Marc Andreessen on how the internet changed news, politics, and outrage | The a16z Show

Key Takeaway

Transform social media rage into productive action. When you feel the urge to engage in online combat, recognize it as a pressure release valve—but use that energy intentionally. The internet has created a 2.5-day viral outrage cycle where each 'current thing' disappears as quickly as it arrives. Instead of getting swept up in every controversy, ask yourself: 'Will this matter in a week?' Focus your attention on what you can control and change in your immediate environment, not on distant battles that will be forgotten by next Tuesday.

Episode Overview

Marc Andreessen discusses the evolution of media consumption from CNN's 'randomonium' concept to today's viral social media cycles. He explores how the internet has transformed political engagement, created the 'global village,' and paradoxically reduced physical violence while increasing virtual combat. The conversation examines media's impact on society, the nature of the '2.5-day panic cycle,' and why political polarization may not be as new or dangerous as commonly believed.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Marc Andreessen on how the internet changed news, politics, and outrage | The a16z Show from A16Z. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Each viral social media meme explosion is like a 2 and 1/2 day panic cycle. It was not that long ago grown men in serious positions of power and authority in the US got mad at each other and would literally have a physical duel and that was like a normal part of life. If you're sitting at home scrolling social media getting mad, at least you're not out in the street like hurting people. The fact that political violence is at like an all-time low in Western society is something that people really don't talk about.

The news is called the news, not the importance. If you can imagine a version of the news that's called the importance and and the newspaper is like here are all the important things that are happening today. Nobody would buy it cuz nobody cares. Cuz people want the news. They want the hot thing. They want the outrageous thing. Mark, thank you for joining Monitoring the Situation. the Situation. the Situation. Good morning. I could not be more excited. Let's monitor some situation. Excellent. Well, first we'll we'll get a bit meta here and uh we'll talk about media.

We've been uh talking about this idea at Monitoring the Situation. We've talked about investing in it for almost a year now. Um and when we were first talking about the idea, uh you had brought up the the book about the history of CNN. And you actually uh you talked about this concept that they had called Randomonium. Uh what did you find so interesting about the the founding or the history of of CNN and how how it could apply to what we're doing here or or this broader media moment?

media moment? media moment? Yeah, so uh so one is I'm old enough to remember when CNN started. Um although I didn't actually have cable TV at the time so I didn't see it, but uh I remember it and the impact that it had and then I because I'm an obsessive, I there's this book at one point that nobody's read, but it's the book is called Me and Ted Against the World. Uh which is a great title. So it's it's uh the founder of CNN, this guy Reese Reese Schonfeld.

Reese Schonfeld. Reese Schonfeld. Um and uh he he basically he's actually the guy who who convinced Ted Turner to go into the satellite go into the satellite business which sort of created, you know, my essentially modern, you know, cable TV uh satellite TV and then all you know, led downstream to streaming and everything else going on today. And so so so and you know, this has been kind of lost to history, but Ted Turner was like a a great like amazing example of like exactly the kind of, you know, great founder that we work with.

Like just this like incredible world of power, you know, very controversial character. Like every other thing out of his mouth like horrified, like you you know, he generated a huge number of headlines of like you know, I can't believe Ted said that. that. that. Um like over and over and over again. So like one one of these one of the one of these real characters in the in the history of the media business. Uh and then this guy Reese Schonfeld who was originally the lawyer that that wired up Ted's first first first first satellite deal and and so the the two of them came up with this crazy idea like I forget like 1981 or something.

And they said, "How about having a 24-hour news channel?" Right? And and and this at the time was like just like a completely loopy idea. Uh actually uh Ted Ted Turner wanted to be a 15-hour a day news channel cuz he assumed that there would be nobody watching overnight, you know, that the 9 hours overnight. And Reese was like, "Nope, 24 hours. People are going to stay up all night to watch this thing." thing." thing." Um and the idea was uh by the way completely alien to what CNN is today.

Uh the the idea was was was this concept that Reese Schonfeld came up with called Randomonium which basically says at any point in time there is like whatever there there is something happening in the world that is like the most amazing, interesting, controversial, bonkers, compelling, transfixing thing that you can imagine. can imagine. can imagine. Um and you know The current thing. Exactly. The current thing. At any moment in time there's the current thing. And so he's like, "What should a 24-hour news channel be? Obviously, it should be the thing it's right Obviously, what it should do is it should lock onto the current thing.

It should then cover the current thing continuously, right? For as many minutes, hours, or days as that thing is the current thing." Uh and then he called it Randomonium cuz he basically said for that period you just put whatever you get you put on screen. screen. screen. Um and so you get whatever fragmentary reports or man-on-the-street interviews or like you know, what what whatever it is, you just like slap the thing on the screen and like if you know, if you get it wrong, you apologize later, but like you know, we're you know, this is you're real time, it's live.

Um and then you just people are just going to be glued to this thing. And actually that So okay, so that was the original CNN business plan. business plan. business plan. They they then they then you know, they took a while to get up and running, but then they they actually did implement this and the the for for our older viewers will will remember as I do that it was the real breakthrough point was the 1991 Gulf War. The first invasion of Iraq and the and that was the thing that really caused the whole thing to punch through and there was like a week there.

Where basically just like you were just people were just glued to CNN around the clock cuz they had you know it was like literally live on the ground coverage of like you know they were in Baghdad you know with like bombing raids happening all kinds of crazy stuff and the Iraqi government like just the whole thing. It was so it was just like the most incredible show in the world and then quite honestly they spent the next you know whatever 20 years you know basically trying to trying to you know repeat that experience and they they repeated it every now and then with like the Monica Lewinsky thing was that for a while and the OJ OJ trial was that for a little bit but.

It was just kind of hard to come up with with with the next thing like that and then and then you know over the last 20 years you know CNN has kind of become something you know completely different today let's say. That's not that at all and then basically what's happened is the internet reinvented randomonium. And so right the experience of monitoring the situation on especially you know on on social media and especially of course on X. X. X. Right specifically right and then by the way also streaming right the you know the other the other part of it is streaming and now there's obviously streaming on X but also you know streaming on other platforms you know YouTube and Twitch and so forth and so the internet reinvented this and right so right so right so randomonium turned into you know the current thing and then monitoring the situation you know legitimately justifiably became a a giant meme and so it is time yes it is clearly time to monitor the situation.

Why do we think the amount of current things or randomonium or situations just is continuously accelerating it it seems like it's you know just the the amount the amount the amount your velocity of these moments just keeps on increasing how do we make sense of that? of that? of that? Yeah so I think there's really two two things that have happened that are really different and even you know different than the days of cable TV and 24 hour news so one is just like the internet for better or for worse like the internet plugs you into the world, right?

Like the internet plugs you in. McLuhan. McLuhan. McLuhan. yes. yes. yes. Uh Marshall McLuhan, okay, so let's cite Marshall McLuhan actually for both of these. So Marshall McLuhan, who was the great media media theorist of the 20th century, yeah, he had two key concepts so that are relevant here. So one is the global village. And so he had this concept of the global village and the concept of the global village, by the way, he did not view as a positive. Like he was not endorsing he was just in his mind he was making an observation of what was happening, which is basically basically what he meant by that is you you need to conceive of what he meant by village to start with.

So so village basically means a community with a small enough number of people where everybody knows everybody else. So like think about a small town or you know, a a literal small village and everybody knows everybody else and as a consequence of that there's no privacy. Right. And and and basically everybody's up in each other's business all the time. Um and I and and I grew up in a small enough town, uh you know, in a rural town where I you know, I I experienced this.

I I saw what it was like and it was like that. Everybody knows everybody else. By the way, it's the same people year after year after year. You like get to know them like way too well. Everybody's completely up in each other's business. Like each up in each other's business. Like there's basically no privacy. Um and so you know, and by the way, one of the reasons people leave small towns to go to the big city is cuz they want to get you know, they want to get away from that.

They want to they want to get to a level of anonymity and and and have a lot more, you know, people running around. But but the village kind of has that specific thing. And what he said was basically modern media is going to turn the entire world into a village. Um and so you're just going to be connected and this is, you know, pre-internet when he said this, right? Um but you know, it's really happened with the internet where it's just like, okay, you're connected to everybody all the time.

