The election in many ways confirmed what many had suspected: the information space has superceded and subsumed the traditional media world. Traditional media is now just one node, and perhaps more alarmingly its influence – and ability to persuade – has drastically declined.

We talk in this episode about the implications of this shift, particularly with the spotlight now on what’s being called the manosphere, a chaotic loose confederation of podcasters and YouTubers who have seemingly broken through to be a key node of persuasion for young men. Plus: Is CNN fixable?

• Rise of the Under Toad: The Tragic Life of Joe Rogan
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• Follow Alex, Brian and Troy on Twitter

someone actually brought up there, they think you guys are taking advantage of me.

that is a wild take.

I'm

telling you, look, we all have our base.

We're going to talk about modern persuasion today.

And like, you know, you got to have your base and you got to build on your base.

Okay.

And you, you don't do that with facts.

You do that with feelings.

You do that with vibes.

sometimes I do feel like Alex is taking advantage of you and I.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's great.

Yeah.

I'm here for, whatever part I do.

I don't know.

you helped us get mics you actually wrote the jingle, which I still like.

So that's very much appreciated.

and I do, Alex, you know, we'll profess a great affection for you and, and your takes, even though you, you sometimes get all uppity about not being a media person and stuff.

I think your takes are welcome because it's good perspective.

This feels like a performance

review.

know.

This is.

Well, it

was a punch kiss

is what that was.

Thank you for that punch kiss.

Welcome to People vs.

Algorithms, a show about detecting patterns in media, technology, and culture.

I'm Brian Morrissey.

Each week, I'm joined by Troy Young and Alex Schleifer.

This week, we are digging into the topic of modern persuasion and what we can learn from the rise of the manosphere.

I just wrapped up an event last night with, 50 top publishing executives and, one of the underlying themes of discussion that was, you know, sort of in the background of, of all the different.

talks we were having was, you know, the basic question about the relevance of legacy media brands.

I know it's something we discuss on this show a lot, and it's just critically important, you know, the election in many ways confirmed what many had suspected.

and that is that the information space has superseded and in many ways subsumed the traditional media world.

I mean, traditional media to me is just now 1 node, of the information space and perhaps more alarmingly, It's influence and its ability to persuade has drastically declined.

And, that to me is, more important than mostly academic discussions about trust.

so we talk in this episode about the implications of the shift, particularly with the spotlight now on what's being called the Manosphere, a chaotic, loose confederation of podcasters and youtubers who have seemingly broken through to be a keynote of persuasion for young men.

we also talk about CNN.

I mean, how do you end up adapting, something like CNN for this very different media landscape?

Hope you enjoy the conversation.

As always, please leave us a rating and review and send me a note with feedback to bmorrissey@therebooting.Com.

Thanks.

I got a long complaint email, I didn't share this with you guys.

again, most, I think it was from my base, because they were blaming you.

you?

guys,

Oh, both

of you, yeah, about your political leanings.

The review is that it was, our last episode was very heavy, heavy handed, parodying of talking points that were blatantly wrong, the quote unquote fascism call out, Troy, you got the insinuation that media was accurately discerning important things.

The Puerto Rican joke coverage is a farcical example and Alex's suggestion that the media was playing some middle ground position.

So I

Well,

mean, my, my lesson is anything in politics is, is, is a terrible place to be.

yeah, and

are we dealing with normal politics now, like seriously, like

I don't know.

Matt Gaetz, is

going to

be the

is, yeah,

right.

So are we allowed, is it like political to, to talk about him and his.

Escapades,

but I

don't know.

Let's get into it because I think that It's going to be an interesting, an interesting approach.

See how everyone takes like, you know, what is to come next because it's going to be a disruptive, period.

but try

observe this and these new media behaviors from my son last night you know, and he's had this kind of long media education from, you know, being a gamer and you remember that guy, Philip DeFranco, who was sort of one of the original YouTube talking heads, sort of next generation news guys.

And, my son asked me last night, he's like, he's like, what's up with Elon?

And, you know, like he's doing all this because he wants to die on Mars.

Like, what's wrong with this guy?

And, and then, and then he said, you got to watch this video.

And it was from this channel called, it's almost like I had seen his musical tastes evolve.

These are sort of like his, his YouTube preferences.

And he's like, it's a guy that's anonymous.

I think he's Canadian.

His YouTube channel is called the Elephant Graveyard.

And he does these kind of.

These mashups of, you know, he sometimes uses AI to, use like famous people's voices and he just uses AI to, to create them.

but he does this kind of, these kind of almost ambient mashups that are like news, if it was played in a, at Burning Man.

@TheElephantGraveyardMusic: I went to, I went to dinner, you know, a moon landing denier.

Oh yeah.

I used to be a moon landing denier.

I used to believe, I used to believe totally that we never went to the moon because there was a documentary from the 1990s.

Fox had a, a show, uh, called Conspiracy Theory.

Did we Go to the Moon and they aired it on television prime time and they got me hook, line and sinker and for years.

I believe that we didn't go to the moon.

so it's kind of like ambient news.

music, image and animation intensive mashups that one told the story of Elon from South Africa to the present day.

And it's, it was like, I was like, what I'm watching here is Someone who had just a fundamentally different media education and their tastes have evolved to something that's kind of surreal.

Because as we were doing this, we were setting up a television and CNN was on the television and my son said, Who would watch this?

He's like, this is ridiculous.

These talking heads, like, I don't know how people watch this.

And so, I, you know, he's just someone that's come from a very different place than people that were raised with that kind of media can't ever see themselves anywhere close to that, you know, format.

mean, I'm

kind of interesting.

You're a lot like him, Alex, by

well, I was going to say I'm nearly like 50 years old and I, I, I completely binged the Elephant Graveyard.

I, I, I

okay, so you know what I'm

talking about.

I was watching it.

I was watching it in New York at your place.

