Stuff They Don't Want You To KnowListener Mail: Vibes, Palau, A Haunting in Atlanta and the Sinister Google Sign-in
Yenna politely asks the guys to stop ruining seafood; Little Girl on a Little Island raises concerns about US imperialism. Chris from Atlanta might be haunted. Nemesis prompts a conversation about the possibly insidious nature of various online sign-in services. All this and more in this week's listener mail segment.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show.
My name is Matt, my name is Noel.
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Alexis, code named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know, as the calindrical prow flies. It is Thursday if you're hearing this, and it is time for one of our favorite things we do on the show. In between our episodes, we have a listener male segment where we crowdsource with you. You and your fellow conspiracy realist are the stars of our weekly listener mail segment. We're going to have some shout outs around the world. We got a lot of feedback on our recent Vibes episode. We're going to explore that one of our pals in Atlanta might be haunted and there are some serious worries about signing in online. Following up as we were talking about earlier. Following up on our recent conversations regarding privacy. Before we get to that, I just went to a quick shout out at the top, you guys, shout out to our longtime listener Yena. This is just a really short one. We won't read it in full, but our pal Yenna, who was a longtime listener in Maine and actually reached out to us for using the phrase down sella thanks to our pal Andrew Howard of follow Maynor. Jenna wrote to us and said, since we aired a story about Lobster being potentially late to a couple of deletorious health conditions in New Brunswick, they haven't looked at Lobster the same and they say, I live in Portland, Maine, Lobster is like one of the best things about living in Portland, Maine. That's true, and ask if we could follow up on this with an update on the show. We will have this on the way. We've got our eyes and our technacles on it. But most importantly, Yenna, we want to say, with great affection, we hope you enjoyed the episode where we ruin caned Seafood.
If you haven't checked.
That one out, then give it a listen and tell us what you think we also got an interesting email. I think you guys saw it as well, from Little Girl in a Little Island. It's a great yeah, yeah, and this person writes to us with some strange news from Palau, which I don't believe is making a lot of a lot of waves here in the US. Essentially, Little Girl in a Little Island, as a US citizen who was born and raised in the southern West coast of the US and liked it for some time, described their childhood as the epitome of an American dream. And then when her extended family was growing older, her family relocated back to the island. And there's a lot going on in this part of the world that the US has huge influence on that the US public is not generally aware of. You know, we've talked about nuclear experiments back in the day in the Marshall Islands. We've talked a little bit in the past about other nefarious activities Uncle Sam has engaged with in you know, places like Diego, Garcia and so on. But this part stood out to me. Loved to hear everybody's thoughts. Little Girl from a Little Island says, my country is a quote freely associated state with the US so pretty much we accept usaid chump change. Think like twenty mili a year in exchange for the chance to be colonized. Uncle Sam is finally gone to cash his chips. And there are soldiers everywhere. Our once quiet skies are now filled with noisy military jets are already crowded, streets are being worn by military vehicles that are in these streets are not built for heavy equipment. There are even a couple of Patriot missile launching systems and missiles themselves on the island. I'm miserable. It's like everything I was running from followed me home. I'm devastated. US military get the out of my country. Being very polite little girl on a little island, said GTFO. But we'll do away with the niceties. When we're talking about imperialism, What do you guys think about this?
Off the top of.
The dome or there's some compelling reasons that the US would be increasing the militarization of US forces on these sovereign countries.
Yeah, strategic perhaps.
I mean, we're all getting ready for World War three. Every country in the world is getting ready for it. We just cluster bombs to Ukraine. That's a great idea.
Yeah, there are more. There are more toys on the way. Yeah, and we're doing an episode on the Chip War as well in the future. It just it seems like the people of this country, I think it's okay to say it's plow. The people here are not really being given an opportunity to say whether or not they want a foreign military power occupying slash colonizing their land.
Isn't that kind of them though? Of you know, of a force like you know, the United States military and the Navy, and I've so many other powers like that. You kind of show up once you establish a base of any kind there.
