Mailbag, Episodes 4-6
Friends, hello, and welcome to the second ever mailbag episode for Never Post. That's very exciting. That's fun stuff. Can we go around the mailbag that we are all here inside of?
Georgia Hampton:It's so dark
Georgia Hampton:in here.
Mike Rugnetta:I'm so scared. Who is joining us on the call? Hi. It's me, Mike. I'm here.
Jason Oberholtzer:Hi, Mike. It's me, Jason, executive producer.
Hans Buetow:Hi, Jason. It's me, Hans, senior producer.
Georgia Hampton:Hi, Hans. It's me, Georgia, producer.
Mike Rugnetta:So nice in here. So cozy inside the mailbag. So in the mailbag, if you didn't listen to the first one, I will respond to listener comments in the form of, emails, comments on the website, voice memos that were left for us via the air table, and voice mails left at our phone number. And to get things started, we are going to hear a voice mail from someone who reached out about things in episode 0, which was our independent media roundtable. And, Violet had this to say.
Caller, Violet:I never post. I'm Violet, sheher. My ears perked up when anarchism was mentioned during the conversation in the mailbag episodes 1 through 3 episode, during the conversation regarding the limits of the cooperative structure. And I wanted to expand on the discussion from that perspective. In organizing, especially anarchist organizing, there's a concept that affinity groups should be exactly as big as necessary to accomplish a very specific task that they need to do.
Caller, Violet:So in this context, instead of one large cooperative, there would instead be an interconnected network of smaller democratically organized cooperative teams who could work together, each with their own objective that forms a piece of the larger goal that the entire team of teams has. These groups could be federated by things like mutual membership between the groups, or a committee with members elected from each team. Now, how these concepts interact with currently existing business law, I couldn't say. But I think it is important to remain imaginative in regards to how to structure a more democratic workplace and the world in general. Thank you.
Mike Rugnetta:Okay. So number 1, hell yeah.
Mike Rugnetta:Can I
Jason Oberholtzer:just Hell?
Mike Rugnetta:Can I just Hell? Can I just Hell? Can I just Hell?
Mike Rugnetta:Yeah. Uh-huh.
Jason Oberholtzer:Everyone else, please respond to everything else we do with anarchist theory.
Mike Rugnetta:Yeah. This was responding to something that Jason said, which was itself a a summary of something that we had talked about that I think did not make its way into the final edit of the independent media roundtable, which is that trying to organize organizations. So trying to figure out how it is that you work together and not just alongside one another when you are working in an industry of, separate independent media entities has a lot of the same characteristics of doing the kind of organizing that Violet is talking about. Just like, how do you invite people into your bespoke structure for the way that you work, while still maintaining trust, while making sure that you're doing things the way that you wanna do, the way that they wanna do. But you're all still working towards shared goals across all of these, you know, the way Violet talks about them, their affinity groups.
Mike Rugnetta:We're thinking about them in the perspective from the perspective of, media companies, essentially.
Jason Oberholtzer:Yeah.
Mike Rugnetta:And I just I really mainly wanted to play this and put it out there for the the vote, the plus one, the thumbs up of, like, how important it is to remain imaginative. I love that so so much, and I think it's so important. And I just yeah. Love also that it's episode 0, which means it comes at the top of this mailbag. So it's the first thing that everybody's hearing.
Jason Oberholtzer:And this is something that I deeply want to keep talking about while we make this show. We are trying to make something that is owned and operated by us that can exist in this world without needing to create hierarchy as we scale, where you almost necessarily take advantage of others, and somehow funded enough to survive. I want to keep talking about how we can accomplish that, and we certainly need
Jason Oberholtzer:to be
Jason Oberholtzer:creative. And I wanna hear from everybody else who is trying to do the same thing, because we all need to find a way to make it work.
Hans Buetow:Here. Here.
Mike Rugnetta:Here. Here.
Georgia Hampton:Hell, yeah.
Mike Rugnetta:Alright. Moving on from episode 0. We are now moving to episode 1, and we got an email from Penelli, who is a high school teacher, responding to the teen fashion segment, which was a segment where a Georgia talked to professor Wissinger about why tween girls dress like their moms.
Georgia Hampton:Penelli had a really interesting point here, which is, as they describe it, the Zoom uniform. So basically, having something presentable up top, and then for bottoms, basically, pajamas or sweatpants. So this very much specifically looking at teens, tweens, people who are in school during the last couple years, so in the heart of the pandemic. And I find this very interesting because as Penelli said, this fashion then kind of translated to actual school when these students return to school, that they're sort of offering the same fashion that they were presenting and I imagine we're gonna see even more of this. The last couple years have influenced tweens relationship to their own clothing in a really profound way.
Georgia Hampton:I mean, I was just talking to a friend about how Gen z, and I'm guessing even now, like, Gen Alpha, are fully obliterating the interest in wearing heels, like, that all, which I love personally, but is I think, very much a part of the last couple of years being like, why would I wear heels? I am not leaving my house.
Mike Rugnetta:No one sees my feet on the Internet. Well, not for
Jason Oberholtzer:free. Not for free.
Georgia Hampton:We're talking about anarchism, and we're talking about feet.
Jason Oberholtzer:This is an Internet podcast.
Mike Rugnetta:This is a good show. This is a good
Jason Oberholtzer:show. Yeah. This totally tracks. I mean, it has changed the way I dress as an adult. The lockdown, why would it not change everyone else?
Jason Oberholtzer:And when they dress What's
Mike Rugnetta:interesting because Pinnelly says specifically that the technologically determined, difference in look between, like, the, you know, using the equator of the waste, the 2 different hemispheres of look seems to have permeated throughout one age group. But she says specifically, I don't generally see women my age in that look. Yeah. And I wonder if that's just like habit. Right?
