This podcast is brought to you by the Albany Public Library main branch and the generosity of listeners like you. God daddy, these people talk as much as you do! Razib Khan’s Unsupervised Learning.
Hey everybody this is Razib with the Unsupervised Learning podcast. Actually I'm going to do something a little different today. What I usually do with the intro also, can you please rate or review my podcast on all the different platforms? I know I don't hock that a lot. But if I don't, people just stop rating it. And, you know, everyone else's ratings are going up and mine are staying static. So I gotta keep up with the Joneses and the whatever's right. But, you know, now, onto the main show. I am here with Default Friend, Katherine Dee. She is a freelance writer, and she writes a lot of different places, we're gonna be talking about one particular place. But Katherine, can you tell us like all the different places you're writing at right now?
Yeah, I write regularly for Return. Tablet, The Washington Examiner, Unherd, The Spectator. And then wherever else asks me, like, Compact, which we're gonna be talking about today?
Yeah, yeah. So um, you know, you're known as a culture writer. On the internet, I guess it's one of the things you do, you have a substack, you have a podcast, and you're on a lot of podcasts, you're all over the place. But I do want the listeners to know that I know you from before you blew up, I would say, back when we lived in the same town, and I hung out with you a couple of times. And you were doing the career transition thing. So I just want people to know, we do know each other a little bit, IRL, aside from our internet connections, which are pretty extensive. Insofar as I've actually contributed to some of the same publications as you, we share a lot of common friends. And we interact with each other on a site called, am I going to call it X, I'll call it X, but Twitter X, though, the, the website formerly known as Twitter, and that's where we're going to be talking about, because you have a piece of Contact. But first, I actually want to start out with a more general question, because this is something actually talked to Marc Andreessen, about on Clubhouse. And you you cover a lot of internet culture, a lot of weird things that I don't really know about, honestly. And, you know, so that's a particular type of culture, right. But what pop culture is not internet culture today? Like, is there anything that is actually mass media pop culture that does not have an internet component or internet medium?
I don't think so. I wrote an article for The Washington Examiner recently. That was basically like, all culture writers are internet culture writers at this point, I think there's like two different, like textures to it, right? Like you could, there's writing about sort of internet native culture. And then there's more of a commercial internet, like the normie internet. And then there's a non normie internet. And I think that's the actual fault line.
Yeah, so you're talking about like, say, going to Amazon and buying something that's the commercial internet. And then, or, I don't know, reading the New York Times. But then there's a whole other aspect of weird people with anons on social media. But there's also the Instagram world, which is totally different. Presumably, there's a Snapchat world, which I do have snap installed, I think, but I've literally used it once. So there's all of these subcultures that are out there. And we're going to be talking mostly about the Twitter subculture, which is one particular subculture, but when we're talking about Internet cultures, this is a vast archipelago. Right?
Yeah. I mean, it's it's so huge. It's, I mean, more people should be working on internet studies. I think it's kind of remarkable that it's actually like, relatively small.
Yeah. So I mean, for example, you know, 4chan got really big. I mean, 4chan has been around for a long time, but fortunately, got really big, you know, during the Trump, you know, period era. I don't know what you want to call it, because a lot of these young shitlords their memes, got mainlined into Twitter, and then from Twitter and went into the broader culture, but people actually don't know that it's from 4chan. You know, and so that's an interesting aspect to me. It's so ubiquitous, but it's also so dispersed that people don't know the different connections, and it's kind of like this big blob, and people are insulated from the mechanics of the blob.
Yeah, it is really weird. And there's a I mean, there's also this other thing where it's like, there's so much of it that like, actually, it's like on one hand, it's I think it's fine that you that you don't know everything, right? Because it actually these things go so deep, it would be like impossible. Like, like for like, for example, like, I actually think 4chan got big with all their like Scientology kind of pranks, right. But I mean, did it? Or was that just my particular bubble? Right. But then on the other hand, I feel like people still don't take the internet seriously. Which is like a weird, a weird thing, because it's kind of we're kind of always ambiently online. At this point. There is no real, like, logging off.
Yeah, I mean, are you a little resentful? Because you're an internet culture writer?
Um, no, I'm not. I'm not too resentful. I mean, I've never, I, I feel like since I kind of, I sort of started as like a Twitter personality. Like, just to be like, totally transparent. And then I eventually became known for my writing. For me, it's almost like, the not being taken totally seriously is par for the course. Right. But yeah, I mean, it I think I think people would probably, you know, it would probably serve people well, to get just a touch more seriously.
Yeah. So I mean, in terms of your origins, and I don't want to, I don't want to, you know, it's not that big of a deal. Although I do have to say, as I said, I've known you I mean, I think we've known each other to various degrees for like, over five years now and you do have a relatively Yeah.
I just say I think I first met you. I wasn't in person, but like I e-met you in like, 2015.
Yeah, we probably interacted already in 2015. So I guess that's, that's, that's a long time. That is a long time. I had fewer children in 2015 then I do now. But yeah. That's so that's, that's how I think of it, you know. But, you know, your, your, your profile has kind of gone up exponentially. You know, I remember. Yeah, I remember. Like, I've had friends who have like, been surprised that I know you because you're someone to know. And I'm just like, well, that's cool. But I mean, I did know her before she was a thing on the internet. So it you know, it's just interesting to see that that particular trajectory of how you came out of if I'm correct, you came out of like Discord, the Discord world?
Sort of, I mean, I got - I've been on Twitter since 2007. And I've been I have like, various, like anonymous accounts, but I started being more open on Twitter, because I was in Oliver Traldi’s Discord server.
Yeah. And Oliver has been on this podcast. So again, a lot of this I don't want to say incestuous, there are billions of people in the world. But apparently, there's only a couple of 1000 interesting ones. I don't know, I just seem to it seems like everyone knows everyone else in my world. And maybe that's because small world topologies work out where we’re in these bubbles. But that's how I feel with you, in terms of you came out of this particular subculture that I was adjacent to, you know, people like Cody Ross, Oliver Traldi, the both of them who've been on this podcast, actually. So that's weird, but it is what it is. And now you're a internet culture writer that has, I mean, you know, I'm just gonna say like, You're bigger than them, you know, so you never know, you never know, who you're who you're mentoring in your Discord is gonna get, you know, bigger and become a profile. Like, you know, you had a normal kind of corporate. I mean, it wasn't a big company. But you know, you had an agency, I kind of wasn't going to ask you this question, because think about it, but you had a normal life with a normal person job. And now you're doing this, and I, you know, I have a startup as the most of listeners know, but then I also have, whatever this is, whatever I'm doing here, you know. And so, how is how is that sometimes? Do you ever think about it? Do you ever reflect on it? Like, how do you explain it to people?
