Radio Better Offline: Jeremy Kaplowitz of the Quorators

Summary

Podcast Summary: Better Offline – Episode Featuring Jeremy Kaplowitz of The Quorators

Podcast Information:

• Title: Better Offline
• Host: Ed Zitron (Tech Industry Veteran)
• Guest: Jeremy Kaplowitz (Host of The Quorators Podcast)
• Release Date: January 29, 2025
• Description: Better Offline delves into the tech industry's pervasive influence on society, uncovering manipulation tactics and scrutinizing the unchecked growth ambitions of tech elites. Through storytelling, interviews, and panel discussions, the show aims to demystify the complexities of the tech world, exposing both its commendable strides and its dubious practices.

---

1. Introduction to the Episode ([02:22] – [03:03])

Ed Zitron kicks off the episode by welcoming Jeremy Kaplowitz, highlighting Jeremy's podcast, The Quorators, which scrutinizes the chaotic and often toxic environment of Quora. Ed praises Jeremy for bringing to light what he describes as "some of history's detritus," positioning Quora as an online space rife with degeneration yet undeniably influential.

Notable Quote:

Ed Zitron [02:22]: "It's goddamn Better Offline and I'm the Chief of Pigs at Zitron Better Offline. Today I'm joined by Jeremy Kaplowitz of the Podcast and I'm so excited to have you here."

---

2. Understanding Quora: A Reddit-Facebook Hybrid ([03:03] – [03:19])

Jeremy provides a foundational understanding of Quora, likening it to a combination of Reddit and Facebook. He emphasizes the platform's unique blend of question-and-answer dynamics but quickly pivots to critique its degeneration, labeling it "the two of the worst websites combined."

Notable Quote:

Jeremy Kaplowitz [03:03]: "Quora is a website where you can ask questions and then people answer it. But it is very much like Reddit meets Facebook, I would say."

---

3. The Decline of Quora's Content Quality ([03:19] – [06:10])

The discussion delves into the deteriorating quality of content on Quora. Jeremy points out the prevalence of perverts, retired cops, and racists using the platform. He highlights peculiar communities, such as individuals who "swim with their clothes on," suggesting niche fetishes and bizarre interests dominating the discourse.

Notable Quotes:

Jeremy Kaplowitz [03:36]: "Quora has endless degenerates to look at and point at and laugh at."

Ed Zitron [04:30]: "So many perverts. It's like cops and perverts and racists, which could all be the same thing."

---

4. The Rise of AI-Generated Content on Quora ([10:23] – [15:35])

A significant portion of the conversation centers on Quora's implementation of its Prompt Generator, an AI tool designed to generate questions anticipating future user inquiries. Jeremy laments the bizarre nature of these AI-generated questions, citing examples like:

• "Should the Grinch be able to kill a Who whenever he wants?"
• "How can someone live with a decomposed body in the fridge for months without others noticing they live alone?"
• "Is it common for doctors to keep umbilical cords?"

These questions are often incoherent, offensive, or rooted in conspiracy theories and fetishism, undermining the platform's credibility.

Notable Quotes:

Ed Zitron [10:23]: "There's this thing now called Quora Prompt Generator. That is making questions that they think people want to ask in the future."

Jeremy Kaplowitz [10:26]: "It's just like this was made by Quora AI. And to find the actual question, like, it's just a pain in the ass."

Ed Zitron [12:47]: "The real answer is just that they just tell people that they have a smelly apartment or whatever."

---

5. AI Influence and User Interaction ([15:35] – [22:19])

Jeremy discusses the challenges users face in identifying AI-generated questions, as Quora obscures their origins within the platform's UI. This concealment leads to confusion and frustration among genuine users while allowing AI-generated and troll content to proliferate unnoticed.

Notable Quotes:

Jeremy Kaplowitz [15:35]: "It's just like this was made by Quora AI. And to find the actual question, like, it's just a pain in the ass."

Ed Zitron [16:13]: "There's also if sometimes you'll see an answer that's like really long and you're like, oh, that's interesting. And it'll cut off and be like, you have to subscribe to Quora plus for $5 a month."

---

6. Monetization Tactics and User Experience ([22:19] – [26:08])

The conversation shifts to Quora's monetization strategies, including Sponsored Jobs and the introduction of Quora Plus, a paid subscription model promising enhanced features. Ed criticizes these moves, arguing that advertising has overtaken the platform's user experience, making it cluttered and intrusive.

Notable Quotes:

Ed Zitron [22:09]: "I just love the idea because see. So what he's up to. Korra seems horrible."

Jeremy Kaplowitz [16:13]: "There's also if sometimes you'll see an answer that's like really long... you have to subscribe to Quora plus for $5 a month."

---

7. Hate Speech, Extremism, and Lack of Moderation ([20:40] – [28:34])

Jeremy highlights the rampant presence of hate speech and extremist content on Quora, including slurs, racist comments, and unfounded conspiracy theories like QAnon. The lack of effective moderation exacerbates the problem, allowing toxic communities to thrive unchecked.

Notable Quotes:

Jeremy Kaplowitz [21:06]: "Oh, yeah. All the time. People say there's definitely, like, slurs on Quora."

Ed Zitron [22:27]: "He came from Korra. That makes me so angry."

---

8. The Impact of Generative AI on Information Quality ([28:34] – [38:10])

The duo examines how generative AI tools have further degraded the quality of information on Quora and even spilled over into mainstream platforms like Google Search. AI-generated misinformation and nonsensical answers are now surfacing in search results, complicating users' ability to find accurate information.

Notable Quotes:

Jeremy Kaplowitz [29:22]: "It's just like they're just guessing, like in the Quora because there's a million questions that are like, what is this? And why is it here? I hate it."

Ed Zitron [31:02]: "That's so weird, though, because surely it knows that Christmas is."

---

9. Comparisons with Other Platforms ([38:10] – [43:37])

Ed and Jeremy draw parallels between Quora's issues and those of other platforms like Reddit, noting similarities in trolling, misinformation, and the prevalence of sponsored content. However, they argue that Quora's problems are more pronounced due to its AI-driven content generation.

Notable Quotes:

Ed Zitron [43:04]: "They refuse to pay for it. We're not. I don't want to do it."

Jeremy Kaplowitz [43:16]: "There's a little bit of it, but with Quora everything is more obvious."

---

10. Ethical Implications and Future Outlook ([43:37] – [50:05])

The discussion touches upon the ethical ramifications of AI-generated content proliferating on platforms like Quora. The hosts express concern over the future of online discourse, fearing that such environments may further erode the quality of information and civil conversation on the internet.

Notable Quotes:

Ed Zitron [46:39]: "There is obviously an anti Hitler podcast because you need to say that now."

Jeremy Kaplowitz [49:14]: "And it's all yours."

---

11. Concluding Thoughts and Final Remarks ([50:05] – [56:00])

Ed wraps up the episode by reiterating the severity of Quora's decline, emphasizing the platform as a prime example of how AI and lack of moderation can corrupt online communities. He underscores the importance of platforms like Better Offline in shedding light on such issues to inform and protect listeners from the darker sides of the internet.

Notable Quotes:

Ed Zitron [53:14]: "We're not spending too, too much time on there. Not more than a few hours."

Jeremy Kaplowitz [56:00]: "It feels like the kind of place that you could fuck with very easily because people will either be way too earnest or they'd be like, well, this person's making fun of me."

---

Key Takeaways and Insights:

1. Quora as a Melting Pot of Extremism: The platform has become a breeding ground for perverse content, hate speech, and extremist ideologies, exacerbated by insufficient moderation.

2. AI's Detrimental Role: Quora's AI Prompt Generator introduces nonsensical and offensive questions, diluting the platform's quality and overwhelming genuine discourse.

