The Technofascist Urge To Never Turn Down a Brand Deal

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_04] Taylor Swift's wedding was on Friday. I knew you know that I'd find a way to shoehorn that in here somehow. Well, I found a way. I found it. Taylor Swift's... Wait, I'm just gonna do that again.

[00:00:13] [SPEAKER_08] Do it as many times as you need. You can never be too sure with your tone about Taylor Swift's wedding.

[00:00:19] [SPEAKER_01] That's true.

[00:00:23] [SPEAKER_04] Taylor Swift's wedding was on Friday. Hello, hello, and welcome back to A Bit Fruity. I'm Matt Bernstein. Taylor Swift's wedding was on Friday. It was held at Madison Square Garden, the largest entertainment venue in one of the most crowded areas of Manhattan, on top of the busiest train station in North America. And I have no opinions on it at all.

[00:00:53] [SPEAKER_04] What's notable, though, is that MSG, Madison Square Garden, has one of the most sophisticated and invasive biometric surveillance systems of any entertainment venue in the world. Spearheaded by Trump sycophant and the New York Knicks owner James Dolan, the network of cameras and computers in Madison Square Garden tracks every movement of everyone who enters the venue,

[00:01:20] [SPEAKER_04] uses facial recognition software to build enemy lists, track the social media accounts of visitors James Dolan doesn't like, and a whole host of other things that would make George Orwell blush. And this, I suppose, is a value add for someone like Taylor Swift, whose every move requires airtight security, lest there be any snakes in her midst. I'm just trying to be funny.

[00:01:48] [SPEAKER_04] Guests of the wedding were not allowed to film or photograph anything. And this anti-surveillance was itself enforced by Madison Square Garden's surveillance system, ironically, which, according to TMZ, scanned guests not just for the phones in their hands, but also for if they were wearing metaglasses.

[00:02:12] [SPEAKER_04] The new AI glasses that photograph and record people without their knowledge, anyone caught wearing metaglasses at the wedding was promptly escorted out the back and shot by James Dolan himself. Thank you. There's the studio audience I was looking for. Metaglasses, we're told, are the next frontier of consumer technology.

[00:02:42] [SPEAKER_04] In their newest release, Kylie Jenner is their celebrity face. A pair of the Kylie Starfire Metaglasses will run you $400, and the built-in AI assistant talks to you in Kylie Jenner's voice. Fun! I'm happy, I really am, that Taylor Swift had a state-of-the-art security system to ensure people around her could not film her with their glasses without her consent.

[00:03:11] [SPEAKER_04] But for the rest of us, who don't have James Dolan on speed dial, what's our recourse? Today, we are going to explore all of this. And I am so excited to be doing that alongside two friends of the show, Kat Tenbarge, writer of Spitfire News, and Ed Anguesso, Jr. of the This Machine Kills podcast and writer of the Tech Bubble newsletter.

[00:03:39] [SPEAKER_04] Welcome back to the show, you guys. Ed, it's been a while.

[00:03:42] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me back.

[00:03:45] [SPEAKER_08] Always glad to be here. Should I tell my story?

[00:03:49] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah, because I just learned that you two know each other.

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_07] Ed and I have known each other for years because we're both like tech journalists in the New York City media scene. Last year, we were at the same party and I saw that Ed had this amazing hat. And it's a hat that says, if you talk to me about AI, I will kill myself. I went home and like in the following days, weeks, I got a shirt on Etsy that said this. And I wore that shirt on the 4th of July this year. I was like, this is my most patriotic shirt. And I took a picture wearing it and posted it on Instagram.

[00:04:22] [SPEAKER_07] And then the next day I woke up and they were like, we flagged your account because you're promoting self-harm and suicide. And I was like, well, I don't think that's – I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say that.

[00:04:34] [SPEAKER_01] Right.

[00:04:34] [SPEAKER_07] Some world we live in can't even joke about AI making me want to kill myself anymore.

[00:04:40] [SPEAKER_02] You know, anytime – I feel like I got a similar flag whenever I post a picture of myself with the hat. I have them go, you know, someone who follows you is concerned and wanted to check in. Totally not our large language model behind the scenes. It's a real person. Soon you won't be allowed to make jokes about the pervert glasses, you know.

[00:05:04] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah, I was going to say, now that I'm doing props and costuming on this podcast, I'm going to show up to the next episode with a hat that says, don't talk to me about meta glasses. I'll kill myself. But actually do talk to me about these things because I can never shut up about them. So we're going to be talking a lot about meta glasses, about the future of AI surveillance, and all of this really fun stuff, as well as Kylie Jenner and her transgressions today.

[00:05:29] [SPEAKER_04] But, you know, I thought that it would be anti-feminist, dare I say, of myself to talk so much about Kylie Jenner's sort of lending her face to the rise of a techno-feudalist society if I did not also talk about what her boy, Timothee Chalamet, is doing, which is in many ways the same thing.

[00:05:53] [SPEAKER_04] So our opener, our icebreaker segment today is a look at the new Timothee Chalamet Kalshi prediction market gambling website ad. If you're not watching the video version of this podcast and you're only listening to the audio, I apologize if this makes little sense. I'll fill in the details for you in just a moment.

[00:06:16] [SPEAKER_00] Well, there's a lot of infection in there, Timmy. You're doing really well. Are you feeling anything? Kalshi. I don't understand, but this is going very well. Kalshi. Kalshi? Kalshi.

[00:06:38] [SPEAKER_01] Kalshi.

[00:06:39] [SPEAKER_04] Kalshi. And that is the point at which I have to cut it for copyright purposes. But the bottom line is it is Timothee Chalamet reclining in his dental chair with the dentist putting all sorts of shit in his mouth and him just repeating the word Kalshi.

[00:06:59] [SPEAKER_07] I was just like, this ad isn't even funny or smart. Like, there's not even any, like, redeeming factor or quality to this. It just was, like, humiliating and you sold your soul.

[00:07:08] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, I think that's also the thing that a lot of these ads, I feel like, as they try to get more creative, as they try to be like, what's a fun way we can get someone to feel like they're promoting us without feeling like they're selling out to us? They just get dumber and dumber and reveal the thing for what it is, right? Which is, like, very brazen. Kalshi's spent a lot of time just doing very brazen, how can we do publicity stunts?

[00:07:35] [SPEAKER_02] How can we get really popular public figures or really popular trends? You know, how can we ride the next wave? How can we get Timothy in the midst of this movie star run?

[00:07:46] [SPEAKER_04] For people who don't know what Kalshi is at all, which, can you broadly just explain what it is?

[00:07:51] [SPEAKER_02] Ninth circle of hell. So just imagine, you know, a place you can bet on anything. Ostensibly, it's a prediction market, which is, you know, a buzzword that these people use, where they like to be like, you know, imagine a world where instead of getting facts and news and, you know, finding out what's what, you would trust a bunch of degenerate crypto bros

[00:08:16] [SPEAKER_02] and people, you know, gamblers and others who are getting taken for a line, you know, to dictate the odds of something happening. And that this will somehow give us more insight because we're democratizing, you know, that's the buzzword. We're democratizing finance and information gathering and news generation through a prediction market.

[00:08:39] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah, and the CEO of Kalshi famously said they want to financialize everything, meaning any difference of opinion. What's the weather going to be tomorrow? Will Taylor Swift get pregnant in 2026? What will, you know, the color of the dildo thrown at the WNBA game? Like, these are all, by the way, real bets that people are placing on Kalshi.

[00:09:06] [SPEAKER_04] Anything where there is a yes-no difference in opinion split, they want to say, you can bet on the future of that.

[00:09:14] [SPEAKER_07] One of the first times that they really came onto my radar was the day of the New York mayoral primary because before the polls even closed, they tweet from their, like, their official X account as if they are the news. It is super, super misleading. I've seen tons of people, including, like, journalists, kind of get, like, fooled or tricked by this because it reads, like, a headline. And even before the polls were closing, they were posting, like, fake election results and claiming, like,

[00:09:44] [SPEAKER_07] oh, so-and-so is in the lead, like, so-and-so is really behind. And it was just completely made up, but they faced zero consequences for it. Like, what they were doing was dramatically flouting, like, advertising guidelines. There was just nobody at the wheel to stop them, and they've only gotten worse since then.

[00:10:01] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, they've benefited from Trump administration corruption extensively, right? They've hired people that previously worked in the CFTC or the SEC. They have pretty close ties to the Trump administration. They are a firm. You know, them and Polly Market technically are illegal in the United States, but are allowed to operate through ridiculous sort of loopholes. I mean, Polly Market, which is a similar venture to them,

[00:10:29] [SPEAKER_02] operated for a while the same kind of loophole that these crypto casinos overseas would operate by, where you'd have, like, these big firms that would do partnerships with streamers and essentially target children trying to be like, you guys should gamble on stream. We'll give you money for it so you're not really losing anything and we'll give you a big payout on top. And you're not allowed to do that in the United States. And similarly, some of these, you know, for a while, if you weren't allowed to do it in the United States,

[00:10:57] [SPEAKER_02] whether it's digital gambling or gambling, you know, on these markets this way. But now it's coming home. Now we are, we're freeing the market to do God's work, which is to let people gamble on whether a town is going to get annexed by an occupying army or whether someone in your neighborhood is going to use a hairdryer to increase the temperature on a radar or on a sensor by two degrees so that they can get like a $30,000 payout.

[00:11:20] [SPEAKER_07] And it's been so demoralizing to see like the Oscars bring this right in. Like no questions asked. Like we're going to put tickers on all of these major channels, like the Super Bowl, the Oscars, like all of these.

[00:11:33] [SPEAKER_02] CNN. Yeah, CNN did a Calci deal too, right?

[00:11:36] [SPEAKER_07] News and cultural institutions bending over backwards to facilitate the slightest profit from this like blatantly, not only illegal, also morally corrupt thing. And all these decision makers are just like, whatever, like it's Trump's America. We're going to do whatever we want.

[00:11:52] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah. And, you know, I've teased this topic many times on this podcast because it makes me so, so angry and like emotional because it's gambling. It's gambling. And, you know, they'll say, oh, well, there's a difference between prediction markets and gambling casinos. And, you know, I would argue that that's like spiritually the same argument that people in multi-level marketing schemes make when they say we're not a pyramid scheme technically.

[00:12:21] [SPEAKER_04] Distinctions without differences. And most importantly, people using these prediction market websites. If the websites themselves want to say that it's not gambling, well, the bottom line is the psychological impulse and the dopamine hits that you get from participating in it is the exact same as gambling at a casino. And the thing about casinos is if you go to Las Vegas and you walk into a physical casino

[00:12:48] [SPEAKER_04] or Atlantic City from my lovely home state of New Jersey, you see what gambling does to people. You see how it destroys people's lives. The thing with polymarket and calci is it allows people to destroy their lives in the exact same way to go into financial ruin, to develop these gambling addictions from the comfort of their own home.

[00:13:18] [SPEAKER_04] And in, you know, in middle school, in many of these ad campaigns, look at what they're doing. Timothy Chalamet target young men and boys. Gambling addiction has the highest suicide rate of any addiction. And so, you know, for Timothy Chalamet to be doing this to me, it just for the sake of this podcast, it opens up a conversation that I am always wanting to have that.

