it is very tempting to start drama because that's how the attention economy works I don't think it's a 21st century phenomenon you know suddenly everything's like lowquality garbage Nostalgia is a yearning for a time that really never existed people are trapped in like these Nostalgia traps and they they don't update themselves there's a cultural lag attached to everything right I think people really
underestimate what that lag is going to be with AI a successful plumber in like a big city could be making figures but somehow the journalist has more power now we've moved to the age of mass personalization I think we're a lot more valuable than we think you could have a wonderful life if you really love what you're doing in a way that you never could have in the past if you play your cards right it's much more
sustainable well hello everyone it's Jim oasy with yet another infinite Loops today guest actually I had to reschedule several times but it's going to be interesting because you are now going to be proved quite uh almost a sear with the article that I wanted to talk to you about um my my guest today is Katherine D who writes it default wisdom as well as numerous other Publications Katherine welcome thanks for having me and thanks
for accommodating the the rescheduling no no worries um so before we get into uh with the item that's going to show how precient you are um give us your origin story tell us about you um I I'm a I'm a blogger I I blog about um internet culture and internet history um Journal I'm almost a journalist that's not quite the right word for what I do since it's it's less uh less reporting and more like I call my my substack
thought digests because it's little things I've been thinking about so it's more like observations or field notes really than uh journalism per se and and yet uh you are published in a lot of uh you know sort of blue uh you know Blue Chip uh journals so yeah I mean um I've been very L I'm lucky that people want to read my read my thoughts ah yes you are did was that your original goal did you want to be a journalist or did it
it sort of evolved um I wrote an internet culture newsletter for an ad agency I worked for um I worked a little bit in entertainment and Tech um and then I worked at a startup that you know as startups tend to do it collapsed um on the night then I just started wrting full tie I love that as as startups uh tend to do it collapsed reminds me of the line uh by uh Ben Stein's father Herbert Stein and it goes something along the
lines of unsustainable Trends tend not to sustain themselves so yeah maybe we could maybe we could apply that to uh startup culture okay well the reason I was really excited to have you on was you you published an article uh that basically uh said why you're not leaving Twitter during back during the times when everyone was like setting their hair on fire and saying I'm done I'm not going to ever be on
this accursed website ever again of course only to see them again the next morning and I was I was fascinated by your article uh so it that got published uh back during the summer and I read it and I loved it and I agreed with it and I thought wow I I really want to do a deeper dive on this uh but Le let's let's remind listeners and viewers during that time Elon was doing some pretty crazy things renaming doing all
sorts of experimentation Etc and everyone was literally losing their minds and then you came with very clear eyes in my opinion and said come on guys don't don't don't try to fool yourself you're not gonna leave Twitter why um I mean the people who it's usually journalists who claim they're leaving right and the only reason they're there is to push clicks or move books or you know it's like they it's a
it's a professional tool um and then even for I I I so I feel like Twitter is really a like distribution site um so if you're not a journalist you're sort of like a journalist in waiting right like you're selling takes um and there's a reason that you chose Twitter it's a proximity to people who are going to read that and um care about what you have to say right so it just doesn't make sense right it's a for a lot of
people it's it's like their main source of of clout um sometimes you know professional meaning sometimes just meaning um and they're not going to do it on Tik Tok they're not gonna quit right it doesn't make any sense yeah and uh you you had some Just Killer lines in there like uh and this I'm paraphrasing you here so and New York is dead a lot is happening in Austin or Denver did somebody like myself with a admittingly New York centri
sensibility uh I I really thought that that was really funny has it surprised you to see all of the people who moved away from New York are suddenly announcing they're they're moving back to New York I I mean that's happening to San franisco too right all the people who had to jack up the prices in Miami are suddenly like oh you know C is not that bad it's really hard to change a center of gravity right and it's never
going to be really like Twitter is the only exception where it's like remote you know um because you need some barrier to entry right and you know for New York the barrier of Entry is like one getting to New York two affording to live in New York three finding the places where people who you know have whatever cache you're looking for are right it's you can't move that to Miami or or LA or right it's like those those
Center of gravities have have been static for a while for a reason yeah and snowing points as well right like San Francisco at the Bay Area silon Valley for for certain types of people New York uh I've always thought of as more of an idea and it draws it draws people who love ideas and love thinking about stuff and I have a good friend who's actually uh not from here never lived here um and
he's planning on moving here and I asked when he was here visiting I why are you moving here and he goes it's where all the smart people are and and in a way is Twitter kind of the the cyberspace equivalent like if New York is the capital or the intellectual capital of America if not uh you know much the world is Twitter kind of the capital of cyberspace I wouldn't say it's the capital um it's the capital for a
certain type of person I think I think there's a couple of um clicks right or factions um that get the most out of Twitter um so I mean it it depends on what you want so if you want to be a writer certainly U if you want if you want to be a like if you want to write op-eds Twitter is the place if you want to you know uh pedal takes Twitter um if you want to be a political personality Twitter um if you want to be a podcaster