3. Monetization Over User Experience: Quora's focus on sponsored content and subscription models like Quora Plus detracts from user engagement and satisfaction.

4. Comparison with Other Platforms: While Reddit and Facebook also grapple with similar issues, Quora's AI-driven approach makes its challenges uniquely severe.

5. Ethical Concerns: The ethical implications of AI-generated misinformation highlight the need for better oversight and responsible AI deployment in online communities.

6. Call to Action: Platforms like Better Offline play a crucial role in uncovering and discussing these dark facets of the internet, empowering listeners with knowledge to navigate the digital landscape wisely.

---

Conclusion: In this episode of Better Offline, Ed Zitron and Jeremy Kaplowitz provide a scathing critique of Quora, exposing the platform's deep-seated issues stemming from AI-generated content, lack of moderation, and rampant extremism. The conversation underscores the broader challenges facing online communities in the age of AI, emphasizing the need for vigilant oversight and responsible technological advancements to preserve the integrity of digital interactions.

End of Summary

Transcript

[Osvaloshin]

Do you want to see into the future? Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? Do you want to experience the frontiers of what makes us human? On tech stuff we travel from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars, from conversations with Nobel Prize winners to the depths of TikTok to ask burning questions about technology, from high tech to low culture, and everywhere in between. Join us Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Alec Baldwin]

Hey, it's Alec Baldwin. This past season on my podcast, here's the Thing, I spoke with more actors, musicians, policy makers, and so many other fascinating people like writer and actor Dan Aykroyd.

[Dan Aykroyd]

I love writing more than anything. You're left alone, you know, you do three hours in the morning, you write three hours in the afternoon. Go pick up a kid from school and write at night, and after nine hours you come out with seven pages and then you're moving on.

[Alec Baldwin]

Listen to here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you.

[Tisha Allen]

Get your podcasts, you are cordially invited to the hottest party in professional sports. I'm Tisha Allen, former golf professional and the host of welcome to the Party, your newest obsession about the wonderful world that is women's golf. Featuring interviews with top players on tour, tips to help improve your swing, and the craziest stories to come out of your friendly neighborhood country club. Welcome to the Party with Tisha Allen is an iHeart woman's fourth production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. Listen to welcome to the Party that's P A R T E e on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Unknown]

How serious is youth vaping? Irreversible lung damage? Serious. One in 10 kids vape serious, which warrants a serious conversation from a serious parental figure like yourself. Not the seriously know it all sports dad or the seriously smart podcaster. It requires a serious conversation that is best had by you. No, seriously, the best person to talk to your child about vaping is you. To start the conversation, visit talkaboutvaping.org, brought to you by the American Lung association and the Ad Council.

[Ed Zitron]

Media Live but recorded on tape from New York City, the iHeartRadio studios. It's goddamn Better Offline and I'm the Chief of Pigs at Zitron Better Offline. Today I'm joined by Jeremy Capowitz of the Podcast and I'm so excited to have you here.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Thanks for having Me.

[Ed Zitron]

Because your podcast has found, I would say, some of history's detritus. Yeah, it's become one of the worst, best places online. But just for the listeners who may have just ignored Quora. What is Quora?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Just look it through. Quora. Quora is a website where you can ask questions and then people answer it. But it is very much like Reddit meets Facebook, I would say.

[Ed Zitron]

Right.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

The two of the worst websites combined to. In sort of like a super Saiyan way to create an even worse website.

[Ed Zitron]

Wonderful. So how long have you been doing the podcast?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

We've been doing it, like two years, since September 2022.

[Ed Zitron]

And why? What brought you to it?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Oh, we really wanted to do a podcast. That wouldn't be hard to do. Right. We figured Quora has endless degenerates to look at and point at and laugh at.

[Ed Zitron]

Right. So what is your favorite one you found recently? And give me a good example.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I'm trying to think. There's a lot of, like, perverts on Quora.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm listening.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

For some reason, people go to Quora to, like, act out their sexual fantasies, but they don't want to, like, see it. So they'll. I don't know what it is. They'll, like, write down a question that's like, have you ever had a girl pee on you? And then, like, they'll be like. They want people to be like, oh, yeah, one time it was. I was so naughty. And I guess then they're jacking off.

[Ed Zitron]

To it or something right now.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

We found a bunch of weird. We found a whole community of people who swim with their clothes on.

[Ed Zitron]

Okay.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Which I imagine is a fetish of some kind, but they were all posting photos of it and stuff. It's all these older guys in lakes.

[Ed Zitron]

And pools and they dressed. How are they dressed?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Normal clothes.

[Ed Zitron]

Just walking around.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

What you are in right now, if you were taking a sexy photo shoot of you jumping into a pool.

[Ed Zitron]

Just falling in a pool.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

And are there a lot of these perverts on there? I realize we're very perverted.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

So many perverts. It's like cops and perverts and racists, which could all be the same thing. I mean, yeah, it's a weird. It's a very weird website.

[Ed Zitron]

So. But wait, the cops. What are the cops doing on there?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Cops. They're talking about safety. There's all these sub. Quoras that are subreddits, but for Quora. And there's a lot of them that are like, how to deal with thugs in your Neighborhood.

[Ed Zitron]

But wait, so you say the sub Quoras?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Is this being People publish there as well? It's not just question and answer.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I mean, those are where people are still doing questions, but they're collecting them in a group.

[Ed Zitron]

Why stop the scumbag from shooting?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yes. And there's a lot of like retired cops who are like writing novels insanely. A lot of them literally are writing books of like. Cause a lot of people have become famous on Quora. The big one is Jordan Peterson. Jordan Peterson got his start answering Korra questions and people were like, you should put this in a book. And then he.

[Ed Zitron]

Those people, we should find those people and stop them. How do I deal with the fact that. That the Shrek and Fiona should not be together? Like.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Right.

[Ed Zitron]

But really he came from Korra. That makes me so angry.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Korra created Jordan Peterson.

[Ed Zitron]

That is fucking horrible.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

It's really sad.

[Ed Zitron]

What was he asking about?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

He was answering. So he was a big answerer. So he was the guy going in there being like, actually, if you swim in your clothes, it's a better fold around your penis.

[Ed Zitron]

I don't like the idea of pervert. I like to be called a sartorial man yet. That's horrible. And there must be even. Are there any other famous Korra freaks?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I think he's the only one who became famous from Korra, but Orson Scott Card is on there a lot.

[Ed Zitron]

Who's them?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

He's the author of Ender's Game.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, who?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

He wrote a bunch of sci fi novels and is like famously a insane crank. I don't know if you know anything about him.

[Ed Zitron]

I don't.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

So he wrote Ender's Game, which is a book about the government abducting children and making them fight wars against aliens. Right, right. Totally normal stuff, as happens. And then in like the 2000s, he went crazy and he's like very Mormon and he was like super anti Obama. He was like, if Obama wins, there will be gangs of black people going around the country killing everybody.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh my God.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

So he was, you know, obviously right about some stuff. But no, come on. He was crazy.

[Ed Zitron]

We have cops for that.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

He, he, he's like super duper, like anti gay people. Even though his books are like very homoerotic. And there's like this very famous. It's very strange in Ender's Game where Ender beats a guy up by soaping himself, he gets really naked and then puts soap all over his body so that the bad guy can't like catch him. He's like a very Strange dude that is.

[Ed Zitron]

But he was a big Korra guy.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah, he's still on there to this day.

[Ed Zitron]

What's he answering? He's just.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I don't know. I can look.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, by all means. I just love the idea because see.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

What he's up to.

