[upbeat music] Welcome back to Tasteland. I'm your co-host, Francis Zeira. And I'm Daisy Alioto. And Daisy, who are we speaking with today? Today we're speaking with Jamie Wilkinson.
He's a prolific programmer and entrepreneur, and you may know him from co-founding the meme database known as Know Your Meme back in two thousand and eight. Great year for memes. Mm.
Um, he also co-founded VHX, which is a platform for selling movies and TV shows directly to fans, which was acquired by Vimeo in twenty sixteen.
And he's currently the co-founder and CTO of Glif, um, which is described as an all prompts, no code generative AI sandbox. Um- Mm. I've used it. It... That's, that's accurate. [chuckles] Okay.
Um, real quick, because as I was preparing to get onto record, I was checking Clone- Mm-hmm...
and I saw an article linked on Clone, a little how bad is Diet Coke for you at really article, which comes from a website called parentdata.org, that I don't know, it seems like kind of an SEO trap to me, but- Um, I did not contribute that article if the fact came- Okay.
Well, you didn't, you didn't... Okay. R- regardless, regardless of the fidelity of the information, I had just finished drinking a small seven-point-eight ounce Diet Coke, as I'm- Mm-hmm... want to do,
uh, right before seeing that. So I didn't read it, but I did sc- open it and scroll down to the comments, which- [chuckles] So I'm gonna read you the top comment, which is- Okay. Tell me... "Thanks.
I average around 20 a day, and in all mo- [chuckles] No. [chuckles] And in all- Is that my father-in-law? [laughs] No. It was the... You gotta hear the second half of the sentence. That's it. Okay. Go, go, go.
"And in all modesty, my biomarkers are better than that Brian Johnson nut." We need to contact this person and get them on the podcast- Andrew S.-... or on Voice Clerk... is that your, is that your father-in-law's name?
[sighs] Sadly, no. But Andrew S., if you're listening, please be in touch. The, the other, um, Clone article that I, that I opened and read a little bit of because it was kind of like, yeah, I get it, uh, is it's from...
It's a Business Insider about Wall- drug use on Wall Street, from cocaine to magic mushrooms. Yeah. Does Wall Street have a drug problem? I'm sorry about this. Exactly.
[chuckles] I feel like this is probably an article they write every five to 10 years. A hundred percent. Um, but I started reading a bit of it and then, you know, it's, it's, it's remarkably long. It was like a...
I don't know. I didn't really count, but it's must be like a four thousand word article for something that's quite simple. Um, you know, drug abuse is, is a real problem, and this, this does get into that.
But what the one, [chuckles] the one thing I wanted to comment on is about halfway through, there's this mural. It's a photograph of some unrelated mural, uh, where it's this, this older woman
puffing a joint, and around her are all these mushrooms. Mm-hmm. And the caption says, "Painting depicting a woman smoking magic mushrooms," which I don't...
That just im- immediately eroded any and all trust I had in this article. You don't smoke them? I don't think you smoke magic mushrooms. Okay. Yeah. Anyways. Well, maybe you could do some...
You could get some engagement by putting that on Twitter and tagging Business Insider. [chuckles] Tagging the, the author, um, who I won't, I won't call them out now. I, I know the author didn't write that, uh...
Oh, there's... Wow, this... There's a, there's actually a one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight journalist byline. They each had to try a different drug.
[upbeat music] So, okay, off the bat- Off the record... we wanna talk about, we wanna talk... No, this is all on the record, Jamie. Okay. Um, your Wikipedia page- Yeah...
has a very interesting fact, which is that you used to teach an internet famous class at Parsons. Um- Yeah...
which, uh, this stood out to me because I know Parsons, if I'm, if I'm not mistaken, stating as part of The New School, which is undergoing a lot of consolidation and program cutting right now, so- Mm-hmm...
um, I, I hope that the internet famous class at Design and Technology, in the De- Design and Technology program will survive this.
But, uh, this class was about internet attention, specifically how it could be manipulated or aggregated dir- by different strategies. Mm-hmm.
Um, and students were actually graded on their ability to garner online attention, which now we're all students that are judged- [chuckles]... by our ability to garner online attention. In the classroom of life.
Talk about, talk about this class and talk about like how different would it be if you had to teach this class today? Well, wh- when were you teaching this specifically? Mm. This was a long time ago.
This must have been in two thousand and eight or two thousand and nine. Were we ever so young? Um, and I mean, for context, that was early Web 2.0.
