Hater Season: Henry Zebrowski

Summary

Podcast Summary: Better Offline – "Hater Season: Henry Zebrowski"

Date: March 11, 2026
Host: Ed Zitron
Guest: Henry Zebrowski (Last Podcast on the Left)
Episode Theme: Technology’s Failed Utopias, Work Culture Delusions, and the Power of Human Connection

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Main Theme

This episode of Better Offline features a candid, irreverent exploration of the failures and delusions of the tech industry, particularly its attempts to sell us the Metaverse, AI, and corporate “culture,” and how these ideas reflect the warped values of the tech elite. Ed Zitron and guest Henry Zebrowski (comedian and podcaster) incisively mock Silicon Valley’s attempts to define the future, exploring how techno-utopian fantasies leave out real humans and fail in practice. The conversation ranges from absurd stories about VR comedy gigs to a darkly comic consideration of tech’s insular worldview, the pitfalls of “office culture,” and the hollow promises of AI.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Metaverse: A Case Study in Tech Self-Delusion

• Henry’s Rage at the Metaverse (03:12): Henry opens by bluntly stating, “I hate the goddamn Metaverse.” He and Ed discuss the endless cycle of tech hucksters shilling the latest “game-changing” innovation—from crypto to Clubhouse to the Metaverse, and back again.
• How They Tried to Sell Us ‘Virtual Living’ (04:00): Henry analyzes how tech leaders thought lockdown would make us crave work as social life, failing to understand most people “just want to put my fucking headphones in. I just want to get my job done. Please leave me alone.” [Ed, 04:41]
• VR Performance Anecdote (07:35): Henry describes performing as “Cheddar Goblin” at a New Year's Eve event in the Metaverse—a surreal, invasive experience where audiences were “not prepped that their cameras would turn on and they would get scared… It was bad.”
• The Dissonance of Virtuality vs. Reality (09:19): Henry reflects on the “cavernous silence” after virtual shows, which highlights how these platforms offer only an illusion of social connection, never replicating the messy, emotional reality of genuine human contact.

2. Techno-Elitism and the Corporate “K-Hole”

• Living in Tech Moguls’ Worldview (05:01): Henry compares modern society to “living in a giant ketamine-fueled dream,” dictated by the likes of Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, and others molding reality according to their productivity-obsessed ideals.
• Metaverse as Rehearsal for a Sequestered Elite (12:00): Both argue the Metaverse and “network state” concepts are dry runs for an eventual tech-secession—where elites wall themselves off from the rest of society, dragging us through their version of the future, which perpetually fails in practice.
• The Futility of “Culture” Initiatives (13:13): Tech leadership treats human connection and culture as frivolous, “feminine,” and ultimately replaceable with corporate events and foosball tables, missing the point that culture is emergent and cannot be engineered from the top down.

3. Office Culture as Propaganda

• Office “Culture” = Work Propaganda (14:19): Ed and Henry dissect countless “office culture” articles, revealing them as managerial efforts to extract more labor while offering nothing real in return.
• Blunt Truth About Work (16:36): Ed: “I know why I’m doing my job. Make money.” Henry: “Unless you’re working at a not for profit helping people directly, there is absolutely no reason for you to have a fucking thesis statement outside of ‘Our company makes goods for people or we provide X and we pay you to do X.’ That is it.” [17:28]

4. Tech Leaders’ Incompetence and Self-Perpetuating Failure

• The “Business Idiot” Era (39:15): Ed and Henry agree that what looks like conspiracy is often just “way more human beings being extremely bad at really important jobs.” [Henry, 39:39]
• CEO-ism as a Sinecure (37:17): Henry riffs that “the only job replaceable by AI… is CEO. Literally. It’s the easiest, it’s the dumbest.”
• Epic Failures Passed Around (38:33): Ed shares the story of a failed executive at Lacework being hired to run AI at Meta/Microsoft, highlighting the absence of meritocracy in tech leadership.

5. The True Limits of AI

• LLMs Are Not Intelligence (50:31): Henry insists, “They’re not AI—they’re language models. There is no intelligence inside.” Human thought is nonlinear and chaotic; AI only mimics the surface of language.
• The Culture and Art of Coding (35:14): Coding is an art form, not just stringing instructions together. Large language models can produce code, but lack the depth of understanding needed in genuine software engineering.
• AI Narratives as Tech Propaganda (31:37): Ed notes media is “captured… by the ideologies that AI will be big… It will be,” regardless of reality or utility.

6. Why Tech’s Fantasies Fail: Disconnection from Human Need

• Tech’s Solutions Don’t Solve Real Problems (46:44): Ed observes, “They don’t have problems, so they don’t know how to fix them.” Rather than tackling housing, food, or quality-of-life issues, tech billionaires “try to solve” what they imagine normal people want (“TikTok and hamburger, I guess”).
• Short-Termism vs. Actual Progress (46:44): Venture capital throws fortunes at short-term hype (“GPUs for a possible return”) but shies away from sustainable investments like clean energy, which require patience for payoff.

7. Media Collusion, Narrative Control & Social Stasis

• Media and PR Echo Chambers (30:38, 31:37): The major news outlets uncritically amplify the latest tech visions; the “real power” is not in technology, but in narrative—what gets presented as the future, what gets memory-holed.
• Suppression and Distraction (47:41): Henry points out, “there’s protests in major cities that exist almost 24/7 and they’re just not talking about it… They’re just trying to delete that out of the narrative.”

8. Human Potential and the Resistance to Debasement

• The Human Mind Can’t Be Modeled (34:06): “There is a part of our consciousness that we will never duplicate.” [Henry]
• Debasing the Human Spirit as Profit Engine (57:19): Tech narrative keeps us doubting our value, ensuring we’re “easier to sell to, easier to capture and easier to use.”

9. Notable Epstein & Tech World Tangents

• Epstein Connections in Tech & Comedy (60:12–63:00): The hosts discuss the infiltration of various industries by elites like Epstein and Bannon, and how these connections play out in ways both absurd and sinister.
• Dark Irony of AI Obsession (63:50): Epstein was interested in AI “the same way every business idiot is”—pure hype, no substance.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On the Metaverse’s Absurd Limitations:
  “You mean to tell me you built an entire second reality and you can’t put in fucking legs?”
  — Henry Zebrowski (06:50)

• On Why the Office “Culture” Narrative Exists:
  “Office culture is what brings the company together. Missing from most of these articles was the definition of office culture, because it was just kind of work propaganda.”
  — Ed Zitron (14:19)

• On the Unreality of Tech Leadership:
  “We are not living up to their expectations, Ed… We’re not dying fast enough and we’re not working hard enough.”
  — Henry Zebrowski (15:49)

• On Human Connection and Tech’s Failure to Model It:
  “Culture’s humans hanging out, spending time… They think that’s gay, okay Ed. They really have like a deep homophobia towards anything emotional or sensual.”
  — Henry Zebrowski (12:45, 13:13)

• On AI Hype:
  “The only job replaceable by AI, you see, is a CEO. Literally. It’s the easiest, it’s the dumbest.”
  — Henry Zebrowski (37:17)

