The tariff wars kicked off and confirmed that we are in a post-expertise era where your bona fides matter less than your confidence. Plus: celebrating GDPR’s impending demise. what to do with Vanity Fair, and Shopify’s AI manifesto.

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I was in, in London and there was a guy that was previously kind of a super fan

He said, you know, I used to listen to your pod religiously all the time, but then you guys just talk about the same shit every week.

So I stopped listening to it

nice?

and

It's good to get feedback.

I like the feedback.

I, is that true?

I guess we do, do we

not very

whine

and talk about media all

Yeah.

I mean, I, I know that I try to change the topic and it's always back, but let's talk about SEO and ads and I'm like, fucking hell man.

Fuck it.

Yeah.

It's good to see you, tiger.

What's

going on?

It's good to see you too.

Yeah.

spring break.

Next week I'm going to Palm Springs.

Oh, that's nice.

Yeah, I love Palm

Springs.

Welcome to people versus Algorithms.

I'm Brian Marcey.

I'm joined by Troy Young, who was just in the uk, but is back in Brooklyn.

Alex Schleifer does not have a hard stop until at least 3:00 PM Eastern.

Yep.

Is the SEO expert gonna join us later, or no?

dunno.

I think maybe we'll have him on next week.

And also we're, you know, as a little preview, we we're also gonna have Rich on Rich Antonella from

Oh yeah.

That'll be fun.

That'll be an explicit

a

LinkedIn hustler hustle guy,

He's got a lot of life advice.

This is Rich.

I love Rich.

I've done some great podcasts with him in the past.

he definitely proves my theory that if you're, you know, if you're on the internet long enough, you become a, you become a life coach.

But I like, I like

about, I have a rant about this.

I have a rant about this.

I didn't even mean to lead us to this topic.

Go ahead.

Then we'll get into

tariffs.

Well this

is sort of related to terrors, so.

I don't know, what did I see?

Something about Chamath Poly on X and I hadn't been reading much media.

I was busy.

And then I noticed that he's holding court on the Flagrant podcast, sort of like bloviating about the deep logic of Trump tariff policy and the underlying, you know, stuff, macroeconomic and sociopolitical logic of it all.

He's on YouTube, lots of audience being interviewed by a famous comedian, Andrew Schultz, who, the YouTube famous comedian and his comedian dude, pod posse.

And just as a, as a reminder, Chama studied electrical engineering at Canada's University of Waterloo, and he got lucky and dumb rich.

By becoming the Facebook growth guy at just the right time.

Right.

And has, by the way, since renounced the evil work he did there, um, and I'm sure he, he, he's, you know, has wonderful growth skills and you know, at times he's reasonably articulate and dare I say occasionally insightful.

Alex May disagree with me on that.

he's not an economist or an experienced policy person.

He was what, about eight months ago, red pilled by his poker pal, David Sachs.

since then, Chamath has seemingly developed a taste for proximity to power and kind of freely leveraged this and his newfound pod celebrity to sling it around.

To support the Trump agenda, which is up to him.

I'm happy for him.

his new celebrity seems fun and he has nice sweaters.

and then I stood back and was like, comedians interviewing allure, piano influencer slash growth product person about tariff policy is basically what we've come to expect in the new infor in the information space.

That's media now, right?

And in the old times I was like, well, what would've happened before?

And we would've had like seasoned kind of policy journalists backed by like economic policy expert editors, backed by fact checking teams, interviewing actual economists and actual experts.

And what does it mean to be an expert?

Well, you understand the cause effect connection between things because you're.

You, you're learned, you've studied history, you've studied policy, you've studied economic models, you like, you know your shit.

And, to watch the sort of Trump tariff policies spill out across social media reminds me, I, I just kept thinking this

is like Model UN in high school meets the Comedy Cellar and like, but on like a Tuesday night, you know, like not a good night.

And, and then over on the other side we have Zach, do you remember Zach from say Media?

Alex?

He was Nat Turner's partner.

Yeah.

Weinberg.

Yeah.

Zach has become kind of an aggressive debater on another YouTube

thing, interviewing the.

all the crypto guys one

Yeah.

Yeah, it was really refreshing actually.

He was going up against Keith Robis, who's like a mindless Trump supporter and, and kind of schooling him to be honest.

And, you know, you got these two guys, this kind of entrepreneur come venture capitalist with this kind of semi entrepreneur, venture capitalist guy, you know, telling us what we need to know about, whether tariffs are, in fact, you know,

we're trying to get to use our might to get to a zero tariff world so we can engage in fair free trade, or that we're trying to exercise some kind of like industrial policy so that we can.

you know, build back, you know, industrial supremacy in America and protect the long-term interests of the country and use, you know, sort of tariffs as a policy device, seemingly contradictory things.

Having this conversation and like, I'm all for, you know, conversation and, and, and I guess that like everything we say and do in public spaces is just media now.

But if my lower back hurts and I wanna know if it's cancer or not, I'm going to a doctor.

And if I wanna know how to, you know, diffuse a nuclear bomb, I'm going get the right guy.

And so, you know, I, I, I just, it, it, it's, it's, it's really a confusing time and I think this tariff moment is really kind of illustrative of how I miss experts in media.

yeah.

and it's hard to tell really if it's just like the Dunning Kruger effect where people who, I mean, I think Chamath is very much that, right?

Like he, he had success, so he thinks he knows everything about everything right now, and there's a lot of confidence in when he says thing.

But, There's also the fact that it, today, it doesn't matter if you change your mind.

I mean, it just, it's just proof, that, you can say whatever you want and that the media river just flows by and the next week you can completely change your mind.

And we've all seen the super cuts of people reacting to market declines under Biden, like freaking out.

All

Yeah, Benny Johnson had one that, that was one that he was, he was freaking out over some little decline, I guess like a couple years ago and then it's like cuts to today and he was like, having money's no money is fine.

It's

fine.

money doesn't cost you

He is

like, what's the big deal?

Losing money doesn't cost you anything.

you didn't have any money as a child.

You were happy.

yeah, exactly.

It's, you know what it feels like a little bit,

It's different

in your fifties though,

Yeah.

Did, did you know that, the, the Mission Impossible movies are really interesting because the way they start shooting those

is that they set up the stunt and they said, okay, we want Tom to fly off to jump off a cliff on a motorcycle and land on a train.

And they go out and they shoot that stunt and then, and, and maybe a couple of others, and then they build the script and story around it.

So they start shooting without a script.

And this feels exactly like that.

Somebody woke up one morning and started throwing random numbers out, and now you have all these sycophants and, and people that are holding court, like you were saying.

And it does feel like that, just trying to build the script around the stunt.

and it's, it's maddening, because it works.

But it's also, it's also, it's kind of thrilling.

Let's, let's admit it, like, right, like, I mean, I, I, I understand what you're saying Troy, about like.

Wishing to have the August like economists and unpacking this in a very somber way.

But we're, we're well past that, and I don't think there's any going back to that, I found just following this over the last week to be really fascinating.

I

I was eager to hear your take though.

Did, did, did, did X Turn against Chamath after that stupid podcast?

It's hard to say.

It's hard to say.

Because there's

also like, there's also massive Chamath, there's Chamath fan boys deconstructing in, in multi, you know, layered, threads.

Like what this great man is telling us.

Like people take him seriously.

This is, this is what's weird about it.

did you know he,

he's one of the top

He's the fucking growth guy from Facebook.

He's one of the top grossing sub stackers.

He has like a $10,000 a month substack, and that actually has vaulted him into the top 10 of like substack.

There's enough people out there that are paying him over a million dollars for access to his substack,

according to a chart that AB shared.

it?

It's like confidence plus shamelessness.

Like how do we, how do we like get in on

Well, it's the appearance of competence.

