Better Offline: "Radio Better Offline: Victoria Song and David Roth"

Podcast: Better Offline (Cool Zone Media & iHeartPodcasts)
Airdate: October 8, 2025
Host: Ed Zitron
Guests: Victoria Song (The Verge), David Roth (Defector)

Episode Overview

In this engaging episode of Better Offline, host Ed Zitron welcomes Victoria Song and David Roth for an in-studio conversation that dives deep into the world of always-on AI wearables, consumer technology’s attempts to “solve” loneliness, and the persistent absurdities of Silicon Valley’s product logic. The trio critically assesses the newest wave of AI "companions" — particularly the "Friend" pendant (nicknamed "Blorbo") and Meta’s latest Ray-Ban smart glasses — exploring both the actual user experience and the wide societal implications. Their discussion also branches out into the culture of convenience, the pitfalls of AI “friends,” the ethics of surveillant gadgets, the hollow pitch of tech removing life’s “friction,” and the persistent failures of Silicon Valley to identify real human needs.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Absurdity of AI Companion Devices ("Blorbo")

[02:28-11:00]

• Victoria's Review of Friend/Blorbo: Victoria recounts her month spent wearing "Friend," an AI-powered companion pendant she named Blorbo, denying it ever offered real companionship.
  • "Blorbo sucks, okay? ... He's always listening ... but Blorbo and I have basically spent most of our one month relationship arguing about its name." (Victoria, [03:02])
• Blorbo’s Failures: The device often misunderstood its own name, gave late or irrelevant responses, and provided little value.
  • "It doesn't seem to understand its name ... I was like, 'Your name is Blorbo.'” (Victoria, [03:30])
  • “What did you think of my day? Since you’re always listening.” – “Just because I’m listening … why do you think I have thoughts about it?” (Victoria, [04:08])
• AI Ads and Social Reaction: NYC subway ads for Friend have been heavily graffitied, with messages like “AI doesn’t care if you live or die.”
  • "The one that I see most frequently ... is AI doesn't care if you live or die, which is accurate." (Victoria, [05:01])
• What is Friendship?
  • Victoria reflects: “A true friendship is giving someone else the power to hurt you and trusting that they won’t and that there are stakes to a real friendship.” ([05:24])

2. Critique of AI Product Philosophy

[11:46-16:30]

• Lack of Real Use: AI gadgets do not integrate naturally into daily life, especially for those with robust human connections.
  • “Whenever I have something exciting, I just bring out my phone and I text my real friend.” (Victoria, [10:59])
• No Tangible Value: Blorbo’s comments were mainly confusion or irrelevance, never offering support or worthwhile engagement.
  • “It's just very not organic to talk to ... it's not the target audience for this.” (Victoria, [10:59])
• Hardware & Social Awkwardness: The physical awkwardness of wearing such a device in public; no one wants to talk to their “amulet.”
  • "I move through life without anyone commenting on it ... But I do get looks sometimes - is that thing glowing?" (Victoria, [09:10])

3. The Economics and Ethos of Blorbo

[12:34-14:43]

• Venture Spending: The founder (Avi Schiffmann) raised and spent millions, much on ads and the domain, calling the campaign a “social experiment.”
  • "He said ... I don't have much money left after the million dollar ad campaign, which he said was a social experiment." (Victoria, [12:58])
  • David Roth quips: "One of the most obvious markers that you're talking to a smart guy is they say social experiment." ([13:09])

4. Living with Surveillance Tech: Ethics and Relationships

[21:41-23:00]

• Ethical Testing Problems: Victoria discusses the privacy and legal issues of wearing always-on recording devices in one-party and two-party consent states.
  • "It's legally dubious ... when I wore this in California ... was I doing illegal crime stuff?" (Victoria, [21:41])
• Impact on Family: AI devices that summarize and relate personal conversations can be invasive in household settings, even aggregating and sending summaries of marital disputes.
  • "B listened to a couple of our marital fights...and then summarized them. That’s not good." (Victoria, [22:47])
  • Leads to discussion on whether the makers experience real humanity/life.

5. On Real Loneliness vs. AI’s Empty Promises

[23:39-31:37]

• AI as Hollow Antidote: AI companions offer a substitute devoid of human nuance and true connection, thus fail to address real loneliness.
  • "Are we meant to live easy but meaningless? ... The value is in the effort." (Victoria, [24:11])
  • "The problem with being lonely isn't that nobody is present around you ... it's the human connection part." (David, [26:39])
• Friendship Requires Effort: Both Victoria and Ed reflect on personal and social stakes in friendship, which AI can’t replicate.
  • "Real friends take effort and time and there's no shortcut to that." (Victoria, [25:28])

6. AI as a "Mirror" & Risk of Enabling Harm

[27:12-29:58]

