*PREVIEW* Invasion of the Corgi Snatchers feat. Wendy Liu

Summary

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TRASHFUTURE: PREVIEW Invasion of the Corgi Snatchers feat. Wendy Liu

Release Date: July 24, 2026
Theme:
A wry, critical exploration of how AI startups are attempting to “optimize” every facet of social and business interactions, using examples of agentic business cards, AI-dominated networking, and the erosion of basic human connection in the marketplace—all with TRASHFUTURE’s signature sarcasm, skepticism, and humor. Special guest Wendy Liu joins the regular hosts for this discussion.

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Overview of Episode

In this episode, the TRASHFUTURE crew, with guest Wendy Liu, lampoon the increasingly absurd intrusion of artificial intelligence into ordinary social and business life. The conversation focuses on the emergence of “agentic” tech—AI-powered business cards and decision-making assistants—and the psychological and social consequences of outsourcing basic interaction and judgment to digital agents. The hosts expand these observations into broader commentary on AI-driven companies with dubious value propositions (“Corgi,” an AI insurer, figures as a key satirical target), interrogating the capitalist incentives behind these trends.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The “Agentic Business Card” & the Futility of AI Networking

(00:00–03:30)

• Pitch of the Week:
  The team discusses a real AI startup, “Purpose Labs,” aiming to revolutionize networking via an “agentic business card”—a digital tool where agents on your phone talk to others’ agents to negotiate value, introductions, and favors.
• Riley’s Reaction:
  “Sorry, sorry, sorry. Their market is everything. They want to be every interaction with people.” (00:43)
• Skepticism from the Team:
  The hosts and Wendy agree that such attempts miss the essence of networking—trust, reciprocity, shared context—and instead try to treat social relationships as programmable transactions:
  • “This stuff runs on trust…you’re not going to just do a favor for some random guy you met at a conference that you tap…your agentic business card together.” — Unnamed Tech Enthusiast (00:52)
• Comic Scenarios:
  Imaginary scenarios follow—a conference at the Great Wolf Lodge, Sheboygan, where business deals are dictated by AI cards, and absurdities like AI advice on which water slide to ride.

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2. Proliferation and Consolidation of AI “Agents”

(03:30–03:45)

• Meta-Agent Satire:
  Wendy jokes about needing another app to consolidate the conflicting instructions from various AI apps:
  • “…what I’m proposing is an app that aggregates all the things that tell me what to do, and then tells me what to actually do.” (03:30)
  • “It’s one agent that I implant into my brain and it drives me around like a little car.” (03:41)

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3. AI as a Crutch for Basic Social Function

(03:46–06:45)

• Anecdote: The Dad’s WhatsApp Argument:
  The group discusses a real-life episode where two dads in a WhatsApp group used Claude and ChatGPT to argue for them about the best local bakery, rather than speaking for themselves.
  • “For three days these people have been arguing, but they’re not arguing themselves. They’re using AIs to argue against each other.” — Unnamed Observer (04:20)
  • “Even in the most mundane aspects of everyday life, people have decided they no longer know how to do very basic things and need AIs to do it for them.” — Unnamed Observer (05:26)
• Old School vs. New School:
  Reflection on how, in previous generations, dads would settle disputes physically or just “go for a pint,” versus now, where even conflict is outsourced to automation.

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4. Surveillance, Self-Optimization, and the Loss of Spontaneity

(06:46–08:11)

• Wall Street Journal Story:
  Riley cites a tech founder who records all her conversations at conferences using an AI pin, and even analyzes her own dating performance with Claude:
  • “Chang has also taken the recording to most of her first dates… once the date is through, she has her feed automatically sent to Anthropic’s Claude to report back on how she did … can I be more engaging or empathetic?” (07:26–07:56)
• Wendy’s Critique:
  “I miss when these people were just trying to fool everybody in the world by like making something where the actual product was the stock valuation. Right now they’re trying to erode the human soul and make money off the actual valuation in the stock price.” (07:56)

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5. The “Corgi” Satire: AI Insurers & Value Without Substance

(08:11–09:55)

