Episode 105

full
Published on:

18th Oct 2024

The End of Text

Mass media’s extinction event has come first for text content. Text is increasingly being "pushed down the stack" and commoditized due to AI's ability to generate, manipulate, and reformat text content. This shift is forcing media companies that primarily deal in text to adapt or risk becoming obsolete. While text isn't disappearing entirely, its role is changing. It's becoming more of an input for other forms of media rather than the primary output. Meanwhile, other parts of media are gaining in influence. This will turn out to be the podcast election, as Kamala Harris prepares to make her closing case to… Joe Rogan while continuing to snub mass media like Time and the New York Times. We also discuss the power of Fortnite, which points to a future of media where content is a means to an ends. In the case of Fortnite, that ends is a combination of a place to hang out, a hub for commercial events like virtual concerts, a competitive environment premised on participation rather than inert consumption, and a communication medium. Plus: Bill Gates is apparently a good product.

Transcript
Brian Morrissey:

it was my fourth anniversary of the rebooting recently, and I ran a little promotion.

Brian Morrissey:

I don't know if I mentioned it here, for, TRB Pro memberships.

Brian Morrissey:

Anyway, I, I have a new, member who wrote me and said to split the attribution, between the newsletter and this podcast.

Brian Morrissey:

So, some attribution there.

Brian Morrissey:

It's good to, uh,

Troy Young:

I don't, I don't understand what

Alex Schleifer:

does that mean money?

Alex Schleifer:

Why are we

Troy Young:

I just want to rewind a little Brian for, for clarity.

Troy Young:

He said that the reason that he was subscribing was equally attributable to the podcast and the newsletter.

Brian Morrissey:

Yep.

Troy Young:

great.

Troy Young:

So that's our

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, that's 160 of, of ARR.

Alex Schleifer:

yeah, it's a good start.

Alex Schleifer:

It's progress.

Alex Schleifer:

I feel

Brian Morrissey:

It adds up, it adds

Alex Schleifer:

it does add up yeah

Brian Morrissey:

Uh, and for those of you

Alex Schleifer:

so we are splitting the

Brian Morrissey:

pro members.

Brian Morrissey:

No,

Brian Morrissey:

not

Alex Schleifer:

goes to the podcast split by three between

Brian Morrissey:

Once it, once it exceeds the production cost, then we'll talk about revenue splits.

Brian Morrissey:

How's that?

Brian Morrissey:

We got a little ways to go.

Brian Morrissey:

welcome to People vs.

Brian Morrissey:

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

Brian Morrissey:

As always, joined by the kingmaker, Troy Young, Troy, welcome.

Troy Young:

thank you.

Troy Young:

Thank you for acknowledging my

Brian Morrissey:

No problem.

Brian Morrissey:

And of course, Alex Schleifer, who's not at a conference this week.

Brian Morrissey:

that's good to see Alex.

Brian Morrissey:

Are you going to take a little, take a little time off?

Troy Young:

and what does Alex represent on this podcast is sort of a very important critical outsider view sprinkled with design and product

Troy Young:

and, and a little bit of a kind of woke mentality.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

Um,

Alex Schleifer:

syndrome

Brian Morrissey:

yeah, no, Alex, uh, is the voice of reason and, and, and of truth, of hard truths.

Brian Morrissey:

You know, so he's, he's emerged, I think, as the, as a divisive figure.

Troy Young:

Right.

Brian Morrissey:

I'm trying to try to make that

Troy Young:

And he's earning a little cash on the side is the Geico guy.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

I don't know what that, what does that mean?

Alex Schleifer:

What does that mean do I look like a lizard what

Troy Young:

No,

Brian Morrissey:

Like the caveman.

Troy Young:

yeah,

Brian Morrissey:

Oh my God.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah, well I haven't shaved in a while

Brian Morrissey:

You know, Troy, you made that, you made that point on this, little panel.

Brian Morrissey:

We did a panel.

Brian Morrissey:

We did a true.

Brian Morrissey:

That

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah, how did that go?

Alex Schleifer:

I mean,

Brian Morrissey:

Well, Troy, well, so let me, let me give my review of it and then Troy can react to it.

Brian Morrissey:

Right.

Brian Morrissey:

So I played more of the, like the traditional moderator role, you know, just like, you know, it's like kind of like being like the volleyball player that just sort of serves up.

Troy Young:

he didn't have anything to say, so he just passed it over to, to, to me and I was ill prepared.

Troy Young:

And then the

Troy Young:

other

Brian Morrissey:

yes,

Troy Young:

had speaking notes promoting his company.

Brian Morrissey:

It was, it was, yeah, well, I got to do that.

Brian Morrissey:

But what was, what was great is we were on the session with, Andrew Swinand, who is a former CEO of public, of, Laird Burnett.

Brian Morrissey:

And, and now, he's the CEO of another agency in London.

Brian Morrissey:

But what I liked about Andrew is like, we were talking beforehand and yeah, he was just like a normal guy.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, it's nice.

Brian Morrissey:

But then when he got on stage, he, he just like, because this is the agency thing, you know, destroy, right?

Brian Morrissey:

He unspoiled, like, all of these, like, statistic after statistic.

Brian Morrissey:

And like, he had, he had a, he had a, like, an opening statement ready to go

Alex Schleifer:

Wow.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah, I mean, he sounds like a pro.

Alex Schleifer:

How did Troy do it?

Alex Schleifer:

Was it

Brian Morrissey:

well, then Troy was on his heels.

Brian Morrissey:

To be honest with you, Troy was a little bit on his heels.

Troy Young:

Yeah, he, he, I was, I was.

Troy Young:

I didn't

Brian Morrissey:

It was great.

Brian Morrissey:

I loved it.

Brian Morrissey:

I loved it.

Brian Morrissey:

Thank you for the invitation, Rashad and Drew.

Alex Schleifer:

So it didn't, it didn't go well.

Brian Morrissey:

I thought it went well.

Brian Morrissey:

I thought he made some really interesting points.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, he's, he's basically, I want to run this by you.

Brian Morrissey:

So, I mean, he was basically saying, because this is what we talk

Brian Morrissey:

about with a

Alex Schleifer:

Is that Troy or is that the other

Brian Morrissey:

Andrew, but then Troy too.

Brian Morrissey:

Troy like caught up, but then he like, he caught Pete Blackshaw.

Brian Morrissey:

with a stray, cause he wrote a ad age article about FAQs.

Brian Morrissey:

that was a highlight actually of the session.

Brian Morrissey:

maybe not for Pete.

Brian Morrissey:

I don't know, but like Andrew made this point that, you know, within the agency world, you know, AI is make is, is already on its way to making all the versioning work of quote unquote creativity, a thing of the past.

Brian Morrissey:

And that, you know, his whole.

Brian Morrissey:

Thing was that if you look at, the growth of independent agencies versus the big network agencies, it's very clear the direction it's going and, you know, agency holding groups as a whole, make their money off of, you know, the media buying because it's super opaque.

Brian Morrissey:

It's super, on transparent.

Brian Morrissey:

I love.

Brian Morrissey:

I love the fact that they use the word, transparently on transparent.

Alex Schleifer:

Isn't that just

Brian Morrissey:

that sounds on the up and up.

Brian Morrissey:

but his basic thing was like, you know, you're going to have far fewer.

Brian Morrissey:

You're going to have some super talented, creatives.

Brian Morrissey:

Right?

Brian Morrissey:

but that that world will shrink.

Brian Morrissey:

And, you know, I think that that is a really.

Brian Morrissey:

You know, basic, but, kind of important point for a lot of these industries, because I think of media as I wrote about this today.

Brian Morrissey:

It just goes first with a lot of these things.

Brian Morrissey:

A lot of the pressures that are taking place and the compressions of the media business will absolutely come to contiguous industries and other industries.

Brian Morrissey:

I think without a doubt.

Brian Morrissey:

I don't know.

Brian Morrissey:

What was your takeaway from our conversation there?

Brian Morrissey:

Troy?

Troy Young:

I mean, I thought it was relatively like boring and, uh, uh, undistinguished.

Troy Young:

And, And in fairness, I was not prepared with my opening statement.

Troy Young:

I would say what you just said is that, You know, what strikes me is the fall from Grace that careers in advertising have had since, since, you know, I joined the workforce when it was a, particularly on the creative side, but even on the, you know, account side in agencies was a, a, a vocation of esteem.

Troy Young:

And now to me it's like a career of, it's like where you go if you have to go and you don't have a job and you're a liberal arts.

Troy Young:

major and, that agencies just aren't really part of the conversation anymore.

Brian Morrissey:

Well, yeah, you made the point that like, you don't what is the, like, what's a big, ad camp?

Brian Morrissey:

Like, I have no idea.

Brian Morrissey:

And I think this is part of, of what I've been wondering about is without mass media, why won't mass brands follow the same path?

Brian Morrissey:

aren't we like, sort of like mass brands really existed with mass media.

Brian Morrissey:

And so if mass media is ending, and I think that's a fair point, then won't mass brands.

Brian Morrissey:

Continue, because they don't have the same hold overall on the culture.

Brian Morrissey:

Leave aside the lock in of the tech brands.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, that's like a ridiculous, like, totally different than,

Brian Morrissey:

you know, the

Alex Schleifer:

Just leave that aside.

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, that's mass media, isn't

Troy Young:

Yeah.

Troy Young:

Well,

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, what

Troy Young:

Yeah, but, but, but their delivery channels are not mass is the point.

Troy Young:

And

Troy Young:

I think that, that, you know, even, even though I think we went through like a DTC bubble where we saw, you know, like new entrance in all the categories to this day, the most important use case, as far as I can tell for Facebook is shopping.

Troy Young:

And, I, I, I, I see new entrance in the sort of men's or kind of unisex clothing category all the time.

Troy Young:

And to me, like, that's totally a function of, the ad buying and distribution mechanics of, of Facebook and Instagram.