[Ed Zitron]

Korra seems horrible. Just want to be abundantly clear because I was a Yahoo Answers freak in the sense that I was similar, but I was just someone who looked. I just. I was like a. And answers voyeur. And there's of course, the very famous Yahoo Answers. How is babby formed? How go get pregnant. I need to do Wey and stain mother who killed dear babies. I could say the whole thing, but I won't. But Quora feels different somehow. It feels like it's got a degree of LinkedIn poisoning almost.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah. There's also full names on there.

[Ed Zitron]

So it's all like. No one's anonymous.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Some people are. I mean, we've come across one guy whose name is I Am a Pizza. And he posts every day. He asks, how can I get eaten? Okay, just so he's not. I don't think that's his legal name, but he's on there.

[Ed Zitron]

Just, my name's. I'm in Pizza.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I Am a Pizza is his name.

[Ed Zitron]

And is it just questions around how.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

He can get eaten? Yeah, it's literally what it is.

[Ed Zitron]

It's all. That's it.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Like, how can I get someone to eat me? How can I get eaten, like, every day?

[Ed Zitron]

It's nothing sexual.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I mean.

[Ed Zitron]

I mean, perhaps just the process of being eaten is sexual. Of course.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Sure.

[Ed Zitron]

Are there a lot of bit style accounts like that?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

There definitely are. There's definitely trolls on there. There's a lot of Christian baby questions. That's a big thing on Qu. Or be like, what would you do if you're skydiving with a Christian baby and the baby says, I'm not gonna pull my parachute unless you renounce atheism and accept Jesus Christ. Okay, well, that's supposed to be a gotcha.

[Ed Zitron]

The answer there is just I'll say whatever I need to. It's a fucking baby.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah, exactly.

[Ed Zitron]

They're very stupid. Like, just. They're not intellectual.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yes, that. There's hundreds of these.

[Ed Zitron]

And how are the responses? Do people take them very seriously or do they take them more like they. They kind of like. Is it like Twitter where you get like 50 honest people in 50% being unfunny?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Well, it's not Twitter because they're not unfunny, but it'll be 50% people answering it and 50% people being like, how dare you bring this to my question website where discourse is meant to be done. Wait, so there were very Scott Card, by the way.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, okay. Okay.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

So he's answered three hours ago, four hours ago. He's there every day.

[Ed Zitron]

He had a job.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I know he's on there. Just people being like, how do you write a book? And he's like, I wrote ender's game in 1975.

[Ed Zitron]

And then back then I had the dinosaur that you pack on the head. Yeah, that's. That's like. There's some listeners who are not gonna love that.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah, just a lot of stuff about, like, he's just giving, like, relationship advice.

[Ed Zitron]

In some spots that's not brilliant based on anything you've told me about. Is there a large, like, relationship advice?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Sure, yeah, there's definitely that kind of stuff. There's a lot of, like, famously bad ones where it's hard to tell if it's, like, legit. I mean, there's just children on there who are being like, how do I get this girl to like me? Or whatever, just.

[Ed Zitron]

And in some ways, that feels quite honest, like, what the Internet is really for. But with the perverts and degenerates on there, it's pretty bad.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

There's a place that we have found a bunch of times called, like, Teen Fun Zone, that's for, like, teens to hang out. And it's just like, how many of these people are undercover cops? Like, that's my question for sure.

[Ed Zitron]

How many of them are teens?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Probably a small percent.

[Ed Zitron]

And so you've seen the generative AI aspect, right?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yes. Yeah. So there's this thing now called Quora Prompt Generator.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, good.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

That is making questions that they think people want to ask in the future. And it's very hidden to even find the question asker in general on Quora because it's like the worst ui. You have to click on three dots and then go down to question log and then scroll all the way to the bottom and see the question. And now it'll just say created by Quora prompt AI or whatever. And it's just these bizarre questions that we've come across every now and then.

[Ed Zitron]

You've got any fun examples?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah, I have so many of them.

[Ed Zitron]

Please, please share them, because I think we should both listen to them and answer.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

This is one that we found on our podcast. Right. Should the Grinch be able to kill a who whenever he wants? According to Halloween is Grinch night.

[Ed Zitron]

So that is Completely generative.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah, that. I mean, I don't quite know how it works. Apparently it's like scrubbing these from somewhere. Like, I. I saw some people suggest. Because there's no, like, answer from Quora, they don't tell you. Like, they're not saying, like, we've announced our new AI.

[Ed Zitron]

So just going over that again. Halloween night.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah. I think we looked this up. Halloween as Grinch night was like a movie from the 80s or something.

[Ed Zitron]

Did it bequeath the Grinch with a License to kill? Is this a purge situation?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I don't know.

[Ed Zitron]

But what were the answers?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Like, so this one had no answers on it.

[Ed Zitron]

Why not?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

And we made sure just to keep things above board, we wrote, no Grinches should have to respond to their programming. Just so the computer knows.

[Ed Zitron]

Grinches should have to. So this is the suggestion that a Grinch is some sort of automaton. Like, I don't know.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I just feel like, take questions very.

[Ed Zitron]

Seriously on this podcast.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

So, like, I just don't like that the computer is asking, like, is it cool to kill? And then we're like, no.

[Ed Zitron]

But under the terms of Halloween night, the Grinch.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Right. Quote, unquote, Grinch should not kill.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. Any other good ones? Because I'm thinking about Halloween night.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

This is a continuation of this theme. This is the. The computer asked, how can someone live with a decomposed body in the fridge for months without others noticing they live alone?

[Ed Zitron]

Like, that's the answer.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

But doesn't it feel like the computer wants to know?

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, it does. You know what I'm saying? If a person asked both of these questions.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yes.

[Ed Zitron]

You'd be like, are you the Grinch? Is that your friend?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Are you gonna kill someone?

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. Did you kill someone? Do you have a decomposing body in your house by any chance? Yeah.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

The real answer is just that they just tell people that they have a smelly apartment or whatever. Yeah. That's what all cereal just be a loser. Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Just don't let anyone in your apartment when the body's there.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I understand that the AI isn't thinking that it's just a next word generator, but it's concerning that that's the next words that it's generated.

[Ed Zitron]

Adam D'Angelo, the CEO of Quora, he's on the board of OpenAI.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

He was part of the people being like, we have to bring back Sam Altman. We need this technology. We need this technology. We need Quorra to come up with crazy questions. It. I actually think that this is kind of almost a Sign of the future for what meta is gonna be like.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah, I think that's right.

[Ed Zitron]

It's. Are there tons? Like, does it just so many out all day?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

There's like, people have like. There's a community where people like find their favorite ones and shit.

[Ed Zitron]

Right, right, right.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

So there I found like 10 of them that I put in. There's. This one's just like false info. It's. How much territory did America acquire from the purchase of Greenland?

[Ed Zitron]

Okay, so it's just like incorrect. Really good.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

So this is. How much of this is there on the. Do you. So you say it's quite hard to find the Generator, right? Or is it hard to find these questions?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Well, it's hard to find the. If you go to like the Generator, it doesn't give you a list of them.

[Ed Zitron]

Right.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

So it's just like this was made by Quora AI. And to find the actual question, like, it's just a pain in the ass. Where I can show you.

[Ed Zitron]

So they're kind of burying them a bit.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah. So like, if this is what the question looks like, it just looks like somebody's asking a regular question and there's all these people answering and there's related questions. And to know that it's Quora AI, you have to go to more and then you go to view question details and then it says prompt.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, yeah. So just for the listeners, I'll post the link to something like this as well. So what this means is you can get these questions and they appear like they're asked by a human. Yes, except they're written like a human that has a ghastly.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah, exactly. And it says prompts are intended to capture questions people may have in the future.

[Ed Zitron]

Just me walking around my house being like, I wonder if the Grinch could kill people on Halloween night. Shit. Well, I don't have time. Well, thank. Thankfully they've already asked it, but no one answered.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Right? Yeah, just me.