Mike Rugnetta:You have you have memories of the before times. Yeah.
Georgia Hampton:Oh, definitely. I mean, you still have TikToks coming up of women millennial women being like, I don't know how to not wear skinny jeans, and the the children are making
Jason Oberholtzer:Also, let's be fair. Pajama pants in school were a thing.
Georgia Hampton:Oh, yeah. Growing up
Jason Oberholtzer:as well. And it's not just because Dave Matthews was doing it on stage, and that seemed very cool. I assume that's where it came from.
Mike Rugnetta:Oh, it's a bad podcast now. Now we're making
Jason Oberholtzer:a bad podcast. People just like wearing pajamas. Alright.
Georgia Hampton:Oh, yeah. I mean, you have the whole culture of, like, cookie monster pajamas girl.
Jason Oberholtzer:That's a that's a whole new can.
Georgia Hampton:Yeah. I don't think that's essentially unusual.
Jason Oberholtzer:Right.
Georgia Hampton:But I think the purpose of it, the the sort of reasoning, the context behind it is so specific now.
Jason Oberholtzer:And maybe we're just seeing the light. Maybe, cookie monster pajama pants girl was right
Georgia Hampton:the whole time. Oh my god.
Mike Rugnetta:Also in episode 1, we had posting disease, a discussion that I had with Bijon Steven about people who cannot stop themselves from posting even though it's bad for them. We got a voice mail from Aaron about posting disease with some interesting thoughts.
Erin:I never post people. The way he describes posting disease, I. E. That you start thinking of the world in terms of posting on the post that you can make about it, is exactly like the Tetris effect. Another famous screen time induced illness in scare quotes, and I would be interested to hear what y'all think of that as a notion.
Mike Rugnetta:So, just for background, I'm gonna read the first couple sentences of the Tetris effect Wikipedia entry. The Tetris effect occurs when someone dedicates vast amounts of time, effort, and concentration on an activity, which thereby alters their thoughts, experiences, dreams, and so on. The term originates from the popular video game Tetris. People who have played Tetris for a prolonged amount of time find themselves thinking about ways different shapes in the real world can fit together, such as the boxes on a supermarket shelf or the buildings on a street.
Jason Oberholtzer:Oh. It's freaking Or famously, when you dream or shut your eyes and the little boxes just keep going. Keep
Caller, Violet:going.
Mike Rugnetta:I think these are the same thing. Yes. I think that they like I think that they are Aaron, I think this is extremely perceptive, and I a 100% agree. And I wanna extend it by saying, this is a great way of thinking about how social media is designed as a game. And for anybody who has read Addiction by Design, like, that's on purpose.
Mike Rugnetta:Like, it's it is put together so that you want to engage in activities that add to the stack of things in the world that then give you points and attention and you get to see number go up and you get to have other people reinforce the fact that you contributed was good. And it all just feels very similar to the satisfaction of Tetris. It is very similarly satisfying though. You know, it's like, Bijan has said this to me, posting on social media a lot of the times is like being really thirsty while you're stranded in the ocean. And you're just looking at salt water and you're like, I'm just so thirsty.
Mike Rugnetta:How bad
Mike Rugnetta:could it be?
Georgia Hampton:It what
Georgia Hampton:if it's fine?
Mike Rugnetta:What if it's fine?
Georgia Hampton:What if it's fine this time?
Hans Buetow:I mean, I won't be the one to get thirsty. Other people might get more thirsty.
Mike Rugnetta:I personally will
Georgia Hampton:thinking about of filtering through things happening in my life as ways I could post about them. Something innocuous happens. I'm like, oh, well, if I post about it, I could, like, say this and I could post like this and blah
Georgia Hampton:blah blah blah.
Georgia Hampton:Like, it's so like, I don't even realize I'm thinking about it.
Jason Oberholtzer:When I used to post 12 times a day for I love charts, most of those posts had little captions under them that were just my 2¢ on something. And at the time, I caught myself looking at things and captions would spring to mind. The little pithy thing that I would say to set this just right in the mind of the viewer. I don't like it, but it's gone now. I know.
Jason Oberholtzer:So I'm fixed.
Georgia Hampton:We're trapped in a cage of pithiness forever.
Mike Rugnetta:Moving on to episode 3, James Mackenzie, sent us an email about Georgia and tomorrow's segment about how the infrastructure of social media does, like, mostly doesn't support, the process of grieving and mourning. And there's one thing that James said that I thought was really interesting that I would love to hear your reaction to Georgia. And he writes, the analogy I keep returning to is saying goodbye to a loved one at the airport getting on a plane. Pre 19 nineties, that was it. Now you can keep calling and texting that person up to and sometimes including the time they're on a plane.
Mike Rugnetta:The communication only definitively stops when the plane takes off and lands. The aerial equivalent of entering a tunnel, I guess. The anxiety of separation never reaches the same height. Digital spaces and communication facilitate or allow so much management of it that something about the experience feels lost. I wonder how others feel about this.
Mike Rugnetta:Mhmm.
Mike Rugnetta:If
Mike Rugnetta:they find themselves struggling, not just when separated from a loved one, but separated from communicating with them. What else is lost besides the connection? Which is an interesting thought of, like, you know, we're, like, out of practice, and, James goes on to say this, like, out of practice being away from people. Mhmm.
Erin:And
Mike Rugnetta:in a way, when people persist online after their death, there are ways in which that withness, that communication can continue, just with no no return, obviously.
