Hello Internet Episode One Hundred

"Hello Internet Episode One Hundred" is the 100th episode of Hello Internet, released on March 30, 2018.
Hi, this is Dirk from Veritat. Well, I can't even do it. Oh my god. Here we go. Here we go. This is Dirk from Verastableum. And you're listening to the 100th episode of Hello Internet. Maybe it's time to stop making fun of my name. BELL RINGS Green versus yellow tennis balls. Yep. This has become quite the thing. Yeah. I've seen a little bit of this on my Twitter timeline. So for people who don't know, I'll do the quick background. Grey and his wife had a little marital discussion about where the tennis balls were green or yellow, which caused Grey to do a little tweaked poll about it. Do you think tennis balls are green or yellow? Lots of people got into it. It got lots of votes. It even got a little bit of like media coverage, which was quite funny. Yeah. And we discussed it on Hello Internet. And it was really interesting what happened as a result of the Hello Internet discussion. There was lots of tim fallery. There are several scientific studies down. I don't know if you've seen the one that I've popped in the show notes, where someone actually took my advice and measured the light spectrum from lime, from lemon, and from a tennis bowl, to see which it was closer to. And so they wrote up a little scientific report. And many a laugh was had. And that could have been the end of it. Except that one listener, I think he must have found out that his girlfriend and his girlfriend's father were going to the tennis. So he decided to tell them, oh, I just went to this podcast. They were talking about where the tennis bowls are green or yellow. And the father, who is not a Tim, who is just the father of a girl who's boyfriend, this is the Hello Internet, was quite taken by this. And the next day he found himself in a little gaggle of people who were waiting to meet and get autographs from quite possibly the greatest tennis player ever. Current world number one tennis player, although he's about to just go back down to number two. But I think he's the greatest tennis player ever. Roger Federer. They were all waiting for Roger Federer to walk past between whatever matches he was playing, sign a cup of autographs and whisk away. And while he was signing his autographs, this dad calls out Roger, a tennis bowl's green or yellow. And amongst all the confusion, Roger Federer, the question to suddenly took him in, he looked up and he went, I think he said something along the lines of the yellow, aren't they? And then a few other people in the crowd went, yeah, yeah, they're yellow. And this guy, the dad, who was filming this with his mobile phone, said, I think they're green, but lots of other people think they're yellow and then Roger Federer said, nah, nah, they're yellow. And then walked off, you know. That in itself, I think, was a great hallow internet moment. And I declared then and there that this team's girlfriend's dad is going to get a hallow internet medallivanna. Is that legal? He doesn't even listen to the show, but you're thinking he's getting one. He's getting one and he's what, within enough degrees of separation from the initiating incident that he's going to get a medal. It's never been written anywhere that you have to be a listener to get a medal of honor. I imagine it helps. I mean, to be fair, I don't think we have anything written anywhere about how anything works. But yes, that's true. We haven't written down rules about how the medals work now. A lot of people said that I shouldn't be just giving them Willie Nilly and I need a durable, but even if you said no to this, I would say too bad he's getting one. This is what happens, people. This is pretty... Could I stop him? No, often I could not. I could not stop him. Would you stop me as the question? You wouldn't veto this one, surely. This is a great moment. Having the greatest tennis player in history weigh in on this minus squabble about the color of tennis books. I certainly could disagree with you. One, you sent me a video and from my perspective, it's some guy in a crowd is commenting on the tennis ball thing, right? And it's like, oh, okay, great. I feel like the medals should be going to actual listeners of the show. So I do feel like I can disagree with you, but I just... You seem so tickled by this that I know there's nothing I can do to start that from simply mailing out one of these medals to a guy who's going to be very surprised, just get a box that's an award. But he has no idea about it. It would be the second one awarded. Look, I see what you mean about you have to be a listener. Like you have to be a citizen of a certain country to win certain honors. But I think medals of honor, generally, are just for the furtherance of the greatness of Hello Internet. And this definitely has furthered the cause in a very special way to me. So I thought it was fantastic, right? I thought it was absolutely fantastic. I had a right laugh at it. And that could have been it. Just so you understand, I know you don't really appreciate who Roger Federer is. This is the equivalent of, say, instead of tennis, as you and your wife had been discussing something about Mr. Chompers' ears, you couldn't decide something about his ears or not. And then someone went and got an official comment from Charles Darwin about it. This is what it is to me. This is the level of greatness in the field. This is the Charles Darwin or Isaac Newton of tennis. He just happens to be alive. This means that I'm officially right in your eyes. Is that how this works? Well, that's another issue. I tell you another thing though about Roger Federer that you may not appreciate. But you know how there are certain things on the internet that you don't mess with because everyone will jump on you, like, you know, electric fences because they have really zealous followers. Roger Federer is one of those things. I was about to say, can you give me an example of things that you don't mess with on the internet, Brady? Like, what are B-hives? You are not supposed to poke sticks. You're normally the one who tells me. So you know more about them than me. You're the one who says, no, we're not talking about that. I have never said such a thing, Brady. Criticizing Roger Federer is such a B-hive. Never criticize Roger Federer because his fans, known as the Fed heads, are very zealous. This is like tennis Logan Paulers, is that what this is? Like, I'll make jokes about Elon Musk to the cows come home, but I'm not saying anything bad about Roger Federer. Are his fans so annoying that you don't want to like him, Brady? Is that one of these situations? No comment. No comment from Brady at all. So anyway, after Roger Federer weighed in on the debate, this story, for lack of a better word, completely blew up and went absolutely everywhere. Like, the today show in America, it was in all the newspapers, it was on all the websites, it was all over the BBC. I tend to suppose yellow or green, for like a day and a half or two days, became an absolute obsession, a media obsession. Any mention of Grey and his wife where it all started, or how they went to that, had completely vanished from existence. Lots of teams were upset about this. They were like, oh, they're not mentioning Grey and they're not mentioning how they're internet. Like, that's just what happens with these things. Yeah. But it became absolutely massive. You couldn't look anywhere without it coming up. Do you care or you relieved that you kind of got pushed out of the story or? I mean, you kept sending me more and more things from new stories about where it was being posted. And the number one thing, no, I don't feel like I need to be credited that I worded a tweet that was a discussion about my wife and I and tennis ball. Like, that is the kind of thing on the internet that trying to have any kind of ownership of that is just like an insanity, right? So I want to be really clear. I would have no expectations that by the time this thing gets pattern matched up to Good Morning America, the Good Morning America is like, Grey and his wife were having a discussion about tennis balls, right? Like, I would not expect that. But I did have this different feeling where I kind of did not like you keeping sending me these articles where you're like, oh, look, it's over here now. Oh, look, it's over here now. How did you send like three or four? I think it was three or four hundred. It felt like a lot. It was not. I would let you continue, but you are doing me a disservice here. It was not that way. It was three or four. It wasn't that many, but it was also on Twitter. Like, people just kept sending me like, hey, look, the thing is over here. Okay, so there is also a way where I feel like, how can I say this thing without sounding like the world's most jaded asshole? I think that boat sound, right? Yeah, no, it's totally gone. But there's a thing where people want you to be like, happy that this thing that you started has spread far and wide throughout the news media. And my response to this is not a kind of happiness. It's just like enough of these things have happened over the years. I've seen this happen with other people enough over the years that this is just like a pattern. And I feel like this is what the media machine does. Like they're looking for things that they know are going to get them views and attention. And they will just repeat and pattern amplify that. And copy the others, what the others are doing. Yeah, and copy the others, but they copy the others in this battle of the memes for attention of who's watching TV. And any kind of thing like this where you can divide people in teams, it's going to spread. But my feeling people are like, oh, aren't you excited? It made the New York Times. It's not exciting. This is literally the job of these companies is to find things that will get people's attention and to pattern amplify them across time. So I almost felt like, oh, this thing that was fun for the podcast. Now it is everywhere in the world. And it's just been pattern amplified all over the place. It was a strange thing to see this spread across the internet. But that's what happens. Like catchy ideas spread. It would be like, definitionally impossible for them not to spread. But that's how these things go. They spread across