[00:13:43] [SPEAKER_04] I don't know if it's that interesting to people who aren't like content creators and or make money this way, but about saying no to brand partnerships. Something that I think we, the three of us, right, as creatives, as creators, that we are all tasked with. Now, to give you a sense of how rich Timothy Chalamet is before his fucking Calci ad and the

[00:14:09] [SPEAKER_04] rates that he commands, Timothy Chalamet was the face of a Chanel, Blue de Chanel fragrance campaign in 2023, for which he was paid a reported $35 million. And, you know, that's one brand deal. That is not to account for any of his movies, any of his anything. He's so rich. It's like we all have the capacity to draw lines for ourselves around what we will and won't do. I do a podcast.

[00:14:39] [SPEAKER_04] The podcast has sponsors. I have the task of deciding which sponsors I will and won't accept for this podcast. And I just think like, you know, for example, I said no to BetterHelp. And I don't think I'm like, you know, a model citizen for saying no to BetterHelp. I'm just like, you know, when you get a certain amount of listens on your podcast, you get the BetterHelp sponsorship offer. And I looked up BetterHelp on Reddit because I don't know that much about the company, but I was curious about what other people said.

[00:15:07] [SPEAKER_04] And I saw enough bad or dubious stuff to be like, I'm going to say no to BetterHelp. I'm just like, if we can say no to BetterHelp on the fucking leftist podcast circuit, like, come on, Timothy, you can say no to Calci. I know you can. I know you can. Does that make sense?

[00:15:23] [SPEAKER_02] I mean, I think it does. Especially I think about it a lot with these gambling, because like you said, gambling's a particularly pernicious one, right? But I also think it's a perfect example of sort of traps people fall for, primarily thinking because something is digital that it's a little bit different, right? You know, what is the reason we have these online gambling markets? It's because we have physical gambling markets. And why are they interested in the physical and gambling markets? Because they're incredibly lucrative. Why are they lucrative?

[00:15:51] [SPEAKER_02] Because they're so intentionally designed to drain as much money out of you as possible, to get you in a flow state there, to get you to lose sense of time and reality, to get you as comfortable and accommodated to spending as much money as possible, which is, you know, the design that we have incorporated into most of our digital interfaces and products. But it's just so silly that given the general antipathy I think the public has for digital

[00:16:17] [SPEAKER_02] goods and understanding that these firms don't have any of our interests in mind, and that they rarely, if ever, offer something that's, you know, pro-social. It is silly to say yes to something that combines the worst of all these worlds, right? Which is gambling addiction, insider trading corruption, political connections to the administration. But, you know, I guess you need like a second, third house or something. I don't really know.

[00:16:43] [SPEAKER_07] It feels like to me the physical infrastructure of the casino is important because if we're going to have like a market that we've created for this like social ill, which like people can participate in gambling and not have it be a morally negative act. But when you're in the casino, you can very obviously see what's happening, the downsides of it. If you go to like, I remember I stayed at the Rio in Las Vegas because they were doing hotel rooms for like $14 a night.

[00:17:10] [SPEAKER_07] And it's really depressing walking past like all of the elderly folks who are sitting there at the slot machines and like you pass them at 9 a.m. and then you pass them again at 9 p.m. and you know they've been there for 12 hours. Like that is an important visual reminder of what gambling is with the prediction markets and specifically the celebrity endorsements. It's now being morphed into just like a cool thing. And I also think that with Timothee Chalamet choosing to do this, he's also doing this very

[00:17:39] [SPEAKER_07] cynical calculus because he's not dumb. He knows this is going to be unpopular. He knows this is going to be controversial. I think a lot of these celebrities have wised up to the knowledge that like they're going to do these controversial ads and endorsements and people are going to get mad at them. They just know fundamentally it's not going to matter because they can afford to lose even thousands of fans. They know that the majority of people will not notice and or will forget and or will not care.

[00:18:08] [SPEAKER_07] So they're doing it purposefully. And I also thought it was very funny like after the Timothee ad came out, my little brother who is a college student who like is not like that tuned into any of this stuff texted me and was like, Timothee's not cool anymore. Like he's like, I can't believe he did this call she had like, I don't ride for Timothee anymore. And I was like, whoa. So it's like, I do think that there is there's blowback to this. And that is real.

[00:18:35] [SPEAKER_07] I think Timothee is like by the time Dune 3 comes out, like no one's going to care anymore.

[00:18:40] [SPEAKER_04] And he's probably right. And like, what of you to have of your own fans? What of you? What of you to have of the people who support you that they're just like these lifeless sheep who will get over it? You know, I know a lot of people love to make fun of like the people who would like engage with something like Kalshi. But I don't. I think that they're all victims of, you know, an extremely predatory business model that

[00:19:08] [SPEAKER_04] Timothee Chalamet has handsomely profited off of. And, you know, like Ed said, for what? That money could hit or not hit his bank account and it would not change a single thing about his life. That's what drives me crazy. We've been experiencing a wave of horrible celebrity brand partnerships from this to what we're about to talk about to Gwyneth Paltrow doing luxury apartments in Herzliya, Israel. And I'm like, for what?

[00:19:34] [SPEAKER_08] Yeah.

[00:19:35] [SPEAKER_02] That are filmed in New York.

[00:19:36] [SPEAKER_04] Filmed in New York.

[00:19:37] [SPEAKER_08] Crazy.

[00:19:38] [SPEAKER_07] For what? You guys all have so much money. I also find like gambling addiction and gambling marketing really interesting because it is so young male dominated and focused. There was an Atlantic cover story that got a lot of attention a few months ago about gambling, which was kind of an insane concept because they gave a Mormon reporter who had never gambled before because it's against their religion. They gave him like $10,000 to go gamble with.

[00:20:07] [SPEAKER_07] And the cover story was basically just like outlining what happened. And what happened is he got really into it and ended up losing a ton of money. But along the way, he was speaking to all of these experts in gambling, going through a lot of the science behind it. And I learned from that article that 93% of people with gambling addiction are men and that many men start gambling for the first time when they're like 14 years old.

[00:20:36] [SPEAKER_07] Sometimes it's because they gamble with their dads as like a father-son bonding activity, which I find so sad and depressing. Other times though, increasingly, it's because kids are able to access these markets like Poly Market and Kalshi and start gambling. And the fact that like that's part of the calculus of doing a Timothee Chalamet ad is they know that he is a popular figure for among these like young men and boys.

[00:21:02] [SPEAKER_07] And I'm like that in particular, I'm like, that's one of those like how do you sleep at night knowing you're probably you've been chosen because they think that 13 year old boys look up to you and are going to want to do what you did because it's cool. Like that is really, really selfish.

[00:21:17] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. I mean, these industries, that's what they thrive off, right? To getting them while they're young. I mean, you know, Natasha Scholl in her book, Addiction by Design, she's an anthropologist that studies casinos and gambling and writes the book at a period where we're just about to be at the cusp of online gambling. But the industries are anxious because they're realizing that they've had lifetime customers

[00:21:41] [SPEAKER_02] who they've relied on using and engaging with casinos in a very specific way and they're going to die. And it seems like they're not going to be able to properly capture, convince young people to move on to casinos or to, you know, to spend all their time in casinos. So what are they going to do? And online gambling, right, emerges as a sort of solve.

[00:22:07] [SPEAKER_02] But what it's also, I think, downstream of some of the same stuff that motivates the gambling in and of itself, right? You know, post 2008 kind of desperation to make money, this insistence on, you know, the way that we can make amends in one way or another, rectify what happened with the financial crisis is, you know, don't trust the bankers, trust the platforms, you know, trust the tech companies. You should manage it.

[00:22:33] [SPEAKER_02] And this sort of constant march of you should democratize more and more of the financial system and bring it under your control. And more and more of the world should be financialized, right? And it should be a casino. You should be able to make money wherever you want. You should be able to rent part of your home. You should be able to rent your car, you know, to pick up other people or rent your home to other people who are traveling. You should be able to turn anything you can into an asset that can generate some rent or revenue for you.

[00:23:00] [SPEAKER_02] And eventually, of course, we've come to one of the logical conclusions, which is information that you come across. You should be able to bet on it against other people thinking that you have an edge.

[00:23:10] [SPEAKER_04] I love your cat meowing. Your cat is like, fuck this.

[00:23:17] [SPEAKER_02] It really is.

[00:23:18] [SPEAKER_07] I also like I think about the male the male lonely crisis as it has been termed. And I think about how for the right, the supposed male loneliness crisis has been taken on as a project to like deny women's bodily autonomy to say like men are lonely because women's standards are too high or like modern feminism is the root of all ills. And like it's the reason why young men are experiencing more depression, why people are less likely to get partnered, why they're less likely to get married, why they're less likely to have children.

[00:23:48] [SPEAKER_07] Even if you were to, you know, complete this political project and ensure that like women are forced to like marry men and bear children at a young age, like it would not tackle some of the roots of these issues, which include things like gambling, like an actual political project that truly cared about young men would address the corruption within this industry and address like the

[00:24:12] [SPEAKER_07] marketing that hooks men and boys onto this at a young age because it is such a male dominated issue. Like I think that those numbers and the way that this crisis operates is really staggering. And there isn't as of right now, though, certainly the right is not taking this on as a political project. I also think it's like fertile ground for people who do want to like make the world a better place for the youth and beyond is to address this like crisis and the fact that it it's only happening

[00:24:42] [SPEAKER_07] because there is no regulatory teeth behind actually dismantling it.

[00:24:48] [SPEAKER_04] I would like to take just a quick break from the show to give a shout out to the sponsors of this podcast, which are hopefully comparatively normal. I think we have a food and soap this week. But before we do that, I wanted to tell you that I completely forgot while we were recording this episode that in 2024, I was asked by Kalshi if I could do a Kalshi sponsorship for this podcast.

[00:25:17] [SPEAKER_04] And I went and I found the email exchange because I didn't even know what Kalshi was. It was better times. And I wanted to read that email exchange to you. I was asked if I wanted to do the Kalshi sponsorship. And I responded, can you please explain exactly what this company is like I am 10 years old. What they wrote back, their sort of like one liner thing was Kalshi is a platform that allows you to bet on anything, the outcome of the election, the winner of the best new artist at the Grammy Awards,

[00:25:46] [SPEAKER_04] or the Rotten Tomatoes score of new movies coming out. It's a platform for people to place bets and potentially win money if they are lucky slash know their stuff. It's totally legal and is available to anyone over the age of 18 in the US. And I just said, passing on this, I think if you have to like tell me in your initial pitch that it's totally legal, that's got me asking questions about why you needed to say up front that it's totally legal.

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[00:29:05] [SPEAKER_04] This all reminds me of something that happened a few years ago, which some people who are very online may remember, which was when a small group of young, mostly black and brown female influencers took a brand trip to China with the fast fashion slave labor brand Shein. The influencers were brought through a staged tour of one of Shein's factories,

[00:29:29] [SPEAKER_04] where, of course, pre-planned employee slash actors told them how good their working conditions are.

[00:29:37] [SPEAKER_03] Next day, we headed to the Shein Innovation Center. This facility blew my mind. It's over 600,000 square feet. There's so much technology. And Shein is just such a developed and complex company. And it was so beautiful to see firsthand. I was able to interview a woman that worked in the fabric cutting department. And you guys know me. She's an investigative journalist. So I asked her all of our questions and she answered them honestly and authentically. She was very surprised at all the rumors that have been spread in the U.S. She told me about her family, her lifestyle, her commute, her hour.

