Podcasting challenges late nite, lying in media, shopping as content, super consumers and Alex rediscovers America at Disney.

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What's wrong with you, Troy?

I'm feeling a lot of sympathy coming from you.

Sympathetic energy.

No, I'm just,

basically have the, well, I have the worst, uh, cold that you've never experienced before.

It's the worst cold that's ever existed on, in New York City.

It's the worst man called ever.

It

all comes back to the oyster.

It comes back to the oyster at the end of the day.

I'm never eating oysters again in my life.

It's not oysters, dude.

Well, we should maybe tell the audience you guys threw a super spreader event.

Not, not from what I know.

Not from, not, I've, I've done some check ins.

It's media influenza.

I, um, I

one of the things that, stuck out, I think, to a few of us, this week was this really interesting press tour that Timothy Chalamet is going on for his, I guess the drops on Christmas.

It's good to see movies dropping on Christmas again.

his, new, Bob Dylan biopic, Complete Unknown.

we talked a little bit about him going on college game day being like, Weirdly, very astute with his picks.

He's shown up at University of Minnesota, marching bands.

He's, he's gone on all kinds of different podcasts.

He was on Theo Vaughn this week.

and he sat down for like a 90 minute conversation.

I, I gotta admit, I only saw the clips of them, of the conversation, which were shared quite widely.

but, It's an interesting contrast, because to me, it's like there's there are elements that he is adapting from the The sort of manosphere playbook that that Trump ran, but I think it's yet another proof point that so much has changed with the traditional role of mainstream media.

It used to be the go to for these kind of press junkets, which you got was like Harrison Ford giving, you know, these kind of grumpy sort of interviews to to late night hosts with these can stories.

And this is very different.

I think Chalamet is a different type of character.

but, you know, he's, I think you got to show your sort of like real self in, in these kind of, you know, the, the press tours now and the alternative media route seems better, you know what I mean?

Like, the New York Times was doing follow up.

This is not the first time they're doing follow up stories on fear of on podcasts.

Because they discussed, the Mitchell Lama artist housing Timothee Chalamet lived in, in New York City, during the podcast.

And so the New York Times then was, was reporting out afterwards.

you know, it seems kind of significant in a degree.

Troy?

I mean, I think it is really significant, if not just a moment to contrast the before and after.

And in my mind, the only way you, you can see, the broadcast product, largely news talk shows, et cetera, is the sort of compressive force that broadcast puts on a piece of content, where.

It needs to be, you know, kind of homogenized, I suppose and, shortened and, you know, a couple of gags and packaged up and sent down the wire like, you know, I'll never forget Alex calling it baby food or he didn't call it baby food.

Baby News.

So I I'll call this baby food and.

You know, I, I, I thought that I watched the whole thing.

I think Theo Von is a real interesting character because he's, he's got this kind of Oshock Southern thing and

Yeah, it's kind of disarming.

yeah, and he's not afraid to lay out his insecurities and routinely cries on the podcast.

And, you know, doesn't care if he doesn't know something he'll admit it.

It's just refreshing.

It's like a, A dude that you would meet at a college, you know, bar.

And, and then Timothy Chalamet presents nothing like he looks.

Like, he, he's kind of like a, you know, he, first of all, he looks like he's 18.

And he's like a dude.

He's, you know, very lovable.

And, you know, he's, you can see him kind of wrestling with His overwhelming celebrity, in this and, you know, it's sort of like he digs it, but he's, you know, he doesn't want to be that guy and he knows that, that this, you know, the kind of undercurrent of authenticity is really what matters now.

So he, you can see him playing with those 2 sort of countervailing forces and what, what turns out the, the format just great because.

You get to see the fidgety people, you know, talking about real stuff, the conversations fearing all over the place.

They routinely bring up supporting information.

Next, you know, in the YouTube podcast, whether it's, you know, a link or a clip or a picture of a friend of Chalamet's that played soccer at UNC or something like that.

So it's a, I think it's a really, really fun format.

And I guess for me, it was just, A moment to like, it's not just podcasts, right?

It's podcasts turn into video replacing late night TV.

And it's, so it's much bigger than podcasts.

It's much more connected to the deterioration of that old kind of media industrial economy.

And I think it's significant for that, for that reason, that, and Brian, Bob Dylan's the goat.

And one of the reasons that, You know, shallow me was so, you know, charged about doing this is because he, you know, felt he fell in love with Dylan and doing this and it took a long time to make and he put a lot of energy and is really proud of it.

but it sent me on a little, you know, deep dive on, on Bob Dylan, including to what year was it?

2003.

Interview with Bill Bradley, on, on 60 minutes.

And then before the, at a of a, a interview like Bob Dylan is surrounded by journalists.

Seemingly, everybody's smoking cigarettes in 1963, San Francisco, and he's, he's responding to the press, the press with just this complete kind of lackadaisical, you know, I don't give a fuck, you know, presentation, which felt really rock and roll and also, I think really appeals to.

A lot of young people who don't want to get caught up in the kind of artifice that is, you know, they, they want to live in a way that's truer than what media would suggest you have to.

So that's why I liked it.

I'm really sick by the way.

Yeah,

No, I, we, we, we, we heard that,

This is, this is like the Michael Jordan flu game.

yeah, I mean, I think a Bob Dylan biopic is getting oversized attention because of all this.

Like, I mean, I like Bob Dylan too ish.

I wish he could sing.

but, I think, I think what you have here is like in, in Shalameh is like a kid that grew up entirely It became famous entirely at a very young age and on the internet, you know, when he was very young, he had like 50 year old women, like proclaiming their desire to bang him, you know, which is kind of weird.

and I think it shows that these kids are, you know, Kind of resilient growing up in that space.

And what he's doing now is very smart.

I mean, I mean, he's doing podcasts, but he's also doing everything.

He's also coming up with like different outfits that are totally memable.

he's just everywhere.

He's just, you know, rushing the zone.

And he's, he's affecting kind of what I'm calling like the hyper algorithm, which is like, you're there, you've got 90 minutes of content on Theo Vaughn.

You know, that all the other, the real old media things are just going to cut and clip this and repost it.

It's like really efficient to, to do that.

And as this comes up everywhere, it feeds the algorithm and it shows up everywhere.

And I think, that's what these new campaigns are about.

And honestly, like.

My guess is that it's way less work.

a great point and a really nice way of framing it.

It's

I was thinking, it is so dependent on the person, right?

Like, can you imagine if they tried to run this playbook with like, what's his name, Jeremy Strong, like from, Succession.

Like, it'd be totally different, because I think a lot of actors particularly, they're not that interesting.

I

Well, that's the thing, right?

And they, and they, and there's, oh, there's always this disconnect between the person that they are on screen and the person that they are.

but, but, you know, honestly, I, I probably think that like, you know, sitting down for a few of on episode takes you less time and effort than getting ready and make, make up and going through the questions and sitting with producers for like three minutes on Colbert, you know, and,

You see people that are like kind of stilted and uncomfortable there.

That sounds really good when they're just having a conversation because the, the, you know, there's less, less pressure on that.