• On Tech’s Dismissal of Human Needs:
  “If you want to make people happy, you make food cheaper and better and you make housing and you make their general life better.”
  — Ed Zitron (48:42)

• On the Limits of Artificial Intelligence:
  “My thoughts are not linear… Human thought is chaos.”
  — Ed Zitron (51:22)

• On Human Potential and Narrative Control:
  “They want you to believe that you are mediocre and that the summation of your life is a large language model… because if you do that, you’ll look down on yourself and you’ll be easier to sell to, easier to capture and easier to use.”
  — Ed Zitron (58:18)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Metaverse’s Absurd Design Flaws and Sexual Harassment Solutions:
  [06:00–07:30]
• Henry’s Metaverse Comedy Gig Story:
  [07:35–09:30]
• Office Culture vs. Reality:
  [14:19–16:36]
• CEO “Replaceable by AI” Bit:
  [37:17–38:33]
• Why Tech’s Solutions Are So Off-Base:
  [46:44–47:41]
• Debasing the Human Spirit for Profit:
  [57:19–58:18]
• Media Narrative and Tech’s Narrative Capture:
  [30:38–31:37]
• Epstein-Linked Comedy World:
  [60:12–63:00]

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Tone and Style

The conversation is sharp, irreverent, and at times gleefully profane, blending skepticism with dark humor. Henry’s comedic timing pairs perfectly with Ed’s technocratic cynicism; both are resolutely critical of tech’s elite and refreshingly honest about the banality of corporate and digital life.

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Takeaway

Better Offline’s “Hater Season” delivers a thorough roasting of Silicon Valley’s pretensions, showing how its grandest visions consistently miss the messiness of real human life—and how the only way forward is to resist both narrative and technical debasement, reclaiming human needs, complexity, and connection in the face of techno-corporate fantasy.

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Listen if:
You want to understand why the Metaverse, AI, and “office culture” are failing fantasies—and laugh about it along the way.

Transcript

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[Ed Zitron]

Callzone media. Hello. Welcome to better offline. I'm, of course, your host, ed zetron.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Better Offline.

[Ed Zitron]

Apologies to everyone for missing the monologue last week. I know many of you have threatened my life. That's a joke. You're all very lovely about it, but we are back this week. It's hater season. I'm gonna be honest, Hater season has been so much fun that everyone is just. I think we're just gonna do this forever. And today, I'm joined by an incredible guy. I'm gonna be one of two divas coming together to maximize our joint slay. I'm joined by Henry Zabrowski of last podcast on the left. Henry, how are you?

[Henry Zebrowski]

I am good. I'm filled with rage.

[Ed Zitron]

With rage about what?

[Henry Zebrowski]

I'm ready. Honestly, I hate the goddamn Metaverse.

[Ed Zitron]

It's. I saw it pop up the other day. I saw a person mention the Metaverse, and there is one guy, Jamie something, just guy on Twitter. You can find him. Who? I watched him go from crypto From Clubhouse to Web3 to NFTs to Metaverse to AI, and now he's back to Metaverse. And I think people is wrong. He's wrong, but also he's professionally wrong. But that's crazy. Like, I. People are very unfair to me about my correct opinions, but it's insane to me how many of these consultant swindlers still exist and how there are still people being like, yeah, dude, yeah, the metaverse is still here, man. I'll pay you. I'll do this.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Because they're desperate. They're desperate for some other realm of productivity and work. There. There's something. They really thought they had us pegged during COVID Like, at some point, they were like, they miss work. They miss work. They miss. They. They. They miss. They miss people. They miss us. And they had this idea of like, oh, the social network. Like, what we have to do is convince them they're hanging out. We have to convince all of them that they're all just going to like, oh, no, no, it's. It's work, sure, but it's like a lifestyle. Work is like your lifestyle.

[Ed Zitron]

Do you remember that whole period as well, just before the Metaverse, where there were all the remote work articles that were like, we're missing the serendipity of the office. We're missing it. You can't bump into a friend at the office and have these thoughts. I love that because it was always written by a boss, because you could tell, because everyone else at work is like, I just want to put my fucking headphones in. I just want to get my job done. Please leave me alone.

[Henry Zebrowski]

We have crawled into the heads of these giant corporate guys. Like, that's kind of what we're living in. I feel like we're living in a giant ketamine. Like, we're in a ketamine fueled dream right now. Like, we are in a. I live

[Ed Zitron]

inside the ketamine dream. But what is the. Who is the dreamer?

[Henry Zebrowski]

The Dreamer is people like Zuckerberg and these guys that are kind of forming how they think we view reality. They're, like, trying to put that on us. They're trying to say, we love work, we love productivity. As a. As a. As a. As a animal, as a human animal. They believe we crave crushing it. We crave dividends, we crave sling, we love hustling. And I just. We've just been in this place now where we're kind of being dragged through their version of the future, which is just not panning out, you know, like. Yeah, the metaverse. I did a show on the Metaverse once. Right, right.

[Ed Zitron]

I. I did New Year's Eve in the Metaverse. What? Which one?

[Henry Zebrowski]

It.

[Ed Zitron]

Facebook Horizon Worlds.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It was some. Yes, I want. It was something like. So everybody was a little Weeble Wobble person. Right. Because they had to eliminate general. You remember when they had to go through the whole thing because they had to eliminate lower halves of people?

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, yes, because they said they were bringing in legs, but then the legs didn't. Didn't pan out. Legs.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes, because legs mean penis and balls or vagina. Right. And so what happened was, is that as soon as those were in play, as soon as legs were in play, penis and balls and vaginas were in place. And then immediately the people started getting sexually harassed on the Metaverse.

[Ed Zitron]

But did they ever put the legs in? I thought they weren't able to get them in at all.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, because that was the. Let's just say I believe you saw several attempts at this. This idea of, like, we can't put in legs. You can't put in legs. You mean to tell me you built an entire second reality and you can't put in fucking legs?

[Ed Zitron]

All right. I mean. I mean, practically speaking, putting in functional legs that map to movement from the user would be difficult, but it's just. I never really understood.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, that's not even with their. There's the aesthetics of legs have, like

[Ed Zitron]

a flat, like a Ken doll. Who cares?

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's. As soon as people saw legs, they saw genitals, and they started saying horrific stuff to each other on the Metaverse, and so they got rid of legs.

[Ed Zitron]

Tell me about this metaverse experience you had. So this New Year's Eve.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So I was asked to do. It was during COVID I was asked to do the comedy for a New Year's Eve party, quote, unquote, in a build out. It was like a metaverse build out. It was one of those. They had done it for this specific event and the goal was that people were walking around this virtual space and they would come upon you and then your camera would turn on and you'd see, quote, unquote, the real person there. I was in a character. It was wildly invasive. Everybody was obviously had agreed to it. But I was Cheddar Goblin, which is a character from a movie called Mandy. Right. I was playing. Yeah, this is my life. This is called the Entertainer's Life ad. I mean, yeah, they gave me a thousand dollars.

