Future of AI and Content

The summer, serve up the cookout classics, craft Mo and dressing, toss green salads with delicious ranch dressing or zesty Italian Serve smooth, craably creamy potato salads with mayo. We all know it's not a cookout without craft. This episode of the Watch is presented to you by Amazon Prime. Ever H a planl come together out of nowhere And realize you're missing something, like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for. That's when Prime, sameame day delivery has your back getting you exactly what you need fast and reliably so you can actually join the moment instead of watching from the sidelines. Same day delivery. it's on prrime. visit ammazon dot com slash prime to find millions of items delivered fast available in select areas. Terms apply Iin for staff to clear the room Stand up and walk. Now Hello and welcome to the watchatch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at theringer dot com and joining me in the studio today is me. No Andy today. It's just the Prince alone in the studio. I am, however, joined remotely by Lane Brown from New York Magazine. Today He's going to talk to me about his incredible piece in New York magazine called The Feed Is Fake whichich scratches an itch that I've been having for a long time Eespecially ever since, you know, the whole is Gese a Syop debate raged online and yet I don't really know if it raged anywhere else. and that's sort of what Lane's is about is why it always feels like everyone is talking about something, but nobody is actually talking about it. He gets into the exploding industry of clipping for social media feeds, but also narrative manipulation And then his piece is also like a much larger kind of essay about the current state of our cultural conversation and our understanding of what is popular and what matters, which is something that I think Andy and I always grapple with on this P but I am going to talk a little bit about some TV news and also give you a few thoughts on last night's episode of Euphoria as far as like what's coming out this week as always busy week in new television, but know, I didn't get a chance to watch any of Duton Ranch and I have to be completely honest like U Beth and Rip when it comes to the Yellowstone universe, this is a Yellowstone spinoff starting Kelly Rilly and Cole Hauser, their characters were beloved on Yellowstone. I think that they worked really well as supporting characters. I'm not so sure I want to watch a television show. entirely dedicated to them. and you don't have to because Anette Bening amazingly is also on this show as is Ed Harris But I will try to get to that at some point Other new releases this week include Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, which is a new series on Apple TV U with Tatana Maslani and it seems like it's a little bit of a normal suburban woman goes down a crazy rabbitole when she witnesses something she shouldn't lookooks like a thriller with some social satire. I'm interested to check that out. Also we have from Netflix I believe this week is the Buroughs, which is being kind of dismissively or you know, casually referred to as old strranger thingsings or new cocoon, but it is A a retirement community and an incident that possibly supernatural incident or extraterrestrial incident problems with that word occurring at at this facility. So great cast Alfred Melina and Alfy Woodwardon in it, but haven't got a chance to check out any screeners of that. that comes out this week and I think Eddie and I will probably hit both Maximum pleasure and the bros at some point. As far as like TV news, I mean, they're really the biggest thing is that the lanterns trailer dropped. I know Andy talks about Lindel off Last week in my absence This trailer is awesome The pairing of Kyle Chandler and Eron Pierre is bone of That's like how a great TV show gets made is you find the right two people and you fit them together and Kyle Chandler as this kind of rugged And uh sort of self involved version of Green Lantern and Aaron Pierre is the up and coming one who wants to do everything right. It's like a very solid basis for a show. and there are watchmen vibes in it, there is More special effects than I think I was expecting from the trailer and maybe that's their They're putting that forward a lot in the trailer just to bring in the DC heads, but it It was a little bit more booky than I thought because I think the original sort of understanding of this show is that it was essentially like a true detective but happened to be set in the DC Universe. It'll be great to see how it actually shakes out. I'm super excited for this for this series I think what we're going to do with Widows Bay, obviously, the last episode, the one that focused mostly on Patricia, Kato Flynn. we've been singing her praises all season, but this is her standout episode I won't give anything away if you haven't gotten a chance to see. U Widows Bay yet, but we'll talk about a couple a brick of episodes together. Mbe mayaybe on Thursday show what we'll do is do four and five together. I do want to talk about Euphoria though and in honor of My colleague Zach Low, I put together a ten things I like and don't like about Euphoria Episode six, Stance still and see. So for those who don't know, Zach Low obviously now has his own podcast with the Ringer podcast network I worked with him Mc Granton and now at the Ringer and while he was at Granton and at ESPN. He had kind of like a great column called Ten Things I like and Don't Like, which was his notebook dump on the week in NBA that he had been watching. This is similar for this episode of Euphoria. I just thought it would be an easy way to kind of move through. What was not necessarily my favorite or least favorite episode of all time. I thought it was like a needed setup for what is obviously going to be an incredibly Cathartic last two episodes of the season. I would I would imagine it's in play of the series, but we'll see. First of all, I would say I loved number one, I loveved the collection of images that he put together charting Ruse Longing and receiving of her sign or salvation. I mean, in the church Look, Zendaya Well lit in a church praying Hearing a call from her mother You know, her face looks like passion of Joan of Arc, you know, like this Sam's got a bag and he goes into it and I think especially in the the rue sequences about her trying to save herself is where the show is still at its best And I think that her experiences over the course of this series are the easily legible from the outside where you're like, I can see what happened to this person and I can see what this person wants to become The images at the end of the episode, she's listening to her book on Tape Bible and it starts skipping. And she almost crashes. She sees the bright light of the inccredibly well lit mononster truck or eighteen wheeler coming towards her and crashes her car or pulls off the road and gets on a tree and lights this burning bush and you get this This incredible Biblical image of this woman finally, finally hearing the voice of God, you know? And The connections to In the words to Damascus, the connections of Christ and the burning bush like Obviously rich with that imagery, does it play fast and loose with it? I think with the Roo stuff, it doesn't because So much of what addicts go through in recovery and in trying to save themselves comes from this relationship to a higher power. and that may or may not work for all addicts and there are plenty of people who get clean without it. But obviously, it's something that Levinson is deeply fascinated by and it doesn't even have to come down to any specific dogma of something you'd find in the Bible or something you'd find in the Old Testament or whatever, it's just about believing that your life has value. and that's obviously something that Rue is looking for And it leads me to one thing that I don't really like, which is the what we've kind of done with the Jules character. Rue goes to Jules at one point in this episode And kind of makes her pitch for Starting a family together and be finding like new problems to have and more classical American suburban concerns of, you know, what to do with your kids and stuff rather than u fentanyl and sex work. and I think that Jules' reaction to Rue was good. I liked The slap, I like the get out of my painting If you think about this show