10 Things We Like (and Don’t Like) About ‘Euphoria’ This Season. Plus, “The Feed Is Fake” With Lane Brown.

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I need support staff to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to the Watch. My name is Chris Rye and I am an editor at TheRinger.com and joining me in the studio today is me. No, Andy, today it's just Prince alone in the studio. I am however joined remotely by Lane Brown from New York Magazine. Today he's going to talk to me about his incredible piece in New York Magazine called The Feed is Fake, which scratches an itch that I have been having for a long time, especially ever since the whole is-geese-a-sci-op debate raged online and yet I don't really know if it raged anywhere else. And that's sort of what Lane's piece is about, is why it always feels like everyone is talking about something but nobody is actually talking about it. He gets into the exploding industry of clipping for social media feeds but also narrative manipulation. And then his piece is also like a much larger kind of essay about the current state of our cultural conversation and our understanding of what is popular and what matters, which is something that I think Andy and I always grapple with on this, on this pod. But I am going to talk a little bit about some TV news and also give you a few thoughts on last night's episode of Euphoria. As far as what's coming out this week, as always, busy week in new television, but I didn't get a chance to watch any of Dutton Ranch. And I have to be completely honest, like Beth and Rip, when it comes to the Yellowstone universe, this is a Yellowstone spin-off starring Kelly Riley and Cole Hauser, their characters were beloved on Yellowstone. I think that they worked really well as supporting characters. I'm not so sure I want to watch a television show entirely dedicated to them. And you don't have to because Annette Benning, amazingly, is also on this show as is Ed Harris. But I will try to get to that at some point. Other new releases this week include Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, which is a new series on Apple TV with Tatiana Maslani. And it seems like it's a little bit of a normal suburban woman, goes down a crazy rabbit hole when she witnesses something she shouldn't. Looks like a thriller with some social satire. I'm interested to check that out. Also, we have from Netflix, I believe this week, is The Burrows, which is being kind of dismissively or casually referred to as Old Stranger Things or New Cocoon. But it is a part of a retirement community and an incident, possibly a supernatural incident or extraterrestrial incident. Always had problems with that word occurring at this at this facility. So great cast, Alphar Molina and Alfred Woodard in it. But having got a chance to check out any screeners of that that comes out this week. And I think Eddie and I will probably hit both Maximum Pleasure and The Burrows at some point. As far as like TV news, I mean, they're really the biggest thing is that the Lanterns trailer dropped. I know Andy talks about Lindelof last week in my absence. This trailer is awesome. The pairing of Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre is the backbone of of that's like how a great TV show gets made. Is you find the right two people and you fit them together. And Kyle Chandler as this kind of rugged and, you know, sort of self-involved version of Green Lantern and Aaron Pierre is the up and coming one who wants to do everything right. It's like a very solid basis for a show. And there are Watchmen vibes in it. There is more special effects than I think I was expecting from the trailer. And maybe that's they're they're putting that forward a lot in the trailer just to bring in the DC heads. But it was a little bit more comic booky than I thought because I think the original sort of understanding of this show is that it was essentially like a true detective, but happened to be set in the DC universe. It'll be great to see how it actually shakes out. I'm super excited for this for this series. I think what we're going to do with Widow's Bay, obviously the last episode, the one that focused mostly on Patricia, Kato Flynn. We've been singing her praises all season, but this is her standout episode. I won't give anything away if you haven't gotten a chance to see Widow's Bay yet, but we'll talk about a couple of brick of episodes together. Maybe maybe on Thursday show, what we'll do is do four and five together. I do want to talk about euphoria, though. And in honor of my colleague, Zach Lowe, I put together a 10 Things I Like and Don't Like about euphoria episodes six, Stance, Dylan C. So for those who don't know, Zach Lowe, obviously now has his own podcast with the Ringer Podcast Network. I worked with him at Grantland and now at the Ringer. And while he was at Grantland and and at ESPN, he had kind of like a great column called 10 Things I Like and Don't Like, which was his notebook dump on the week in NBA that he had been watching. This is similar for this episode of euphoria. I just thought it would be an easy way to kind of move through what was not necessarily my favorite or least favorite episode of all time. I thought it was like a needed setup for what is obviously going to be incredibly cathartic last two episodes of the season. I would I would imagine it's in play of the series, but we'll see. First of all, I would say I loved number one. I love the collection of images that he put together charting Rue's longing and receiving of her her sign or salvation. I mean, in the church, like Zendaya well lit in a church praying, hearing a call from her mother, you know, her face looks like passion of Joan of Arc. You know, like this Sam's got a bag and he goes into it. And I think especially in the the Rue sequences about her trying to save herself is where the show is still at its best. And I think that her experiences over the course of this series are the most easily legible from the outside where you're like, I can see what happened to this person and I can see what this person wants to become. The images at the end of the episode, she's listening to her book on Tabe Bible and it starts skipping and she almost crashes. She sees the bright light of the incredibly well lit monster truck or 18 wheeler coming towards her and crashes her car or pulls off the road. And a spark gets on a tree and lights this burning bush and you get this this incredible biblical image of this woman finally, finally hearing the voice of God, you know, and the the connections to other words of Damascus, the connections of Christ and the burning bush like it's obviously rich with that imagery. It doesn't play fast and loose with it. I think with the Rue stuff, it doesn't because so much of what addicts go through in recovery and and in trying to save themselves comes from this relationship to a higher power. And that may or may not work for all addicts and there are plenty of people who get clean without it. But obviously it's something that Levenson is deeply fascinated by and it doesn't even have to come down to any specific dogma of something you'd find in the Bible, something you'd find in the Old Testament or whatever. It's just about believing that your life has value and that's obviously something that Rue is looking for. And it leads me to one thing that I don't really like, which is the what we've kind of done with the jewels character. Rue goes to jewels at one point in this episode and kind of makes her pitch for starting a family together and be finding like new problems to have and more classical American suburban concerns of, you know, what to do with your kids and stuff rather than fentanyl and sex work. And I think that Jules's reaction to Rue was good. I liked the slap. I liked the get out of my painting. If you think about this show as these people existing in their separate realities, I liked the idea that Jules was sort of snapping Rue out of whatever dream she was having and was like, you know, you don't actually have anything to trade here. Like we are not going to go off and ride into the sunset. This is not the love story. Whether or not that remains the case for the rest of the series. I don't know if I if I believe that, you know, to the extent that you care about