Troy Young:

And I guess, TikTok that, you know, allow these little brands to find customers.

Troy Young:

Like, that's the same point, right?

Troy Young:

Like you, small brands can exist and start up fairly rapidly.

Troy Young:

The, you know, access to product creation, manufacturing, and all of that is.

Troy Young:

You know, has been kind of democratized and now you can find customers on Facebook.

Troy Young:

So you get a lot of, you know, you get a lot of niche players just like you do in media.

Alex Schleifer:

mean, Instagram is incredible as an ad product these days.

Alex Schleifer:

And, and, and, and, and, and the shopping, integrated shopping and everything like that is, I They've done that full transition away after Apple, you know, shut down all the tracking.

Alex Schleifer:

you know, it feels like it's a fully transitioned to a place where now, I'm seeing a lot more kind of DTC, brands coming up.

Alex Schleifer:

so what was your question, Brian, about mass media brands and big brands?

Brian Morrissey:

well, I guess my point is, is mass media is, is clearly to me.

Brian Morrissey:

It's clearly like ending.

Brian Morrissey:

You look at this,

Alex Schleifer:

Can you define it for me, please?

Alex Schleifer:

Because I find like, I'm always quite uneducated on the topic as to how we define media.

Troy Young:

Oh, yeah.

Troy Young:

That's why we're doing a media podcast.

Brian Morrissey:

uh, mass media

Alex Schleifer:

technology podcast, because I can talk, we can talk about Fortnite and you guys think it's Minecraft.

Alex Schleifer:

So

Brian Morrissey:

uh, we can talk about, I guess.

Brian Morrissey:

I,

Troy Young:

Nice

Brian Morrissey:

I

Alex Schleifer:

like, we're all here to

Brian Morrissey:

I don't think you read that article.

Brian Morrissey:

That's why I was a little annoyed because I didn't

Troy Young:

is one thing you need to know about Alex, is that he's great with the, he's, he's less aggressive with the punch, but the punch back, he's great at.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, it's good.

Alex Schleifer:

Oh, really?

Brian Morrissey:

So mass media, I would define as what, like, arose with the consumer economy after World War II, right?

Brian Morrissey:

It's centered in, television, for the most part.

Brian Morrissey:

But mass media, we had mass media, magazines.

Brian Morrissey:

We had mass media in, like, newspapers.

Brian Morrissey:

I think a lot of times

Troy Young:

It's shared cultural experience driven by, sort of oligopolistic, media distribution, distribution structure.

Alex Schleifer:

yeah, like a monocult, but,

Brian Morrissey:

was well, that was well done, Troy.

Brian Morrissey:

You should have brought that to the panel.

Alex Schleifer:

I saw when you saying the end of mass media is more of the end of mass monoculture of everyone consuming the same type of stuff, because a lot of these, a lot of like media properties today is have the same reach as like mash head at the time.

Alex Schleifer:

Right.

Alex Schleifer:

Technically Mr.

Alex Schleifer:

Beast.

Brian Morrissey:

It's totally different.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, I mean, like, let's, let's go into, the video game world, because you're itching to go into the video game

Alex Schleifer:

No, I'm not, I'm

Brian Morrissey:

I'm ignorant, I'm

Alex Schleifer:

I come here, I come here to have like you know, a palate cleanser from all that stuff, but we can talk about

Alex Schleifer:

it.

Brian Morrissey:

it's, it's an area that,

Troy Young:

want to talk about Fortnite as a cultural phenomenon?

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, because

Troy Young:

Alex got all, you got all testy when, when, Ryan Broderick wrote the article that said mass culture is created in Fortnite.

Brian Morrissey:

yeah, like, no, duh.

Brian Morrissey:

It's about ethics and game journalism.

Brian Morrissey:

Um,

Troy Young:

What is Fortnite, Alex, for the idiots that listen to this podcast that don't know?

Alex Schleifer:

Fortnite is a, essentially at its core, what is called a battle royale video game.

Alex Schleifer:

where a hundred people go in, there is a, You land randomly on an island, there's a zone that gets smaller and smaller, pushing people together and they have to take each other out.

Alex Schleifer:

And, you know, final team or final person wins the game.

Alex Schleifer:

Now that's how it started.

Alex Schleifer:

It actually started as a different game that was a failure.

Alex Schleifer:

and then Epic just added this as a mode and it became the biggest video game in the world.

Alex Schleifer:

Which is.

Alex Schleifer:

Which is really, kind of a wild,

Troy Young:

Do you use, do you use guns to shoot people?

Alex Schleifer:

You use guns.

Troy Young:

Is it what's called a, is it a is it a first party shooter or whatever

Troy Young:

that's called?

Alex Schleifer:

first party, a first person shooter.

Alex Schleifer:

It's, it's, it's both the first person shooter, but it's actually a third person shooter.

Alex Schleifer:

So you see your characters, from the back and you run around this very colorful Island.

Alex Schleifer:

Now, what Fortnite has done is that they've added all these different modes and specifically events.

Alex Schleifer:

The world keeps changing and as it does, it kind of opens up a new season, you know, they'll have, you know, a day where Godzilla stomps across the island.

Alex Schleifer:

they'll have live concerts, where everybody's kind of playing the game gets sucked into this.

Alex Schleifer:

and it's, you know, world where I don't know, some, some, some artists things.

Alex Schleifer:

so it's become kind of a place where kids hang out.

Alex Schleifer:

The game has become not secondary, but it's the kind of peripheral to the overall experience.

Alex Schleifer:

it's very much like ready player one type stuff where, you know, you put on your.

Alex Schleifer:

Spider Man outfit.

Alex Schleifer:

You go in with your friends and you watch a concert.

Alex Schleifer:

and

Troy Young:

Is this something

Troy Young:

you, do you do this?

Alex Schleifer:

Do I do this?

Brian Morrissey:

Is this for children?

Brian Morrissey:

I think that's what Troy's asking.

Brian Morrissey:

Is this

Brian Morrissey:

for like

Brian Morrissey:

functioning

Alex Schleifer:

is, Fortnite is, Fortnite is, very, teenage boys are probably the biggest customer base.

Alex Schleifer:

It's broadened out for sure, but it's like, that's essentially the core audience here,

Alex Schleifer:

which is why I always, I always think like calling it, you know, defining, you know, like defining culture is interesting because it does target a very specific demographic.

Alex Schleifer:

Now gaming spreads much wider, but I think culture doesn't get defined by.

Alex Schleifer:

I'm not saying that Fortnite isn't important, it's hugely important.

Alex Schleifer:

And I'm not saying that Fortnite doesn't have, you know, a wide

Alex Schleifer:

audience.

Alex Schleifer:

It has, you know, people of all

Alex Schleifer:

ages and genders play

Troy Young:

if you were explaining fortnight to me and its significance in society and culture, what, what do I need to know?

Troy Young:

Alex

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, I think that the main thing is like, it's a mixture of essentially play, meaning content, because there are stories, emerging stories and kind of events that happened.

Alex Schleifer:

And And communication built into one, it's like a social network mixed with interaction mixed with, with, with storytelling.

Alex Schleifer:

So it's actually, I would say fortnight is the first version of the metaverse as, as, as a kind of more complete package,

Alex Schleifer:

you

Troy Young:

has any as any packaged entertainment spun out of it,

Alex Schleifer:

no, however, a lot of entertainment have, has been kind of pulled into it, every movie that comes out, right.

Alex Schleifer:

They really skins.

Alex Schleifer:

Epic, which is the company that runs it, which is also the company that's.

Alex Schleifer:

You know, and, and has, has won a case against Google and, and, and has been fighting.

Alex Schleifer:

Apple, has, has built a bunch of tools.

Alex Schleifer:

So, there's a giant ecosystem that's being built around that.

Alex Schleifer:

you know, as a game developer, our, our company could decide to just build on Fortnite today, built our online games on Fortnite and, and, and tap into that audience.

Troy Young:

should the rebooting be on fortnight?

Troy Young:

I

Alex Schleifer:

be on Fortnite.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah, it would be great.

Alex Schleifer:

But first you'd need to learn how to, like control a, a.

Alex Schleifer:

Character.

Brian Morrissey:

that.

Brian Morrissey:

so it sounds like, like Second Life was just sort of like ahead of its time a little bit and, and maybe not.

Brian Morrissey:

Mark Kingdon is somewhere in Miami.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, God damn it.

Alex Schleifer:

No, I mean, second night, here's the thing.

Alex Schleifer:

Like second night wasn't fun.

Alex Schleifer:

Second night wasn't fun.

Alex Schleifer:

And it was like, it

Troy Young:

thought it was,

Troy Young:

fun.

Troy Young:

You can throw like dildos at each other's.

Brian Morrissey:

I

Alex Schleifer:

second, second, second life wasn't fun.

Alex Schleifer:

And it was, there were so many layers to kind of like push through to get anywhere, that it attracted a very specific audience and that audience just pushed everyone away.

Alex Schleifer:

So it's became this very niche product, but like conceptually, yes.

Alex Schleifer:

You

Alex Schleifer:

know?

Alex Schleifer:

I think Fortnite started with a game that was fun that people genuinely like to play and they, they had like, you know, Epic built the engine and the technology stack is so huge that now it's like, there's a certain group of specifically boys, but you know, teenage.

Alex Schleifer:

kids that only communicate over fortnite they get home they jump on fortnite They hang out with their friends there and then you know, they go to bed.

Alex Schleifer:

They don't you know They don't really consume movies Or use whatsapp or whatever.

Alex Schleifer:

It's all on fortnite

Brian Morrissey:

So is this like the new version of mass media then?

Brian Morrissey:

Because it has different characteristics than, than what we talked about before, right?

Brian Morrissey:

And I think that's interesting because to me, the mass broadcast media is over.

Brian Morrissey:

I think whatever becomes of mass media will be in some weird way, More niche because it isn't for everyone.