Um and and and and by the way, like by default, um you know, he would find this to be like a a very entertaining thing that this is actually happening cuz he he would say, of course you're getting all the downstream effects that you're getting, which is by default it's it's it's going to melt your brain, right? Like the the human animal was not evolved the human animal was evolved to have like, you know, there's a Dunbar's number. You can basically have a direct relationship with like 150 people.

It's sort of famously called the Dunbar number in sociology. Um but the global village expects you to have a Dunbar number of like eight billion people, right? Like Like cuz cuz they're all right there and they're all up in your grill, right? And they're all telling you what they think of you and they're all like cursing at you and calling you names. Like and so it's just like this like really really brain melting experience. Um so so that that's part one. Um so we just we experience reality differently uh as a result of that.

And so the the the thought experiment I I always have is, you know, we we talk a lot about the impact of the internet social media on politics. It's like uh well, okay, like imagine having social media during World War II. War II. War II. Right? Like we would have had a completely different national uh experience. Um you know, had like Pearl Harbor happened with like Twitter? Like it like it would have been a completely different experience than the way people lived through, you know, Pearl Harbor in in in in in actually 1941 with, you know, with primarily with TV and radio.

And so anyway, so there there's a global village thing. And then there's this other thing that he said, which he originally said about television. He made this key observation. He said this is part of his thing where he said the medium is the message. So the the actual medium of the of the media technology actually determines a lot of the message of what's received. Uh a lot of the content. And and and specifically he said this thing. He said, "If it's on television, it's a television show." Um and what he meant by that is if something's going to be on television, it's going to end up being turned into the equivalent of like a half-hour comedy or an hour-long drama.

Right? Basically, you know, the two native media forms of of television are the half-hour comedy or the hour-long drama. Um and so you're you're going to get this basically very emotion You're going to get this very polished and sort of glossy and produced thing that's going to it's going to be a story and it's going to run the way that a television story runs or a television show runs. Um and it's going to and and like and every television show is like a it's a every television show is like a morality play, right?

Every television show basically tells a moral story of basically people behaving badly and then and then learning the error of their ways and then, you know, then famously you have like, you know, the happy ending, right? Uh where everybody you know, kisses and hugs. Um and remember Seinfeld was like a huge variation of that because remember the the motto of Seinfeld, Larry David's motto for Seinfeld was no learning, no hugging. hugging. hugging. Um and it was it was what made Seinfeld so unique cuz every other television show up until Seinfeld always ended with everybody learning and hugging, right?

You learn the moral lesson and then you you you sort of reconcile with with the people close to you. And so every every real life experience would get wedged into the format of a television show and would be turned into like this basically this basically this morality play. Okay, so the internet version I I believe the internet version of if it's on television, it's a television show. The internet version is if it's on the internet, it's a viral social media meme. meme. meme. Uh right. If if if it's on the internet, it doesn't matter what it is.

By the way, if an alien invasion happens later this afternoon, this afternoon, this afternoon, it will be turned into a social media meme. Like like like and it will go viral. And that and that's what will happen. Right? And it will be turned into a viral meme and it will spread virally across the thing and then and then, you know, human beings what they are, that will turn into a moral panic. You know, that that'll turn into a full-fledged like outright, you know, outrage and how dare you and people will line up on each side and you sort of tribes will form and then people will go to war with each other on social media and you'll have all these, you know, basically back and forth.

You know, all all of this all of this, you know, all all both all the humor and all the rage of of kind of how how how meme culture works. works. works. And so so everything on the internet basically whatever happens in the real world becomes like a social media basically social media viral moment um meme uh complex and then, you know, basically moral panic. Um and you know, search for scapegoats. Um right? Like a moral emergency. And and and and that happens to every single new that happens.

Right? And so and then you combine these two and it's like, okay, for better or for worse, we're all in the same room now. We're like literally in the same global village and we're sort of surfing controversial internet meme moments over and over and over and over again. over again. over again. And as far as I can tell, like if you look at the numbers, basically what happens is each viral social media meme explosion, it basically is this huge spike up and then it's like this half-life decay and it lasts about 2 and 1/2 days.

1/2 days. 1/2 days. Uh right. And so each social media basically experience is like a 2 and 1/2 day basically panic cycle. Um and and then what happens is the old one isn't necessarily ever like resolved or reconciled, but what happens is a new one appears, a new current thing appears, right? And and just takes over the the the you know, takes over the outrage, right? And all the emotional energy that applied to the old one apply applies to the new one. Everybody forgets the old one even happened.

Like a week later, you can't even remember like like like What was the social media like craze of like 7 days ago? I mean, it might as well have been like a thousand years ago. Like lost to the mists of time. Nobody knows like 7 days ago whatever it was was the most important thing that's ever happened. And 7 days later, it's like it never it never not not even a peep. Like nothing is it's like completely gone. Um, and so you just you're just going to have this like basically repeated sort of you know, emotional shotgun blast over and over every 2 and 1/2 days, you know, essentially forever.

By the way, this is like this is why one of my theories is like it's not possible to predict the outcome of politics. So like it's everybody thinks they know what's going to happen in the midterm elections in November. And I'm like, okay, it's now whatever. It's it's it's April 20th. It's April 20th that the election is whatever, November 6th or whatever. All right, how many 2 and 1/2 day cycles are there between April 20th and November 6th? And I you know, the the math majors you know, be able to calculate that in their head, but it's I don't know 100 or something, right?

Or 120 or something like that. Like whatever is the thing that we think is the thing that's going to tilt the election today, election today, election today, it's going to be a hundred social media meme cycles old. Like nobody's going to remember anything that's happening right now. The election is going to turn basically on like whatever's happening in the economy and then it's going to be whatever is like the viral meme panic that's happening like that day. And so and and you could say like is this good or bad?

I don't know. Is this better or worse than television? I don't know. By the way, is this better or worse than the days of radio or the days of you know, I don't know the Pritchard you know, the the revolution that followed the you know, the the arrival of of good the printing press? Is this better or worse than the days in which you know, we were all reciting epic poetry around the campfire as our former media? I don't know. You could have like a big value discussion about you know, which is better or worse.

Um, I I have an argument I will make that this notwithstanding all the craziness this is better. But like this is the nature of the world we live in um and it it let put it this way. This is we're now on autopilot. Like the the the the shape of the media determines the behavior basically from here on out and and until there's something that fundamentally displaces uh social media like this is the world we live in. Hence the need to monitor the situation. the situation.

the situation. Amen. Is the reason why you think it's better is because even though there's more noise, there's more signal and as kind of a collective global brain we get closer to the truth or So I I would say this um we get so a couple things. Yeah, so one is look I would say there you could say this there are more truth and more lies. Right? I so so so I would say that it's it's both of the following statements are true which is there's more truth in social media than we had in previous forms of media and they're probably probably I mean old media had a lot of lies by the way.

So it's it's hard to say there are more lies. But let's just say there are plenty of lies in social media. Like there are plenty you know plenty of ops and in in fact one of one of the native one of one of the native forms of entertainment of social media is trying to spot the ops. Um by the way maybe I should pitch you a show for on MTS which is you know maybe every day we should do an hour on let's spot the ops right?

Like what you know which ones are real and organic which ones you know which ones are staged [ __ ] You know was somebody getting paid behind the scenes. Um and so you know and everybody of course focuses on the downside and so they focus on the fact that there's all this all the all the all these ops and [ __ ] which is certainly true. But there's also just like the ability for somebody to tell the truth is like much more direct and clear uh than it was before right?

Because of because of the you know the the collapse of the gatekeepers. And so I I I think both of those are true. So I think that's true and then but the the slightly different argument that I would make um make um make um is that uh previous forms of media were really good at generating physical violence. violence. violence. Um and so um the the I mean there's many many examples of this in history but the Spanish the Spanish Civil War um which was kind of the the the war that kind of pre forecasted everything that was going to all this sort of tragedy of the of the 20th century that followed um you know the Spanish Civil War was kind of basically the test bed for both communism and Nazism uh, in the modern world.

Um, and um, uh, and uh, you know, it it's native media format was posters. Um, and so you literally it was like the idea the the ability to cut printed color propaganda posters was like the new media technology at that time like you right before radio. Um, and the Spanish Civil War was like super violent. Um, and then radio was the technology that led to um, you know, radio was was was the Nazi regime's native media format. Radio was the way that basically the the fascist regimes got established.

got established. got established. Um, uh, as well as by the way as well as FDR uh, you know, was was was primarily a radio phenomenon. Um, you know, kind of the rise of modern, you know, kind of you know, it's kind of modern modern liberalism. liberalism. liberalism. Um, and then, you know, television, you know, was the native media medium of like you just, you know, television kind of kicked in starting around World War II. So it played a role, but it it then, you know, television had a huge role to play in in the Vietnam War.