Um, I mean, I just, I actually don't interact with a lot of people now who aren't in this world, which is actually kind of crazy. But I sometimes miss the normalcy of corporate life. After the agency I worked for, like a couple of like, large tech companies. And I mean, there's, there's definitely like a comfort to that, right? Because you get the like, there's like gelato on campus, and you ride your little bike around, and there's something like very like idyllic about that lifestyle. And now I just feel like, I'm like a neat, who has to, like, you know, do a bunch of work like three days a week, and then otherwise, it's, it feels a lot like college. Yeah.
Yeah, no, I know what you're talking. I mean, it's interesting, because, you know, the internet opened up the possibility for everyone to be kind of their own entrepreneur in a way, you know, entrepreneur with their skills with their services with their hustles. And that's kind of cool. It's kind of liberating, but it's also a lot - it’s really stressful. And there are people that go between the two between corporate have this like kind of hustle life. And there's others who prefer one way or the other, you know, and you don't know who you are until you do it.
Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, I feel like I always wanted the like, especially when I was at the agency, which I really, I hate it. I mean, I did not, I did not have a good time in Texas for most of it, it got a lot better towards the end, but I like really miss having the freedom to do stuff. And now I feel like I have all the freedom in the world. And I'm like, damn, I could use some structure.
Yeah, I know. I know the feeling. So I want to ask, you know, we will we will get to the piece in Compact just for people who want to jump ahead. ‘Why you're never leaving Twitter’, Katherine Dee, it's in Compact August 10 2023. I actually do like Compact, I do subscribe to Compact, even though they did kind of attack me in that piece with Michael Lind, just like I was a little part of it. But that was kind of annoying because and you know, the people Compact or whatever. It's the world as it is. But it's - I’m not gonna say it's good. Because like, whether it's good or bad is depending on where you start out from. It's interesting. I think you can't say that. Okay. But I want to ask you about online personas and stuff like that. Because I have a lot of Zoomer friends. Not a lot, but I have some Zoomer friends, I have a lot of Millennial friends, you’re a Millennial. I'm Gen X myself. And I think one of the issues and questions that I really do think about is online personas versus offline personas, how they're merging how they're bifurcating, and how that's affecting people. You know, can you talk about that?
Yeah, I think it's different for everyone. I think for some people, that like, truly, their their profiles are an extension of themselves. And I think those people probably have a harder time with everything. I also think like, weirdly enough, people who are most likely to fall into that trap, are like journalists where like, like, truly, they are their Twitter selves. And they're also like the most likely group to receive just like heinous amounts of hate, that is very difficult to make sense of, and at the same time is pretty meaningless. But then I think for other people, it's more of like a laboratory to experiment with, like, maybe like a more distilled version of yourself. Or, you know, maybe it's not like literally who you are, but there's a certain emotional truth to your internet persona. For other people. They're just like blowing off steam, like a great example of this would be Radfem Hitler on Twitter/X, who is for anyone who doesn't know who she is, she just like, all day is just like railing on men. And she I mean, the rate that this woman comes out with, like criticisms of men, is really impressive. And it's always very funny, that she's another person I know, in real life, and she's really sweet and like, like a demure like Midwestern girl, and you would never, like even the way she treats men in real life, you would never assume. And it really is a character. It's it's actually she's like getting onto a stage and it's a bit even if they're, you know, it's not she's not lying, but she is playing a role. So it depends on your approach, I think.
Yeah, I've I've talked to Radfem Clubhouse, not many, many times, but, you know, probably a dozen times. And, yeah, she does have a Midwestern affect. And she does seem sweet and nice. So it's interesting, because I do follow the account. And I just so people get a sense, it's kind of you kind of like take misogyny, and then you invert it. I mean, she's can be funny, but it's a very negative take on males. And sometimes I do feel that it's pretty, the joke is pretty obvious. Insofar as ‘you're an incel and here's why you should be enjoy it’ or something like that, you know, like, you know, just ‘just accept who you are, you're a piece of crap, because you're a man and that's what you were born to be’ like weird things. Like, you know, I'm exaggerating. But, you know, I mean, that's kind of the attitude. So it's obviously not real. I know, she has real life and real interactions with men and whatnot. So I don't get the whole stick, I guess, because I do follow the account. And I just see that stuff. I don't know this person in real life. And so that's a common issue. You don't know the person in real life. You think that what they're like on the internet is going to be what they're like in real life. And there's a lot of people that are very, very opposite. And then there's some people who are the same like you were saying, some people are a little exaggerated. I would say, I'm harsher on the internet than I am in real life, but I don't think I'm really that different. So it's like it's a whole spectrum, right?
Yeah, it just depends on I mean, this sounds like such a cop out answer, but it like kind of does depend on like your needs and like, why you're using it and what platform you're on. There's so there's so many different, different variables.
Yeah, so I mean, these are the nuances that are going to be like, oh, what to a lot of boomers. So for example, Instagram, I mean, outside of maybe teenagers. Instagram is a little. I would say it's a bit saccharin. By which I mean, so if Twitter is snark, Instagram of saccharin. So Twitter, you're trying to be clever, witty in the short amount of characters. But on Instagram, you need to show everyone your beautiful cupcake. You know, it's like your whole life is a beautiful pink cupcake with blue sprinkles, and a delicious looking glazed, obviously, it's not it's all fake. But that's what you do. That's what I do. I do a lot of food Instagramming and people who follow me on Instagram, which is a private account, so don't try to don't try to follow me, by the way. And if I don't know you, I'm not going to accept just so you guys know. But in any case, so Instagram is that one one face. On Twitter, you have the short form comments, like kind of snarky kind of harsh. And then you know, I have substack you have substack does a more long form place to put your thoughts out? Right. So, you know, medium affects the message.
Um, yeah, and I mean, I, I think like it's, it's almost even more more broad than being able to assign a specific mood to it. I think sometimes you can, but like, there's many different ways to use Instagram. I think a lot of consumers use it in this sort of surreal, detached way. Like, you know, sometimes the images are like, it's like a reverse curation. They're almost like purposely kind of like wacky, and like, they don't look good as a way to identify against the millennial curation. I mean, I could, we could go down rabbit holes for every platform, and I'll spare your audience that but yeah, it's, it's there's so many different forms of expression.