[Ed Zitron]

That's worth it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It was. It was for the tears. Because then I put in. I propped up. I have a build out of the Cheddar Goblin from Mandy. Right. I have a poll from the original model. I put it in a chair and I put it on a. Put a camera on it.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And then I was talking as him roasting people that would arrive to the little comedy build out, right. That they had. And the thing is, is that it's what happened after every single Covid Stream show is that obviously it was janky, it was strange. People were not, even though they thought they were prepped, that their cameras would turn on, they were not prepped that their cameras would turn on and they would get scared. And it was bad. You like all that type of stuff. But in the end, it really is, which is what I discovered afterwards is the closing of the laptop after this and the silence.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, was it just like constant noise in there?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, just the idea of, like, as a performer, like, this was kind of one of the big issues. I had it just. Even just during COVID which is the cavernous silence after the show that you have now done on Zoom, in which you have been a. In a sort of simulacrum of real life for half a second. And then as soon as the laptop closes, all that illusion is shattered. And now you're just sitting in silence. And there's a part of me that thinks that that is kind of the issue with the phenomena as a whole, which is this fake. A fake version of society that they wanted to recreate for us in order for us to obey whatever rules they want to set up for us. And so, like, as I was in this, I was like, oh, I'm a part of the normalizing process of this. Like, this is a. I am a person and I am here doing this as a way to show all of you. Look, even if the world is uninhabitable, even if all the corporations of the world make the surface a giant, like, lava stream, the rest of us can still go underground and don't worry. There can still be the Friends reboot. Don't worry. There can still be any type of Charmin you like. It can be there. It can be underground. We can live underground. We don't need all of this real life.

[Ed Zitron]

Right. I also think it's just to your point about living inside their heads. It is really funny watching them try and sell like make stuff to sell us when they do not speak to real people like, yeah, what. What are you fucking pigs like you have sitting at desks, right? You want to walk around world, I guess. Look, it's the few you pigs like this, right?

[Henry Zebrowski]

What do you think about the human version of the Right now what I see is the. In the IRL version of the metaverse are the corporate like it is not only a. It's an apartment complex. It's where you work. It's also where the, the you got your slop bowls. And then you can go over here and you can get your face injections and you can go over here and you can do the thing that makes you look sound and you can get the clothes that make you look just like everybody else.

[Ed Zitron]

The Google version of worry free from. Sorry to bother you.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes. Yes, there is. That's. That's like one soft rollout, right For.

[Ed Zitron]

I do believe they've all of this back though. They've started pulling back on corporate benefits. So I think it is going to be the, the moment a company offers housing within their campus. That's how you know that they've just lost the plot and they're like how to fuck it? How do we do this? Just give him housing, I guess.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I genuinely believe all of this is the dry run for some form of United States of Peter Thiel.

[Ed Zitron]

See, that's, that's the thing though because I, I see that argument but whenever I read them or hear them talk or actually look at the success of them trying to do like their network state stuff, which always seems to go poorly because running a city or a country is hard.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's hard.

[Ed Zitron]

I also see it fall apart and I see them put like AI in general is this thing that's very much a cultureless person. A person who doesn't know anything how they think knowledge or culture works. Culture is just when you go to the arts vendor and you like one art please. I've got $100. How much art can I get for this?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, culture's humans hanging out, spending time

[Ed Zitron]

and in collection too.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, it's like, it's. This culture is literally just a. It was A. Not to, not to minimize it, but it's almost a. In my mind, it's a, It's. It's a product of our connectivity as, as an animal, as a psychic animal. Like, it's the, that's the point of it. And so they're just trying to. They don't. They think that's gay. Okay, Ed.

[Ed Zitron]

They know they really have like a deep homophobia towards anything emotional or sensual. So feminine is what they.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I do believe that. That, that is the literal vibe that I get, which is this idea of you look at Peter Thiel talking, look these people talking. And I guess that's what it is.

[Ed Zitron]

Is that though. But, but you saying there's like a self loathing to it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I just mean in terms of his. The way they, they view it as frivolous and stupid.

[Ed Zitron]

Right?

[Henry Zebrowski]

That our, our need for connection is something that is replaced, that is very

[Ed Zitron]

easy, takes you away from the grind set.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes. And that, that is. And it's extremely easy to place.

[Ed Zitron]

And so what.

[Henry Zebrowski]

They didn't do little things. What you were saying too, is the idea of a corporate culture. It's like when I was working in office jobs, the idea of a culture, I was like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. I'm here to get health insurance. Like, I'm not here to meet you, buddy. Like, I'm here for health insurance, you know, Like, I'm here to work. Like to just get the fuck out of here and go home. But they want.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, go.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, they just want all of us. They want us. They want every minute of our fucking breathing lives.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, that kind of reminds me again around just before the metaverse, all of the anti remote work stuff that talked about office culture. It's like, office culture is so important. You need office culture. Office culture is what brings the company together. Missing from most of these articles was the definition of office culture, because it was just kind of work propaganda and

[Henry Zebrowski]

doing what your boss wants you to do. Yes, that is what office culture means. Which means you're living in a dictator. You're living in his. You're living in his reality.

[Ed Zitron]

And on top of that, it's like you. Oh, so you're saying we should have a culture that involves supporting labor and respecting labor and valuing work and supporting us. They're like, oh, God, no, no, no, no. Sorry, sorry. Don't get us wrong. It's the culture of the office, not the people in it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It is the foosball tables.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes, we have the foosball tables.

[Henry Zebrowski]

There's a. We got A never ending soup bowl.

[Ed Zitron]

We love Sl. I used, I used to have a wework long ago and I never tried the beer. And when I finally tried it, I'm like, wow, these people fucking hate us. Because it was like the worst beer. They could have put like a keg of Bud Light and it would have been fine, but they somehow found like a beer that tasted not quite as bad as Natty Light, but.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And they just. And then. But it's their bear. It's the we work of beer.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes. It really is though. Yeah. It's like the beer slop.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Spear slop these. I, I find it. We are not living up to their expectations, Ed. Yeah, I think that's what it is, is that we're really not living up to their expectations. We're not dying fast enough and we're not working hard enough. And that's the thing, is that we be working and dying up until the very minute, the very minute that we die. Technically we should be productive in that it is. And that's why, you know, when I hear the argument like about how people like me should be having kids and then I hear where the argument's coming from and I hear it's about me keeping up the ever exponentially rising capitalistic output. That's really all they're concerned about.