the internet very fast and very far. Just to be clear, I wasn't sending you those things because I wanted you to be like excited or happy or proud. I was winding you up, basically, because I know how much you hate the media. So the fact that you and your wife just, you know, chatting about tennis balls for 10 minutes in your house can make it as a news story in the times of London. Yeah. I expect you to see that go, oh my God, what will do I live in? I'm sending that to you to like poke the grandpeold man and get him more upset about news. Not like, well done, you should be proud. You've made it. Yeah, I know that's 100% what you're doing, which is also why Brady, you may have noticed you got very few responses from me. That's like Brady sends the articles through and there's like, I say nothing back, right? I'm not going to reply because I know you're trying to wind me up, right? And that's why I see your wife into the messages as well because she's polite and replies. And she was also getting a bit wound up and I happened to be away while this was going on and you were messaging my wife and I, and I was busy, but I came very, very close to sending my wife a message, which would have been something along the lines of like, don't keep replying to Brady or just encouraging him. Because she was all like, this is tweeting, right? This is outrageous. She was just crying. She was being fun. She got the joke. But yeah, no, of course, of course. I know you're trying to wind me up and it fits exactly in like the gray checklist of, not media hatred, but media sadness, disappointment, a little bit of despisal. I'm not angry at the media, I'm disappointed. Yeah, I'm disappointed. And next time you want to tell me about the brave fourth estate protecting our democracy from all sorts of ills, I will remind you that they spent lots of time on whether or not tennis balls are green or yellow. Can I give you that? I know we talk about how I will sometimes cut things that you say from the show, segments that I find boring, sports ball corners sometimes. But I have to say that last episode, I did have a real crisis of confidence of if I should even put up that section about necessary lies for society. There was something about it that just felt like, I don't know if I really want to open this door publicly. I really did think about it. Like, should we put up this little section? We're not really saying anything that's terrible in here. This is not like a brand new idea that has never been released into the world. But there was something about it that I felt a little bit uncomfortable about. But once the show was up, then I immediately asked on Twitter, like, hey, everybody tell me you're necessary lies to keep civilization together. Because they're like, well, when it's out here, let's just double down. And it's interesting because I think I got back many terrible answers. And that people would just say things that are phrases that you hear that simply aren't true. So I'm trying to think about how to define more clearly this idea of a necessary lie of civilization. And I think your one, just then, as the transition is totally true. Like, cheaters never win is a kind of civilization propaganda that we have to try to get people on board with, even though it's not true. Anyway, so there were a bunch of answers that I thought were not really good or just like aphorisms. But I think the best answer that I got was from Greed Crow on Reddit. And the necessary lie is that violence is not the answer or violence is not the solution. Man, that is a really great necessary lie of civilization. It's almost definitionally there to keep civilization together. Like, civilization is the resolution of problems without having to resort to violence. And that feels like a real ground level kind of agreement that there are plenty of things that you could probably try to solve with violence. But we all have to agree together that we're not going to resort to this tool. And we have to agree that this keeps things together. Like, we're not going to resort to violence as a solution. But it's like, there are plenty of situations where we use violence as a solution. We have wars, right? Or it's like, we pay police to essentially force things to occur. So I really like that as an answer for a necessary lie of civilization as like we teach kids. Like, violence is not the answer. Violence is not the solution. And it often can be, but we just, we can't resort to it. Otherwise, we'll be a bunch of chimps tearing each other apart. So violence isn't a solution then, because ultimately, we tear each other apart. Violence is not the solution if everyone uses violence. Violence can be a solution if a select few people use it. Yeah, that's really getting to the core of, like we were talking last time, like the psychopathy school of like, oh, we pull some people apart and we're like, hey, here's some things you might want to know that are actually true. Like, you're going to be very successful or very terrible people. And being willing to resort to violence is one of those things. It's like, if everybody does this civilization falls apart, which is why it's a necessary lie. But like on an individual basis, it can kind of work. The thing that made me think about which you can, is like, oh, God, I don't even want to say it out loud. When I was in middle school and like on the edge of being a kid who was about to be bullied a little bit, and you know, the adults tell you it's like, oh, I'll ignore the situation. You know, don't do anything. Bullies just feel bad about themselves, which is also like a weird lie. Like you hear all of this advice. And my experience as a kid was nothing stopped the beginning of bullying faster than adding a little bit of violence into the solution. What did you do, Gray? Because my question I was going to ask you was have you ever used violence as a solution? And I thought there's no way he'd answer that. And you've just offered it up. Well, your criminal past is not criminal. It's self-defense. What did you do? Did you punch someone? A bully? Did you punch a bully? Look, I don't even really want to get into the details, right? Right. It sounds cooler if you don't tell anyway. Because we can imagine something more awesome. I don't know. Look, here's the thing. The reason why I would be like a potential bullying target is because I wasn't like a big buff kid or anything. Like shock, surprise, younger Gray was kind of a nerd, right? Like total surprise, I'm sure to absolutely everybody. I don't know. You mean he wasn't... Quarterback at the school football team? Yeah, that's not the image of how it was. So you just had to, you laid down a marker once. You laid down a marker and the trick is you have to be able to convince the other person that retaliation will be unreasonably large. Again, I don't want to say these things out loud, Brady. Why do I say them into the microphone? But it's just you and Mehe. When I was a teacher, I would just see it. I had the interesting experience of teaching at mixed schools with both boys and girls teaching at girl-only schools and teaching at boy-only schools. Like it was really interesting as an adult to see this, like from a different perspective. And it's like, oh, there's a couple of lessons that I learned there. Like lesson number one is, high school is even more awful, like viewing it from the perspective as an adult than it was as a kid. But it's like, oh, okay, I can see that none of the boys make it through school without being subjected to some kind of physical violence. And none of the girls make it through school without being subjected to some kind of psychological violence from each other. It's like, it's just so obvious. I like that violence is not the answer or the solution one. I feel like that was just a really, really great answer to this question. And I'll be sure to cut or dramatically cut down this section. Don't let me leave it up, Brady. Don't let me leave it up. We're going to tear the world apart. I don't mean to. Hello, hello, internet listeners. Is there something that you want to learn? Is there a skill that you want to acquire? Something you wish you could do that you can't do now? Then you should check out Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes in design, business, technology, and more. With Skillshare, premium membership, you get unlimited access to high quality classes on must-know topics. So you can improve your skills, unlock new opportunities, and do the work you love. Right now, you're listening to a podcast. And I'm willing to bet that many of you probably want to start a podcast of your own, but you don't know where to begin. And it can be pretty overwhelming. Even after having done this for years, I'm constantly surprised at how fiddly and fussy doing a podcast can be. Well, Skillshare has podcasting classes. And not just one thing on podcasting, they cover all of the various ranges from the technical side about how to get started to the editing side, how to work with tools like logic or Adobe to actually edit the podcast. And they have classes on how to improve your extemporaneous way of speaking. So across the whole range of everything you could want to know about how to make a podcast, Skillshare has classes on that. So again, an annual description to Skillshare is less than $10 a month. But right now, if you go to Skillshare.com slash hello, the first 1,000 people to sign up will receive their first two months for 99 cents. There are quite a lot of Hello Internet listeners. So if you are hearing the sound of my voice right now, you probably want to go and check that out as soon as you can. It gets you a discount on Skillshare and lets Skillshare know that you came from our show. So thanks to Skillshare for supporting Hello Internet and thanks to Skillshare for teaching people the skills they can use to make a podcast. And that's it for now. Thank you for watching. For teaching people the skills they can use to make their lives better. A thing has happened, which we all know we have been waiting for it to happen. A bad thing that was inevitable, which is we have had now the first death as a result of a self-driving car. As in hitting a pedestrian, because people have died in their own cars already. There have been a bunch of these like leading up incidences. I think some of