Georgia Hampton:And later in James's message, he also mentions that being online and grieving online makes that process so much more public than it may have been in other situations, in other contexts, and that can cause frustration and tension to people who maybe are also part of this process of grieving but are seeing this prolonged expression of it and are, like, uncomfortable by it, are made uncomfortable. And it is just putting all of that in a public space that it kind of isn't normally set for? It's not suited for normally. We don't expect it.
Jason Oberholtzer:Yeah. I think the public availability of that timeline of grief is a big challenge here. You see it in places where there's losses in communities and the community does something publicly to note the loss of someone, the passing of someone, I'm thinking about, like YouTube communities, I'm thinking about battle rap specifically actually, where different companies will put on title cards at the beginning of their, releases saying rest in peace, this person who was taken too early, etcetera, etcetera. Then at a certain point, it is years after the fact, and do they still put up that title card? And that's a thing that people have opinions about.
Jason Oberholtzer:When have you sufficiently mourned for long enough? And now that we're all involved in the discussion about that, it makes it so much more challenging to figure out what is a sufficient mourning period for you, for others, for your public facing self, for your private self. What a wildly complicated space to just try to do one of the more difficult human experiences. It's tough.
Mike Rugnetta:On to episode 4. 1st, we're going to talk about critical ignoring, which was a segment that Hans produced about why it is paying attention to all of the news makes us feel exhausted. And one way of addressing that, which has to do with just not paying attention to a bunch of stuff if you can.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. One of the really interesting first questions that we got was from John who, let us know that he worked at Twitter 2014 to 2017 in trust and safety. So that's a big time fighting disinformation, abuse, terrorism, all that stuff. That's a pretty important time to have done that work. And the thing that John wants to introduce into the conversation on critical ignoring is the Dunning Kruger effect, which I had to look up to make sure that I understood it.
Hans Buetow:If you don't know, Psychology Today describes it as a cognitive bias in which people wrongly overestimate their knowledge or ability in a specific area. It tends to occur because a lack of self awareness prevents them from accurately assessing their own skills. What John is saying is maybe it's actually more like work, and he provides us with a sample script. So, Georgia, will
Hans Buetow:you Yes.
Hans Buetow:Will you help me with this script that we have
Georgia Hampton:here? Yes.
Hans Buetow:So John says that someone will join the Twitter trust and safety team and say something like
Georgia Hampton:Happy to join the team and finally fight the Nazis. Twitter has historically been bad at this. Good thing I'm
Hans Buetow:here. And then they would go on to suggest things.
Georgia Hampton:Have we considered this super basic idea? Oh, we have? What did we learn? Oh, have we tried this other thing? We did?
Georgia Hampton:Oh, Okay. Thank you. George,
Jason Oberholtzer:yes. Amazing.
Georgia Hampton:A whole
Mike Rugnetta:a a plus o, a plus plus plus.
Georgia Hampton:Thank you so much.
Hans Buetow:We submitted this and said, I wonder what doctor Steven Lewandowski, the, guest in this segment would have to say about this, and he had some thoughts.
Stephan Lewandowski:The Donnie and Kruger effect is a serious issue when it comes to people making comments about things they don't understand, except they think they do. I think that this doesn't apply quite as much to, critical ignoring, because the cost of ignoring something mistakenly, I think is quite low. There's lots of things out there we can look at, and if there's a few we don't look at, even though maybe we should have, yeah, I think the loss function for that is far less than it is for mistakenly, spreading information, thinking you know what you're talking about, but you don't.
Jason Oberholtzer:So it seems like Steven has faith in people's ability to discern whether they have ignored something or whether they think they know enough about something, which is just a great deal of grace towards humanity that I perhaps don't share.
Mike Rugnetta:But I think I I think there is a nugget in here that if I'm understanding what he's saying correctly, I think I agree with, which is sort of the almost the theme of the show, which is that, like, it doesn't cost anything to shut up.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. That yeah. It costs
Mike Rugnetta:nothing to not contribute. And contrary to what many, many, many entities and people in organizations online want you to believe, you do not have to contribute and probably shouldn't contribute to every conversation.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. So what's interesting is that that actually leads us really well into the next question that we got from Josh from Palo Alto, who talks about the commodification and the way that you actually have to use these things, which is kinda what Steven is saying.
Josh:Howdy, Never Posters. I wanted to point you at an excellent take from media theorist, Shaka Spier. He suggests that the overwhelmingness of being blasted with world news 247 doesn't really have to do with the volume of information there. We're always ignoring mountains of raw data from our environment all the time without getting frazzled, like the color of the ceiling or the number of leaves on the nearby plant are technically available and knowable but they're not useful so we don't feel overwhelmed by missing out on them. Speer thinks that we feel this way because we're engaging in a sort of commodity fetishism with information products, mistaking the consumption of information shaped things for learning and integrating useful facts into our mental framework for action.
Josh:Like, I might read a half dozen articles over breakfast, but if I don't or can't incorporate them into an actionable mental model of the world, I might as well be counting leaves or staring at the ceiling. We we do pick up on vibes but if we don't come up with a plan to act and fix whatever's causing them, then the only thing to do with that nervous energy is read something else or maybe post about having consumed it. Anyway, bye.
Jason Oberholtzer:That rules, Josh rules. Our listeners rule. This is so much fun.
Georgia Hampton:Huge Josh fans in the chat right now.
Jason Oberholtzer:I'm I'm fans of this whole thing. Did we get something from Steven on this too?
Hans Buetow:You know, we actually did. He had some thoughts.
Jason Oberholtzer:We're so lucky.
Stephan Lewandowski:That's an interesting point because it is true that we're constantly being bombarded with information. You know, I'm looking out the window right now, and there's, like, you know, trees and cows and paddocks, all sorts of things. And I don't feel overwhelmed by that. So why is critical ignoring such a big deal? I think it's because when it comes to information, that isn't natural and that isn't you know, horses and leaves and trees out in the paddock, we're much more likely to become overwhelmed because they require more processing.
