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- [00:16]
A
So I just do the normal podcast introduction?
- [00:17]
B
Yeah, I would say just do the normal podcast introduction.
- [00:19]
A
Okay.
- [00:20]
B
Riley, you've been taking too long to do the normal podcast.
- [00:22]
C
Hello, everybody.
- [00:23]
B
Hello, and welcome to an episode of Trash YouTube, your favorite podcast, which I am launching unilaterally due to the existence of a sexist boys club. Determined to delay the launch of the podcast, I am your host and sole host, November Kelly. However, be assured that Riley Quinn and sagen Kasvani are 100% behind me on this one. You just can't hear them right now because I'm talking over them.
- [00:48]
A
Yeah, I'm releasing a video now that's all about how TF will continue. The laughs will continue. I'll keep doing startup segments at some point in the future. Thank you, Nova, for welcoming all of our listeners to tf.
- [01:01]
B
Absolutely. I'll see you in court, you sick fuck.
- [01:04]
A
And I also want to welcome our guest. First time, long time, I think, Archie Woodrow, one of the premier chroniclers of the foibles of the British left and an editor at Prometheus Journal and recent publisher of an article for Novara on. Exactly, I guess you could say, what the fuck happened with your party? So, Archie, welcome to the show.
- [01:27]
D
Hello. Thanks for having me.
- [01:28]
A
Yeah. So I guess I'd like to start with a question, unless Nova wants to interrupt me to do the bit again.
- [01:33]
B
Oh, I will be doing that, but not at predictable intervals. You know, it's just gonna happen as and when I feel like it.
- [01:40]
A
So, Archie, here's my question. What the fuck happened?
- [01:44]
D
Good question. Let's.
- [01:45]
A
Let's say this. The listeners.
- [01:47]
E
What We've.
- [01:47]
A
We've talked about this as often bemused outsiders. We've looked at the various launches, the various sort of internal. Like the. The fighting between Corbin's team and Sultana's team.
- [01:59]
C
Yeah.
- [02:00]
B
I guess if I. If I had to find origin point for this, it's like, where do these two camps come from? Right. Who are Corbin's people? Who are Zahra's people? And sort of like, how do we get these two houses alike in dignity or indignity?
- [02:15]
D
Yeah. So, I mean, the first answer to that is, I think the idea that there's two camps is a bit of a simplification in the first place. Although, not that there's not an element of truth to it, but it is more complicated than that.
- [02:27]
E
Is there like, a third camp of, like, a guy just, like people who actually just support a guy called Steve to run your party?
- [02:32]
D
The way I put it in Prometheus, I put it into actually sort of four camps that have aligned into two blocks. But even that's potentially a simplification. I think really the roots of it go back to 2024, when the sort of discussions about starting a new party were centralised in an organization called Collective, which some of you may remember. And Collective was largely run by people who were close to Corbyn, either through their roles in Corbyn's office in the Labour Party, such as Carrie Murphy, who used to be his chief of staff, or through the Peace and Justice Project, such as Pamela Fitzpatrick, who was one of the directors of the Peace and Justice Project. And basically, by most accounts, things in Collective were not very effective and not very democratic and unnecessarily secretive and it wasn't really working. And I mean, also they had the problem that the whole point of it was trying to encourage Corbyn to start a party. And Corbyn didn't seem that keen on. I don't have the full ins and outs of exactly what was Corbyn thinking, exactly what the inside story was in 2024 by any of my research. I've sort of focused on the stuff more in the last year. But so the, I mean, the place my story kind of starts in the Navarro article is that in, I think it's off the top of my head, September 2024, there's a meeting of Collective that goes very badly because somebody leaks to the press saying Jeremy Corbyn has attended this meeting where he will announce that he's going to launch a new party. And then very quickly you have Jeremy Corbyn clarifying that he's not going to launch a new party and that wasn't his intention of the meeting.
- [04:24]
A
Can I jump in with a question, actually? What is it that made him so reticent to start a new party when for so long there was such a dearth of elected left wing figures in the sort of aftermath of, like Starmer.
- [04:37]
D
I can't pretend to be an authority here because, like I say, I've not researched in detail what the conversations were going on back in, you know, between 2019 and 2024. Most of my research is focused on what's happened in the last year. I mean, a lot of people think it's to do with the fact that he was in the Labour Party so long that he's got a sort of deeply ingrained sense of loyalty to the left of the Labour Party and that therefore he always would rather have rejoined the Labour Party than started a new party. But I can't swear. Whether or not that's true, I suspect there's an element of it, actually, that his real loyalty is to his constituency activists, a lot of whom will have been in the. And, you know, if you think about his history, he's been MP there for donkey's years. And for most of that time, the base to which he was accountable to was the Islington Local Labour Party.
- [05:29]
B
But it did strike me that Corbyn as the kind of man of the hour was always a strange choice, because I'm old enough to remember when the socialist campaign group that left of the Labour Party's kind of Hope for the Future was John McDonnell running for leader back in the day. And Corbyn was always this kind of backbench radical, which I thought he was suited at. And I think all of the qualities that made him good at that.
- [05:52]
D
Yeah, that's sort of an accident of health, because the reason MacDonald didn't run in 2015 was because he had a heart condition or something. So he was basically worried that he'd have a heart attack from the stress of being leader, which, I mean, given what happened, I mean, that's probably quite likely. And then also there was a thing about it just being Jeremy's turn, because I think I forget exactly the details, but I think Diane Abbott had stood the previous time, I think McDonnell had stood the time before that, and they didn't expect to win. So it was just, oh, well, we've got to put up a left candidate, whose turn is it?
- [06:28]
A
And so then I think this is important background, especially again, for American listeners who might not be as au fait with this, which is that he's. This guy is catapulted into the leadership position sort of by an accident of health and history. And, you know, a lot of people do their utmost to try to get him over the line, but, you know, we are rat fucked into oblivion, of course. And, you know, this. I think this also explains a little bit of why getting your party going was such a sort of long process, why it took so long to actually do.
- [06:55]
D
Yeah, and I think that's. That's also the thing that's important there is, in the sense that he's a leader, it's as a figurehead. Like, he's not like the next Lenin. Right. He's not someone who's got, you know, really detailed ideas of this is exactly what we need to do. And everyone needs to do what I tell them. It's very much, you know, a voice for the movement. And I want to lift up the voices of the grassroots activists, blah, blah, blah, which, you know, useful role in certain ways. I think it's part of how he was. I think both his strength and weakness as Labour Party leader because it meant he could be a very unifying figurehead for the broad left, but it also meant that he wasn't a very decisive source of leadership. And a lot of things sort of descended into a fight between different factions and advisors in his office, in the parliamentary party, in the shadow cabinet, in the trade unions, in momentum, etc. Fighting over who actually gets to set the agenda.
- [07:46]
B
It's interesting how much the people around Corbyn sort of like evoke a lot of the worst behavior of the Labour right as well. Just in terms of the kind of constant factionalism and the group chats and the bullying and the sort of like betrayals. It really like I know Corbyn said, you know, not covering ourselves in glory, but this feels sort of like almost indistinguishable in places.
- [08:11]
D
Yeah, but that's because it's not the culture of the Labour right, it's the culture of the Labour Party and actually even more broad than that. And if you talk to anyone who's worked in Parliament, it's like bullying is clearly endemic across the whole of it. And some of that is to do with the way it's structured with, you know, there's no HR department, all MPs just sort of control their own little staff team and there's no one to appeal to. But also you don't want to appeal to anyone because you're on a shared political project together. So if you complain about something, you're also undermining the thing that you're working for. And also there's an element of it that links to the Labour Party and the Labour left's linked with the trade unions. Obviously a lot of Corbyn support was in Unite and a lot of his key allies were in the United. Some of them are now some of the key players in your party. Obviously there's currently a massive investigation into alleged corruption around Unite, but also more broadly than that, like, you know, these people who've been fighting quite brutal factional fights against the right for decades, not only in the Labour Party, but also in their trade unions. So it's this sort of odd double edged sword that, like the ruthless faction fighters from parts of the Labour left from Unite in some ways may be the only thing that allowed Corbyn to become leader and to sort of safeguard him in that position. But also were Arguably responsible for a lot of the dysfunctions. I mean, Carrie Murphy, who comes up a lot when you talk to people both about what was happening in Corbyn's office in the Labour Party and what's happening now in your party, is sort of an interesting figure because although a lot of people who portray her as this very ruthless, factional operator and the source of all kinds of problems, the flip side of it is that a lot of people will say, well, Corbyn's office before that was totally dysfunctional, and Corbyn wasn't sort of decisive enough to be a leader, so he'd just be sort of wandering around saying anything to anyone. And you needed someone really sort of strong and decisive like Carrie Murphy, to just sort of get things in order and to stop him being pulled around by. By anyone trying to, you know, get some influence in the office.
