Loading summary
Transcript41 lines
- [00:00]
Ashley Frawley
Keep your wellness routine going strong all summer. Cachava's new travel packs help you stick to your daily ritual even when you're on the go. Just one packet of Cachava's all in One Nutrition Shake provides complete nutrition wherever you are. With 25 grams of protein, 6 grams of fiber, greens, adaptogens and more. Simplify your daily ritual. Go to cachava.com and use code NEWS for 15% off. That's K A C-H-A-V A.com code NEWS.
- [00:54]
Matthew Schmitz
Welcome to the compact podcast. Today we'll discuss the death of Spirit Airlines and Devil Wears Prada 2 the Return of the Fashionista, or whatever it's titled. I am joined by Ashley Frawley and Jeff Schulenberger. And I'm Matthew Schmitz. So Spirit Airlines, who here has flown it?
- [01:17]
Jeff Schulenberger
I have.
- [01:19]
Ashley Frawley
I have not, but I have flown the European equivalents many times.
- [01:23]
Matthew Schmitz
They're actually Ryanair or something like that.
- [01:26]
Ashley Frawley
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [01:27]
Jeff Schulenberger
They're actually kind of even more impressive, both in their cheapness and the incredible links they go to kind of deprive you of any comforts.
- [01:36]
Matthew Schmitz
Like, I once flew on something in Europe called like wiz.
- [01:39]
Jeff Schulenberger
Yeah.
- [01:40]
Matthew Schmitz
And I remember a friend of mine specifically said, do not fly whiz air.
- [01:48]
Ashley Frawley
It's a punishment I swear to God they actually punish you for. It's like, well, you've booked Ryanair. This, this is where your life has ended up. It's your poor choice making. I often think, like, at some point they're gonna have like a fare class. It's like, we'll slap you the entire flight continuously unless you pay us like €40 extra. Do you want the non slapping class? You're like, I guess, yeah, I'll pay the extra to not get slapped.
- [02:15]
Jeff Schulenberger
Did they ever introduce the, the standing? Weren't they talking about doing a standing flight? Like a standing. A sort of standing room class, like steerage, sort of.
- [02:25]
Ashley Frawley
That was the idea.
- [02:26]
Jeff Schulenberger
Did they ever do that?
- [02:27]
Ashley Frawley
No, I think because of like safety regulations, but also the way that Ryanair works is that they, they do this on purpose. They'll say, like, we're gonna do horrible things. We're gonna pay. You're gonna pay to use the toilet. And that's actually part of their marketing because people are like, yeah, yeah, man, I don't care. I want to go to Tenerife. I'll pay to use the toilet. That's great. That must mean it's going to be super cheap and if I can just hold my pee, then we're we're going to Tenerife on a tenor. You know, that's, you know, maybe that's what Spirit was missing, that they, they needed to promise to punish the passenger a little bit more.
- [03:01]
Jeff Schulenberger
Yeah. So, I mean, I don't want to get too, too sidetracked, but yeah, the year, I mean, what, I remember being incredible when I lived in Europe 20 years ago as a poor, as a penniless student, you know, living in a garret or whatever. I, I mean the flights, you could actually get flights for, you know, three euros or something. It was, it was, they were practically paying you to fly these airlines, which
- [03:26]
Ashley Frawley
I, by the time you check out, it's 100, let's be honest.