Brian Morrissey:

I don't know about it.

Brian Morrissey:

Right?

Brian Morrissey:

Like everyone knew about mash when I was growing up.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, TV was just different than monoculture.

Brian Morrissey:

Right?

Brian Morrissey:

Like you said, it's going to be more interactive.

Brian Morrissey:

It's going to combine.

Brian Morrissey:

you're going to be a participant, not a, just like passive.

Brian Morrissey:

what else, like, what are the characteristics, first of all, I guess, is that true?

Brian Morrissey:

Like, is this the new version of mass media?

Brian Morrissey:

And then what are the characteristics of it and how does it differ from quote unquote old mass media?

Alex Schleifer:

I think it's I mean, I think that's a good question.

Alex Schleifer:

I don't even know if you can call it media because so much of it is like such a big part of it is just like kind of Interaction in a space with communication.

Alex Schleifer:

So it feels like, you know, in quotes, that version of the metaverse that people have been talking about, and yes, you're consuming entertainment and brand messages and all these things, but it feels like something very different.

Alex Schleifer:

So yes, maybe it's, it's replacing mass media.

Alex Schleifer:

It's also replacing a lot of other stuff, right?

Alex Schleifer:

It's, it's replacing a lot of these kids, like going out in the streets and playing.

Alex Schleifer:

Hmm.

Alex Schleifer:

Ball, you know, it's it's a like a totally

Alex Schleifer:

digital version of your

Alex Schleifer:

afternoon.

Alex Schleifer:

So

Troy Young:

if you want it to pull it into what I think

Troy Young:

media companies have to be thinking about right now.

Troy Young:

So if you're a media company, you're saying, what is this?

Troy Young:

Let's call it, I don't know.

Troy Young:

Is it 3.

Troy Young:

0, 4.

Troy Young:

0 shift, right?

Troy Young:

Whatever came after the kind of social media and search era.

Troy Young:

You're like, well, what's going to be our distribution?

Troy Young:

What's going to be.

Troy Young:

unique that a media brand can do outside of, you know, the new aggregator call that chat GPT or any of the new news aggregators or anybody that's using interface to get above media, interface and, and, and technology.

Troy Young:

And, and one of them is gotta be interactivity, right?

Troy Young:

And, and that's the ability to to participate in an experience.

Troy Young:

Gaming is obviously the ultimate in interactivity, but you know, gaming on the New York times is interactivity closely related would be, well, not unrelated, I think is your your data set.

Troy Young:

or the thing that powers that experience, that, that the unique data, and I say data in the broadest way, which could be numbers, statistics, profiles, search results, anything have to be, you know, you know, kind of proprietary.

Troy Young:

And, and then I think thirdly, it's, it's the power or the opportunity for a brand to create trust inside of that new environment to the extent that, that trust is a, is a differentiating factor in what someone's going to consume.

Troy Young:

We, we sometimes naively, I think, put too much emphasis on the, the, who it came from, because increasingly, It seems like we live in this kind of, you know, you know, this kind of universe that's like, you know, 1000 points of light and, and we spend less time thinking about, like, where did the message come from?

Troy Young:

And so I think trust is still important.

Troy Young:

And the media brand is a manifestation of that.

Troy Young:

But, I, you know, I certainly don't think you, you rely on that as being the thing that's, that's gonna.

Troy Young:

That it's the starting point, but it's not the thing that's going to save you.

Brian Morrissey:

Hmm.

Brian Morrissey:

So how does this then impact?

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, we're going to talk about like, let's just talk about you know, media with the new aggregators, because like, as you said, getting upstream of the aggregators has been nearly impossible, I feel like for, for most, media and, and aggregators that

Troy Young:

Yeah.

Troy Young:

They're good too.

Troy Young:

Like if I'm finding them interesting,

Troy Young:

like artifact.

Troy Young:

Well, yeah, yeah.

Troy Young:

Artifact was interesting.

Alex Schleifer:

it's

Troy Young:

I found it

Troy Young:

it's it's it's not Yahoo news now.

Troy Young:

Right.

Troy Young:

particle is a new entrant, in the aggregation space that uses AI extensively to help you navigate.

Troy Young:

A lot of content and it's kind of fun actually.

Troy Young:

And it is interactive.

Troy Young:

And it, I believe the founder was the head of product at Twitter.

Troy Young:

I don't know the person.

Troy Young:

There's another one called valve.

Troy Young:

V O L V E, which is sort of AI generated summaries of, you know, the news that you just flick, flick, flick, flick, flick.

Troy Young:

You can sort of see how the interface allows you to navigate a huge amount of content really quickly.

Troy Young:

There's AI generated news, which is, I don't know if you've seen break the web, which is sort of like 10 stories a day or a couple of times a day.

Troy Young:

in a graphic intensive app interface.

Troy Young:

Perplexity is trying to do the same by bridging LLMs and chat, the chat experience with actually the delivery of news.

Troy Young:

And they're extending that, you know, across mediums.

Troy Young:

So they have an auto generated newsletter and they have an auto generated podcast, all of which are reasonably good products, I think.

Troy Young:

and so.

Troy Young:

You know, those are all places that consumers are gonna, you know, be certainly tempted by that, that, that sit on that, that offer no real economic salvation to a media brand.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, I think what the hard part is, like, all of these things are moving towards pigeonholing, particularly news brands as just raw material providers and downstream of the value chain.

Brian Morrissey:

If you look at like, who is making the most money, particularly in news content, it's the people on top Of the actual gathering of the facts.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, like, we always point out that, all in loves to, like, you know, take shots at, the quote, unquote, mainstream media, but then is constantly referring to the reporting done by the mainstream media, either to say it's fake, or if it actually goes with their point of view to say, yeah, there's, there's this is proof point of it.

Brian Morrissey:

And I think that that is happening.

Brian Morrissey:

It's not just at the interface level and.

Brian Morrissey:

I think that is a real challenge because all of the incentives, the economic incentives, are not to be gathering the news.

Brian Morrissey:

It's to be manipulating the news, maybe.

Brian Morrissey:

It's to use technology to manipulate it into a new package.

Brian Morrissey:

it could be like to provide a point of view or an opinion on top of the news.

Alex Schleifer:

can I make a prediction?

Brian Morrissey:

yeah, I love predictions.

Alex Schleifer:

I think none of the apps that Troy mentioned will be around in five years.

Alex Schleifer:

I think if If you're just, recompiling information, that's all going to be provided to you by your operating system or Google or something like that.

Alex Schleifer:

All that stuff is going to be, you know, if you want facts, if you want access to facts, information, even something to kind of retell you a story or tell you how a movie ends or whatever, that's just going to be like straight to the vein, directly to the OS.

Alex Schleifer:

You're going to have these conversations.

Alex Schleifer:

They're not going to be intermediaries that you.

Alex Schleifer:

You know, whatever deals you make today, they're not, they're not going to exist.

Alex Schleifer:

The thing that is going to continue to exist and it's, it's kind of related to Fortnite is it's entertainment.

Alex Schleifer:

You know, the all in podcast, the reason people like getting their

Alex Schleifer:

news through that is because it's entertainment.

Alex Schleifer:

It's through the lens of entertainment.

Alex Schleifer:

People want play, right?

Alex Schleifer:

Which is why Fortnite is there.

Alex Schleifer:

And which is why, and it's the next, I think the next, and I'm not, I don't mean to be kind of.

Alex Schleifer:

The pitching my own book here, but the, the, the next frontier is not like, how do we recontextualize this content that's over it's going to be, how do we make this entertaining and, and, and, and people are going to be more and more demanding and it's going to be around like play and entertainment.

Alex Schleifer:

How can you

Troy Young:

well, that's the way you see some, some, of that in particle where.

Troy Young:

You can combine, recombine, sort, change, manipulate content in ways.

Troy Young:

That's fun.

Troy Young:

Like rewrite all the headlines is if it was the onion, you know, that's part of the,

Troy Young:

the, the sort of

Alex Schleifer:

GPT to do this right now.

Troy Young:

it's listen, they're the aggregator of those aggregators.

Troy Young:

So, you know, the, you know, but, but the one thing I think that I would take away from it and the Brian, I would love your take on this is, to me, text is being.

Troy Young:

Push down the stack, like text is becoming increasingly commoditized

Troy Young:

and, and, and, and it's happening because.

Troy Young:

LLMs can create and manipulate and reformat and make into new mediums any type of text.

Troy Young:

So text is now an input into the machine as opposed to an output.

Brian Morrissey:

I think

Troy Young:

And I think that's a, that's a big thing for media companies that trade in text.

Brian Morrissey:

No, I think that's totally right.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, cause like, I'm just amazed.

Brian Morrissey:

Claude is my sort of LLMF choice these days, but,

Brian Morrissey:

you know, I use it to, I just used it to, to do like five bullet points summary of, you know, piece I wrote.

Brian Morrissey:

It's pretty good.

Brian Morrissey:

It's already pretty good, and I don't think it's going to get worse.

Brian Morrissey:

And like, that is, they're all of these tasks, kind of what Andrew said about versioning.

Brian Morrissey:

There's all of these things within the sort of text world that are, frankly, going to be better done by machines than by humans.

Brian Morrissey:

And it's hard as a, as a, as a person has produced a fair amount of texts in my day and, and continued to produce a lot of texts that might not be the most pleasant thing, but, that's, that's a reality, right?

Brian Morrissey:

And I think, yeah, like he said, it's getting pushed down the value chain.

Alex Schleifer:

the only thing holding me back from subscribing to more newsletters is that I don't have a an AI that's smart enough integrated into my email that can just give me a rundown of what's going on.

Alex Schleifer:

I just want to just subscribe to what I want to subscribe and then just ask this thing.

Alex Schleifer:

Hey, what's happening right now?

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah, I'm interested in this thing.