- [10:15]
B
She made the Corbyns run on time.
- [10:16]
D
Well, pretty much, yeah.
- [10:18]
A
So this is the situation we're going into it with, and I wonder if we could even say that the. We have a bit of a thesis, antithesis and synthesis in that we brought a lot of that culture from British politics in general, but the Labour Party specifically into the thing that is trying to fight the Labour Party, which is causing many of the same problems that made the Labour Party so ungovernable.
- [10:38]
D
Yeah. And I mean, I touch on this in the Navarro article. I go into it in a lot more detail. Detail in the Leaders who Don't Lead article I did for Prometheus. So, I mean, I could go on about this at length, but I think one of the big things is that in the Labour Party, there's like, a culture of secrecy that you don't. You don't do the politics out in the open. You pretend, you know, you're a broad, united church. Everyone puts on a smiley face in the open, even if it's, you know, ghouls from the Labour right who, you know, you want to kill each other, but in public, you sort of put on some vague show of unity, which means the political differences don't really come out in the open. And all the real political fights and factional fights happen in secret and in private negotiations between MPs, between trade union leaders, and between various sort of insiders and advisers and bureaucrats.
- [11:28]
A
So, basically, with this in place, now let's talk about the factions that emerged in your party and how we got to this incredibly public breakdown that resulted in, like, threats of reporting one another to the ICO or lawsuits and so forth.
- [11:43]
D
Right. So Basically, to start with 2024, everyone's in Collective. A lot of people are getting pissed off with the way that it's being run, partly because a lot of people perceive it as being very sort of top down and undemocratic, controlled by Carrie Murphy and her key allies. But also there's this specific thing of people leaking to the press that a new party is, you know, Corbyn's about to announce a new party, then he has to clarify he's not Andrew Feinstein's about to launch a new party. No, he's not. Which, from, from what I understand, most people think it's Pamela Fitzpat Patrick specifically who's responsible for the briefings, although obviously I can't confirm that. And so in September, basically a group of them break away. I think it's largely at Schneider's initiative that this happens, but it includes Jeremy Corbyn himself, which is a slightly confusing thing in the narrative because it sort of puts him in both factions.
- [12:34]
B
Man of ultimate decision making ability.
- [12:37]
D
Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, one person, one person I was talking to said, who, you know, been quite involved with this at the national level, said, the way they saw it, it just that, like Corbyn doesn't want to tell everyone what to do and make the decision, so he convenes a committee to be the voice of the movement to tell him what to do. And then for various reasons, I mean, partly because he's just not someone who's good at running a committee, it breaks down or one side of the committee doesn't like it and he wants there to be a consensus. So then he invalidates the committee that he convened and starts another committee. And then the same thing happens about three times.
- [13:09]
B
Magical.
- [13:09]
A
Oh, God, look at my parliamentary left dog. I'm getting rounded up and taken to a stadium.
- [13:14]
B
You know, when they said of Starmer that he knows how to chair a meeting and it's not a skill everyone has, they were kind of right. He just also doesn't know how to share a meeting.
- [13:23]
D
Yeah, no, exactly. But it is an important skill. So Corbin Schneider, Jamie Driscoll, Andrew Feinstein, Salma Yacub and a few others split off. And on the one hand this new group that they start, which ends up being called the MOU group for memorandum of understanding because it's sort of united around a little document that they draft, saying, look, we're all here on a shared common basis to try to work out how to start a new part.
- [13:51]
B
Stirring.
- [13:52]
D
And so in some ways it's an improvement. Because they're sort of starting it on a slightly clearer political basis and they're, you know, having some clearer internal processes and so on. But also it's even more secretive than collective was in the first place. There's also an element of it that. So I think a lot of the people, like Corbyn himself, but also Feinstein and Driscoll, very disillusioned by the way that collective was going. And it led them to some extent to be disillusioned with the whole idea of the party, which is why at that point you get various public statements where they stop talking in those terms and start just talking about, oh, well, we need local community, independent, grassroots, in often very vague terms that you think, what does that even mean? So partly this MOU group is a sort of, I think, an effort by Schneider and a few others, partly to, like, redirect that discontent back towards the direction of a party. And so by January, that group has convened, it's got its own internal processes, and Jamie Driscoll has written this very long axioms document that's supposed to be the sort of principles and basis of it, which to me is bizarre. They never published it because it's quite an interesting document.
- [15:00]
B
English socialism localized entirely within one PDF file. On your computer.
- [15:07]
D
No, exactly.
- [15:07]
B
May I see it?
- [15:08]
D
Well, no, not on anyone's computer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's exactly like that. And this is something that recurs throughout the whole story. My understanding is basically that committee fails to make much progress, and part of the problem is, although supposedly they had like, you know, proper processes and governance structures and processes for decision making, which was supposedly agreed at meetings in which Corbyn was present and, you know, seemed to accept that those were the decisions and the accepted processes. I mean, I've had some people say, well, him and several other committee members probably never read any of those processes, but so there's a. Basically, I think a lot of people involved have this sense that it's not getting anywhere, that you think you've made one decision and then someone says, oh, well, I'm not sure Jeremy's very keen on that, and then it gets reversed. So part of the dynamic here is that it's sort of supposed to be a collective project, but also it all hinges around Jeremy Corbyn, because he's the only person with a big enough personal profile to break through Britain's, you know, two party system. So he has this sort of effective veto power. Also, one of the things that seems to come out of a lot of this is he's not always the clearest communicator. So there does sometimes seem to be a bit of dispute as to exactly what does Jeremy think. And okay, he's not expressed clear disagreement with something, but does that mean that he's not comfortable enough with it to go ahead with it?
- [16:25]
A
You know, when I was reading your article, I got the sense that like really the way that his role in this group is much like a kind of constitutional monarch where like lots of he has the legitimacy and then lots of people are interpreting what they think his will is to advance their own agenda.
- [16:45]
D
I think that's exactly what it was like in the Labour Party as well. Yeah, I mean Max Shanley and Steve Freeman and others have talked about social monarchism and the sort of the sense that it's court politics of a, of a party king. And you do see. And even the fact that you've got like Corbyn's wife, Zahra Sultana's husband, Adnan Hussein's sister turning up to these like national level meetings is very much like the sort of monarchical court politics.
- [17:15]
B
I'm just reminded, Riley, do you remember when we did left on. When we did left on Red, we read Richard Kaposinski's the Emperor about Haile Selassie and there's this, there's this bit like, you know, I'll just come right out and say it. The King of kings liked weak courtiers. Right. It just, it feels like that again where it's like sort of like a weak court is one that is, you know, one that gives you the kind of appearance of collegiality. It doesn't give you a lot of headaches and you know, quietly it lets you kind of burnish yourself a little bit.
- [17:49]
A
But in this case it's like that weak. He, because he's so dependent on the people around him to like constantly be coming to consensus. That means that there is very little sort of collective decision. There's very little collective decision making power to break the faction.
- [18:04]
D
Yeah, no, exactly. And also that there's often. It's not very clear. I mean, like I say, he doesn't always seem to be very clear communicator and you have different people sort of claiming to be speaking for him. So one of the ways that the fractional split starts emerge is that there's I don't know exactly the dates because like it's all sort of private meetings that aren't minuted and so on. But there's a series of private meetings I think in May or early June of this year between Corbin and Zahra Sultan, although also with a few others present, including their spouses, which.