[00:30:03] [SPEAKER_04] And this was a mega controversy on the Internet. And for good reason. These influencers were being taken for a ride and themselves cashing in on an opportunity to launder the image of one of fashion's most notorious violators of labor laws and human rights. One of the influencers named Danny DMC, known colloquially as confidence activist. She became a meme.

[00:30:31] [SPEAKER_04] And videos of her sort of like obliviously and unquestioningly nodding along to Shein's sweatshop propaganda circulate regularly three years later. And, you know, to be clear, I think these influencers deserve criticism for their lack of discernment. And a number of these girls, again, mostly brown and black beauty influencers, have said in hindsight that that was like the only brand trip they'd ever been invited on.

[00:30:58] [SPEAKER_04] During an era where influencer trip marketing was a really big thing and when splashy opportunities with brands like Tarte Cosmetics were overwhelmingly made available to white influencers. It felt like sad to me then that these Shein girls seemed uniquely poised to be doing this brand's dirty work, which didn't make it okay. But today, it just made it like complicated.

[00:31:24] [SPEAKER_04] And I bring all of this up to say that that Shein trip was the talk of the town in 2023. There were so many articles, so many YouTube videos, so many TikToks, the commentary, the discourse. It was endless. There are multiple videos about it on YouTube right now with between 500,000 and a million views. Comparatively, there was no widespread backlash to Timothee Chalamet's Kelsey ad.

[00:31:52] [SPEAKER_04] Like, on leftist discourse internet, you know, a lot of us were like, dude, really? But I scrolled through YouTube, no commentary videos about this. Something that he was no doubt paid a million times more than these Shein girls. Potentially, literally. You know, I was like scrolling on YouTube trying to find like, where was the outrage?

[00:32:12] [SPEAKER_04] And the last time that YouTube commentators did have a field day with Timothee Chalamet was over his comments about ballet's relevancy in the commercial market, which was a comparatively stupid controversy. Anyway, I'm getting off my soapbox now. It's just like, it's again, it's crazy to me what these people can say yes to with no backlash. Besides from your woke little brother.

[00:32:36] [SPEAKER_07] It's true, but I think you're completely right in that a lot of people had a knee jerk like this sucks reaction. But that is also exactly why I think he and his team of, I imagine, very talented publicists were like, of course you can do the Kelsey ad. You're going to make like, who knows how much he was paid, but like, definitely millions for sure. Millions, yeah. Millions, probably tens of millions, maybe even more.

[00:33:02] [SPEAKER_07] But it's like that calculus comes into play where it's like, you're going to get bad press for about 24 hours and then people will just move on. It's not the same calculus whatsoever for smaller influencers, for people in the public eye who are women, who are marginalized. Like, the calculus is totally different because we do have such a social script of like, haranguing people who have smaller platforms because they're just easier targets.

[00:33:29] [SPEAKER_07] At the end of the day, those influencers who went to the Shein factory, like, are not going to have a major blockbuster coming out later this summer. Like, it is a much trickier thing to do to rehabilitate your reputation or to have people move on when that's the only thing they know you for is your public controversy versus like, I am the most bankable young man actor of my generation.

[00:33:52] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, I think also, you know, and over time people get normalized to these sorts of things, right? People are more willing, forgiving, or maybe not even willing or forgiving, but inundated with these sorts of advertisements all the time that it kind of passes over their head in one way or another. I mean, I think about the reaction to crypto ads. You know, what would we see? Crypto ads and Super Bowls peaking, right?

[00:34:21] [SPEAKER_02] I think, you know, a few years ago in outrage and then ads that have come up since then. You know, a bit of a muted reaction to, you know, these sorts of spectacles, marketing opportunities, blatantly corrupt developments by virtue of, you know, just flooding the zone with them. Like, there's a lot of room for people who want to make a quick buck and are scared of the publicity or might have otherwise been scared of the publicity to take advantage of the fact that there's just so much.

[00:34:47] [SPEAKER_02] There's so much of this going on in almost every corner that they can take advantage of the confusion that the public might otherwise have. And also, I think, you know, the media in some ways is to blame with this the way that it has covered, you know, crypto, covered prediction markets, covered AI. You know, not to say there isn't great critical work, but there is the I think the usual position feels a lot of times like let's just give this thing a chance.

[00:35:15] [SPEAKER_02] You know, let's check it out. It's kind of cool, right? It's kind of cool that we're doing this, right? And that does a lot of work off the bat, preventing someone who might otherwise have such a deep revulsion to it. If you said aloud what it was when it's primed as, you know, part of it is good, part of it is bad. But we'll have to wait and see how it shakes out.

[00:35:38] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah. And I was fully ready, by the way, to get on my soapbox and defend Danny DMC, a.k.a. confidence activist, until I checked her Instagram last night and saw that her most recent brand partnership was with, you guessed it.

[00:36:00] [SPEAKER_08] Call she?

[00:36:01] [SPEAKER_04] Nope. Polymarka. Meta glasses. Oh, my God. She's kind of on a generational run. They were like, we liked what you did there for the brand. Just got back from the Shein factory, here to promote the pedophile goggles. Like, come on, guys.

[00:36:19] [SPEAKER_07] It's also like to Ed's point there, I guess that once your reputation has become intertwined with this type of controversy and like taking a bad brand deal, it's like the initial pushback is going to be less and less and less every time it happens. Because I think with the Shein ad, it was like kind of framed as a shocking thing. Like, why would these like young women who are like seemingly so progressive and socially aware, like go to this factory and like endorse these slave-like working conditions?

[00:36:48] [SPEAKER_07] But now that they've done it, it's like, oh, well, now we have no expectation that they're not going to endorse like the Meta glasses or whatever.

[00:36:55] [SPEAKER_04] Just say no to some brand partnerships, you guys. You know, like, I don't think better help is Hitler. Hitler.

[00:37:03] [SPEAKER_07] Iconic quote.

[00:37:04] [SPEAKER_04] But it's not great. Amazing quote. Like, I think like, I think like Meta glasses and I think Kalshi are like much closer to Hitler than better help. But like, it seemed shitty enough. It seemed like enough people had bad or ethically dubious experiences where I'm like, let's, we're just not going to do better help. Another thing I won't do is like supplement ads.

[00:37:26] [SPEAKER_04] There are certain companies that love to sponsor podcast advertisements, which is why you probably hear all of the podcasts you listen to or a lot of them sponsored by the same companies. And the supplement industry loves podcasts. And categorically, that's just one that, for example, like I personally, I draw a line around the supplement industry. I'm like, I'm not going to tell you guys to go buy vitamin gummies. I'm not, I'm not getting my own buy sister debacle. I don't think I'm like a, I don't think I'm like an amazing person for that. Like, it's fine.

[00:37:56] [SPEAKER_04] But you don't understand these supplements worked for me.

[00:38:02] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Yeah. They made me orange or, you know, whatever else they do.

[00:38:07] [SPEAKER_07] It's also like something that you had mentioned a little earlier, Matt was like these, some of these influencers and celebrities clearly don't view the people watching them as people. Yeah. They view their followers and their audience as just like numbers on a screen. And I do think that makes all the difference in choosing like, am I going to do a specific sponsorship or am I going to endorse a specific product?

[00:38:31] [SPEAKER_07] Because if you view your audience as people, you're going to think about the potential consequences of your voice impacting and influencing their decisions. If you like care about the people, even if you don't know who they are, it's almost like a weird parasocial back and forth. Because it's like, obviously we don't know who every single person individually in our audience is, but you can imagine that like, oh yeah, I probably have someone following me who could then think because I put my name behind this supplement that this supplement would actually work.

[00:39:00] [SPEAKER_07] And then does that matter to you? Or do you not like care about what will happen to the people who watch your content? And I do think with a lot of these celebrities, they're like, they don't care at all about the people who like watch their movies or like care about them at the end of the day.

[00:39:15] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah. Well, Danny DMC confidence activist is selling meta glasses. And in fact, seems like everyone's selling meta glasses. They've been sponsored by Doja Cat, by Chris Pratt, by Chris Hemsworth, by Chris Jenner, all the Chris's by Jenny of Blackpink, who that one really got me because I'm like, Jenny, you have the best solo career out of the four of them. And I feel very passionately about that.

[00:39:42] [SPEAKER_04] Why are you selling meta ray bands?

[00:39:45] [SPEAKER_02] I will say, you know, shout out to meta for making them very easy to smash. You know, we had a tribunal where we smashed them with a giant fucking sledgehammer. And that was, it was pretty nice and easy. So I want to, I got to thank them for that. You know, that'll be good in the coming years.

[00:40:02] [SPEAKER_04] We have, we have some more meta glasses to smash because like I said up top, Kylie Jenner is the official face of the new meta glasses launch. And I would like to enter this segment by watching a 60 second commercial that meta put out for this Kylie Jenner collaboration that I don't think a lot of people really saw.

[00:40:27] [SPEAKER_04] They posted it to their like meta glasses YouTube channel, which nobody watches. Kylie just, you know, to promote the partnership. She just posted like the photo shoot. This ad is highly bizarre. Here we go.

[00:40:50] [SPEAKER_05] Morning. This new sample just came in. All right. That's fine.

[00:40:53] Come on.

[00:40:53] [SPEAKER_03] Where did you want this?

[00:40:54] [SPEAKER_05] Uh, over there. And then these flowers just came in from your mom. Here you go. Thank you. Hi. Hello. Oh, you're so cute. I love you. Can I just grab you for a quick? Wait.

[00:41:37] [SPEAKER_04] I've watched this like 50 times.

[00:41:39] [SPEAKER_02] Imagine if you're, if you could go through the day and watch a video where your, your hands were slightly further from your face than usual. Wouldn't that be sick? You could cut it up and share it with people.

[00:41:53] [SPEAKER_04] For those listening to the audio, this is essentially the whole ad is just, it's filmed with her meta glasses. So it's from Kylie Jenner's point of view. She's walking around what I believe is her Palm Springs mansion while her various servants do tasks around her. Like she really got the whole team out. Yeah. Yeah. Wheeling around a large like art sculpture and asking her where she wants it, bringing her flowers to which she says a muted.

[00:42:24] [SPEAKER_04] Thank you. One, one woman rushes in to put a moisturizer on her hand, which I suppose is meant to be a tester. Yeah. The most emotional she gets is when she like picks up a cat, which is, you know, relatable. It's just to me, it reads like a horror movie trailer. Like I'm like, we're alone in a house. We're being watched.

[00:42:51] [SPEAKER_07] The desire here is clearly to create something aspirational. And the aspiration is like, what if you just woke up and made a series of decisions about where you wanted people to put things for you? Because that's literally how, that's her morning routine is like, oh, put this moisturizer on this hand. Like move that $2 million sculpture over there. Like, like clean my pool. Like.

[00:43:14] Yeah.

[00:43:16] [SPEAKER_07] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:43:16] [SPEAKER_02] 15 minutes of it is like arguing with them as they put it in the place.

[00:43:21] [SPEAKER_07] A little bit to the left. It may, like, and this, this type of aspiration as a brand has worked for the Kardashians for a long time. This is like a key component of their success. Yes. I do think like, as I was watching this and as I saw like some reactions to it, I don't think we've entirely moved past it. I think this probably still works for people.

[00:43:43] [SPEAKER_07] But the juxtaposition of like them showing this as her real life with also the widely publicized lawsuits from her employees against her where like, I don't know if you both have seen this, but.

[00:43:57] [SPEAKER_04] I have, but you should tell people.