I think that really is the only thing that matters right

just that when we verge, you can talk to me about whether you think the, New York Giants made the right trade.

And you can just be some fucking guy and that's fine.

And you can talk to me about, you know, whether you like the Chinese food at the new Chinese restaurant in soho.

Great.

You can be some, some person, but when you start talking to me about, I.

Like really nuanced macroeconomic policy.

Sometimes I want you to be a doctor

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, maybe not Dave Portnoy weighed in.

I mean, this actually, I, I think this is one of the pressure points was Dave Portnoy was, was turning against Trump.

Now he's a, he, he represents an important constituency and the, the reality is Trump won from low information voters.

I mean, I think it was made the point that like 60% of Americans rated a sixth grade reading level or lower, that came out during this, didn't fact check it, but that sense.

which is fine.

but like you have to think like the idea that someone is gonna just listen to a Nobel Prize winning economist is just out the window.

I mean, look, Trump has branded these things as reciprocal tariffs and the New York Times has to put it in quotes 'cause it's like literally they're not reciprocal.

Like they don't match up.

So that, that you can't, you can't just take a word and say it means something else.

you have to put it in quotes.

Is there a breaking point though?

Is there, is there like a breaking point where, to me it's like, it seems to be escalating and the, the, the, it's so, flagrant, you know, like the podcast, that it's, it's like at some point it becomes noticeable.

Wait, the shit you were telling us last year, it's completely different to the shit you were telling us this year.

And the whole like, manosphere, grift space, like that, it, there's all these playbooks that are being played up all the time where people just change their minds or just say

the opposite thing that they were last week or become Christian because all of a sudden there's rape accusations like Russell Brand, right.

Russell Brand

turned

is a Floridian.

He's a Floridian Now.

So yeah, move to

I think he's actually, I think Russell Brand is also

a, uh, a macroeconomic policy expert.

If anybody moves to Florida and becomes a Christian, something's coming,

Short that stock,

yeah.

short.

It.

But, so here's, here's my, here's my positive take on this, right?

Is the way these things normally, and I'm gonna try my best.

The way these things normally take place is they're very controlled rollouts.

Everyone gets to their talking points, and you have surrogates that go out there with their talking points.

That is not what happened here.

We had the world's richest man who is also a close advisor of the president calling his top trade policy architect, Peter Retardo.

I can say that now

I have no money in my 401k, but I

It

was worth it.

It was worth.

you know, we've got Dave Porter, we have Scott Besant sent out to do the hard yards, not just on

But the character, he's become in this sort of expert, the new, new expert land is he's the guy that made his mark with smart trades.

He, he, he's held up by everyone to be at, well, at least there's Scott.

At least someone's smart there, right?

At least there's someone who knows what they're doing.

Oh, Scott, you know, is soft spoken and has thick glasses.

He's like, nerd stock.

He's like, real, he'll take care of it.

He'll

he's got a, he's got a good part, he's got a classic part, you know, like he's got the, the sweep.

It's good.

He looks, he looks good, he looks apart, but he was on Tucker Carlson explaining it, and then he was on like, all in.

So it, it's interesting how this, this, stuff is now, now filtered through the information space.

I did you see that Walter Bloomberg, which is an pseudonymous, x account, caused a $2.4 trillion swing in the market by, by misreporting, that the, the terrorists

Is that, is, is that Bloomberg's brother?

Hey, is this, is this what happens when you, uh, when you sell blue check marks for like eight bucks a month?

Uh, you know, all of these like things of no consequence are having like really real consequences.

But here's my positive take on it.

I would rather have like, like his advisors, duking it out in public and have this sort of all playing out transparently than the strategic leaks and the talking points because it lays bare, sort of how the sausage is truly made.

Now, I think it's extreme in this case, but it's anyone who's wor

ever worked

in a

That, that's a, actually, that's that, that's become a maga talking point actually,

which is where the most

transparent we're the, we're the most transparent government ever.

Mm.

Yeah, exactly.

true.

I, it's true.

Like they're definitely not hiding Trump.

They might want to, but like they're not hiding him, that's for sure.

You cannot accuse them of that.

I, I, I don't want it to get conflated with honesty though, right?

Like, I think it's, it's still super dodgy what's going on with, with all of this stuff.

And I, and I think transparency would also require honesty.

I mean, you know, there's, they're saying stuff, but you know, it doesn't mean that it's true or it's what

I mean, like you said, Brian, we came last week when we talked memes with Nick.

You know, narratives are powerful things and, you know, the, the, the Republicans have have stolen the kind of working men Main Street

platform and, you know, the, the, this is all seemingly, I mean, you know, there's a lot of conversation about motives here.

Like what are the motives, what's our objective?

And, you know.

You can see a kind of populous narrative underneath of this, that this is all about not rewarding the, the, the, the bankers and lawyer class, but, but, you know, doing something

for Main Street and Scott's out, Scott Beins out talking about this and Trump talks about it and all of the sick offense talk about it.

meanwhile, I cannot, I walked home from a meeting this morning and I was just like, walking by stores and, you know, just kind of, I don't think that there's a single business that isn't like shitting their pants right now.

Yeah.

small businesses that have lost, you know, not just that they're, you need to thrive in volatility, but like, you know, that they can't

order next season's clothing for their little clothing boutique in New York City because of, they don't know where they're gonna get it

Yeah.

at what price,

I mean,

it's happening to Apple.

Yeah.

Well, let's talk, let's talk about the downstream impacts of the, the real world impacts beyond this, like information sta space nonsense, of this.

'cause it is going to, I mean, look, this thing is whipsawed back and forth and now it's, it's apparent, it's back to, oh, it's just about like China and this is going gonna go on for a long, long time.

Yeah, but I mean, let's stick, stick to the information space.

Like advertising, advertising.

Like forget

Ian Shehan.

Timo, that that's gone.

all these little, you know, B2C retailers that kind of like, you know, that I keep seeing on Instagram that are trying to sell me beard oil.

I mean, maybe the beard oil is fine, but you know, like little clocks and

Where do they make, where do they make beard oil.

I don't know.

Mine is kind of like honest Amish, so I think it's, it's

over

here.

make it.

Yeah,

Oh, so maybe it is American made.

yeah.

Maybe.

And then they sell it to the English.

like advertising.

Like what, what happens?

Like this, kind of magnificent seven stocks are being shorted.

I think in large part Google and Facebook and, and Meta because of kind of the advertising hit this is gonna take, this is gonna bring with it.

No.

Just sticking to media and talking about

Yeah, I mean, look, the, the, it's always downstream of that.

I mean, advertising is the easiest thing to turn off.

You can't like stop building a plant or data.

I mean, I guess you can.

Microsoft stopped a data center, but it's harder.

Capital investments are harder.

You can always cut advertising.

I always joke that, you know, a recession's coming when one of those articles pops up on adage saying the worst thing to do is to cut advertising during a downturn.

And ev no, CCFO apparently reads adage because they always cut it.

we cut it at Airbnb like pretty, pretty extensively.

and for a second it didn't make a difference.

So maybe that was the

oh well that was the performance stuff.

I remember that stunt.

yeah, it's gonna, I think one of the big sort of impacts of all of this with is with the overall soft power of America, like America's exports are, are mostly in services.

Yes.

But in like cultural products.

And I think that's a, an underrated aspect of this.

you know, it, the American, the US National Anthem is being booed at NHL Games in Canada by your people.

Troy and I, I kind of don't blame 'em to be honest with you.

And I think that's gonna have a real impact.

I mean, obviously China is going to go after Hollywood.

I mean, there's a reason their stocks got got crushed.

They've done this before.

They're gonna stop showing, Hollywood movies.

there's gonna be a tremendous amount of impact of this disruption.

'cause I do not see, I do not see Trump and the Trump administration all of a sudden snapping back to being like, oh yeah, well we tried that and that's, you know, we're just gonna go back to being like normal.