- [18:40]
B
Why, though?
- [18:41]
D
But you may well ask. You may well ask.
- [18:44]
B
I do. And also just in particular, throwing into this kind of rather febrile mix of, you know, like, weak king, weak court. We also have Zara Sultana, who. A woman who I firmly believe is at this point in the timeline, seeing in her head that one illustration of, like, young Napoleon at officer school with the shadow being cast on the wall behind him.
- [19:06]
D
Yeah. So you have these private meetings where they float the idea of co leadership and again, they're not minuted, as far as I'm aware. So it's hard to know exactly what happened there. But some people involved say that they thought at that point Jeremy Corbyn agreed to co leadership, whereas other people don't think that that's what he agreed to. And some people think he signaled his openness to the idea, and others are not so sure about that.
- [19:32]
B
This is the last guy in politics I knew who had this communication style. I say I knew, like, I knew the guy. The last person in politics I've encountered with this communication style was the Emperor Hirohito. The war situation has developed, not necessarily to Japan's advantage, and everybody comes out of that room with a different idea of what the fuck he meant by that.
- [19:54]
E
Yeah, I mean, also, not to sort of hammer too much, but, like, I know I grew up on stories around, you know, sort of a lot of my, you know, my. My sort of religious background is one of, like, a split between various factions over what, like, a certain charismatic leader may or may not have said. And the fact that, like, that still hasn't been resolved. So I, you know, it has been.
- [20:13]
B
Reported with a reliable chain that Corbin said that he was, like, down for a co leadership, you know.
- [20:19]
E
Yeah, I imagine there's a lot of. There's a lot of, like. Well, there must be some people that are just like, oh, yeah, this isn't actually like an authentic Corbyn quote. It's been doctored and, like, you know, over time. And it wasn't really written down properly. It was just remembered.
- [20:31]
B
The thing is, it's very difficult because the kind of classical English that Corbyn speaks is not familiar to most people's modern language.
- [20:40]
C
You have to get your earring for it.
- [20:42]
D
Yeah. I mean, this comes about most clearly in the meeting where they actually vote about the co leadership, where, I mean, maybe we're skipping ahead a bit if you want the full faction story, but just on this point about Corbyn's sort of weird, unclear utterances. And again here I've interviewed quite a number of different people who were present at the meeting. I've also read the minutes of the meeting and I've also read the full like WhatsApp chat archive of the organizing committee, that it was a meeting and so you have this meeting to discuss and vote on these two different proposals for leadership structure, one of which is about co leadership, one of which is about having a single leader and one or more deputy leaders, or there's also. There's a bunch of other stuff in that paper but not worth going into now. And in fact I can pull up the exact quote of what he said according to the minutes, which so. Oh yeah, no, sorry, it's even funnier than sorry, I've forgotten how good it is. So they have this long and quite interesting and maybe a bit superficial but perfectly reasonable civilized discussion about the two different leadership models and it gets to right near the end, just before the vote and someone asks, well, what's Jeremy's view? And Salma Yacoub, who's chairing the meeting, observes, Jeremy has not put his hand up to speak, but it is important to hear his view, so invites him to speak and what he says according to the minutes. Although a few people I've spoken to who are at the meeting from both sides of it think that it does roughly reflect what he said. He says thank you for the discussion. We need to be based in grassroots activism around the country and communities. How do we deal with the existing independent groups? Potentially we'd need a federal structure. We should not found the party about not being Labour but founded on a positive message. I've had a bad experience of deputy leaders with Tom Watson. I have affection and admiration for Zara and happy to work with her in any capacity. There are pros and cons to sole deputy co leadership or collective leadership approaches. I want us to have a democratic, inclusive party which gives hope, inclusion and opportunity to people. But so I mean, if you just take that at face value, it sounds like he doesn't mind that much that, you know, there's pros and cons to either and literally says happy to work with Zara in any capacity, but having spoken to a few people.
- [23:11]
Including people who like you know Corbyn very well and have known him for years and worked in his office and so on, they'll often when explaining on the anti Zara side is basically that everyone knew that Corbyn didn't want co leadership. And that Zara pushed ahead with it and announced it unilaterally, even though everyone knew Jeremy didn't want it. From the minutes of the meeting, it sounds like he didn't voice any objections to it and indicated that he was happy with it if it was what the meeting wanted. But you talk to people who were there or who have known him for a long time, and not some of them, not all of them, but some of them will say, oh, yes, but this is Jeremy, and you know how he is. And everyone who knows Jeremy, he knows that he wasn't happy even though he didn't say it in a completely explicit or direct way.
- [23:58]
B
Yeah. Once you've been working for him for 20 years, you'll learn that when he says, I'm happy to work with you in any capacity, what he means is, over my dead body will I work with you in any capacity. He's just too shy to express that.
- [24:13]
D
One of the odd things with. I mean, there's a number of different ways. I mean, I don't know Corbin personally. I've only, you know, met him briefly, a couple of protests or whatever. But if you look at all the different events and accounts of things and the minutes and etc. Etc. One way that you can interpret it all is, oh, he's just a bit indecisive and it's all a bit dysfunctional. One way you can look at it is that, you know, his advisors and people like Carrie Murphy are sort of pushing him around and claiming to speak for him, but actually they're pushing their own agenda and using his weakness to do that. But there is actually another, less charitable interpretation of some of it where it does look, you know, you could almost read it as Corbyn being, like, really, really passive aggressive. And he's not. And perhaps that he's. That he's not willing or able to explicitly say that he's got a problem, that he doesn't want to do something, he doesn't want to work with anyone, and then he just waits until after the meeting and then says to Carrie Murphy, you know, will someone rid me of this turbulent priest or whatever the.
- [25:14]
B
Thing is just doing the like. No, it's fine, it's fine. Nothing's bothering me thing, I swear to fucking God. Well, the thing is, right, what happens is we went into this meeting, right, and the people who have reports of that meeting is first there was this woodcutter who went in and just happened to observe a meeting between, like, a samurai and a woman. And then also There was. And it just.
- [25:38]
A
I was gonna say, do you think Jeremy Corbin needs to read polysecure?
- [25:41]
B
I think all of these people need to.
- [25:46]
Just stop for a bit is what I think.
- [25:49]
D
But, I mean, I have heard that apparently Roger Hallam has a theory that the problem with the left is old men who don't talk to their mothers and don't know how to communicate. And I mean, based on some experiences in local groups as well, you do start to wonder if there's. That we need some sort of group therapy to address this. But, sorry, going back to that meeting and Corbyn's communication stuff, the other thing is that. So there's a bit of dispute and confusion as to exactly what happened in that meeting and exactly what. What he said. Because if you look at the WhatsApp messages from the organizing committee, I think while the meeting is still ongoing, one person says, oh, it's very rushed. Corbyn asked for no vote, but we have moved to one. And then Corbyn says in the WhatsApp, I did suggest a group to take us forward, not a vote today. Now, nobody I'd spoken to remembers Corbyn saying that out loud in the meeting, but a couple of people, their recollection or their interpretation of it is that what happened is he didn't say it out loud when asked directly for his opinion, but that he posted it in the Zoom text chat saying, oh, you know, maybe this is rushed, maybe there's not enough consensus, maybe we need to have further discussion. Which, I mean, to be fair is true. Like, clearly there was not consensus on what was going on and it did cause everything to fall apart. So in some ways he had a point, but he seems to have said it on the ZoomText chat and it got lost rather than saying it in a way that people can hear him. If you.
- [27:14]
B
Look, I did make my crucial objection to you doing this in white text at a one point font size that I've appended to this kind of like second to last page in the margin.
- [27:26]
A
Yeah, I made my objection to this particular course of action in like the disclaimer voice on pharmaceutical ads. By the way, I'd rapid co leader.
