Episode 103

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Published on:

4th Oct 2024

Above-the-Line Media

This week, we discuss a new framework for the media industry that separates content into two distinct categories: "above the line" and "below the line" media. The line in question represents the threshold of human uniqueness in content creation. Above it lies the territory where human creativity, insight, and expertise still reign supreme. Below it, we find the realm increasingly dominated by AI-driven processes and automation. Plus: Taylor Lorenz and the question of whether packaged media can retain talent; AI dwindling the value of curation; synthetic social networks; and praise for bullshitters.

Transcript
Brian Morrissey:

we got a negative review by the way, that there's too much bickering on this podcast.

Brian Morrissey:

So

Troy Young:

Oh yeah?

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah,

Troy Young:

Why didn't you share that with me?

Brian Morrissey:

oh, it's, it's, it's on, it's on Apple, podcast review.

Troy Young:

Oh, did they single out anybody?

Troy Young:

As being divisive like the A.

Troy Young:

I.

Troy Young:

called me divisive.

Brian Morrissey:

No, a previous one.

Brian Morrissey:

Did you see the one that called you the Troy bot needs to stop interrupting?

Brian Morrissey:

I wrote that one though.

Brian Morrissey:

welcome to, people versus algorithms where we connect the dots between media technology and culture.

Brian Morrissey:

Normally we are joined, by Alex Schleifer and Troy Young, but, I'm using the Royal way, me and the audience.

Brian Morrissey:

but this week again, Alex has some kind of conflict.

Brian Morrissey:

What did he's at a conference?

Brian Morrissey:

Is it?

Troy Young:

I don't keep track of Alex.

Brian Morrissey:

Okay, he's at a conference.

Brian Morrissey:

I can't imagine Alex at a conference.

Brian Morrissey:

but I've never met him in person.

Brian Morrissey:

I told someone this last night and they didn't believe me.

Brian Morrissey:

And it's true, I've

Troy Young:

I, you can't imagine him at a conference.

Troy Young:

Why?

Brian Morrissey:

I don't know why.

Troy Young:

of cave dweller.

Brian Morrissey:

No, I just, I don't know.

Brian Morrissey:

It's

Troy Young:

Maybe it's like a Comic Con or something.

Brian Morrissey:

I don't know.

Brian Morrissey:

Having been to a lot of like conferences in my day, I don't know.

Brian Morrissey:

Alex doesn't

Troy Young:

and the, and the

Brian Morrissey:

he doesn't seem like a conference type.

Brian Morrissey:

He doesn't seem like a guy who would put the lanyard on, but maybe, I mean, that's, it's reassuring to me as a, as a person who is a webinar provider that, you know, Alex also does, the conference circuit.

Brian Morrissey:

I want to talk about this like packaged media and how they deal with free radicals.

Brian Morrissey:

You used this term free radicals the other week and I really liked it.

Brian Morrissey:

Cause I've been like thinking of them as like troublemakers, but that's too negative.

Brian Morrissey:

And I think free radicals is a nice, it's a nice branding touch.

Brian Morrissey:

Because what I meant by it is within every organization, You're going to have, you're going to have people that line up and, you know, you don't have to worry about it, but anyone who is running these organizations, you're going to have, you're going to have the people that don't stay in line and they're going to, they're going to

Troy Young:

I liked them.

Troy Young:

I liked having a few.

Troy Young:

Until they went, you know, over the edge.

Troy Young:

But I liked having pre radicals in

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, it's a balance, right?

Brian Morrissey:

But what I, what I wonder is if what I'm trying to, to brand packaged media, can keep the free radicals.

Brian Morrissey:

Because there's so many, because they, they don't necessarily fit within there.

Brian Morrissey:

And now they have like a lot of options.

Brian Morrissey:

Taylor Lorenz to me is a, like a lot of people, she's a lightning rod.

Brian Morrissey:

And that's a great thing to be these days.

Brian Morrissey:

I really admire Taylor for that.

Brian Morrissey:

And she just left the Washington Post where she was a technology columnist.

Brian Morrissey:

And prior to that, she was a technology reporter at the New York Times.

Brian Morrissey:

She, she has been a technology reporter at the Atlantic.

Brian Morrissey:

And before that.

Brian Morrissey:

At the Daily Beast.

Brian Morrissey:

This is all since 2017.

Brian Morrissey:

And also shout out to the Daily Beast, which has incubated a lot of really great talent, over the last decade or so.

Brian Morrissey:

I think that's an underappreciated thing.

Brian Morrissey:

But Taylor, you know, she penned her, inevitable.

Brian Morrissey:

I'm, I'm going to sub stack, which I'm shocked that it hasn't happened before.

Brian Morrissey:

This is not the most surprising thing, because, I don't know, like she's, she's always involved herself in, in like controversies either through her own means or just because there's a lot of people out there on the internet, who I guess she rubs the wrong way.

Brian Morrissey:

But one of the things that Taylor, wrote and you know, she focuses on internet culture and I, I give her a ton of credit for taking that approach.

Brian Morrissey:

This area, seriously and before other people did, and she's been doing it for a long time, and I would always use her as an example with their younger, or less experienced.

Brian Morrissey:

I should say staffers about how going narrow and deep, makes you really valuable in the marketplace.

Brian Morrissey:

So she's going off to sub stack.

Brian Morrissey:

She started her own.

Brian Morrissey:

publication there called User Magazine.

Brian Morrissey:

And in her departure, she torches old school institutions.

Brian Morrissey:

she said, legacy media has tried desperately to position itself as a credible source for news about online culture.

Brian Morrissey:

But many of these institutions for all their power and prestige have proven themselves fundamentally unprepared to navigate today's chaotic, contentious, fast paced, and highly nuanced online media landscape.

Brian Morrissey:

and I think she has a bit of a point.

Brian Morrissey:

you know, Substack has, we've gone past the 2021 sort of era of is Substack coming for the New York Times?

Brian Morrissey:

No, it's not.

Brian Morrissey:

But it's interesting that there's still this, this drip drip of legacy media, package media, whatever you want to call it, losing free radicals.

Brian Morrissey:

What do you think, Troy?

Troy Young:

so I think for someone like Taylor, it's probably a good idea.

Troy Young:

And I think broadly what Substack shows is that, and it really had to do with the transition from ad supported to paid media and other monetization alternatives, which meant that if someone created.

Troy Young:

A platform there were platforms before there were plenty of blogging platforms and there's plenty of social media platforms and there was, you know, tumblr and all the places where you could make content and, you know, distribute it.

Troy Young:

But we then hit the kind of subscription era where.

Troy Young:

You could start to see that like Matt and Glacius, who's got, I don't know what they say to the 18, 000 paying subscribers at 80 per a year.

Troy Young:

that there's a, you know, really good living to be made as an independent and it's admittedly for the few, but basically Substack drove out all the costs and complexity of being a free radical, of being an independent.

Troy Young:

And, you know, there's no, I got to deal with advertising nonsense.

Troy Young:

There's no.