The, yeah, he has Rogan takes

you see, did you see the Elon one?

it's, they're incredible.

I mean, I think like the,

Did you, did you put Seb onto these or did,

is it just coincidence?

maybe the algorithm found out that I was browsing it.

uh,

IP

you're on my profile on my TV, by the way.

Your face is on my profile,

that may be why, I mean, I'm sure he found it himself.

but it's, it's definitely that they're just like longer video essays.

and there's,

but they're almost like they're mute, but they're music videos.

Alex, basically

yeah, they're very creative.

And I think there's different formats for stuff.

He does some long and some short, the Rogan takedowns and There's this whole scene.

There's this whole like Austin comedy scene that is kind of, semi funded by Joe Rogan.

and he does, he does a lot of kind of explorations of that.

Really great.

Every time I turn on the TV, it's something like CNN.

Like, what are we watching?

This is like baby news.

But

baby news.

What do you mean, baby?

What do you mean?

Baby

I, don't know.

I, you, you watch this stuff is there's very little substance.

There's obviously a ton of padding.

Then they bring on these talking heads who just repeat the same things.

I don't know.

I it's, it's very hard for me to, take it all seriously.

I don't even understand how it's still in the air.

Yeah, do you know what it reminds me of?

when I go to, like, the UK, for instance, I'm going next week in case anyone's around.

But, I'll, turn on, like, BBC, Newsnight, and it's totally different than American TV and almost looks like a parody.

And then I start to realize that, actually, no, like, American cable news does look like a parody of cable news at this point.

Like, it just, it all looks, yeah, I mean, late

you know, like when Anderson, exactly.

And you have all these kind of like Anderson Cooper looking into the camera, doing these dramatic pauses, like acting, like he's surprised about things that is coming on a teleprompter, all that stuff.

It's just like, give me a break.

Like, I think

baby, baby news,

baby news.

yeah, I mean, I don't know.

I mean, maybe that's what we're doing too.

I'm not sure how much, how much we're

is definitely, this is baby podcasting.

So let's talk about modern persuasion, right?

Because I think what you're talking about is, you know, to me, the, you know, a lot of the, the, the navel gazing with that's happening right now, particularly within the news media is really less about, it used to be about, Oh, how do we get trust back?

But now it.

It's really a crisis of relevance.

Like there's not, I think this election made very clear that large portions of the news media is irrelevant to, most of the audience really this point.

I mean, if you look at all of the sort of issues that were being highlighted that were being pushed, they just didn't persuade at all.

And I think that there is this idea that, you know, media is supposedly to be about informing.

But it's really moved into, and it's not always been there, it's been about persuasion, and it's less persuasive than ever, and to me that's downstream of being less relevant.

but the, the focus on the manosphere I do find, fascinating.

I know, Alex, I know you're going to be triggered by this.

Because this has sprung up and I think it's pretty clear that the data is showing that it's, it's pretty persuasive.

But Troy, do you want to start us off with like how you're thinking about what underpins modern persuasion?

Oh, I'll try.

I mean, I thought by the way, to start that you had, you laid out a sort of equivalence across all the mediums of the sort of before and after, like what newspapers become, what lifestyle magazines have become and what we're all wrestling with, I think is like a mental model for, for this kind of information space and how, how we participated in is in it as business people or.

politicians that, you know, need to use it to, to advance an agenda.

and and I think that the, the conversation about the manosphere, what did Alex call it last week?

Something else?

the

yeah.

I mean, I don't

Oh no, the grifterscape is

I I guess I think that

I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna annoy people Yeah,

that I think tell the story of what.

what this kind of what the ingredients are in the modern landscape.

And let me try to break it, break it down a little bit is that a lot of these, you like, it's, they're not just political.

It's not just political commentary.

It, it's much broader than that.

Like the connection I was in a, I was in an Uber last week in the UK and the driver was a.

guy from Eastern Europe who had lived in Dallas and been chased out of the country because he didn't have papers and happened to love Trump and was like a young guy, young man and was, and I said, like, do you, who do you follow?

And he said, I mostly follow the comedians.

And so it was clear to me that like, that, that his path in.

Was I guess fundamentally about entertainment and when you break down the Manosphere what you see is it may have started in The gaming world, it may have been part of this kind of participatory entertainment where you chat and play sort of engage in a gaming environment and talk shit at the same time.

It may have started with.

Sort of almost, self help about, like dude self help, rooted, I guess, in kind of male alienation, it might be about health, like getting jacked, working out, being strong, and you see a lot of those themes, and then also, it's about hustle culture, like how to make money.

how to make bank and all of those things have been connected to, politics.

And so you've got this world of almost kind of, a follow up to talk radio, which is greased by, comedy or irreverence or, just like lad talk and also where people can really find themselves in it because it's about.

finding kind of male identity and, and then health is connected to that, which I think makes it really, compelling for people that are looking to.

just to kind of realize their own, potential in the world.

So I think that when it becomes about your health journey, it becomes really personal.

And then it's, it's like, How are you going to like make money?

Like, how are you going to get ahead?

How are you going to take back what's yours?

And so it gets re it's all of those things put together.

And if you can.

If you can insert, a movement inside of that, if you can insert politics inside of that, you got the man, like, it's really powerful and I think that like narrow, like, old fashioned identity politics that are going to be the kind of, you know, what, how we see what, dictates how, you know, someone's gonna, vote or how they think about the world are not nearly as powerful is this type of kind of participatory young male.

hive mind media.

And so I think if we understood why the, why this type of media and the personalities that fronted are so powerful, we can, we can connect some dots in terms of what media looks like next.

Yeah,

do you think that, that first of all, do you think these, these voices are powerful?

and then secondly, why do you, what do you unpack?

Because I mean, it is just one particular demographic and I think it caught a lot of people unaware because, they don't think a lot about young men because

I mean I want to I don't know about, connecting it to the results in any meaningful way.

