This episode of The Watch is presented to you by Amazon Prime, ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for. That's when Prime's same day delivery has your back, getting you exactly what you need, fast and reliably so you can actually join the moment instead of watching from the sidelines. Same day delivery, it's on Prime, visit amazon.com/prime to find millions of items delivered fast, available in select areas terms apply. Hello and welcome to The Watch! My name is Chris Ryan, I am an editor at TheRinger.com and joining me in the studio today is me! No Andy today, it's just the Prince alone in the studio. I am however joined remotely by Lane Brown from New York Magazine today, he's going to talk to me about his incredible piece in New York Magazine called The Feed Is Fake, which scratches an itch that I've been having for a long time, especially ever since the whole is geese a siop, debate, raged online and yet I don't really know if it raged anywhere else and that's sort of what Lane's piece is about is why it always feels like everyone is talking about something but nobody is actually talking about it. He gets into the exploding industry of clipping for social media feeds but also narrative manipulation and then his piece is also like a much larger kind of essay about the current state of our cultural conversation and our understanding of what is popular and what matters, which is something that I think Andy and I always grapple with on this on this pod, but I am going to talk a little bit about some tv news and also give you a few thoughts on last night's episode of Euphoria as far as like what's coming out this week as always busy week in new television, but I didn't get a chance to watch any of Dutton Ranch and I have to be completely honest like Beth and Rip when it comes to the Yellowstone universe. This is a Yellowstone spin-off starring Kelly Riley and Cole Hauser. Their characters were beloved on Yellowstone. I think that they worked really well as supporting characters. I'm not so sure I want to watch a television show entirely dedicated to them and you don't have to because the net betting amazingly is also on this show as is Ed Harris, but I will try to get to that at some point. Other new releases this week include Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, which is a new series on Apple TV with Tatiana Mazzlani and it seems like it's a little bit of a normal suburban woman goes down a crazy rabbit hole when she witnesses something she shouldn't. It looks like a thriller with some social satire. I'm interested to check that out. Also, we have from Netflix. I believe this week is the boroughs, which is being kind of dismissively or casually referred to as old stranger things or New Cocoon, but it is about a retirement community and an incident that's possibly a supernatural incident or extraterrestrial incident. I always had problems with that word occurring at this facility. Great cast, Alfred Molina and Alfred Woodard in it, but I haven't got a chance to check out any screeners of that. That comes out this week and I think Eddie and I will probably hit both Maximum Pleasure and the boroughs at some point. As far as TV news, they're really the biggest thing is that the lanterns trailer dropped. Andy talks about Lindelof. Last week in my absence, this trailer is awesome. The pairing of Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre is the backbone of how great TV show gets made is you find the right two people and you fit them together. Kyle Chandler as this rugged and self-involved version of Green Lantern and Aaron Pierre is the up-and-coming one who wants to do everything right. It's like a very solid basis for a show and there are watchman vibes in it. There is more special effects than I think I was expecting from the trailer. Maybe that's they're putting that forward a lot in the trailer just to bring in the DC heads, but it was a little bit more comic bookie than I thought because I think the original sort of understanding of this show is that it was essentially like a true detective but happened to be set in the DC universe. It'll be great to see how it actually shakes out. I'm super excited for this series. I think what we're going to do with Widow's Bay, obviously the last episode, the one that focused mostly on Patricia, Kato Flynn, we've been singing her praises all season, but this is her standout episode. I won't give anything away if you haven't gotten a chance to see Widow's Bay yet, but we'll talk about a couple of break of episodes together. Maybe on Thursday show, what we'll do is do four and five together. I do want to talk about Euphoria, though, and in honor of my colleague Zach Low, I put together 10 things I like and don't like about Euphoria, episodes six stands still and C. So for those who don't know Zach Low, obviously now has his own podcast with the Ringer podcast network. I worked with him at Grantland and now at the Ringer, and while he was at Grantland and at ESPN, he had kind of like a great column called 10 Things I Like and Don't Like, which was his notebook dump on the week in MBA that he had been watching. This is similar for this episode of Euphoria. I just thought it would be an easy way to kind of move through what was not necessarily my favorite or least favorite episode of all time. I thought it was like a needed setup for what is obviously going to be incredibly cathartic last two episodes of the season. I would I would imagine it's in play of the series, but we'll see. First of all, I would say I loved number one. I love the collection of images that he put together charting Rue's longing and receiving of her her sign or salvation. I mean, in the church, like Zendaya well lit in a church praying, hearing a call from her mother. Her face looks like passion of Joan of art. This Sam's got a bag and he goes into it. And I think especially in the the Rue sequences about her trying to save herself is where the show is still at its best. And I think that her experiences over the course of this series are the most easily legible from the outside where you're like, I can see what happened to this person and I can see what this person wants to become. The images at the end of the episode, she's listening to her book on tape Bible and it starts skipping and she almost crashes. She sees the bright light of the incredibly well lit monster trucker or 18 wheeler coming towards her and crashes her car or pulls off the road and a spark gets on a tree and lights this burning bush and you get this this incredible biblical image of this woman finally finally hearing the voice of God, you know, and the the connections to other words of Damascus, the connections of Christ and the burning bush like it's obviously rich with that imagery. It doesn't play fast and loose with it. I think with the Rue stuff, it doesn't because so much of what addicts go through in recovery and in trying to save themselves comes from this relationship to a higher power and that may or may not work for all addicts and there are plenty of people who get clean without it. But obviously it's something that Levenson is deeply fascinated by and it doesn't even have to come down to any specific dogma of something you'd find in the Bible, something you'd find in the Old Testament or whatever. It's just about believing that your life has value and that's obviously something that Rue is looking for and it leads me to one thing that I don't really like, which is the what we've kind of done with the Jewels character. Rue goes to Jewels at one point in this episode and kind of makes her pitch for starting a family together and be finding like new problems to have and more classical American suburban concerns of, you know, what to do with your kids and stuff rather than fentanyl and sex work. And I think that Jewels's reaction to Rue was good. I liked the slap. I liked the get out of my painting. If you think about this show as these people existing in their separate realities, I liked the idea that Jewels was sort of snapping Rue out of whatever dream she was having and was like, you know, you don't actually have anything to trade here. Like we are not going to go off and ride into the sunset. This is not the love story whether or not that remains the case for the rest of the series. I don't know if I if I believe that, you know, to the extent that you care about something being endgame on this show, but like are Rue and Rue and Jewels like meant for each other? I don't know. I don't know if it's actually germane to the actual show itself, but I did like that scene. I don't really know what they're doing with Jewels. And I don't know, you know, this was a the things of behind the scenes in this production of this show and what it required to get people in the same room to shoot it. I think I sometimes allow myself a little to get a little distracted by that because I'll be like, oh, you can tell this person wasn't available and they had to shoot all their scenes in like a hotel room. Like I don't know if Hunter Schaefer had more or less time than usual to shoot or whether or not there there was like, discussions about what to do with the children.