[Ed Zitron]

So there are enough workers. Yep. It's funny, we're going to get the listeners, the occasional listeners who are like. Because occasionally I think we've got a fairly left leaning audience, but occasionally. I'm sure you're listening now. One of you guys who's like a straight up, like somehow a center left person who's very pro work will be like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Office culture is important. So that everyone knows while they're doing their job. I know why I'm doing my job. Make money. Well, I'm an entertainer now. I guess not guess it's a real job. But I remember the offices I've worked in. The one that was the worst was the one that I actually respected the most for just not pretending there was a work culture. They didn't have any of that shit. They were just like, you need to do this enough or we fucking fire you. It's a PR firm. Truly nightmarish place. But it didn't try. No one tried to pretend like we're a family here. No, we're not. This is jail.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Unless you're working at a not for profit helping people directly, there is absolutely no reason for you to have a fucking thesis statement outside of we're Our company that makes goods for people or we provide X and we pay you to do X. That is it. That's all we do. Like it's. There doesn't have to be special. That. And this is the problem is that where I see it from, literally from reality television shows all the way up to this top now this like concept of everything has to have like a presented story. Everybody already has to be arriving with a character arc ready to go, locked in. And now the bosses are doing that. The bosses have, are applying a character arc to us. They are saying they're trying to tell us what we are going to do for them. And now I feel like we're in this process of they are going to try over the next decade or so to kill as many of us as possible to literally weed out the, the, the people that are against it. They're going to make us sick. They're going to put bad things in the food, they're going to pull out all of the things protecting the environment. They're extremely sure they're going to be able to beat all of those for themselves. Right? And then what they're going to do is create a break off civilization. All of this is a dry run for them to leave us behind.

[Ed Zitron]

The funny thing is is though I believe you that that's what they may plan.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes. I mean the plan. That's the plan.

[Ed Zitron]

I don't think they're competent enough to prove it because the metaverse was the. I think Clubhouse was the beginning for me, but the metaverse was the moment when I was like, oh, you don't speak to any real people like you just.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Clubhouse was the single dumbest, giantest, flaming pile of waste of money of anything I have ever. That was so stupid, I was going to almost use a presidential word. Ed. It was so stupid that the whole thing, I cannot believe the whole thing needs to be deleted. It was just repackaging intercoms. It was repackaging a zoom call, a conference call.

[Ed Zitron]

It. Have you ever wanted really, really, really, really bad non produced radio with people that thought they were great? Welcome to Clubhouse. Do you want to hear VCs talk for hours and say multiple slurs? Well, guess what? We have a place for you.

[Henry Zebrowski]

We already have podcasts, man.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, but the thing is though, it was I remember getting the reason that it got to me, Clubhouse specifically was because the amount of people I talked to was like, Ed, this is the future, man. It's the future. This is how everything's going to get done.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Tell me about it.

[Ed Zitron]

Dude, what's your clubhous? What's your question?

[Henry Zebrowski]

You how many times I heard that sentence and I was just like this super flu is going to kill all of us. That was like the only. That was my response.

[Ed Zitron]

I was like terrified of dying.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes. I was like we're all going to fucking die and you want me to repackage radio again? I've already done it dude. I did it 15 years ago just

[Ed Zitron]

like the good doctor. I am a podcaster.

[Wanda Sykes]

Foreign.

[Odoo Advertiser]

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La importantia del trabajo.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, it's. But it was also just a moment where I was like looking at all of these supposedly smart people, all these people who are meant to really know what they fucking talk about, and watching them as they just went, yeah, this is. This is crazy, man. And then at the same time I've been reading all this anti remote stuff and I was like, wait a minute, all of these are written by managers or bosses who aren't in the office. And then it was just kind of obvious. But none of these people interact with their businesses or regular people. So they're just the things that they make do not reflect solving human problems. And then the metaverse comes along and half. Most of the media was like, yep, this makes perfect sense. And I as a gamer was like, you were describing World of Warcraft or like an mmorpg. You're just describing going online in a group. I played EverQuest. I have the skills.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It already happened. And also it looks like somebody read the book Snow Crash, like one of the. One of their aides read the book Snow Crash at some point in college, vaguely describe the concept of making real estate out of nothing. Which I think really was what the metaverse was about. Was his idea of recreating a world in which they could own everything.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, they wanted to own the next Internet. That was very much what Zuckerberg wanted.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That was the idea is that they would have. And they would again set all the rules. They'd set all the rules. They'd already had set up all the real estate parameters. They. You'd show up into this like brand new world of a thing and then you'd be described, oh my God, there's a McDonald's. Oh my God, there's a fucking Pizza Hut. Oh my God. Gut. Because they've already bought into this real estate concept because they were just trying to figure out. I also feel like that's a part of it. They saw some of the writing on the wall of, like, it's gonna be hard to get these back in the office. These went home and they're enjoying their meal. They just do it.

[Ed Zitron]

They're doing as much work, if not more. And they seem happier that I hate.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Wait, wait, wait. Did you see? I want to smell what he's eating. I want to look. I want to hear what he's listening to. I want to ask him about his wife. I want to look at his wife. I want to think about his wife.

[Odoo Advertiser]

He's.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And so what I think, like, that's what I think what turns into. Right. I think it cook a little.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And so they just then realized, like, oh, but what if we could do it so we can bring them into this other world and then we own. It's like that.

[Ed Zitron]

It's.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's reality. Then eventually we can let go. Yeah. Then we can let go of real life, real estate. Then maybe if we build it all in the. In the metaverse, just like in that great book Snow Crash. Anybody read the end is it we could do is we could build up this amazing new real estate system while the Earth eats itself alive on the surface. I do think that that's the other side. What we're also seeing is the other side of this too, which is why they all showed up at the inauguration, because they were all so excited for the fact that they were going to just be like, let's boil the planet. Let's boil the surface of the planet. And then they have to come to the metaverse. They have to come to us, because we're the only ones that are going to have the stuff to protect them.

[Ed Zitron]

It's really funny as well, because everything you're saying is true, but they left out because their lack of. Their lack of connection to anything. It working. They didn't check if it worked. They also left us out.

[Henry Zebrowski]

What about us?

[Ed Zitron]

It also didn't work.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's the best part. And that's the best part is that

[Ed Zitron]

they don't know us.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Human beings are fascinating. And there's no. They have tried to model us. They have tried to model us again and again. And they've looked at history and they've done all the number crunching and they can't figure it out. They can't. They can't figure it out. They. All of these things fail because they legitimately are operating in a fantasy world. They're operating outside of reality. They. Because they believe they can imprint their. They can literally just put their reality on us. They just think that they can do that.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, look at MLM and look at

[Henry Zebrowski]

us, and then you see it's actually super difficult. It's actually really weird. I actually think part of what broke my brain was in the 2016 election, when Trump won in the first place. That was the first time I saw something and I was like, oh, wow, elections might actually do something.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I was like, the first time I realized that the fix might not be entirely in from people that actually are in control.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, I, I definitely, like, I didn't get particularly political until after that. I will fully admit to being completely ignorant of stuff.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Same. Why would I. I didn't feel these things. And then everything changed.

[Ed Zitron]

Then everything happened, and then it was. You suddenly look backwards, you're like, oh, did I miss everything? And I'm still learning as well, a lot of this stuff. And I feel like when you saw all of them turn up at the White House, it was so fucking grim. But I saw people who were surprised, and that really made me laugh. The people were like, wait, what?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Huh?

[Ed Zitron]

Why are they honestly kissing up? They said three years ago that they liked me.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Huh. There's a part of me, you see, this is my problem, is that I look at this and it made me laugh.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, yes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I finally felt like I'm correct. I'm correct. Yeah, they're all on. They all. They, they. They couldn't give a.