I mean, it obviously had some impact, but there were lots of things that play right during the election.

So I'm less, comfortable about connecting the two, but it is, force and one has been growing for a while.

I might've started, definitely started on, on, on the internet, on forums.

but I was looking at it and I'm wondering, like, hasn't it, kind of the ability to, influence young men has kind of been weaponized throughout history.

So this seems to be just like a new version of, of that you promised them.

you know, you promised them like a better body, more money that women are going to like you power.

And the more

Oh, I don't think that's on offer in this.

I mean,

Oh, I think, I think it is.

I think it all is it's all is, I mean, it's sort of like Rogan or Peterson or any one of these, things, it's all about like, you know, boosting your body, like, you know, relationship with women.

They also like, and it's, it's also like just like a bros club, right?

Very few.

are no women in these spaces.

The women are doing 4B.

They're like withholding any sort

but, but, but that's not the idea, right?

Like, I think if you, if you look,

I wasn't commenting on whether there was women in it or not.

I was saying, what can we learn about media from this?

And there's a related point, and it seems to me, Brian, that the right leaves Far more room for dissenters for crackpots for opinion outside of the sort of prescribed agenda.

And as a result, you can kind of create a big tent of lunatics that all want to, and I'm not being You know, pejorative here

like that, that all.

can, they can all kind of participate in this thing.

Whereas like, you know, the DNC kicks Hassan Piker out of the convention because they don't like his views on Palestine.

they're worried, they're, they're worried that that's going to hijack, their, their agenda or the, the sort of, you know, calm that, or the alignment that they were looking for at the event.

and meanwhile, I mean, meanwhile, like the, the, this kind of manosphere type, media also exists in the left and Hassan Piker is a great example.

He has a mortal enemy and a guy called destiny, who's also like, You know, D plus started as a game streamer and, these guys get huge audiences, but it looks like the one on the right is maybe, better organized and, concentrate around the same topics, but if you look at it, right, they're not all.

there's a spectrum on one side, which I think is more benevolent as their Hooberman guys, right.

and probably the Lex Freedman's, who have some agenda, you know, but, but broadly kind of building kind of media empires around that stuff.

And it's, it's good for them.

and on the other side, you have Andrew Tate and that stuff is, is purely of how you relate to women.

Like, you know, how you, you know, how you make money and, and everything in the middle, like overlaps.

And if you listen to these things, I, I, I, I listened to this podcast, called decoding the gurus.

They also have a pretty active Reddit community where this, these two academics kind of just go through a lot of, you know, what they call the gurus.

Whereas, you know, Jordan Peterson or, or now, Russell Brand, all these guys, and, and kind of.

You know, traces their path, you know, and there's so much overlap between these guys.

There's overlap in the way their media, is structured there's overlaps in the way they make money.

They participate in webinars together.

I mean, you'll be happy to hear that, Brian.

Like, I mean, if you look at some of these webinars, it's like the list of the people you think, and some of them are, you would say maybe Obstructive than others, but they all kind of gather together because they know there's so much overlap in their audience.

I, I dunno, it's just been really interesting to watch.

But it happens on the left as well.

It's just more distributed.

I think there's, there's

Yeah, the headline, the headline for me in this is that persuasion is participatory.

It means that you have to allow.

space for people to be part of it.

It's not like you're going to read an article or watch CNN and be moved by it.

The internet is a, is a participatory medium.

And this is so, so if you're going to create a tent, but almost by definition have to create room for different points of view that fit in with a broader narrative.

So can media co opt this?

Like can it be reverse engineered?

Or does it go in a totally I mean the mainstream media, package media, whatever you want to call it, legacy media.

Or is this always going to be an unfair fight?

I mean, because you're going

I don't, I don't, I I think it's game over, like the parasocial the, the parasocial relationship that people have with podcasters or streamers is so much more powerful than with the media.

Then a talking head.

There's no connection there.

yeah, but I mean, like, what I'm wondering is, like, you know, if you're sitting in, like, a legacy media company, okay, do you look at what's going on?

You're saying, okay, well, we need we need our own creator strategy.

We have a lot of.

We have a lot of things, a lot of levers to pull, you know, we've got, we've got brand relationships.

You look at the quality of advertising that still goes into legacy media companies versus, you know, I, I find it hilarious that Tucker Carlson does a good job reading his ads.

Cause he, he gets, he does the same gusto when he's reading some VPN ad as he does for deconstructing the deep state.

And I appreciate

I have, because it doesn't really matter what he says.

I think, right.

Because, you know, they're listening to you, don't you?

Yeah.

I mean, you just make a face, like you just smell the fart and ask a question.

That's it's great.

But like, you know, I think, I think that there's an interesting question about whether or not, you know, legacy media can adapt and adopt some of, of these approaches that are clearly effective.

you know,

there's a big debate going about whether quote unquote the left, which is basically mainstream media, I think is the question, needs its own Joe Rogan.

You

but that's the,

I've

is they had Joe Rogan, but then the tent is too small because Joe Rogan started asking questions about things.

And, and then now that's the counter, right?

That, that forced quote unquote forced him.

Right.

Yeah.

I mean, I think, I, the, the left needing its own Joe Rogan is an, is an interesting one because what is Joe Rogan is, is kind of hard to quantify.

I think like a lot, a lot of the appeal about Joe Rogan is that it uses this, kind of conspiracy theory mindedness, right.

And then attaches it to, we're just having a conversation type format.

and I don't know if that applies to you.

To everyone.

And if you can build, you know, something, something like that, that doesn't, that

But the UFO

stuff is part of the

manosphere, by the way, that is totally part of the manosphere

But I was, I was part, I was part of that.

Documents are like, just like, weird things that you could find on the internet with like forums run by a conspiracy theorist.

And you would get into these long conversations on IRC about stuff.

And 16 year olds would like eat that up.

And then we'd talk about it.