was character, but I find like she had her artistic breakthrough on the set of LA nights and now seems to be in her. I am going to do a, you know, a body study figure and then paint over it as like her new, like art phase that she's in. I don't know if that's like really that compelling television, but I like Hunter Sharefruer as a performer, so I wish there was more for that character to do. As far as more things that I liked and didn't like, look, I love the high and low and I love the sacred and the profane. I love the church and the only fans and the spaghetti westerns and the Polanski dread, the Hitchcocky in moments, the 70s and more, you know, I think that Levinson moves pretty easily between those and if anything, I think I've oft repeated I'm never bored watching Euphoria. It's because of those tonal shifts, which even if the transmission really grinds sometimes on them, I still welcome them. It's still fun to have a completely different feel from scene to scene. You could say that it's mimicking kind of like our feed, you know, it's like when you flip through social media videos and you're kind of like going from one thing to another without any kind of transition, that would be one way of looking at it. Another is just that he had several different shows that he wanted to make and he's just going to make them and then stitch them together. I think that's also you could make a criticism of the show, but in terms of like the spectrum of tone that he's playing with and also like reaching very, very, very high and then also wallowing around in the grime and the grit of something exploitative, I think it's pretty fascinating to watch. I also think it's really interesting and I really like the tension between cinematic and TV storytelling. I thought it was very funny when Sidney Sweeney walks onto the set of LA Knights for her one line, pretty much throwaway day player part and starts improvising or disassociating with the actor who's playing opposite of from her and that she obviously is kind of thinking she's talking to Nate and she does this kind of riff about how you know scared she is for her life right now and the guy is kind of playing along with her and it's then shattered by the character of Oshayana walking onto the set and saying like, are you going to cue me up or what? I was very, very highly amused by Colleen Camp saying, ah yes, this is giving a real clout vibe because I think everybody is always like in their mind, they're making clout, you know, like in their mind, I'm sure everybody would love to be Alump Cool in the 70s and that took for clout to be what everybody was watching but obviously they're making LA Knights and I think that there's almost a slight commentary happening there where it's, yeah, like Sam Weaponson is making like an episodic spaghetti western opera but he's also making a soap opera and he's trying to sort of pay both pipers there and I like the effort, you know, I don't think it's successful for everyone. I know that Andy has both rejected some of the storytelling and also the interests that Levenson obviously has. He's also given it the college try so I really, I appreciate him doing that for me because we're enjoying talking about the show. I think that Levenson for as much as he's interested in high and low art, he's also interested in television and cinema and whether or not you can bring the feeling of cinema, the cinema that he loves and Sam's actually programming a festival out here in Los Angeles over like I think started last Friday and it's going through this week. We're showing a bunch of movies that he says influenced season three and he's showing like 30 Harry and Candy Snatchers which is like an aqua movie that you should check out and he's showing freeway which is like the Reese Witherspoon 90s Thriller so he's like throwing a bunch of a different like things up on the mood board and it's hard to take all those cinematic influences and consistently make a television show and maybe that's why the production of euphoria is inconsistent because it's difficult to translate all of that stuff but I am enjoying it. I will say that one thing I also enjoyed was Daniel Deadwiler as Alamos Mom. The character introductions on euphoria, a hallmark of euphoria, the sort of backstory, flashback moments, your mileage may vary on these but I don't know that I necessarily walked away from that scene truly understanding Alamo anymore than I already did but I did think this little message in a bottle from 70s grindhouse movies or it actually wasn't really like that really. It was more like an LA noir set in 70s black Los Angeles and some people might be like the temerity of Sam to do that I don't know. I thought it was pretty cool like it looked great. Daniel Deadwiler I will watch Rita Foam Book but seeing her play this Alamos mother who essentially runs a long con on a kindly but you know disfigured man to set herself up with her boyfriend is awesome. It was a cool little little snatch of time and obviously Levenson had a blast making it because it just looks great. I told me nothing about why Alamo was writing it with a polo mallet while she's buried up to her head and sand and told me nothing about why he doesn't care. So I enjoyed Daniel Deadwiler I don't know if that segment necessarily was necessary quote unquote but it was very cool. I think it's also cool that we're returning to met a euphoria. This is a degree of playing the hits but one of the season two highlights for me was the show within a show with an issue of Lexi's play depicting on and off screen events. The LA Night's thing has potential. It's coming. They're calling this this picture in at the seventh inning. I like the idea of Lexi being responsible for writing Cassie's arc on LA Night's and also Lexi perhaps thinking of how to kill off Cassie's character and that little throwaway line that Lexi has where she's just like you know what am I going to do. I'm going to kill her and then I think I can't remember. It's a Gideon Adeline who's playing that friend. I can't remember but she's just like you got to kill somebody every once in a while or else people get bored. That does not bode well for our ensemble. Somebody somebody may pass away in the last two episodes. I like that return to met a euphoria. If that was sort of Cassie's long term goal was just like fame no matter what instead of making tons of money to help Nate. I think that this arc for her would have been kind of interesting. Unfortunately and this is my sixth thing. Cassie's only fans modeling is kind of getting in the way of of this show being legible to me. The further out we get towards Cassie and Nate. That's where the show gets really muddy and on its own it's kind of amusing and I like how every scene with Sidney Sweeney seems to be from another universe whether it's like that Hitchcocky and kind of tension of whether or not she's going to delete only fans. We talked about the sci-fi B movie stuff of a 50 foot woman from a couple episodes ago. Earlier in the season on the wedding night the kind of almost Ari Asterish horror of Nate's, you know, being getting his pinky toe chopped off. Nate is shrinking. Cassie is growing. But this leads into my seventh thing which is unfortunately also something I don't like which is just Nate. I think they're leaving a lot on the table here because Nate is actually closer to Ruth than anyone else. I mean he's looking for redemption. He's trying to find a piece of the American dream. He's trying to shake off his past which we get a glimpse of the old Nate as he stomps on the protected flowers that if held up his retirement community construction. But we get so little time with him and he gets almost no time with anyone of consequence from the show that it's kind of hard to tell how he got there and where he wants to go. And now we're in this ritual humiliation phase that's lasted the better part of the season. And this is my biggest question mark about where they want to go with this character. You've got Jacob Olority. It doesn't really matter one way or the other if he's having fun. I can't tell. But give him something to do, please. Let's do something with Nate. Can Nate interact with anyone else from the show aside from city sweetie? I don't know. But it would be nice. It would be nice to get him. I love that moment with him and undershave her at the wedding. That actually had a charge. Let's do more of that. I don't know where I'm at with Matty. Eight is not a thing I don't like or like I just like Alexis Demi and I love this character historically on the show. Her being a shadow madam of only fans models who is now curious about Alamos business and her pursuit of financial gain for security to like gird against like everything that's happened in her life and not unsimilar, not dissimilar from Alamo, I guess. Her reactions to things I think sometimes are a little convenient for the television show and have nothing to do with the character. I think that that's like understandable in terms of writing a TV show. You have to have people just kind of go along with stuff. But we're getting towards the end of this season and series and I'm not exactly sure how they're going to bring together like the Alexis Demi part of this show, the Nate part of the show, the jewels part of the show with the thing that's the most successful, which is the the root part.