as these people existing in their separate realities I liked the idea that Jules was sort of snapping Rue out of whatever dream she was having and was like, you know, you don't actually have anything trade here. Like we are not going go off and ride into the sunset. This is not the love story. Whether or not that remains the case for the rest of the series. I don't know if I if I believe that You know, to the extent that you care about something being end game on this show, but like, or rin ruined jewels like meant for each other? I don't know. I don't know if it's actually germane to the actual show itself I did like that scene. I don't really know what they're doing with Juleles. and I don't know You know, this was a the the thingsings of behind the scenes in this production of this show and what it required to get people in the same room to shoot it. I think I sometimes allow myself a little too get a little distracted by that because I'll be like, o, you can tell This person wasn't available and they had to shoot all their scenes in like a hotel room like I don't know if Hunter Safer had more or less time than usual to shoot or whether or not there was like discussions about what to do with the Jewel's character, but I find like She she had her artistic breakthrough on the set of LA Knights and now seems to be in her. I am going to Do a you know, of body study figure and then paint over it as like her new phase that she's in I don't know if that's like really that compelling television I like Hunter Sherf as a performer, so I wish there was more for that character to do. U As far as more things that I liked and didn't like, look, I love the high and low and I love the sacred and the profane I love the church and the O fans and the spaghetti Westerns and the Polansky Dread, the Hitchcockian moments The seventies more, you know, I think that Leinson moves pretty easily between those and if anything I think I've of repeated I'm never bored watching Euphoria. It's because of those tonal shifts, which even if the transmission really grinds sometimes on them, I still welcome It's still fun to have Um completely different feel from scene to scene You could say that it's mimicking kind of like our our feed, you know, it's like when you slip through social media videos and you're kind of like going from one thing to another without any kind of Trition That that would be one way of looking at it. anotherother is just that he had several different shows that he wanted to make And he's just going to make them and then stitch them together I think that's also you could make a criticism of the show. But in terms of like They u spectrum of tone that he's playing with and also like Reaching very, very, very high And then also wallowing around in the grime and the grit of something exploitative, I think is pretty fascinating to watch I also think it's really interesting and I really like the tension between It in Maticin TV storytelling. I thought it was very funny U when Siddney Sweeney walks onto the set of LA Kights for her one line pretty much throwaway day player part and starts improvising or disassociating with the actor who's playing opposite of from her and that she obviously is kind of thinking it's she's talking to Nate And she does this kind of riff about you know, scared she is for her life right now. And the guy is kind of playing along with her and it's then shattered by the character of Oceana walking onto the set and saying like, arere you going to ceue me up or what? Um I was very, very highly amused by Cing Camp saying, ah, yeah, this is giving a real clute vibe. Because I think everybody is always like in their mind they're making clute, you know? Like in their mind, I'm sure everybody would love to be Elem Cool in the seventies and not to forlude to be what everybody was watching, but obviously they're making LA Nights. and I think that there's Almost a sly commentary happening there where it's yeah, like Sam Leinson is making like episodic Saghetti Western opera, but he's also making a soap opera and he's trying to sort of pay both Piers there and I like the the effort You know, I don't think it's successful for everyone. I know that Andy has both rejected some of the storytelling and also the interests that Levinson obviously has. He's also given it the college try. so I really appreciate him doing that for me because we we're enjoying talking about the show I think they Levinson for as much as he's interested in high and low art, he's also interested in television and cinema and whether or not you can bring the feeling of cinema the cinema that he loves and Sam's actually programming a festival out here in Los Angeles over like I think started last Friday. it's going through this week We're showing a bunch of movies that he says influenced season three and he's showing like Dirty Harry and Candy Snatchers, which is like a Agfa movie that you should check out and he's showing Freeway, which is like the Reese Witherspoon nineties thriller. So he's like throwing a bunch of a different like things up on the mood board And It's hard to take all those cinematic influences and consistently make a television show. Maybe that's why the production of Euphoria is inconsistent because it's difficult to translate all of that stuff But am I am enjoying it. I will say that One thing I u I also enjoyed was Daniel Deadweiler as Alamo's mom The character introductions on Euphoria, a hallmark of Euphoria, the sort of backstory flashback moments people their your mileage may vary on these But, uh I don't know that I necessarily walked away from that scene truly understanding Alamo any moreore than I already did, but I did think this little Um Message in a bottle from seventies Grindhouse movies or it actually wasn't really like that really. What was it? It was more like Ellene Noir set in seventies Black Los Angeles And some people might be like the temerity of Sam to do that. I don't know. I thought it was pretty cool. Like it looked great. Daniel Dadweiler, I will watch read a phone book But seeing her play This u Alamo's mother who essentially runs a long con on a kindly but disfigured man to set herself up with her boyfriend is It was awesome. It was a cool little little snatch of time and obviously Levinson had a blast making it because it just looks great. It told me nothing about why Alamo was riding at Rue with a polo mallet while she's buried up to her head and sand and told me nothing about why he doesn't kill her. So I enjoyed Daniel Deadweiler. I don't know if that segment necessarily was necessary, quote unquote, but it was very cool I think it's also cool that we're returning to the metauphoria This is a degree of playing the hits, but one of the season two highlights for me was The show with it a show within a show of Lexi's play depicting on and off screen events. The LA Nights thing has potential. It's coming They're calling this This pitcher in at the seventh inning. I I like the idea of Lexi being responsible for writing Cassie's arc on u LA Kights and also Lexi perhaps thinking of how to kill off Cassie's character And that little throwaway line that Lexi has where she's just like, you know, what am I going to do? I'm going to kill her and then I think I can't remember Is it Gidey and Adlon who's playing that friend? I can't remember, but she's just like, you gott to kill somebody every once in a while or else people get bored. That does not bode well for our ensemble somebody. S ofbody may pass away in the last two episodes. I lik that return to metauphoria. If that was sort of Cassie's long term goal was just like fame no matter what instead of making tons of money to help Nate I think that this arc for her would have been kind of interesting Unfortunately, and this is my sixth thing, Cassie's only fans modeling is kind of getting in the way of of this show being legible to me, the further out we get towards Cassie and Nate, that's where the show gets really muddy. And on its own, it's kind of amusing. and I like how every scene with Sdney Sweeney seems to be from another universe, whether it's like That hitchcockian kind of tension of whether or not she's gonna to delete only fans We talked about the sci fi B movie stuff of a fifty foot woman from a couple episodes ago earlier in the season on the wedding night that kind of almost Ari Asterish horror of Nates You know, being getting his pinky