Podcast 186 Transcript, Otter

A transcript for Episode 186: Am I Being A User Right Now (2022-07-05).

Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.

Transcript

Cortex 0:00 I think let's get this party started. This was a good post. I'm making a note here,

Jessamyn 0:11 huge success.

Cortex 0:14 It's hard to overstate

Jessamyn 0:16 the links is quality matter

Cortex 0:21 filter. This is episode 186 of the medical podcast. I am Josh cortex Millard.

Jessamyn 0:32 And I'm Jessamyn. And we have with us

Cortex 0:35 today as well.

Loup 0:37 Hello. Hi, everyone.

Cortex 0:39 Hi. So we are, we're finally getting another person talking on the podcast again, for the first time in forever. And I'm very excited about that. And

Jessamyn 0:51 thank you for your feedback.

Cortex 0:55 Think you've already in theory, I haven't read it. So

Jessamyn 0:57 thank you for your cards and letters. We'd like to have someone else on the podcast we hear you loud and clear.

Cortex 1:06 But yeah, so here we are. We are podcasting. And, and that's that's it. That's the That's the plan. Now the hell are you guys?

Jessamyn 1:16 Pretty good. And you know, if you missed it, we also did a half month podcast talking about vampire video games and the television show sufferance.

Cortex 1:28 And we got six comments in that thread. So a lot of people were excited about it.

Jessamyn 1:31 I think one of them was mine.

Cortex 1:33 Yeah, I'm not sure any of them were about either of the specific things, either. I think it's just people being supportive.

Jessamyn 1:37 So I appreciate that.

Cortex 1:40 I announced unpromoted extremely niche discussion of a couple of media properties. That's that's clearly the future of this stuff. But uh, but yeah.

Jessamyn 1:55 Well, so we should probably talk about why we asked you to be on this podcast besides that people asked specifically for this.

Cortex 2:03 Yeah. Well, I mean, that that seems like a good plan. Well, I mean, there's the you know, we are in the the post transition area, it's, it's how I am -

Jessamyn 2:12 You'd like to say we're in the post transition. Transition area for you.

Cortex 2:17 Yes. Yes.

Loup 2:20 Much the beginning of it? Yes, sir.

Jessamyn 2:22 I quit my job. Yes. Transition era, maybe we

Cortex 2:28 can all agree. We're in the I'm unemployed era. And the things I used to be doing, Loup is doing many of them. And one of the things I used to be doing was owning the company and Jessamyn, you're doing that. And

Jessamyn 2:43 I though, how's that going? Well, I

Cortex 2:45 mean, you own it. You know, everything else.

Jessamyn 2:48 I have the stock transfer, but the business isn't licensed in my name.

Cortex 2:51 We're still Yeah, we should be able to take care of that.

Jessamyn 2:53 We.

Cortex 2:55 Yes, we

Jessamyn 2:59 just, you know, I wasn't gonna bring it up. You brought it out?

Cortex 3:01 Yeah. No, it's dangerous for me to get into anything that involves me getting shit done. That's a real own goal on my part, but I respect that. It's summertime. Yeah. It's fucking warm here, too. But yeah. So yeah, so you to doing things YouTubed both know more about what's going on on Metafilter in the last couple of weeks than I do. And that's very weird and exciting. And glad to have you here to talk about it and your experiences and whatnot.

Jessamyn 3:29 Well, I feel like we should talk about Loup a little bit first, because I firmly believe people are probably bored with me, and you know, the ups and downs of my life. But we don't yet know anything about the ups and downs of Loup's life and Loup if you care to share, you know, give us your 30 your 30-second Loup elevator pitch and we can go from there.

Loup 3:52 That's actually funny, because I mean, I've been here for a while now, right? And now when I think about it, I've been like super quiet. I'm one of those people who are in the background all the time. And so why what can I tell you in the past 15 years of my life, I literally anything in my life has been internet related. I mean, most of my jobs have come from the internet, most of my friends relations, everything. And that ties a lot into why I'm here curse. Because I've always known about I mean, I've known about Metafilter for like 10 years, but always lurking and never had a profile, which was like, oh, go check this out. interesting conversation. And then when I realized that there was an opening for a place to work there, I was like, Yay, this is amazing. And well, things have develop here and and I mean, to me at least there says quite nice and quite interesting because it aligns a lot with the things I do believe in, which is I am from a generation that was basically raised with the internet in how it happened, right. And to me, it's one of those things where I saw it from being this technology that was very promising. And we expected the world to be a better place. I want to bore you with how things turned out. So I'm one of those believers who think that there's still a lot of work to do to make the internet a better place. Right. And I actually think that this is one of the place I believe the Blazers I believe in. That's pretty much Oh, sorry. No, that's pretty much what I have.

Jessamyn 5:43 I'm just I'm looking at your profile and noticing you have a birthday coming up in a couple months. Yeah, I'm a Leo. I'm, so my birthday is a couple of weeks after yours.

Loup 5:58 Oh, there you go. That didn't know that either. way.

Cortex 6:01 I don't believe in astrology.

Loup 6:07 I mentioned it because because people care. And I have this thing where well, if you care about that bit of data, I'm going to provide it but myself, I don't even really know what that means.

Jessamyn 6:19 All I know is the Virgos are like the uptight neat freaks, which is like both kind of me and absolutely kind of not me. And more to the point, like my birthday, I believe this year is on American Labor Day, which is like kind of fake Labor Day, compared to May 1. And, and this year, like every year, I always do this thing called that I call the Virgo month of leisure, where it's like you're uptight, 11 months of the year, take this one month to relax. And then I always comment on what a joke it is that it's always the busiest month of the year, save maybe the holidays. And it's just always very funny.

Loup 7:01 You know, it's actually interesting for me, because there is a saying that by the end of August, always in the past years, it's a busiest part of my entire year. So it's generally like my birthday. It's something that I get to celebrate or do something about it by like, mid September or so. Yeah, I just got used to it. I mean, there's no way around it.

Jessamyn 7:28 Yeah, I think this Yeah. I mean, I think that's good, though. I think having a birthday month is I don't know, I mean, I know there's a back and forth on AskMe Metafilter, about how much grownups should celebrate their birthdays. But I gotta say, I am definitely on like Team birthday celebration.

Cortex 7:48 I mean, I think they should celebrate them as much as they want to as a thing, right? There's, there's obviously no moral absolute here. It's like, you know, do what feels good for you. And if someone's doing something that you don't think you would do, don't do it. That's, you know, mind your business.

Loup 8:04 Also, I think it's a cultural thing around it. Because for example, here, here where I come from Costa Rica, everybody does actually the older you get, the more important it is, in my second family, as from day one, I mean, we are not blood family, but they are they are my family, I was raised with them. And with them is the other way around. You just don't celebrate them

Jessamyn 8:29 ever. Right? Not even for children.

Loup 8:32 No, not at all. And it's a cultural thing. We're how they celebrate things is like when you get married, for example, in the lecture, so you will keep presents to people who go to your wedding ceremony. And I'm like, Isn't it the other way around? Right. And so, yeah, I do think that it's one of those things that you can adjust to your culture and the people around you. And at the end of the day, just have fun and enjoy it in the best way you can.

Jessamyn 9:07 Yeah, exactly. I think in the United States, our understanding is like you know, birthdays are more for children. And I'm just always like, why like, we can all do a thing

Loup 9:22 as of now, I would say anything that you can celebrate go ahead and do it cuz joke, we need to celebrate things. It doesn't matter how little they are.

Jessamyn 9:35 Yep. Yeah, lining lining up those W's I think is how I read it on the internet and how I think it is important.

Loup 9:50 And that actually, it's to me, it's interesting, because I mean, it's one of the conversations I've been having with everyone recently. It's this thing where I remember And I don't know, we used to be worried about climate change and a couple more things like capitalism and stuff like that. And now it's like, no, you don't have three or four things you have like 18. Good luck.

Jessamyn 10:16 You don't have the luxury of only worrying about capitalism right now.

Loup 10:19 Exactly. So that to me also means that every little thing that you have in life that you can actually enjoy, do it. So for example, when it comes to the birthday, for me, it's one of the important things where I am like, I don't know if I want to celebrate it, but having a reason to actually get together with the people I care. I will be like, Yeah, I'm totally celebrating my birthday. Actually. It's just pretextual. And it's a way to get them together.

Jessamyn 10:48 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And the before times, a lot of times, I'd be like, All right, we're having a big dinner out at, you know, one of the few local restaurants and it's on me, because it's not actually it's pretty hard to run up a huge tab at any of the local restaurants. And, you know, not not a big outlay, everybody gets kind of the one day hookup, and then everybody gets to kind of hang out with each other. Like, I'm waiting for that to be a thing we can sort of safely do. Moving moving forward, like I'm still like, pretty much knowed indoor dining, but like, we're in an outdoor dining weather, and a lot of our restaurants finally have sidewalk service. And yeah, we'll we'll see couple months. Yeah.