of a certain kind Twitter um you know what's interesting about the internet is there's all of these celebrities of like massive audiences but they don't have um more traditional forms or like Legacy forms of Social Capital um I have a friend who's incredibly popular YouTuber um you know he uh subscribers into Millions right and he's like I don't know how to get important people to notice me and that's kind of that is
that's cyber space in a nutshell certain forms of celebrity are more valuable than others and uh Twitter is very valuable if you have particular goals yeah and I I think that's really interesting about uh your friend so number one is his YouTube channel one that where where he would really benefit by having in quotes I'm doing air quotes here for people are just listening um important people notice him or is that just kind of like
a status game thing I think it's a status thing I think you want to feel like your work is Meaningful uh and at at some point making money isn't enough um you know there's this sort of like classic thing that comes comes up on Twitter a lot right where it's like um you know a a successful plumber in like a big city could be making six figures at then you have a journalist who is barely scraping by but somehow the
journalist has more power right and it's the same kind of thing like my friend it's a hobbyist um Channel and it's it's very appealing for the people it's supposed to appeal to but um he's never going to get like I'm just picking random names here like like lizo is never gonna like stumble across his his channel and be like you know hey like you're doing I mean she might but like you know realistically or maybe like
some venture capitalist or something um it's just like very unlikely um and so he feels like I'm doing so well but it feels somehow like it's lacking that like traditional marker of success and Twitter really gives you access to that based on who's using it yeah I think that Twitter's really interesting uh I used to do a ton of Legacy Media I did a lot of CNBC CNN uh did interviews with like major newspapers and stuff and then
I don't know about 20 156 I kind of decided I have this thesis which I call the great reshuffle and where all the old playbooks are um basically get burned and they really don't work anymore and that's why they're getting burned and so I kind of decided you know I think I'm going to shift just to social media and see how that goes out uh because um what I you the business I used to be in asset
management for other people uh which I sold and then started this new company uh it the change there was ridiculous so like in 20067 uh if you were in asset management or anywhere really for that matter on Wall Street you you couldn't have a Twitter account compliance wouldn't allow it and so everyone had one of course I I I didn't ever have one that was uh under a pseudonym but I had a lot of friends that that did and it was just
a accepted that they had to because you know their their companies wouldn't let them do it but then it shifted in like 10 years where I was reading something about asset managers things and they say if you don't have a Twitter account like you're not going to make it because you know th twit is what they call that little section of Twitter you know blew up and and part of my thesis was that we
are increasingly living in on the internet and in cyberspace and you know very difficult to move your physical uh ZIP code very easy to move your digital uh uh ZIP code but I want to talk a little more about status because I just read something you were writing about that that I thought was really interesting um the the whole idea that gets confused in a lot of people's minds is like Rich does not equal High status uh
as you just pointed out with the plumber versus the the journalist uh it seems to me that journalists especially of Legacy Media they they made almost an implicit deal and the implicit deal was you know what I'm not going to make a ton of money but I am going to have influence right which is a much different form of status or Prestige than money uh sometimes arguably much more important um and and do you think that's one of
the reasons why that we see kind of a meltdown on the part of many older uh Legacy Media Stars I think partially I mean yeah that's that's part of it I one of my I don't know if it's gonna come to pass in exactly this way but I think that um journalists probably have like a good shot at like a class action lawsuit or something against their employers because you you know if you want to to write a book or something right like you
need you need a big platform and it's not enough simply to say I work for the New York Times or I work for the Atlantic you need to be um a personality right and that was a change that happened in in my lifetime I remember I was like in college and it started to be that journalists had to be personalities and the craft of Journalism was secondary so you take someone like for example Taylor theen who I think is
actually a really really good journalist and she um she has like a wonderful memory for internet culture um she really knows her stuff but when I say Taylor Loren um people immediately think of her social media drama right and she's not she's not forgettable and it it was sort of like this Devil's bargain but part of that bargain is she has to become a joke to move books to to have these high-profile positions um to get
her point across and then incurve I believe she is harassed right incur harassment for her behavior um and then it's like no I don't think anyone can name a single article that she's written which is a shame because her work is actually like quite good right um and so it's just like this weird thing where like lots of journalists are in this position and it's um some sometimes it's a flawed personality I don't know this I
don't know her personally I've never spoken to her I have no idea what she's what she's like but I mean it is very tempting to start drama because it's that's how the attention economy works and I would imagine that a lot of people are in this position where journalists have to make a fool out of themselves um in a way to sustain people's attention because people may not be as interested in like a thoughtful Tech piece right um
and then it it's everything else is secondary and that's a lot of stress and I think that adds to the Meltdown because not everyone is uh like I certainly am not good at being like an internet personality right but at the same time where you if was not an internet personality I would not be in this interview right now you know it's it's it's difficult for people who think of themselves as writers or
