Radio Better Offline: Mia Sato & Dave Lee

Summary

Podcast Summary: Better Offline – Radio Better Offline: Mia Sato & Dave Lee

Podcast Information:

• Title: Better Offline
• Host/Author: Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts
• Episode: Radio Better Offline: Mia Sato & Dave Lee
• Release Date: July 30, 2025
• Description: Better Offline is a weekly show that delves into the tech industry's impact on society, scrutinizing the pursuit of growth-at-all-costs by tech elites. Through storytelling, interviews, and panel discussions, the podcast demystifies the tech industry's complexities, exposing schemes from cryptocurrency frauds to venture capital greed. Hosted by tech veteran Ed Zitron, alongside various expert guests, the show aims to illuminate how tech powerhouses are reshaping the world for better or worse.

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1. Introduction of Guests (02:38 – 03:50)

The episode kicks off with Ed Zitron introducing his guests, Miya Sato of The Verge and Dave Lee of Bloomberg. Both guests are recognized as prominent opinion columnists with whom Zitron shares a longstanding professional relationship.

Notable Quote:

• Miya Sato: "I'm so excited to have you here because you were two of my favorite opinion columnists as well." [03:08]

2. The Labubu Phenomenon (03:50 – 08:11)

Understanding Labubu: The conversation shifts to the mysterious toy known as Labubu, which has garnered significant attention. Zitron explains that Labubus are plush dolls with a distinctive design—featuring a hard plastic face combined with a bunny suit. These dolls are sold in blind boxes, making acquisition akin to gambling.

Key Points:

• Gambling Aspect: Each Labubu comes in a blind box with varying chances of obtaining specific colors, including rare variants with a 1 in 72 chance [04:14].
• Manufacturer: Produced by Popmart, under the broader umbrella of Monstes [04:34].
• Resale Value: Opened Labubus have minimal resale value, with rare ones fetching slightly higher prices [05:29].
• Consumer Behavior: The scarcity and chance-driven acquisition have made Labubus a trendy item, especially among children and teens [05:45].

Notable Quote:

• Ed Zitron: "Labubus are little plush dolls... it is just gambling for kids and kind of adults." [04:14]

Comparison to Past Trends: Miya Sato draws parallels between Labubus and previous collectible crazes like Pokémon cards and Sunny Angels, highlighting the cyclical nature of such trends [05:56]. They discuss how Labubus lack intrinsic value beyond their collectible nature, emphasizing the randomness of acquisition as the primary allure.

3. The Role of TikTok and Platform Algorithms (08:11 – 22:50)

TikTok’s Influence: The discussion delves into how platforms like TikTok drive the popularity of products like Labubus. Zitron describes the challenging process of acquiring a Labubu through the Popmart app, which involves navigating a gamified purchasing system that discourages easy access [08:41].

Key Points:

• Engagement Strategy: Popmart leverages TikTok Live to engage thousands of viewers during Labubu drops, creating a sense of urgency and exclusivity [10:26].
• Algorithmic Push: The hosts explore how TikTok’s algorithm promotes trending products, pushing creators to produce content that aligns with what the platform deems popular [17:26].
• SEO and Content Quality: The shift from genuine content creation to algorithm-driven posts has degraded content quality across platforms. Zitron mentions how both Google and TikTok suffer from content optimization issues, where creators prioritize what works for the algorithm over authentic expression [19:10].

Notable Quotes:

• Miya Sato: "Why are they creating search tools on their platforms? Is it so that you can find the thing you need? Or so that they can kind of get you halfway?" [28:31]
• Ed Zitron: "It's not just the tech companies who make the systems bad, but there also is sort of the guiding hand of TikTok." [19:11]

Impact on Media and Journalism: The hosts discuss the detrimental effects of algorithm-driven content on traditional journalism. They lament how media outlets now chase trends for clicks rather than focusing on quality reporting, drawing comparisons to past media challenges.

Notable Quote:

• Miya Sato: "It is about how do we keep people here or get the credit card." [60:00]

4. The Decline of Quality Content and Traditional Media (22:50 – 43:44)

Erosion of Trust: The conversation highlights the decline in trust and quality of content as media companies and platforms prioritize engagement over informative and meaningful content. Zitron reflects on how Google’s shift towards AI-generated search results undermines original web content, likening it to past instances where Google dominated search spaces by introducing proprietary products [39:06].

Key Points:

• Google’s AI Overhaul: Zitron criticizes Google's new "Web Guide" feature, which presents AI-generated summaries alongside traditional search results, diminishing the need for users to visit actual websites [40:46].
• Niche Content Survival: Despite platform pressures, Miya Sato and Zitron express optimism about the survival of niche content and dedicated content creators who maintain quality regardless of trending algorithms [62:50].
• Media Responsibility: There's a critique of how large media companies fail to uphold quality standards, allowing sensational and low-value content to proliferate due to algorithmic incentives [55:15].

Notable Quotes:

• Ed Zitron: "The degradation of Google search as a window into the web... the same thing is happening on TikTok." [19:45]
• Miya Sato: "Why do we have this? Because everyone has this. Why do we do this? Because everyone does this." [55:18]

5. The Future of Content Creation and Media (43:44 – 72:55)

Hope Amidst Challenges: Despite the challenges posed by platform algorithms and the decline in content quality, the hosts find hope in dedicated content creators and niche platforms that prioritize depth and authenticity. They mention individuals like Mina Le and Ryan Finn, who create well-researched and meaningful content, as examples of positive trends [64:07].

Key Points:

• Authentic Storytelling: Emphasis on content creators who stay true to their vision without succumbing to algorithmic pressures [72:25].
• Legacy Platforms: Niche websites like Ravelry for knitters and Baseball Prospectus for sports enthusiasts continue to thrive by catering to specific interests [66:10].
• Media Evolution: The evolution from traditional media to algorithm-driven platforms has led to a fragmented media landscape where quality is often sacrificed for clicks [73:09].

Notable Quotes:

• Ed Zitron: "I think people are obsessed with buying Labubus instead of, like, groceries or whatever is a recession indicator." [11:09]
• Miya Sato: "People need to know and appreciate... the work goes into it." [70:55]

6. Closing Thoughts and Conclusion (72:55 – End)

Sustaining Quality Journalism: In their concluding remarks, the guests stress the importance of maintaining quality journalism amidst the evolving digital landscape. They advocate for media companies to support authentic content creation and highlight the human element behind journalistic endeavors.

Key Points:

• Human Element: Highlighting the effort and integrity involved in producing quality journalism [72:35].
• Platform Accountability: Calls for platforms to acknowledge their role in shaping content and to support creators who strive for authenticity [75:45].
• Personal Recommendations: Guests share their favorite platforms and content creators that embody the values of depth and authenticity, offering listeners avenues to explore quality content [73:09].

Notable Quotes:

• Ed Zitron: "We're just people making shit that we like and we think is worth your time." [75:52]
• Miya Sato: "There are many alternative communities that have found good things online and then others." [61:15]

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Key Takeaways:

• Consumerism and Desire: The Labubu trend exemplifies modern consumerism driven by scarcity and algorithmic promotion.
• Platform Influence: TikTok and similar platforms significantly shape content creation, often at the expense of quality and authenticity.
• Media Evolution: Traditional media faces challenges as digital platforms prioritize engagement over depth, but niche communities and dedicated creators offer hope.
• Quality Journalism: Emphasizing the importance of maintaining quality and integrity in journalism amidst algorithm-driven content landscapes.

Final Thoughts: Better Offline effectively highlights the intricate dynamics between consumer trends, platform algorithms, and the evolving nature of media and journalism. Through insightful discussions with industry experts Mia Sato and Dave Lee, the episode underscores the pressing need for authentic content creation and the preservation of quality journalism in an increasingly algorithm-driven world.

Transcript

[Ed Zitron]

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[Miya Sato]

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[Dave Lee]

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[Miya Sato]

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[Ed Zitron]

Media.

[Miya Sato]

Locally hated, globally loathed, chosen by God, and perfected by science. I'm Ed Zitron and this is Better Offline, Better offline. Today I'm joined by an incredible duo. We've got Miya Sato of the Verge and Dave Lee of Bloomberg. Thank you both for joining me in the studio.

[Ed Zitron]

Happy to be here.

[Miya Sato]

So before we go any further, of course please subscribe to the Newslet, the premium one as well. Please help me and for a limited time you can buy a Better Offline challenge coin and a bunch of other staff links in the episode notes. But you two, I'm so excited to have you here because you were two of my favorite opinion columnists as well. But also feature like you, I've known your work for many years, so I'm very, very excited to have you here. Mia I wanted to start with a simple question though. What is a Labubu? You've shown me this creature, this horrifying like little evil thing and everyone wants one and I don't. Every time I try and look it up, it makes me upset.

[Ed Zitron]

This could be the first time a Labubu has stepped foot in the iHeartRadio offices.

[Miya Sato]

I think we record in the same room as last.

[Ed Zitron]

Something shifted. Oh, okay. So a Labubu probably has been in the called Friso's area.

[Miya Sato]

Yeah, I would assume.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. Labubus are little plush dolls. They have kind of like a hard plastic human like mean face, but then are wearing like a bunny suit. They come in all different colors. And I think the most important thing to know about Labubus is it is just gambling. It's just gambling for kids and kind of adults.