This is, this is gonna be three and a what, a three and three quarters years at least of this.

Yeah.

And then, so in that time, that's you, you, you need, you need at least two to four years to start onshoring anything.

I don't know who's gonna start doing that.

So that's the, the external factors of that is, is definitely like the, these new alliances forming, right?

We might be seeing new alliances in Asia.

Like a lot of the news I'm hearing from Europe as a European actually feel pretty good about, right?

Europe feels more united than ever before.

they're going to invest in their own defenses.

They're, they're, they're going to start, I mean, talk about Onshoring, like I think Europe is, is starting to build, You know, it's kind of, it's like reinforcing itself against this stuff, and it will create new alliances.

I mean, like, this is, I mean, it's terrible for China in the short term, right?

Terrible for China in the short term.

But in, in the long term, China's going to be making alliances with all these other Western alliances.

And that's what happens when you run a country as a fucking business.

A business doesn't have alliances, doesn't have friends in a business, you're always competing.

And if you lose out, if somebody else wins, you usually lose out.

You see everybody else's competitors, or at least that's the way these folks are seeing it.

And that's not a way to run a, a a, a country.

And so

although Trump is, is kind of like he's going back to the Gilded Age and that mercantilism where there were a lot of alliances businesses allied with, with each other in order to avoid competition.

So there is hope for that, but one positive that has come out of this, Troy and I thought of you when I saw this, um, I went to politico.eu and I xed out of a massive cookie consent banner to find that the European, I'll just read it.

The Europe's most famous technology law, the GDPR is next on the hit list.

As the European Union pushes ahead with its regulatory killing spree to slash laws, it reckons are weighing down its businesses.

So GDPR, all of this could be in service of a greater good.

And that is the end of the tyranny of GDPR.

Congratulations.

I mean, it, it couldn't have happened, soon enough, to be honest.

It's ridiculous.

It doesn't protect anyone and it adds terrible friction to an already horrible consumer medium as a media delivery mechanism.

So great.

It's great.

It was

Can, can you

explain, can you explain what it is and what the impact is on people

people's privacy, let people know that they're being tracked in some shape or form, either as a, a cookie that helps, you know, create functionality on a website or is used for ad targeting.

And, you see it on every website, the little bottom banner that says, you know, you can opt in or opt out.

Everybody engineers it.

So actually opting out is way harder.

So everybody, you know, the opt-in rates or something like 60% or something like that.

And it's just, it's, it, it, it, it was, it created an entire new industry in ad tech that are, I guess, good for people like Brian, that take their money for, well, advertising the consent

business.

No, I haven't.

I tried to sell Source Point, but no, it, I did, we

didn't do any business.

It was yet another

expense for media companies, by the way.

And, and the people that had authenticated users like Google and Meta never suffered at all you

No, just locked in.

It locked in competition.

I would say It

benefited, benefited this podcast as well because it's probably 15% of our content is Troy complaining about it.

So it's

What it cost.

It cost.

I, I saw a study it cost between 1.7 million for small, medium sized firms to up to $70 million for compliance.

The, the, I couldn't find a total cost of GDPR.

and for what?

Like what did we get out of it?

What did it do?

It

Well, here, here's the thing, maybe also to clarify and, and Troy, Troy is so, I'm gonna ask, how does that, why does

instead of trying to poke me,

you

can't, you can't defend Alex.

This is one

it.

I'm

not defending it.

I'm not, I mean, it unites Europeans.

how does GD, how does,

Hey, Alex,

tell me what's in my sausage.

Don't like put a ba, a useless banner on the bottom of my website.

No, I'm good.

I'm good with that.

I'm literally asking, like we, we talk, it's maybe a, a chance, and Vania, maybe edit this out.

What I'm trying to frame is

No, you can't, you can't, keep doing, you can't keep doing that.

Part of the, the beauty of, of your mind and this podcast is spontaneity.

Alex.

No,

Uh,

let Vanya edit out

what,

what, what, what I'm trying to ask you is like, let's, let's frame it for people.

Like how did GDR, because a lot of people I talk to here about GDPR and I explain it to them is, but isn't that a European thing?

How does that affect me?

You have to follow GDPR because you can't serve different customers in different markets.

It's a global market for information, and so if you're operating, you're gonna have to change how you operate because of GDPR, you're

So, so in

As a,

terms, yeah, in real terms.

The cookie, ugly cookie window you get at the beginning of a page that's GDPR.

Even,

That's the most tangible manifestation of GDPR that all of us have had to endure.

you know, now Americans won't have money to travel to Europe, so they won't have to endure it.

it's even

that too.

right?

Oh, it's, it's horrific.

Yeah.

You're just axing out Troy.

Weren't you just like closing cookie consent windows

I don't even

days?

in Europe.

think about it, like part, part of, but what I mean, you, you, you're, you're saying that, but I think it, it actually pushes people, away from the open web and towards apps, right?

There's like all these downstream effects that came from it.

And it was probably like one of the, just like one of the most, anti open web.

policies ever, like I'm very anti GDPR.

Also, if you wanted to do this force, the browser makers to make some sort of, you know, built-in browser interface that handles that, don't

Plus, you know, Alex, the cookie was the only con concession towards a coherent kind of u recognizing the user in a browser session.

Yes.

it's also asking people to make a decision that they don't fully understand, and so people just click Yes.

Oh, I don't care.

none of that.

So I think the idea was flawed, the execution was flawed, and in the end, everybody suffered.

And the fact, how long has it been, going on for?

I

don't know,

six, seven years.

So I'm all, I'm, I'm all here for this nightmare to end.

Troy, I'm with you.

I, I poke the bear a little bit because you get, you're funny when you get angry at

Seven years.

Seven years later

You're so cute when you're angry.

You're cute.

You're cute when you're angry.

I mean, it's, but I, again, this is, this is due to the pressure that is being put.

On a lot of it is like good changes can come, like Germany is now spending, you know, they, they're stopping their, their silliness with like, you know, against any sort of

debt.

And so a, you know, good things can come out of, this kind of disruption.

So let's, let's be open

I am worried about Germany, as you know.

are you, you're worried about their infras levels of in infrastructure

I'm worried that there are, the industrial backbone is about to be decimated by the Chinese, by the, the destruction of the automotive business.

the

BYD and my brother was just in, in China was just like, he's like the, it's like their car industry is just so far ahead of,

I mean, do you know like the, the China increased?

It's export.

So the Chinese car industry used to be kind of very internally facing, but they, they increase their export and the one of the

biggest increase are the combustion engines because they know they, they have a, a massive production capacity for combustion engine.

But Chinese consumers aren't really buying combustion cars anymore.

They're all switching to elec electric cars.

So all these combustion engine cars are flooding the markets outside of China.

so it's, it's, it's kind of wild.

They've, they've, they've leaped ahead in that.

and meanwhile here, we're hoping to bring back, you know, manufacturing jobs in Detroit to bit good, good old fashioned cars, like in the

You know what Alex, if you had just waited and not bought that lucid, you could have paid maybe, I don't know if you can get a BYD if you pay a

massive tariff on it, or they're just completely restricted from the US market, but they now have one that has, comes with a drone on top of it.

They have a partnership with the drone company.

And so you can control the, I presume you can control the drone from your dashboard.

I saw one, like the cops have them in New York.

They put a drone tethered from the top of those SUVs outside of major events.

So if they ever have to do crowd surveillance, they just let it go.

Um, but now everybody has one of those, right?

Can you imagine driving down

So what to like, look, look at the traffic ahead, like that kind of

you know, like you're driving through the countryside and you want a, you want an aerial shot.

You just release the drone.

You know, you probably see the image on your dashboard in the car.

It's kind of cool.

