancey
And I think you make like yeah, like there's a compelling point of like, we're almost in that part of the cycle with media as well.

00:56:50:19 - 00:56:54:22
Ed Zitron
I agree with you. And I want to take like a slight aside from it as well.

00:56:55:01 - 00:56:55:10
Cas Piancey
Yeah.

00:56:55:10 - 00:57:07:20
Ed Zitron
What I'm really getting at is the one of your things you've done well. And something I did when I wrote about crypto is crypto. The condition of crypto is not really about tech. It's about society. It's about the fact the

00:57:07:20 - 00:57:11:09
Ed Zitron
wealth accumulation in the modern world is bordering on impossible.

00:57:11:09 - 00:57:18:09
Ed Zitron
It was meant to be. You go to college, you work hard, get married, you have 2.4 children. You buy a house or works like clockwork.

00:57:18:09 - 00:57:32:00
Ed Zitron
Then it was like, we'll do day trading and the media did a dog shit job of stopping people day trading in the 2000. I'll just give money to my financial advisor. Have. Not that the media ever really explain what one of those was, what it did, what good look like?

00:57:32:00 - 00:57:34:13
Ed Zitron
What bad look like? Okay, well,

00:57:34:13 - 00:57:53:03
Ed Zitron
I'll work. Really? I'll go to college, I guess. I went to college and I still can't get a job. Oh, my shit's more expensive. But I read the news, and the news says that actually, my shit's better than it was, but I feel bad. In the case of crypto, it was. I can't accumulate wealth.

00:57:53:05 - 00:58:08:16
Ed Zitron
So I'm going to go in the big illegal slot machine. I'm going to fucking try because I'm desperate and scared. And by approaching people and going no new, new, only idiots would touch this new. You couldn't possibly or alternatively, being like if you'd invested in ethereum a thousand days ago, you could have made this much money.

00:58:08:18 - 00:58:26:00
Ed Zitron
Both of those are wrong, as is the humoring of the idea of crypto was some sort of valid thing. There is probably some value to saying yeah, if you want to try a big illegal slot machine, this might work if you get lucky in the way that people often are not, or if you have some way in early on a project.

00:58:26:00 - 00:58:30:21
Ed Zitron
Sure, this is honestly just a scaling of allowing people access to cons.

00:58:30:21 - 00:58:46:06
Ed Zitron
That's what it is, because people feel conned by society. So there is now a legal con you can join. And now that Lina Con is gone, and now that the SEC no longer has Gensler, well, they'll be allowed to sell more cons to more people and more people will lose money.

00:58:46:08 - 00:59:00:21
Ed Zitron
But it's really explained as a financial and social and psychological condition. It's really explained in a way that actually has empathy for the people involved. I was on crypto groups in telegram, some Rutger Hauer speech in the end, Blade Runner, things I've seen.

00:59:00:21 - 00:59:01:16
Ed Zitron
But it's like

00:59:01:16 - 00:59:07:16
Ed Zitron
you'd see guys in India and the Philippines screaming. They'd be like, I've lost.

00:59:07:16 - 00:59:16:14
Ed Zitron
I put my money into this. I need this to work. The desperation off of these people. How does that that is more indicative of the problem than anything.

00:59:16:14 - 00:59:29:11
Ed Zitron
And journalists don't seem to have this inherent. And this is something I said in the piece. Well, there's no love for the user. There's no concern for the user. There's no thought of like, if someone reads this, if someone reads this and makes a bad decision, I've hurt them.

00:59:29:14 - 00:59:39:17
Ed Zitron
It goes back to when I was reviewing video games. I used to fucking crush it. And I used to say when I get in a lot of trouble for it was actually £30, £40, nine.

00:59:39:17 - 00:59:44:22
Ed Zitron
Like, that's a lot of money. We get these games for free, but people pay for these. This might be the only game they can afford this year.

00:59:44:22 - 00:59:49:17
Ed Zitron
Do you want it? Do you want them to buy some shit? And they'd be like, you're being dramatic. And perhaps I was, but

00:59:49:17 - 01:00:03:07
Ed Zitron
it needs to get back to who we actually writing for. Who is this for? What is the net effect of what we are doing every day? Because people feel fucking hopeless and people are aware that the media is not really serving them.

01:00:03:07 - 01:00:22:15
Ed Zitron
The right wing media feels like it's serving people, it's serving them to the like, but it has the appearance of it. Andrew Tate is famous because he offers grown men things that 13 year olds one sex, boobs, cigar money, pile of money, strongman, strongman, lift all the time, not gay.