[Miya Sato]

Now elaborate.

[Ed Zitron]

So they come in blind boxes which is like they are all in like a little plast or a paper carton and you have like a 1 in 6 chance of getting a certain you. And then there's one rare one that's like a 1 in 72 chance and it says it right on the box. Like it is just straightforward betting.

[Miya Sato]

Who makes these?

[Ed Zitron]

They are sold by this company called Popmart and they're based on like a cartoon, I think like a broader umbrella called the Monsters. So Labubu is one character in the.

[Miya Sato]

Monsters and the others did not take off.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm guessing not the same way, but I think there are some fans for the other characters.

[Unknown Speaker]

Is the Labubu on your bag?

[Ed Zitron]

The Labubu is a Is that a.

[Unknown Speaker]

Rare one or is that just.

[Ed Zitron]

No, it's real. It's real.

[Unknown Speaker]

Is it one of the 72?

[Ed Zitron]

No, no, no. Obvious.

[Miya Sato]

No, you can't. Is there a secondary Labubu market?

[Ed Zitron]

Well, this is where it gets interesting. And this is why I think Labubus are funnier and kind of stupider than they appear on the surface. Because from my observations and from talking to friends who are, like, good at flipping things, there is no, really no resale value for opened Labubus. So if I wanted to sell this pink Labubu, it would go for maybe like 40 bucks, 50 bucks. And they retail for like $27.99, not including shipping and tax and all that.

[Miya Sato]

So not a huge margin.

[Ed Zitron]

No, no.

[Miya Sato]

Assuming you can even sell.

[Ed Zitron]

Exactly. The. The ones that do go for some money are the rare ones, which is like, you know, their special colors and unopened boxes. Because again, it's about gambling. It is about the chance that you might have a rare one.

[Miya Sato]

Do they sell out? Is that why they're all sold out.

[Ed Zitron]

On popmart's app, which we can talk about, Like, I think it is, like, the funniest thing ever to do to parents of young children and to teens to like.

[Unknown Speaker]

But I mean, I feel like this was my life with Pokemon cards.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes, it's exactly the same.

[Unknown Speaker]

At least there was a sort of game with Pokemon which you had. There's like trumps, right?

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, yeah, right. And there is some, like, off, like, downstream Labubu culture where people will dress up.

[Miya Sato]

Sorry.

[Unknown Speaker]

That's great. Jesus Christ.

[Ed Zitron]

In this essay, I will.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, we live in hell.

[Ed Zitron]

But people will, like, dress up their Boo Boos. They'll, like, get accessories. There's a crazy kind of like, off brand black market for, like, Labubu related things like faux Boo Boos. Lefoufous Lefufus are the fake Labubus.

[Miya Sato]

Okay, that's pretty cool.

[Ed Zitron]

I also own a lefufu that I bought outside the Statue of Liberty as God intended. But yeah, the Labubus are interesting because it's not about the doll. It's about how you acquire it. And it's about the. The odds. The odds that you're taking really quite like that.

[Unknown Speaker]

There's nothing more to it.

[Miya Sato]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

I feel like two years ago this would have got. This would have had like an NFT element to it. Right?

[Ed Zitron]

I mean, don't say that. Don't speak that into existence.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, I think it's quite wholesome that. It's just. It's just the thing. It's Nothing else.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, it's just like collector culture.

[Miya Sato]

It's also, like, very nihilistic.

[Ed Zitron]

It's pretty nihilistic. There's no IP related to it that people are familiar with. There's no film like Labubu movie that people are obsessed with. Like, you know, Paw Patrol. Like, kids see Paw Patrol and they want stuff.

[Miya Sato]

And like 10 years ago this would have already. Remember with Angry Birds?

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Miya Sato]

Rovio was like, we're gonna do a T. TV show. We're gonna do a movie.

[Ed Zitron]

Or like Grumpy Cat. I just wrote about Grumpy Cat. There's a Grumpy. There's a whole ass movie.

[Unknown Speaker]

This will come.

[Miya Sato]

Yeah, that's kind of what I'm waiting for. Also, it does seem there is a Labubu fan Connect collection on magic Eden. It's 0.04 soul. If you buy one of these, they should put you on a list. It's fascinating as well because I've done everything I can to avoid this. And I've mostly seen like Cities by Diana Classic Instagram account. I've seen Labubu pop up on there and being like, no one will save you. It's like that kind of brain rot style thing where it's like a cutesy voice being like, no one will save you. The world will collapse. And it's just Labubus. Yes, but it is. I thought there'd be more. I thought there would be more to it, but it just. See, it's just gambling. It's just gambling. We found a way to give children gambling.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. And this isn't the first one either. Like, they're blind. Boxes are definitely a thing. Like Sunny Angels were the last blind box thing. That was kind of a craze. They're little cherub, like dolls, probably like 2 or 3 inches tall. And they're all naked. And I think that's why adults felt weird about owning them. But Labubus are not naked, so people feel comfortable putting them on their, like, expensive handbags.

[Miya Sato]

So as far, what is it that has enabled this though? Is it like very tick Is like. This is a very TikTok driven movement?

[Ed Zitron]

It's definitely on TikTok. I think also a big reason they're so kind of like zeitgeisty or buzzy is because they're impossible to buy. They're sold out all the time. I went through the steps of trying to buy a Labubu on the popmart app and it was hell.

[Miya Sato]

Why don't you walk me through that? I'd love to actually, like, how do you actually allegedly buy these?

[Ed Zitron]

Okay, well, I didn't realize that you have to play, like, a mini game, basically, to Labubu. This is what people don't understand is, like, I have been through the trenches to buy this stupid doll. You have to. So on the popmart app, they're always sold out and they have, like, drops at certain times. And the company, I think, wanted to sort of recreate the experience of going to a store and seeing an empty shelf where you're, like, looking for the doll or looking for the product, right? So when they drop, there are, like, digital shelves or bass or, like, boxes where individual, like, six boxes of Labubus will be placed, like digital ones. And you can watch them sell out. And you just scroll through the boxes to find a Labubu for sale. And most of the time they're all like. So that it's in someone else's cart. And then they'll get released. Like, someone will abandon it or whatever. And then you have to, like, spam, click the box. It's crazy. And then you can shake it and it will give you hints about, like, what? It's not what doll. It's not. I'm sorry, I feel like I'm speaking in tongues.

[Miya Sato]

No, no, no, I'm following you. It's just horrifying.

[Ed Zitron]

It's really hard. And the other thing, I mean, popmart is they're sick. They're so sick and brilliant because they also get thousands of people watching their TikTok lives for hours waiting for them to drop Labubus in TikTok shop. And that is engagement. That's. It's just like, straightforward engagement. You know what I mean? It's pretty insane.

[Unknown Speaker]

So when does this jump into being. I mean, you said there's no other IP around it, but I think of, like, Minecraft that kind of started, I mean, a very sort of different product, but eventually they went. Microsoft bought it, and then they made a movie and all that stuff. And there was. The commercialization was massive after this. Very organic. Organic. Is there a point, do you think, where that just suddenly people go, all the kids are crazy about these things. We can't just let this go by.

[Ed Zitron]

Maybe. Like, maybe. But also it feels so straightforwardly consumeristic that, like, I could see it just dying down in, like, two months.

[Miya Sato]

Recession indicator is when they stop selling these out.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, well, honestly, I feel like people being obsessed with buying Labubus instead of, like, groceries or whatever is a recession indicator. Like, these are cheap. You know what I mean?

[Miya Sato]

Like, I also feel like China just leads the world in this kind of.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Miya Sato]

Like 90s style evil consumerism. Like this is some you would see in a mid-90s film about evil tech CEOs. Like we've created a devil doll. Like China has that bad.

[Unknown Speaker]

I mean, I still, I mean, I, I feel like when I used to buy football stickers as a kid.

[Miya Sato]

Yeah, but this is so they were blind.

[Unknown Speaker]

I didn't know whether there was a good players in there or bad players in there. I fully agree. Different scale and different level of obsession from what you're describing there. But isn't there just this part of a young person's brain that says, I want to collect these. My friends are going to collect these?

[Miya Sato]

Absolutely.

[Unknown Speaker]

It's. I mean, I don't see it's that dramatically different.

[Miya Sato]

Oh, it's not like you're totally right in that. It's kind of clicking into that. You had a bit of that with the NFTs and you've had right at the beginning especially, and with top shots as well, which was the NFTs for basketball games that they then expanded and then failed. It was exactly the same thing. It was the kind of Top Trumps. Well, not Top Trumps, football stickers. The difference is that they've built like an economic layer to it to like torture the people trying to buy them.

[Unknown Speaker]

The disappearing boxes.

[Miya Sato]

That is. And manipulative.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, it's really interesting. It also feels very much like what a lot of shopping is these days is like a, you know, a stand in for a hobby. Collecting like, I feel like Labubus and Stanley Cups are like the same thing. Do y' all know what Stanley Cup. I'm sorry, Sorry.

[Unknown Speaker]

For a moment.

[Miya Sato]

I don't understand the cocky.

[Ed Zitron]

No, no, no, no, no. But that means your, your brain is good. You pass the test. Like your brain is not fried. That is like the women who collect like dozens of Stanley cup colors and there's no reason to have them, but like that is. Is their form of, you know, it's a hobby.