[Ed Zitron]

Not.

[Henry Zebrowski]

They couldn't give a fucking about our lives. The only reason they want to replace us so bad. And that's the thing. When we talk about. Ed, I actually got turned on your work about this idea that we're going to be hitting this AI wall? And I could not be more in agreement. There's a part of my brain that saying, like, where's the guy that wants to make the trillion dollars that finally makes the little robot that puts dirty dishes in the dishwashing machine? That's what, what we want is a little robot man that I can yell at, that can do, does laundry, does. Puts the clothes away and does the dishes. That's it.

[Ed Zitron]

Henry. The problem is that is. That's really difficult. Like, that's the thing. They're like, okay, can we do stuff that would help people maybe, I don't know. Or wash their floors. We kind of got vacuum robots, but

[Henry Zebrowski]

they're expensive, rooms suck, and they scare my dogs. Yeah, I want a thing that can pet the dog. But also, when it comes down to it, I don't need it to be God in the machine, because guess what? The real God doesn't exist. And the real God gives children aids. I don't need another one.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. Also, I don't know. None of this works. Like, just none of it. None of it works.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's not going to happen.

[Ed Zitron]

It's not going to happen. But also.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But then, Ed, what do we do about continuing to be in their delusion?

[Ed Zitron]

We break it. Like, that's what I'm like, that's the thing right now, as. As we talk. I've recently been working on this piece about how, like, anthropic, admitted in court, they made $5 billion cumulatively, like, of all time, which, when you follow their previous revenue reports, does not make sense. And I'm arguing with people constantly, all through today leading up to this, because what has actually, what the real power of these people is, is that they control, like, we live in their world through narratives, the narratives that are created. And it is you. It's true. Yep, it's Elon Musk buying Twitter. Yes, it's Google Search. Yes, it's this. But a lot of it is just institutions like cnn, cnbc, New York Times, like, they are captured, but not necessarily by the entities, but by the ideologies. The ideologies that a. The AI will be big. AI will be big. It's not that. It's. Oh, it may be. It's. It will be.

[Henry Zebrowski]

We are just say how. You notice that too, right? They all are like, all this stuff about AI and they project all of these, but none of them actually says specifically, what do you mean? Like, what are the uses of AI? Like, what exactly. You say, oh, it has all these uses. It's inevitable. It's going to replace all of these things. And it's more like. But to what end?

[Ed Zitron]

How Also.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, he's like, what is it?

[Ed Zitron]

Is it doing that?

[Henry Zebrowski]

I don't think it is, dude. Because guess what, man. Guess what you. This shit with the fucking Waymo. When they came out and they said that they. They have to kick it to some guy in the Philippines to dry it, drive it. If it gets specifically stuck with Waymo,

[Ed Zitron]

that's not even generative AI because they love to say AI so that you conflate them. Waymo kind of works. Waymo's interesting because it's interesting. It's interesting. It's a natural thing that drives people around. I think that there are a ton of issues that I will go into in a future episode, but with, like, large language models. I have been. And I'm going to say this in passing, I'm not going to go into depth because I don't want them to people to get mad at me. But I'm currently learning to code and the more I learn about code, the more I get scared about people using large language models to code. Because I don't know, I'm getting worried that there are software engineers out there that can't read code and just copy paste it from place or that they're willing to ship code that kind of looks right, but they don't really understand. I'm not saying this is all software engineers, but I'm worried that the software engineers they're building these LLMs for are the ones that don't know what they're fucking talking about.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Buddy. I think that that is exactly what we're seeing here.

[Odoo Advertiser]

Oh no.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I think that we are in.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh no.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I literally think that this is a. It's all human led. All of the issues are human led. It is still. Because you would need a perfect AI to make a perfect AI, right? You would need. It's. It's too human. It's too janky.

[Ed Zitron]

We.

[Henry Zebrowski]

We are my. My whole view, one of my more. I guess, I guess they call it a mystical view. But I think one of the problems I have with AI is I do believe that there is like a 1% of the human brain that we just can't. We literally can't see if we wanted to see it because we're looking at ourselves. That there's like a. Like in terms of just the observer gets in the way of the thing that we need to be looking at. Right. Like we are. There's a part of our consciousness that we will never duplicate.

[Ed Zitron]

Ever. We just won't. We don't even understand thinking.

[Henry Zebrowski]

We don't. This is what I'm saying is that at the very bottom of it we don't really understand what the key is. So how is a bunch of cargo short wearing basement dwelling coders sitting in a place that probably never kissed a girl or a man before and then now they're going to make the new human thought machine, you know what I mean? Like that's kind of like what we're seeing. So what we're seeing here is it's all based. It's all. It's turtles all the way down. And it's just going to keep going.

[Ed Zitron]

With the software engineers I found that there's this real. We're seeing this schism between those types of basement dweller incel types. There are the coders who know just enough to get by and keep their job without Being fired. And then the people who actually do software engineering who are relatively normal folks who are just going about their lives

[Henry Zebrowski]

and the art people, like the true. They view it as like. Because I know that it can go as far as to being like an art form and like a. It's a whole thing. But again that points to. Not to create an absolutely bedrock structure for a new conscious entity on. It doesn't sound like the way that works.

[Ed Zitron]

Which the summation of what code is is not. Nick. Nick. Suresh. Good mate. Mine made the point where it's like coding is not just writing code. There is an art form to it. Cal Newport as well as well. Where it's like, it's a. There is a cultural awareness. There is the awareness of how one constructs stuff. If you. I don't know. The way I put it is like how comfortable would you be feeling about a building where, oh no, the architect only kind of knew what materials were in it. It's most. I think it's mostly bricks.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I legitimately think that that is another big issue is that it's. They're they low. They're lowballing the creation of the new God. You know, like they're literally like nickel and diming it with guys and they're creating these dumb deadlines and they're creating all of these things where it's like, you know, if Peter Thiel really wanted to take over the very globe, yes, to my mind he has to have more like of a thousand year view like with the old, like the, the way that they, they view the world more in like China and stuff like that where they. He needs more of a longer view.

[Ed Zitron]

Who's going to take that forward? But Henry, that's not American capitalism. American capitalism.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Tell me about it, bro. Tell me about it. I got fucking agents fucking breathing down my neck every day, all right? And I do podcasting. I can't imagine what, what these idiots, all these people in the money realm and then the fake computer God realm are what the pressure is from the inside for them all to make all this bullshit money.

[Ed Zitron]

I have to wonder if the people inside the labs though, at this point as they kind of. It's become kind of obvious that like this isn't really doing the thing. They don't actually. They haven't made any gods and now it's just kind of like what are we doing? I think they're all just fucking around. Not in like a completely labor free way. They're just like doing experiments and spending like millions of dollars of Compute a day just being like, what if this works? What if this works? What if this works?

[Henry Zebrowski]

I'm a CEO. That's what I've learned. We know I've learned about being a CEO.