Loup 11:35 One of the things I do a lot is cooking, because I know that whenever I say I'm going to cook something people will show up. Hmm. So yeah, that's, that's my way to actually convince people come, I'm like, Yeah, I'm making something. Whatever it is pay. Yeah, you name it, but people will show up if they know there's food.

Jessamyn 11:57 Oh, my gosh, pay. It's been so long.

Loup 12:00 Well, I mean, I've been trying to convince you to come here for a while I fly in and stuff but your decision not my

Jessamyn 12:09 gotta say, you know, I have definitely my my, my my rule for me right now is like, no more airports, no more airplanes until things stop being so unreasonable, both in terms of COVID and like staffing and everything else. But that it's very tempting. And I have people, friends of mine who live in my town here, which is, you know, small town. 4500 people. And they have a place in Costa Rica that I think they like Airbnb, a lot of the time. I don't know where it is. I'll figure out where it is. But they're a bit they've been forever, like, come to visit come and I'm like, Oh, I haven't been to Costa Rica since I was in my 20s I think

Loup 12:50 and also there is the thing where in Costa Rica, you're never over three, four hours away from anything in that weird. I mean, if you have to drive three hours or four hours, it's like it's far. All right, pretty much over that. It's one hour away. So

Jessamyn 13:08 which is glorious. You can you can go to the mountains, you can go to the ocean, you can go to Yes. And the amount of birdwatching, I could do there was was truly, like just like more different kinds of hummingbirds. We have like two kinds of hummingbirds here.

Loup 13:25 That is crazy. I literally, as I mentioned, I just came back from Mexico City, right. I had been there before. And it didn't strike me as much before. But this time, I was like, oh, so city, yes. But like nature and stuff. I forgot. Since I've been stuck in Costa Rica for so long. Due to the pandemic. I forgot how much I got used to nature. And now when I'm traveling, and I'm like, Oh, now I do see it, too. Now, I do understand that this is intense.

Jessamyn 14:01 Yeah, I went to Montreal for a work trip a little over a month ago. And, you know, my trails lovely. And the people are lovely. But it was like a city. And I just, it was fun to walk around. It was fun to have like a place you could get food at 10pm. Like, you know, but I had to reacquaint myself with traffic, and like just congestion, you know, there's just people everywhere, even though like, you know, masking was pretty good. And also like, just, you know, My kingdom for a tree to stand under after a while, just because it was very, it was very concrete. And that's just kind of not how it is here.

Loup 14:45 Though, I have to admit one of the things that I've been missing a lot since I have been stuck in Costa Rica for so long. It's I mean, sexual seasons. I mean to see. Nice to see the fall. I mean, right now The thing that to me is driving me crazy is knowing that we are in the middle of the summer. And here it's like sunset will be always like five 6pm. That's it. Right? And you have days during the summer, I missed that so much, right? Yes, Costa

Cortex 15:17 Rica has enough more South India, you don't get the big long stretches for

Loup 15:22 here you get two things. It's either rainy or not so ready. That's pretty much it. There's no phones. There's no winter. There's no summer, there's no nothing. It's like, Eternal Spring, something like that.

Cortex 15:38 Yeah. Well,

Loup 15:41 but I miss it.

Jessamyn 15:42 I didn't really think about that that much. But yeah, the length of your days doesn't change the way it does. You know, up here like, Josh, remind me, I am further north than you are or no,

Cortex 15:54 I'm about 44. I don't remember I'll have to look at about

Jessamyn 15:58 I think, actually about the same. Yeah. One of the, we just had Solstice. And it means that, you know, longest day of the year, and, you know, it's glorious having, you know, there's still be enough light to kind of walk around, you know, at 9pm. And, you know, it's been a little too hot this week. But like, like, you know that it's going to turn around right? Like for everyday that's too hot this summer, there'll be a day that's too cold in the winter, and you can kind of flip flop back and forth, but at least you know, things are, they're going to change. And it makes it easier to deal with whatever stupid whether you're dealing with or your short days or whatever. I don't know when the sun comes up, because boy, I'm not around to see it, but sunset. Lovely.

Cortex 16:49 I'm gonna say, based on Google Maps, and its Mercator projection, I am in fact a couple degrees farther north and

Jessamyn 16:58 Oh, interesting. I mean, that makes sense. Just Yeah, but I'm never sure. I always know. It's just not what I expect.

Cortex 17:06 Yeah, I mean, it's so much snow, you're where you are than it ever is here. And like, it's not my latitude. It's that we're like, by the ocean. Well, I mean, you're by the ocean as much as we are almost, but like we've got the Cascades right here and it's not so much with that mountainous microclimate over in New England.

Jessamyn 17:27 The ocean to me, interesting. Pacific Northwest, they've repainted the Space Needle,

Cortex 17:34 orange, good they

Jessamyn 17:37 chop I was very excited. I you know, things I know nothing about and didn't think I cared until I found out that I cared.

Cortex 17:45 No Yes, no, that's that's Seattle news. Portland are not to know. Like, oh, did they paint their nice little, you know, showpiece good for them?

Jessamyn 17:58 Is that true? Is there really like a Portland Seattle? Kind of?

Cortex 18:01 Not really? I don't think so. I think there's that like, if there is anything in terms of like sort of rival cities, it's probably one of those things where like, smaller college team has a rival you'll read with like a Ivy League team and an Ivy League team has never fucking heard of them yet. Like you know, it's not quite that much of disparity with Seattle and Portland but Seattle's like, it's the bigger city it's the what city it's the bigger city of the two for sure. Like it's definitely got more weight to throw around if you're gonna get into like some sort of like city influence. Bullshit. But what do they got? They got Fraser and we've got Portlandia that sounds a lot better until I actually said it out loud. Because

Jessamyn 18:41 so much. He said everything aggravating.

Cortex 18:48 Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Jessamyn 18:52 Which is why I don't know anything else about Portlandia

Cortex 18:55 Oh, that's fine. I barely watched it. Although it's in our

Jessamyn 18:59 flag means death. And I just use their Yeah, and it's to ignore him. And enjoy that show nonetheless.

Cortex 19:09 Yeah. A lot of people were in our flag means that I enjoyed it as a sort of like comedy cameo. sort of show sort of the same way the Mandalorian was Loki doing that, like a bunch of comedians have just had like five minute parts in an episode of Mandalorian times in elaborate makeup or their faces covered? Yeah, like who was it? Like? Yeah, a bunch of people bunch of people. Brian Polzin is like just a guy giving them a ride at some point. And then I think he gets blown up, like on screen for like, two minutes and gets a line and then it's fine.

Jessamyn 19:45 But Brian Paul Zane is like the world's biggest nerd so that must have been Yeah,

Cortex 19:50 well there's there's there's a lot of fucking Star Wars nerds in the comedy world who like showed up on that show. So and then the cast bill burr who was like a major character and like the second season, he was like in two different episodes basically playing bill burr in spades. He's just like, being this you know? Hey, fuck you. I'm from Boston.

Jessamyn 20:09 I somehow never started watching season three and I don't know

Cortex 20:14 why two cents three come out I if it has whatever was after

Jessamyn 20:17 the Bill Burr, I mean,

Cortex 20:19 yeah, like I just Yeah, I think that was season two and I don't know, I don't know anything about season three.

Jessamyn 20:24 I should probably make sure I even know what I'm talking about

Cortex 20:27 as succession call back anyway. If you've been watching anything in particular Loup, any any media content, do you want to go off on a tangent about?

Loup 20:43 I mean, the thing is, reasonably, I haven't been watching as much TV because of two things. First, lots of work in second. I've been avoiding screens because of the pandemic, specifically, I've been more like, Okay, go for a walk, go fight nature. However, there is a thing that to me is I love Westworld. And actually, they just started the fourth season. Yes.

Cortex 21:13 Yeah, just a reference to that being back on. I got about halfway through the second season, and then like, got distracted. And that was not a good season to get distracted halfway through because like, it's clearly two different timelines and two different Bernards and something going on. And I'm just gonna have to start from the start of that season again to like, figure out what the hell's up.

Loup 21:32 I totally recommend it. To me, it's the acting that actually I love and then science fiction, like I'm totally into science fiction. Then aside from work Westworld now that I mentioned science fiction, I tried to watch the patient that they made foundation from Isaac Asimov. Oh, yeah. And it's interesting. I mean, what they do is kind of tried to go over to things that are not covered in the books. The books are very about what happens, but the the actual series are about how it happens, right. And it's interesting, but I mean, there is this thing that when you read a book, then you see that optation, you will never be satisfied, right. So yeah, I mean, those are the two things that come to my mind recently. Other than that, I have been avoiding screens. I mean, most of what I do at this point is reading, but watching TV is not so much

Jessamyn 22:37 that I had it wrong with the Mandalorian. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I have. I have only seen the first season and so second season, I guess the bill burr season is what I haven't seen yet. And the third season has been announced but not not completed.

Cortex 22:54 All right. But Star Wars Show update.

Jessamyn 22:59 It looks like Luke and I are both fans of space westerns. According to Wikipedia, like Yeah, Westworld. Mandalorian Farscape which I loved the expanse which I loved the books and was deeply unsatisfied with the show. And Firefly.