Troy Young:

you know, CMS nonsense.

Troy Young:

At the same time, we decided to basically abandon the complexity of page based web publishing and just go like to simplified formats, mostly connected to an email.

Troy Young:

And so it sort of showed a different way.

Troy Young:

I would extend that because.

Troy Young:

I'll share this little anecdote.

Troy Young:

I was having lunch with a person that's a sort of investigative reporter, like kind of, I don't know, late career, mid career, late, mid career, senior, on the weekend.

Troy Young:

And she said, Troy, she's a big fan of the podcast, by the way.

Troy Young:

she said, how much time do you think I've got?

Troy Young:

she's like, I don't want another job.

Troy Young:

Like how much time do I got?

Troy Young:

And I sort of like knee jerk, you know, replied.

Troy Young:

I said, I don't know, five years.

Troy Young:

and I said, maybe you need to start a side hustle soon, you know, we started a discussion and agreed pretty quickly that even in the I world, you know, we still need reporting, which is what she does.

Troy Young:

Right?

Troy Young:

you need someone that can wave through the complexity of the world and pull out the important stuff and use your eyes and ears and your judgment and all of that.

Troy Young:

And, you know, AI is no good at that.

Troy Young:

I mean, at least not yet.

Troy Young:

Right?

Troy Young:

Like

Troy Young:

it's, it's so reporting's really important.

Troy Young:

then just to kind of extend the story, then I was like, well, let's, let's create a construct of like, what I refer to or think of is above the line and below the line above the line is shit that I can't do or that you should be investing in and below the line is all the parts of media that, Impacted massively by AI should be replaced, should be automated.

Troy Young:

All of that stuff.

Troy Young:

Right.

Brian Morrissey:

hmm.

Brian Morrissey:

I like this.

Troy Young:

Yeah.

Troy Young:

And so I was just like, let's start to separate because if like, we're clearly going through, this isn't just like a Google platform shift, this is a media platform shift that we're going through.

Troy Young:

And then you send me that thing on the text thread, which is like, dude, Jason Silva, you know, doing like sort of philosophical jazz with chat GPT.

Troy Young:

You know that thing from Twitter that you sent?

Troy Young:

Do you remember

Brian Morrissey:

I didn't say I think that was Alex.

Brian Morrissey:

That

Troy Young:

Yeah,

Brian Morrissey:

Why was he on why was he on Twitter

Troy Young:

oh, Alex jumps in now and

Troy Young:

see a Anyway, there's this guy having this incredibly dense conceptual, mystical kind of spiritual conversation with the AI.

Troy Young:

And it's like a real, you know, kind of wonderful back and forth.

Troy Young:

And, like, this is, This is like singularity shit, like you're seeing an ability to navigate, you know, even if it is just pattern matching in an intense amount of, you know, against an intense amount of processing.

Troy Young:

To me, it, if it, you know, it looks like natural connection, making insightful, instinctual intelligence.

Troy Young:

Right?

Troy Young:

Like it's, it's, that's what it looks and sort of asymptotically, we're clearly approaching something that is human like but we still need reporting.

Troy Young:

We still need, you know, humanness.

Troy Young:

We still need humor.

Troy Young:

So you sent me that.

Troy Young:

And, and then I was looking at one last kind of data point, which was the open AI dev day.

Troy Young:

And that was like, I think a couple of days ago.

Troy Young:

And they were showing now they have a new, what's called the real time API.

Troy Young:

And they were showing the real time API against other API calls.

Troy Young:

So a conversation.

Troy Young:

About being in a city, going from place to place with the A.

Troy Young:

I.

Troy Young:

In real time, but also connected to a map A.

Troy Young:

P.

Troy Young:

I.

Troy Young:

And showing like real time like images and then links to other places.

Troy Young:

And then in the end, they actually asked the.

Troy Young:

In a funny little kind of demo, they asked, GPT to find a place to get treats for the developers in the audience.

Troy Young:

And it literally made a phone call to order a bunch of chocolate strawberries.

Brian Morrissey:

hmm.

Brian Morrissey:

Okay, so that's the agent sort of

Troy Young:

so you're seeing this sort of Agentic,

Troy Young:

future, right?

Troy Young:

And

Brian Morrissey:

that.

Troy Young:

So, you know, media gonna change.

Troy Young:

A ton.

Troy Young:

And so, in my mind, Like the web model of pages and links is going to feel very old, very quickly.

Troy Young:

Now we've talked about this for two episodes, right?

Troy Young:

So an AI is kind of retraining us to expect something easier and more helpful and less frictiony and all that.

Troy Young:

And.

Troy Young:

Once again, publishers are going to straddle two worlds, just as they did bridging sort of print broadcast worlds to digital on demand worlds.

Troy Young:

And you can't abandon one in favor of the new.

Troy Young:

Those are the trade offs that we always talk about.

Troy Young:

Right.

Troy Young:

And then

Troy Young:

nimble innovators will be better off, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Troy Young:

But, I sort of think that you then have to go and you've got to say, well, what's above the line and what's below the line.

Troy Young:

And I've been doing that exercise.

Brian Morrissey:

wait, is the line just survivability?

Troy Young:

The line is stuff to, I guess, I mean, it's a, this is a new Thought so maybe you can help me with it.

Troy Young:

But I was thinking that the line was the stuff that humans do uniquely well in media and and then below the line was stuff that gets essentially gets automated or is done better by the technology.

Troy Young:

By AI.

Troy Young:

And so I, I, I made a list.

Brian Morrissey:

Give me five things that are above the line and a

Troy Young:

Well, obviously, like I said, real source reporting, right?

Troy Young:

Probably augmented by your little AI helper, but real reporting, original, informed, thoughtful point of view.

Troy Young:

this is what I

Troy Young:

think, this is what my

Brian Morrissey:

Reported analysis is going nowhere.

Brian Morrissey:

Tim, Tim Kawakami, this, really good, um, sports columnist just had, he just left the athletic and he torched the athletic too, for being a bureaucratic mess and losing its way, but he's just went over to SF standard and I think he's totally right on that

Troy Young:

So, human, humanness, personality, right, a.

Troy Young:

k.

Troy Young:

a talent, right, like what we think of in the business, talent, humor, A.

Troy Young:

I.

Troy Young:

isn't funny.

Troy Young:

I mean, at

Troy Young:

least I haven't done it to be funny.

Troy Young:

It's, you know, it's weird

Troy Young:

sanctimonious.

Troy Young:

It's

Troy Young:

yeah, yeah.

Troy Young:

yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

It's always telling me,

Troy Young:

I got more, I mean, recommendations provided by trusted brands or qualified humans, right?

Troy Young:

The best, I don't know, SUV for X, Y, Z, according to someone you trust or someone that you know, I think that's important.

Troy Young:

you know, at some point quality of

Brian Morrissey:

I think that's straddles above and below the line.

Troy Young:

Okay.

Troy Young:

So that's a straddler.

Troy Young:

We'll call that a straddler.

Troy Young:

And then I think your Your data, your unique functional offering connected with AI, right?