[00:43:58] [SPEAKER_07] So basically this has happened, I believe, to multiple Kardashian Jenners. But as of late, a number of Kylie's employees have sued her and the company that like procures these employees for the Kardashians for just like horrific allegations of workplace mistreatment, including a woman who said she miscarried due to the strain of the labor that she was performing and was then told that she was making Kylie upset because she was too emotional about it.

[00:44:28] [SPEAKER_07] So you compare that to what's on display here, which is like my employees love me versus like my employees are literally suing me for the abject misery of my life.

[00:44:40] [SPEAKER_04] Well, I don't even think this commercial is arguing that her employees love her. I just think it's saying that she has employees.

[00:44:46] [SPEAKER_07] That's true. That's totally true.

[00:44:48] [SPEAKER_04] Because they're kind of just like, where would you like this thing, Miss Jenner? And I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I guess I'm so like New York socialist summer pilled right now. Sorry. I really shouldn't be like talking like that. I don't know. Hey, listen.

[00:45:09] [SPEAKER_02] Until we stop winning, you know.

[00:45:11] [SPEAKER_04] But like New York right now is so high on its own community orientedness. Like it's such good vibes in the city right now, which I think is a message that's really emanated across the internet. And I've really been thinking a lot about like the ideal of like human happiness that like people like Zoran, but really this whole movement has put forth where it's like we're in community with one another. We're out in the streets together. We're having fun with one another.

[00:45:38] [SPEAKER_04] We're like experiencing life and joy and the joy of like reaching out and touching other human beings, not just to put a moisturizer on their hand. And then I look at the idea of happiness that's put forth by Meta in this ad. And I'm just like, oh, no. Kylie Jenner is surrounded by servants, but she's also very alone.

[00:46:00] [SPEAKER_08] Yeah.

[00:46:01] [SPEAKER_04] And this is what Meta seems to think we all want is just to be like in our secluded estates. It's such a misread of the moment. And it also I know we talk a lot about Jeffree Star on this podcast.

[00:46:14] [SPEAKER_08] I thought about the exact same thing.

[00:46:15] [SPEAKER_04] It feels so out of the era that made Jeffree Star really famous. When Jeffree Star was famously like always in his like pink house surrounded by 16 dogs and like three pink Lamborghinis and a film crew and telling everyone where to go and what to do. And I'm so rich. I'm so rich. Look at all my beautiful things. And it's just like you're right that I think that probably still works for some people.

[00:46:42] [SPEAKER_04] But as a culture, it so does not feel current.

[00:46:46] [SPEAKER_07] It also arguably has not always worked that well for Kylie. Kylie, like her aesthetic and her public persona changed a lot after she got pregnant for the first time. They launched a Kylie Jenner spinoff show called Life of Kylie back in the late 2010s that was canceled after just one season, if I remember correctly. Because I don't think people are really that into like Kylie's version of this. And that is something that also came to mind for me when watching this ad was I was like,

[00:47:15] [SPEAKER_07] I don't think she needs to be like, I don't believe in like, oh, as a mother, you always need to be with your children. Like, absolutely not. But I did think it was kind of striking that as a mother of young children, they're not even like, they're not present in this. You wouldn't even know that they existed in this. Like, it's so clear that, you know, her experience of parenting is to not have to be hands on because clearly there is a team of other people like taking care of her kids for her.

[00:47:42] [SPEAKER_07] Almost no other young mother on the planet has that experience. So I think that a lot of people are sort of like, not really like on board with with the Kylie of it all. But it's more like there's a fascination with watching her because of her the fact that her life is so surreal and that she has grown up in this like, bizarro world of wealth and privilege.

[00:48:03] [SPEAKER_04] And what a nice option for her to have to not include her child in the metaglasses commercial. If only mothers everywhere could similarly have the option to not have their children filmed by these glasses.

[00:48:17] [SPEAKER_02] Yep. On like such a base level, what would the general person really be using this for? Right. Just like filming the general day to day and constantly be what interfacing with checking in on the metaglasses, capturing very specific moments or trying to set that up instead of just letting things happen.

[00:48:35] [SPEAKER_02] I think, you know, as is the case with a lot of Meta's products, the goal is to kind of terraform social life and convince you that, yeah, of course, of course, it's nice to hang out with your friends. Of course, it's nice to be offline. Of course, it's nice to go outside and to have things spontaneously happen. But wouldn't it be better if you did it on the platform? In fact, here's some reasons why it might be better if you did it.

[00:48:59] [SPEAKER_02] If you did dating, if you did, you know, meeting new friends, if you did events, if you did communication, you know, and phone calls. Here's why it would be better if you did in our ecosystem and trying to offload as much as that as possible. But, you know, you still by doing that, you have to convince people there's a reason why or you have to change the way that the experience happens.

[00:49:20] [SPEAKER_02] And I feel like the Meta Glasses, part of the move, part of the push is they're going to try to do is how do we convince people that it's normal, cool and fun to not just film strangers in public, although that's already, you know, that we've kind of lost out war. But how do we convince people that they should also be filming their private moments completely and consistently all the time and always be online, right? There's no real reason to be doing this.

[00:49:48] [SPEAKER_02] Most people have more digital detritus than they can handle. You know, how many people have thousands, tens of thousands of photos that don't really need to sift through to the point where it's like you can't, you have to make a decision. I'm not going to use some of these services because they encourage the sort of like thoughtlessness of perpetual piling on instead of being a little bit more present with the moment and cherishing it.

[00:50:11] [SPEAKER_02] I think, you know, these are attitudes that the technology encourages, but also that the company encourages because that makes for a more amenable and reliable customer for this product than others, right?

[00:50:25] [SPEAKER_07] Yeah, I think like along with that, the only people who I've really seen using these glasses so far and the only type of content that I've seen created with these glasses so far are influencers. Like when I'm watching like reels or something, I will see because this being a meta product, they're using it as a form of advertising within the content. So like if someone films something with meta glasses and then uploads it to Instagram, there's a little label that says like filmed with, you know, meta AI.

[00:50:53] [SPEAKER_07] I can see why for some content creators, the selling point is like you can go hands free and you can just like literally just have this like instead of holding a camera and like setting it down, setting it up. It's like you're just filming everything around you. There's one woman who her whole shtick is she eats like a stack of edibles. Have you guys seen this woman? Okay.

[00:51:15] [SPEAKER_04] Like edible like THC?

[00:51:17] [SPEAKER_07] Yes, yes, yes. She's really, really popular. And I don't have anything against her as a person, but I do have two problems with what she's doing. So the whole gimmick of her video is she shows you this massive stack of like THC gummy edibles. She puts them all into her mouth in one big bite. And then she's like, let's go eat lunch together. And she films the content from what I can tell with some form of the glasses.

[00:51:42] [SPEAKER_07] She'll go into the restaurant and she'll be recording like her interactions with the people who work there. And she'll ask them on camera, are you okay with me filming this? To which they'll say, yes. But my issues are twofold. One, I don't think you should be eating that many edibles and then driving.

[00:52:02] [SPEAKER_01] Right.

[00:52:04] [SPEAKER_07] I'm like, you should not be driving like under the influence, which I do think that a lot of the people who are doing this are. Second of all, and this is the bigger issue with the glasses and with content creators using the glasses. You're acting like you're asking for people's permission to be filmed, but you're already filming them. And they're in a social position where they can't easily say no. If you are the customer and you're already filming the person serving you and you're like, can I film you?

[00:52:31] [SPEAKER_07] It's almost a knee jerk reaction to be like, oh, yeah, sure. Because it's already happening. And it's like there's so much there's such a balance of power with like a paying customer and a low wage employee where I think a lot of people in that position would just say yes. So I'm like, I don't like the like the way that I'm seeing these glasses sort of be used in people's content already.

[00:52:53] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, working customer service or retail half the time, it's most of the time, actually, it's just so much easier to say yes than to risk stepping on some random landmine that activates a fight where you get disciplined, chastised or lose the job. You know, I can't think of how many times I said no to a very innocent thing that I thought made sense, yelled at and then get yelled at again by the boss like it's my fault.

[00:53:22] [SPEAKER_02] It is funny that it's like the one person who seems to be asking is doing it after, you know, taking a million edibles to the face.

[00:53:34] [SPEAKER_04] I never thought I would yearn for the GoPro. Like bring back tradition. Let's all put our GoPros back on if this is what we want to be doing, kids.

[00:53:43] [SPEAKER_07] But to do it with the glasses and to be like, just like asking the workers instead of just not filming them in the first place. I'm like, I don't love this because even if they do consent, they don't know. You're not standing there and really like telling them like, oh, by the way, I have a million followers. So like hundreds of thousands of people could see you. You just like it just it doesn't feel like these glasses and the function of filming with them in public or even in private. It doesn't feel like informed consent is even on the table.

[00:54:12] [SPEAKER_04] And mind you, these are all the problems we have with the edible lady who just by virtue of asking for people's permission sounds like the most ethical wearer of these goggles. Like this is the best case scenario.

[00:54:27] [SPEAKER_04] Kylie Jenner had a launch party for her meta glasses, which Timothee Chalamet attended, ironically, in a hoodie, which he had pulled the string so you could basically not even tell that it was him because he didn't want anyone to see or film him, presumably. Which I just thought was a beautifully ironic thing to do at the launch party for the surveillance goggles.

[00:54:53] [SPEAKER_02] Surveillance for thee, not for me. You know, that's usually how it is.

[00:54:57] [SPEAKER_04] What we don't know is that he was actually inside of that hoodie. He was on his own meta goggles placing bets on Kalshi.

[00:55:07] [SPEAKER_02] Do you think he'll do a partnership with meta ray bands? Like a his and hers.

[00:55:12] [SPEAKER_04] I mean, you know, I have to say I have to say people. I remember when Timothy and Kylie started dating and this is sort of heterosexual business that I try not to get too involved with on this podcast. But people were like, oh, my God, he like has these little chicken legs and she's a voluptuous, beautiful woman. What could they have in common? He's like this artsy baby girl boy actor. And she's like this like shameless influencer. Like, what do they have in common?

[00:55:41] [SPEAKER_04] They, my friends, are perfect for each other. And I think as time goes by, we can see that crystallize. Right.

[00:55:50] [SPEAKER_07] 100%. 100%.

[00:55:51] [SPEAKER_04] So I want to spend time talking about these glasses and the future that meta is predicting we all want. And, you know, I disaffectionately call these pedophile goggles. Those in the industry call them wearable AI. Meta Ray Bans, meta's earlier AI glasses release sold 7 million pairs in 2025. Entrepreneur.com called AI wearables the next big thing in personal tech.

[00:56:21] [SPEAKER_04] Is that true? I don't know. I hope not. I know Meta hopes it is. They've invested billions of dollars in that hope. But to better contextualize what Meta hopes is the future of everyone wearing glasses that talk to us in the voice of Kylie Jenner, which, by the way, just based on that commercial and how monotone she is, doesn't sound that fun. Where did you want this?

[00:56:43] [SPEAKER_05] Uh, over there. Just came in from your mom. Thank you.

[00:56:46] [SPEAKER_04] But anyway, I want to first look back into a recent past that feels so, so long ago. The year is 2013. We've survived predictions of the world ending. Obama's once again president. Thrift shop by Macklemore is dominating the charts. Your host, Matt Bernstein, is a freshman in high school. And there's a new tech product on everyone's lips called Google Glass.