Um, and then in all of the violent riots of the '60s and '70s, you know, which were kind of you know, super crazy both, you know, across the US and Europe. Um, and so you know, tell television has a long history of of leading leading to downstream violence. Um, violence. Um, violence. Um, you know, the fact that we haven't actually had like the the the fact that like political violence is at like an all-time low in Western society is something that people really don't talk about.

Um, and it feels like we must be in this like super politically violent world because everybody's so angry about politics all the time, but like measured political violence is is at like an all-time low. And so so my theory is the the ability to directly participate in online virtual combat uh, is shunting away a lot of the energy that in the past would have would have translated to street violence. street violence. street violence. And so and so I so it's it's sort of this thing is if if the virtual world can become arbitrarily rhetorically violent violent violent without people actually getting physically hurt.

And that gives people a way to exercise all of their anger and rage over politics and to be able to attack, you know, the the hated enemy uh, without having it actually be something that translates to physical violence. violence. violence. Um, and so so yeah, my it's like I don't know, social media wars up, you know, physical violence down. Nobody wants to hear that cuz everybody's so mad all the time about what's happening online, but but I think that that's character Like, if you're sitting at home scrolling social media getting mad, like at least you're not out on the street like hurting people.

So, that's my That's my moral defense of the whole thing. Well, it's fascinating because there's kind of a different kind of of of ideological sorting happening cuz cuz people you you say things like, "Hey, you know, now they can't even talk to their own families cuz they've sort of found their tribe online that it that agrees with them." Uh and uh you know, it's it's no longer the people they it's it's no longer their families and and back in the day, you know, you didn't have as as much uh po- po- this or the the logic goes, as much political polarization of the idea that I can't even talk to someone not not from the same side.

Pa- Part of that perhaps is because the internet allows them to find their tribe so, you know, so strongly and so clearly that they're able to uh you know, have an exclusionary tribe as well. But, I guess one response to political polarization argument uh is that, "Hey, at least it's not going to uh you know, leading to physical combat." Uh wh- what might you say more broadly? Is is it just overstated in general because people also have this idea of filter bubbles, too. But, uh of course, it in some ways it's the opposite in the sense that the internet exposes you to ideas that you wouldn't have seen otherwise.

Right. Yeah, so I think people just have a really rose-colored glasses view of the past. The The past gets sanded off like in part cuz we only interpret the pa- you know, a number one is we we weren't there. And then the modern interpreters of the past, you know, are often quite honestly not telling us the truth about what happened because they they have their own modern kind of, you know, gloss or spin they want to put on it. it. it. Um and so uh but just the edges of the past gets sanded off in in in retrospect.

But, it's just like it's really significant like if you just Like the easiest thing to do easiest thing is just go go on YouTube and watch old episodes of a TV show called All All in the Family. Um which was a a very uh a Um which was a a very uh a very famous uh successful TV show when I was a kid. Um and All in the Family was a microcosm uh fictional microcosm of basically the culture wars, political wars of the of the late '60s into the 1970s.

Um and it was like, you know there's famously this this character Archie Bunker Archie Bunker Archie Bunker who sort of represented, you know, this is white guy and he he basically represent great brilliant actor named Carroll O'Connor played him and he basically played a retrograde basically Republican, you know, Nixon supporting Republican in this would be in like I don't know 1972 or something 1974. Um who just basically was was was painted in the show as like the most backwards like basically archaic, you know, knuckle dragging racist, sexist, just like the worst possible person in the world.

And then there was his son-in-law played by young Rob Reiner who who who Archie Bunker nicknamed Meathead. Um which is what the character became known as and and and Meathead was basically just the arch progressive liberal, right? right? right? You know, sort of like you know, think I don't know young Gavin Newsom or something, right? Where he just like he had just like the exact politically correct approved view of the time and so he's like, you know, super at the time, you know, the equivalent then of super woke, super progressive, you know, super liberal, super enlightened on uh on all these issues.

And and the the conceit of the show, you know, and the guy who did create the show is this famous television producer named Norman Lear and the conceit of the show was supposed to be a moral it was supposed to be a moral lesson of Meathead giving basically moral lectures to Archie Bunker every week to try to get Archie Bunker to stop being such a backwards-looking like 1950s retrograde basically racist sexist guy and and come into the modern world. And of course what happened was Carroll O'Connor number one the actor was just like super funny.

Uh but the other was the the political environment was superheated at that point and and of course it turned out Archie Bunker ended up being the star of the show. Uh and and so the the show ended up being the opposite of kind of what what it was intended to be. Uh that happened later in the 80s it happened in the show called Family Ties which was again it was a very similar thing which it was it was these two parents baby boomer parents in the 80s and they were like super, you know, very left-wing producers who made the show and the characters were like super proper left-wing progressive.

And then there was this character in the show Michael J. Fox their their son who was this teenage kid, um and um he played the I forget the name I'm I'm blanking on the name of the character, but he played played the son. And the son basically was a Reagan Republican as a teenager, right? And and literally the son would like wear like sport jackets and ties to school and carry a briefcase. And they kind of wanted to make him into like a stereotype of like basically uh you know, sort of a weird Republican, you know, kind of weirdo.

Um and again, the same the same sort of weird thing happened, which is actually the Michael J. Fox character became Oh, uh Alex Alex Keaton was Alex uh was the character's name. Uh Alex P. Keaton, um you know, he essentially became the star of the show. And so I bring up both of those shows cuz you can see in those shows you can see the culture wars of the '70s, which were actually like super intense. You can see the culture wars of the '80s, which were super intense.

You go back before that and you have the Vietnam War and the the all the campus protests and the civil rights movement and all the riots and all the forced you know, everything, you know, dropping the 101st Airborne into you know, rural you know, the rural South to you know, basically, you know, desegregate the schools at literally gunpoint. Um you go back before that, you have the Cold War, you know, you have the Red Scare, um you know, it's now known as the Red Scare, but you had, you know, communists all through the US government and you had all kinds of freak outs about that.

You had the risk of nuclear annihilation. You go back before that, you had World War II, War II, War II, which was like this like just like incredible global orgy of violence. You go back before that, you had the Great Depression and the you know, the New Deal, which was hugely controversial. You go back before that, you had World War World War I, you know, and then you go and then you know, if you keep going back, it's like you have the Civil War and then you have the Napoleonic Wars and then you've got the French Revolution and you know, and then you go back further than that, you've got the you know, the the democratic revolutions uh all through Europe and then you've got the you know, the the Gutenberg printing press kicking off all kinds of violence, you know, throughout Europe in the 1600s.

Um and so I just think like the history of Western civilization, American European society is just like constant strife and warfare to like an absurd degree um over this entire period. And we we go back and we study the history and we're just kind of like, "Wow, like those people were like really really really violent. Like really crazy and really violent." And boy, did they really like killing. It was not that long ago and I don't think there's anybody alive now, but it was not that long ago that like grown men like in serious positions of power and authority in the US that they got mad at each other, they would literally have a physical duel.

Right? Like so you know, you and I you and I start going at it on social media and we get to a point where you get really mad and I challenge you to a duel and like we show up in a [ __ ] field in a [ __ ] park, you know, at like 6:00 in the morning with guns, right? And we like square off and march off and then we turn around and we try to like literally shoot each other to death. And like a thing that they did and that was like a normal part of life.

Wait, Mark, I thought the past was all matriarchies and everyone just so peaceful and Oh, everybody was so wonderful. Everybody got along. Everybody all Yes, until social media everybody thought the same thing. Yes, exactly and everybody was all Yes, everybody was all calm and happy all the time. time. time. Um and so You look, the the the way You look, the the the way the way the way the world is conflict I just historically the way the world is conflict and anyway, not to not to beat a dead horse, but they you know, you know, you know, There was plenty of conflict in the past.

There were plenty of heated disagreements in the future shape of society. There were plenty of political wars. There were plenty of violent wars. By the way, just politics itself was much more violent. Like if you go back and you read about political movements 100 years ago, like they would literally form up in the street and like [ __ ] you try to kill each other. Yeah. Um like it was like a common thing. thing. thing. You know, strikes I mean even the history of the labor movement is full of this.