So before we go on, and I want to go to, I want to go to Twitter, I want to go to the Compact piece. But I want to just like have a not a placeholder, but just like a little information here, just so people get a sense, like 8.some billion people in the world. Facebook claims that has 3 billion active users, even if that's only like half true, whatever. Still like billions, right? YouTube has to pick up 2.2 million. MAUs so like monthly active users as well. WhatsApp, 2 billion Instagram 2 billion Wechat 1.2 billion, that's just basically China I think. TikTok has a billion. So that's like every single teenager in the world or something. Twitter, Twitter X, probably on the order of 450 million. So we are going to be talking about a platform about a social media app that is dwarfed by all the others. But people talk about it a lot. And well, let's just start out there. Why do people talk about it a lot. There's actually a lot in your piece about why people talk about Twitter all the time, even though there's not that many people on Twitter.
Yeah, it's it's it will just like Clubhouse, like you were referencing, it's not how many people are on it, it's who's on it. And what it's used for, it's used for not just media distribution, but idea generation. And this really hit like a fever pitch and the Trump administration, but it was happening like much, you know, much earlier than that. And it's it's still happening, right? In fact, arguably, it's gotten it's become worse. And that just sort of is a companion to TikTok in terms of like, where are people getting ideas to write about?
Yeah, so I saw like, I'll give you a concrete example. This is try to keep the podcast evergreen but you know, this is gonna be dated. People aren't going to remember this but my friend Inez Stepman, who was on this podcast recently, she tweeted about how young starlets like the one in Snow White, what's her name? They have wide set eyes. Right now, a lot of them have wide set eyes, or Rachel's Ziegler, as does you know, the woman in Little Mermaid and stuff like that. Okay. There's a bunch of these women, Anya Taylor Joy, you know, her too, okay, so they have wide set eyes. Inez Stepman just made a comment asking. And eventually it became a huge thing. Some like influencer bros said it's because they look like herbivores, and so you can be a predator on them. Okay, that's weird. And then eventually it got to Rolling Stone and Rolling Stone wrote an article about phrenologists on Twitter. And so Inez Stepman had become a phrenologists. Because she had talked about this, and it was really because I know her and we were like talking about this. It was a very offhand comment that somehow triggered something and now it's like it's become - so the for the people want to know Look it up. “Why are the girlies so into phonology, self appointed experts in a discredited pseudoscience about skull measuring have undertaken social media” Like it was a tweet. Yeah.
It's like what pisses me off about the like, like right wing extremism online beat is like there's always a very interesting kernel of truth like people do like the word physiognomy has come back. And there are people who are not even within like, right wing Twitter, which is, of course, all journalists eyes are on it at all times. Right? Like, for some reason, like I see TikToks about physiognomy all the time, and if they feel like astrology videos, and that's actually like, Well, why is that and there's probably tons of reasons, like, filters are misleading. So there's maybe a search for some sort of hidden truth. I mean, there's, you could, there could be a million like, really interesting reasons for it has nothing to do with like racism, and they just miss because you're so like, zoomed in on this, like, let's paint like random, like mildly conservative people on Twitter as like, these heinous racist, like, but like, always the MO, they miss the interesting story. I mean, I think there's even an interesting story on like, Inez was right, like, people do, like, this is a trending look, is there a reason for that? Like, they kinda look like anime characters. Is there something there? I don't know. It just it always really, like frustrates me, like, just the missed opportunity.
Yeah, so I will say, I will say in terms of Twitter, it's, it's interesting. You know, I know they're there. And I use them for my substack pieces, but the extended tweets, those are really worth that people are still staying to 250 and below 256, whatever it is, and you know, these like short little comments, and you can say a lot of different things and intend a lot of different things with these comments. And so you don't know where they're gonna go. You don't really even have control. So it's this chaotic, meme factory that you're just pulling out of, and I think the main issue that I would take with some of the journalistic observations, is that the person making the comment is intending what played out at all. Usually they're intending nothing it's literally just like a brain fart.
Well, yeah, I mean, especially Rolling Stone like has this like just ridiculous hard on for like, you know, like fanfiction about right wing Twitter, right and not you know, not to let right when put her off the hook there's, there's like, there's plenty going on there. It's just they always miss the they always miss the story and they always miss identify people have nothing to do with it. I think it's a shame because there's, there's definitely like real trends that happen and they also - but I will say in their defense, they don't have the time, as I myself don't have the time, to like, spend, like the time like marinating within these subcultures to write like very robust investigative pieces. And that's part of the problem, right? Like not only is there no time to go out on the field as in, like in the physical world, unless you're very privileged, and you have like a very rarefied position. There's also not enough time to even like play anthropologist, or investigative journalist online, because you need to be like producing at this sort of insane rate.
Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. Do you know, this is, again, out of the - outside of the list of notes that we have, but I'm gonna ask you Do you know, the stuff that happened with Raw egg Nationalist and think, New Founding?
I didn't. I didn't see what I know. There was some kind of thread and some sort of drama there. But I don't know exactly what what happened.
I'll give - I don't know too - Like, again, I got, I literally spent like 20 minutes. It was just like, it's, it's it's really, really difficult, really difficult to keep track of what's going on, on the internet. But journalist had started getting into it. And so I was like, What's going on here? I didn't know much about raw egg nationalists. He's some far right figure. I think it of him like BAP except he's more into fitness, I guess, or eating? I don't know. So I don't know much about this. But he got associated. He got into a partnership with New Founding, which is a right wing. Kind of like Think Tank run by Nate Fischer. I know Nate a little bit. He's in the Claremont circle is what I would say he lives in Dallas. He comes down to Austin every now and then. He's a very serious reformed Christian. So you know, Protestant Calvinist, and that's New Founding’s thing, and they're getting attacked by these other Christians who I don't know. Because like, I don't know Christian Twitter, okay. So they're gonna He's for being associated with a Nazi. And then they go through. They go through this book or this magazine, that Raw egg publishes and BAP is in it too. And they talked about how there's all this Nazi imagery. And a lot of it looks like to be jokes, but I don't know. You You know, I mean, it's a little awkward because he jokes about Nazis. I don't know. I'm not like really down with that personally. But then there's stuff about oh, there's nudity, obviously. And not obviously, but and then New Founding is Calvinist. So they're attacking them for the association, all this stuff. And after about 20 minutes, I'm just, you know what I, you know what I honestly did, I declared epistemological bankruptcy. I was just like, Okay, I'm just not going to figure this out. I'm just not going to know. Okay, so I am, like, exiting out of this. And I am not going to draw any conclusions, you know, because the only reason that I was interested is I know Nate Fischer somewhat. And I was just curious, and I have no conclusion. And that's just all I'm gonna say, and I wish people would be like that more.