- [03:29]
Jeff Schulenberger
Oh, I know, I know, I know. But the sticker, you know, the sticker price was often sort of two or three euros and then there are all these add ons and taxes and fees. But it's still, you know, it was still impressive to me when I first. And then Spirit, I can't remember exactly when it was founded. I mean, it never, it was never quite as impressive in creating sticker prices that were so ludicrous. You know, they were like the cost of a beer. But it did do the same thing of, you know, constant upselling, you know, sort of basic price and then everything else is an add on. And it did end up influencing other airlines to do the same. So it used to be that with the normal airline, you bought a ticket and you would get an assigned seat automatically, you'd at least be able to do carry on. And a lot of these other airlines have followed Spirit's example in terms of making everything else an add on. And so to that extent, perhaps it was out competed by the fact that all these other larger airlines have introduced these same sorts of basic ticket price things where they'll, they'll kind of lure you in with a very low initial price and then, you know, tack on, you pay to get an assigned seat, you pay to have a carry on, et cetera, et cetera. So it's, it seems like, you know, in that sense it's a classic sort of victim of its own success that it, it pioneered this model that now seems to be generalized and it's, it's kind of, you know, it's easy to read it as a sort of a good indicator of the kind of K shaped, you know, post 2008 recession recovery that you sort of have on one hand the proliferation of perks and of kind of differentiated versions of business class and first class and so on. That all these airlines are kind of always adding like, more and more space for, and, and the first class compartments, ever more spacious and luxurious. And then at the same time they're going, you know, for the, the, the economy cabin is kind of going in the Spirit Air direction. So it's like the, the, the most, the biggest airlines and the most successful ones like Delta and United and so on, like all have kind of Spirit style air in the back and then sort of, you know, Emirate, Emirati air in the front. And so it's, it seems like Spirit's problem is it sort of pioneered this model that was picked up by the, all these other airlines and they realized you can actually have both. You can, you can do the luxury stuff and do the, and do the, the, you know, sort of Ryanair style cheapskate stuff. So that's, I mean, that's kind of my observation of how air travel has changed. And I will say one thing about Spirit is that it used to fly out of a very cool. The one thing I flew it a few times, short flights. I mean, it was never particularly horrible in terms of. I think other people complained about it bitterly. My experiences of it were it was comparable to any sort of budget experience, whether you're buying basic fare in a major airline or one of these other cheapo tickets. But one thing I did like is the air, the terminal that it flies out of laguardia from is this very cool. I think it's called the Marine Air Terminal. And it's this very cool New Deal era building with like, mirror, you know, kind of classic New Deal murals and stuff. And it's, it's very, very cool. So I hope, I think maybe Southwest and a couple of these other budget airlines still fly out of there. So the one thing I liked about flying Spirit was I got to go to that, a very cool Marine air terminal at LaGuardia that basically all the cheapo crappy airlines fly out of. And it's worth doing just for that because it's a, it's a, it's a gem of New Deal architecture and design tucked away in the otherwise dismal precinct of LaGuardia Airport.
- [07:49]
Ashley Frawley
Yeah, very much sort of concur on the, what airlines like Spirit did in terms of transforming air travel. That it basically meant that, you know, you had your steerage and it could be the cheapest thing possible. But also it influenced the rest of the, the airlines to do the same thing. And it brought down tickets, brought down the price of tickets and allowed, you know, the opening up of Air Travel to a huge range of people that wouldn't have been able to access it in the past. And one of the concerns was a few years ago when JetBlue wanted to merge with Spirit, which wasn't really a merger, it was, you know, for all intents and purposes, this would have been the end of Spirit then anyway. The concern was that this merger would lead to higher prices because essentially Spirit would, would end and JetBlue was going to buy up all of its planes and, and obviously the staff that runs them, because if they were to buy a plane or buy new planes, planes, they would have to wait like five years and the cost would be a lot higher. But if they were to sort of fleece this desperate airline, then they could buy it all up at a discount. But it was blocked on antitrust grounds. And it's interesting that the end result is exactly the same that you're going to see probably a lack of competition. Well, not probably. Definitely now you've, you've got competition that's dropped out and probably ticket prices that rise as a result. And I mean, it's just the perfect story of how things tend to go where our economies work best in the form of many small capitals. But the trajectory and the, the constraints of the economy lead to monopoly regardless, either through mergers, through destroying competition in that way, or, you know, the, the smaller capitals simply can't compete this sort of thing. And Spirit was vulnerable that, that entire model and not having anything to fall back on was so extremely vulnerable that any tiny little shock was going to push it out regardless. And now we have a problem in that probably the, the ability to fly, see family, do new things and so on is just going to be that much more restricted. And that's, that's a negative thing, but that's a useful lesson that even when you try to break up Monopoly, it's very, very, you know, the drives that are built into the economy are going to push in that direction anyway and not for the best for everyday people.