- [27:36]
D
May cause wedding to be fair to Corbyn because, I mean, this is all sounding quite negative on him. I mean the other, other aspect of what's happening and why it all falls apart is basically because the process is like stupid and rushed and doesn't really make sense and that. So they, they. So. So to go back, to go back to the, like, wider narrative. So They've set up this memorandum of understanding group at the end of 2024. It's not really getting anywhere. They end up trying to expand the committee partly to try to get Corbyn to sort of commit to it more, if it's more representative, more inclusive. Also includes some of his, you know, close allies like Carrie Murphy, having committeement issues. So they expand the committee to have Zara Sultana on it, Carrie Murphy and some of the others from Collective, I think at this point they also bring in Liam Muhammad, Mark Sawaka and a few others. Oh yeah. And so they put together that committee, so they're called now the Organizing Committee. They put together in mid June and they have like their first meeting within a week and say, oh yeah, we want to launch the party on, I think it's 28th of July, which is like a month away. And I mean, I've got somewhere here one of their leaked, like minimum viable product, project management spreadsheets, which has got like the list of all the things they thought they needed to have ready for the launch is, you know, one year strategy, the name a staff, team membership system, social media strategy, logistics for rallies, just legal stuff, draft constitution, code of conduct strategy for local groups, all this different stuff that they basically gave themselves a month to put together when they had a committee that like, had only just been put together. Half the people on the committee didn't know. Know each other, didn't know each other's politics. There's clearly no, you know, like massive differences on basic issues about what should be the structure of the party, what should be the politics of the party and so on. So they have that meeting, they vote on the co leadership proposal, 70% of vote in favor, including the four independent MPs who have since fallen out very badly with Zara. And then apparently at the end of the meeting, Zara says, immediately after the meeting, I'm going to announce my resignation from the Labour Party. And then she not only announces her resignation from the Labour Party, she also announces her co leadership. And like the first anyone hears of this is like something like half an hour or an hour after the meeting ends, she gets added to the WhatsApp group and posts her tweet in it.
- [30:14]
B
Let's go full send.
- [30:16]
D
But sorry to go back to my my in defence of ch, Jeremy Point. Corbyn's then immediate reaction to this in the WhatsApp group is he says, what on earth are we supposed to be doing? No discussion on the politics or structure or democracy of our new venture. And now a Public announcement with no consultation, which is pretty reasonable. It was kind of insane to say, let's launch this in a month before we've got consensus or even had real discussion about such fundamental questions.
- [30:44]
B
It is, on the other hand, not to sort of leap to Zara's defence here, because I'm not necessarily a fan either. But you do get the kind of, like, group project vibe here. And I think reading the kind of reading between the lines of sort of what Zahra has said and what she's done, I keep getting struck by the feeling of, like, well, I like the way I'm doing it better than the way you're not. Right. And it seems like there is a criticism from that side, which is not unwarranted. Even if the actions have been bizarre and sort of unilateral, of we will wait forever to do nothing under the organisation.
- [31:22]
D
Yeah, that's definitely a big, big part of it. That a lot of people involved are just getting very frustrated, that there's constant delays, that it seems to go around in circles and they're just, oh, we're just going to be trapped in these secret committees that are just going backwards and forwards and not getting anywhere. And that therefore a unilateral announcement will get. Although it's not so clear to what extent that is a defensive Zara, personally, because, I mean, unless there's further secret negotiations before that, I'm not, which is possible. But at least as far as I'm aware, she only really comes into the story in sort of May this year. So she's only been, as far as I'm aware, directly involved in it for a couple of months before she does the announcement, where it's people like Feinstein and Driscoll and so on.
- [32:05]
A
So this is how we've sort of moved the pieces around the board and we understand who's acting and how and why these like. Like big splits happen. And I think it's the same kind of dynamics that lead to an uneasy truce between the two sides, where it's like, okay, well, you'll control the mailing list, I'll control the finances. And again, like, because it's so factional, there is again this feeling that, like, Zara's team is being iced out. And then we get to that second relaunch where we. Where then we see sort of the lawsuits come in or the threats of lawsuits.
- [32:36]
D
I mean, obviously, if you threaten to sue someone, that doesn't go down well. And if you accused people of being a sexist boys club publicly, they. They don't like that. And if you call out their sort of staffers and aides publicly by name, people don't like. And I think also, again, I don't know the full details here, but I think the. The impression I get from a couple of people more or less plugged in is that there was some, like, quite nasty arguments going on between them in the MPs, WhatsApp groups, but I. I don't know the full details of that. So I think by that stage there was like an enormous, enormous amount of animosity privately between the people involved. I think also part of it is by this point, nobody involved on Corbyn's side trusts Zara at all and they think she's like completely a loose cannon, completely unreliable. The other dynamic of it, which I didn't really include in the article because there wasn't space and there's not really much that's on the public record, but if you talk to anyone involved, particularly on Corbin's side, another aspect of it is that Sara's husband seems to be like, like her main advisor and one of her main sort of negotiators, and he's not popular. You know, there seems to be sort of mirror image of the problems a lot of people have with Carrie Murphy. Although actually, the way some people I've heard spoke about him, it sounds potential, but it's all, again, it's not very much on the record about exactly why people dislike him so much. So at that point, I think Corbyn's team just are sort of scared of a project that, that involves her and her husband because they just think they can't be trusted. Whereas on the other hand, Sultana, you know, said, well, you know, the committee voted for co leadership and now I'm being completely iced out. And also that on Zara's side and more broadly, people have the impression that basically people like Carrie Murphy and the sort of faction around her who lots of people already didn't trust and have lots of reservations from because of, of how things went in the Corbyn years or in collective. And so they just think, oh, it's, well, this clique is going to take over and lock everything down and give all their mates the top jobs and lock down the democratic processes and it'll just be like the Labour Party and the problems, they're all over again. Or the problems like, similar to how it happened in Momentum when the sort of democratic processes got shut down.
- [34:58]
B
I do sort of have a question here just to sort of tie this up, up which Is. Does any of this seem reparable to you or is it just sort of, like, terminally in the mire of this kind of.
- [35:13]
Let'S say, musical differences?
- [35:15]
D
I think in terms of the personalities, the impression I get is it may be irreconcilable. It sounds like there is like an. Particularly between Zara and the four independent MPs, it sounds like there is like enormous, enormous ill will. On a personal level, I think, with Corbin and Sultana, there's also like a really deep feeling on both sides of sort of betrayal of trust. And also, then the issue of Carrie Murphy is a particularly big one because, like, she's very, very close to Corbin personally and has been for a very long time, but now her and Sultana are like mortal enemies. And, I mean, also, in some ways, it's like Sultana coming in with the condition that Corbyn's closest aide has to be got rid of. So, obviously, that starts by putting Carrie Murphy on the defensive against Sultana. And then also, one of the things that escalates things is after she does the announcement, there's then all these various leaks. And in the WhatsApp group, she directly accuses Carrie Murphy of being the source of the leaks, which actually, from what I can tell, isn't true, probably. And I think, you know, Carrie Murphy was on a plane when it happened. And if you talk to the people who sort of understand the details, details of how this press stuff works, it probably wasn't even anyone in the organising committee, but Zara thinks that it's like a personal hostile briefing from another member of the committee against her. And so then when other people are, like, trying to say, oh, well, you know, why can't we all just calm down and try to de escalate? And then, because Zara's so angry about the leaks, she won't respond to that. And so it all just sort of spirals from there. And then, you know, everything we've seen happening with the legal threats on both sides, and also the fact that people's spouses are involved in the arguments as well. I mean, we can't help so. But obviously that's on the personal level. One would hope that you might have a party with structures and democracy and other people involved, such that it might be able to function despite the personal relationships of a handful of individuals. But, well, that remains to be seen.
- [37:21]
B
You sort of ask, as anyone on the left, why would you bother? Why would you sort of like, run into this burning house? You know, it's sort of like. Like, I Think the temptation for anyone looking at this, looking at sort of like whether it's sort of Corbyn responding to a straightforward sort of organizational question with a sort of, like, allegorical poem, or whether it's Zara sort of like, you know, tweeting something devastating to the entire project and then throwing her phone across the room, or, you know, Adnan Hussain going insane about trans people on Twitter for three days, you just think, why, why bother? Why hand handcuff myself to this? And I still don't know that I've heard an answer from anyone, really.
