🆕 Never Post! Mailbag #11: Someone To Tell Us How To Be

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Never Post's producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton and The Mysterious Dr. Firstname Lastname. Our contributing producer is Meghal Janardan. Our senior producer is Hans Buetow. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholtzer. The show's host is Mike Rugnetta. 

Never Post is a production of Charts & Leisure.

Friends, hello, and welcome to NeverPost's jingle bell jingle bell jingle bell mailbag twenty twenty five in which we respond to listener emails, comments, voicemails, and voice messages about our segments. A surprising number of missives this round delivered by the mailman. Though they mostly appear to be poorly written letters with awful handwriting requesting things like pop guns, Lego sets, and puppies addressed to some guy who definitely does not work here. Beginning to think there may have been a mix up at the post office. Anyways, we're only a small Internet show.

We're gonna see what we can do about all of these puppy requests. I'm your host, Mike Rugnetta. Joining me here today in order of how likely I think it is that they may have gotten their tongue frozen to a flagpole as a child decreasing.

Oh. Okay. So most likely first.

Oh. Based entirely upon geography, never post senior producer Hans Buteau. Yeah.

My geography is cold. It was nine degrees yesterday, max. It's been snowing a lot recently. I live in the Twin Cities, and I grew up here. So, yeah, absolutely.

I have frozen here's I'm not

frozen my tongue too.

Is the flagpole? But you know how well, especially when you're a kid, I was gonna say, you know how accidentally you lick your zipper on your jacket once in a while. I mean, you don't. But when you're a kid, you do. When you're

a kid, you absolutely do your thing.

You you huddle yeah. Exactly. Yes.

Huddle your Sure.

Sure. Middle is exactly what you're

talking about.

Yes. And then your tongue, like, glances against in its 16 below, and all of

a sudden no longer a glance.

Yeah. Yeah. All of a sudden, you're stuck to your zipper. That has happened Next to

in the roster, based again entirely upon geography, friend of the show, Meagle Janardan.

Yeah. I don't think my tongue has ever frozen against anything, but I have been slashed by ice. Woah. Slashed by ice. Sledding accident.

Oh. Classic.

Let the audience know that Meagle made a motion indicating that she got the coolest, most badass injury in the world.

An ice cut across the face.

Never post producer Georgia Hampton.

Okay. So I think I literally have done this. Like, I have a vivid memory of that specific feeling of my tongue being sucked to something that's, like, very strong, and having to figure out how to free myself and the panic of, like,

uh-oh, the consequences of my actions.

And finally, never post executive producer Jason Oberholtzer.

I would never do such a thing.

And I know that.

Two watts.

Two My entire life, I've been in a climate where that was available to me, and yet I have decided to make a better choice every time it was on offer. Wow. Okay.

And that's why Jason's the EP of the show, folks.

Mike, have you had such a thing happen?

Oh, god. Yes. Absolutely. Oh, wow. Oh.

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I mean,

I would just wander around my grandmother's house in Boston during this during the Boston winters and just, you know, lick every piece of metal I could possibly find.

That's what

I'm talking about. Mike's

a very lingual four word. It's how Mike engages with a lot of the world.

Heard about this one guy in Connecticut who refused to, and I was like, well, I gotta maintain balance in the universe.

So Yeah. Have you ever considered making a better choice?

You know? No.

Good.

Anyways, let's make a podcast.

Yeah. Speaking of making bad choices, we've got a lot of mail. I'd like to start us out like we normally do with some responses to the previous mailbag and the subjects that came up there. And as a reminder, everybody, there are many ways to get in touch with us if you wanna be a part of these mailbags and look to the show notes for all of them. So I have one email in particular responding to some of the chatting you were doing last mailbag that I thought was particularly relevant in the holiday season.

We're gonna do some spiritual stuff, gang.

You know, we have we have joked in the past that this is a religious podcast. And then have joked that the more that we make that joke internally, the closer it gets to being weirdly kind of true. Mhmm.

Well, I got an email for you, bud. We're getting close. This comes from Alex Friedman. I've been thinking about emailing the show for some time because I love it. I'm a member, and because I'm a rabbi.

Oh. The last reason makes sense only because Never Post was deeply influential to me and to the high holiday sermon I just gave a week or so ago. Oh. I spoke about Addictive Technologies, Neil Postman, and focusing on local things you can actually influence over things that are just designed to get you angry and impotently engaged or enraged. Oh.

I thought that might be too boring to be worth an email, but then Mike mentioned in the latest mailbag episode that he loves Rhode Island, and I'm in Providence.

I this is only proving me more right that Providence that, yeah, Rhode Island rules. Yeah.

I know y'all are inclined to think politically about solutions to crisis of the social Internet, but I'm a rabbi, at least in part because I believe that religious institutions have a crucial role to play. They are, by definition and necessity, local. They are one of the last places, though this is becoming less true in some places and ways, where people of different politics and economic backgrounds come together regularly in common purpose, and they are a bastion of communal meaning making in a world that wants to teach us we are meant only to consume alone and be angry. Mhmm. He concludes, I'm happy to send the sermon along if you want to read it.

I hope this note finds you well. It does and I do, so please send it along.