It's like, what if little 13-year-old boys design cars?

Well, you know,

on top.

I, I'm very happy with my lucid.

It's, it's a really beautiful car and, and apparently it's done really well.

I mean, I think it's, it's, it's picking up

a lot of Tesla.

of them a month.

orphans.

Yeah.

There, there is no beat, there is no lucid without PIF.

Lucid is entirely funded in a, as a massive loss making company by the Saudis.

Just so you know the trade you're making.

Well, I don't, I don't, I don't

Yeah.

Did you get the model Khashoggi?

It's a

Oh,

one.

oh my God.

we've

Wow.

the Khashoggi stuff.

you wanna move, move up the kind of like the, the production line for any product you own and see, see how it makes you feel.

I don't know,

So one of the other, downstream impacts is Apple is, is in a pickle.

Right?

I don't know.

Can, can you unpack this a little bit?

'cause I think Tim Cook's legacy is really gonna be real interesting with how this turns out because

bring on our Apple specialist, Alex,

he was the supply chain guy and it seems like they missed on, on ai.

And there's the, that's the two big totems of this, of

watch for a little blip in their sales.

Last week and the week bef I ran out and I bought an iPhone.

I didn't wanna pay

of,

bucks more for my iPhone.

I

yeah.

I mean, they're, they're scrambling and apparently, even before the tariffs were announced, a lot of kind of like, PC manufacturers and Apple were trying to front load imports of their most expensive models.

So like a lot of high-end models were brought into the country.

cause they expected some tariffs.

but at this rate, I think, apple is a bargaining.

No, nobody did.

Nobody did.

That's why it wasn't factored into the market.

Like, it's, it's nobody did.

it was priced in, it was priced in at like something way lower.

No, I mean, Apple's in real trouble.

They, they're, they're building some of their stuff in, in, in India.

you know, they try to shore some of these things.

I think Apple.

It could be existential if they don't strike a deal.

and I'm sure Tim Cook is spending a lot of time at Mar-a-Lago right now to try to get this done.

it used to be that, and it, there's always been this risk, right?

Like a big, like one of the biggest geopolitical risks was, you know, if China invaded Taiwan, for example, right?

And that would, severely disrupt our entire, you know, semiconductor industry and computing and stuff like that.

But Apple would be in real trouble because it would probably, you know, stop anything coming from

Is it true, Alex, that you need tiny, little, delicate adolescent fingers

to do the final assembly

Yeah, I

think American fingers are a little too big

Yeah,

Did, did

you see the, the Chinese

can you fact check that Alex?

Is that, is that, can you, am I fact checking that with you?

We probably can't do the assembly just because of our anatomy.

Yes.

It's

Well, did you see the Chinese memes that were being created?

The AI memes of like fat Americans trying to screw in like, um, uh, Little iPhone

Well, I mean, Dave Chappelle had a good line where he said, you know, I wanna wear Nikes.

I don't wanna make 'em.

Uh,

If Americans designed iPhones or actually executed them, they would look like those things that you hang over top of a baby,

yeah.

the knobs.

I mean, but that stuff isn't onshoring that stuff.

I mean, I've heard different numbers, like between five and 10 years.

it would make the iPhone cost like two and half thousand dollars.

I mean, it's not, it's not a, it's not a serious, it's not a serious plan.

And at, at the same time, like, what do you do, right?

This, this, this trade war has, even if it resolves itself.

I think it's fundamentally changed the way people look at, where they get their parts from and, and what's reliable long term.

And Tim Cook, you know, that's his legacy, having set up this incredible, incredible supply chain that meant that these new phones would come out every year with no fault.

People would deliver them.

They wouldn't have delays, they wouldn't have any stock issues.

I mean, it's incredible what they set up.

but turns out it's a house of carts.

and a lot of people are very, very worried and.

The Mag seven, which includes Nvidia and Apple, also has been holding up the stock market, right?

It's like big chunks of people's portfolios.

And 4 0 1 ks is held up in these stocks.

and I think what we're, the decline we're seeing in Apple right now could feel like a tiny blip compared to what happens if these tariffs, like, if the tariffs war kind of keeps escalating, it's at 145% now.

I mean, that's essentially no trade from China, right?

mean we're not gonna get a new season of severance?

I mean, it means, means that it means, I I I think that the billion that they're losing on Apple TV will just seem like a, like small fry.

They might just wanna spend entirely on services.

I mean, it could mean like massive things, right?

The delay of the next iPhone.

It could mean, For me, it could mean like, I don't get my switch two when it comes out.

You know, Nintendo had announced a switch, two pre-orders, were meant to start yesterday or, or this week.

they basically canceled their pre-orders for, for the us the rest of the world got to pre-order.

We didn't,

I don't think it's crazy to, to think there's a possibility that Apple and Amazon spend less on the, the streaming.

That's, that's losing money.

What?

Why?

Why would that be

be, because services is the only thing that's like, if, if the hardware faucet has to stop for a while, like investing in services, the only thing you can do.

I don't think Apple doesn't need to save money.

I think they have, they're sitting on plenty of cash.

They can wait things out at the very least.

if, if they have trouble supplying hardware.

I, I would, I would see them investing fully in software.

You know, they're gonna release a new iOS version, and fully on services, right?

Services is also the, the, the part of the, business that's growing the fast, fastest.

So, I, I wouldn't see that happen.

And I think right now they're looking at the service port as a portfolio.

they're not seemingly caring so much about how much money they're losing.

I mean, a billion dollars for Apple is nothing.

Alex, do they have to bifurcate their production so that they serve the, they they sell iPhones in China.

They, they serve the Chinese market and the European market, and those not affected by the American tariffs from a Chinese production facility and try to serve the rest of the world in other ways.

How does it evolve?

I have no idea.

I mean it because it's, it's

so, it.

get Chamath on.

We should get Shaath on.

Yeah.

I've never heard him say that that would be,

anybody who thinks anybody who's friend friends and takes Jason Ka seriously, like we should kind of look at

I'm coming around

on Jason, to be honest with you.

really, well,

he laid me off.

So there's that.

but, but yeah, I don't know.

I don't know.

I think it's, it's, I think we're gonna see a lot of, I think Apple for sure is going to be used as a bargaining ship as, as this goes on, and I don't know how long it can go on for.

I mean, they're, they're, they're planning 2, 3, 4 years ahead for these next, next iPhones.

And that must have put everything up.

You know, everything.

Everything's in turmoil right now.

but also, I mean, the big, you know, the card that, that China can play is just taking, is just saying, all right, we we're not respecting any intellectual property

That's the big part.

Everybody's terrified of that.

you

Sorry

say

before.

no.

They

did.

They did.

And

it, there's a semblance of them doing it.

And, and they did enough so that large companies like Apple felt comfortable working with, Foxconn and things like that, knowing that their intellectual property would be respected.

Now, fine, you can still, you can go to China and there's like a cafe somewhere called Disneyland, and nobody's doing anything about it.

And you can get a fake Nikes and stuff like that.

There's a, there's a black, it's, but it's, it's handled as a black market that changes, right?

If you're saying, well, you're implying those tariffs, now we're putting a freeze on any IP, partnerships that we had in place.

And that's, you know, okay, well now we're gonna start selling iPhones in,

Yeah, you have a night, you end up waking up in, you know, cold shivers, realizing that if you had to live in a, the country of

America where everything was made in America, it would be like living in Russia where everything, where they have fake McDonald's,

Russia, interestingly, no tariffs.

I would've a lot of trade.

the DTC industry is, is gonna be, that's a tough one.

any thoughts there, Troy, on second order impacts?

Because, you know, a lot of these

I think it's, I, I honestly think it's catastrophic for, for a lot of them.

you know, even people that design their own products, I, you know, know several that design their own products that are manufactured, you

know, in China or elsewhere, you know, are looking at huge price increases in, in a really, in a business that just has really n narrow margins.