But yeah, but what, what they're feeding is that kind of hyper algorithm of everything it's going to be on YouTube.

It's going to be on Tik TOK.

It's going to be on Vogue.

I mean, it's on, you know, it's going to be everywhere because you're flooding the zone with things that are creating content and.

You know, the traditional media kind of started giving all of that away when they started making tweets news items.

Because like, you don't go to them first because you know that they're going to have to cover something, right?

Maybe you'll go for the photo shoot or something like that if you want something

Well, I mean, that is, I mean, that's over, like, because, I mean, Elon Musk and, Vivek Ramaswamy are, like, tanking, a massive spending bill on X, right?

So, I mean, they have no choice but to be reporting out the tweets.

I

yeah, I, I, but I think, I think the ecosystem feeds itself, right?

Like, like he's still doing professional photo shoots and press junkets where he'll be like in line at the premiere, right?

And those things are coming up on Tik Tok.

Right.

And then he does the Theo Von and that stuff comes out in, in Vogue.

Right.

And what he's doing, he's, he's just like the media ecosystem that is just feeding it to each other.

It's becoming like maybe a healthy ecosystem.

I don't know.

There seems to be some sort of fauna and flora that's developing here.

but you're seeing in this person that's been entirely kind of conditioned by the internet.

He knows exactly what he's doing.

He's charismatic.

he comes across.

Smart and honest and like, Oh, he's actually one of us, even though he's somebody that, you know, many people find, incredibly like, unapproachably good looking.

And I think that's, that's refreshing.

And it's a new type of, of, of celebrity, which I think, we're going to see more and more, but, but, you know, I think the interesting thing to me is how broad they're going

with this and how

the, the, the question Alex is, what do you still need from legacy media?

Like the role that the magazine used to play in that, celebrity pass by on a talk show was, and it was always kind of depicted.

I think the reason that magazines were sort of small businesses, but.

You know, famous brands and, and you would, you would be, you would be Timothy Chalamet and you would show up on, on Leno and you would hold up the magazine that you were on the cover of and the magazine fulfilled an important role in capturing and defining a moment and making that thing that's still right, it's, it's, it's kind of etched in now and.

You know, I think it was really valuable.

I'm not sure that we need even to do that anymore.

I mean, I think influencers, we've talked about this before, Brian Goldberg will always say from Bustle that influencers love going by and being on the cover digital or print covers of his, You know, his publications because, they, they like all the, you know, pomp of, of a professional photo shoot and, and being framed for that moment on a cover

Yeah, I

then the, then exchange for that, they'll come to the party in Miami, And, so, you know, what role does, does Colbert play in this thing and role, I'm sure there's magazine covers.

What role does it play?

I mean, it's definitely downgraded, right?

The object.

The magazine cover used to be the moment, but now I think the moment is very distributed.

It's very part of this like hyper algorithm as I'm calling it, where you kind of have a sense that now people are talking about Timothee Chalamet and young people are giving a shit about Bob Dylan.

That's like a win, right?

For everyone.

and, and I think before this.

I, you know, what is it a year ago?

Pedro Pascal did a very similar thing, right?

Like he was kind of everywhere and he was very memable because people started notice.

You know, like he's kind of acting adorable and self conscious and he was dropping these outfits, but, there were still like the artifice of the photo shoot or the premier and stuff like people still want to see that there's still value in it.

It's just downgrade.

It's just like an ingredient.

This part of the media thing.

So I think these things will still happen.

and I don't think you're going to have just superstar, just being on Theo Vaughn being kind of like, you know, especially if glamour is part of that brand and I think, I think, you know, super stars are, but you kind of like unapproachable Angelina Jolie or Jeremy strong, kind of like.

Superstar press tour is, is over as it stood.

Right.

And I don't think they want to do that because imagine how much value he's getting out of that one Theo Vaughn interview.

Usually these guys have to sit for 16 hours in a room talking to like press outlets, that's going to put them in front of 5, 000 people, you know?

So there's still going to be like the, big drop, like.

Appearing on SNL, like, you know, when, when McGee appeared on SNL, it felt like he was dropping it.

He felt like he had arrived, but that didn't really bring him that many new fans.

You know, he was, he was already popular by the time he got that.

That was just like a glamorous thing to do.

And, you know, if you're an artist, that's nice to put on your mantle, it's like an award.

But yeah, Shalom is smart and he's charismatic.

Like that's what they're going to look for.

And I wonder if, you know, you're looking for the next artist is like, how can that person like sit in a room and chit chat with a bunch of other people?

that being said, the whole podcast thing is still like super male dominated.

I wonder how that changes over time, you know, sure,

Yeah, that'll be interesting.

I mean, there's Caller Daddy and other examples, but,

sure.

I mean, it's not, it's never like a hundred percent, but it does feel like,

sure.

No, I get it.

up by these very male dominated, like, man of sphere type podcasts.

Maybe we can become part of the Manosphere.

That'd be awesome.

I mean, we're part of it if, whether we like it or not, you know,

Speak for yourself, Alex.

just need more grifts.

this might be a little bit too, too niche, but it's, it's after my heart.

the Aussie media CEO, Carlos Watson got sentenced to nearly a decade in prison this week for conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud.

know, Aussie to me was an extreme case of that eras.

playing sort of fast and loose and sort of fake it till you make it approach.

do you know Ozzy Alex at all?

Probably don't.

You know, I was trying to follow, the thread and I thought you were talking about Ozzy Osbourne for a good Few minutes and was like, what?

This is exactly the

point.

This is exactly the thing.

It's like you could, you know, they stood up this, it was backed by Goldman Sachs and Google's, VC arm, I believe.

And it, it raised a lot of money.

Okay.

And it clearly to me, like, you knew it had no, Real audience, right?

Like it was like I never see this stuff anywhere and there were some brands I always felt like could get away with that if they were focused on particular niches that I, I might not like, you know, be near, but this was when I was like, okay, they cover politics, they cover news.

And I'm like, I surely somehow I would, and then organically come across it.

And then you go to the, like, YouTube videos and like, it's clearly any views or, or, you know.

He's suspicious and, and that is kind of par for the course.

I think what, what happened was this got taken to, to an extreme, in trying to raise money.

and, Carlos, at least according to the courts, ended up stepping over that line and now he's going to jail.

so talk about the scale

and the website is still, is still full of just his face everywhere

Well, so he's turned, it's kind of interesting in a weird way.

he's, he's really dedicated to, you know, His innocence, I guess he's become a freedom fighter of

I mean, one would be, yeah,

and yeah, no, I would be dedicated to it, but he's, he came up with a documentary.

That's like a 90 minute long documentary about like, Basically this conspiracy that to put him away in which he like details how the judge might have like investments tied to this is before sentencing.

Never a good idea.

I don't know.

I've never been sentenced, but I would not put out the sort of documentary like saying that the judge is crooked before that judge is sentencing me that

no.

That's the right way to motivate a judge.

But it's kind of, it's, it's kind of, it is kind of the path, right?

Like somebody.

Somebody gets to a certain place in their career, then they get accused of something, like embezzlement or usually, you know, something even more nefarious.