Yeah. I mean, I think like the right wing thing is like a hot topic. And there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of weird stuff going on there. Because it's like, there' - I think there's just so many levels, right. Like, obviously, the BAP circles have a lot of cultural cachet, and conservatives have sort of any right wingers in general have sort of felt for such a long time that they're like terminally uncool. And finally, there's an expression of right wing thought and right wing subcultures that are like, wow, like everyone sort of wants to be not everyone, obviously, right? Not everyone. There's they, they have, they’re cool, right, people are paying attention to them. They're edgy. They're bad boys, right? They also joke or in some cases, like quite seriously flirt with national socialism. And it's just like, it's so hard to know, like, what to what to do with that, or like, where to draw the line? And then like, what is the difference between drawing a personal line and then like being a woke scold? That's another complicated thing. And it's become like, incredible. It's like just a swamp. Like, there's it's so hard to untangle what to do with these things.
Well, also, there are other things. I mean, we're going a little off topic, whatever. This is how the internet is. So let's just go with it. Right? ‘Rich men north of Richmond’ So I, people know that I'm on Twitter, a lot of these a lot of you listeners know that I'm on Twitter. But one thing you have to understand is, I don't really pay attention to a lot of the things that are happening around me too closely. I just tweet, and then I engage the people that engage with me and I look for news, you know, so there's a lot of things that are happening, like, what's Wordle? I still don't know really what Wordle is, okay, not gonna lie. It's Wordle right? okay. Yeah, I don't know what it is. Okay. I see it on my timeline a lot. For awhile. I saw it all the time. I never bothered to figure it out. So there are things that happen that become things. So for example, Rich men north of Richmond, I just ignored it for a while, because I'm like, what's up with the ginger, like this ginger keeps showing up in my in my timeline. So I finally like figured it out. But here's the thing with rich men out of Richmond, or north of Richmond, I actually didn't know if it was like a left wing thing or a right wing thing. Like I could not tell from the song itself. I'm not gonna - maybe I'm just stupid. But I mean, in hindsight, it makes sense. But if you just literally listen to the song, I'm not totally sure. But somehow it became culturally polarized on the internet. And now all the lefties are making fun of it. And all these right wing people are like, Oh, this guy is great. That's pathetic guy is great, you know. So that's just how it is. So sometimes stuff just happens on the internet. And it just happens because it happens. There's no fundamental deeper principle there. So I think that's also part of the problem with trying to understand what's going on. And that's why I try not to understand a lot of it.
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's so ephemeral and like to actually like be paying attention takes up so much mental real estate, like another thing about the Rich men North of Richmond thing is then like, within the sort of like, right wing internet circles. There's like ruralists and urbanites, right. And there's all these like, sort of like labyrinthine, like factions and fights. And it just, it's like, to what end? I mean, that's a sort of a funny question for me to ask, because I kind of professionally pay attention to this stuff. But for like, for you like to what end? Does it - is, you know, to - what's the point, right, there is no point it doesn't really matter, unless you're trying to trace the ecosystem.
Yeah, I mean, sometimes it's, sometimes it can be a little annoying when people allude to a meme that I don't get that I got to go to urban dictionary or whatever. But that's the main functional issue. I think there's been there's been so many times where stuff has happened, where everyone's commenting on it, and I just ignore it, and I don't even remember what it was, you know. There's always something literally every two days every two days there’s something. And yes, if like, I found the story about an article about it, it would have jogged my memory, but there's so unimportant most of the time. It's like, oh, like, some guy made his son eat beans and that was mean. Oh, they're, they're snapping eggs on to kids foreheads, like, these are real things, I think, you know, and I just ignore, because like, what are you going to do? On the other hand? On the other hand? You know, you wrote an article, which, you know, we want to talk about, but X, Twitter, it's a big deal. It's driving all of this media, it is the media in a way. I mean, would you say Twitter Is the media in a way?
Um, not not totally. But in, in large part, yeah, I think so.
Well because I feel like this is the problem, because they've been, they've been telling journalists for years now, like, five more than five years, like mainstream media, the editors, the older editors are like, get off Twitter, although stay on Twitter to publicize your articles, but don't read it. Don't be influenced by it. But it's pretty obvious that it didn't work. And I don't hear those things anymore. They don't even bother. They're just like, whatever. You know, it's just part of being a journalist.
Yeah, I feel like, you know, not all - I, honestly, I think I get work because, like, partially because I get engagement. And because I'm so online, right? Like, because I'm so on Twitter even because the other really weird thing is like on Twitter, like, being very online, is being very on Twitter, right? There's different ways to be very online. Like I've always been very online, I just haven't always been on Twitter the way I am now. Right. And that's considered a strength. Because it means that you're like, more in touch, and you know, what's going on? And it's a really weird, it's a really weird thing, because you don't really know what's going on. You only know what's going on within this, like certain certain bubble.
Yes, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So speaking of bubble, let's talk about the Elon bubble, or whatever's going on in Elons head. I mean, you kind of opened up the possibility that he's that Twitter might end, you know, do you think I mean, let's just like do a little bit prognostication here. I was pretty skeptical that Twitter was going to end when Elon took over. And he like fired all the engineers, because I've heard some stuff about how they ran the ship. And it looks like there was a lot of dead weight in there clearly was because it’s still around. But, uh, I will be honest, like, all of these ideas that he has, that he's experimenting constantly, it's kind of exhausting. And I think it's gonna wear people out. And at some point, there will be the negative feedback loop, but we're not there yet. What do you think?
I don't think we're there yet. either. I think there needs to be a good replacement. Or if and if there isn't, digital media is just going to die. Right? It's it. There need like there needs to be somewhere else for these people to go for Twitter to really end. And it might be TikTok, I think. But it's just like you're not going to, you're not going to make a TikTok every time you write an article. I have seen people - There are journalists to do that. And there's journalists who do it successfully, but I just can't. I like I can think of three of them. And they're all like, relatively good looking women minus one.
Wait, who are you talking about?
I don't want to name names because I just called one of them ugly. And then I called the other two hot and it's all that's weird for me to say. But I can think of three I can think of three female journalists who use TikTok effectively, and then like, what are what are all the what's Michael Lind gonna do? Right? How is he going to call you a eugenicon on TikTok ?
I'm getting an image right now and it's a funny image.
DF: I mean maybe, right?