Cortex 23:16 I'm about let's see, I'm for books into the the expanse books. Oh, nice. And just sort of taking it as the holds come along. So every two months, I read another one. But that works out. Okay. But ya know, I'm really enjoying it. I'm really curious to see where the book series goes. Because I liked the show a lot. But I started with the show. And I still felt like the show just really kind of WoW, wrapped up in a way that was like, Yeah. So like, it feels like there's the books like yeah, the show ended.

Jessamyn 23:50 Books ended, but like the last book just came out fairly recently. Yeah,

Cortex 23:54 yeah. No, the show ended. I feel like fairly abruptly like, it feels like maybe they don't decided not to keep making seasons or found out they weren't gonna be able to do so on the terms they wanted. I don't know. I haven't followed the production at all, but it felt like it felt like hitting stop in a sort of like,

Jessamyn 24:13 right, like, Okay, now it's over. Yep.

Cortex 24:16 So I'm curious to see where the books go.

Jessamyn 24:20 I think you will like them. I finished the Mars trilogy, and I've just been burning through books, and I feel like maybe, maybe Asimov's Foundation like would be a good next set of books because I need those. The Mars trilogy was good, but I didn't love it. But I did love that the books were very, very long. And I know that's just a weird thing to like, go choosing your breeding from but like, you know, I mean, there's

Cortex 24:52 something about having that like sort of long runway on something if you get into it and you can just sort of stick with it. You know? I always had trouble with short story anthologies. And not that I didn't enjoy the short stories, but like, you know, I didn't sort of get in a groove as much like I had to, like, mix it up again, every like, you know, 12 or 20 or 30 pages.

Jessamyn 25:14 Yeah, exactly. Especially, you know, depending on how uneven the sort of selection is, or why they're all sort of selected together, kind of.

Cortex 25:24 Yeah, so I mean, I'm also an album person, and like, a entire discography person, like, I tend to, like, find an album, I like and listen to it a bunch. And then if, you know, it's not a fluke, by that band, like, do that for each of their other albums. And eventually, like, you know, spend a ton of time with that, those individual albums and those artists rather than doing sort of like playlists, D, shuffle, listening,

Jessamyn 25:47 right? Or like Spotify, find me more music like this one.

Cortex 25:52 Yeah. Which can be nice. I mean, like, it's nice to discover new stuff instead of just be stuck in like, you know, my grind, but, but also, a lot of the times, they're recommending stuff. I'm like, man, and then yeah.

Loup 26:04 Well, I mean, myself, I hyper fixate quite easily with things. So when it comes to music, it's like, oh, that sounds nice. Let's listen to the whole thing. And let's listen to everything they have ever done, side projects and everything. And then if something, any subject is interesting to me, I'm the type of person who will be at 3am. reading all the Wikipedia pages that are related to that and being like, why am I now an expert on something that I didn't know anything about yesterday?

Jessamyn 26:38 Well, and that's a good quality to have, especially if your next quality is not. Now I've got to get on the internet and argue with other people who have 30 years experience that day, because I've been reading Wikipedia all night.

Loup 26:51 Well, actually, that's the thing for me, in any platform I've ever used, in most cases, I tend to enjoy more lurking reading and listening to what people have to say. I even though I have strong opinions, I'm not the person who will go into long discussions about things, mostly because I mean, a lot of the time I don't know where people is coming from and what it means to them. Right. So I just tend to enjoy more just sitting and relaxing and seeing what happens in grade into what people have to say.

Cortex 27:27 Yeah. I think that's a it's a, it's a healthy quality on the internet, healthy quality for working with other people on the internet to

Loup 27:39 a certain degree, because I do think that the people who are vocal helps shape perspectives, right? Yeah. So if you have something important to say, it's important for people to listen to that. And that's, to me part of the beauty of the internet search to a certain degree, right? I mean, when you go into Metafilter, I get to read people's perspective, some things that I am like, oh, it never crossed my mind that you can say this way. Interesting. And I might have some of those, I just don't get to share them as much.

Cortex 28:15 Yeah, well, yeah. And that's like, I think that's a big part of it is like recognizing, like there is the value in and the need for like, actually saying, Okay, this is something you know, I have feelings about. And this is like important to, you know, be clear where I'm coming from. And then there's the instinct to like, oh, but now there's a textbox. And I can put words into it. And like finding the difference between just reflexively putting words out there. And finding that moment where, hey, this is going to be a contribution. It's, you know, described like that. It sounds really fucking trivial. But like, that's a huge part of what's tricky about the internet, and part of why moderation is necessary. And part of why moderation is tricky. And part of why throwing a whole bunch of people onto a worldwide network and just letting things happen. Sometimes it doesn't go great. That's partly because yeah, like having that sense of like, oh, this is listening time, oh, this is actually need to speak time. As you know,

Loup 29:11 it's a skill set mentioned that it's to me, it's interesting, because, for example, so right now I'm hosting a friend who she's from Costa Rica, but she is living in Finland. So she came for the summer here. And so her, my partner and myself, the three of us, pretty much tend to consume the same type of content, but we use different sites for that, and you can understand and you can easily tell how the behavior isn't terribly different, right? So we right, same, same same information, different behavior, and that tells a lot about how communities are built and how people perceive these things and how even technology shapes how you do things. One of The thing that I particularly love about Metafilter is this thing that it's not gamified in any way, right? While you have all those sites, I won't say which ones where everything is super obvious. I mean, come on. But there are these sites where people no longer care. It's not any more about what they have to say it's more about how do I people? How do I get people to like what I'm saying? And then yeah, and yeah, nobody says anything seriously, anymore in those places, right? And I'm like, come on, I want to see the real thing.

Jessamyn 30:33 Right, right, or something you actually care about instead of something that's, you know, designed to provoke a response. And I think that sort of harkens back to what you were saying before Loup about the idea of, you know, worrying about capitalism, that like, you know, part of part of what we get from the internet is the fact that there are a whole bunch of people essentially using it as like, resource extraction in various ways, right, that they, that they not only gamified, but they sort of fine tune for engagement in order to do whatever other sort of capitalistic things that they're that they're trying to do. And I think that's why you see, you know, businesses like Twitter that are always kind of tweaking their algorithms or whatever, Facebook, I just something happened on Facebook this week, which changed, like, I use this sort of Facebook native ad blocker thing, and something changed. So all of a sudden, it wasn't working the way it used to be. And I was just, you know, Facebook is like, has a lot of utility for me interacting with local people, right? Because they're not using other social media. And that's where they put their events. And all of the sudden, I was seeing a Facebook that was full of ads, and I hadn't before, and I was like, Oh my gosh, is this what people are dealing with?

Loup 31:52 Even when you change? Experience? Yes. Yeah.

Jessamyn 31:55 On a day to day basis. This is wild, you know, because so much of it was like, you know, recommendations, because you liked this one thing, maybe you want to hear about like Catholic Church sex abuse, and I was like, what, why? What happened? Like, oh, my God, but, you know, that, I think affects engagement, like anything

Cortex 32:17 with a kid in it, you know? Stop.

Loup 32:20 Sorry. No, it's, it's terrible. Because there is this thing work. To me, it all comes down to the revenue models that we as humans fucked it up at some point, like a decade and a half ago, somewhere there where there was this thing, I mean, to me, it's super clear, because for example, we were using the internet to forget ride sharing right? Now we don't have ride sharing, we have over right, which is an entire, it's a lot more revenue, but a lot less community and humanity to it. Then you say it with Airbnb and stuff like that all of these services that are mostly about the money and not the community behind it. And, and to me, that changes so many things. Right. Right. I am still a firm believer in the early stages of the internet. I mean, of course, that's why I'm here. But But yeah, I mean, it's to me, it's shocking in and one of the things that to me, it was hard to come to terms with who was it for example, I think it was this year or last year, I'm not entirely sure that the most visited the website in the world used to be Google. And now I think it's this year, it actually get to be Tik Tok, where I don't even have an account. I mean, I get to see some content, right? But I am like, a now the more I talk to younger generations, they are like, Yeah, I learned this through Tiktok. Right. And I'm like, Well, did you actually check any of the sources or anything? No, that's pretty much how I actually learned about

Jessamyn 34:06 source. Yeah, I know, I sound like a weird cranky librarian here. But like, oh my gosh,

Cortex 34:12 it is not an attribution heavy culture. Like I love tick tock i It is like, easily my favorite social media sort of platform among the big corporate social media platforms in terms of me just enjoying spending time fucking around on it. But yeah, it's like it's, it's almost part of what works about it is like there is zero friction for things like writing things up and annotating and being dutiful, like, no, that's not even culturally in the lingo of tick tock, and that's pocket crazy. But

Jessamyn 34:46 well, and then, of course, we're seeing what we're seeing in the United States, right, where, you know, the Supreme Court made their decision based on facts that actually weren't true, but somebody said they were true. And so they're like, move sounds right. This was the prayer in school, you know, the the coach kind of guy, it's fine. If you don't know more about it, you don't have to. But essentially, you know, the the guy who was the coach was like, oh, no, I never, you know, I only pray on my own and people are welcome to pray with me. And then there's like, literally a photograph that sort of my art included, which was like, Nope, this is you and your team. Like, hello, now? Yeah. So I am slightly concerned about that, you know, I don't want to be in a post factual world. But

Loup 35:32 it's actually interesting, because I've been thinking about that a lot. And one of the things is I was, so there is this concept that, to me has has been in my mind for the past weeks, or a couple of months, probably, which is how technology, technology becomes transparent, right? So I use reading glasses. And it gets to a point where it's no longer something I use, it becomes part of how I see things, and it becomes part of myself, right? Sure. And

Cortex 36:03 ematic at that point,

Loup 36:04 exactly. And that happens to every kind of technology we have, I mean, from stick that we use to reach things to the social media, we use to phone to all of this. And so I'm totally there with you. And the thing that facts do matter, and how in depth to me, it's important. And so it's hard to see how to see a world where people will say anything they want, but where are you coming from? Do you actually have anything to back it up? People are not really asking that anymore in many places, right, that are all the replaces where that still happens. But that, to me it it's a shift that I think it's I'm worried about that a lot.