And then they, they, they make a documentary trying to prove their innocence.

And, you know, three years later, they're full on right wing selling, vitamins on YouTube.

But if he's going to jail, he might not get that, that option.

Yeah, well, he got to make his documentary.

He got his, his, his take on it.

He besmirched the name of, names of Jonah Paretti and Ben Smith and his, and his documentary.

That's Chelsea Paretti's brother.

Oh yeah, I remember now.

I mean, now I remember him as the guy who, said, no to Disney offering him 650 million for BuzzFeed.

Yeah.

That in re in retrospect.

That's the problem when you think you're a tech company and you think like, You know, all the stories about saying no early are going to pay off.

If you're a media company, just say yes.

Anything, any, just somebody comes with a check.

Just say yes.

Any money at this stage.

It's just gonna,

it's just gonna get, it's just gonna get less.

entirely fair, Alex.

The, the,

I'm just poking the bear here.

I know my audience.

the reason this story is interesting is because Medias is full of liars and the entire industry, in fact, even pre digital, which was the lying era, I can remember lots of times when people would talk about the kind of audience research that you would field as a established media company or print magazine.

And it was all, you know, soft, generously.

And you would, you know, twist the results, find the conjunctions where you had the most pet lovers that used wireless headphones in the world.

And so you would find all these ridiculous things that distinguish you.

And then the digital era.

Where it was part like you driven by absurd, you know, reach and page view and uniques numbers.

And much of it was on validatable.

People were just throwing that stuff out.

Like they were, you know, like, like it's like performance art, you know, how many uniques you got?

Uh, we have a hundred million uniques.

Wait, you mean half of the country reads your product every month or something or every week?

So there was, it was, it was rampant.

And

what is.

to fake, right?

But it's hard to fake this on the

There isn't a person in digital media that hasn't lied about the reach of their pro,

My favorite of that was the, the traffic.

Yeah.

Traffic assignment scheme.

there's this, there's this, I'll just explain it to Alex, there's, there's this thing comscore that, you know, that, that supposedly it, it, it's okay, it says how many people visited a website and then it's used by media buyers, to figure out plans.

And so you want to, you always want to get your comscore number higher.

so if people are not coming to your website, it's like bit of a problem.

But you could get some other website, like a bored panda or something who doesn't really, who needs, who needs money and is not like obsessed with that to assign their traffic to you.

And.

It would not, it would look like your traffic.

Okay, like you could dig down and find out that is really bored pandas traffic.

And this was how this was how vice, basically appeared to be so big.

I mean, they were claiming in 2018 that they had an audience of 288 million people.

Britain Co.

claimed at one point to have an audience of 175 million people.

They were counting, they were counting

Well, I mean, a lot of people want to know how to make Christmas decoration out of

any content on Pinterest or something.

Yeah.

I, the problem with that is when that shows up, I mean, sure it's, it's, at worst fraudulent at best, you know, a little cheeky, but it's pathetic.

But I think it's also like strategically destructive because if your data isn't correct, right.

Your entire staff like thinks it's working, like doesn't understand what's working and what's not.

You know what I mean?

It's just like, it's such a fool's game.

It's such a, I mean, at least be a, be a crook that like leads your company to success.

Right.

But this is, you're just telling the people that work for you wrong things so that they don't know what's working and what's not.

And which accelerates your demise.

what happened here?

He was on a call with Goldman and was pretending he was the YouTube.

Wasn't there some

Rao, his like co founder was the impersonator.

YouTube exec or

Yeah, to say that no, no, no, because Goldman Sachs is like, I think this is bullshit.

And it's like, yeah, pretty obviously bullshit.

And it's transparently bullshit, like the whole thing was obviously nonsense.

I got to respect people that are like such like grifters.

They just go for it.

I mean, just like the raw just like waking up in the morning and saying I'm going to full on

But the, the whole thing, the bigger picture is the whole thing was out of whack because CPMs were relatively speaking low.

engagement was fake and, people needed to, you know, you know, trade in all of these sort of high carb impressions that they were generating and the whole thing was like a false economy, right?

Like it was cheap impressions that were, you know, cheap for a reason built on fake analytics.

And, you know, that era's over now.

It's like, shame on you, media buyers, for, not, not you, Brian, shame on,

You seem to be looking at me.

well, for buying into it, and

Oh, you know who you are, you know who you are.

You're listening right now.

Troy is

year old media

this is what happens when you sell 2 CPMs, And, and think that that's, that that's actually what it costs to create something of quality.

This is unrealistic.

Anyhow,

All right.

Well,

All right.

Let's move on to the next topic.

let's talk about shopping content, right?

I mean, we are, I think one of the sort of stories of, of this year was Google's war on, the SEO glue factories out there.

Google basically said they don't like those business models.

And it's sort of obvious path that a lot of publishers have to go on.

Seems like we've talked about it a lot on the show about getting as close as possible to the transaction.

and we are in the holiday season.

So this is gift guy time.

I mean, this, this was always a lucrative.

I mean, hopefully it'll be as lucrative as it has been in years past.

but Troy, what in your, in your, estimation.

First of all, what makes a good gift guide?

And then what, what is the future for, for shopping content?

It's a little broad, but

you know, I mean, affiliate had great promise, right?

It's the most native of all ad formats.

The idea of recommending products in the front of a book is an age old practice in publishing.

The idea of doing it with trust and.

Authority of your brand and people buy it after that.

Like that's, that's the real thing.

And then it got connected to the transaction and the distribution, mechanism of Google.

So you would create a lot more cause that would give you more distribution from Google and you would make more money.

And it was like for publishers, it was like, Oh my God, finally, finally, something that I actually don't have to go like.

Sell and put fake numbers on in the market.

So people will pay me for it.

If I generate revenue, it was glorious.

And I still think it matters.

But for me, so many of the shopping guides are just generic crap that feel like, you know, something I could, you know, find on the front page of Amazon.

I personally like, and I don't seek out shopping guide content, but I like shopping guides where, like, an editor, a writer, like, find really kind of, you know, personal, interesting, weirdo, can only get them at a store in the East Village, kind of like, you know, stuff that, you know, speak, that feels, you know, really cherishable.

I don't know, like, Yeah,

a huge market.

Yeah, that's pretty niche

Yeah.

You know, Troy's little bric a brac store is not going to keep your media's EB.

but I don't I don't really need a

I, I hope they're

like

Sony Sony wireless headphones in it.

That's not a

gift to me,

I get it.

I, I think that path is kind of a dead end, because as behaviors shift more and more from search into, you know, chat interfaces, which is happening.

It's, it's undeniable at this stage.

People are getting much more into behaviors about fine tuning their shopping guide.

First of all, describing the person, or describing the type of categories.

Some categories are really hard, to, to recommend for.

Like I was, I was talking about furniture, right?

Because they're so contextual.

so you can't say this is the best chair.

And so there's, there's a lot of categories there.

And

I think

That's not a that's not a gift guide.

It's

Hang on.

I think people are, are, are individualized and unique, right?

Like, so if you want to buy something for a musician that plays a certain type of instruments and likes wooden instruments, that there is a product out there, but the thing, the main, the main thing is that the entire, this entire part of the industry is entirely based on the fact that the link is attributable to the source.