It's like, how many kids does Razib Khan have? And then like, the big 3 and it is like ‘hmmm…’ Yeah, I don't really get to tiktoks. Okay. I mean, you know, people consume tiktoks for like, hours. I don't get it. It's not my thing. So people People differ. But um, you know, it's like, I think the issue with Twitter is not the issue. Twitter is text, text is different than video. Text is different than audio. So you know, like the pivot, pivot to video that Facebook was going to do that it never ended up doing this because video and text are different in terms of how you can consume them, like for example, with video, you gotta, you gotta like pay attention. You know, with text, you can like, go back, you can sample stop/sample, stop/sample, and it's not that big of a deal. You know, it's much easier to multitask with text. So I think there's different utilities, there's complementarities. And so that's why Twitter has its own niche, right. It can't be replaced by Tiktok, or YouTube because they're fundamentally different things. Facebook and Twitter are a little bit more competitive in a way because Facebook has a lot of text, but Facebook's really just image and images a lot too as well. So Twitter has an image aspect, but I don't think it's that much of a I mean, Twitter is Ah, the closest heir we have air we have to the bulletin board systems of the 1980s 1990s. That's what I'll say.
Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, as you were talking, I was trying to think like, where else? You know, where else have journalists gone, right? There's been different places that they've sort of like, right when, you know, we were making that transition to digital media. There's other places where people would get story ideas. You know, Tumblr, Reddit, 4chan being sort of the famous ones. But yeah, I think like, it's - what's interesting about Twitter is like, digital media explodes, right when Twitter starts, and so they've always been in a sort of symbiotic relationship. And maybe there was like, a short window of time, where like, Tumblr could have been the place, but not, you know, not really right. Like, there's - it would be catastrophic, I think for for the industry.
Well, what about threads?
No, I mean, I, is anyone using thread? I mean last I checked..
I log into threads every couple of days and tell people I love them.
DF: That's sweet.
Yeah, I just like I just tried to be a nice person on threads. I just say I love you guys. That's all I do. Threads. I retweet people. It's very like it's very like saccharin and Instagrammy, in my opinion, so I just like go with it.
That's, that's sweet. But it's not that's I don't know, and blue sky certainly didn't take off either.
Oh, blue sky, I need to log into my blue sky account. Let me just check it out. Now. You saw just so the listeners know, the reason that I log into, I actually have an account on everything. And Kat. Do you know why I do that?
So no one can pretend to be you and take your name.
Yeah, exactly. See, this is why they pay you the - the medium bucks like normal people do not, do not like, realize that. If you have a I don't know name. Or if you have a public profile. It's very, very common for a hater to squat on your name. And then start like talking. So like I have. So for example, I have accounts on I think I'm 99% sure because I never log in after I initially squat. But I have accounts on gab and all these other like sketchy sketchy sites, but it's mostly because I immediately go on. I log - I reserve, Razib Khan that I don't ever log in again. You know, but once I have the account, they nobody else can use it, you know? Yeah. So you got to do things like that. But yeah, Bluesky, all of these other things. The issue is like their functionality is not that different. It's not about the functionality. It's about the incumbency effect, right? Like you cannot This is a stable equilibrium. Twitter is a stable equilibrium right now, no matter what Elon is trying to do like shock it off. It's, you know, of course.
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right, like it would just the amount of time. And that's the other thing, it takes time for these platforms to grow and to become what they are, like, Tumblr is so interesting, because Tumblr was started in like, 2007. I'm pretty sure I was in high school when I first got on Tumblr. And it was like, very confusing, and not many people were on it. And then it didn't really come into itself. Until, like 2011 2012. And then like it had sort of like a second life much, much later, right? It takes a bit and but now, even though people are still on it, and the site isn't dead, it feels almost like this piece of internet history. But it took so long for that - for that to happen. And same with Twitter. Twitter took a really long time to mature. And so there's this expectation like, oh, well, we're all going to move to blue sky. And then blue sky is going to just shutter Twitter, even if that's is what that migration is going to happen. I feel like the the lifespan is just it just takes so much longer than people think it's not going to happen in a week or a month or two months. It takes it takes a while.
Yeah, so Twitter what it was, as was a 2006. South by Southwest that debuted was 2006 or 2007.
I think it was 2007 too.
Yeah, so 2007. And media, people started using it. But it wasn't a major cultural thing. For like two or three years. It was it was slow burn. I remember Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media. He would tweet about how he had just eaten a sandwich. And this was literally through the SMS. So Twitter was originally oriented towards short text, short messaging services. And people would just - I remember I did it a couple of times. That way to just to that's been deprecated by the way, a lot of people don't know that. It's not you can't do it that way anymore. But anyways, people used to do it. It was an SMS service, and then eventually got hooked up to the Web are, you know, that was an option. And then people started articulating thoughts instead of updates. So Twitter was really just a public updating service and it kind of organically evolved. Journalists kind of took it over, turned it into the public space, the public square, you know, you know, we probably remember Arab Spring, other sorts of things happen. Facebook came up around the same time, the two were kind of overlapping, but they've really bifurcated now, Facebook is really the boomer platform. You know, people's parents are on it, grandparents are on it. And I don't know what I mostly - images. And also like talking to people that I knew from high school or keeping up on, you know, them stalking them somehow. Twitter is not like that at all. People, very few people from my high school are on Twitter, a few of them are, but
That you know of, right? I think what's interesting about Twitter is, if I'm not mistaken, I might be misremembering this. I think, like the quote unquote, like “discovery” of Black Twitter is what really started making it popular. There was there was a few like news, there was a Slate article, and then maybe like a New York Times article about like, man, black people are using Twitter in this weird way. And that actually helped it explode. I might be misremembering -
No, I remember that article, I remember that article that black people that basically, black Americans were overrepresented in the production of content on Twitter, viral content, right?
DF: Yeah.
I mean, and you can see it even today, like when you go to the GIFs, you know, the expressions and all these things and a lot of like, black people in it, you know, like, it's just how it is. And so that's an interesting interesting point, you know, woke, woke culture came out of woke was originally a black thing. It's been literally culturally appropriated. No one complains about this, by the way, but it's just it is how it is. Woke got culturally appropriated. Just like bro grow.
I think Compact actually, and I didn't read the - I don't subscribe, funnily enough, but I think they had an article recently, I was like, black woke vs white woke, and I actually do want to want to read that because that I think it might address like, what what, like, woke was kind of like a, I don't know if there's a better word for this kind of like a Hotep term, initially, wasn't it?
Yeah. It's very conspiracy theories, like get woke. Like, wake up. Right. So yeah, Lee Siegel, ‘black woke versus white woke’ Yeah, at least, you know, Lee a little bit. But yeah, so I didn't read that. But I saw it. It's there. Okay. Because eight days go. But yeah, it was a Hotep. So Hotep is, again, this is Hotep was originally pre internet, you know, it was around like it comes out of black nationalism and Nation of Islam spin off, and then was the 5% nation and all that stuff. But there's whole subcultures online, that have their own lexicon have their own ecosystems that you don't know about. Hotep is one of them, and stuff leaks out of Hotep. And then sometimes when it goes into the mainstream, people are like, Whoa, what is this? Like? What's his name? Mariah Carey, is ex - ex husband, is it his ex husband or ex boyfriend? Yeah. Nick Cannon. So Nick Cannon, the all that stuff about like how white people don't have souls and melanated and all that stupid stuff. I mean, that's just like part of Hotep culture. It's part of the understanding of the Hotep worldview. It's very normative and just accepted in, you know, a lot of I would say, inner city, lower middle class, lower class, black male culture, this these Hotep ideas, but once it got exploded out to, you know, mainstream media, and you know, white female cable news presenters start talking about it. It seemed crazy.