Alex Schleifer:

Tell me more.

Brian Morrissey:

Well, first of all, Apple is doing that, right?

Brian Morrissey:

Apple is summarizing.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, like, if you look at the direction of travel, it's pretty clear.

Brian Morrissey:

you know, Apple will summarize all of your newsletters for you on the device.

Brian Morrissey:

that's happening.

Brian Morrissey:

that, without

Troy Young:

see it kind of strategically manifest.

Troy Young:

I just had a kind of a conversation with a company I'm on the board of that's focused on the, football media space, the soccer media space.

Troy Young:

And, the idea, and you see this in the ESPN app, you can either start with statistics and numbers.

Troy Young:

And things that you can manipulate around, you know, the kind of data of the, of the game, or you can start with articles about the game, or you can start with videos.

Troy Young:

And I think that as a publisher, we're, we're having to kind of reprioritize this because to me, the, the statistics side of it's getting more interesting the, because the statistics are leading to different Gaming opportunities.

Troy Young:

Now, the ultimate one that monetizes best is obviously.

Troy Young:

Gambling betting, but you know, this company, for example, is doing these really light parlays where you get, you get to bet on six teams that are playing in, you know, on Saturday and if you get them all right, there's like a small reward.

Troy Young:

So it's sort of like betting light, but if you think about it is you've got all this data.

Troy Young:

You know, from the players to the matches to the leagues, and you can start manipulating that and then you can have fun with it.

Troy Young:

And if you really want to, you can place your bet.

Troy Young:

And that to me is the more, when you think about, say, the homepage as a surface area, that's the number one thing.

Troy Young:

Because, you know, chatbots don't do that as well.

Troy Young:

The number two thing is probably, how do we.

Troy Young:

You know, how do we entertain with video?

Troy Young:

And then the number three thing is how do we put smart interfaces on this corpus of millions of pieces of content?

Troy Young:

That used to be the lead thing that are now secondary to me And I just think that that that's appointed the departure in the publishing market.

Brian Morrissey:

I used to host the holiday party game show at Digiday.

Brian Morrissey:

I might have to bring that back.

Brian Morrissey:

It's like a career choice.

Troy Young:

I think that's a good idea

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Troy Young:

Okay.

Troy Young:

Well, I think that was a nice

Alex Schleifer:

People say we're, we're, we're, we're, we're too down on, on everything on media and everything like that.

Alex Schleifer:

But, any, any optimistic thoughts?

Brian Morrissey:

Oh, so actually I'm not, I wrote a little bit.

Brian Morrissey:

You're not a subscriber, so you don't have access to it, but everyone else can subscribe.

Brian Morrissey:

You get a 20 percent discount

Alex Schleifer:

I just don't read newsletters, man.

Alex Schleifer:

It's just too, I have good friends that write them and

Brian Morrissey:

All right,

Alex Schleifer:

I have a huge list of things that I feel guilty about.

Brian Morrissey:

I will feed this shit into notebook LM and personally deliver you

Brian Morrissey:

a,

Alex Schleifer:

be great.

Brian Morrissey:

like if you want, but I'll have Snoop Dogg or,

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, make a podcast out of it.

Alex Schleifer:

We've been talking

Brian Morrissey:

Uh, well, I maybe, I mean, we'll see if

Brian Morrissey:

if

Alex Schleifer:

Like if you made a podcast out of it, I would, I would

Brian Morrissey:

cool.

Brian Morrissey:

All right,

Brian Morrissey:

done.

Brian Morrissey:

Um,

Brian Morrissey:

use the code.

Alex Schleifer:

You know what I'm actually really excited about?

Alex Schleifer:

I, you know, I was diagnosed with ADHD and God knows what that means.

Alex Schleifer:

It can mean a hundred different things, but

Brian Morrissey:

Is that real?

Brian Morrissey:

Is that a real diagnosis

Alex Schleifer:

Oh, it's definitely real, man.

Alex Schleifer:

if anything, you know, it's real that because when you take Adderall, your whole body calms down rather than get hyper.

Alex Schleifer:

So, you know, you kind of know that, that, that that's, that's one of the telltale signs.

Alex Schleifer:

although Adderall is, you Not for me.

Alex Schleifer:

school and going through just stuff in life, where I had to consume a lot of information in a certain way, right.

Alex Schleifer:

That was written in a certain way.

Alex Schleifer:

It was so against the way my brain worked my whole life.

Alex Schleifer:

You know, my whole life I pushed against it, right?

Alex Schleifer:

and I, I, I really struggled with school and things like that.

Alex Schleifer:

And yet I'm, you know, I'm a relatively fast learner if the information is in the right place.

Alex Schleifer:

And I can tell you that this age where information can get recontextualized and I can ask it to write in bullet points and I can ask it to read it out for me, has been.

Alex Schleifer:

The last two years has been incredible for someone like me to

Alex Schleifer:

be able to finally learn things like, like, you know, music theory or, or, or, or some, some computer concepts that I never got to because I just couldn't, couldn't process that information.

Troy Young:

Self help everywhere i've been doing a lot of self help

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, yes, in, in, in a sense, but what I'm saying is that I think we'll discover that there's so many different types of brains and the people who usually end up writing are usually the people who end up liking to read stuff that is written.

Alex Schleifer:

But that there's a huge part of the population that doesn't want to consume information like that.

Alex Schleifer:

And now for the

Alex Schleifer:

first time, we're actually going to be asking the consumers, say, how do you want that information?

Alex Schleifer:

Imagine all that data and people will notice shit.

Alex Schleifer:

I only have to write five words, or maybe it has to be like this.

Alex Schleifer:

And it, it, that was never an option.

Alex Schleifer:

That was

Alex Schleifer:

never an option.

Brian Morrissey:

I

Troy Young:

my MTV, Alex.

Brian Morrissey:

But the most successful

Brian Morrissey:

people, the one, the one thread

Brian Morrissey:

is they're all like voracious readers.

Brian Morrissey:

They're all voracious readers.

Brian Morrissey:

I'm long reading.

Brian Morrissey:

I think, I think it's a competitive advantage to be able to have the self control to read a book these days.

Brian Morrissey:

And

Brian Morrissey:

I don't think you get that

Brian Morrissey:

by having an

Alex Schleifer:

more successful

Brian Morrissey:

read and Snoop Dogg.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, uh, there's a lot of ways to succeed.

Brian Morrissey:

There's,

Alex Schleifer:

know, And I think that there's a, that there's a world, I think that there's a bias right now because the people like to write, create the type of content that they want to see.

Alex Schleifer:

And that's fine.

Alex Schleifer:

We, we just had, you know, I think,

Troy Young:

Do you think that the people in power are biased towards readers?

Brian Morrissey:

Trump has never read a, has not read a book in at least 15 or 20

Alex Schleifer:

I'm not saying guys, I can read a book.

Alex Schleifer:

Right.

Brian Morrissey:

he didn't read his own book.

Alex Schleifer:

that doesn't matter.

Alex Schleifer:

Let's not talk about Trump.

Alex Schleifer:

I I'm saying it's not that I don't like long form reading.

Alex Schleifer:

I think it's a, I, especially when it comes like to, fiction.

Alex Schleifer:

I really enjoy that.

Alex Schleifer:

I like getting immersed in the world.

Alex Schleifer:

When it comes to me, learning, reading, getting real, very specific value out of stuff.

Alex Schleifer:

it is incredibly.

Alex Schleifer:

time consuming and hard for me to consume information in the way that it's presented currently.

Alex Schleifer:

I wonder how many other people feel the

Troy Young:

There's a lot, Alex.

Troy Young:

I think there's a lot.

Troy Young:

I've had this conversation with one of my kids who much prefers consuming books via audio.

Brian Morrissey:

So wait, is reading dying?

Alex Schleifer:

What, why, what made, what made reading?

Alex Schleifer:

I think there was just like this academic, grandstanding that like reading was the only way we should consume information as if as, as apes,

Alex Schleifer:

that's what we decided to do, like, look, we're, we're

Brian Morrissey:

Well, I don't know.

Brian Morrissey:

Gutenberg was a pretty important,

Alex Schleifer:

yes, at the time, because that was the way to transport.

Alex Schleifer:

Content because we didn't have, guess what?

Alex Schleifer:

We didn't have, we didn't have an MP3 that you could send over

Alex Schleifer:

space in a

Brian Morrissey:

So Adam Curry is going to go down in history as like the new Gutenberg.

Alex Schleifer:

Maybe I, what I'm saying is what I'm saying is, is actually maybe more profound than that, is that people will write.

Alex Schleifer:

Content will put content out into the world in the way that they feel comfortable in the tone that they feel comfortable.

Alex Schleifer:

And then people will consume that content in the way that they feel comfortable.

Alex Schleifer:

This is like it's such a profound change to the way we exchange information with each other.

Alex Schleifer:

I think we're going to learn a lot about about about things and it's also going to make people lazy and it's also going to kind of destroy our attention span and all that stuff.

Alex Schleifer:

But, you know, I think we, we, we, we, with every new technology, like our brains change a little bit.

Alex Schleifer:

And this is one of the ones where I feel we'll look back and say, wow, for the past, you know, few hundred years, we've been kind of really stuck in that one modality of, of, of how

Alex Schleifer:

information should be consumed and transferred.

Brian Morrissey:

So text was overvalued is basically what we're saying.

Brian Morrissey:

It had, it had,

Alex Schleifer:

always try to get like the, the, the, the headline out

Brian Morrissey:

well, yeah, that's exactly what I'm trying to do because it's, it's a compelling, it's good.

Brian Morrissey:

It,

Brian Morrissey:

I can sell

Troy Young:

but Brian, Yeah, that's the job of the moderator, Alex.

Troy Young:

The, um,

Alex Schleifer:

have to like fucking dissect the frog in front of everyone.

