← Pablo Torre Finds Out
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre. And today we're gonna find out what this sound is.
- [00:06]
B
Can we get to the Raw Dogging.
- [00:08]
A
Right after this ad?
- [00:11]
C
You're listening to Giraffe Kings.
- [00:28]
A
I do like Vita. How. How our group chat for this specific show has just devolved into us saying no to things Dan wants to talk about.
- [00:38]
B
Welcome to my life. It's not. It's my entire life. I became the founder of a company so everyone could tell me no for things that I want. It's. And then when I tell people that, when I tell people the story, somehow everyone looks at me and laughs. That I would be so naive to think that as the founder of a I would get to do the things that I want. The fact that people laugh knowingly at that when I would have at any point in my life said yes. If someone founds a company, they get to do what they want. That's how. That's how that one works.
- [01:11]
C
Just to open the kimono a little bit. Phrase I always immediately regret saying immediately after I say it.
- [01:19]
B
You should make that your signature line. You should make that something that is trailing behind you like an airplane banner.
- [01:27]
C
It's sort of racist entrapment. Because then people make a joke about me being Japanese and I'm not Japanese.
- [01:35]
A
You asked for it to let people.
- [01:38]
C
Inside the hanbok, which is a Korean. This is so sexual and weird. Anyways, whatever. I said the group chat. An article about. From GQ about men raw dogging flights, which is funny. And there's. It's. You know. And Don don't replied by. With the. With the text quote. I'm fine with that. Watching Celine Dion doc now. Brutal.
- [02:02]
B
It is. It was brutal.
- [02:04]
C
Can I make a confession to you guys? I wanna know if anyone else does this. So my husband loves documentaries. And like, he. Dan and him should live together because I think they would. They share the same taste in cinema. He wants to watch serious, depressing documentaries. And, you know, we also consume a lot of content separately. Cause I trav and I watch stuff while I work out. Whatever. I really hope this doesn't get back to him. But sometimes he'll say like, oh, have you seen, you know, the Celine Dion doc? And I'll be like, oh, yeah, it was okay. I straight up lie to him all the time.
- [02:43]
B
Mina Mina, since we've met you, you've lied about the movies that you watch. What is this? What is wrong with you? What is wrong with you that you feel the need? I don't think of you As a liar, is this the one space where you allow yourself to fundamentally immoral.
- [02:58]
C
I also kind of gaslight him sometimes. He'll. He'll say, wow, this looks really interesting, like a Lars von Trier movie. And I'll be like, oh, we watched that.
- [03:08]
A
Oh God.
- [03:11]
C
And he's like, really?
- [03:12]
A
I'm like, yeah, you're like a corrupt. You're a corrupt nursing home aid who's like, oh, you had. You had your vitamins. You barely had your vitamins. You don't need them.
- [03:23]
C
We barely remember what happened like two weeks ago. Now that we are parents of an.
- [03:27]
B
Infant, you must have such the advantage now with that trick because your parents who aren't sleeping because the baby's menace and the gaslighting must work so much better now.
- [03:39]
C
I Pablo, you can, I'm sure, relate to this. The number of times the get out of jail free card having a baby provides you is honestly worth all of the lost sleep, all of the frustration. I use it to get out of so many things.
- [03:55]
A
Yeah. The amount of time I saved on just texting, like just I. When you text with me now, there just fewer three dot sort of like.
- [04:04]
C
Yeah.
- [04:04]
A
Visuals of me trying to figure out a paragraph worth of trying to say no. And now it's just like daughter's sick daughter.
- [04:13]
C
She's not saying.
- [04:14]
B
She's totally. That's. No, that's terrible. My new thing, terrible Karma Stugatz has killed his grandmother about 14 different times to get out of things.
- [04:26]
C
When I forget something, like I forget an obligation or I'm late for a meeting, sometimes I hate. It's so disgusting. But I'll go mommy brain. And everybody laughs.
- [04:38]
B
God, who are you? How did this happen to you? If I had shown you this person five years ago, doing jazz hands and mommy brain to get out of things, you would have been repulsed by her.
- [04:54]
C
No, I would have had the kid sooner, honestly, if I had known I could get out of going out.
- [05:00]
A
Yeah, it's.
- [05:01]
C
It's a hidden incentive. What a perk.
- [05:21]
A
Because it is my show, I'm going to use my power to start with my topic because we get voicemails to our voicemail line. 51385 Pablo. That is the number you call to leave us voicemails, story pitches, suggestions, sometimes questions, mysteries you have. And here's a call that I got that I want all of us together to solve.