anthropologists or you know basically anything else besides an Entertainer to pursue that life I there was a great documentary um where they were talking about Kurt it was a documentary on Kurt vaget and and uh uh John Irving gave a quote on the documentary that really was taken by and it was he said that when they were teaching at the most prestigious I think the Iowa school of writing or one of the really super
highly Prestige ones and and uh Irving had got to know Bon and he said he said something that I always remember and it was this he goes it's absolutely fine to write about deadly serious stuff but you better be [ __ ] entertaining yeah do do you do you subscribe to that I mean because like I one of the things I like about your reading is it you are very entertaining oh thank you um I yeah I mean you have to sustain people's
attention somehow um and I think for a lot of myself included to some extent um you know your personal life and your personal baggage um whether real or imagined by your audience that's another thing right um the lore that people write for you versus what you have you know constructed for yourself um is is really important and so it's you constantly have to negotiate well like Oh I'm a joke but if I wasn't a joke I
wouldn't be able to pay my mortgage with substack or you know or whatever right whatever thing it happens to be for any given individual yeah but the other thing that I think about a lot is um you know when when when everything is digitized right um you know you can't copyright reality you can't copyright that tweet that was a real Banger and and and and so what can't you uh what can't you create with
zero marginal costs you can't create your reputation you can't create authenticity you can't create trust you can't create all of the things that I think would argue about uh maybe really thinking deeply about making yourself a joke on on uh social media in terms of uh you know to be memorable do you think there are other ways that that you can do that and and also succeed um I I think rarely people are
successful because of the quality of their work um but it does seem rare I mean there's so many like bloggers who sort of you know are just stuck in obscurity and it's not that their writing isn't good um it's just that they they lack something that makes them uh you know pop but I mean that's I think that's probably true that's something that's been true to different degrees forever like you know you always
hear these stories of like these like very talented Subway musicians and they just you know died uh just collecting you know tips and a cap or something um and to some extent it's like it's not really their fault it's like there's a lack of an IT factor or something um and it you know it's it sucks right there's it's some some of it's just luck um and there's plenty of people who have no Talent who because uh they have a really
good stage presence or they knew the right people or something somehow like w their way into to these incredible positions yeah that makes me think of two things on the first uh there was a great piece that I read about the artist bosia um and uh I I've collected contary art for long time and and I I don't own any of his work but I was really intrigued by his work as an artist and then I read this piece that basically
said that he had a partner uh he was originally a graffiti artist right and he had he had a partner who whose work was so similar to his that they themselves could not tell who did what part of a thing right but the the point of the piece was bosot got be befriended by Andy Warhol and became part of his Circle right and his friend was like no that's selling out I'm not going to do it well of course bosot started Selling
paintings for millions and millions of dollars and his friend still completely in obscurity same Talent completely different results based on the point you're making yeah I I think that happens all the time um it you know and it creates resentment right um it's but it's just the way it is there's a finite there's a finite amount of uh attention right um and it's also I also think in a way it
creates weird situations like my friend who is like he's very good and he's the best within his particular Niche um but his Niche doesn't have wide appeal nor has someone sort of reached out and made it have white appeal like another thing that I think could happen to him um is like let's say for example some random celebrity is really interested in his Hobby and sort of turns it into a trend and then he already has all this power
behind him um but it just you know that's it's just like playing the lottery yeah and and the second thing that it reminded me of what you said was have you ever seen it's very old and you're young so I doubt You' probably seen it but have you seen the movie Broadcast news I haven't but I was supposed to watch it in college and I never did I I I would recommend watching it uh because it really uh was also
preent in that uh the setup is William Hurt is this very good during his clamor boy days is this very very good-look guy and like he he's smooth delivery like looks like the Anchorman from Central Casting and then um uh Albert Brooks I think uh plays the guy who's the nerdy like he's singing songs in you know catalonian and making a this funny stew and listening to several different news sources and processing them all at the
same time and he's just as smart as smart can be and of course we all know who gets the anchor slot right William HT gets it it turns out that the nerdy guy becomes his brain and he uh William Hurt always wears an earpiece and the nerdy guy basically just tells him what to say I mean it's kind of weird but there there does seem to be some truth in that yeah yeah um definitely I mean there's also this this interesting
phenomenon um especially like on Twitter uh much smaller scale right of like pretty women or like women who are like pretty presenting they may not actually be pretty having like smarter um funny funnier men I mean this this sounds so sexist as I'm say as it's coming out my mouth but having these ghost writers that are like you know men who at least understand the medium more I don't want to say they're necessarily actually
funnier or smarter or anything um and then together right they like the the woman harnesses her sexuality and the man harnesses knowing the medium and knowing how to create a good joke and they become these powerhouses and it's always like very small scale right um but it's a similar similar sort of thing yeah that that that's interesting I hadn't given I hadn't either noticed or given that thought that is uh like