- [10:20]
Matthew Schmitz
Yeah, Spirits failure, I think, is an interesting kind of question for populists. What, what should they think about it? And I think it does put a black eye on the antitrust agenda that's been shared to a degree by both the kind of Lina Khan Democratic Party and the kind of Steve Bannon wing of the Republican Party. I mean, you know, our contributor Michael Lind has argued basically that big is beautiful and, and that antitrust is misguided because you need large firms to really deliver value. And so there's a logic to a Walmart or an Amazon. And that kind of argument is probably strengthened in an era of intense geopolitical competition where you need kind of large champion firms that can go up against international competitors. So I think it's a good day for Lyn's type of arguments and maybe a reminder that, though I think there's a place for antitrust and for saying, look, this has become too big. It's no longer in line with what we want politically. It's not only dominating the market, it's somehow dominate. This firm is dominating our political life in a way that feels unhealthy. We need more competition. I mean, I think that's. That's always going to be a part of trying to maintain a market system. But, you know, maybe that medicine needs to be administered in somewhat sparing doses. Then. The. I mean, obviously the other angle is just the run up in fuel prices around the Iran war. So we're. We're seeing a crunch. This is not. This is not a costless conflict. And spirit errors is one of the clearest economic signs of that.
- [12:27]
Ashley Frawley
Well, speaking of the decline of industries, I went and saw devil wears Prada 2 last night, and it is not at all fun or snarky. Well, I guess there's moments of snark, but it's. It's become a film about the decline of traditional publishing and. Yeah. Have you heard anything?
- [12:50]
Matthew Schmitz
Sorry, I need to just stop there because I don't understand that. So my understanding is that the Devil Wears Prada is a film about fashion. People who work in the fashion industry, which is its own highly competitive and kind of, but prestigious industry, not unlike publishing. But this is not about fashion. It's about publishing.
- [13:16]
Ashley Frawley
Yeah, so I laughed because I attempted the segue rather than you, and I wasn't sure if I had done it successfully.
- [13:23]
Matthew Schmitz
No, I think you did it well. But I. I genuinely don't understand. So they. They made. Because fashion is at least, you know, fun to look at, and you can have kind of fabulous men making catty remarks and women being anxious, but publishing, I mean, that is not a sexy endeavor. I'm apologies to all of the publishing bros, the pub bros, and lit gals. Lit chicks. But publishing is not. There's no sex appeal there, so why would they make him happy about it?
- [14:03]
Ashley Frawley
I guess there was nothing they could do. Right? Because if you're gonna do. If you're gonna do a sequel to the Devil Wears Prada, you simply cannot ignore the fact that, yes, traditional publishing has changed massively. So. So they can't just Go into this world again and do like a fun, light kind of story of the growth of a character because one, the character's already grown up now. But also, you know, that it's undoubtable that the industry has changed. But then they make the whole film. I guess they're backed into a corner with it, but they make the whole thing about the death of journalism and the traditional publishing industry. And then all the characters just become this reason for them to sit around and talk about it. Like, she's got a love interest, but then what's he even doing there? It's not even. She's. Maybe you guys should go on another date. Is like the end of that whole arc. And it's like, okay. His whole purpose was for them to sit and eat takeout and talk about the decline of journalism. Like I, you know, I was, I. Maybe my attention span has been ruined by short form content, but I could. I was like desperate to look down at my phone several.
- [15:08]
Jeff Schulenberger
God almighty.
- [15:09]
Ashley Frawley
Get on with it.
- [15:11]
Matthew Schmitz
Yeah. So the context here, right, is that the Devil Wears Prada, you know, it's not about people working in a kind of conturier sort of making the outfits right there. Working at a kind of Conde Nast publication, whatever, Vogue, something like that. And they're talking about fashion. Right. And so we're seeing the decline of that, that element of publishing along with everything else. Is that right, Ashley?
- [15:38]
Ashley Frawley
Yeah, I mean, the, the I. I also rewatched.
- [15:42]
Matthew Schmitz
So they're. So they're. They're fashion journalists, basically, is the idea.
- [15:46]
Ashley Frawley
Exactly. Yeah. And. And the good thing is that she's a little bit less ashamed of that and just a little bit less ashamed, but she's still pretty ashamed of it. She's like, oh, I'm writing about face peels and I'm just too good for this.