Troy Young:

Like, how do you get, I mean, think about this is the hardest question.

Troy Young:

So we have these aggregators, right?

Troy Young:

Like Google was an aggregator.

Troy Young:

you know, Instagram Tick tock's an aggregator.

Troy Young:

What I, and media has been slaughtered by aggregators, right?

Troy Young:

Cause they create better interfaces for information and they create more ways for more people to put more content into a system.

Brian Morrissey:

and also they don't pay for the actual

Troy Young:

Yeah.

Troy Young:

And that's a benefit too,

Brian Morrissey:

of it that don't while you take out all the costs of actually making the shit.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Troy Young:

So,

Brian Morrissey:

looks better.

Troy Young:

if you want to, you're going to say, you know, someone in your tech group or your product group is going to say, we'll just do our own AI interface on our CMS.

Troy Young:

And like, why would you use that?

Troy Young:

if you're like, why would I go to a webpage to use that?

Troy Young:

Unless the dataset was super, you know, proprietary and useful and unique, and it really was worth my time because.

Troy Young:

The kind of generalist or horizontal models are getting so good at doing everything,

Brian Morrissey:

I don't know.

Brian Morrissey:

I might part ways with you there.

Brian Morrissey:

I think, I really think that there is an opportunity.

Brian Morrissey:

Did you see that Politico is doing this

Troy Young:

Right.

Troy Young:

But, but that's my, that supports my case.

Troy Young:

Cause they have, they have their like a

Troy Young:

unique data set at augmented by AI,

Brian Morrissey:

Right.

Brian Morrissey:

Right.

Brian Morrissey:

Okay.

Brian Morrissey:

So yeah, yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

The middle gets slaughtered no matter what, you know, for instance, I think with this, like Alex uploaded the, all of the, the podcast episodes and notebook Ella, I think there's actual value, I don't know how much the value is, but I think there's value to be created, if, if people could have a natural query with the insights that particularly you have shared during this, during this podcast, like, I think that there's actual value to be created there.

Brian Morrissey:

For sure.

Brian Morrissey:

what I'm surprised at is that I did a dinner last night with a bunch of publishing executives.

Brian Morrissey:

And I just asked.

Brian Morrissey:

What are people doing with, what are you doing with AI?

Brian Morrissey:

Give me, give me a business use case, just anything, small, medium, very little,

Troy Young:

right.

Brian Morrissey:

either not sharing it or they're just not doing it.

Brian Morrissey:

And I think the, the real danger is that this just becomes another game of defense and I get it, these businesses are difficult to make work, but you got to kind of get beyond the defense, get onto the efficiency.

Brian Morrissey:

I did this little, this little schematic

Troy Young:

to talk like a consultant.

Troy Young:

It's nice.

Brian Morrissey:

Oh, yeah, I did a little schematic too.

Brian Morrissey:

It reminded me of that like

Troy Young:

a napkin

Brian Morrissey:

we did.

Brian Morrissey:

Um, Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

no, it was the, it was the Kubler Ross like stages, but it was like denial.

Brian Morrissey:

and then you get into, um,

Troy Young:

project this

Troy Young:

you projected it with a projector

Brian Morrissey:

No, I didn't project it.

Brian Morrissey:

it was in a newsletter.

Brian Morrissey:

and, and you can also, everyone can like see this, but you're going to see the explanation.

Brian Morrissey:

You need to subscribe to TRB Pro.

Troy Young:

shit?

Troy Young:

I got to remember

Troy Young:

to cancel my subscription

Brian Morrissey:

please don't, please don't.

Brian Morrissey:

anyway, but you go into the efficiency and I think that's where the stuff is going to start, right.

Brian Morrissey:

But you have to get beyond just

Troy Young:

Well, that's what I would bring this back to okay, so to bring it back to the taylor thing, Way, way too much money in what we would call digital media or publishing, whatever you want to call it, is spent on the enablement of the content, like 60, 70 percent ad sales operations.

Troy Young:

You know, all the things you do to make the content.

Brian Morrissey:

Oh, by the way, within the editorial, there's a ton of money that goes to that.

Brian Morrissey:

To me, you remember, like we were talking above the line, below the line, working

Troy Young:

we haven't finished

Troy Young:

yet.

Brian Morrissey:

sorry.

Brian Morrissey:

Cool.

Brian Morrissey:

I'm just eager.

Troy Young:

Well, let's go below the line now.

Troy Young:

What do you say?

Troy Young:

Because this is where it starts.

Troy Young:

If you're going to compete with.

Troy Young:

For talent, like in the case of WAPO and Taylor Lorenz versus Substack, you need to be More efficient, more tolerant.

Troy Young:

You have to give people more room.

Troy Young:

You have to pay them more.

Troy Young:

I mean, you have to pay talent more like real talent, right?

Troy Young:

And let's, let's assume that Taylor is that.

Troy Young:

So what you have to do, I mean, I think below the line means take all laborious costs.

Troy Young:

You know, expensive process processes and use and automate them.

Troy Young:

Right.

Troy Young:

And so like in particular ad tech or anything or, and not even ad

Brian Morrissey:

You've really turned on ad tech lately.

Troy Young:

not just ad tech duty.

Troy Young:

It's,

Troy Young:

it's, there's usually three people for every sales person in a media company.

Troy Young:

Okay.

Troy Young:

And those are the people that package up grids and do the strategy and make the decks that get thrown in the garbage.

Troy Young:

It's a complete waste of time.

Troy Young:

And by the way, the skilled providers and the platforms, they don't do any of that shit.

Troy Young:

Right?

Troy Young:

Just the little tiny companies that take the sub 15 percent of the revenue against the platforms pitch and pitch and pitch and make decks and do the dining and do all the stuff, right?

Troy Young:

So that needs to get more efficient or you can't put, you can't compete with the efficient mechanism that the marketplace is giving independent talent, but let's keep going.

Troy Young:

Okay.

Troy Young:

Below the line, right?

Troy Young:

So obviously historical or evergreen content below the line, right?

Troy Young:

Like Well, it's, but it's more than that.

Troy Young:

And I want to make this point

Troy Young:

because the philosophical conversation, the Carl Sagan conversation that Jason Silva had with the AI.

Troy Young:

I mean, that was like all knowledge that existed before this moment in a book, in a conversation, in a movie, like the AI swept all of that up.

Troy Young:

So it's like my friend, Chris Kimball will say to me, well, they, you know, it won't automate my recipes.

Troy Young:

I'm like, Chris, maybe it will.

Troy Young:

If I want to make carbonara, I know you make it really well.

Troy Young:

Like you're really good at it and you got your own little Milk Street twist on it, but there's like access to a carbon era recipe in two seconds, which had GPT.

Troy Young:

And then

Troy Young:

to query it, if you really wanted it to make it cause you had one ingredient and on another, like it's, it's kind

Brian Morrissey:

That's what I like.

Brian Morrissey:

That's what I like about, I use perplexity for recipes pickle.