- [05:39]
D
Hey, Pablo, Evan from Delaware again. I read Bloomberg a lot. Mostly for work, a little bit for pleasure. Shout out to the legends Matt Levine and Joe Wiesenthal. It got me kind of thinking about espn, because everything I hear is that unlike Bloomberg, the people in the business absolutely could not care less about what ESPN or FS or local talk radio or local fan sites, whatever, say, is that actually right? I can imagine some of the owners caring a lot, but you hear a lot of coaches and GMs say, oh, we're not managed by the media. They just don't understand their criticism. Doesn't matter. What I want to know is, what do people in the industry think of typical sports coverage, if anything? Awesome. Thanks so much. Love the show. Bye.
- [06:19]
A
So this is fundamentally a question about how much does the stuff that we do here in sports media actually get into the ears and the brains of the people who make decisions, who matter inside of sports teams. And my read on all of this is they care so much more than they want anybody else to realize and that there's a lot of posturing about how it's. These idiots, they don't know what they're talking about. But meanwhile, I mean, I can tell you from knowledge and belief that the most important and influential people in sports are oftentimes the people who have the most sensitive antennae to, like, what is being said. And that involves LeBron James, that involves owners of teams. Go down the list. I think you'll find really, more than anything else, a dearth of people who are actually unplugged from what people in our chairs, broadly speaking, tend to say. Mina, what's your view on it from. From, again, your perspective as a former business journalist?
- [07:13]
C
Yeah, my experience is pretty NFL centric because, you know, just conversations I've had with players, agents, people who work for teams, and it largely reflects what you're saying. They do all watch sports media. What I think is interesting, though, and maybe worth parsing out is they all consume very different types and forms of sports media. Your typical player, what he's watching, what he's hearing is very different from what your typical gm, assistant, GM cares about or coach. But, you know, so, I mean, I guess I'll just kind of spell it out. I do. First take. I hear much more often from players about things I've said on that show versus people who work in front offices are more likely to listen to my podcast or watch NFL Live or see stuff on the Internet, frankly, which is a third part of this. It's not. We can, you know, it's not television or podcasting or whatever, but they see tweets and video, you know, put content we put out. But I would say like 9 to 1 is the ratio of guys I've encountered who are aware of some of it. It is far more the exception that anyone athlete, player or executive or coach is not seeing it.
- [08:40]
B
It's interesting because I do think there is some generational stuff that you're talking about there where the executives or the people in power might be inclined because are older to somehow care what still a newspaper columnist is writing, whereas a different generation isn't going to have any interest in that, in how it is that they get their information. But I don't think that you can do this by putting everyone in the same box, because I will say that the people that I have met who I would say have the most confidence about their leadership, even though human beings are going to hear criticism and react to it, they really don't care about about criticism unless it's coming from people they truly respect. And if it's them hearing something they believe to be ill informed or uneducated, they may fight against that because they're like, really? It's your job to build a bridge to explain to people how it is. I come by my expertise and you're that ill informed. So they might hear something and object to an accuracy in it. But I have found that the people I know the most, that I would respect the most in this industry, they only care about criticism when it comes from people they in turn actually respect as authorities and then disagree with them on something.
- [10:00]
A
I get that. I think that's a reasonable, rational perspective. But I don't know, man. I think about how Ryan colangelo, the former 76ers executive, had burner accounts online and this was seen as like, ah, he's so what a whack job. He's so extreme. And then you realize how many people actually in this business are doing maybe not as recklessly that, but doing a version of that.
- [10:24]
B
Meaning, do you think McVeigh, like, you been around the Rams? I would assume that someone like McVeigh might have an objection to something you say because he respects you. He knows that the knowledge is real, he knows that the care is real, but he doesn't care whether somebody else on around the Horn who's just giving the opinion of the day says that he's a bum. Does he? Someone like that, someone who's had real success, real confidence at an early age?
- [10:50]
C
Yeah, I think he and people of I guess are similar coaches or front office types are a little bit are dialed into what like Peter King writes what we say maybe on NFL Live, perhaps in a way that they don't care. Like, I don't think Sean McVeigh is on the Internet. I don't think he cares what's said about him on some of the shows that are less, I guess, specific, shall we say? Which kind of goes back to what I was saying, Dan. Like, it really is. I think different people in the sports world care about different things, different voices, and different voices matter to them. I do think, though, like, to Pablo's point, there are a lot of guys who we would respect or hold in pretty high esteem who are very online. And I know that just personally because I've been shocked by it as well. Conversations I've had. I. I've tried to be a little bit more careful at times because I. I've had conversations with, you know, people in front offices, and we go to Indianapolis every year for the combine, which is sort of where everybody interacts, where they'll reference something I tweeted. And I. It never even occurred to me that it would cross that many levels to reach someone, but it does.
- [12:07]
A
I also think that it's worth sort of big picture establishing how much the media has become a really overlapping circle when it comes to who sports teams are hiring to very important jobs.
- [12:21]
C
Yeah.