- [15:59]
Matthew Schmitz
Well, so what this reminds me of a bit is just. Has either of you seen the Wire? That HBO series? Yes, about the Baltimore drug trade. So something tells me that Ashley is not kind of American male millennial theory cell. Because everyone in my cohort and Jeff's cohort, all of us guys had to watch that and we became very devoted to it. But Wire has season five and it's about the decline basically of the Baltimore sun newspaper. And so really the series should centrally be about the drug trade. I think it tries to take a broad view of the city, which is admirable in terms of its ambition. But it becomes this in season five, just there's this bizarre kind of axe grinding. And in my view, Fairly tedious description about how the Baltimore sun is betraying its high mission. And it was really hard for me to care about this kind of meant for publishing, even as a journalist.
- [17:14]
Ashley Frawley
Right. Like, even as somebody involved in it. I was like, I just cannot bring myself to care about these people. And the other thing, too, is that it doesn't seem to affect.
- [17:24]
Matthew Schmitz
Do you think that reflects kind of. Oh, yeah. So the characters aren't. I mean, do you think that this is maybe a veiled way of expressing anxiety about the decline of Hollywood because there's so much concern there that Hollywood, both just in terms of the film industry broadly, and then also the specific. Its specific location in California, both are in decline, threatened by AI and such.
- [17:53]
Ashley Frawley
Yeah, that's a really good point. And one of the. The little sort of plot lines is that they want to take over the magazine, which is a thinly veiled reference to Vogue, it's called Runway in the Movie, and turn it into AI with like, basically, we. We won't even need real models anymore. We don't need any people at all. We just. We're just going to put AI in here, and the whole thing will just be online only. AI Generated content. And that's. That's like, oh, no, the death of everything. And, you know, and Meryl Streep, too, was apparently complaining about the. What was it? The Marvel Ification of all kinds of movies. And it's just so boring and this kind of thing. And then. But then this movie, it kind of has that feel to it at the same time where I don't know, because I feel like they kind of. Her original character is something like a superhero. You know, she's like, hard as a rock. And she always knows what's up, even when she doesn't seem to know what's up. And I kind of love that about superhero movies. Like, no matter what, you know, your. Your guy's going to get the girl. He's going to win the day. And that's wonderful. When you go see a movie, that's kind of what you want. You're going to escape into fantasy land where everybody gets their just desserts. And I kind of hate when, you know, these kinds of movies that are not artsy, like, leave the unhappy endings for the arts world. When I go to a movie and I see a Marvel movie, I want to see. I want to be sure the hero doesn't d. You know, and then in this, it's like, Meryl Streep, she's so. She. I mean, she does have that Kind of shrewdness to her too, a little bit. She's so like, vulnerable and they're, I, I get the idea that it's like, oh, look, we're developing her character, but it just struck me as like, you destroyed her character. That was like, the whole point is that she's like invulnerable and the, the, that this industry makes you so hard that you will like, throw your friends under the bus. But I think also, like, as I was, I was saying, I went back and I rewatched the original as well. And I was thinking, you know, if you watch both films, the idea is, oh, this is like the cutthroat world of publishing. And it's so bad. But actually the underlying thread was like, yeah, that's just business. But at the end of the day, we're all still friends. And I kind of really, I kind of really like that they accidentally did that because they all constantly double cross each other. But at the end of the day, like, yeah, let's go have coffee afterward. It's, it's cool. It's, it's fine. Whereas I think if you were going to do this in the real world, you know, the beginning of Devil Wears Prada too, they start with a cancellation. So they, they do something that's like against social justice or whatever accidentally. And they're all fighting with cancer. Oh no. You know, this Anna Winter character, what's her name supposed to be, Miranda Priestley is gonna get canceled and da, da, da. And she's getting dragged online. And like the real. What it actually would have been was like everyone would have thrown her straight under the bus and been like, oh, no, I always thought that she was a bit problematic and everybody would have saved their skins, you know, that would have been the real, the villain in the film is so contrived, like everybody's like still cutthroat and trying to get to the top or whatever. No, how they do that now is by having, pretending to have morals and in so doing having no loyalty or morals whatsoever. That is what publishing is now. And, and I, I feel like they presented this really, I accidentally. The sort of idealized version where as I said, everybody remains friends at the end of the day. Whereas in the real world, all