of the show. Though there is one thing that's starting to bug me about the root part of the show. And after I've sort of like waved away every criticism about like, well, what about this and what about that when it comes like talking with Andy about you for the season. And I'm like, you don't get it. It's a vibe. It's a feeling just just go with it. The crime plotting is starting to get to me. That's, I don't know if this is actually 10, but I'm calling it 10. We're doing too much and explaining too little here. Lori is going to give up Alamo to the FBI, thus forcing him to work with her and allow her to use his, I guess, ambulance service to bring fentanyl from Mexico into the States because the border is closing. I'm not sure I buy that. Typically like in crime dramas, like the threat of revealing someone to the FBI is like more of like a marketing your reputation. And I think that Alamo wouldn't be just so like, ah, check made it by Lori. Now I know Alamo has a ulterior motives here where he's also trying to get his stuff out of Lori safe and perhaps everything else that Lori has. But this seems like it's one extra like a hat on a hat. Like Lori and Alamo's collision course and the the presence of the DA on the outside via Ru is good. That's a good beef. They should have a shootout and work this shit out, you know, like whatever. Let's get, let's get these characters getting after it. Now being vaguely in business with each other while also intending on killing one another and robbing one another is a little thin. And then you know, I'm not sure why Ru is being given all these important gigs. If seemingly everyone in Alamo's crew knows she's a rat. So we obviously end with the rat and, you know, we have the rat and the snake for Ru before she goes on the road. She's terrified because her mother is now in danger. You know, we know that Alamo never lets a woman get over on him. But I don't really understand why Ru is now becoming the, you know, the agent of revenge against Lori. It doesn't seem like she is the most dependable person. It's not like she's like a, she's not a burglar. She's not a gunman. She's just a convenient person to work in a strip club and manage the girls until she wasn't. I don't really understand why not like when everybody shows up at Alamo's house with guns. I don't really understand why the shootout probably should have happened then. And now we're off for another element of this. This was more among the more, you know, amusing parts of the show for much of the season. So I hope that they tighten the screws a little bit. I have a feeling based on what we saw as the trailer for next week that next week is going to be largely focused on Coleman, Domingo's ally character and how that, yeah, I mean, seemingly his health incident impacts her. So I wonder if I had to guess it's like take a beat and then the big crime happens in the finale. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know when the moment is and I don't know how much it's going to feel like a series finale versus a season finale. Those are my thoughts on euphoria. I want to get into my conversation with Lane Brown. So I introduced Lane a little bit in the beginning of our combo, but I'll just tell you I've worked with Lane about 15 years ago when Grantland started. Lane is somebody I've always really admired and he's now a features writer at New York magazine where he does some really, really, really great reported pieces and the thing that makes this feed is fake piece. So fun to read to me is that it's really, really, deeply reported and it's really fascinating to read about all these different methods that marketing digital marketing companies are using to populate our feeds with clips of shows and music and movies that we're then supposed to be talking about supposed to be ingesting, but it's also about like how the narrative around those things gets shaped and then really more it's Lane kind of writing this, you know, awesome rant about like how do we even know what things are actually popular and it does that even matter anymore. And you know, we had talked about the the geese side up controversy on this show and I'll wait a second a couple of weeks ago when it really popped off and that's what really got my interest in this going, but I've also had this like nagging feeling for a while. I've noticed a really perceptible change in the tone of online discussion like no shit, but not in the way that you think, not in like this, everything is getting angry or way, but that like everything kind of is starting to sound the same like it's I'm starting to just be like I can't tell the difference between the post above and the post below if you read on Reddit or, you know, everybody's Instagram is starting to kind of like merge into one Instagram and this kind of everything is being optimized for engagement because I think that this is like become way more important than connection with other human beings. Like yeah, in your stories, you might, you know, be following what your friends are doing in any given moment and that's kind of like my primary use of Instagram, but that whole other side of it with reels and then I think especially for TikTok where people are making content more or less has led this to our phones being like our new connection to what we think a conversation is about culture in the world and Lane writes about that beautifully. And I really wanted to talk to him about this piece. It's kind of a different look for the pod, but I thought it would be fun on a random Monday to do this. So thanks so much to Lane Brown for joining me and thanks to Kai and Sarah and Kaya for producing today. I'll be back on Thursday. We're going to talk about Widow's Bay. I'll have a guest and I'll get into deep Widow's Bay lore then. But thanks to everybody for listening and let's get into my conversation with Lane Brown. My guest is my former Grantland colleague. I should put that first and current New York magazine features right here Lane Brown Lane. It's so great to see you man. We were just remarking that I think the last time I've seen your faces as you were leaving Los Angeles and I was arriving in Los Angeles. Chris moved in and I moved out. Yeah. And it is an honor to be here on my favorite podcast, the only organically popular podcast in the world. And also maybe perhaps the least clipped. Actually, we are doing that more clipping. Last week, New York magazine published Lane's article, which is one part deep dive into the exploding clipping economy that has taken over algorithms. And one part, Jeremiah, about how the shadowy industry has distorted our understanding of the conversations taking place within our culture. I think that's that's if I had to pitch it to anybody. I suppose that's what I would say. And for people who've been listening fairly closely to the watch over the last couple of weeks, this stuff has come up in conversations, even though we haven't known it. I think most notably Andy and I more or less jokingly talked about the stuff that happened with Geese, the band Geese, a couple of weeks ago, where magazine wrote an article about Geese's marketing company or the marketing company that works on behalf of Geese, that Geese is a client of. And John Sennley wrote an article called the fanfare around the band Geese is actually a siop. Actually was a siop. And the piece is largely about the unorthodox practices that count a good use used on behalf of Geese. But this is like Lane, I wanted to know that's like sort of my in on this article. I saw this. There's a funny story. I have to tell you like after I we hear from you for a little bit. But you know, I think that that was sort of my in on your article. But what was the thing that kind of was like the kernel of the idea that got you to write this piece? It's sort of a two-parter basically. I feel like I have been noticing things just every story I try to write just in my sort of daily intake of information. You