Yeah, I mean I always forget how many countries there are US military presence in and it's not like on paper we're quote unquote occupying them, but through you know, deals that have taken place in the past, those presences just remain, you know, like like Germany. I mean there's a huge military presence there and that's where I grew up. I literally grew up in Germany because my father was the choir director at a church on a US military base.
And it seems reminiscent perhaps of the island hopping strategies that occurred in World War Two in the Pacific Theater between Japanese forces and the US forces. It also these are little chess moves, right, It's kind of like how France passed that sketchy service valence law, completely cognizant that they are going to use that against domestic descent, even if it's just peaceful protesting this. It seems like a move little girl on a little island, for the US to better position itself for a possible hot war or maritime conflict with China, depending on how things go in Taiwan. That's the guess, right, Does that seem like the most obvious guess, just given the the expense involved in getting all that stuff out there m m.
And then once it's there and just kind of set up shop. You mentioned Ben in your travels abroad as well. You, but also other friends I have that have been in the Navy, you know, spend tons of time in Korea and in Japan. And I mean it really is just like we kind of police the world in a weird way. I mean, not police, it's all in ways that benefit us or to kind of keep us, you know, unilaterally present.
The force projection. For a long time post World War Two, the United States, through the Navy and through various other institutions, ensured the safety of international shipping lanes, right ensure the predictability and sustainability financially at least of global trade, and increasingly this really hot topic in the world of foreign affairs. Increasingly the current US administration is seen as pulling away from that role, kind of deglobalizing its power or its existence as an ubiquitous superpower. What does that mean for the world. No one's really sure at this point. And what does that mean if a global conflict breaks out? No one sure either. And that's why there are that's I would posit, that's why we see various world powers that want to be the next hedgemon putting their anchor holes on their anchor their anchor heads, of their footholds in places far away from home, so that they don't have to cross the Pacific to touch you if something goes wrong. And that's that's a scary thing to think about it. I think collectively it gives all of us a bad vibe.
Because it's like a segue vibes into the film. We're gonna do some Film Corner with with Ben about the excellent piece of cinema that is Vibes the movie. It should be called Vibes the movie, just just to separate it from Vibes the concepts. Sure, what happened? Why didn't they make Vibes too? I feel like, didn't it sort of have the potential for a sequel? Honestly, I'm sorry to go Vibes fanboaight for a second, but that movie is like as good as Ghostbusters. I'm just good. I will die on that hill. I really like the movie.
That's nice to say.
Yeah, it's it's definitely some. It's definitely we something we enjoy on the show, and we did. I think in that episode we did a pretty good job of exploring the concept of Vibes and not going too deep into that amazing film, And we knew we would get a lot of responses, so we just wanted to share a couple of these responses that we got. One that was really interesting was from Dan, and Dan says he was listening to the episode about Vibes and had a theory or some speculation about that study we cited regarding rating professors based on ten seconds of silent video remember that one. Nsley nuts, Yeah, because what is it If they had to write down how they would judge the professor beforehand, their conclusions were less likely to match the conclusions of the students in the class the entire time. It's very weird and counterintuitive. And Dan brings up something that I had not heard of, a phrase I had not heard of, and says, could the correlation between their rating and the rating of the students who had taken the class not also be explained by both groups making the same jump to conclusion decisions because of hereditary heuristics or whatever? And then the semester long kids not changing their mind appreciably. You know the old adage about first impressions, just the thought. Keep it up, guys, Thanks Dan. Hereditary heuristics, it's very interesting.
That's a great word. There's a Brian Eno song where he talks about the heuristics of the mystics, and I just think that's one of the most clever rhyme schemes I've ever heard.
Yeah. One of the fiction worlds I write, heuristics are treated as a superpower. But essentially heuristics is it's a fancy word for mental short cuts that all human brains use to solve problems in a quick way that is not perfect but good enough to work. You know what I mean. Someone throws something at you, then you instantly your brain makes a calculation, can I get this is just a bottle of the breeze I have here? I'm sure it's terrible for the world. But someone throws a bottle of for breeze that you your brain, without much conscious thought, will quickly make the calculation one, do I catch this? Do I flee from it?