Yeah, it's, - what's interesting is I had this weird moment, like a few weeks ago, maybe it was months ago, at this point, where I was where I was, like, you know, I, I feel like I have a lot of exposure to white nationalism, just because it's always in the news, and it's on Twitter, and it's very, very visible, but I don't know anything about black nationalism, or black separatism or Afrocentrism, or any of these things. And I went down this rabbit hole, and I ended up getting to this woman named to Shahrazad Ali. And she, she was like, operated in the 80s and early 90s. And she sounds down to like, you know, verbatim quotes, exactly like Pearl Davis pearlythings. And I had this realization, like, did they kind of invent the manosphere? Like, is this?
Razib: Oh yeah they did.
And then and yeah, and then I understand like, damn, like, we like everyone sort of accuses the black manosphere of like, piggybacking on the like, Red Pill community that sort of grew online, but I think it was actually like, pickup artists that were reacting to the sexual revolution, and that was sort of a white thing. And then there was like a separate black manosphere that actually was like, much more influential, that is, like, you know, way, way older sort of same time period, but so much stuff comes from that and like no one knows about and it's, it's wild.
Yeah so, actually, I know a little too much about pearlythings. We are one degree separated. We are talking about a lot of things that I'm sorry to say the boomers in my listening audience like, you know, I know that you're just like, what, what is going on here? So I'm gonna elucidate it for it for you a little pearlythings young woman, Hannah Pearl Davis, a wealthy woman from Chicago, ginger, so she has no soul. She was a semi pro soccer player in England. Because of the pandemic they stopped playing or something. She eventually decided to take some investment money from her dad who was a wealthy businessman in Chicago, and she has a little YouTube empire, like pearlythings. And it's a lot of it is kind of dating advice. And it's like a talk show. It's a little bit like a Jerry Springer type thing for Zoomers, but not really there's no violence or anything. But basically, a lot of her shtick is taken from manosphere it's a woman, it's a young white woman, young upper middle class, white woman mouthing manosphere talking points, but a lot of it is similar to stuff from a show called fresh and fit, which is two black guys from Miami. And they are manosphere types. And you know, you know, like how they're high value men, that's what they'll call themselves, right? And when you hear that term, there's all these terms that they have. And, you know, that's just how it is. But yeah, the genealogy of how things emerged from one culture to another is interesting. It's kind of like rock and roll like Elvis. You know, this is a famous, everyone knows this. Elvis took black music, or like, you know, the black hillbilly synthetic music and brought it to the white masses in a form that they found palatable as a attractive, you know, young white man, right. And so people like pearlythings, they are, you know, like, Pearl, she's bringing it to an audience, it's a somewhat different than the audience that would watch fresh and fit. And if you watch fresh and fit, you know, it's a black show, right? It's a black lexicon, it's black concerns. It's black centered, its centers, blackness, like that's normative and fresh and fit. So obviously, it's not as attractive, or it's not going to be as interesting to people outside of that community. There's a lot more non black people out there, the black people. So you know, that's, it's a capitalist opportunity. That's how the internet works. That's how internet culture is. It's porous, it's viscous. It's interconnected. And wouldn’t you say Twitter is kind of - Twitter, like, actually is a node. That's what it is.
DF: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's a great way to describe it.
I mean, basically, it's like a heart. And it's like, you know, transmitting things here and there. I mean, how are you feeling? I mean, do you like Twitter? Like, what's your experience? Do you like it? Like a lot of people have a love/hate, you know, guilt relationship with it.
So, you know, on the one hand, I, it's brought me like, so much opportunity, I've met some of my best friends on it. You know, I've met so many like now, like, in the physical world, like good friends on Twitter, I forgot, but they were Twitter people at any point, right. But on the other hand, I feel like I have like, so many just like, crazy a logs, and it's made me like, get in my head about shit. I was never thinking about, there's a new thing to be insecure about every single day, I'm never going to turn on notification filters. So I'm kind of like, it's brought, it's brought me so much joy, opportunity. But like such a huge, like psychological and emotional tax.
Yeah, like talking about what is that tax? What does the emotional tax?
I mean, like, I'm just Well, you know, I was saying earlier, like a lot of journalists sort of like to use the DEI HR term, like, bring their whole selves to the timeline. And like, there is no like Katherine Dee / Default Friend persona, and like, not really, I mean, you know, there's things I won't share just for self preservation, but I am like, my tweets are things that I would say, and they're things I say, on podcasts and in real life. And so I take the criticism very personally, and I've gotten better at it. But it's like really hard, especially when you have like a, like a random person you've never met, who just like, gets it in their head that you're evil or like, you need to be taken down a peg or something you're kind of like, well, what the fuck like, I'm like, What did I do? Right? And it's so hard to be like, Oh, well, some people are just like this, like, there's a huge like, I'm broadcasting to a bunch of people I can't even see and who knows what stories that they've made up? Or who knows what things I've actually done that are offensive because I offensive to a community where I'm not aware of the rules or something. So it's, it's, it's hard to see myself as like a public figure of any kind, even if I'm like, relatively.
Yeah, in terms of, you know, being a public figure and Twitter and all that stuff. It's interesting. I don't know. Would you call me a public figure?
Yeah. Definitely. A lot of people know who you are.