know, I'm looking at Reddit. I'm you know, I'm seeing with the voice of the people is on the internet comments. And I've kind of noticed just sort of more and more things a little strange. And so I did it story in real estate a couple of years ago. It was all about how New York City rent prices were just sort of exploding at a time when basically people were leaving the city. And just in these you know, New York City apartment reddits and just there would be full of people saying like, you know, this is not happening. The nobody's leaving. People are moving in. People are flooding back. It's like this is just totally not the not the case because I sort of noted that. And I saw the kind of the same thing over and over again when I was so I was working on some other stories. And then I found this this service. I'm not going to say the name of it because I maybe don't want to give them. I don't want to do the any product placement here. But basically there are services that will essentially advertise your product within Reddit comments. And I thought, oh, this is really, you know, they've really figured something out here and they've they've got me. And so I kind of, you know, I've been begging my poor editors at New York Magazine to let me write a version of this for so long. And finally, the sort of the you know, the key thing came up. And suddenly this was a thing that was, you know, sort of in the conversation. And I was finally able to break them down. But after years of sort of twisting their arms. And so they finally kind of let me let me take a couple of weeks and sort of dig into this. The other thing too also is I have no idea what's popular anymore. Yeah. Is somebody that, you know, cares a lot about culture. I was the culture at New York Magazine for a long time. And I my job is kind of, all right, figure out who people are going to care about in six months so we can put this person on the cover. And it used to be kind of simple to do that. We had, you know, things like ratings back in the olden days. And so, you know, there was
fairly easy to do and it got harder and harder and harder and harder and now I just have absolutely no idea like I was thinking Do you have any idea? What is more popular the bear or the pit? I don't know I mean, I think I think definitively in this case right now the pit But I think cumulatively culturally When you think about the like footprint of the bear people saying yes chef Like the way people maybe started dressing because of the way Jeremy Allen White dresses on that show It's a different kind of influence. It's maybe people saying things and not even knowing that yes chef is from the bear You know, but it goes hand in hand with There's different kinds of impact that shows can make and I think we you know over the course of our lives and you know especially working in music There are bands that are important and there are bands that are big and that's always been attention in the media is to like You know, are we making too big of a deal out of a band be just because we personally like them So we're going to fashion some narrative about why this is the only band that matters when there is objectively In sync or somebody who was like exponentially bigger than the white stripes or something like that and That that kind of back and forth has always been really fascinating and like you dude I have I don't think there's ever been a time where I've been less certain of Not only what how many people are watching something and you get at this in your piece where you talk about when you really start to go in about like You know all of this stuff being made by companies that have no incentive to share How people are watching it how deeply people are watching it how much they're paying attention to it It's so complicated now. I'm sure you've had this experience now when you're like even talking with friends or if you go to a bar and and TV or movies come up and the The amount of siloing that's going on now where somebody is like yeah, man I am like a for all mankind Every scene completist and then the next guy over is like I don't even I don't have no idea what you're talking about and both are Conversant and television Right. Yeah, it's like every conversation about culture has it has to have that side bar about like where you sort of justify How popular you think a thing is and it's like oh by I was talking to my niece about this or you always bring in like this Is your evidence like a cooler young person that you that you know or something that is somehow more tapped in the new or you know Yeah, I was at brunch and I overheard this and everything and that's it. We should be able to track this stuff better than ever Yes, everything is and but yes, there is no incentive on the part of these companies that are you know making this stuff to actually share that data with us and so we are just You know trying to look for every sort of strange little signal that we can find about how big one thing is and And kind of unfortunately in this vacuum that we we have now it's become really really easy to sort of fake these signals of popularity and so I feel like We do not have a very clear view of of reality Which is kind of yeah kind of strange and so I wrote mostly about You know TV pop music sort of celebrity gossip like the frivolous stuff, but it's like you can obviously See the implications for for everything here. It's like we're getting You know all of our information Right now through the same You know sort of rectangle in our in our pockets through social media and it's It's so easy to sort of get a distorted look at Just reality with this and so it's kind of terrifying and what creates an ecosystem in which I think that I'm sure you find this challenging as a reporter And as a as a features writer where I Think of my romantic conception of what my dad used to do is a newspaper journalist, you know, even though he was a film critic but like He would still have to gather a lot of information especially when he was a crime reporter the crime reporting happens in the courts You know like you would go down the courthouse and sit there and wait for an interesting case and and then be like oh this is good This was a rich kid got into a car accident and just trying to get out of it This is a good article or this is a good hook for a piece, but we're deriding driving a lot of our concept of what is What is popular or what is unpopular or what is beloved or what is being said about all those things from Online platforms that are very susceptible to the kind of manipulation Data inflation and also narrative construction that in some ways I'm like the game is the game and I I think you've probably heard some pushback about this piece where it's like how different is this from say Paila How different is this from street teams plastering stickers all over a city for a band in the 90s? I was wondering if you could give our audience without aggregating yourself because I do want people to read the piece Just an idea of what clipping is and how it maybe is a little bit different from say a digital marketing campaign for a band a TV show a movie 10 years ago basically if you've got a song or a Movie trailer or a TV show you You take it and you cut it into social media friendly clips like short 20-second clips And then you find a bunch of dummy social media accounts that will post all of this online at huge volumes and Essentially as you do that you are tricking the social media platform algorithms into interpreting it as a Basic as sign of organic interest in this thing and so when that happens the platform sort of push these videos Far and wide to users who ordinarily wouldn't have seen it and then sometimes They will kind of engage with it and that will sort of you know add even more fuel to fire - it's yeah It's I think it's sort of normally not too long ago It's probably at this point four five years old, but really kind of in the last year. It's really sort of