- [12:22]
A
And we can go to JJ Redick with the Lakers. We can go to the revolving door of executives who wind up Bob Myers, all of these people in the NBA, and there's more obviously in football than baseball. But there was a naivete that I had early in the business where I was like, look, having seen the inside of a newsroom, I can only imagine what it's like when you get into a front office and how different it is and have access to all the different and better information. And I think as time has gone on and as the Internet, of course, and like, more sophisticated reporting and analysis has, has also been published, it's become obvious that there's actually very little distinction, or at least a shockingly small distinction, between what you can access as a consumer who gets maybe publicly available or at least premium subscription stuff from, like, data sites and newsletter versus what people who run teams are consuming themselves.
- [13:15]
B
Mina, I would assume that you have run into some of what I'm about to say, which is whether it's conference commissioners or athletic directors or some people who come by power in executive roles, how they've just been around for a ton of time and they might not actually know more than some of the people who are covering the sports with the most hustle. Right. That they've just arrived at a leadership position. After many years. That is given through longevity and through expertise. Expertise. And maybe those are the people that would be most sensitive to media criticism. Because I'm telling you that my experience with the McVeighs of the world is no man. I'm truly confident. I have had success. I believe I know more than everyone because I get that validated a lot. My successes on top of each other represent real confidence. And so I'm not going to actually be bothered. No matter how much Mina and Harvard boy and Lebanon think they know. I'm not going to be bothered that they know more than I do about.
- [14:13]
C
Something I do not. My experience is it does not correlate with success or intelligence. McVeigh is. I don't think he's online so that, you know, you may bring that up. But I'm telling you, Dan, there are a lot of very successful people in football who are very online or who pay attention to people. I'm shocked that they care about their opinions. I don't think it has anything to do with like reaching a certain mountaintop. I think different people are just built differently. Like why is Kevin Durant our greatest poster in most online? You know, he is an incredible player but he, you see him responding to people and engaging and he's very like dialed into that. I just think that's his personality. And I think there's people in football, there's people at very high levels. I am telling you there are very successful GMs who I know for a fact see everything and read everything and then there are ones who don't. I, I think it's just we always talk about this, you know, with ourselves or people in our industry. Like who's online? Are you reading it? Are you? I, I don't think that you can draw, paint a broad brush when you talk about why people care about others opinions or why they're dialed in. I really think some people are just have different psychological makeups that make them more curious, who make them want to sort of touch the third rail and you know, maybe even like listen, we're talking about being online listen to local radio. I there, there are GMs and coaches who do that. It shocks me.
- [15:39]
A
Jerry Jones still goes on local radio. Right. And maybe it's because he's of that generation, but it's also because I think even the wealthiest people and I hear, I've talked to owners who are like consuming stuff, you know, like billionaires.
- [15:52]
C
Yeah.
- [15:53]
A
And the reason I say like even the billionaires do it is because this feels like a larger thing broadly, about what media is. So media, Dan, you know, has been hollowed out, degraded, is. Is ever more marginalized, but at the same time, it still represents the industry that is most synonymous with public opinion and influence. And if you're a billionaire, I don't think it's a coincidence that this is why Elon Musk bought Twitter. This is why Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post. This is why all of these people who have everything seem to not be able to buy approval. They can't buy the coverage that they want. They can't get it from people who seem to be withholding it. And therefore, they are cast, of course, as antagonistic and unfair to them. I think that the media, for all of its marginalization, still exists as such a boogeyman in the minds of people who seem to have everything else, who are above all of this, but because they hear it, they have a very human response that makes us all a version of Kevin Durant. Honestly, we're all so much more like these people that seem to be unusually online.
- [16:58]
C
Some people just really want to be loved. And, yes, some people are more attuned to that. I want to flip it, though, Dan, because, yes, there are McPhees and certain people that, you know, who only listen to people they respect. But I think we all agree there's a pretty large section of sports executives, coaches, players, whatever, who see what's said about them, who pay attention to sports media. So accepting that as a given from our side, do you care? Does it affect how you talk about things, knowing that if you say something about the Heat, Pat Riley's gonna hear it or whatever? I mean, that's obviously a unique case, but I'm just saying, like, because I actually now, knowing that, it's very interesting to me to see how it affects the way certain people in sports media talk about certain teams. It's kind of fun sometimes to try to read the tea leaves and figure out, who is this for. Why is this tone being taken? Because it's not always for the mainstream audience.