Like strikes became super violent. Um and you know, management would like literally you know, this the strikers would try to attack their plants and the management literally would have like machine guns and they'd be like machine gunning their striking workers. Crazy crazy stuff. And so like we just we live in a much crazier world than we want to give ourselves credit for and the idea that like the current level of conflict is something new is just not true. And and just to that end too, when people say, "Oh, ever since 2008 or you know, your smartphone sort of you know, propagating that it's led to increased depression or things like that." Is that also another example of hey, we were underestimating how depressed people were prior and it's It's of a measurement thing or is it oh, but there was a lot of other things happening in 2018 like you know, political extremism and and other things that that make people more depressed or how do you engage in that how do you engage in that that topic?

Well, so the funny thing is different Western countries have different that show different data on the quote and quote rise in in depression. Yeah. Um and it basically basically turns out it correlates to social benefits programs. Um and so basically if you get paid uh or if you get like special dispensation in school for having you know, psychological issues all of a sudden you see a massive spike in those psychological issues. The countries that don't have that the other Western countries that don't have that don't show the same results.

And so I I actually think that's a statistical artifact uh of literally like government benefits programs. benefits programs. benefits programs. Um so I I like I I don't even yeah, I would I would say I don't I don't I don't even don't even I don't even concede the uh you know, concede the premise of the question but that's that's that's a longer debate. Um I would just say in general like I guess what I'd say I'm I'm I'm prepared to say that basically call it since I don't know, 2014 or something I'm prepared to say like it does feel like things have intensified.

Right, it it it does feel like things are like wilder. Um you know, than they were before that. Um Um Um I think the most that I would be willing to say though is I think we might have lived through an era of what you might call suppressed volatility. Um and call that maybe from like the end of the Cold War through 2014. Um where basically it just looked like the West had won everything. Um and then also it was sort of by the way, it was sort of the peak heyday of centralized media.

Um so it would if you just like if you basically track if you track like how distributed is media versus how centralized is media like centralized media sort of peaked somewhere around 1970. 1970. 1970. Um where you know, literally like all the newspapers in every city consolidated down to like a single newspaper and then you ended up with only three television networks and all the radio stations independent radio stations got bought up. Uh let me give you an example. So historically so historically like if you go back to the days of the American Revolution it was common in in even like mid-size cities you would have like 10 or 15 different newspapers.

Um and each newspaper would represent like a different political point of view. And then the the newspapers would have these like furious you know, they've just like just like you you would do today online. You You They would just have these furious constant political, you know, fighting and accusations back and forth and arguments. And of course the newspaper owners would be trying to egg all that stuff on cuz it sold papers. But it was like very common to have like many newspapers per city that would all fight with each other.

And then the economics of centralized media meant that those all rolled up into into a single newspaper. newspaper. newspaper. Um and and then and then that single newspaper, you know, at least for a while tried to be non-partisan and tried to be even-handed cuz it was trying to appeal to everybody. Um and then and so and again same thing of just like, you know, like when I was a kid there was three television networks that were all basically the same. Uh they were all trying very hard to be even-handed at least, you know, kind of as best they could.

Uh there were like three national news magazines. Um you know, there were like I don't know there was a small number of national radio networks. Um you know, there were two, you know, news wire services. And so I like I I I will concede like I think we lived through a period of suppressed volatility as a consequence of the fact that we had overly centralized media. I think if you go back before that, like if you go back to before that, if you go back to like the 1930s and before, like media was much more fragmented.

Uh it was it was much more like it is today. And then if you like I said, if you go all the way back like 200 250 years ago, it was like extremely fragmented. Like if you read the accounts of like Ben Franklin as a newspaper publisher and like the the the stuff that he got up to with his newspaper. So Okay, great story. So Ben Franklin ran one of the newspapers in Philadelphia originally as a as a printer. Okay, so what would happen is Ben Franklin wants to become a pretty much become a commercial printer.

He buys a printing press. He advertises the whatever and tries to get like all the local businesses like print pamphlets in the printing press, but he doesn't have enough business for the printing press. And so he starts a newspaper to have something to print. Um and so he starts this newspaper. There's like 15 other newspapers in Philadelphia at the time. But he's got to fill the newspaper with something. And so in he's Ben Franklin, he's very creative. And so he creates basically sock puppets. sock puppets.

sock puppets. He does basically alts. He does alts. Alts. He does alts. So Yeah, yeah, exactly. Alts. Um and they're all under pseudonyms. Um and so he does I forget the all the names now, but he had, you know, he had all these different he had all these different different names for them. And I think at one point in his own newspaper he had like 15 different alts uh going at it. And he he he he wrote them all but under different names. And they all had like very different points of view.

And then he would basically set them off to have these like raging arguments with each other in his newspaper. And people would buy his newspaper to cover this. And then that that culminated in the election of 1800, which was the famous election of Thomas Jefferson versus John Adams, which was sort of this newspaper centric election, which was characterized by a level of slander. Like the degree to which partisans of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams attacked each other in the 1800 election is like way beyond even what we see today on social media.

Like they accused each other of the most horrible [ __ ] you can possibly imagine. possibly imagine. possibly imagine. Um and it became like this giant scandal. scandal. scandal. And so like this is not the the idea that there's like whatever rhetorical combat or like that there's like this virtual environment in which there's lots of points of view and there's lots of, you know, again both lots of truth truths lots of lies. Like this is not new. In fact, this this this is the natural order of things.

We just lived through a period of artificial volatility and that artificial suppression of volatility. Uh with media becoming over centralized. And and and obviously those days are over. over. over. I want to return back to uh we were talking about the current thing and how that's accelerated over time. We previously had a conversation a while ago where we talking about sort of the attributes of of a current thing. And I remember you had this one theory that it can't be something too believable. It has to be almost surreal.

Uh Uh Uh yeah. Um I'm I'm curious if we just talk kind of what are the attributes of something that becomes sort of the the current thing or sort of the the the topic that people can't stop quote tweeting, sharing, etc. Yeah, so Yeah, so Yeah, so again, it's kind of this thing you kind of reverse engineer it. It's like, okay, to be a current thing it it has to if you know, again to to to be this thing of if it's on the internet, it's a viral internet meme kind of outrage cycle.

Um so it it has to be something that like it has to be something that activates outrage. Like it has to be something that activates the emotional kind of valence valence valence um of you you have to get like the emotional reaction off of it. Right. Um and so you know, it's it's just like by the way, this is just like also the history of the press in general. It's just like whatever you know, I always say, the news is called the news, not the importance, right?

Like you can imagine a version of the news that's called the importance. And and the newspaper is like here are all the important things that are happening today. today. today. Right? Um and you know, of course nobody would buy it cuz nobody cares, right? Cuz people want the news, they want the new what the new thing, right? They want or you know, they want they want the hot thing, they want the exciting thing, they want the outrageous they want the outrageous thing and and so the the internet version of that is right, they want they want the outrageous meme and so so it's got to be something that provokes.

And you know, and there's something about this, you know, this this is other people made this observation but you know, it's like you know, kind of the ultimate male coded version of this is professional wrestling, right? The ultimate female coded version of this is like Real Housewives. Housewives. Housewives. Like you know, reality TV, like you know, I don't know and then The Apprentice is maybe somewhere in the middle. middle. middle. You know, it's just like reality TV, like there there has to be there has to be sparks.

Like it has to generate a level of emotional intensity. Driven by some level of outrage and then and then I think it has to be the kind of thing where you can have tribes that form up and square off against each other, right? So um so you know, there's a little bit like like like West Side Story dynamic to it or something, right? Where it's just like, okay, you can imagine, you know, there's there's something that's worth arguing over. Um where where there's a you know, where there's a real argument to be had.

Like there you know, there's there's some underlying thing that actually like really matters. Maybe maybe this event doesn't matter as much but like the actual underlying issue matters a lot. Um and then it's going to activate this tribal effect where you're going to be able to basically you're you're going to become part of what they call a moral tribe. The the people on the other side will become part of a moral tribe and then you're going to kind of go to war with each other. You're you're going to have a rumble, what they would have said in the old days.

You're going to have a rumble. A rumble in the streets, except you're not going to have a rumble in the streets, you're going to have a rumble online, right? You're going to go at it. And so it has to lend itself to that kind of basically tribal formation um and and and kind of that beating and and and and kind of that beating back and forth. And of course you you the tribes then attack each other, you know, on the issues but then they also attack each other's values um and they accuse each other of being horrible people.

