After COVID-19 and the internet people seem to be less connected. In this episode Rich and Paul discuss how the internet is designed to perpetually split people into different parties and views. They offer advice for people to care less, in order to foster better, more holistic human connections.

I was wearing a mask, uh, a face mask, uh, and, uh, it was,

where are you?

I'm not in New York City.

I'm, I'm in a rural part

That was a

of New England.

Uh, and, uh, it pandemic is definitely subsiding, but, you know, I have family

members, elders who I don't want getting sick, so I, I kept wearing a mask for a

right, right.

Me too.

Knock on wood.

Okay.

Also, also, you know, the New York City experience of

the pandemic was a rough one,

It was a rough

one.

We were, we held on for little long.

Yeah,

exactly.

And, and, and so I walked down an aisle.

I, I forget which aisle I was in in the Walmart.

It was very big.

It was huge, man, you couldn't see, and they make it such that you

can't find the exit, so they make sure you walk around more Shit.

It's like a casino

Yeah, it's like a

with an Ikea, but it sells guns.

Yeah.

And this guy who was like putting stuff on shelves, worked at the

Walmart, had the vest on and everything.

He was an associate,

Mm-hmm.

gave me just the most brutal stare.

Like, how dare you?

How could you, oh,

Oh, you with your mask.

You with your mask?

And you know, I just kept walking and instead of feeling like I wanted to

lecture this guy about the importance of like, you know, aerosol containment,

Sure.

All

said to myself is like, how did you get to the point

where you gave a shit about me walking by you with a mask on?

I, I think, I think something's gone haywire and I'll explain

what I think has gone haywire.

I think we're connected to one another socially, a lot less now, I think.

I think, I think people are, Netflix binging, or they're on the internet.

And I think the, the connection that we seek out, look, there's a wonderful

book I read many years ago called, um, home from Nowhere by, uh, I think

his name is James Howard Kunstler.

Mm-hmm.

And hi, his, the whole premise of his book is that the United States, um, is.

Set up architecturally to lead to, to have people living pretty

isolated, separated lives.

It's a car culture.

It's a lot of setbacks.

Strip malls, there's less town squares.

We talk about the town square on the internet ironically, but

in fact it's a lot of sprawl.

It's a lot of walking through big parking lots, and he actually talks about the

sort of collective psychology as a result of that, which is less connectedness.

Mm-hmm.

What he didn't have at the time, this is an old book,

is that the internet would show up and provide this almost sort of

proxy

form of connectedness.

Mm-hmm.

That wasn't actually people connecting with each other.

I'm meandering here.

Hear me out.

Okay.

If I know you in town, And you have a particular position

on guns, but I've also seen you be incredibly kind at the daycare center

or at the volunteering for this or that.

I'm now seeing a diff, a fuller picture of what you're about.

But when you have the internet that is perfectly optimized towards

sort of position amplification and joining a particular camp

and then saying your peace.

You can't see anything else.

And so that's all we're left with and all of that energy that we would

pour into, like frankly, hoping that person recovers from the flu just fine.

It all pours into one

here.

Here's what happens right with that, cuz I, I see this too.

It's really tricky because all positions get evolved or grown

or developed to points where they become intolerable, right?

So I, I'll give you an example, which would be, okay.

I know you, I see you at the, at the store and I know you like, you like to.

You're, you're kinda like a rough Second Amendment advocate.

Not like you don't have like an a rifle.

You don't have like one of these like machine guns, but you, you believe in the

second Amendment and you want to protect it and you would vote accordingly and you

kind of know that I know that about you.

Right.

Okay.

You're right.

For the first 70,000 years of my life, I'd be like, oh,

well, you know, Mike is weird.

He is got that gun thing, but I like him.

We say hi.

I get along

He also is just the, he's really hilarious what he

does at Halloween for the kids.

Right.

So, but I don't think it's just that we're all online together.

It's Yeah, that's right.

He is a really funny, like, and they do the haunted house, et cetera.

He's a good guy.