[Ed Zitron]

You know what the best thing is gonna be when they just have them answer it when they have an AI answer it. You just have an auto Quora.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah, but I'm sure there are AI answers on there. Oh, I'm sure we've come across some that feel like, I mean, it could just be weird people. But that's the thing.

[Ed Zitron]

It sounds like you've got like a perversion element that really throws the. I am both disappointed and happy to hear about the amount of perverts the purple account. But that kind of means that Quora's keeping going. But actually it sounds like they're really trying to fill, like, plummet with this fucking AI shit.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah, they said that has something to do with, like, they just want more questions on the site.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes, of course they do. So keep looking at the site. But the UI of the site does not appear to have changed.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

No, it's terrible.

[Ed Zitron]

It's really, really bad. I will admit the reason I don't use Quora, other than the fact that I know everything, is every time I go on there, I'll be like, I'll click on it, I'll look for a question. It will like a question to announce, like, I don't know, like, who do you think the best baseball player in this year was? Like, because I only started watching baseball fairly recently. And it will be like, answer. Then like an ad of some sort. Then like a wallet hub sponsored piece of content being like, how do I save $1,000 a month and it's just 18 affiliate links. Yeah, this feels like it's. The advertising element has taken over Quora. But these don't even seem like they're advertising. They just feel like it's bizarre.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

And there's also if sometimes you'll see an answer that's like really long and you're like, oh, that's interesting. And it'll cut off and be like, you have to subscribe to Quora plus for $5 a month.

[Ed Zitron]

Who the fuck is Quora Plus?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

It's just the better answers are on there, I guess.

[Ed Zitron]

Are you fucking serious?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

It's the worst website.

[Ed Zitron]

What the fuck is the.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

It's really bad. But the good thing about Quora is that people put their full names and, like, address. So sometimes we'll find a guy who's like, you know, every one of their posts is like, I love to shit in a diaper. I get off on it sexually. And then they'll be like, I live in this town, Indiana. Here's my full name and photo. That's so, so weird.

[Ed Zitron]

It's like you've got like a combination of AI slop and just the purest old school Internet disgusting people.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah, yeah.

[Unknown]

You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other job sites. With Indeed sponsored jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up Your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com podkatz12 just go to Indeed.com podkatz12 right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.

Have you ever looked into the night sky and wondered who or or what was flying around up there? We've seen planes, helicopters, hot air balloons and birds. But what if there's something else, something much more ominous that appears under the COVID of night? Silent, unseen, watching. They may be right above your car late one night as you cruise down the road. Or look like mysterious lights hovering above your home. Drones. Or are they?

[Alec Baldwin]

We used the word drone because it was comfortable to other people.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

One minute was there and one minute it wasn't. Oh, that is beyond creepy.

[Unknown]

Do you feel like this drone was targeting you specifically?

[Ed Zitron]

Yes, absolutely.

[Unknown]

Listen to Obscurum Invasion of the Drones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Osvaloshin]

Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? I'm Osvaloshin, one of the new hosts of the long running podcast Tech Stuff. I'm slightly skeptical, but obsessively intrigued.

[Cara Price]

And I'm Cara Price, the other new host, and I'm ready to adopt early.

[Osvaloshin]

And often on Tech Stuff. We travel all the way from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars to the dark corners of TikTok to ask and attempt to answer burning questions about technology.

[Ed Zitron]

One of the kind of tricks for.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Surviving Mars is to live there long enough so that people evolve into Martians? Like data is a very rough proxy for a complex reality.

[Ed Zitron]

How is it possible that the world's new energy revolution can be based in this place where there's no electricity at night?

[Cara Price]

Oz and I will cut through the noise to bring you the best conversations and deep dives that will help you understand how tech is changing our world and what you need to know to survive the singularity. So join us.

[Osvaloshin]

Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Unknown]

How serious is youth vaping irreversible lung damage? Serious. One in 10 kids vape serious, which warrants a serious conversation from a serious parental figure like yourself. Not the seriously know it all sports dad or the seriously smart podcaster. Or it requires a serious conversation that is best had by you. No, seriously, the best person to talk to your child about vaping is you. To start the conversation, visit talkaboutvaping.org, brought to you by the American Lung association and the Ad Council.

[Ed Zitron]

So, okay, we've got our perverts, we've got our cops. Are there any other weird subcultures you've noticed on there?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

There's a lot of politics on there. A lot of people argue about Trump. There's, like, a bunch of, like, Trump and. And, you know, Democrat spaces that battle it out, where people say, like, is Obama about to get arrested tomorrow? And people go like, no, he's not. He's our greatest man alive. And they go back and forth, and there's memes.

[Ed Zitron]

So it's not even, like, necessarily logical questions.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

It's like, yeah, just total, like, QAnon stuff is on there.

[Ed Zitron]

And so it's not particularly moderated, then?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Not really, no. There's not. Doesn't seem to be any moderation on Quorra.

[Ed Zitron]

Do you see any kind of, like, hate speech? Hate speech?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Oh, yeah. All the time. People say there's definitely, like, slurs on gora. We found a guy recently who said his bio said, we need a white president. Jesus. Americans for white presidents.

[Ed Zitron]

Jesus Christ.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah, and sometimes it's both. Like, we found one that was like, why did Joe Biden let Obama make him his slave? And all this stuff. And then right after, it'll be like, how do I get my sister to fall in love with me? It's like, wait, what? They'll be combined, the perverts and the racist.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, my God. So are there any, like. So there must be sports people. Are they arguing, too? Is everyone just kind of arguing all the time?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

You know what? None of us on our podcast are really sports people, so maybe there is, and we're just not seeing it. But I haven't interacted too much with Sports Quora, but I'm sure they're on there.

[Ed Zitron]

No. And they must be insane.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm still. I'm still blown away that there was a Quora Plus. Yeah, it's.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

It's bizarre. We refuse to pay for it. We're not. I don't want to do it.

[Ed Zitron]

You've been doing this podcast a while. That's so good. That's so good that you steadfastly.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Why would you ever. $5 Adam D'Angelo.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I have emailed him many times, though.

[Ed Zitron]

He does not. He does not get. He doesn't get back to you, Adam D'Angelo. It's a permanent thing. The creators will have you on, and you can Come on. Better offline as well. But I only have very specific questions around Halloween night. And then you will leave. I have no further questions.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I just want to know if a Grinch is allowed to kill a who.

[Ed Zitron]

And you said a Grinch, right?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I think it was.

[Ed Zitron]

Actually, let's check this out because I feel like the proper.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Like if it's the owner, it was the Grinch. Should the Grinch be able to kill who whenever he wants?

[Ed Zitron]

Because I feel like that question comes down to whether you consider the Grinch a person or a race.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Like a real man. Yes. Who is allowed to kill just a.

[Ed Zitron]

Very person of color, harassed whenever he wants. Harassed for his religious beliefs.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

A person of green color.

[Alec Baldwin]

Yeah.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I've emailed Adam. I've emailed Jordan Peters. I've emailed Orson Scott Card. All of them just being like, hello, I have a podcast that celebrates Quora. Like, you're my favorite website. Just trying to be really nice, but none of them will bite.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, I text Sam Altman. No, I have got his number. I've said it multiple times on the show. I've texted him. And then one time I terrorized a few friends by. I was at a hotel and I stepped on the side of a balcony and I took a photo and I put it in the chat box. The Sam Altman. And I said, I bet you would love this. But I didn't send it. I really should have.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Has he ever answered you?

