We discuss the transition from the darkroom to the solitary digital age, and the tactile joy of film development as a refuge from a tech-dominated world. We examine storytelling, the pursuit of truth, and the artist's influence on society in a post-truth era.
This conversation reflects nearly a year of introspective dialogues, as we consider the paradox of using technology for creativity while critiquing its cultural impact, guided by Neil Postman's "Technopoly." We navigate the balance between drawing from the past and pioneering innovation—the interplay of authenticity and commercialism that shapes our expression and need for validation. We discuss cults in culture, defying norms, and the pursuit of originality amid commercial pressures. - Ai
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a rating and/or a review. We read and appreciate all of them. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode.
Links To Everything:
Video Version of The Podcast: https://geni.us/StudioSessionsYT
Matt’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/MatthewOBrienYT
Matt’s 2nd Channel: https://geni.us/PhotoVideosYT
Alex’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/AlexCarterYT
Matt’s Instagram: https://geni.us/MatthewIG
Alex’s Instagram: https://geni.us/AlexIG
We discuss the transition from the darkroom to the solitary digital age, and the tactile joy of film development as a refuge from a tech-dominated world. We examine storytelling, the pursuit of truth, and the artist's influence on society in a post-truth era.
This conversation reflects nearly a year of introspective dialogues, as we consider the paradox of using technology for creativity while critiquing its cultural impact, guided by Neil Postman's "Technopoly." We navigate the balance between drawing from the past and pioneering innovation—the interplay of authenticity and commercialism that shapes our expression and need for validation. We discuss cults in culture, defying norms, and the pursuit of originality amid commercial pressures. - Ai
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a rating and/or a review. We read and appreciate all of them. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode.
Links To Everything:
Video Version of The Podcast: https://geni.us/StudioSessionsYT
Matt’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/MatthewOBrienYT
Matt’s 2nd Channel: https://geni.us/PhotoVideosYT
Alex’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/AlexCarterYT
Matt’s Instagram: https://geni.us/MatthewIG
Alex’s Instagram: https://geni.us/AlexIG
And it had been a golden afternoon and I remember having the familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer, and so on.
Speaker 2:I came out the process of shooting 35mm but also developing your film and printing it like in the dark room, making things, working hands, and I kept. You know, one of the guys said the biggest thing I missed when digital photography took over was that community that we had in the dark room and just like being there and I think about when I was watching that I'm like the thing that excites me most and the community part is one, but it's that I don't have a computer nearby, I don't need a phone, like the work is, but it's that I don't have a computer nearby. I don't need a phone. Like the work is chemicals and it's a negative and it's an enlarger and it's photo paper and it's a red light and it's. It's not that stuff.
Speaker 2:Which is what I've really enjoyed about going out to try to make work is, you know, yeah, I have my phone with me and all that in the truck, but like go on these photo walks for my photography channel and I'm out there for two, three hours and I don't check any of that stuff. Yeah, I'm alone, which isn't you know which sometimes I want, but um, but yeah, there's something about, and I know cameras are obviously technology and you know I use my truck to get around and whatnot, but there's just continuing pull towards getting away from my desk.
Speaker 3:I think there's this idea I wrote I literally wrote this down while you were saying that. Rejection as a process of integration yeah, addition by subtraction yeah, I think we're at that stage with technology in our lives right now as a society.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, it's it is really ramped up for me in a major way well, I feel this clarity.
Speaker 3:Like you know, I I've really, you know this, you've seen this and like I've seen this, like I've really kind of just been floating around for like the last year and a half of my life of not knowing, like not have, like I have stuff to say, yeah, but I don't quite know what, what.
Speaker 3:And over the last call it four months, I feel like I'm just really singling in on something special for me. I have something clear that I want to almost tell myself and investigate and that's starting to become very clear. It was always kind of clear. It started with this idea of I know I started on this idea of. I was, I know I've, you know, I started on this idea of nash, like doing projects about nashville and like, oh, this means a lot. I wanted to kind of, you know, investigate kind of the change. And then that led down this rabbit hole of look at how much this has changed, what has caused that change, which led down this huge rabbit hole. With, like you know, reading, you know, just consuming all of this, you get into the century of the self stuff that came as a direct byproduct of that.
Speaker 3:You get a lot of like the, the um Chomsky talking about, like the propaganda machines and things like that.
Speaker 3:And just all of these ideas kind of converging and relating, um in the. In the background of that, of that, you know, I'm like watching all these werner herzog films and like exploring this idea of like, like the ecstatic truth, like what is the? Um? You know, a truth that might not necessarily be true, but it is a truth like how do you represent that? Through metaphor, yeah, and it's all kind of coming into view, Right, and and then you know you have these feelings and you don't know how to quite put them into words and they just sit in the back of your mind and then they're starting to turn into words or turn individuals.
Speaker 3:I'm starting to like see things. Okay, I want to. This needs to be captured and explored more. So it's interesting. But your idea there of getting away and you just like, yes, the camera's technology, but you're changing your. All of these ideas came together for me because of the rejection as a process of integration, like take steps back to take a step forward. Like I was barreling in this direction of felt like I had something to say, but and you know part of that was using analog photography and but I had to almost take a few steps back to move.
Speaker 3:And you know, yeah, that was using analog photography and yeah, but I had to almost take a few steps back to move. And you know, yeah, I think it's. I think it's happening culturally.
Speaker 2:I do want to say when you, when you talked about um, you sort of like floating and I don't know if that's the right word, but sort of like holding back on maybe making stuff or making work, like in a very focused way, publicly for what almost a year and a half now so what? What? So you know, for those of you that have been listening or watching the podcast for the how, long, by the way.
Speaker 3:This is like this is getting close to close to a year this is would be our 40th week yeah which is crazy yeah, uh, you know, alex and I don't have a lot of conflict.
Speaker 2:You know we don't like well, no, I think this and you're I don't think that's quite right. You know we don't have, you know. So there's, there's probably a general sense of us having a lot of similarities, right? Um, general point of view, general perspective. Obviously there's all the very minute nuances and differences and whatnot. But what I find fascinating and I made this reference, I think, in the last episode about baseball writers you kind of holding back and kind of figuring it out and what your focus is going to be or how it's going to come out, is the complete opposite of how I do it, yeah, and have done it. I'm like the baseball writer.
Speaker 2:It's like consume it feel it, see it, experience it, write something, uh, make a video, uh take photos, put you know, put a zine together, do you know like? I just like just churning through it, and I'm not saying that that's, that's better or worse.
Speaker 2:There's no, there's no qualitative judgment of it but that's what I feel such a pull to do. It's just ingest it and then process it, make something as a result and then go on, um, and you know, we'll see if that evolves over time. I'm also in a very heightened place of, uh, excitement and inspiration and exploring new things and whatnot. Um, so I, I, just I love that you are, from what I can tell, going about your experience in a completely opposite way for me, um, especially for the last, yeah, about the last year, this, this being, from what I've seen, one of the, the, the, the main outlets for whatever you've taken in and then, you know, put back out.
Speaker 3:It's probably more obvious. Like I, I don't go back and watch, I haven't listened to any old episodes. We kind of edit them and once that, right it's my experience has been once they're out, they're out yeah um, but I I would be curious is like how clearly does that track? You know we have been sitting down pretty regularly and recording.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Lots happened, um you know. I wonder how that evolution of ideas tracks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think for you and we don't have to spend a lot of time on this, I think you're very, you feel very deliberate and aware of when you're going to make something, it's going to be work, whereas I am occupying, you know, so much in the content side of things, versus like something that is just work.
Speaker 3:Then again, though it's like and you would, you would say that, but I, you know, I, I guess, in a way, my job is like creating content, that's true.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:So that's still happening? Yeah, you know it's. It's not like I'm just fishing, Right?