And then it was also linked with like, you know, downloaded pilot, downloading pirate software and, you know, sharing hacking tools and all that type of stuff.

It all started there.

It was probably like.

10, 000 people.

and it's the same thing.

It's just being turned into entertainment.

That's like much easier to consume and it's fun.

It's fun to listen to conspiracy theories, right?

It's really, it's like they've managed, you know, we're, I keep saying that like everything is entertainment.

They've just managed to balance that like entertainment and newsworthiness stuff

and it also comes at a, it also comes at a good time because I think there's no denying that mainstream media is liberal and that it, the, the structure of mainstream media is about control and that the internet is undermining that.

And that it's the perfect time for.

the people that don't, you know, see themselves or find their power centered in mainstream media to tear it down.

And to tear it down means to push on the other side.

And which means that you have to, everybody that, you know, is, is newly empowered by, you know, the physics of the internet.

now have a single agenda, which is, you know, that type of media is over, you know, we are part of the next thing.

And the next thing is aligned with, for the most part is aligned with, better aligned with a right wing agenda.

Well, because it's populous, right.

And po and we're in a populist e era, and it's a, it's a right wing populism that's taken root, not a left wing populism.

And

the, and that's why it's inevitably political at the end of the day because it's just a, it's just an offshoot of, of the overall populist shift.

I.

I keep hearing that mainstream media is a liberal, but like, doesn't that forget like kind of dismiss like Sinclair owning most of the local local TV station, doesn't that dismiss like Fox news owning 70 percent kind of thing.

I don't think the news media is not liberal at all,

Yeah, that's why, that's why the term is like tough because it's like more like institutional media, right?

It's like, I'm sorry, you're not, you're not going to walk through like the New York Times newsroom and you can spit.

You're not going to hit many, like, you know, conservatives.

that is that, is that the right has gone.

If you actually look, I don't know, as an outsider, if I look at kind of institutional media here, sure, you have MSNBC and certain things like that, that are very liberal, but the majority of the, of the, like, if you turn on CBS and that doesn't read as liberal to

me, that feels pretty centrist, you know,

like, and it's just, it feels that the right's gone so right that everything else looks very

Maybe, maybe, but I think that the New York Post and, and Fox News are characters that sit on, you know, on the right side, side of this.

But for the most part, when you think about media being liberal or, you know, legacy media being liberal, it's not just the New York Times newsroom.

It's all of Hollywood.

It's all, it's the culture creators, right?

It's, it's more than just news, Alex.

But that's always been the case.

I mean, if you, if you go back to the thirties.

you know, you go to Paris or, or, or Berlin or stuff like that.

Just, you know, like the artists were always the more liberal ones, right.

Artists were always kind of the ones flirting with communism.

Like, I think none of that stuff is particularly, I think,

What about Ted Nugent?

mean, there's, there's, there's, there's.

Yeah, that's true.

That's completely, this proves my, I mean, I just, it proves, it probably proves my point that all artists will generally lead.

Yeah.

yeah, Uh, but, but you know what I mean?

I, I don't, I think people are reading into that and it's, it's maybe the data will prove itself out.

But, the

hey

of the matter is that the format, the format is really good at influencing people because it's about sitting with hours of information.

While you're at work, while you're driving, listening to the stuff, right?

It's very compelling.

Right.

Hey Brian, would you mind taking people through your sort of

before and after framework?

Yeah, I was trying to think of like what, you know, because there is like a big shift going on.

So to me, like newspapers become like what the AI companies are, at the.

At the event, it did last night, we had a, we had a group discussion and I, I, it's Chatham House Rules.

So I will disguise the person, but, this person was saying basically that, she got a totally delusional, the approach of publisher, news publishers to, uh, AI, AI, because the AI companies are already doing, in her view, a better job than a lot of she called out actually the Washington Post.

She said, I would rather have perplexities.

summation of a topic.

And, you know, the Washington Post with their AI chatbot.

I want to have different perspectives.

And frankly, in her view, like the AI is.

Getting to the point where it's actually doing the writing better and in many cases anyway.

so I think it's pretty, I don't know if you, did you guys see particle that it finally came out a

use, I use it, yeah.

Yeah.

And,

I mean, it just shows the, the sort of in, you know, massively expanded interface possibilities with it.

You know, AI is the aggregation tool.

It's a, it's a really fun tool to use.

And then if you think about lifestyle magazines, creators have replaced them, right?

I mean, we had Brian Goldberg, who's supposed to come to my event last night, but he canceled.

His assistant canceled for him, Brian.

know, you look at what, you know, he, he's doing with like influencers at Bustle.

I mean, that's just.

It's kind of a tell, right?

Like, it's the, the, the heat has moved to these, these influencers, sometimes creators, but they're really influencers.

whereas the, You know, the, the brands themselves, like in a lot of these magazine companies, they don't, they're not nearly as relevant.

you know, I think, I think make sure made like a very good case, you know, for complex, it's still difficult for me to think that for that demographic that, you know, what was like a classic, you know, was basically a magazine brand is as relevant now as it was, previously.

And then when you look at like cable news, that's clearly shifted to podcasts and YouTubers.

Like that's not going back.

I mean, these audiences on these cable news programs, I mean, it's, have you seen the commercials?

Like it's, it's, it's all for like super old people.

And this also is biased towards, I think, and I just think that right now, like conservatives are far better at, YouTube and podcasting than, Then progressives, but I think they'll each have it there.

And then

when you look at network news, I think that's X and threads, right?

It's going to split down the middle just as, you know, X is, is already, it's amazing how much that has shifted to a very right wing.

It's impossible to get away from some of these characters.

That guy, do you know this guy, Sean McGuire, he's like a VC at Sequoia.

No idea.

He's a guy.

He's like KL PhD in physics.

Anyone who puts academic credentials in their bio, you know, I can't get it.

I can't get away from this guy.