Stephan Lewandowski:It's easy enough to ignore things in the natural world, but it is not easy to ignore text, video, people talking to us. And that is where critical ignoring comes in. So we can filter out things even when they're challenging to us and they're demanding our attention.
Mike Rugnetta:I I really think the additional aspect of this is like what Aaron said, which is that it's additionally so so difficult to ignore this sorts of information when you are receiving it in a context that then insists you do something with it, but doesn't tell you what that thing is. No. You just know generally that it all has a use and it could be used to make you more popular or, like, more notable or make you seem smart or whatever. Yeah.
Jason Oberholtzer:It's a really pernicious mix of you're gonna need this, and people are gonna love you for having this.
Mike Rugnetta:Yeah. So do so do something with it. Whereas, like, looking at trees, I'm not thinking to myself, like, well, what am I gonna do with this? Yeah. I'm peeping these leaves, and it's in my brain now, and now I'm gonna have
Jason Oberholtzer:to figure out what to do with this. Damn it. It's social currency. Use it.
Hans Buetow:Thank you to Steven for all the responses, for coming back and sending us thoughts from apparently the field near his house.
Hans:What a delight.
Mike Rugnetta:And I have a thank you, which is to Hans for joining us for the first part of this mailbag, which we we have to say goodbye to Hans for the second half.
Jason Oberholtzer:Right. Which
Hans:I guess
Georgia Hampton:I have
Hans Buetow:a lot
Mike Rugnetta:to do.
Jason Oberholtzer:Get out of the bag.
Hans Buetow:Goodbye. You all have fun.
Mike Rugnetta:Thank you. We're gonna take a break. We'll be right back. Hans less sad, but with more listener comments, which we're excited to talk about.
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Mike Rugnetta:Okay. We're back, and I would like to I think we said that we were gonna establish this in the last episode, and I think in the last mailbag. And I think we may continue to do it for as long as we have material to work with. We have entered Molly's Corner in which
Georgia Hampton:I love the answer.
Mike Rugnetta:A a really not show related question slash comment from my wife, Molly. And, Jason, this one concerns you personally.
Erin:Uh-oh. I just wanted to document it there. I've commissioned to Jason Oberholtzer, inspired by some books he found at his parents' house, Tom Swift series. Ever heard of it? No.
Erin:Me neither. Anyway, I've asked him to go into an innocuous setting and give the name Tom Swift instead of his own, a coffee order, a restaurant reservation. They don't need to know who you are legally. I want video of the situation. I need Jason on camera.
Erin:What I'm really trying to capture is this moment of embarrassment and and gleeful joy, I assume, how he feels. One giving the name. And that's it. I just wanted more accountability for Jason, really, why I'm letting you all know. I mean, feel free to mention it to him.
Erin:Call him to talk to a fact.
Hans:I mean, have fun with it, you know. That's it. Thanks. Bye.
Jason Oberholtzer:Okay. Okay. More accountability is what I needed for this.
Hans:I didn't know she could just do dares on us.
Jason Oberholtzer:Right. Because Molly's corner is really getting aggressive. Yes. I found some books in my parents' house. Tom Swift books, which are I mean, I don't know.
Jason Oberholtzer:I should look it up. 19 fifties classic boys science fiction books. The two titles I have, and I have not seen of all titles are like this, are Tom Swift's possessive something, Tom Swift's spaceship, Tom Swift's robot. I don't know if all of his things are so colonizer focused, but Molly really wanted me to go and, order things in the world as Tom Swift and see if it made me feel good, I suppose. And also wanted this documented and has now enlisted all of the listeners in this pursuit.
Jason Oberholtzer:Yes.
Mike Rugnetta:Tom Tom Swift's mocha latte.
Jason Oberholtzer:Yeah. That is how I will do it. It is my right as Tom Swift to have this mocha latte. I don't know. I mean, what are interstitials in our show for, if not this?
Jason Oberholtzer:The so
Georgia Hampton:Yeah. Perfect.
Jason Oberholtzer:Ready for pristine binaural audio of Tom Swift.
Hans:And his many incredible adventures.
Jason Oberholtzer:Yeah. Asking for what's his.
Mike Rugnetta:Returning to episode 4, we had the segment about important emails and the weight of certain messages. And I just want to respond on mass to all of the communications we got that said that Georgia was correct. Yes. Texting from a computer is far superior
Hans:Yes. And
Mike Rugnetta:that Georgia Georgia is right.
Georgia Hampton:Vindication. I'm t posing right now.
Jason Oberholtzer:Actually are.
Mike Rugnetta:Wait. Georgia is Georgia is dabbing. Georgia is
Hans:just dabbing.
Jason Oberholtzer:Back in just constant. Oh, my God.
Hans:Georgia is is it a back flip?
Mike Rugnetta:She's done it.
Jason Oberholtzer:She's done
Mike Rugnetta:at least a dozen dabs, everybody.
Jason Oberholtzer:That's just dabbing on her cat. Beefcake.
Hans:He just hit the down. Oh my god. Beefcake is dabbing.
Jason Oberholtzer:Turn away, beefcake. You don't wanna end up like this. I think universal, ubiquitous support for Georgia
Georgia Hampton:This is huge for me.
Jason Oberholtzer:Every manner of communication possible.
Hans:I'm beaming. I'm so happy.
Mike Rugnetta:I mean, we all agreed with you. We were just aghast that someone would say it out loud. Yeah.
Hans:Well, let the record show that I was always right.
Mike Rugnetta:Yeah. And and and not afraid to say it. No. So our first, specific, listener response that we will get to in the the subject matter of important emails is from Mary Rose Devine, who asks some questions about other types of things that you can do, that you can compose on both phones and computers.