- [37:59]
D
Yeah, well, I mean, those are very good questions. The basic answer was always just because there's about 500,000 people who will join whatever political party Jeremy Corbyn joins. But I don't know that that's completely true anymore because I think this process has been so dysfunctional and so toxic that, I mean, we don't know what the membership figures are for the new relaunch, at least unless there's been something to. Today, they've not announced it. A lot of people, I mean, I've not been able to get a clear answer on this, but a lot of people have been speculating that it hasn't been announced because the figures are not very good. And I mean, I get into this at the end of my article, but the prospects for a democratic process, to build it and to have a democratic constitution at the end of it, I think look very, very pessimistic. For one thing, just like two months is a very short time to run a democratic process. I mean, if anyone's been involved in any significant or even just like a local organization that's got 100 people turning up to its meeting, doing a serious democratic process to deliberate on fundamental constitutional and political issues, very difficult to get that done effectively in two months, let alone with tens of thousands of people. And particularly when there's so much chaos and dysfunction at the top. And they announced this very vague plan for the process where there'd supposedly be some sort of online portal and some sort of regional assemblies and some sort of national conference based on sortition. And some of it sounds positive in the abstract, but whether or not it's meaningful democratic a depends on, like, really key details that they've said nothing about. Obviously they've not published any of these details. Nobody I've spoken to seems to know the details. I suspect it's quite likely the details don't exist. Even, you know, with the best will in, in the world, if you're rushing together a process like that in two months it's probably not going to be very good. So if Carrie Murphy's the only person who knows what these processes are, who has signed off on them, then it's not really about Carrie Murphy personally. Because the point is, you'd need to know and trust Carrie Murphy personally to have any faith in the process. You'd have to trust her as an individual to be impartial and non factional. And also you'd have to trust her as an expert in designing democratic processes. And maybe she is both of those things. But for anyone who doesn't, doesn't know her personally, if the information's not published, we can't really know. And I don't see how anyone can trust the process. So I'm very worried about where things go. I suspect it won't be very democratic. I suspect the constitution we get out of it won't be democratic. And I worry the party will have enough momentum to sort of keep going, but not enough momentum to be particularly good. And then we'll have the left split between your party and the Greens and the whole thing will just be a mess, is my worry.
- [40:44]
B
What do you call an act like that? Because they still haven't chosen a name. Trash future. Thanks so much.
- [40:50]
A
All right, well, so I'm gonna throw to back to us for the back half of the episode. I'm sure that Nova will have found something fun to talk about. I'm gonna be relatively quiet, so tell.
- [41:01]
B
You what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna. I'm gonna. I'm gonna throw to myself by just kind of like groaning in annoyance and hope that I pick it up in the future if I remember to do this bit. So here we go.
- [41:29]
Well, what a frustrating, wonderful interview with Archie Woodrow from Camp, the Friends of Palestine and Prometheus. You can. You can go and find all of his work on Prometheus or on his Twitter account, which is Samurai apology. And yeah, we hope, of course, for your party to become less frustrating in future, but we have to do an abrupt change in tone because Riley's going to go very quiet and Nate's been here the whole time. Nate, how's it going?
- [41:59]
C
I've heard that my voice is indistinguishable from Riley's to many people. I find that extremely discriminatory against Americans. We are way more annoying than Canadians. And you should recognize the specific tells that indicate to you that you're hearing a completely born and raised American. Riley is polite. I am a dickhead, and I can never stop Talking. So learn the differences between our voices. I'm doing very well though, thank you for asking.
- [42:23]
B
Yeah, well, thank you for joining us. And of course, Hussain, thank you for continuing to be here on the same recording that we definitely did, like back to back.
- [42:31]
E
Yeah. I did get rid of my baby, though.
- [42:34]
C
So, like, that is an interesting way of phrasing it, Hussain.
- [42:37]
B
This is why it's so difficult to have children in this economy. And so it's just you always have the demands of work trying to entice you to just get rid of your baby.
- [42:47]
E
Yeah, no, no, Dead ass is so. It is so true. Yeah, go on.
- [42:51]
B
So to round things out, I have a reading series and this is from Futurism, and it's by Maggie Harrison Dupre and it's entitled ChatGPT is blowing up marriages as spouses use AI to attack their partners. So I think we're going to really get like a nice cheery kind of segment out of this one. We'll all go home feeling a lot better for having talked about this.
- [43:13]
C
Well, also because all three of us are fully spouse maxing all the time, so this is absolutely the perfect environment. Yeah.
- [43:21]
E
So statistically, one of our marriages is going to blow up because of AI.
- [43:25]
B
I'm like spouse's gayorg. I've got more spouses than the rest of the podcast put together at this point.
- [43:32]
E
And that's just.
- [43:33]
B
I'm increasing the odds. The law of large numbers means that something like this will happen to me. And I'm terrified.
- [43:40]
C
I have only ever used ChatGPT for one thing with this in this general wheelhouse, and that is some of the really dumb visual K, like anime pretty boy dating simulator things had a thing with whatever model of CHAT GPT they did where you could basically get them to start quoting Wikipedia at you in character. And so I would have them summarize films or like. I had one tell me about the first time they listened to the X album, Los Angeles. I had one tell me about the Francois Truffaut film Day for Night. And it's so fucking stupid when I.
- [44:12]
B
Try to imagine how you're spending your evenings. I don't know that I would have come up with a like the Banzai Buddy Bishonin explains, like XTC albums to you. But you know what? I'm not here to judge.
- [44:26]
C
Basically I saw people sharing it and talking about it and I was like, okay, what the fuck is this? And I would have assumed it was like a thing you had to pay. And it wasn't. It may be now who knows? And I was like, this is so stupid. But like my brain immediately went to sort of chaos mode of like, okay, well what if I just start pulling stuff that's completely out of the normal sort of like meet cute dialogue and just start asking it to pull the.
- [44:48]
B
Sort of like the sparkly head.
- [44:50]
C
Like yeah, so I want you to talk about hearing John Doe at Axie and Cervenka singing on Johnny Hit and Run Paul Colleen. And it actually would, but it was like, I don't know. There's something so uncannily weird about how substanceless it is.
- [45:06]
B
Just the kind of online pretty boy tells you the Anarchist's Cookbook recipes.
- [45:10]
C
Well, I guess what it comes down to is that it's bad writing. It's really unconvincing, incredibly cliched, incredibly formulaic writing. When it does write things at you, when it does dialogue at you, it's summaries are pretty banal and just kind of slightly dressed up. Wikipedia verbatim. But what is funny is when like the characters are programmed to have sort of like turns of phrase and tells and like kind of like expressions or stock reactions. It forcing itself to work those into like a depiction of the Franco Prussian War or something like that. It's very, very funny to me. Like, but it was funny for about 15 minutes.
- [45:45]
B
That's. That's a significantly healthier use of AI than this. So let me get into it. A husband and wife together nearly 15 years had reached a breaking point. And in the middle of their latest fight, they received a heartbreaking text. Our son heard us arguing. The husband told Futur, he's 10 and he sent us a message from his phone saying please don't get a divorce. What his wife did next, the man told us, unsettled him. She took his message and asked chatgpt to respond. He recounted this was her immediate reaction to our 10 year old being concerned about us in that moment. The couple is now divorcing, which you don't say.
- [46:21]
E
Mm, I do like the way that this is written because when what his wife did next the man told us on self sudden. That could have been so many that could have happened.
- [46:30]
C
What happened? Like if I had shock you.
- [46:31]
E
What happens next will shock you. Yeah, like we're sort of back to buzzfeed 2015 baby. That's like really good SEO chatgpt unsettles.
- [46:39]
B
Husband by perfectly reassuring child in perfect family therapist.
- [46:45]
E
That's right. But also like yeah, imagine if the wife like texted her son just being like stay out of our business like, you know, continue playing your sort of like radicalizing games.
- [46:53]
D
Yeah.