[Ed Zitron]

What is it he.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The only job replaceable by AI you see is a CEO. Literally. It's the easiest, it's the dumbest. They have nothing but like, not to be like, I work very hard, blah, blah, blah. But they have plenty of time. They, they can just sit and think about these dumb things all day and play around with it and they're just waiting for enough. Like, I also also think there's a massive. Obviously it's capitalism, but the, the lateral moves these guys just get to make. Like, they get to just sort of like decimate a company, decimate a bunch of stuff, lose everything, and then they get to just kind of jump ship. Well, I do another thing.

[Ed Zitron]

Can I tell you my favorite one? So there's a guy called Jay Parikh who is the co CEO of a company called Laceworks, I believe. I'm just gonna check that on air and see. Lace works. So this company. Yeah, Lacework. So this company was famous for doing an event where they handed out $30,000 worth of Lululemon gift cards in a night to convince people to use their software. So that guy ran that company into the fucking ground. And you know what happened? He got a job at Meta and now he heads up one of the AI divisions in Microsoft. The meritocracy is real.

[Henry Zebrowski]

What is. Do they not. At some point it has to almost be purposeful. It has to be purposeful, right? Like, do you think that they do it almost, in a way. What if there is a game being played too, where they all know it's not going to happen and we all know it's not going to happen, but they are. We're all like, all of these middlemen have propped up the economy with this shit.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So it almost kind of feels like it's. It's almost like they're making money on the constant rug pull and the moving of all of the stuff back and forth. It's almost like maybe it's good to hire somebody that will purposely blow it all up so then they never have to get it done.

[Ed Zitron]

I just think. I think it's more stupid than that. I think it is. They hire people who look and sound like them, who they've worked with before, who have the right things on LinkedIn, who then go. Who then can say that? I have this theory era of the business idiot. I Call it where it's like, these people are just morons. And if you look.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, they're morons.

[Ed Zitron]

If you look at them as dipshits without much strategy, the world actually makes a way more sense than this is

[Henry Zebrowski]

what we've been saying. We've been saying on the show. This idea of like trying to come back from conspiracy theory and just understand that there's just way more human beings being extremely bad at really important jobs. Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

And those are the humans that run these companies. Because, like, if you've ever heard Satya Nadella Talk, CEO of Microsoft, it is like sustaining 100 concussions a second. It's insane. He meanders. There was a interview I saw him give in Davos, I think, where he spoke for three straight minutes to a yes or no question. And it's just like. And this is, I think as a journalist, you should just be able to get out like a Taser at that point. You don't have to use it, but you can just like start crackling it a bit. Like, Yep. Uh huh. The Oscars. Like the Oscars.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Why doesn't any. Is there. Why does no one ever just say, just sit up and be like, excuse me, sir, what in the living hell are you talking about? I know, I know. Why there just be one person, be like, hey, just one question. What in the living fuck is going on? Why, what do you do? I want you to tell me what you did today from the moment you woke up until when you got here. I want to hear what you did for the money.

[Ed Zitron]

I. And like, that's the thing, they will never answer that because a lot of it is just, I read emails and I drank coffee, I went to lunch, I went to a meeting. I didn't really listen.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hey, CEO's job's extremely important, okay? When I have my executive time, Rob knows my producer, he knows when I'm there. And I am in my blessed Somnu lessons. You think I'm sleeping? Yeah, I'm thinking dreaming of the mind dojo. I'm in my mind dojo. That's where I do every day. I do my karate and I think about different ways for me to spend our money.

[Ed Zitron]

You know, it takes a lot of effort and work as a CEO to go, hey, do this.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hey, if you guys thought about not having buttons on this, you know what I mean? Like that I love those. That stuff where it's like, Steve Jobs is a genius and it's just like, make it not have buttons.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, Steve Jobs was a genius in the sense that he was. No, no, I don't mean this in a defensive way. I mean genius in quotation marks. Because it was. He was like, what if it was good? He's like, what if instead of it, instead of being clicky buttons, it was a touchscreen? But because touchscreens are being shit. What if they were good and responsive and people use that? And went, wow, this is fucking great. You come up with that.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's like, that's like what I'm saying.

[Ed Zitron]

Something worked.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Why? Like, that's another thing, Ed, that I've never really understood. And I feel like there's like, I'm just dumb in that way where I was like, I feel like when it comes to the environment that there is a lot of money in saving the environment. Yes, right. It feels like in my head there's somebody that's going to maybe clean the ocean that will also then become a trillionaire. And I feel like that could be a really good focus on what we need to do in the future and you can make money. I just don't understand. And I just feel like I'm a silly, dumb. I'm a bad capitalist. I learned that I could give all my people raises and it really doesn't affect my fucking bottom line because my bottom. It's ridiculous. It's fucking. The margins are fucking ridiculous.

[Ed Zitron]

It's short terminism. Because if you think of it, you probably wouldn't make money immediately from saving the environment. No, you wouldn't make it yet. So no.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You sell some penguins. Honestly, dude, there's ways. Talking to a capitalist. Just get some penguins. Round up a bunch of good, healthy penguins. You selling them to an elementary school, like, it's like it's stuff like that. You see, you do certain things where you, you. There's ways to do it in fun ways. There's fun things.

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[Redfin Advertiser]

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[Ed Zitron]

I also just think solar power is kind of magical and batteries are kind of magical like like that stuff. But in if you think of it in the short term way, it's weird because what I'm about to describe is buying batteries and solar panels before you make much money off of them, such as, just to be clear, a capital expenditure which will lead to an eventual payoff. Now that they hear and they go fuck no, that sounds terrible. However, if they're like invest in a bunch of GPUs for a possible return, but probably not. They're like fuck yeah, that makes perfect sense because they're all trapped in the past. Yeah, they keep because these people are so disconnected. The thing I always say is like they don't have problems, so they don't know how to fix them. So they look at the world and they go, what are my problems? Well, I don't have enough money. What do poor people like? TikTok and hamburger, I guess.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I mean, you saw the. Did you read that Epstein file? That one email? There was one that went back and forth about the idea of. It was an extremely racist email from. I forgot it was somebody within. Forget who it was explaining to Jeffrey Epstein. He's like, look, you see, the same people was about Jay Z buying into the NFL and they were doing this, this, this commercial with Jay Z and he's like, he's like, look, you see, that's the same. They're doing their advertising to the people who should be super angry. That's exactly what we're going to do. You see, look, you just gave them exactly what they wanted. That's all they care about. Which I think is minimizing of human beings obviously, because they think that there's more than this. Because what they've just done is. We have, we do actually our, our countries actually, which I'm certain you're well aware of Ed is, is kind of in deep turmoil right now and there's protests in major city that exists almost 247 and they're just not talking about it. And that's really the, the issue is that they're just, they're just trying to delete that out of the, the narrative

[Ed Zitron]

as if it's funny as well because if you want to make people happy, you make food cheaper and better and you make housing and you make their general life better.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But it's easy to do. The fucking fat boy actually ran in a really good. The idea of bringing manufacturing to people or so if he had done one single maybe good thing, maybe anybo could have a good, a favorable opinion. What's going on? But the we are nothing, Nothing good happened, right? Nothing's good is happening. And we are, we've just now started a new war. And, and we, and I go to Florida. The groceries are as expensive as they are in Los Angeles.