And the guns are in a safe, like he's following all the rules, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

But then I go online and there is every five minutes I can

add from a Sandy Hook parent.

Yeah.

Right.

And every five minutes, um, oh, in Mike's world, he gets an ad fr about

liberals coming to take away your guns.

Yeah.

And it's just, So what happens is you get, you get into this position where

even if you are someone who is motivated towards a kind of tolerant, like, well,

we have to figure it out together, you actually start to feel like you're

betraying your core values if you are kind or if you spend time with people who

have really fundamental disagreements.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And, and I do think that the internet made that.

I, I think that was always there, right?

Because you would go to your church and they would go to their church.

Yeah.

That kind of thing.

Or you'd live in one part of town.

They'd live in the other part of town that's always there.

But what wasn't there was this apparatus to continually optimize the messaging

to, and, and look, we're all vulnerable.

misinformation is always somebody else's cultural problem.

Exactly.

Not me.

And

mean, I might have fallen for some random hoax where somebody, you know,

said something was cake, but it wasn't.

But my political beliefs are perfect.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

And so what you have is, you know, I have, you know, uh, family members

who keep showing me videos of like, Biden flubbing a sentence.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because it confirms a particular view that they have about like him,

and, and it's not just that he's old, but also they don't like him.

And so this is more entertaining for them or more interesting to them.

I kind of sort of don't agree with some of it myself, but why do you care so much?

I keep asking myself over and over again.

Why do you care so much?

Oh, everybody cares a whole lot right now.

Is that the advice here?

No.

Can we care less?

If, if you go and study anything about the social sciences,

like every single uh, research finding is like, ah, you know, people

do better in really small groups.

You know, they like have a cup of coffee together.

Probably you should know about 20 people

your mm-hmm.

Life.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

And

never talk to anybody else.

You'll be a lot happier go, go fishing,

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, and,

so like,

So we know in instinctually as humans that smaller clustered groups

of humans that are kind of family and friend oriented are really healthy for us.

And as we get bigger, bigger, bigger, we get more power and authority,

but we tend to like be less happy.

Yeah.

Okay.

So you have, I think this sort of like somewhat atomized, somewhat

unhappy cohort and then the great hack of the internet isn't just

that it put the information and the misinformation straight into your brain.

To me it's that it created, it actually constructed this whole new

rhetorical structure where if you don't.

Consume the information and you don't agree with the information,

you no longer are in the in group.

And the in group is constantly shifting and variable.

What I think is actually happening is, uh,

An enormous

of people make all this noise, and then a lot of people consume it.

Most people just kind of go on with their lives and don't

pay much attention anymore.

I would say 90% of the people in my world are just like not really

connected to social media anymore.

Like they're, they're there.

No,

I, I, I guess, I think you're right, except that, and, and

this is, you know, for our international audience, this is very much a, an

American, uh, issue, uh, or challenge.

Um, the truth is, yeah, social media's not, but what, what people

have come to realize in media generally is that if you make it

real juicy and you confirm my biase.

Boy, I will give you, I'll give you views.

Right.

And, and you know, look, I, I know it sounds like I'm, I'm sort

of signaling about Fox News, but frankly, CNN is, is just as guilty.

MSNBC is just as guilty.

Well, yes and no.

That, that is a nice balancing to, yeah.

Fox is like currently

a, is

No, but they're, they're,

They are the innovators.

Right.

currently talking to the judge trying to see if

they can reach a settlement.

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

So like

That, that, I agree with

just, I'm just flagging the term guilt cuz actually it looks like

they're probably pretty guilty, but the.

yeah, yeah.

No.

Yes,

Yes.

Again, just take it outta politics for a sec.

Play it.

Or actually, let's take it further into politics.

Play this out and let's talk about this for a second to

see how the world has changed.

2016 election.

Absolute chaos on social media.

Everything's hyper-targeted.

People from like Eastern Europe are, are doing ad campaigns to Republicans

about Trump in order to get clicks.

So they.

You know, make rent payments.

So just absolute madness.

Exploitation of human behavior.