Yeah. I would love to read that. Please send it along.

Yeah, please. That sounds awesome.

Incredible. So what do we

think about the role of a religious institution as one of the last places where people of different political and economic backgrounds come together in common purpose? Wasn't that supposed to be the Internet?

Interesting. Mean, I wonder the degree to which this is true on the larger scale. Like, I don't actually know, but it is extremely heartening to read that it is at least true in some places.

Yeah. Yeah. I do think there's very few in in world places. Sorry.

Oh, no. It's not it's,

you know, in universe locations.

In universe. Yeah.

Canonical. Is this church canon? They say, Chad. This reminded me there's an another conversation I've been following online right now about movie theaters, kind of in a a sort of similar way of this space in our real lived world where we are gathering together for a shared goal, in the case of movie theaters. And I imagine in the case of religious institutions, the idea being that you are not allowed to be on your phone, that there are very few places left where that is explicitly understood.

And in the things I've seen, movie theaters obviously fall under that category, though many people do not follow that. Mhmm. And I imagine the same is true for religious institutions.

I think it's yeah. There's, like, relatively few places that you go where there is some percentage of the group of people that is there has a strong idea about how everybody is supposed to behave while they're there and enforces that.

Yes.

It's one of the reasons I love metal and punk rock shows. Because when someone gets out of line, there's a big group of people there who will very gently, but very firmly say

Mhmm.

We don't behave that way here. It's not what this is for.

Yes. Do you think a classroom will fall into that?

That's a good question. I and I wonder if the answer is different pre and post device ban, which is really sort of sweeping the nation at this very moment.

Mhmm. It's almost like we have a natural inclination to desire some structure and authority around us at times.

I mean It

can be nice. It can

be nice.

That's not very girl boss slay.

We gotta take our medicine sometimes. Yeah.

But interesting about that comment is that it implies that having a device around you is anti structure in some way, where I would argue that having a phone on you is following a different set of rules. Like Yes. The people who want you to hold your phone all the time and want to be online, and that's a different environment with its own rules. It just clashes with a movie theater, a church Yes. A synagogue, what have you.

Yeah. Yeah. It is in some ways in, like, conflict that you're walking around with a social compact in your pocket that's very different from the spaces you move between

Yes. That have

different social compacts.

Yeah. Like it's not just that it's different, it's that it's like directly in opposition to those spaces.

Well, because they're both kind of asking the same thing, which is that they want you to be here. Yeah. They just happen to be co located and at odds.

Mhmm. We got some responses to the segment I worked on on New Luddism. One of them from a friend of the show, Talia. Talia wrote in, what a great episode. Love your work, Meagle.

Thank you. It just so happened that Jathan Sadowski was holding a Luddite tribunal at the local public library last night. So, of course, I had to mosey down and have a gander. Although the analysis and antics were fun, the library had risk assess smashing things and found it, well, risky. Instead, they commissioned, quote, Enoch shredder, unquote, to shred paper icons of the technology we deem smash able.

Amazing. That is suspicious.

I'll put it on.

Fun little tautological knots aside, I guess the event didn't delve into the questions I feel most strongly about, and these were the ones I think this episode tackled. Like, generally, one of the most important questions to me is, can you even smash a virtual machine? There definitely feels like there is an important moment going on in which capital is trying to make its instruments less contingent on labor. Maybe more clearly stated, are they making the machines networked and virtual with protective intention? Can tools of this nature ever be democratized?

I would question, is it really virtual? I I I think that that maybe is something that a lot of companies are having us think is that, you know, like, the cloud is in the cloud when a lot of technology is not there there's a physical aspect to all the technology that we engage with. We just kind of are being more and more removed from it. Yes. I also think that, you know, if we're not gonna go mosey our way down to a data center, maybe another way to look at smashing virtual technology is through boycotting.

It reminds me, Meaghel, of of what they were talking about, of what especially Mohammed was talking about in the interview about all the different types of sabotage that exist.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. Mohammed and Emily were talking about that it's not always about smashing a physical piece of technology. You know, there's other ways to resist and kind of break down the technology even through using it.

You have to smash the Epson printer in your heart first.

Oh my god.

Next up, we got an email from Julia Fisher in response to the episode I worked on about my attention span. This episode made me think about my own relationship with my phone usage and particularly short form video. In about twenty twenty two, I was halfway across the road when I realized that I had been using TikTok without enjoying it for months. I took that moment to delete the app and have never gone back. I could feel how the app had its hooks in my brain, and I knew that I had to remove myself from the cycle there and then.

I am still annoyed that a medium, which I think has so much potential for really interesting and unique expressions, been used as a tool to squeeze the hours out of my day like a juicer. I'm ashamed to say that in the past year, I started going at Instagram reels instead.

Oh my god. I saw. The freaks.

Home of the freaks.

I feel similar. I could give various arguments as to why I've gone back, but ultimately, it's the same brain hooks from a different app. One thing I've noticed with Instagram though is that one of my core themes my algorithm keeps returning me to is productivity. I believe it started from a few videos about how to do good academia, which makes sense since I've recently returned to university for a master's. And, of course, Meta could consult their constellation of data about me to find out the second I submitted my application.