which we've even talked about on the show in the past where someone is in a car and they're not paying attention or there's accidents. But this is one where it was Uber testing a fully autonomous self-driving car. And there was someone behind the wheel who was just like keeping an eye on the equipment. And a pedestrian walking a bicycle across the street got hit by the Uber and died. And this to me is like the first, like, clearest example of someone has died from a self-driving car that was being autonomous and it's a car that is designed to be autonomous in the way that we're all thinking about as opposed to the malfunction of a system which is much more like an assistive driving system or like a lane-maintaining system. What do you think about this as a moment in time or as a new story that has occurred? It's a significant sort of moment like in terms of being a milestone. I've seen footage of the accident and I've seen what a lot of people wrote about the accident. And like to look at it without knowing all the facts, like it does seem like this person was crossing the road in a way that wasn't like being super, super cautious. Like they did seem to be crossing the road in a way that looked dangerous. But we're also told these self-driving cars can see everything off to the sides and know what's going on and predict these things. And so all the people who were saying, well, of course, no one could have avoided that. No human could have avoided it. How do we expect a self-driving car to avoid it? Well, I will hold self-driving cars to a higher standard. But you can only hold them to so high standard. If someone wants to die by jumping in... Not that this person did, but wants to die by jumping in front of a car. They can still do it with a self-driving car. So I think we have to realize people are still going to die at the hands of self-driving cars. I think this was just a milestone that was always going to happen. It'll slow things down. It does make me wonder if when the first person died from an actual car, like, you know, back in the olden days, whether or not cars being on the road was stopped for like six months while people rethought the situation. Like was it the same back then when the first pedestrian got hit by some five miles an hour automobiles? Did everyone go, no, we can't have these things on the road and go up in arms. Well, there was no social media on which to share these stories. Who knows how information was spread back in those days of nobody. Nobody knows. I think it's interesting because this happened a little while ago and I remember when the first thing that could be even classified as a kind of accident with any self-driving occurred, which I think was like a Tesla system a couple years ago on the highway had an accident that became like the first story about this. I thought it was interesting to see that that blew over relatively quickly and I feel like this story as well, at least from the little bit I've been keeping an eye on it, seems like it's blowing its way through the new cycle pretty quickly. Yeah. I don't know if this is actually going to have any significant effect on the development of self-driving cars. You can find the video online that shows the camera in front of the car and I agree that it's a case where no human driver could have possibly avoided that accident. It's at night time the woman walking the bicycle is walking across a highway where there's not a pedestrian intersection and by the time she appears in the headlights, the accident is inevitable. Like there's no way, even if the car slammed on the brakes immediately, there's no way that you could possibly do it. But I feel like I don't need self-driving cars to be better than humans to be on the road. I feel like they just need to be equivalent to humans. That is my point of like where can we start putting self-driving cars on the road? No, they need to be better. Okay, why do they need to be better and how much better? Because when they need to be better, because we're so bad at driving, like our level is unacceptable, basically. But they don't need to be infallible. They need to be more impressive than humans. And how could they not be? Because we're such bad drivers. They are already better. So I think this debate's already over. I did see someone on Twitter make a joke or something like a self-driving car has killed one person today and people driving cars will kill 3,000 people today, right? Which is like, oh god. It's an unfair comparison in many ways, but I think it really does make a point that humans are terrible drivers. My feeling though is like, I'm happy with equivalency because I think the benefits that you get from the self-driving car then make that mental calculus of is this better. It makes it clearly better even if the self-driving cars are only at human level. And I feel like it's inevitable that they'll obviously keep improving over time. But you're right that it is a case where the story about the self-driving cars is like, oh, they have LiDAR, which looks in all directions and can see everything. It does raise the human expectation that like, oh, this car should always be able to see all pedestrians in all situations. I also wanted to mention the story because there's a thing that has been on my mind for a while with self-driving cars, which I find myself wondering or maybe I should say re-evaluating my position on how fast this is actually going to occur because when I put out that humans need not apply video a few years ago, it felt like things were moving very quickly in the world of self-driving technology and most people were not aware of it. And now that people know self-driving cars are a thing and that they exist and people are sort of waiting for self-driving cars, it feels like there has been just very, very slow progress in this field. And I wonder, like, is this a technology that is going through some kind of S-curve where there was no progress made for a long time and then like the year 2000s things start to speed up and accelerate. And then we hit like 2015 and it looks like, oh, man, it's going to be here any day and then all of a sudden it starts to really level off like the rate at which we're making progress in this area. And I do wonder if it is the case where it's a technological problem where the last 10 or 15% of the problem turns out to be 85% of the actual work that getting a car to not quite human level is much, much simpler than getting it to human level, like getting it to that last 10%. But I am aware that I feel like past me expected there to be more progress in self-driving cars by now than there actually are. And I feel like we've only seen the smallest scale tests of these things. So you think this last 15, 10% that we might be going through at the moment is purely going to be a technological hurdle. We haven't started running into the social and political side of things. You think it's all technology now? It's funny. I didn't mention it because there's just not a thing that's even on my radar. I really just don't think that that is going to be any kind of significant barrier. But I still think it is such a technological advantage if we can get it there that there's no way that the places that say, oh, we're going to wait on self-driving cars. I feel like that is such a self-slowdown that very few places will do that. It would be like banning cell phones because we're not quite sure how addictive they are yet. It's like, well, okay, good luck with that. But the rest of the world is going to totally leave you behind. And I think that, yeah, when we do get the self-driving cars, it'll be the same thing. That if some states or some countries say, we're going to hold off on this for a little while. It's going to be just such a tremendous economic advantage that they won't be able to do so. But yeah, I don't know. I wonder if it's just going to take a lot longer than I expected. I hope it doesn't, but I'm a little worried that it might. Well, I'm funny. Every time I think it's going to take forever at speeds up and every time I think it's going to be tomorrow, it slows down. So I've given up altogether. I have this feeling almost like as soon as we publish this episode, again, it's going to be like, oh, and self-driving cars are here in three weeks. They're on sale, right? You can preorder them now. I read an article on the paper this morning that really disappointed me about self-driving cars, though. They're talking about building into the interface for self-driving cars, things to keep people's attention, whether it's like games of Tetris or things like that, so that people stay alert so they can take over the car and an emergency. That's not what I want myself driving car to be. I want to be in the back reading the paper or working on my laptop. I don't want to have to be ready to take over in an emergency. That's an excellent point. And I think there is a way where we are actually in a little bit of a dangerous, like, local minimum right now with self-driving technology, because, like my parents bought a new car that has a lot of drive assistance stuff in it. So we can do things similar to like what Tesla's will do, where you can tell it to stay in a lane, and it will maintain its position within that lane on a highway, even if it goes around the corner, or it will be able to, like, you should, if you're trying to minimize the amount of traffic, like it'll keep an equidistance between the car in front of it and behind it on the highway, and it will do some limited accident-avoidant stuff. And it's very interesting to drive that and play around with that. But I really do think it does put humans in the worst situation, where the car is good enough on the highway that you feel like you don't need to pay any attention at all, which must dramatically raise the possibility of an accident. Like, I would love to see what the numbers are for what is the accident rate per 100,000 miles when lane maintenance is engaged on a highway. And I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if, like, minor traffic accidents go up because the person feels like, I don't have to really pay attention. I can be doing something else. And I noticed that behavior in myself when I was driving that car. It's like, oh, I'm on the highway. I feel much safer looking at my phone in a way that if