Alex Schleifer:

I was

Alex Schleifer:

just making banter here,

Troy Young:

Okay, so

Alex Schleifer:

That's that, That's my point.

Alex Schleifer:

I'm the disruptor on the podcast.

Troy Young:

you're the

Troy Young:

free party, you're the,

Alex Schleifer:

Uh, free, free radical

Troy Young:

Free radical.

Troy Young:

Okay, Brian, but you had made the point, and I just want to get your take on this, that this sort of, what you called it, the end of mass media is definitely manifest in how, this election is playing out.

Brian Morrissey:

It's just so stark.

Brian Morrissey:

The other day, I opened the New

Troy Young:

So explain, break it down for us, help us understand it and its consequences.

Brian Morrissey:

Well, like, we're in the home stretch to the election.

Brian Morrissey:

This is when all the political reporters bring out every cliche that it's a dash.

Brian Morrissey:

The candidates are dashing and it's a blitz and like all this.

Brian Morrissey:

And when you look at where we are, This is make or break time.

Brian Morrissey:

When you look at where the closing arguments are being made, the New York Times was aggregating an interview that Kamala Harris gave to Charlamagne, the God, okay, not technically a podcast or a radio host, but like, of that elk, she's going on Joe Rogan.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, Trump has been on, like, every other, podcast, no, the mass media overall is being ignored.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, time just threw a fit that Kamala Harris did not sit for an interview with Time magazine.

Brian Morrissey:

I'm sorry, but like, I'm sorry, Jess, but like,

Alex Schleifer:

She might as well set, uh, for an interview with us at this stage.

Brian Morrissey:

that is not a big L.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, I mean, who is time reaching that, is more important than these niches that a lot of these alternative media are reaching?

Brian Morrissey:

And I tuned in last night.

Brian Morrissey:

This is also a product problem because I decided to actually look at the Brett Baer interview of Kamala Harris.

Brian Morrissey:

I'm like, maybe I'll get something new.

Brian Morrissey:

At the very least, if she does the middle class thing, it'll be kind of funny.

Brian Morrissey:

And, I couldn't watch it for longer than five minutes.

Brian Morrissey:

The bickering, the talking over.

Brian Morrissey:

I think it's almost like those late night TV tropes, where they have those fake stories.

Brian Morrissey:

you called it like the uncanny valley of media.

Brian Morrissey:

Right, Alex?

Brian Morrissey:

I thought that was really smart because,

Alex Schleifer:

talk about Uncanny Valley.

Alex Schleifer:

Brett Bear looks like an.

Alex Schleifer:

But

Brian Morrissey:

but it was like, it was awful, awful to listen to, and I would much rather Theo Vaughn and Donald Trump is better than that.

Alex Schleifer:

but, but, but, and the thing is that, but that's because like, that's, that's their format and that's how they're pitching to their audience, but that the emergence of podcasts, right.

Alex Schleifer:

Has been once again, right.

Alex Schleifer:

Like I think it was, there were early adopters in podcasts.

Alex Schleifer:

It, there was a, it took a long time to get here, but just the power of.

Alex Schleifer:

Not only audio, but the format of a podcast where you sit down and listen to somebody talk through, there's no way this can be transferred to text, there's no way that you can get that emotion and that feeling and the pauses or anything like that.

Alex Schleifer:

And, and TV is just too impractical to consume at, at scale at this stage.

Alex Schleifer:

But, but podcasts is you have it in your ear where you do the dishes, you know?

Brian Morrissey:

I honestly don't think, I don't know if I would agree to like a You know, like, if I was a prominent person, nobody's writing a profile on me,

Brian Morrissey:

but, like, I don't know if I would agree

Alex Schleifer:

it goes into a black hole and somebody rewrites everything you said.

Alex Schleifer:

It's crazy.

Troy Young:

really interesting point.

Brian Morrissey:

remember we wrote that profile of you try that called you brusque.

Troy Young:

You wrote that?

Brian Morrissey:

No, I didn't write it.

Brian Morrissey:

She wrote it.

Troy Young:

Oh yeah, that's nice.

Troy Young:

She did a nice job.

Alex Schleifer:

I would agree with that.

Brian Morrissey:

But you call me you're pissed about it about the breast comment.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, and I

Troy Young:

The best one was Michael Sebastian wrote a profile of me in Ad Age, Ad Week.

Troy Young:

Michael

Troy Young:

Sebastian, he's now the editor.

Troy Young:

And

Brian Morrissey:

that's that's the old oldest of the old school tricks.

Brian Morrissey:

I love

Troy Young:

that.

Troy Young:

was the sort of wrecking ball analogy.

Brian Morrissey:

Okay, well, that's

Troy Young:

Yeah, and

Troy Young:

that one that was when that Miley had that big hit it was

Alex Schleifer:

I, we, I don't know.

Alex Schleifer:

I don't understand any of these references.

Alex Schleifer:

I hope our audience does.

Brian Morrissey:

Miley Cyrus?

Brian Morrissey:

You don't know Miley Cyrus?

Troy Young:

you know the song wrecking ball

Brian Morrissey:

She's

Alex Schleifer:

why.

Alex Schleifer:

Why are you just jumping around?

Alex Schleifer:

Okay, great.

Troy Young:

I'm not jumping around.

Troy Young:

I want to finish this.

Troy Young:

I'm gonna do what I do.

Troy Young:

It's just sort of a hostile moderating takeover the

Alex Schleifer:

being brusque.

Troy Young:

Yes But Brian,

Troy Young:

how does it

Brian Morrissey:

was it was better than Asshole.

Brian Morrissey:

I

Alex Schleifer:

But was it truer?

Brian Morrissey:

thought it was fine.

Troy Young:

That asshole is my friend.

Troy Young:

Okay.

Troy Young:

So, but can you help us understand who's played this new media environment more effectively?

Troy Young:

And why?

Brian Morrissey:

I think it's going to be fascinating to see at the end.

Brian Morrissey:

Who ends up, because I think of like Kamala Harris has run a more traditional campaign.

Brian Morrissey:

She gets to her talking points.

Brian Morrissey:

Trump was swaying to like Sinead O'Connor in front

Alex Schleifer:

38 minutes, for 38 minutes.

Brian Morrissey:

I have no idea if this is genius or pure lunacy, but it'll be interesting.

Brian Morrissey:

I, I think Trump is a natural, of this new environment.

Troy Young:

I don't think it was Sinead O'Connor.

Troy Young:

I think it was Hallelujah interpreted by Rufus Rainwright.

Troy Young:

That

Troy Young:

was originally a Leonard Cohen song and he.

Troy Young:

reacted to that was one of

Brian Morrissey:

Nothing compares

Troy Young:

like, He's like, don't play that shit.

Troy Young:

That's my song.

Troy Young:

Don't do that.

Alex Schleifer:

None of these artists wanted to be on that stage with

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

There are no more slow songs these days.

Troy Young:

about the YMCA guys?

Troy Young:

They don't mind.

Brian Morrissey:

well he has to, I think he has to get people who are dead because they can't object then.

Brian Morrissey:

That's why he's doing Ave Maria.

Troy Young:

Yeah.

Troy Young:

Okay.

Troy Young:

So, so,

Brian Morrissey:

I think Trump is a natural, and we've said this before, we've disagreed, but like,

Brian Morrissey:

I think he's, he's a natural for this

Alex Schleifer:

Brian, we do not disagree, but he's a natural insofar as like he's an amoeba that's thriving in it.

Alex Schleifer:

You know what I mean?

Alex Schleifer:

I don't, I don't think there is a board with a master plan.

Alex Schleifer:

I

Troy Young:

I, thought you were going to say maggot.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

But like, you know, I would make the argument that having instincts is better than having a strategy

Alex Schleifer:

I don't know.

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, I guess the, the only thing that I ever disagree with is, is when people use the term strategy, right?

Alex Schleifer:

Like I think there's a strategy when you kind of sit down and plan stuff out.

Alex Schleifer:

I think there's just people who have reflexes that turn out to be correct.

Alex Schleifer:

That's not a

Alex Schleifer:

strategy.

Alex Schleifer:

Yes.

Alex Schleifer:

He's reflexive.

Brian Morrissey:

he's like, uh, what's his name?

Brian Morrissey:

Johnny Manziel.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, you know, he would run around in the backfield.

Brian Morrissey:

Like there was no strategy going on with Johnny Manziel.

Brian Morrissey:

And he didn't end up having a very,

Alex Schleifer:

He is definitely, he's definitely a natural, the media ecosystem is at the right temperature and the right amount of moisture for him to thrive.

Alex Schleifer:

And he's just

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

it.

Alex Schleifer:

It's like, you know, like when the power goes out and you leave a fridge and you leave the fridge door open, that's what happens.

Alex Schleifer:

There's just,

Brian Morrissey:

My, my mom scared me about this.

Brian Morrissey:

She was like, do you clean out your fridge?

Brian Morrissey:

before you like leave, because like, if there's a hurricane, the, you'll have like rotting chicken in there and then you'll have to get an entire new refrigerator.

Brian Morrissey:

I was like, really?

Brian Morrissey:

I never thought about the dangers of leaving chicken in a refrigerator.

Brian Morrissey:

Okay.

Brian Morrissey:

That's what I thought.

Brian Morrissey:

I was like, refrigerators were all back when

Alex Schleifer:

Yes.

Alex Schleifer:

This is what people come to this podcast for, by

Troy Young:

Yeah,

Brian Morrissey:

we,

Brian Morrissey:

can cut that out, but I want to, I want to move, I want to move that because it was on my mind.

Alex Schleifer:

It's frustrating choice.

Alex Schleifer:

So therefore it's good

Alex Schleifer:

content.

Alex Schleifer:

Look at it.

Alex Schleifer:

He's, he's, he's, like, he can't sit still

Troy Young:

you guys know that I

Troy Young:

get frustrated when you, when you, when, when we, when we beat the dead horse.

Troy Young:

So let's, let's move on.