From those academia videos, I have then been shown a number of videos similar to the episode, which are about how to rebuild your attention. Mhmm. I am fascinated by the process of an app showing me videos, which acknowledge that the experience is not pleasant and then showing techniques of how to stop using it. It's hardly new for systems to present their own critiques, but seeing people talk in practical terms about how to stop does feel different. It all makes me wonder about how the future of digital systems will be built on co opted critique.

Could Instagram just be setting up a smokescreen by showing me these videos, showing me the way out to trick me into thinking I can leave whenever I want? Oh. Woah. You should definitely subscribe to the Neverpost RSS feed and continue to listen to this podcast.

I'm trying to

can learn how to stop

listening to podcasts. But just listen to this podcast.

Could Instagram be showing you the way out to trick you into thinking you can leave whenever you want? We know the answer, and we'll tell you soon later on. Never post.

After these messages. After

these messages. If you're a member,

you'll get access to that conversation early.

Should we should we just start printing out transcripts and mailing them to people? Is that the better option? Finish an episode. Do the transcripts.

Not to be confused with a newspaper. Oh.

Uh-oh. Mike accidentally invented newspapers. Newspapers.

Interesting. Interesting. You know, this podcast industry thing is doesn't really seem to be working out for the world. Let's just go and check. How is the news publishing industry doing?

Oh, Mike. I already checked.

It's awesome. It's so good.

Oh my god. I do have to I have to yell about the TikTok to Instagram reel pipeline.

Where where what's the state

of it now? Because it used to be, like, TikTok had everything first and it was cool, then Instagram was boomer y and had it late. But now, like okay. Still that?

Yes. Oh,

still that.

Oh, I'm just gonna

know TikTok seems like it's all commercials, and Instagram seems like it's all sickos.

Instagram reels, at least in my experience in comparison to using TikTok, is full of fucking weirdos. Oh, okay. Strange. Like, the amount of just truly bizarre stuff that I see, it's is just mountains more of it on Instagram than I ever saw on TikTok.

I do wonder how long it will take for the the ads, the endless advertising to get to Reels because I do still feel like TikTok I I generally avoid Reels because I'm like, listen, if I'm going to be drinking straight from the hose of this kind of content, I'm gonna do it once.

Like it to be like it to be water and not chlorine or

Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah. And, like, I have a lot of a a few friends in my life who genuinely have been like, yeah. I'm so glad that I never got on TikTok. And I'm like, diva, Let's check our Instagram DMs. How many times are you looking at

TikTok is on you. Yeah. This email does it just makes me think about I mean, and and Julia even acknowledges this, the old idea that it's like, any capitalism is able to subsume any criticism of it and is able to host it and profit from it. Yeah. So it's like, you know, Penguin House makes tons of money from printing Karl Marx's books.

Yeah. It's just how it works. And it's like, you know, the job of the technology is to figure out what you want and give it to you. And what a lot of people want right now is to figure out how to spend less time online. So yeah, it is deeply ironic, but also very very true and makes all kinds of sense that Instagram will be like, well, here's endless content about spending less time online.

Yeah. There is also this new what's in my bag video that I've seen where it's people packing, like, you know, putting stuff in their purse for activities that are offline, and they're making content about putting a book in their purse.

Folks, we're gonna win. We're gonna we're everything's gonna be okay. It's just gonna take a little while.

Did they start that day by yawning and tossing off their

sheets 10 feet away from their phone? Yes. God. Well, I

think one thing that's interesting about this is where Julia figured it out. I love the detail that no one has commented on. I was halfway across a road. Realized I

had been using TikTok

TikTok without enjoying it for months. I took that moment to delete the app and have never gone back.

I hope it.

Stepping on to the far curb and thinking immediately, oh, damn, dog.

We all remember that moment. If you if you remember the moment that you had such a realization, tell us what it is. Tell us where you were standing and which road you were crossing, when you decide when it hit you.

Don't tell us

Oh god.

Out of the road first.

Yeah. Yeah. Please. Traffic.

But send that to us. Thank you, Julia, for this.

Ben Smith sent in something about my segment about recipes as vibe posting.

Hi, Neverpost. This is less of a question or comment and more of just an excited, what a wonderful confluence of people thinking about this topic slash excitedly just sort of waving my arms in the air about this the entire time I was listening. But Ruby Tando from Bake Off, but also who is just a fantastic food writer in her own right, literally had a book coming out this week called All Consuming. The cover is very good, but the first section of it, because I have devoured it like so much of her writing, is all about the process of writing recipes now. And why are all of the descriptions of them like cheesy green beans and things like that.

And just sort of like the nature of very Marshall McLuhan y, the medium is the message, and what does it mean that the medium has now changed? And I just wanted to excitedly share so that it is also on your radar. Thank you for a fantastic show.

Ben, I just looked this up, and I'm ordering it right now.

I love this. Love this.

The it also it would behoove me to mention specifically Caleb Herron's interpretation of this, which is the, like, just a a green crunch. Like, a a healthy green crunch. Like, it's Is there a

name for that? For that, like God.

Maybe I need to do another segment that's specifically food about this.

In? It's enraging.

It's so it's so wild. Like, I just think we need a little green, a little crunch, a little

Like, it's every time you

do this.