[00:57:14] [SPEAKER_04] Priced at $1,500, the original smart glasses looked less like glasses and more like orthodontic headgear. Yet many at the time were convinced that these would be the next big thing. Vogue published a 12-page editorial photo shoot devoted to them. Diane von Furstenberg, the designer and former wife of gay billionaire Barry Diller. It's a whole other thing.

[00:57:41] [SPEAKER_04] Not only wore them to her spring 2013 runway show, but sent all of her models down the runway wearing Google Glasses. Yet the backlash was swift. The glasses did many of the same things that meta glasses are trying to sell you on today. You could talk to them, tell it to take photos and videos. And people in 2013 did not like this. They thought it was creepy. They thought people who wore them were creepy. So much so that they were given a name.

[00:58:10] [SPEAKER_04] Glass holes. And so my question to the esteemed panel today is, do you think that meta glasses can overcome many of these same concerns 13 years later or not? And why?

[00:58:25] [SPEAKER_07] I think that the problem slash the pro, like why I think that they are overcoming it or maybe will continue to, is that they are not as hideously ugly as these glasses were. And you cannot tell that they are recording you all of the time.

[00:58:44] [SPEAKER_07] And I think that with so many of these technological advancements around AI, it's like the whole point is that people have to be coerced into a world where they exist by simply not even knowing what is happening. Like if you saw someone wearing Google Glasses, you'd be like, that, I can see those. Those are weird looking. Like I know that that's not like just a regular pair of sunglasses. If you see the meta Ray-Ban sunglasses, I guarantee you most people probably don't even know that these exist yet.

[00:59:12] [SPEAKER_07] So there's not that like skepticism and disgust factor built into it. It's like almost like a gaslighting thing where it's like, these are just normal sunglasses. Oh, wait, no, you've been surreptitiously recorded this entire time.

[00:59:25] [SPEAKER_04] The lack of consent really is a huge through line, I feel like.

[00:59:29] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, you know, also meta tries to be like, hey, you know, we have implemented features that will let you know if someone is recording. We'll put a little dot. But I mean, the glasses are also relatively easy to get into and get rid of the dot. Or, you know, as you're sending me examples of this, you can get a vendor to give you a little dot that you can just put on it. And, you know, it can blend in with the glasses itself.

[00:59:58] [SPEAKER_02] I mean, I've also seen demos of people using it to dox people, right? You can use the glasses, scan faces, right? They have biometric code that you can upload or that's already, you know, on the glasses itself. Take publicly available information, voter registration, namely, and figure out where someone lives, you know, and repeat that information back to them as they do in the demo.

[01:00:22] [SPEAKER_02] Right. So on a few levels, I think that there is enough of what can go wrong and enough of a tech leap. There's an opportunity to get people to react as sharply as they did to the glass holes. But it is possible that they'll win the war and that the pervert glasses will spread everywhere because there's been erosion of people's outrage, right? You know, we have, you know, as we've been talking about, we're just inundated with constant violations and revulsions.

[01:00:51] [SPEAKER_02] Facebook is constantly doing something that pushes a boundary and is constantly getting people to accept the boundary later. This sort of surveillance is increasingly pervasive and people are being taught to accept it as part of the price for living in a city. And I think that they are going to and have been doing a good job of trying to latch on to all the other ways it can be used outside of surveillance,

[01:01:21] [SPEAKER_02] outside of creeping on people, outside of secretly recording people without consent, right? They're trying really hard to graft it onto content. And as Kat was talking about onto hands-free content, they're trying to also latch it onto this sort of personal, like, don't you want to fill out, you know, parts of your life and have these things as cherished mementos forever? I mean, this is similar to what they've been doing with the slow integration of AI features into a photo album that you already have, right?

[01:01:50] [SPEAKER_02] Don't you just want, like, an automatic, you know, face tune or modification or adjustment of the photo? It's no different than what your phone already does, actually. When you take the photo, right, it already has to do some adjustments, algorithmically. So what's the difference if we have an actual artificial intelligence or if we have an LLM that's interested in doing that for you as a product, right?

[01:02:13] [SPEAKER_02] And so there's been a lot of slow encroachments over the years that I think have eroded people's defense mechanisms. And these companies are also more desperate. They need as many lines of revenue as they can, especially as they're burning all this money on AI infrastructure, right? You need, they don't have another growth thing, right? We don't have another search. We don't have another new social media. The growth thing is supposed to be generative AI offered to consumers and chatbots and enterprise.

[01:02:42] [SPEAKER_02] And if that doesn't pan out, you need to put your money into a bunch of baskets, right? You need wereples, AIs, or, you know, you need, you know, what they tried to do with the metaverse and AR and VR. You need some sort of crypto thing. I think of this as all also constantly trying to figure out how can we just pull people in for another growth product.

[01:03:04] [SPEAKER_04] I don't think it's going to work. I hope not. I don't think it's going to work. That's my prediction. That's my prediction market. Hey, sorry. Should I kill myself? I don't think it will because I was reading all these articles from 2013 in preparation for this and all of them were like the Google glasses are creepy. If someone around me is wearing them, I'm going to smash them.

[01:03:29] [SPEAKER_04] It was identical to the things that we're seeing today online, the sentiments that are going viral around the meta glasses. Did 7 million people purchase the meta glasses last year? Yes. Did 7 million people ever purchase Google Glass? No. Do I think, like you said, Ed, that there has been an erosion in like the privacy that we feel we're entitled to in this tech landscape? Yes. Yes.

[01:03:54] [SPEAKER_04] But I also perhaps naively, maybe optimistically think that this moment generally over the last year, especially with the proliferation of AI data centers, everyone is feeling this like wake up of like, no, actually, I have agency and you can't just do this to me. There is such a through line of non-consent to all of this. It's just happening to us. I don't know. I think people are tired.

[01:04:22] [SPEAKER_07] I agree with that. And I do think like one thing that has heartened me throughout like the force of AI, like AI was forced onto people who did not want it. And I think you can tell that like one thing that I do to just like gauge like public sentiment about things is like go through all of people's Instagram stories, including people who I went to high school with, including my family members who are not like politically engaged, including like people who are relatively outside my bubble.

[01:04:49] [SPEAKER_07] And I have almost never seen anyone like organically within these like networks of people be like, I love using AI. In fact, all the time I see people like rejecting it and being like, I hate AI. I hate that I'm forced to use this at work. I hate when my dad sends me like an AI generated picture. I hate all of this stuff. And I think that that will continue to be the case. Like we're already seeing that with these glasses.

[01:05:15] [SPEAKER_07] The way that people are kind of like drawn to it is when they when the companies can figure out a way to engineer some sort of like participatory meme. And the way that that the way that happened with generative AI was like the Ghibli challenge when Sam Altman. The what? Do you remember the Ghibli challenge when everyone was putting their stuff into Chachi BT and telling it to make it look like a Ghibli film?

[01:05:38] [SPEAKER_02] They should have given Miyazaki a gun.

[01:05:40] [SPEAKER_04] Oh, and people would did that fucking stupid fucking bullshit yearbook shit. Yes.

[01:05:46] Yes.

[01:05:47] [SPEAKER_04] They're like fed photos of themselves. Do you know that people were paying money to do that? Crazy. People were posting those those AI generated yearbook me as a jock in high school. They were like paying like it was like eight dollars or something.

[01:05:59] [SPEAKER_07] Or like the Barbie doll where it was like this is me as a Barbie doll and these are my little like props.

[01:06:04] [SPEAKER_04] My God.

[01:06:05] [SPEAKER_07] People can be, I think, convinced to do things via the power of like participatory memes and like participatory internet culture in general. The challenge with the glasses is if you aren't already a content creator, I don't really see how they're going to get people to do this. I'm sure they will try. I would not be surprised if especially around like the holiday season this year. We're going to see a lot of people being like it's so easy to take a family video when I don't have to pick up the camcorder and I can just switch on.

[01:06:34] [SPEAKER_07] We're going to see a lot of cutesy videos of like caught this moment of my kid unwrapping his present or like look at this amazing surprise I captured with my Meta Ray brand glasses. But I don't think that this actually has a real utility for most people and so I think it would be short lived.

[01:06:50] [SPEAKER_04] Yes. And I think many people have correctly pointed out that there really is one novel utility about these glasses which is that you can film people basically undetected. Which I think is useful for a very specific type of person and for a very specific reason. And the idea that these glasses are a tool for creeps isn't just speculative, it has materialized.

[01:07:17] [SPEAKER_04] I want to talk a little bit here about this idea that Kylie Jenner and you know frankly the many other women who have been hired by Meta and paid handsomely to do their dirty work are attempting to girl boss this digital panopticon for pedophiles. That sorry I mean sorry I'm just going to come out and say it. Like that's what it is that we're creating.

[01:07:40] [SPEAKER_04] And BBC has done some extensive reporting into stories about women who've been caught on camera non-consensually by men wearing these glasses. And I'm going to read you some of their reporting. Joy Kolekye, a 19 year old woman living in Nairobi, Kenya was approached by a man on the street and did not know she was being filmed.

[01:08:03] [SPEAKER_04] She was one of many women filmed by this same guy who made content for the internet secretly hitting on women in public. Well I guess hitting on them openly but secretly filming himself doing so. And the video that she was in went viral. She's told the BBC quote, It's like being a celebrity but not in such a good way.

[01:08:26] [SPEAKER_04] It led to men harassing her in person, slut shaming her outside of her home, cat calling and the like. And the same thing happened to a woman named Dilara, a 21 year old woman in London, who was shocked to see a first person POV video of her getting hit on by the male creator of this video, with 1.3 million views on TikTok.

[01:08:50] [SPEAKER_04] In the video, the man asks for Dilara's phone number, which was then made public in the video, and led to her getting spam called for weeks, including in the middle of the night. The article said, quote, On one occasion, she says she picked up the phone and a man said to her, Do you know how stupid you are? Do you regret it? Do you know how easy that made you look? Men have also shown up to her workplace.

[01:09:16] [SPEAKER_04] And the same thing happened to a 56 year old woman named Kim, who was filmed wearing a bikini in a video that got 6.9 million views on TikTok. Kim only learned of this when her son called her one morning at 5am to notify her that a video of her in a bikini had gone viral. She says she received thousands of messages from men, including, quote, Name your price to see your naked body. And, quote,

[01:09:47] [SPEAKER_04] Do you have an OnlyFans? Six months later, the messages still have not stopped. She says she didn't even think there was any point in asking the man who uploaded the video to delete it because it had so many views that it didn't matter anymore. And she had no recourse.

[01:10:03] [SPEAKER_07] It's dark. I mean, I think that this is kind of like this is something that happens alongside a lot of technological advancements. And particularly I've seen this with AI. Like when deepfake technology was first being engineered and hitting the Internet and hitting the public, one of the original biggest purposes of this technology was to sexually harass women and girls by like deepfaking women and girls' faces into pornographic videos.

[01:10:31] [SPEAKER_07] And today that's not the primary purpose of deepfaking technology, although it is still a major one. But I think you see a lot of times with like these sorts of advancements, that is oftentimes like one of the mainstreaming purposes. And these companies aren't really doing anything about it because they know that it serves them in the end. Like that's part of the profit incentive here. Like you want someone, anyone to be buying these glasses.

[01:10:57] [SPEAKER_07] So if your main target audience is like creeps and purveyors of sexual harassment and abuse, they'll do like surface level, like condemn that type of behavior or not. But they're not going to stop it because I just think that like they see that there's a market for it.