Like, it was Digg, Tumblr blogs, YouTube was just a glint in Larry and Sergey's eyes. I don't know. Um, i- in hindsight, it feels like a baby internet compared with the
robust capitalist machine we're transmitting live on today. Well, what kind of work were students doing? Like, what... Was there any memorable like, you know, gimmicks or- Yeah... achievements? Yeah. It...
I mean, honestly, it is... I haven't talked about it in a while, so please forgive me- [chuckles]... uh, if I get, get facts wrong. But it, it does feel, in hindsight, like a bit of a microcosm of
what we found ourselves in today. Like, it was- Mm... you know, sort of prescient in that, um, there were, let's say, I wanna say about 20 students in the class. We taught it two semesters. Um,
it's a graduate level course for design and technology students if they're like going for an MFA. These are folks who are like creative.
And despite that, I wanna say maybe 10% of them succeeded on the basis of something creative being picked up in the ether and sort of succeeding through-The thing that I think most creatives sort of aspire to, which is people, like, appreciating your art and the depth, and the history, and the context that went into it, and the other 90% of it was essentially, like, bikinis or similar.
Mm. And, you know, clickbait. Like, uh... And that was at a time when clickbait was new, was kind of new. At le- at least at the beginning. We hadn't been vaccinated against it yet.
[laughs] I mean, I think I've, I feel like I missed that inoculation if there was a vaccination available. Yeah, like are we now? [laughs] Uh, yeah, based on stuff that people send me, I don't think,
I don't think the vaccines are working so hot- [laughs]... anymore, but, um, yeah, and so, so that was it, was because this was, you know, your grade was on the line here.
So it was very interesting how in the beginning of the semester most folks were sort of trying to put out, like, more, like, you know, more serious, more...
Uh, generally it would be kind of, like, under this, um, category of, like, clever internet art is maybe how I would classify it. You know, where it's like the, the punchline is in the title.
Well, this is the kind of era when I was using, like, StumbleUpon, and so it's not- Absolutely... you're discovering the kind of thing that maybe you would see on StumbleUpon.
Yeah, and when you hit it on Stumble you'd, like, re-blog it or whatever you did on StumbleUpon. I don't remember. It wasn't relevant anymore. Was...
Wait, I, I don't know if, yeah, I don't know if any of us know this, but, like, I remember when I used to use it, uh, like, I feel like I would often just get the same things over and over, and I became convinced- Yeah...
that there was only, like, a few hundred things on there that were- Mm... manually added, and when you clicked the button it would just shuffle between them. Does that, does that how you guys remember it? If you...
I would, I would believe that. And then, or, or- I never stumbled that far. I think you stumbled too many times, Francis. Mm. It was a, a pretty fun way to use the internet.
And, and it was at a time, too, where I, like, also had a lot more free time to just press, like, the shuffle button of the- Mm-hmm... internet.
Um, but yeah, if you told me that there were only, like, 100 people who've ever created all the content that was featured on StumbleUpon, in the same way that, like, I feel like you could even say that about
big chunks of Reddit today- Mm. Mm... or, or other parts of the internet. If you were like- Shusli and Maxwell was holding Reddit up. Totally.
Yeah, if you told me there was, like, an OPEC of internet content, I would totally believe you.
Okay, well, so the, the time that you were teaching this class was also the time, the, like, three-year or so period that you were doing Know Your Meme, right? Mm. Yeah. Yeah, it was all kind of, uh, interrelated.
Had Know Your Meme actually officially launched beyond being a video series when you taught the course? I would need to check the Wikipedia page, I guess. Um- [laughs] It was- Okay, well, wait, wait.
I, so I checked the Wikipedia page. Okay. What, what I understand is... Okay, tell me if I get the facts wrong here. [laughs] 2007 or so is when this video ser- video series begins. You're part of another company.
You're making these- Yeah... videos. It gets spun off into its own company, you and a couple other people. Um, and then that's in 2008. So it started in 2007, 2008.
According to, you know, the, the co- the, um, our chroniclers over at Wikipedia, 2008 is the proper beginning. I think that, that sounds about right. It was...
A- and the- there was this kind of couple year period where I was doing a lot of, like, internet culture work, um, between,
uh, Know Your Meme probably most successfully, and then the Internet Famous class was another one.
Then I was doing a lot of work with this group called The Fat Lab, which was, which was super fun, kind of doing art and technology. Free Art and Technology Lab. Free Art and Technology Lab, yeah.