And then when it gets really into it, they start to dox each other and try to get each other fired. Right? And then it all becomes, you know, very exciting. exciting. exciting. Um and so so it's got to have it's got to have the it's basically it has to have the formation of a of a of a moral tribe effect. It it's a the the psychological lens on this they call moral tribes and then there's this concept right of moral panic. Uh, it's got to lead to a moral panic.

It's got to lead to this kind of thing of like this is indicative of how society is going to [ __ ] right? In in in like some important way. important way. important way. Um, and by the way, this is why you can have like many many many many different examples occurring things that end up revolving back around the same handful of like underlying political or moral questions, right? Cuz cuz it's really right. It's really not about the, you know, what happened, you know, I don't Jussie Smollett.

Jussie Smollett. Jussie Smollett. I I just want to say there's this new uh there's this new um there's this new uh Keanu Reeves movie on on Apple TV um where uh Keanu Reeves plays a movie star who gets canceled. Um, and his crisis lawyer played by Jonah Hill. Uh it turns out during the course of the show, I'll I'll just spoil it in course of the movie, it turns out his his crisis lawyer uh set up the uh the the Jussie Smollett uh was was was off it was it was a produced op.

Um, So so so in the movie world the lawyer came up with the idea um that there would be a black celebrity who would get attacked in the street by white racists and that would be like a viral social media outrage thing and then and then literally the lawyer says, "Well, then we of course we went on cast and Jussie Smollett had the best pitch for why he should be the black guy." should be he should be the black guy." Um, and then um there was Um, and then um there was one of his underlings he he's still mad at because the uh the um the underling was was tasked with the assignment of going out and hiring, you know, the attackers.

Um, but you know, this is in the heady of diversity and so he hired two black guys to be the attackers. Right? And he's like all confused cuz he's like, "Am I supposed to hire black people not hire black people?" And it's like, "Well, not in this specific case you weren't supposed to hire black people people people to attack Jussie Smollett." Anyway, so the Jussie Smollett is fresh in my mind. Um, but it was a great example which is like what happened on the street in Chicago that night during the whatever whatever blizzard cyclone thing it was like kind of matters, kind of doesn't matter.

Whoever really knows, who knows whatever. We've got weird grainy video, whatever. People say different things. I mean, I think we now know what happened, but like in these events, like what actually happened in the street? Who the hell knows? But the fight, you see what I'm saying? Like the moral tribes that were able to form up on, you know, one side or people are like, of course this is what, you know, this is what happens to people all the time. And the people on the other side of it were like, of course this is all fake and [ __ ] Right?

You had this chance for these moral tribes to to to pair up and fight. Um and so so I think I think it basically had I think it basically it it it basically has to have that. Yeah, and sometimes it's very serious uh and and the stakes are very high and sometimes it's uh just an episode that's so so so you know, you know, you know, funny and the astronomer uh CEO HR as a as an example. Uh Okay, so well this Okay, this is a very important point.

So I would say two things. So one is um the truth or falsity of the actual event doesn't seem to matter at all. And and I think this is I think this actually throws people cuz you start to think these are all fake and they're not all fake. Like actual actually bad things happen. things happen. things happen. Right? Actually bad things happen and it's actually like fully legitimate to get outraged about these things. But also people are going to get outraged about a lot of things that actually didn't happen.

Um and so so so for the purpose of the discussion of of the media again, this is the Marshall McLuhan thing. If it's on the internet, it's a viral social media outrage cycle. Like whatever are the facts of the thing, it doesn't really matter. In fact, it's probably best to your point. It's probably best if it's actually hard to tell what actually happened. Cuz that makes it something that you can more easily argue about. And so that's one thing. And then to the point that you just made, I really agree with that also, which is um the the degree of importance of the actual issue doesn't matter that much.

Right? And so if it if so if something happens to a single person, you can and then something happens to 10,000 people, you can have the same level of outrage in in each case. case. case. Like the the outrage doesn't scale with the number of people affected. Right? In a lot of ways, Right? In a lot of ways, maybe the outrage is even higher when it's a specific person cuz it's because then it becomes personalized. Yeah. And then and then you get in the old uh what is it?

The old Stalin thing, which is a single death of a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. Like may maybe it's even the small scale horrible things that happen that are the most emotionally intense cuz they're the things that you really you know you're going to react to a going to you're going to react to a person. You know kind of kind of the most intensely. And so so and I think that's the thing if you're if you're doing the meta observation of this it's like okay you're just going to you basically you just have to expect the same phenomenon this outrage cycle to play out every time regardless of truth or falsehood and regardless of the actual magnitude of the underlying issue because because because because again what's being argued about is the specifics about what actually happened.

That's not the point. The point is the ability to form up into moral tribes and then and then yeah and then have the rumble. Yeah. Oh there's a there's a there's a George Orwell um actually has a has a great thing on this cuz George Orwell famously covered the Spanish Civil War which which was as I said it's kind of the original where a lot of this stuff sort of played out for the first time in the 20th century and he he he did he did this thing one time where he talks about his version of this.

He talks about the role of the atrocity. Um and he said basically the the key point of propaganda in any war um so you you get two countries to go to war and you know they've each got a moral claim of like why they're the justified you know it's like nobody ever attacks everybody's always defending like and I only attacked him first cuz he was going to attack me otherwise. And so every each side in a war each country has its own basically moral position why the why the war is justified.

But he said he said basically Orwell said like it's hard to sell like high it's hard to sell like these high blown you know these high high flying kind of abstract ideas of like why we need to go to war. And so he said what what happens is that the propaganda efforts of each government in a war become basically looking for atrocities. Um atrocities. Um atrocities. Um and so specific point events. A famous one is the My Lai Massacre in in in Vietnam. But you you could you could we could name many many other examples.

Um and so you're looking for these very specific events where something very specific and concrete happened that's clearly over the moral beyond beyond the realm of of moral acceptability. Right? Just clearly like you know usually involving innocent people getting killed. getting killed. getting killed. And in the Spanish Civil War it was like you know nuns getting killed or something like that, right? Um and and and again, it's the the the the point of the atrocity The point of the atrocity is not that it affected 100,000 people.

The point of the atrocity is in fact, maybe the best atrocity only affects a small number of people cuz you want to personalize it. Um and then he said he he he says this. He says, "The truth or falsity of the atrocity doesn't matter at all." Like it it it the atrocity If the atrocity is made up, it it it it the the the political value of the atrocity is just as high. Right? And so it it doesn't matter. Like once the atrocity cycle gets running, um it doesn't matter whether the underlying thing is true or false because the because the point of it is to have the have the atrocity be a propaganda win uh for for moral for moral for moral justification and then and then for moral demonization of the other side.

And by the way, lest lest people think that I'm being cynical when I go through all this, I'm not saying I think this is all good. Like I I'm not saying I think this this world is great. I'm not saying that this I think that this is all positive. Um I I'm saying something different, which is I think it's very important to understand how this actually works. Because when you find yourself in the middle of one of these things, I think it's very useful to have at least a slice of your brain that's basically saying, "All right, I need to be aware of the fact that I'm getting pulled into something, right?

That I'm being triggered by emotion and I'm being triggered and I'm being slotted into a a moral tribe and I'm and I'm mounting up to go to war with the hated enemy and it's on the basis of something that very well might not be true." Yeah. Right? And I and I and this, you know, this is a the Rene Girard thing, which he says this the scapegoating cycle always works because people always forget that there's a scapegoating cycle. Like Like whenever you have to like crucify the scapegoat, it's always the most morally important thing that's ever happened.

For the duration of that cycle, right? And until it's forgotten by the next one. Yeah. And so And so a big part of what I'm trying to do is explain why like as as as we surf all of these current things, that we like at least keep part of our brain that basically says, "Look, th- this is the state of the world we live in. This is the state of humanity. This is the state of the media. Like this is what's happening. We can like it or hate it or we can debate the pros and cons, but it is what's happening, and all objective events are going to be filtered through that.

And to the extent that you care about objective truth, you have to get through that, and you have to get to the other side to be able to actually still deal with objective reality. But But to do that, you need to understand the the cycle. And it's also important to understand cuz if if people are ever involved in the cycle or implicated in it, they typically say, "Oh, but I'm innocent. Once everyone finds out the truth, they're they're going to exonerate me. They're going to clear me." And they of course don't fully appreciate that people don't give a [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] People are, you know, predisposed to to to hate you, and they'll just find any sort of reason, uh, you know, or or certain people, perhaps.