become a thing that everybody is doing and You know, it's like yeah, it's from from geese although of the Justin Bieber to bed bunny and so it's it's Tiny artists and big artists and everybody in between are doing it. Do you feel like it grew out of? Something organic so like obviously Tik Tok and Instagram Reels One of those like sort of pillars of how you make stuff on there is to soundtrack it or Interpolate clips of things like I follow a thick of it memes account on Instagram where it's just scenes from the thick of it You know being posted all day long And I'll just be like oh, that's a that's a funny line. That's primarily how I like rewatch that show in the last two years I don't really know that there is a lot in it for the thick of it producers To have that still on my feed, but I'm curious whether you think that this has become a weaponization of organic fan interaction or if it's something different than that That's a good question. It is really really hard to tell and I feel like that's kind of the point I think that the people doing this probably learned from things that actual you know fans were doing and they saw that it you know worked And one way but now it's like the the volume is different. It's you know, it's not just a couple of fans Making you know, adding a song to a clip of euphoria or something This is like 50,000 videos of the same thing being sort of dumped into Social media all at the same you know over the same weekend to basically kind of like overflow the toilet and sort of get this Sorry to be scatological As a watch listener you should know that's fine. I think why it's different from you know Sure, there are people that said that you know, this is the pale of fine has always kind of existed The fact that we don't have any trusted culture metrics at all anymore To tell us what's actually you know popular or they're not Is sort of one thing and so we you know in the olden days you could check a street team you know people putting up stickers Or something against like sound scan sales and you could kind of see the golf but now there's just nothing to Sort of check this against it. It is just trivially easy to do it is like so simple It's everybody's doing it. It's at a scale that I think is different. It's like it's not just in one city This is you know, you're putting up posters. This is like you're blasting this out to the entire universe of You know tiktoks user base really really quickly Uh, and so the you know, this the scale of it is is pretty different So the clipping stuff happens obviously on video, but you were talking a little bit about the the feeling you were getting Reading reddit threads and I certainly agree that there seems to be over the last couple of years I can't really pinpoint the moment But it reminds me a lot of like you know twitter I think went from this thing that was sort of everybody's running Like gag journal over the course of a day and was very much directed towards like a select group of followers And then like right when we started working at Grantland is when I think it became the primary promotional tool for journalism and in the world And there was that that had its benefits and obviously also I think made everybody slightly insane Um, and then now it's kind of like a rage factory where You go and if you look on your for you page at least when I do There are people having these like insane arguments about things that I'm like Why are you guys even fighting about like how my bloody valentine isn't that good like what who started this fight Why is this now like crossed over to six different friend circles that I seem to have and or businesses You know and like some guy from Bloomberg is like actually my bloody valentine is the best and I'm like why are you commenting on this yeah yeah yeah There's this so that I digress just to
to say, with Reddit, I noticed a real collapse of voice. Like, everything started to sound exactly the same. And obviously, on Reddit, you can comment anonymously. And if you click on someone's user profile often, they'll be like, this person is hidden their activity. How much of what interested you about this project was not only the obfuscation of data, the inflation of the sense of popularity, the people can have, but also the shaping of narrative around cultural objects. - Clipping is sort of one technique. The other thing that they're doing now is, this thing, a chaotic good sort of put a name on it. I don't know if this is the name sort of used by everybody, narrative campaigns, where they are basically, yeah, using internet comments, using dummy accounts to comment on things in a way that makes it seem like, everybody is talking about a thing in kind of the same way. And so you see it on Reddit, you'll see it, you'll see it happen on Twitter. A couple of people that I talked to, I thought this is sort of interesting. It's like, clipping is something that you want to do at huge volumes because you want to push this out to everybody. Narrative campaigns are a subtler thing. You actually don't want that many people to notice this. You want kind of the right people to notice this. You want, it's sort of a light sort of sprinkle of sort of like narrative juice on a story to kind of shape something. And then once you do that, you can then, these other accounts to amplify certain arguments too. And so, yeah, it is really interesting because it seems like a lot of the pop culture fights that we've had over the past, I don't know, how many years have basically been seemingly the result of some of these techniques. And so in the story I talk about, one example is like, bad bunny in the Super Bowl. For a month, this is the loudest argument in America. The NFL has hired this Spanish-speaking artist to perform, and then, you know, people are upset about that. And other people are sort of defending this. And it, yeah, it turns out that basically these bot detection firms that track this kind of thing found that basically the shape of the argument was exactly the same on both sides. Yes. And these accounts were basically posting at the same time, maybe in the same time zones, which is sort of suggestive of something coordinated. And so, yeah, when you think about that, it's like all of these things that we're just, you know, at each other's throats about all the time. It's like, you know, how much of this is real? We have no idea. I was talking to a friend of mine who's a lawyer in the music business about your piece and about the wire piece about chaotic good and geese. And he was like, I wonder if the guys who did Cambridge Analytica knew that the endpoint of this was to get a geese song on a montage of Sixer's highlights that I would have. You know, it's like dreams come true, yeah. But the bad buddy thing is a really good segue into the thing that I wanted to ask you about, you know, I was talking with, well, both, I guess your former colleague, in a sense, at Grantland, Kirk Goldsbury, we worked with us at the Ranger now. And we were chatting about, for some reason, he hit me up about like, why is everybody talking about the Kevin Hart roast? And I was like, yeah, me too, although I don't know who's talking about it, because really what's happened is it has been atomized down to its 30 most important 30-second clips, completely de-contextualized from like the fact that that was like a three-hour show on Netflix that I find roasts like super uncomfortable to watch. Honestly, don't understand them at all. - I appreciate it, yeah. - And yet, it is, I think Kirk called it my junk feed, where there's all these things that everybody I talk to seems relatively conversant in. But you can't find a single person who's like, I absolutely made time to watch a three-hour roast of Kevin Hart and have like an opinion about it. And there's tons of stories like that. Like, I am a person who likes the bad bunny I have heard. Does not give a shit who plays the Super Bowl halftime show. And like, was very