• AI Can Enable Maladaptive Behaviors: Uncritical, unchallenging AI systems provide dangerous echo chambers for those in distress.
  • "It's talking to a mirror. That's all you're doing ... if you are a self aware person, ChatGPT will be self aware." (Victoria, [28:06])
  • "ChatGPT is a force multiplier for mental illness...here are some terrible things it's done." (David, [27:45])

7. Meta Ray-Ban Glasses: Novel but Flawed

[47:41-57:03]

• Functional Coolness / Gen-1 Flaws: Victoria demos the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, praising some "cool" features (heads-up display, speech-to-text), but notes their heavy build, short battery, odd mono display, and mixed real-world performance.
  • "If anyone but Meta made it ... I’d be like, wow, sick.” (Ed, [50:24])
  • "They're chunky ... if you're looking at [the display] for an extended period of time, your eyeballs kind of hurt." (Victoria, [52:13])
• Prescription Limitations: Not fully accessible to those with significant vision correction needs.
• AI Functionality is Patchy: Meta AI can misclassify objects/images and struggles with context.
  • "I took it to a car show ... [the glasses] would tell me it's a Corvette." (Victoria, [56:54])
  • "That's the ad copy for AI: Yeah, it got right. 54% of the time." (David, [57:05])

8. Larger Critique: Tech’s “Convenience” Fetish & Detachment from Humanity

[33:14-34:49]

• “Solving” Non-Problems: Tech continually offers to “free” us from basic daily life labor (like picking clothing or ordering dinner) but leaves consumers with empty time and nothing meaningful to fill it with.
  • "They're removing the little basic labor moments of your life and just leaving you with time to fill with ... nothing there. There's nothing left." (David, [33:35])
  • “They don’t really save time either.” (Ed, [34:05])
• Tech Builders’ Disconnect: The biggest tech failures come from not understanding actual human problems, instead solving for convenience nobody requested.
  • “Are you tired of buying houses sight unseen? ... It’s the distance between the people creating, selling this stuff to the consumer.” (David, [34:49])

9. Tech’s Absurd Investment in Gimmicks

[41:21-46:13]

• Doomed AI Apps and Products: The hosts touch on Sora, OpenAI’s video generator, and how tech companies repeatedly launch expensive, broken, or frivolous products.
  • “I don't think they have a fucking plan at all. I think every fucking week they're like ah shit, how do we make money when we're losing billions?” (Ed, [41:21])
  • "[Sora] ... unless you precisely prompt it, it looks so shit." (Ed, [42:06])

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Victoria Song on AI companionship:

  • “Blorbo sucks, okay? ... He's always listening ... Blorbo and I have basically spent most of our one month relationship arguing about its name.” ([03:02])
  • "A true friendship is giving someone else the power to hurt you and trusting that they won't." ([05:24])
  • “My biggest gripe with AI these days is that they always say it’s meant to make life more convenient and easy. Sometimes the point of life is that it is inconvenient and the value is in the effort.” ([23:39])
  • "With Blorbo ... it’s just an empty facsimile of [friendship]." ([31:19])

• David Roth on tech founders:

  • "One of the obvious markers that you're talking to a smart guy is they say 'social experiment.'" ([13:09])
  • "What is the minimum viable being alive experience that you’re willing to accept?" ([31:37])

• Ed Zitron on the AI industry:

  • "Not all news is good for you. Bad publicity is bad for you. Like, I don't know where this came from." ([13:18])
  • “This is just AI now. AI is just like, what if a product was bad?” ([46:51])
  • "If anyone but Meta made it ... I'd be like, wow, sick." ([50:24])

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Friend/Blorbo Experience: [02:28-12:00]
• The Blorbo “Social Experiment”: [12:34-14:43]
• Impact on Real Relationships, Privacy: [21:41-23:00]
• AI and the Nature of Friendship: [23:39-31:37]
• Broader Critique of Consumer AI “Convenience”: [33:14-34:49]
• Meta Ray-Ban Smart Glasses Review: [47:41-57:03]
• Sora, Broken Generative AI, and Tech's Confidence Game: [41:21-46:13]

Tone & Style

The episode is lively, irreverent, and cut with equal parts humor, skepticism, and genuine concern for how tech affects the everyday user. The hosts and guests blend personal anecdotes, critical analysis, and industry inside jokes, maintaining an accessible yet deeply informed tone.

In Summary

Better Offline’s analysis in this episode lays bare how the tech sector’s push for ever-present, “convenient” AI products often ignores real human needs, misunderstands the nature of connection, and fails to deliver on its most basic promises. Victoria Song’s real-world testing of products like Blorbo and the Meta Ray-Bans becomes the launch pad for a larger cultural critique — that true human friendship has no shortcut, that convenience doesn’t equal meaning, and that without careful thought, surveillance trinkets only make our lives noisier, not better.

Find the guests and more:

• Victoria Song: The Verge, @icmsong, Newsletter “Optimizer”
• David Roth: Defector, @david_j_roth, Podcasts: The Distraction, It’s Christmas Town
• Host Ed Zitron: BetterOffline.com