I don't know why he keeps telling me about, like,

But you

views.

I cannot get away

shut the whole thing down.

You can just like

Well, that's the only way, but I mean, like, it's kind of insane that, like, Elon Musk took this over about free speech and it is like, has turned it into.

It's a propaganda

organ.

Like, I mean, I

Brian, before Troy says that, before Troy says it, that is Elon derangement syndrome, right?

he,

he, he said, he said it was about three.

He said he wanted free speech.

And he's, he's applying his, his,

Man, I just want media news.

I do not want this stuff.

I don't want it.

I keep, I keep muting Elon Musk himself.

I don't want the Islamophobia Month,

the, the only, yeah, I, the only, the only thing that is surprising is just how, obvious it was at the time that, that this was going to happen.

it's funny threads right now is interesting.

It's a lot of people saying I left Twitter and I'm joining blue sky.

It's a fucking mess.

It's just a blue.

Blue Sky is definitely, Blue Sky is definitely, having its moment, but isn't,

so

to me, like,

Oh, I'm sorry, and then the final one is cable

TV moves into streaming.

Go on.

And

YouTube.

Okay.

So you said just to recap there, cause it's a nice framework that newspapers or the daily access to information gets.

Gets kind of trumped by the new aggregators in AI perplexity open or chat GPT or whatever lifestyle magazines, you know, the power there shifts to.

your kind of daily blend of creators that are unencumbered by media brands that have all, you know, they're not going to be de platformed.

There's an infinite number of places for them to communicate with you.

And it's about their, their personal brands.

Cable news has become podcasting.

I think you said, is that right?

YouTubers.

I mean, I think that those things are now, like, almost the same thing.

Yeah, the network, the thing that you go to for up to the minute news becomes these politicized platforms like X and Threads, right?

And they're not neutral anymore.

Just like, you know, CNN and Fox are not neutral.

And cable is just, you know, whatever, streamers.

Is that, is that how you see

That's pretty much it.

That's it.

That's my framework.

I like it.

I think it's, it's especially interesting as all of, all of these things are also then algorithmic, right.

And, access to all content is moving.

to algorithms and AI specifically and things were like perplexedly is kind of like, it feels like the final form of an algorithm where you're just asking for something and it pulls from all of these.

So I think it's, it's somewhat different to the other, types of media that exist out there.

It's going to be interesting to see how people can make it, You know, digest and recut videos and things like this, which I think is going to happen.

But does, does AI eat up a lot of this stuff too, at some point, because if you go by the kind of like the, the reduction of friction laws that happen in tech, it's like, it's, it's just about removing clicks, removing.

Removing steps to the thing you want, right?

And so maybe even browsing through Instagram feels like friction over time or looking at the YouTube feed.

and, and some of these tools are becoming really, really good, right?

Like at some point you'll be hopping onto Perplexity and you won't have to type anything.

It'll just say, hi, Brian, here's what's going on, you know?

it's, it's a massive shift that, that's happening.

I think subsec is actually in a, in a interesting position here.

Cause it's one of, it's B it's become a platform the end of the day.

And, it's one of the few places that, that is bringing both sides of the political divide.

You know, they're both on it.

Um, and they really, they muscled their way through, you know, the, the people who wanted them to move in a progressive direction.

Yeah.

And I think that's gonna

prove to be a really

smart decision because it

differentiates it.

yeah, I mean, were they pushing for it to move into progressive direction or were they asking for neo Nazis to be taken off the platform?

Um, you know,

I mean, there was, there was definitely a bit of, there was definitely a bit of both, but I think that sometimes, you know, I, all of that, I know that some folks left because very specific publications were on the platforms.

well, we're in a weird time where the political like having open.

I never believed this, but this would be the case, but that quote unquote free speech has, you know, the idea that, The way to combat speech you don't like is more speech.

And I know all of the arguments the other side with algorithms and all that stuff, but that that has become a political issue.

you know, I didn't really think of it.

It used to be more of a left wing issue.

but now it's, it's an issue that divides the More progressive sides of the media from the, from the more conservative sides.

Yeah.

I mean, I think, and I think what we're, we're, we're seeing it, it exists on both sides right now.

the new Twitter is definitely.

Kind of

tweaking its algorithm.

And, and, and the issue is always like, I, you know, I think when Substack was just like, here's the thing, publish your thing, have your newsletter.

That's one thing when they start becoming a content platform that promotes content to each other, it's more of a, it can become more of a business decisions where like, I don't want to see the other side shit on my feed.

Right.

Like I just don't, or I don't want my advertising to be connected to this, these types of views.

Right.

And that's where, a lot of these businesses, I think in this new administration are going to bump into that at some point.

Right.

so I don't know, it's going to be interesting, but at the end of the day, I mean, Substack being a platform, nobody's going to go to Substack to read stuff.

No?

think that's going to be, I don't think that's going to happen.

Why would you?

Why like the idea, the idea, Brian, the idea like that people are already getting past the idea that you go to a specific brand to get content.

no, no.

It's a specific person.

I think that's different.

Right.

But like, but,

People want to have a direct connection to other human beings.

And if it's mediated by a platform, that's one thing,

but like the idea that we're just going to get a bunch of undifferentiated AI aggregated stuff is, I just don't believe it.

but it's not undifferentiated.

Hey, hey, hey, perplexity.

Tell me what, like, give me a rundown of what's going on in Brian's, Brian's world, there's, there's creators.

I follow, they have a very dynamic, active social media life.

They're posting YouTube videos.

They're doing little clips here.

They have a Patrion.

I can't keep up with that stuff.

I wish I could say like, Hey, you know, you know, give me the latest from elephants graveyard and sure.

It might kind of pick the platform from there, but that's, that's, that's To me, to me, to me, obviously the end state, if you believe that like, you know, technology is only about removing layers of abstraction between you and the thing you want to do.

I don't think anybody will be going to Substack for that.