[Ed Zitron]

No. No, he is not. But he's not blocked me.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

That's good.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm still getting blue. He's. That's the thing. There is a little bit of joy of just knowing that Sam Altman's forwarding these to his PR people, being like, he's. He messaged. Just. Just letting you know about this. He keeps asking me about Halloween night and he asked me if I am a. Or the Grinch and I'm not sure how to respond.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

He's the Grinch.

[Ed Zitron]

He's legret. I.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

He stole our presence.

[Ed Zitron]

He's just. I. This is not a tech episode, so who gives a shit? But we're currently in the post deep seq world right now, which I think is really funny. And how you bring that back to Quora is now they're going to be able to make so many more generative answers for so much cheaper. We're going to be able to see these demented things. Do you have any questions from. From the AI generated ones about like life, though? Like life decision stuff? Because I think that my favorite thing with Yahoo Answers Was the more innocent stuff.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Sure.

[Ed Zitron]

Where people would say, like, how do I get a girl to fall in love with me?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Right.

[Ed Zitron]

My friend is mad at me. How do I deal with that? And then the just most insane. You get, like, normal, normal, normal. And then someone being like, doesn't sound like much of a friend. Even though the story is about you offending the friend. I was really extremely rude to him. Like, no, he's not a real friend. He should just understand you. You were. You were justified in screaming at him.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I'm trying to see if we have any, like, nice. I mean, there's certainly a lot, but.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, no, I don't mean nice. I just mean, is the AI asking a life question? Because I want to see how the AI thinks about life.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Do any animals refer to their young as baby or child like humans do?

[Ed Zitron]

Fuck, yes. That's such a large language model. Last question. Yeah, you just like, well, of course animals act like humans.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Right? They're all kind of the same to me.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes. Fuck it. Does my cat revert? Does a cat. That's just. Every time I think about these fucking questions, it just kind of begins to boil what's left of my brain. More questions. Let's go through these. I want to know all of these fucking things.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Is it common for doctors to keep umbilical cords? Why would an AI write that? Like, I get that it's not a robot at the computer, but it just feels like it being like, what is up with these freaks?

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, it's just the. Is just the GPT4 being like, humans are so fucking weird. Why do you need doctor. Wait, just run that question by me again. Okay.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Is it common for doctors to keep umbilical cords?

[Ed Zitron]

Okay, so there. It's just like, oh, yeah, I bet they do that, but how often?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

And then all the comments are people being like, no, this is a weird question. Why would you ask it? But they don't know that it's the robot.

[Ed Zitron]

I would not be able to help myself responding with a fake doctor account, like, all the time. Just throw them in my fucking.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah, you could just get a stock photo of you, you know, a guy in a lab coat, and just feel like, I'm a doctor, Dr.

[Ed Zitron]

Genius, MD. But wait, so more questions.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Okay.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm excited by these. These are very good.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Did Adam and Eve celebrate Christmas? If so how.

[Ed Zitron]

That's so good.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

They're off in, like, a weird way.

[Ed Zitron]

They're off in a way that's like, they have a full understanding of meaning, but not context or history. No, not even meaning. It's just like, these are plausible sentences.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

But not.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

It makes no sense if you know what any of the words mean.

[Ed Zitron]

That's so weird, though, because surely it knows that Christmas is.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I don't think it. I don't know how it knows.

[Ed Zitron]

I want to know. These are so. The more I think about them, the stranger they get. Cause it's like, these are questions that if you heard someone say them out loud, you go, yeah, I don't know. And then take a step back and like, wait, what the fuck are you talking about? But this is all of them. But let's see, what.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

There's a lot of answers on this, too. People are answering. Some people are being serious. They're saying, no, that's not possible, because Christmas was after that. And then other people are like, none of it's real. So none of it. Of course they can't, because they're not real.

[Ed Zitron]

Right.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

There's people just being silly. But, yeah, there's no way to know that it's an AI and you wouldn't think it was. You'd think it's a child or something.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, like someone with a gas leak. Yeah, it's like, gas leak, AI.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

It's the kind of shit that you'd say if you, like, were walking out of a car wreck.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

But more of the. These are. I'm so glad you brought these today, because I really want to.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Is it true that astronauts are not allowed to touch the Earth? I don't know what that means.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, I heard this the other day. Someone told me this the other day. And are there any answers on that one?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I have to imagine it's just people being like, how dare you? No answers on this one yet.

[Ed Zitron]

It's so bizarre. And again, this is. There's no real quick way of seeing this as AI.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

No, no. Yeah. It doesn't show you on the screen. You have to go into, like, more settings, answer a question log, and then it'll show you there.

[Ed Zitron]

So deeply deceptive. When did you start seeing these pop up?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

So our whole thing is that we just dox people all the time on our podcast. So if you ask a question, we want to read your full name. So we just started figuring out, like, anytime we read a crazy question, we're like, who asked this? What's their deal? A lot of people are from, like, India. We found quarters really big in India. Much bigger in India than the U.S. but then, you know, every now and then, we'd come across a crazy question, like, can astronauts touch the ground be like, who the fuck asked this? And we click on it and it's like the AI and we were just.

[Ed Zitron]

Like Earth as well.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

And it's just more and more has been happening.

[Ed Zitron]

Strange question, is the earth capitalized in that one?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I think so, yeah. Yeah, it is.

[Ed Zitron]

So that makes the meaning even stranger.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Because I thought, okay, touch the ground maybe like, if it's earth, I don't know. Like, Americans don't tend to refer to the ground as earth that much, but like in England I've heard people say that, so. This is so fucking cool though.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

It's really. It's bizarre.

[Ed Zitron]

Any other. Any other good ones? Let's go through.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Would horses have been invented if they did not already exist? What factors contribute to the invention of new animals?

[Ed Zitron]

Okay, just run that by me again.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Would you. Would horses have been invented if they did not already exist?

[Ed Zitron]

Uh huh.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

What factors contribute to the invention of new animals?

[Ed Zitron]

There's something wrong with this.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

This one, like, okay, again, I understand that it's just predictive text, but it does feel like the computer being like, I'm a new animal of sorts. How we do invent animals. I mean, humans invented dogs and there.

[Ed Zitron]

Are like ligers and such. You can make two things fuck all the time. Yeah, probably should get off that subject or get off. It's really your choice. The numerous perverts listen to the show. You're loved and accepted. If you make it someone else's problem, I'm coming for you.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

It on Quora, they're happy to discuss.

[Ed Zitron]

I think what it is, is that this doesn't even sound like chatgpt.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

No. Yeah, I don't know what it is. I. I'm not sure where it is. I think so. But there's no like again, there's no Quora hasn't said what it is. Like everything I've found about it is people either just guessing, like in the Quora because there's a million questions that are like, what is this? And why is it here? I hate it. So people are just like guessing. And then some people will ask because there's an aqua AI assistant now where it'll. The AI is at the top of every answer and every question and it tries to answer every question. So the AI will be like, this is what the Quora prompt generator is.

[Ed Zitron]

But that's so. Actually elaborate on that a little bit. So there is the AI on top.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Of just like all websites now, if there's any question on the Internet, there is an AI answer for It.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, but specifically it answers the question. Like, it generates one.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

So you go to Quora.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

It's not on everyone. Like these unanswered ones. It wasn't there. But a lot of times on a popular question, the AI will either try to answer the question itself using, like, GPT or it'll be like a summary of everyone's answers.

[Ed Zitron]

That's. So it feels like at some point the computer is just talking to it.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yes, it really is.

[Ed Zitron]

But these. These questions, they're. They're bothering me because they don't even sound like I've seen the various models. Like, I would say anthropics. Claude, more conversational. ChatGPT. Very much like a lobotomy situation. Like, very much like a. I have just recently had a lobotomy, but I know everything written in this book I can read. This is demented.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

It's really weird. There's something very off and it's infecting the Google AI too.