[Miya Sato]

Yeah. And I just want to read something from the Wikipedia page for Labubu. The Federation Council of Russia proposed banning the sale of Labubus. The reason was their frightening appearance and potential hunter. Children's mental health in Russia. Ekaterina Alta Baeva, Deputy Chair of the Committee of Science Education and Culture state that the figures cause children to feel fear. I just want to say that that, like, that was just a very funny sentence.

[Unknown Speaker]

Russia's found its red line, I think.

[Miya Sato]

Yeah, yeah. Russia's Massive ethics. Cause there's. It's just. I think you've really mentioned something though with like collectibles that reminds me of NFTS as well where it's I collect comic artwork and I original comic book. I fucking delight in it. I have filled my walls, I won't be getting any more. But like it has meaning. And those I know, like sports memorabilia, they collect stuff because oh it's a meaningful game, whatever or the player with this it's like, like NFTs. It's that with all of the culture removed, it's just strip mined to the core of you want what everyone else wants. You want it now, how will you get it? Only us. And the fact that there's not another thing that popmart has done. Like this is so strange though.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Miya Sato]

Like they're not. It's almost like they're being a little bit cautious with it. They don't want to overfill and push their luck a bit. Which is fascinating. And also the reason I mentioned this China is American E commerce companies do not have that killer instinct. I feel like out in China they'll fucking roll our asses with making this kind of stuff. They made an evil looking doll with no IP that they're just like we own this. Buy it now.

[Ed Zitron]

People are obsessed.

[Miya Sato]

Take off. Was it there like one. Is it just something that appeared?

[Ed Zitron]

Okay. The weirdest thing is that from what I understand, one of the Blackpink girls were seen. She was seen with a Labubu.

[Miya Sato]

And that's a Korean pop group.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes, K pop. K pop group. One of the. Probably the. One of the biggest acts in the world.

[Miya Sato]

Insane videos.

[Ed Zitron]

I can't remember if it was Jennie or Lisa, but I think maybe Lisa from Blackpink had a labubu and it like it had been kind of percolating already but that really like blew it up in a crazy way. But yeah, my prediction is like this will be not a thing anymore when it's. They're easy to acquire. Because again my, my theory is that it's really just about the process of acquisition and the processing, purchasing rather than like the actual thing. And I think also a lot of other especially like American toy makers are desperate, right? Like what is their Labubu? What is. I don't know.

[Miya Sato]

And the thing is it's, it's they're trying. They're going to solve it by going well, we'll just make a better one. It's like no, the actual thing you need to do is engage your killer instinct and call Fangio or one of those companies, they. Fang has more in common, I think, than any like Mattel as far as creating a product like Labubu. It's just this thing of scaring people saying, oh, if you don't get in on now this now, you'll miss it. Just the thing with NFTs, things with crypto and now they've brought it for children, which is great, I think, I think it's good. It's also, I think, the natural end point of this fandom culture we've been in the last 10, 15 years maybe, where it's just like. It's just.

[Unknown Speaker]

I think, I think you underestimate the degree to which these things just cycle around again and again.

[Miya Sato]

I don't disagree on that. It is a cyclical thing. But I think it's also just like, why do we have this? Because everyone has this. Why do we do this? Because everyone does this. Accelerated by things like TikTok and TikTok Live in particular.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

The urgency is interesting.

[Miya Sato]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

And I think the, if there's one, even if the, the toys go away, that mechanism seems like an enduring thing. But it'd be interesting to see if an American brand does try that fully here because it's kind of similar to. Do you ever remember, used to use like booking.com and would say three people booked this room in the last 20 minutes. You better get it, otherwise you're not gonna do it. And we, we sort of, we that was, you know, got a lot of scrutiny as being an unfair way for. To force people to buy things in a hurry. And I suspect we'd see the same.

[Miya Sato]

Oh yeah, it's. It's like the natural growth of E commerce and all the ways you can kind of push a customer. You see it with like every single Instagram drop ship thing. If you click them, it's like 62 people are buying this right now.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Miya Sato]

You need to buy code looking at it, right? Yeah. And if you don't, they're going to sell out. This is the pans that sold out. There are so many pans that sell out on Instagram but leading into another thing. Actually both of you have kind of covered as well. It feels like this is almost humanity trying to move with the algorithm to fit what people would be going after a growth of, as you put Dave, that the fact that, yeah, we are trend seekers, we all want to kind of fit in, but it leads to this thing of. This got popular because it got, it got popular and it hit the algorithmic side. You Were mentioning before we came in here, Mia, that there is an almost an SEO level to posting on TikTok now.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, I think it goes back to. Do you remember, like two years ago, everyone was freaking out that people were using TikTok like a search engine? Which now feels like so quaint. I think like a Google exec mentioned it at some event.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right, well, they mentioned it. This is one of my favorite parts. So during their antitrust here.

[Ed Zitron]

Right, right.

[Unknown Speaker]

Where they, we say lost. Eventually they argued that Google isn't Monopoly because kids are turned to TikTok to search. And it was just, it was. And Google had this slide they were briefing journalists with and others that had all the sort of supposed competitors.

[Miya Sato]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

And it was just things that they weren't competitors. And TikTok was one of them. And there was this idea and because here's the thing, someone might go on TikTok and say, oh, good restaurant New York and get like a couple of, you know, videos or whatever. But the idea that there was like a utility that's replacing like, for like was very, very hopeful to me. But it was at a point sort of picked up by all these kind of trends and now being, oh, Google's in trouble because people are searching on TikTok. Well, not really. That'd be like saying, I'm searching on television. It's not the same thing at all.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, absolutely not. And it's obviously like it was deployed very strategically by Google bringing out very specific statistics or whatever. But I think the point stands that the same thing I've written about sort of the degradation of Google search as a window into the web. And part of that is because people spam the web with horrible things, like things that kind of suck and are not useful because they're trying to appease an algorithm. And I think that same thing is happening on TikTok. It happens on Instagram. And a lot of it is user like comes from the user. We have to be honest that people make shitty content.

[Miya Sato]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

You know what I mean? It's not just the tech companies who make the systems bad, but there also is sort of the guiding hand of TikTok where it will give creators ideas for types of content to make. These are what people are. These are the terms that people are searching for. What if you made a video about trending restaurants in your neighborhood or La Boo Boo. Right. And part of it is like, people want to want ideas for what to make. TikTok is a very punishing algorithm, at least in My experience, like if you stop posting, it's really hard to regain views.

[Miya Sato]

I wasn't sure. Yeah, I've actually always been. So there's a momentum almost.

[Ed Zitron]

There's a momentum for sure. For sure. And this is something creators have talked a lot about. But you need ideas for what to post. And if TikTok is saying a bunch of people are searching for this one specific restaurant in New York, why wouldn't you make a video about it? Right. It's like sort of, it's, it's a, almost like a, it's backing into SEO. Yeah. Where you kind of, instead of searching for, you know, terms related to what you make, you take the terms that the platform is giving you or telling you, suggesting you make content based off of.

[Miya Sato]

Yeah, it's, it's the kind of incentive driven web at this point. Because I think that with the thing with SEO especially is there were, there were people always made shit content, but there were also people who genuinely like, here are 10 things I really like in, in New York. I mean, one of my, one of the saddest like deaths of a brand that's still around is like Zagat, that used to be. Or Timeout especially.

[Unknown Speaker]

I mean, there's so many Sports Illustrated, you know, they're just these places that were making good content. The business model didn't work. And one of my grievances with Google at the moment strongly is that what they're selling now is the solution to the web they created. They're saying, we've got all these disgusting websites out there. You go on a local news website, my God, it's, it's.

[Miya Sato]

Your phone is like 150 degrees exactly.

[Unknown Speaker]

And there's, you know, pop ups everywhere. And you get, and Google's saying, oh, the web's bad. We're gonna, we're gonna summarize that as an AI overview. Isn't that great? And so. Well, the web's bad because the design had to be, you know, the way we made content had to change in order to appease the platform.

[Miya Sato]

And that's the thing. You did a great piece actually about reaping the rewards of its unfair advantage. And also kind of like selling Hugh swill and being like, yeah, we'll, we'll find the dog, we'll find the, the diamond in the turds that we created. And I think quite the turn of phrase. Yes, that's why they, why they give me a microphone. But it's, it's so sad as well because there is an innocence to it. There's like, yeah, if you know people are looking for New York stuff and you know New York, of course you'd say that. Timeout, reasonable Zagat as, as it used to be that you pick up time out, be like, oh, what, these people think they're cool. Like, it was a big degree of that. And I think TikTok has leaned into that as well with content creators like that. Because I have seen TikToks of stuff in New York. I moved to America in 2008. I've spent many, many hours in New York. That shit I'm surprised by. It's cool. And then you get the people who are doing it chop shop style. And it's unfortunate but kind of inevitable that you'd see this on social networks. What's confusing to me is why TikTok feels like the first one to really give it the actual try. Because Instagram sort of half assed it. Twitter's never really like people try and appear for algorithms, but it didn't feel like the companies were as serious about it as say maybe a Google or indeed TikTok.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, I think, I mean Instagram, at least the search has always sucked.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes.