these people, their villainry is precisely in the fact that they have no loyalty whatsoever to anything but themselves. And that's what I, that's what I feel like. Anybody who claims that they're like social justice and you go to like a left wing conference or whatever, everybody's Just sort of like looking at each other side, eyeing each other, like, just waiting for the moment when they can drag that person and say, no, no, no, I'm better than you. I'm better than you. I'm more deserving of the job. I mean, that's how it actually works in this. In this kind of world. But anyways, in terms of, like, the commentary on Hollywood and. Yeah, I suppose it is this kind of massed anxiety for the death of the glitz and glamour prestige of Hollywood, because you can. You. We're not really looking at these people as the characters that they're supposed to be in the film. We're really looking at them as, like, Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway. Because even though apparently the publishing industry is dying, as I was saying before, it doesn't really affect them. Like, Anne Hathaway still moves into, like, this big fat apartment. Like, even though her job is probably temporary, she's like, yeah, okay, I'm gonna go move into this brand new apartment. Like, God knows how much this apartment would have cost in York. You know, what kind of salary was she getting? Jesus. And. And everybody's just still super rich. And like, the big thing is like, oh, oh, Miranda Priestley has to ride fly coach, but she's still staying in, like, the presidential suite when they get to Milan. Like, it's. It's so bizarre. It's like what they're most worried about is the loss of prestige. Not, like, the actual material. The material. Their material interests never really seem to be at stake. And I don't know, maybe that's how it feels to be a superstar now. That's really what you're worried about. You're never going to lose your material base, but maybe you lose the. I don't know, the prestige that comes with it. And perhaps that explains a lot of the sniping that goes on. You know, like, we just had the Met gala. Was that yesterday? Met Gala. And there was like all the.
- [23:19]
Jeff Schulenberger
Monday.
- [23:20]
Ashley Frawley
Monday, yeah. So all these boycotts going on. Just this is how. How prestige is kind of maintained now of, like, trying to be holier than thou and. And try some other basis for the deference that you expect from society.
- [23:37]
Matthew Schmitz
Jeff, how concerned are you about the decline of Vogue?
- [23:45]
Jeff Schulenberger
I don't know. I'm sort of. I'm concerned about. I think attractive print magazines are nice, and I hope that they have a future. I think it is possible that in some sense the opposite trend of. What's being imagined there might appear as a countervailing One in that as people become more inundated in AI generated content, they will also turn to things that are scarce in a world of infinite AI generated content. And therefore they will turn to things that AI cannot simply generate by itself. I mean, I suppose we might reach a point at which AI can, you know, generate an entire print, sort of beautifully laid out print magazine and ship it out. I don't know. I mean, I'm sure people would claim that this is possible, but. And then in that case, that would still generate further interest in things that it cannot produce. If you go back to the film her, famously about a sort of Joaquin Phoenix, lovelorn character, sort of sad sack office flunky, falling in love with sort of. I mean, this was pre LLM era really. So it's. It's kind of a kind of elaborate version of Ciri voiced by Scarlett Johansson. You know, one. One thing I think was. Was somewhat interesting there is that his job is to produce these love letters. That it's kind of weird. There's. They're. They're supposed to look like handwritten letters. And the idea seems to be that people hire people who, I don't know, don't have time or have been so kind of, I suppose, like emotionally and verbally deskilled that they're not capable of producing such things. They hire him to generate these personal touch letters on their behalf. And, you know, what's kind of weird is like he's typing them up, but they appear as if they're handwritten. And so obviously it's a. It's a kind of simulation of authenticity. It's not. It's not actual authenticity. It's a kind of weird simulacrum of authenticity. But nonetheless, there is some idea that people are willing to pay this person who, you know, seemingly has a verbal and emotional register that they recognize as superior to their own, to produce these documents for them that, you know, mediate some sort of intimate relation. And so anyway, I think part of what that is hinting at is that in this world in which we become inundated with all kinds of artificial and simulated authenticity, people are willing to pay for, I suppose, even. Even though it's still a simulation, a somewhat more authentic and sort of human mediated version of. Of the. The. The experience of some kind of emotional interchange. And so, you know, I think that the film is kind of interesting in, in playing around with those ideas and the question of sort of what becomes scarce when, you know, when this AI generated content