something being endgame on this show, but like Rue and Rue and Jules like meant for each other. I don't know. I don't know if it's actually germane to the actual show itself, but I did like that scene. I don't really know what they're doing with Jules. And I don't know, you know, this was a the things behind the scenes in this production of this show and what it required to get people in the same room to shoot it. I think I sometimes allow myself a little to get a little distracted by that because I'll be like, oh, you can tell this person wasn't available and they had to shoot all their scenes in like a hotel room. I don't know if Hunter Schaefer had more or less time than usual to shoot or whether or not there was like discussions about what to do with the Jules character. But I find like she had she had her artistic breakthrough on the set of LA Nights and now seems to be in her. I am going to do a, you know, a body study figure and then paint over it as like her new like art phase that she's in. I don't know if that's like really that compelling television. But I like Hunter Schaefer as a performer, so I wish there was more for that character to do. As far as more things that I liked and didn't like, look, I love the high and low and I love the sacred and the profane. I love the church and the only fans and the spaghetti Westerns and the Polanski dread the hitch cocky and moments. The 70s noir, you know, I think that Levenson moves pretty easily between those. And if anything, I think I've oft repeated I'm never bored watching Euphoria. It's because of those tonal shifts, which even if the transmission really grinds sometimes on them, I still welcome them. It's still fun to have a completely different feel from scene to scene. You could say that it's mimicking kind of like our feed, you know, it's like when you flip through social media videos and you're kind of like going from one thing to another without any kind of fear. Transition that that would be one way of looking at it. Another is just that he had several different shows that he wanted to make and he's just going to make them and then stitch them together. I think that's also you could make a criticism of the show. But in terms of like the spectrum of tone that he's playing with and also like reaching very, very, very high and then also wallowing around in the grime and the grit of something exploitative. I think it's pretty fascinating to watch. I also think it's really interesting and I really like the tension between cinematic and TV storytelling. I thought it was very funny when Sydney Sweeney walks onto the set of Ellie Nights for her one line, pretty much throw away day player part and starts improvising or disassociating with the actor who's playing opposite of from her. And that she obviously is kind of thinking she's talking to Nate and she does this kind of riff about how, you know, scared she is for her life right now. And the guy is kind of playing along with her and it's then shattered by the character of Oceana walking onto the set and saying, like, are you going to cue me up or what? I was very, very highly amused by Colleen Camp saying, oh, yeah, it's just giving a real clute vibe. Because I think everybody is always like in their mind, they're making clute, you know, like in their mind, I'm sure everybody would love to be Alem Kool in the 70s and not for clute to be what everybody was watching. But obviously they're making LA Nights and I think that there's almost a sly commentary happening there where it's, yeah, like Sam Levinson is making like an episodic spaghetti Western opera, but he's also making a soap opera. And he's trying to sort of pay both pipers there. And I like the effort. You know, I don't think it's successful for everyone. I know that Andy has both rejected some of the storytelling and also the interests that Levinson obviously has. He's also given it the college try. So I really, I appreciate him doing that for me because we're enjoying talking about the show. I think that Levinson, for as much as he's interested in high and low art, he's also interested in television and cinema. And whether or not you can bring the feeling of cinema, the cinema that he loves and Sam's actually programming a festival out here in Los Angeles over like, I think it started last Friday and it's going through this week. Where he's showing a bunch of movies that he says influenced season three and he's showing like Dirty Harry and Candy Snatchers, which is like a act from movie that you should check out. And he's showing Freeway, which is like the Reese Witherspoon 90s thriller. So he's like throwing a bunch of different like things up on the mood board. And it's hard to take all those cinematic influences and consistently make a television show. And maybe that's why the production of euphoria is inconsistent because it's difficult to translate all of that stuff. But I am I am enjoying it. I will say that one thing I I also enjoyed was Daniel Deadwiler as Alamo's mom. The character introductions on on euphoria, hallmark of euphoria, the sort of backstory flashback moments. People, they're my you're mileage may vary on these. But I don't know that I necessarily walked away from that scene, truly understanding Alamo anymore than I already did. But I did think this little message in a bottle from 70s. Grindhouse movies are actually wasn't really like that really what was it. It was more like an LA noir set in 70s Black Los Angeles. And some people might be like the temerity of Sam to do that. I don't know. I thought it was pretty cool. Like it looked great. Daniel Deadwiler, I will watch read a phone book. But seeing her play this Alamo's mother, who essentially runs a long con on a kindly but, you know, disfigured man to set herself up with her boyfriend is is awesome. It was a cool little little snatch of time and it obviously Levenson had a blast making it because it just looks great. I told me nothing about why Alamo was writing it Rue with a polo mallet while she's buried up to her head in sand and told me nothing about why he doesn't kill her. So I enjoy Daniel Deadwiler. I don't know if that that segment necessarily was necessary, quote unquote, but it was very cool. I think it's also cool that we're returning to Meta euphoria. This is a degree of playing the hits. But one of the season two highlights for me was the show within a show within a show of Lexi's play depicting on and off screen events. The LA nights thing has potential. It's coming. They're calling this this picture in at the seventh inning. I I like the idea of Lexi being responsible for writing Cassie's arc on LA nights and also Lexi perhaps thinking of how to kill off Cassie's character and that little throwaway line that Lexi has where she's just like, you know, what am I going to do? I'm going to kill her. And then I think I can't remember. It's a giddy and Adlon who's playing that friend. I can't remember. But she's just like, you got to kill somebody every once in a while or else people get bored. That does not bode well for our ensemble. Somebody somebody may pass away in the last two episodes. I like that return to Meta euphoria. If that was sort of Cassie's long term goal was just like fame, no matter what, instead of making tons of money to help Nate. I think that this arc for her would have been kind of interesting. Unfortunately, and this is my sixth thing, Cassie's only fans modeling is kind of getting in the way of of this show being legible to me. The further out we get towards Cassie and Nate, that's where the show gets really muddy and on its own, it's kind of amusing. And I like how every scene with Sidney Sweeney seems to be from another universe, whether it's like that Hitchcockian kind of tension of whether or not she's going to delete only fans. We talked about the sci fi B movie stuff of a 50 foot woman from a couple episodes ago earlier in the season on the wedding night, the kind of almost Ari asterisk horror of Nate's, you know, being getting his pinky toe chopped off. Nate is shrinking. Cassie is growing. But this leads into my seventh thing, which is unfortunately also something I don't like, which is just Nate. I think they're leaving a lot on the table here because Nate is actually closer to Rue than anyone else. I mean, he's looking for redemption. He's