Brian Morrissey:

Okay, let's move on because I want to just just dwell for a little bit on how you think about careers in this kind of environment, right?

Brian Morrissey:

Because my, my working theory in general is media, particularly text media goes first, right?

Brian Morrissey:

A lot of the pressures and the compression that we're seeing in this industry are going to spread to other industries.

Brian Morrissey:

And what I'm seeing a lot of is.

Brian Morrissey:

I think that this is actually a time to be a generalist, a new kind of generalist of sorts, because when we talk about like the negativity, we talk about like big media companies.

Brian Morrissey:

I have totally different conversations with people who have one to five to 10 person media companies.

Brian Morrissey:

There are so many opportunities out there in the media business.

Brian Morrissey:

It's just not a lot of these big media companies because they're trying to retrofit old models.

Brian Morrissey:

They're trying to get slimmer, they're battling with unions, they got screwed over by platforms, ad tech is, continues to be like kind of a mess for them, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Brian Morrissey:

But a lot of the needs out there that I see, and this came up a lot at that Athena Project conference, is people who are kind of generalists, who are able to do a bunch of different things.

Brian Morrissey:

I was talking with one executive about this, and the idea of people, Just being complete specialists.

Brian Morrissey:

It's like, no, I just do sales.

Brian Morrissey:

I don't do the sales deck.

Brian Morrissey:

Someone else does that.

Brian Morrissey:

And all like, you need to be able to do a bunch of different things at out there.

Brian Morrissey:

Like you can't just be I think of like Vanya, who produces this podcast.

Brian Morrissey:

We should give like Vanya a lot, a lot more.

Brian Morrissey:

We should give her the credit she deserves.

Brian Morrissey:

She's a designer, but she also produces podcasts.

Brian Morrissey:

I feel like you need to be, it's not like generalist, but it's a new kind of generalist where you have to be able to cover just far more ground to have a, to protect yourself in some ways, because the old career path is gone.

Brian Morrissey:

It is not coming back.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, I shared that with you guys about the accountants.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, what was a more safe career than going into accounting?

Brian Morrissey:

Okay.

Brian Morrissey:

And they're projecting like completely decline in accountants.

Brian Morrissey:

Too bad.

Brian Morrissey:

Learn to code.

Brian Morrissey:

You saw the developer statistics.

Brian Morrissey:

It's like, I just think how people think of their quote unquote careers has to completely change

Troy Young:

Hmm.

Brian Morrissey:

Thoughts,

Troy Young:

Thoughts, comments, questions?

Alex Schleifer:

I think about that.

Alex Schleifer:

I get asked that a lot about designers and, and product designers.

Alex Schleifer:

And I don't remember who it was that said he wanted.

Alex Schleifer:

His kids to grow up resilient.

Alex Schleifer:

yeah, I mean, absolutely.

Alex Schleifer:

Like, just like develop, an intelligence, get spread your knowledge out so you can do a lot of different things and all of a sudden you'll notice that, the more interests you have, the more you can learn things quickly and adapt to what's coming up.

Alex Schleifer:

So when some, some, some new change arises, you have the intuition to say, Oh, this is how I could use this.

Alex Schleifer:

I think I fell into that path because I was always bad at becoming a deep expert.

Alex Schleifer:

I was always

Brian Morrissey:

But wait, you're a trained designer,

Troy Young:

but he was always like this, so it was like him, And his friend, a couple of friends and his, and his brothers on the island

Brian Morrissey:

In

Brian Morrissey:

the tree house.

Brian Morrissey:

This isn't

Troy Young:

So, no, I mean, there was like, they didn't, they didn't have specialists.

Alex Schleifer:

all

Troy Young:

They had, They all did everything.

Troy Young:

And that's what I loved about Alex when I met him.

Troy Young:

I want to connect four thoughts here.

Troy Young:

Thoughts that I

Troy Young:

think are important.

Troy Young:

And the one is, obviously there's now this like kind of strata of tools that make more disciplines and more sort of functions accessible to more people.

Troy Young:

Right.

Troy Young:

And, that accelerates with AI that lets me build more things without being an expert as, you know, in coding or whatever.

Troy Young:

There's the Rashad Tabakowalik point that organizational structures were about role definition.

Troy Young:

And hierarchy and a two dimensional org chart.

Troy Young:

And that that's changing a lot where we need kind of assigned roles against a task with a small group that takes on a project and, you know, what kind of amorphous organizational structure that kind of combines and disbands as, you know, different needs arise in an organization.

Troy Young:

And I think that's, really true.

Troy Young:

I also think that it connects to something that confuses me, which is like, you get into a new company that's been, that set the precedent to be remote during COVID, and you may have gotten rid of an office and, Your organization has adjusted.

Troy Young:

Do you then go back and say, as things, you know, return to normal, everybody back to the office.

Troy Young:

And to me, like the kind of fungibility or you call it generalists or the way we're working differently, Kind of ladders up to org structure ladders up to how do we construct work environments in the future where people do need to get together, but maybe they don't need to congregate 9 to 5 every day and you know, and spend an hour and a half commuting into New York City.

Troy Young:

So all those things are connected.

Troy Young:

And there's one other thing that I think is vitally important.

Troy Young:

And it's sort of, when you look at a change program in media, it was really, really hard to get media companies to change.

Troy Young:

And the reason that it was hard is because of role specificity against revenue streams that needed to be protected.

Troy Young:

And we said to, Hey, Dave in sales, or Hey, you know, You know, Jenny that works in audience growth or in operations.

Troy Young:

Like we need to build this new business that's different from the old one.

Troy Young:

And it never really got done because you were struggling just to hit the numbers.

Troy Young:

And so like, we, the only way you change a media company is by like.

Troy Young:

Setting an objective, carving off a group of people that are sort of not, you know, distracted or committed to supporting an existing declining in many cases, you know, kind of business outcome and get them focused on the next thing.

Troy Young:

And that's really hard to do when your revenues under pressure.

Troy Young:

So all of those things, I think you want people that can play.

Troy Young:

Lots of different roles.

Troy Young:

You want to create an organization structure that can compensate reward and allow people to do that.

Troy Young:

And by the way, unions want, you know, want to want to constrict your ability to to kind of evolve tasks and roles, even though their broader objective around protecting employees might be might be admirable and a good thing to do.

Troy Young:

So I think that we're at a time.

Troy Young:

where we're really like rethinking notions of what it's like to go to work.

Troy Young:

And, and, and the generalist, you know, comment is I think part of that bigger picture.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, I totally agree with that.

Brian Morrissey:

I think there's, there's something, I haven't pieced it all together, but Alex, I want to get your, your thoughts on this.

Brian Morrissey:

because, you know, I, I talk with a lot of people who are, I would say in their like late forties into like early fifties, who the career ladder kind of got pulled out from under them really.

Brian Morrissey:

And because I think it's particular to the media business, because, you know, a lot of the top jobs have either gone.

Brian Morrissey:

Some of them have gone away entirely.

Brian Morrissey:

Some of them have, you know, a lot of companies are doing fractional sea level jobs.

Brian Morrissey:

I've heard of, like, fractional, like, chief product and chief technology officers at these companies, because, like, the pressure

Brian Morrissey:

is Quite Quite great on them and so people who had taken a path that was very sort of, you know, it wasn't easy, right?

Brian Morrissey:

But it was kind of straightforward.

Brian Morrissey:

Well, then you hit your like prime earning years.

Brian Morrissey:

Okay, and guess what?

Brian Morrissey:

The ladder is gone.

Brian Morrissey:

Those jobs are gone or they're or they got shrunk and you're kind of being like told to like, okay, find your own way.

Brian Morrissey:

And set up an LLC and like piece together a bunch of different gigs because you're still in your prime earning years.

Brian Morrissey:

It's tough.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

There's this, meme about how the C suites are so excited about, AI replacing all those jobs, but they might be the easiest one to replace

Alex Schleifer:

as well.

Alex Schleifer:

look, I, I trade in a very specific.

Alex Schleifer:

it's hard to generalize because I think there's a lot of jobs out there.

Alex Schleifer:

some of them we, we rarely talk about that require all sorts of different paths and that are probably pretty safe, you know, for a long time, right.

Alex Schleifer:

You know, fixing our physical infrastructures

Brian Morrissey:

Oh, no, no, no.

Brian Morrissey:

I'm talking about knowledge

Alex Schleifer:

all that stuff.

Alex Schleifer:

So, so, so, but I, I think, you know, as a recommendation, that's also a good path to take if you're in the laptop class,

Brian Morrissey:

What am I going to tell these guys to go into HVAC at like 48?

Alex Schleifer:

man, man, it keeps you, it keeps you moving.

Alex Schleifer:

no, the, the main thing I, I, I recommend all the time is that just like, I think, specifically for designers is to just make stuff.

Alex Schleifer:

Like just start making things.

Alex Schleifer:

Things, right?

Alex Schleifer:

Like I think everybody should have like one, two, or three entrepreneurial side gigs where you're learning the tools and you're learning what's available, and you're building something, and you're making something real.

Alex Schleifer:

So much time is spent and when people have the most amount of energy trying to learn the things you need to do to get to a job so that finally at some point you'll be able to make things, but by the time you get there, you're being pressured to become a manager.

Alex Schleifer:

So you're not thinking about making things anymore and just.

Alex Schleifer:

Making shit is such a powerful thing to do.

Alex Schleifer:

And today we have all the tools in place.

Alex Schleifer:

If you're interested in moving into technology and becoming a product manager, whatever the role turns out to be, and you're not using cursor or, or chat GPT to start building your own products and having your own ideas and developing that intuition, then you're wasting your time, you know?

Alex Schleifer:

And if you're going to college to start learning about these things, unless you know, you want to become kind of like a deep AI engineer or stuff like that.

Alex Schleifer:

You're also wasting your time.