2020, still a lot going on, but, but, but a little bit calmer, a little bit.

Still got your Marjorie Taylor Greens and your, you know,

like, and, and all that stuff.

Lot of noise in all

Yeah.

Um, okay.

2024.

What do you think we're headed for?

um, I, I, I think 2024, like as an election,

Just assume there's a Biden Trump rematch, right?

Like to just worst possible scenario for everybody.

I, I'm, I can, I can list out the flaws of a Biden as much as the next

person, regardless of where you sit on the

spectrum.

Mm-hmm.

But I will say that I think part of the reason Biden won is

there's just, there was, there was.

um,

He busted the template of like the crazy vaudevillian

marketer and just was like, how about we just all eat a piece of pie?

is Biden's good at the other kind of politics, right?

He just went to Ireland and everybody in Ireland waved an American flag and then

he came out on stage and he went, hello.

Right.

Right?

And so I, I think, I think Biden was very much a reaction to, um, just sort

of the cynical kind of baiting of a Trump

Biden is when you elect Joe Biden, you're someone who says, you

know what, I, I really, we need, we need to get a new sofa for the living room.

Really?

You're just like, I'm gonna live a good life.

I'm gonna like watch, I'm gonna watch tv.

I'm gonna Yeah,

short.

Right?

And, and, and so what he's, what he was betting on was that most of the

country isn't running to the edges and is rather again, looking to like

get that new dishwasher by September.

Right.

Like that's, that's like the goal.

And, and so, and what you heard from that again and again was something

incredibly not exciting and unimpressive.

Mm-hmm.

And what, what we none of us have acknowledged yet is that's

kind of exactly what we needed

Oh no, it was, it was, that's exactly, it

what we needed

mid pandemic.

We've been under enthrall of this absolute goofball lunatic who

really doesn't mean anybody any.

Like,

no, it's just the game.

He's playing the game.

Right.

Like

he's just also like fundamentally and even people on the

right, he's just kind of a bad guy.

Like he might, and then, um, and then so I think like we wanted soothing, right?

And I actually think that, so when you're saying everybody needs to

care a little bit less, I think there is an element of that.

I think people, what happened culturally is that, To say you don't care that

much is an unforgivable offense.

Correct.

You can't say that.

You cannot go out into the public square and say, you know what?

I don't care.

You know what you do instead?

You go quiet.

And if, I mean, look, look at my Twitter presence right now.

You look at everybody's right.

People just aren't saying as much.

And it's not because there's like, why wait in?

Yeah.

Um, I want to tweak it.

Okay.

Because I, you're right.

Oversimplifying it and saying, why don't you just care a

little bit less isn't right.

Well, I, but I, I think a lot of people, what happens is there's

no evidence of people caring less.

I don't think people,

they get quiet.

They get quiet.

They get quiet, but, but it also, families get torn apart.

Friendships get torn apart because they, because they get quiet and then you

have that dinner party and then that other person just won't shut up about

I gotta say, some of the most brutal stories have been like, and

then my brother died of Covid because he refused to believe the vaccines were real.

And it's just like, well you are never gonna fix that.

Right?

Like, that's horrible.

Yeah.

Oh.

Or, or my brother didn't, but we can't sit at Thanksgiving dinner at all, period.

Like it's done.

Right.

And so I think, I think the tweak I would make is this, if someone,

uh, is holding up a sign about, you know, transgender rights

Mm-hmm.

Right.

I guess what I'm reacting to is that person that walks by that just spins

up into a fury because they feel like something has been invaded on

their side, even though that person is holding up a sign to just raise

an issue and you can walk by and say, okay, um, I don't know much about.

I think, I don't disagree with it.

I'm not speaking for myself, but okay.

And then they keep walking.

Instead, what?

You have this incredibly emotional, intense reaction.

Right, and, and I think that, I think is a condition of the last 10 years of

both the pandemic of the internet of, of, of our president, our former president.

I think those are all things, those nerve endings got way more sensitive.

Let,

me flip it.

I'm extremely protran rights have been for a long time, have

given money and so and so forth.