Mary:And email strikes me as something that's actionable. I actually feel the same way about long texts that I do about email, where anything that feels like I really need to dial in and create a task list or devote more than 10 minutes or so to, I have to be in my computer head space to address. If I get a work text that has instructions for me, I'll almost always answer that on my computer. It's like a physical switch, computer out, notebook out, calendar out, got my workspace ready. This also carries over to any sort of editing project.
Mary:So this is actually a reverse question for you. Even though there are currently some really great phone editing tools out there now for video, audio, images, which are maybe tailored better to social video and phone capabilities, I still always end up using, like, Premiere Pro, Audition, whatever. I would sooner take a video with my phone and send it over to my computer to edit and then put it back on my phone to upload, then use what is maybe a more tailored app and keep it all in my phone space? You all have backgrounds in audio and video. Have your workspaces stayed on the computer?
Mary:Or do you ever use or consider using some of those more mobile products?
Mike Rugnetta:So I mean, I am curious to hear what you all say. None of us are like TikTokers. You know, like, we don't We're not making a lot of, short form video Right. Mobile short form video and uploading it to YouTube shorts or to TikTok or whatever to, you know, making an Instagram reel. I've talked to a lot of people, just professionally who are and there are a lot of people that I've spoken to who are like, yeah.
Mike Rugnetta:I do everything in capcut.
Jason Oberholtzer:We're like,
Mike Rugnetta:I do everything in the, in, in the editor, in TikTok. And every time I have tried to do that, I have thought to myself, I'm gonna go insane if I keep doing this. And I have done exactly what Mary Rose divine describes. I I use, DaVinci Resolve. I will always I would always rather cut something in DaVinci Resolve than use whatever the built in mobile editor is.
Georgia Hampton:So I will use the features in the iPhone to, like, tweak the light and, like, change contrast. I use this app called Lapse a lot that is basically just the newest VSCO type app that you just take photos through. It will put them in a digital darkroom that's not real. You got all
Hans:of that.
Georgia Hampton:Yeah. It's yeah. And then, like, an hour later, they're ready, and then you see them and they have this beautiful filter on them. But I'm not doing any of that, and I'm only using that because it's on my phone. So it's all kind of contained in the phone.
Georgia Hampton:But if I was doing something more, I guess, quote, unquote professional, to your point, Mike, I'm not doing work that really lives on the phone.
Jason Oberholtzer:I would never edit anything of import on a phone, and I made that choice in my early twenties when I already knew that I was too old for this. I would see younger musicians roll up to a gig with an iPad and unfurl an entire sequence of things. And I was like, I'm never gonna learn that. I'm 22. I'm already never going to learn how to do that.
Mike Rugnetta:That was the you are you are answering the question that I was gonna ask next, which is, Jason, as of, like, a musician, I'm curious how you feel about, like, iPad production. Because especially in electronic music, there's, like, a whole class of people who like yeah. I'm the same way. I can't I tried, and I just it's so foreign to me. I find it very, very hard.
Mike Rugnetta:Yeah.
Jason Oberholtzer:And the thing is, like, it's cool when they do it. I I know that I am bad for not knowing how to do this, and that they are cool, but I decided very early this was not a skill I was gonna pick up. And similarly, editing, I'm so amazed when Steve Lacy puts together something on his iPhone that is great. I will never learn anywhere near that skill. I went to a celebration of the closing of the comparative literature department at Hamilton College a couple years ago and showed up with my reel book, my actual reel book because there was gonna be some jazz players there and I was gonna play with some folks and we had a good time and all the kids were aghast at my reel book, and they had never seen one in person, and they all had their iPads, and this was like a relic to them, and they enjoyed it.
Jason Oberholtzer:It was cute that I had showed up with an actual wheel book and, like, woah. Can I thumb through that?
Mike Rugnetta:It's a shame Hans had to leave because in the background, in his studio is on his piano is a physical real book.
Jason Oberholtzer:Yeah. It is like a pacifier to me. I need that to be able to play jazz. And I cannot wait for all the emails telling me that I am right.
Georgia Hampton:Soon, you'll be the one dabbing.
Jason Oberholtzer:Yes. God willing.
Mike Rugnetta:We got a voicemail from Josh, a different Josh, about an experience of email that one might have have had if they are slightly older?
Josh:I'm 45 and that puts me as a gen whatever x maybe, I guess. I'm not sure. One thing I was thinking about, I just was listening to your discussion, and I was thinking that perhaps, at least for me and maybe my wife too, we've spoken about this, that how we email and, like, text as well have as much to do with our age as the the tool itself. So that, for instance, text and, you know, email were a lot of fun when we first got them, and it was kind of a joy. And then, you know, email has now turned into a burden.
Josh:And it's a thing that, you know, I we get emails and we end up deleting most of them because it's crap. It's it's been commodified and it's been, used for advertising and it's just it's it's not a fun experience anymore. And that could be because it's email or just could be that we're a lot older. We've been doing this for, you know, 20 plus years. I wonder what that consideration is.
Josh:It's just that as we've gotten older as a people group that we also see the tools that we use differently.
Mike Rugnetta:Josh's voicemail really made me like it was like a bolt of lightning of in fact, remembering having email for the first time. And I would say that I agree that like I think email was fun for like a solid maybe 10 years or more.
Jason Oberholtzer:There was a time when if you had the number that said you had unread emails, that was a good thing. You log on. It would take a while to get there, and if there was no new emails, you would be disappointed. Now it is the exact opposite.
Georgia Hampton:I think I'm the exact age to have missed that.
Mike Rugnetta:Yeah. That's I figured that this might be the case. Yeah.