toe chopped off. Nate is shrinking. Cassie is growing And This leads into my seventh thing, which is unfortunately also something that I don't like, which is just I think they're leaving a lot on the table here because Nate is actually closer to Rueh than anyone else. I mean, he's looking for redemption. He's trying to find a piece of the American Dream. He's trying to shake off his past, which we get a glimpse of the old Nate as he stomps on. Did flowers that have held up his his retirement community construction. But we get so little time with him and he gets almost no time with anyone of consequence from the show. that it's kind of hard to tell how he got there and where he wants to go. And now we're in This ritual humiliation phase that's lasted the better part of the season And this is my biggest question mark about where they want to go with this character. You've got Jacob Blordi. It doesn't really matter one way or the other if he's having fun. I can't tell Give him something to do Please, let's do something with Nate. C Nate interact with anyone else from the show aside from City Seetie? I don't know But it would be nice, it would be nice to get him I loved that moment with him and underchaefer at the wedding. L that that actually had a charge Let's do more of that. K of don't know where I'm at with Matdie. eightight is not a thing I don't like or like I just like Alexis Demi and I love this character historically on the show Her being a shadow Madam of On fans models who is now curious about Alamo's business and You know, her pursuit of like financial gain for security to like gird against like everything that's happened to her in her life not unsimilar, not dissimilar from Alamo, I guess. Her reactions to things, I think sometimes are a little convenient for the television show and have nothing to do with the character. I think that that's like Understandable in terms of writing a TV show, you have to have people just kind of go along with stuff But we're getting towards the end of this season in series And I'm not exactly sure how they're going to bring together like the Alexis's Demmi part of the show, the Nate part of the show, the Jeweles part of the show with the thing that's the most successful which is the the rote part of the show Though there is one thing that's starting to bug me about the rue part of the show. And after I've sort of like waved away every criticism about like, well what about this and what about that when it comes to like talking with Andy about? Euphoria this season and I'm like, you don't it. It's a vibe It's a feeling just Just go with it The crime plotting is starting to get to me. That's I don't know if this is actually Ten, but I'm calling it tenen All We're doing too much in explaining too little here. Laorie is going to give up Alamo to the FBI, thus forcing him to work with her and allow her to use his I guess, ambulance service to bring fentanyl from Mexico into the states because the border is closing. I'm not sure I buy that. Typically like in crime dramas, like the threat of revealing someone to the FBI is like more of like a markering your reputation. and I think the Alamo wouldn't be just so like, ah madeated by Laurie. Now, I know Alamo has Ulterior motives here where he's also trying to get his stuff out of Lurie'safe and perhaps Everything else that Laorurie has, but This seems like it's one extra like a hat on a hat. L Laor and Alamo's collision course and the presence of the DEA on the outside via Rou is good. That's a good Beef They should have a shoot out and work this shit out. You know, like whatever, let's get Let's get these characters getting after it now being vaguely in business with each other while also intending on killing one another and robbing one another is a little thin And then All right You know, I'm not so sure why Rue is being given all these important Gigs. if Seingly everyone in Alama's crew knows she's a rat So We obviously end with the rat and, you know, we have the rat and the snake foroo before she goes on the road She's terrified because her mother is now in danger Um You know, we know that Alamo never lets a woman get over on him But I don't really understand why Rue is now becoming the, you know, the agent of revenge against Lauri. It doesn't seem like she is the most dependable person. It's not like she's like a She's not a burglar, she's not a gunman. She's just A convenient person to work in a strip club and manage the girls until she wasn't I don't really understand why not like when everybody shows up at Alama's house with guns, I don't really understand why the shootive probably should have happened then Um And now we're off for another element of this. This was among the more you know, amusing parts of the show for much of this season. So I hope that they tighten the screws a little bit. I have a feeling based on what we saw as the trailer for next week that next week is going to be largely focused on Coleman, Domingo's ally character and how that Yeah I mean, seemingly his health incident impacts her So I wonder if I had to guess it's like takeake a beat and then the big crime happens in the finale? I don't know. I don't know, I don't know when the the moment is and I don't know how much it's going to feel like a series finale versus a season finale. U Th thoseose are my thoughts on Euphoria I want to get into my conversation with Lane Brown so I introdued Lane a little bit in the beginning of our como, but I'll just tell you, I've worked with Lane About fifteen years ago, when Grantland started, Lane is somebody I've always really admired, and he's now a features writer at New York magazine, where he does some really, really, really great. supported pieces and the thing that makes This feed is fake piece. so fun to read to me is that it's really, really deeply reported and it's really fascinating to read about. All these different methods that eting digital marketing companies are using to populate our feeds with clips of shows and music and movies that we were supposed to be talking about supposed to be ingesting, but It's also about like how the narrative around those things gets shaped and then really more, it's lane kind of writing this you know, awesome rant about like How do we even know what's things are actually popular and does that even matter anymore? And You know, we had talked about the the geese Sop controversy on this show and I'll wait a second a couple of weeks ago when it really popped off And that's what really got my interest in this going. but I've also had this like nagging feeling for a while. I've noticed a really perceptible change in the tone of online discussion, like no shit. in the way that you think not in like this E is getting angrier away, but that like everything kind of is starting to sound the same. Like it's I'm starting to just be like, I can't tell the difference between the post above and the post below if you read on Reddit. or You know, everybody's Instagram is starting to kind of like merge into one Instagram and this kind of Everything is being optimized for engagement because I think that this is like, become way more important than connection with other human beings. likeike ye in your stories, you might be following what your friends are doing at any given moment. and that's kind of like my primary use of Instagram, but that whole other side of it with reels, and then I think, especially for TikTok where people are making content more or less has led this to O phones being like our new connection to what we think a conversation is culture in the world. And Leane writes about that Beautifully. And I really wanted to talk to him about this piece. It's kind of a different look for the pod, but I thought it would be fun on a random Monday to do this So thanks so much to Lane Brown for joining me, and thanks to Kai and Sarah and Kaya for producing today. I'll be back on Thursday. We're going to talk about Widows Bay I'll have a guest and I'll get into Dep Widows Baylore then Thanks to everybody for listening and let's get into my conversation with Lane Brown. Everyone knows that unexplainable it factor, that smile that lights up a room, that wow. Well, it doesn't happen by itself. There's chemistry behind the charisma. Colgate Optic White Pro Series tooothpaste removes fifteen years of deep set stains when you brush twice daily for two weeks. How? The clinically proven formula is powered by Colgate's hydrogen peroxide complex. It works at the molecular level to gently dissolve stains deep within the enamel where your brush can't reach. It's proof that daily routine can be remarkable. 