01:00:22:17 - 01:00:26:04
Ed Zitron
Not. Nope. Nuh That's

01:00:26:04 - 01:00:28:04
Bennett Tomlin
It's not okay to kiss a man.

01:00:28:04 - 01:00:31:02
Ed Zitron
it really is the not gay song from,

01:00:31:02 - 01:00:45:13
Ed Zitron
from a pop star. We've seen it, it. But that's the thing. It's like this very basic thing, and it works because guess what? Would you look at the rest of the media? It's like, okay, I'm a miserable motherfucker and I have no hope.

01:00:45:13 - 01:00:56:22
Ed Zitron
Where am I going to look away? Convenient excuses over here. And this isn't even a new phenomenon, MGTOW has been around a long fucking time. The media needs to start operating on a principle of

01:00:56:22 - 01:01:01:23
Ed Zitron
how about this regular people reading this and making decisions. The result of what I write.

01:01:01:23 - 01:01:08:01
Cas Piancey
My my last question is you talk about this easy solution that the right offers. For a lot of this stuff.

01:01:08:01 - 01:01:10:09
Cas Piancey
And generally, I would say that

01:01:10:09 - 01:01:17:15
Cas Piancey
Ben and I are left leaning, but Crypto Critics Corner is just a podcast about crypto and whatever.

01:01:17:15 - 01:01:22:15
Cas Piancey
What do you think is the way to, like, what is the alternative to that?

01:01:22:16 - 01:01:44:03
Cas Piancey
Simple like blanket, like, oh yeah, we'll blame the immigrants or we'll blame the whoever. Like they're the problems. So what is the alternative to that? Like how do you have a simple, forthright statement that you can counter that with? Because I think especially with something like crypto, it's quite difficult to have a counter to something like that. You know what I mean?

01:01:44:03 - 01:02:03:05
Ed Zitron
I'm going to speak a little broadly, because crypto is just its own freaky condition. And also the damage has been done so thoroughly that it's going to take decades to work it out. When people failed on crypto, they failed society. And people are losing money all the time, and the rich people are getting richer because of it. It's a disgrace.

01:02:03:07 - 01:02:10:06
Ed Zitron
Like really disgusting. But on a wider scale, what these people on the right do is they do sell hope

01:02:10:06 - 01:02:22:05
Ed Zitron
that there are answers and some of them are made up, but what they actually do is they talk to their people. And I must be clear, I'm not advocating for any of these people, but what actually is a really good place to start?

01:02:22:05 - 01:02:38:23
Ed Zitron
One of my least favorite things is people saying, Joe Rogan's bad. He's a fucking dumb ass, and the people he brings on are sometimes bigger dumbasses than him. It's pretty good interview. It's a well-produced show. It's high quality. I don't know if the content high quality, but it's well mastered. But also Joe Rogan will sit there and go,

01:02:38:23 - 01:02:40:00
Ed Zitron
why that happened.

01:02:40:02 - 01:03:00:07
Ed Zitron
Yeah, that's crazy. Guess what? That's how most people, even the most intelligent people you are, they don't know. Not everyone knows everything. So if you start from this position of, hey, I should ask questions that seem very obvious, I will help your reader. I will help you listen up. On top of that, the right wing people so hope, horrible hope, corrupt hope.

01:03:00:07 - 01:03:07:06
Ed Zitron
But something that there is an answer. There can be answers that you are not bereft of industry and they use that to mechanize anger.

01:03:07:06 - 01:03:20:03
Ed Zitron
But guess what? There is actual space for positive masculinity and positive masculinity. I was like, oh, you turned gay. If only. If only it was that easy. Jesus Christ, seems like I have more fun.

01:03:20:05 - 01:03:41:02
Ed Zitron
I love clothes, seems like I love them. I could dress more interestingly. It'd be way more fucking fun. But the point is, men in general are so scared of discussing their emotions. Cowards. They're cowards. But also men can't even discuss hope or inspiration. These things have been taken from the US by the right because the left is not all of the left.

01:03:41:02 - 01:03:56:19
Ed Zitron
I think some of them, like Hasan is. I don't agree with Hasan on everything, but he gets people in. Interesting. He had a really good interview on Pod Save America, which is a sentence I never thought I'd say. And what he did was he blankly explained the errors that were made in a way that was very digestible, but fundamentally.

01:03:56:19 - 01:04:13:13
Ed Zitron
If we want to fight back about against this, we have to give people hope, but we also have to treat them like human fucking beings and the things we make need to speak to their problems. And actually what's happening to them. Rather than this, I should write about the markets we want them. Where's I going? Who gives a fuck

01:04:13:13 - 01:04:18:13
Ed Zitron
if you can't prove where it's going, say it could go here, but here's where it could also not go.