Yes. Yes. Yes. If Yes. If you are Yes. If you are actually in a If you are actually innocent, and if you're caught up in one of these things, it's it's horrifying. It's horrifying. I mean, look at cancellation. I mean, this this happened to a lot of people over the last decade. You know, people people would get canceled for things they literally never did, and for, you know, for for for people then imputing beliefs, or, you know, some I don't know, stray comment, or misreported comment, and then it gets imputed that, you know, this person is a horrible racist, and off and away it goes, and they have to get fired and purged from society, and, you know, have no way to come back.

Or or, you know, or whatever the issue was, right? Um, and, you know, we you know, there were these you know, these viral videos viral video you know, Oh, that's the other thing is like, okay, the the viral videos The viral videos, right? The viral videos have become so videos have viral videos have become so much like the By the way, the first viral video that mattered was actually a Rodney King. Um And it would And it actually inaugurate And I'm not going to litigate the Rodney King good or bad or whatever.

It's a the whole separate conversation, but conversation, but conversation, but um um um the Rodney King video starts with the beating. beating. beating. Um so, it doesn't show everything that led up to that. And And And that set the pattern. And again, I'm not I'm not excusing anybody for anything or whatever. I'm just saying like the video started midway through the event. Um All of the really effective viral videos basically since then, including the ones that have been really important over the course of the last decade, they've all had that characteristic.

They all start halfway through the event. Um so, you you don't see the run-up. Um and so, you don't you know, the Central Park birdwatcher was the famous like you don't see the run-up of what happened before the before before the video started. started. started. Um what was the other one? Who was the other person who got like brutally canceled based on a video? I can't remember. I mean, there've been a whole bunch of them. But, um this is the thing. Right. And so, you you you get a viral video and it kicks off halfway into the event.

Why does it kick By the way, why does it kick off halfway into the event? That's because that's when the event became interesting enough to be able to put on a video. Like that's what People don't just like walk around with their phones out. That's when they pull the phone out. But, by that point, you've lost all the context. Right? And so, so then again, this is one of those things where, okay, you're watching a viral video, you can feel yourself getting outraged. The key question ought to be, all right, what happened before that?

Right? And you And that takes work, right? Like cuz it's not it's not right there on the screen. And you have to like really try hard to like go back and like figure out eyewitness reports. And by the way, like if it's a criminal thing, half the time you don't find out what happened until the actual trial happens. So, you don't find out for like another year. Because they don't put the evidence out until the trial. Um and so, that that's another thing where people get got basically people get used basically people get ginned up into these outrage cycles without actually having the context of what happened.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The The The I want to go back to this conspiracy you know, we have a a friend who thinks everything is an op and maybe I'm naive and I miss out on on the ops that are actually there. But, I'm I'm curious what your mental model one might have to think about how much is coordinated versus not. I've I've I've been inspired by the idea of uh uh decentrali- or emergent collusion. Uh just sort of um this this idea that a lot of people have incentives to go in the same way that even if they're not coordinating explicitly, they almost might as well be or something that that or that it might explain why so many things seem uh coordinated.

But, you know, ever since joining A16Z, so many people have impuned onto us things that we're not doing. And so, it's made me skeptical of uh of people calling for conspiracy. Um and and so, I'm curious what what sort of mental model you might have for for for the idea of ops and how that might help one understand the the the social platforms today. today. today. Yeah, so I think as best I can tell, and it's tricky cuz it's hard to tell. Um and there are, you know, some real experts in this that really really focus on this.

But, um as far as I can tell, like there there's some there's there there's some truth on both sides. Um the the the answer is um is the the the answer is um is the answer is messy. And it's it's messy for two reasons. So, messy number one is just like there are a lot of things that I think are happening that are truly organic. And then there are a lot of things that are happening that are ops. Um and I I think I think there's a combination.

And then and then I think maybe you were alluding to this. And then there's this thing which is like something could start as an op and then become real. become real. become real. Right? Um which is kind of the point of the op, right? The the the Right? The If you Let's just say if you and I are going to be Machiavellian and we wanted to start a movement, right? And I And we wanted to start a moral outrage cycle cuz we had some underlying goal cuz we were either trying to win an election or trying to get a political something, you know, law passed or something like that.

We were going to like we're maximum like Machiavellian deviousness and we're going to like have a black budget, you know, and we're going to pay influencers to you know, da da da all this stuff that people say, you know, bot we're going to have our bot army and so forth. Like the point of it is not to just like have a bunch of propaganda online with a with a bot army behind it. The point is to get people to actually believe it. Right? Like that is the goal.

Right? And so and and and and then you know, you don't want to have to pay for like every post, right? At some point you want them to be happening organically even just out of out of self-economic interest. And so you you actually you're actually trying to generate uh the thing. Actually, there's there's a great paper on this. Um There's a guy Timur Kuran and and uh who's the famous sort of a guy who talks about preference falsification. And then Cass Sunstein um wrote this thing years ago or they they talk about this phenomenon relevant here.

They call it availability cascades. So, their term for this kind of thing that we've been talking about, which is like a viral outrage cycle, uh their term for it they call availability cascade. And what they mean by availability cascade is sort of cascade means basically the process it's the sociological term for sort of an an idea or concept kind of cascading through a society kind of building a momentum as it goes. And then availability they they they they call based on the idea of availability bias, which basically is we we to overfocus on the thing that's right in front of us.

Um and so we we tend to over focus on the thing that's basically present in our mind at that time, which may or may or may not be as important as other things that we're not focused on. But But in the paper the significance of it is in the paper they identify the role of a specific kind of person they call availability entrepreneur. availability entrepreneur. availability entrepreneur. Um and the the role of the availability entrepreneur is to try to inject into the public consciousness availability bias as a deliberate exercise to basically say, "This is the specific thing that you should be focused on right now." right now." right now." Like this is the specific person who's been hurt by something.

This is the specific whatever, you know, moral event that's happened. This is the specific issue. This is the specific thing. And And basically what they say is like every time you see an availability cascade, if you trace it back there was always what they call the availability entrepreneur, which is basically the person who was like, "Aha, I am going to put I know I'll give you the classic example. And And again, this is not a value judgment and you know, this this was like you know, fantastically good that this happened.

But Rosa Parks was a classic example of this. Like Rosa Like the story that we all got told at school was Rosa Parks was just like another you know, some sort of random person and you know, with with the thing on the bus. Um Rosa Parks was like an actual She was a trained activist. Like that she she went to like the There was this whole like school of activists and they like she was like a specifically trained It was an It was There was an availability entrepreneur uh uh who set up an availability cascade targeted on Rosa Parks that ended up causing fundamental and obviously very very positive changes to American society.

But like it started as an op. Like she started as a She started as an op. But the point of the op was not to be the op. The The point of it was to be what happened, which is to become a nationwide movement that that ultimately led to led to fundamental change. And so And so anyway, the point is like just because things start as ops doesn't mean they're not real. not real. not real. Right? And And And And if Right? And And And And if the op leads to real the And if the op leads to real outcomes, then you might as well consider you know, it's like a At some point it's just a matter for historians of how it started.

Like it's a footnote to the Rosa Parks story today that she was a trained activist. It doesn't really matter really matter really matter because she because that op unlocked a broad-based actual movement in American society that led to actually profound change. Um and so this is the problem with this topic, which is oh, that's just an op. Is basically like cope. Like, okay, right? It might have started as an op. But if it ends up in a real thing, it doesn't You see what I'm saying?

It doesn't matter that it started as an op. Right. Uh and then by the way, conversely, it also doesn't matter if it didn't start as an Because again, it's it's the same outcome. And so So, I do think I think I think both things are true. I do think there's this furious fight. I do think there are serious operators. And you know, you can go online and you can find out about these things. This is a big issue, by the way, in political influencer world right now.

This is This is actually a big thing. So, um So, um So, um if I if I if I want to run an advertising campaign to sell shampoo, sell shampoo, sell shampoo, um legally in the US, if I hire influencers to say good things about the shampoo, they I I believe this to be true, they have to disclose that it's a paid commercial. paid commercial. paid commercial. They can't just like pretend that they just happen to stumble on this shampoo. Um if I donate money to a political candidate, I have to disclose that as part of election federal election law.