[Ed Zitron]

And it doesn't, I don't know that it makes sense to optimize that. Same way that said, Instagram also does have like creator tools where it will be like, this is how you should edit a video or this is how you should make content. Right. YouTube does this. So it's, it's not that. I just think that search on TikTok is something so different. I did something recently where I was, I searched for something on TikTok and there was like a little pop up that the app gave me that was like, if you're not finding an answer that's satisfactory, why don't you ask people to make content based off of it or something? It was crazy. You know, it was so many levels of optimization that I was like, this is really an experience that doesn't exist on other platforms.

[Unknown Speaker]

One thing, it's such a by design thing with TikTok search. Because one thing is really, I find really aggravating as someone who, you know, isn't as clued up on the online culture as evidently you guys both are.

[Ed Zitron]

Like, well, nobody has Labubu.

[Unknown Speaker]

I'll often see on TikTok some reference to something and I'll go, what are they talking about? Like, what is, what is that about? And TikTok doesn't allow you just to link to another video. Right. And so what it forces you to do is there'll be the search suggestion. There'll be people doing searches, there'll be people that know that people are looking for searches so they will reference something else that will send you somewhere else entirely. And it's just the net effect of that is instead of going to the video that explained the thing that I'm confused about, I end up watching maybe five others with ads in between every second or third one and I still don't really know. I mean, although some of the things I think if I did see the explanation, I still wouldn't understand it. But just trying to get there in the first place is really, really tricky.

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[Miya Sato]

It's when you get to the point of like why are they creating search tools on their platforms? Is it so that you can find the thing you need? Or so that they can find like they can kind of get you halfway? I don't think it's, it's. I'm just be clear. I'm not front loading this and suggesting they're evil in everything, everything, everything they do but the tweaks they make kind of are one of the funny things. Mia, you put, you actually put in the article about dupes though. Excellent. I'll link all of these in the notes. Don't worry, you don't have to email me. Was you if you look for Apple dupes on Instagram you get this thing saying protect your favorite brands. The sale or promotion of counterfeit goods is not allowed on Instagram. So funny. But if you just type in dupes it goes summarizing. If you're looking for alternative alternatives to high end products, dupes are the way to go. A dupe is a product that replicates the quality and or appearance of price. Your alternative so funny. And then you get a bunch of videos that are selling dupes. Sometimes it feels like they don't really care that much. They just, they just kind of like mailing it in.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, tick tock it for dupes I find. I wrote a column months ago now but it was I saw one video and it was this guy and he hadn't even got out of bed, right? And he said oh, Apple's selling these AirPod Maxs for 300 bucks, but these ones are only 20. And he was holding his hand, you can't obviously see on the pocket. He was holding his hand in the air and he didn't have a product in his hand, he just had a screenshot of the Apple, the official Apple AirPod Maxes, and it was just sort of floating around with his hand. And then what he was selling on TikTok shop was, you know, a 20 buck knockoff. That was terrible. And I wrote about basically how the TikTok shop is. I think it's kind of insulting to TikTok users. They've really shoved it in. They put it right in the middle so you can't see it and it looks terrible, terrible. The products are just awful. Some of the marketing people do is so trashy. It's like got all this like sexual innuendo in it and all this kind of stuff. And TikTok, we're just like, well, no, we're happy with it basically. And they actually tried to force a big correction on a column that had nothing wrong with it other than the fact it was calling out. This is a terrible place to shut up.

[Miya Sato]

I think that TikTok should lean more into the excellent Chinese business owners though. I don't know if you've seen any of these insane ones where it'll be like, like we're selling giant houses. You can. No permit needed. There was one where it's like four. Four people said. It's like one says I'm racist, one says I'm ableist. And one goes, I'm Stefan. If you need to buy high quality cables with your logo on it. And I love those because they're funny. They're funny, but they're also just like, yeah, we're trying to do the algorithm, but fuck, you buy cable. And at the end they're just like, we have a bunch of cables with you. That's respectable, that's commerce. We should support that. Not this, this weird qvc. It almost feels like we're trending towards what every music video in the 90s was making. Like this very kind of like greasy consumerism. Though I will add this isn't me suggesting anyone specifically has decided to be evil. This is just what happens when incentives pull people. I think when you get like the slop shop in TikTok, I think the.

[Unknown Speaker]

Incentives of all the major networks have been so interesting and sort of shaping. I mean, you were talking earlier about Twitter. They never really pushed people in much of a direction in terms of what to sort of be talking about. But one thing they did reward constantly, the algorithm was anger. And Facebook got into that problem when they, for the longest time they thought any engagement is good engagement until they realized it was your auntie and uncles having a go at each other over politics or whatever. That's when they realized that was bad. And I'm still not convinced they do realize how bad that is. Twitter was all about anger. I did for a short while and this was years ago, I think now, now. But like TikTok did seem to sort of push people towards doing stuff right, which I thought was quite healthy. Like, well, the things that did well were, you know, friends getting together and dancing. It was being out and about, it was being funny, it was better. But the stuff that worked was actually quite entertaining.

[Miya Sato]

Kind of like vine almost.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, just like vine. In terms of just the sort of the humor that traveled. I think the, what's happened though is they've turned the screw on the monetization and the amount of sponsored stuff and, and, and honestly like the. And I never quite know what drives it. Right, because is it that some people come up with a format for a format for a video that works and then TikTok goes, oh, that's good, we'll get others to do it. Or do you think sort of tick tock is trying to nurture it itself first? I mean, I guess it's a bit of both, I imagine.

[Miya Sato]

Yeah, it's chicken and egg is because I, I had this theory about a year ago, or maybe actually 2023, where it's like at some point how much of content is just going to be geared towards what they think the algorithm wants. And because the algorithm, with good reason, they don't want to just publish would work because then people would only do that. And I think that there's just this weird battle between I think any content creator, I think all of us, like there's a certain degree of what's going to do well. And personally, as everyone knows from this show, I've just done what I want since the beginning, regardless of what people said. But there is a pool of like what will do well, what do people want and what is a person in this case? And so you've just got this people probably, I reckon for the most part people are making honest content.

[Ed Zitron]

I think it's like.

[Miya Sato]

But it's impossible to quantify it.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, it's impossible to quantify. And also I don't think it's that like it makes a lot of sense when you think of the Internet or these platforms as A workplace which for a lot of these people, it is. For me, it is. In some ways, the Verge employs me and pays my bills, but part of my work, part of my how my work travels is based on my ability to ride algorithmic waves when needed. Right. And it's the same way that, like, you still see journalists on threads. I don't really post on threads very much, but you see journalists on threads post screenshots of their articles, and then in the replies, they'll post the link because they think that they're going to get downvoted. Right. Or down downranked for putting a link in there.

[Miya Sato]

She's insane.

[Ed Zitron]

And that's the same way that, like, you know, Twitter.

[Miya Sato]

Twitter's like that as well now.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, Elon Musk has just come out straightforwardly and said, like, you know, that's. I can't remember the term he used, but yeah, he's acknowledged that. But, you know, the same practices sort of carry over to video platforms where you need to start a video in a certain way if you want it to get traction.

[Miya Sato]

There are different ways.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, there are different ways to do it. Some, some stuff that goes really, does really well is like, you know, selfie style, camp selfie style video. And it starts. Okay, story time. I'm sure you've seen it.

[Unknown Speaker]

What's the Gen Z Shake that, you know, like.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, where you put it like millennials.

[Unknown Speaker]

Get it ready, right. And have it.

[Ed Zitron]

And there's a pause.

[Unknown Speaker]

Hello, everyone. Right.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes.

[Unknown Speaker]

The Gen Z Shake is. The.

[Ed Zitron]

Is like.

[Unknown Speaker]

So you guys.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, that's a perfect example of, like, people. The. The shake is this thing where, where people were, I guess, surmising that if you put your camera down, like, you start recording and you put your camera down in a way that feels like you were just caught spontaneous in the moment. Yeah. And you were just recording. Jumping in to record a video like, that is effective for people or it makes it feel organic or it makes it feel relatable, like, whatever. But yeah, everyone does some level of optimizing.

[Unknown Speaker]

I think the dark side of this is that trying to predict what works is turning people completely loopy, isn't it? Right. Like, so I saw, and I won't say who it is. I might have my assessment on how this person feels might be wrong, but I saw a singer who made a short video, maybe 30 seconds, where she had like one verse of a song and she's like, oh, guys, you like this? And it was wonderful. And it got like, you know, over a million Views and everyone's going, oh, record this, record this, record this. And so she did, right? She sort of took time off the platform, made like an EP and put the songs out there. Came back on TikTok to make the content about the song being ready and it got next to nothing. Engagement. And you can just see. At least my impression was you could see her kind of going, why? Like, why like I've done the song, I've done the actual work of releasing a song. And the algorithm, for some reason, maybe it seems less organic or maybe people just didn't like the song. Maybe I'm ugly now. Maybe all these. And people go, what is it that's preventing it? And I think that's where it's kind of troubling.

[Miya Sato]

I agree. And I think that it's really hard sometimes to see the difference between the algorithm and the reader or the viewer.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right?

[Miya Sato]

Because it's like, what did you like? Did people actually like it? As well as the question there, there was also a YouTube video that went up a couple months ago where someone was investigating why lots of videos have a person holding the tiny microphone, the lavalier microphone. And it really.

[Unknown Speaker]

I do that? No, but the Bloomberg Tick Tock account, I do the whole micro thing and people take the mick out of me.