Troy Young:

recipes, right?

Troy Young:

So history, geography, physics, chemistry, recipes, you name it, unless you can convince me that you are a very, very specific recipe that is very, very special, right?

Troy Young:

It just gets harder.

Troy Young:

It's not impossible, but it's harder.

Troy Young:

But stick with me.

Troy Young:

Here's what I've been finding lately.

Troy Young:

So I was in a car dealership and it was aggravating as, as always.

Brian Morrissey:

are you going to car dealership?

Troy Young:

I just want to get another car.

Troy Young:

I just, my car,

Brian Morrissey:

I've never, I've never bought a car and I'm like scared about the process.

Troy Young:

yeah.

Troy Young:

So, yeah.

Troy Young:

What I found is that the nice salesperson was just annoying because chat GPT was like a hundred times better, because if I want to compare the trim levels on two models, like it literally just spit the answer back to me in two seconds

Troy Young:

and I could.

Brian Morrissey:

he or she is there to negotiate.

Brian Morrissey:

They're gonna

Troy Young:

no, there's no negotiation in this kind of dealership.

Troy Young:

Like there, no, no, there's no, you just, there's a price.

Troy Young:

You pay

Troy Young:

the price.

Troy Young:

Yeah.

Troy Young:

So here's what I'm finding.

Troy Young:

Much of the, what I would call new knowledge content, stuff that's current or new will fall below the line.

Troy Young:

And we don't like to admit that.

Troy Young:

So what that means is.

Troy Young:

And by the way, with little economic recompense, like the stuff that is like the demo that they showed at the open AI dev day was like, Oh, we're hungry.

Troy Young:

Where should we eat in?

Troy Young:

I don't know, whatever city they were in San Francisco or Los Angeles.

Troy Young:

And it said, try this restaurant and this restaurant and this restaurant.

Troy Young:

And so those are current pieces of content, right?

Troy Young:

And you would like to think that I can still put those on my eater site and differentiate, but increasingly everybody's doing deals with the aggregators.

Troy Young:

Increasingly, people will feed the aggregators for free and aggregators.

Troy Young:

I mean, the new interfaces, whether it's Gemini or, or chat, GPT or perplexity or whatever, and they're closing the gap between evergreen and new,

Troy Young:

they're closing the gap, dude, you just use it every day and you'll see that the gap is being closed.

Troy Young:

So unwittingly or not, content creators of all stripes feed models with the best restaurants in Lisbon.

Troy Young:

Yeah.

Troy Young:

You know, and by the way, that information changes, but not that much.

Troy Young:

Listen, travel content on AI killer use case.

Troy Young:

Yeah, I I've done it.

Troy Young:

I've done it.

Troy Young:

Not only is it a killer use case before you go, it's a killer news case while you're there.

Troy Young:

I was in Paris taking pictures of monuments with chat GPT, and it would just explain it to me.

Troy Young:

Like, I don't need lonely planet.

Brian Morrissey:

You know what a lot of people are using?

Brian Morrissey:

And I don't know how this plays into your above the line, below the line, but with travel content and that.

Brian Morrissey:

Is Google Docs.

Brian Morrissey:

a shared Google Doc is like the new hottest app for finding, things to do in cities.

Brian Morrissey:

Because it's human recommended.

Brian Morrissey:

It's like you, like

Brian Morrissey:

I know this,

Troy Young:

Well, you're not building a, you're not building a, you know, Media company off that.

Troy Young:

I'm sorry.

Brian Morrissey:

No, no, that's what I mean.

Brian Morrissey:

because everything has become optimized to the point of absurdity, and because everyone gets the same recommendations, if you're going to find the deep cuts in Tokyo, you're going to get Colin Nagey's

Troy Young:

Right, right.

Troy Young:

For free.

Troy Young:

But, but what I was trying to do there is kind of show you that it's not just evergreen.

Troy Young:

It's kind of like evergreen plus

Troy Young:

new stuff.

Troy Young:

And so as media, your ability to justify web based friction in exchange for moderately valuable new content will be modest.

Troy Young:

Um, it just will be because friction crushes most things.

Troy Young:

And if I'm using the chat bot, but you're like, come over to my webpage and get something for me, it's getting harder.

Troy Young:

so, so that's a below the line item for me.

Troy Young:

Here's another below the line item, curation curation's not useful anymore, right?

Troy Young:

AI can curate a million times better than humans.

Troy Young:

Not only can it curate.

Troy Young:

But it can also provide the next step, which is to present information in the way you like it.

Troy Young:

Long, short, bulleted, summarized text, audio, we're seeing it, right?

Troy Young:

I want my news read in the voice of William Shatner.

Troy Young:

Like, great.

Troy Young:

Alex wants his read in, you know, in bullet points by Snoop Dogg.

Troy Young:

so like the packaging and curation of information is becoming a below the line item because it's so good at personalizing for you.

Brian Morrissey:

Define curation.

Troy Young:

here's things that you should read today because they're hot or because you like them or because you're interested in this topic or this is your passion or, you know, the most topical things of the moment.

Troy Young:

Like I mean, of course, everything has a human kind of like boutique angle, right?

Troy Young:

Like, Oh, I get my album recommendations from the like, how long gone guys?

Troy Young:

Because they're, you know, tastemakers.

Troy Young:

Sure.

Troy Young:

Okay, great.

Troy Young:

But this isn't media, man.

Troy Young:

This is like little tiny, little tiny businesses.

Troy Young:

This is little boutique.

Troy Young:

This is boutique shit,

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, I do think that there is a lane for packaged media curation, right?

Brian Morrissey:

Like, I mean, the economist's point of view is never surprising, as I say, but like, there's still value in In that, and there's influence and power in, in their curation of what is going on in the world that

Troy Young:

but, but the economist is a reporting organization with a brand, you know?

Troy Young:

So I think that's useful for sure.

Troy Young:

That makes sense to me.

Troy Young:

Right?

Troy Young:

Like the other thing is, is it below the line, what I would, is what I would call the AI I don't know the context engine.

Troy Young:

So any piece of original content can be infinitely contextualized with AI.

Troy Young:

Remake it, augment it, add a timeline, show precedents, add imagery, connect to locations.

Troy Young:

All of that AI is so good at taking.

Troy Young:

A piece of knowledge and just making it more useful.

Brian Morrissey:

well, you know, what is also really good at is we've talked about it before about the versioning.

Brian Morrissey:

Right.

Brian Morrissey:

And I think what it's going to be, you know, I, what I believe a lot of publishers going to be using this is to take the content and create new forms of content off of it.

Brian Morrissey:

You know, and you already see it with like substack and they're, you know, the AI, you know, creating a podcast.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, right now.

Brian Morrissey:

It's not perfect.

Brian Morrissey:

It gets a couple things wrong notebook LM and whatnot.

Brian Morrissey:

That's fine.

Brian Morrissey:

Right?

Brian Morrissey:

That's it's going to get better.

Brian Morrissey:

you're always trying to guess, it's like, should it be this format?