But it is, like, there's something so it's like, picking up, like, a mosquito bite where, like, even saying it, I'm like, there's something evil that I'm, like, taking pleasure But, yes, thank you so much, Ben. This is awesome. I am so going to read this. This looks amazing. Also, cover is awesome.

Eric Moore wrote in about my Brain Rot segment. Eric writes, I was listening to the Mailbag episode, and I was struck by what my mother used to call the cosmic two by four when I heard your discussion about Jay McGee's letter on WikiLeaping. I'm a professional independent trivia host, and what they were talking about is very nearly my initial brainstorming process when it comes time for me to write a new show every week, which got me thinking, am I just a paid brain rot shepherd? Uh-oh. I think trivia and brain rot have a sort of rhombus slash quadrilateral relationship.

In that trivia, begrudgingly to my field, is a type of fulfilling brain rot in the modern sense, but especially when compared to AI slop brain rot, which at most generous is probably a highly irregular trapezoid in this metaphor. While I think brain rot is a well understood and accurate description of the umbrella term for activities that are capitalistically useless, but passively to semi passively enjoyable, I think where some of that distinction of fulfillment and where it loops into being a healthy thing pejoratively called brain rot comes in is in a, as Jay remarked, was this brain rot designed by human minds? B, are you engaging with it because you want to and not that it was served to you algorithmically slash systematically? And c, is this something that can be shared and communally experienced? Trivia is at least as old as the classics etymologically, but probably even older because even standing on the stage, there is nothing quite so enjoyably human as being surrounded by other humans fighting about answers to questions no one ever made you learn the answers to, and that you don't need to remember and utilize afterwards.

Viva la brain rot that actually helps you enjoy living and being wonderfully useless if only for a moment. PS, AI is extremely bad at writing competent trivia questions, so my brain rot job is safe for the time being. I mean, I think like I don't know. I'm so maybe increasingly resistant to calling anything that doesn't leave you with a kind of device related hangover afterwards, any form of brain rot. That like, for me, rot now has, like, a very particular feeling associated to it.

And it is when I put my phone down and I, like, re check into the world, and I'm like, oh, woah.

Hold on.

Like, you just woke up from a really long nap and you'll

go Oh, yeah. You feel sick and angry. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Stupid. Like a you're, like, kinda sweaty and angry. You went

to bed.

It was bright, and now it's dark, and you missed dinner, and what

the hell? Stop. I had stuff I needed to do. Yeah. And so I'm like, if you're I'm open to the idea that, like, you can do things in space with people, and then afterwards be like, oh.

And like, have a kind of social hangover. But like, fundamentally, is that brain rot or is that just, you know, social anxiety? Like, I think if you're with people, there's gotta be something just fundamentally additive and pro social about it, if certain characteristics of the scenario are given. That is just so different from sitting on your phone and like, doing nothing or doing something that sort of is justified through the idea of doing nothing.

I'm really enchanted by this description of trivia as information that you never learned intentionally. Because there's something I think, comparatively true about that with memes, and I can say, and they were roommates, and you know what comes next, and you know where that's from.

And they were roommates.

Yeah. There's something about that that's kinda sweet that is sort of communal, but it kind of I feel like in a way, it feels the most that way in the real world with other people.

And I think there's still a big distinction between, like I'm gonna talk in generalities here, and like what I'm about to say doesn't apply to say, like, people who are gonna go on Jeopardy! Or like Don Caldwell from Know Your Meme. Watch yourself, counselor. The idea of trivia is that you, just through the way that you live your life and the sort of, like, you know, who you are, you are in possession of information that is at that particular moment and perhaps no other moment immediately useful to answer a question. Whereas I see a lot of people using their devices, being online, scrolling TikTok, scrolling Instagram, etcetera etcetera, like, using the excuse of being like, well, I gotta know what's going on out there.

Like, I gotta sort of, like, actively dig through this pile of stuff and like kinda hurt myself a little bit in the process Mhmm. So that I know what's going on. I think unless you are a professional trivia person, the people who play trivia most regularly, and I have a lot of friends who do, they're not like studying. But they are studious people.

My takeaway from all the responses we've gotten to your brain rot segment is, I think to notice that people have a very difficult time defining what productive uses of their time are as soon as they are asked to so without a capitalistic framework.

Yeah.

Yeah. Everyone answers that a little differently, or like makes a little bit of a different deflection on the answer, as if they cannot just wholeheartedly say, I enjoy doing this with my time, and so I do.

Yeah. And and even though it makes me no money or whatever, like, don't feel guilty about that.

Yeah.

So with that, let's take a little break so I can go check my texts, my TikTok, my Instagram, all the things. Because I don't know what happened in the last twenty minutes, but

Gotta go make sure. Maybe it could have been

some guy. Gotta yeah. So sorry. We'll be right back.

Welcome back everyone. I hope you enjoyed that break wherein you looked at a different screen and waited for us to come back. Next up, we have a response to a segment I did over the summer with Hannah Paivo about charts in the early nineteen hundreds, and the ways in which charting came from the cartographers of the world, historians, and the academics into the greedy little hands of business. And what that meant about the dissemination of data and its magical powers of prognostication. I have not heard this response at all, but Hans assures me I will enjoy it.