[Miya Sato]

It's weird though.

[Unknown Speaker]

Rightly so.

[Miya Sato]

Apparently algorithm likes it. I don't think so. Then over a morning brew as well does he holds like a full scale like old newsman microphone. I think people need to go back to that.

[Unknown Speaker]

I love that subway tanks guy has it on like a little. Yeah, yeah.

[Miya Sato]

I think that that's lovely as well. But it's like I hadn't really thought about how it drives people insane, but it does even early days of the newsletter, I text Matt Weinberger, friend of the show, I'd be like, is this shit do people. He's like, just keep writing. Just ignore. Just keep writing. It will grow naturally. But we've been conditioned for this thing where we're constantly chasing even me. And I try and pretend I don't get affected by stuff like this, but it's like you see something do well or don't do well. Your natural inclination is why? What can I do to. Am I wrong? Am I somehow. And it's interesting how so much this comes back to the platform incentives, right.

[Unknown Speaker]

And the human inside you assumes people don't like it. Right? Yes. That's your initial reaction to it, I'd say I always find your boss, Nilay. Nilay. He's always talking about how The Verge is just has to be true to what it's doing and not sort of bow to any of the platforms as they go. And I think that's always been a very good lesson because I think too many media outlets, we, we sit here and we go, oh, okay, this is the thing that's working on Tick Tock. We're gonna sit down, we're gonna act in a certain way, we're gonna do it in a certain tone. And I've had previous employers where they're like, oh, just trying to do it off the cuff. And I'm like, well, when you work for. And I stress a previous employer, I would argue with my editors and saying authentic for us was to not do that. And it's a very sort of hello fellow kids thing that happens when these serious places tried to be all like, hey, you know, like in the same way that when a politician like Chuck Schumer tries to do some TikTok joke, it's like it's not real. It doesn't. And it's embarrassing and it's patronizing to the people. Yeah.

[Miya Sato]

Also off. Yeah. Can you just do something off the cuff? Oh, you would like me to fake spontaneity? Absolutely. I'll get. But it's. It gets back to credit to Nilay here. The term Google zero, I think is really interesting because this idea that. And as you wrote about recently, Dave, that Google is basically possibly taking away the traffic from everyone or dictating who gets traffic now in a very direct way, though not one they control because it's a large language model or at least controlling its indirect. And I think it's almost like a final boxer in Animal Farm being marched to the glue factory the final way. You've outlived your usefulness. And I feel like the media are. And I, by the way, I say this with a great deal of sympathy. Yeah. You're going to chase. Which would get you clicks for your click driven business. But I think you've seen your where at the end or the beginning of a dark, kind of like semi dark era where we're seeing the cost of orienting journalism around trends and clicks so aggressively. And we're kind of now with laboors and everything. We're seeing the natural result of orienting things around trend chasing because it's like here's a thing that has no real resale value, that owning it is just symbolic. Do you care about the show? No. Why are you making these news stories? Well, it's because people are gonna be looking for Them. Why are you covering the same thing as everyone else? Because everyone's looking and there's a fair argument for that. If there is a big funding round or a big news story, of course everyone's gonna cover it.

[Unknown Speaker]

It just needs the traffic and it's.

[Miya Sato]

Like the functionality of journalism. And I think this Google AI thing is. It's scary, man. I think like Nilay got there early. I'll give him this one.

[Ed Zitron]

The other one thing I'll say about the Google Zero, this idea that, you know, the traffic will go down until it hit.

[Miya Sato]

I don't think it hit nothing, I should say.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. I think for some people it has basically hit nothing. However, I will say that like, and I posted this on Blue sky, but this has just been the MO for Google and with search for years before. AI overviews the idea that Google is self dealing, right? That it creates products that then replace the things that other people were doing in search. That is old news. And it's, it's funny that, you know, people are kind of. That the AI overview of it all is what kind of, kind of finally makes people realize it. When I worked at the markup, we ran this story by some great former colleagues that like measured the percentage of the first page of Google results on a phone screen. How much of that space was taken up by Google products itself. And it was like 41%. And that killed websites, like celebrity net worth, you know what I mean? Or like travel companies because Google had flights shopping, right? Like all of these, these services that other sites were providing. Google just made its own version and they were like, we're going to put this at the top. That's what, that's what's happening with AI.

[Unknown Speaker]

The exact same thing in those cases in Europe. They regulated against it, right? So when these companies come along and say, oh, Europe's being so overbearing, that's what they're talking about, right? They're talking about the fact that Google Shopping can't dominate the top 20% of a search page when you search for, you know, iPad or whatever, you know, so that's what they were so aggrieved by. But now with all the AI, I mean, I was on my mobile, on my smartphone the other day and I was scrolling for days before I got to organic content.

[Ed Zitron]

And now they're doing the entirely AI generated whole page.

[Miya Sato]

Did you see this AI mode.

[Unknown Speaker]

AI mode.

[Miya Sato]

Oh, is this beyond AI mode?

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, I forget what it's called. I would have to look it up. But they announced it last Friday, Thursday Or Friday. And basically it's separate from AI mode. You search for something and it creates. Creates honestly, exactly what web pages look like websites.

[Miya Sato]

Oh my God.

[Ed Zitron]

And it is, you know, it'll have a section if you search. I think the example they gave was like solo traveling in Japan. And the top part will be like Reddit and Reddit and YouTube posts. So like communities or forums. Then there will be a whole different section of the serp, the search engine result page. That is. Yes, that is a web guide. Web guide, Web guide. And then it'll be sort of like, you know, top places to go. And it will pull stuff in from, from Expedia or not Expedia, TripAdvisor, things like that. It basically subsections the SERP to look like an SEO generated or like an SEO driven article. It's really crazy.

[Miya Sato]

It's the snake that is actually.

[Unknown Speaker]

Who needs websites anymore? No, but it's all over, isn't it?

[Miya Sato]

But that's the thing. It's ironic as well, because the origins of Google were based on this idea that there was too much original content for you to find alone. And it was kind of noble. And also within the original paper, they were like, yeah, if ads ever get involved with this, it's fucked, man. Were they right? But it's this sense of they've never had much gratitude towards the web. And you made me actually think of something with traffic dropping away. This is also if you read like Search Engine Journal, like these are great publications by the way. You want to see some real like journalist ass journalists. People that read SEO and talk to SEO people all day. Jesus Christ, Rusty over there. But there are so many situations where traffic has just disappeared from a concept and then just Google went, no, not today. The idea that they're building pages like this is fascinating as well because it's like, like, wow, we don't need you anymore. Yes, you fucking do. Dick. What? How is it going to generate the page? What's it going to be based on? And their, their thought, I imagine I'm. I'm guessing is likely. Oh, people won't notice. I think people will. I think they will. I think people will see AI results, which is why the traffic's dropping and go, okay, that answers my question. But I think an entire fake page, people are going to be like, okay. And maybe they'll click them, but they're not going to stick around on them. They're not going to read much. It's not going to be particularly enjoyable. But maybe I'm wrong and I Hope I'm not wrong. Because if this is an idea of something replacing the web, that is Google. Like that's more Google zero than anything I've ever seen. Grotesque.

[Unknown Speaker]

It's just part of a pattern of reducing any need to go off that. Yeah. To get what you need. And one of the most egregious examples of it isn't even AI. And every time I see it, it annoys me more and more. So one of the things that some publications have been quite successful at Bloomberg's, one of them New York Times famous is games. Right. Wordle Connections, whatever. A little thing that would make people subscribe to the app, open the app every day, maybe catch a bit of news while they're there. Right, right. And now LinkedIn are doing mini games.

[Miya Sato]

And I'm like, why can you explain this LinkedIn game? Because I got the pop up for the Apple news thing and I think I posted it on Instagram. And I don't know what this shit is just like, it's just like, fuck that. But what are these LinkedIn games? Please walk.

[Unknown Speaker]

I mean they're just little word games. I mean they're. There's nothing, they're just trying to sort of capture. Do you know what? I've not played the LinkedIn ones, but the Apple ones are just mini crossword, that kind of stuff. The thing with the LinkedIn one, which I find quite funny is it will tell you how many of your colleagues have that and it's like, oh, 300 of your colleagues at Bloomberg have done the mini crossword. Oh, that's, that's really useful information.

[Ed Zitron]

I imagine the crossword answer for every Single day on LinkedIn is just like hustle rise, grind work.

[Unknown Speaker]

That would be quite fun though. Yeah. That would make me sort of go for it.

[Miya Sato]

That would require. Require too much like charm and thought behind it.

[Ed Zitron]

LinkedIn, if you're listening, I can write your games.

[Miya Sato]

I also, they added vertical video to LinkedIn evil. And I think that if you post one of those, someone should come visit your house.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, like that's Wellness Check.

[Miya Sato]

They're like, no, I'm thinking more like the FBI. It's like, what do you got on the laptop? Let me, let me check that hard drive real quick. But it's, it's so funny as well because all of this is just coming down to. Please click our website. Please don't leave our website. Our website. Website is the most. It almost feels just desperate. Like it feels that TikTok generally, and I don't say this with any. I TikTok upsets me when I use it. I need the, the page to end. There's just a weird thing in my brain. I'm like, no. Infinite makes me. I don't want to look at this forever.