Cortex 36:54 Yeah. It's like, yeah, it's, it's not even that nobody does it, it's the continuing shift away from it as any kind of reinforced expectation. And that's, that's the fucking hard thing. Because like, it's not a bunch of people like getting up one day to say, you know, what, I'm tired of facts. You know, like, everyone's just being a person and some people are being shitty people with some intentionality at times. But even most of the people who are being shitty, are more being shitty, because of the, the, as a product of like this system and the environment that they have been exposed to. And that environment is not doing a good job of helping people not be shitty and knee jerk and reactionary and whatnot. And like, it's it's so hard to figure out how to counter this kind of trend that is, you know, driven more by the weird circumstances of changing technology and profit motive. And there's there's no money behind incentivizing being a well informed reader and citizen, basically, like,

Loup 38:05 well, actually, sorry to interrupt you,

Jessamyn 38:08 but let us know Loup. Well, that to me,

Loup 38:13 actually, it's strike strikes point that it's super important to me about what is going on with the site right now. Which is, I've seen websites and things I care about at similar stages already, right? Which is like, from here, what do we do? And one of the things that I've seen happening all the time as they start making decisions on how to monetize and they either go well or go wrong, but they changed the entire blueprint of what the actual service website or product was. Yeah, that's

Jessamyn 38:45 no longer entirely it is from that.

Loup 38:49 Exactly. I mean, it's one of those things where decision to actually bring power back to the community to actually make it more of what you like of it. It's a thing that believe it or not, never happens. Never in the history of internet, you will see how this ABS it's like take all the beauty of it and then transform it into a business model that doesn't go anywhere and don't help humanity in any way. Yeah, so I particularly one of the things why I show up to work every single day it's because I'm the way I say it, we're actually making an effort to actually make better filter a little bit more Metafilter by allowing members will actually have a say in there. And that to me it's one of the things that the internet rarely rarely does.

Jessamyn 39:38 Yeah, we're really hoping I think all three of us to be able to do kind of a low level subtle pivot to a little bit more you know, community steering wheel than metal filter has had before but with the idea that it should be run, you know, more by the community which isn't to say like the community clocks in and clocks out maybe like Loup does or you know, Josh did or I'm supposed to sorry, Josh, I keep calling you Josh and not cortex. I hope you don't mind.

Cortex 40:11 I both have always been fine. Okay, the only other the only thing that's ever weird is like a couple times I feel like in Metafilter earlier this year, a couple of times someone who does not know me was really proud of this thing. Josh Maillard is like, Well, okay, that's my name. I'm not shy about it. But also,

Jessamyn 40:27 you know, kind of like your mother be like, yes, like, Yeah, you get down here.

Cortex 40:32 Yeah, we don't have a you use my full name to point out how angry you are at me sort of relationship. Like you couldn't be that angry at me. But like there's other places on the internet. But

Jessamyn 40:42 I know, I know this, Josh. But What's your middle name? Edward? Wow. Yeah, I

Loup 40:49 didn't know any of that.

Cortex 40:51 I never will. I mean, I'd never use it. You know, I've always only ever gotten by Josh too. And I very recently, I may have said this on a previous podcast, but like, there's good food carts around here. It's one of the things I like about my neighborhood. And, you know, busy busy food cart pod where there's like 12 different food carts and people eating and whatnot. They're gonna yell your name from somewhere and not everybody yells very loud. And Josh sounds like like, it's nothing. It's just, it's just an AW sound with some wind around it. So I've been going, I've been saying when they're like, Oh, what do you want to know? What's your name? I'm Joshua at the food carts, because that's three syllables. That's

Jessamyn 41:26 that's your real first name.

Cortex 41:28 It really is Joshua. Yeah. But, uh, but it carries, you know, like, they have to hit three syllables. So there's like a melody to it, rather than just like,

Jessamyn 41:37 ah, yeah, Jess is absolutely unhearable. Like, and if I hear people talking in a group, I always think they're saying, like, they say, just and I think they're saying my name. Yeah. But if I say Jessamyn, then we've got to do that. How do you spell it Hokey Pokey for 30 seconds.

Loup 41:55 With mine is funny, because it's this thing where I mean, at this point, I just allow people to pronounce it however they want. Right. But But I mean, it's, it's it's interesting, because actually, if you're technical about it, it's actually pronounced loo. But that this point, everybody pronounces it Loup. Which

Jessamyn 42:18 Wait, wait, wait, do it again.

Loup 42:22 Loo.

Jessamyn 42:23 Loup.

Loup 42:25 No p, just loo. Loup. Oh, yeah. Yes.

Jessamyn 42:31 Hey, good to know, then.

Loup 42:34 Oh, don't worry. I mean, at this point, I thought myself like that anymore. Yeah. Which, by the way, scene, by the way, in case you didn't know that's actually a wolf in French.

Cortex 42:48 Hey, lupine. Hey.

Loup 42:52 My blown.

Jessamyn 42:53 This is great. So glad we've had this conversation.

Loup 42:59 That's how you get to know people. Yeah. I mean, I'm one of those who I'm an open book if you get to talk to me, but otherwise, I'm a very quiet person, I guess. Once you get me to talk, I don't stop. I admit.

Cortex 43:19 That's always been my experience with like, like doing social situation stuff. Like I don't I wouldn't say that. I like an introvert but like, I'm definitely an introvert until we've talked for five minutes in terms of instincts. And then and then like, yeah, I will as longtime listeners this podcast. No, just absolutely not shut up. But totally take that little bit. You have to like hit that first checkpoint.

Jessamyn 43:43 Right. Tell me a little bit about gnomic, Josh. Wow, well,

Cortex 43:48 man, I have feelings about gnomic these days, like not gnomic itself, but like, the more bullshit has, like undermined the basic institutional functionality of a notion of democracy. The more a game that's about sort of satirically, examining democracy does not feel like anything I'm ever going to want to play again in my life and like, oh, yeah, let's,

Jessamyn 44:11 let's see how this falls apart. Yeah, I was talking to the guy that runs our newspaper in town. And, you know, we were talking about this or that, and I was like, well, you're, you know, I talk to him like, you're friendly. You're chatty. He's like, Oh, no, I hate people. And I'm like, What? No, you don't we're having a great conversation. He's like, I like you. And I'm like, You don't hate people. You're just shy. Like, just look for him get to know people.

Cortex 44:38 He just pretends to like people because he wants those pictures of spider man. I've J. Jonah Jameson. I don't know I was just let's firstly, please continue.

Jessamyn 44:52 But like it was interesting, trying to sort of delineate like, what's introvert extrovert and what's just kind of shy versus outgoing. Weighing. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, like I can be, I'm less initially shy with people than I used to be, because I would rather get along with people than have them be like, She's weird. To the extent that I can control that. And part of that does involve kind of like, you know, idle chit chat, and how's the weather, and how's it going, and whatever. And I used to just resent it, and hate it. And like, if you read AskMe, Metafilter, you'll see a lot of people who resent it and hate it. And you know, but once I sort of figured out kind of the social purpose of it, and I could make it make sense to me, it's become something that most of the time unless I'm exhausted, you know, I actually enjoy and like, you know, Tim, who runs the newspaper, like, he talks to everybody all the time. Like he goes, he takes photographs for the paper, which is interesting that you mentioned it. And, you know, so he has to go into strange situations constantly and be able to be like, hey, but he's got a status position, which I think makes it easier for him. So that one of the things he's not doing is jockeying for you know, are you more important to me? Am I more important than you like, confusing, confusing? I'm just happy he likes me. And I'm waiting for, you know, they gave me a little test at the newspaper, and I'm worried eventually, they're gonna regret it.