So it's, it's pretty, it's gonna be, it's gonna get pushed, you know, to, to the consumer or they go outta business.

when ad pricing Rose went because of

different, like,

That shut down away the DDTC companies, you know.

now, now, I mean, you know, they're already operating on thin margins and they, there's all reliant, almost all reliant on, Chinese supply chains.

And, and that's because they weren't really product companies.

They didn't make the products.

I mean, I guess that is sort of at the heart of all of this is that even the companies that we think of as like making and selling products, they don't make the products.

They, they just, they're branding.

I mean, that's why I always think Authentic Brands Group is like the ultimate company of like late stage capitalism because.

that, that actually leads me to a new place.

If you're getting tired of this conversation, which is what do you do with Van,

what do you do with Vanity Fair?

oh, what

do you do?

Oh, you absolutely

you this on the WhatsApp and you said Harvest so

well, you know what I mean?

We can maybe have a more intelligent conversation than that.

Well, I was hoping for it on the WhatsApp, so maybe we can have it now.

I mean, we'll leave it to the nice people at Puck to go on endlessly about it, the, um, You know, John at Puck made this kind of,

you know, he was reflecting I think pretty honestly and courageously on, you know, the Grayden Carter years versus, rodika Jones.

you know, he said that, you know, being an editor isn't what most people think, surprises people.

You're not like, you know, pouring over texts and assigning stories really.

You know, the great insight from Grayden per this is, I'll credit this to John, was, you know, this simple idea that Hollywood wanted to see themselves in the, you know, on the pages of a, of a, you know, prestigious

magazine that fashion companies wanted to see, you know, the elite in their clothing on the pages of magazines, and that if you did that you could create an economic system where you

funded, really sophisticated journalism and storytelling that, you know, reinforced the, the, the whole kind of enterprise with, you know, a really, you know, high quality product.

that all, you know, seems great.

And it, and it, and it underneath of that was The, the kind of certainty of the business model and a structure where, relatively speaking, you had far less competition.

you had the sort of oligopoly oligopolistic benefits of being a scaled print, enterprise, couple hundred million in revenue, and you could kind of just invest to keep that, that engine going.

And I think that for the new editor, you, you know, media brands take a long, long time to kill and they, they last, you know, a lot longer than you think.

You can make mistakes on covers.

You can, you know, go through crisis.

You know, you can, you can navigate bad years.

And to most people, vanity Fair is still that idea of Vanity Fair and it lasts a long time.

I think that the Vanity Fair.

The barometer in some ways it becomes the, the Oscars event, which is, you know, a longstanding franchise of, of that brand, the Vanity Fair Oscars party.

And you know, I mean the, the sort of smack talk this year was like, people didn't really hang out there.

They go there, they take a photo, then they go to like, you know, a real party.

you know, over time that institution just becomes less and less important and you can get someone in that's very business-minded, but creative.

And I think that's the, I. the sort of Venn diagram you have to put together, which is a great appreciation of where, you know, culture is going and how you can play a role in that uniquely as a media brand.

And then, you know, how that becomes, you know, a, a, a good business.

And that, that's what a, I think a, a great magazine editor was able to do.

just think that now the business part of it is so difficult because there is no stability at all to the, you know, to the underlying kind of medium mechanic.

So what are you doing if you're Vanity Fair, Brian, you're the editor of Vanity Fair.

Maybe that's not your gig.

You might wanna do some, some other type of publication.

But let's say it was, You're trying to figure out how am I relevant, if not in print?

Am I making more, you know, short celebrity interview videos on YouTube, which I don't make any money from?

Am I gonna take that game to TikTok and Instagram?

Am I doing, you know, fast-paced newsroom type?

Am I in that game competing for, you know, a, a, a seat, you know, at the table against, well-funded kind of newspaper platforms like the New York Times or Washington Post, or Wall Street Journal or any of those, or The Atlantic.

you know, what is, what role do you play in this ecosystem such that you have enough money to fund the kind of journalism that's gonna make you famous?

Well, you gotta figure out what you're a front business for, right?

Like the only path is to be a front business.

I mean, you're either

for, you mean like for sunscreen and like, sunglasses?

Uh.

it could be for, you know, cl classy, classy harvesting of the ip,

Well, that's what I'm saying.

That's, I would harvest that IP all day long.

Yeah.

That's the classy version.

would love that.

That's classy harvesting the ip.

Harnessing IP is classy.

Wow.

Yeah.

it's better than, it's better.

into media.

It's better than the SEO glue factory, right?

It's

better than

the IP glue factory is

what it is, Brian.

okay.

What?

I don't know.

It's not that I,

What do you even, what

do you even do with Vanity Fair?

I'm sorry.

That's why I'm asking.

Well

so, so, so they, so they have,

they're searching now for a global editorial director and, and what they describe it as, you know, this position develops strategies to drive editorial excellence, audience growth, and revenue.

It's a public facing role, and you're representing the title to the industry.

I mean, it's like a biz dev role as much as it is an editorial role.

You're not going, you're not doing line

I I feel

like Vanity Fair.

Vanity Fair and, and maybe that's kind of my, my oblique view of it.

I, I think Vanity Fair's kind of brand power is so tied to the concept of celebrity.

and that has been fundamentally changed, whereas a celebrities have changed.

You know, I just heard somebody call George Cloy a blister, and at first I was like, what?

And then I, yeah, for sure.

Like these celebrities that used to attract so much attention and just, you could,

you know.

fair.

That's not fair.

Hang on, let me finish.

I mean, I, I, I don't, I, they, you know, you used to be able to put, you know, a name at the top of a movie poster and attract an audience.

and I think now celebrity when it is Alister, like if it's a Chalamet or if it's a Pedro Pascal, which are really true, a-listers, you know, they'll do the Vanity Fair, cover shoot and stuff like that, but it's all peripheral.

Most of that attention, most of their audience connection is like, you know, we talked about that before, is participatory.

And I think this kind of like non-participatory relationship with celebrities is, is gone.

And those brands that used to basically just act as a vehicle for that, for, for like connecting with a celebrity within the confines of that brand, are no longer relevant.

And I think the, I don't know if the brand stands for anything, so I, I, I don't know what I'd do with it.

that

Maybe you'd make it be really like a really cool.

Game where you like go from the Vanity Fair Oscar party where you, you do like, you get, see, you get points for, you know, engaging with paparazzi and you know, then you go to the buffet and get the free sushi and you get points for that.

And you see if you can do it all and have a couple, I mean, there's a game in that, Alex, you could make.

Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's, uh, yeah, there's a free, free mobile game, like a Kardashian mobile game where you,

There you go.

We're harvesting the IP as we speak.

yeah, yeah,

This is media.

yeah.

How would you, Brian just outta you got a good mind for this.

How would you harvest that IP, sweaters or jackets or what would you I was thinking something with high, high margin like sunscreen

You know what I, this is what I was asking you about fashion, the fashion credit system, like there needs to be an updated version of this.

'cause I don't think a lot of people understand like the role of fashion credits.

Can you explain like what role that fashion credits have played in these

Yeah, there was a kind of invisible balance sheet with the luxury fashion industry where you would, feature them in the edit of a prestigious magazine, like a Bazaar, an Al, or Vogue or Vanity Fair.

and for that, you would essentially get credits.

And those credits were something that the companies, the, you know, that the brands kept track of.

And so the Ultimate Credit is a star on the cover of Vogue, dressed in Sailor or something like that, right?

Like you, you, you want, and, and those credits, you pay those off in, in booked advertising in the pages of the magazine.

And that was the system.

You didn't monetize them directly, you monetized them indirectly.

So what's the modern version of that?

I mean, it's a little sketchy, but that means it's like it's a good

It's,

so.