Because I don't know what that means. But yeah, I don't put I'm mean I put myself out talking about personal. I don't talk about my personal life, you know that on Twitter. You know, I might allude to it here and there. But there are certain things I definitely do not talk about. Yeah, there's things that there's things I talk about in real life that I definitely do not talk about Twitter, I'm not gonna get into whatever that is. But I there are people who have moved to Austin, that have followed me for many years. I've been on Twitter for a while. So you know, there are people who started following me as a teenager, and now they're in their mid 20s, software engineer, they moved to Austin, they started hanging out with me, and then I find out that they know me from Twitter, and they're like, oh, yeah, you're somewhat different in this one way or this other way. And, you know, that's when you know, like, what you hold back and what you present. And, you know, I look at Twitter in a very instrumental way. Like, what can it do for me? What do I get out of it? And, you know, I don't, you know, I mean, I've made friends out of it. But I also have, like, I make sure I've other just like you, I make sure I've other platforms of distribution channels. And this is really important in terms of today, because Twitter is a privately held company. And it's basically the plaything of one Elon Musk. And that is a little disturbing sometimes to me. Now, I have to say, I I'm, I mean, this is gonna polarize the audience. I'm kind of pro Musk, overall, I'm friendly with his circle, I will say that I have been in the same room with him in Austin, so he's part of this world. He is a human being, you know, he does walk amongst us, but the capriciousness, the, with the way he behaves is really stressful. And I do feel, I mean, I'm not one of those people, oh, I'm quitting Twitter, and then I'm gonna be back. I don't do that all the time. But I feel like my own internal reserves, slowly depleting because, for example, just a selfish thing that I'm going to bring up, you know, he's been de boosting substack, you know, that's affecting my bread and butter. And it's because he has a beef with the substack founders and whatever it is what it is. But the ultimate ultimate issue is he's judged jury and executioner, there's no appeal to him. And this sort of behavior is really disconcerting, because if it's the public square, there's got to be rules beyond the Fiat of the pharaoh, you know?
Yeah. I mean, to you know, now he says he wants to take up, take away headlines, he wants journalists to publish directly to Twitter. And he's like, Well, now you can make more money. Well, that's great. But like, what if you got deboosted? Like, you know, you and I might have because we post a lot of substack links, and you know, you write like a well thought out piece about whatever and I write maybe a less well thought out about piece about whatever, and then we make 50 cents and then and then to add insult to injury, Ian Miles Chong walks with $25,000 a month, you know, it's like, there's so many, like, that's not any better than it was, like, stuff's super corrupt right now. And I'm with him, like, with his eyes towards the media, I get it. I understand why he's upset with the press. But like, is, is it is it really, really better the way things are now? I don't know.
I mean, it's certainly different. It's certainly different. I guess the issue the issue that I do worry about is you know, Elon, you know, he's involved in neuro link or not neurolink - Starlink I mean, neurolink, obviously, he's involved in so many things. He has so much power and on the whole, like, I'm more pro Elon than the average. Probably PMC professional, managerial class person, but, but it worries me to have all this power in one man's hands. And so now we're talking about the media. We're talking about Twitter, how Twitter is the node, it's kind of the switchboard, you know, you Elon controls the switchboard. So if you don't want to get if he doesn't want you to get through, you're not going to get through. So that's disturbing, right? That's, that's disturbing. Elon Musk. If Internet culture is culture. And Twitter is one of the main nodes of the internet. Elon Musk controls our culture and that's disturbing.
Um, I don't think I don't think he's been so I don't think he's been so authoritarian with it that he's killing. You know, like, I don't think he's like exterminating subcultures or anything. And to be, to be fair, to say something in his favor in his favor. The old the, you know, the old version of Twitter or, you know, prior management, kind of, like, didn't exterminate subcultures, but they definitely kneecapped a lot of them in a way that felt more intense than Musk's rule. Right.
Yeah I feel that
so it's, you know, I think it could be worse but yeah, it is. It's like definitely frustrating that like, your visibility is impacted, probably because of you know, so many people have opted into the monetization thing but like it If you post I think and I, I have this - no ones said this, but I have a suspicion if you post too many, like links like to articles on outside platforms, like I find that I see a lot fewer. Like, like it used to be like every day there'd be like an Atlantic article going viral or New Yorker article or something? I see I don't see that quite as often.
Razib: I’ve noticed that too.
Yeah. And there's, there's pros and cons to that like, you know, the Pro is like the like, should should the Atlantic still be ruling the roost? I don't have a particular bone to pick with them. But maybe that's it just it's just not - it's not a meritocracy? Either way, whereas - Yeah,
Yeah, what I would say is, um, you know, because I've been thinking about this because Elon does do things. And I've seen it, like, you can test it, he has deboosted like, he's like, put a delay. Because, you know, it's him who's done this. He's put a delay on New York Times and substack links and other things like that. Right. Okay, that's fine. A like, five second delay. I think like, if you go to substack.com, I don't think that this applies if it's, you know… anyway, a custom domain. But in any case, he's done stuff like this. And it's disturbing. And it's annoying, because, you know, in a liberal rule based order, equality before the law is super important. That's how things function. Obviously, there's not a government, but Twitter functions as a kind of a confederation or constellation, or a little republic of tweets, you know, or republican x's, whatever. And then when the rules, there are different rules for different people, at different institutions, it starts to get really confusing, and people are going to start opt doubting or behaving badly.
Yeah, I mean, I totally agree with you. Uh, you know, the thing is, I think the people who will start leaving and getting an opting out first are probably the people who you would have expected to stay like the people who, like the Atlantic, or the New York Times, they're gonna find other ways to advertise themselves, but someone who's really like, earning their money off of substack, they're going to need to say, Alright, I'm gonna have to make, - if it gets really, really suppressed, they're gonna have to, like, make another platform work, they're gonna have to find a way to distribute.
Well, you know, I mean, that's why you do. So, you know, I started, I started a substack in 2020. But I started a MailChimp earlier, and I have blogs, I've done other things over the years, but in 20, it was fall 2016. I believe. I remember my friend, I'm not gonna say his name, but he was a co worker, you know, on Silicon Valley, when I was working Embark, the doggy DNA company. And he's, uh, you need to start a mailing list, because you never know what the platforms are going to do. You never know. If you don't have control, you never know. And he was prescient. You never know what's going to happen, what the platform is going to do. Who's gonna get suspended. Who's gonna get yanked. Because ultimately, there's not that much real appeal. Like, yeah, there's appeal. But you know, you have to have pull, you know, years ago, like, a couple of years ago, I got brigaded on Clubhouse, and they suspended my account or whatever. And then I called Eric Weinstein and he called the the founders of Clubhouse and got me reinstated. Well, I mean, I had some pull, obviously, that's not really fair. Like a lot of normal people get, you know, they get squelched that way. Because some random person, I have a friend. I have a friend, she just a normal person, and her account got suspended. And she didn't understand why she's very SJW, by the way, so it's not like she's right wing. And later, she found out that someone on Twitter, this was before the Elan era, someone on Twitter did not like her and decided to blacklist her account. And they put enough pressure and enough weight behind it that nobody else really wanted to bug about it. Cuz she's a nobody. Right? Stuff like that happens. You know? That's not cool.
Yeah. It's that's, man. That's my nightmare.