Loup 46:23 And now that you say that, actually, to me, it seems puzzling, because I'm one of those people who are like, I don't actually like people until until I get to know them. Right. Yeah. And I think it's because there is this threshold where you actually have to develop empathy. Right? I know where you're coming from. And that, to me, it's something that, that as a generality, I can't have it that easily. But when I actually engage with someone, I entirely changes, which I think it's, it's just really interesting, because, because that's how you actually engage with people how you change your mind about how you see things. It's weird when you actually engage with them, right? Yeah,

Jessamyn 47:09 yeah. It's like a muscle you flex kind of get better at it.

Cortex 47:13 That's the this is the conversation about this stuff always remind me of sort of meetups which I miss. And resent the fucking pandemic for

Jessamyn 47:24 talking about the apps while you were rebooting actually. Yeah,

Cortex 47:27 yeah. Yeah, everybody missed me having to reboot my computer because my voice turned into a robot that all happened before we started. Because this old fucking Mac workstation the last the last last computer metal filter ever would have paid for. And it's been a few years now. And

Jessamyn 47:45 I finally got rid of mine yeah.

Cortex 48:14 One of the things I really like about meetups for metal filter is and this probably applies to other kinds of meetup as well. But for me, metal filter is by far and away the most common reason I've ever gone to a meet up with random people from the internet or whatever, is like you have a starting point. And, you know, I, whether whether I should describe myself as an introvert, or just described myself as someone who has anxiety and is bad at initiating small talk, either way, that's one of the challenges of like, sitting down with people you don't know already. And just like starting to socialize, it's like, you have to break the ice, you have to get things rolling. And when what you have in common is like literally anything anybody remembers that happened on metal filter in the last week or month? That's a lot of content that you know, from the moment you walk in the door, you have as a shared point of interest, which is great. Because like, it's not even like, Oh, what have I personally been doing in this cream suit we have in common like, which is great when you have that, but like, it can be challenging. You're like, Oh, but I haven't really done anything lately. But if it's like metal filter, other people have done plenty of stuff on metal filter. You can talk about like, Hey, did you see that thread? And if that's yes, okay, let's talk about if no, let me tell you about it. Like, it's such an easy on ramp. And it's one of the things that just sort of gets you talking in a way that I really kind of appreciate because it lets because yeah, people can sort of come out of their shell when they have something to talk about that doesn't feel effortful. And that's a big thing. Like, that's like, I feel like this is the first time you've like been on a podcast with us for like, Oh, we're going on 50 minutes now and I feel like the first five minutes was like kind of like, well, okay, we got to figure out what is the rhythm like we're not saying this out loud, but there's this like, what is the rhythm? What are we going to talk about it? cetera, et cetera. It feels a little bit stilted. And at this point, we're cross talking over each other very naturally, because we sort of, we found that like that thing. And it's not even like, it's not the first conversation you and I've had, we've had a bunch of fucking zoom calls over the last couple years. But like, it's, it's a different context. And I don't know, I think it's great because you get people opened up. And then that thing you're talking about with the empathy, it's a lot easier to develop a sense of empathy for other people, when you start engaging in sort of like a natural sort of, I'm interested in what this person is saying and how they're thinking way instead of like, I've got to figure out what I have to say now. Like, that's not a good place to try and

Loup 50:39 sad earlier, I think it's actually one, it's one of those muscles that you actually have to exercise, right? Yeah, yeah. So for me, it's been what, like 1413 years working remotely, I mean, I, I rarely get to see people. So one of the things that I've realized is that you need to find ways to connect with people, even though you won't see them face to face all the time, or you will talk to them just 30 minutes in one month. Right. So how do you humanize that? And that's so important, because if we are not able to do that, it's we're in trouble as humans in general, that's the way I see it. I don't know things that

Jessamyn 51:22 go ahead. No, no, no, no, you go ahead.

Loup 51:25 No, it just crossed my mind because it made me remember at previous, undisclosed website, they used to work for there, they have like, dirt member base was so passionate. So there was this particular person who was Yep, perfect definition of the word troll. Right, was one of the last least positive people you could ever talk to online. And then when they came to Costa Rica, so we met face to face, we hit it off right away. And we were great, great friends and like five minutes. Why cuz you get to humanize them for the first time ever. Right? You realize that we have testing COMM And we have, we're both passionate about this. We just go about it different ways. And so having that little space to actually understand that we actually have more in common than what we think with we do. That changes a lot to me.

Jessamyn 52:29 Well, and that's definitely happened to me at like, you know, historic metal filter, because I've been going to metal filter meetups for whatever, 15 years now, something like that. 1617 like, because we had them in Seattle when I was still, you know, yeah, I met a filter person there. And then 90s. And, you know, I did meet people who were like,

Cortex 52:49 for the role knew very little bit the 90s when you could have been a meta filter person, I

Jessamyn 52:53 guess, I guess, sorry. I'm thinking of like my own blog, which was 97, the early aughts, then, but yeah, meeting people who had like, let's say, kind of acerbic. I'm not sure if this person is even really real, really espousing their real beliefs, opinions on the site, and then getting to meet them. And either being like, Oh, I get it, like, this person is either extremely socially anxious, or, you know, has this or that concern, which is why they present themselves in that way. You know, what really changed, at least for me, and especially for like, you know, then moderator me changed the whole vibe of how I felt like that person was interacting.

Cortex 53:37 Yeah, well, it's such a, it's, it's such a weird, interesting, complicated thing. I would say for me, one of the things that like, for better and for worse, one of the things for me is like I've always felt I had like a pretty decent capability to get into that sort of like theory of mind, headspace empathetic space with people without necessarily a ton of info like, you know, I mean, Jessamyn, and Luke, you have both at different times, been involved in lengthy parenthetical conversations with me, where I'm trying to sort of unpack someone's motivations to try and understand where they might be coming from, and what might be the point of miscommunication and how we can sort of like gap that and whatnot. And like, that part is not necessarily difficult for me, but figuring out how to approach like, the problem after having done that theorizing is trickier because people are people, but one of the things is a real recurring thing is I can develop this sense that like, I think I know where this person is coming from, but unless they feel like they know where I'm coming from, or understand or believe that I have a sense of where they're coming from, that doesn't matter because they're going to be operating from a point of sort of, like self protection and defensiveness about it. Like, that's one of the things you see with people who are shitty, like, you know, in a specific context, but you meet them and it turns out, they're not like just actual shitheads it's like, it's usually they don't operate from a position where they assume they will be understood or where they assume they will be given the benefit of the doubt or be met equally on stuff. And like

Loup 55:10 that's one of the things that I actually admire from you a lot, which is that you're always willing to do the work to actually go and meet them and humanize that person that. I mean, a lot of people in the internet can just see people as the words they put in, right, you actually do have a clear idea that there is a human behind the keyboard. Yeah, and that sounds like basic to us, I guess. But to a lot of people, that's not really a thing. Well, and that's

Cortex 55:37 one of the challenges with like a site like meta filter or anywhere else. And I think metaphor does better. But like meta filter has just as much a challenge with it as anywhere. It's like, how do you get everybody to be in that headspace all the time? How do you get everybody to be trying to remember to be empathetic, and to try and stop and say, Oh, I only have a couple paragraphs from this person who I don't know. And I'm having reactions to it that are based on sort of dealing with a blank slate, instead of like, thinking about why is this person saying what they're saying? And what's the context that's coming from? And, you know, it's like,

Jessamyn 56:09 a ton that I put into it. Yeah, yeah.

Cortex 56:12 And expecting everyone to do a tremendous amount of work in interpreting things every time. It's like, unrealistic, but fostering, like, going back to the idea of like, what is the culture even encouraged in the first place, you know, you know, meta filter is not going to solve the problem of fact checking, but meta filter, can maybe continue to work culturally to solve its own problems of, yeah, empathy and sort of assumptions and figuring out the lens.

Loup 56:39 There, you're touching on one of the key things for me, which is that, on a very basic level, when we talk about what moderation is, a it's actually this thing, where you actually want to kind of do your best to remind people that when you are discussing any subject, right, for you, it can be theoretical. And that's it. But for some other people, this actually derives Deus Ex essentially affect them. So you have to, if you bear that in mind, that changes how you talk about it. Yeah, right.

Cortex 57:13 And I feel like a lot of the growth of site has shown over the years on a bunch of fronts is in sort of accomplishing that culture, like there is a much better general understanding on the site and general set of expectations about that than there have been in the early days of the site. And you know, like, conversation now versus 1520 years ago, on any number of topics, you know, you'll look back to the old threads, it's like, oh, and people now are like, hey, no, actually, that's not cool.

Jessamyn 57:41 And I think having that codified, um, you know, in terms of like, you know, the content policy, the privacy policy, that guidelines, the, you know, what are microaggressions give you something to point to, so that when you tell somebody, Hey, maybe you need to kind of retool this because of this thing. I feel like that is helpful. Yeah, like gives people it's sort of a jumping off point where they can understand the expectations, which I think is one of the things we've heard from users over and over, that they prefer.