- [46:54]
B
I told you, Johnny, I won't be impressed with you or show you any kind of love until you try and shoot a right wing influence.
- [47:01]
D
So.
- [47:04]
E
Yeah, and the son's name was Charlie Kirk too.
- [47:08]
I think.
- [47:09]
C
I think the thing for me is just more that like, I understand when people are doing things for like work or whatever, when there's a language barrier, but the idea that you immediately go to, I mean, we haven't even gotten into the article. You immediately go to a large language model to respond to your child.
- [47:23]
D
Yeah.
- [47:24]
B
Having it outsource the parenting and have it tell your kid like, what you've noticed about your parents fighting isn't just brilliant, it's also insightful. M Dash. Here's some things you could do.
- [47:35]
E
Yeah.
- [47:36]
C
What if you fuck it up though, and you still have the data simulator loaded so it starts talking about fucking more fun in the real world. The second exile.
- [47:43]
B
I had a really rough childhood. Anytime my parents would argue, I would go and ask this online yaoi guy to give me advice. And to be honest, it wasn't bad, but it just felt a little formulaic.
- [47:55]
E
Yeah, I do like the idea of a young boy's only friend is like a yaoi cartoon character powered by a weird AI. What I was going to say in a more serious note was actually like, the whole Proliferation of ChatGPT in parenting circles is super, super common. And like, I was a member of like a couple of parenting groups in my area when our son was born. And it was more just because like the people that we did antenatal classes with were also part of this group. So it was more like we sort of joined just out of a sense of, oh, it'd be nice to kind of see other parents and a lot of the group chat. I left the group in the summer because it just became like a bit too much. But like, parenting culture is already very, very weird and a lot of it is to do with like its intersections with Internet culture anyway. Right. Like, I feel like parenting influences have really sort of like made quite. You know, they're like fucked up in so many ways that we've talked about on this show and I've talked about on like other shows and everything. But like, there was this point in the summer where every time there was this kind of dispute over like parenting styles, someone would sort of come in to be like, Well, I asked ChatGPT and this is what they said. As if it was like, like this definitive, like, I'm Gonna win the argument by asking the computer to sort of come up with the answer.
- [49:03]
B
That's sort of gonna be a theme for the rest of this.
- [49:06]
E
Yeah. And it's just like, it's very scary, like to sort of outsource like your own. Because for us it was mostly just like, oh, okay, should you feed your children nothing but like Ella's kitchen pouches for people who don't live here? It's sort of like ultra processed kind of baby food that some parents use and some people don't.
- [49:23]
B
Should I feed my kid like Death Stranding MREs.
- [49:25]
E
That's right. And so it's like a lot of it was very practical rather than sor. Emotional. But I was sort of thinking, well, if you're going to begin your parenting journey, so to speak, by like asking the computer how you should raise a baby, that's scary enough as it is, but it's also like, I can understand where parts of that come from, but like outsourcing your emotional labor for a.
- [49:44]
B
10 year old as well.
- [49:46]
E
Outsourcing your parenting, because that is fundamentally what parenting is. It's about developing this like, emotional kind of relationship with your child. Outsourcing that to the computer, like, fucking hell.
- [49:57]
D
That's insane.
- [49:58]
B
You know what's really weird about this is I think the specific change in affect of like, oh, I parented this child for like 10 years. And then ChatGPT came out. So like in the article, the husband sort of says, you know, they've been together for like, you know, 15 years total, two kids, ups and downs like any relationship. In 2023, they almost split. They end up like, reconciling and they have two good years. And then he sighed. The whole ChatGPT thing happened over this past summer. Arguments they'd worked together to resolve years ago came suddenly and ferociously roaring back. What he eventually realized was that his wife had started using OpenAI's chatbot to analyze him and their marriage, holding long, drawn out conversations over text and the chatbot's phone, like, voice mode feature. What was happening unbeknownst to me at the time was she was dredging up all of these things that we had previously worked on and putting it into ChatGPT, you see, said, I am really.
- [50:57]
C
Weirded out by this. I think the two things you've said so far that really get me is, I mean, the first is commenting about the parenting side with a child that age, like the idea that they would want, I mean, the appropriate thing would be generated from a prompt from a machine versus, like you acknowledging your child and talking to them like I'm going to be real with you, like my child isn't 10 but I've taken care of 10 year olds before and if a 10 year old were really worried and said that I wouldn't text them, I would go and talk to them and give them my full attention because that's what they need in a moment like that. So the idea of doing it like oh, the computer will do a better job than me.
- [51:29]
B
But it's also like you as a 10 year old are now competing for attention with the kind of sycophant computer that can give its users all the attention they want.
- [51:38]
C
You know there was a story years ago and it's not the same thing but I feel like to me it kind of occupies the same kind of like you have failed so massively in a moment here that you'll probably never recover Cover. And it was the story of a. Basically I remember reading about this, I can't remember for the person it was their partner or if it was a news story. I don't think it was a news story. But people were sharing basically that dad, frustrated with 8 year old not doing his chores or not stopping playing computer when he was supposed to, finally got so mad and fed up that he decided to just go in when his son was at school and delete the entire Roblox world he had been building for years and it was unrecoverable and then realized what he had done and it was completely unrecoverable. And it's like yeah, your kid's never going to trust you ever again. Like you have, you have fundamentally violated that, that child's trust in a way that like yeah, they're never going to trust you again. And I think like this in a moment when like you're worried your parents are going to get divorced, like maybe the kid didn't know that it was ChatGPT, who knows? But to me like it's just, it's like, I don't know, it's like all right, time for us to critique other people's parenting. But like fudgeing, come on man.
- [52:38]
B
Also just on the kind of marriage level like the husband sort of says, and admittedly this is kind of one sided in the sense that one of them is, is talking to futurism and the other is talking to ChatGPT. Right? But it says as his wife leaned on the tech as a confidant meets journal meets therapist, he says it started to serve as a sycophantic feedback loop that depicted him only as the villain. I could see ChatGPT responses compounding, he said, and then my wife responding to the things ChatGPT was saying back and further and further and further spinning. It's not giving back, it's not giving objective analysis. It's only giving her back what she's put in. Their marriage eroded swiftly over a span of about four weeks, and the husband blames ChatGPT. My family is being ripped apart, the man said. And I firmly believe this phenomenon is central to why I can recall being.
- [53:22]
C
On aol in the 90s and being these things are like fill in the blank, sort of like rants and denunciations that kind of read like polemic philosophy essays, but made no sense at all because they didn't have anything about this. It was like this person is the paragon of evil, but it doesn't say why. That's what this kind of feels like. Like, imagine if you, you just, you got 1997 ass BBS. Fill in the blank text to basically yell at your spouse with. It's got about as much substance.
- [53:45]
B
Well, speaking of yelling at your spouse, the second sort of. Because this is an article of like sort of two anecdotes broadly, and the second one of these is much worse, I would say, not least because it's about a lesbian breakup, which some of you will know from experience that's it's, you know, Western front versus Eastern front. Right? You're going through things very differently.
- [54:09]
C
Shut the fuck up. Oh my God.
- [54:12]
B
Genuinely, some of you would choose voluntary celibacy after, after a single lesbian breakup. So in this case, yeah, I was.
- [54:20]
C
Going to say imagine two people who know as much about the Battle of Kursk fucking going, facing off like it's the Battle of Kursk.
- [54:28]
B
So in one chaotic recording Futurist obtained, two married women are inside a moving car, their two young children sitting in the backseat. The tension in the vehicle is palpable. The marriage has been on the rocks for months, and the wife in the passenger seat, who recently requested a separation, has been asking her spouse not to fight with her in front of their kids. But as the family speeds down the roadway, the spouse in the driver's seat pulls out a smartphone and starts quizzing ChatGPT's voice mode about their relationship problems, feeding the chatbot leading prompts that results in the AI browbeating her wife in front of their preschool aged children. I mean, this is just straightforwardly abusive. No, it's, it's.
- [55:07]
C
Yeah.
- [55:08]
E
One thing I was also thinking about hearing These stories is because obviously the way in which ChatGPT and these types of large language models work is basically through mass data scraping.