I don't know.

It's influencers getting free.

Shit.

I'm gonna turn us away from, from Ty talking about the dead brand.

It's not dead.

You're pulling, you're, you're, you're, you're

pulling a Troy here.

You're putting your foot down.

You're

changing, you're like, Brian, you're not doing your job.

Let's go.

it's like, yeah, but how are we gonna make Humphrey Bogar cool again?

I'm like, he was cool and now he's not.

That's fine.

All right, so we won't talk about quartz.

Fine.

uh, well now I did wanna talk about maybe Quartz, but, but dig, just relaunched, just relaunched breaking news, right?

and they, they launched with early access, and here's the thing, they did.

Early access is $5.

You can get early access, but you have to pay.

And it's genius.

I think it's absolutely the right thing to do, it's a way of, of doing kind of like moderation and bringing in people who are serious about the product.

But it's gonna be interesting to see if a, a brand like, you know, like Dig has, has

How, how did I just, I just gave 'em my email address.

Alex, how?

Where did they charge me?

The $5?

I think when you get the invite, entry is, is at $5.

Okay.

Is this, is this like a, an extensible strategy to give people early access for $5?

I, I think it's a great strategy because what it does is it fo it, it kind of like it stops your servers from getting overloaded.

It, it's a filtering mechanism that people that come in are just like more committed to what they're about

to do.

It funds some of the beginning of the product.

It shows interest.

It shows like true interest, right?

Like, whoa, shit, 10, 10,000 people fa paid five thou, $5 each Is, is a way better signal of future success than a hundred thousand people paid zero.

What do you expect from this product?

Alex, do you have any insight into what it's gonna be?

Yeah, I mean, I think they're trying to, mean, they're not trying to compete directly with dig.

They've talked about

like the things that they're

with, sorry, with Reddit, I think some of the, of the thing that they want to do, which, which Reddit stopped becoming, is really, recreate this homepage of the internet thing, like used to go, and I still do that with Reddit somehow.

But you used to go to these pages, like dig and see, oh, what's happening on the internet today?

And using ai, of course, as part of that.

so we, I don't know exactly what it looks like.

I haven't tested it out

I mean, it makes sense in that like you.

You have to have, you can't go on social media platforms in order to like find like links to interesting stuff.

Like they've deprioritize it and there needs to be somewhere to go to find interesting.

Cool.

Shit.

Yeah, I mean, I, I find it like, I, I like finding interesting, cool shit on the internet, but the, the, the thing is that social me, yeah, I like

surfing the, I like

the net.

Alex, why can't

the web.

be the new dick?

Alex?

yeah.

Now that we're talking about

modern,

we're talking,

about a place to go to surf

but you know, maybe it is true like that these, I I think part of these brands that I don't think can be resuscitated are maybe too connected to a cultural phenomenon that is changing or dying out.

Like I do think so, you know, vanity Fair too, connected to this type of like very, unapproachable, high-end celebrity or something like Dig is more trying to sell, solve something and providing some utility.

So Dig has more of a chance of surviving.

I mean, another one that's doing pretty well is our friends at the Yahoo.

Who would've thunk that?

Like you could, you know, turn Yahoo around, but didn't they do that?

Yahoo

is taken seriously today.

Define turnaround.

I, I, I feel, I feel like Yahoo.

Yahoo was, was being seen as a dying assets, asset.

People were, you know, you know, kind of landing on it by mistake or kind of using it reflexively.

And I, I feel that it's like a, a much healthier business today

Hmm.

see the brand differently.

Nice.

I'm happy about that.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, it's, it's, I don't have, I don't have all the data.

They're

I mean, I think that economic, I think it's doing very well financially.

I think that Yahoo Finance is better than it was.

I think Yahoo Sports is way better than it was.

you know, I think that, that your friend Matt's done a nice job on the homepage.

you know, the pressure on Yahoo broadly is that that type of information, you know, provisioning on a page is under pressure.

Where does all the traffic come from?

So people just have

It's much more direct than most properties, Brian.

a lot of it comes from, it's kind of its own ecosystem because people, use mail.

People track their portfolios on Yahoo Finance.

People play Yahoo

Fantasy

Sports, by the way.

All of them are in, are, you know, this notion that we, we, we brought up in the last, People versus algorithms.

Weak weekender, what is it?

Is it weak weekender?

Could be.

Yeah.

Weekend.

which is ultimately the internet demands that we, that that media makes room for us.

You gotta participate, right?

Like fantasy sports, participate, track my portfolio, participate, you know, use my, you know, like, it's just like the internet's an interactive place.

Yeah,

and I think,

and read articles.

I mean, I think it's the last, it's the last, you know, remember portals, it's the last great portal.

It still provides a ton of utility, but lots of people use Yahoo Mail.

Yes.

Lots of people, you know, instinctively go to Yahoo Weather or Yahoo Finance to see that the thing, it's, it's, it's like a

straight

is growing

product.

very important metric.

That's crazy.

Right.

Like,

People are opening

new email.

Like I, I, I guess they're getting email for the first time.

Does someone like I, I don't know what would happen for

I mean, I think it's,

account.

would a kid, a kid who needs email, go to Yahoo and get an email?

Hey grandma, you should get on email, go to Yahoo and get an email.

I have a Hotmail too still.

you want a second email account to track your e-commerce activity?

Get a Yahoo email account.

Yeah.

I got a place for receipts.

so I mean, I think if you build in utility, a lot of a, a lot of these things are, are, could potentially be good turnaround stories.

I think Yahoo is, is turning out to be good turnaround stories.

I think dig

A OL still has more EBITDA than any other company in digital media.

So there's that too,

Yeah.

A OL was,

you know

what it says, but

it

says that it there, you know when you had your moment and if you were able to monetize that with subscriptions, a OL was TikTok for grandma.

It's great.

Let's talk AI for a little bit at the end.

Did you see Toby Luka?

Am I pronouncing that correctly?

He's got an, he came out with a memo, a quote unquote leaked memo.

I always think these

He's the, is he the king of Silicon Valley, north Ottawa?

he could be,

Toby.

I know

personally, myself.

Uh,

did you read, so basically the memo was, was, you know, bit of a, like a manifesto te telling everyone that.

AI is the starting point.

It's a baseline expectation to be using AI in every single role, which I think is like, it's an obvious one, but I I, it, it's probably necessary at this point.

I just notice myself, like, I use chat GBT not just every day, but all the time.

I've, I've narrowed it down.

Uh, Gemini?

Nah.

The Anthropic and Claude.

No, I just, I've just decided to go all in on, on Chachi.

Bte.

don't want more than one.

Do we?

We just want one.

I think Chachi, I think OpenAI is gonna run away with this thing.

I think they

I mean, they,

They

product.

they are, but at the same time, I think it's going to be like a browser and it's gonna be commoditized, but like,

Oh, wait, wait.

We gotta go back to, to,

But, but, but this is a real testament to the, you know, power of this.

'cause Brian doesn't, Brian is like high utility boy,

yeah.

does that

mean?

He doesn't, romance technology like

Hey guys.

I mean, I'm, I'm impressed because I think like I am, I'm a person that like will force myself to use the technology until it becomes something that clicks for me or doesn't.

Right.

But I know that I, but for example,

exactly,

and for example, you guys have been trying to get you guys to buy a new camera for like the last six months.

And, and, and here we are still looking like we're recording often

do you use a water pick?

I have something with a custom mouthpiece that's molded to my mouth, that shoots a jet in seven seconds as a professional cleaning in my own bathroom.

That's right.

so, so I, I, I, I kind of, sent a note to Toby after that and said like, I completely agreed with it.

and I think it turns out from what I'm hearing that internally at, at, Shopify, I. I don't think it created as much of a ruckus.