[Ed Zitron]

How so?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

You know how if you search something on Google now, it'll come up with an AI answer. Right. Google is sourcing from Quora for a lot of these. So, like, there was a thing recently where someone said, like, when was running invented? And Google answers says, like, 1945. And that was because of a Quora comment.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, I know that. Was this where they had the melting egg situation?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I think so, yeah. A lot of these are from, like, Reddit and Quora.

[Ed Zitron]

So the melting egg situation for listeners, was someone on Quora, I think, asked if you could melt an egg and then the AI responded with, yep.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah, gotcha.

[Ed Zitron]

Of course.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah, That's. It's all very, very weird, but these.

[Ed Zitron]

Questions don't feel like that. These questions feel like jokerfucking.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Something you might ask in the future.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

When you're an astronaut and you can't go home.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. Or just something that a broken GPT would ask, like a. Yeah.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I don't know if it's, like, trained on Quorra, because Quorra is already, like, where the sickos are. So maybe it's just like training on specifically delusional people. I really don't know.

[Ed Zitron]

It must be trained on Quora because that's the only way you'd get such weird. It must train on Quora as well, because they're running out of training data. Oh, I really need to look into this.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I would love for someone to find.

[Ed Zitron]

Out, because these questions are not just like. I'm sure If I loaded ChatGPT and asked a question, it would be a normal one.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Right.

[Ed Zitron]

It wouldn't be like. So when horses. We all agree that horses were invented. We all know that, of course.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

It's really. I don't know. Yeah. Some of them are just like, misinformation.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, please. Any others?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Is Tesla considered a socialist company?

[Ed Zitron]

That is the closest they've come to a normal question.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

How about this one? What are the reasons for California having fewer natural disasters compared to other states?

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, boy. Yeah, oh, boy. That one again, closer to meaning, but just like.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah, just completely nonsensical. I'm trying to see. When was this asked? This was, I think, asked on January 12th. So during the fire.

[Ed Zitron]

Right.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

They asked, the AI was like, California rocks at natural disasters.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. These guys really missed these.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

They're traditionally California disaster free. That's really good. Any other good ones?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Let me see. I think that's all the ones that I wrote down. I have one more here. What is the term for when a person's brain and physical body are connected to two different people?

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, that's. That's a tough one.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

This is so strange.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

It's really weird.

[Ed Zitron]

This concept is actually really bothering me because the idea of a generative one, sure, it sucks, but sure. But when it's just like, so we all know that boars, of course, have been president, but why can't they be king? And it's like, no, actually, that's too normal. That one made more sense. That's like an understanding of there's a republic versus monarchy situation. But we could get rid of that in post. This is just these. There must be something strange. And you're saying that users do not like this?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

No, no one likes it. I mean, if they can even tell, there's like, questions where people are just like, why is this here? And like, what is it? But on most of these, like, no one knows that it's the AI. Like, if there's any answers on it, people are just like, this is stupid and I hate you.

[Ed Zitron]

Right. Which is the general response to AI I found.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

You don't use AI, I'm guessing me?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Not particularly, no.

[Ed Zitron]

No, you're not a big GPT. Someone said that to me on the phone. Like, you use ChatGPT every day, I assume. I was like, sure.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I know so many people who use it for, like, emails and all sorts of crazy shit that you would. I mean, I'm sure you're hearing about it.

[Ed Zitron]

That's not good.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

No, it's crazy. You can't write an email.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, I. That's so bad. But you still seem to kind of love Quorra though.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I do love you.

[Ed Zitron]

Come at it. But why tell me?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I just like how pure it is. The fact that there are people just like, I don't know, you could go on pornhub and just jack off to whatever you want and you're sitting here coming up with a situation to be like, what does it feel like to have poop in your diaper? There's a lot of diaper people in there.

[Ed Zitron]

Do you have any non sexual? Are you just on the pervert zone? I do love the section.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I love the perverts on Korra. It makes me so happy to see them.

[Ed Zitron]

He really is quite happy.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

The fact that they all have their full names makes me really happy. I'm trying to think. I don't know. People ask like silly relationships. It's like, am I the asshole? But like, more like insane.

[Unknown]

Have you ever looked into the night sky and wondered who or what was flying around up there? We've seen planes, helicopters, hot air balloons flying, and birds. But what if there's something else, something much more ominous that appears under the COVID of night? Silent, unseen, watching. They may be right above your car late one night as you cruise down the road. Or look like mysterious lights hovering above your home. Drones. Or are they?

[Alec Baldwin]

We used the word drone because it was comfortable to other people.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

One minute was there and one minute it wasn't. Oh, that is beyond creepy.

[Unknown]

Do you feel like this drone was targeting you specifically?

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yes, absolutely.

[Unknown]

Listen to Obscurum Invasion of the Drones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Osvaloshin]

Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? I'm Os Velozin, one of the new hosts of the long running podcast Tech Stuff. I'm slightly skeptical, but obsessively intrigued.

[Cara Price]

And I'm Cara Price, the other new host, and I'm ready to adopt early.

[Osvaloshin]

And often on tech stuff. We travel all the way from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars to the dark corners of TikTok to ask and attempt to answer burning questions about technology.

[Ed Zitron]

One of the kind of tricks for.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Surviving Mars is to live there long enough so that people evolve into Martians. Like data is a very rough proxy for a complex reality.

[Ed Zitron]

How is it possible that the world's new energy revolution can be based in this place where there's no electricity at night?

[Cara Price]

Oz and I will cut through the noise to bring you the best conversations and deep dives that will help you understand how tech is changing our world and what you need to know to survive the singularity. So join us.

[Osvaloshin]

Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Unknown]

How serious is youth vaping? Irreversible lung damage serious. 1 in 10 kids vape serious, which warrants a serious conversation from a serious parental figure like yourself. Not the seriously know it all sports dad or the seriously smart podcaster. It requires a serious conversation that is best had by you. No, seriously, the best person to talk to your child about vaping is you. To start the conversation, visit talkaboutvaping.org brought to you by the American Lung association and the AD Council.

[Tisha Allen]

Welcome. My name is Paola Pedrosa, a medium and the host of the Ghost Therapy podcast, where it's not just about connecting with deceased loved ones, it's about learning through them and their new perspective. Join me on the Ghost Therapy podcast.

[Ed Zitron]

Whoa.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

My lights in my living room just flickered. I'm a little nervous. I'm excited.

[Tisha Allen]

I'm excited nervous.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

You know, I'm very spiritual person, so I'm like, I'm ready and open. That was amazing. I feel so grateful right now.

[Tisha Allen]

I got to speak to my great grandmother Abuela, and she gave me a lot of really good advice that I'm going to have to really think about.

[Ed Zitron]

Wow.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Okay. That's crazy. Yes, that is accurate.

[Tisha Allen]

Listen to the Ghost Therapy podcast as part of the My Cultura Podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ed Zitron]

Do you get a prevalence of fake questions? Like, I know that.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I'm sure there are.

[Ed Zitron]

Relationship advice is like, on Reddit. It's like 90% people being like. And time for my fan fiction. Yeah, I will do the fan fiction now, but Korra seems more demented.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

It is. I'm sure there's just as many fake ones, but they're more obvious where it'll be like, there's one that was like, my son wanted an Optimus prime toy and I don't want him to. Or I didn't want him to have it, so I made him hold his breath for three days. Am I a bad dad? And it's like, it doesn't feel like the same as am I the asshole or someone made up like a boring relationship problem.

[Ed Zitron]

And one like that is very bean dad adjacent. Where it's like, you think this is normal. It isn't.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah, exactly.