Right.

And when you have something that says, well, here's what Vogue recommends in watches or whatever the hell you're looking for, that attributable source is going away.

It's non defensible.

Nobody nobody needs to be recommended to buy a whoop.

Okay.

I'm talking about I don't

Wait, I didn't, I wanted Alex to explain what do, what do you mean?

It's non attributable to the

Well, it's like right now you go to the site, the site has links, you go on Black Friday and say these are the top Black Friday deals for video gamers or sports fans, right?

And you go there and you click the link, that link has a code that tells Amazon or whatever, That, you know, you get a cut from that, from that deal.

when, but that way of experiencing these types of guides is, already feels really arcane because it's very broad.

It's very scattershot.

While asking a thing like a chatbot, for example, say, Hey, I'm looking for a present for my wife.

She likes these types of things.

She's size this.

And, here's where we live, right?

There are so many variables that can add that thing can go through these shopping guys and, and, Twitter and Reddit and

That feels

And, oh, oh, I, I don't care what you feel about it.

Is That serendipity?

Is that what

serendipity

Troy, Troy, you think you just want to, you know, like your, your, your friend, who's an artist told you to go to the store in Brooklyn.

It's only open on Thursdays.

And you have to ask this old lady to give you the special ashtray that was used by like that shit.

Like it's fine.

It's great.

Love that.

99 percent

of the people just want to know, like, wait, which video games should I buy for my kid?

Because I don't know what the fuck they're doing.

Like,

whatever I'm saying, it's just like the, this, this, this If, if this is a huge source of revenue and you can see them, they're all leaning on it.

That stuff is going to go away so quickly because the idea of an attributable link to a product is going away.

Not only that, imagine I want to say, Hey, and you know what?

I don't want to buy it on Amazon.

Find me a thing that is for this person.

And I don't want to buy it on Amazon.

Like tell me that that is not a better experience than Googling stuff.

And then getting onto a site that has a bunch of links.

And I don't even like that stuff is all gone.

You can see it.

You can see it

I mean, you're, you're, you're beating up on the weak kid in the schoolyard.

I, I

No, I'm telling like, I'm telling like, Hey, we kid like bulk up because that's not working.

I don't

all, all right.

All right.

I get it.

Alex,

I, I think that makes sense.

We, we started the conversation about gift guides that I cherish about why I like the green tomato scented fuckity fuck candle, and, and that you can't find anywhere.

And.

And I appreciate that kind of recommendation.

And that's the human side of it that I like.

I get it.

If you want your gamer kid to get a game, you can type it into the machine.

Perfect.

No.

You know what you can do?

You can, you can ask a query to something like chat GPT saying I'm looking for a gift here, some variable.

And please don't find me stuff from, you know.

You know, go deep in the internet, find stuff that is like less, less well throttled path.

And, you know, you might find something there that you might, you might not know where to find other way.

Whatever the case, I mean, I stand by it.

I know you can make your gift guide from your friend or whatever, your best product at the end of the day.

But like, if you're a media company and you're relying on commerce, I don't see where this is going.

Hey,

this is painful.

The truth is a, I agree.

And one of the, my point to close, it would be once commercial intent moves.

Into the chat space, like really moves in there as opposed to it.

Just being a querying front end forever.

Green content.

that's when the dam breaks

It's over.

and the dam being search it, where, when commercial intent manifests, like in real ways at scale in, in the search box.

It's it's serious.

Yeah, and I think it's, I think we're like, this is like happening over the next 24 months

Yes.

and, and, and, and the downstream effect is going to be, is going to be huge.

so, you know, with that, like, I think, we're still going to see gift guides, but it's just because people enjoy doing them.

There you go.

Okay, it's becoming a hobby.

sources like I think, you know, American's Test Kitchen that really focuses on certain things and they have a very kind of broad spectrum, media strategy, you know, they're kind of everywhere.

They've got a subscription service.

I think that still works.

I mean, I think you still go there and you trust and they've got a mix of characters

there's gift guides and there's recommend, but there's like every day, like to me, wire cutter is fine for like every day.

Like

I need,

fine?

want to buy an alarm

They have zero taste.

I don't need taste.

I didn't need an alarm clock.

It goes, can you imagine day out?

They recommended a speaker that costs 450.

You have to at least

And I don't want to have to ring the bell

of

no.

You don't want an alarm clock that's tasteful.

But besides, why do you even

I don't

clock?

Get one of

Because I don't want to have my phone in, in the

Yeah.

Now

those beautiful little bronze ones.

Those are nice.

I'm looking for a brown one, actually.

You know, just the, just the phone in the room is like, it's stress inducing.

Like you should never put your phone on the table also.

Don't put the phone on the table, keep it in your pocket.

Okay.

Alright, should we move to the next topic there, Mr.

Moderator?

right.

Next gen super consumers.

I wasn't clear on this one.

Alex, you said, kids are watching a lot of packaging content.

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, so,

Take it away, Alex.

And don't start, why do you, I don't know why you had to get all testy with me and, like, Troy's a whiny baby or something.

I edited that out, by the way.

he dead.

Well, I don't know

why, yes.

he asked me for my opinion.

Cause you were sick and you were being a whiny baby about like, like wanting me

were very active.

You, you like lost it in the, in the thread this week.

I

So, so for our audience, what happens with Troy is that there's long hours of silence where you've asked Troy something he doesn't respond.

And then Troy decides to work on something and then starts yelling at everyone that we should all pay attention now because he's focusing on this and he's done with whatever else

It's great insight, Alex.

It's not true.

It's fake news, but

reading about the fact that, you know, brands like Sephora are being, are being swarm by, by like, you know, girls that, you know, like, like 10, 11, 12 years old for, not makeup, which is, you know, makeup can be fun and, I get that kids want to try to stuff out, but actually skincare routines.

And they don't need it because, you know, at 11 years old, your skin is pretty much the best it'll ever be.

But, it turns out that, a lot of these kids, are watching influencers.

And a lot of this influencer content is, this is my morning routine, and this is what I do.

And, and so they're asking their parents, and the parents are oftentimes obliging, which is to me to buy them like really expensive Korean, you know, that sea salt, you know, facial creams and all of that stuff.

and the brands are responding, you know, by, by actually tagging some, you know, of their products to be, you know, tween, you know, like great for tweens or whatever, but it got me thinking.

The fact that like these kids have grown up on a very commercialized type of content.

you know, some kids really grew up on watching unboxing videos.

Of kids, kids unboxing toys.

they're like a YouTube generation.

yes.

And, and so much of this kind of, influencer sphere is really kind of integrating the product marketing into their content, right?

Whether it's like, you know, kind of like Mr.

Beast having a snackable stuff or, you know, drinks or branded content, all these kinds of, and they're, they're putting these kind of brand partnerships into their content as, and they're not separating that at all.

And, and if you look at Mr.

Beast and, you know, the, the, the, the Logan and Jake Paul's of the world, they are, you know, grown men that are really targeting young kids.

And really marketing to young kids.