[Ed Zitron]

Jesus Christ.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You know what I mean? Like, and they don't see the difference.

[Ed Zitron]

In Florida, they don't buy groceries. They don't buy like these people don't buy groceries. They don't. I, I genuinely wonder if they have someone who brings them like a soda. Like, do they go to the fridge? Do you think these people like, like. I, like that's the thing. Because I think that they see the world as Friction to be removed. They see every experience as friction. And they, at the top of the pile, have removed all friction. Such as they don't meet unexpected people.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, there's.

[Ed Zitron]

They don't get talked to by anyone they don't want to talk to and indeed can reject anyone they want. They. Anybody. Anything they don't want to do. So things like, oh, I got to go to the bathroom. I got to go do my laundry. I got to go unload the dishwasher. Maybe the dishwasher is like, something we can automate. Fine. Washing dishes sucks. Laundry sucks. They're not trying to fix those problems. What they're trying to fix is, what do you people do? Well, you do something, and I want to get rid of that. So I've created a large language model that. But will tell you it will do anything, I guess, because that's all it is with it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And I think that that is also an important thing we have to constantly call it, which is. They're not AI they're language models. There's no. There is no intelligence inside. And I think that that has to keep being hit. Being like. And I keep saying this places. And people are like, oh, well, you know, but they're pretty smart. And I'm like, I.

[Ed Zitron]

They're not smart.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I don't think you. It is easy to mimic how we talk. We aren't. Because this is the thing. The human mind is unknowable. The human mind is endlessly complex. Our communication, however, is extremely patterned. We know exact. We know how to. It is. We have so endless amounts of examples of human conversation. And it's easy to mimic.

[Ed Zitron]

But here's the thing about thought. I don't know about you, but my thoughts are not linear. I've got, like, rockets going off in my head constantly. Not like genius thoughts. It's like stupid thoughts. It's like, oh, what do I got to do?

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's like, my butt hurts. I'm hungry. I'm like, yeah, yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Do I need to pee? Probably not. Like, things like that. Constantly, like, human thought is chaos. And if you're a listener, by all means email me easyetteroffline.com and tell me how you think. Because I think that a lot of these people want to believe that they sit there and they enter their mind dojo and they do their gun Carter from equilibrium to think. And then the genius spits out. Because if you do that, you think large language models are genius. They also. It goes back to my thing where it's. They're all looking at the past. They believe that the only way to tell the future is by just looking at the past and going like ass. Kind of like that, you know, sort of like was, you know.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Meanwhile we are heading into. I love, you know, I'm a big. I love Terence McKenna and that kind of. And I love his concept of the idea of we're in this like novelty zone.

[Ed Zitron]

Okay, go on, tell me more.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That, that the universe longs for novelty and builds novelty out and that life doesn't. It doesn't get like. But he was. The way you describing it. So it's like instead of like imagining our technology in our society ever going upwards towards some form of utopia, we're actually endlessly folding in on top of ourselves like a fractal. Right. Like we're constantly folding. We're. We're slowly breaking large groups into smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller niche micro groups. There's more and more layers to a single subject. The more and more information that is readily available to the human consciousness. We just complicated again and again and again and again. And that what we are in and that's where we're going to be headed to is more unique situations as we have more information to deal with it. As each generation came up before we operated largely each country, each area operated in a sort of like a vacuum of information and, and kind of had to do its own thing and developed on stuff. This is the kind of like, like we're heading into an area where everybody knows what everybody's doing at all times. And it's going to change how we behave. Yeah, it is going to. It's going. It already is. It's going to change. And I think that, that, that is kind of what. What we're seeing now is that these things are. Nothing can play out like in another world, like in another country. I could have seen a thing with January 6th back in the day, the, the insurrection. And another country, the White House would have been burnt to the ground. People would have been mass executions that style. And I do believe that the Internet created another world where they observe themselves insurrecting.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes. Hosting insurrection.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes. They didn't understand. They were, they couldn't understand that they were being history. They were, they were walking through a thing as if they were on their own cell phones watching somebody else do it. That's like the way I describe it, which is a. I think a new phenomenon. Like you were like watching a bunch of people doing a pro. Doing a. What used to be like an inherent human way of changing our Government. Right. That used to be a way we

[Ed Zitron]

used to do like an attack on the very fabric of society.

[Henry Zebrowski]

We used to get together and hang a bunch of guys, you know what I mean? It was like a thing that we used to do. And now that it's not, I feel like that's what we're seeing here is, is this effect is that we're all on camera and so it's going to affect how we behave.

[Ed Zitron]

I see. I have this theory that I like that I love saying, even though it doesn't map to the thing called the beginning of history, which is just that it is no longer illustrative to use history to explain stuff. It is no longer. It's. You can't. Like, we are not like, everyone's like, okay, we've worked everything out, it's just a question of going up from here. Great. No, I actually think what's happening is we have done stuff for decades based on looking backwards. The situations we've got ourselves in where look at everything Trump's doing, it's horrifying. But what he is doing is instead of going, well, we didn't do this before, so we're going to keep being nice. It's just, what if I didn't do that? A lot of the boundary pushing is just the result of ignoring what decorum was. And a lot of the rationalizations for a lot of tech stuff comes from looking at the past. It's the same bullshit. Uber lost a lot of money. No, it didn't. 32.9 billion is a lot of money. But OpenAI raised $42 billion in the last year. Amazon web services cost a lot of money, actually not normalized for inflation. Amazon web services cost about $38.9 billion in 11 years. Amazon is going to spend $200 billion in CapEx in 2026. The actual historic comparisons are used as ways to placate people.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's.

[Ed Zitron]

Don't worry about it. This didn't happen before. And the reason I say the beginning of history is you need to start looking forward. Like that's what everyone needs to like, stop pretending the because thing didn't happen before. Have none of you played craps one dice? Anything can happen and if you.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Anything can happen.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, it's just. Oh, no.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I believe it entirely. I think that we are. We have been let loose from those examples. I think that once we understand. But, you know, I think this goes all the way to a psychic thing though. I think this goes straight to this full. To an idea of human beings not fully understanding what they're capable of and their potential at all times.

[Ed Zitron]

Okay.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And I think that we have accepted a very low position in reality as, as, as this amazing quantum computer walking around fired by like, like, literally, like I, I do. It gets a little in the woo wee area, but it's. And the truth is that they were capable of a lot. And I think that they make a lot of money on debasing the human spirit. Hell yeah. And say, yeah, like. And that's the idea. The idea is that we are, we need them. They're nothing. We're nothing without them. We have to be constantly entertained by them. We need to be, oh, we're just as hungry as, like, like all this kind of shit. And we just have to do more of. No, we're not going to do that. And said we're going to do naked bike ride. And said we're going to do this thing, like, literally. Like, I know that's like ridiculous, but there needs to be more of that sort of culture jamming which we're already seeing.