really interesting let's go a little bit back to uh the piece you recently wrote social status and wealth class and how class does not equal wealth I you know I Americans have always been very uh squeamish about talking about class because ultimately right if you go back to the founding that's what we were ostensibly rejected right uh everyone is equal under the law blah blah blah you come here and yet it does seem to me i'
will store the author of the uh the status game on I love his work and uh the reason I I've read all of his stuff but I had him on for that book Because I had kind of consistently tried to convince myself that hierarchy would meant nothing to me and that I never St old and etc etc and then after reading all of Will's work and my friend Rob Anderson I'm like [Laughter] [ __ ] I always thought that like my goal
was to stand outside of the hierarchy uh but then like if you start studying uh Evolution you start studying other species like literally there are status hierarchies everywhere from hens to baboons to ants and bees and weak humans what do you think uh how would you how would you sort the difference between uh class on the one hand Paul Fel has a really hysterically funny but a little bit old so a lot of the references are
not great uh book called class a guide through the American class system um and it it's always been something I've like been myself squeamish to talk about because it's like really hard what is class like what is prestige what is status and like why do people continually link them to money I I think I mean often often they are connected they're just not always connected um especially in the United
States uh where you know theoretically anyone can can become super wealthy right like that's the beauty allegedly of of this country um you know when anyone says that like CL and and wealth are the same right I think immediately of like some hypothetical like new money family and like Long Island who still is all the trappings of like like a middle class like Italian American family but they also like can afford a Ferrari or
something I'm like well that's not really high class and like I don't know why that's sort of my major thing that I think of but I feel like you know those those families exist right and there's lots of them um I I think of like so I always went to um prep schools uh growing up and I I went to a college was sort of like a similar flavor um and there was a lot of people um with money but you knew the
difference between like someone who simply could afford to attend that school and then there was like some other secret layer of society that like like only a few kids actually had access to right um and then it's even like you could even tell based on like what Prep School people go to like oh you go to the best school within your particular City but you're still go to um Andover exitor or something right um it's and
it's hard to describe to people who haven't seen it it's just like it's just the difference between like my dad drives a Porsche and my dad drives a Porsche and is friends with Hillary Clinton you know it's it's just like a weird thing that like you kind like once you notice it it's like um I'm sure it is uh you know something that can be articulated but uh I personally don't have that that skill set um you know it's it's just a it's
like access to just like something else there's like real power real influence or something so let's go let's go further on that like what you mentioned you at repb schools uh did did kids that you knew then emerge in life kind of the way you thought they would based on most people right I mean I think for there's a certain type of kid who it's like they you you knew pretty early on they'd be like doctor lawyer Finance right and
then you knew a kid really came from like status you know really was high class if they could go study like you know Egyptian history and now career artist right um another thing was like um you know everyone could like technically afford the same things but then like randomly there'd be like some senior who could go to the Met Gala and it's like you don't even know like most are like how do you even get invited
something like that like that's just it's that's more than money right that's like a level of access that you can't even conceive of right even if and then there's like little dog whistles right like um like do you play tennis or do you play Squash you know like there's like all these little things that kind of like uh our like dog was like you know do you can your parents simply afford to send you here or are you from
a special [Laughter] family I [ __ ] me up when I was growing up because I just like I um I was like I could never figure out like why am I different right I'm like I'm I'm a spoiled kid just like everyone else and then I was like oh just like my dad just has a good job like but we're not special and then I just never and I know I know that this is you know this is like these aren't New Revelations like
people have been writing on this for you know hundreds of years I I just never I I harbored these feelings confusion my whole life and then never took the time to educate myself on it I love the dog whistles um again again back to my friend Rob Anderson he has a really he has a book coming out he had a rough childhood raised in foster homes uh but super smart guy and so he uh as he would self-describe it was like
a burnt out [ __ ] uh from you know Northern California uh who like had a wakeup call joined the Air Force and then got accepted to Yale and talking to him about Yale and it's in his book so I'm not um saying anything that he hasn't already said himself he he one of the things that he noticed was he he he said I felt like I spoke a born language when I got to Yale um he said all of the kids knew like what references to the
west wing and all of these other popular shows and he said like I had never heard of much less seen any of these shows and so like he's a researcher right so he does the download on westwing and and he does the download on all of these so like like I learned interestingly madmen and uh Madmen in particular uh had like one of the highest ad rates because it was reaching an audience that like luxury goods manufacturers that was
their their sweet spot right and and I wonder like how did did you experience that with the well you wouldn't have but did you know people who uh experienced the kind of like holy [ __ ] I are you guys even speaking the same language as me um there's sort of I've had an experience so I feel like I'm kind of like in the the middle right like I'm not I'm not really in the like the core group you know but I'm kind of I've