So Hans, show me what I'm in store for.

We got a message, an audio message from Talia, who we heard from a little bit earlier in the in the episode. They sent us this pretty incredible thing with the tag. They're all good segments, Brent, but I have listened to the charts one like four times.

Hey, Inverpost. This is Talia. I'm coming to you today from a far noisier place than I normally do. It's Friday afternoon in the hot lab, which is where I work, which means it's time for the end of week monitoring sweep. And I have been thinking a lot about the formalism thing that Jason discussed and how much I have grown to have after working in HOT Labs for the last six or seven years, a sense of formalism based on the sensor, which is a radioactive sensor, which you potentially can hear in the background.

I was wondering what that was.

Yep. The

afternoon monitoring sweep is to check whether or not the laboratory is clean and safe and if everything that should be active or hot, as we like to call it, is in its rightful place. So rest assured, I'm a professional and

I know what I'm doing.

Don't worry if

it happens to sound noisy Okay.

With chirps over here. But I thought that this would be a nice submission for the charts that Jason requested as this is a sensor that moves through the chart of space in the laboratory in the jerk. And I think the way in which these trips have come to mean something to me, but potentially don't mean anything to you, is is interesting as a discussion on, like, that that kind of idea of, like, how the form becomes or starts to mean something the more you interact with it. Anyway, I'm gonna stop talking and just do the sweep. Okay.

So this message goes on for another

Oh, Talia, get out of there. No.

Another five minutes and it goes a lot of places. Talia's really doing the work over that. Let me play you just a couple of moments that happen within the next four minutes of Talia's life.

Can I just read one one thing, Hans, before you start it? Yeah. Okay. A hot lab is a secure shielded room in hospitals or research facilities for safely handling, preparing, and storing radioactive materials used in nuclear medicine and therapy.

Talia, just Okay.

Our first radioactive audio clip.

So apparently, they can just use their phone in there because this is these are these are two examples of what we get later.

Is that good?

I don't think so. They are a professional.

Are a professional.

Hearing that sound, does that feel good?

No. It does not. Something about the form of it.

I don't think I like charts.

I'm scared. I'm scared. So by the end of

it, Talia gets into a little bit calmer area.

This is even scarier to be seen. Yeah.

I embraced. Is that good?

Who is that? Don't know. Okay.

Again, Talia is a professional.

A secret third thing.

Okay. Well, that's all the serious stuff done. As always, loving the show.

Bizarrely stressful.

Why is it?

What is the part of my, like, animal brain that's like, that's bad. That's just bad.

That's bad.

Get out of there.

I cannot overemphasize how much everyone was fidgeting and moving around frame that entire time. Nobody was comfortable.

Oh, that's also only segments of it. I'm it literally go it's four minutes long of them just

going through the room. That is truly Incredible. Wild.

Speaking of unsettling and alarming sounds, Adam, sent in a note about my segment with Luis Lopez on Burnt Toast Audio, which if you do not recall, was this audio trend where people intentionally peak their audio and just blow out the sound.

On the opposite end of mic clipping, I've noticed this thing where people will move their face away from a mic to yell, and it just has a very particular vibe to it that creates this mixture of both yelling and whispering as they're no longer speaking directly into the mic, but they're still talking at a loud volume. I feel like I see it a lot when people are making comments that are either open secrets or very private hush-hush secrets. I couldn't find any good analysis about this online, so I wanted to see what you all could dig up. Thanks. This is truly one of my favorite podcasts, and I look forward to every new episode.

Oh, thanks, Adam.

Thanks, Adam. Okay. This I'm obsessed with this because I know exactly what you're talking about.

Can you do it?

Yeah. So it'd be kind of like, I'm talking to you over here.

Yeah.

And then I move away

Okay.

And in interact with the space I'm in more pointedly.

And while you're back there, you talk about how, like, someone is cheating on their significant other? Like, is that

Yeah. Is that,

like, the gossip you enter the gossip zone? You're like,

so this celebrity has done something normal and innocuous.

The smash cut, probably.

Not that we would ever forget the terrible and horrible crimes they've committed.

Smash cut back.

So anyway, like, it's yeah. It's

this Sure. Yeah.

It's this, like, analog

It's like the Greek chorus almost.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, it's this analog way of cutting. It's an emphasis on what you're saying in the opposite, which is interesting.

It's it's sort of posits, like, you know, like the whisper is like a very particular kind of emphasis that it's close and a change in vocal timbre. Like, you know, you can't really, the only way that you can hear this is like, you really have to get in there. But like, this sort of does the opposite where it's like, it forces you to yell, but it still sort of like enters this whole other space.

Well and I think there's the an implication there that it's like, I'm yelling and no one can hear me.

Oh, interesting.

Like, no.

I didn't think about that.

Like, I'm saying this thing, like, don't you under like, it's sort of you, like, slapping your hands against the glass being like trying to warn

you. Yeah.

Yeah. I've tried to warn you. Don't like, don't you see I'm yelling and no one can hear me.