• Corgi—AI Insurer:
  The hosts mock “Corgi,” a company claiming to be a “full stack AI insurer” but lacking transparency on key decisions and risks (such as mental health fallout from chatbot usage).
  • Riley: “…they say we’re a full stack AI insurer, but a human makes every decision. Which one is it?” (08:11)
• Sky-High Valuations, Absurd Promises:
  The group questions how such companies double in valuation with no real deliverables, mocking the idea of companies insuring against the very negative consequences of their own (or similar) AI products.
• Quibi-Style Distraction:
  Wendy invents the “taste app” telling users what “quibs” (short videos, likely referencing Quibi) to watch, purportedly as a mental health intervention.
  • “If you’re listening to the show, you can never die because there are so many quibs to watch.” — Wendy (09:25)
  • Riley: “If I have, like, a friend who’s, like, really, really down, I’m like, no, you can’t. You have so many quibs.” (09:30)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Their market is everything. They want to be every interaction with people.” — Riley (00:43)
• “You’re not going to just do a favor for some random guy you met at a conference that you tap…your agentic business card together.” — Unnamed Tech Enthusiast (00:52)
• “It’s one agent that I implant into my brain and it drives me around like a little car.” — Wendy (03:41)
• “For three days these people have been arguing, but they’re not arguing themselves. They’re using AIs to argue against each other.” — Unnamed Observer (04:20)
• “I miss when these people were just trying to fool everybody in the world by like making something where the actual product was the stock valuation. Right now they’re trying to erode the human soul and make money off the actual valuation in the stock price.” — Wendy (07:56)
• “If you’re listening to the show, you can never die because there are so many quibs to watch.” — Wendy (09:25)

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Key Timestamps

• 00:00–00:10: Introduction to “agentic business card” and concept pitch
• 00:52–03:30: Critique of AI networking, imagined business conference scenes
• 03:30–03:46: Meta-agent and “one agent to rule them all” jokes
• 04:16–06:45: AI arguments in WhatsApp dad groups, reflection on lost social skills
• 06:46–08:11: The “emotionally supportive surveillance state”—recording every interaction
• 08:11–09:55: Critique of “Corgi” AI insurer, tech valuation satire, and “quib” distractions

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Tone and Style

The discussion remains deeply irreverent, rich with deadpan asides, sarcastic hypotheticals, and dystopian humor, all underscoring genuine skepticism about tech industry motives and social impact.

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Summary Takeaway

The episode is a sharp, entertaining dissection of how technology—AI in particular—is not only commodifying human interaction but, in the process, threatening to erase its meaning. Through concrete (often absurd) examples and rapid-fire wit, TRASHFUTURE and Wendy Liu argue that a society guided by agents and optimized networking becomes one fundamentally unable to trust, connect, or even argue without digital mediation. If we cannot even decide what cake is best or how to make friends without an AI’s permission, what’s left to insure? The only thing growing is the stock price—and, perhaps, the existential dread.

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Transcript

[Riley]

I was going to do a funny little ha ha moment, but I'm not going to do that because I need you to say more about agentic business card right away. We're finally getting a fucking gen alpha. Patrick Bateman.

[Wendy]

Great.

[Unnamed Tech Enthusiast]

Different. It's different. Yes, exactly. Exactly. So he started his pitch by saying, you know, doesn't it suck when you go to a professional networking event, you add someone on LinkedIn and then the connection dies like nothing ever happens. What if what's missing is, oh, my

[Riley]

God, I fucking hate these people?

[Unnamed Tech Enthusiast]

The idea. Okay, so Purpose Labs is what they're called. They're building an agentic business card. You tap your phone and your agent has conversation with the other person's agent about how you can add value to each other. Who are the people you can introduce? What favors can you do for each other? Their market is huge because trillions of interactions happen at business events.

[Riley]

Sorry, sorry, sorry. Their market is everything. They want to be every interaction with people.

[Unnamed Tech Enthusiast]

Riley, listen, they're going to be the next LinkedIn. They want to be the operating system of every business relationship in the AGI world. I wrote this down word for word. They're going to have a physical card eventually, but at some, for now, it's just like a digital card. And it's. It's so funny because I think these people don't really understand what networking is and what relationships are because, like, this stuff runs on trust. This stuff runs on, like, reciprocity and trust and a sense of, we're in this together, we know each other. You're not going to just do a favor for some random guy you met at a conference that you tap, is that you tap your gentic business cards together. I mean, like, maybe these people would. But, like, that's not how these things actually work in the real world. Mm.