[Unknown Speaker]

Have you ever reached the clip that says, hey, you've been scrolling for a while?

[Miya Sato]

No, see, I, I'm the only one.

[Unknown Speaker]

Who'S ever seen this.

[Ed Zitron]

I've hit it.

[Miya Sato]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, okay. Isn't that the most depressed thing? It's so does work though, doesn't it?

[Ed Zitron]

At that point I'm like, God damn, I need to go outside.

[Unknown Speaker]

You know, we're talking about. There's like a clip if you've been scrolling and it must be like an hour and a half maybe I get really anxious. It will say, please, you know, you've been doing this a long time.

[Miya Sato]

I need to hit the end. If I, if I get the sense that there's no end, I'm like, I can't look at that. Like what? I require time to end, please.

[Ed Zitron]

But that sort of limitless space is why we get derivative content. You know what I mean?

[Miya Sato]

Like that's, that's kind of because people want more.

[Ed Zitron]

People want more. And also it's just if there's space, someone will fill it.

[Miya Sato]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

And that was kind of what I was trying to get at in my dupe story, which is like the same thing that happens on an infinite scroll feed on recommendation based social media platforms is happening to like our physical goods simply because there is Amazon space, there are Amazon pages to fill and you need ideas the same way that a content creator needs ideas to post every single day. Like when it is so algorithmic and recommendations based and taste based, it's just like, just throw whatever.

[Miya Sato]

And I hate to defend the platforms at all. I think there's the thing you said earlier about people did make shit content before actually really did resonate because it's, there's also a degree here of, yeah, there's a bunch of derivative content, but there's also consumer demand. And yeah, as human beings we want to see more of a thing we're interested in. I do think part of the unhealthy parts of the Internet is we can fuel just about anything. Perhaps not for the best, but it's, and there's a goodness to it as well as many alternative communities that have found good things online and then others. But it, it's interesting because it's fulfilling the need of needing an infinite scroll, which is a need that they created on the platforms themselves. And I also found that story interesting because you didn't really have sympathy with anyone. Like it felt like you were empathetic for everyone but not sympathetic to anyone. It was like you recognized why people did these things and why people want dupes of expensive things is probably because the things are too expensive. But then you had the skirt worn by the by Taylor Swift.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, I like scored.

[Miya Sato]

Thank you. Sorry, my bad.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, I really like stories where you read it and your allegiance changes. I think that's like one of my favorite things to write and when I can figure out ways to put it into that format, I really enjoy it. But yeah, I mean I don't really love the debate going into who's right and who's wrong because it's just not that helpful and not that interesting. That feels more like just gossip or something. But I like this idea that like everyone is a little bit being taken advantage of and everyone also sucks a bit. Here.

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[Miya Sato]

And I also think that there is a certain degree of human beings take advantage of other human beings too. The ripoffs, the I'm the person, I'm the labo whisperer. Great quote there. Like I'm the person that can help you find the thing. There are all of these channels about how you can, like gambling tips about how you can buy and resell stuff. There are ethically dubious things that pop up on the Internet, but there's also hunger for career. Those people are taking advantage just as much as the incentives of the platform take advantage of people. I think the platforms are generally more evil because they have more capacity for harm. But that doesn't mean that these small time people would not do evil things. Even given that scale.

[Unknown Speaker]

I feel like the platforms, the difference between how the platforms behaved and how what people describe as what the legacy gatekeepers from, you know, yesteryear is that they don't, they don't have any sort of standards of what's good. Right, Right. So if you're, you know, you know, you're running a children's television company, Nickelodeon, Children's BBC, whatever, you're not commissioning a show like Mr. Beast or whatever because you just something makes you going, ah, is this really what we want here is like, do we want to make it that everyone's obsessed with money and they're willing to sort of do these crazy stunts, embarrass themselves, whatever. And you make those decisions despite knowing that people would lap it up, People would go crazy. And I think you could say the same thing about sexualized content. You can say the same things about gambling. I think, yeah, you could do a great show about people gambling on sports.

[Miya Sato]

Oh, we had one back during the super bowl and many listeners did not like that I talked about sports. But it gets back to the same incentives, like you're saying, though. It's people take advantage of people.

[Unknown Speaker]

But I think there used to be this idea that the major companies, when they even down to, say, 60 Minutes, right, on CBS, they would say, right, is this genuinely important? And do we need to do it? And I think when the platforms don't apply those same standards, what it means is that the people with just completely nonsense theories and opinions just get on that same surface where any TV producer worth their salt at all would go, okay, well, we're not going to put this guy on because what are his qualifications? We don't, you know, we don't know if he's talking gibberish or not. So there's been problems with that in terms of who gets on. But like, I think it's, I think it was better maybe in some respects.

[Ed Zitron]

No.

[Miya Sato]

And I think the. But you're also touching on something which is these platforms have, despite what they're doing right now, have always acted as if they're never going to be the arbiters of what is used as content. It's just like we're helping you find stuff. But it's very clear that they're, they want to be the producer or at least mimic being a producer as well. And it's very interesting as well, because everything we're discussing is just incentives. It's incentives and how people are drawn by it. Because you mentioned nutters. Like people. People like.

[Unknown Speaker]

Did I mention nutters?

[Miya Sato]

No, I mean, just like people of dubious intent. Intent and content. Content people like Curtis Yavin or Eliza Yudkowski or these less wrong freaks they were 10 years ago, they would have never had them. I would say they would have likely not got a New York Times whatever. But I think what that is is actually a mashing between everything we're talking about, which is 10 years ago, there wasn't perhaps the pull of SEO, there wasn't the pull of tons of online content, suggesting that we need to talk to this guy and humor him. Seriously. There was tons of reporting saying these people were or evil. But now I genuinely think some of these things also might get clicks or they'll see the interviews that these people get 500,000 views. So they're drawn by all these new incentives versus having an actual quality bar. I do think it is funny though that these companies to this day are still pretending that they have no responsibility for the content. They, they have no, they have no quality standards they need to maintain and indeed they will tweak them to whatever level. I'm not even saying that anything has changed. Changed.

[Unknown Speaker]

I mean there's been changes in the sense that they, I think, well, I struggle to give Facebook too much credit on this, but, you know, they definitely have made tweaks around just having, you know, a regular family member talk on Facebook and that. That being driven to. But what they've, what they've kind of pivoted to and maybe they've done it not out of any sort of obligation to improve the problem, but because they realize now that content made by people you don't, you don't know, that's sort of made in a certain way. You're going to look at that for longer anyway. So they don't care.

[Ed Zitron]

There's more of it. Yeah, there are more people you don't know than do.

[Unknown Speaker]

And which is a really interesting. I find now the only time I get any utility from the Facebook app is when it says, here's what you're doing 10 years ago and I'll take a screenshot of that, send it to whoever it was and go look, can you believe that was 10 years ago? And that's going to start running out soon. I think I'm going to run out of those sort of, you know, because people don't post it. But that time when it used to be a platform where you'd have like a party and the next day they'd be be, you know, 100 photos of people attacked it. I mean that feels like a completely different.

[Miya Sato]

It was so nice as well. Like when I got.

[Unknown Speaker]

Great.

[Miya Sato]

That's the thing. Like, as angry as I am at these platforms, it's broken hearted, romantic. Because when I got on Facebook, it was genuinely magical. Like you said, you go to a party, somewhat like 10 webcam photos would be up there. You'd see. Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

And you tag me in that one like an idiot.

[Miya Sato]

Or just like you'd see someone that you talk to for a minute and you were friends. I had tons of friends at Penn State. For example, and there was something nice about that. And I guess that that was just before they realized how much money they could make or before they went public.

[Ed Zitron]

And they realized too that humans have an endless appetite for slop. Not even AI slop. It's just like if you give them a scrolly feed, they will just keep going until we hit the danger zone pop up.

[Unknown Speaker]

Does Facebook have a danger zone pop up? I don't think.

[Ed Zitron]

I don't think so.

[Unknown Speaker]

I've never looked at it.

[Miya Sato]

Don't look at this. Yeah, no, it's. And I think it's the shift away from their claimed utility towards their real one that they want, which is they all want to be entertainment networks because this concept of we ran out of stuff. That is it. It's like you go on Facebook, you check Facebook and you go, oh, this, this and this. Okay, I'm done. Because my utility here is social networks on Google. Like I go and look for something people might do. I idols idle looking. But they're like generally with a target. Now you've. TikTok was, I think created within the realm of people want to see stuff. Like it was. It never tried to sell itself as a place where you meet your friends, a place where you interact with others.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. In fact, it was distinctly. This is a place where you are not by people you know. You know what I mean? You're posting things to. To an assumed audience that does not include your parents or your friends.

[Miya Sato]

Social networks.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

And TikTok doesn't. Compared to the other networks. TikTok doesn't really encourage you to post. Right. When you, when, when you, if you do one video, then it will say, oh, do this, this, this, this, this. But it's quite content for people just to. To consume if that's what they're.

[Miya Sato]

But it's an entertainment.

[Unknown Speaker]

There's not like a huge sort of, you know, nudge in the app to say, oh, get, get, get posting.