One of the things that I teach students when we work on audio only things and I talk about writing for audio is that grammar, as it is generally taught, is a written person's game Yeah. And not a reading or talking person's game. We do not talk with proper grammar, and we never will. If you wanna sound natural, ignore grammar. Of course, don't because you need to make it legible when you read it and things, but this feels like another entry into a grammar

of audio.

Oh, a 100%.

I agree with that.

Because there's also kind of a like, it's a parenthetical almost.

Yeah. Like this what you're saying so much more. It is a parenthetical, but it's like a nuanced parenthetical.

Yeah. Well, because it's not it's not just necessarily, like, I'm yelling and no one can hear me. It's almost like I'm yelling. I'm far enough away from the mic where there's almost this implication that, like, I don't know you can hear me. Like, whereas I'm right here right now, and I know that you can hear me.

I'm right by my mic. I am intentionally recording my voice. Whereas if I move four feet back, there's this sort of implicit feeling of, like, maybe I'm saying this and I don't know that you can hear me.

I wonder how much of it is derived from the practical concerns of, Yeah. These are things that you want to shout because they frustrate you, but that would make the audio sound bad, so you just move away a little bit.

But with burnt toast, you'd be looking for that.

Yeah.

Like, staying close to your mic and blowing it out according to Georgia's thesis is actually a thing you could do, and it would mean something.

Yeah. There is something this phenomenon of, like, either intentionally, like, okay, come closer, come closer, and then whispering into your mic or, like, going back reminds me of, like, millennials use of jump cuts Yes. Yeah. And the videos that they make.

Sure.

Mhmm. It feels very millennial to

me. Uh-oh. That well, that's interesting to me because I feel like the millennial jump cut is much more effort Because in that case, you are actually cutting the video, like, are going in after the fact and cutting it. Whereas this is such a, like to me, this feels very very close to the medium that you see it in, at least that I see it in, which is more like short form video TikTok, that kind of stuff, vertical video, where the idea is that you can just make a video right now. I don't have time to do all this stuff.

So I'm just going to get this message across as quickly as I can.

Yes. Adam,

this is so interesting. I could write an entire other, segment about this, and maybe I will.

No. Wait. Hold on.

Hold on.

And maybe I will. A

little while ago, I did a segment about how artificial intelligence is helping contribute to the aesthetic of new American fascism. And Dan wrote us an email, and Dan says, since listening to your episode about AI and new American fascism, I can't stop thinking about how the Fasc Bros' latest obsession of AI contrasts with and contradicts their previous obsession with cryptocurrency. Specifically, how the supposed advantage of crypto, its ability to substitute fiat government banking with cryptographic proof of work runs completely counter to the inherent premise of AI. What is at its core evidence of a lack of work. So much of the hype of crypto seems nominally predicated on the belief that the proof of work equals scarcity, and therefore legitimacy as a currency.

But AI throws out that notion that proof of work matters at all, insisting that only the end result is of any importance to the audience. The fact that adherence to one of these technologies are typically adherence to the other belies crypto's stated necessity. If the ultimate goal of AI is to get work without any effort, then perhaps predicating an entire economic system on computational work isn't the democratic decentralized anti establishment tool we were told it would be. Perhaps even it's just another tool for speculating, scams, and buying sketchy drugs on the dark web. Okay.

Listen. As someone with friends who buy a lot of sketchy drugs on the dark web, like, that part, let's, you know, let's let people buy their sketchy drugs. Everything else, hell yeah, Dan.

Well, in truth, you should be buying sketchy drugs from your own

community. Lately.

Sores. You. You go You should be going

to Providence. Yeah. I mean, I think that this is a set of people who generally is interested in one thing and it's political expediency. And so they will do whatever is politically expedient in any given scenario, and they're doing the politically expedient thing in both of these scenarios. The fact that those two things don't necessarily line up to form a coherent I don't even wanna call it ideology.

A coherent line of reasoning is like, Dan, you have given this a thousand times more thought than any of the people who are interested in both of these technologies.

Yeah. Yeah. Think the center of the Venn diagram between the two is what is an easy answer for how can I receive things from the world when I have absolutely nothing of value to give the world?

Yeah. Yeah. I guess in that way, it's very coherent.

Yeah.

So we got a very interesting comment in, of all places, our subreddit, which if you did not know this existed, you should go to r/neverpost and join the community there. Make your voice heard. Tell us your thoughts. We are constantly reading it. Sometimes we might even comment in there.

We're in there.

We're in there, and I was in there when I found this comment. So, frequent, chat participant in our, live streams, which if you'd also like to, see our beautiful faces there, it is twitch.tv/theneverpost. User nondeterminist system wrote a really interesting comment on our subreddit about my episode that came out in October about digital witchcraft, Etsy witches, and the industry of witchcraft on the Internet. And they write, I had a few quick thoughts after listening to this episode. First, one thing that I may ruminate on and come back with a more fleshed out thought later.

Mahegan Saint Pierre talked about acting as an intermediary between the living and the spirits. It occurred to me that, for most people, the Internet is a vast ethereal world with unpredictable agents whose will often requires interpretation and intercession. Maybe we need new kinds of spiritual intermediaries for our new realities. Or maybe we're already trying to think of the Internet as a spiritual place, and maybe some of our angst about the current state of the Internet can be thought of as spiritual. Second, and relatedly, I'd love to hear more from practitioners of other religions and faith traditions about how their beliefs and practices have been impacted by the Internet.