I think people took it pretty naturally.

and I heard that from multiple places externally.

I think, I, I, it's absolutely the right thing to do and maybe, you know, sometimes that's controversial to say, but if you don't incentivize people to try new, new technologies, that stuff is going to be, it's just gonna move slower.

Right.

I, I, in the beginning of the pc, you know, the, the, the, the kind of the release of these, like personal computers, like the corporations

were really slow to integrate that into their co, into the companies because people are naturally not inclined to try new things.

You

know what struck me, Alex, is this idea, simple idea in that memo that it's like you send an, I was just in a meeting where we did this.

It's like, we need to build this competency.

Here's all the people we need to hire.

You know, there's this role, this role, this role.

And you know, and you know now in the future when someone sends a, you know, job opening request to hr or the automated response sends them back, have you tried ai?

Yes.

And sometimes it'll be, and sometimes it'll be ridiculous.

and, and you say, well, of course it won't work with ai, but you just need to get people to think about it for a second.

Yeah.

Like, we need a tariff policy analyst from the White House.

They opened up a job record.

No, just use ai.

well this is what he said.

He said before, asking for more headcount and resources, teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using ai.

That's big man.

look like if

I'm telling you, that's the single biggest thing in that memo that's gonna influence everyone in an in, in, in a corporate role.

I, and I think it's, it's one of those things where.

It'll also, I think it's gonna be mimicked by everyone.

And I, I don't, I think it would be a mistake to see it like, well, you're just asking us to replace people with the eye.

No, we are asking everyone to think through their process.

It's so, so, you know, I've done a lot of consulting in my life and I've, I've done, I've worked with really large teams.

You'll work, walk into these teams and you look at their tooling and their processes and how they do things.

Oh yeah, no, that stuff is like, Bob just copy and paste it into a spreadsheet and then Frank pulls it out and you're like, wait, we could spend a day fixing this and saving hours every week for the rest, rest of our working, lives here.

And we're not doing that.

And so just to push people to say, Hey, before you do this, think about it.

Just think about it.

I think it's, it's, it's, it's great and it's great in, in my, in personal life, like, okay, I'm doing this thing over and over.

Can chat, GPT, can ai, can a tool

improve it?

It's,

think the Morrissey anecdote here is, is powerful.

And Brian, I, I, I'm not, I'm trolling a little bit, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna do

it.

Um,

I'll do it really, really comp in a complimentary fashion.

last week, and, and you know, Brian is a kind of technology, he's not a Luddite, but he's like, you're not, like, not technology forward.

And

we host a podcast with Nick Denton.

Brian sort of is, I would say 80% engaged.

He's, he's engaged.

You're engaged.

No, I, I mean, actually just, pause on that for a second.

Brian was working really hard to get that conversation back to media, and Nick was not interested in media.

not, not, at all.

That was

like, I haven't thought about it very much.

I

was like all

Brian once in a while would go, so what about media?

And he would go, well fucking, you know,

Elon

is he movie like Bulgaria or whatever?

Yeah,

right, right.

Hungry.

but anyway, so Brian gets off the podcast and he feeds the transcript into his ais, Alex, and then he writes literally like.

A beautiful piece of copy, like beautiful.

I would encourage everyone to read it about the interview, and I know it, I loved it.

It brought me to tears and, and he did it all in two hours.

Okay, so this is like a kind of like ft

Le this is like an FT level, you know, $20,000 piece and a podcast and all of the related activities to do all of that done in like four hours total for nothing.

And technology plays a huge role in, in that, in that, in, in, in that being what it

Yeah, and I think, I think it's, it's exactly, it's exactly the way you should use this stuff.

It's like an augmentation, right?

Like

Yeah, it's like assistive.

It's truly assistive.

'cause where I like, you know, it's just like writing.

You put like, tk, tk, do you know tk

it means to come, uh, but like TK quote and like they, and then it just like it.

It'll fill it in.

You just tell it to fill it in and then you just go back and forth with it.

I think a lot of times people get

It

up with.

out of the transcript,

Yeah.

Yeah.

'cause I upload the transcript, it has all of my writings and then like I start it, it comes up with ideas.

And I think a lot of times people react against AI because they look at it as a replacement and it's an easy button and it's

But they, they, they react both, both positively and negatively.

So, so, but I think that's been kind of the, the, we're blindsided by that.

And I see a lot of people trying out, well, I tried to get it to do this, replace this entire thing I do, and it didn't work, or, or, I'm terrified that it's going to replace this entire thing I do.

Rather than saying, no, remember before you had to turn your hand to screw the screw in.

Now you just press a button and the thing goes in, like it's assistive and, and it's been hard for people because it's so human in a way.

I think it's been hard for people to calibrate.

Right?

It's, I, I think it's because it's, it's so human and and conversational.

I think people don't calibrate well around that.

I saw a, a video that, TikTok or something of like a Gen Z person calling it the, the chat, GPT Umen, because cha g Bt uses so much, so many

hate it.

Yeah.

And

it doesn't put sp, I put spaces between mine, so I go through it

know it.

So that's the, like tell if you see a lot of M dashes without spaces that might be like AI created.

But I also feel like people, I've talked with a lot of, you know, journalists about this and they view it as cheating.

Like,

mean, that's,

I I will, I will use this example.

I, I, I used to be, you know, really great at designing icons for all the computers with either in black and white or then 16 colors.

And I could do this amazing, you know, technique called dithering, which is you create gradients by using, you know, just two colors, by making the dots kind of, you know, you kind of doing everything by hand.

And when, when a, when, you know, backwe

and

windows,

were good at that.

It's

uh, incredible, right?

But when, when they came out with 256 colors for, for the operating system, I was like, I, I refuse to do it for months because I thought it was cheating.

Uh,

yeah.

I mean, it's like what this thing I've spent so much time learning how to do it can be done, quickly, but everything's cheating.

Guys.

You know, you had to put like letter presses together.

You had to like, you know, you didn't have like autocorrect, you didn't have any of these things.

Like at the end of the day, you have to understand what the values of what you're providing and the value you're providing is whatever the output is that you've guided forward.

And if it's yours, it's yours.

Like that's fine.

Taste is going to play so much bigger role

Well also I think, you know, just from a, a, like a writing perspective, it combines writing with, with editing, right.

And I

think a lot of, you know, there's, there are different skill sets, but they're obviously very related and it's a mix between the two.

And to me, going forward, a lot, at least within writing, is going to be a combination of writing and editing.

Like,

you're gonna need to be

Would you mind

what to most

to write the newsletter this week?

no,

We could do that.

It's not gonna write it though.

It's just going to be like, for instance, let me go through how I'm gonna use it for, for a research report.

Like I have a, I had like all of

the calls with the.

you to write it.

Oh, are you?

Well, I mean, I'll do it with, uh, no, wait, I'm not gonna do it.

It's like Thursday.

I got some, I got stuff to do.

How do you write a research report with AI Brent?

well this might be boring,

but

It's not, it's nice.

plow ahead.

so like after like the, the, the call with like clients and stakeholders, that, that, that, that transcript gets fed into ai that keeps all of my stuff in there, knows, knows all of the rebooting content.

I've uploaded everything in there, and then it comes up.

We go back and forth on what the questions are going to be in the outline, and then the survey gets, gets produced.

I like edit it and change things and whatnot.

And then the results get loaded back up into the survey.

I have a freelancer who is interviewing a bunch of stakeholders with questions that I created with the, like ai.

Then all of those interviews are gonna get uploaded.

Along with like case studies, mini case studies that he's, he's writing and then like fact bot, so it's basically, it's almost like an auto assembly plant I'm trying to make, to

create what will end up being a 3000 word research report that I think will, will be done in probably like quarter of the time,

but just as high quality.