trying to find a piece of the American dream. He's trying to shake off his past, which we get a glimpse of the old Nate as he stomps on the protected flowers that have held up his his retirement community. Construction. But we get so little time with him and he gets almost no time with anyone of consequence from the show that it's kind of hard to tell how he got there and where he wants to go. And now we're in this ritual humiliation phase that's lasted the better part of the season. And this is my biggest question mark about where they want to go with this character. You've got Jacob Elordi. It doesn't really matter one way or the other. If he's having fun, I can't tell. But give him something to do, please. Let's do something with Nate. Can Nate interact with anyone else from the show aside from Sidney Sweeney? I don't know. But it would be nice. It would be nice to get him. I love that moment with him and an undershaper at the wedding. Like that that actually had a charge. Let's do more of that. Kind of don't know where I'm at with Maddie. Eight is not a thing I don't like or like I just like Alexis Demi and I love like this character historically on the show. Her being a shadow madam of only fans models who is now curious about Alamo's business and, you know, her pursuit of like financial gain for security to like gird against like everything that's happened in her life. Not. Unsimilar. Not dissimilar from Alamo, I guess. Her reactions to things I think sometimes are a little convenient for the television show and and and have nothing to do with the character. I think that that's like understandable in terms of writing a TV show. You have to have people just kind of go along with stuff. But we're getting towards the end of this season in series and I'm not exactly sure how they're going to bring together like the Alexis Demi part of this show, the Nate part of this show. The jewels part of the show with the thing that's the most successful, which is the the root part of the show. Though there is one thing that's starting to bug me about the root part of the show. And after I've sort of like waved away every criticism about like, but what about this and what about that when it comes like talking with Andy about you for the season and I'm like, you don't get it. It's a vibe. It's a feeling. Just just go with it. The crime plotting is starting to get to me. That's I don't know if this is actually Tim, but I'm calling it 10. We're doing too much and explaining too little here. Laurie is going to give up Alamo to the FBI, thus forcing him to work with her and allow her to use his, I guess, ambulance service to bring fentanyl from Mexico into the States because the border is closing. I'm not sure I buy that. Typically, like in crime dramas, like the threat of revealing someone to the FBI is like more of like a marker in your reputation. And I think that Alamo wouldn't be just so like, ah, checkmated by Laurie. Now, I know Alamo has ulterior motives here where he's also trying to get his stuff out of Laurie safe and perhaps everything else that Laurie has. But this seems like it's one extra like a hat on a hat like Laurie and Alamo's collision course and the the presence of the D.A. on the outside via Rue is good. That's a good beef. They should have a shootout and work this shit out. You know, like whatever, let's get let's get these characters getting after it now being vaguely in business with each other while also intending on killing one another. And robbing one another is a little thin. And then, you know, I'm not sure why Rue is being given all these important gigs if seemingly everyone in Alamo's crew knows she's a rat. So we obviously end with the rat and we have the rat and the snake for Rue before she goes on the road. She's terrified because her mother is now in danger. You know, we know that Alamo never lets a woman get over on him, but I don't really understand why Rue is now becoming the, you know, the agent of revenge against Laurie. It doesn't seem like she is the most dependable person. It's not like she's like a she's not a burglar. She's not a gunman. She's just a convenient person to work in a strip club and manage the girls until she wasn't. I don't really understand why not like when everybody shows up at Alamo's house with guns, I don't really understand why the shootout probably should have happened then. And now we're off for another element of this. This was among the more, you know, amusing parts of the show for much of the season. So I hope that they tighten the screws a little bit. I have a feeling based on what we saw as the trailer for next week that next week is going to be largely focused on Coleman Domingo's ally character. And how that, I mean, seemingly his health incident impacts her. So I wonder if I had to guess it's like take a beat and then the big crime happens in the finale. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know when the the moment is and I don't know how much it's going to feel like a serious finale versus a season finale. Those are my thoughts on euphoria. I want to get into my conversation with Lane Brown. So I introduced Lane a little bit in the beginning of our combo, but I'll just tell you I've worked with Lane about 15 years ago when Grantland started. Lane is somebody I've always really admired and he's now a features writer at New York magazine where he does some really, really, really great reported pieces. And the thing that makes this feed is fake piece. So fun to read to me is that it's really, really deeply reported and it's really fascinating to read about all these different methods that marketing digital marketing companies are using to. Populate our feeds with clips of shows and music and movies that we're then supposed to be talking about supposed to be ingesting. But it's also about like how the narrative around those things get shaped and then really more it's Lane kind of writing this, you know, awesome rant about like, how do we even know what things are actually popular and it does that even matter anymore. And, you know, we had talked about the the geese sigh up controversy on this show and I'll wait a second a couple of weeks ago when it really popped off. And that's what really got my interest in this going. But I've also had this like nagging feeling for a while. I've noticed a really perceptible change in the tone of online discussion, like no shit, but not in the way that you think not in like this. Everything is getting angrier way, but that like everything kind of is starting to sound the same. Like it's I'm starting to just be like I can't tell the difference between the post above and the post below if you read on Reddit or, you know, everybody's Instagram is starting to kind of like merge into one Instagram and this kind of everything is being optimized for engagement. Because I think that this is like become way more important than connection with other human beings like yeah, in your stories you might, you know, be following what your friends are doing at any given moment and that's kind of like my primary use of Instagram but that whole other side of it with reels and then I think especially for like TikTok where people are making content more or less has led this to our phones being like our new connection to what we think a conversation is about culture in the world and Lane writes about that beautifully and I really wanted to talk to him about this piece is kind of a different look for the pod but I thought it would be fun on a random Monday to do this. So thanks so much to Lane Brown for joining me and thanks to Kai and Sarah and Kaya for producing today. I'll be back on Thursday we're going to talk about Windows Bay. I'll have a guest and I'll get into deep Windows Bay lore then but thanks to everybody for listening and let's get into my conversation with Lane Brown. Are you're at campaign's lighting of the dashboard but not the pipeline. That's bull spend a marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions. My boss asked for results so we opened my dashboard for the only positive sounding metric I had impressions. Cut the bull spend see revenue not just reach LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad networks advertise on LinkedIn spend 200 pounds on your first campaign to get a 200 pound