[Ed Zitron]

Your son should breathe. It kind of reminds me from ces. Like the Samsung. No, sorry. LG demo. Where the AI was like, yeah, I heard your son cough last night, so I raised the temperature 5 degrees. It's like, you fucking insane. And I just, for the sake of argument, opened up Quorra and thought, it can't be that weird. First one, what was the dirtiest country you ever visited?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Oh, God. Just the annoying thing about Quorra too is that like, if you visit it, if you like really interact with it at all, you'll start getting emails from it.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, God.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

The Korra Digest. They'll send you like an email every day. I'm sure I have a million of them in my email.

[Ed Zitron]

Why must farmers wake up at 4am to milk the cows? Why not just wait until a more reasonable time, like 8am Won't the cows adjust?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

It's a weird website. It's very strange. I'm just see what I have.

[Ed Zitron]

Like this guy, I'm looking him up as well. This is a system analyst. Yeah, in Brazil.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Isn't it fascinating to know his life? Like, it's not just Reddit where it's just like, oh, you slash whatever.

[Ed Zitron]

But also it's not even just that he like, is that guy. It's that he was just like one day, like, well, I got over from a job, system analyst, and I thought, why are these fucking idiot farmers get up so early and just. There's a hunt. There's 131 different answer. Sorry. No, the original question is from. This is going to be a fucking AI one, isn't it? Let's see who I think. Wait.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

It's very hard to find the answer.

[Ed Zitron]

This is crazy. The guy who responded was a systems analyst.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Okay.

[Ed Zitron]

And he was saying he was talking to his farmer friend. No, you weren't. Wait, so show me.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Okay, so you have to go to view question details and then you have to physically scroll through every answer to get to the very bottom of the feed. And then it will tell you who the question is. And very often it'll just be like, anonymous.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, the farmers of the world will wake up early to wake up the roosters. You see, if the roosters don't wake up on time. Very funny.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

While I'm not a dairy farmer, I do associate with them. I'm just. I'm gonna close that because I would just read Quora every day. But it is, it does feel like even though it's being tortured with, with electricity, it does feel like one of the last real parts of the Internet.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I mean, it's like how we all hated Reddit for so long and now if you have Any question you have to put Reddit at the end of it when you Google it, because otherwise you'll AI swap or SEO swap.

[Ed Zitron]

You get one of 15 different articles all on WalletHub.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

So it's like, sure, this is gonna be from some asshole who might not know, but at least it's a human being.

[Ed Zitron]

Have you seen much? Because Reddit I've started to see some obvious sponcon in there. Well, it's sponcon, like affiliate people, people going in, selling their shit. Do you get a lot of that in Quora?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

There's a little bit of it, but with Quora everything is more obvious. So like there was one we read recently that was, we did a whole episode of Hitler questions because there's a lot of Hitler people on there and there was somebody who asking about like, did Hitler's have high testosterone or something?

[Ed Zitron]

How would you know?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I don't know. And they were like Ted answers that were like, I think because of, well, you know, this reason. If you look at his male pattern baldness and his mustache. And then at the end it was like, if you want to learn more about high testosterone, you can take pills from this website. And it was just like people advertising their pills.

[Ed Zitron]

There was some fucking SEO expert was like, all right, let's bring out the Hitler stuff.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah, it doesn't matter where my Hitler.

[Ed Zitron]

Analysis I'm scrolling to. The reason I'm doing this on air is I want to be clear how much Quorra is burying whether a question is from AI. Yes, because you have to go right to the end of this and there's a hundred answers or so. And it was actually answered by a guy called Tao Dao.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

This is the question.

[Ed Zitron]

And he asked, do you have to have a full time job and high income to take out a loan for a house? That's like a normal question.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Very normal.

[Ed Zitron]

These are like normal questions.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Farmer question. Yeah, yeah, it's weird.

[Ed Zitron]

This guy's sitting around just be like, huh, yeah, you get a house. But I guess this is the pure Internet. This is like the normal Internet a little bit.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I mean it's like fucked up, but that's what.

[Ed Zitron]

Why can't people learn from their mistakes?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

That's a great question. That's a beautiful question.

[Ed Zitron]

How can I get out of debt as quickly as possible? I love these. But they're also very sad because it's like, well, there's just a degree of like no one else you could ask me. Yeah, no one else.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

And you don't want to Google it. You have To. You need someone to answer you.

[Ed Zitron]

How much money did Elon Musk have before he became a multibillionaire? I assume less than a billion dollars. There's, like, a lot of pictures. Oh, my God. This is a picture of my son and daughter. He passed away in 2015 at the age of 26 from heart failure.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Oh, my God.

[Ed Zitron]

This is posted in Good Vibes.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Well, it's interesting to me. Like, the farmer question is one thing, but if this was on the profile of the guy who said, like, what is the dirtiest country? Like, I'm just fascinated by these people who are like, I'm so racist. And then they're just like, here's a picture of my daughter.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. And all of their posts are different pages of, like, there's a thing with a cop. They've got a lot of pictures of couples.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

This is on Good Vibes.

[Ed Zitron]

My daughter Becca passed away one year ago. This is an AI account. This is.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

You think it's AI?

[Ed Zitron]

Well, considering the fact that they've now mentioned two of all the children have died, yeah.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

It's very possible it's AI or a troll or something.

[Ed Zitron]

But this is what it is now. This is. This site makes millions of dollars.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I don't know. Yeah, it must make something. It was made by people who left Facebook. I think it was all people who worked on Facebook and left to make Quora the worst version of Facebook.

[Ed Zitron]

What should I absolutely not do when visiting the usa? And the first one is, do not get out of your car. If stopped by the police, they'll assume you were armed and they might shoot you. And there's a picture of a cop that's. AI generated a truly monstrous looking with, like, another cop.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Three fingers with, like, another cop, but.

[Ed Zitron]

In a, like a gray police uniform and doing something a cop would not usually do, which is stop a cop being violent. And there's 2,000 responses. This is just. How was it always this bad?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I don't think Quorra was ever good. I don't think the version of it where Jordan Peterson became a famous author was a better time for Korra, but, I mean, maybe it was more usable back then, at least.

[Ed Zitron]

I used to think that the most shameful thing about Jordan Peterson was his opinions, but I think it's that he got famous using Quora. Yeah, that should get you. They should take your passport just in case you answer questions in real life. That's so horrible.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

It makes sense, though, like, thinking back on what is the name of his book? Like, five ways to live your life.

[Ed Zitron]

Crying Principle.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

I don't know.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Like, it makes sense that you'd be like, oh, yeah, that guy is answering questions on quora.com.

[Ed Zitron]

It feels like the kind of like a palace of pedantry. Like, is it. Do you get people on there who are just like, no, actually, like, yeah.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

You know, it's a big one. We find a lot is witches, a lot of, like, witchcraft.

[Ed Zitron]

I am keen, tell me everything.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

So people will be like, how do I, like, put a hex on someone at school I don't like? And then a lot of people will be like, how dare you ask this question? You don't know anything about being a witch. You haven't read the spells. Open a book. The Necronomicon is free at a library. Like, it's. It's just people getting mad at each other.

[Ed Zitron]

Wait, so there are witches and witch pedants?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Oh, yeah, there's a lot of witch pedants. They're all arguing with each other about witchcraft.

[Ed Zitron]

Like, a lot of them.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, not like, you know, it's not overwhelming, but we've found a bunch of these people who are arguing about witchcraft.

[Ed Zitron]

See, I keep oscillating between terrible and beautiful because I think the idea of people being like, ah, how dare you, man?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

It's very similar to Reddit, but it's. I don't know, it's more stupid. It is gas leak. Reddit is a good way to.

[Ed Zitron]

That's. I like that. And are there any other weird subcultures, like witches? I don't know. I must not.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I'm trying to think if there's any other. There's a lot of perverts, a lot of cops. We found a cop who, like, wrote a book. We read some of his book.