I'm also extremely pro-choice.

Okay.

These are not really secrets about me.

I remember once I was walking by, um, literally the Planned Parenthood, like

one of the original ones in New York City.

The one that

Margaret said og.

the oj.

And there were nuns outside.

Okay.

And I remember I was with my friend, um, and, and

he went, I want to punch a nun.

I wanna punch a

I wanna punch a nun.

out of fairness.

People say that even without a protest in front of Planned Parenthood,

you know, you know the critical thing.

Hmm?

I laughed and he laughed.

Yeah.

And then we walked out.

You're gonna have the thought.

fight.

Yeah.

But what's lo, what's got lost is the social context where people

go, yeah, I completely disagree, but I'm not gonna blow up my entire life for

this thing that I see in front of me.

I'm gonna just let it go for right now.

You can disagree.

No, no.

And then I'm gonna vote, then I'm gonna make decisions.

I'm gonna give money.

Like, I'm just like, you're gonna li if you're gonna live in the real

world and it's gonna be sticky and, and it's gonna be unpleasant in

some ways and you're gonna have.

Complicated moral decisions.

We hit a point with the pandemic where everything became absolutely black and

white, and I do think that that is an internet thinking is very black and white.

Let, let me end this with a question

to you.

Hmm.

Obviously the advice is why don't we pause and realize

that most issues are pretty nuanced and really understand

No, no,

Why does that not work?

Let me, let

me actually, let me turn it into real advice, which is that you

may feel under pressure to have strong opinions on absolutely everything.

Mm-hmm.

And that is the, that's how they get you.

That's how you don't get anything done.

That's how you drink the poison.

and then you end up spending all the time trying to

get the right opinions in place and the right strategies in place.

In our world, it comes down to like we're building a new product and I, you know,

I, if I went online to my particular cohort, it would be like, you can never

launch this because people could abuse it.

it.

Right, right, right, right.

that is a, there's a morally sensible argument in there,

but it also is utterly IMing.

I can't do anything with

that.

Yeah,

because I

Don't take the bait is what you're saying,

saying.

Because Hu and here's the thing is like, you're gonna be right.

Let's say you're incredibly right about something like human perversity will

mean that you'll be wrong the next day,

Yeah, yeah,

right?

You can't win.

So anyway, uh, the advice is don't take the beat because

believe what you want to believe.

Yeah.

Give some money away.

Yeah, stand up and And if you have something, you say you

gotta stand up and say it.

Of course.

But

what's one last piece?

Cause I have a feeling most of our audience doesn't take the bait.

man.

Probably

Yeah.

Possibly.

Well now, now we've affirmed them.

We affirm them.

Good for us.

but what advice should you give to the, what would you, what

advice would you give to the person who is sensible and kind of even keel

but is standing next to someone who's losing their minds about an issue?

I mean that's when you gotta go out for a beer

bud Light.

No know.

apparently not.

No.

I mean, look, again, we're in this funny zone where if like you guys both really

like to play Call of Duty and one of you is like a Republican one is a Democrat,

ethically, you're not supposed to be able to play Call of Duty together.

That's where we've ended up as a society.

Right.

Which is crazy because then you're not doing anything together.

Well, nothing's gonna change at that

point.

So, you know, find a hobby and hang out with your friends.

Let's end it on that note.

Beautiful.

And we solved it.

Ya and Ford Meta advisors very

very tricky, thorny topic, but I think we, we came through

Yeah.

But here's the thing, rich, they're all tricky and thorny.

Yes.

Hit us up.

Ziade, uh, hello.

At Ziade ford.com with questions, thoughts, opinions, anything.

We'd love to hear you react to this podcast, which was a bit of a

minefield, but I think we came out

No, we're doing all right.

Look, listen.

Also, if you want to, uh, go to a board.com and put your email

in, we really could use some beta testers real soon and we have

something exciting and interesting,

Yes, aboard.com.

right.

All right, rich, let's get back to it.

We got a lot of work to do.

Have a good day.

Bye.