[01:11:11] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. I mean, you know, this is the thing, you know, Facebook runs into this time and time and time again. Right. It's profitable to have fraud on the platform. Right. It's profitable to have sexual harassment and abuse on the platform. Right.

[01:11:26] [SPEAKER_02] It is profitable to have as many people as possible and eat a tiny fine because everyone more or less has either been made amenable to the regulatory frameworks that you've lobbied for or believes in you and your mission. With products like this, you know, we have seen increasingly, increasingly over time, what is, what are some of the, the immediate use cases? Right. It's, you know, how can I harass? How can I abuse?

[01:11:55] [SPEAKER_02] You know, how can I stalk someone? And these glasses in particular, when combined with biometric surveillance and combined, I'm sure, with deep fake tech are offer like a pretty frightening vector for people to be able to only expand this even further. And is there going to be any real effort to impose guardrails on this sort of thing? No, of course not. Right.

[01:12:18] [SPEAKER_02] I mean, even recently, right, there was reporting from Wired, I believe, that was talking about biometric code that was already present in one of Facebook's products. They rolled out one of their chief PR people to basically call the journalists liars and say that this was slander. This is bullshit. They don't know what they're talking about. And then eventually have to take all that back and apologize because it's true. Why? Because they don't care. Right.

[01:12:48] [SPEAKER_02] They're putting out antisocial products because in a way, it's actually good if it is antisocial. There's a market for antisocial behavior. And they've also monopolized so much or cannibalized so much of the social fabric that those who rely on it or those who integrate it as part of their lives when they're moving around, interacting with people, keeping in contact with family abroad through WhatsApp, keeping in contact with friends from earlier periods of their life through Facebook. Or through Instagram.

[01:13:19] [SPEAKER_02] I mean, they have been able to pull a large chunk of people's lives and communications onto the platform. Or that even if it becomes a hostile place, even if it becomes a toxic place, even if you're subjected to harassment and abuse, you're still going to use it. And now we have a secondary market that has not been properly tapped into.

[01:14:06] [SPEAKER_02] For surveillance, for stalking, for harassment. And they're not going to do it because there's so many other things that it could be done for. I mean, we have this with these sort of AI license plate readers. I mean, they are used regularly to stalk people. What's the reaction? Integrate them even further into the police systems.

[01:14:22] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah. Flock. Flock surveillance, which, if my memory serves, is also integrated with ring cameras.

[01:14:29] [SPEAKER_02] Beautiful.

[01:14:30] [SPEAKER_01] That sounds right. Yeah.

[01:14:32] [SPEAKER_04] Every house or fortress. Hello, hello. Editing Matt here. I fact-checked this. And what actually happened was Ring Cameras, the ones that all of your parents have on their doorbells, announced a collaboration with Flock Safety. Safety. Which is, if you don't know, it is a surveillance company that makes cameras and puts them all over the roads everywhere and collaborates with police departments so they can track all of our driver's license plates. Yay!

[01:14:58] [SPEAKER_04] Ring announced a collaboration with Flock, which was also, in nature, a collaboration with local police departments around the country. And that announcement got so much backlash that they canceled the collaboration before it ever went into effect. So what have we learned here? Keep bullying these bullshit surveillance companies. Yay!

[01:15:17] [SPEAKER_04] I should highlight that all those sort of vignettes of women being victimized by this technology, that's just the women being surveilled without their knowledge by content creators. The vast majority of people, of all the genders, of all genders, by the way, who will have their privacy and bodies invaded by all of the glasses. That won't be content. That won't get uploaded.

[01:15:46] [SPEAKER_04] But it's still just as bad that someone is now, you know, has that footage of you to do whatever you want. And, you know, and of children. And there is a whole, naturally, what one Redditor called a creepconomy that has sprouted up, a third-party creepconomy, which, like you said, includes people making covers, little black circle covers,

[01:16:10] [SPEAKER_04] that can stick on to the glasses and cover the already very small light that pops on when you start recording. Which, by the way, most people don't even know what these glasses are, won't know what the light means in the first place.

[01:16:24] [SPEAKER_08] Yep.

[01:16:25] [SPEAKER_04] But, you know, and I was on Reddit, and I was on all these different forums, and there's all these presumably men talking about, how do you cover the light? What's the best way to cover the light? It's not a secret. Meta knows this. They don't care. And for Kylie, someone who has been, you know, I don't want to put all the weight on her, she's being hired for a specific reason. Just like Timothee Chalamet was hired by Kalshi for a specific reason.

[01:16:49] [SPEAKER_04] Selling gambling addictions to the people that Kalshi knows are most likely to be receptive to developing them. And in the case of Meta, Meta knows that they have a women problem with this product. Just look at the public discourse about it right now. They also know, and I talk about this a lot, that you need women to make a product a quote-unquote hero.

[01:17:16] [SPEAKER_04] You need women, you need the women's market to turn a product into a blockbuster, to make it worth all those billions of dollars that you've invested shareholder money into. You know, women, through their own purchasing power and also through their influence of other people's purchasing power, Forbes estimates that they control up to 70 to 80% of consumer purchasing power. They need to convince women to get on board.

[01:17:40] [SPEAKER_04] And, you know, who better to hire than the most famous woman on the internet, who also happens to be not discerning whatsoever and completely willing to throw other women and girls under the bus of this technology, despite Kylie Jenner being open about having her own sort of traumatic experiences being surveilled by paparazzi as a child.

[01:18:06] [SPEAKER_06] But when I'm in LA, for some reason when I'm here, it's hard for me to leave the house.

[01:18:12] [SPEAKER_05] Why do you think that is?

[01:18:14] [SPEAKER_06] Paparazzi or in LA, it's just easier to be spotted, I think. So the thought of like trying to find an outfit and like getting ready and present. And then I go back and forth because that's a silly way to think about it. But it's honestly the truth.

[01:18:33] [SPEAKER_05] But do they just wait by your house for your car to leave?

[01:18:37] [SPEAKER_06] No, because I don't really leave. Got it. So they don't really wait for me anymore. It used to be so insane. I don't even know how I'm like a normal person right now.

[01:18:47] [SPEAKER_05] Like what would it, what was it like?

[01:18:49] [SPEAKER_06] Things that they would say to me and how they would treat me as a child is diabolical. Like inappropriate. I would be coming out of a thing and they'd be like, you fucking slut. What? When I was 16.

[01:19:03] [SPEAKER_05] You're lying.

[01:19:04] [SPEAKER_06] I'm not lying. The things that they would say to me, I would never try to give them a photo. So I would just jump in the car and then there would be like six of them. And they would stand in front of my car as I was like 16, like turning my car on, whatever. And they would all stand out because I would just be like, you know, hiding. And they would just be like, oh, I'm like, you know, mock me. What? They wanted to just make more money off a scandalous photo. And I was an underage girl by herself. I didn't have security.

[01:19:33] [SPEAKER_06] I didn't have security till after I had my daughter.

[01:19:37] [SPEAKER_07] A lot of this comes down to like wealth and class because it's like people like Taylor Swift, people like the Jenner Kardashians, like they are able to pay for environments in which they are truly private and secure. Like they can create the conditions necessary to have a party where no one is allowed to talk about or take pictures of them or like what they wore, what they said and what they did.

[01:20:01] [SPEAKER_07] In a way, by endorsing and sort of mainstreaming these projects, they're creating an even larger divide between what they are able to create for themselves with their money and the rest of us. They are actively participating in this project to create like new ways to define class and isolate themselves away from the rest of the masses. Being able to like prevent yourself from being recorded and surveilled in this way is part of that. And it is ultimately really selfish.

[01:20:30] [SPEAKER_07] I remember like a long time ago before, again, like before she had her first child, Kylie Jenner did an interview where she literally said she would go off the grid if given the opportunity because she had never been allowed to have that type of a lifestyle. Only then to turn around and like, like expose herself to the world, like create an economy around her like 10 times harder than before. And I don't think that that is because she's like even necessarily contradicting herself.

[01:20:58] [SPEAKER_07] I think it's because for her, she actually has like freedom of choice that the rest of us don't have. Like we already have such a massive societal panopticon around just like people in the background of TikToks. Like there have been so many controversies where so-and-so who doesn't even know they're being recorded becomes this like viral overnight villain for not smiling or not dressing in a certain way or not looking a certain way. The potential with these glasses to like make that even worse, I think is true.

[01:21:27] [SPEAKER_07] And also like just the social trust element of this is a big thing too, because we've already seen this with the rise of generative AI. There's been this erosion of social trust. Like teachers don't trust their students to be turning in original work. Like people don't trust that their friend or colleague is writing their own emails, writing their own text messages. Like the what if, the not knowing is a big part of what is so like antisocial about all of this technology.

[01:21:55] [SPEAKER_07] And whether you are wearing recording glasses or not, that's a new area of social distrust. Because now like anytime, if this starts to become a big viral thing where like people are constantly being exposed, if you see someone wearing sunglasses or glasses, now that question is going to be in the back of your head. Like, I wonder if they're recording me. And I just think that is such like an enormous loss at a time when we really need to be building and reinvigorating social trust.

[01:22:21] [SPEAKER_07] These technologies and these companies and these celebrities are actively working against it.

[01:22:27] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah, I was at Penn Station, funny enough, the other night waiting for a train. That wasn't me trying to coyly be like, I was at Penn Station. But I was sitting there waiting for a train and I found myself and I've started to do this more and more. Anytime someone has like a black rimmed glasses of a certain shape, I was like squinting trying to see if there was that little camera on the side.

[01:22:57] [SPEAKER_04] And I'm like, what the fuck are we doing?

[01:22:59] [SPEAKER_07] I don't have any faith that Meta like cares about this at all. If they actually did, I'm like, a little red light is not enough. It should be like a blinking flashing red light and it should be an audible sound.

[01:23:13] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, literally, you are being recorded. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:23:17] [SPEAKER_07] Yes.

[01:23:18] [SPEAKER_04] I personally think if you start filming with them that they should just spontaneously combust. But you know, I'm asking a little too much.

[01:23:26] [SPEAKER_02] If I had a wand. Okay. You know, I'm hopeful and I want to be optimistic also about, you know, us blocking these glasses from proliferating because I think downstream of them are a lot of other developments that I hate and I don't want to see happen. And that would follow pretty quickly if they were used, you know, widely. And I'm hoping also, I mean, something that encourages me a little bit is the fact that people do smash them.

[01:23:55] [SPEAKER_02] You know, I have read many reports of people taking them off people's faces and smashing them. You're doing Lord's work, right? Okay. And that's what he wants you to do.

[01:24:05] [SPEAKER_04] Let's talk about practical solutions.

[01:24:06] [SPEAKER_02] It's the, it's what the Pope wants is what we want. I've seen more of that and heard of more of that than when I look back and see how people reacted to the Google glasses. That does give me hope, I think. But it does, the solution is really only going to come from us, right? Because the company's not doing it and God knows the government's not doing anything except somehow figuring out a way to make it worse as long as, you know, Trump is in control here.

[01:24:32] [SPEAKER_07] Instead, they're going to pass a moratorium on legislating anything to do with AI surveillance glasses for the next five years.

[01:24:40] [SPEAKER_02] That's going to be great. We have to let the tech develop and mature.