Alex Schleifer:

I think you, you just need the thing about when you, when you set yourself an ambition and you decide to do it, and then you figure out what you have to learn to get there.

Alex Schleifer:

It's just such a better way to develop skills.

Alex Schleifer:

And at the end of the day, if you have skills and you have more tools, you'll be able to, to be more valuable to an organization or to yourself, whatever you built.

Troy Young:

Hey, Alex, on that point, I want to call out a new segment on the

Troy Young:

podcast called random, random media item of the week.

Troy Young:

That

Troy Young:

is really a beautiful thing that I think supports your your comment about a life of, of making an art and what it means to kind of let things into the world.

Troy Young:

And I discovered it.

Troy Young:

I think it was from Taylor Lorenz's email newsletter.

Troy Young:

And it was a 19 minute talk on YouTube that I would encourage.

Troy Young:

I don't know if you guys have watched it, but I would encourage everybody to watch it.

Troy Young:

And it's from this guy named CabSassersar, Sasser, who's one of the founders of an app development company and game company called Panic.

Alex Schleifer:

Oh yeah.

Troy Young:

And, and, and he's a quick, he's a he's a, quirky dude and they've made some really interesting things.

Cable Sasser:

and there was this mural on the wall that,

Cable Sasser:

I don't even know, oh my god, okay.

Cable Sasser:

This mural was better than it had any right to be.

Cable Sasser:

It was the Sistine Chapel of McDonald's wall art.

Cable Sasser:

The, the brush strokes are incredible, the lighting, and I'm, I'm, I'm actually not joking.

Cable Sasser:

The lighting, I love this, I love the, the hat.

Cable Sasser:

Nobody remembers Captain Crook anymore and that's fine.

Cable Sasser:

But this pose, I couldn't stop thinking about this pose.

Cable Sasser:

It's just incredible.

Cable Sasser:

Oh man, there's whatever is going on.

Cable Sasser:

There, and then there was a name in the corner.

Cable Sasser:

Which is surprising to me, for a piece of art in a McDonald's.

Cable Sasser:

There was a name in the corner, Wes Cook.

Troy Young:

There's an event called XOXO I don't know the event.

Troy Young:

But he presents at it.

Troy Young:

And the gist of it is, is he goes into a McDonald's in Washington State and discovers this glorious piece of art on the wall.

Troy Young:

And it's a kind of Washington kind of diorama.

Troy Young:

Of McDonald's characters and he's like, holy shit, the brushstrokes, the lighting, the depiction of Hamburger and grimace and all of these characters and Ronald McDonald is milking a cow and, Apparently, so he, he starts to research this person who, who painted it and turns out that this guy led a kind of lonely life of creation in Los Angeles and was responsible for, for many things, including like environments at Disney Japan and, this, you know, crazy kid shows and all of this stuff, but, you know.

Troy Young:

wasn't, there's no Wikipedia page, there's nothing written about him.

Troy Young:

And it turned out he found all of his drawings on eBay and bought them all.

Troy Young:

Anyway, it's a long story about, the two things that are legacies of people, the time you die and the last time someone says your name.

Troy Young:

And, He found this guy and kind of, like pointed a light at a very incredible life and it was all sort of circumstantial from like falling into this, you know, McDonald's in Washington.

Troy Young:

on a road trip and it's an amazing product.

Troy Young:

It's an amazing story about the sort of human creative spirit and it's really, really great.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

And I would say panic is you know, the company I wish, I was running.

Alex Schleifer:

they just, you know, do the stuff that they want to work on, they built it.

Alex Schleifer:

It's commercially successful.

Troy Young:

did you see the little hardware they made called panic play date?

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah.

Troy Young:

It's got a crank on the side.

Troy Young:

It was done.

Troy Young:

It designed by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Troy Young:

Those guys.

Alex Schleifer:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle engineering.

Alex Schleifer:

Yes.

Troy Young:

Yeah.

Troy Young:

Yeah.

Troy Young:

and it, and it updates two games a week for 12 weeks.

Troy Young:

You don't know what you're going to get.

Troy Young:

It's a wonderful kind of serendipitous product.

Troy Young:

It's really cool.

Troy Young:

Really cool

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah,

Troy Young:

that was my random media item of the week connected

Troy Young:

to your,

Brian Morrissey:

Is this connect to good product?

Brian Morrissey:

Is this like,

Troy Young:

no,

Alex Schleifer:

because we

Troy Young:

product.

Troy Young:

we have a different, well, we had a segment, we, we we have to wrap it up, but we also had a little brief segment on mentorship.

Troy Young:

we wanted to talk a little bit about mentorship because I don't know, Brian, you think it's, it's a, not a thing or it's overrated or,

Brian Morrissey:

I'm, I'm against it having been productized

Brian Morrissey:

as part of HR.

Brian Morrissey:

No, I don't.

Brian Morrissey:

And I've always, I mean, I think Gen X people think mentorship is bullshit in their hearts.

Brian Morrissey:

I think they do.

Troy Young:

Do you have a mentor, Alex?

Alex Schleifer:

I counted you as a mentor.

Alex Schleifer:

I

Troy Young:

Well, that's, but I don't think it can be abusive.

Alex Schleifer:

no, I don't have a mentor.

Alex Schleifer:

I don't believe I, I, I mean, I've, I've probably been doing what people would call mentorship with some folks, but I always find that like a little bit of a loose term.

Alex Schleifer:

I like advisory or apprenticeship, like stuff that

Brian Morrissey:

Apprenticeship makes more sense.

Brian Morrissey:

And I think we need more apprenticeship,

Troy Young:

But you've had good bosses.

Troy Young:

Like I've had good bosses that are, that are kind of mentors in a way, right?

Troy Young:

Mark Kingdon for a time from organics.

Troy Young:

Steve Schwartz at Horthurst.

Troy Young:

My collaboration with Matt Sanchez over many, many years.

Troy Young:

Matt's now at Yahoo.

Troy Young:

Those were all sort of collaborations, mentorships, bosses, you know,

Troy Young:

those are important.

Troy Young:

But.

Troy Young:

Well,

Alex Schleifer:

think Brian is

Alex Schleifer:

talking about it the way it's been kind of like weaponized

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, it's become productized and it's like you get matched to a mentor and now I'm going to meet you're my mentee and like it becomes just another HR exercise when it enters the

Troy Young:

and I'm, I'm thinking about it, like, I had a sort of personal slash professional problem and I called a guy who is a very walking just a really smart person and a really successful person, and he in a half an hour deconstructed it for me and helped me see my dysfunction in this process and help me understand kind of what was really happening.

Troy Young:

And, I found that kind of mentor like relationship to be really valuable.

Troy Young:

And that happened last week.

Troy Young:

and then I've also been watching like my son, you know, he, he, Seb makes, makes records and wants to be a producer and, you know, has been kind of isolating himself, playing every, he plays everything.

Troy Young:

He sings the backups.

Troy Young:

He does all the production, all that stuff.

Troy Young:

And a friend of mine, who's a very successful, music producer said, you got to stop doing that.

Troy Young:

I'm going to send you, Seb's going to Indiana tomorrow and is going to be, The guy connecting cables at a, at this crazy studio in Indiana, Fort Wayne, and is going to go in there just to learn.

Troy Young:

And the point of this person, this person's point to Seb, this, this, this music producer was like, you don't know anything and you need to go learn things from other people.

Troy Young:

And so that's apprenticeship, I guess,

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, because I think apprenticeship is different than mentorship.

Brian Morrissey:

Apprenticeship is work,

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah,

Brian Morrissey:

when we think about like colleges, like more colleges should look like Drexel right than like Columbia.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

Drexel is, is, is a great engineering school, and they send you off, half of it is working.

Brian Morrissey:

It's apprenticeship.

Brian Morrissey:

You're in, you're in companies, you're doing real work.

Brian Morrissey:

Not like getting coffee, you're doing real engineering work.

Alex Schleifer:

I think mentorship, like strokes, the ego of the mentor,

Alex Schleifer:

you know, I think in some ways, it's just become like such a common question.

Alex Schleifer:

Like who's your mentor?

Alex Schleifer:

but yeah, I agree.

Alex Schleifer:

I wish we had apprenticeship, especially now, I think, you know, and it goes back to my point about doing stuff.

Alex Schleifer:

It's just having just like.

Alex Schleifer:

in your youth, apprenticeship where you dropped in, like, like, like Seb, like putting cables, like making sure that stuff works, building stuff, being, you know, having your work actually, be impactful and be, you know, reviewed by someone and a mentor feels like just kind of this weird therapy otherwise.

Alex Schleifer:

so I've changed my mind around it.

Alex Schleifer:

I felt it was.

Alex Schleifer:

useful back in the day, but I always, I always kind of wished we went back to, to apprenticeship and that, that should be the way things work.

Brian Morrissey:

Well, I think we're gonna have to, right?

Brian Morrissey:

Because of the way the hollowing out of a lot of companies is happening.

Brian Morrissey:

a lot of the roles that were played by incredibly junior people in some of these organizations, they're getting wiped away.

Brian Morrissey:

Right?

Brian Morrissey:

So, like, the, the, again, that ladder.

Brian Morrissey:

Doesn't really exist.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, I mean, what Andrew was talking about was a lot of junior roles being automated away.

Brian Morrissey:

Well, you know, because they could hire a ton of him and he called him 23 year olds, but like, I thought there were 25 but okay, you know, agencies were always filled with, with, with all these people.

Brian Morrissey:

Right?

Brian Morrissey:

And because they have to do a lot of, I don't want to say it's cognitive manual labor, but some of it kind of is, and you sort of learn the ropes and that doesn't really, you I can see that sort of disappearing.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, if you think about, like, let's say in, like, newsrooms, you get super junior people, they're doing a lot of aggregation at the end of the day, right?

Brian Morrissey:

So they don't, they're not experts in anything.