[Riley]

Imagine. Imagine. Imagine you are at, I don't know, for my mind always goes to H Vac when I want to. Imagine, like a normal business, right? Imagine you're at, like an H VAC conference in, I don't know, Des Moines. Yeah. You're at an H Vac conference in Sheboygan.

[Wendy]

Sure.

[Riley]

Right. They've taken over the Great Wolf Lodge in Sheboygan. And it's like one hour until water slide time, but first you have to get through the networking breakfast. And again, these people, these people are all probably pretty wealthy, right? If you own a regional H VAC installer, you probably have a couple million dollars in liquid cash. You own your own house and, like, you have, like, Lamborghini Money.

[Wendy]

Liquid cash is what they call it when I use it to go on the water slide.

[Riley]

Yeah, right, are. And also a lot of these businesses are businesses that might like, they might have a website or an Instagram page if the guy's nephew set it up for him. But like, their reason that their targets for private equity to buy is that they tend to like not have CRMs. They tend to not have a lot of online, but they just have all these customers that they've worked with basically forever, but they continue to work with. And that's like a huge amount of the economy is that kind of thing. Especially as it's experienced by people and the idea that they're. You're trying to. As you. I think you alluded to this, Wendy. They're trying to solve a problem for themselves. But like imagine, imagine the Great Wolf Lodge in Sheboygan. And, and these are just guys who, whose businesses barely have websites going up to each other. Like, yeah, the. My business card said that we should go down the flume, the log flume ride together. So I guess let's go do that.

[Wendy]

What if. Okay, now here's a problem that I think maybe I can start a company to solve, which is we tap business cards. It says to go on that slide over there, but then I pull up my other AI app that tells me what taste to have and it tells me to go on a different slide.

[Riley]

So I think these agents, what I'm

[Wendy]

proposing is an app that aggregates all the things that I've got that tell me what to do and then tells me what to actually do.

[Unnamed Tech Enthusiast]

Just the one AI. The one agent to solve them all?

[Wendy]

Yeah, it's one agent that I implant into my brain and it drives me around like a little car.

[Riley]

Perfect.

[Unnamed Observer]

I mean, that's effectively what they're sort of working towards, right? Like that. Because underlying all of this is just this sense of like, okay, for whatever reason, these people have sort of decided that they no longer know how to interact with each other. And I think this is sort of very common in just every aspect of AI use in general. You know, not to sort of bring it down to like a very hyper local level, but there is like an argument going on in my local dad's WhatsApp group. And both people love the local dad.

[Riley]

I love the local dad's WhatsApp.

[Unnamed Observer]

This has been going on for three fucking days, right? For three days these people have been arguing, but they're not arguing themselves. They're using AIs to argue against each other.

[Unnamed Tech Enthusiast]

No.

[Unnamed Observer]

And One of them. One of them is using Claude and one of them is using ChatGPT. And, like, it's fucking bizarre because, like, because now you have the data and I'm not sure how many people, like, recognize this AI because there are, like, other dads who are trying to, like, intervene and they're not using AI. And so, like, this very weird sort of, like, argument is kind of happening. And, like, the AIs don't really know what they're arguing about anymore. I didn't want to give them too much agency. The whole thing is really weird.

[Riley]

You probably can't say, what are they arguing about.

[Unnamed Observer]

It began. It began with an argument over where to buy the best slice of cake from among the five bakeries that are in our area.

[Riley]

One of the dads is just like, I'm going to take this motherfucker to school. All right, Claude, you and me.

[Unnamed Observer]

And it's like, something. Some type of argument because, like, one of the independent cafes, like, is apparent. Like, the guy who runs his. I don't want to get into the details, but the point is being that,

[Riley]

like, sorry, that's good.