Right?
And then how do I catch it? And that's that's an example of like touristics, right, figuring out how to untie a knot, you know, all these little kind of programmed psychological and physiological combo moves that we have and without I couldn't find much on the term hereditary heuristics. But I think maybe what we're describing, maybe what Dan's describing here is similar to what we clocked with preconceptions and prejudice, right, Like what was that is that part of the conversation where we're saying, well does the professor have glasses? Because no matter how intelligent people are, you do tend to unconsciously attribute more intelligence to people who wear spectacles. It's so weird, it's so true. So maybe maybe there are those little subtle signals. I don't know. It gets ugly when you talk about like perceived gender or race as well, because of all those preconceptions.
Very true.
Do you guys think that explain it?
Well?
I just think you could use that for breeze to smell less fearful and or disgusting. I mean, if we were doing the test again, might.
The smell of fear it washes it with a patina of like fake flowers. You know, everyone, we all know, we all know what that smell really is.
It's such a weird study.
It is a weird study. And I think people, you know, including de Grout, like the people we were name checking who are working on this, I think they're still figuring out the implications of these sorts of things. And yeah, our answer, though it does seem to be based on a lot of responses we had as well. Our answer does seem to be the concept of unconscious smell, perhaps even even as important as body language, and a little bit more secretive, a little bit more conspiratorial, because it's very rare. It's pretty rare unless someone smells very bad for you to meet someone and say I don't like him because he smells. But then again, in English, if we don't like something, we say it stinks. I don't know stuff to think about. We can. We'll keep this one pretty short. There's one more vibe shout out, and again there's so we want to thank everybody who wrote to us or called are hit us up on social media about vibes. There was one thing we should mention. It was not specifically related to our episode, but it was a great point from our friend Sean or sheen Sei n apologies and from mispronouncing your name.
There.
This conspiracy realist says, I just listened to the Our Vibes real episode and within minutes I was saying to myself, I hope they talk about Rastafarian culture and belief about vibes. So during their time in their adventures, this person was traveling around Kingston, Jamaica with some musicians and learning about Rastafarian culture and says quote, the overall message of vibes in this culture is vibes are like a communal fire that we all feed with care and are rewarded with light and heat.
Every day.
We were told to regularly align with the intuition we feel and how we connect to everything and everyone around us. Be aware of how great you are to the people you pass, the message and tone you speak, and the willingness to connect those vibes. Actual acts and behaviors of kindness and selflessness will reverberate in making one person feel good. In an instance, you will give good vibes, and likewise that experience will be passed into you. My experience, their vibes were very real and very much about oneness, and then shared some great stuff about We haven't done a ton of stuff about Rastafarian culture, but the culture is fascinating. In many cultures, selflessness is not in like reward driven cultures, let's say very anarcho capitalistic cultures. Then selflessness is not seen as an action that induces reward, but selflessness should not be enacted for a reward in the first place.
To take it a step further, it's often seen in some anarcho capitalist cultures as a sign of weakness, like how could you possibly think of anyone other than yourself? Or like how could you possibly look at portraying yourself as helping others? As anything but a grift as anything, but like a means to an end of like getting what you ultimately want, like very self serving. So I mean, you know, it's it's important, I think, to bring ourselves back to this idea. I mean, it's just referred to things, you know, like karma or whatever, which I don't know if I am all in on the spiritual aspect of that. I think it's more of a functional thing. Like I think, to me, karma can be measured by like the good works you do come back to you because your reputation precedes you, and people know about the things that you've done, and they know you to be a person with quote unquote good vibes, and therefore they'll think of you when when an opportunity arises.
You know.
I don't think it's some mystical force. I think it's literally just being a good person and training people with respect.
You know.
Yeah, I do have mystical force too. It's it's kind of a cultural framework.
I mean, any.
Study of evolution shows that the natural state of the human being and of the primemates in general is to attempt to collaborate and attempt to help when possible, you know, And that's a good positive note for us to end on. We would love to hear continuing thoughts about vibes. We would love to hear your thoughts, of course, about expanding US imperialism.