[Miya Sato]

Yeah. And I think we're. And even with Google it's like, what is Google anymore? Is it. Are they trying to not making it a search? Is it going. Is a place where Google searches. I mean it always was a place where Google served you ads, but now it's. You are in the Google zone. And I have to wonder if I say this with some optimism, whether someone might go, huh, what if we made a search engine that helped you find things that could be a billion, 2 billion annual revenue business. You know, it's not 100 billion, but we also don't need to do antitrust shit. Every year I'm being even saying these words out loud, I'm like, no, that's not going to happen. Aravind's room.

[Unknown Speaker]

I mean people are trying to, trying to make different. I mean duck duck goes kind of in that vein. Yeah, but people just don't use them. That's the problem.

[Miya Sato]

And, and that's the thing. It's like do they not use them or is just not as many as Google use them? I'm not even saying you're wrong. It's just when you say people, you mean most people. And yeah, most people use Google. Most people stop the, stop their Internet journey on Google.

[Unknown Speaker]

I mean the thing that ties a lot of these platforms as problems together is the point in which they go public. They all just go. Goes nuts.

[Miya Sato]

Right?

[Unknown Speaker]

Because you have, I mean Facebook is the classic example of this. It just then it just became massive growth every single quarter. And that sort of. And I, and I think, I mean, and this is such a sort of basic observation, I guess, but you know, I think if you applied that model to say the bodega on your street, right, okay. Every year you need to grow by 10%. Imagine what that, that business is going to go mad, isn't it? It's going to be selling porn and it's gonna be selling drug just, just to, just to get the margins up. Right. And he's thinking, well.

[Miya Sato]

No, this is the, this is the rot economy. This is the growth. It's everything, everything driven around growth. It's the moment that growth must be perpetual. Because in 2017 there was an internal Facebook thing I put out last, last year. Big up to Jeff Horowitz. Broken Code. Great book where there's a whole thing where Zuckerberg needed 12 perpetual growth. When you just really sat and thought about this, that is an insane thing to put on a social network. I must have more friends. I must connect with the more. And it's. And that now when you look at everything that is the incentive, everything. It's not really about do we buy toys, do we search thing. It's how do we keep people here or get the credit card. Which is, I mean the age old capitalism thing.

[Unknown Speaker]

The problem was with Facebook is that people didn't have enough friends.

[Miya Sato]

Yes, exactly.

[Unknown Speaker]

The constant. Yeah, it's like you'd run out of stuff. And so then it became okay, well how do we make them, when they're looking at this site, look on it for longer. And that's when we started to get all the mad.

[Miya Sato]

It's Crazy. It was profitable before they took it public. I have read stories which suggest that Mark Zuckerberg didn't want to take it public. And I, I'm like 50, 50 on whether he did because there's enough evidence that suggests that he was quite happy with it being a $50 billion public, a private company. And then I think he realized, oh wait, I control this whole thing. I can never be fired. But it's like trying to give a soul to.

[Unknown Speaker]

There is. There's regret though. I mean Jack Dorsey is the. Probably the, the famous one there, right? He's. And he's going to say he should never have been a, a public company. And he's right.

[Miya Sato]

If only someone.

[Unknown Speaker]

Twitter could have been a fine business. But people, the VCs need their, their payday. Right. That ecosystem. It could have.

[Miya Sato]

That's why I always wonder whether we don't have more interesting venture capital models with like revenue shares or like, like something that is more interesting than if I give you a bunch of money. This might, you might sell this in the future. It's. It's sad, but it's. You know what? I want to ask a good question though. Are there any parts of the Internet you enjoy right now? I truly want to know.

[Unknown Speaker]

You should have prepped me with this one before.

[Miya Sato]

It's interesting having the gap like I'm.

[Unknown Speaker]

Sort of gravitating towards old style blogs like web logs. Do you ever see. And I think. I don't know how to pronounce it. I think it's kotka.org oh yeah, Kotke. And it's just. It's just a blog. There's maybe three or four entries a day and he's been doing it and he's got a team, 20 years or something for a long, long time. Yeah. And it's just a beautiful design and the stuff is just interesting stuff. It's kind of reminds you of the days when you just have a few web blogs that you. That you'd rate.

[Miya Sato]

And he sends real traffic as well.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, I imagine it does, but it doesn't. You couldn't launch that site that today and gained popularity. I think you have this sort of legacy of people that have always visited that website.

[Miya Sato]

I actually, I.

[Unknown Speaker]

Although I'm a new reader, so maybe. I don't know.

[Miya Sato]

But I, I kind of. I agree with 98% of it. Other than I think you could do something like this. It's just that starting a new thing sucks like that. I went and I have some personal experience with this and I went and looked back where I was five years ago. 300 subscribers, 60 views on my first piece. But you have to have the ability to do a bunch of. Of shit until it makes money. And I had a main job, had a PR firm. And I think just making money and creating anything is so difficult. But I love. I actually, I had not thought of it in a while, but it's just a place where someone thoughtful has said, you should check this out. Kind of mimics, I don't know, friendships or iconoclasts, like the idea of someone.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. And there's a tone as well. You just kind of know you're going to get. It's going to be sort of mildly nerdy, but not too much. So like. And that's what you get when you go there. And I, I think it's. Yeah, it's when people get nostalgic for the web, I think it's that kind of discovery that they're thinking about.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Miya Sato]

And it's. It is the thing that I think a lot of listeners miss as well. It's like we're not. We don't just hate arbitrarily. We're not just angry. It's just there's something taken away. Like we mentioned Facebook, the quality. It also used to be Google. You used to be able to dick around on Google and find some bizarre stuff. I remember back in college, I lost this 2006. I want to say I was in my. In my Dustin Pangolinas for college roommate. We randomly typed in, you know, you're right by nirvana into YouTube. And there was just this. I think it's like, I don't even remember it had View. It was this grainy video of this like young Asian guy singing this like really kind of like slightly out of tune version of something. But it was so interesting and grim. Like, he seemed very sad. Can never find it again. But that was the kind of Internet I kind of miss. Like just these arbitrary moments where you find these weird things.

[Unknown Speaker]

You can't find that clip on YouTube. But would you be interested in two hours of Joe Rogan instead?

[Miya Sato]

Yeah, five hours of Lex.

[Unknown Speaker]

It will help you find that. Yeah. And then if you watch that, then maybe Charlie Kirk, then. Then you're in the.

[Miya Sato]

Or you've learned three times of racism where you get Lex ribbon going. How you are on computer, on website. I won't do that for too long. That's why the episodes are so long. It's 10 minutes per question. But. So, Mia, what are you enjoying? Like what.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, man. I feel like there are a few content creators that I really like and really tune into. There's a woman who makes like, sort of YouTube video essays that are very well researched. Her name is Mina Le, and she does sort of like fashion and consumerism and culture and art and stuff. And I think she is really fun. And just like, clearly I saw this thing the other day that someone was like, if you can't write a normal essay, you should not try to do video essays. And she can do both. It's clear she can do both. And I'm like, thank you so much.

[Miya Sato]

That's very good.

[Ed Zitron]

You know what I mean? I mean, so I really like her. There's another person that I follow on TikTok and other platforms named Ryan Finn, and she is also really great. Also kind of writes about like, kind of like a she. She. She talks about fashion and clothing and culture in a really, like, heady kind of. It's, it's. It's the type of content that people who don't read would see it and be like, it's really not that deep. But it is, you know, And I appreciate that someone takes things seriously like that. There are also, like, corners of the Internet, even on platforms like TikTok or Instagram, that I just like, find the nerds and they still are just plugging away and doing whatever they want. And their posts get like 50 views and they're fine with it. And like, that's, I think, where it's special, where I, I don't like it when I follow a creator and suddenly everything is spawn con or I follow a creator and clearly they're just sort of like jumping on. On trends. I also like websites where there's still like, new content being posted, but you can clearly find the markings of like 2006. Like, I'm a big knitter and Ravelry is the. Was the place to find knitting patterns in like the early to mid 2000s. And sometimes I'll find photos clearly from that era and it's like, really delightful, you know what I mean? Like, they were posting to a different Instagram. They were thinking of the web as a completely different space.

[Miya Sato]

Before the algorithms, I imagine, before the algorithms.

[Ed Zitron]

And Ravelry also, like, it has some algorithmic stuff, but, like, a lot of it is sort of pure. I think there are, like, forums, you know what I mean, that people post on.

[Miya Sato]

But this is why one of my favorites is Baseball Prospectus. I know you're a, you're a Dodger fan, right?

[Ed Zitron]

No, Dodgers. They suck, right?

[Miya Sato]

Now everyone's really sick. Everyone bats are dead. But Baseball Prospectus I think has looked the same way since it was made. And it's just, just like really specific nerdy stuff. But I think you can even see it in sports. You've got people like Chad Moriama over at Dodgers Digest, I think it is. You've got these like really specific and you know that they're probably doing okay, but they're not like millions of views every month or anything. But you've got this kind of niche strength. And my hopium I snort aggressively is that these will never stop being made because they're still being made now. There's never been a more bleak time to make niche specific content and keep making it, but people keep doing it. I mean Carl Brown from Internet Internet of Bugs, he like does the most straightforward thing and just talks and it's great and he has a growing audience but you can, he does very specific developer focused stuff with a very straightforward explanation. Lovely fella. And it's nice seeing those and it's what gives me a bit of hope because if those people, if you never find any of that stuff anymore, if everything is just mainstream, I think that's terrifying. But even look at gamers. Nexus, Big hot Steve Berkov, a legend, Hard run Box as well. You've got millions of subscribers. There is, there is hunger for this stuff.