I'm gonna write the thing, but it, it's going to be done with all of the inputs being fed in there and

In some, in some ways, the role is like you kind of, everybody turns into this writer, editor hybrid, right?

Like, like a, a writer, editor, researcher, hybrid where you kind of merge all these things together and you augment it with things like ai and you

still need to make sure that every, every word in that is, is, is touched and, and made sure that it's like, comes like something you would write.

But I, I, I mean, I think it's incredible.

It just definitely speeds things up.

You know, you know what's also cheating?

Having an editor,

That is

which a

Here you go.

in the media don't, don't realize sometimes.

Nice.

Okay.

Well,

product.

Do we have a good product?

we can take you on just a little quick journey.

I guess I was just thinking about it, and I don't really want, like, this is gonna sound a little bit, I don't know, fussy or pretentious, You know, like I,

uh,

never

well I had, I had a, you know, a nice travel experience and a nice media experience and actually a nice nut and beverage experience,

but you know.

Well, I like the

nuts on.

like the Virgin

on an

airplane.

I like those nuts.

No, on the plane.

I, I actually sometimes ask for an extra serving of the war almonds, you know, that come,

You were on Virgin.

no, I was on American, actually.

But yeah,

you know, on the way over, I, I watched, kind of a cool movie.

I had the book, I never read it.

nickel Boys is a movie, based on a book by Colson Whitehead.

And the way it's shot is kind of cool, sad story, but, I think worth watching.

And then, you know, if you can only discipline yourself enough so that you, for, you know, you, it's like forcing yourself to read on an airplane can be an amazing experience.

And I'm, I'm reading a book that I'm loving right now.

Brian called, not for You, Alex.

It's called Moth, moth Smoke.

it's motion Hamid.

He's a British Pakistani writer, and he had written another book that I read earlier in the summer that I mentioned, I think on a previous podcast.

but I, I was going on last week, Brian, about the greatest hotel in America being, you know, that, that hotel you took me to the,

The Four Seasons.

I stayed in a great hotel in, in, in, in London.

Like terrific.

I stayed in the Mandarin Oriental in Mayfair and it was unbelievable.

Oh, Mayfair, huh?

With all the oligarchs,

someone booked it for me.

I,

someone had a, had a hookup and, level of detail in that hotel is unbelievable.

But, but the, the, the, the only thing that wasn't a good product is I am so over these multi-course, sort of Michelin tasting menu meals.

They're so stupid, I hate them.

They force you to sit there for like four hours, you

and there's too much food.

three desserts, who needs three

desserts,

agree.

I agree.

and you'd leave feeling sick, and then you spent like so much money.

It's horrible.

By the way, you sound like, elitist Seinfeld right now.

That could be a new shtick.

No,

it all of this was

are Michelin star tasting

what about

those warm elements?

Don't you just hate it when you know, they, you have to get up from your first class seat so they can turn it into a bed.

I'm not ready for sleep yet.

Well, no, I mean,

But that's, that's ho cuisine, right?

Like, I mean that, that's like, it's the experience.

Yes, yes.

It's it, and, and I think some of those, some of those are really good.

I went to one, at a place called Merchant Roots and there's Troy, I think you would like it.

They are, every season they change the theme and the theme is very fun and it's kind of semi interactive.

You go from room to

room.

don't want my, I don't want themes.

you don't.

meal with you

you can do that too.

I mean, it's a choice.

It's a, it's a free market.

you know what else you guys?

I bought a new iPhone.

I haven't bought a new one in year in, I dunno, three years.

They're pretty good.

Well, there we go.

That's the review.

We got like M-K-B-H-D, we're coming for you.

It's the new iPhone is pretty good.

Yeah.

a new one every year I have a subscription um,

Is that a thing

yeah, I just pay, I just, I just send them 70 bucks a month and I just get the new phone when it comes out.

it's only 70.

I don't know.

I'm not good with money.

I think

Is that an Apple program?

Yeah.

Do you have that, Brian?

No, I don't.

I just buy it

I,

my phone starts to slow

I I have a subscription water pick.

I get the new one.

So

uh.

your good product there,

I

don't know nothing.

just being rich.

I'm not rich.

I just happen to, I, I, I just happen to have this great experience that I want to share with you guys.

Uh, thank you.

Well,

I have a good product.

I think it's,

an older movie, but I don't think enough people have watched it.

It's called The Death of Stalin.

It's with, Steve Buscemi is in it.

it's, you know, we were talking about, holding court and, it happens.

It's a comedy, so it's, it's, it's quite light fair.

but Michael Palin, Jeffrey Tambor, and Jason Isak from, from the White Lotus, it's a nice hour and 45 minutes and it shows you in a very comedic way how people react around, ultimate power and, it's really, really good.

I've seen it.

it.

It's great.

By the way, just

of

of White Lotus Brian?

I, I'm, I'm not caught up yet.

I don't,

It was fine.

I don't wanna ruin it for Alex.

I can't believe I

watched it

I'm slow.

We are watching,

do everyone talks about it.

How do

we don't always have the energy to watch that.

We watch other stuff.

We kind of have our, a mix of shows that we watch.

you guys watch Mork and Mindy reruns?

No,

no.

Mindy.

I

never watched Morgan Mindy.

Pam dlr.

She was a great actress.

RIP.

No.

There's a lot, there's way too much good TV to watch.

And then we watch YouTube a lot.

Honestly, like the amount of YouTube we watch is ridiculous.

Like long form shit on YouTube is great, like elephant graveyard.

And you know, some of these like

That's not exactly relaxing fair, Alex.

It's like, listen, it was like my wife and I we relaxed as death metal.

Yeah.

I mean, I, I find it relaxing because it makes me feel less crazy that somebody else sees the world in a way.

So

So this is tangential before we go, but, and maybe it's for a different episode, but I'll go ahead.

have you noticed there, there's a very strange thing with modern comedy overlapping with like libertarian politics.

And the like podcast just asking questions, crowd

Oh, this is a whole

episode.

started with

episode.

but like the, no, Andrew Schultz.

Then there's this guy, Dave Smith, all of a sudden who's on like Lex Friedman and all the pod.

They all go

let's just reflect.

each other.

Is this

like an official

A,

a, a, a

growth, a growth product manager, right?

from Facebook is being interviewed by a comedian about tariff policy, and people are then abstracting the most relevant policy points and putting them on X. That's modern media.

I was listening to this comedian Dave Smith talk about like Israel Palestine, like Ukraine, like on Lex Friedman,

The, the, the

like asking myself, why am I listening to this?

Well, also, like l Lex Friedman or insufferable?

I thought you like Lex

no, no, I do not.

I I always found him kind of insufferable.

I might have said a couple of positive things as,

Putin

yeah, let's see if he's, as fair and balanced with Putin as he was with the other guy.

it's, it's a, it's a grift, Brian.

It's called audience capture.

All right.

It's called audience capture.

So what you do is you kind of.

You align yourself.

And the right wing is really good at that.

There's a lot of shared talking points, and, you know, you get them from wherever and it, it creates this eco ecosystem.

started with Joe Rogan.

Everybody's kind of in Joe Rogan's orbit.

And it creates an environment where these people jump on each other's podcast for audience capture, which means that even if you don't totally agree with what's being said, at least you're not gonna push too hard.

Everybody knows the grift, right?

You're gonna go there, it's gonna be pretty friendly.

and you're gonna hear stuff that you might not completely agree with, but you kind of nodding along and saying, yeah, you know, maybe, maybe vaccines are bad.

and that's how you get an audience these days within that framework.

And so that's why we're seeing more and more and more of these.

And honestly, like comedians make a lot more money from some of these podcasts than they do touring.

It's a lot less work.

So it's, it's, it's beneficial,

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.

All right, cool.

Let's leave it there.

We'll have AI write the, uh, newsletter.

Yes

we all.