You can reach us.
We read every email we get where we're conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also drop us line our number one eight three three std WYTK. We're going to pause for a word from our sponsor. We'll be back with more messages from you.
And we've returned a couple quick shout outs here. There's an anonymous so and so that asked about our Cambridge Analytica Classic episode. Wanted to know when it was originally published, and that was from late April twenty eighteen, quite a while ago when that first came out. So people have been remarking that in that episode, we're really all three of us. The stance of it sure seems like Facebook is listening, but we have no way to prove that it's listening.
I think that's the jupiter.
I think that's still kind of the same thing that we're in. I mean, we're all kind of in that same boat, right. Nobody at metas slash Facebook is saying your phone is listening to you, and then that is directly, you know, transferring into the ads that you get served.
But question comes up a lot, the observation comes up.
A lot, exactly. But in response to that classic episode, we also had someone named Ryan who wrote to us who told us about an instance when he was loudly and we imagine humorously singing Drops of Jupiter in a publix, only to find himself being served Facebook ads for a particular wine titled drops of Jupiter, which sure is a dang coincidence.
I think it's from one of the guys from the and the seminole early two thousand's alt rock country band Train.
There you go, it's getting Train ads for singing their song in publics. Or maybe it was just a coincidence.
Was it in publics or just in public? It was in public, in public, in published, got it.
We also received a message from someone named Chris in Atlanta who is gonna tell us a story. It's almost the full three minutes, so prepare yourselves to listen closely. Here is Chris's message.
Hey guys, how's going? As is Chris from Atlanta? Here, longtime listener to the show. Love it. I especially love hearing about ghost stories and anything paranormal. I had an experienced years ago that will kind of creeps me out. I'm wondering if I'm haunted. In college, I gave it a young woman and she had some odd mannerisms. I noticed early on she would occasionally pause and stare off into the distance with the blank stare, and I kept getting the feeling that maybe she was theen things there that I could not see. I eventually asked her about this, and she revealed to me that she practiced WICCA, and she in fact considered herself a medium, and that she could sense spirits and could in some way converse with them telepathically. Basically, she told me that there was a little three year old girl a spirit that was somehow attached to me and had been following me for several years since I was a young child. Of course, I thought this very odd and didn't believe it, and we eventually broke up. Years later, I'm at a family get together and my little sister is an old story of when we were kids. I was probably ten or eleven. We were exploring the woods out beside behind a farmhouse that we lived in in Dylwan Virginia, we unwittingly stumbled upon a very very old family grave site. These were graves that dated back to pre Civil War times. It was very old, very creepy, and in the process of exploring this site, my sister and I tripped slid down a bit of a hill and accidentally knocked over a complete headstone. It was the headstone of a three year old girl who died in the early nineteen hundreds. And as my sister is recounting the story, I got the biggest chill up my spine. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. Oh my god, we desecrated a grave and this spirit has been haunting me, following me around my whole life. I don't know what do you guys think. Have you ever done a show about Wickan ideology? Is it possible to actually be a medium and see spirits? I hope I'm not haunted? But thanks guys, love the show.
Oh yeah, sorry it cut off there was right at the three minute mark. Chris Din call back again and just to make sure everything will well, And it did, and we just played it on the air. Chris, so thank you so much for calling in and telling us that story. Man my goodness. Questions do you think do you think knocking over the headstone of a grave site? Do you think that is desecration?
If you did it by accident, I mean intent? Does everything?
Right?
The most boring, most accurate answer probably be it depends on the culture, right, because in some cultures graves are moved or exhumed after amount of time, you know, and there are different things one can do to move it in a respectful manner. And then also, you know, if magic, if we accept the idea of magic or the supernatural, is kind of having a weaponized psychology aspect to it, you can also perform some active obedience to let like to apologize. Right, that's fiction and fiction folklore and real life anecdotes are are full of that. But I think it's if we're talking about the supernatural, it's about intention.
Right.
Did you knock over the gravestone with a malicious intent? Or was it an accident? Do you feel bad? Et cetera? Those are starting questions.