I think Substack people will be using Substack for, for

It's behind a paywall.

Like, I don't like get, I know like a lot of the legal issues, but like, I mean, there has to be a limit to like the wholesale theft and breaking of the law that, that

seems to be a hallmark of

of

Silicon

but, Brian, I, I paid, I pay for your podcast and I pay, I pay for your, newsletter.

I got to check on that.

and no, I don't actually, but I, I, I, uh,

a discount.

the, the, the thing is like the, the paywall is, is just like one function away from being disrupted.

Because like, if I pay, I have a paywall, I have this thing called a browser.

I have an agent, right?

You know, that, that runs my browser that can easily go to your site with my login credentials.

There's no problem with that.

I just will never set foot in Substack again.

I don't want to do that, you know, and I think if you, if you're looking and I know I'm, I'm getting a few, I'm getting into futurism here.

I use something called the arc browser.

They were building a better browser.

They've announced that they're not doing a second one.

And the next version of there is going to be something that is much more, AI driven, they're not giving a ton of details, open AI.

Perplex the, all of these guys are saying that they're building agents that can do tasks for you.

You know, like the rabbit, are one that, that Troy bought that little device was that that was the promise that they would do tasks for you.

Once these things can do tasks for you, it doesn't matter what platform deals they make

Well, that's interesting.

So I guess what my question is, what does agentic media, right?

Like, because it seems like it's pretty clear that, like, Everyone wants to control the interface.

They want to, they want to be doing the retrieval and they just want everyone else to be surfs or whatever.

And just like shoveling content out there to be like manipulated or so.

I just don't understand how agentic media works as a concept.

people will have different things that they enjoy that includes friction, right?

Like I like.

I still like reading a paper book better than I like, you know, using my Kindle or listening to an audio book.

And I choose to do that, but that's probably like a fraction of my media diet.

The majority of your media diet is, is kind of like, I think the, the quickest kind of most enjoyable, A version of it, right?

So if I have, right now I subscribe to things on, on podcast, apple Podcasts that I pay for, I pay for some, stuff on, on Patreon.

I pay maybe for some newsletter newsletters.

I have subscriptions to certain things, certain kind of like, media sites.

And if I, if, if, if something could just go.

And do the work for me and pull it out and give me clips of videos and read it out and, and pull out the stuff that I like.

I'm pretty sure I would spend much less time on these

Yeah.

I mean, it's okay.

Starman.

I get it that there is

I know.

I know.

I when I was talking about this two years ago, it was, it was

Yeah, right.

When you when you forecast out far enough, you'll always be Right.

far enough,

never put a date on a prediction.

far enough.

There was, we were just talking about how an election was won by podcasters.

I, I mean, I think what Brian's grappling with is that, I mean, for a long, long time in the future, there will be a layer below Matt, the aggregation layer manifest in different ways.

That layer could be in the form of you reading an email from Brian Morrissey or connecting via sub stack or the mechanisms that they create both monetization, right?

They, they manage a monetization layer for creators.

Well, and they fire out emails, and I think that that layer below the aggregator will exist for a long time, just as the layer will exist in affiliate media, where, if you need to make sense of the best payroll system to get, you might not get all the information.

Directly from the aggregator, you may go to someone who's done, who has a differentiated data set, who's done the work, who's made it readable and legible and understandable, and whose brand you trust.

I think that those, those layers that really are about media will exist for a long time.

The question that Brian asked, which is, I think the question he's asking is when everything gets absorbed into the aggregation layer and you are just shoveling your content into the coal into the fire that like, there's no, you know, there's no mechanism for you to be rewarded for doing that.

I don't think we disagree, but maybe my point of view is more optimistic.

I was having conversations over the last two weeks with a few people in the video game industry, like really large companies.

and they're all saying everything is moving to algorithmic to the point where like, You know, we used to be able to spend money to advertise for, for game.

And it used our structure as a big company used to allow us to put a game in front of people.

Cause you know, we had these, you know, we had events and we had, magazines that we could put stuff in and we can, we had like these game news outlet that we could, all of that stuff is going away and everything is becoming so much more algorithmic.

And the algorithm is fed by a bunch of creators.

That make your game successful or not.

And so all the investments right now is moving away from creating these structures of like, okay, we're going to publish your game.

And here's how much we're going to push to, Hey, is this team that we're investing in creative enough to stand out, to create something that's compelling, because if it is compelling, the algorithm will find it.

And it's much more about building quality content.

And the bets right now being placed are just like, let's, let's fund creative teams.

Let's, let's give them autonomy.

let's allow them to kind of build an audience, because the algorithms are so good that if, if there's something compelling for an audience, that audience will find it now that that's kind of the new, and I think that if you look at AI as kind of this final stage of something, it's like, Hey, find me something to do, find me something to play.

I don't only want to read Brian, but I want to read about this topic.

And it turns out Brian is a subscription I have and we'll pull it out.

And so.

As, as, you know, as you're trying to figure out what media companies are doing next, like maybe you step back and maybe you fund all these little different groups, micro groups of, of people that are doing interesting things, because at the end of the day, the algorithm is

not going to scare, care about your corporate structure or your brand and the amount of kind of infrastructure that you have, it's not going to care if you're on a hive or beehive or, or a substack or, you know, Patreon or whatever, it's just going to find the information.

And I think I, I, I feel like optimistic that good stuff is going to connect to the people that want it.

I think that they're just going to get much, much better at that.

The same way they did with advertising, you know, like experience advertising on Instagram, it's nearly fucking magical, right?

And so.

The, the, the future is becoming much more algorithmically based.

And I think when you look at something like an AI chat bot, that's kind of a final stage of that, and I do do that, what you will, but I think Brian is actually on the right path.

Oh, thank God.

thank God.

I mean that,

Well, I mean, this

but like, that's why, that's why I wanna stop talking about CNN.

What, what, where, where's CNN in this thing?