Speaker 2:No, yeah, yeah, and I certainly don't want to give the implication that you're stuck in neutral.
Speaker 3:I would love to go in neutral.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Right, but it's not an option for either of us. You're just more publicly no-transcript. Right, yeah, and for me that doesn't quite exist for you just because of how you've struck like you are the right. Yeah, the product.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that, I think, has its own sort of ramifications that you know, you know I don't know how often you're sort of like grappling or contending with. You know, does that, does that curtain, you know, help create that binary, that dichotomy that just sort of makes it clear.
Speaker 3:I think I love it in a way, Like you know how much I get frustrated with some things about. You know just the politics and industry and things like that. But you know I sometimes I'll explain it to people as like a Stockholm syndrome.
Speaker 2:Right, right, right yeah.
Speaker 3:And, but I think there is. You know, the most important thing to me has been, I mean, one it's the relationships. Like I'm very much a person that values relation, personal relationships, but not, you know, face to face. I guess it's just how that expresses itself. Um, I mean, I think I'm very one track minded, sometimes to a fault, like if you I think you've probably recognized this over the past you know half a decade like I, when I'm whatever I'm doing is the thing that I'm doing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, like there's intense, it is an intensity, but it's it's. I mean, that's also just like I can't not do that right some people are very. There's a skill there yeah where they can just like do multiple things right. Right, but you know, like, if I'm having a conversation with you and then I switched to do have to do something else, I'm like completely.
Speaker 3:So, um, but I do think I'm very attracted to that idea of having that curtain. Yeah, and it's like it might not be ideal and there might be a lot of BS, but the most important thing to me, other than the personal connections, is, yeah, it's creating work and, you know, executing a craft, and maybe I don't feel like I get to do that as much as I'd like. Uh, or at least to the form that I'd like.
Speaker 3:But yeah, there you know the opportunity to be able to still create work and have it undercover and have a curtain there is very attractive to me and I think that might outweigh a lot of the negatives and lead to that Stockholm syndrome feeling at times. So we kind of just jumped in mid flow. I'm almost thinking maybe we go back. Yeah, give a little context, give. It seems like. I think for this episode we focus on, focus on two things, and that's the article and I'll let you give context on that, because that we read that and it just really put into words, yeah, what we've been feeling and also just created a greater awareness of I think, something that you suspect is out there and that you're seeing.
Speaker 3:But you just haven't talked about several times.
Speaker 2:Yeah, haven't.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we'll talk about that. And then, yeah, I came in kind of hot with this. I'm reading a book right now and I recommend um, you know, I I think I recommend people go check this out yeah I found it um, a couple of months ago. I started about a month ago and, uh, it's really been one that I've just kind of slowly gone through like. I'll read a few pages and chew on it for a little bit.
Speaker 3:It's not the most dense book yeah but there's there are a lot of really interesting ideas in there that I think are worth just closing your eyes and thinking about for a couple of days.
Speaker 3:Um, and the book is called technopoly and it's by, uh by uh, I guess he's a culture critic would be that, but I he probably didn't categorize himself as that, maybe he did um popped up in an interview where I ended up watching like an hour interview with him and I was like, okay, I need to read this guy's book and and um, the book is called technopoly and it. It's essentially talking about how we have prioritized as a culture, and this was written in 1991, I believe. Yeah, so 33 years old, right, which is crazy, and you know going back.
Speaker 3:Yeah, a lot of people look at it as like pretty prescient of where we are today, and then also you know the changes have he kind of got the core right, so it looks like it's just gotten worse? Yeah um, which you know, maybe you know good on him for having a holistic understanding of this thing. But there's plenty of critiques you can give and you know, I kind of talked to you through the. I needed a way to summarize it. I was like what's the best way?
Speaker 3:to summarize this for Matt without just spending two hours talking. So I had a conversation with an LLM that I used. It was essentially just asking a couple of questions, trying to tie some different things in. Yeah, um, and that was very helpful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I thought it was great, great way great use of technology right there Very elegant CliffsNotes yeah, very elegant.
Speaker 3:CliffsNotes. Um, I mean not, my writing was not elegant in there. The questions were completely probably, but she sorted through it nicely yeah, the llm did, yeah, yeah, great job, um, but essentially he talks about how culture has been captured by technology and, like technology is the lens, we view everything through medicine. You know, culture as a whole, art product release cycle in my world.
Speaker 3:Obviously, technology is a big you know we talk about me and you have talked about commerce and the algorithm, and all of that is a byproduct of technology, right? It's binary, it's numbers, it's revenue, it's you know it's um statistics polling. All of this is that's technology. You, you know it's a result of technology or, yeah, a form of technology and the language learning model you use to summarize technology. The irony does not is not lost on me um, and we certainly don't.
Speaker 2:You know, we're not coming at this like anti-technology necessarily. It's just sort of of like, uh, how does this book? And I think once I read it, to create, just like the article did, a greater awareness of what's going on, so that to me, it goes back to what we talked about, which is mapping. Like I map people when I talk to them, like I try to get an understanding of basic personality traits, things.
Speaker 2:They tend to do this or that just so I can navigate them empirical best, just so I can have a better, better way to navigate who they are and and all that. And I think this for me, you're downloading them. Yeah, for me, you know a book like this and that articles go. Okay, I my, I have a. My map is drawn even better, map being a piece of technology. Yeah, um, my map is even even better.
Speaker 2:Map being a piece of technology, my map is even better for understanding. Oh, I see that's what's going on there, or that's why I'm feeling this way. That's why I immediately live streamed about the final cut pro for iPad update that was released and letting everybody know what's all new and going on in there.
Speaker 3:Audrey said something to me the other day that was like interesting, and this, this is not like self I, it was just I said something. She said something about technology, dr audrey, yeah, she's a lot.
Speaker 2:That's I was gonna yeah, huge change, like there is a there's, you know the, uh, the intelligence gap there.
Speaker 3:You know, yeah, literal doctor, um, actual real scientist. And there was, there was some kind of something that referenced and I was explaining something and she's like. She was like I don't understand what you're, what you're talking about. And I was like, yeah, but like you absolutely could, like you do understand. And uh, I was like, look, I have a flip phone, like I don't know shit about technology. And then she said something like um, it was just an offhanded comment, I don't, I didn't think too much about it at the time, and then it like circled back and she was like, yeah, but you understand technology, you understand how technology works, and you choose not to use it exactly.
Speaker 3:And you know, I, I, yeah, I didn't think about it much because I wasn't thinking in that lens I was thinking of like, look, you can, you can absolutely understand. This is like, I mean, if my dumb ass can understand this and you absolutely can. Yeah, that was the lens I was like. But then I came back around and I was like, oh, what an elegant way to put it, which again just evidence, right, that. What an elegant way to state that. Um, it, the goal should be to understand it on a deep level. That's right. And then you can apply it when it's necessary, but that's also knowing when it's not necessary, and I think that's.
Speaker 3:But getting back to the technopoly book, he essentially says, yeah, the culture is captured by technology. That's what means. We view everything through. We've thrown everything else out, everything's got to be empirical. Um, we've applied that, you know, yes, to the natural world. I'm trying to understand how gravity works, what you know, how the earth's rotation, all of these things, and now how consciousness works. Well, and, yeah, that's so. Then we started to apply it to social sciences people, yep, and the argument or one of the arguments there's a lot of arguments that he makes. There's a lot of brilliant kind of thinking um, or at least just brilliant stuff to chew on and interesting ways to look at it.