Got you no, okay? My wonder is that the headstone is a completely separate thing from the actual grave, right, it is in the same vicinity of it. It's represent its representative of the remains that are you know, in the earth six feet down or whatever. But it's not the same thing as the person, you know, the physical body and where it is in the grave.
That was my only questions, Like, well, I mean, is graffiting a mausoleum, you know, desecrating a grave?
You know?
I mean, all of these things technically are kind of part and parcel of the same thing. Again to your point, depending on your perspective, like your religious belief or your belief, and just the burial process, like yeah, I mean, if you look at history of certain cultures and their burial grounds, the way they mark the grave is sort of part of the whole deal, you know, I mean, and like and those things can be imbued with some sort of power, you know, or at the very least be connected to the departed.
It's really interesting me just taking the concept that let's say spirits or whatever lingering energy does remain after death, and then we'd have to suppose that that energy stays around the physical remains, right, rather than in a different place where perhaps a person died, or where a tragedy occurred, or where their greatest memory, their strongest memory was. It would be like where they are physically in space and time, so you kind of have to take that as that's what happened. Then you have to take well, this spirit, for whatever reason, when it was disturbed by the headstone getting knocked over, chose to basically follow these kids or one of the two kids throughout life to then one day be at least seen in some way by the significant other of this person. I don't know. That's a lot for me, but I can totally see, Chris, why you're into paranormal and you know, these kinds of things because that having that happened to you, or having someone tell that to you, right, and then rediscovering this thing you did in the past, that's God. I can totally imagine why the hairs stood up.
And nobody has proved that these things don't exist. That's the flip side of the coin that people don't mention.
And I don't know if there's an answer to like can someone be a medium or like is wiccan practice? Does it work? Quote unquote like like a lot of it is all about what you said, Ben about intent, and like what does it mean to you and how how do you use it in your in practice? You know in ways that like help you with your It's the same as religion. To me. I have some people that are very close to me in my life who consider themselves to be witches. And it's a thing, you know, and it is all about the belief.
You know.
My cynical side sometimes does a little bit of an internal eye roll occasionally, but then I sort of have to slap myself back out of that, you know, high horse to be frank, because it's about what this person believes. It's not about what I believe. I don't know if I believe in like spells or in things working to malevolently people or positively. But it's about intent and it's about in the same way we're talking about vibes. It's about putting acts out into the world, and it's about how those acts connect with other people, whether they know it or not. I don't know. It's a lot to unpack, it really is, but I do find it fascinating and I think it all boils down to belief and intent.
Yeah, well said. There's also there's also Chris an episode we did not specifically on wicked beliefs, but on the concept of witchcraft. They're not one, but several wherein we were fortunate enough to speak with some friends who are practicing practitioners of bevy of those belief systems, and please do check that out. Also, at the risk of sounding sounding cliche in here, it is very true that you are you are not alone in these experiences, Donny. People have contacted us over the years on a regular basis and they're saying, you know, they're saying very similar things. I have encountered something that I cannot explain right, and I am looking for a way to understand it. And this is just my personal stance. I believe it is tremendously unhelpful for folks to automatically dismiss another person's experience that way, right, because we're not that person, and we're not and that's something we you know, I'm very happy that we never do this on the show, and we never also, to be clear, our track record of conclusively explaining some of this stuff, it's not that great because no one could do it for thousands of years people have tried.
I also think the impulse to immediately want to debunk something that someone is passionate about is a little weird. It's kind is not cool. It's like the actually guy. You know, it's just like, who cares? Are they hurting you? If they're hurting you and and they're like really forcing something upon you, then okay, game on. But if they're just doing their thing and it's just a belief and it makes them happy or it makes them feel some agency, some sense of agency in this chaotic world of ours, why would your initial reaction be to try to convince them that it's bolted. That just seems really rude at the very least, and megala maniacal and kind of sociopathic at the most.
Also, those actions can often come from someone's own personal trauma that they have fully export. So sometimes when people are being gross to you, it's because something happened to them yourself.