[Ed Zitron]

What was the book like?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

You know what it was? It was like his life as a cop in London or something, as a retired cop. And we found out afterwards, like, why would anyone write or publish this book? And his brother owns, like, a book publishing company. So all of his answers were like, whoa, I remember in 1983, in the streets of London.

[Ed Zitron]

Okay, so he's a British cop.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah. We do have a button. Whenever we find a British person, we press our button and it says anglo Spotted.

[Ed Zitron]

Anglo spotted, Yeah, I like that. I like that a great deal. And I'll be bringing that onto the Chanel, please.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah, take it. It's all yours.

[Ed Zitron]

Eating it the entire fucking time. Yeah, I really. I'm locked onto those witches now. I wonder what they think about the Grinch.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah. I mean, not to bring it all back to that, but there are Grinch fetishists.

[Ed Zitron]

That's the thing.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Is there a whole Grinch? Not necessarily on Quora, but there are. I know people love Bigfoot. I know people love the Grinch. Any sort of big furry dude they'll get into.

[Ed Zitron]

That's really good.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah, that's.

[Ed Zitron]

I just. There is something very pure about this, but pure in the way that, like, you don't want to look at too often unless you run a podcast.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I will say a lot of people listen to our podcast and have told us, like, it's really funny. And I've gone on Quora to be like, I want to see some of this. And they're like, I hated it. And it's like, yeah, that's. Leave it to us.

[Ed Zitron]

No. I tried to prepare for this episode by looking at Korra being like, and I will bring some bangers of my own. And there was nary a banger to be found. It's just like, people.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

It's a bad website.

[Ed Zitron]

People being like, how do I get on a plane and get to have two seats for free? I am fucking like, why is this person next to me on this flight? And it's like. It's questions that don't even need answer. The answer is like, who gives a shit to, like, 90% of the questions.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

But we're the ones seeking out 15 Hitler questions. Why didn't Hitler use the magical lance to defeat Russia? Or whatever?

[Ed Zitron]

And so first response is like, all right, which magical lance? First of all, what do you mean by magic? You don't know about my.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Exactly. There was one that just on this Hitler episode that was like, would Hitler have liked Princess Diana? Which is a bizarre question. You're like, why do you care about this? And every answer was people being like, of course, obviously. Or like, no, you idiot. He'd hate her for this reason.

[Ed Zitron]

And he was the answer. There is obviously. He might. Because he kind of romanticized England.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah. I don't know.

[Ed Zitron]

He wanted to live in fucking Whiteley's shopping center. It's like a. I'm trying to think of it. If someone wanted to live in, like, the Westfield Mall in San Francisco. It's so strange that you.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Weird guy, that Adolf Hitler.

[Ed Zitron]

But this is obviously an anti Hitler podcast because you need to say that now. We're like, six months from Fox News pro Hitler segment. They're kind of getting there. So to wrap us up, though, please. So. Okay. It wasn't that bad. Do you. Are you going. How long do you spend on Quarrera a week, would you say?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I don't think we're spending too much time. We're lucky that we have a few sickos who will find questions.

[Ed Zitron]

They deliver you.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yes. Which is very, very important. And then sometimes we will search stuff and find it. But it's not. We're not spending too, too much time on there. Not more than a few hours.

[Ed Zitron]

I was wondering if there was like a madness you'd like. You get into it too much, maybe.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Our listeners are all going insane and we don't realize it. The ones who are finding these going into the minds.

[Ed Zitron]

Do you involve yourself? Do any of you?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

We answer a lot of questions. Sometimes I used to ask questions and like, try to get answers from people. Did they work? Not really. They were onto us pretty quick.

[Ed Zitron]

It doesn't feel like the kind of place that you could fuck with very easily because people will either be way too earnest or they'd be like, well, this person's making fun of me.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

And yet there's thousands, literally like thousands of Christian baby questions that are. Must be trolls.

[Ed Zitron]

That's so many. I think they might just be like 13 to 18 year olds who have never spoken to a person.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

They're all great scenarios. There's one that was like, what would you do if you're about to hit the winning strike in a baseball? That's what they said. Winning strike in a baseball game.

[Ed Zitron]

Winning strike.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

And the pitcher throws a Christian baby at you to hit the baby.

[Ed Zitron]

Winning strike.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

It's all bizarre.

[Ed Zitron]

So you are. You are about to. Okay. Hit the winning strike.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yes.

[Ed Zitron]

And you are being thrown at a.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Christian baby instead of a ball.

[Ed Zitron]

So two problems as far as I know. Yeah. Well, also, that is. I don't think there are any specific rules around that. But that sounds like.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

It's like a dog playing basketball.

[Ed Zitron]

If you are throwing a strike, you wouldn't be hitting it. No good place to end is any. Jeremy. Where can people find you?

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Just search my name online.

[Ed Zitron]

Okay. Say your.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

I would love if people checked out quorators.

[Ed Zitron]

I will put a link to it in there.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah, we've done 200 episodes. You should come on.

[Ed Zitron]

I would love to.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

And it's. It's great to have people chronicling these parts of the Internet. Fine. One of the reasons I brought you on, other than you're very funny, is the Internet is kind of dying when it comes to real people. And it's nice to see an evaluation of real. What real people are really like, which isn't necessarily a good thing.

[Jeremy Capowitz]

No?

[Ed Zitron]

Well, well, talking about things that are good. This episode's ending now. I'm Ed Zitron. You know where you can find me. And of course on my left is the wonderful Daniel Goodman, the producer here in the iHeartRadio studios. You've been listening to Radio Better Offline. Thank you kindly and I swear to flippin Christ I'm doing a Deep Seek episode. It's I feel like Jer fucking Jeff Passon on espn. People saying like, oh, announce Pete Alonso to the Mets. I don't do that job either, but I. I'm working on it. Anyway, thank you so much for listening. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matto Sousky. You can check out more of his music and audio [e-mail] m a t t o s o wski.com you 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.

[Tisha Allen]

Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or.

[Ed Zitron]

Wherever you get your podcasts.

[Osvaloshin]

Do you want to see into the future? Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? Do you want to experience the frontiers of what makes us human? On tech stuff, we travel from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars, from conversations with Nobel Prize winners to the depths of TikTok to ask burning questions about technology, from high tech to low culture, and everywhere in between. Join us Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Tisha Allen]

You are cordially invited to the hottest party in professional sports. I'm Tisha Allen, former golf professional and the host of welcome to the Party. Your newest obsession about the wonderful world that is women's golf. Featuring interviews with top players on tour, tips to help improve your swing, and the craziest stories to come out of your friendly neighborhood country club. Welcome to the Party with Tisha Allen is an iHeart Women's fourth production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. Listen to welcome to the Party. That's P A R T E e on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Alec Baldwin]

Hey, it's Alec Baldwin. This past season on my podcast, here's the thing, I spoke with more actors, musicians, policymakers, and so many other fascinating people like writer and actor Dan Aykroyd.

[Dan Aykroyd]

I love writing more than anything. You're left alone, you know, you do three hours in the morning, you write three hours in the afternoon. Go pick up a kid from school and write at night. And after nine hours you come out with seven pages and then you're moving on.

[Alec Baldwin]

Listen to here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you.

[Ed Zitron]

Get your podcasts, we all have a moment that splits us wide open. On my new podcast, Wide Open with Ashlyn Harris Harris, I'll sit down with trailblazers from sports, music, fashion, entertainment and.

[Cara Price]

Politics to explore their toughest moments and the incredible comebacks that followed.

[Ed Zitron]

Listen to Wide Open with Ashlyn Harris, an iHeart women's sports production on the iHeartradio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Cara Price]

Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.