Speaker 3:And he makes this, uh, ties it in with literature and myth and you know if, if you're you've done like any screenwriting or whatever you've probably read like, or at least you know cliff noted the joseph campbell right, you know, but if hero's journey, the power of myth. Lincoln shonas, yeah lincoln shonas um, and you talked about how that documentary about that kind of changed your power of myth, and I've always looked at it as like that's kind of what our responsibility is as artists in a way.
Speaker 3:Yeah, is to find interesting metaphors, challenge pre-existing metaphors find, break down human experience into myth yeah not.
Speaker 3:So you don't make art empirically. Art should not be made through data. Yeah, it's always been my belief, and it's full of nuance. And so he starts making this argument about how we've tried to apply natural science, social science, and when you do that you lose all the nuance. And so, um, there's this. You know, that was interesting in the 90s, when we were kind of I think when he wrote this book in probably 89 through 90, right, probably took him a few years there was this idea that we were gonna reach a point. It almost seemed as if we were gonna reach a point where technology was gonna be the solution for everything. The answers lie in the data. Yeah, and I can see how that would have been something easy to buy into at that time. You know it was the computer revolution we were just getting into. The Internet was kind of right on the right on the periphery. And you start to think of, like for one, props to him for stepping back and being like I don't hold on, pump the brakes. Obviously it didn't happen. And.
Speaker 3:I think he even recognizes there's some writing in there where he kind of sees like look, I might be the old guy yelling at the cloud Right. Or you know you know the you know you're standing in a rainstorm and you're telling it to stop, and it's like yeah it's going to rain, you're like it's going to happen, no matter what.
Speaker 3:Yeah, almost a force of nature, and I think, though, that we've it's just continued to spiral and get. You know, there's more and more information, and so we had this idea that there was an empirical truth. There's a truth to the world that can be expressed in an equation or in data. There's, it's, it's, you know, um, it's out there, and now you hear this term thrown around a little bit, and it's like post-truth, or entering, post-truth, or whatever that is. And there's so much data there's no way to process it. You know, there's, you can have an event, and there's, it can only be processed subjectively. There is no truth. And he kind of says, like subjectivity is the enemy of Technopoly, or empirical right, yes.
Speaker 3:Subjectivity, because it's seeking an objective and it's like. So what happens when you enter a world where objective doesn't exist? And we're already in, like's, two stories, three stories, ten stories, to everything that happens. There's you know what, what point of view? It reminds me of the kurosawa film, right um, and you're just like you know who's well, who's telling the truth, right um, there's two sides to a great example of art, you know, presenting nuance and metaphor, but you have the you know, kind of breakdown.
Speaker 3:And we, when we adopted tech, technology or technopoly and we kind of went head-on. His the argument that he makes is that we kind of threw out all of our myth. You know philosophy. We threw out all of that because that stuff is can't be proven and this is the new world. Things need to be backed with evidence. So we throw all that out and now it's more important than ever. And we don't eat, we're almost we've lost. How to create that? Right, you look at art that's being created. Nowadays, a lot of art is empirical.
Speaker 3:You know, although I would argue, at least a lot of, like the popular art, yeah, yeah. So how do we? You know what is the? I asked this thing, but like, what is the responsibility of the artist? How do we balance that? Because it seems to me that we're entering a point where you know the myth and the philosophy and the understanding of the world through narrative, and he used, like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky as as reference examples of like they do a better job than a lot of social scientists do. Social scientists are just kind of picking up on their theories and being like, oh, but look data and look at this new thing that I discovered.
Speaker 3:It's like, well, they were saying that in a more nuanced way, if anything more effectively, and so it's like you're just repackaging it and presenting it as new information to fit the you know, technopoly or the technological viewpoint. So I just I think it's interesting, though, like where, yeah, what is our responsibility as artists? Because serving that, serving that idea of you know, if we're entering post-truth, what becomes important is how do we hold ourselves up, what is the structure that we hold ourselves on? And a lot of that is understanding humans, or humanity, through myth and through these long-standing metaphors.
Speaker 3:That might not be exact and objective, but so that's a long I just lost the train of thought in there of like where I started, but I was just trying to lay out kind of the argument that he's making and you, you and I talked about this in pre-show. So this is like the second time you've kind of heard this nonsense spiel, and I just read this passage last night, so I haven't even had a ton of time to process it. I'm just tying it in with a lot of other things that were kind of floating around.
Speaker 3:Um, in in you, in, in you know, in my world. So, um talked about the David Foster Wallace uh concept of new sincerity and uh, even it was plurum um that, that essay that he wrote um in this like post postmodern society, post irony. Um, I think that ties in as well. Still processing on kind of what, what I think about this. But yeah, I mean what in your mind, you know what? What is the responsibility of the artist? What is the influence of technology? Like I just I want to hear your thoughts on everything it's hard because, you know, I think about the responsibility artists.
Speaker 2:It makes me feel like, you know, the artist has to be like, consciously, whether it's pushing back or offering a counterpoint, um, making things that are counter to um, things moving toward, you know, the death of myth and um, you know, moving towards technology, data, empirical evidence, all of that stuff and objectivity and away from subjectivity. You know you're going to have artists that just react to this stuff. Naturally, it just happens. Counterculture, you know the grunge movement, madonna, you know like they take in what the world is giving them and they react to it and they may not be going. Well, I feel like, after reading this gentleman's book called Technopoly and it was my responsibility to create art that was, you know, flew in the face of that. You know, I don't, I don't know that, that all artists do that. Now, I definitely think there are a lot of artists that take in something and make art as a direct response to it.
Speaker 3:Right, 100 we've we've definitely talked about, and you know, holding two ideas in your head at one time. Yeah, I'm still processing this, but, like I also want to reiterate, because some people might be have listened to earlier episodes well, don't you like argue in earlier episodes that the artist's responsibility is to be objective?
Speaker 3:and I also think that's true right so that kind of would almost on the surface seem like, seems like it goes against this idea. But I think when I say the artist responsibility objective it's the artist's responsibility is not to portray a message it's to take a subjective experience and transform it into something that's laid out objectively.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, um, that the the person who takes in what they made, is not being told how to feel, not being told what to think.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Well, well put.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not didactic, it's not binary, it's not right or wrong, it's.
Speaker 2:You know, I have this experience.
Speaker 2:I channeled it into this through my unique perspective and created this and then take from it what you will Um perspective and created this and then take from it what you will Um.
Speaker 2:But I do think that when, even in 1992, which is amazing, you know in reading the LLM and your conversation with it, uh how like it's, you're just like reading, you're reading something that is an exact description of everything I've been thinking and feeling, whether it's knowingly or unknowingly, my struggles with technology. And then you know, certainly what mass media or even independent media puts out there about humanity as a whole and how we're handling technology as a whole and how we're handling technology. You know, I look at something like that and I haven't read Technopoly. I'm kind of with you. Audience like Alex is presenting this and I'm catching up and I would have to read the book and get a lot more aware of what those concepts are in that book. But just in general terms, seeing something like that, um, you know he's calling out, he's calling out what you know where, where he sees things going and the potential, uh, the potential um negatives that arise from it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this is one of those episodes where, like, you're processing it in real time episode for sure, um, and you know, for me I always want again, going back to the map analogy I always want to consume stuff like this without this sort of just a little bit more at face value, a little bit more objectively. I don't want to go into something like Technopoly and then just be destroyed by it, like that article. God, that article messed me up and we'll get into that in a second, but I want to try to, I just want to try to have greater awareness. I want to, um, I want, uh, I want to see things a little bit better, but then, at the same time, I don't want to always feel like I'm seeing things clearly. Um, I want to be enlightened. I want to be illuminated, yeah.