Cortex 58:16 Yeah, it's not it's not that those documents by themselves solve the problem. But those documents create a framework in which people can better understand and better refer to, through the expectations in sight. And it becomes, yeah, sort of some some, some bedrock and some, some foundation for the individual user decisions and actions and attempts to reinforce a culture. Because like, none of it happens, unless people buy into it. You could put up any list of rules and guidelines you want. But if people don't take it seriously, or don't care about it, then

Jessamyn 58:48 or if moderation is not going to back it up, right. I mean, that's Twitter and all their trust and stuff, where it's like, yeah, sure. But like, well, that's not what you actually do. So what does it mean to have documents that say that that's what you're doing?

Loup 59:05 To me? That's actually one of the things that, that I mean, I, I could go on for hours about how it. Let's use one specific example. Let's talk about Facebook for a second, which I hate to do, but it's one of those places where I can't tell you how many times I flagged something because it's ridiculously transphobic. Right. I won't say exactly the things I've seen, but I mean things that you're like, there's no way this is close to okay for anyone. Yeah. And then you flag it and they're like, Yeah, nothing wrong about it. Go on, just ignore them. Yeah. And that's shocking, right? I mean, how can we live in a world where a side as big as them can do those things and they don't really care, right? I

Cortex 59:58 mean, that's why

Jessamyn 59:59 I I saw a really interesting analysis of that. Talking about I don't even remember, I think it was like serbo Croatian disputes, right, that, that part of the issue is, you had, you know, an out group that was being sort of online terrorized by an in group, but the people who are moderating are more likely to be from the cultural background and from the language background of the in group. And so even if they kind of saw what was going on, they might not have a particularly nuanced understanding of the debates, but they also weren't at the table, even of the level of having the power of being moderators. And so, you know, I think I think this was even more of a deal, you know, with the Rohingya with with some of the stuff going on in Myanmar, and, you know, the people who are or in in China with the Uighur like, you don't have Uighur moderators at Facebook, you know, you have Chinese moderators, who may be downplay the issues that are involved with sort of the weaker sub population. And, you know, it's the argument for having a much more diverse workforce. And, you know, trading them appropriately to sort of understand in group and out group dynamics, which maybe if you've always been part of an in group, don't, aren't even visible to you, you know, like, I've learned a lot of metal filter, just listening to people talk about weight weights, and I'm not involved in the conversation, but just reading along being like, oh, you know, it's, it's, you know, it's the this is water effect, where, like, I didn't even realize, but listening to other people talk about it, who are different from me, helps me learn. And if I can also shut up while doing that, I'm not also making it worse. And, you know,

Loup 1:01:53 I think this, this goes back to revenue models and how a business is built. Because for example, the way the works for site as small as Metafilter, which percentage of everything is moderation, how much care is put in there, while I, I am talking from experience because I literally used to, I was directly in touch with the trust and safety team at Twitter. And what they have, it's actually people who will do it in bulk, right. So they have to review reports, like so many of them, that most of the time they have it's used in to just gobble over the amount of reports you get, and very little of the areas into actually learn about the issues that are being reported. And you don't have the knowledge to actually handle all of that. Time to research it. Exactly. And so that's not sustainable in any way.

Cortex 1:02:51 Yeah, this is this is why I was laughing about it ago is like I was catching myself wanting to go into a long rant as I am want to do about like, like you said something Loup about like how it's, it's it's bizarre that like, a platform as big as Facebook is like, letting this stuff happen. And like, it's partly because it's so big. And it's partly because the way it got big was trying to make money off the thing. There's, there's no clear, profitable way to do an ethical amount of moderation on any of the big social media platforms, because they scaled in favor of growth and metrics and profit, instead of saying how like, do we have a foundation that we can actually scale up responsibly? Like, who is

Loup 1:03:38 I remember about, what was it like, seven years ago? I was at well, I already said at that Twitter's headquarters, and we were talking to her trust and safety team. And one of the things that crossed that, to me was shocking, is they had their own team of developers, aside from the normal development team, they had one just for trust and safety to where they could request tools and features and things to build in no time, right? Sure. And I was like, Oh, those are amazing things that you can do with the resources you have. But then you realize that that's just one side of the story, right? Then there is this thing that you are growing so fast, and to the point where you no longer cared that much about things are happening that are being said. So you get to a point where what people say is not that important. It's just that well, you don't want people to put bomb threats and bomb threats in your site. Right? That's as far as so you go. And I'm like, well, that's that's very shady.

Cortex 1:04:43 Yeah. Oh my god. Okay. Not having bomb threats is not an acceptably nuanced bar for fucking moderating an online.

Jessamyn 1:04:53 And remember, remember when Trump got banned from Twitter, and there was a whole bunch of like, screenshots that were leaked of what their moderation tools looked like. And I don't know about you, folks, but like, I remember looking at them and being like, this isn't even this, oh, this is very good.

Loup 1:05:12 Like, oh, yeah, no, no, no. And it gets to a point where it becomes very political. Now that you mentioned Trump, for example, it's one of those things where I swear I wasn't there at the table, but I'm pretty sure that that decision was made just because of the public relations side of it. If Trump was saying that, but he wasn't that visible, they wouldn't have cared. Right? Yeah. And that's the thing that it's concerning, is you need the people who are at the table making decisions to actually care about what people are saying and about, because that changes entire blueprint, the entire website, how it is and how it shapes how people see things, right.

Jessamyn 1:06:01 Yeah, Twitter went recently from like their reporting, for if you wanted to report a tweet, it changed, where it used to be, you know, quote, using the reply feature to spam unquote, was enough of a reason to report or block someone. And now, that same sort of rule or guideline has been changed to using the reply feature repeatedly, to so if somebody just replies to you with a whole bunch of like, buy bitcoin crap, you know, you can still block them. But you can't, you know, you're not going to get that account shut down. And one would assume they aggregate those reports. And there's some back end mechanism that'll, that'll go to that, but to what you were speaking to Loup, the user doesn't see that and so all the user sees is the website doing nothing, and they don't feel safer or protected. And it's

Cortex 1:06:57 a fucking like, six click process to seemingly have nothing happen. It's just It's

Jessamyn 1:07:02 lots of clicking. And Twitter also has this thing. Now, I don't know if either of you to know about this, but called birdwatch,

Cortex 1:07:09 which has seen it. Yeah,

Jessamyn 1:07:12 I've signed up for it. And what birdwatch means is, when you read a tweet that's like from somebody, and it's some garbage statement, you can add a comment to that tweet, if you're a part of the people in the birdwatch beta, that, that then can get evaluated by the people in the birdwatch beta, so that when somebody sees the tweet, it has like a little, like, you know, this has been, you know, read more about this or whatever. And so somebody could be like, you know, this isn't true, what they're saying, Here's a citation, or they're saying this word, but that's not what that word means. Like, you can add context that might not be available in the tweet itself. Now, you know, to be honest, I think most people aren't going to be using it. But it was really interesting, especially with the Supreme Court decisions this week, you know, a lot of people are trying to sort of get their clicks on with hot takes about this, that or the other. But it's the first time since I've been involved in this, that, you know, I've had the ability to both add commentary, but also evaluate others commentary. And for the most part, you know, I sort of agree with what many people say that, like, the truth has a bit of a liberal bias or, you know, the liberal, whatever, that I think there's a lot more people from the right, just making crap up. And so it's interesting to see the kind of birdwatch approach to that, being able to sort of add facts and commentary without polluting the discourse with a lot of people yelling back and forth, for example. Yeah. And I don't know how you, you know, get on this beta, or what you can do. But I've been, for me from a community moderation perspective. It's very interesting seeing sort of how it's designed to work. And it'll be more interesting to me, if they do any public reporting on how it's actually working, you know? Yeah.

Loup 1:09:11 And that's an interesting one, because I mean, it all comes down to resources, right? I'm sharing. sites like Facebook and Twitter, like they are huge. So they do have resources, but then you think about the amount of content that has been created, and how problematic it is, or it can be, and then you realize that the numbers don't really add up. I mean, you don't have enough people to actually review all the reports with the time it actually takes to actually make an informed decision on something but it's been reported. So we are seeing change in humanity and in technology right now, where these are things that we as humans are trying to address and companies are trying to address in ways that I mean We're still gonna have the right answer to all of them. I remember back in the days where, for example, there was this trend where people were going into Amazon to actually add reviews just for content purposes, you know, they were just falling reviews.

Jessamyn 1:10:18 Right, and you can find some time still, they're fun,

Cortex 1:10:21 like milk jug reviews, it was one of the classic ones back in the day. Let's see if I can find that actually.

Loup 1:10:28 Right. I mean, there are so many of them that are super funny, but then you realize that you have a feature that was not intended for something like that, and then it explodes. Right? How do you say something like that? And I mean, particularly when it comes to the huge, huge sites, you'll see that? I mean, they are failing terribly and tell us because they see it from another perspective, which is domain thing. It's revenue, not necessarily content, right. And that to me, I mean, it sucks. It's, I mean, again, it's I definitely think it's a generational thing I was born in in a time where I was a teenager, when the internet came, and I was like, this is going to change everything. This is going to make our life's perfect. And well. I mean,

Jessamyn 1:11:25 well, that's teenagers are teenagers, right? Like Sure.