Brian Morrissey:

Should it be that format?

Brian Morrissey:

It's like, no, it's going to be like every format.

Brian Morrissey:

you're gonna be able to just version it out in so many different ways.

Brian Morrissey:

I think the challenge ends up being everyone is going to have access to these tools.

Brian Morrissey:

And I'm not sure how you create leverage at all as a media organization in that kind of.

Brian Morrissey:

Ecosystem.

Troy Young:

let's list it out.

Troy Young:

I think it's back a little bit back to your economist example, which is your brand connotes, trust your format and your reporting, is useful and, and, incremental to what, you know, could be done in the future.

Troy Young:

By automating retrieval of information, And I think that what will be demanded of those organizations is that they're hyper efficient.

Troy Young:

So more and more of the revenue can go back to seasoned senior talent that exhibit the characteristics of being human.

Troy Young:

Having strong, clear, valuable point of view, personality, humor, whatever it is, and, and their ability obviously to do deep, deep reporting and be experts.

Troy Young:

Frankly, it's just that they're experts.

Troy Young:

Hmm.

Troy Young:

But I a question that why would that, why would that talent want to be part of,

Troy Young:

well,

Troy Young:

because because if Taylor existed inside of a different construct in the Washington post and there was less bullshit and more money, she would stay there.

Brian Morrissey:

I think that's the interesting thing of, our friends at Puck is that they're trying to thread that needle.

Brian Morrissey:

And I think every, every publisher is going to have to figure out where they're going to lie on that continuum.

Brian Morrissey:

And they're going to have to give, I think that there was like a lull, With the sort of substack wave, but this isn't this isn't, sort of going away.

Brian Morrissey:

And the problem critical problem of it is that.

Brian Morrissey:

the most talented and arguably most valuable people are going to be the ones who end up taking this path because it's, it's, you know, it makes sense.

Troy Young:

I think it's dangerous.

Troy Young:

And I really think it's yet another.

Troy Young:

Reason for folks.

Troy Young:

And by the way, I think it's a tremendously exciting time to be a media entrepreneur because we're going through this massive platform shift, but like nothing is sacred and it all starts with, with human behavior, a, much more of the spectrum is going to be aggregated, processed, and, you know, kind of recombobulated by AI.

Troy Young:

B, Talon is going to platforms where they eat what they kill.

Troy Young:

And I would say that on the, on the consumer front, I found, like my wife said the other day, she's like, I don't spend that much time on substack and, our friend, Jane Pratt, had announced this week that she, was going to take her joint to the, to substack.

Brian Morrissey:

I.

Brian Morrissey:

was excited by that.

Brian Morrissey:

I'm

Brian Morrissey:

glad she went with Substack cause she

Troy Young:

Well, and you and I, you know, I got her to talk to you, I think.

Troy Young:

Right?

Troy Young:

Didn't I?

Troy Young:

I love

Troy Young:

Jane.

Brian Morrissey:

I'm taking credit to everyone.

Troy Young:

And I was like, Jane, stop talking about building like a big website and getting all this funding and all this.

Troy Young:

Go write content, make content, get some people to make content, go to Substack.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

It's a perfect minimum, minimally viable product

Troy Young:

yeah, right.

Troy Young:

And so she, she's doing that.

Troy Young:

And, my wife wanted to read it and she's like, I kind of love Substack.

Troy Young:

Yeah.

Troy Young:

Like she was sort of got the, it was the first time she got the app and started seeing, you know, all the, I'm like, don't subscribe to too many.

Troy Young:

I subscribe to a lot of them and you can use mine.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, well,

Troy Young:

The subscription thing.

Troy Young:

is out of control in this house.

Troy Young:

Out of control.

Brian Morrissey:

You should, you should give it back.

Troy Young:

That's why I got to cancel rebooting.

Troy Young:

It's like, it's too much.

Brian Morrissey:

God.

Brian Morrissey:

Casey Newton had his like four year anniversary.

Brian Morrissey:

I have my actually four years coming up, next week.

Brian Morrissey:

It's been four years

Troy Young:

Wow.

Troy Young:

Time flies.

Brian Morrissey:

I know.

Brian Morrissey:

So I'm going to do a, a subscription offer.

Brian Morrissey:

So you can renew at like a 20%, discount.

Brian Morrissey:

I don't do, I don't discount a lot.

Brian Morrissey:

but for a week, you'll be able to get 20 percent off.

Brian Morrissey:

but I think what Casey was saying, which was kind of interesting is, he left sub stack over the Nazis and, You know, he was very honest about the tradeoffs to that.

Brian Morrissey:

And, you know what he found is basically people don't convert as much on, on these other, you know, whether you just have a member full or I don't know exactly what, what setup he's on.

Brian Morrissey:

I think he's on ghost.

Brian Morrissey:

but a lot of it is just like, they've got the credit card.

Brian Morrissey:

On there, and that's going to be their lock in.

Brian Morrissey:

They're going to have incrementally.

Brian Morrissey:

It's so much easier to just add an extra one to to the account.

Brian Morrissey:

look, ultimately, everyone I say to everyone who asked me about ghost versus sub stack versus be high or whatever.

Brian Morrissey:

You have to make a decision if you're going to build a business on a platform or if you're going to build a platform around a business, right?

Brian Morrissey:

Because you can do, you can take the latter half, you have more independence, you have You know, Substack is a platform through and through now, same as YouTube, et cetera, you're going to be at, I don't care about the niceties that they're saying, they've got a ton of money from Andreessen that they have to return, and you're going to be at their mercy.

Brian Morrissey:

There's a lot of upsides, but there's absolutely downsides if you want to take a truly independent path, but I think those are the binary decisions people have to make.

Brian Morrissey:

And most people, it, it makes 98 percent of the cases.

Brian Morrissey:

I think it makes sense to be on Substack or Beehive or one of these platforms.

Brian Morrissey:

rather than build a whole website.

Brian Morrissey:

I saw

Troy Young:

Well, that, that that relates to that question that you had from a reader, which is like, how do you prioritize what you do as a media company?

Brian Morrissey:

yeah, because this was, I'll redact, the, the, the publication and ask, them.

Brian Morrissey:

but what they were saying was that.

Brian Morrissey:

You know, it's a lament you hear from a lot of people in publishing.

Brian Morrissey:

They're like, we're doing like 14 different things now to make money.

Brian Morrissey:

And then we're also trying to focus.

Brian Morrissey:

It's like something has to give and you can't be good at everything.

Brian Morrissey:

And, you know, they were like, of course, we're not doing, you know, five of these things well at all, but we kind of have to do all of these things.

Brian Morrissey:

And, oh, by the way, the organization can't add resources to do these things.

Brian Morrissey:

And that's why I think the AI for efficiency is just like inevitable.

Brian Morrissey:

And every publisher has to figure out how, you know, the, the doing more with less, it's just, it's obvious, right?

Brian Morrissey:

and so you have to figure out how to get leverage in these models.