Speaker 2:And watching that Joseph Campbell power of myth series, I was like I've felt these things, I have had inclinations toward these thoughts or these feelings, and this, uh, you know, made me aware of things that I was only aware of on a, a very um, uh, just a general feeling. Um, I know I'm very rambly and not like making any clear points here, so forgive me, but, um, I'm very rambly and not like making any clear points here.
Speaker 2:So, forgive me, but, um, I think, but I, but I want. I want, then, that better framework, that improved framework, that more detailed map to infiltrate the things that I want to make. And an article like the one we read, uh, the age of average, which we'll link in the show notes, an article like the one we read, the Age of Average, which we'll link in the show notes, an article like that does trigger in me, as someone who aspires to make work, a desire. I want to go around Omaha now, and I've sort of generally been aware that all these new apartment buildings all look the same, but like I actually now want to go out and photograph them, even if it's not to, you know, put it out there as work, but just to go, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:You're testing it with, you're testing the theory. One of the interesting things is it's a bit for any social scientists that are listening he calls that field out pretty tough and it basically says In the article or the book, in the book, in the book, okay, essentially says you know it's pretty unnecessary, says you know it's it's pretty unnecessary. It's just translation of things that were known previously into this new kind of stilted technopoly language that we're yeah like this you know condensed metaphor that we've built our world around.
Speaker 3:Now you're taking all this nuance out and you're just putting it into like a black and white piece of you know data and that's kind of what he says.
Speaker 3:And look, I'm not here to argue about the field of the social sciences, but I did read that and it almost confirmed something that I've always thought and I got into this a little bit at the beginning. But like I think you know, if you are approaching work, especially if your subject is other humans, you should approach it with the same rigor that you know and not intellect, but the same like a Carl Jung would right, like, like there's, there's work that has been done in, like the field of social science or in psychology and that is highly academic and it's like we but you should be going for the same realizations. And I think kind of what you just laid out sounds a lot like a scientific process we've talked about that before where work is just, yeah, laying like the. The true purpose of creating work is to test these ideas within yourself yeah, I have a hypothesis and I'm gonna run an experiment and you know, I know the.
Speaker 3:There is definitely irony in me presenting it like that, because it is that's the, that's the lens of technology. Yeah, I'm trying to pull art into a science, but you know, there is a responsibility, because I guess what I'm trying to say is great work shares all of the characteristics of great science. There's something more to it, though, that can only be accomplished through art. There is the nuance, there is the not. You know, everything is not so precise, it doesn't have to be so precise, and I think we should carry that into our making. When we're trying to create things, when we're trying to explore ideas, you know it should be approached from completely just universe, juju, like going at this as just pulling ideas out, working and, just, you know, flowing through ideas. But then there should also be the other side, where it's like I am exploring something, I'm trying to do much more deliberate and focused and knowing what's already been been done is an important aspect to that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, whether that's reading great literature, watching great film or familiarizing yourself with you know, psychology and social science, it's all in the same vein.
Speaker 2:I think we are due for something big. This sounds like, oh, like the big debut of this cool new form of music or this new you know whatever, but I feel like something's going to society, yeah, Just something that this, you know what, what was outlined in technopoly and sort of like the state of how things are in the world.
Speaker 2:You know, I think when you have enough people that are feeling something and then reacting to it, especially through making work, you know I'm in and not that I'm going to obviously like be the person that that maybe does this or whatever, cause I'm I'm late to the game. But when it comes to analog tech, retro tech, um, photography, uh, poetry, whatever, whatever I make as a response to what I'm feeling and what I'm experiencing, and what the temperature is in the room, what the climate is out there, um, I feel like just as a whole, something's gonna. Something's gonna pop here we talked about. I don't know what it'll be.
Speaker 3:We talked about how it's already infiltrating like zeitgeist.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And it's not. Maybe it's not clear that this, and you know, maybe we're just projecting, because this is what we're thinking about. So everything this is our lens we're just seeing all these events. But it does seem like there is a big unraveling happening between like this empirically driven, you know, pulled out like committee.
Speaker 3:Yeah decision by committee world that we've created yeah, designed by focus group and maybe wishful thinking is also a component of our saying that, but it does seem, like you know, culturally there have been some things that are happening and have happened recently that point towards, um, just a new wave of thinking, yeah, something that just feels like it came from outer space and, yeah, you know, all the signs were there that it was coming.
Speaker 2:But you know you couldn't have and we sound. There was no data set that could have predicted, you know we probably sound like a couple of nut jobs on a podcast.
Speaker 3:Yeah it's coming from, but no, it does. It does feel like there is being. It's interesting. The book was written 33 years ago. Technopoly book was written 33 years ago and it's how technology is kind of captured culture and we really haven't not. It's things are different. Things are very different, but things aren't like drastically different there haven't been like you know, there hasn't been anything like completely revolutionary. That's, that's happened.
Speaker 2:I mean little things I would argue that you know a full-blown computer in your pocket. That that to me, if I, if I had to make an argument for a revolutionary um change the internet.
Speaker 3:The internet, yeah, has come into like the internet is probably the most revolutionary thing that's happened, right, but even like, yeah, the internet age of information like the internet was already brewing in 91 right it was already yeah it hadn't really caught, it hadn't gone mainstream yet yeah but it was already brewing when he wrote this book like there were people that were sending emails and and I think I think too, just overall the that but that what I guess just really quick to in that point, like he, you know you couldn't have seen what was coming with the internet, but even that kind of got like co-opted in a lot of ways
Speaker 3:yeah, sure, like you know, the internet was supposed to be this.
Speaker 3:You think about early tech or what the internet was supposed to be like.
Speaker 3:It was supposed to be like this open source thing that kind of went out and, you know, civil liberties were just built in, they were ingrained in the internet. You had, you know this, it was going to open up all of these, tear down all these gatekeepers, all of these new um highways to get information, and you know, then you had, like you know, web 2 came around and suddenly it's not, you can't, I'm going and I'm pulling information from the Internet. It was publishing and pulling and it was supposed to upend everything and then it kind of got captured and part of the revolution that I think is coming in the field of technology is like, yes, I think we're going to get to a point where, call it Web 3, call it whatever you know, call it web 3, call it whatever we're starting to, you know, kind of leave some of those gatekeepers behind, some of those people that have captured what the internet was supposed to be. But I mean, yeah, culture, like what does that look like culturally outside of technology?
Speaker 3:yeah these are the best episodes for me because I am and I don't know the answers to these questions obviously, yeah, I, and I don't either.
Speaker 2:I I mean just when I feel like I'm a little bit lost, not lost, but sort of um, quiet. In these moments I try to just talk about what I'm thinking about and so you know thoughts I had while you were saying. That was, you know, I think sometimes we want to like tie technological revenue revolution to a single thing the internet, the, you know, the smartphone. I also think about just the car. Yeah, I think about just overall this explosion of technology, that that democratized a lot of the things that only previously a few people could do. Things that I can do, like, um, make a video and put it on YouTube live stream, like I literally live stream for an hour and a half after this news of final cut pro and final cut pro for the iPad, after Apple's event, talking about what the implications were of those updates, et cetera, et cetera, admittedly like sort of part of the machinery of that world, in my excitement over a piece of technology that I feel empowers me to express myself and, you know, share the tools that I use with other people, et cetera, et cetera. So I think about that, just the access we all have, the reduction of gatekeepers for the average person, to connect with people, build an audience, but then also succumb to the attract and extract paradigm that I'm currently really grappling with and, I think, responding to in the things that I'm interested in, the work that I'm doing, etc. So cetera. So that's one big thought, um.