I was driving a car without it, I feel like the phone doesn't exist for me if I'm driving a car without any assistant stuff. And I found myself like, ooh, maybe I can just look at that text message and see what it was about, or I want to change what podcast I'm listening to. I can flip over and do like a fiddly app switch on my phone right now because the car's got it on the highway. So I wouldn't be surprised if cars with that stuff are a little bit worse than cars without it. It's like, we need to push past here to get to exactly what you are talking about. I can sit in the back with a laptop and not have to care at all. But if you need to have Tetris on the dashboard to keep a person mentally engaged, I think that's almost worse than not having that technology at all. There was a plan crash caused by a pilot basically saying these things can land themselves. I'll prove it and didn't look while landing and then crash the plane and killed a bunch of people. Pilots, no dares in the cockpit. No, we don't want that. That's no good. I agree. I've been going through the listener emails. You know, what people are doing, what people have to say and all that sort of stuff. I know you want to have the people feel like you're listening to them. You're looking through their feedback. I'm listening. I'm always listening. I'm always listening. That's a little much. No, not only when they want to be listened to and sometimes not been. But go message for Brady at Gmail. The number four is where these things should go and I will have a look from time to time, including an email from Ryan, which was so interesting. I sent him an email back asking for some more details and boy, did he provide them? He wrote a very lengthy reply. Thank you very much, Ryan. But the main reason he caught my attention was he has gotten himself a tattoo that I thought I should share with you. He already had tattoos and this is like he's kind of added this as you'll see. I think these tattoos are sort of to reflect his interests. Sorry, I accidentally just sent them to my wife. Who found it really interesting? I just replied with, oh my god. Let me send them to you. I thought, why is Gray replying with, oh my god, and not just saying it out loud? I've decided that we should do this podcast via texting Brady. There we go. Now, hopefully you've got them too. Oh my god. We have a nail and gear tattoo that is connected to, oh god. Okay, USB symbol at the other end. And that's a representation of a certain kind of chemical connection, right? The hexagon with the three lines? Yeah, I mean, that kind of looks a bit like a benzene ring, but it can't be that because it's got a whole bunch of other stuff. I don't know what that is. But yeah, so three symbols connected to each other, the nail and gear, the benzene ring and the USB symbol. It's like a chemical compound that we don't know what it is. A USB symbol coming off of it. And most recently he's added quite a bold nail and gear to his inner arm. It looks very fresh that nail and cure. Yeah, that picture you're looking at was very soon after it was done. He says, I really love the podcast. I'm a huge fan of you and Gray. The H.O. podcast got me through some tough times. And I want my tattoos to be a sort of time capsule of what was important to me at each stage in my life. It took about half an hour to have done. My friends like the tattoo, although some of them got a bit confused when they asked me what the nail and gear was. And I went on a five minute tangent on a podcast about playing crashes and flags. So this is a thing, Brady, you send me these again, nervous. With the tattoos, there is definitely a way in which I obviously think about tattoos in a different way than people who get tattoos. Think about tattoos. I think that way too. Yeah. And even that comment from Ryan sums up what I've heard from a lot of people with tattoos where they want them as markers of a point in life. And I can't think about tattoos that way. I am tattooless as I'm sure will be a surprise to no one in the world. It'd be a surprise to Ryan because he says in his longer version of the email that he feels like he's on the same wavelength as you. Not about tattoos though, maybe just about other things. I feel like there's a lot of pressure all of a sudden, right? Because when someone puts a tattoo on their body and they say, oh, I love the show right now. What happens if you decide in the future that you're not such fans of us? But nothing's ever going to change the fact he was a fan for a couple of days. This is exactly it. Like this is what I tried to understand is this idea of it is a marker of a time. And so the future is not affecting the thing. Like tattoos, I feel like are the opposite of my mental framework. Because people who get tattoos, it does seem to be much more past focus. Like it's a marker of a thing that happened. And of course, I feel like I want nothing to do with the past. It doesn't exist anymore. I have no interest in it. It is gone. And it is only about the future. So when I look at tattoos, I can't not always mentally frame them from the perspective of what will future me think about this tattoo. Which then always leads me to the conclusion of, well, I don't have any idea what that guy is going to think about this. And then like, well, I can't make decisions for that guy in this way. So I'm not going to get a tattoo. But when I've spoken to people who have tattoos and I try to explain my thinking about them, they look at me like I'm crazy. And I clearly don't understand at all. So yeah. I mean, it can go wrong. I just sent you a tattoo that was doing the rounds quite recently that someone got a few days before all the news stories broke about Kevin Spacey. And he got a tattoo of Kevin Spacey on his arm. And then like, you know, all that stuff hit the fan. It's a bit like, what does that mean now? That's the problem. There's a reason that most countries also decide that they are only going to put dead people on their money is to avoid this sort of problem. Yeah. You don't want to put a living person on your money. And then that living person does something that you as a country don't like. They start spilling the necessary lives of civilization. And they're like, oh no, we just put them on the $2 bill. I don't think Frank Underwood is a president. You'd want to put on your American money anyway. So I think we're going to always going to be safe on that one. Well, Ryan's happy with that. He thinks it looks good. And I think it looks good. It does look good. It does look good. And we will try to keep this a podcast that is worthy of your tattoo. No, sorry. I shouldn't say that. That's what you don't want me to say. Can't say because we're not going to be beholden to Ryan. That's not what's going to happen. Ryan, we make no promises about the future quality of this show. Right. Brady feels happy about it. I feel slightly uncomfortable about it. But I am glad that you are glad. That's what matters. You got to make decisions for you. You don't make decisions for me. Also, I had another photo from a viewer. A kind of what you do while listening to Hello Internet moment that really tickled me. Before I... Oh, Drake. That's just... That's terrible. She's getting worse, Greg. She wants to be on the podcast. But he is on the podcast. So here's one from Eden. I am a student studying ecology. I'm currently working on research about differences in animal community structure that result from external factors around streams. One of the things this involves is collecting fish and measuring 24 different parts of the fish's body, which is amazing to me because I didn't know fish had 24 parts of their body. I tend to listen to podcasts while doing this as it is tedious work. Hello Internet is, of course, the world's greatest podcast trademark. So I like to listen to you and Greg discuss those pesky, flaky, flaggriples while I work. I've attached slightly morbid proof of my claim. Keep up the work. So here's the picture. The fish studia Eden has sent. Gross. I feel like I can smell all of those fish on that measuring tray through this photograph. That is a very fishy photograph. Nicely arranged in a pattern. We have some dead fish spelling out H.I. And some tiny little fish around a border making the H.I. logo all on a medical examining tray. I love that those little tiny little baby sad, anyone's makeup, the little dots of the border and the big fish make the letters. I was originally going to say I don't believe this photograph because I don't see the mandatory podcast logo in the image. And then it took me a second to resolve what I was actually looking at it like, oh right. The fish are the logo. I don't know what kind of fish they are, but they're freaky looking. Their eyes are scary. I think that's how things look when they're dead Brady. You know, they passed on to the next realm and their eyes are all cloudy. I've seen dead fish in the fish market and their eyes weren't as cold and dead as those ones. I'm very happy that people listen to the show. I'm happy that it gets them through tedious things in their life. And I'm happy that somewhere in the world, someone arranged a bunch of fish in a laboratory to spill out the H.I. logo. Sentences you'd never thought you'd say. Brady, when you bring stuff to me, especially when you bring stuff from listeners, I never know what's going to happen. And I always feel slightly apprehensive. No, I'm sorry. Well, yeah, I'm something big because there is a plague that is spreading through the world, Brady. And that plague's name is Bitmoji. Bitmoji. And I know you know what Bitmoji are. Because you created one as well recently. I've had one for a while. I just never send it to you. Yeah, because you know better. Yeah, I think that's why. Bitmoji, it's a company that's obviously decided regular emoji, not enough. And so what they allow you to do is you can create a little avatar of yourself. And then this apple will allow you to place that avatar in a bazillion situations. So it was like you're creating a custom emoji for everything that's possible under the sun. Would you say that's a fair description of what the Bitmoji are? It's kind of fair. The only thing that's not fair about it. And I think this is a problem with the name maybe. Is it's not like a replacement for emojis to me. It's just a