aware that that was like a weaponization that worked for both parties. Like, whether or not bad bunny or bad bunny's label or bad bunny's marketing company participated in that debate. I think it's actually like important that he gets to play the halftime show, but it can't, you know, and I thought his performance was really good. But it's like that kind of thing where I'm like, how the fuck are we talking about this for a third week? Like, and who actually is like every day I wake up and go to bed thinking about the Super Bowl halftime show? - You really do have to wonder how many of these people actually just, who gives a shit about anything? Like, people have enough on their plates, I would think, I don't know, I can't imagine being upset about, you know, enough about anything to sort of long on and go off anymore. I talk about Justin Bieber using this for Coachella. At least we think so. Somebody paid to clip Justin Bieber's Coachella performance. And I really thought, you know, maybe I don't know if I've been going to witness protection after this. Like, am I going to be, I mean, is this going to be, you know, are people going to be after me this weekend? And, you know, I was out walking around. I didn't hear from one believer. - Yeah. - And so it really, it's like just how much of this is, how much of this, how many paper tigers are there out there? It, you know, how much of this is real? It's like, we hear about the, you know, these fan armies that are supposedly just, you know, burning people's houses down every time you say a negative word about whichever pop star. And it's like, how much of that is real? Or how much of that is just bots sort of, you know, bullying, you know, people into, in the submission? Who knows? It's, it's really, it's a, yeah, strange, strange world up there. - But there is like real world implications to it. I mean, obviously like our political landscape is completely like shaped by this kind of online discussion. I mean, going through the Los Angeles mayoral race here now and you can see a lot of the old positions being taken that the same ones that have been sort of, and people have been manning since 2016. There's like a sort of progressive spoiler candidate. There is a far right wing reality TV like candidate. Like there are two people kind of in the middle, trying to scrap to see who's gonna get into the runoff and watching people talk about it online. Even sometimes people I personally know, I'm like, oh, it kind of feels like you, if you're gonna actually take the indignity of posting, you are still parroting one of like seven pre-agreed upon positions. And most of the time, I think it's almost reflexive now that people say things, I find this sometimes even talking to Andy. I'm like, I don't know how to make my point without making it in an extreme way, right? Like I don't know how to say, like I acknowledge this without saying, I hated it or I loved it. And I think that that's something that I see a lot in criticism and in online discussion of culture now where it's like, the idea of something being like a two and a half star, three star out of five star thing has completely vanished. You know, because even if you think that, there is like a really vocal contingent of people somewhere online or quote unquote people who are like, this is actually the goat sci-fi show. This is better than 2001 and you're like, oh god, man, I really, really don't think so. But that doesn't mean I think it's an unredeemable piece of crap. I just don't want to spend 30 hours watching it, maybe, yeah. - The negative engagement, the stuff that starts arguments is the stuff that sort of goes goes further. And so I think that's more kind of more of what you see. - Well, okay, Spencer Pratt is obviously clipping it up. - Yes, yes. - He's got clipping events going full time. Although he is to his credit, at least he's, I think he's because of election laws, he's got to disclose it. And so he's the rare, you know, sort of clipping event that actually you sort of know where it's coming from. Most of the journalism in the world now has sort of disappeared behind paywalls. And so we are getting the TLDR version of stuff for the stories that we're not subscribers to, from the, you know, the tweet about it, the quote tweet or the comment in-- - Or the argument about it afterwards. - Yes, yeah, exactly. And so the terms of the debate are basically set by whatever that argument is, which is really easy to, you know, sort of amplify a real thing or just completely astroturf it from scratch. And so it's, yeah, so I think that's probably another reason why you're seeing, it's like everything is the most extreme kind of, you know, fight that it could possibly be because that's, you know, it's somebody benefits when that happens. - Yeah, and you see, I mean, this has been going on since we were kids, but you see all the time on the left and the right political candidates, television shows, pieces of music, movies, TV, you know, whatever are essentially rejected from trying to occupy some sort of like middle ground, you know, like the stuff that really kind of, at least drives conversation is the stuff that's gonna be, and increasingly the more extreme kind of version of whatever we're talking about. You know, I always try on this show, Andy and I always have this kind of running conversation about doing something because it's doing, like covering a show because we think it's popular. And there are shows that,
are hugely popular, but not necessarily within the algorithm that we follow. So something like say, I think the Sheridan shows, Taylor Sheridan shows are a good example of something. I cannot honestly say that we would do as much Taylor Sheridan coverage if those shows weren't obviously very big. - Right. - Taylor Sheridan also would not have made 13 shows in four years if he wasn't big and if Paramount and hadn't decided like this was what we're gonna bet the farm on by the same token, we cover you for you on a week to week basis. I think that's a very big show. I, most of my friends have stopped watching it. You know, like, so it's always this murky thing feeling around the dark for a light switch. And the thing that's funny about what you were writing about, especially like when you're talking about geese, which is a band I like and I kind of wonder if you don't based on your description of how camera monitors things. - I like the good, yeah, cat or wolf, yeah. - But I was like mildly offended by like, I'm not, I'm not being manipulated man. Like I like geese. I like, you know, I started like in geese two years ago. Do you, did you come across anything in your research or in looking online and seeing these discord servers where people are, you know, begging someone to clip Apple TV shows or what have you, where you were like, oh, well, I like that thing though. (laughing) - Keatic Goods roster has got some good stuff on it. And so it was kind of maybe a little bit, yeah, disappointing, I guess, to see that. But I also, you know, I also understand it's, we are, this whole system is so broken that like you kind of need to, you need to do this. You're either in or you're out. And so being in means, you know, sort of resorting at some of these sort of shady techniques. I was in these discord servers for three or four weeks and basically I would ask the publicists of the people being clipped, you know, is this something that you, you know, is this something that was paid for by the, you know, the artist and their team? And nobody wants to talk about this. They're, everybody's doing it. But I think, you know, for understandable reasons, they don't, they don't want to talk about it because it's just kind of lame, I guess, to be the word, like it's really sort of a bummer that this is what we've come to. But at the same time, I totally understand why Geese or, you know, McGee or, you know, whoever has to do this because one of the things that this does, it's not just, you