Speaker 2:The other thought is how will this generation who grew up with you know who, who is a 21st century generation? Maybe some of them learned how to walk, you know, in the late nineties, um, but they were growing as people in the 21st century. So there isn't, you know, like me, the pre-internet days. You know that those sort of they've always had devices. They've always had this like very heightened state of technology, both culturally and and the actual stuff that was in their lives iPads, iphones, you know, tvs, where stuff is on demand, they can make stuff, upload stuff, post this, whatever. How will those people find ways to do stuff outside of the matrix, to do something in the real world to? I don't know is the reaction to some of that technology to get away from the life online?
Speaker 3:Is the revolution, just like micro communities, right right.
Speaker 2:You know, you saw that. You know that sort of stereotypical you know and it's my only understanding of it as it's been represented in you know television shows and movies. But you know these sort of cult enclaves and religious enclaves or spiritual enclaves, you enclaves in the 60s counterculture and all that. Are we going to see stuff like that?
Speaker 3:I think it might be a good thing to start to tear down. One of the things that he talks about in technology is like how we tear down icons and how, when we went into technology, so much like that became the only Holy grail, that became the only sacred icon.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So suddenly you start using Jesus to sell wine. What's his example? Right? The commercial where Jesus is holding a bottle of wine. He's like when I turn water into wine. This is what I was picturing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And then go to buy this wine here. You know nothing is sacred anymore, other than you know technology, which is.
Speaker 2:you know, technology is the it is God, it's the deification of technology.
Speaker 3:And so I mean, is it yeah, is it almost the first thought I had you said like the cult communities? Let's you know, maybe we start tearing down the iconography or the reference behind the word cult?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Because I think cult is a. You know, there's.
Speaker 2:There's a positive light for it. And there's what some of our culture has made it a bad word. Heaven's gate um branch davidians, you know all that stuff that you immediately think of. You know the word cult is having a very negative connotation that's a great project.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exploring cult. Yeah, humanizing. Yeah, exploring cult. Yeah, humanizing cult, tearing down the pre-existing I don't know, I need to drop that thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, you know there's an, there's an, you know there's there's. You know arguments that you know, even with my audience surrounding a piece of software, you know you could argue that there's sort of a, could argue that there's sort of a. Um, the cult, the cult aspect of it, yeah, the cult of Apple, or the cult of a specific application like final cut pro and devout followers, and you know all that stuff. You know you could have people that you know. Take that, that audience that they've attracted, and then you know the extraction begins where it's. You know they're more binary in their thinking, they're more absolutist in their thinking, they're more didactic. They're telling people how to think and feel, what they should do, how they should do it. And I think that you know, uh, you know, just from my rudimentary understanding of of occult following, um, uh, you know that's where things tend to go a little negative. Um, in in, in my estimation, um. But then you have things like a cult movie where we think of that so positively. There's some great books on.
Speaker 3:I'll, I'll reference, I'll send you the references.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:If I, if I remember to cause yeah, I've. I've read some interesting books on just the idea of cults and, like, everything is essentially a cult in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, and then I, you know, take that a step further and go. You know, is that? You know what is that? You know? That's great. What's it a symptom of? You know what's what? What's it what? What is? If there feels like there's a prevalence of those things happening, like what is?
Speaker 3:Is it a symptom of our nature, though? Yeah, like?
Speaker 2:is it just part of human nature? Is it a reaction to what we're experiencing culturally, societally, as a civilization? Are the forces of technology at play? Mass media, those types of things, a lack of tribal identity, of a substantial um presence of you know, an artistic movement or something that has really captured the, the heart and imagination of people to um to dive into before the commercial interests go? Oh, we can make money here, let's's start processing this. You know hip hop, uh grunge. You know um uh, Warhol's pop art movement. You know, those are the first three that come to mind for me.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then the imitators that come afterwards because they see the playbook, and this goes back to the article the age of average. Somebody makes something that really resonates with people, and then the data drives the imitators to distill it down to a reductionist facsimile.
Speaker 3:And let's jump into the article, yeah, and just put it out you know, get it out there, maybe, like if you just want to break down the article, because you sent me this article. Somebody sent it to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I sent it to 35 people no.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean it was you know. It's not necessarily saying anything new or anything quite.
Speaker 2:Again, it's just.
Speaker 3:It's one of those things where it aggregates a lot of things, that almost that situation where you want to sit down and like explain this to somebody, but you're like, okay, do you have an hour? Yeah and it's just not realistic. Like, if it's you and I having a conversation, it's realistic, yeah, but for most people in our lives it's not realistic that I can be like yeah can I sit you down for an hour and talk to you about how art has?
Speaker 2:yeah, you know, disintegrated into this, you know and art in all aspects in this article, from architecture, the art of architecture, to um you know how we fashion architecture, music, exactly Um, literature and film.
Speaker 2:A friend of mine sent sent me this article weeks and weeks ago and it sort of stagnated in my inbox and I've been working hard this week to get to inbox zero, the exalted nirvana stage of all technology loving people, the productivity, that's right, productivity, uh, nirvana, uh, across four inboxes to get to inbox zero for me. Um, anyway, so I processed that article and I said I haven't read this yet. So I did um, and he had you know, written, just sort of his reaction to all.
Speaker 2:Of your language is so like sort of like a droid here going through everything, and as I read the article, I mean it just was, it was just. You know, I read a lot of articles and I don't always have a visceral, like deep reaction to them, but it really gutted me as the word that I came up with and I I honestly felt after I reading it like a little like touch of panic setting, and that's the only word I can think of to describe it. And I of course had to send it to alex because I want him to be in a panic state as well.
Speaker 3:I'm always in a panic state. You're not doing anything to me.
Speaker 2:That's my secret, I'm always in a panic state. So I sent it off to you and I need to read it, read it again just to get you know those extra layers of nuance and detail. But it basically was a gut punch because it goes through architecture, it goes through fashion, you know, music et cetera, and it just kind of gives examples and shows how everything just is the same. And the biggest one that got me was like apartment buildings. And you know Omaha has got a lot of expansion. These neighborhoods that were a little rougher have been, you know, scooped up by young entrepreneurs and business people small businesses, mom and pop shops, making coffee shops and ice cream parlors and all that. And so now the residential stuff's moving in because the corporate interests, you know, see demand and they see opportunity and they, you know, have whatever they have to ruin it.
Speaker 2:Whatever architecture firms design these buildings, and they just all look like boring, inexpensive, designed by focus group things. And they're everywhere. And I read that article and I immediately wanted to go out and photograph them, just to sort of like document, like you're right, like this is actually true, and so it was just really. And then, you know, I start looking back at my body of work as a content creator, a writer, and I'm like you know the influence that Peter McKinnon's videos or these youtubers, and like, oh, you got to do your b-roll like this and you know, like you don't even, you're not even thinking about it, you just sort of do it and like the, the impact that that has and you know, and the questions of is anything really original? You know, uh, anymore, is that, is that even possible?
Speaker 3:can I make a video? Is anything original period?
Speaker 2:but I mean, we are like very, you know, we're a very numetic society well that's kind of how we approach things or species yeah, and I think society, species and I think there's originality in the sense that people take ingredients of multiple things that maybe don't seem connected and then they combine them in a unique and interesting way where you can trace them back to the source. But in that unique combination there is a feeling of originality.
Speaker 3:We talked about it before. It's like you take one turn, yeah, take another turn, take another turn Right. Ten turns later you're at something that is almost original.
Speaker 2:And so you see that in my work where I'm trying to incorporate and I'm not the first person that used a typewriter to like do titles. You know obviously Van Nistet does it. You know movies have done it before.
Speaker 3:All the typewriter channels. Yeah, all the typewriter channels.