- [17:56]
B
I think we should always have that, Governor. Right? The faceless cruelty that emboldens people all over the Internet to say things they would never say to a human being to their face just because it's indecent? We should always carry ourselves with what used to be the newspaper principle of if you write the column excoriating someone, you show up in that locker room the next day, you do not hide from that. You do not say something on television and then never interact with the people that you are Criticizing. But that is also from a different time. I would say. I would say that sports radio sort of ate up that decency by creating an atmosphere where anyone on a car phone or anyone with a microphone could say anything that fans were thinking that day. And that's where this all got a little bit crueler. I have found, in my experience, I want to talk about people here as if it's going to get back to them, because I don't want to run into somebody that I've said something about. And I feel like hiding under a chair, like, who wants to, who wants to do that? That would feel, I imagine the mirror wouldn't look real good if something like that. Always in my life, that something that I was saying here was coming back to haunt me when I had to deal with the consequences.
- [19:17]
C
I can think of. I, I've had a couple instances like that.
- [19:22]
A
Yeah. What chairs have you guys hidden under? That's the question that I go to next.
- [19:25]
B
I, I, I've hidden from Dave Wanstead. I've hidden, I've physically, I physically hidden from him because of the things that I said about his mustache. Yes. In the Bahamas. He had a cabana in the Bahamas. And I was, like, moving away into a different area. Cause I didn't wanna, I didn't wanna confront him. And it was just mustache jokes.
- [19:46]
A
That's a mustache joke. Sad visual.
- [19:49]
C
At the combine a couple years ago, a few years ago, I can't remember, but it was in the last few years, I met for the first time the GM of a team who I had not met. I'm not going to name him. And I was like, oh, I'm Heena Kai. It's nice to meet you. And I don't know, I always approach these from the standpoint of they have no idea who I am. That's just my, you know, I'm just a person. And he's like, yeah, I know you are, but not in a good tone. Uh, oh, oh, no.
- [20:17]
B
That immediately puts you on the retreat.
- [20:19]
C
And he said, he's like, you know, you've been pretty damn critical of my drafts. And I was like, yeah. And then he actually pantomimed me stomping on his neck and squishing his dress. Like, I was, like a person, I guess, putting out a cigarette. And he did it for, like, two minutes. And I just had to stand there and watch him pantomine. Like, just me destroying his draft. And I walked away. And I was like, what did I really, you know? And I was like, I left it off. In person. And then I remembered I actually put up all of his drafts on a full screen and just on it on TV for like three minutes. Being wrong, failure, wrong, wrong. So he was actually right.
- [21:05]
B
Mina. I actually thought of that example. Not all of those details, but I did think to myself when you were talking about where and how GMs would care about this, the thing that you triggered as a thought process for me. Well, of course, if a GM cares that deeply invested in self worth and work that job, then he would find people who care similarly in the media and care about those opinions. If the following factors were true. Job is incredibly subjective. Do you know how hard it is, no matter how much data I have to do correctly what Mina is asking me to do? And do you know how easy it is to criticize me when you may have a ton of information, but you don't have as much as I do because your entire livelihood isn't based on me having to select this one player based on the sensors that he's got in his pads that my advanced scouting department from, you know, three months of budget has been telling me about and pressuring me to hire. When the owner says I should pick somebody else, like I understand why that person would think, how dare you question my expertise at something that's this unscientific.
- [22:11]
C
And I could never do what they. People sometimes ask me, oh, do you want to work for your team? Absolutely not. It's so hard. My job is just, I'm criticizing it and Monday morning quarterbacking it. I, yeah, I fully respect what, you know, he does is very, very, very difficult, but he did not do it very well for a very long time.
- [22:33]
A
What I want people to appreciate though, right? Is that even information beyond opinion, information like the Newsbreakers, Schefter, Woj, pick your favorite giant account, that's from a clearinghouse of information. Those people have such tremendous power and influence when it comes to just how currency is information in that sport. I raise you this question. Do you think there's a person who runs a team who does not leak to somebody? Do you think there's a person who's like, you know what, I'm not doing the anonymous source thing. I believe that. Exactly. Mina's pantomiming is zero. Everybody has.
- [23:13]
B
I'm glad for that clarification because it did not look that like that's what she was pantomiming. That is not. That is not what that looked like, Dan.
- [23:23]
A
It looked like what the GM yelling at her was pantomiming what he felt like as she was criticizing him.
- [23:30]
C
No, I think it's what he wants from the media is what I was.
- [23:33]
B
Pantomiming.