Nobody's gonna type CNN to talk to their ai.

And the AI might just.

Like, we'll, we'll probably value the content that CNN's making at a million dollars a minute.

The same as what, like elephant graveyard at like, you know, $30 a

Yeah.

So Troy, take the counter.

I would like to hear the counter that there, that.

CNN and its ilk are not just ultimately just managing decline and look, there's, there's a lot of value in managing decline.

It's no problem.

but I, is there any conception in this world?

Let's just say it's broadly like what Alex is, is, is talking about where CNN is actually a bigger, more profitable entity in five years than it is now.

Like, it's, it's hard for me to see that path, but like, maybe Mark Thompson has some, Some tricks up his sleeve,

I think there's an argument to be made.

it might be hugely speculative.

The reason that I like CNN as an example in this more than say a, you know, historic or, you know, longstanding kind of media brand, in say the lifestyle space is because CNN is like their model, a created a level of funding, and what is so suited to the medium that it's attached to that escaping that is really difficult.

And so CNN is in a place like Newsweek was right.

Where the idea of weekly.

you know, news and lifestyle fed to you in a print publication, like escaping that was really, really difficult.

And, and, and, and those types of publications like, you know, Business Week or, or, or, or Newsweek have become a shadow of what they were, right?

Like, it's really hard to find, to reinterpret that idea for a new, new environment.

Now, CNN, if you were just to have fun with this, the question you asked, and you thought, well, CNN is a global news gathering mechanism.

Reporting is still important.

Being there, listening to people.

Making sense out of what's going on in the world.

I like a, you know, a global news gathering capability is still important.

and, and, and, and doing that against a brand that people, you know, can trust, you know, has value.

Then you could see how CNN could could continue to be.

You know, relevant now, then you would say, well, what form does that take?

And how do they find their way?

You know, per Alex's comment through the algorithm.

Well, your cost has to go way down of doing that news gathering.

Your personalization has to go way up the intimacy with which you, you know, engage another human being has to be materially different either because it's dramatically sort of more personalized in its format or more human.

And therefore you want to engage in it like as a, as a consumer of that.

So you could imagine that CNN had a radically different, you know, cost base that it was.

You know, a huge global repository of reporting and data fed through a layer of personalization delivered to you in your phone, you know, in the format that you want read by whomever you wanted and they became an interface layer, a trusted interface layer for news delivered how, and when you wanted it in a new world, could that exist?

Yes.

Now the steps from here to there, and could it be ad funded or subscription funded?

I'm assuming it could, are, you know, the steps technologically and in, and in terms of the cultural transformation are super intimidating.

Like basically get rid of everything that you have today with the exception of your sort of reporting layer and find a materially different type of personality that people want to engage with and completely refactor your cost structure.

So if you can do that.

Great.

in the, you know, on the way there, if you're Mark Thompson, someone may destroy your life.

Like you may not make it through because it's just.

I mean, I just, I think that it's, it's 10 years of pain and suffering.

I can't see them becoming the interface.

I think, you know, and

Do you understand what I said though?

Could you build on it?

Could you make it better?

We could gamify it, dude.

We could make it, we could make it fun,

right?

Like it would be, you know, Snoop will be reading your news.

right.

Okay.

It's CNN.

to news, right?

Like, I mean, everything I

say with CNN, it's, it's about talking heads and they're not even the right talking heads.

Like, I

mean, they're paying

when we talk about news, we're saying like they're offering such a service that is so indispensable in the news gathering.

You have things like the AP, you know, Reuters, AFP, you know, the, To Chinese free press and all of these kind of large news organization, which provide a ton of news, right?

So that's covered that, you know, you might say, well, you know, they're biased or whatever, but that's covered.

That's, we don't need CNN for that.

Then you think about the interface,

now.

I disagree.

I disagree.

I mean, I get what you're saying.

Cause I think a lot of tech, like it was pointed out like last night that like the only, the only news deal that meta.

Has done is like with Reuters, like they want like the news wires because they need breath and all that, but having unique breaking news still has value.

And if you look at like all of the Trump appointments, it's all been broken by the, by the, the legacy media.

If you're bringing new information to the table, if you're just waiting for like people to publish press releases.

Yes, absolutely.

AI can do that for sure.

but, I don't think that

that that's the,

press organizations like the AP and

News gathering and reporting is not commodity, Alex.

It's not just, something

Hey, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not dancing on the grave of this thing.

I'm not happy about it.

What I'm saying is, what I'm saying is when you're, when you're applying things like, okay, here's, here, here's, here's where news can come from.

You have, you can strike deals with the APs and the Reuters at the Bloombergs of the world.

You have direct feeds coming from every single, party and celebrity coming in from social media.

you have a giant, Ecosystem of punditry that happens over podcasts and YouTube.

And then you have a single interface that is kind of like a perplex, perplexity or open AI interface that gathers that stuff.

Like, I, I, I think you're saying, well, but CNN has all fine.

Right.

CNN has really nice stables and maybe we'll park our cars in this stable, but it's, it's like, I don't understand where, like it is

You are absolutely on fire today.

You're doing a

that.

Although I

would like, I, I don't

no, it was a great, I I, I, I will not,

your

counterpoint to my point of, of the value layer that CNN could occupy.

they would have to be, they might have to add more value than I articulated.

I mean, I think you broke the fourth wall.

So you kind of took the air out of my, but I, I, I, mean, I really believe that.

I think it's, that's why I'm, I'm getting a little, I think, I guess frustrated that we keep talking about these things because.

I'm sure there's a chance, but it's MTV, right?

Like it's MTV.

And right now what we're saying MTV, you know, you should stop playing music videos and just start doing, yeah, I know, but I'm repeating it because that's also good podcasting, but it's just, you know, it's the same thing.

Well, should we go to good product now?