Um if I pay an influencer to take a position on a moral topic that is not a product that is sold or a political candidate, candidate, candidate, but it's just like a position on a moral or political thing, that doesn't qualify either as an advertisement or as a political donation. political donation. political donation. It's fully legal to do that in the dark. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, right. AI, right? A lot of a lot of paid doom out there. We were just talking about Aella's, you know, you know, you know, a new media fellowship for doomers.

And yeah, it's a perfect example and it, you know, seems to be having a real impact. real impact. real impact. This is a great example. So, this is the thing, right? You know, they're they're living the meme, right? They're living the meme. So, cuz cuz so so this is a good So, good So, good So, so so so I don't know if you you you may have covered all this already, but yeah. So, so like there we we know we're in this AI we're in this pitch AI policy battle and we we know through that and we we're we're deep into this.

We know that there's dark money in in AI. Like, a lot of the AI doomers and stuff is basically bought and paid for. Like so there's this these influence operations that are happening and they fall into this bucket of it it's it's it's neither an advertisement to say AI is going to kill everybody nor is it a political candidate. And so you there are organizations and companies that are paying that you know that they're they're they're there's that and again it's like not not everybody who says that is is is being paid but that there there is a lot of dark money in in that world right now.

Um and so and of course you know that the partisans in that world insist full on of course that there's you know that that of course is absolutely not happening until yesterday. Um when they just go ahead and like live the meme and they just like announce the program. Um and so and so and so So they announce the program in black and white um right there on the website. It's like a influencer camp in which you're going to go did that that that that and by the way it's free right which means you know you're you know you're being you're being paid.

Um and then they say you know where's the money coming from and they say oh you know we're a non-profit being funded by by in this case MIRI which is one one one one organization with its own kind of interesting funding history. And then they say and other donors. Right then they Right. It's like It's literally you know it's literally like it's it's literally like is it you I don't know is it a conspiracy if it's in plain sight? But and I'm just I'm picking on that one cuz that's the one that happened yesterday but like that that for sure is happening all throughout politics.

It's for sure happening on lots and lots of social issues. social issues. social issues. Um you know it's it's it's a it's a thing. Um uh and so yeah and so like but again it goes back to this thing of like okay yes there are ops. Yes you can't believe what you see. By the way there there are there are there are bot farms. Like there are obviously bot farms. Um and they're obviously bot farms that are being deployed. You know there there are online influencers some of them very controversial where you know they clearly there's clearly a bot army behind them.

By the way you could be an influencer online and have a bot army behind you and have nothing to do with a bot army. bot army. bot army. Right. Like somebody could be paying for the bot army and you might not even know about it. about it. about it. Um and again today it's totally legal to do that cuz again if it's if you're not selling a product or not donating to a political candidate like it's it's actually in this gray it's actually fine to do.

And so I think it's It's the case that like there's ops all over the place and quite frankly, like the longer I I you more deeper I get into it, the more like, yeah, there's probably more ops than I've been that I've been um that I that I've been I've been uh willing to acknowledge. Um but, I would just say on the other side, it's like like like I don't know. Does it really matter? Like Like Like is that really the thing that the cuz the ops are only going to work the other way to put it is the ops are only going to work if they if they resonate into something that people are going to pick up and run with you know, anyway.

Like to become a mass movement, this is like what Timur Kuran says about the role of the availability like, it's not enough to just like have your cause your cause your cause and then just like expect that you can kind of trick people into running with your cause. There has to be something to it that resonates with them. Uh you know, kind of in them already. Um the causes the causes the causes them to Uh and and if if maybe they pick it up and run with it based on the paid op, and and by the way, maybe in the counterfactual they would have picked up and run with it anyway, you know, without the op, and you know, you'll never know.

Yeah. The um The um The um that that's a great mental model for it. Think about a last topic for today. I want to close uh close on the say sort of the bridge between legacy and new media because we see just give some examples. Obviously, the New York Times they've made the adjustment to the new world um very well from a business perspective. You know, we had um CBS acquire the Free Press, and so there's some, you know, acquisitions there uh strategic acquisitions for legacy media companies who are trying to innovate.

You know, uh on MTS ourselves, we're sort of experimenting with with players from both worlds. You know, we have um new school of podcasters and Twitch streamer, you know, Theo is Theo is 21 years old? years old? years old? Yeah. 20 Yeah, he's born to be a a Twitch streamer, but we also have I mean, 21, I mean, over the hill. Yeah, exactly. What, you know? Has been by now. Gray hair, gray hair. Washed. Yeah, washed. But, we also have Mark Halperin who uh you know, as a you know, legacy and legendary um you know, uh commentator and host who who funny enough uh Uh, know, we've talked about how is the is the bridge figure uh in that he was successful both in legacy and in this new media media climate.

Um, and it's rare for people to do both. Halperin, of course, interviewed did a very famous interview with Trump when he was talking about the Bible verses and getting getting him uh to mention some specific ones and you know, Trump of course didn't want to pick favorites. Um, anyway, I'm I'm curious how you think about the sort of the bridge um either analysis of Trump as a bridge or or more just how do you see legacy players and new media players um sort of you know, playing out or even the styles of what will work in this new new format.

Yeah, I mean, so I guess I don't know, you maybe start with data, right? So, um the data shows that basically Um, so if you focus on American data cuz what I'm most familiar with. So, just in the data you basically see a couple things. So, one is um trust in centralized institutions of all kinds is is collapsing in the US. Um, so basically any kind of legacy um or um incumbent institution you know, trust is collapsing fast. By the way, that collapse in trust didn't start with the internet.

It actually started around 1970. Um, 1970. Um, 1970. Um, it actually it actually it actually uh it actually it's it's part of this WTF happened in 1971 uh meme um is when basically trust in centralized institutions in the US started to fall off a cliff. Um, that's true for many kinds of centralized institutions and it's been true for you know, basically 55 years. Um, but but media's included in that. Um, and so trust in centralized media is collapsing and you know, keeps hitting new record lows basically every time they run the survey it collapses further.

further. further. Um, and so so that's certainly true. And then you and then the the business version of it is just very clear which is you know, we've talked about CNN later like you're earlier like you know, ratings for all the centralized media properties are in full scale collapse. Um, you know, cable news is collapsing. Um, you know, almost every almost every newspaper has collapsed. Um, almost every magazine has collapsed. Um, you know, basically all the all the all the legacy formats have collapsed. Um Uh you know, with only very very rare exceptions.

Um and so, you know, just and then by the way, of course, finally, it's just sort of obvious, you know, the the rise of podcasts obviously is is obvious now. Um and by the way, it's amazing like the election of '24 was the one where podcasts kind of flipped the you know, it went from being like, I don't know if this matters to like all of a sudden everybody's like, oh wow, this matters like a lot. Um and so, the rise of podcasts of course is undeniable at this point.

The rise of social media, the rise of of live streaming. Um you know, these things are clearly happening. And so, like the the the the changing of the guard, reordering of the the businesses and of the cultural and social phenomena are clearly happening and I think are undeniable. Um you know, if you extrapolate forward, like obviously all you know, essentially all of the remaining old media properties that don't figure out a way to adapt uh to the new world are going to you know, they're they're you know, going to get basically run basically run basically run as my private equity and that'll be that.

Um you know, which is kind of the story of the newspaper industry industry these days. Um so so I you know, that that like it's almost like not even interesting to say that anymore just cuz it's like it's so obvious that that's happening and then, you know, obviously social media, you know, continues to grow as a phenomenon. Um Um Um uh continues to be very important. Um uh and so, yeah. And you know, look, we're still we're still living in this we're we're still living in a in a hybrid world today, right?

Um and so, we're still living in a world um in which like, you know, to some extent it still matters what's on TV, but like not nearly as much as it did, but you know, pretty soon it's not it's not going to anymore. So, uh you know, so so so that world is changing fast. Um yeah, I I just think yeah, the the main thing is going to be um you know, the the the the people who adapt to that are are people who adapt to that are going to adapt to that.

Um and they're they're either going to adapt or they're not. Um you know, you mentioned Mark Mark Halperin, you know, who's a good good friend of both of ours. Um and you know, he's I think he's doing like an amazing job adapting to that and in a way that's just like I would say shockingly different um and better than you know, most of his former former colleagues. colleagues. colleagues. Um you know, there's great examples that you know, then you get The New York Times has adapted to that in an interesting way.

interesting way. interesting way. Um you know, the the Hasan [ __ ] um um a a newspaper um has fully committed itself to um to the future, let's say. Um so, you know, they're they're doing their thing. their thing. their thing. Um yeah, Um yeah, Um yeah, you know, most of legacy properties won't adapt. They, you know, they never do. Um there's going to be lots and lots of new things um that emerge. Um And maybe I I should say here again to not sound not sound cynical about this, like like like it is really striking.