credit. My guest is my former Grantland colleague. I should put that first and current New York magazine features where your Lane Brown Lane it's so great to see you man. We were just remarking that I think the last time I've seen your faces as you were leaving Los Angeles and I was arriving in Los Angeles. Chris moved in and I moved out. It's an honor to be here on my favorite podcast the only organically popular podcast in the world. And also maybe perhaps the least clipped in. Actually we are doing that more clipping last week New York magazine published Lane's article which is one part deep dive into the exploding clipping economy that has taken over algorithms and one part Jeremiah about how this shadowy industry has distorted our understanding of the conversation. This is a conversation taking place within our culture. I think that's that's if I had to pitch it to anybody I suppose that's what I would say and for people have been listening fairly closely to the watch over the last couple of weeks. This stuff has come up in conversations even though we haven't known it. I think most notably Andy and I more or less jokingly talked about the the stuff that happened with geese the band geese a couple of weeks ago. Wired magazine wrote an article about geese's marketing company or the marketing company that works on behalf of geese that geese is a client of and John Semley wrote an article called the fanfare around the band geese is actually a Psyop actually was a Psyop and the pieces largely about the unorthodox practices that got a good use used on behalf of geese. But this is like Lane I wanted to know that's like sort of my in on this article I saw this. There's a funny story I have to tell you like after I we hear from you for a little bit. But you know I think that that was sort of my in on your article but what was the thing that kind of was like the kernel of the idea that got you to write this piece. It's sort of a two-parter basically. I feel like I have been noticing things just every story I try to write just in my sort of daily intake of information. You know I'm looking on Reddit. I'm you know I'm seeing you know with the with the voice of the people is on you know in the Internet comments and I kind of noticed just sort of more and more things. I don't know a little little strange. So I did a story in real estate a couple of years ago. It was all about how New York City rent prices were just sort of exploding at a time when basically people were leaving the city. And just in these these New York City apartment reddits and just there would be full of people saying like you know this is not happening that nobody's leaving people are moving in people are flooding back. I was like this is just totally not the case. I sort of noted that and I saw that kind of the same thing over and over again as I was working on some other stories. And then I found this this service. Not going to say the name of it because I maybe don't want to give them. I don't do the any product placement here. But basically there are services that will essentially advertise your product within Reddit comments. And I thought oh this is really you know they've they've really figured something out here and they've got me. And so I kind of you know I've been begging my poor editors at New York magazine to let me write a version of this for so long. And finally the sort of the you know the geese thing came up and suddenly this was a thing that was you know sort of in the conversation and I was finally able to break them down but after years of sort of twisting their arms and so they finally kind of let me let me take a couple of weeks and sort of dig into this. The other thing too also is I have no idea what's popular anymore. Yeah is somebody that you know cares a lot about culture. I was the cultural editor at New York magazine for a long time and I my job is kind of figure out who people are going to care about in six months so we can put this person on the cover. And it used to be kind of simple to do that. We had you know things like ratings back in the olden days and so you know that was fairly easy to do and it got harder and harder and harder and now I just have absolutely no idea like I was thinking do you have any idea what is more popular the bear or the pit. I don't know. I mean I think I think definitively in this case right now the pit but I think cumulatively culturally when you think about the like footprint of the bear people saying yes chef like the way people maybe started dressing because of the way Jeremy Allen White dresses on that show. It's a different kind of influence. It's maybe people saying things and not even knowing that yes chef is from the bear. You know right but it goes hand in hand with there's different kinds of impact that shows can make and I think we you know over the course of our lives and you know especially working in music there are bands that are important and there are bands that are big and that's always been attention in the media is to like you know are we making too big of a deal out of it. And I think that's the kind of a band because we personally like them so we're going to fashion some narrative about why this is the only band that matters when there is objectively in sync or somebody who is like exponentially bigger than the white stripes or something like that and that kind of back and forth has always been really fascinating and like you dude I have. I don't think there's ever been a time where I've been less certain of not only what how many people are watching something and you get at this in your piece where you talk about when you really start to go in about like you know all of this stuff being made by companies that have no incentive to share how people are watching it how deeply people are watching it how much they're paying attention to it. It's so complicated now I'm sure you've had this experience now when you're like even talking with friends or if you go to a bar and TV or movies come up and the amount of siloing that's going on now where somebody is like yeah man I am like a for all mankind every scene completist and then the next guy over is like I don't even I don't have no idea what you're talking about and both are conversant and television. Right. Yeah it's like every conversation about culture has it has that sidebar about like we sort of justify how popular you think a thing is and it's like oh by I was talking to my niece about this or you always bring in like this is your evidence like a cooler young person that you that you know or something that is somehow more tapped in than you or you know yeah I was at brunch and I overheard this and everything and it's a wish in theory we should be able to track this stuff better than ever. Yes everything is and but yes there is no incentive on the part of these companies that are you know making this stuff to actually share that data with us and so we are just. You know trying to look for every sort of strange little signal that we can find about how big one thing is and. And kind of unfortunately in this vacuum that we have now it's become really really easy to sort of fake these signals of popularity and so I feel like we do not have a very clear view of of reality which is kind of yeah kind of strange and so I wrote mostly about you know TV pop music sort of celebrity gossip like the frivolous stuff but it's like you can obviously see the implications for everything here it's like we're getting. You know all of our information. Right now through the same. You know sort of rectangle in our in our pockets yeah through social media and it's. It's so easy to sort of get a distorted look at. Just reality with this and so it's kind of terrifying and what creates an ecosystem in which I think that I'm sure you find this challenging as a reporter and as a as a features writer where. I think in my romantic conception of what my dad used to do as a newspaper journalist you know even though he was a film critic but like. He would still have to gather a lot of information especially when he was a crime reporter the crime reporting happens in the courts you know like you would go down to the courthouse and sit there and wait for an interesting case and. And then be like oh this is good this was a rich kid got into a car accident and just