We're just asking you to check yourself, like think about that, you know, Like we've all been through trauma, you know. But it's it's important to have a little bit of a semblance of self awareness when you're interacting with other people. And if you can do that and take a look at yourself, maybe it'll cause you to not do that. Maybe you'll have more friends.
Well, hey, that was Chris's story. Let us know what you think about it. Chris. If you got anything else to say let us know, or anything to add to it, you can always reach us one A three to three STDWYTK Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. We'll be right back with more listener meal.
And we're back with one last piece of correspondence from you, Yes, you, This one comes from Nemesis, and I'm not going to read this. There's some really nice, lovely complimentary gushing about the show at the top, but I'm going to leave that out lest we sound to self aggrandizing. But I do love the the intro here the salutation dear esteemed gentlemen, Gods of podcasting and champions of conspiracy. Apologies if this has already been covered on a previous episode, as I've only just started working my way in time on your back catalog. In the last I've noticed ever increasing attempts by Google to gain access to my data by requesting that I log onto websites using my Google credentials rather than the websites existing username password system. Websites forums that I have used for years have suddenly logged me out and up pops a Google prompt hinting that it will be so much easier to never have to remember multiple passwords and user names and just use Google for everything. As far as I can remember, this first happened on eBay, but it has happened on multiple others. I'm well aware of many websites giving you the option to use existing social media credentials when creating a new account, but this is the first time that I've seen one using an attempted aggressive takeover. I assume that Google must be offering the websites a fee for allowing the access, which implies the websites are complicit in the process. My thoughts are that this is a reaction to the initiative started by Apple when they stopped background app tracking slash tracing via an iOS update, where you had to opt into being tracked in the background, and since most didn't realize they were being tracked, opted out. I read that this had an immediate effect on the quote value of private data being quote stolen. This restriction and the chains to the more widespread use of ad blockers and VPNs means that previously freely available data streams and hence revenue, have been closed. The reaction to the loss of covert acquisition was the more direct approach of offering you a service so uninformed majority grant them direct access back to the data that had just been blocked. In the UK, at least, TV Google adverts had been broadcast with a young man extolling the virtue of the latest Google phone, with the line, while you already use Google for mail, maps, searching, browsing, smartphones, etc. Why not get a Google phone and complete your indoctrination. I added the last word winky face emoji. Your thoughts. I am happy for this email to be broadcast if deemed interesting enough. Well, it has been deemed best regards Nemesis. I don't know. This is just kind of like a roundtable here, fellas. Like I've certainly seen Facebook doing this. Apple definitely does this. There are certain apps or websites that all of a sudden will let you log in using your Apple thing. And it gets confusing because I'll go to one that I'm pretty sure I've already made an account on, but I've forgotten what the account is, and then I'll do the Apple version of it. Then all of a sudden, I have like this weird, redundant account that's linked to Apple, and then like all my stuff from the account that I already created isn't there, And it's just God, it's a mess. Yea, all the Internet is a mess. It's become a real trash heap. What do you guys think about this? Because all of these things that were just so easily accessible to Google, they were the king of the mountain. Now they're not so much anymore, and so they're having to like find little back doors into getting this data.
Now.
Yeah, it was.
Really popular ten twelve years ago to sign in to like various places is with your you know, as a single sign in with one social media thing. It was usually Facebook, I think.
But it's back though, Man, I'm seeing it all over the place.
But yeah, please, Well it's definitely returned in force, and it does feel like a reaction to to some of the tightening, the privacy tightening that's happening all over the place. But I you know, I don't have anything to directly point to that.
Well, I mean, when you agree to do it, there's a lot of fine print that you probably should read that many people aren't. And that fine print basically says that when you log in using that social media account, the website that you're accessing has access to that. I always assumed it was to benefit the website or the other service rather than benefiting Google. But I guess it's a two way street.
Yeah, well, I don't know if you guys have been getting these messages. If I access Gmail on any browser or in any other way outside of an official Google app or Chrome, it gives you a pop up message that says basically like, you should be using this on Google Chrome. Click here and you can do it right now, go and switch over to Google Chrome. Do it now on Google Chrome, which.