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Apply today and earn a welcome offer of one thousand five hundred dollars cash backack After you spend fifty thousand dollars in qualifying purchases on your new card within the first six months of card membership, Terms apply. leararn more at go.amic slash graphite. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast instead of doom sccrolling? Smart move. Another smart move Getting help from one of State Farm's nineteen thousand local agents when you choose to bundle home and auto Bundling, J another way to save with the personal price plan. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state My guest is my former Grantland colleague. I should put that first And current New York magazine features writer Lane Brown Lane. It's so great to see you, man We were just remarking that I think the last time I've seen your face is as you were leaving Los Angeles and I was arriving in Los Angeles. Chris moved in and I moved out. Yeah. And it is an honor to be here on my favorite podcast, the only organically popular podcast in the world. And also maybe perhaps the least clipped in exact. No actually we are doing bit more clipping Last week, New York Magazine published Land's article which is One part deep dive into the exploding clipping economy that has taken over algorithms And one part, Jeremiah about how this shadowy industry has distorted our understanding of the conversations taking place within our culture. I think that's That's if I had to pitch it to anybody, I suppose that's what I would say. And for people who've been listening fairly closely to the watch over the last couple of weeks, this stuff has come up in conversations even though we haven't known it. I think most notably Andy and I more or less jokingly talked about the stuff to happen with geese. The band geese a couple of weeks ago, Wired magazine, wrote an article about Geese's marketing company or the marketing company that works on behalf of Geese, that Geese is a client of And John Semley wrote an article called The Fanfair Around the Band Geese is actually a Sci op actually was a ps up and the piece is largely about the unorthodox practices the cic good used on behalf of geese But this is like Lane, I wanted to know, that's like sort of my in on this article. I saw this. There's a funny story I have to tell you like after we hear from you for a little bit. You know, I think that that was sort of my in on your article, but what was the thing That kind of was like the kernel of the idea that got you to write this piece. It's sort of a two parter, basically. I feel like I have been Nicing things, just every story I try to write U just in my sort of daily intake of information, you know, I'm looking at Reddit. I'm, you know, I'm seeing, you know, what the voice of the people is on, you know, in the internet comments and I've kind of noticed just sort of more and more things I don't know, a little strange. And so I did a story in real estate a couple of years ago It was all about how New York City rent prices were just sort of exploding at the time when basically people were leaving the city. And just in these New York City apartment redits just they would be full of people saying like, you know, this is not happening. noody's leaving. Pople are moving in, peopleople are flooding back. It was like, this is just Totally, not not the case I sort of noted that. I saw kind of the same thing over and over again as I was working on some other stories And then I found this service I'm not going to say the name of it because I maybe don't want to give them I don't want to do any product placement here. But basically there are services that will essentially advertise your product within Reddit comments. And I thought, oh, this is really you know, they they've really figured something out here and they've got me. And so I've kind of, you know, I've been begging my poor editors at New York Magazine to let me write a version of this for so long And finally, the sort of the, you know, the Geese thing came up and suddenly this was a thing that was, you, sort of in the conversation and I was finally able to break them down, but after years of sort of twisting their arms. And so they finally kind of let me let me take a couple of weeks and sort of dig into this. The other thing too also is I have no idea what's popular anymore. Yeah is somebody that, you know tell us a lot about culture I I was the cultrator at New York magazine for a long time. and My job is kind of right figure out who people are going to care about in six months so we can put this person on the cover. And used to be kind of simple to do that. We had, you know, things like ratings back in the olden days. And so, you know, that was fairly easy to do. And it got harder and harder and harder. And now I just have absolutely no idea I was thinking Do you have any idea What is more popular? The bear or the pit I don't know U I mean, I think I think definitively in this case right now the pit But I think cumulatively, culturally When you think about the like footprint of the bear, people saying yes, chehef Like the way people maybe started dressing because of the way Jeremy Allen White dresses on that show It's a different kind of influence. It's maybe people saying things and not even knowing that yes, Chef is from the bear. you know R. But it goes hand in hand with There's different kinds of impact that shows can make. And I think, you know, over the course of our lives you know U especially working in music There are bands that are important and there are bands that are big. And that's always been a tension in the media is to like you know, are we making too big of a deal out of a band be just because we personally like them. So we're going to fashion some narrative about why this is the only band that matters. When there is objectively in sync or somebody who is like exponentially bigger than the white stripes or something like that. And that kind of back and forth has always been really fascinating and like you, dude, I have I don't think there's ever been a time where I've been less certain of notot only what how many people are watching something and you get at this in your piece where you talk about when you really start to go in about like You know All of this stuff being made by companies that have no incentive to share how people are watching it, how deeply people are watching it, how much they're paying attention to it. It's so complicated now. I'm sure you've had this experience now when you're like Even talking with friends or if you Go to a bar and TV or movies come up And the The amount of siloing that's going on now where somebody is like, yeah, man, I am like for all mankind every scene completest And then the next guy over is like, I don't even I don't have no idea what you're talking about. And both are conversant in television Yeah, it's like every conversation about culture has it has that sidebar about like where you sort of justify how popular you think a thing is and it's like, oh by I was talking to my niece about this or you always bring in like this Is there evidence like a cooler young person that you know or something that is somehow more tapped in than you? Or you know, yeah, I was at Brunch and I overheard this and everything. And in theory, we should be able to track this stuff better than ever. Y. Everything is but yes, there is no incentive on the part of these companies that are making this stuff to actually share that data with us And so we were just U you know, trying to look for every sort of strange little signal that we can find about how big one thing is and And kind of unfortunately, in this vacuum that we have now, it's become really, really easy to sort of fake these signals of popularity. And so I feel like do not have a very clear view of reality, which is kind of yeah kind of strange. And so I wrote mostly about you know, TV, pop music, sort of celebrity gosip, like the frivolous stuff, but it's like you can obviously see the implications for everything here. It's like we're getting Uh, you know, All of our information. H. right now through the same sort of rectangle in our pockets Yeah