- [55:19]
D
Right?
- [55:19]
E
And I don't know whether you guys have ever got onto some of the subreddits. Am I the asshole subreddits? Or mostly it's stuff. There are a lot of subreddits which are just relationship advice, marriage advice, all these type of stuff. And they are largely ways in which one side of a relationship or one side of a marriage kind of like explains a problem. It has a bit of a reputation among some of the subreddits because the answer that is often given is just break up with them. And some of the answers are really. Some of the situations are really absurd because some of the original posts are like, oh, I've been married to my partner, or I've been with them for a really, really long period of time and this thing has happened and I've caught them sort of, I don't know, for example, looking at porn or something like that. And there will be answers underneath these things as being like, break up with them. They are like, irredeemable. Your relationship was a lie to begin with. And I do Wonder whether these AIs have sort of gotten all that data and so they're sort of programmed or at least hardwired to give you that type of response, which is to say that it's not to necessarily say that they're wrong in the sense of ChatGPT or these LLMs are kind of ruining relationships. Because I do think that that is true.
- [56:29]
B
Well, it makes them very easy to lead. Right. If you kind of put your thumb on the scale, if you ask it, like, should break up with my wife or like, is my wife being sort of like, abusive to me? It's sort of like it's a very agreeable technology.
- [56:47]
E
I guess the point I'm also trying to get to is like, the Internet and Internet culture has sort of shaped relationships, like, very weird, like, very kind of like strange ways for a pretty long time. I guess it always has. But, like, this isn't sort of like an unprecedented phenomenon in the sense of, like, even in the pre AI period, there are people who sort of are kind of like writing into, like, message boards, podcasts, like YouTuber videos and everything.
- [57:11]
B
Do not write into our podcast about your relationship.
- [57:14]
E
Yeah, please don't write into us. Just don't. For obvious reasons. Please don't. And I guess the point I'm trying to get to is that the idea of getting nuanced Relationship advice from the Internet has kind of always been a farce anyway, but you've now got that coupled with society sort of telling people that, oh, yeah, ChatGPT is a definitive source for information. And because it sort of collects so much data and makes a rap rational in the middle decision, apparently it means that the most neutral response that you will ever get is from a computer. And also add that you can access ChatGPT immediately, which means that you can use this stuff passive aggressively. But it's not that different to writing into a subreddit to basically say that, yeah, my wife and my husband is horrible and mean and doing it in such a way where you know that you are sort of eliciting sympathy, but also doing it in a climate where, like, I feel like relationships in general have become a lot more transactional. Like, you know, I think part when we think about, like, the crisis of loneliness, for example, a big part of it is like, well, the fact that we've seen a lot of relationships in general just develop or, like, take on a transactional element just by the nature of, like, online mediation. Romantic relationships are like, no different from that.
- [58:28]
B
Yeah, well, in this case, it's like genuinely kind of like, like a kind of abuse, like, like a force multiplier in the sort of like, lesbian battle of curse. I'm going to finish the story because it's real bad. Right? After funneling her complaints into ChatGPT, the driver, because they're still driving at this point, the driver asks the bot to analyze the prompts as if a million therapists were going to read and weigh in. This story also has another example of why you don't want to be in a lesbian breakup, which is the phrase, oh, the worst person you know just learned therapy language. The responses you've described would likely be considered unfair and immoral, emotionally harmful by the majority of marriage therapists. The chatbot responds at a loud volume while mirroring back the same language used in the prompt with flowery therapy speak. It offers no pushback, nor does it attempt to reframe the driver's perspective. At one point, the chatbot accuses the wife in the passenger seat of engaging in avoidance through boundaries by requesting that they not fight in front of their kids. It goes on and on with ChatGPT monologuing, while the wife it's being wielded against to get occasionally tries to cut in over its robotic lecture. The spouse prompting the bot, meanwhile, mutters approving commentary. That's right. See, please keep your eyes on the road. The wife being Lectured by the AI pleads. At one point, I didn't know that John Fetterman had transitioned. But you know what? I hope she's very happy.
- [59:50]
C
I was gonna say, you know, everyone told me that it was going to be a mistake to enter into a podcast molecule where the third person was the text to speech voice from TikTok. And you know what? They were all correct. But I guess the thing I would say to Hussain's point, I think is really valid here is that, like, there is also so much of this just dumb propagandizing PR hype around this selling chatgpt in particular, and large language models in general as the apotheosis of knowledge processing, that all human knowledge is there and that the degree to which it's treated as definitive people. Because, I mean, I guess if you consume stuff in the news the way it's reported in, you know, you call it general media, and then also all the pr. Yeah, that's the impression you would get if you don't know anything and you don't know how fucking wrong it is or how banal or overgeneralized it is. Yeah, you might think that, but I think it's very surreal to me to think of people doing this. I mean, I guess in a way, because some of these things, you know, they, like you said, they are so obviously led from the prompt and they don't push back. But then also I think about Hussein's comment about weird Internet advice and, you know, I'm a bit older and I can recall a line that stuck with me that's haunted me throughout my entire life, where someone on the Radiohead fan forums in 2000 asked if they should break up with their boyfriend because he didn't like Radiohead. And people were like, he couldn't actually love you if he can't understand something as deep and emotional as Radiohead. And I never thought, I mean, on one hand I'm glad that web 1.0 disappeared, because if that web 1.0 shit from the forums got observed, absorbed into a large language model, than like, God knows the kind of advice they'd be giving people.
- [61:25]
B
I guess it's the difference between having that kind of bad advice and having that bad advice on dial.
- [61:31]
C
It was just as stupid then when it was teenagers in the year 2000 on fucking web 1.0 forums. But there wasn't this push to describe stuff with a similarly banal and not applicable analysis as the best analysis you can possibly get.
- [61:47]
B
It also wasn't there all the time. Time in the Same way. So, like, for instance, this same couple, the wife, who is sort of like begging her wife to keep her eyes on the road while she's driving, says, we were arguing a lot. We would be up all night and I would assert a boundary or say, like, I don't want to have this discussion in front of the kids or I need to go to bed. She recounted. And my ex would immediately turn on ChatGPT and start talking to it and be like, can you believe what she's doing? Her ex would carry out these conversations with ChatGPT on speakerphone, she added, within earshot, so she could hear her everything. My ex would have it on speakerphone and then have it speak. Not to me. It would be in the same room, she recalled. And of course, ChatGPT was this confirmative voice being like, you're so right. Today, the former couple, together nearly 15 years, is in the midst of a contentious divorce and custody battle.
- [62:35]
C
Yeah, I'm just. I don't know. I mean, part of me wants to make a dumb joke once again about, like, you know, leaving open the dating simulator that's talking about, I don't know, fucking Jules and Gym. And winds up, you know, inserting bits about early Francois Truffaut films into this thing about why you should break up with your lesbian wife. But, like, I guess to me, it's like, what's so interesting here is it's grim, is the idea of, like, actually boundaries are abuse, as I completely disrespect a normal human boundary of don't be yelling at your phone 24 hours a fucking day. Like, it's insane. To me, it just seems so. And it feels like such a, like, snapped fingers happened out of nowhere thing.
- [63:09]
B
There's one guy in here who is like, is already divorcing his wife. But after he moves out, his wife started to send him straight, strange AI generated messages that, through an unfamiliar blend of spiritual and therapeutic language, drew a portrait of himself and their marriage that he says he didn't recognize when he first read them. He said he wondered whether his wife had joined a cult. The couple is now engaged in ongoing custody litigation. Today, the man's soon to be ex wife communicates with him about everything from court matters to childcare, almost exclusively through peculiar sounding ChatGPT generated text.
- [63:41]
C
I struggle to understand the idea that you would so casually, casually and unerringly outsource every thought you wanted to communicate to someone, you know, in real life to what basically amounts to, like, the Matrix pods for graphics cards.
- [63:59]
B
Yeah, it's kind of like, infinite jest, right? Like you can. I'm just kind of. It.