And I was wondering, like, first of all, what does this go?

And also like, Do the rules that apply on, on, on broadcast TV around advertising to children, not apply on YouTube.

Like this feels like a massive, massive weakness for YouTube.

yeah, YouTube has always had, their biggest weakness has been with COPPA and, all kinds of children's issues.

the closest they've come, I mean, they've never gotten really fully, hit on it, but that is their biggest, their biggest

I mean, I mean, the most popular videos this year were, were Mr.

Beast, right?

The second most popular was Cristiano Ronaldo with Mr.

Beast and everyone.

I think Mr.

Beast is a grifter at the highest scale.

I mean, I think he's, he's,

he's heading for a downfall.

You can see this coming.

but, but he's also like too big to fail at this stage, he's an economy, you know, and I don't, it doesn't look like YouTube is either tweaking the algorithm.

Or, you know, or does it's strange because it feels like when it comes to children, the legislation doesn't seem to move very fast, but, we're seeing what kind of rampant consumerist content is doing to accelerate kids.

You know, potential body issues, but also just like the fact that they think they have to use like face cream.

So they don't get wrinkles at 11 years old.

It's, it's, it's, it's happening.

And it's, I think it's consequential.

So all the grief that YouTube got and then Instagram got, YouTube will get it because YouTube is, somehow it was like, obviously it was always there, it was massive, right?

But if you look at, there's this chart, that shows the most popular social network among kids, and it's just, It's so far YouTube versus, not social network platform, versus all the others, TikTok, all of them, obviously Facebook just cratered.

and yeah, that's gonna be, where the battle is.

I mean, if you were, we're, you know, we're, we often talk about kind of the power of brand here.

This new generation is very much has very strong brand affinities.

Right.

Like, and if you look at like the content that's being built into Roblox and things like that, it's a lot of, you know, kids building things around their favorite brands of products and you'd be surprised.

And so that's just like, it was an interesting topic to me.

And if you want to read up about it, it's wild to see kids queuing at a Sephora to buy some 40 face cream.

Yeah, it's just, it's just a weird

seems to me there's something even broader that would mirror the discussion we had on the Timothee Chalamet thing, which is that marketing takes the same form of kind of informality and authenticity.

And it's, it's just all around us now.

It's like you're soaking in it.

It's less.

And I think we saw this in 24 with, The change of the sort of tech keynote structure where it became more like conversational and you could make mistakes and, you know, we're bringing you into meet the product managers at open AI or this week.

We're going into Jensen Wang's kitchen, CEO of NVIDIA.

And he'll do a little gag like he's pulling the chips out of his oven.

but he'll show you how he's pulling this new, what's it called Alex?

This new, it's kind of cool actually.

The Jetson Orinano from the oven.

I had the little computers.

Yeah, which is a 249 brain for making basically AI robots.

and it just becomes another video on YouTube.

And it's fun, and the CEO would want you to his house, and they probably made it in an hour.

It's so, it's so strange, right?

Because I think, you know, there's like the, the, the, the baby news comment when you, when you watch kind of network news, it also happens.

I also get this feeling when I watched advertising and the ones that are very striking to me specifically is very like very specific car advertising.

You watch a brand like BMW and it's somebody driving and it says no compromises, explore the beautiful.

And you're like, what the fuck are you

The winding road?

Yeah.

Winding road and just some guy with a, you know, four o'clock shadow and his hot wife or whatever the fuck.

and then you're like, I don't care about this product at all.

And then Doug Demure shows up in his shorts and is just like going around and saying, like pressing all the buttons and showing us the quirks and features and all of a sudden his car becomes a product that you may want.

You know, like, I think we're, you know, And I have to be careful here because it's not that it's always the truth, but there is like fakeness.

We have a, we have a good radar for fakeness.

And it used to, we used to think that we used to have nothing to compare it to.

But now that there's at least an expression of, of unedited, just raw expression of things.

the fake stuff is, It's disappearing.

Like it was just like becoming so much less powerful

It's like artificiality to some degree, right?

And

I mean, it's,

was, it was interesting.

The early, there was this moment where user generated advertising was like a thing, like in early 2010s, I think, and It all sucked to me, but the reason it sucked was because when people were told that they were going to make ads, they made ads as they imagined ads to be.

So they just made poor, but I'm like, you're not good at making these ads.

no, no,

no, you're supposed to.

ads, you know, like, Oh, no, you know, like some guy doing

Yeah, they would just sort of pattern match that and I do think you're right that, you know, over time, you know, there's been.

This shift that like, no, you're not going to try to like mimic what the quote unquote professional, you know, ad makers would do.

And I think they got much better at figuring out the incentives, right?

Like it's, it's, if you tell a podcaster that they're going to make 10 bucks every time somebody gets their AG one, you know, Nitro greens subscription or whatever, then you've got incentives and that person who's good at making content is going to figure out how to make content for your product, you know, just let them cook, completely adjacent to this, but there's a, apparently there's a proliferation of content on Instagram, which is not, marketed as ads.

And there are podcast clips of people going, Oh yeah, I use that product and it's great.

And those are entirely actors in studios that are

just, they have said podcast set up and they're just like shilling, you know, they never record a podcast.

It's not a real podcast.

The genius genius

some some gaming system is is sending me, ads showing RFK Jr using their gaming system like nonstop on X.

It's a really wild place.

I know you're not coming back.

Alex, but it's

I mean, I got to tell you like

it's pretty insane.

just to, give you, you know,

I mean, in a kind of good way, like I really, I know you're going to hate to hear this.

I think he's going to do it.

I think he's going to make X into, something.

And

but I don't, I

to be very different.

Well,

Let me just give you some, some raw data, right?

Because this is very interesting.

I have, and it's an algorithm thing.

I have 7, 600 followers on X, right?

and I have, 2, 400 followers on threads and essentially the same post, a very similar post, got, over 750 likes and 72 comments and 32 retweets.

Okay, it's pretty good.

I'm happy with that.

and on X.

It got one, like, it's baffling,

it's that is the, I mean, you're just, it's TikTok.

Your followers don't matter.

I don't think that much on, on,

right.

But I mean, I've been on X like for, I've been on X since like 2007.

Like I don't under, and I have posted regularly in the past.

I don't,

Oh, I don't post.

I rarely post on X anymore.

There's

But I mean, I think, okay, but I think without, the content, I mean, I'm hearing this from a lot of content creators, I'm back on posting because I need to create an audience because I need to feed the algorithm.

I need to Timothy Shalami this.

and you know, I can't wear leather pants at a Vogue photo shoot yet.

You can do

whatever you want.

I can do whatever I want.

That's true, man.

I

like that.

for,

you might make content on X that does better than it does on Instagram.

it has never happened.

not very

never, I mean, it's not very scientific.

It's a different system.

It's a different system, man.

I'm hearing of a lot of content.

Creators on x that said that they're not getting any traction for the stuff that they're doing and it's not worth the effort

Every time I head over to threads, I feel like it's icky.

I know yeah, yeah, I mean, I don't know maybe see I'm not saying threads is fine.

I don't like facebook.

I don't like I'm actually just giving some raw numbers here.