Is you know ful first of all, yeah, yeah, that's.
A mouthful, but just the concept of they want you on their platform as well, not only using their services, but do it on their platform because they've got stuff built in they you know, they can track for their own purposes.
What do you think then?
It's absolutely true, Nemesis. The the things that you're looking at are not occurring in a vacuum. What Matt and Miller describing here has accelerated and will continue to accelerate in the future. Talking a little bit about this off air, the age of privacy in the modern sense is a short lived historical fad. The Internet will not retain the illusor the illusion of anonymity for much longer. The data that you generate by your movements, including your psychological movements, are valuable in an aggregate form to these private entities that simply are too new to be effectively regulated by old school legislation. Now, why is every place insisting on a sandbox? Why does every large company of this sort want to be the doorway that you have to walk through to access the wider web. Well, it's because right now there are a lot of big players, but there's not a single there's not a single ring to rule them all.
Yet.
That's what the race is about. It's an arms race for data, and it's an arms race for control of the door. And you're going to see it like it's going to be related to things like sesame credit. We called it. That started as opt in. Now it's very much can't opt out. And what we're seeing is history being made in real time. It's just going to continue. There's not a way to stop it.
Well, it's the idea of the Internet, you know, initially the open Internet, like the pipes of the Internet being content agnostic, meaning that like whatever flowing through the Internet, you can't throttle it or like mess with it, depending on what it is, like, nobody gets a better deal necessarily. So this is like different megaith megalithic providers or services that are essentially becoming the largest, you know, sources of traffic on the Internet, trying to become that thing right and to be able to like police you and control, maybe not control you, but the very least have access to like everything that you're putting out there, you know, whether it be your data, whether it be you know, how you do commerce, because a lot of these platforms also offer like e commerce solutions and like you know, and and I don't know this for a fact, but I have a feeling that a lot of these like pay later services, they're probably owned by a company that has interests in all of these particular you know, platforms, and they're pushing one over the other for a very self serving reason. So I mean, it's like all of this is to try to like push back the hands of time on the idea of open internet. To me, maybe I'm like overthinking it or like overstating it, oversimplifying, but that's how it feels. That's why I just said the Internet's a mess, like with you know, it's just not what it used to be. I hate to be that, like you know, Boomer saying things used to be better or whatever. But it's getting so cluttered. The same with like the streaming wars or we don't know what service a certain show is on. This is bouncing all over the place, and like everyone is just vying for supremacy and in doing so, diluting everything. Like everybody is so fed up with all this stuff.
Right, I don't know. No, Yeah, I agree. I tend to agree with that. There's also there's a larger existential threat here, nemesis, and it's one one that keeps me up sometimes. Which is which is the following? And I think we've talked about it a little bit previously on the show. And the best comparison is an OS update right, planned obsolescence of your favorite overpriced gadget, right, which isn't proven exactly, it is proven, it's been proven, and it's under the guise of like they learned the lesson from the Phoebus cartel, so now it's under the guise of maximizing performance. Right, that's why we're slowly bricking your late model iPhone. But this is useful as an analogy because I posit to you that the human brain, the operating system, and the hardware of the human brain, wasn't prepared for television, much less social media, much less the Internet. Human species is running into a technological limit and may not have the cognitive hardware to interact with this technology in a productive, non harmful way. But to your point, Noel, turning back the clock there, screwing the lid back on Pandora's jar is a herculean, if not impossible effort, and you're gonna see the erosion of privacy continue, Nemesis. What's going to happen unless there is a catastrophic event. What's going to happen is that in successive generations, after a couple of backlash reactions to this kind of invasion, successive generations are going to grow up with this id that never leaves you know what I mean, the online version of your social Security number, a unique identifier, and that will follow them like a shadow all the days of their digital lives.