[01:24:45] [SPEAKER_04] But this is why it's like, we need to look and imagine solutions bigger than the law because like these tech companies and products are moving faster than the law. The law is moving especially slow as long as people are in charge like the people we currently have. And so it's just like, I don't know. I think we need to use social ostracization as a skill. I think we need to brand these as pedophile goggles even harder than we currently are. Yeah. And speaking of all this, we've up until this point talked about how this quote unquote

[01:25:14] [SPEAKER_04] surveillance creep, as it's often referred to, is being used to victimize women in the public sphere. But who's taking care of all the data produced by these goggles, including what's not posted publicly? In February 2026, a Swedish newspaper called Svenska Dagbladets pronunciation.

[01:25:35] [SPEAKER_07] That was really impressive. I don't know if it's right, but it was impressive nonetheless.

[01:25:41] [SPEAKER_04] Released a bombshell report called, quote, she came out of the bathroom naked, an employee says. It described Sama, S-A-M-A.

[01:25:51] [SPEAKER_07] Sam Altman.

[01:25:53] [SPEAKER_04] Also, yeah, not, which is also Sam Altman's Twitter handle, but it's, I don't know, precede Sam Altman, I think, which is a quote unquote data training company headquartered in San Francisco. But the real work happens in Africa, in cities like Nairobi, Kenya, where thousands of employees sit in rows for 10 hours at a time and do something called data annotation. Essentially, they are fed an endless stream of photos and videos stolen from Internet users

[01:26:23] [SPEAKER_04] across the world and label what's in them. Those are hot dogs, not legs. These are legs, not hot dogs. That sort of thing. Quote, on the screens, they draw boxes around flower pots and traffic signs, follow contours, register pixels, and name objects, cars, lamps, people. Every image must be described, labeled, and quality assured, all to make sure the next generation of smart glasses is a little more intelligent, a little more human.

[01:26:53] [SPEAKER_04] Meta subcontracts companies like Sama to quote unquote process your data. So not only are the tech companies stealing our data, our artwork, our content, what have you, they're also hiring people across the globe and paying them pennies to label our data and identify its contents. This is what machine learning really is. Swedish reporters interviewed Nairobi-based data annotators anonymously. These laborers revealed that on the daily, they review footage from quote, Western homes

[01:27:22] [SPEAKER_04] of people using the restroom, getting changed, watching porn, and having sex. One worker who spoke to the journalist anonymously described a man hitting record on his metaglasses, setting them on his nightstand, and leaving the room before his wife enters the room to change her clothes while being unknowingly filmed. If the workers speak up about their discomfort of having to review this type of content footage,

[01:27:51] [SPEAKER_04] they risk expulsion and financial insecurity. Whenever you ask metaglasses to do anything, all of that data is sent to meta servers for processing. So it's a process of sharing you can't turn off. Another worker said, quote, you'd think that if they knew about the extent of the data collection, no one would dare use the glasses. Two months after this investigation was published, meta terminated its contract with SAMA, quote, because they don't meet our standards.

[01:28:21] [SPEAKER_04] But meta subcontracts at least 30 companies globally to annotate user data. So I don't know. To me, I think this one company got caught because a few of their employees spoke anonymously to journalists to say, basically, look, we can watch these people go into the bathroom. And meta was like, this is a bad look. So for PR cover up, we're going to ditch this one company. But I think it's happening all the time.

[01:28:46] [SPEAKER_07] They basically were like, people spoke up about this anonymously. So to chill that and make sure that never happens again, we're going to fire, essentially, ensure that all these people lose their jobs.

[01:28:56] [SPEAKER_04] And they did, over a thousand of them.

[01:28:58] Wow.

[01:28:58] [SPEAKER_02] This is a reliable method from Facebook. How many times have they had stories about working conditions for subcontractors? And the response is, we hear you. We are listening. We are going to fire every single fucker at that company. We're never working with them again. And we're not going to fix the conditions and we're going to replicate them. And the firm also persists. I mean, this firm, Sama in particular, I was wondering where I recognize that name. And funnily enough, they work with OpenAI.

[01:29:24] [SPEAKER_01] Oh, my gosh.

[01:29:25] [SPEAKER_02] In 2023, when there was that story that reported about Kenyan workers being paid $1 to $2 an hour to label the data, it was this firm, Sama. These companies are used precisely because the understanding is, you know, we're going to offload everything onto you. You know, you're going to have to deal with, you're going to get the psychic baggage and trauma. And you're going to also get the brunt of the blame and the liability if something goes wrong, right? We'll cut you off.

[01:29:55] [SPEAKER_02] You'll find another firm. You'll find another hyperscale. You'll find another SaaS company. Who cares, right? We'll be able to move on without much reputational damage. And it's a system that's like so cynically constructed. They, you know, it's one of the things tech does best, right? They do this to distance themselves from unethical labor. They do this to distance themselves from slave labor.

[01:30:18] [SPEAKER_02] They do this to distance themselves from any sort of toxic sludge that's integral to their operation.

[01:30:27] [SPEAKER_07] It feels like deja vu from all of the amazing 2010s reporting on the content moderators and all of the horrific violence that these people had to see get uploaded to social media platforms 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But instead of addressing that, instead of doing anything at all to like address that, we're going to make it worse. We're going to ensure that exponentially more of this horrific content exists because at

[01:30:54] [SPEAKER_07] the end of the day, they realized that to have all these problems in the world is like the greatest like boost to their net worth. And they just will steamroll over everything in their quest for more and more money.

[01:31:06] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. And you don't want the threat of a good example either, because if you have some sort of precedent where it's like, OK, then we are providing for them. You know, maybe we create some workers fund. Maybe we hold ourselves accountable. Then that just gives a little bit of a legal scaffolding for more ambitious lawsuits to be brought up in places where we acted even more egregiously.

[01:31:26] [SPEAKER_04] Mm hmm. I think so many people who are relatively low information when it comes to AI, which is most people, which is me most of the time. I mean, this isn't my area of expertise, but they think that if they were to buy, for example, the Kylie Jenner meta glasses that talks to them in Kylie Jenner's voice, that it's like some algorithms that really smart people at meta wrote. And now I can talk to a fake Kylie Jenner inside of my glasses.

[01:31:54] [SPEAKER_04] And it's like more or less technological magic. But it's not. The entire system that we're talking about here relies on a labor force. And this is that labor force based in Africa consuming the way that you're using these products and potentially consuming the first person videos of people who are having sex with these glasses on.

[01:32:18] [SPEAKER_08] Yeah.

[01:32:19] [SPEAKER_04] And telling the machine exactly what they're seeing to better train the next model of the machine. Like there's a lot of discussion about the way that AI and the way that it's changing the American workforce and going to create a permanent underclass in, you know, the American labor force and all of that stuff is awful. And it has already in many ways created an underbelly in other countries where they can exploit workers

[01:32:48] [SPEAKER_04] for even less and do hideously traumatic things to them. I mean, not to be such like a downer, but it's like, again, it's just it's all so unbelievable to me.

[01:32:59] [SPEAKER_02] I mean, this makes me think of the luxury surveillance idea from Chris Gillard, right? That where that, you know, there are populations that have surveillance forced upon them or are forced to interface with technologies that either scan their faces or monitor where they're going, whether that's because they're on probation or coming out of the corrections industry or because they are in a heavily policed area. But then there are populations that willingly subject themselves to surveillance as a status

[01:33:28] [SPEAKER_02] symbol of some kind. Right. And that's a lot of that is the wearables, you know, these sort of VR, AR devices where the idea is, you know, by turning the camera towards myself and offering these companies free training data or free insights, I will also get a little bit more data for myself. And, you know, the company will presumably get something in aggregate. And this sort of is a dynamic, I think also is overlooked.

[01:33:58] [SPEAKER_02] Like there was a little bit of an understanding that was being cultivated in the 2010s that none of this stuff is free. And in a very real way, you know, you are the product. And the question was, you know, product to what end? For example, with advertising, where it's like we're selling, you know, advertisers access to you and our value as an advertiser revenue based business, which Facebook is, is getting as many people as

[01:34:24] [SPEAKER_02] possible, getting as many groups as possible, getting as many insights in those groups as possible, which means moving almost all their lives onto this so that the advertisers can pay us some obscene, you know, fee to get that privilege of your eyeballs. And I think similarly, it feels like so much of the push to put the surveillance inwards, right? And integrate these sort of wearables constantly on always recording, always learning devices.

[01:34:54] [SPEAKER_02] Some of it is, you know, how can we monetize this? How can we introduce advertiser revenue? Some of it is what other insights can we get to develop additional products and services that will get you to use? And if you spend all your time on it, then we'll get the answers we need to maybe tinker it and iterate it better. Right. But I think to your point where I, when I think about are people low or high information, I think it's really like everyone is saturated in information, but it's propaganda.

[01:35:23] [SPEAKER_02] You know, we're just saturated in propaganda about how these things work. We're lied to constantly about how they work, what their capabilities are going to be, what they're going to do to our livelihoods, you know, where you should use them, where you shouldn't use them. The only people who are really sending out messaging constantly is these companies who are screening about how they're going to destroy everything in our civilization, but they're also the greatest thing that we've ever made. You need to integrate them to get ahead of the workplace, but they're also going to take

[01:35:52] [SPEAKER_02] your job away in a few years. They're magical devices that are smooth and frictionless, but they also need a fleet of slaves to teleoperate or to, you know, label and to treat constantly. So I think that's the thing where it's like most of what people do know is just like, oh, usually a bold faced lie or misunderstanding that a company is selling and on the flip and through a very thin layer on the flip side is how it's actually working.

[01:36:20] [SPEAKER_02] But it is hard to break through that barrier when every day, all day, you go on the subway, you go on the highway, you know, you go on your phone, you go on your TV. There is some message about why it's okay to have this pervasive surveillance, why it's okay to have AI, why it's okay to port your life over to this or that platform.

[01:36:41] [SPEAKER_07] Yeah. I also feel like the way that we're being introduced to this technology is through the lens of like, Kylie Jenner's morning routine or the woman who eats a shit ton of edibles and then goes to lunch. But also like the police are going to be wearing these, like police officers are going to have like these cameras all over their bodies. And 404 Media, just an amazing story this past weekend about a woman who was being stalked by a police officer.

[01:37:09] [SPEAKER_07] And they outlined how this police officer, he was working private security at an event. He saw this woman. He went up to her and harassed her for her number. She told him, no, she told him I have a boyfriend. This police officer, this who was working as a security guard, he then went to the station or wherever he had his technology. And he was able to use like Palantir-esque surveillance networks to track her license plate and then put out an active alert so that he was notified the next time she passed like a flop camera.

[01:37:39] [SPEAKER_07] And then he drove out and pulled her over to harass her more. So it's just like, yeah, it's just like when you outfit the police, when you outfit the military, when you outfit the private companies with this type of surveillance, like we're constantly bombarded with the message that it's done for our safety and for our benefit. But the reality is they're giving these abusive creeps and individuals the power to like torment us and make our lives hell. And at the end of the day, we do not have recourse.

[01:38:09] [SPEAKER_07] And I think the vast majority of people out there don't even know how interconnected these webs of surveillance are to the point where that creepy man who's harassing you at the event is going to be able to like track you down and flag you down like a few days later.

[01:38:24] [SPEAKER_04] Can I just put out a call before I conclude here? Like, I don't think you need a ring camera. I don't think ring cameras do anything good for you. My parents have a ring camera. Your parents probably also have a ring camera. Everyone's fucking parents have a ring camera. Everyone loves ring cameras. This is like kind of a random side tangent. But but but not really, because ring cameras are tied in with all of this like police force

[01:38:48] [SPEAKER_04] bullshit amidst the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, Savannah Guthrie's mother, where Nancy Guthrie had a ring camera in the home that she was kidnapped from. Everyone was sorry.