Georgia Hampton:Yeah. Because email always kind of was the domain of either professionalism or spam.
Jason Oberholtzer:I mean, there was always spam, but it was of the sort that spam filters caught. It was sort of actual spam. Now we have this sort of, pseudo spam that, like, everything is kind of spam, but it's also kind of an email, and so the filters don't really I get a lot
Mike Rugnetta:of I get a lot of emails that, like, it makes sense that I get them, and I understand why I'm getting them. But I want almost none of them.
Jason Oberholtzer:Yeah. Exactly.
Georgia Hampton:It's like a cavalcade of coupons.
Mike Rugnetta:Right. It feels it's just so much bullshit. And like that yeah. Like that used to not be the case. You would only ever get emails from individual people who wanted to get a hold of you for something.
Mike Rugnetta:Yeah. And at least, like, you know, when I first moved to New York, that was almost always a job. Right? Like, an email meant, like, someone needs needs me to do something that I can charge the money for, which was very, very exciting. Now it's, yeah, nonsense Or someone who needs money from me, which go away all of it.
Mike Rugnetta:No. Yeah.
Jason Oberholtzer:Yeah. No. You used to go to your inbox and be like, my friends and opportunities are in here. Yeah. And now none of that is true.
Mike Rugnetta:So I wonder I mean, that's that's I just wanted to pose that as, like, do we think that that is the technology or the our age? And it seems like it's probably both. Oh, it's definitely both. Or one is a factor of the other. Yeah.
Mike Rugnetta:Yeah. Finally, we started out talking about the listener response to important emails, acknowledging everybody who agreed with Georgia. I would also like to just blanket acknowledge everyone who wrote in, who wrote an email saying that they were writing the email on their phone, even though that didn't seem like the right thing to do just to practice. And I just I just wanna say, you are seen and you are appreciated.
Hans:Yes. And you
Mike Rugnetta:did and you all, all of you did a great job.
Jason Oberholtzer:Also on top of that, a lot of really thoughtful emails about emails in there, and I really enjoyed reading all of them. So thank you for putting as much thought into emails as an email is supposed to have in it.
Hans:I appreciate all
Mike Rugnetta:of it. Email seriously. The right amount of seriousness.
Hans:This is the real deal. Well proportioned. Look, they look great. Uh-huh.
Mike Rugnetta:Okay. From emails to audio, we now move on to episode 5. The first thing we're gonna talk about is burnt toast audio. If you don't remember, the burnt toast audio segment was about, how a lot of audio online seems to be worse than it needs to be. Like it's bad on purpose and wondering why that might be.
Mike Rugnetta:And I have some great news. Louise is back to join us as a guest. Yay.
Luis:Hi, everyone.
Mike Rugnetta:We flew him in from Studio Ocenta. Yes. All the way to the Riverside call. Luis, thank you for joining us.
Luis:Oh, of course. Thanks for having me. Yeah. I was excited ever since you originally invited me to be a part of this mailbag. It's great to be here and, like, see what comes up.
Luis:I'm I'm curious, and I'm excited.
Mike Rugnetta:Well, then, in that case, allow me to introduce you to clowns. Yes.
Jason Oberholtzer:Joan, I will
Mike Rugnetta:let you take it from here.
Georgia Hampton:Oh my god. Yeah. We got an incredible message from Dylan on, as he described it, burnt toast clowns, which mixed feelings about that imagery. But
Luis:I'm excited. I'm a little scared.
Hans:Yes.
Georgia Hampton:But, yeah, they they made such an interesting point about how the use of burnt toast audio likens itself almost to clowning and how clowning has a a real place on the social Internet and even mentioned that Tiara, the TikToker that we mentioned, is kind of doing a performance that could be clowning, and that even Twitch streamers are clowning, which I find amazing that this person made this connection because, Luis, as you know, the original version of the video I sent you is actually not the original version.
Luis:Of course.
Georgia Hampton:Yeah. It is an animated interpretation of that audio with a little cartoon clown with a microphone. Woah. Yes.
Jason Oberholtzer:There we go.
Georgia Hampton:We kept calling it the clown video.
Luis:Yeah.
Georgia Hampton:But, But, Luis, I'm interested to hear your thoughts more about this idea of clowning and, like, audio clowning online.
Luis:Yeah. I mean, it's one of those things that now that you mentioned it and I heard it, it seems so obvious, but we never really touched on it in the in the piece. And now I'm, like, so curious to just explore that a lot more because it makes a lot of sense. Like, people are afraid of clowns for so many reasons and and all of that and, like, the the whole, like, clown phobia is a big thing. Right?
Luis:And I I feel like part of it in part and also just everyone's discomfort or not everyone's, but a lot of people's discomfort towards clowns and and these sorts of performers is that you never really get access to the person behind the face paint or the mask or whatever. Right? And so, like, they're always well, they're always clowning. They're always, like, playing with you, and you're always a butt of the joke with them. Right?
Luis:And it's it's kind of escapable.
Jason Oberholtzer:Yeah.
Luis:And so I feel like that's a fascinating thing to to bring into this idea of of audio virtuos and clowning in the sense of, like, of of, like, you're yeah. You're you're always on edge because there's always something happening, and you're always sort of vulnerable to someone's, like, mocking.
Mike Rugnetta:And the the second part of Dylan's email is great because it talks about dawn of everything, the Wengrow and Graber book, which is great. One of my favorites. Very, very good. But he the but Dylan talks about that, like, that very thing that we've maybe become a little bit too accustomed to not being uncomfortable. We were all just a little too comfortable.
Mike Rugnetta:And clowns like bad audio, push you into this perverted. Right? Inversion or perversion of typical values and hierarchies. That's just like puts you on edge.