different toy. It's just a different fun thing. So they're using the Apple sticker method. They're not really emoji like Bitmoji is a good name, but they're custom stickers. But I think that when people use Bitmoji, they often start to displace the regular emoji. So what you could do so people can better understand. If Gray said let's meet at four o'clock and maybe I would send him an emoji just to thumbs up. Instead, I could send him this customized little Brady that looks just like me, riding a horse saying, yes, let's do it or something like that. These things are awful. They're terrible. I would love to say one of you. I'm going to design one to look like you just to see if I can do it. Do not Brady. I am. I won't put it out there because it'll look so much like you that that would be unfair for spoilers. But I'm going to make one just as my own little project. Great. Have you tried to make one look like you? No, of course I haven't tried to make one look like me. I mean, look, here's this thing. These bit moji. There's just like a nightmare from an episode of Black Mirror. These are so close to the little avatars in 15 million merits, which is still my favorite Black Mirror episode. I swear to God when people send them to me, they make me sad. They really do. I was on a thread recently with a bunch of people and it's like, oh, it's supposed to be like a happy event and everybody's expressing their emotions through the bit moji. Maybe there's something wrong with me. But I feel like it sucks all of the genuine emotion out of the world. Even emojis, regular emojis do this to some extent. Yeah. But without a doubt, there's a way that they kind of suck out emotion in your expression. But the bit mojis, like more and more people are using them. And because they're customizable for every situation, you see them all the time and they make me sad and seeing people use them to express thoughts and like, it's like, I hate them. I hate them so much and they're creepy. They're so creepy. And I had to endure this longest hour of my life when my wife finally got sucked up in the bit moji thing and she was creating her own bit moji avatar. She's good at them. She's good at it. She kept asking me, does this one look more like me? I know, I know that's right. Whenever she would show me one, it's like, that doesn't look like you. That looks like an uncanny valley nightmare version of you. The thing I don't get as well is that like almost all the women I know, they're bit mojis look exactly the same. Whereas the men I know, they kind of look like them. And I don't know why that is. I can't figure out why it is. But like I know three or four women who use bit moji all look the same. It could be any of them. Like my wife wasn't happy with hers. And I said, what do you think of mine? Yes, yours looks just like you. Like angrily, she said. Like she's angry that I had more options or something. But I don't know why this has happened, but it feels like it has happened. I'll tell you, that bit moji app is not short on options though. My wife was doing this on the iPad so she could have like the full palette of everything that was possible. And I couldn't believe like the enormous number of options to be able to like. 19 different noses and 19. We would be blessed with but 19 noses to go through. Right, there were hundreds of noses. She's like, is this one more like me? Or is this one more like me? Like I don't like any of them. They all make me uncomfortable. It's all securely in the uncanny valley. Please never send this to me ever. It will make me sad. I don't like it. But they just keep spreading and people keep using them. I want them to go away, but they won't. It's too much. Like it's too far. I feel like the constraint of but like 200 regular emojis is almost good for people. It's like it's too adaptable. And then people use it for everything. And it makes me die a little inside every time I see one of them. Says the man who portrays himself publicly in videos with an animated stick figure and face and doing cute things. Yeah, in my YouTube videos, which are produced like I'm not. When we text Brady, I don't quickly in inkscape whip together and exactly correct CGP Gray to be a response to everything that you do. No, it's totally different. Don't even try to compare it like those things are the same. And also, I don't think the stick figure has like the creepy, creepy dead eye uncanny valley-ness of these bitmojis. Don't you agree with me? Aren't they unsettling in the way that they look? No, I had to have a great way with you. I don't unsettled me. Go to bitmoji.com and look upon the nightmare that stares back at you from the top of that page. I'm going to make a CGP Gray one. I tell you what. I'll make a CGP Gray one. You actually physically cannot stop me. Like, it's impossible. I can't believe your wife didn't make one of you and said, oh, look, I made one that looks like you. Because she respected my desires. And she knows never to send me the bitmoji. I don't even like seeing her using the bitmoji talking with other people. I just like, I don't want to see them. They're creepy and they're weird. And my wife respects my desires, unlike my podcast co-host. He was probably right now giggling on his phone, making a bitmoji of me. I'm looking at the front page of the bitmoji website. And there's one that looks a bit like me. Maybe these are random. I have no idea which one you think looks like you. That really hits someone. The winking guy is not the one who you think looks like you. No, to the right, the far right. Don't you think it looks a bit like me? No, that doesn't look a bit like you. And if it did look like you, it would only look like you in a nightmare world where we're all trapped and emotionally separated from each other, writing on bicycles all day long for pretend points. That's the way it would look like you. And that one on the left is the one that looks like, oh, the people I know, he used it. Generic brown hair go. Bitmoji, thumbs down. They're terrifying. Hello, internet. If you are someone who builds by the hour, here's a quick mental calculation that might leave you unsettled. How much of your time in a day are you losing to having to complete annoying paperwork and admin tasks? How about in a month or in a year? Our friends at Fresh Book calculate that you could get back as many as 192 of those hours per year by using Fresh Book's ridiculously easy to use cloud accounting software. Here's how. It takes about 30 seconds to send a perfectly formatted invoice. In literally two clicks, you can set yourself up to receive payments online, which means no more trips to the ATM to deposit a client's check, which also means you get to say goodbye to the time vacuum that is the expense spreadsheet. Fresh Book's also has other things to help you save time, like you can take pictures of your receipts with your phone, making claiming expenses a million times faster and easier. Getting back hours to your business means you can do more business. 192 hours in a year is about 16 hours per month. That's a whole lot of your time to get back simply by using Fresh Books. So if you bill by the hour in any way and you listen to Hello Internet, which definitely you are doing right now, try out Fresh Books for a free unrestricted 30-day trial. To do this, just go to freshbooks.com slash hello and enter Hello in the How Did You Hear About A Section. This lets Fresh Books know that you came from us. So once again, go to freshbooks.com slash hello and enter Hello in the How Did You Hear About A Section and get back many billable hours for your business. Let's go to a less controversial subject that won't upset you as much as Bitmoji Gray. Let's talk about Nazis. Brady. This is an interesting new story that's been doing the rounds. This caught your eye, didn't it? It did catch my eye. I feel like Bitmoji, Nazi Pugs, things going on with Facebook, things going on with YouTube. I'm at a low point with my thoughts about people and the Internet and what the Internet does to people and vice versa. It's all a terrible mess. There has been a sort of conclusion to a story which to me is a terrifying story. Let me try to summarize. It is a story about a Nazi pug as in a little dog. This guy up in Scotland, Count Dankela is his online name. I don't know what his actual name is because Count Dankela is way easier to remember. He made a video for YouTube where he trained his girlfriend's pug to be excited and do a little Nazi salute upon hearing particular phrases. Particular phrases you would expect Nazis to say. He put together this video and he sets it up as a joke. There is this little bit of a story that people always say when they upload videos to YouTube with the like, oh, I only expected a few of my friends to see a thing and then like it went viral and I had no idea that it would. I'm not entirely sure that I believe that, because that's like a standard story that everybody says. I kind of think that the guy did expect it was going to be a bit of a viral video. But he sets it up in the beginning that like he is playing a joke on his girlfriend who the pug belongs to. That the pug is super cute and his girlfriend is always talking about the pug and loves the pug so much that like she's on vacation or something. And while she's gone, he's going to train the dog on like zig-hile, it's going to put up its little paw in a Nazi salute. Which you can almost say the dark humor of Kanye, like this dog's the apple of her eye and he turns into this like. It's pretty twisted, but you sit there is that twisted brand of humor that exists. Yeah, there is a twisted brand of humor that exists and there's this weird thing where everybody feels like they need to like distance themselves a little bit from it. Like when I saw this video like it's funny. Like it's a funny joke and people have to pretend like it's not funny because what like part of humor is surprise and unexpected juxtapositions of things. Right? And so like he films a shot where it's like pretending like the dog is watching a Nazi rally on TV and like that's a funny shot because of course like the pug doesn't know anything about what's going on. Like he's just setting up a frame. Yeah. These are jokes and he sets it up as a joke. But what has happened in the UK is that the UK has less freedom of speech laws than