Well, Alex Friedman, rabbi who wrote in to us, I'd be very interested if you have thoughts about this. Yeah. Yeah. I do think this is an interesting idea of looking at our relationship to the Internet as spiritual. I think it's that's certainly its own thing.

I don't want to equate the industry and existence of witchcraft on the Internet with a broader spirituality about the Internet. But I do think there is there is truth in this feeling that the Internet does, by virtue of it existing through devices, but not in a particular place. It's sort of a this vast endless more conceptual space that there is a a desire to ground it, to understand it, to interpret it in a way that I think does feel similar to spiritual practice. There's a desire to, like, interpret, understand, have people who interpret it for us who feel more, like, authorities.

And that's why I have to look at my phone for fourteen hours every day to make sure that I know enough to guide people through

the Exactly. Exactly. I was gonna say I do feel I I worry that us on this call I mean, I certainly fall into that, where I'm like, I gotta I gotta learn so that I can I can explain? Mhmm.

I would also say that what this made me think of is how sometimes people have a crisis of faith, where going to church every week, doing this thing doesn't feel the same anymore. It's not they're not getting what they used to get out of it. And that makes me think of how I feel about the Internet. I used to go to the Internet. When I would go online, I would feel a certain way.

I would frequent certain websites, engage in certain content, whatever. And I'm always almost having a crisis of faith when it comes to the Internet. I don't feel the same anymore when I gauge in certain times of types of content, and I'm in certain spaces. And that makes me think of how maybe, yeah, the Internet is kind of a place that is very similar to, like, a spiritual practice.

And which is also, like, getting actively worse. Like, you know Yes. I don't as I don't participate in religion too much, so I don't know how often that that happens. It certainly has famously happened in a couple places in The United States over the last thirty or so years. But, like, I think that's also part of it is that it's like, it is actually demonstrably getting less pleasant and harder to use.

Mhmm.

Yeah. Speaking of getting less pleasant and harder to use, unless you're a member, it's time to hear some ads. We'll be right back.

Folks, I got good news for us. Finally. Finally, good news after all those ads. We got a Molly's Corner.

Yes. Yes.

I have no clue what this is. For anybody who is a new listener, Molly, my wife, occasionally calls in and asks questions or make statements that are completely unrelated to the show.

Yes. Today, we hear from Molly Underground.

Hi. It's me. I was just getting the m train up town from Delancey Essex Street. And one thing they've done, everything is install a screen that tells you on the m Platform when the f is coming because it's not in New York. These are trains that basically go on the same route that are on different levels of the subway platform.

For the years, there's been one stairway between the two platforms where people would either stand at the top or stand at the bottom, look out for when the train was coming, and then communicate to strangers to say, come up here or go down there, and and people would essentially shave one or two minutes off their commute. Very important. But they since they've installed the screen, now you can stand on the m platform and see when the app coming. I assume the same as Shu downstairs. And it's just a bit sad to me, really, because I love that I love the forcing function of having to communicate with a stranger to figure something out in the city.

And it made me wonder if any of you have examples of where, like, technology has arguably made your life better. It actually makes you a little bit sad because maybe it's the right some kind of human connection or something that was pleasurable to do that took longer than the way you do it now. Anyway, I was just thinking about that. So gladly. Know

exactly what Molly's talking about. Is this clear to everybody what's going on here?

Yeah. I think so. Yeah. I think so. Two two different levels of people talking to each other about which train is coming first.

Yeah. And then they put it they put a screen in. You don't to do that anymore.

Yeah. Molly trusting the screen is what I'm

not sure

about. Yeah.

I find those screens generally are right unless they say, hey. I'm a screen. I'm broken.

Nope. Which is Hey. Often. Often. So maybe No.

Okay. But okay. To her question, does this make you think of another example?

Absolutely. Something came right to mind when they installed checkout kiosks at the library. Oh. I love talking to our librarians. They're great.

Yeah.

Like, I loved going to the desk and, like, having a little chat, talking about books, and, like, getting recommended other books. And, like, I sometimes I did have to wait in line.

Mike, that's a good one because I feel the same way. I think I'm on record on this show saying I don't use self checkout in lines. Oh,

yeah. Interesting.

And and a similar reason where, like and it's a similar reason to, like, what Alex was saying way at the beginning of this episode, which is, like, there's certain social contracts and the fact that people still wear their pajamas to the store and then can check out without interacting with a single person. It leads to this idea that these spaces are your living room, and they are not

Bypass by bypassing all of the moments wherein they may be slightly judged.

Yeah. Yeah. Hold on. Why is wearing pajamas to the store catching strays right

now? Yeah.

Hans is actually a Russian grandma that thinks that you should have a full face of makeup and red lipstick every time

you leave silence. All

of us. Right?

All of us. Yes. All of us doing

that. Yep.

No. I this then makes me think of it's funny when when I was listening to Molly's Molly's Corner. I wasn't originally thinking of this, but the other day, was walking down the street and I saw a little restaurant in my neighborhood that basically deals entirely in online orders. Nobody ever goes in there and sits there. It's just picking up or getting DoorDash or whatever.