Jason Oberholtzer:Yeah. The other interesting overlap here is that we described, burnt toast audio a bit as, like, performance art.
Hans:Mhmm.
Jason Oberholtzer:And performance art as a medium owes a lot to clowning and there's a large percentage of people who do performance art who have gone to clown college. This is, like, a known path to getting into cool performance art. As you go to clown college, you get your skills, and then you come do the weird stuff in the black boxes. So, clowning's everywhere.
Georgia Hampton:That is a promise and a threat. Well, this actually dovetails kind of nicely into the next comment that we got from a listener named Ian on a similar kind of challenge, like, challenging through the use of burnt toast audio, specifically on the limitations of audio and the and the format turning into its own kind of aesthetic?
Ian:I can't remember the exact quote, but, Brian Eno said that every technical limitation will eventually become an aesthetic. I've been thinking about this a lot recently because I've been working on the score to a documentary about sound and sound effects. And so I've been using the aesthetics of different eras of sound to kind of create a through line and represent those eras in, you know, just the natural content of the music. But what's so interesting about permittos audio or just the general fascination with kind of the early Internet limitations recently, you know, especially on Tik Tok is that, you know, the other one being the lossy data compression of MP3s and, you know, Kazaa downloads, things like that. What's so interesting is that it is the aesthetic of the Internet that can only be used on the Internet.
Ian:And it's kind of like gatekeeping the gatekeepers of traditional media is not able to use this properly, you know, it sounds wrong, like you said. And so, I think this is the first time that there is an actual aesthetic that can only be used by the community that created the aesthetic, at least in terms of sound. So, yeah. Thanks so much. Love the show.
Ian:Bye.
Mike Rugnetta:Woah. Yeah.
Luis:Yeah. I totally agree. And that is something that I have thought about for for a long time. And it's a concept that I that that has always fascinated me. The thing about, like, technology, once it becomes obsolete, becomes an aesthetic.
Luis:It's something that's so fascinating, of course. Right? Like, like, once vinyl records aren't the predominant form of audio, listening or consumption. Right? Then suddenly, like, having or listening to your music on vinyl becomes a choice.
Luis:Right? An an aesthetic choice. And you you also, like, take into account how it looks. Right? And so a similar thing happens, obviously, with every stage of of technology as it relates to art and then in this case, specifically to sound.
Luis:Right? I mean, not too long ago, the only way to listen to audio on the Internet was through, like, a relatively low quality because that's all we could do. Right? And so then now that that's not the only option, suddenly deciding to do it has become this aesthetic choice as well. And it's interesting.
Luis:I hadn't thought about it that way about how, like, it so far hasn't been able to be co opted in some way, like, beyond the Internet in the quote traditional media or that sort of thing. I find that just fascinating to to explore.
Jason Oberholtzer:There are definitely ways that it's leaking in. In the conversation we had with Charlie Harding
Hans:Yeah.
Jason Oberholtzer:In the most recent episode, he was talking about how Phoebe Bridgers made choices to make her album sound more like you had gotten it off of Kazaa. And there is now a nostalgia for the limitations of MP 3 and the aesthetic choice that that is much in the way that if you get that little hiss of a vinyl record in the middle of your lo fi beat to chill out to, you feel better. Something feels better about the MP 3 limitations. And that was
Mike Rugnetta:my main reaction to this was surely it's only a matter of time. Yeah, right. Right.
Jason Oberholtzer:Like, yeah, the comforting hug of the loudness wars. But yeah, it's totally wild how, like, set in time, by necessity, technology becomes. And then, of course, it has to mean something. And then if you reach into the bag of meaning and try to get it, you're gonna reach for the tech that gets you there. Yeah.
Georgia Hampton:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a big interest of ours exploring this kind of audio was that it was just so uniquely of the Internet and seem to kind of only be able to exist there.
Mike Rugnetta:Like, you are always referencing. There's no presence of it that doesn't conjure those places in some way.
Georgia Hampton:Exactly. You can't you can never extricate it from that
Hans:original source.
Mike Rugnetta:Talked about this a little bit on our audio production stream that we did, me Hans and Jason, where it's like, there are plugins that let you do it, but you do it because it sounds like the Internet. Right?
Georgia Hampton:Exactly. Like, the original purpose is still there. Well, Luis, I'm so glad you were able to come back and chat with us.
Luis:Of course. Yeah. Thanks for inviting me. Call me whenever you you would like to work on anything else that's, like, weird audio Internet stuff related, I'd I'm here, and I'd I'd be happy to.
Jason Oberholtzer:Those are all of our favorite words in a row. Yeah. Thanks for joining us.
Luis:Thank you so much.
Mike Rugnetta:Okay. And on to episode 6, our most recent episode. First, we have a phone call from Steve, who Jason lists a bunch of things that you guys missed when talking about the sound of the Internet.
Jason Oberholtzer:Well, I asked for it, so I'm ready, Steve.
Steve:I think Lil B, the base god, deserves an honorable mention, for being one of the best worst rappers of all time. We did get a start on the Internet. I think Kodak Black is kind of in that category too, though some of his more recent stuff, I think is quite a bit better. XXX Santacion is in that camp too. All three of these figures are pretty fraught people.
Steve:And I think that's kind of part of what makes them feel like the Internet. But then there's also, like, Zach Fox, who's a comedy rapper, at least offensively, but honestly has some of the greatest bars in the game. But really I wanted to talk about JPEGMafia, who I think sounds like if J Dilla grew up on Xbox Live playing Call of Duty with the rest of us. Fantastic work. I love hazard duty pay, but if we're talking about stuff that sounds like the Internet, super glitchy and the type of record scratch switches between genres and vibes, that you might see in something like hyperpop, then you should check out his album with Danny Brown.