trying to get out of it this is a good article or this is a good hook for a piece. But we're deriding deriving a lot of our concept of what is what is popular or what is unpopular or what is beloved or what is being said about all those things from online platforms that are very susceptible to the kind of manipulation. Data inflation and also narrative construction that in some ways I'm like the game is the game and I think you've probably heard some pushback about this piece where it's like how different is this from say Paola how different is this from street teams plastering stickers all over a city for a band in the 90s. I was wondering if you could give our audience without aggregating yourself because I do want people to read the piece. Just an idea of what clipping is and how it maybe is a little bit different from say a digital marketing campaign for a band a TV show a movie 10 years ago. Basically if you've got a song or a movie trailer or a TV show you you take it and you cut it into social media friendly clips like short 20 second clips and then you find a bunch of dummy social media accounts that will post all of this online at huge volumes. And essentially as you do that you are tricking the social media platform algorithms into interpreting it as a. Basic a sign of organic interest in this thing and so when that happens the platform sort of push these videos far and wide to users who ordinarily wouldn't have seen it and then sometimes they will kind of engage with it and that will sort of add even more fuel to the fire too. It's yes I think it's sort of only not too long ago it's probably at this point four five years old but really kind of in the last year it's really sort of become a thing that everybody is doing. And you know it's like yeah it's from from East although the Justin Bieber to bad bunny and so it's it's tiny artists and big artists and everybody in between are doing it. Do you feel like it grew out of something organic. So like obviously TikTok and Instagram reels one of those like sort of pillars of how you make stuff on there is to soundtrack it or interpolate clips of things like I follow a thick of it memes account on Instagram where it's just scenes from the thick of it you know being posted all day long. And I'll just be like oh that's a that's a funny line that's primarily how I've like rewatched that show in the last two years. I don't really know that there is a lot in it for the thick of it producers to have that still on my feed but I'm curious whether you think that this has become a weaponization of organic fan interaction or if it's something different than that. That's a good question. It is really really hard to tell and I feel like that's kind of the point. I think that the people doing this probably learned from things that actual you know fans were doing and they saw that it you know worked in one way but now it's like the volume is different. It's not just a couple of fans making you know adding a song to a clip of euphoria or something. This is like 50,000 videos of the same thing being sort of dumped into social media all at the same you know over the same weekend to basically kind of like overflow the the toilet and sort of get this. Sorry to be. It's kind of logical. Obviously as a watch listener you should know that's fine. I think why it's different from you know sure there are people that said that you know this is the pale of fine has always kind of existed. The fact that we don't have any trusted culture metrics at all anymore to tell us what's actually you know popular or not is is sort of one thing and so we you know in the olden days you could check a street team you know people putting stickers or something against like sound scan sales and you could kind of see the golf but now there's nothing to sort of check this against it is just trivially easy to do it is like so simple. It's everybody's doing it it's at a scale that I think is different it's like it's not just in one city this is you know you're putting up posters this is like you're blasting this out to the entire universe of you know tiktok user base really really quickly. And so the you know this the scale of it is is pretty different. So the clipping stuff happens obviously on video but you were talking a little bit about the the feeling you were getting reading reddit threads and I certainly agree that there seems to be over the last couple of years. I can't really pinpoint the moment. But it reminds me a lot of like you know Twitter I think went from this thing that was sort of everybody's running like gag journal over the course of a day and was very much directed towards like a select group of followers and then like right when we started working at Grantland is when I think it became the primary promotional tool for journalism in the world and there was that that had its benefits and obviously also I think made everybody slightly insane. And then now it's kind of like a rage factory where you go and if you look on your for you page at least when I do there are people having these like insane arguments about things that I'm like why are you guys even fighting about like how my bloody Valentine isn't that good like what who started this fight. Why is this now like crossed over to six different friend circles that I seem to have and or businesses you know and like some guy from Bloomberg is like actually my bloody Valentine is the best and I'm like why are you commenting on this. Yeah yeah yeah. There's this so that I digress just to say with Reddit I noticed a real collapse of voice like everything started to sound exactly the same. And obviously on Reddit you can comment anonymously and if you click on someone's user profile often they'll be like this person is hidden like their activity is how much of what interested you about this project was not only like the obfuscation of data the inflation of the sense of popularity that people can have but also the shaping of narrative around cultural objects. Clipping is sort of one technique. The other thing that they're doing now is this thing that cat a good sort of put a name on it. I don't know if this is the name sort of used by everybody narrative campaigns where they are basically yet using internet comments using dummy accounts to comment on things in a way that makes it seem like you know everybody is talking about a thing in kind of the same way. And so see it on Reddit. You'll see it you know you'll see it happen on Twitter. A couple of people that I talked to I thought this is sort of interesting. Clipping is something that you want to do at you know huge volumes because you want to push this out to everybody. Narrative campaigns are a subtler thing. You actually don't want that many people to notice this. You want kind of the right people to notice this. You want you know it's sort of like the light sort of sprinkle of sort of like narrative juice on a story to kind of shape something and then you know once you do that you can then. This other kinds to like amplify certain arguments too and so. Yeah it is it is really interesting because it's like it seems like a lot of the pop culture fights that we've had over the past you know. I don't know how many years have basically been seemingly the result of some of this. Some of these techniques. And so in the story I talk about you know one example is like bad bunny in the Super Bowl. Yeah. For a month there was this was the loudest argument in America. You know the NFL has hired this the Spanish speaking artists to perform. And then you know people are sad about that and other people are sort of defending this. And it turns out that basically these bot detection firms that the track this kind of thing found that basically the shape of the argument was exactly the same on both sides. And these accounts were basically posting at the same time maybe in the same time zones which is sort of suggestive of something coordinated. And so yeah when you think about that it's like all these things that were just you know at each other's throats about all the time. It's like you know how much of that is real we have no idea. I was talking to a friend of mine who's a lawyer in the music business about your piece and about the the wire piece about chaotic good and geese and he was like. I wonder if the guys