It's not like, Oh, you know, X is I get half the likes.

It's just one compared to 750 and it's either like a massively different audience, although my audience is pretty similar on, on both, or there's something going on with that algorithm that, that is really prioritizing types of content that like,

Probably.

it's, it's hard, you

don't know what signals have picked up that I was really into anything relating to Ireland and migrants, but I get an unbelievable amount of content about that.

Irish migrants.

no, about migrants in Ireland.

I don't know.

Like, there's a lot of stuff on X that is like, kind of nuts.

A lot of fights videos get sent to me.

I don't know.

Alex, you went to Disneyland or Disney World?

Land.

You went to Florida?

No, Land is

World.

Oh,

is in L.

A.

It's, easy to remember.

World has the ORL numbers in it, which is Orlando, and land has L.

A.

in it, which is LA.

Okay, yeah, yeah.

how was that?

Do

Oh, we love it.

you know, you feel that they are kind of jam packing it, to a point where it's becoming somewhat untenable.

but if you can manage it, you can, you can manage it.

you guys dress up?

Do you dress up?

Do you like go and

No, but I got to tell you like the Disney adult population and the amount of just people.

Pure adults that are there without kids that are fully decked out in Disney stuff.

is incredible.

and it's, somewhat disconcerting.

But that's kind of, that's the people you need.

You know, people who have no kids, have a job and are so into buying your plastic shit that they will spend 30 on a sippy cup.

it's great.

It's a little, it makes me a little uncomfortable at times, but,

there any documentaries on Disney adults?

I would

I'm sure, I'm sure.

did you go to Ri Well, why did you go there?

I took my, son and my niece and nephew, and it was very fun.

it, you know, there's, there's lions and stuff like that, but that Star Wars, I mean, some of the stuff that they do is so good.

The marvels and the Star Wars land is just, you know, so immersive, so well done.

And, and especially the newer rides are so smart about how they shuffle you in and, and get you to experience that.

they have an app, which surprisingly doesn't crash with, you know, 50, 000 people kind of using the network at the same time, which is incredible in its own right.

but what I, what I, what I did notice there is just, first of all, like phones are everywhere.

Right.

And, and the amount of kids just and immediately getting a phone or a tablet in their hand is, That stuff's not gonna end well, because we're making addicts like at a very young age.

but also being, waiting in line and watching people's behavior, you know, a lot of people watch social media and I always found it crazy that people listen to podcasts at 2x and I know some people do.

Do that with this one.

I, you know, it just breaks my brain if I do that.

or three and a half X, it

I would just like to ask them, just don't listen.

If you're gonna listen to it at 2, please find another podcast.

you just, you just told that to somebody really fast and they hardly paid attention.

but if you see,

But that is, that is a, that is a young person.

That is a sign of the brain chemistry.

Just changing.

cause that's something true.

Like I'm like, I think we all grew up analog and, I can't even imagine.

Like I've tried it before.

I'm like, no, this is nuts to me.

yeah.

And, and the thing that I was actually surprised by is how people use their feeds, so people on Instagram or Tik TOK and the way they swipe through that stuff.

And swipe between apps and then swipe back and then go to Instagram and swipe back and then go back to TikTok and swipe, swipe, swipe.

And I don't know, it's, it feels like it's, you know, like, like a hundred movements a minute, like that are happening.

I don't even understand how they are consuming recalling or, I mean, they're not, but like, it feels like when you watching somebody do that, it feels like, You know, seeing somebody on the production line that knows how to slice up chicken really well.

And they're just, just going through the motions.

and I don't even understand how you create content for a generation that consumes and like that.

And I would, you know, I would not bring it up if it was one or two people, but it's pretty much everyone I saw waiting in line use their phones much faster than I did.

and, and, you know, if you, if you haven't noticed that behavior before, I recommend just like paying attention and seeing that because that's a.

You know, that's I didn't see anybody read anything.

That's for sure.

except a lot of people have their phones muted and read the subtitles.

Apparently.

and, and they probably go through like 200 pieces of content, you know, waiting in line.

It's, it's just, it's just wacky.

so that's what you guys have to deal with.

So when Troy sends me a New York Times article that I have to read and listen to, and it's got all this thing about this tapes that they found in the seventies, even I'm like, I cut this.

Does, I cannot look at that.

That's too

know, that's funny that you brought that up because I guess I'll remove that from this week's good product content

I'm not saying it's a bad product.

I'm saying I have

brain worms as well.

Like I,

reason I sent you that one was, because there's no words.

You basically get like a paragraph every swipe.

there's a lot of words.

very few.

Those

Can you can actually try it?

Just why don't you set it up?

Because we're like, people don't know.

It's a multimedia package

on New York Times.

Yeah, it's

do you like those?

Like,

I do, I do like them actually, you

I didn't think I felt like there's one of those things.

Nobody actually likes, but they pretend they like, because they think it's good

I

I

thought, I mean, it's gotta be, the content's gotta be good.

This was a good story, it was about, Fire Island's a cool place, and it was about this influential gay couple in, in, I don't know, what was it, 50s, 60s, that had created, you know, there were a big part of this scene in Fire Island and then live through the scourge of AIDS.

They sold their house.

The guy was, you know, really big in the electronic music community and had left them like crates and crates of mixed tapes, many of them rare.

So these new guys moved into the house and they discovered this kind of museum like collection from a time and an era and, celebrated it and it was just a cool story.

I

was done in a way that was kind of interactive.

And you swiped and you could read and you could hear the music in the background.

And conceptually, I get all that.

But the whole time I was like, You know what I wish?

I wish this was just a YouTube video with somebody with the boxes, putting them in a tape player and listening to them and responding to it.

I, I, I don't know what modality I need to be in to, be reading and listening to stuff and swiping my phone or being in front of a computer.

always asked too much,

actually.

I love that point.

We did that stuff because we wanted to find The new feature form right on on an HTML page So we tried to combine images and interactivity and words in a way that felt real and it kind of skidded out But I like this story is why it's from 22

But I, how much do you think it costs to produce that?

tons

Yeah.

And how much do you think they would have spent if they just got like some charismatic person to open boxes in front of YouTube,

It's the scourge of Snowfall.

Do you remember Snowfall?

Oh, we remember Snuffle.

I mean, we, like Troy and I worked on this stuff because we really hoped it would work, but like, I think honestly, like It's hard to put yourself in a place where you can experience content that is very different.

I think you, you either need to put yourself in a different space and like you go to a museum and you kind of like guided through it.

But on your day to day, like, am I reading?

Am I watching?

Am I listening?

What am I doing?

That type of That type of stuff is hard to make.

Like modality is important.

and you know, if, if you're trying to kind of grab people's attention when they're kind of waiting in line or in the toilet or bored at work or whatever, which is where a lot of media consumption happens, there's only a very few formats that really kind of fit that, you know,

I should say, for those who do not, for some reason know, but Snowfall is a multimedia feature that the New York Times did in 2012 that ignited all sorts of, predictions that this was the future of interactive storytelling.

didn't turn out to be the future.

it's still around and it's, it's still, quite beautiful.

I looked at Snowfall so much.