- [23:35]
C
And I'm not gonna give it to ya. This is something that we have kind of had an ongoing conversation on this podcast about and I actually sort of alluded to this but as like a tangent and I thought this would be a good opportunity to elaborate on the headline is Is Google SEO gaslighting the Internet? I was in the New Yorker. It's by Kyle Chayka who writes a lot about this stuff, has a book about it. I believe this article was specifically about just I guess to sum it up how search has gotten terrible and increasingly useless for a number of reasons. He uses anecdote of a woman who operates a. A air purifier website that you know, where they, they specialized in it, they cater to SEO, they do good work and have been increasingly punished in Google results as sort of, you know, indicative of this larger trend where you just can't find stuff on the Internet because it's being taken over like SEO, which is always, you know, it's been a thing for a long time but now increasingly it's being exploited by useless websites. Topping that Google now adds this like this like half baked AI terrible. It's not an option. They force it on you at the top which many people, myself included have found pretty useless. This is sort of indicative or rather reflects a lot of broader trends. Obviously AI I think the general. They call it the inshitification of the Internet but basically you know, it's something you see with social media. I think you see it with websites like Amazon where these companies as who. Who are basically monopolies have become less and less likely to cater to the actual needs of the people who use them online. Twitter is the example. A lot of people go to website that's become really trash. But Google is an interesting one to me because it's been so. It was almost synonymous with the Internet for me. And reading this I felt it really cohered with my personal experience of it. An example, this is kind of. It's very Dan like in that it's. I come across as like a pretty. A doddering boomer in this story.
- [26:12]
A
But Dan has put on his glasses for this segment by the way, just for the record.
- [26:16]
C
Okay, so. So the other day I was trying to figure out can you find the identity of a person based on their license plate? I won't clarify why but.
- [26:27]
A
Oh God.
- [26:28]
C
Simple question people.
- [26:29]
A
Is Mina beefing with on a regular basis?
- [26:32]
B
It is. I'VE I've always thought that you can find someone's identity from their license plate, but I don't know how.
- [26:39]
C
It's funny that Pablo used the word beef because I was thinking about the, the show Beef where one of the characters literally buys the identity of someone based on their license plate.
- [26:47]
B
Great show, by the way. Great show. We should recommend that it is, it is very good on Netflix.
- [26:52]
C
So I couldn't figure it out from Googling it because all the results on top were just websites to buy it. But the websites to buy it based on the search results, it looks like a thing you could buy. I bought one for a dollar trial.
- [27:06]
A
Oh no.
- [27:06]
C
It turned out you can't buy it. But then the next Google result was like, no, no, this time you really can. So I bought that one for $10 again, cannot buy it. So I ended up spending $11 on this just because I could not figure it out based on Google search results. And I feel like that's just so true now when you Google anything.
- [27:28]
B
I thought she was, I could figure anything out. I thought she was scamming sucker proof like she can. I. I did not think that it would be easy. As easy to trick Mina on the Internet as it is to me to trick me, Pablo.
- [27:41]
A
So Google does suck. So wait, but Dan, I want to. I want to define what insidification is. This was what the American Dialect Society recognized as the word of the year in 2023. And I wish that we could have left it back then. It turns out this is actually the story of all the things we use in tech. And it's basically the story of how a company, a tech company will design a product that's so actually useful to its consumers that everybody starts to use it. This is Google, right? Which has basically become a. The closest thing we have to a public utility online like Sear. That's what we've turned to because they made search really good. But at a certain point, all these tech companies, it sounds like, were making a decision to prioritize the user experience over what they would eventually need, which is to actually make as much money as they wanted. And now we're at the stage of all of these companies are like, time to cash in. We have all of the users captive, we have the people that we need using our product, and now they're deciding to make them worse. Because the way to actually make the money is to stop making it as useful to people, to prioritize sponsored search results, to prioritize the people paying you to get in front of your eyeballs. Whereas it used to be the thing that actually was what you wanted to find, now it's a thing where it's pay for play. And this is true of Airbnb and Amazon and Facebook and Google and Twitter and arguably Netflix, YouTube, Reddit, Uber. All of these things have become worse because they have a critical mass of users and now they don't need to care about it acquisition of customers anymore as much.
- [29:13]
B
And furthermore, Google also owns YouTube. Lest you think that their power is just over there with Google, they have an influence that is terrifying to me for a number of reasons, not the least of which is I come from exiles, I come from communism, I come from a childhood that has a whole lot of propaganda in it and the warnings of it. And those fears seem realized in the modern age when corporations are doing things like this. To reiterate some of what Mina's saying there, okay, the Department of Justice did take Google to trial for having a monopoly. And this article is saying basically that Google reps regularly lie, mislead or omit information, Right? So if you're thinking about this as it got together in 1998 in a perfectly resourceful way, let's just gather and organize the world's information. If they've gotten so good at that since 1998, Mina, that it is now a utility that we all need. If they've done that in whatever it is years, what do you imagine the next 26 years of this is going to look like? If we got it right for 26 years, but now capitalism is going to take over now tech company and the hedge fund and need to just gobble up every inefficiency everywhere because the main currency is always going to be currency, not attention. And Google is. It is a monopoly. Like, that's not. That's not up for debate. I don't even know who you'd go to second anymore.
- [30:41]
C
More. I. I listened to a great podcast on that topic, Dan, which is kind of like what's next with if the Internet is this useless. It was Ezra Klein episode with, I believe his name is Neelay Patel. He's the editor of the Verge.