through social media. and it's U It's so easy to sort of get a distorted look at reality with this. And so it's kind of terrifying. And it creates an ecosystem in which I think that I'm sure you find this challenging as a reporter and as a features writer where I think my romantic conception of what my dad used to do as a newspaper journalist, you know, even though he was a film critic, but like he would still have to gather a lot of information, especially when there's a crime reporer, the crime reporting happens in the courts. You know, like you would go down to the courthouse and sit there and wait for an interesting case. and then be like, oh, this is good. this was A rich kid got into a car accident and is trying to get out of it. This is a good article, or this is a good hook for a piece. But we're diding deriving a lot of our concept of what is What is popular or what is unpopular or what is beloved or what is being said about all those things from online platforms that are very susceptible to the kind of manipulation U data inflation and also narrative construction that in some ways I'm like the game is the game and I I think you've probably heard some pushback about this piece where it's like, how different is this from say Payola? How different is this from street teams plastering stickers all over a city for a band in the nineties I was wondering if you could give our audience without aggregating yourself because I do want people to read the piece. J just an idea of what clipping is and how it maybe is a little bit different from, say a digital marketing campaign for a band, a TV show, a movie ten years ago. Basically if you've got a song or a movie trailer or a TV show, you take it and you cut it into social media friendly clips, like short twenty second clips And then you find a bunch of dummy social media accounts that will post all of this online at huge volumes And essentially, as you do that, you are tricking the social media platform algorithms into interpreting it as a basically a sign of organic interest in this thing. And so when that happens, the platform sort of pushed these videos far and wide to users who ordinarily wouldn't have seen it sometimes they will kind of engage with it and that will sort of, you know, add even more fu of the fire too.'s Yeah, it's a thing that started only a notot too long ago. It's probably at this point four years old, but really kind of in the last year it's really sort of U become a thing that everybody is doing And U know, it's like, yeah, it's from Geast, although it's to Justin Bieber to Badunny. And so it's it' Tiny artists and big artists and everybody in between are doing it. Do you feel like it grew out of something organic. So like obviously, TikTalk and Instagram reels U One of those like sort of pillars of how you make stuff on there is to soundtrack it or interpolate clips of things. like I follow a thick of it memes account on Instagram where it's just scenes from the thick of it, you know, being posted all day long And I'll just be like, oh, that's a funny line. That's primarily how I've like rewatched that show in the last two years I don't really know that there is a lot in it for the thick of it producers to have that still on my feed, but I'm curious whether you think that this has become a weaponization of organic fan interaction or if it's something different than that. That's a good question. It is really, really hard to tell, and I feel like that's kind of the point. I think that the people doing this probably learned from things that actual fans were doing and they saw that it you know in one way, But now it's like the volume is different. It's you know, it's not just a couple of fans making you know, adding a song to a clip of Euphoria or something. This is like fifty thousand videos of the same thing being sort of dumped into social media all at the same, you know, over the same weekend to basically kind of like overflow the toilet and sort of get this Uh sorry to be ological obviously as a watch listener, you should know that's fine. Well I think why it's different from you know people that say that, you know, this is the ple up has always kind of existed. The fact that we don't have any trusted culture metrics at anymore to tell us what's actually popular or not is is sort of one thing. And so we, you know, in the olden days, you could check a street team, you know, people putting up stickers or something against like sound scan stales and you could kind of see the golf, but now there's just nothing to uh, sort of check this against. It is just trivally easy to do. It is like so simple Uh It's everybody's doing it. it's at a scale that I think is different. It's like it's not just in one city that this is, you know, you're putting up posters. This is like you're blasping this out to the entire universe of You know, TikToks user base really, really quickly. And so the, you know, the scale of it is pretty different So the clipping stuff happens obviously on video, but you were talking a little bit about the feeling you were getting reading Reddit threads. And I certainly agree that there seems to be over the last couple of years I can't really pinpoint the moment but it reminds me a lot of like You know, Twitter, I think went from this thing that was sort of everybody's running like gag journal over the course of a day and was very much directed towards like a select group of followers. And then like right when we started working at Grantland is when I think it became the primary promotional tool for journalism in the world And there was that that had its benefits and obviously also, I think made everybody slightly insane Um and then now it's kind of like a rage factory where you go and if you look on your for you page, at least when I do There are people having these like insane arguments about things that I'm like, Why how why are you guys even fighting about Like how my bloody Valentine isn't that good. Like who started this fight? Why is this now like crossed over to six different friend circles that I seem to have and or businesses, you know, and like some guy from Bloomberg is like, actually my Boody Valentine is the best. And I'm like, why are you commenting on this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's so I digress just to say With Reddit, I noticed a real collapse of voice, like everything started to sound exactly the same And obviously on Reddit, you can comment anonymously. And if you click on someone's user profile, often they'll be like, this person is hidden like their activity U How much of what interested you about this project was Not only like the obfuscation of data the inflation of the sense of popularity that people can have, but also the shaping of narrative around cultural objects. Clipping is sort of one technique. The other thing that they're doing now is This thing a chaotic could sort of put a name on, I don't know if this is the name sort of used by everybody but narrative campaigns where they are basically, yeah, using internet comments, using dummy accounts to comment on things in a way that makes it seem like, you know, everybody is talking about a thing in kind of the same way. And so see it on Reddit, you'll see it you know, you'll see it happen on Twitter. A couple of people that I talked to I thought this was sort of interesting. Flipping is something that you want to do at, you know huge volumes because you want to push this out to everybody Narrative campaigns are a subtler thing. You actually don't want that many people to notice this. You want kind of the right people to notice this. you want, you know, it's sort of like a light sort of sprinkle of of sort of like narrative juice on on a story to kind of shape something. And then, you know, once you do that, you can then use other kinds to like amplify certain arguments too. And so Uh Yeah, it is, it is really interesting because it's like it seems like a lot of the pop culture fights that we've had over the past you know how many years have basically been seemingly the result of some of this someome of these techniques And so in the story I talk about, you know, one example is like Bunny in the Super Bowl. Yeah for a month there was this was the loudest argument in America u you know, the NFL has hired the Spanish speaking artist to perform U and then, you know, people are upet about that and other people are sort of defending