Speaker 2:You try to like come up with fresh ways to, you know, make your point or to do what you do. You know, I've always felt like my voice and perspective is unique, but I don't always want to deliver it in like the playbook way, like, oh yeah, you got to do like a little B-roll montage at the beginning and then you got to have like the lo-fi music and then you start, you do a little pre-lap with your vocals and then you go into. You know you sitting in like your studio with like a nice little edge light that's warm and you got the you know, the daylight, balanced light. You know, like you just start checking all the like what was done before, just like the apartment buildings do okay, so we like the faux brick facade and we like the metal texture in the middle, we want square windows.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, we do a little sign. We get that cool branding company to do our brand. You know what I mean. Like you just start going through the machinery of what's worked in the past and you just keep yeah, you just keep making it. This recipe for I mean what's like a apple pie or I don't know like like this recipe for this thing that just sort of like, loses its specialness because it's just been distilled down to it's the same time it's the same everywhere, you know it's been.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, it's factory and producing it's yeah mass produced, there's um and it just ends up making everything just average.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I think there's like it's lost on a lot of people. That's become a way of doing things. I think it's lost on a lot of people that we are just it sounds so, you know, acid culture to say this, or like hippie, but everything is is made up, every, everything is. You can do things anyway. Like there might be more optimal, like there's not really even optimal. There's optimal based on the variables that you're trying to optimize for. Yeah, so you're choosing variables and you're optimizing for them, and then that might be optimal for those variables, but then you're sacrificing other variables. You can look at this through history. There's cultures where there are clear examples. We were in when we were in um rome and we were going to some of the museums. It just became so clear how much they valued aesthetics.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:How much that like that was the variable they were optimizing for. And everything was just so ornate and I even made a comment to Audrey, you know like three or four museums in, or walking through ruins or whatever, and I'm just like I bet all of this was lost on people, because it's just when everything is ornate, nothing's ornate.
Speaker 2:Right yeah.
Speaker 3:Right, like every, so like there is there, you know, I guess. What I'm trying to say, though, is you're optimizing for a certain variable in your society. Determines that right now. You know, technology is what's determining the variable. I would argue yeah, part of that might just be because I'm reading this book right now and that's like my lens, but I'm aware of that. But we're optimizing for it, and I think what gets lost is that we can optimize for anything, but there are incentive structures, there's regulation especially if architecture and things like that there's regulation. That has popped up.
Speaker 3:That limits what the potential is but, I think, yeah, you should approach anything you do with the, with the understanding, like, yes, there's regulation, but don't build from that. Build from like, okay, let's get as creative as possible and then try to work that in. Yeah, um, yeah, I think what gets lost, though, like, like, finishing that point is anything's possible. There's this, um. I believe his name is, uh, jaron Jaron Lanier. He's a technologist, he works for Microsoft. He like invented virtual reality. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Um, and he has uh interviews and I enjoy watching his interviews, Um, and he has this idea for uh, this principle called data dignity, and it's like where everybody owns their data, like everybody is the stewards of their data.
Speaker 3:And then but one thing he uses in this is talking about gardeners and, just like you know, you can optimize for this one set of variables and you can make everything look the same. Or you could do this you know where you you have spirals and just allow them to, like all of these communities, these micro communities, kind of to just do their own thing and see what blooms out of that, instead of having this, like everybody needs to optimize for the same things.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that optimization comes from, too, the access to information. So if we were left to our own devices to come up with something, you know, our parents, they always. You know my mom always did her garden like this. Well, you know, I don't want to do it that way, I don't want those types of plants, but I don't have access to the information that's going to teach me. You know well what, what plants that are in opposition to her choices can work. You know, here I'm going to, I'm going to try this. I'm going to mix these flowers with these vines. I'm going to. You know this. You know, forgive me people who are gardeners for not knowing some of the lingo, but but you don't go on Google, and then every.
Speaker 3:because now everybody goes on Google and they find the first search result. That's right and everybody's going to do that.
Speaker 2:And they go oh, you need height here, you need lower things, here You're supposed things. And I learned this in plotting out my front landscape and like, oh, you do things in like groups of odd numbers, I wouldn't have guessed that, yeah, but if I was, didn't have access to that stuff, um, and went to, uh, you know, the landscaping store and, you know, didn't talk to an employee to get in pointers from them, I would have had to have, like, stood there staring at my yard going what do I like, what sounds good to me?
Speaker 3:See, but I wonder if, to be at a local level, you go to your landscaping store and they would have a different perspective. Now they're just going to regurgitate whatever Google would tell you, cause that's the consensus or they might, you know, they might go.
Speaker 2:you know what? Uh, what are the most satisfied customers that we had, and what designs did we deploy? What plants did we have? What ones were pest resistant? What ones didn't attract deer? Which one?
Speaker 3:Blah, blah, blah it's interesting, though, because, like, we're so entrenched in it at this point. There is the only maybe this isn't true, this is a bit of hyperbole, probably, but it, you know just gut reaction at all. Is it like the only solution? The only way out of this is to just start from scratch, like throw out the internet, start looking at your garden and just you know, you start experimenting again.
Speaker 2:There's a school of thought and this has come up in a couple of things that I've consumed where it's like people that are very learned, very experienced people that they, like they are actually seeking out this is the Yoda thing you know unlearn what you have learned but they're actually like trying to seek out. That sort of beginner mindset, like knowing less, is going to help me figure out what this thing is. Daughter. And it was these two young women at a black Catholic high school that were like one of the only people who have proven the Pythagorean theorem or something associated with the Pythagorean theorem. They, they each came up on their own with the proof for for it.
Speaker 2:I think someone in like 2004, forgive me for forgetting, I'll put a link to the video in the show notes had come up with a proof as well for it, but it was something that had stumped mathematicians for 2000 years, so you could throw the world's greatest mathematician that to try to figure out, and it's almost like they know too much to be able to see it more clearly. You know what I mean, and this happens with everything.
Speaker 3:This is why a lot of like the biggest breakthroughs in any field pretty much comes from when somebody adopts principles. It's not from somebody who has been in that field forever, right? Sometimes it is yeah, but usually it is like the major breakthroughs are somebody who has come in and just been like built from the ground up. Yeah, you call it first principles thinking or whatever you want to call it, but yeah, approaching something and just being like why is this done this way, to the very core.
Speaker 2:Well, building it back up, and I'll give you an example.
Speaker 2:You know I've had fear with film photography, wasting money on a roll of film because I didn't expose it correctly or I didn't have the settings right, or, you know, I didn't get the light seals fix, whatever.
Speaker 2:And my desire for exposing an image perfectly and not having any, you know, anomalies in in it and all that stuff makes me seek out information. Okay, well, let me watch a video on this camera how to expose properly and use the light meter. Let me, you know, let me find all the tricks and everybody get the shortcut to the information, because someone else learned the hard way, whatever, where I just had a bunch of rolls come back and I forgot to set the ISO dial. I had 50 speed film and I set it at 250. I didn't read the light meter and the Canon F1 correctly because I had a non Canon lens. Then I put a Canon lens on and it works differently if you have a Canon lens versus a non Canon lens and I jacked up like three rolls of film like underexposed by two to four stops and a couple of them. I was like this is a photo that might be an all-timer in my short career as a photographer.
Speaker 2:Like. I had this one photo. I almost spent time on this, but it was like midday, super contrasty, this yellow house, not like bright yellow, like mustard yellow, and there was like a shadow on the awning. And then there was a front door and a big green bush. There's a little boy in the window and a dog sitting on the porch and the boy looked at me click and it's underexposed by like four stops, lives in perfection in your head, though, and now I haven't tried to see.