[Ed Zitron]

And I think the. No, I fully agree because it's. I say that like, I've taught myself a lot of economics and accountancy in the last year because a lot of people said you couldn't possibly understand this. I was like, okay, let me find out. I think that everyone underestimates human beings. I think that many of my listeners actually, with last podcast, I imagine you get this as well. People like, oh, I couldn't possibly understand something so complex. I have listeners who email me complex economic theories who are like builders and teachers and realtors and shit. The human being. They want you to believe that you are mediocre and that the summation of your life is a large language model which is just everything on the Internet crammed into something. And that you don't need to think this, you must think this is intelligent. Because if you do that, you'll look down on yourself and you'll be easier to sell to, easier to capture and easier to use. Because in the end, when you use a large language model, it is training you.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I saw a really interesting statement that I forgot where it was, but it was like the idea that we're in this, we're being governed by gigantic economic and political forces that are all under the guise of. You don't really care though, do you? Right. Like it's this idea of we're now in this area where it's a bunch of guys. We're like, well, you never cared about this stuff. So what do you care? What do you care about this thing? What do you care what we do? You just like, just eat your slop and go to work or I'll kill you.

[Ed Zitron]

All right?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Why do you act like you care? You know, buy more software. Yeah, shut the up, right? Just shut the up. Whatever. Just like that's. And it's going to take us to say I do care. I do actually care about human beings. I care that you've assigned massed shock troops to fucking arrest children.

[Ed Zitron]

You're building fucking. It's like bucking warehouses to prison people.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I, I, I care. I care about the Epstein files. I care about them a great deal.

[Ed Zitron]

Fun fact. Fun fact, Henry, did you know that the CEO of LinkedIn per jmail Reid Hoffman, he actually endorsed Jeffrey Epstein on LinkedIn?

[Henry Zebrowski]

And I refuse to believe that.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, it's sadly in the files. But what's so funny is, you mean

[Henry Zebrowski]

that sea of disinformation?

[Ed Zitron]

Here's the thing, when I read that, I was crying with laughter because it's just like, there are so many people in the Epstein files who are, like, guilty by association because they fucking went to the island. But, like, you are the CEO of LinkedIn and you endorsed Jeffrey Epstein. Could not find out what for God knows.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Did you get into? Well, you see, my own, My own pet obsession is Epstein's connections to the comedy world, which is just.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, I haven't looked close.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, it is just. You know what? I'll tell you, man, I'll say a year of so many years of being nervous around people, it is so nice to know that every single person I've ever liked is just not. And they can all absolutely suck my dick. Yeah, it's, you know, if there's a release, there's a release of, like, the guys that book Jay Just for Laughs used to be connected to him. Timothy Chamberlain's PR person. His, her pub. His, his publicist, Peggy Siegel is connected to him. The guys from the Interlock and that trained Chapel Roan and all those people that did make all these, these superstars. He was like, he gave them $450,000. So it's like all of this stuff where you're like, like, I'm really ready to tell all of these guys to go fuck themselves.

[Ed Zitron]

And JMail is great as well. You can just go in there and type the name of anyone you meet, and hopefully they're not in there.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You just do that, man. I'd recommend you do that.

[Ed Zitron]

That's all I do. That's all I like. Every time I meet a new person, I'm like, yeah, let me just run that name through jmail. Oh, where were you?

[Henry Zebrowski]

What do you do?

[Ed Zitron]

Where Were you in 2018, by the way? It's so weird though. It's like Sergey Brin and Larry Page were in there. Like Sergey Brin definitely seems to have at some point associated with Epstein. Nothing, nothing in the tape media really about it. It's.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, then you also look at his connections with Moot, all of that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, I always believe all of that though. I actually got a great breakdown on the show about that from a listener again, how our listeners are some of the smartest, most educated.

[Ed Zitron]

So cool. Isn't that so cool?

[Henry Zebrowski]

It means the world to me.

[Ed Zitron]

It's same like I love my listeners. Like I adore them.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I love it. And this someone broke me down about like the secret history of 4chan, which is just the idea that. Well, at the time Christopher Poole was moving away from 4chan, already had other ideas. He was already on the way out. He had already kind of segued. He had been trying to create a sort of area for bad actors on 4chan for a while. It never took. And when Epstein and Steve Bannon got involved with him, he was already kind of out door. So Epstein probably had nothing. Epstein had nothing to do with 4chan. But then it. It was interesting how that took off because of the Steve Bannon Epstein connections to him. But it really was just. To me, what I thought was interesting is more so after the fact about how they were making fun of the QAnon 4chan pizza gate stuff by using the pizza gate stuff themselves. Yeah, it's like a game on a game on a game on a game. And it's all just. It just makes people go crazy.

[Ed Zitron]

You know what's really interesting though? None of this generative AI. Like Epstein was kind of into AI it seems, but he was into it in the same way every business idiot is. So he's like, what if it could do all this stuff that I've imagined? But yeah, he had no era is part of like he. Maybe he was like a load bearing pedophile.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Like, because I think they missed the ketamine. I think it was no ketamine. And I do think it was a different thing because at the time what Epstein really was more focused on was his appearance on the Internet. He was focused on the information about him on the Internet. And that's why he got into all of the informational technology and all that shit, because he was trying to Figure out how can I control how people hear about me and talk about me? And that's really what, that's what that was about. And then because remember he was into fucking freezing his common making a world world of. Of supermodel sex slaves that he would make endless children with. And that's his big idea, Zed. He was trying to fucking live forever and to. So he had other ideas. So he wasn't here in this one. He was doing. No. He's looking great now, though.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, I mean, I. I don't know if I agree that Jeffrey Epstein looks good. I don't know. What are we talking about?

[Henry Zebrowski]

I just saw him. Oh yeah. I always me and him. I. Whenever I go to Tel Aviv, I see him. That's my whole thing. I go check in with Jeff, we go down there. It's amazing. I love him. Hang out with him. David Bowie, Michael Jackson.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, God.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, Henry Bin Laden, finally we're here.

[Ed Zitron]

They're all there. All right. All right, Henry. We're gonna wrap it there. Henry. Where can people find you?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Go and check it out. And last podcast on the left and all of the worst shits. Our videos are on Netflix now and you can also see also on YouTube. And we've got a new if you want to check out, if you like live play role playing games. We have entered into the fray over here and we do Bloodbath, Vampire, the Masquerade. It's LPN RPG. It's over on our YouTube channel, LPN TV. And it is, honestly, I think it's really good. And it is. It is a dark and evil version of an LPN event. RPG playthrough.

[Ed Zitron]

Hell yeah. We'll get some links at that in the notes. You can also now buy. We've just launched our Better Offline. Fuck Data centers. Merch, beautiful T shirt, beanie stickers, tank tops, baby onesies. Put them everywhere. You're gonna love them. I'm Ed Zitron. Subscribe to the newsletter. You'll have a monologue this week. Sorry for missing it last week. Cheers everyone. I love you all. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Mattasowski. You can check out more of his music and audio [e-mail] M A T T O S O W S K I.com youm can email me at ezeteroffline.com or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to Chat where's your Ed to visit the Discord and go to R betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzone media.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.

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