So much like trying, you know, when I, when we were building the sites and it was just very well built, I have to admit, I never read snowfall and I still don't know what

You don't know what happened at Avalanche

Creek?

no idea.

No idea.

I just like, I just know that, you know, they had a static, video that like the content scrolled over and that was pretty,

Tunnel Creek.

It was the avalanche at Tunnel Creek.

yeah.

Well what it made me think about is Ethan Mollick wrote a Kind of, you know, be careful what you say about AI, because when you just look at what's happened in 24, it's mind bending and remarkable and uses this one example.

Ethan Mollick researcher where in Chicago or someone, he writes a substack, He's like, there was this research paper that basically said that those black knives and forks, those plastic knives and forks are toxic because they have too high, of inclusion of, you know, recycled, toxic, recycled plastic.

And everybody started to freak out about it.

And then It turns out that in the peer reviewed paper, the paper past peer review, there was an error in the math, like one extra zero and everybody missed it.

And so he uploaded it on his phone, the PDF to the latest model on opening eyes, the latest model and said, is there a problem with this paper?

And in two seconds it said, yes, there's an error in the, in the math, in the math.

And I just thought, he's like, he made the point that, you know.

Stuff in the world gets so complicated that sometimes, you know, you have to be an expert to understand what the machines are saying to you.

But, you know, and in this case, Just how remarkable it was.

He could type in one sentence on his phone, upload a research paper into chat GPT and get a result like that.

And I, I think it's remarkable.

And then he went on to show the new, the quality of the clips on the new Google Video model.

and I, I'm kind of, you know, I find most of those things are just toys, but, VO

two, VO two is pretty, pretty crazy.

Alex.

Oh, it's, it's incredible.

I can generate up to eight minutes at 4k.

It's not, it's not fully available to the product now

But like the permanence of objects and the way that they respond, and like, it's pretty crazy.

we don't, we don't know how this going to be used, which is why I always find it strange, just like the, I get it.

I get it.

That, Media creators.

I'm not calling, I'm going to call it the media because it's everywhere.

It's across YouTube and podcasts.

There is a lot of, AI skepticism, and I think the AI skepticism is bigger, with people who create content because they feel the most targeted and I understand why.

So if you feel like your job is about to disappear, the first thing you're going to go is like this stuff is shit.

And I love Neelay Patel and I listen to The Verge.

Cast all the time, but I feel that they, they dismiss all of these products as like vaporware.

Sometimes the stuff like that is, it's not productive because I don't know what's going to be big, but I think that there is a, an element of paranoia that everyone should, should pick up on.

It's like, you know, if you're walking through the forest, we're, we're programmed to be, You know, to, to be a little bit on edge and freak out.

Every time we hear something rustling in the, in the, in the branches, because we don't know if a tiger is going to eat us in this case.

Like, I'm not saying that all of these things are going to pan out, but if you don't have, if you're, if you're going through this thing, well, They will never be able to do this, or they will never be able to do what

I do.

if you're talking in the

future, it's easy to argue about the future because like, nobody knows, honestly.

what, wait, okay.

I'm talking about the future.

I'm talking

about in two weeks.

Brian, I'm talking about, I'm talking about in two weeks,

okay, if we're talking about the present, I think it's fairly, it's okay if someone, for instance, like writing is probably something I know the best.

And like these engines suck at writing.

Like I got some writing back, someone, I was like, did you do this through AI?

Because it reads like AI.

And that was

right.

But they, they suck at, they suck at writing, but they can create an outline for you in,

I get that, but I'm saying, like, maybe I'm misunderstanding the, because I can understand criticizing the output of the current reality right now, because a lot of the stuff is still, it could, it will, it's going so fast, blah, blah, blah, everything changes.

And.

A lot of what is being produced is incredibly mediocre.

It is very good with finding errors in research papers and all the summarization and whatnot.

But when it comes to creation, it doesn't seem to be creating very compelling stuff.

I think the use case for me is much more about the interface to information, Brian.

The video one is different, and how people will use that creatively, I think is gonna, we'll see, and it'll take a long time, and, You know, process of a paragraph versus hunting through multiple ad laden articles, there's no comparison in utility.

No

Oh yeah.

and I think that we also like the trajectory of this seeing just we're using raw tools right now.

we're not really using the next generation of tools that are going to be built on top of that, you know, specifically made for writing specifically make for a statistic expression.

Also.

Yes.

What Troy is saying is right.

Like how we consume content changes.

So how you write it will.

Undeniably need to change.

All I'm saying is that this is moving so fast.

Please remember where we were two years ago when we started doing this podcast.

This is moving so fast that this denialism of That there's something incredibly profound happening to, to the industry that we love, I mean, for me, like media games, movies, but also to the way people experience content and knowledge on the internet it's really profound.

And I, I think it was on the verge guys where somebody said like, you know, nothing still beats the 10 links when I'm writing a story, like I go on Google and I need to really read the sites.

Yes.

But nobody else does that.

Nobody else wants to do that.

People just want an answer to how you, what temperature the chicken needs to be when

Oh yeah, I

it,

like,

Sounds like nothing beats the feel of the newspaper in the morning.

yeah, exactly.

Like now people are never, and you know, and it's going to happen so fast.

and it's also going to come at us from vectors.

We don't really understand because I don't know what it means.

Like, yes, if you look at the raw output of these things, there's a lot of not very compelling stuff.

And, but it's always getting better.

And at some point, somebody is going to learn how to use it because it's going to become the tool to make stuff.

Have you been on LinkedIn lately?

Oh, sure.

I mean, I mean, I mean, there's going

AI is not making it better.

I

of the things that I

but I don't think it's, here's the thing, I don't even know if it's making it better, even if it's making it worse, you cannot dismiss it.

Like, even if

Oh, I wouldn't dismiss

is,

SEO is dead, product guides are dead, You got

what's alive?

Stock photography, stock photography and stock video is that's, that's over.

Stock photography should be dead.

Let's be real.

Like talk about

but, but

you're, you're talking about, you're talking about stock photography.

I mean, the downstream effects of stock photography, here's the truth.

Keep going on the dead thing.

What

a lot

of.

Wait, wait, but a lot of professional photographers make, make recurring revenue of the B roll stuff that they put on stock photography site.

They could not make a living by purely doing their photo shoots.

If that, if that goes away, it's a big problem.

The only thing that will slow this down is a major copyright.

Lawsuit, because I, you know, I believe and many people believe this is all built on stolen content.

So, you know, that could be something that that kind of can can sustain creatives for a long time.

But otherwise, I think it's going to have to be a new world with new jobs.

I think there's, There's going to be value to be extracted from it and, and creativity is always going to be valued, but yeah, I mean, I think the search page with a bunch of links is dead.

dead.

I like this, the Alex dead list.

That could be a reoccurring feature.

Yeah.

Anything else spring to mind?

Well, on the dead list?

Well, I want to get into good product, but I've got some, some,

Reader mail.

So,

mail feedback.

let's go to read ML.

Okay.

Cause it's about good product.

Well, one was, was talking about Alex, but we'll, we'll skip that.

What?