always sort of been like an Orbiter right and then there's people who are totally outside that so like in college um I was like very good friends with this this woman she came from like um you know like a middle class suburb in New Jersey um and then there was like then that was really Stu because we we had um we had another friend who was like super wealthy grew up in Asia you know like totally different so like
there was me who grew up in Palm Beach County this girl who grew up in Suburban New Jersey and then this this other girl who's just like totally on another planet and then seeing the things that like I was aware of I I was aware I didn't have access to but I knew it existed and I knew what the the social norms around it were but I knew that it wasn't for me and then just like the total ignorance of our other friend from
New Jersey it was like that's when I was like wow there's really like there's so many worlds like going on that um and just it it kind of like put how out of touch I was into perspective and then like how out of touch in a way we all were right just like completely unaware to everyone's situation um I I don't know if I explained that particularly well but so sort of it's similar to to what Rob experienced where
it's just like you don't even know how other people are living because it's just there's so many layers of it you know as you were talking I was thinking uh if you had any aspirations for fiction that'd be kind of a great book I think like like uh intentionally mixing up people from really really different backgrounds and like I I don't know I'm not g to write it here you would write it much better uh but but
but like uh and and then kind of uh seeing how literally you you because you lack a shared context you you lack the ability to understand one another right and like you think that the you think the other person's lying or like you think they like you just don't understand how certain things could be true and you'd get into these like bizarre like very esoteric arguments about things um I mean like one thing
that like we would all argue about is just like the etiquette around certain things um one say I don't remember anything in particular I remember there being like lots of really stupid ones one argu one argument I got into recently that was sort of In The Same Spirit is like do you send a courtesy invite right to a to a large event and then it's like these layers of it like why am I sending invitations to a large
event right um you know or do you hand write thank you notes and it's all these things that it's like that you are even arguing over doing it at all is part of the argument you know right but I mean I think you're too important about fiction people love stories about that like that's Metropolitan the Wht Stillman movie or like any joh novel people love Donna tar too yeah Ellis I mean I think everyone's very even now right
everyone really wants to know about like class differences in the United States Gossip Girl there's a nice tradition of of literature and film um even you know stuff that's actually literature not not a donart Noel that that that seems like a good segue to the stuff you've written on Tik Tok too all right so I'm an old and I don't have Tik Tok and I don't have Tik Tok primarily not because I don't understand it I think a lot of the ones
that I see people put up on Twitter are really funny and like really amusing uh but uh I I I can't get past the fact that it's owned by the CCP basically and and that it's kind of like the if if you if you want to do really really stealthy influence that's what I would do like if I was CCP and and I'm like huh I want to influence Western you right uh I'm not going to put up posters of Mau or you know anything like that
I'm I'm gonna do Tick Tock what what do you think about that I think you're right um but if that's true it's interesting what they're choosing to influence because I feel like you know like something like Tumblr which was much smaller by comparison had a huge um cultural impact uh you know so does Twitter as we discussed earlier and a lot of that is like who do you ultimately have access to right um Tik
Tock is really good at um making music television and products go viral including food right um there's been so many cases of like older songs or like maybe candy that like no one really liked but you know been on the market for 30 years you know become viral and turn into a meme and in some is is now like a permanent fixture of um you know it's just now it's just a popular thing people eat and it wasn't actually
sometimes it's ephemeral sometimes it's not like one really weird example um this was the first one I personally noticed um someone started like wrapping pickles in Fruit rollups and then freezing them and putting chamoy and tahen on them and um I mean it's a really weird snack but now there's now there's multiple like small businesses and stores where you can get like these customizable pickles and now it's just
it's like frozen yogurt it's just like kind of a thing that's like oh do you want frozen yogurt do you want ice cream do you want a a pickle like you know not in every city in the country so some people might be hearing this and be thinking what are you talking about but like in the places where it's popular it's very popular and Tik Tok did that and the Tik Tok is great at doing that um so it seems like if that if this is
some sort of like Chinese op maybe they're still in like the testing like what can we get Americans to like or consume or it's s it's sort of revealing that the ultimate goal is really about selling random stuff and like and you know how can we make money how can we make such and such a band popular or a a lipstick that changes color with your skin pH or you know whatever that's not a bad idea yeah um
the uh idea though you know Edward bernes who was a massively bad human I always append anything I say about him with what a [ __ ] that guy was but like he was the nephew of Sigman Freud and he was the guy who rebranded propaganda to public relations and like that's masterful I think yeah that's I mean that's genius and and what do you think about that are do you think that we with kind of the ascendency of the Tik toks of the
world uh those types of things that we are just becoming this uh kind of ethereal uh you know one thing then the next then the next then the next or or is that too alarmist thinking that it's shortening our attention spans to like I mean it might it might be um I think we're a lot more malleable than we think and I also think it would have been this bad earlier had we had the tools right like something that's always