this And, uh Yeahah, it turns out that basically these bot detection firms that track this kind of thing found that Basically, the shape of the argument was exactly the same on both sides. Yes. And these accounts were basically posting at the same time maybe in the same time zones which is sort of suggestive of something coordinated. And so yeah, when you think about that, it's like all these things that we're just you know at each other's throats about all the time It's like, you, how much of it is real? We have no idea. I was talking to a friend of mine who's a lawyer in the music business about your piece and about the The wire piece about Chaotic Good and geese and he was like I wonder if the guys who did Cambridge Analytica knew that the endpoint of this was to get a geese song on a montage of Sers highlights that I was like. You know, it's like dreams come true. Yeah. But the Bad bunny thing is a really good segue into the thing that I wanted to ask you about, you know, I was talking with well both I guess your former colleague in a sense at Grantlland, Kurt Goldsbury, who works with us at the Ringer now. and we were chatting about For some reason he hit me up about like, Why is everybody talking about the Kevin Heart Rast? And I was like Yeah, me me too, although I don't know who's talking about it because really what's happened is atamomized down to its thirty most important thirty second clips. completely decontextualized from like the fact that that was like a three hour show on Netflix that I find roasts like super uncomfortable to watch, honestly, don't understand them. And yet it is I think Kirk called it like my junk feed where there's all these things Everybody I talk to seems relatively conversant in I can't find a single person who's like, I absolutely made time to watch a three hour roast of Kevin Hart and have a coner like an opinion about it And there's tons of stories like that. like I am a person who likes the bad bunny I have heard does not give a shit who plays the Super Bowl halftime show and like was very aware that that was like a weaponization that worked for both parties. like whether or not Bad Bunny or Bad Bunny's label or Bad Bunny's marketing company participated in that debate. I said I think it's actually like Important that he gets to play the halftime show play you know, and I thought his performance was really good, but it's like that kind of thing where I'm like How fuck are we talking about this for a third week? and who actually is like every day I wake up and go to bed thinking about the Super Bowl halftime show? You really do have to wonder how many of these people actually exist? Who giv a shit about anything? Like peopleople have enough enough on the plates, I would think I don't know, I can't imagine being upset about you know, enough about anything to sort of long on and go off anymore. I talk about Justin Bieber using this for cooachella U Uh at least we think so. someomebody paid to clip Justin Dieber's Coachellea performance. And I really thought, you know, I maybe I don't know if I' could go into witness protection after this L, am I going to be I mean, is this going to be, you know, or people going to be after me this weekend. And you know, I was out walking around. I didn't hear from one believer. Yeah. And so Really it's like just how much of this is how much of this, uh U how many paper tigers are there out there? It u, you know, how much of this is real? It's like we hear about the, you know, these fan armies that are supposedly just you know, burning people's houses down every time you say negative word about whichever pop star. And it's like much of that is real or you know, how much of that is just bots sort of, you know, bullying, you know, people into u uh in the submission, who knows? It's it's really uh It's a yeah, strange up there. But there is real world implications to it. I mean, obviously, like our political landscape is completely like shaped by this kind of online discussion. I mean going through the Los Angeles Mayorll race here now and you can see A lot of the old I positions being taken, the same ones that have been sort of peopleople have been manning since twenty sixteen. There's like a a sort of progressive spoiler candidate. There is a far right wing reality TV like candidate, like there are two people kind of in the middle try to scrap to see who's going to get into the runoff and watching people talk about it online. E sometimes people I personally know I'm like, oh, it kind of feels like you If you're going to actually that indignity of posting, you are still parroting one of like seven pre agreed upon positions, right? And most of the time I think it's almost reflective now that people who say things I find this sometimes even talking to Andy, I'm like, I don't know how to make my point without making it in an extreme way, right? Like I don't know how to say like I acknowledge this without saying I hated it or I loved it Um And I think that that's something that I see a lot in criticism and in online discussion of culture now where it's like the idea of something being like a two and a half star three star out of five star thing has completely vanished. You know, because even if you think that, there's like a really vocal contingent of people somewhere online or quote unquote people who are like, this is actually the goat sci fi show. This is this is better than two thousand one and you're like, ah Godd, man, I really really don't think so. But that doesn't mean I think it's an unredeemable piece of crap. I just don't want to spend thirty hours watching it, maybe yeah. The negative engagement, the stuff that starts arguments is the stuff that sort of goes goes further and so I think that's more kind of more of what you see. Well, okay, Spencer Pratt is obviously clipping it up likeike he's got he's got Yeah, clipping been sced going going full time Although he is to his credit, at least he's, I think he's because of election laws. he's got to disclose it. And so he's the rare you sort of clipping event that actually you sort of know where it's coming from. Most of the journalism in the world now has sort of disappeared behind paywalls.. And so we are getting the TLDR version of stuff for the you, the stories that we're not subscribers to from the, you know, the tweet about it or the, you know, the quote tweet or the, you know, the comment in or the argument about it afterwards Yes, yeah, exactly. And so T terms of the debate are basically set by whatever that argument is, which is really easy to you know, sort of amplify a real thing or just completely astrrootrophic from scratch. And so it's yeah, so I think that's probably another reason why you're seeing it's like everything is the most extreme kind of, you know that it could possibly be because that's, you know, it's somebody benefits when that when that happens. Yeah, and you see, I mean, we and this has been going on since we were kids, but you see all the time on the left and the right political candidates, television shows, pieces of music, movies, TV you know, whatever are essentially rejected from trying to occupy some sort of like middle ground, you know, like the the stuff that really kind of at least drives conversation is the stuff that's going to be And increasingly, the more extreme kind of version of whatever we're talking about. Um, You know, I always try on this show Andy and I always have this kind of running conversation about doing something because it's doing like covering a show because we think it's popular. And there are shows that are hugely popular, but not necessarily within the algorithm that we follow. So something like say I think the Sheridan shows Tayor Sheridan shows are a good example of something. I cannot honestly say that we would do as much Taylor Sheridan coverage Those shows weren't obviously very big Taylor Sheridan also would not have made thirteen shows in four years if he wasn't big and if Paramount and hadn't decided like this was what we're going to bet the farm on By the same token, you know, we cover euphoria on a week to week basis. I think that's a very big show mostost of my friends have stopped watching it, you know, like Um So it's it's a it's always this murky thing feeling around in the dark for a light switch And the thing that's funny about What you were writing about Especially like, you know, when you're talking about