Cortex 1:11:47 Well, we are about hour and 10 minutes in here. And

Jessamyn 1:11:53 11111 By my Yeah, yeah. Oh,

Cortex 1:11:57 that's a good number. Exactly. 186. I don't know if we want to just keep yammering, which is fine, if we want to try and if feels almost silly at this point to try Nugen normal post content. So I found a link to some Amazon reviews. And that can be the one link for the show. If we want to do it that way. I also

Jessamyn 1:12:19 have a shout out that the job that I put up, I believe it was oh my god, this is me starting to talk before I um, June 2, so when was the last podcast? Yeah, so um, I, I think we were talking about this trash that I posted a job for a rewrite of my stupid book list that was in antique PHP, yeah, from the arts. And I found a meta filter user who took that job, and did significantly more work than I was expecting that job to take. But I guess it was a bigger job than I thought, but he was a delight to work with. And that project is now finished. And I just wanted to give a shout out to Mike who's username? I of course don't know because I only interact with them.

Cortex 1:13:26 We are professional podcasters Hey, you've been doing this for years.

Jessamyn 1:13:31 I wasn't expecting to do this part of it

Cortex 1:13:35 was your idea. You know

Jessamyn 1:13:39 what I had time to? Just go vegan? Look,

Cortex 1:13:46 is there any particular post anywhere on Metafilter that you liked in the last month or so?

Jessamyn 1:13:51 Nightwood? Nightwood. Shout out tonight, would you fix my stuff? Thank you so much. It's great. And I love it. Sorry, no.

Cortex 1:14:00 Would What did you night moves?

Jessamyn 1:14:05 Oh my God. That's what I was doing in high school. I was listening to Bob Seger and the silver bullet band.

Cortex 1:14:12 Nice, is it? You know, it's a polite thing to say.

Loup 1:14:23 So interestingly enough, now that you ask about posts that I'm interested in, here's the thing as much as I love the blue, I spend most of my time in ask and the five saying no. And the reason why it's because I actually think that you get slick. So specific questions, you know, things that are hyper specific, and you get points of view that I'm like, Oh, I never looked at it this way. So I literally most of my time in the site. It's not even seen what is new. But I actually go back in time, I started scrolling back and see previous questions. And I'm like, oh, that's something I want to know more about, what what people have to say about that. And that's where I spend most of my time, when it comes to the other thing is, I actually get to follow all of them. And then it gets to a point where I am like, at this point, in reality, with the pandemic, a lot of it is very tied to things that are going on that I am like, do I want to know more about what's going on with the world?

Cortex 1:15:38 No, absolutely. This is, I mean, this was one of the things that is hugely great for me in having left the job is like the last couple of months, I haven't really had to pay attention to any metal filter thread, I didn't want to because I wasn't moderating it. And it turns out most of the threads I would be moderating are the ones that I'm not paying attention to. So like I'm looking for, like the weird, weird stuff posts and the art posts and the music posts and like oddball technology and occasional internet drama fractus. And like, and being able to just put it down and walk away is fantastic. As far as that goes. It's definitely I'm, I'm enjoying myself on the blue a little bit more. The last couple of months as far as that goes.

Loup 1:16:23 And I think you're right, it definitely has a lot to do with the fact that you're moderating a lot of them. And then you are well, that so so you assume a different position there, right? Yeah. Even though I have to admit it, there is this balance that to me, it's weird, because then during my days of peeking in the site and reading things in their name, I get to this point where I'm like a my being a user right now we're a man

Cortex 1:16:55 it's a it's a fucking I tell you, it's one of the biggest mindfuck so this job is like, you know, having to navigate your own understanding of your navigation of that space is it's an oral borrow. So

Jessamyn 1:17:07 yeah, Loup and I were talking about this during your lengthy reboot to is trying to figure out like, what time that I'm spending interacting with, you know, Loup or users or you or paperwork is, you know, work time. And what's just me being me, which I would have been doing if I weren't also the nominal owner of

Loup 1:17:33 boiler alert. The Division is not clear right now, and underestimated how much doing

Jessamyn 1:17:40 a terrible job as usual getting paid. This is just This is my life. Yeah, I will work on it. I have endeavored to work on it.

Cortex 1:17:49 This is this is sort of endemic to like, this is kind of like the nature of the metal filter staffer to some extent.

Loup 1:17:56 Yeah, I literally asked her to report how many hours she worked.

Jessamyn 1:18:01 And I reported the literal meetings that I went to, and nothing else.

Loup 1:18:06 Yeah. And I was like, okay, come on. You've been talking just talking to me, you have spent like, twice that amount.

Jessamyn 1:18:12 I know. Well, and I didn't feel like I should count the podcast because Josh doesn't get paid for those. I don't think

Cortex 1:18:21 I mean, when I worked there like it like it fell into well, that's one of the things I'm doing but like, I've never like paid myself an hourly bonus for podcasts.

Jessamyn 1:18:29 Yeah. And met a filter used to pay for my phone and does not and that's fine. For doing the podcast. But yeah, it's it's worth trying to pay more attention without also feeling like, you know, I bilking this site of I don't know, it's a difficult issue for me actually. Get some more time in therapy.

Cortex 1:18:47 Yeah, like it's, it's it's weird, stupid, complicated emotional space thinking about like, because, because like, it's metaphor hasn't been like, you know, riding high on a good budget in a long time. So it's hard not to buy produce of caring about the site wanting to do stuff for it, because you care about it. It's hard not to sort of discount like, Yeah, but does that really, really need like, $1 amount? And like, it's like, yeah, it's, you should get paid. And also, there's no money like, you know, how do you balance those? Actually, it's

Loup 1:19:18 funny to me, because because I have this thing where I have this conversation with lobster meeting during the transition and with Jessamyn. Now where I'm like, No, if you weren't there, and you were working, you're supposed to be paid for that. Right. But to edit to myself, on the other

Jessamyn 1:19:36 hand, right. Good luck with that. Also, it's tricky, because I think, you know, there used to be kind of slush time when moderators, if they had stuff they were working on could do that during not their moderator time. And so that's been, I think, corralled in a

Cortex 1:19:52 way. Yeah, we used to have the flexibility to just like throw some extra hours on like, by implication, I was just

Jessamyn 1:19:59 like, I worked on the FAQ for an hour. So pay me for that, even though it wasn't my mod shift, but it was hard to predict and as a result with the necessity of budgeting, and also unless your mod shift is really super busy, hopefully you can nest those things not that I would tell anybody how to do their job but but so that's been a change. I think.

Cortex 1:20:19 I know for a fact that you would tell people

Jessamyn 1:20:26 you would like to get into this Josh. No,

Cortex 1:20:28 no, absolutely. I just have I just have terrible instincts.

Jessamyn 1:20:38 But yes, it's it's an interesting and tricky conundrum trying to figure out how how this all works. Oh, my God. Sorry, I thought the you know, blanket I was under was, which is an electric blanket. But I haven't turned it on. I felt like it had turned itself on and I was gonna die from sweat.

Cortex 1:20:54 Oh, I thought it was gonna be like a squirrel report or something. Ah,

Jessamyn 1:20:57 squirrel report. They are outside. They're climbing all over the SUID. They're driving me crazy. There's a goldfinch? about a foot and a half from my nose outside. But I'm sorry, we're getting somewhere.

Loup 1:21:09 Yeah, going back to that. No, don't worry, going back to exactly that. It just crossed my mind curls. Because I think one of the things that we've been getting way better at is literally the fact that that does not apply to you Giles, and me and and myself, but to the other moderators, we've gotten to a point where it's like, I think they are in a position where they know exactly what they are focusing on. So the vision is clear. Right. For for both you and I it's like, sometimes in requires us to be like, all over the place. Right. But I think it was, before the worst of that everybody was had to be all over the place and wear many hats. No, I don't think it's the case anymore. So that's getting better. And that actually makes me happy. Very happy.

Jessamyn 1:22:00 Yeah, no, I agree. I think that's, I think that's a positive change. And hopefully, one that that's good for the mod team, in addition to just, you know, being acceptable and workable for you know, the site and the users. Yeah, yeah,

Cortex 1:22:18 that's not my problem anymore. So we you stopped with that. Not

Jessamyn 1:22:23 your problem.

Cortex 1:22:24 Probably a couple more months, probably to get out of my system. It's

Loup 1:22:27 wishful thinking or something.

Cortex 1:22:31 Well, what is it? What did they say about like, you know, the, you need like, half as long as a relationship to recover from the breakup for it. Oh, yeah. Seven and a half. Like, I'll be 50 and I'll be like, completely chill about everything medical related by then. So.

Jessamyn 1:22:48 I don't want that for you, Josh.

Cortex 1:22:51 I'm good. There. I'm actually it's it's it's been good. I feel like Matt's

Jessamyn 1:22:54 there but let's see if he feels the same way when we cancel this Netflix.