Brian Morrissey:

But I think that's a difficult one to square is how do you figure out, you know, where you're going to win without putting too many, you want to have enough bets, But you can't have too many bets.

Troy Young:

Right.

Troy Young:

And then, you know, adding to that complexity, almost every publishing business, save for.

Troy Young:

The sort of new upstarts find themselves with a foot in the past and a foot in the future.

Troy Young:

It's just the nature of it.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

That's why I think this is a

Troy Young:

we still publish a magazine and now we also do digital, but digital, we, and we can't stop doing digital, but we have to do social and we not only have to do social, but we have to do video and wait, now we have to do AI and we have to do newsletters and, oh yeah, we have to do affiliate or we're not going to be able to pay the bills.

Troy Young:

there's sprawl.

Troy Young:

It's a really good question.

Troy Young:

you know, I mean, it starts with obviously like courage, but you gotta, you gotta look at the kind of Meg meta environment or the kind of big picture environment and say what's above the line and what's below the line.

Troy Young:

Where can we possibly differentiate, create uniqueness, create value over the longterm against a media brand.

Troy Young:

And where can't we, how do we be ruthlessly efficient?

Troy Young:

And in all in media, there's no longterm.

Troy Young:

There, there just isn't.

Troy Young:

So anything that's like new initiative has to get to revenue, you know, pretty, pretty fucking quickly.

Troy Young:

Or, you know, it's never like, it's not like you're going to build a new wallpaper app, or maybe you will, but if you're in media, but you know, you likely aren't going to.

Troy Young:

And, so you're, you're going to be, you know, stuck in that, you know, In that kind of short term mindset, just by necessity in the nature of the business, I think,

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, I was talking with another, like a lifestyle publisher, you know, we're talking about their tick tock strategy, quote unquote.

Brian Morrissey:

I have no idea why they were there.

Brian Morrissey:

they're like, you know, we, we have to be there.

Brian Morrissey:

We feel like we have to be there.

Brian Morrissey:

And it's it's completely all about, you know, individuals, not like brands, but we have to be there.

Brian Morrissey:

and I think that is the, I don't know if that's a relic of the past, but that's a really difficult position to be in.

Brian Morrissey:

at a time of, of obviously scarce resources and the need to focus on what's working and leave aside the stuff that's not working.

Brian Morrissey:

By the way, also, you know, being forward looking and trying to be innovative and all the rest of that.

Brian Morrissey:

It's just a really difficult, it's difficult to operate, I feel like.

Brian Morrissey:

And like you're saying, there's so many advantages to having a blank sheet in, in these kinds of, times.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, we saw it with the transition to the internet, um,

Troy Young:

of like the folks that have the blank sheet can get really good at one medium.

Troy Young:

And from there create, I mean, I think that's probably one of the most important answers.

Troy Young:

It's tough when you got to pay bills and you feel like you've got to have your fingers in everything, but.

Troy Young:

Really, we're in the sort of IP era of media, which means that your ability to distinguish yourself across platforms, and have something that's uniquely yours is everything.

Troy Young:

And so, you know, I mean, the all in guys did a podcast, that's it.

Troy Young:

They did a podcast

Brian Morrissey:

it's now a lot more.

Troy Young:

Well, it isn't, right?

Troy Young:

But it.

Troy Young:

kind of flew They didn't have to publish.

Troy Young:

They didn't have to make media every day.

Troy Young:

They didn't have to balance the needs of advertisers and subscribers.

Troy Young:

They made a podcast and then they were able to turn that into an event.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, it's hard to tell with subscribers these days, but they've got 672, 000, subscribers on YouTube now, getting over a million views on, several of these videos, which is pretty, you know,

Troy Young:

And getting real money for a ticket had to an event.

Brian Morrissey:

yeah, so all credit to them, well done.

Brian Morrissey:

it's funny, there was a bit of a throwback.

Brian Morrissey:

yeah, I miss the days when, when publications would like sort of brag about their, their new redesign of their websites.

Brian Morrissey:

I always liked those.

Troy Young:

What the hell was that?

Troy Young:

What?

Troy Young:

We should care that TechCrunch got a new homepage?

Brian Morrissey:

Yes, I mean, well, it was

Troy Young:

Not only that, it's got a menu that sticks at the top that

Brian Morrissey:

I know, I know, Well, take it up with Dan.

Brian Morrissey:

Code and Theory did it.

Brian Morrissey:

Actually, it took two design chops, which is never a good sign.

Brian Morrissey:

But, I believe Code and Theory was, it was definitely one of them.

Brian Morrissey:

Um,

Troy Young:

the most important thing if you redesign your homepage is get the body copy right, so it's easy to read.

Troy Young:

And I'm not sure they got that right.

Brian Morrissey:

Make the logo bigger and just make sure there's a sticky nav

Troy Young:

You know, Brian, I did this thing one

Brian Morrissey:

Oh, by the way, they also clearly added the ads at the last minute, which is always a pet peeve of mine of design.

Troy Young:

Anyway, we're cheering for them.

Troy Young:

I mean, God, that brand's lasted forever.

Troy Young:

And

Troy Young:

it's remained, you know, after Arrington, it kind of went on to live its own life.

Troy Young:

And it's still important.

Troy Young:

And, you know, God bless them.

Troy Young:

It's owned by Yahoo.

Troy Young:

And I'm cheering for Yahoo.

Troy Young:

So go.

Brian Morrissey:

yeah, I mean, it's an original web to survivor media brand.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, Mashable that got sent off to the factory, uh, the glue factory.

Troy Young:

Mashable's owned by Ziff Davis, right?

Troy Young:

You want to call Viv X shop a glue factory?

Troy Young:

You won't like that.

Brian Morrissey:

I'm calling, I mean, look, I don't know.

Brian Morrissey:

I have not been to Mashable in a little while.

Brian Morrissey:

It's a little bit different than, than, than where it started.

Brian Morrissey:

Right.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, it's, it's it's

Brian Morrissey:

a

Brian Morrissey:

long ways from the the the Pete, the Pete Cashmore days, of Grumpy Cat, at South by Southwest.

Brian Morrissey:

but they've basically faded from, look, there's, every, every, every brand, every person goes onto a different phase of, their existence.

Troy Young:

I once did this sort of naive exploration into why people read or watch content and I wanted to break it down into the buckets, you know, as a sort of helpful guide to think about what actually motivates someone to, to watch.

Troy Young:

Do anything to watch content and we know the basics, right?

Troy Young:

Like we know, cause this will lead to a news item of the day that I think is actually

Troy Young:

important and interesting.

Troy Young:

And you know, we know the basics, like your passions are addictive, right?

Troy Young:

Like the question was what makes content addictive?

Troy Young:

Like if I'm looking for a car or a, you know, a pair of speakers or whatever, like I go deep, I go hard, I'm very motivated, whatever.

Troy Young:

If I'm interested in a topic, you know, whatever AI, I go hard at it.

Troy Young:

So that, you know, passions, interests, there's vertical categories, super addictive, right?

Troy Young:

The new, remember Robbie Myers from Elle magazine.