Brian Morrissey:

and they have to, you know, get that, get there and, you know, That's going to be taken away.

Brian Morrissey:

So I don't see any,

Troy Young:

Yeah, but I love this idea of unstructured kind of guidance combined like in some cases, maybe it's, it's tough truths or tough talks combined with love that to me represents what mentorship is, which is, you know, I can help you see another way and I care about you.

Troy Young:

and I'm going to tell you things that maybe you don't want to hear.

Troy Young:

And I know a lot of people throw around the term, Oh, my mentor, he's my mentor.

Troy Young:

In some ways it's, it's kind of an error.

Troy Young:

There's an arrogance to it.

Troy Young:

Like if your mentor is successful enough, maybe that says something about you.

Troy Young:

But, any, anyway, I think it's, it's a nice idea.

Troy Young:

I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand, but

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, I think maybe we're mostly annoyed with way the term is being used and the triteness of it all.

Alex Schleifer:

I think there's definitely like an ego exchange in that like this person's my mentor and i'm this person's mentor, right?

Alex Schleifer:

which has devalued it somewhat but

Brian Morrissey:

but there's also a lack of a loss of agency in my view in that, in that it's, there's a lot of like, appliers out there, like people who are really good in the system.

Brian Morrissey:

I think what you were talking about, maybe to try to.

Brian Morrissey:

Pull off the weave is is that the system was really set up to be really good at applying you.

Brian Morrissey:

You did your you got the grades.

Brian Morrissey:

You did the required extracurriculars in order to apply.

Brian Morrissey:

So some group at a university would say yes, you get in and then you go through college and you.

Brian Morrissey:

you get the, you get the, you apply to the internships, you get the right internships, you get like, okay, everyone gets good grades, I guess, in college these days, and then you apply, and then you apply to McKinsey, or you apply to HBS, and you see it on all, and like, none of that ends up.

Brian Morrissey:

You know, having the same kind of value, I think, in, in this world, like being really good at applying for things and having to me, like wanting to have be handed a mentor through a mentorship program.

Brian Morrissey:

It's just another application process, and I don't think the world is going to be as kind to, to those who are really good at applying, than those who are a little bit more feral, I guess, out there doing stuff.

Troy Young:

should we just

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah, just do good

Brian Morrissey:

Alright, let's just do good product.

Alex Schleifer:

wrap it

Troy Young:

I don't know anything about, you know, his affairs or any alleged connection to, to Epstein or any of that stuff.

Brian Morrissey:

Oh my God.

Brian Morrissey:

This is, this is going to be a great, good product.

Troy Young:

don't

Alex Schleifer:

woah, woah, woah,

Brian Morrissey:

What is it?

Brian Morrissey:

Bill Clinton,

Alex Schleifer:

shit.

Alex Schleifer:

All I know is that he's a good friend.

Brian Morrissey:

I'm

Brian Morrissey:

like, this could be like, this this could be like a hundred different dudes.

Alex Schleifer:

Jesus.

Troy Young:

So, so

Troy Young:

to me, Bill Gates is a good product and.

Troy Young:

And, and,

Troy Young:

and, and I, and I find that in interviews, he, he, he has a kind of nice mix of nerdiness and authority, but is personable, and he's incredibly clear and smart, and I find when he talks, it's usually You know, I think he's a good communicator and it's valuable.

Troy Young:

And so, so the reason I like, there's a lot of billionaires that get into the media business, right?

Troy Young:

So, you know, Elon got into the media business and Bezos got into the media business and Benioff got into the media business and Trump got into the media business and Balmer got into the media business and Bill Gates is in the media business and, You know, he has this show called what's next the future with bill gates on netflix and it's it's it's a great

Troy Young:

And he was interviewed by the one and only sanctimonious Kara Swisher.

Troy Young:

and I, I found him to be, you know, he's like a terrific interview and each of the episodes.

Troy Young:

It, I feel like he's a billionaire that goes into media for good reason.

Troy Young:

Just kind of like the Balmer thing, which is to, to help shine lights on the light on important changes in society that are occurring because of changes in technology and the implications of that and making it understandable.

Troy Young:

And so each of the episodes kind of focuses on a different challenge, like artificial intelligence, climate change, misinformation.

Troy Young:

And a lot of times like in misinformation, it's like, I don't understand it.

Troy Young:

But let's see if we can understand it together.

Troy Young:

You know, his focus on, you know, eradicating disease.

Troy Young:

And there's another one on income inequality.

Troy Young:

And so he finds big thinkers in each of those categories.

Troy Young:

And some of them have, you know, different points of view.

Troy Young:

And, he gets a perspective in it.

Troy Young:

And it was a sort of eye opening experience for him.

Troy Young:

And I think for the audience.

Troy Young:

And I think that's, this is the right way for a billionaire to get into media.

Troy Young:

And so to me, Bill Gates.

Troy Young:

You know, obviously at a stage in life where, you know, he's giving away more money than he's taking in incredibly, you know, incredibly rich.

Troy Young:

He's very human, right?

Troy Young:

Like he's been mistakes.

Troy Young:

I'm sure.

Troy Young:

but, he's an admirable character and, he's contributing to the world as opposed to taking away and, and it doesn't feel like media as.

Troy Young:

You know, as a vanity play, it feels like media that, that, that's kind of useful.

Troy Young:

And for that reason,

Troy Young:

I think this week, Bill Gates is my

Brian Morrissey:

But he's a very controversial character these days.

Brian Morrissey:

I think it's impossible not to be a controversial character beyond the Epstein stuff.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, there's a lot.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, they have spent too much time on X, but like, you know, there's a large group of people who believe that, like, he's trying to push vaccines on everyone and that he's making money off them and that he's buying up all the farmland and that this is all just a

Troy Young:

Most of that Brian, by the way, is, is, is misinformation, fake news and

Alex Schleifer:

yeah, this is, this

Brian Morrissey:

Okay.

Brian Morrissey:

Well, Peter Thiel, you know, Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel,

Brian Morrissey:

was also sort of trafficking in this, so I don't know, I mean, I,

Brian Morrissey:

I'm, the, the VCs are the public intellectuals

Troy Young:

it's, it's a guy, a guy with billions of dollars is really looking to, to, to make money off of vaccines.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

I guess the point that I was trying to make is that it's nearly impossible.

Brian Morrissey:

I don't think it's possible to be like a billionaire and, and, and not be a recluse without being a controversial character at this point.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, there's no, like, sort of, I mean, are there any sort of who are the good billionaires left?

Brian Morrissey:

Like, yeah, Buffett doesn't get a lot of, like, grief.

Brian Morrissey:

That's true.

Troy Young:

right?

Troy Young:

I think Buffett would be the example.

Troy Young:

Anyway, Bill Gates is a good product.

Troy Young:

You, you guys can,

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, maybe he's also, he's also a quirky little dude.

Alex Schleifer:

Maybe he's got his little things going on.

Alex Schleifer:

I don't know.

Troy Young:

Can you like, you get, you mean he gets his freak on?

Alex Schleifer:

and maybe he gets his freak on and that, in ways that we wouldn't agree with, it's hard, it's hard, you know, it's, it

Brian Morrissey:

It's hard to, it's hard to divorce it from like a little bit

Brian Morrissey:

of

Brian Morrissey:

reputation

Alex Schleifer:

same thing.

Alex Schleifer:

Like we just, it's, last 10 years has been all, all about like.

Alex Schleifer:

Us like wrangling with the fact that we needed to divorce the art from the artist and then the achievement from the achieve, from the achiever.

Alex Schleifer:

Like, I mean, like I have my views on Elon and then he lands a fucking rockets and

Alex Schleifer:

chopsticks.

Alex Schleifer:

Like, I'm like, how do I like

Alex Schleifer:

disconnect?

Brian Morrissey:

for that.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah, how do I disconnect the fact that he's also like, just like a horrible human being?

Alex Schleifer:

Like, how do I put these, take these things apart?

Alex Schleifer:

it's, it's all very confusing.

Alex Schleifer:

So the construct of Bill Gates as a, as an intellectual, I would agree is like, he's, he's, he's very focused and I think very valuable.

Alex Schleifer:

it's hard to, have an opinion about the person.

Alex Schleifer:

Otherwise, I don't know.

Alex Schleifer:

I think if we,

Troy Young:

know,

Troy Young:

I, I've, I've now gone, I've gone, I've gone from like, I don't know, pomegranates or something like that to human being

Alex Schleifer:

to, yes, maybe

Alex Schleifer:

one day we'll actually recommend a product.

Troy Young:

Yeah.

Troy Young:

Well, we, when we see nice products, we single them out.

Troy Young:

And I think last, last week, and I got some feedback on this and so did Steve, by the way.

Troy Young:

people appreciated us having Steve on and he, I think he laid it down with like the super glue and all that stuff.

Troy Young:

So,

Alex Schleifer:

That was great.

Alex Schleifer:

That was That was, true, true brilliance.

Alex Schleifer:

I love that.

Alex Schleifer:

You know what's a bad product?

Alex Schleifer:

My cat.

Troy Young:

yeah, you

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

All right.

Brian Morrissey:

This is fun.

Brian Morrissey:

Have a good week.

Alex Schleifer:

Like and subscribe.

Alex Schleifer:

Also, you can watch us on YouTube now so you can

Brian Morrissey:

also for, for just a little bit longer, you get 20 percent off your TRB pro, subscription.

Brian Morrissey:

And I will, give partial credit to the PVA podcast, for any of the

Alex Schleifer:

Oh shit, yeah, since we're making money out of that, we're all gonna start chilling it.

Alex Schleifer:

It's a

Alex Schleifer:

great read.

Alex Schleifer:

I recommend it.

Alex Schleifer:

I'd pay full price for it.

Brian Morrissey:

You're not, but you sued.

Alex Schleifer:

All right,

Brian Morrissey:

Thanks.

Alex Schleifer:

bye

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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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