know, the artists that do it are sort of in the conversation. And it's basically everybody who doesn't do this is sort of left out of the conversation. You can't hope that it gets to many others themselves. It's, I feel like it's more of a information ecosystem problem that is complicated. I've played the platform, so I think more than anybody. At one point you mentioned like the chaotic goods, narrative shaping tactics was if an artist has a performance on Saturday at live, at midnight, you're posting it and the narrative, the comments under the videos should be, this is the greatest live performance I've ever seen. This is the best live show I've ever seen on Saturday at live. Like we have our new strokes. We have like, there's like an obvious like echo of like, there's a sort of excellence or supremely, like amazing thing that's happening rather than like, cool, like they played on S&L or whatever geeky thing some fan would say with they saw their favorite band playing on S&L. I was wondering whether or not you felt like, you know, you kind of mentioned this with the paywall media, traditional media sites, but whether or not you felt like this had kind of filled this vacuum where, I don't even know where I would go now to find out what someone thought of an S&L live performance anyway. I mean, when we were coming up, there were plenty of things that recapped Siren Out Live on Monday. There were plenty of articles where it was like, it sure seems like this band is having a moment. That would kind of shape maybe a narrative around it, but that's not in the artist's hands. The artist is hoping that John Porellis at the New York Times or somebody in Rolling Stone is like into them enough and is like, yeah, that was good. But you know, it's easier maybe to say, have like a lot of like a Stan army of Ashley Padilla fans who were like, this is the new Kristen Wigg, I don't know. - It is really hard for culture journalists and I think just journalism in general to know anything anymore. I think that this is, like I don't know where to go to find out, you know, what's actually popular. I used to think that I had my finger on things, but all of the advertising sort of moved to short form video. - Yeah. The websites that you would sort of go to to find out what a writer sort of thought about the stuff if you know, some of them are still hanging on, but it's like a court a lot of them have disappeared. And so it's, it is, I don't know, it's really tough. I don't think, you know, I am no better at anybody else than anybody else at figuring this out. I'm like, just, you know, fumbling around with the darker. - Yeah, I mean, it's also like there's a degree to which there's like, I would actually be curious to get feedback from this conversation from people who are not necessarily working within the media or are not handcuffed to their laptops 12 hours of a day and kind of working for seven of them, but also like ambiently looking online at stuff. Because I do think that that phenomenon, while it gave us careers, it also is kind of why sometimes it's really hard to tell like, is there a whole world out there that doesn't give a shit about X, Y or Z thing that we're writing about or arguing about? I know there is, but what are they, what do they care about? You know, because it's, it's, maybe they are not watching as much TV or listening to as much music or care about whether obsession made 15 or $16 million this weekend. But they're engaged with culture on some level or else, like we cannot be propping this entire thing up. So how do they get their information and how seriously do they take what they see on their feeds? It's an impossible question to answer, maybe. - Sort of a culture emergency. But the people I worry about, maybe the most though are the artists themselves, because nobody has any idea what's popular, nobody knows what people are actually responding to anymore, this is, like we talked about, okay, like in the old Grantland days, we covered a show like Mad Men, which 200, 300,000 people watched. But we understood that the people that watched that show would maybe come to our website and read about it. But now it's like the, we knew it wasn't as popular as Big Bang Theory, for example. But I feel like the, yeah, it's impossible to compare something like, I don't know, beef to house of the dragon. I have no idea, which is sort of more of an impact. You just think of an artist trying to pitch something right now. It's like I don't know what, you know, they don't know what kind of feedback they're getting, sort of the market research has just sort of been run through this whole, you know, sort of distortion pedal of a social media that really kind of warps everything. Yeah, so it's just, it's hard to know. And so I feel like, you know, I think about how the fact that, you know, every show on TV lately seems to be sort of derivative of like the white lotus, or it's like we had a, I know a couple of years ago, like the agencies were telling, you know, telling everybody, it's like, all right, no more knives out riffs and anything. And it's, it's like, I kind of wonder, were those like the last two shows, or the last two, like culture products that we sort of had hard numbers for for, you know, original things and now, you know, we're just sort of reinterpreted them in the perpetuity because we have nothing else that, like real data on. It's, it's so hard because like, but back when you, you and I were working together, like something like Homeland would come on, it would be a sensation for two years. I mean, it was a very popular show for its entirety, but like those first couple of seasons of Homeland, were like, it felt like you would come in on Monday and people would be like, let me know when you're ready to talk about Homeland, you know? And that's what this, like literally this podcast is built off that premise, that there are these five, 10 shows a year, that yes, we, Andy and I are happy to recommend 100 shows or 20 shows in a year, but there are gonna be five or six that like, we feel confident, like that madmen group of people are gonna be like, I wanna talk about this, or hear people talk about it. That Homeland thing that would then lead to 10 Homeland ripoffs that would have varying levels of success or critical appreciation, and then they would kind of shed that and get out, but you're right. It's like, I don't even know what I would try to imitate now. Like, I don't even know what a show like, why Lotus is a good example? I think that there's a lot of reasons for that. One is, I think shows TV networks may be are like, this is great, 'cause this is like a very controlled environment, you can isolate people, so that's essentially like, we don't have to worry a lot about extras, we don't have to do a lot of set pieces, like it's just find a good location, have a mystery, and then have people portray one another, and that's great for us. But I'm not sure what a show now, the pit, I think would be the best example of, I think that Max and other places will start to try to say, how do we get a 16 episode procedural up yearly but have it be stickier and more maybe long lasting in the psyche than say the Chicago Dick Wolf empire or a procedural on a network. But I don't know, I don't know, I don't know if you can recreate that magic, and