the United States does. And there are more caveats and this guy, Count Dracula, has been convicted guilty of, I forget exactly what it is, but it's like spreading obscene messages over the internet. He's been found guilty as of the time of recording. The sentencing hasn't occurred. The sentencing is going to happen in a couple of weeks. But he is facing prison time over a viral video where he trains a dog to raise its paw on particular commands. And I think this is just terrifying. I agree it's terrifying and I want to hear more. He's saying about it just to be clear though. It's not the fact that dog raises his paw that's got him in trouble. It's like the phrase he's repeating isn't it? Yeah, okay, but so can we say the phrase? Are you afraid to say the phrase Brady? I think he should not have said use that phrase. So one of the phrases that he uses in the video is he says, Hi, future gray here stepping in for a moment. I wouldn't normally do this, but it is a special occasion. Since we recorded this episode, I looked into more of the specifics around this law and this ruling and, haha, turns out that the judge did know it was a joke, but the way the obscenity law is written in the UK allows judges to ignore that factor. It seems to allow judges to ignore all context around the literal words that are spoken in isolation from everything else. Which seems to make it impossible to talk about the bad ruling of an obscenity case without also exposing your self to the very same obscenity law that you're talking about. Which makes this just a rather breathtaking catch-22 slash Brazil level law. So anyway, here we are, future gray is going back and cutting off past gray. And thus this very conversation becomes an example of what we end up talking about later in the conversation. In the video, as he says, and the pug sits up and looks interested. Like he's obviously been giving the dog treats for that phrase. Right? Clearly, this to me is the thing where there's something I find kind of awful in the world where everybody is like, oh well, I don't agree with the sentiment of that phrase. And it's like, of course, nobody agrees with the sentiment of that phrase. Who agrees with that? Nobody. Everybody feels like, of course, we want to distance ourself from that. But the actual question here is, should you be able to put someone in prison for these actions? Prison. Where we physically remove someone from society for what they have done. I think this is terrible. I think this is really one of the worst things in UK law. I have come across in the years that I have lived here. Because this is like such an incredible chilling effect that it comes down to like a judge thought that this is obscene. And so finds him guilty of communicating obscenely over the internet. Man, if that's the case, there are plenty of other UK YouTubers who should be in prison over similar kinds of things and everyone on Reddit. Yeah, like next time Mel Brooks lands in the UK straight to prison, he's going to go because he made the producers. An entire movie which is nothing but Nazi jokes, right? All the way through. I don't know. I find this genuinely terrifying because it opens the door to this idea that if the legal system doesn't like what you say, it can put you in prison. And what does it mean to say that some things have seen? This video where a dude is training a dog to do the Zieghail. I don't think we should put people in prison for that. Whether or not you think it's a funny joke, whether or not you think the guy should have done it, whether or not we think like, oh well, I don't agree with the phrase that he uses in like a schoolmarm kind of way. I don't think that that is justification to put someone in prison. It has such an incredible chilling effect on speech. I don't know. I find it just deeply, deeply upsetting that this has occurred. As always with these things, like you find yourself like, oh, okay, I have to defend the guy who made a video about a Nazi pug. But it's never the thing. It's the system that it allows. Like it is a precedent of putting people in prison for saying things. There's really dangerous. I really don't like it. And it makes me deeply uncomfortable with the way the laws are in the UK. I agree with you. You know, whether you thought it was funny or not. And like the video was kind of funny. Yeah. But you know, some people have problems with that really confrontational humor like the comedians like Frankie Boyle and people like that use. And some people really enjoy it. I think it's ridiculous. I don't think he's committed a crime. And it's an injustice. There are two caveats though. There are two things that I do feel more strongly about that I think we can be a bit lax about on the internet that I do think should be punished. One is if you are harassing an individual. And I think a lot of that happens on the internet where people like say things. And harass individuals and people like, you know, it's free speech. I can say whatever I want on on the internet and that. And I think if you're targeting a person, I think that's unfair. And I think we need to start getting stricter about that. Because I don't like seeing people being harassed like that. And the other thing is if he had been inciting people with what he was doing. If he was trying to incite, you know, anti-stemitism or something with the video, then I think maybe it needs to be looked at. But he clearly wasn't doing that. So this does not apply to this person. But I think if you are making, you know, Holocaust jokes with the intent of inciting racial hatred, then that can start having like real-world repercussions and people can start getting hurt. And when that happens, I think, you know, we need to protect people in society. I agree with you there, but I feel just extraordinarily cautious towards this idea. Individuals, I'll agree with you. Like if you are harassing an individual online, there's a place where there are some kind of repercussions there. Although, again, in our society, when you talk about people who are public figures, all of that just goes out the window. And we're like, oh, no, then it's fine, right? And I like if a person's in public, like, that'll screw them. Like they don't deserve any protections. Which, like, maybe makes sense and maybe doesn't. But even then, like, starts to blur the boundaries of this. Like, even that is not as crystal clear. And I also agree with direct incitements to violence. But I also find, like, in conversations with people that there's a thing that happens where people do what kind of mind-reading, where they assume intentions of when people are saying things. And it's like, my feeling is, like, a direct incitement to violence is a direct incitement to violence. Like, it is someone calling, like, for an attack on a specific person or a specific group. Like, I think what this guy got in trouble for is exactly that blurry boundary what you're saying where it's like, oh, when someone's making jokes and it's jokes that are too incite violence, like, that's kind of clearly what the judge was thinking in this case. It's like, oh, yeah, this guy's making jokes, but he's making jokes. And this is, like, promoting hatred in the UK. You can't pin that on me, of course, because I think that judgment is absolutely... Oh, no, yeah, no, I agree with you. I know that in the case of Count Dracula, that the judge decided it wasn't like a joke and how anyone could have watched that and not think it was a joke is completely beyond me. I wasn't saying that you were saying that. I'm simply saying that. So you read the section of the law that he gets convicted under and it's one of these things where it's like, oh, it's illegal to communicate like obscene language across the internet. What does that mean? And that's why I think, like, the standard has to be incredibly high. Like, a person has made a statement that any child could agree is like a direct threat against a particular person. And it's not like, oh, well, this person is contributing to like a general overall feeling in society this way, like through their jokes and the fact that they joke about a thing means that it's not serious and so that they're contributing in this way. Like, I think that's a path down towards crazy town and the only result that is like, oh, everybody has to just say things that are perfectly acceptable online. Like, the other thing is I also just feel bad for this guy because his whole life has been on hold while this trial has been waiting to happen and it's been like, you're going to have for something before it has actually gone to trial. And this is a thing where I have these bad feelings about the internet where it's like, these little storms happen and it's like a person becomes an unperson even before anything official has occurred. So even though this guy hasn't gone to trial, it's like, oh, his whole life has been destroyed for the past year and a half while this is occurring because nobody wants to hire the guy who is waiting for his trial about inciting hate on the internet to go through. And it's like, oh, even if he wasn't ever punished, like he has still been totally punished in the meantime. It's like a terrifying thing in society that that can happen. It's like, you get swept up in something and so much of your life is destroyed. And even if in the end, it's like, oh, we're going to overturn that case and we're not going to put you in prison and don't mind about it. It's like, well, the internet never forgets and now no one will ever want to associate with you because you're this person, even though like many people don't think you did anything wrong. It's terrible for a UK law and for people who make anything on the internet in the UK. I'm not condoning it, but I do wonder in the back of my mind if it could be the making of him because he's a pretty funny guy. He could become like a really funny, successful YouTuber now. Again, I'm not saying he wanted the attention, but now that it's happened, I hope it becomes the making of him for his sake. Even if everything turns up roses for him in the future somehow, it doesn't change the fact that it's like, okay, well, who are we going to bring up next on this obscenity law? Just start picking YouTubers in the UK. I argue you said like so many people who are just leaving comments on Reddit. I don't