[Unnamed Observer]

For whatever reason, both of these dads have decided that, like, rather than argue themselves or to, like, do what you used to do when you were a dad, which is to go to a car park and, like, try and fight each other. Realize that, like, you no longer have the strength and you just, like, go for a pint and just get on with your life. Right? Presumably, that's how this stuff works. Instead, they're getting the AIs to fight each other. And I think it's just really sad and kind of weird. And it's one of these sort of reminders that, oh, even in the most kind of mundane aspects of everyday life, people have sort of decided that they no longer know how to do very basic things and they need AIs to kind of do it for them. And then you're sort of explaining on this hyper level that, like, oh, okay, the people who are actually just, like, who have money in this economy have also decided that they don't know how to interact with each other or that normal parts of interaction are no longer efficient or no longer effective for some reason that they can't quite explain. And so they're trying to get their agents to sort of work out what kind of optimal date they should go on to decide if they can do business together. But even that's really weird. And it just does feel like what we're sort of converging towards is actually The Elon Musk kind of idea of what he wants Grok to be, which is like the one AI that tells you how to live your life, but based.

[Riley]

Well, if I can build on that for a moment. I mean, I was going to include this, but I bumped it for time. But I'm going to include a very truncated version of it, which is from a Wall Street Journal article about people recording everything all the time. Emmy Chang, founder of a startup that one invested in by a vc, is also quoted in this article. Provides sales data intelligence, uses AI to describe every conversation she's ever in. At a work conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico in May, Chang wore a small pin with a red light indicating it was recording. Someone who worked at the conference eventually approached her and told her the device was making people uncomfortable. But she found the request to stop recording to be triggering. No, no, she know it's. That's the.

[Wendy]

Literally the words emotional support, surveillance, state.

[Riley]

It's my thing, she says. I'm not attributing who said that. It's for my general knowledge. Chang has also taken the recording to most of her first dates, usually using the transcription tool Granola. She puts her phone out on the table and then once the date is through, she has her feed automatically sent to Anthropic's Claude to report back on how she did. She might ask Claude, can I be more engaging or empathetic? What are the percentages of me talking versus them talking?

[Wendy]

I miss when these people were just trying to fool everybody in the world by like making something where the actual product was the stock valuation. Right now they're trying to erode the human soul and make money off the actual valuation in the stock price.

[Riley]

Yeah, it's like, because you think like, let's tie it back to Corgi, right? This is a company that doesn't really, doesn't really have a lot of auditable claims about what they've actually accomplished. A lot of what, how they say their business works is very woolly. They say we're a full stack AI insurer, but a human makes every decision, which one is it? You can't be both. And so, and again, it's like, okay, well so is it worth 1 billion, 2 billion, 4 billion? It just doubles, what, every two months at this point for a product that hasn't changed and hasn't proven itself anymore, at least not in a way that's publicly knowable. And again, for a sector that is complete, that is absolutely not, I would say, well known enough to ensure the risks involved in like, like I said at the very beginning, Wendy, people kill them. People are suing chatbot makers because, like, they're like, uncle killed themselves. How is corg is Corgi have the secret sauce AI that says how to insure against that? I. I bet they don't. Maybe they do. I wouldn't imagine they do, though.

[Wendy]

I think the answer is to also download again the taste app. It tells you which quibs to watch, and that will stop you from killing yourself.

[Riley]

How many of those quibs are going to be AI generated?

[Wendy]

Listen, if you're listening to the show, you can never die because there are so many quibs to watch.

[Riley]

Yeah, that's. That's.

[Unnamed Tech Enthusiast]

It's.

[Riley]

If I have, like, a friend who's like, really, really down, I'm like, no, you can't. You have so many quibs.

[Unnamed Observer]

Check out, check out. Yeah, check, check out, check out this quip. You know, my.

[Riley]

My, my George W. Bush saying, now watch this quip.

[Unnamed Observer]

My. My. My agent talked to your agent and decided that this is the quib that you need to watch in order to not be depressed anymore.

[Riley]

2H vac conference. 2H vac conference, guys. In the Great Wolf Lodge in Sheboygan. Just being like, I don't know. Our business cards told us we have to watch 50 States of Fright on Paramount. Plus, I know that they don't actually have the literal quibi properties. Just work with me here.