And by the time token, if you clipped it enough, and if you had the faction of pit fans who seemed to be talking about these people, like their actual humans instead of fictional characters, maybe you could manufacture like an illusion that your pit rip off police procedural or pit rip off family drama was actually as big as the pit. I'm not sure. Talking to some of the people I'd talk to, I believe you could. It obviously shows fail at the time, obviously things get canceled at the time, things just don't work, things, you know, don't catch on. It feels like there's a way to sort of put your finger on the scale a little bit more than there, than there once was. And you can sort of declare a hit by, by fiat a little bit. I don't know. I think you guys were having a conversation the other day about Apple shows and it's like a hit on Apple is different from a hit on, obviously Netflix or any other service with more subscribers. And so you're dealing with things at totally different, different scales. And so if a show without a lot of viewers, it's survival prospects on Apple TV are probably better than they are. I think there's something to Apple's volume play is still modest compared to Netflix. They seem to be way more willing to bring shows back. I don't know what their budget and model is. And if it's different from show to show like I will routinely see renewal announcements or a new season of something that's in season four or five, traditionally a lot of these places, they wrap things up by season three either because they see like an attrition in viewership or because that's when contract renegotiations come up with cast. And I don't understand the economics of what Apple is playing at. It's pretty much a write down for them in their larger business. So I'm not sure. And then you get into something like Netflix, like you're saying, where their data to me is incomprehensible. More people watch Bridgerton season three than watch the moon landing is like my favorite stat. Yeah. None of it makes any sense. Everything is incomprehensible who knows. But interestingly enough, so one of the things that I've mentioned at the piece, the night agent was something that was being being clipped. And yet, sort of if you look at the numbers, the release that show is massively popular. It's like every episode is watched more than the Super Bowl or something, at least in season one or two, I guess. So then why do we need, why do we need clippers at all? So it's, yeah, I think we have a, I don't think we have a clear, clear view of any of this anymore. And it's getting, I don't know. It's getting a little scary. So yeah, I'm a single issue voter at this point, real hard culture metrics. I think that would fix a lot. Let's wrap it up by discussing like where you see this is going next because this piece begins and, and if I remember correctly with, was it Joe Lim, the guy from Floodify? Joe Lim. Yeah. Who, your piece starts with an assertion from Joe that that 90% of what you're seeing on your feeds is essentially fake advertising and, or shadow advertising. It's essentially like there is like some, hey, a dollar per every thousand views incentive for somebody to post it. And he, that, that statement kind of chilled me to my bone because, you know, if I kill 25 minutes looking at my phone, I'll have one part of my brain that's like just smoothed out and is looking at cats and soccer highlights and whatever. And then there's the other part that's like, is it a weird that like, I've just gotten 11 videos that are the same template or have the same similar prompt or like something like top jaw will be popular and then 150 top jaw style shows will be in my phone, all of a sudden of like, guys getting interviewed on the street about what their favorite something is. But Joe seems to be suggesting at the end of this piece that this is all coming to an end. What can you, can you tell us a little bit about that? So Joe thinks that basically he thinks eventually people are going to stop trusting what they see in their social media feeds. He thinks this has gotten so bad and I kind of, I think I sort of agree with him. This is, it's so clear. I think people really are noticing this more than they, more than they used to, that, you know, there's just so much, so much astroturf that he thinks eventually people will be turned off from this. But he thinks that the, you know, the clippers, at least the people that are doing the, the clipping now, they're going to basically be sort of directing all of this content at AI. Yeah. So soon, you know, maybe we're not going to open social media apps, maybe we're just going to have our AirPods in and it's going to, you know, clawed or checked, GPT is going to tell us what, what TV shows to watch or, you know, what, what music to stream. And he thinks that if, basically, if they hit these LLMs with enough sort of volume of, you know, stealth marketing, but that will, you know, basically sort of trick the LLMs instead of tricking. Yeah. Yeah. Even now, if you, okay, so like the other day, I was like, I think I was, I think about listening too. It was some, some band that had 12 albums and I was just kind of like, I'm not quite sure where to start. And I just, you know, did a usual Google search of ex artist ranked, which gives you a Gemini summary of what the two or three peak albums are in terms of like critical appreciation, but also these are the Colt records. And then obviously they're the Reddit threads where people are ranking them. There's like rate your music threads. There's all these things where you can kind of find that information. But I noticed, and I think everybody has this experience now that they're very rarely going past that Gemini summary of the answer to your question now. And so that vision of the future, that idea of basically your Google result being a prompt you give your AI agent, essentially, where you're just like, hey, I want to listen to Salem. What's music like? Like what are the best, like which house songs? And it creates a playlist for you or it tells you like people like this. It's like, well, where are they getting that information? Like, where is this, where's the learning happening? And I would imagine that there is also a worry that like AI agents probably already are operating multiple like social media feeds and just working from a prompt from an actual human owner are populating our feeds with this kind of stuff. This happened to search first. It's like we're searches just been completely sort of overtaken by spam. And that's, I think, where we're headed with social media. And so people I think are eventually going to, yeah, escape. I do kind of wonder if it's like some of this is purposeful. It's like Google is, you know, they want you to use Gemini. They don't want you to use their search engine anymore. And so maybe they're tanking, you know, on-purposer and pushing you to Gemini. And so, you know, then Gemini will then take in this huge amount of undisclosed advertising and then sort of spit that back to you in the form of, you know, supposedly personalized recommendations. I find it too. I ask Chet GPD all the time. It's like, what are five, you know, albums that I've never heard before that sound a little like, I don't know, the alligator by echo in the bunny men or something, and they're spitting me back. Like incredible recommendations that, you know, I never would have found any other way. And, yeah, I feel like this is this whole thing. Somewhere, a bald record store employee is like, I could have told you if you were just coming to me, I would still have a job. Oh, man, Leanne, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been awesome. And this piece is incredible. We'll link it in the show notes, obviously. And you can read Leanne's writing on New York Magazine. I would tell you where to follow them on social media, but you're probably just an open claw agent looking to blasting with G's propaganda, Lane, great seeing you, man. Thanks again to Lane Brown. You can read his piece in New York Magazine. We'll have that piece in the show notes for the pod on Spotify. As always, you can watch us on ranger.tv on YouTube. You can write us at the
[email protected]. Follow us on Instagram at the watch pod underscore. It's very funny to say these things after having this conversation with Lane. I wonder if Kai feels any extra pressure with clips. This week, after, you know, can you put up G's numbers, dude? Thanks to Kai and Sarah and Kaiya for producing, and we'll be back next on Thursday. Take care.
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