like a nice wakeup call is to like review trends of the past and then actually like buy the product or experience it for yourself because you know people in like the 30s 40s 50s 60s 70s 80s 90s like I mean like crap has always been popular right like um a lot of like musicians we remember fondly like aren't really great there's just something they they just have like a cultural cashion now and that's time has
given them that um so there's there's that aspect of it um if we have you know it's not like I don't think it's a 21st century phenomenon that uh you know suddenly everything's like lowquality garbage right I think things have been since at least the 20th century maybe earlier right things have been not great um and and by a certain metric um and as far as our attention spans I think that is true um but I think it's so much
easier to heal um and I think that we also have like a natural saturation point it doesn't mean that we won't like immediately go back but I you know there's been all these articles written about like oh uh you know Zoomers or leites or something I think what ends up happening is like you reach a point where you your existence is too mediated and you kind of get freaked out and you have like a self-imposed break so it's
like eating too much candy like you could your diet can be generally bad but even if you're like someone who only eats fast food and candy all the time in one sitting right like at some point you have a stopping point and you're like I need to take a break right um and I I think something we don't do is um reflect on those breaks and then try to harness them and say okay what do we need to change what we do is we give
oursel the space I mean we become a little antisocial or something and then we just go right back to doing what we were doing um but I I I think it's alarmist to say like well we're stuck like this the you know the C out of the bag um I I'm very online I'm very attached to my devices and I I this happens to me and I'll take months off and then I can read the same way I you know was able to read before I had a
smartphone um and then it's the problem is I just go back right and the all of the progress is gone but it it comes it it comes back right it's there there's never I at least you know at my age there's still there's it's not you know I'm haven't reached the point of no return yet I think that's a good way of putting it too because um I I one of the things that I think is happening is we are moving from the era as you mentioned the
50s 607s where everything was mass production right and like everybody watched the same TV shows everybody read the same books um and they were all mediated through gatekeeping and uh now we we've moved to the age I think of mass person personalization and the the good news there is for example there's lots of mitches like your friend the YouTuber uh we now have the platforms and the technology where you can if you're good
you can successfully you know power laws aren't going away they're going to be around forever and but now there are many Hills much smaller Hills like I love Lucy 63 million viewers for any one episode um the closest equivalent that we have adjacent now would have been the Game of Thrones finale with 18 million viewers wow consider considerably lower but by the same token there are now all
sorts of things where you could earn a successful living you could have a wonderful life if you really love what you're doing in in a way that you never could have in the past right like if your thing were I don't know um viones or austo Hungarian Empire military tactics um and the internet didn't exist that was going to be your little niche and you might have a couple of nerdy friends that you could talk to
about it but that was probably it and you were Bound by where you were right so if you were in New York probably gonna fight a lot more back to the New York theme as gravity wall uh but if you were in Arkansas you probably didn't have nearly as many to reach now with the internet you've got everyone in the world who might be interested in that particular Niche and um you could have a successful YouTube channel on it
successful substack uh do do you share that view yeah um I it's interesting because I think people think it's the opposite um I think people think that like oh 40 years ago it was so much easier to have like like a mom and pop hobby shop and now you can't anymore uh and I think it's like well now like you you can you can in a place like you know a small town Arkansas because not only are the costs low but if what you make
up and people in the town not being interested in it um you have people who fly in you can sell things online it's actually like if you play your cards right it's much more sustainable um and I think what it is is that uh people are trapped in like these Nostalgia traps and they don't they don't update themselves and they don't make it sustainable even though as you say actually it's much easier in a way to do
it now yeah and I I also think typically Nostalgia gets much more important to society during times of lots of volatility right lots of changes happening and it's my opinion at least that Nostalgia is a yearning for a time that really never existed right uh you know oh gosh it was so much easier to have a mom and pop coffee shop back in the 50s oh that would be so great you know no it really wasn't that much
easier and a lot of the times it really sucked like it was just really really hard work and we we tend to put on our rose-colored glasses and say oh wasn't that an idolic past no actually it wasn't it right you know like I anytime anyone says to me like wouldn't it be great to be able to live in like the late 1800s and my answer is [ __ ] no man like if I got a sliver I could die of sepsis because there are no
antibiotics right and and people had to gloss over how hard life was for most humans up until pretty recently right yeah and and how like I think we also just forget how we always sort of Look Backwards um like you know they I mean this is this is again like sort of a well Trot in Trope now but like people you know PE people in the 80s wish it was it was the 50s people in the 90s wish it was the 60s I like you know what one thing that
comes to mind as we're talking is like a conversation I have with like Zoomers a lot is or you know like my my Zoomer siblings for example oh I wish Blockbuster was still around I wish we could you I hate Netflix I hate streaming I wish I could just go in and there was a finite number of choices and like I remember being in like Blockbusters in like 1997 and then whoever I'm with or even myself without