who did Cambridge Analytica knew that the endpoint of this was to get a geese song on a montage of Sixers highlights. You know it's like dreams come true. But the bad bunny thing is a really good segue into the thing that I wanted to ask you about you know I was talking with. Well both I guess your former colleague in a sense I at Grantland Kirk Goldsbury we worked with us at the ringer now and we were chatting about. For some reason he hit me up about like why is everybody talking about the Kevin Hart roast and I was like yeah me me too although I don't know who's talking about it because really what's happened is it has been atomized down to its 30 most important 30 second clips completely Decontextualized from like the fact that that was like a three hour show on Netflix that I find roasts like super uncomfortable to watch honestly don't understand them. And yet it is I think Kirk called it like my junk feed where there's all these things that everybody I talked to seems relatively conversant in but you can't find a single person who's like I absolutely made time to watch a three hour. Roast of Kevin Hart and have a concert like an opinion about it and there's tons of stories like that like I am a person who likes the bad bunny I have heard does not give a shit who plays the Super Bowl halftime show and like was very aware that that was like a weaponization that worked for both parties like whether or not bad bunny or bad bunnies label or bad bunnies marketing company participated in that debate. I think it's actually like important that he gets to play the halftime show but it can't you know and I thought his performance was really good but it's like that kind of thing where I'm like how the fuck are we talking about this for a third week like and and who actually is like every day I wake up and go to bed thinking about the Super Bowl halftime show. You really do have to wonder how many of these people actually exist who gives a shit about anything like people have enough enough on their plates I would think I can't imagine being upset about you know enough about anything to sort of long on and go off anymore. I talk about Justin Bieber using this for Coachella. At least we think so somebody paid to clip Justin Bieber's Coachella performance and I really thought you know I maybe I don't know if I have to go into witness protection after this like am I going to be I mean is this going to be you know people going to be after me this weekend. And you know I was out walking around. I didn't hear from one believer. Yeah. And so it really it's like just how much of this is how much of this. How many paper tigers are there out there. It you know how much of this is real. It's like we hear about the you know these fan armies that are supposedly just you know burning people's houses down every time you say a negative word about whichever pop star and it's like how much of that is real. Or how much of it is just bots sort of bullying you know people into in the submission. Who knows. It's it's really it's a yeah strange strange world out there. But there is like real world implications to it. I mean obviously like our political landscape is completely like shaped by this kind of online discussion. I mean going through the Los Angeles mayoral race here now and you can see a lot of the old positions being taken that the same ones that have been sort of people have been manning since 2016. There's like a sort of progressive spoiler candidate. There is a far right wing reality TV like candidate like there are two people kind of in the middle trying to scrap to see who's going to get into the runoff and watching people. Talk about it online. Even sometimes people I personally know I'm like oh it kind of feels like you if you're going to actually take the the indignity of posting you are still parroting one of like seven pre agreed upon positions right and most of the time. I think it's almost reflexive now that people say things. I find this sometimes even talking to Andy I'm like I don't know how to make my point without making it in an extreme way right like I don't know how to say like I acknowledge this without saying I hated it or I loved it. And I think that that's something that I see a lot in criticism and in online discussion of culture now where it's like the the idea of something being like a two and a half star three star out of five star thing has completely vanished. You know because even if you think that there is like a really vocal contingent of people somewhere online or quote unquote people who are like this is actually the goat sci-fi show this is this is better than 2001 and you're like God man I really really don't think so. But that doesn't mean I think it's an unredeemable piece of crap. I just don't want to spend 30 hours watching it maybe yeah. The negative engagement the stuff that starts arguments is the stuff that sort of goes goes further and so I think that's more kind of more of what you see. Well OK Spencer Pratt is obviously clipping it up. Yes he's got he's got clipping events going going full time. Although he is to to his credit at least he's I think he's because of election laws he's got to disclose it. And so he's the rare you know sort of clipping event that actually you sort of know where it's coming from. Most of the journalism in the world now has sort of disappeared behind paywalls. And so we are getting the TLDR version of stuff for the you know the stories that we're not subscribers to from the you know the tweet about or the you know the quote tweet or the you know the comment in or the argument about it afterwards. Yes. Yeah exactly. And so the terms of the debate are basically set by whatever that argument is which is really easy to you know sort of amplify a real thing or just completely astroturf it from from scratch. And so it's yeah so I think that's probably another reason why you're seeing it's like everything is the most extreme kind of you know fight that it could possibly be because that's you know it's somebody benefits when that when that happens. Yeah and you see I mean we and this has been going on since we were kids but you see all the time on the left and the right political candidates television shows pieces of music movies TV you know whatever are essentially rejected from trying to occupy some sort of like middle ground you know like. The stuff that really kind of at least drives conversation is the stuff that's going to be and increasingly the more extreme kind of version of whatever we're talking about. You know I always try on this show. Andy and I always have this kind of running conversation about doing something because it's doing like covering a show because we think it's popular and there are shows that are hugely popular but not necessarily within the algorithm that we follow. So something like say I think the Sheridan shows Taylor Sheridan shows are a good example of something I cannot honestly say that we would do as much Taylor Sheridan coverage if those shows weren't obviously very big. Right. Taylor Sheridan also would not have made 13 shows in four years if he wasn't big and if Paramount and hadn't decided like this was what we're going to bet the farm on. By the same token you know we cover euphoria on a week to week basis. I think that's a very big show. I most of my friends have stopped watching it you know like. So it's it's a it's always this murky thing feeling around the dark for a light switch. And the thing that's funny about what you were writing about especially like you know when you're talking about geese which is a band I like and I kind of wonder if you don't based on your description of how camera. Yeah. Yeah. Caterwall. Yeah. But I was like mildly offended by like I'm not I'm not being manipulated man like I like geese I like you know I started liking geese two years ago. Do you did you come across anything in your research or in looking online and seeing these discord servers where people are you know begging someone to clip Apple TV shows or what have you. We were like oh well I like that thing though. I think the chaotic goods roster has got some good stuff on it. And so it was kind of maybe a little bit yet disappointing I guess to to see that but I also you know I also understand it's we are this whole system is so broken that like