- [30:55]
A
The Verge.
- [30:56]
C
And he talked about the possibility of there almost being two Internets like. Like a second smaller Internet that's actually useful and not for everything but for some things. And I think there is something to that because Pablo, you were listing all the sites that have gotten worse, but one that I find myself increasingly using because it has been a little bit more impervious to algorithmic influence is Reddit I am, oh boy, a Redditor now.
- [31:30]
A
Oh boy.
- [31:31]
C
And I know that there's some really horrible toxic corners of it, no doubt. But there's two things that I really, that, that I find harder to use on the websites I did before that I have gone to Reddit for. One is like discussions of TV shows. Twitter is now basically useless for trending topics because you click on a trending topic and it's just crap. Whereas Reddit, I can go to a TV show's thread like the Dragon show and it's funny and there's good. Everything I want is there the Dragon show, just saying. So there's that aspect of it. But perhaps more importantly, to answer basic questions, you know, searching my kid, you know, something is stuck up his nose, do I need to go to the emergency room? You know, Google's now basically useless. I have found like actually concrete good information on Reddit threads because they're actually written by humans. I know that there's some AI dabbling around the corners of it, but for the most part now it's, it's still one of the very few places on the Internet where you can actually find humans talking about.
- [32:35]
A
But that smacks of such a desperation more than it is like a thing I want to credit Reddit for. It's just that at we've gotten to a point where the places we used to look for human reviews have now become so hard to trust. Partly because by the way, like this is a story of the insertification of Twitter, right? Obviously we all know this. The people who pay for the verified thing are now at the top of the comments section. So you can't even get to the things that like seemingly more normal actual people are posting. And so Reddit does not have that. And so it's sort of like, like in the land of the blind, the one eyed commenter is king. Like I. Part of me is also because a lot of this is about where can we get a bunch of people talking like humans again. It makes me think about how social media moved us away from websites into these platforms and now the websites, when I try to go back to them, are just impossible to find. And it's, it does call for like are what are we? What's the next product? When, when, when Mina talks about the second smaller Internet, I'm intrigued. And my intrigue is only stopped by the fact that that sounds like a scam that I might sign up for which I give my credit card information for a site that promised me a better Internet.
- [33:49]
B
Mina is going to pretend to have seen this movie, whether she has or she hasn't. But if you've seen Demolition man, what she's describing as the Redditors are the Dennis Leary renegade community that lives in the sewage system of sylv. Sylvester Stallone's view of the future with Sandra Bullock. You're saying you go to Reddit to get the real from the dirty humans who are still out there not being artificial intelligence. And it may be you said toxic corners in Reddit. My God, there's so much more real estate than the corners that is toxic in Reddit. But the fact that you found some human purity somewhere there that offers you solace is funny.
- [34:30]
C
But the thing is about Reddit and the toxic corners is you can avoid them. You don't, you know, like, whereas I think on these other. What, like Twitter, TikTok or whatever, it's unavoidable. And when you use it right, it's. It's thrown at you. Actually, when Twitter changed to where you said the first comment is like a crappy, you know, blue check comment, it is like if you set your Reddit to always have the least upvoted comment, which is not a thing anyone does. It's kind of like the Internet used to be this incredible grocery store where you could go and you could pick out the things you want to make a great meal, and you had this wonderful. It was like the promise of. It was like, oh, my God, you have all of this choice. You have everything from all over the world, and now it's just somebody chewing up gruel and spitting it into your mouth. That's Twitter, at least. And yeah, the devilish demand which I have not seen. But the analogy sounds good. I truly have been able to find conversations between real moms talking about their experience. So I just traveled with my kid for the first time ever, and let me tell you, so much good advice from that part of the Internet, because there aren't websites that I can find good stuff anymore. Every parenting website is bought out by affiliate links, and it's paid for by you. You're like, oh, this looks like a good product. Turns out the website is obviously sponsored by the product and whatnot. Social media is useless. It is literally the only place where I can find good parenting advice.
- [36:00]
A
Now I just like how in the cinematic story that Mina's trying to tell us, only. Only now is she becoming a strange Internet creature. Meanwhile, Mina established that the reason she doesn't trust Google anymore is because she was trying to buy the information of whose license plate Is this as if that's not a thing a person with an insane personal vendetta who should not be trusted on the Internet Internet would be doing.
- [36:28]
C
I'll tell you guys why. Offline.