Troy Young:

I said like, Robbie, what makes content addictive?

Troy Young:

She said, it's the new, the latest,

Troy Young:

right?

Troy Young:

The thing that nobody had seen before.

Troy Young:

I thought it was a great answer.

Troy Young:

and then I, you know, I kept sort of investigating and, and there's like FOMO is a great one, right?

Troy Young:

That's addictive, right?

Troy Young:

Or, I think that there's, you know, sort of the car crash allure, right?

Troy Young:

Which is like the misery of others

Troy Young:

is a very addictive, you know, that's the daily get to the mother, the daily, the daily meat, the daily, the source of daily mail thing, right?

Troy Young:

And then ultimately social media taught us that really the most addictive thing is you.

Troy Young:

You and your network, right?

Troy Young:

So it became like content about the people, you know, and about you are, you know, people are, are, interested in their own little world and themselves in particular.

Troy Young:

So the answer probably more than anything else is what makes content addictive is you.

Troy Young:

Like the, and so back to the headlines at the bottom of meta, after they did the, the, the AR VR demo day, they said that they were going to start inserting, AI content into your feed a test basis.

Troy Young:

And they were careful to say it was a test, in Instagram.

Troy Young:

Now, what that means is you could be scrolling Instagram and you could see a generative photograph of Brian Morrissey jumping out of a birthday cake or wearing a pumpkin costume or whatever, like taking your friends, your network, your image and automatically creating content around that that's synthetic and pushing it back into you in the feed.

Troy Young:

I mean, how dystopian

Brian Morrissey:

Gross.

Troy Young:

it's like

Brian Morrissey:

Kevin Systrom is on a yacht somewhere in the Mediterranean just like sick to his stomach.

Troy Young:

well, now my Instagram feed is going to get filled before, before someone outside of Meta generates content and tries to jam it into the feed with robots.

Troy Young:

Meta is going to do it for you and they're going to have more data than anyone else.

Troy Young:

And they're going to like, You know, make you even more irresistible, put

Troy Young:

you in a speedo in the Mediterranean and put

Brian Morrissey:

me with the speedo.

Brian Morrissey:

But like, this is a good example of how everything moves on to a different phase of life.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, this is a more positive sort of phase, you know.

Brian Morrissey:

They, they started Instagram to celebrate like photography and there was a big art feel everyone can be like creative with the lenses and whatnot.

Brian Morrissey:

And, you know, they, they did a tremendous job at that.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, when they started advertising, system would like approve every ad and now it's on to a different phase of its existence and

Troy Young:

Well, it it also, if you want to look this up, there's a guy that was an engineer at Metta that in the last couple of weeks has released something called social AI, which is basically shows a social, a synthetic social interface to AI, which is imagine Twitter.

Troy Young:

But everybody that responds to your tweets is a robot.

Troy Young:

So you set it up and you say, I want to be followed and commented on by people of, you know, this kind of predisposition or whatever, like angry people, cynical people, nice people, helpful people.

Troy Young:

And it's all of these sort of different characters.

Troy Young:

And you tweet away.

Troy Young:

And they respond to you and you get into conversation with a synthetic social network.

Troy Young:

It's called social AI.

Troy Young:

And his point is, is this is sort of what the world's becoming.

Troy Young:

And this is just a different interface to AI where a lot of different points of view, because the, one of the knocks on AI in particular is there's one answer.

Troy Young:

You ask, chat, GPT gives you one answer.

Troy Young:

And so this is the idea is that you can get different perspectives and you can engage in conversation back and forth, even if they're all Automated and, uh,

Brian Morrissey:

they're synthetic.

Brian Morrissey:

They're

Brian Morrissey:

not automated, right?

Troy Young:

anyway, that there's a, it's a freaky world, dude.

Troy Young:

And, um, that's where we are.

Brian Morrissey:

freaky world, dude.

Brian Morrissey:

That could be a good title for this episode.

Brian Morrissey:

yeah, no, I think that's, that's absolutely coming.

Brian Morrissey:

I don't know if people want that, but we will see.

Brian Morrissey:

It's, it's up to the people, you to decide whether you want these kind of this synthetic life.

Brian Morrissey:

Um, I guess it's going to be appealing to some.

Brian Morrissey:

it

Troy Young:

you got a, got a good product.

Brian Morrissey:

I thought it was gonna be bullshitting.

Troy Young:

I mean, that's what I got this week, but I didn't know that you were going to give it away without the, without the big, uh,

Troy Young:

Two little stories.

Troy Young:

One is this kid called me one time and he told me he was going to do a media rollup and that he was raising capital and he could bring together in a kind of recurrent type way, a bunch of different media properties and get the economies and

Brian Morrissey:

Is it Brian Goldberg?

Troy Young:

No.

Troy Young:

And I said, you're full of shit.

Troy Young:

You don't know what you're talking about.

Troy Young:

But what I didn't do is I wasn't my usual, like I wasn't dismissive as much as I could be when I was a, when I was a, lesser person.

Troy Young:

And, and I got to know the, the person and I, and I, I still call, say this to him to this day that he was like an extremely good bullshitter.

Troy Young:

And I actually invested in his company after that.

Troy Young:

And it's been a great, relationship.

Troy Young:

So I'm, I'm

Brian Morrissey:

So define a bullshit to

Troy Young:

Well, but, but, but this isn't the story.

Troy Young:

I'll get to the bullshitter part.

Troy Young:

One of my favorite bullshitters, and one that I admire actually, and I think that his bullshitting is borderline manifesting, is Shane Smith.

Troy Young:

And, This week, I mean, I, I listened to it today, it was delightful to hear Shane go on for two hours and tell his story to Rick Rubin on the Tetragrammaton podcast.

Brian Morrissey:

Oh my God.

Brian Morrissey:

There's, there's a two hour podcast of Sean, of, of Shane Smith and Rick

Troy Young:

yeah.

Troy Young:

And so I've heard many of the stories over the years, like having dinner with Shane or chit chat with Shane or whatever.

Troy Young:

And I think he's, A remarkable person who's had, if life is defined by experiences, he's had a lot of them.

Troy Young:

and like some of them are, are really amazing.

Troy Young:

And I'm kind of jealous, like going to North Korea.

Troy Young:

is, an amazing thing to do.

Troy Young:

And I remember Shane and Vice Media, because I worked at the Montreal Mirror.

Troy Young:

Vice media was across the street from us.

Troy Young:

It used to be called the voice of Montreal.

Troy Young:

They dropped the O and it just became vice.

Troy Young:

And it was like funded by like the, the.

Troy Young:

I don't know, the government, they took grants or whatever.

Troy Young:

And they, they were just crazy, nutty punk rock kids.

Troy Young:

And they built this great thing.

Troy Young:

And along the way they invented or iterated on a type of journalism.

Troy Young:

They, became the envy of the industry.

Troy Young:

They bought a cable network.

Troy Young:

They built.

Troy Young:

They made a lot, they won a lot of Emmys.