geese, which is a band that I like and I kind of wonder if you don't based on your description of how Cameron Woers sings. good ye, Caterwall. Yeah. But I was like mildly offended by like not I'm not being manipulated man, likeike I like geese. I like, you know, I started liking geese two years ago. Do you didid you come across anything in your research or in looking online and seeing these discord servers where people are, you know, begging someone to clip Apple TV shows or what have you, where you were like Oh Well, I like that thing though. Chaotic Goods roster has got some good stuff on it. And so it was kind of maybe a little bit yeah, disappointing, I guess to uh to see that, but I also uh You know, I also understand it's we are this the whole system is so broken that like you kind of need to you need to do this. You're either in or you're out. and so being in means u you know, sort of resorting to some of these sort of shady techniques. I was in these disiscord servers for three or four weeks And basically I would ask the publicists of the people being clipped, you know, is this something that you U Is this something that was paid for by the, you know, the artist and their or their team? And Nobody wants to talk about this. everyverybody's doing it, but I think, you know, for understandable reasons, they don't Uh they don't want to talk about it because it is just kind of uh lame, I guess would be the the word. likeike's it's really sort of a bummer that this is what we've come to. But at the same time, totally understand why geese or you know, McGee or, you know, whoever has to do this because one of the things that this does, it's not just You know, the artists that do it are sort of in the composition. It's basically everybody who doesn't do this is uh sort of left out of the conversation. You can't hope that it gets too many artists themselves. It's, u I feel like it's more of a information ecosystem problem that is is kind and it's the I blame the platforms, I think more than anybody. att one point you mentioned like the chaot one of the chaotic goods narrative shaping tactics was If an artist has a performance on Saturday night Live att midnight posting it and the narrative, the comments under the video should be This is the greatest live performance I've ever seen. This is the best live show I've ever seen on Saturdayight Live. L we have our new strokes. We have like there's like an obvious like echo of like There's a sort of excellence or supremely like amazing thing that's happening rather than like Cool, Like they played on SNL or whatever geeky things some fan would say if they saw their favorite band playing on SNL. I was wondering whether or not you felt like, you know, you kind of mentioned this with the Paywall media traditional media sites, but whether or not you felt like this is kind of filled this vacuum where I don't even know where I would go now to find out what someone thought of an SNL live performance anyway. I mean When we were coming up, there were plenty of things that recapped Satireurnet Live on Monday. There were plenty of articles where it was like, it sure seems like this band is having a moment That would kind of shape maybe a narrative around it But that's not in the artist's hands. The artist is hoping that John Perrellis at the New York Times or or somebody at Rolling Stone is like into them enough and is like, yeah, that was good You know, it's easier maybe to say have like a lot of like a Stan army of Ashley Padilla fans who are like, this is the new Kristen Wig. I don't know. It is really hard for culture journalists, I think just journalism in general to know anything anymore. I think that This is like I don't know where to go go to find out you know, what's what's actually popular. I used to think that I had my finger on things, but all of the advertising sort of moved to short form video. Yeah. All of the yeah, the websites that you would you'd sort of go to to, you know, find what a writer sort of thought about this stuff Uh, you know, some of them are still hanging on, but it's like quite a lot of them have disappeared. And so it's yeah, it is I don't know, it's really tough. I don't think, you know, I am no better at anybody else than anybody else at figuring this out. I'm like just fumbling around of the darker Yeah, I mean, it's also like there's a degree to which there iss like I would actually be curious to get feedback from from this conversation from people who are not necessarily working with it within the media or are not handcuffed to their laptops. twelve hours of a day and kind of working for seven of them, but also like ambiently looking online at stuff because I do think that that phenomenon while it gave us careers, it also is kind of why sometimes it's really hard to tell like Is there a whole world out there that doesn't give a shit about X Y or Z thing that we're writing about or arguing about? I know there is. Um, but what are they what do they care about? You know, because it's It's maybe they are not watching as much TV or listening to as much new music or care about whether obsession made fifteen or sixteen million dollars this weekend. But they're engaged with culture on some level or else Like we cannot be propping this entire thing up. So how do they get their information? And how seriously do they take what they see on their feeds it's an impossible question to answer, maybe. sort of a culture emergency. but the people I worry Maybe the most though, are the artists themselves Uh, because, uh, Nobody has any idea what's popular. Nobody knows what people are actually responding to anymore. This is like we talked about, okay, like in the oldld Crland days we covered a show like Madmen, which two hundred hundred thousand people watched, but we understood that the people that that show would maybe come to our website and read about it. But you know now it's like the you know we knew it wasn't as popular as Big Bang theory, for example But I feel like that yeah, it's impossible to compare somethingomething like I don't know, beef to you know, House of the Dragon. I have no idea which is which is is sort of more of an impact. You know, you just think of an artist trying to pitch something right now and it's like don't know what you know, they don't know what kind of feedback they're they're getting sort of their market research has just sort of been run through this this whole, you know, sort of distortion pedal of social media that really kind of warps everything. Yeah. So like's just it's hard to know. And so I feel like U, you know, I think about how the fact that u every show on TV Lately seems to be sort of derivative of like the white Lus or it's like we had a I know a couple of years ago like the agencies were telling, you know telling everybody it's like right, no more knivice out rififfts Yeah and anything. And it's like I kind of wonder, wereere those like the last two shows or the last two like culture products that we sort of had hard numbers for for the, you know, original things and now, you know, we're just sort of reinterpreting them into perpetuity because we have nothing else that with like real data on. It's so hard because like back when you you and I were working together, like something like Homeland would come on. It would be a sensation for two years. I mean, it was a very popular show for its entirety, but like those first couple of seasons of Homeland were like It felt like you would come in on Monday and people would be like, let me know when you're ready to talk about Homeland, you know And that's what this like literally this podcast is built off that premise that there are these five, ten shows a year that yes, we Andy and are happy to recommend one hundred shows or twenty shows in a year, but there are going to be five or six that like we feel confident like That madmen group of people are going to be like, I want to talk about this or hear people talk about it That homeland thing that would then lead to ten homeland ripoffs. that would have varying levels of success or critical appreciation, and then they would kind of shed that and get out, but you're right. It's like I don't even know what I would try to imitate now. Like I don't even know what a show like White Lotus is a good example. I think that there's A lot of reasons for that. One is shows TV networks maybe are like, this is great because this is