even knowing what I'm talking about being like Oh like I'm GNA get a movie from the 80s I wish I wish it was like 1987 right it's like why what like you know why do I wish that why does why is the adult that I'm with saying that you know and just we're always looking backwards we're always like reconstructing the past yeah I think a big part of that is part of human OS is a really strong desire for the illusion of
certainty and and so we we get enamored of the past because in our minds it's fixed it's certain and you know we're we're uneasy or we're we're uh anxious about now and the future because obviously it's not fixed right and there there're a lot of different things going on and when there's a lot of disruption uh whether it's positive disruption or negative disruption the you know human o kind of reacts the same
and it's like I don't like disruption I don't want that Tony n Melo had a great line which is everyone wants progress but nobody wants change and yeah I agree that's a great it's a great way to put it and and and it's so funny to me because like I I I I you know if there's a time machine I'm going forward I'm I'm not going back because like although uh Louis CK had the funny bit about how as a white male he would only go back in
time because he said I could go back to 1 AD in Rome and they'd say Mr CK we have your table right here and he goes but I'm not going into the future um and I'm the other way around I I I think that uh we are like on the C per like very very cool things happening now that doesn't mean they won't come without problems everything comes with problems and uh I'm just hoping that they're they're better problems what do you what
do you think about the debate right now that's going on about uh Ai and about you know the the on the one hand there are the people who are terrified they see Terminator um and then on the other hand there are the people like like we're g to it's going to bring us to The Singularity Etc I think both sides of those extreme arguments are silly but what do you think um I'm not I'm not too scared of
it um when I used to be really scared of a like 2011 or something and the uh I I was in a relationship at the time um with someone who had had uh studied machine learning in grad school and he said to me he was like think of it every time you go to an airport and you go to get your tickets um at one of the little kiosks right those were supposed to um make the the the desk attendance IR relevant and they never work and it's
2011 and now it's 2023 and those things still don't work and I still always need to go up to the desk and ask you know for my ticket and for my information and uh you know his only point was like the technology always exists better technology than like I you know I personally am even aware of has always always existed but the distribution and then getting people to cooperate it cooperate with it is so difficult um and
I never hear that that piece uh brought into the conversation like chat GPT is very good but writing prompts is actually kind of difficult and uh it's like you have to get people over so many hurdles that it's sometimes it's just easier to use human labor and how long are we going to be in that situation before people are really made redundant that's that's one very important piece of it I think yeah I I think that um AI
will be the killer app of AI will be a bit like an iPhone right or an iPad where you can just use it so intuitively that you don't have to you know join a Discord or take a class in prompt engineering and all of that stuff I think that it's Pro that's probably coming a lot faster at least from what I've seen now admittingly I'm involved in AI I'm the chairman of stability AI which is the largest open source AI
foundational model builder um but I I I I see AI uh as kind of the greatest uh amplifier for human creativity and Innovation to come along in certainly the time that I've been watching Tech and uh but I also believe that you know AI should be for everyone it should be all for all uh the idea of a few people controlling AI just gives me images of the great pat Opticon and you know I have five grandchildren and I
don't want them to grow up in that world so I'm a much bigger believer in AI for all and but it's also to your point it's got to be almost intu ably easy to use yeah or right because like when when you I I sometimes joke that when you let hardcore Engineers do so-called upgrades on Tech it's actually a massive downgrade for regular people right because the engineer has a certain way of thinking and they're like oh wouldn't
it be great if we could do you know whatever it is some you know obscure Arcane thing that is admittingly cool but like completely to running like iTunes for example and I use iTunes as my example all the time because like when iTunes first came out like I had everything all my music was on iTunes it was super simple it was really easy to make playlists it was super just very convenient very intuitive then throughout a series of
upgrades with air quotes attached it became unusable like literally unusable and you know thank God Spotify came along and save me but um like it seems to me that it it's kind of table Stakes to be able to give through a technology platform be able to give things that are way too complicated like and that the engineers love to make what's really hard is to make things like an iPhone like Spotify
like Amazon has become right in the old days like I was one of the earliest users of Amazon and you you you you would call with your credit card information like because people didn't I didn't do that but like my sisters who are true baby Ms uh did like and I'm like why are you doing that well I would never put my credit card you know on the internet and and so I do see there's a cultural lag attached to everything
right and that's the classic adoption curve yeah I and I think I think people really underestimate what that lag is going to be with AI um there's sort of this like I I feel like there's a mythology that like after maybe like um Gen X and everyone's like super comfortable with technology I I think I saw a study that like Zoomers are left less comfortable than Millennials and Millennials are are largely like uh you
know superstitious about AI so I mean the hurdle that we're going to have to get over with like getting Millennials and Zoomers Beyond people who are already receptive and interested um to be using these tools too is is I think going to be very difficult even if um even if you know we do have something like an iPhone that's very intuitive to use um and I think even just convincing people to use tools that will make their