know, it's such an incredible overreaction. Do you have this fear because you're worried that it'll affect you one day? Because quite often I thought your fears boiled down to that somehow. Like you scared one day someone will take something you've done in the wrong context and you'll end up in hot water or you really just been quite noble here and just worried about the world in general. I don't know how to say this very well in the context of this conversation because we've just been talking about Nazis. But the ability to express thoughts is extremely important and the power to suppress what thoughts people are allowed to express is terrifyingly powerful. It worries me on a society level. When you ask, oh, am I personally concerned? Not really. I produce the most g-rated content in the world and the podcast has a million hours of context around it and I don't think, aside from our opening up the wound of the necessary lies of society, I don't think we say anything that's terrible on the show. So I'm not personally concerned, but I really do feel that there's something dangerously corrosive here. I always try to stay away from specific political examples because I don't think that that is very instructive. But I will mention one that came up in a conversation with someone. So this is like in an American context. But the conversation was around the idea of this person basically wanted to make it illegal to deny the fact that climate change was occurring. Or like you shouldn't be able to express this idea online. It should be against the law. The reasoning was it's so potentially harmful. Spreading misinformation around this may be the end of the species. Right, maybe the end of all life on earth. They're like this idea that there's no climate change is so terrible. We should put it into law that people are not allowed to express it. It's like, okay, that's absolutely terrifying. Even if you agree with that, that opens the door to the idea that like you're seeding power to a government to tell you what you're allowed to think. Hey, newsflash, your team isn't in charge right now. So how would you feel if a law was passed that said, oh, you're not allowed to express the idea that the climate is changing? Then suddenly it's like, oh, I don't like that idea at all. Yeah, of course. This is why you have to defend the ability to express ideas and thoughts in the broadest possible form. And so I feel like any incursion into this territory is just like a big danger. So that's why I feel these stories very strongly. And it's like, yes, I will agree with you. There are tiny areas that we can carve out, direct incitement to violence, attacks on a particular person. But even then, I feel like we need to define that very tightly. What do we mean by that? It's like there's a cleanliness monster that is going through the world, making everything have to be clean and safe. We can't even make jokes about the Nazis because the Nazis are not clean and safe. So let's just put some antiseptic over this and just make it go away. And I think it's bad. I think it's really bad for society. And there's something about it that just seems like it's getting worse. And the producers is a perfect example. It's like, oh, 15 years after World War II, we can make an entire movie that makes fun of the Nazis. But 60 years after World War II, jokes about the Nazis are forbidden. They're so dangerous we can't possibly even speak them aloud. I don't think that's good for society. Here's a topic where I feel like I need pushback. Where am I wrong here? Or do you agree? I do fundamentally agree. So I don't want to be the good person who now gets up here and talks against free speech. The only thing that I don't like about the way you argue this point doesn't mean I disagree with the point. It's just don't like your stylistic argument. And that is I always feel like the people who are like the scumbags of the world who are putting all the scum out there that I hate, the dirty stuff. I acknowledge their right to do it. So I'm on your side. But I sometimes feel you kind of clothe them in righteous garments when you talk about defending their right to express thoughts and ideas. This is just people taking a dump everywhere. And I feel like you're kind of using this argument of let's have a free debate. And you make a lot of these people sound better than they are. I don't know they're right to exist and do these things. But I wish you didn't make them sound so noble. Yeah, I mean, the reason I talk about thoughts and ideas is because I feel like I'm trying to keep it generic. Yeah, but I think by doing that, you're bringing a lot of scumbags into the fold of nice people. Yeah, but that's the problem of letting people express all of them. And people express all of their thoughts and ideas. Guess what? Some people have terrible thoughts and ideas. I don't think these people taking a dump all over the place are expressing their ideas. They're just like taking a dump. But they are thoughts and ideas. They are concepts expressed with language. I don't think that there is a way to draw a circle where we can say we all agree these patterns of words are good. And these patterns of words are terrible. I think we can do that. I just don't think we can ban them. I think it's fair to sit around and start weighing things and saying, that's a good idea. That's an interesting thought and idea. That's a smart thing you said. You there who just wrote your gay. That's not a good thought or idea. That's not constructive. You're an idiot. But you're allowed to do it. Like that's a perfect example, right? Like the canonical YouTube comment. You are gay. Yeah. Perhaps there has been no YouTube comment more frequently said than that one, right? Right. And it's like, yeah, I'll sit here and agree with you. Like 100% like it adds nothing. It's no good. It's not play-doh. But I think it's too easy in a conversation to pick a particular thing that we can say, like, oh, we all agree that this is no good. But if you're trying to craft laws, I think it's really hard to craft a law that can define what do we mean by this? And that then as an additional layer can be enforced in a room. And that's a good example of this. Where, okay, if this is the law of the land in the United Kingdom, how is it that, like, just this one guy got swept up by this law? And meanwhile, like, there are actual Nazis, like expressing actual Nazi thoughts. And that's cool. Like, okay, well, when you have some kind of bizarre selective enforcement of this, I'd love to know the story behind this. There must be a bigger story. It is amazing, isn't it? This guy got done with all the other stuff that's out there. It's weird. I think it's because it was a viral video, right? So it just, like, it becomes a bunch of attention and then someone files a complaint. And like, now it starts getting run up the chain. I feel like for my old days as a teacher, I understand very well the concept of, like, a small thing. The instant someone makes an official complaint about it, it, like, oh, God, like, now it's going to be written. Like, oh, God, like, now it's going to be run up the chain. Like, no one can stop the machine that keeps making this a bigger deal than it actually is. Right? Even if no one involved in the chain wants to keep escalating it, there's an incentive at every level to keep escalating it. So I feel like this can just be like the random weather of the internet. Yeah. But so that's why I do want to be clear. Like, I'm not saying like, everybody has an equal contribution to the conversation because obviously they don't. Some people are really smart and they can contribute more to conversations. Some people are really stupid and they don't have very much to add at all. Anyway, you just, as I said, I agree with you. You just asked for some pushback and my pushback is the way you frame your argument. I think cloaks these people in garments of righteousness that they're entitled to the garments. But I just feel a bit like, let me just say the reason that I do say it as thoughts and ideas is it's just like when I made those videos about the voting systems a long time ago that there's a reason I don't talk about specific political parties because as soon as you talk about specific political parties, the only thing people want is whatever voting system gets their guys into office. That's the one that seems the most fair. And you need to have a system where everyone can agree that the election is fair before the election takes place. When I'm talking about thoughts and ideas in the public realm, we need to talk about them in the most abstract way because if we start talking about what do we do with good ideas and what do we do with bad ideas? The conversation about how do you manage conversation is already poisoned because everybody has in their own head the idea of what a bad idea is. And so we should do bad things to bad ideas. Like the idea of which side of a debate do you want to not allow to speak? So that's why I try to talk about it in general terms because I think that is the only sensible way to try to think through the topic. And yeah, of course, whenever you're discussing freedom of speech and you are defending it, you are by definition having to defend the most fringe of fringe people. That's just the nature of this conversation. And I think it's why free speech defenders are often at a bit of a disadvantage because by necessity, you're like the guy who has to defend the Nazi joke when it would be much easier to just join in with a sanctimonious crowd and be like, he should have phrased it differently. I don't appreciate that joke at all and I don't think it's good for the world. I do think he should have phrased it differently for his own good. How many more people do you have to see step on the landmine before you think, hmm, maybe I won't walk into that minefield. How many people do you have to see get blown up? To take it in a slightly adjacent way, I'm reading a book which is about the court case that happened with Gawker a few years ago with the whole Kulgen sex tape and Peter Teel was funding this lawsuit against Gawker. It's an interesting book so far, but part of what they're talking about as well is this effect that like gossip columns have on people's ability to think in public and it's like, oh, people start worrying