Speaker 2:Like, what can I turn those photos into? Maybe there's something interesting there. Maybe there's a look, there's a vibe, maybe there's something there that will be interesting. And I think that's the excitement about artists when they can't Google it, when they can't watch a YouTube video, when they have to screw around with the software or the instrument or whatever, when they aren't listening to. Well, I want to make a folk, you know, album, singer, songwriter, stuff, and they're going to go through Bob Dylan and they're going to go through all the greats, and then that permeates their mind and they start emulating it or whatever. Like, if you can get into a place where you're stumbling through it, something special might come of it.
Speaker 2:Like you mentioned art, right, well, the impressionist movement in France, you know, potentially I don't know enough about it, but like, well, I don't want to paint it the way that we're taught in school. I don't want everything to be perfect in the lighting and the still lives and all that stuff. I want it to be dreamy and vibey and whatever. And and I'm going to reject what you're telling me and I'm going to go this route, and this goes back to what we were talking about earlier, which is I'm going to reject the current atmosphere of technology and even if I'm still using technology through retro technology or 35 millimeter film or old DV tape camcorders or this or that like I want to reject all this stuff and try to do something new over here and figure out something that feels like like it has the elements and I mean elements like mercury and oxygen and all that has the elements of these other things.
Speaker 3:But it's a new molecule I think there's an interesting thing. You talked about it like it's having been a while since something major shifted yeah and I think, historically, we've always rejected the previous generation. Yeah right, you go to the previous generation what they've done, up to the point that you come in. I don't want to do it that way, I want to do it this way. So everything is incremental, building on itself yeah previous generation.
Speaker 3:New generation rejects new yep yep, next generation rejects that new right even newer. Yeah, next generation rejects that even newer. And that's in part because there's was, there's always been, a limited access to information right of the previous. Yeah, now we are rejecting history right, yeah, everything's available, yeah everything in the ever is available to us as influence, and so we're rejecting everything we're figuring out what needs.
Speaker 3:So it, yeah you, I mean, you know, in my head it would make a little bit of sense that it's been longer, because it takes a little longer to reach, like it takes less time to reject the previous generation than to reject history. Yeah, and the internet gives us the ability, in a way, to reject history, and so we're synthesizing, still, we're figuring out what that looks like. What does the next iteration look like?
Speaker 3:well you're getting, you know you get memes and you get you know all like all of this is just just punching and trying to figure out what what comes next and is it harder for us to?
Speaker 2:will it be harder for us to see a movement, a counterculture, uh, a new?
Speaker 3:maybe yeah, jazz barbecue.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, art nouveau. Is it going to be hard to to for all of us to?
Speaker 3:see it no more because there's encompassing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's you know, there's a gazillion media outlets. There's youtube, there's social media apps, there's. There's so many ways to get it out there.
Speaker 3:I mean, I think, no matter what when something captures cultural waves or cultural ways like those are always going to exist and it's gonna, you know it's gonna ascend through.
Speaker 2:You know the top, you know top. But the sort of the the media with the largest audience to the smallest pockets. Commerce yeah, turned into commerce and you're gonna right but that that, that other video that I shared with you, the cool, the people searching for cool yeah, that old video, um. And and the people that are seeking out those artistic and cultural movements so that they can appropriate them for a sprite commercial.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, um and I mean part of that is, you know, like, yeah, we're gonna have to come to terms with, with that, because it's funny, you, if you would ask me five years ago about commercialism, I would have thought because I was compared, I, it's just a little bit naive of me, but you know I limited scope, comparing it to like the grunge and anti-commercialism of like the early and late 90s.
Speaker 3:And that commercialism was absolutely rampant in the 90s and things like that. But it evolved, it became more disguised and if you would have asked me five years ago I might have. I would have probably come with the mindset of, like, commercialism is just a part of culture now.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:And I don't disagree with that. But I do think there is a rift forming and there's a crack in the commercial.
Speaker 2:Like well, because commercialism has been democratized. I'm commercial, I'm trying to sell you a course, I'm trying to sell you my plugins, I'm trying to sell you this and what have you seen?
Speaker 3:you democratize commercialism in these little micro communities like youtube. And then what have you seen? You democratize commercialism in these little micro communities like YouTube. And then what have you seen? You've seen burnout. You've seen the result of that. Yes, so, like you know, you're seeing microcosms of what happened with, like, these major celebrities, where they just burned out or killed themselves or whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:That was a little bit, I just threw that out there. But you know, you are seeing microcosms of that and I think we're becoming you know you talk about media literate. We're becoming more literate of these, of what these things are, and so you are going to start, you're starting to see more of a rejection, a rejection of that stuff, and I think this rejection of it is even stronger than the grunge movement and things like that, because that was more of a superficial rejection yeah while this is like a from the inside out.
Speaker 2:Well, and we have so many, so many ways to listen to people talking about their frustration. We have YouTube, we have all the traditional social media, but we also have podcasts. I mean, I just listening to Chris Pine on Tetragrammaton. I was listening to a couple of vloggers on YouTube that have like sub 5000 subscribers.
Speaker 2:I mean you've got that, You've got they're making it like, like this one young woman her vlogs are, to me, phenomenal. It's like that, that beautiful blend of art and content that I think youtube um is really strong. Strong with uh and like, like. I feel like it's out there, we're talking about it, people are talking about it, there's this subscription, and part of that might just be this growing frustration.
Speaker 3:It's being presented to us because that's what we're seeking Potentially yeah. That's potential, but I reference two things that have captured the entire US. Yeah, before this. Right In our pre-show. That do make me think this is a little more than just yes, it is in our niche, it's being served to us and maybe we have a better grasp on it because we're approaching it from a different, but it is starting to make its way into, whether people recognize it or not yeah it's starting to crash into, yeah, the general populace Maybe, hopefully.
Speaker 2:Well, and you know, with COVID and all that stuff, I mean, I think, I think all of it, you know, uh, a desire to connect to nature, a desire to connect with each other more tangible, real world, physical experiences, um, building communities that are not about attract and extract, it's not about a newsletter, it's not about buy my stuff.
Speaker 3:It's. It's not about um can you, can you stuff? It's it's not about um can you, can you? Define attractant because you, you told me what you, what it, what it meant to you beforehand and I just I don't think we've, because I love that concept yeah, and I and I'm.
Speaker 2:I may have wrote it in my notebook and I'll maybe if I, if I find where it first popped or first came to me. It didn't come to me as in I came up with that phrase, but I consumed it on something, watching a video or whatever it was, and it was. It was again kind of like the tech, the technopoly book. Someone just says three words and it gives me a clear understanding of what this thing I'm seeing and feeling is. I'm like, ah, that's what it is Attract and extract and we've talked about this on the I like I struggle with, like coming up with the newsletter, making a final cut, pro course, like all this stuff that feels like well, you attracted this audience, now it's time to extract. You want to earn a living from this, um, but then you also just want to make cool videos that that happened to earn you a living, versus you like consciously and deliberately making things that get views, get subscribers, get sponsorships, all that stuff. You know, in a perfect world for me, I would just make whatever videos I feel like making and the byproduct of that would be, you know, revenue. That was like cool, this is great. I feel like a Casey Neistat, like I feel like, like he is the, the example of someone who he didn't even have his ad revenue stuff turned on for a long time. He was just purely making things that he wanted to make and then he turned on the ad revenue and it's like, oh, now all of a sudden, I, you know, I'm good, uh, and there's conversations to be had about what the fallout is of that financial stability and that um and the and the wealth that he has and how that informs what he makes and doesn't make but attract and extract. You know, the rejection that I have is when someone is like I see a hole in the market.