[01:39:04] [SPEAKER_08] They're calling you, Matt. You've gone too far. Amazon's on the line.

[01:39:10] [SPEAKER_02] Stop. Would you like a brand partnership? Yeah, exactly.

[01:39:16] [SPEAKER_04] They're going to they're going to give me the Timothee Chalamet treatment. Everyone was like, oh, thank God she had a ring camera so we could have this footage of the men who kidnapped her. And this is like this is like the most sympathetic. This was like the most fleeting sympathy I ever had for the argument of like ring cameras are good. And what did the ring camera footage do? We never figured out the people who who kidnapped her because they were wearing masks.

[01:39:46] [SPEAKER_04] We got no recourse for her death. And even with my parents, I had this conversation with my parents. I was like, why do you guys have a ring camera? Has anything good ever happened? Like have have you ever as the ring camera says you can help find your neighbor's dog? That's how they that's how they spun it in the Super Bowl ad. And they said, well, no, but it gives us peace of mind. And I said, but has it ever done anything for you? I said, no, but it makes us feel safer.

[01:40:10] [SPEAKER_02] They did a great job convincing people to be paranoid in their own homes. I mean, that's the whole thing, right?

[01:40:15] [SPEAKER_07] Yeah. And it's like, I understand because this is the messaging that is like conditioned into us from birth. But like people are under the impression that surveillance makes us safer when the reality is that surveillance puts people in danger. Like surveillance does not equal safety. In most cases, I would argue surveillance equals like authoritarian danger and like the ability for people with power to like to track you and harm you in situations where you will not have recourse.

[01:40:42] [SPEAKER_04] I want to conclude by reflecting more broadly on my experience with technology. And I don't know if you guys can articulate yours or articulate this feeling better than I could. But in the realm of new tech launches, nothing feels exciting anymore. I almost exclusively feel dread. And this is distinct because back in the day, I remember watching iJustine, the YouTube queen of tech, iJustine.

[01:41:09] [SPEAKER_04] I remember watching her unbox all the new tech products with wonder. I remember when the iPod got color and then it came in colors and then it had a touch screen. And when the iPhone got apps and when every iPhone, it felt like the camera was actually improving a lot. And every new iteration of the thing felt genuinely exciting and innovative. And I can't pinpoint exactly when that feeling went away for me. But it doesn't exist at all anymore.

[01:41:40] [SPEAKER_04] Nothing feels innovative or exciting anymore. I just feel like I am constantly being taken for a ride by companies who hate me. There are no more value ads, just useless novelty. And I'm always nervous that this is just me becoming like a proverbial boomer and resisting change and being like, it was better when I was young. And maybe there's some of that. Maybe there's like the nostalgia factor.

[01:42:05] [SPEAKER_04] But there is evidence that points me towards a different conclusion, like the fact that young people are the most vocally against this sort of societal takeover of AI and are leading the political backlash to it. And that many young people seem to be more interested. And I see this like when I go out at night. It's like they're like buying like Canon PowerShot digital cameras instead of headwear that like records your trips to the bathroom. Yeah.

[01:42:33] [SPEAKER_02] I mean, you know, I hear you. I think it's hard to be excited for tech when a lot of it is used for the things that we've been talking about, you know, surveillance, projecting power from afar, hurting people, stealing cultural commons and creative wealth, you know, putting people out of jobs, creating working conditions and jobs that suck. I mean, it's hard to be excited for these things when, you know, you would have thought if you talked to me as a child and you said, when you're 30, there's going to

[01:43:02] [SPEAKER_02] be, you'll be able to, you'll be able to tell your computer, Hey, draw, you know, draw me a map. It'll draw you a map and everyone will be obsessed with that. And the company that has that will be worth, you know, almost a trillion dollars. I feel like I might've had a little wonder, a little childlike wonder about it. Whereas now I think, like you said, it's dread because it's not even now it's not just a technology. It's what's impact is this going to have on the rest of our society? Because every single one of these tech firms, they've not just made products.

[01:43:30] [SPEAKER_02] They've also tried to terraform daily life around everyone using the product as much as possible in very specific ways so they can make more money. So it's hard to get excited for tech because it's not, it's never just tech. It's, you know, package within it is an attempt to realize some sort of social reality as some sort of political project. And, and that does actually strip out a lot of the wonder for it. Right. Well, I don't even last piece of tech.

[01:43:57] [SPEAKER_02] I feel like I probably got excited about was, you know, it was a pretty, it's pretty lo-fi tech, which is what my partner got a, like a new, a new glucose monitor that was actually functional.

[01:44:10] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah.

[01:44:11] [SPEAKER_02] You know, because a lot of them suck. A lot of them really fucking suck. Am I excited by anything in AI? No, you know, even if on a technical level, this stuff is interesting. The company's pushing it. I'd rather anyone, I'd rather any other group of people on the planet have a say on this. And I'd also, I'd actually want it to be us. I'd want it to be democratized, but it's not, you know, can I be excited about, you know, any sort of advances in robotics?

[01:44:40] [SPEAKER_02] No, because this year they're trying to roll out like 12 different lines of robot slaves that'll be tele-operated by people in the Philippines. I mean, I'm not too keen on, on that. Can I be excited about autonomous vehicles? No, because they're also tele-operated or they're, they're vanguard of some political project that Musk specifically that I don't like, or some scheme to make cities look and feel a different way. You know, things that you shouldn't, that might, that you can make the case for being excited. It's hard to, which, which does suck, right?

[01:45:09] [SPEAKER_02] Because there are a lot of technologies that have the potential to radically change the world that could be pursued or developed. And instead, a lot of the attention and capital is focused on fucking chatbots and surveillance, you know, and book theft and deep fakes and, you know, all sorts of horrors that I want nothing to do with, right? So I guess, I guess that's also part of why the youth are so against it.

[01:45:38] [SPEAKER_02] I feel like you don't even get to have the period of being too excited about it. And you're just kind of confronted with the horror almost immediately.

[01:45:44] [SPEAKER_07] Growing up, it felt like there was a separation between the world of tech and the world of like politics. And now we're at a point in time where it's like, it's very obvious that all of these tech companies are just completely intertwined with like the authoritarian state. And like Elon Musk, I think is like, you know, the perfect example of this. But even more broadly, it's like these tech companies have amassed so much power.

[01:46:09] [SPEAKER_07] They've amassed so much wealth that they essentially operate as like systems of government that are completely devoid of accountability. And but even on like the cultural level, too, I think I've become more disillusioned with it because it's like when I see someone using their meta Ray-Ban glasses to make content, like maybe 10 years ago, I would have been like, oh, that's so cool. But now I just think like there's a growing expectation and need for all of us to be monetizing every aspect of our fucking lives.

[01:46:39] [SPEAKER_07] So when I see someone like monetizing, like going to a restaurant, I'm like, damn, I wonder if I'm going to have to do that. Like, I wonder like it's like this slow creep of like being a content creator, being a creator, period. At one point felt like a very liberating thing. And now it feels more like a ball and chain where it's like you are slowly having to record yourself, perform, monetize and disseminate every single thing you do just to like keep

[01:47:08] [SPEAKER_07] up and like have all these various income streams because that's the way that the creator economy like that's like what ultimately was the result of this versus like an actual like liberating force of like building people's platforms. It feels much so more that like our expectations and our potential is like limited through new technology versus like, oh, it's building new ways for us to like say and do things. It's like, no, no, you have to perform for meta and then they will censor you if you even

[01:47:38] [SPEAKER_07] like joke about it.

[01:47:40] [SPEAKER_04] You're still pissed about that shirt.

[01:47:44] [SPEAKER_08] I'm so mad. So mad.

[01:47:48] [SPEAKER_04] And you're right. Yeah. With all that with all that being said, though, aren't you afraid as a woman of being left behind?

[01:47:55] [SPEAKER_07] Oh, that is even more insidious. And I do think that, you know, you are seeing more and more people wake up to this, which is that like that anecdote, it's very haunting of like the man turns on his glasses and puts them on like the bedside table and begins recording like a woman undressing herself. Like it is so haunting and it is so disturbing. And I also think that like more and more people, not just women, like this also affects men and boys and people of all genders and identities.

[01:48:23] [SPEAKER_07] Like it is not good to have the ability to be surveilled without your knowledge. And I think that more people are actually like waking up to that and are becoming more and more viscerally aware of that.

[01:48:35] [SPEAKER_04] Meta reality labs, which is the division of meta that's producing these glasses and creating all sorts of bullshit nobody really wants. They brought in in the first quarter of 2026, $402 million in sales of these glasses. Sounds like sounds like a good number. Nope, not really. Because in that same time, meta reality labs lost $4 billion.

[01:49:02] [SPEAKER_04] And that's on top of the $6 billion that they lost in the quarter before the final quarter of 2025. And this is all part of a total loss of $80 billion since meta reality labs opened in 2020. So in the tradition of ending these podcasts on a high note, yay. Yay.

[01:49:25] [SPEAKER_04] People don't really want this shit, no matter how much they pay Kylie Jenner to try to make it look sexy. I have no faith that laws will catch up. And even in, you know, look how the laws that do exist around things like sexual violence, look how those protect women. Exactly. Not very well.

[01:49:44] [SPEAKER_08] Yeah.

[01:49:44] [SPEAKER_04] And so what I am, you know, advocating for officially on the A Bit Fruity podcast is, you know, as always, we need a cultural shift around this stuff. It is not cool to film people without their permission. It wasn't cool to do that with a phone. And it's especially not cool to do that with fucking glasses that nobody will know that you're filming on.

[01:50:07] [SPEAKER_04] If you are in a Reddit forum asking people how to cover up the light on your glasses that signal that it's recording, that the vast majority of people already won't even know what that means, you have gone too far, bro. We all just need to, you know, if your friend, if your family member gets these metagoggles, like smash them, throw them out, throw them out.

[01:50:31] [SPEAKER_08] Throw them on the ground and beat them with your foot or hammer.

[01:50:36] [SPEAKER_02] And hey, if you need help finding a hammer, a big hammer, hit me up. I know a guy. I know a guy.

[01:50:48] [SPEAKER_04] Ed and Kat, thank you so much for joining me today. It's never fun to talk about the techno feudalist encroachment that we are all living through. But I do have faith that knowledge is power. And thank you for helping everyone understand it just a little bit better today. And just remind people where they can find you.

[01:51:10] [SPEAKER_02] I'm at BigBlackJock, I've been on Twitter. Still there until they ban me, I guess. And the Tech Bubble newsletter and This Machine Kills is a podcast I co-host about technology and how it works and how it's developed. And that's on Patreon, SoundCloud, Spotify, everywhere, every platform, essentially.

[01:51:34] [SPEAKER_07] And I am at SpitfireNews.com. That is my newsletter. And you can also find me on Blue Sky and Instagram at Kat Tembarge. And soon YouTube. Teaser.

[01:51:46] [SPEAKER_04] Oh! We haven't talked about this.

[01:51:49] [SPEAKER_08] Coming soon.

[01:51:52] [SPEAKER_04] That's very exciting to me specifically. I love you all so much. Thank you for joining this episode of A Bit Fruity. Thank you for listening all the way. If you need me, I will be putting various moisturizers onto Kylie Jenner's hand and asking her which one she likes the most while she films me. I love you so much. And until next time, stay fruity.