when there's a gossip column that's going after the technology sector. That it naturally has people close ranks much further than they otherwise would. Like they're much more reluctant to express any ideas in public because they're worried about it being twisted because that's what the gossip column does. And that's what I mean when I say like I think there's something dangerous in this kind of law that it's like, even if you're a million miles from making Nazi jokes, like you said, you feel like the boundary of acceptable conversation has been moved. And so if I want to stay far from that boundary, I need to move even farther in to only acceptable things. You know, so it's like I want to stay 100 meters away from that boundary and we keep pulling that boundary in further and further. It has more of an effect than just the people at the very edge. And I just don't think that that's good for public conversation. Fair enough. Sorry about that. I didn't mean to rant for so long. No, sorry. You're a passionate guy. This whole time I've been ranting Brady, the dead fish and the H.I. logo I've been looking at me from my computer screen. I never close that image. It's still there. Hello Internet. This audio sounds terrible because I have just gotten into a hotel room. I'm on the last leg of a multi-leg trip and without my regular audio equipment. And you know, when you're traveling, it's very easy to find yourself without the stuff that you really need, including, for example, your computer files. You grab your laptop and you go, but you know what? You forgot that thing that's sitting back at home on your desktop. What are you going to do in that scenario? Well, under most circumstances, you're just screwed. There's nothing that you can do. But if you have taken our advice on Hello Internet and installed backblaze, then everything is fine. Because backblaze, in addition to being the backup service that you should obviously have on your computer, will also allow you anywhere in the world to access any of your files. And speaking from experience, not only has backblaze on multiple times totally saved my bacon with lost files, backblaze has been super helpful for grabbing a file that I just saved in a random spot on my hard drive and didn't really think about. And then later needed when I was away from the computer. Once again, I'm going to tell you that if you're sitting in front of your computer and you do not have backblaze installed on that computer, right now you need to open up your web browser, open it up, and go to backblaze.com slash Hello Internet and get started. There really isn't any better service for your Mac or PC to just take care of your backups and allow you remote access. And it's just $5 a month, $5 a month for peace of mind. So please, go to backblaze.com slash Hello Internet. Do it for your sake so you can sleep better at night. Do it for my sake so I'll sleep better at night knowing that your files are protected. So once again, go to backblaze.com slash Hello Internet. That lets backblaze know that you came from us and it will get you a fully featured 15 day free trial for your computer. That's backblaze.com slash Hello Internet. All right, enjoy the rest of the show. I got to get going. So there was a full page ad in my copy of the times, Sunday times this morning, Mark Zuckerberg, kind of apologizing to the world, but in that kind of, you know, weasley way where he's not really apologizing and is also blaming other people. Right. Like the way a spider who's pretending to be a person would apologize. He's got a terrible signature by the way, Matt. Oh, does he? Well, that's because spiders writing inside of human suits have a really hard time with that finger dexterity. That's an interesting theory because it is kind of spider like. In fact, I took a photo of it to send you. So I'll show you. Maybe this is wrong. Maybe this is me bullying a public person. But I always just get the feeling that Mark Zuckerberg is like there's a spider writing around in a robot that shaped like Mark Zuckerberg. This is the feeling like whenever he talks, whenever he moves, it's like there's not a person in there. There's a spider in there. Here's my question, right? Facebook is in a new controversy to do with data and stuff like that. We can talk about it in a minute if you want. But my overall question is because this is going to keep happening to Facebook because they're a company that seems to cause a lot of controversy. Is Facebook too big to fail now? Is Facebook going to be with us forever? It's interesting. If you would ask me a month ago, I would have said now that I think Facebook is too big to fail. But Facebook has done an amazing job of collecting some of the worst PR in the world in a short period of time. Just at the wrong time zeitgeist-wise that people are super receptive to it. I think the idea that, hey, maybe all of the social media is bad for us was really coming to fruition earlier in the year. And then it's like, right around that time Facebook had some of the worst PR in the world. And then they have this most recent scandal. It just might be a perfect storm of things to drive a stake through the heart of Facebook. But that being said, I think even if it were to happen, we are at a technological point in time where there is always going to be a natural monopoly for a social network. If you strike Facebook down, something else will just grow up and be stronger in its place and will be functionally equivalent to Facebook. I mean, there has to be one, doesn't there? For a social network to actually work the way it should. There sort of has to be one, doesn't there? Otherwise, we're not networks. Yeah, 100%. I am really convinced that is not just Facebook. I think that the big tech companies exist in no small part because we're at a technological point where there are these natural monopolies. I think that search and video are a kind of natural monopoly that Google has that there will be a super big video site. I think it's almost inevitable. I almost think that like Amazon is kind of at a logistics and server running kind of natural monopoly that makes it almost impossible for any other company to compete with them. I think we really are in a weird phase of the world where that is a truth. And so these big companies exist. And even if we were to somehow break them up, it would have just take a couple of years before the thing that replaces them is just as big because everything is pointing in that direction. But yeah, you're 100% right. The social network is the most strong version of that. Like, definitionally, there almost has to be one. Do you use Facebook anymore? I haven't used Facebook in any meaningful way in years. In any meaningful way, but do you use it in non-mainting forwards? Yes, I do use it in a non-meaningful way, which is that I have a CGP-Grey like business page right because if you're a public person, Facebook doesn't let you have a personal web page, you have to have this business page. I don't even know if it still works, but I did have set up like an if this, then that trigger that would just automatically post stuff from the website onto that page. Yeah. And so when I say like, I haven't used it in a meaningful way, that's what I mean. Like, I haven't logged into Facebook in like six months at a bare minimum. Yeah. And even then, it would be just to like check on a thing. I pretty much checked out a Facebook. The instant they started that, you need to pay us to send out your posts to the people who follow you on Facebook thing. That was for me the day Facebook died. I was like, okay, well, I don't use Facebook on a personal level anyway. And so if the only thing that I use it for is on a business level. And now you're playing the mafia game of like, oh, it's a nice business page you have there. Sure would be ashamed if something happened to it. Then it's like, okay, I'm out. I'm out. I'm not really going to play this game. I'm not going to participate in this. So no, I haven't used it personally and ever to you. Yeah. I mean, I have pages for all my different projects that I maintain. Yeah, I go in there every day and have a look just to check what my friends are up to. And I don't post a lot of stuff myself on there. Unless I'm doing like something amazing, like going to Antarctica. And then it's like, yeah, the kind of amazing my life is. I don't post when I'm spending three weeks in a row sitting at a desk editing videos. And that's the social media effect where everybody's life seems a million times more amazing than yours. As you only ever see the most amazing things they do. Yeah, of course. You contributing to making the world a worse place by doing that pretty. You have to post your mundane days as well. I think it's a problematic company. But I almost feel like it's too big to fail because I look at you know, although I don't reach on my followers because of the mafia thing you mentioned, I do have you know, following all these Facebook pages. And it seems like I can't just throw that away again. I like, ignore it. So I mean, I can. I was going to say, you totally can, right? I mean, I'm willing to bet that if you dig into your analytic data on YouTube that Facebook is a much smaller portion of the views than you might expect that it is. Yeah. So that would be right. If that is the case, I would certainly encourage you to not waste your time on it because if you're tracking like how much time do you spend on Facebook and how many views is that actually translate into. I bet that equation would show very fast that Facebook is not worth actually spending any time on. I would definitely say I don't waste time on. I do probably waste time on that, you know, looking at my friends puppy. But I don't waste time business on it. Like if there's a new number file video, I'll just go in and say, hey, everyone, there's a new number file video. And he's the link and then leave. And I won't hang around reading comments and, you know, it's, it's perfunctory. Facebook is terrible. I like this mark. I could have expired a thing. You've got me thinking now. We have much to complain about. We do have much to complain about Brady. We may need another 100 episodes, Gray. Oh, oh, Brady, you can't do that to the people. You can't do that to the people.
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