Steve:Songs like Zooming Beef Patty, Step Up Pig, Kingdom Hearts Key, all these just like feel like Twitter jokes come to life, and the energy is unbelievable. Also allows me to talk about Gary Clark junior. He's not really Internet artist, but also jumps genres in a way that feels like the Internet. Thanks. Bye.
Jason Oberholtzer:Awesome. Okay. Thank you, Steve. There was definitely a lot of hip hop that we did not get time to talk about in the timeline of this, And I think everyone you just mentioned fits really elegantly into that space of, like, humor, self aware, ironic facing Internet that we did talk about, and these are all, like, perfect. Danny Brown immediately came to mind, and I also think it's important to think about because it transitions nicely into the streamer era.
Jason Oberholtzer:Like, Danny Brown now is more known for being a streamer than, and, than his musical output. If you think about what T Pain has managed to do with his career being, like, maybe one of the best streamers and how that has revitalized his image for a new generation.
Mike Rugnetta:I love t Pain's journey. I love t Pain. Incredible.
Jason Oberholtzer:I love yeah.
Mike Rugnetta:Yeah. It's true. I love t Pain.
Jason Oberholtzer:I just love him. Hip hop has always been so culturally aware of its own participation in culture, even in the moment, that it is really it's a really good lens to look at how the Internet is bleeding into everyday consumer culture at the exact same time, and I think everyone you mentioned is a great part of that journey.
Mike Rugnetta:I also I love that Steve is like, I got so much to say. I'm gonna name these 3 people. Those are the first three people that come
Hans:to mind. They're all problematic. Yes. Yeah. That's that's a
Mike Rugnetta:good one. Feels like the Internet and still you're not wrong. Yeah.
Hans:Yeah. It's so true.
Jason Oberholtzer:That's SoundCloud rap. That is this is, like, part of the history of the Internet sounding music of Internet sounding music that we have to deal with. Yeah.
Georgia Hampton:I mean, also just the incredibly apt mention of Gary Clark junior. That is such so good. I mean, his newest album is called JPEG Raw.
Jason Oberholtzer:Mhmm.
Georgia Hampton:Even like the genre jumping and and mixing and all of that, I even think of something like the mashup of Encore and Numb, the, like, Jay z, Linkin Park collaboration from back in, at least, like, my emo youth. Like, that there's so much of what is of the Internet sonically and musically is this genre mixing and jumping.
Jason Oberholtzer:Mhmm. And Steve wasn't the only person to point out what I missed. Ethan also wrote in an email saying that he would have liked to have heard more about chill wave, the blog rock era and Pitchfork, the 1975 postmodern, post irony bands with hypertextuality in their music, bandcamp and bedroom pop, meme genres like Simpsonwave, r y m, mucor, the needle drop. I'm sorry. I agree that they should all be in there, but we only have so much time.
Georgia Hampton:I'm so sorry we let the lofi chill hip hop beats girl down.
Jason Oberholtzer:So I I do wanna take a little bit of time for chill wave and pitchfork stuff though, because it was really hard for me to decide how much of pitchfork ouvre counts as sounding like the Internet or not just because it was so monocultural, and it was in Brooklyn. It was in different scenes, and it was suggesting that it was the only important culture, but I don't actually think it was Internet culture, despite the fact of the discourse proliferating on blogs. Chillwave probably has a better argument to be in the mix.
Georgia Hampton:I would agree. Definitely.
Mike Rugnetta:I agree with that. A lot of the pitchfork stuff feels like it's media darling music that leaked into the Internet as opposed to things that feel like they came from the Internet in a more, I can't believe I'm about to say this, authentic way.
Jason Oberholtzer:Oh, and speaking of authentic, I do think bedroom pop deserves to be in this conversation. We kinda talked about Myspace era music and sort of the emo to bedroom pop wave or crossover or trajectory or gateway or whatever it is. But clearly, you know, home production tools include that genre in a meaningful sense, and YouTube music for a very long time was sort of better produced bedroom pop, weaponized into more and more sparkling production. Yeah. So thank you, thank you Ethan, thank you Steve, Thank you, everyone else.
Jason Oberholtzer:Please continue to tell me what I missed because I'm also finding new stuff to listen to in here, and that is awesome.
Mike Rugnetta:And with that, our 2nd mailbag episode comes to an end. A round of applause for everybody, everyone involved. Georgia, no round of applause, not dabbing. Round of applause. She just won't stop dabbing.
Hans:At this point, this is bordering on cyberbullying. Now she's
Mike Rugnetta:doing the Dougie?
Hans:Oh, wait. Okay. Never mind.
Jason Oberholtzer:She's
Hans:doing it really well. Who said that? Wait. Could you teach me how to Dougie?
Mike Rugnetta:Thank you to everyone who, wrote in, who, left us a voice memo, who left us a voice mail. And thank you at the same level to people who we didn't get to. It's really hard for us to get to every single thing that comes in. Please do not take, the absence of your response as an indication that we did not find it interesting. It's just we we get a lot, and we would love to talk about it all.
Mike Rugnetta:But we're just we're just a small team. We're just humans.
Hans:We're just
Georgia Hampton:We're just a couple of little guys.
Jason Oberholtzer:Just a couple of
Hans:little guys.
Georgia Hampton:Couple of little guys.
Jason Oberholtzer:I'm just a rude little dude.
Mike Rugnetta:So, we appreciate you and we love hearing from you. So please, you know, write in, let us know what you think, and we'll see you at the next mailbag in 3 or 4 more episodes.
Jason Oberholtzer:Thank you, everybody. Cool. Thank you. Thanks, everyone.
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