you kind of need to you need to do this you're either out and so being in means you know sort of resorting to some of these sort of shady techniques. I was in these discord servers for three or four weeks and basically I would ask the publicist of the the people being clipped. You know is this something you you know did is this something that was paid for by the you know the artist and their other team and nobody wants to talk about this they're everybody's doing it but I think you know for understandable reasons they don't want to talk about it because it is just kind of lame I guess would be the word like it's it's really sort of a bummer that this is what we've come to but at the same time I totally understand why geese or you know McGee or you know whoever has to do this because one of the things that this does it's not just you know the artists that do it are sort of in the conversation it's basically everybody who doesn't do this is sort of left out of the conversation you can't hold it gets too many there is themselves it's I feel like it's more of a information ecosystem problem that is is complicated it's the I blame the platforms I think more than anybody at one point you mentioned like the chaotic one of the chaotic chaotic goods narrative shaping tactics was if an artist has a performance on Saturday Night Live at midnight you're posting it and the narrative the comments under the video should be this is the greatest live performance I've ever seen this is the best live show I've ever seen on Saturday Night Live look we have our new strokes we have like there's like an obvious like echo of like there's this a sort of excellence or supremely like amazing thing that's happening rather than like cool like they played on SNL or whatever geeky thing some fan would say if they saw their favorite band playing on SNL I was wondering whether or not you felt like you know you kind of mentioned this with the paywall media traditional media sites but whether or not you felt like this had kind of filled this vacuum where I don't even know where I would go now to find out what someone thought of an SNL live performance anyway I mean when we were coming up there were plenty of things that recap Saturday Night Live on Monday there were plenty of articles where it was like it sure seems like this band is having a moment that would kind of shape maybe a narrative around it but that's not in the artist's hands the artist is hoping that John Perelis at the New York Times or or somebody at Rolling Stone is like into them enough and is like yeah that was good but you know it's easier maybe to say have like a lot of like a Stan army of Ashley Padilla fans who were like this is the new Kristen Wig I don't know it is really hard for for culture journalists and I think just journalism is a big thing in general to know anything anymore I think that this is like I don't know where to go to find out you know what's what's actually popular I used to think that I had my my finger on things but all of the advertising sort of moved to short form video yeah all of the yeah the websites that you would you'd sort of go to to you know find out what a writer sort of thought about this stuff if you know some of them are still hanging on but it's like a lot of them have disappeared and so it's a yeah it is I don't know it's really tough. I don't think you know I am no better at anybody else than anybody else at figuring this out I'm like just you know fumbling around in the dark here. Yeah I mean it's also like there's a degree to which there's like I would actually be curious to get feedback from from this conversation from people who are not necessarily working with it within the media or are not handcuffed to their laptops 12 hours of the day and kind of working for seven of them but also like ambiently looking online at stuff. Because I do think that that phenomenon while it gave us careers it also is kind of why sometimes it's really hard to tell like is there a whole world out there that doesn't give a shit about X Y or Z thing that we're writing about or arguing about I know there is. But what are they what do they care about you know because it's it's maybe they are not watching as much TV or listening to as much new music or care about whether obsession made 15 or $16 million this weekend but they're engaged with culture on some level or else like we cannot be propping this entire thing up so how do they get their information and how seriously do they take what they see on their feeds. It's it's it's an impossible question to answer maybe sort of a cultural emergency but the people I worry about maybe the most though are the artists themselves because nobody has any idea what's popular nobody knows what people are actually responding to anymore this is like we talked about okay like in the old old Grantland days we covered a show like Mad Men which 200 300,000 people watched but we understood that the people that watched that show would maybe come to our website and read about it. But you know now it's like the the and we knew it wasn't as popular as Big Bang Theory for example. But I feel like that yeah it's impossible to compare something like I don't know beef to House of the Dragon I have no idea which is which is sort of more of an impact you know you just think of an artist trying to pitch something right now and it's like I don't know what you know they don't know what kind of feedback they're they're getting sort of their market research has just sort of been run through this this whole you know sort of distortion pedal of social media that that really kind of warps everything. Yeah so like it's just it's hard to know and so I feel like you know I think about how the fact that you know every show on TV lately seems to be sort of derivative of like the the white lotus or it's like we had a I know a couple of years ago like the agencies were telling you know telling everybody it's like all right no more nice out riffs. Yeah and anything and it's it's like I kind of wonder were those like the last two shows or the last two like culture products that we sort of had hard numbers for for the you know original things and now you know we're just sort of reinterpreting them in the perpetuity because we have nothing else that with like real data on it's It's so hard because like but back when you you and I were working together like something like Homeland would come on it would be a sensation for two years I mean it was a very popular show for its entirety but like those first couple of seasons of Homeland were like it felt like you would come in on Monday and people would be like let me know when you're ready to talk about Homeland you know. And that's what this like literally this podcast is built off that premise that there are these five 10 shows a year that yes we and you know are happy to recommend 100 shows or 20 shows in a year but there are going to be five or six that like we feel confident like that mad men group of people are going to be like I want to talk about this or hear people talk about it. That Homeland thing that would then lead to 10 Homeland ripoffs that would have varying levels of success or critical appreciation and then they would kind of shed that and get out but you're right it's like I don't even know what I would try to imitate now like I don't even know what a show like White Lotus is a good example I think that there's a lot of reasons for that one is I think shows TV networks maybe or like this is great. Because this is like a very controlled environment you can isolate people so that's essentially like we don't have to worry a lot about extras we don't have to do a lot of set pieces like it's just find a good location have a mystery and then have people portray one another and that's great for us. But I'm not sure what a show now the pit I think would be the best example of I think that Max and other places will start to try to say how do we get a 16 episode procedural up yearly but have it be stickier and more maybe long lasting in the psyche than say the Chicago Dick Wolf empire. Or a procedural on a network. Right. But I don't know I don't know I don't know if you can like recreate that magic and by the token if you clipped it enough. And if you had and if you had the faction of pit fans who seem to be