is abundant. I feel like this hasn't you know, I think the question of, like, Vogue and, you know, what it specifically represents isn't necessarily one I can speak to, but I do think that that sort of. There's a kind of lushness of the experience of these. Like, my mom used to subscribe to Vanity Fair, so I used to have that around, like, when I was growing up. And there is a kind of lushness to the. The physicality and kind of visual riches of those magazines as a kind of object. And I, you know, I think that is something that's. You can sort of see people already grasping towards as they're seeing it, as they're seeing it slip away. So I think the interesting thing is what. And then obviously a great deal of what is going to be generated kind of like in her is going to be some kind of simulation, some kind of more plausible simulation of authenticity measured against the sort of AI generated versions. And so, I don't know. I mean, I think we're still in the early phase of this whole set of developments. But as you talk about, I mean, I haven't seen the new Devil Wears Prior. It. It does remind me a little bit of. Of the. The Top Gun remake, which was also kind of about this set of concerns, because it was about the sort of automation of. Of warfare and the question of, you know, what a sort of actual pilot in the cockpit can contribute, you know, that cannot be done by a drone. And so, and it's interesting, I mean, if you go back to the original Top Gun, it's kind of fascinating to watch alongside, like Baudrillard's early writings on simulation, because it's very much about simulation in the context of warfare. You know, the, the love interest character in Top Gun basically is a. Is an instructor, you know, for the Air Force pilots in terms of how to use these new technologies of simulation. So that, you know, is. Is before the Gulf War, but kind of leading up to that moment. And then when you get to Top Gun Maverick, it's really about this question of, like, what, you know, what becomes of the pilot of the Air Force pilot or the Navy pilot in the context of a world of automated drone warfare. And I suppose this is kind of why, you know, there's this whole sort of discourse about being agentic that, you know, this is kind of what people in the AI sort of San Francisco world talk about is, you know, you're either agentic or you're like an NPC or whatever. And so, you know, the agentic is the only. The agentic person is the only kind of human who has, who still has value in this world according to this account, you know, which it, which is a sort of brutal Darwinian version of the future. And so, you know, I suppose these movies are kind of about, you know, these, these characters who are supposed to represent some version of the agentic. But then of course the, the interesting irony of that term is that agent is also the term being used for the aspirational goal of AI development. That it is supposed to produce agents who can essentially be agentic in the same way that these sort of strong human characters can. And so I don't think there's a kind of clear, you know, I've drifted away from the Devil Wears Prada, but it is interesting to hear that it reprises these sorts of themes. And, and I do sort of wonder what the. And I also think like, you know, maybe the question of like beauty and so on in fashion is kind of interesting. I mean, I was just trying to explain to somebody who wasn't familiar with it. I think we've talked about this on here before, but like the looks maxing phenomenon and you know, these kind of male, you know, clavicular. I believe we did a segment on these kind of male influencers where even, you know, 10 or more years ago you had this, I think there was a famous article by maybe Gia Tolentino about Instagram face and the way that the, the self presentation on these heavily filtered photo sharing platforms was kind of changing the way people, you know, present themselves in public, what their beauty ideals are and so on. And of course this is now, you know, it was originally thought of as a thing that mostly afflicted women as an extension of the, this sort of long standing anorexia discourse, which of course was blamed on magazines like Vogue and so on for constructing these impossible beauty standards. And then you know, basically you have interestingly, men in these kind of manosphere realms, you know, sort of taking a hammer to their own faces in order to, you know, reshape themselves into some, you know, kind of sculpture, you know, adequately sculptural form to present themselves on these platforms. And so there is kind of a bizarre way that these, that, that all of these kind of technological enhancements create these feedback loops in terms of what's valued. And obviously like the, the fashion industry and fashion magazines are in an earlier era in particular kind of deeply part of those feedback loops. But in some ways, you know, maybe they're, they're sort of being cut out of the loop or they're no longer as, as relevant and Maybe that's like another aspect of this that seems, seems sort of interesting that, you know, the, the trends of that they're not necessarily able to set the trends. Instead they kind of have to chase them. And so that's maybe another aspect of their obsolescence.