Speaker 2:If I become a photography channel that talks about this and does these things in the playbook but then also fills in this missing gap, I can attract a large audience and the commercial list in me will lie in wait, and when I hit a certain amount of subscribers, then I'll start rolling out the extraction, and it might be a newsletter, it might be a course, it might be a free thing that you know, but you got to give me your email address so I can, you know, market to you. It might be sponsored ads, it might be affiliate revenue, etc. Etc. And then you know someone like, like me, who isn't calculated in that way but definitely has turned on. You know, turn like, push the button, I want affiliate revenue, I want sponsorships, I want these things.
Speaker 2:You start getting into this feeling where it's like well, hey, audience, if you, if you want more videos from me, I need to extract more from you. Become a channel member, um, watch my videos all the way through so that the sponsors see that, um, I get a lot of attention and and to me, there's a really gross element of attract and extract, a very conscious, um, entrepreneurial pursuit that is trying to mask itself in authenticity. There are the people that are like just, this is, this is a business. I'm literally opening a store and I'm going to attract people, but it's a business from day one, like I'm selling stuff.
Speaker 2:Day one, I may only have five people that are watching me or whatever, but my intention from day one is to make money, you know, and provide value, but I'm going to make money, um, and then someone like me that's more like well, I want to make work and I kind of want to express myself and I want to do this and then do that.
Speaker 2:I also need to earn a living and I'm going to I'm going to stop doing these curtain earning a living, client work, having a job, all that stuff and I'm going to start shedding all of that and then put more pressure on the art slash content stuff to earn revenue that then I get into this place where I'm feeling real conflict. I've attracted this audience and I have the ability to extract from them in ways that I could probably earn a good living doing it. But there's parts of that that feel gross to me or I haven't mapped it well enough to understand the way that I can do it. That makes me feel like I'm not attracting and extracting in the um, in the more deliberate um shallow way, it's almost like you have to.
Speaker 3:If I, I, I, you probably would not feel guilty about extracting. If you felt that you were delivering something that was of true value, yeah, but then getting into that, like it gets into the definition of what is value you know, what you know. Why is what you're doing valuable? What is that? Does that take a certain type of ego to think that that's valuable? Are you looking? Are you searching for value through metrics?
Speaker 2:of right oh, there's a hole, for, like you said, there's a hole in the market for this yep yeah I um, I almost wonder if there's yeah, like a fresco had something that in his the war of art, that um great, great, little quick read yeah I've been going through and um and we need to wrap up here. I know, uh, I probably won't find it, um, but it was no pressure.
Speaker 3:Well, whenever I can you share your highlighting process, because I I mean for this one that little note purple highlighter and then just a little note with a tip marker.
Speaker 2:wish I could write notes in books.
Speaker 3:You just have like a, like it just pains you to do it, it just hurts me I think there's some books that I would not do it, for I just I need to embrace messiness more. Here we go.
Speaker 2:This. This is the one Cause this book is really making me. We could do this in another video, but this book is really making me try to evaluate that, attract and extract mentality, because there is part of me on, just because I yeah, this could be a little teaser for that, but um, he wrote um, you know, resist.
Speaker 2:This is in a section called resistance and self-doubt. Self-doubt can be an ally. This is because it serves as an indicator of aspiration. It reflects love, love of something we dream of doing and desire, desire to do it. If you find yourself asking yourself and your friends am, am I really a writer? Am I really an artist? Chances are, you are the counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death and so I wrote down. Am I counterfeit? Because, just talking about what I said before, you know the baseball writer mentality like feel it, process it, make it, send it, feel it, process it, make it, send it.
Speaker 2:But then that attract and extract element of hoping to earn a living, making things that I want to make every day, not being employed by someone else, not doing client work, not doing anything that isn't I want to make this thing today because I feel like it. Um, and and the concerns I have that, uh, that there is something in me, like you were saying, ego, attention, We've talked about this throughout, like the, you know, when I got attacked by that guy. Well, maybe I should post about this on Instagram right away, you know, and this podcast, just to wrap up has been so helpful in not only mapping what I'm seeing happening out there, but what is going on with me, what I've done, my history. And then you know what I'm doing on a daily basis, and you know these books are conversations. You know and I'm doing on a daily basis and you know these books are conversations. You know, and and and get me going.
Speaker 2:There's something in me with ego and attention and the desire for not just financial security but like financial prosperity, without being, you know, like a billionaire.
Speaker 2:You know something like ridiculous and that force in me and then I think just a a, a selfless desire to, to make work, to respond to something, whether it's through pain or frustration or, um, uh, just observing a beautiful moment on the street and taking a photograph of it, or making something deliberately as a reaction to an article, like the age of average, and not thinking at all in terms of how can I, how can I monetize this? How do I get this in a gallery? How do I get this in front of an audience? How do I submit this to a contest? How do I, how do I get attention from this thing? Because if I get attention and validation and all of that stuff, then I'm gonna like you know, when I walk into the coffee shop, people are gonna know who I am and that's important to me. I'm not saying it is, I'm saying for that part right, right, right is it and those are.
Speaker 3:That's all part of what's swirling inside of me um, I think it's just something, though, that has to be. You know, some people are blessed where they, you know they just are of a certain you know they're almost predisposed to not have that yeah that sense of it's.
Speaker 3:It's difficult, especially for people like you said, like 21st century. I'd wager there's probably a lot of younger people out there who all they know is the metric of fame and celebrity, or you know financial security, but also just you know indulgence, right, and yeah, I think it's a process. Everybody you know if, if that's all your exposure, then there is almost a relearning that has to take place. And I'm not, yeah, I just I think that it's probably a constant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I think, and I think these, these elements are swirling inside all of us that are doing what we do, to varying degrees and they always have been too like they're not.
Speaker 2:These aren't new feelings, you know they might be listen to a podcast with casey neistat and he's like, he's just flat out said like, oh yeah, I I mean, I pursued everything with filmmaking and all that because I wanted to be a millionaire. Yeah, you know, was that the only thing he wanted? No, but he's like I, I literally grew up, broke like he went down, like gas, money and welfare and all this stuff, having a kid at 15, all that stuff.
Speaker 3:And he's like I 100 wanted the money you know that you know thing like the medium is the message. Where it's like you should look for the medium to see what the medium is trying to tell you like like the medium will tell you more than the actual message that's being given yeah well, and it's like the medium of youtube in a lot of ways kind of speaks to I want to be a millionaire right, more so than like I want to.
Speaker 3:I don't know if this is always going to be true, but definitely in like, especially in like early 2010s, 2014 through 2018, maybe like the Mecca of like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:YouTube 2.0 or whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:The medium being the message. Like you know, he was making vlogs on YouTube, yeah, and like there was an artistic quality to him but yeah, it kind of spoke to that idea of like I care about filmmaking but I care about the you know a lot of people watching these videos and yeah things like that.
Speaker 2:I'm not, I'm not trying to you know and he talks about that, looking at youtube studios, seeing the views, seeing. You know all that like it. It gets to all of us.
Speaker 2:The medium kind of speaks to that artists release a movie and check the box office. I mean coppola cared about the box office of the godfather that weekend like it was important to him, and maybe again the hierarchy of intentions part of it was well, what kind of bonus am I going to get? The other part is like are people responding to this? It was also are people connecting?
Speaker 3:with this. Everybody doubted me this whole time. That too yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, he got validation. Validation, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:So, and I mean we all want validation right, everybody puts work. Anytime we put work out in the world, we want validation.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:And it might not be the direct one but there's the top.
Speaker 1:It feels good, no matter what comes to you, and says I really like this.
Speaker 3:Even if it's just reassurance that you know, okay, I'm not alone, I'm not alone, somebody else has a similar feeling. But anyways, I think that's a little bit of a hour and 22.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we're starting to get on that hour 25. All right, good podcast.
Speaker 1:And it'd been a golden afternoon afternoon, and I remember having the familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.