Cortex 1:23:02 He probably doesn't even fucking use that account either. That's probably part of why this is a for people have no idea what the fuck we're talking about. Like Loup was looking over Pay Pal stuff and found a Netflix charge. And was like, Hey, it is your Netflix on on

Jessamyn 1:23:17 the company, like a dodgy thing that you would do, Josh?

Cortex 1:23:20 Well, yeah, no, I've I've very pointedly not like put anything that wasn't explicitly work related on there. And now pulled all that off. But like, you know, it's like, well, no, I don't even have Netflix anymore. But it wouldn't have been on the thing. Could it be masked, but we changed all the bank accounts stuff with Matt left, so it wouldn't be but it was like the old paypal account, which has a gigantic storm of payments every month. So finding one line item, especially if you're not looking for it, which Pay Pal does not make it easy to like Loup has caught this thing that's probably been there for Yeah, at least, at least probably five years, maybe more.

Loup 1:23:56 And then come on. Let's give you some credit. The thing is that you you had to so many different things, right? Sure.

Cortex 1:24:04 But I've also like, oh, that's fucking Netflix.

Loup 1:24:08 We have been looking at numbers for the past month and how for two months, every single day, right? So that's

Jessamyn 1:24:15 it for it.

Loup 1:24:19 Thank you so much. I mean, it's one of those things where where you can do it just because of the support from everyone right? I mean, I see it and when I say this, I actually mean it. I can see the change in how the community is reacting to the things that we're doing. I can I have you every single day. Every time I reach out to Josh, he was like, Okay, let me actually this is not supposed to be my problem anymore. But it actually is let me help you. Out. I read everybody is helping, right. So it's not like I'm doing it the Titanic job. It's most like everybody is and that's to me, it's me. isn't

Jessamyn 1:25:01 the same thing along here?

Cortex 1:25:04 Yeah. Keep keep it healthy. Maybe

Jessamyn 1:25:07 that's a good place to wrap it up. Yeah,

Loup 1:25:10 actually, actually, you are touching. We didn't even mention the thing that I am. That has that, to me. It's what it's making me super happy. And yes. I don't even want to think about all the amazing work that the transition team has been putting in. Oh, yeah. I can't believe that. We didn't even mentioned that. Because to me, it's been like, how are they doing? And I am like, they are doing great. But I mean, literally, it's one of those things that even paying attention to where they are at. It's extra attention that I haven't had in the past weeks, right. And I check in with them and everything. But it's so much, it's so much, that actually gives me a lot of perspective into how many things just you were doing that. I was like, No, I couldn't, I couldn't have done any anything. If it was exactly the same thing. Like, you're going to be doing what Josh was doing, I would have run away. Right? Yeah, it was not

Cortex 1:26:14 just some extent, like, you know, it was also like, hitting breaking points were the, it was the stuff that I was in theory doing and that was able to do all of it. Yeah, you know, it was not sustainable. So like, I'm very, very glad to hear that that balance is existing there. And, ya know, I, I've had the, again, I've had the pleasure of not having to keep real close track of it, the transition team has checked in with me about a couple of things, but most of their I think when they're checking in, it's with like, the continuing staff. And, and yeah, they've been doing a ton of good thoughtful work and trying to move this along. And that's, it's really fantastic. And just thank you all for doing that work and making it possible for me to not like spend a couple of months, dragging myself along and trying to come up with a framework or a skeleton of something myself when I was already that extremely done.

Jessamyn 1:27:06 Yeah, and there's been a really nice, the people who are going over the survey, there's been a really nice thread on meta talk. You know, they're like, look, we're gonna change the scope a little bit of the review of these answers, if that's okay with people, and also, does anybody want to help because it turns out, this is kind of a big thing. And that's actually been going really well, like people are people are super positive about it, which is great. And they're gonna get a little bit of help from other people to let them review it. I know, I've had like a really gratifying, you know, back and forth ongoing email exchange with Brandon Blanchard just talking about, you know, kind of his view of transition team stuff and where it overlaps with my stuff and how I need to stop emailing him because I'm doing too much work and but, you know, it's it's just been, it's been, it's been gratifying to see power, being able to shift and be be in a different place and having the site still doing okay.

Cortex 1:28:12 Yeah, and that, I mean, that's part of what will make it possible to keep this sort of healthier, like, future balance like that. That is the thing, like, if, if no one person has to do everything, then everybody can have a better shot at doing the things they are doing. And that's like, it's, it sounds simple, putting it out loud, but like, I recognize how much I was not like, you know, following that, thinking in practice, you know, when I worked there still so it's yeah, it's great. I'm really, I'm really happy to see things going along. And, and yeah, thank you all for that work. And yeah, the survey data thing, like dealing with qualitative survey data is a huge fucking task, huge task. Like it is something it's a very good thing to get some extra hands on, because like, it's easy to underestimate how much work it will be. I hate to remember the favorite survey, Jasmine, you should I have a friend, Loki mefite, who has like, bugged me literally every year about that, like it stopped being a serious bug. But that like it just became a yearly rituals like oh, hey, so when you're gonna put up the favorites, survey data and like, yeah, like you were

Jessamyn 1:29:20 saying that the data oh my god, I forgot part of it huge amount

Cortex 1:29:25 of data. And it was like, just impossible to fucking get through in a reasonable way. And it was just not the important thing at the time and loosen charge at the time you met. This was like 2008. So I was like, still beat you and your mod.

Jessamyn 1:29:37 So I was the senior mod, but it was this was all Matt's fault, though. Yeah.

Cortex 1:29:41 Yeah. And I don't know that Matt was ever that interested in the surgery?

Jessamyn 1:29:46 Because I mean, I think the entire point was Matt like favorites. And that was a little bit more when the site was just Matt. Like, he made the decisions. He added titles. He, you know, launched a beta of traveled filter that never went anywhere like there was a bunch of stuff he did just because it was his. And that's how it worked. And that has changed, I think, mostly for the better. But there was a lot of grousing about favorites. I seem to recall. God, I have seriously suppressed this memory, we could

Cortex 1:30:18 go down a rabbit hole, this could be for another episode. There's a lot we could dig into there. But anyway,

Jessamyn 1:30:26 there was a big argument about whether favourites were ruining the site or not. And so in order to get some more data on it, there was a survey the results of which were never really made first.

Cortex 1:30:36 But that that came on the tail end of like experimentally hiding them, which was the thing that got people so so so so angry, in retrospect was like a real bold move cotton.

Jessamyn 1:30:47 That's what I'm using it.

Cortex 1:30:49 That's it's a whole thing. Anyway.

Jessamyn 1:30:53 We're having a nice time.

Cortex 1:30:55 I just tried to make things uncomfortable enough that we stopped so so I can go too bad.

Loup 1:31:00 Because literally one of the things that keeps me sane in here is the fact that I don't have all that baggage. Do you know?

Cortex 1:31:10 Yes, God bless you. Good now from 20 years of fucking baggage is like a that's a healthy move for this, like, just in general. 2025 2020 2022 change going on? 23. Hey, the birthdays coming up. Hey, oh, oh, middle of June is the cyber, I hope.

Loup 1:31:27 I care. Like you have no idea about a site and about how things improve and change and everything. Sure. But the thing is, as much as I care, I don't have that many years of baggage to get in the way, right?

Cortex 1:31:45 Yeah. Yeah, it's like baggage in the in the in the purest sense. I don't regret having a long sense of history on metal filters that can potentially be a resource now and then to y'all in that capacity. But the baggage thing is like, yeah, there's a lot of your you have feelings about your family that stopped being sort of rational at a certain point, because it's just these people you've lived with for so long. It's that the same thing happens with online communities. And like, yeah, there's a lot of people in my family. It's complicated. Anyway, yes. All right. Well, this has been fucking delightful. And we talked about to Metafilter posts, and I feel like that's a triumph. So why don't we wrap it up? And we'll figure out what happens next month or middle of next month? If we want to alienate a bunch of people with more video game talk? Sure.

Jessamyn 1:32:37 Work? Well, this time. But yeah, I have to go talk to a nice lady about strategic planning in public libraries. That's my next meeting. So this has been great

Cortex 1:32:49 Loup. Thanks so much for coming on and being on and also, you know, for literally everything. Yep. But this has been, this has been a real pleasure. I'm glad we got to just like Yammer like this for a while. And I would be happy to have you on in the future as you are so inclined.

Loup 1:33:11 Thank you so much.

Cortex 1:33:12 I mean, for that matter, you can decide what happens there.

Loup 1:33:17 Well, I mean, you know, how, when and how to reach me, I'm literally here. It's one of those things where I'm glad to be here. And I mean, I have no opinions on that. Trust me, I need to have opinions on so many things right now that this is one of those where I'm like, no, no opinions

Cortex 1:33:37 that we were that were the no opinion squad. We come here and just have blessed freedom from opinions for a while. All right, well, hey, thanks, everybody for listening. And that's a podcast and we'll do whatever we do next whenever we do it next. Yeah. See you

Jessamyn 1:33:51 next month. Bye, everyone.