- [33:25]
Ashley Frawley
Yeah. On what you were saying in terms of like, of what kinds of content people will end up buying, if I'm not misunderstanding you, but I mean the, the premise that you would just take the magazine and like utterly fleece it and replace everything with AI content is kind of ridiculous because no one would buy or visit a website. Well, maybe you might visit the website, I don't know. That is entirely AI generated because I could do that myself. You know, I'm not going to buy something. I mean, that's implicitly what you think about when you go and spend your money on something. You're like, you have this idea vaguely in the, in your mind, like I am exchanging some of my hard spent labor power for on average someone else's hard spent labor power. And you're not going to do that if it's like something you can generate in, in 2.2 seconds for yourself. So then as you said, what becomes value is what cannot be reproduced so easily. And that is something that is human. And you know, I've become obsessed lately with crochet because it can't easily be machine produced and it's a, it's a huge trend. I, I've never done a damn original thing in my life. I just, I saw a lady at the airport crocheting and I was like, hey, that looks like a pretty good use of downtime. So I start crocheting. Apparently it's a huge fad and I'm just, apparently I'm a big follower. But you know, you can understand why because you have this sense of like, handcraftmanship is much more interesting and appealing when everything is machine made and mass produced and can be made in seconds with very, very little human labor, which is fantastic. But you know, at the end of the day, what you will then hopefully be able to spend your time on is things that are actually meaningful and represent the, you know, something that only humans can do. But there was one aspect. I don't know, Matthew, want to jump in about anything that Jeff said, but there was one more aspect that I, of the films that I wanted to bring up because I rewatched the first film with my two daughters and I found it very interesting. I felt several times like I needed to pause the movie and jump in and be like, girls. That was. That was bad. You don't want to. They call it the famous thing where they call Anne Hathaway fat. And they're constantly. I'm just one flu away from, you know, my goal weight, this sort of thing. But actually more disturbing than that for me was the way that you. 20 years later, Anne Hathaway stands out as what we would now call a pick me. She's such a pick me, and it's so annoying. She's like, I'm not like other girls. I'm one of the cool girls. I don't like fashion. That's silly. And then she goes into this world where actually realizes how much goes into creating something beautiful, how it's actually not frivolous and. And silly, even though the film does its best to convince you that it is. And then at the end of the day, she retreats from all of this personal growth that she has had in. In finding a new passion and interest, throws it all out the window in order to get back with her loser boyfriend who works in a kitchen somewhere. I was like, you know, I'm gonna say the most annoying girl boss thing ever, but I was like, to my daughters, like, no, this guy was bad for her. He was totally unsupportive. And now she has to throw away everything to get back with him. It was horrible. But then I feel like the new film kind of overcorrects where this guy appears as a prop for her to just, like, babble to, you know, I. I don't know. There's. We're struggling, I think, as a society to find a good balance where, like, he goes, oh. She's like, well, I never dated anyone who read any of my stuff. And he goes, oh, that's a tragedy. You know, Like, I don't know. Is that so bad? Maybe she could have a really supportive husband at home. In fact, Miranda gets that finally. Oh, I don't spoil. But, well, yeah, I think it's in the film, just sort of embedded. But she finally has, like, she's not being punished so much for her job. She actually does have a husband who just supports her and is in the background. I feel like that's the best place for you guys. I don't know. What do you think?
- [37:28]
Matthew Schmitz
Yeah, Men need to know their place. So I. I like it. And I think the dynamic. You both note that the spread of automation and rise of AI will put a premium on things that are actually human. I think that's true. I think it's also true in the world of journalism. I don't find it that difficult to spot text that sounds like it's been written by an LLM. And I think it's going to be very valuable in the future to have a sense that you're interacting with a real person. I mean, that's probably one thing. Behind the rise of podcasts and other things, staking journalistic ventures on specific personalities, on real people, seems to be becoming even more important rather than less so. Yeah, I think especially for a magazine like Vogue that has such prestige, I mean, that's going to be one of the things that is best positioned to survive this onslaught. I mean, what's going to suffer in the age of AI is, you know, writing for whatever Lowell chats, upvote.com or whatever. I mean, that's. That's going to be hit very hard and those jobs are going away. But, you know, if you have built an audience through podcasting or if you have a gig at prestige publication where it's, you know, all about that prestige, I think you're fine with that. Thank you, Ashley and Jeff, the real people on this real podcast. And if you like real writing, go to compactmag.com subscribe and support our work. Olivia Rodrigo the Unraveled Tour Live across North America with special guests. Get tickets Thursday, May 7th at Olivia Rodrigo dot com.