- [36:43]
B
Can we get to the Raw Dogging? Finally, we get to the Raw Dogging. It is an article by Kate Lindsay, and it's why men are raw dogging flights. And basically, this is an unpleasant verb. There's a picture here of Idris Elba on the show that Pablo likes Hijack, which is basically, he's very restless once they take the phone away from him. Because what do you do when you're addicted to the phone and you're on one of these long flights? I'm about to fly for 24 hours here, and I don't believe that I have the strength, stamina, the will to do what raw dogging is represented by here, which is to just look at. At the map the entire time you're flying. To not be on the Internet, not be connected to anything, not interact with others, just go into some sort of trance where you just bore yourself for 24 hours as a matter of will. I could not do this. I find myself all the time reaching for my phone, reaching for other things, other stimuli. But I can see when I read some about it, how it could be meditative to some. If you can find yourself in some, you know, trance of serenity where you could do breathing exercises or something else, to be 100% present instead of, you know, doing what I do, which is trying to figure out how to play the Tetris with my remote control, I don't think that that's the best use of time. But you guys, neither one of you can imagine yourselves doing something like this, right? On a long flight, seven hours, no reading, no connection to anything.
- [38:18]
A
So I was just going to. I was in Europe. I was in France last week, back and forth about, you know, seven hours or so. And the. The level of anger that I felt when the Wi Fi wasn't working was Mina Times googling license plate levels of just fury. I hate this idea. I do not relate to it. Except Mina in the aspirational sense, which is that this is mostly a story. If we're translating this, really about how desperate people actually are to, like, be off their phones and they're looking for some sort of, like, excuse or this framework in which maybe now I can be the person that I cannot be when I'm left my own literal devices on the ground. They're like, what if I tried this radical experiment of you know, revisiting what it's like to have an imagination that feels like what the story is about.
- [39:08]
C
Yeah. It's the kind of story that inevitably inspires a lot of people talking about. About how it's such a sad commentary on man, modern existence that no one can even imagine going seven hours without their phone as they tweet it out on, you know, their devices to brag about how. How evolved or enlightened they are as not being people who aren't addicted to the Internet. It's also a story that, by the way, went viral just because people like to say raw dogging. I just want to say that, yeah, I don't think I'm Dan if not for Rodbd dog. I don't.
- [39:40]
A
I don't know if Dan has ever heard that term before. I believe he's using it in a way that is very dangerous in the.
- [39:46]
B
Have heard of. Yes, I do know what that phrase means. I don't know why you would think.
- [39:52]
C
Why, why, why are you defending that? You know, this. I don't want to say.
- [39:57]
A
Yeah, I don't know what. This is a weird. This is a weird hill for Dan to defend.
- [40:00]
C
I was being sarcastic, but there is something to it. I, like you, like everybody, have had moments where I've been disgusted with my, certainly my addiction to my phone, but I would say worried about my reduced attention span generally. That is something that bothers me. I think it is something that should bother pretty much everybody. And like you said, Pablo, this story is sort of really a prism to consider that more than it is a starting point for a discussion on whether or not any of us are capable of doing this on a plane. We can talk about that. I find that for me, it is a good exercise to take to force, and I do have to force myself, which is what's being described here, to be away from not just the phone, but the Internet for X period of time, especially if I want to think through something or have or be creative. When I was a writer, actually, I loved flights or Amtraks without wi fi because it would honestly be one of the very few places where I. I found myself doing my best writing and most likely to get something done for exactly this reason. That's very different from what's being described here. But I think the thrust of it is the same, which is because we have so much distraction at our fingertips all the time, it does render us incapable of certain types of thought and mental exploration.
- [41:32]
A
Dan, we're seeing products all of the time now being sold by the way sometimes in sponsored links elevated to the top was Google search results, where it's like, hey, what we're selling now is effectively a digital camera where you can't see the photos that you're taking. So that you have to sort of like almost go back to the analog world of you'll find them when they get developed later. I'm seeing people buy phones that don't have color, where they're like, they're a black and white, almost like brick phone, I think it's called, or something like that, where it's like all you could do is text on it. I'm seeing products like, hey, here's a. Basically a typewriter, where it's like all you can do is type and see the words and there's nothing else on the screen. And it all feels like a way of us trying to sell ourselves what used to be the case, because the pendulum finally feels like it's swinging. But as a former writer, all of us, all of us qualify as that. I do relate to how sometimes, sometimes my brain being left alone was the only way that I would get inspiration. Like, what an thing I'm about to say. But like, sometimes the muse only visits you when you know you're sort of unoccupied.