talking about these people like their actual humans instead of fictional characters. Maybe you could manufacture like an illusion that your pit rip off police procedural or pit rip off family drama was actually as big as the pit I'm not sure. Talking to some of the people I talked to. I believe you could obviously shows fail all the time obviously things get canceled all the time things just don't work things you know don't catch on it feels like there's a way to sort of put your finger on the scale a little bit more than there than there once was and you can sort of declare a hit by by fear a little bit. I don't know I think you guys were having a conversation the other the other day about Apple shows and it's like a hit on Apple is different from a hit on obviously Netflix or any other service with more subscribers and so you're dealing with things that totally different different scales and so if show without a lot of viewers its survival prospects on Apple TV are probably better than they are. Yeah I think I think that there's something to Apple's volume play is still modest compared to Netflix. They seem to be way more willing to bring shows back I don't know what their budget and model is and if it's different from show to show like I will routinely see renewal announcements or a new season of something that's in season four or five. Traditionally a lot of these places they wrap things up by season three either because they see like an attrition and viewership or because that's when contract renegotiation come up with cast. And I don't understand the economics of what Apple is playing at. It's pretty much a write down for them and their larger business so I don't I'm not sure. And then you get into something like Netflix like you're saying where their data to me is incomprehensible. More people watch Bridgerton season three than watch the moon landing is like my favorite step. Yeah none of it makes any sense. Everything is incomprehensible. Who knows. But interestingly enough so one of the things that I mentioned in the piece the night agent was something that was being being clipped and yet sort of you look at the numbers they released that show is massively popular. It's like every episode is watched more than the Super Bowl or something at least in season one or two I think. I guess. So then why do we need why do we need Clippers at all. So it's yeah I think we have a I don't think we have a clear clear view of of any of this anymore and it's getting a little scary. So yeah I'm a single issue voter at this point. Real hard culture metrics. Exactly. It would fix a lot. Let's wrap it up by discussing like where you see this is going next because this piece begins and and if I remember correctly with. Was it Joe Lim the guy from Flutify Lim who your piece starts with an assertion from Joe that 90% of what you're seeing on your fate feeds is essentially fake advertising and or shadow advertising. It's essentially like there is like some hey a dollar per every thousand views incentive for somebody to post it and he that that statement kind of chilled me to my bone because you know if I kill 25 minutes looking at my phone. I'll have one part of my brain that's like just smoothed out and is looking at cats and soccer highlights and whatever. And then there's the other part that's like isn't it weird that like I've just gotten 11 videos that are the same template or have the same similar prompt or like something like top jaw will be popular and then 150 top jaw style shows will be in my phone all of a sudden of like guys getting interviewed on the same street about what their favorite something is. But Joe seems to be suggesting at the end of this piece that this is all coming to an end. What can you can you tell us a little bit about that. So Joe thinks that basically he thinks eventually people are going to stop trusting what they what they see in their social media feeds. He thinks this has gotten so bad. And I kind of I think I sort of agree with him. This is it's so clear. I think people really are noticing this more than they were the most used to that. You know there's just so much so much astroturf that he thinks eventually people will be turned off from this. But he thinks that the you know the clippers at least the people that are doing the clipping now they're going to basically be sort of directing all of this content at at A.I. Yeah. So soon you know maybe we're not going to open social media apps. Maybe we're just going to have our AirPods in and it's going to you know Claude or check E.B.T. is going to tell us what what TV shows to watch or you know what would music to stream. And he thinks that if basically if they hit these LLMs with enough sort of volume of you know stealth marketing that that will you know basically sort of trick the LLMs instead of tricking. Even now if you. OK so like the other day I was like I think I was I think about listening to it was some some band that had 12 albums and I was just kind of like I'm not quite sure where to start and I just you know did a usual Google search of X artist ranked which gives you a Gemini summary of what the two or three peak albums are in terms of like critical appreciation but also these are the cult records and then obviously they're the reddit threads where people are ranking them. There's like rate your music threads. There's all these things where you can kind of find that information but I noticed and I think everybody has this experience now that they're very rarely going past that Gemini summary of the answer to your question now. And so that vision of the future that idea of basically your Google result being a prompt you give your agent essentially where you're just like hey I want to listen to Salem what's music like like what are the best like which house songs and it creates a playlist for you or it tells you like people like this it's like well where are they getting that information like where is this where is the learning happening. And I would imagine that there is also a worry that like AI agents probably already are operating multiple like social media feeds and just working from a prompt from an actual human owner are populating our feeds with this kind of stuff. This happened to search first. It's like we're searches just been completely sort of overtaken by spam and that's I think where we're headed with with with social media and so people I think are eventually going to get escape. I do kind of wonder if it's like you know some of this is purposeful it's like Google is you know they want you to use Gemini they don't use their their their search engine anymore and so maybe they're tanking. You know on purpose or in pushing you to to Gemini and so you know then Gemini will then take in this. You know huge amount of undisclosed advertising and then sort of spit that back to you in the form of. You know supposedly personalized recommendations I I find it to I ask chat you be deal the time it's like what are what are five you know albums that. I've never heard before that sound a little like. The alligator by echo in the bunny man or something yeah spit me back like incredible recommendations that you know I never would have found any other way. Yeah I feel like this is this whole thing somewhere. A bald record store employee is like I could have told you if you had just come to me. I would still have a job. Oh man. Lane thank you so much for joining me today. This has been awesome and this piece is incredible. We'll link it in the show notes obviously and you can read Lane's writing on New York magazine. I would tell you where to follow him on social media but you're probably just an open claw agent looking to blast him with these propaganda. Lane great seeing you man. Thanks again to Lane Brown you can read his piece in New York magazine will have that piece in the show notes for the pod on Spotify. As always you can watch us on ringer dash TV on YouTube you can write us at the watch at Spotify dot com follow us on Instagram at the watch pod underscore it's very funny to say these things after having this conversation with Lane. I wonder if Kai feels any extra pressure with clips this week after you know can you put up geese numbers dude. Thanks to Kai and Sarah and Kai for producing and we'll be back next on Thursday. Take care.