Yeah, like, some are just just like, the issue is though, you you wouldn't have a problem because your default friend, you have enough pull, you know, so there's different rules for different people. That's what that's what's really bothersome. You know, if you can find an angle, and you can find an angle, if you have power, if you don't have power. You don't. And so I think one of the things that Twitter and social media and the internet was supposed to do was to democratize and it has democratized in some ways, but ultimately, your your power, you know, really matters. And it's still playing out. And you know, there's all these rules on Twitter, like block voting, don't block quote dunked on small accounts and stuff like that. But you know, that is predicated on certain norms that are enforced, and people just have to honor it. And they're not necessarily doing that right now, especially in a context where you know, you're monetizing engagement and so, we've been talking for a while, I want to end with this topic, because like, it is something that I've talked about with other people that are on Twitter. I am I've gotten a little bit of money out actually, I turned on monetization. Not you know, Ian Miles like, I would just say, like, $226, whatever. I mean, I get millions of impressions. You know, like, I've gotten like, 18 million impressions one month. So I don't know how they're calculating, it's fine. I make good money on substack. So I’m not whining, but I think monetization in this way with impressions might be very dangerous. In terms of the incentives, what do you think?
Um, I don't totally understand how it works. My impressions went, like, if you look at the month over month, my impressions went way down. And I'm making more than that. I know, people who have less followers or a comparable amount of impressions, who make a lot more than I do, like, I'm not even making, I'm not even making $200 I'm not even making $100. I'm in the same boat as you. I make plenty writing, writing, and I've made plenty from substack. But I don't like it makes me wonder like, how does this work? Like, am I on some kind of blacklist or something? Like there's just no way that I have 40,000 plus followers. I'm, you know, I have, at a minimum 6 million impressions a month. I mean, and that seems kind of low from what it was. And then I'm making like, a, you know, I made like 20 bucks one time, you know, it's like, just it's weird. I don't understand how it's calculated.
It's not transparent. It's not transparent. I mean, yeah, also, like, this is just random. And I don't care. It's not a big deal. But I was getting like 1000 new followers per month, until the Elon regime. In fact, the last month before Elon, I got 2000. And since then, I have gotten like 300 to, you know, 800 followers. So, you know, something changed there, which is fine. I don't mind. But there's been tweaks in there that have happened that have affected people. And I wish there'd been a little bit more transparency about that. But yeah, there were people who got our level of impressions that were getting 1000s of dollars. I mean, like, Richard Hananiah is getting, like $1700-$2,000 a month. And his account is about the same size as mine. I think he'd probably get a few more tweet impressions, because he trolls but still.
Yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't totally make sense to me. And I had a I had a follower drop off, too. Right. And it's, you know, I don't think my my contents changed. But I think like, you know, what I think it might be for both of us, actually, you are hugely negatively impacted if people mute and block you. And both of both of us are, you know, we are memes in certain corners of the internet. And we experience mass blocks and mass mutes almost as like a bit sometimes. And I think that has actually, we've paid a price for, like, weirdly, we're like in this weird level of fame, where like, it's it, we pay a price that someone who has a larger platform doesn't.
Yeah, I mean, for those of you who don't follow me on Twitter, I have, I have recurrent beefs with certain sectors of the internet. And I don't actually avoid them, I just run towards them. And then I just do a mass cull. But of course, they're doing the same thing to me. So you know, I might block like, 50 people overnight. And I'm sure I got blocked by about 50 people. So that's what you're talking about.
Yeah. Or even just like muted. Like maybe like people, you know, they love your stuff. And they're like, I'm just gonna manually check his timeline, because he's always beefing with people or something.
I'm not always beefing. I just have like, periodically like, you know,
DF: you have little episodes.
Yeah, I'm an episodic beefer. You know that. That is what I do. And I know when - I usually I do it before I go to sleep, I put out a tweet, and I know exactly what it's gonna attract. I get up in the morning, and I do my work. I do the work, you know, I block, I come back at them. And it's, it's done. But yeah, so I had not thought about that. I mean, that's the issue. I don't think in much detail about what the hell I'm doing on this platform. You know, it's very organic. And I just like follow my whim and whimsy. But now that people are monetized again, you know, you have 40,000 followers. I have 67,000, almost 68,000 followers. And then you see other people that are making 1000s and 1000s of dollars, and it's like, yeah, even with inflation, that still matters. You know, it affects you on some level. Like you start to think like wait, what should I am I leaving money on the table?
Yeah, and it's, yeah, it maybe we should monetize on other platforms like I had. Maybe this. This is where we end it. I had a very disturbing morning. I woke up at five, that’s just when I wake up, I woke up at five I did on my morning tours. I wrote my little articles. And then I thought to myself, like completely sincerely, I'm going to start making TikTok and I recorded a TikTok at like 7am. And I was like, I can't, I can't let this be who I am. I can't I can't publish this. I can't let this. I can't let this replaced Twitter. It’s already too bad.
Yeah, I mean, I got a buddy of mine, and he does a he does a TikTok, a genetics TikTok, and it's pretty big. But yeah, I don't know. That's just it's not going to be me. I did a I did start posting the podcasts and stuff on YouTube, because that's good for discovery. But I don't think that that's that big of a deal. You know, you just have to do what you have to do. But, yeah, so you know, we've been talking for a while we touched a lot of different subjects, I'm sure. You know, people are gonna be following the links and some of these esoteric, I mean, I don't know if they're - esoteric is the wrong word. Maybe parochial, is the right word, because everything is parochial now, everything is universal. And also parochial in some way, if that makes sense, within all these subcultures, and they're accessible, but you need to look and if you don't, look, they don't exist, but they're there.
I think that's a perfect way of putting it. Parochial, is I'm gonna I'm gonna start adopting that word to describe this stuff.
All right. Well, it was great talking to you, Katherine. The article is ‘why you're never leaving Twitter’. I mean, it should be why you're never leaving X. But you just put Twitter right you wrote it before they changed it. Did you work did you was was a piece pitched before? It was X?
Yeah, it was it was one of these things were like I had written earlier in the summer and they just hadn't found like a right time. Like, a right, time to publish it. Yeah, but I like I like dead naming it. It's something feels good and rebellious about that.
People routinely like the media. It's like the former - X, the platform, formerly known as Twitter. They're just having fun with it. It's just a fun joke now. But anyways, it was great. Catching up was great talking to you. And don't be freezing up there in Chicago. Well, I guess that's wait do people know that you live there?
Yeah, they do know that I lived there. And guess what? It's over 100 degrees right now.
Okay, well, don't melt down. Yeah. All right. I guess I'll see. I'll see you. I'll see you on the interwebs the information superhighway as they say
All right, see you around
Is this podcast for kids? This is my favorite podcast.