- [42:47]
B
It is an thing to say, but the part of this that I find speaks to me. And what Mina is saying is that all three of us, as you said, used to be writers. All three of us have forsaken that in search of the cotton candy that gives us an assortment of fulfillments now. But all three of us have lives that are sprinting on a treadmill on the content machine, because this is what ESPN has birthed of writers is three people who spend a lot of time on this particular treadmill making things. And I just realized with what Mina said that on Wednesday, Juneteenth was a Wednesday, and I had it off in the middle of the week, which I cannot remember when I had a day off and the number of times that I had the thought, oh my God, God, I have time to think. I have not had time to think. It was a. It was a revelation not but a couple of weeks ago, Mina, of what it is that you're articulating, which is if you slow it down for a second and you remove the distractions. Because I've tried all sorts of stuff, breath work, meditation stuff to stop the spinning fishing reel that just sends wire out to sea all the time. And it was in having a day off, off a national holiday forced upon me That I noticed what it is that you're talking about. And it's something I've lost from writing because I wrote four days a week. There were three days to think that's gone. ESPN makes you work 300 shows a week or 300 shows a year that feel like 300 shows a week. You guys have all lived in this space. I'm guessing that you have less time to think than you've ever had because you have to be taught talking and there's no time to think when you're talking all the time.
- [44:36]
C
I don't have less time to think because I'm on TV for an hour a day. I have less time to think because I'm addicted to the Internet. I am not going to for dead Mike, which I think is true of probably a lot of the listeners. Probably just this is a facet of modern life. I don't think this is an extreme example the seven hour plus flight without the Internet. But I do think there is great mental utility in of terms to bake in baking time into your day, Even if it's 10 minute walk with your dog or whatever where you are disconnected from anything and you have in your brain has to go in certain directions. I think I've found that my creativity and problem solving is stunted when I don't bake any time like that into my day.
- [45:32]
A
I feel like we're pretty close to a world where there's going to be some tech startup that is literally just trying to sell us our imagination back to us. Where it's like imagine I were to tell you you can envision any pornographic situation that you wanted. Imagine you could have the life that you dreamed if you only had the power. Power to close your eyes and dream.
- [46:00]
B
I think it's weird. It's weird, Mina, that. That he made a pornographic.
- [46:04]
C
No, I know.
- [46:05]
B
Weird that he made it pornographic.
- [46:07]
C
Honestly, I'm just shocked he didn't say Raw dogging the muse.
- [46:10]
A
That was the kicker of my speech you interrupted.
- [46:13]
B
Sorry, sorry.
- [46:15]
A
God damn it.
- [46:16]
B
Raw dogging the museum foreign.
- [46:31]
A
What did we find out today, guys? I feel like something that I found out immediately is that we're perpetually in a therapy group that we've assembled about our cell phone addiction. That's very clear.
- [46:40]
B
It seems like.
- [46:41]
A
Listen to these episodes.
- [46:42]
B
It seems like we're talking about that a lot and I spent a lot of time here. Yeah, I keep getting scared of the future while presently living in the future every week.
- [46:57]
C
Dan, can you. Can you raw dog the. The. Your flight for an Hour and report back with results.
- [47:04]
B
I could do. I can do an hour. I can do breath work. I can do breath work for an hour.
- [47:08]
C
Much longer than mental STD check.
- [47:12]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [47:15]
C
I have learned that you guys are. Are afraid of Reddit, but I'm not downvoting you.
- [47:22]
B
You are braver than we are. You are tougher than we are. You have lived in that septic system with your peris cope and Dennis Leary and all your pregnant moms that are giving you good advice.
- [47:32]
C
When your kid hasn't in four days, you'll do whatever it takes to find out how to make him.
- [47:38]
A
I'd ask Jeeves.
- [47:39]
C
Yeah, bring back Jeeves.
- [47:40]
A
Jeeves, can you help my kid poop?
- [47:42]
B
Four days?
- [47:45]
A
Oh, God. I do. Mina, there is nothing like seeing the compacted feces of a baby after four days of not putting pooping. It is a geological survey. You will see layers. You'll see like a mantle, a crust. It's a remarkable thing.
- [48:03]
B
Come on, come on. We didn't need the crust. It's a good word, but it's not necessary. There. A mantle, a mantle and a crust.
- [48:13]
C
The shared triumph in a. In a. In a couple. By the way, I know I. I admitted to gaslighting my husband about seeing movies we haven't seen and that that might set us back, but you know what'll bring us back? When the kid poops after four days and we look at each other, that high five has never felt so good.
- [48:32]
A
Dan, before you go off on a. On a flight across the world, what did you find out?
- [48:40]
B
Well, I. What I found out, and unfortunately I found it out before we even started this, that when I'm trying to connect with friends and people I love over content that I think we would all enjoy, they've never watched what it is that I've watched. And furthermore, they judge me as viewing sad things that they wouldn't watch because their judgment is better than mine, or they wouldn't watch the same things I would. I just thought that this was a place we connected, and it hurts to find out here that you guys are secretly mocking me about it.
- [49:17]
A
Hear that sound? Oh, that's not a tr.
- [49:20]
B
That's not a grief eating truffle.
- [49:23]
A
The grief eating truffle. Big is back. Who invited him?
- [49:26]
B
No.
- [49:34]
A
This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out a Meadowlark Media production and I'll talk to you next time.
- [49:51]
C
Sam.