Or

are we, do we need to land this

Well, can I

Because people have been people have been on my case about the length of our podcast a little

really already, but they, they listened to a seven hour Lex Friedman podcast.

Yeah,

he just had a five hour one with someone, right?

yeah,

Oh, oh, the, the, the, anthropic guy.

you know, when people used to say, well, a podcast shouldn't be more than 20 minutes long.

That was like old media thinking podcast should like,

we

used to, well, that's what

us for 14 hours.

I could do that.

no, I used to do it for the length of a commute.

I figured a half hour was good because that's, that's the average length of a commute.

No, no, you really need to, you know, there, I once saw, national geographic video about this, goat herder, like high in Nepalese mountain somewhere, I think.

and he would, You know, they would use kind of these large eagles, I guess, as a ways to deter wolves, right?

They would train these eagles to attack the wolves and save their flock.

And the way they would do it is they would capture one of these giant birds, put them in a little hut, And for 24 hours, just like play a little guitar thing to them.

So whenever the bird would want to fall asleep, it would just like, and then at the end of it, they would break the bird and they would have a trained Eagle that would attack wolves.

and I think that's what podcasts are.

You just break, you just keep going.

Keep Lex, keep just talking, keep talking Lex.

Yes, it's all about love and friendship and understanding each other and everybody having a point of view and you keep going, keep going until you, you know, you take over the brain's wiring and that's it.

And then, then you can sell them supplements, which is great.

So.

You know, that's

I like when he, I like when he goes through like 11, 11

minutes straight of like supplement reads.

did I break you?

yeah, exactly.

Yes.

You just, you just broke, you just broke me.

I don't think I can do a good product anymore.

Well, I

No, you had a good one.

I don't know who, I don't

I'm speaking of supplements.

Maybe it's because I'm on my magic mind.

What does this say?

Good

product McGee.

Yeah, I, I got advertised this on Instagram by fucking the comedian Pete Holmes, and I bought it.

And it works.

And it's probably why I'm so fired up right now.

yet.

Troy's feeling emboldened.

I know.

well, I, I think this good product ties into what Alex was saying about good things being surfaced by the algorithm.

And this one broke through about six months ago and it broke through kind of quickly.

There's this, this kid from New Jersey.

I think he's 23 years old.

His name's Mike Gordon.

He, he was on SNL this week, so he's kind of completely broken through.

But I think he's a, he's a, the, the, his name, his sort of stage name or musical name is Mickey, M K dot G E E.

And I think he's a kind of generational guitar phenomenon.

And, He's got this new album called Two Star and the Dream Police, and what's amazing about it is It's kind of new in terms of the way that he manages the instrument so that it's kind of got these like 80s kind of soft soulful vibes when he plays it, but he hooks up his setup.

A lot of people geek out to his setup on YouTube, because he, he runs stuff through this four track where if the signal is too intense, it distorts.

And so.

It's, it's this kind of combination of, of kind of gentle, melodic guitar playing with like, like little punctuated with like, really kind of medley sounding disruptive interludes.

And, so it works as like, who is this kid who's on YouTube?

He did this.

Really amazing video with other artist,

Dijon,

Dijon,

Oh my God, he's incredible.

Incredible, YouTube thing called Big Mics.

You should check it out.

It's one of my favorite tracks.

It's

I love that track and I love how they did that video.

And I love how they mic'd it and it was live and it was so great.

And the guitar player on that was McGee.

And that was kind of how it started.

And it's like Frank Ocean vibes meets kind of Phil Collins, but like reminiscent of early Prince and feels a little like, you know, Bon Iver or the police.

The whole thing is great.

And he sings to the guitar melodies.

He's got a great voice.

And, seven, I, my son were completely nerding out on it.

Seb just saw him live in Brooklyn.

And, um,

came out, uh, he came out, uh, on YouTube, right?

Yeah, and he kind of came out of the algorithm, Alex, and he just kind of popped, and he's like everywhere,

But, but this is it, this is it.

Like, like w w w you know, this is a podcast about finding patterns and it's, and a lot of this stuff is about pattern breaking.

It's about doing something different that the algorithm kind of spots and, and pushes up and it's all becoming like that.

And when you hear him, you're like, this is different, but it's familiar.

And it

So you're saying like trying to cheat, trying to like pattern match to the algorithm, it's it'll, I mean, I guess the hopeful thing is that it becomes like so hard to pattern match the algorithm that your incentives are to do things that are different.

Yeah, I mean, I think good, good and different.

I think it's about finding an audience, right?

Like I think that, I think pattern matching starts working when you, you know, so, so, so the, the algorithm is like a stream going by.

Right.

And you're just, you have your, you know, your fishing rods in there.

And.

Then when it, when something hooks, then that's when you pattern match, then that's when you kind of latch on to what's working and, and double down on that.

Right.

Do you have a, do you have a goat analogy?

no, no, but it is I like analogies.

it's a way my mind works.

but yeah, I think, I think, it's really about, breaking out and doing things differently.

When they tell you 20 minutes, maybe it's seven hours.

Oh, you know what?

Electric guitars are out, but maybe they're back in and it's, and it's culture.

Isn't about repetition.

Culture is about newness.

the eagle in the hut, Alex,

did the eagle get so irritated by the sitar, or guitar music, that when uncaged, it attacked the wolves?

Okay.

The thing that happens after that is they cut to, they cut to the guy at the top of a hill and a wolf is approaching its goat and this fucking bird.

Flies off the guy's shoulder, grabs the wolf, and flings him off a cliff.

It is the most fucking metal piece of media I've ever seen.

I've been trying to find that clip ever since.

but, yeah, I think that was just like one of the most

And that was all because they, they tortured the bird

Yeah, just because he Lex Freedman him into full submission.

Great.

That's the way it works.

Great

Perfect.

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.

Awesome.

This was

hanging with you guys.

Yeah,

All right.

Bye.

needed this.

Alright, bye guys.

Bye.

Bye.