I have certainly been someone who does this, but it does make me sad to see entire restaurants that are just completely empty, have all the trappings of a regular restaurant, have seats, have chairs of everything, and nobody's ever there because they're never going to be there because this has been determined to be a takeout restaurant.

There's an incredible thread on the I believe the Bed Stuy, the neighborhood that I live in subreddit, where someone is like, hey, where are the good Indian food restaurants where people actually sit down in the restaurant Yes. And eat in the restaurant? I want I wanna go. I have a first date coming up or something like that, and I wanna go, and I don't want the two of us. We wanna get Indian food, but, like, we don't want the two of us to be the only people in the restaurant.

Oh, And every single comment is like, oh, this place is really good. And then people being like, you didn't he doesn't yeah. But it's always empty.

But it's a takeout restaurant.

Yeah. Only just a group of guys on bikes waiting outside constantly.

Do you think then it's this is kind of part of the bigger conversation that about convenience, and this is actually the pain of convenience?

Yes. Absolutely. 100%. Yeah. The destruction of the sensual world at the the altar of convenience.

Yeah.

Mhmm.

Jason? Yes? You look like you were gonna say something. I wanna give you a chance before we move on.

I was gonna try to, and I haven't figured out how to use the altar pivot to land a religious button to move us on. Okay. Ended at the altar of convenience.

Sir Suri is mouse in French, and mice inhabit churches. Church mouse.

Mice are very religious.

This is a well known fact. Mice love Jesus.

All of this is.

Mice love Jesus. Jesus. They're constantly telling me. Yeah.

And we actually I think like most Ganesha statues, there is a mouse.

I feel like I missed an entire connective step in this. Why am I here?

I feel like we should just leave this in and then just talking about start talking about one word graffiti.

Blessed are the meat.

Okay. A mouse.

What's the great or not the great mouse detective. This one

Why are we talking about mice?

What's this? The Jewish

No one tell

Jason. One. That's about mice.

Fievel Goes West is a Jewish movie? Yes. But he's a cowboy.

Careful. Why are we talking about the cowboy? That's okay.

How about this? Andy's a cowboy.

There you go.

We got a bunch of one word graffiti mostly from the subreddit.

Good god. Alright. Yeah, gang. Hey. Remember when I told you all to stop doing this last time?

Well, you didn't fucking listen, did you? I'm gonna rattle off some one word graffiti for you, which to be fair, you all were very good rule followers this time. Maybe it's because you listened to an episode of Normal Gossip where Mike Rickenetta talked about being a rule follower, but you're doing good this time. Alright. Reddit user, vim dynamo, sent in Souris, s o u r I s.

And in that thread are a bunch of people talking about this word that is baffling to me. I'm not gonna spoil it. You gotta go to the subreddit and figure out what the fuck Cerus is all about.

It's good. There's a whole discussion. It's great.

Next up, Vogie sends in p s y c psych. Psych. On the side of, like, a transformer unit. That's kind of fun.

With just pigeons and pigeons?

I don't think that's not

a pigeons.

That's are those assumptions? It's something far more worried.

Those are bushcats. It's

I this image is spooky.

There's a darkness here. Yeah.

If Saff only sends in dong.

Dong.

Dong dong near soup.

Oh, yeah. There's a bunch of I didn't see that ever.

That just makes it for me. Yeah. Dong near soup.

Campbell's cream of something.

Yeah. Oh, this next one rips so hard.

Todd from Montreal sends sends in and a little Mario guy with a b on his hat.

I'm gonna say that this barely it is one word, but, like, maximum effort.

It is a full wall mural

of graffiti. With, like, three d letters. Carolyn

Thompson from Portland, Oregon sends in queso. It appears twice. Queso queso, and it's stenciled on the street. So in a few ways, you are pushing credulity, but I'll let it in.

And it's yellow. Like queso.

Like queso.

We do like that.

I like that it's also in this very pleasing triangle.

Like a chip almost. Yeah. Like a tortilla chip. You know what? Cameron, this is good now.

I'm gonna forgive this being both a stencil and the same word twice.

Wait. What's wrong with the stencil? Yeah. Why is that a problem?

Jason's the, in charge of He's the decider. Yeah.

Yep. There's lots of mostly,

we must cater to his whims.

That's so true.

I just feel like spray painting through a stencil is not quite the spirit of one word graffiti.

Fair enough. Fair enough.

And finally, quirky spirit five nine eight zero in the subreddit sends in a sign that appears to say shit bottle on it, and one imagines someone spray painted something to change it from what it once said.

There's a whole story. This is less than one word graffiti. It is people adding a single horizontal line to the signs for a town named Shillbottle.

Uh-huh. Knew it. Yes.

Jason, in fact, two months ago, you responded to this saying, the purest entry.

Yes. We'll see if

past Jason agrees with the whims of present Jason.

Well, I myself feel like something of a shit bottle right now. So I think that's as good a reason as any to say, thank you all for your one word graffiti. You did much better this time around. I'm proud of you all and my holiday gift is for the next mailbag, you can send me two and only two word graffiti. Oh.

Wow. Thank you all your little shit bottles out there. See you next time.

Thanks for listening everybody. Done.