I want to hear that.

I

on, stop it.

Don't.

It's so annoying.

please tell me, tell me about me.

The audience wants to know.

Oh, it was this one.

It's it's this.

This is this is just tighter.

good product.

As I listen, as I listen to that at the end of the show each week, it's been reminding me more and more that the best things in life aren't things.

The best things are real experiences like a good hike.

Walk or simply time outdoors and time with friends.

Time on the internet separates everyone from people, nature, and the best things in life.

How many people really need the best shoes, sound system, juicer, bicycle, or whatever.

Almost all products are good enough these days to satisfy most people most of the time.

and then, The listener signed off.

The best thing in life is the off button.

but that is an endorsement, Troy, of your very expansive take on good product.

Thank you.

Okay, that's why you want to do it.

That's why you wanted to hear that one over mine.

Yeah, well, the other one was about Funkin

also, guys, let's not call a good product there.

Like, here's the thing I enjoyed this morning, a hot shower and a cold foggy day.

dead.

it's nice.

I wish I had that.

Sounds great actually.

Yeah, you look like you need one.

yeah.

I certainly not gonna bring that New York Times article out about the mixtapes from Fire Island.

That's dead.

That's dead.

I,

know, I appreciate this stuff,

Troy.

And it's from a conceptually.

The web page is dead.

I don't know if the webpage is dead, actually.

Oh, really?

The webpage is not yet dead?

my good product of the week is, I just think about things that, that I enjoyed and I enjoyed the War Room immensely.

I would highly, I would encourage, it's sort of a canonical documentary.

You should watch it.

It's cool.

It shows you, by the way, that the kind of violence in politics is not a modern phenomenon.

It's rough and tumble and it has been for a long time and both sides.

Complained about the media endlessly.

Carvel used to fight with the media like mad.

And to watch Clinton navigate, um, all the troubles that he had at the beginning of that campaign felt very Trumpian.

So,

I remember that, that 60 Minutes interview he did the allegations, I guess, first

what was the name of that woman that then admitted publicly that she had been encouraged to speak by the Republicans?

What was

her name again?

Um,

but have also that we had a nice contribution this week by an anonymous banker, and that will show up in the newsletter.

Oh, nice.

he talks about what's in store for deal making next year how we're going to see more structure to protect downside in deals like we did with the money line deal that happened last week where payouts only achieved if the stock hits a certain price.

but there's a lot more activity in the market now, so I thought I would find a sort of enterprising young banker to write it up for us, and we'll keep that person anonymous for now, because then maybe they can bring better stuff to the table.

They can come and we can disguise their appearance and their voice.

Yeah, with, why would we do that?

Just like with some,

Yeah, yeah, we can do that.

We have the technology.

okay.

do you guys have anything to add to good product?

No,

mean, I think it's perfectly great.

I mean, I think Disneyland is a good product.

being

strained.

had a very strange Disneyland experience.

I, I went like, it was when my sister got married.

my mom got like a, there's a lot of kids in my family.

So, Elon Musk would love my family.

And, there, there, I don't know, there's a group of like 20, of us.

I, I went to the park too.

And, I guess we had a couple extra tickets.

And.

You know, we're from Philly.

So my mom was scalping and she's like, I was like, mom, you shouldn't do that.

And she's, she was selling the ticket.

She got picked up by an undercover cop, a Disney cop.

No, they don't

fuck around.

I was telling my, I was telling my

They didn't cuff her

like, you know, there's, there, it, you know, it's people waiting in line and, and, you know, kids being kids and stuff, but you never see a kerfuffle, you never see kind of a, you know, a scuffle at, at Disneyland.

And I'm sure they must have all these, like, secret agents that

Oh, they have

you up and,

Like literally

I was like, I was like, mom, take the loss.

And she was like, does anyone need tickets?

And all of a sudden this person was like.

Damn.

Your mom's hardcore.

I like

Alex, you know, you can, you can pay a couple of grand and get taken to the front of the line and through the back, all that stuff.

That's what I did.

The one

What did it, what did it cost per person?

I wonder.

What?

Yeah, yeah, that's the, that's, that's the VIP.

You can get the VIP stuff and it's like I don't know, a couple of grand per hour or something like that.

But if you're a bigger group, it can make, it can be worth it.

But look, you know, we took, kids over a weekend.

We stayed at one of the Disneyland hotels, the new Pixar hotel.

And with flights and tickets and the express lane passes and the food and the stuff, it's like eight grand.

It's a lot of money.

I did remember a good

Wait, total or per person?

No total.

I

Okay.

mean we were flying from california So it wasn't you know a long flight, but you know, it adds up, you know for families.

It's really expensive So a lot of people like wait in line and some of these lines were two hours long, you know So I don't know how many rides you do

when I went to Disneyland, or Disney World, we drove from Philadelphia in, in a Country Squire station wagon.

Seven.

Two parents, five kids.

nice.

That, that was vacation.

Yeah.

I'm sure

you i'm sure the parents had a good time

that's why Jim, I did that too, except that my dad smoked the whole wagon.

and, and by the way, I laid in the back of the station wagon without a seatbelt

Yeah,

you know, behind,

uh, man, those good old days.

just being able to lie on the

It's for the government guy.

no, this is why Gen X is the great generation, you know, we, uh, we don't take a lot for granted.

the one other little mention on good product that came to mind is, I like buying fragrances for people at Christmas, and I, and I bring with that the arrogance of Picking what I think they should smell like, which isn't super good.

And Dries van Noten has this really nice idea where you buy a 70 sampler kit.

And by the way, Dries van Noten makes beautiful fragrances in incredible packaging, really beautiful packaging, and you get 10 small vials for 70 bucks.

You give that to the person.

And then they pick what they like and they put the code on it.

And then as soon as they transact, you pay an extra 250 bucks or something, and they get the large bottle of fragrance.

Oh, that's smart.

So it's a nice way to sort of sell a sampler plus the whole product.

And if someone doesn't redeem, you know, you're only on the hook for

Yeah.

And it protects the downside of the gift giver.

Just like, I mean, that's like shot in the dark.

Be honest with you.

Isn't it?

I'm not a, I'm not a cologne guy,

Is that, is that women's cologne?

it doesn't matter anymore.

Alex, we're all one.

No,

Lamar Jackson just, he was just talking about how he, he wears, probably gonna be the MVP of the NFL.

Saquon Barkley doesn't get it as he should.

but he

talks about how he wears women's perfume.

Oh, Josh could, that's true, but I think it's gonna be Lamar.

Um,

Well, that's fascinating.

That's it for this episode of people versus algorithms where each week we uncover patterns shaping media culture and technology.

Big thanks as always to our producer, Vanja Arsenov.

She always makes us a little clearer and more understandable and we appreciate her very, very much.

If you're enjoying these conversations, we'd love for you to leave us a review.

It helps us get the word out and keeps our community growing.

Remember, you can find People vs.

Algorithms on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and now on YouTube.

Thanks for listening and we'll see you again next week.

Are we doing one more episode before the end of the year or no?

We will, at which point we'll wish people a happy holiday.

Okay.

All right.

See you guys.