like a very controlled environment you can isolate people. So that's essentially like We don't have to worry a lot about extras, we don't have to do a lot of set pieces. like it's just find a good location, have a mystery, and then have people portray one another, and that's great for us A and But I'm not sure what a show now Pit, I think would be the best example of I think that Max and other places will start to try to say How do we get? A sixteen episode procedural up yearly but have it be stickier and more Maybe long lasting in the psyche then say the Chicago Dick Wolf emmpire or or a procedural on a network But I don't know, I don't know. I don't know if you can like recreate that magic and B its same token If you clipped it enough and if you had. And if you had the faction of pit fans who seem to be talking about these people like they're actual humans instead of fictional characters Maybe you could manufacture like an illusion that you're pit rip off police procedural or pit rip off family drama was actually as big as the pit. I'm not sure. Talking to some of the people I talked to, I believe you could. Obviously shows fail all the time. Obviously things get canceled all the time. things just don't work, things you don't catch on. It feels like there's a way to sort of put your finger on the scale a little bit more than there once was and you can sort of declare at a little bit. I don't know. I think you guys were having a conversation the other day about Apple shows. and it's like a hit on Apple is different from a hit on obviously Netflix or any other service with more subscribers. And so you're dealing with things that totally different different scal. And so if show without a lot of viewers, the survival prospects on Apple TV are probably better than they are on Yeah. I think I think so ye. there's something to Apple's volume play is still modest compared to Netflix. U they seem to be way more willing to bring shows back. I don't know what their budget and model is and if it's different from show to show. like I will routinely see renewal announcements or a new season of something that's in season four or five. Traditionally a lot of these places, they wrap things up by season three Either because they see like an attrition in viewership or because that's when contract renegotiations come up with cast And I don't understand the economics of what Apple is playing at pretty much a write down for them in their larger business. So I don't I'm not sure And then you get into something like Netflix, like you're saying, where their data to me is incomprehensible. More people watched Richardon season three than watched the Moon Landing.'s like my favorite stat. Yeah, None of it makes any sense. Everything is incomprehensible. who knows? But interestingly enough, one of the things that I've mentioned in the piece, the night agent was something that was being clipped And yet sort if you look at the numbers they releasase, that showit was massively popular. It's like every episode is watched more than The Super Bowl or something at least in season One or two, I think I guess. And what is the So then why why do we need why do we need clippers at all? So it's u I think we have a have a clear clear view of any of this anymore. And it's getting, I don't know, it's getting a little scary. So yeah, I'm a sle issue voter at this point. real hard culture metric. Nels. I think that exactly. that would fix a lot. Let's wrap it up by discussing like where you see this is going next because this piece begins and ends if I remember correctly with U wasas it Joe Lim, the guy from Floodify? Joe Lim Yes.. Wh your piece starts with an assertion from Joe that that ninety percent of what you're seeing on your feeds is essentially fake advertising U or shhadow advertising. It's essentially like there is like some, hey, a dollar per every thousand views Um incentive for somebody to post it And he That statement kind of chilled me to my bone because you know, if I killed twenty five minutes looking at my phone I'll have the One part of my brain that's like just smoothed out and is looking at cats and soccer highlights and whatever And then there's the other part that's like Isn't it weird that like I've just gotten eleven videos that are the same template or have the same simimilar prompt. or like something like top jaw will be popular and then one hundred and fifty top jaw style shows will be in my phone all of a sudden of like, guysu getting interviewed on the street about what their favorite something is. Joe seems to be suggesting at the end of this piece that this is all coming to an end. What can you tell us a little bit about that thinks that basically he thinks eventually people are going to stop trusting they what they see in their social media feeds. He thinks this has gotten so bad. And I kind of I think I sort of agree with him. This is it's so clear. I think people that really are noticing this more than they more than they used do that Uh uh, you know, there's just so much so much astroturf h that he thinks eventually people will be turned off from this. But he thinks that the, you know, the clippers, at least the people that are doing the clipping now, they're going to basically be sort of directing all of this content at AI. Yeah. So soon, you know, maybe we're not going to open social media apps, mayaybe we're just to have our AirPods in and it's going U U uh you know, Claud or CheBT is going to tellell us what TV shows to watch. or u you know, what music to stream And he thinks that if basically if they hit these LLMs with enough sort of volume of stealth marketing that will Uh basasically sort of trick the LLMs instead of tricking I even now if you okay. so like the other day I was like, I think I who was I thinking about listening to? It was some someome band that had twel albums and I was just kind of like, I'm not quite sure where to start and I just our usual Google search of X artist ranked which gives you a Gemini summary of what the twowo or three peak albums are in terms of like critical appreciation, but also these are the cult records. And then obviously there are the Reddit threads where people are ranking them There's like wrate your music threads. There's all these things where you can kind of find that information. But I noticed and I think everybody has this experience now that they're very rarely going past that Geminiz summary. of the answer to your question now And so that vision of the future, that idea of basically your Google result being prompt you give I AI agent, essentially where you're just like, hey, I want to listen to Salem. What's music like like what are the best like witch house songs? creates a playlist for you or it tells you like, People like this, it's like, well where are they getting that information? Like where is this where is the learning happening And I would imagine that there is also a worry that like AI agents probably already are operating multiple like social media feeds and working from a prompt from an actual human owner are populating our feeds with this kind of stuff. This happened to search first. It's like search has just been completely sort of overtaken by spam. and that's I think where we're headed with with social media. And so People I think are eventually going to escape I do kind of wonder if it's like U you know, some of this is purposeful. It's like Google is, you know, they want you to use Gemini. They don't want to use their search engine anymore. And so maybe they're tanking you know, on purpose here and pushing you to to Gemini. And so, you know, then Gemini will then take in this you know, huge amount of of undisclosed advertising and then sort of spit that back to you in the form of, you know, supposedly personalized recommendations. I find it too. I ask ChatTPD all the time. It's like, what are What are five, you know, albums that I've never heard before that sound a little like alligator by echo in the bunnymen or something. spit me back. likeike incredible recommendations that you know, I never would have found any other way.. And yeah, I feel like this this whole thing is fromwhere I think. A bald record store employee is like, I could have told you if you had just g to me. I would still have a job. man Lanne, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been awesome. and this piece is incredible. We'll link it in the show notes, obviously