Troy Young:

They made a lot of great content

Troy Young:

and they, they, they, they fucked it all up and got eaten by private equity.

Troy Young:

And, you know, did all the other

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, it's a perfect millennial story.

Troy Young:

It's a

Troy Young:

great story.

Troy Young:

It's a great story.

Troy Young:

And I admire him.

Troy Young:

So much because along the way he used his great skills of bullshitting to manifest a company and to sell a lot of advertising and to get a lot of people to believe a lot of really smart people to believe.

Brian Morrissey:

He got Rupert Murdoch to come to Williamsburg.

Troy Young:

got Bob Iger do a group to believe, you know, I mean, he, he's.

Troy Young:

An incredible guy

Brian Morrissey:

So, but what goes, what makes someone a good bullshitter?

Brian Morrissey:

I guess that's my

Brian Morrissey:

point.

Troy Young:

I guess,

Brian Morrissey:

That

Troy Young:

uh,

Troy Young:

optimism, being able to think in the moment to dance.

Troy Young:

you know, creativity and imagination and the realization that truth isn't an objective thing.

Troy Young:

And truth is

Troy Young:

necessarily backward looking.

Brian Morrissey:

You know what I think it is?

Brian Morrissey:

I think it's just recognizing that, that I'm stealing this a little bit from Jeff Bezos, but that people are not truth seeking animals.

Brian Morrissey:

They don't want the truth.

Brian Morrissey:

Really.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, they want, they want confidence.

Brian Morrissey:

They want you to tell them.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, I think that's what I've learned with like a little bit

Brian Morrissey:

because bullshitting is part of sales.

Brian Morrissey:

I will

Troy Young:

I don't know, like, it's like the channel five thing that really is a, certainly, you know, is in the, is a, is a legacy media brand from, you know, the, the ground that, Vice tilt for sure on YouTube channel five, that Andrew guy.

Troy Young:

but like Shane makes the point that there was a time in kind of traditional structured media distribution control where someone would be, you know, posted to.

Troy Young:

Iran and would stay in their hotel room and would report back to the anchor and the anchor would read it.

Troy Young:

And that was the truth.

Troy Young:

Right.

Troy Young:

And they went in to Afghanistan and they like, this is the vice kids.

Troy Young:

And they turned on

Troy Young:

the camera and they, you know, started recording a different version of the world.

Troy Young:

And that, that, you know, Now we don't really quite know who to believe

Troy Young:

and like last night on the debate I would say and now I'm getting I'm all over the place, but like Vance is an extraordinary bullshitter He's a way.

Troy Young:

He's a better bullshitter than walls is

Troy Young:

and and and so, you know bullshitters are You know are are valuable

Brian Morrissey:

Well, Trump's a classic bullshitter.

Troy Young:

So anyway, I didn't think good product bullshitter.

Troy Young:

It's not a bad one.

Troy Young:

I mean, I've had better.

Troy Young:

I had a really good apple today.

Troy Young:

I really, I'm into apples right now, but, um,

Brian Morrissey:

I like the bullshitter one because I think it's, it is like, You know, like Adam Neumann is, he's back with WeWork, which just,

Troy Young:

grade a grade a bullshitter.

Brian Morrissey:

a perfect bullshitter.

Brian Morrissey:

He's, he's running the same playbook, which is hilarious because like, as we discussed, everyone has one playbook and they just keep running.

Brian Morrissey:

Very few people have more than one playbook.

Brian Morrissey:

And so he's just going to redo WeWork and the guy's still a great bullshitter.

Troy Young:

I want to bullshit better.

Troy Young:

I want to be better at it.

Troy Young:

I'm sometimes I don't let myself bullshit.

Troy Young:

I used to do this thing where I would get bored at one of my great weaknesses is that I, I get bored talking to people and what it means is I can be seen as less than sort of.

Troy Young:

Like I can, I move around, I can just like, you know, I, I, I go kind of discontinuous and I, I've been at parties with, with my wife and once she's caught me a couple of times doing it where, someone comes up to you in, in a very American fashion, they're like, what do you do?

Troy Young:

And I, and I would be like, Oh my God.

Troy Young:

I would say, well, I'm an emergency room surgeon.

Troy Young:

Cause I think that would be a great job.

Troy Young:

And because it's just like, you're in it, right?

Troy Young:

Like it's, it's, it's kind of like.

Troy Young:

You know, like ultimate in intensity and my wife is up behind me.

Troy Young:

And she's like, well, what the, what the fuck are you doing?

Troy Young:

You're like, you told them you were an emergency room surgeon.

Troy Young:

I was like, I was just playing around.

Troy Young:

And, and so she, she, she, um, shamed me.

Troy Young:

And, I, You know, I moved on, but you know, that's just lying.

Troy Young:

That's not that, I guess that's,

Brian Morrissey:

Well, I think that's what, so I think bullshitting Because of Theranos and a lot of other things, and Madoff even, it got like tied up into fraud, and I think bullshitting is

Troy Young:

I wasn't about to cut someone open, Brian, but, you know, in this case, I was just kind of being playful.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean people like bullshitters.

Brian Morrissey:

You know,

Troy Young:

they're fun.

Brian Morrissey:

and I think I'm reading this book, that was recommended by another PVA listener, the Gio Moses, why Buddhism is true.

Troy Young:

She texted me this week.

Troy Young:

I love Lucia.

Troy Young:

She's a nice

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

About how we create all these like illusions, in our minds.

Brian Morrissey:

And that was kind of the, the part about Buddhism that I found was kind of interesting, but I think bullshitting is kind of similar.

Brian Morrissey:

It's we kind of want the illusion to some degree.

Troy Young:

People like you, I, I would have, you know, I, I, I'm not very good at it.

Brian Morrissey:

You think

Troy Young:

you're, No, not at all.

Brian Morrissey:

I know.

Troy Young:

No, I mean instead of building up this incredible media company that you've created you talk about webinars Like that's the opposite of bullshit, you know, like

Brian Morrissey:

nagging.

Brian Morrissey:

It's like self nagging.

Brian Morrissey:

It's a, it's a strategy.

Troy Young:

right

Brian Morrissey:

All right.

Brian Morrissey:

I'm bummed, Alex.

Brian Morrissey:

Is he, is he doing like a, like an Austrian goodbye?

Brian Morrissey:

I appreciate that he's busy with

Troy Young:

What you need to realize about Alex is that he when you add a lot of complexity to his schedule.

Troy Young:

he just, he's like, I'm out.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, me too.

Troy Young:

gotta go, I gotta dinner.

Troy Young:

talk to you later.

Brian Morrissey:

Dinner?

Brian Morrissey:

It's like 4.

Brian Morrissey:

30.

Brian Morrissey:

Alright,

Brian Morrissey:

see

Brian Morrissey:

ya.

Troy Young:

someone.

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About the Podcast

People vs Algorithms
A podcast for curious media minds.
Uncovering patterns of change in media, culture, and technology, each week media veterans Brian Morrissey, Alex Schleifer and Troy Young break down stuff that matters.
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