[Unknown Speaker]

There's hunger for like passionate people. Storytelling. Yeah even. I mean I was always a big fan of British guy Tom Scott. I feel like you might have. And he, he's done that for years and years, made YouTube videos and he did, he did like 20 minutes on the design of the British plug for like an outlet and how it's got.

[Miya Sato]

I really want to see this video.

[Unknown Speaker]

And he makes the case that it's, you know, one of the finest things that Britain's ever come up with because it, you know, you can't electrocute yourself by putting it in all that sort of stuff. And I, and I remember watching thinking, God, I've just watched 15 minutes about the history of the plug and I and I. But he was, he's just such a sort of arresting, interesting guy, bonafide nerd, but a great presenter. One of the things I take from the sort of substack era, if you like, is like, I imagine. And I'm not going to make you get into numbers but I imagine the verb merge with its paywall now has a lot of people saying, oh, why are you paywalling? And I find it really interesting that when big Publications put up a paywall. Everyone gets a little bit mad. Right. They say, that's, you know. And like whenever I post a link to Bloomberg's, I was like, oh, it's paywall. And yet when one person launches a substack and says, right, this is 10 bucks a month. Oh my God, they kind of go, oh, great, good for you. I'll definitely get behind you. And I think what that's showing us is one, it's a kind of, you know, middle finger, finger to the mainstream media. Fine. But then the second thing maybe is that I think people have respect for depth and, and niche and like love.

[Miya Sato]

For content as well.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. Because I think, I think they want to sort of. They love the idea that someone gives up and gives up. You know, a steady thing goes into a subset. I mean, I think of Paul Krugman who left the New York Times. I remember thinking, oh, there's the show, Paul. Oh, well, I remember thinking, okay, Paul, you're being a cranky old man just because the editors don't want you to do that. But now his substack is brilliant. It goes to length.

[Miya Sato]

If you know Paul Krugman, please get him in touch with me.

[Unknown Speaker]

But, but it's great. And I think I'm much more inclined to Chuck, you know, when, when the New York Times wants to upgrade my subscription, I'd rather send that to Paul on his own.

[Miya Sato]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

Get the entirety of the.

[Miya Sato]

Because you're incentivizing this individual voice and, you know, the person kind of parasocially.

[Unknown Speaker]

And the way that I think bigger publications kind of lean into that is to have these sort of niches.

[Miya Sato]

Well, verse just added following. Right? Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, yeah. Everyone should follow me on the Verge. You can follow me and all the topics I write about. But I'm glad you said that, Dave, because I think that is. It shows a thing that mass media or big media companies have failed to do, which is explain what we're actually doing day to day. And I. That's why I am active on TikTok. You know what I mean? I talk to people who will never probably read my story and probably will never subscribe to the Verge. Truthfully. Some do. Thank you so much. But a lot of them will just watch my videos and that is a way for me to explain to them what it takes for me to write a story. This is how I talk to people. This is like. I think people don't realize that, like, when I'm writing stories, I'm actually sometimes going in person to interview the Person. You know what I mean? Like, it's. And I don't blame them really for not knowing because media has done a really bad job of explaining it historically. And I hope that, you know, folks who read my work know that, like, I'm an. I'm a. I'm one person and I write these stories and I. Obviously there's copy editors and editors and photo editors and, you know, dev folks who make my stories come to life. But, like, we are just people making shit that we like and we think is worth your time. And every media company should be showing that off.

[Miya Sato]

You made a really. You made a post quite like, maybe it was last year, forgive me, where it was saying we're kind of journalists are seeding ground to content creators who are reusing their stuff. And I think it comes down to a few. Failure of. I'm not saying anything specifically about any given out there, but a fail to failure to realize that people want people, they want to read people. They. And I think that large broadsheets tend to fail, actually. I will give big props to the FT for doing this, that they let their freak flags fly. Bryce Elder, the Legend and like Alphaville as well, because people want to read people. And I think that what should be table stakes now is that every outlet should get everyone a good microphone, get everyone a good camera media, train them, jush them up a bit so that they can sound good and represent the work of the publication in a personal way that makes people more willing to understand. There's a paywall.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Miya Sato]

Which is a reasonable thing, whether however you feel about the Verge or any other out there. Yeah. Money. The things cost money to do. Money. Money.

[Ed Zitron]

It's really fucking expensive to write 6,000 word features. That's like months of my day time. Many, many people's, you know, work and resources. And I think also, like, if we don't fill that. And I know a lot of people disagreed with me when I said, like, we're seeding ground and people didn't like it for a lot of valid reasons. But if we are not there, something will fill the space. I was. I was basically just sick of seeing my stories. Super. You know, behind someone's head.

[Miya Sato]

And you made this point very clearly as well. You said, like, it's someone taking my stuff.

[Ed Zitron]

It's someone taking my stuff. Yeah, exactly. It's someone taking my stuff. It's. They're misrepresenting it, getting basic facts wrong. And like, I have 30 minutes in my day. I will just make the video. You know what I mean like, I don't care.

[Miya Sato]

They should get. There should be the space for. They should have like Ihel radio gives me a studio at least because it's like, oh, imagine I might want to do an in studio thing. Might make for good content. It's just when you have resources, share them. You're going to say something.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, I think part of all of the. As well is showing the process is the most. It travels.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes.

[Unknown Speaker]

Almost more than the story. Right. And. And it breeds a ton of trust. I mean I'm always surprised you can be, you know, in, in rooms of people who are, you know, incredibly success and they'll still. They'll ask the most like rudimentary questions about the journalistic process. Like, oh, who tells you what to write?

[Ed Zitron]

Yes.

[Unknown Speaker]

And I'm like, my job would be much easier if someone did tell me what to write. Being the other way around. Things like do you let people read things? I think just going into the process is really, really useful. And I always. There was. I was at a dinner thing once and this one guy made this point that I thought was. I've always thought of when I'm talking about this is if you said to somebody, when was journalism in America the most trusted? Right. They're gonna. My assumption, most people would say Watergate.

[Miya Sato]

Right.

[Unknown Speaker]

Was the thing. And he said, no, it wasn't Watergate that made journalism trusted. It was a very good film about Watergate that made journalism trusted. Because all that film was was just them trying to get this stuff in the paper and them going through hell.

[Miya Sato]

Yes.

[Unknown Speaker]

To make it happen. And if you want a more modern example that the, the book she said by the New York Times reporters that did the Jeffrey Epstein. Sorry, no, it was Harvey Weinstein.

[Miya Sato]

I get all these different.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, disgusting man.

[Unknown Speaker]

But their book, they knew what Harvey Weinstein had done within about 10 pages of the first chapter. Right.

[Miya Sato]

It was getting the rest of the.

[Unknown Speaker]

Book was get it in the newspaper. And I just think that is the, the more of that process that journalists share off the cuff constantly is super powerful. That's what Twitter used to be very good at. There was a big shift in newsrooms among bosses that went, hold on a second. The official account is getting no engagement. But when this random person on one of our UK desks starts tweeting about it, that gets loads of pickup. Why is that? It's because people respect hearing the process more than the, the end result. The, the, the eventual story.

[Miya Sato]

They want to also know and I know that this is difficult for different like your Opinion stuff is fucking fantastic, by the way, at Bloomberg. It's really like Bloomberg has actually been very impressive in how they've grown out the opinion stuff. So this is not a detraction of that. I, at least in my writing, have found that people really like to know why you care. And I think that explaining that even on here, talking about your work, it's like hearing it just a little bit about the things that draw you into the story. I think it's so powerful. It's also. People love it. I mean, after ces, I know. I see like Victoria Song and Dash Sherlyn Lowe. Both of them get the loveliest comments from people. I just found you work for the show. It's lovely. And it's also, I feel like most readers like to know and appreciate. It's not like most people are like, oh, these idiots. Just when they actually know what goes into it. I feel that there's more goodness in people around this than they know. And now you've made that comment about Watergate and be thinking about it all day, obsessed with it. No, it's such a good point. So I'm gonna wrap it there. It's been so wonderful having you back. Both me. Where can people find you?

[Ed Zitron]

I'm on Blue sky, TikTok, Instagram and theverge.com where again, you can follow me.

[Miya Sato]

Dave.

[Unknown Speaker]

I'm on all those places except the vos.com I'm bloomberg.com opinion but Sky, Instagram, the rest. Yeah.

[Miya Sato]

And I must recommend both of their work. Both of you are two of my favorite writer. No, like I'm actually so excited I got this. One of my favorite episodes ever recorded. I'm just going to be honest. I am Ed Zitron. You can find me on the podcast Better offline. You go better offline.com click newsletter. Click all the stuff. Get the challenge coin if you want. But really just I'm so grateful to have all of you. Love you all. Thank you for listening. And then you're going to hear it say, thank you for listening again. Going to get an email. I'm going to ignore it. I'll respond and thank you for listening. But thank you for listening. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Osawski. 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 ezetteroffline.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 at? Visit the Discord and go to R betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit.

[Ed Zitron]

Our website coolzone media.com or check us.

[Miya Sato]

Out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts.

[Ed Zitron]

Or wherever you get your podcast.

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