- [64:04]
C
I mean, yeah, it's the same entertainment. It's the. It's the entertainment. It's just like you stare at it, you just piss yourself and starve to death because it's this, you know, like, psychic communication of your mom saying I'm so sorry over and over again. It's like, wow, oh my God.
- [64:22]
E
The other, the other thing worth noting is that everyone, at least in this story, and this is not to sort of say, because we've covered stories on this show before about, like, people kind of using ChatGPT for, like, fairly benign reasons and outsourcing their communication to, like, very, very intimate things, even to people that they love. In this instance, it's like all of these people seem to kind of have been on the road to divorce anyway or like, were sort of the process of doing so. And it does make me think that, like, well, I wonder in those situations where it's just like the person that you were sort of the most intimate with emotionally you now no longer want to sort of have to deal with. And suddenly this, like, technology comes in of which one of its many promises and one of its many over promises is that, oh, like, if you don't want to talk to this person, the machine can kind of like do that for you. And then as you kind of continue to do that, it's like, oh, it can also make you feel really good about yourself. And the thing about, like a divorce is that even the most amicable ones are ones where one party at the very least wants to feel like they were in the right, but they tried their best to save the relationship and they tried everything that they could, including asking the computer for what their neutral thought was on it. And so I do wonder whether this is actually sort of part of. It's less to do with them kind of being enthralled by the machine in and of itself. Which is not to say that they're not. It's only just in the context of what we know and more to do with them kind of attempting to feel good about themselves by sort of saying, but, oh yeah, like, even the computer thinks that I'm right. And you can't argue against the computer, can you? You can't debate the computer, which, like, number one, I guess you can because it's like, well, if the other person also asks. ChatGPT.
- [65:49]
B
Oh, God, yeah, that's not in the article, but that's a horrifying prospect is two people arguing with Each other via their phones.
- [65:57]
D
Yeah.
- [65:57]
E
And I imagine that probably like will happen fairly soon and we will talk about that on that show. On the show. And we'll still have our head and our head hands as we talk about it. Yeah, because I guess one of the things that we talk about with AI and the sort of culture that it induces is one that it accelerates the culture of frictionlessness. The idea that you should never be uncomfortable in your entire life. And that ranges from you should never have to pick up a meal from a restaurant all the way to you should never have to talk to. You should never have to talk to your horrible 10 year old that's telling you to stop fighting because they're trying to watch Charlie Kirk videos on YouTube. You know, my stupid shud 10 year.
- [66:34]
B
Old who I don't respect enough to.
- [66:37]
E
Answer, if you had just given that.
- [66:39]
C
Kid your time of day, he wouldn't have decided to get on top of the medical school building at Utah Valley.
- [66:46]
E
But, but I think it is just like that thing about like, well, a big part of life is like having to have uncomfortable conversations, right. And having to sort of even with people that you don't like and even, even with people that you once loved and you don't like anymore. Right. Like, those are big conversations that you sort of have to have in person. You should have in person.
- [67:03]
A
Right.
- [67:03]
E
It's like a health. It's like, it is the healthier way of living, even if it feels intimidating, like anxiety inducing. But instead, like when you have this machine that's basically been marketed as like, oh, we can do this for you and we can also make it feel fun by telling you that not only are you right, but you're an incredibly special person and you know, you should have never been betrayed like this or whatever. That probably is appealing to quite a of. Lot, lot of people. Yeah.
- [67:26]
D
Yeah.
- [67:26]
B
It genuinely, it feels like it can kind of like give yourself like narcissistic personality disorder. Just in the sense that like, it's a really like important and worthwhile experience to feel guilt, to feel shame, to have like, I, I don't know, to have like, said or done things you regret. Right. If you always have your phone telling you no, not only were you right to do that, but that's. That that was amazing that you did that.
- [67:51]
E
Yeah. And I mean also like being in a cultural environment where like, shame is something that isn't encouraged or like, encouraged is not the right word, but like, shame is something that you are sort of told to actively avoid. Right. And that, and as we know, all of us being like former forum posters and like, of the extremely online variety in the 2000s or whatever, it's like you can never admit that you're wrong, right? Because if you're wrong, never back down, never log off, then you get downvoted, so you never back down and you never log off. And I think the thing that we're seeing, not just with like this particular use of ChatGPT, but I think just like Normie, online culture in general has definitely moved towards like the, I guess like the types of forums that we all experience where you have relatively normal people who lived what seemed to be relatively normal lives and were not sort of like addicted to the computer when they were in their teens or whatever are now sort of, they now have been forum pill to be like, I can never back down from this. I always have to compute. I'm going to spend as long as I can with like ChatGPT. Every everything's confusive. But also if I admit that I'm wrong in any way, if I admit that I'm culpable for any harm that I've done, particularly to someone that you once loved, right? If I admit that I've harmed someone that I once loved or that I still love, that makes me a bad person. And I might feel shame in doing that. So I'm instead going to revert to the computer that will tell me that I'm a good person, that I was wronged in ways that I didn't even consider before. And I'm going to do it so publicly that no one can sort of refute me on that because I can just say, well, the computer told me that actually I'm a better person than you morally and intellectually. And I'm not hearing anything else about it.
- [69:22]
C
On one hand I feel like, okay, this is basically like a slightly more advanced Microsoft Clippy. And I don't think anyone would be like, no, actually Microsoft Cliffy says I should deny all of your emotional agency. But I guess the thing about it is, I mean, maybe they did, but that's. I mean, I don't think it would be anywhere near as convincing, I would say. I mean, look, I. Becoming a parent, moving internationally multiple times, dealing with a lot of stuff. I've been with my partner almost 10 years now. There are a lot of times when things have been challenging and I think to me, just trying to put myself into the shoes of the person who's not the chatgpt addict in these stories. I think the thing about it is, is that when you are struggling, especially like if you become a parent or when circumstances change and you know, it's very hard to be able to give each other your full attention. I think one of the things that you want is for the person to be listening and to hear you and you want to show that you're listening to them. You hear them and you like you're actually paying attention to what they say. And they. And that obviously becomes a lot harder with both like the requirements of jobs and stupid computers and dang phones. And also when you have kids and they're caught, they don't care about what you want to be doing. Like they, they are going to do what they do. But to me, the point I'm trying to make is that I cannot imagine a thing that would turn, would curdle any feelings I had harder than someone not just like actively not listening, but finding a way to use a computer to dispute dumb bullshit act me to tell me that nothing that I say matters. I feel as like normally with these things, it's a slow burn when stuff. And then eventually there's a blow up and you're like, okay, well this was a long time coming. But that to me could be like an instantaneous, I no longer have any feelings and want to leave tomorrow kind of thing. I mean, not to say this is. I would never expect that in my own relationship but if I were in those shoes, like man. Because it's just like the complete annihilation of the idea that you have to acknowledge anything that the other person thinks feels.
- [71:02]
B
It's insane just to tie this up. Of course, OpenAI say like we want to make it safer, but we still think that this is a kind of legitimate use case for the product is like asking about how you did nothing wrong in your relationship. And I think really just this world that we're seeing laid out in front of us of everybody getting more narcissistic, everybody getting kind of more abusive and being on their phones more to legitimize that it really. I think this could be the technology that fixes is your party. You know, this could be the thing that heals the rift between Jeremy and Zara.
- [71:35]
C
I mean, I was going to say it would be really, really funny in that recording of the lesbian couple arguing. And then like what if the chat GPT, you know, a third wheel in the polycule heard the one, one of the spouses say could you please keep your eye on the road? And the chatgpt response, actually Subarus can survive any head on Collision.
- [71:51]
B
So what a what a downer of an episode this has been. However, thank you so much much for joining us on the bonus. Thank you so much for subscribing to the Patreon. I was going to throw in a little bit at the end about how the Guardian is stealing our bit by selling T shirts. Except they're not even T shirts. They're like hyper luxury sweatshirts that have fiercely independent hand stitch. Dumb as hell. In the meantime, Riley will return for the next episode and we will see you there. Thank you so much.
- [72:19]
C
Thank you everyone. Take care.
- [72:21]
B
Thank you.
- [72:25]
D
Sam.