01:04:18:15 - 01:04:35:18
Ed Zitron
When you describe the things you're describing, describe them in terms that actually apply to a person to be reading it. Oh, but the business people are reading it. I do public relations for B2B products as well. Guess what? The same fuck, they are also human. You wouldn't believe it. You wouldn't believe that the business people also read stuff and want to explain to them simply.

01:04:35:20 - 01:04:52:21
Ed Zitron
Matt Levine is one of the best living financial writers and his stuff is so straightforward and so fun and so human. It's brilliant. And yeah, it's written fucking traders and financial perverts just like me. I'm the pervert side, but the point I'm getting too slowly is

01:04:52:21 - 01:05:00:01
Ed Zitron
hope, excitement, caring. These are things out of the media right now on the left, in the center.

01:05:00:06 - 01:05:17:18
Ed Zitron
It doesn't feel like many people writing about tech actually give a fuck about the computer. And guess what? Regular people do. Regular people love the computer. They wish the computer wasn't so annoying. They wish the computer was it. They want to go back to Facebook. Working in Instagram, working. They still get value out of these things even though they fucking suck.

01:05:17:19 - 01:05:26:07
Ed Zitron
So coming out and saying, listen, this thing you experience every day that pisses you off, I have an answer. I have a person look at this asshole.

01:05:26:07 - 01:05:39:18
Ed Zitron
But also, you're not stupid. You're not stupid for feeling bad. Do you know how annoying it must be for someone who's struggling to pay their fucking bills? To read a CNN article going, well, actually, the economy's great, is there?

01:05:39:18 - 01:05:59:08
Ed Zitron
But is there a problem with the economy? Ooh! Fuck you. God damn, what a disgraceful, condescending way of looking at people. And it's how a lot of the media works. And it's a disgrace because it could be so much better and so much good would be done. Because guess what? A lot of these corporations, they really don't want bad headlines.

01:05:59:08 - 01:06:01:00
Ed Zitron
They're fucking terrified of them.

01:06:01:00 - 01:06:21:19
Ed Zitron
You think the CEO of a company is sitting there looking at the numbers? No. They look at CNN and USA today, and if USA today says that are fucking bellend for doing something, don't freak the fuck out. Their wife, who they barely talk to, will email them through their assistant that this article came out and now they're embarrassed and now talking and quipped in their children are at school being made fun of.

01:06:21:21 - 01:06:51:04
Ed Zitron
And that's the thing. I know what I'm saying. A lot of random stuff. But fundamentally the way that we as communicators, whereas people in the media treat people, needs to be more human and needs to approach the real fucking consequences of these things. Perhaps tether isn't bothering people. Perhaps Tesla doesn't really scare the average person. But you know what does some poor motherfucker inside the Celsius lawsuit in the bankruptcy thing, talking about how they fucking lost everything?

01:06:51:06 - 01:07:20:04
Ed Zitron
The emails I got when I wrote about fucking Celsius and it's quite Molly White and the things she's found, the responses got like, fuck, I finally get this. This is horrible. It's no longer just crypto perverts who are losing their money. It's real people who were conned by something that seemed honest. That is what is lacking the actual consequences and acting as if they are them, rather than what you hope will happen in an industry, and what you would like the world to look like.

01:07:20:04 - 01:07:22:15
Bennett Tomlin
What seems like as good of a place to wrap it up as any.

01:07:22:15 - 01:07:29:09
Bennett Tomlin
Make sure to check out Better Off Line. And where's your editor for your podcasting and newsletter needs? And.

01:07:29:09 - 01:07:33:10
Ed Zitron
Better off Lancome. That's where I put all my links because there's too many of them now.

01:07:33:10 - 01:07:35:16
Bennett Tomlin
And thank you very much for joining us. It.

01:07:35:19 - 01:07:37:09
Ed Zitron
My absolute pleasure. Love coming on.

Crypto Critics' Corner

Episode 162 – Humiliate your local billionaire (feat. Ed Zitron)

Humiliate your local billionaire (feat. Ed Zitron) – Crypto Critics' Corner

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Episode 162 – Humiliate your local billionaire (feat. Ed Zitron)

Humiliate your local billionaire (feat. Ed Zitron) – Crypto Critics' Corner

Where to find the podcast:

Other episodes mentioned in this episode:

Other resources mentioned in this episode:

Where to find Crypto Critics’ Corner:

English Transcript:

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