lives better uh will will create jobs right um Zoomer is really really are Tech illiterate for the most part um and they'll need they'll need help right um and that that's that that in itself as an opportunity Creator there you go uh you've also written a lot about uh Astro turkey on on uh social media and elsewhere that's another great example of something that has always happened right yeah like
during the uh during our little spat with our cousins from the UK there were all sorts of newspapers that were uh driven entirely by political factions and and so they engaged in you know quite uh if you read them now it's quite eloquent but it was still astrod derping uh do do you think like is that a pearl clutcher moment or or what do you think about the proliferation of either gaslighting or astr turbing in Social um it it depends
I think there is a lot of alarmism around it um I think like it it it sort of depends I mean there's some there's some obvious examples of it it becomes most obvious when these attempts fail right um or when they don't cover their tracks well enough um but I I I I you know this sort of goes back to the AI point in a way um there's this disbelief that things can become organically popular online um and people
misunderstand the way power can help right so they'll think um let's say a musician or a thought leader or something is totally astroturfed when really what happened was they had organic momentum and the thing that knocked them over the The Edge was a powerful person or celebrity then endorsed them and made a break their career right whereas a lot of people will see a trajectory like that and think oh this person was totally
astroturfed and totally invented but they don't understand that like actually like someone writing a profile about you or something um in uh you know in the New York Times will give you that like last push you need to get you know mainstream popularity or something um so there there's I think there's just a lot of misunderstanding of how again like to go back to our earlier conversations how Social Capital Works um how power works
uh how Trends explode how things grow um and it's easier to be like oh well this this was a plan you know from so and so and so nefarious yeah and that's right back to the basad getting uh adopted by and promoted by Andy warhold right um now he he didn't he did have a strong organic following it just wasn't not many people knew about it because we didn't have the internet back then to people put uh screen grabs of his stuff
up up on the Internet um so what's next for you what what what what what's the aspiration what would what would you like uh to be the the next chapter in the life or you just loving the current one um I don't know that's a good question um I am kind of getting burnt out with social media although I always say that um I have a very love haate relationship with it on the one hand it's made my career which I'm very
thankful for on the other hand it's a pain in the ass um you know I would love to get to a point where like I don't have to be so available and um the work will just speak for itself you know I'll write a book or something and that that'll be you know that'll be it it's like I just I write books now or something um who knows um maybe maybe the next chapter is I I I find a hobby and I like make you know mini miniature
furniture for the rest of my days and that's actually gives me perect and then you write a book about miniature furniture making and then it's just a whole new world right it's like you know I got conventions have a Tik Tok I love it I love it well Katherine this has been awesome thank you for taking the time we we uh have a question that we ask everyone at the end um of the podcast which is we're going to make
you Empress of the world uh you can't with anyone in a reeducation camp that's a no no uh nor can you kill anybody uh but you can we're going to hand you a magic microphone and you can speak two things into it and the next morning whenever the morning happens to come for the 8 billion inhabitants of this Little Rock everyone is going to wake up and they're going to think I just had two of the greatest ideas and I'm going to
start taking action against I'm not going to talk about them I'm GNA start taking action against both of them what are you going to incept the entire population of the world with that's a that's a big question uh the because it's so much I don't want to pick the wrong things um all right so this one I'm going to say I'm saying this has been outsourced to me by by multiple people I trust so I can't I
can't defend this I'm just trusting my friends here um I am a a I'm very scared of climate change so I'll say nuclear power assuming my friends are right on that hopefully they are and then for me personally um I would change I would change the way the internet works so it's it's more like Facebook events or next store than it is what we currently have it's more like localized and in like little groups so those are my two those are my
probably gonna have terrible terrible knock on effects but I don't think that they're terrible I think that like I changed my mind on nuclear power because of climate change it's kind of like you know what I was wrong to be opposed to nuclear power um it is the cheapest probably safest when you actually look into its history I was I was opposed to it just because I didn't even like that was what you were
right you were opposed to growing up when I grew up I it was just like you of course I don't want nuclear energy and and then when when the whole climate change thing came up I'm like I better do a deeper dive on nuclear power I was literally as found it I'm like holy [ __ ] I was so wrong and so I think that's a great one and and I've never seen next door but I've heard about it I actually like it I actually think it I think it's
actually really good um I like I I tend to my ideal internet usage is that it's a supplement to um to to real life instead of easily replaced like you can't like live on next door right like you use it to navigate your immediate environment and so maybe not the whole internet's like that but more more of that more supplementing and improving what's immediately in front of you versus a place that you can kind of
Escape into forever ah okay you know what you've you've convinced me you here you incepted me I'm gonna go I'm gonna go check out next door and your mileage mayber I live in a great neighborhood so holds you accountable all right well Katherine this has been awesome thank you so much for coming on and uh uh we can't wait to see what the next chapter uh involves that likewise have a have a great day