I'll say the following. So, like what are the two like mega mega mega trends in video uh and and and and by the way, also in politics over the course of last like 5 years. It's basically two things. It's it's short-form video in the form of TikTok, Instagram, and and and and X, you know, short-form, you know, Reels uh or short-form video. Uh and and there you get like the full battery of accusations of like, you know, destroying attention span and everything's trivial. everything's trivial. everything's trivial.

Um but on the other side is the rise of the 3-hour podcast. Um and so on the on the podcast side, you have this incredible phenomenon with 3 hours. And by the way, some of these, you know, Joe and and Lex and others are now pushing this to the point where, you know, Lex now has like in some cases 7-hour podcasts, right? I think what is it biology did like a 10-hour one on Lex. Yeah, yeah. So, biology went for 10 hours on Lex. Um and so and it's actually interesting cuz if you talk to those guys, they get data on completion rates.

Um and and it's actually a very large percentage of their of their listeners or viewers who actually listen to the whole thing. Um so, like many many many Rogan podcasts or Lex podcasts, people actually listen to the full the full 3 hours. hours. hours. Um and so so it's it's the thing I really rejected this idea that like, you know, I don't want people to think that I believe this is like this idea that everything is going to become just like trivial short-form social media [ __ ] like that.

No, not at all. You have this correspond correspond correspond You do have a lot of that. But you have this corresponding thing, which is you also it's like a barbell. also it's like a barbell. You also have this You you have this massive rise in substance. Um and on the substance side, I would point to the long-form podcasts. I would point to Substack. Um by the way, you know, there's a big push on X to have long-form essays. Um I would push uh you know, online online you know, courses uh on every topic are available.

Um and um uh you just yeah, you have this ability. But I've even AI what my favorite feature of AI is what they call deep research. Uh which is a feature on both I think it's on particularly on ChatGPT and on Claude, but like you set it loose and it will write you like literally 30 pages. Uh a 30-page answer, you know, this is basically like a textbook on any topic. Um and so so I I think there there is this other side which is you you have this you also have this growth in you have this growth in Oh, the other thing is just in we're an example of this, the rise of the practitioner media.

Uh Uh Uh practitioner-driven media. So, people who are actually doing a thing showing up and talking about it. Um and of course, you know, that leads to all sorts of outrage of that's not journalism if you don't have somebody asking like whatever super you know, snippy critical questions about it or whatever. But like the idea for somebody who is actually doing a thing, I mean, you know, Andre Karpathy in AI, right? He just He just He just just like shows up and like explains like here here is how this all works.

Um is is is just like amazing. And and you know, in in in old media like basically like when I when I was younger like Charlie Rose did that. But so I grew up actually listening to Charlie Rose watching Charlie Rose. But Charlie Rose literally was on at [ __ ] midnight. Like he was on CBS at midnight and he would have these hour-long conversations with these super interesting people doing super interesting things, but he was on at midnight and you had to stay up at midnight to watch Charlie Rose.

Right? It was like it was one of the great things about getting a DVR is you could record, you know, Charlie Rose and watch it during during normal normal daylight hours. But you know, we lost that or we didn't have that for a very long time and we have that now. And so so I do think it's worth noting like there is this incredible in my view clearly incredibly positive, informative, educational, super helpful, super constructive thing on the other side which is of course a lot of what we try to do.

to do. to do. And And And you know, if 2024 was the podcast election, election, election, it'll be interesting to see what 2028 people have been very concerned, you know, or or sort of predicting, you know, deep fakes for a while and how that might influence things, but we haven't really seen anything there super material it it seems, but it'll be interesting to see what what media formats or just how the 2028 election is is different than the 2024 one in this conversation. this conversation. this conversation.

We've had deepfakes forever. Like Like Like Like people have believed all kinds of crazy [ __ ] crazy [ __ ] crazy [ __ ] Um I mean, you know, there was there was the Gulf of Tonkin incident and they kicked off the really kicked off the Vietnam War. Like I think we now know that that was a fish. Like it's actually quite well established. Um then some people might say Russiagate. Um Um Um it was it turned turns out it was quite an elaborate fake. Um so I the the deepfake thing I find very funny cuz it's like it's not like we've been swimming in truth all this time and all of a sudden now that now there's going to be deepfakes.

But anyway, that maybe that's a a separate conversation. The um I think the the the the the substantive comment I would make is um is um is um So uh So uh So uh So I actually think we have People talk about like famously talk about the 1960 election Kennedy versus Nixon where where famously where television took over from radio. Uh where if if you they had their famous debate and if you listened to the radio you thought Nixon won and if you watched it on TV you thought that the the the Kennedy won.

Uh so so so you know, the the the the you know, audio versus audio plus video. Um and so people have been talking for a while you know, that was considered like the first television election where television was like the determining factor in who won or lost. Um along with you know, maybe some shenanigans in Chicago. Anyway, Anyway, Anyway, um um um Speaking of deepfakes. Um Um Um so uh anyway, um people have been talking for a while about um when will there be the first internet election?

Um and and you know, people like to point to 2016 being you know, Trump using social media or maybe 2024 being the podcast election. I actually think the first internet election hasn't happened yet. I I I By the way, people even point to 2008 with which with Obama fundraising. So yeah, 2008 Obama fundraising online. Uh 2016 Trump using using social media as a broadcast method and then 2024 podcast. So we've had three examples of internet mattering for elections for sure. Uh but I think we haven't had the true internet election and and I and and and as a consequence of that and and by the way we therefore haven't really had the true internet candidate yet.

And actually it's interesting as people talk this is not a pro or negative pro or con comment on on Trump himself for the purpose of this discussion, but people talk about Trump as the internet candidate, but he really he's really a hybrid. Um, in that he cares he cares enormously about what's on TV. Um, and he's on and he's and he's on TV a lot um, and he watches TV all the time famously in order to cuz TV is basically how he gets a read on the pulse of of sort of what's happening and of what people think about things and what people So like I think I think Trump's kind of underlying theory is the things that are on TV are the things that the people running the TV network know that their viewers want to see.

And so therefore if you watch this on TV you can get a sense of what people actually think and I you know and as TV has been the dominant medium for the last 60 or 70 years, you know, that I you know, it's a pretty good theory. Obviously it's it's it's pretty well you know, quite well for him. Um, and then he he also like Um, and then he he also like cares a lot about like affecting what's on TV. on TV. on TV. Um, and and there's this there's this famous Trump story that lots of people have told where he'll be in a meeting and there'll be a TV on in the background he'll be watching it and he'll he'll have it with the sound off, but he'll be watching the Chiron the you know, the thing at the bottom of the screen the text that shows what what they're what they're saying and if he doesn't like what's on the Chiron he'll tweet something to change the subject.

Right. And so he'll tweet and then he'll literally watch and the Chiron will change and he'll be like ah, you know, so he right he's right he's able to cause right he's able to single-handedly with his power of his Twitter to turn one current thing into another current thing, right? Okay. So so my my point is like he's he's a hybrid. He So he's he's very social media fluent, but he's also very television. And of course his entire career was made on television. So he's he's very television fluent.

He's one of the best you know, television programmers in history. And he's and he's and he's a social media native. Um, there will be an internet candidate. There will be an internet president who gets elected and I I believe entirely based on the internet. Um, where they don't pay any attention at all to what's on TV. Um, because it doesn't matter to them one bit. Um, and they're going to be entirely online and they're not going to care what's in the on TV and they're not going to care what's in the newspaper and they're going to be 100% a creature of the internet.

Um, and and I think we haven't I I believe we haven't seen that yet. I don't know when we're going to see it. I'm pretty sure possible it's 20 Um, probably my guess is 32. is 32. is 32. Um, yeah. And so I I think we all have Yes. Yes. Yes. For better or for worse, we all have we all have that to look forward to. Yeah. The uh well, I think that's a great note to to wrap on. This has been a great discussion all things media.

Uh Mark, thank you for coming on the first day of Monitoring the Situation. I am proud to be part of the monitoring. Excellent.