I mean, it's only one step removed from the way things already are been. I mean, like my kid and her cohort, they have no illusions of privacy, like I mean, well, okay, they you know, they try to. They try to control it in as much as they can and keep their Internet interneting to a certain close knit thing. It is the reason that things like Isstagram stories for close friends as a thing, right. But they also have no illusions that like this stuff is out there and it's not causing them to like shrink away in horror and like not put anything out there because it's so fun and it's literally how they do business, it's how they make friends, it's how they do all of this stuff. So yeah, they don't have any illusions of this. And honestly, for them, they don't know what a social Security card is or it ideas or whatever. For them to all of a sudden be told, yeah, this is also on the Internet forever, they'd be like, cool, can I keep looking at TikTok? All right? Cool, I'm good. I don't care. Like I think there's a that generation doesn't care. And I would argue in certain ways, it doesn't matter because that stuff can be found, it can be hacked, it can be stolen, So why not just have it out there. I don't know, I'm sorry, I'm being nihilistic, And maybe flippant. But seeing my kid in the way she lives her life on the Internet, it's different than the way we grew up because we came into internet one point oh, already kind of grown, you know what I mean. Like, I think we probably all had AOL and stuff when we were like in our late teens, and then DSL modems didn't come out until we were in our late teens early twenties maybe, and we had to kind of adapt, you know, we were sort of like standing astride to eras of this stuff. These kids are growing up with it at its like peak, you know, and now it's like it's this whole shuffle, you know. I don't know, it's just very interesting. It fascinates me. It scares me, but it also fascinates me. But I'm also like, I think in the way we were talking about showing gorillas TikTok videos and how that like you could like screw up their brains, gorillas are designed to work in a very old school model. When I say old school, I just mean a primal model of like, you know, how they interact. Our kids are growing up with a completely different model. So it's true, I think if they're smart about it. It's not wrecking their brains, it's changing their brains. But I don't think that means they're all totally they're adapting, you know, you have to adapt because this does not going away.
Yeah, they're not ft because of that, They're ft because of the planet's dying.
Oh there you going and think the show with me wanting to jump off a pier. Sorry for Jesus. So you're right, man, where we're focusing on that, we're asking the wrong questions. Should we be showing gorillas TikTok videos? Yeah? The real genie that's out of the bottel isn't a technological one. It's a existential you know, like actual facts one to quote Lauren vocal Boon.
Also, it's important to realize that if you're hearing this, you have agency. Your personal decisions do matter, right, and we're very glad you're here. It is easy, of course, for us to fall into nihilism. It is dangerously, delightfully easy to practice optimistic nihilism. Nothing matters, Everything's going to be okay. But we cannot remove ourselves from the equation, folks. And this doesn't mean that you're gonna end up being the future version of a boomer saying, back in my day, we're had to use our hands to touch buttons to talk to the internet.
And destined for that fate unfortunately, I.
Mean, but it doesn't have to be curmudgeonly nor cantankerous. The future is as exciting as it is terrified, and there are amazing things on the way. So please, please, please do your best to stick around.
And do your best to reach out to us via the Internet. Yeah, because that's the way.
The rumors are true. You can find us all over this early version of the Internet, and they're still more than one door to walk through to reach us. We're talking Instagram, we're talking TikTok, we're talking Friends to, We're talking Pinterest, we're talking Farmers Only. We're talking for Square. Remember for Square, Back before people were a little more cognizant of the dangers. They were like, I do want people to know, when I'm not at home, exactly what it was where I'm at.
I thought four screw was like a restaurant y kind of thing. It was sort of like about reviewing places. But I guess it was geo. Yeah, tagged that was the whole deal, wasn't it.
Yeah, And then you could become like the mayor of a certain place. Anyway, you can find us all over there. We still keep our venerable YouTube channel up. You can see some of the I think objectively really good work we've done there. And if this internet conversation, these conversations about big data have put the capital F fear into you and you prefer to go a little more old school, there are two other ways you can always contact us.
That's right. You can give us a telephone call and you might hear your voice if you give us permission on one of these weekly listener mail episodes. Our number is one eight three three syk. Give yourself a clever nickname. Whatever you want, have fun with it, go crazy, and please do let us know if it's okay to use your voice on the show. If you don't want to do that, you can also get in touch with us the old fashioned way by sending us a good old email.
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