Um, and yeah, good times. Proto internet. When did Know Your Meme become profitable? I... After it was sold. Mm. After I was no longer involved and it was- Mm-hmm... it was sold.
Um, and I'm, I'm still a friend of the company and an advisor to it today, but, um [clicks tongue] um, you know, media's a tough business. Y- y'all should know this better than anybody.
Media's a tough business, but memes are a business of their own. But [laughs] that's, like, today during whatever internet version we're in now. Mm-hmm.
Back in 2008 it was, you know, uh, there, there weren't a lot of avenues to make money outside of, like, Google AdSense essentially for something like that. That's true. Subscriptions were nonexistent.
The idea of, like, subscribing or, like, the Substack or the Patreon model was nonexistent. I'm not sure Kickstarter existed yet- Mm... or if it did it was in, like, its very version one-ish,
uh, Rivington Street innings. Well, wait.
So you, you also founded a company, co-founded a company called VHX, which I had not heard of until I was preparing for this, but I, my, like, basic understanding was that it was sort of a proto Patreon model- Mm...
like a direct support for artists. Yeah, exactly. And that, that we were kind of part of this initial wave of companies that were doing sort of direct to consumer monetization. Mm. You know.
Um, and with VHX, our first start was working with Aziz Ansari to help sell his comedy special with the, the, uh, $5 DRM-free format that Louis CK pioneered. Mm. Mm.
And, and eventually the business evolved over time into becoming much more focused on sort of subscription services and streaming services like the Netflix, the Netflix model.
Um, but in those early days, people were just sort of like, "Can I sell anything to anyone online?" basically. Like, and Gumroad I think had just started. Um,
yeah, and even just, like, like, I don't, I think Stripe didn't exist yet either really. Like, so monetizing was actually still pretty hard.
Um, and- You can sell anything to anyone online, but they might not pay for it is what we discovered [laughs]. Yeah. So how have memes changed? It's been, what, 17 years? Yeah, I mean, you're better off asking my kids.
I... Well, wait. Mm. What, a comment I can make here, I remember it was around that time, 2000... Would've been 2010, um, that I was a zero, I was a sophomore in high school, I think, and
I had been, you know, addicted to the internet for five or six years, maybe seven years at that point, and I, you know, I knew what memes were. You know, they were the thing. It was, like, Caturday, right?
Like, that, that was... When I think of memes- Absolutely... like that, it was, it was that, right? Yeah. Cat memes. Yeah, can has cheeseburger. Exa- Mm. Well, exactly. This kind of thing.
But, uh, I remember when somebody who I, like, kind of knew at school was talking about memes, and I don't remember h- how they referred to it, but they referred to something and I was like, "That's not a meme.
That's not a meme." You know? Like, don't-You can't appropriate that word in this very, like, righteous, you know, nerdy sophomore in high school way.
Um, and I think about that often when I, like-- when I think that, like, when I think about how memes have changed, right?
It's like back then it was something that felt like it was mine as somebody who was so engrossed in the internet in that earlier era. But now it's like, like I was trying to define this for myself.
Like a meme now is more a video than a still image, especially because of like the way TikTok and Instagram Reels have, have built in like the- Mm-hmm...
the stitching, like the, the remix culture built into it now because that's what a meme is, right? It's this, it's when the thing becomes remixed and reused.
Memes are sort of like proto-generative AI from my perspective.
It's the smallest unit of remixable information, and I think what's interesting about that is we feel very differently about remixable-- between remixable visual information and remiz-remixable textual information.
Because- Mm... if you, a meme, a single image as the sort of minimum viable unit of transmittable culture, whatever you wanna call it. If you want to- Minimum viable information? Yeah.
Well, if you wanna do the same thing with language, okay, maybe it's a word or a phrase, but once you start remixing that, it loses its meaning very quickly, and it loses its context very quickly.
Mm. And so,
so much of the growth of the internet through the period that I've been online is establishing a sort of like base unit of virality or remixability, whatever you wanna call it, and then running with that for a little bit, and then having a cycle where you try to like reintroduce context.
And I feel like we're seeing the same thing happening in generative AI right now, but I'm really interested to hear your perspective on it as somebody who has like,
now, now has a startup in that field coming out of the environment of memes, the environment of this very proto-primitive way of transmitting information.
Like you sort of have lived the full arc of it and, you know, what, what does that feel like and, and kinda what's next? Yeah, it's a great, it's a great question, and,
uh, I guess Francis even actually something you mentioned struck me where sort of this person who was gatekeeping the memes to you. [chuckles] I was, I was the one. I was- He was the gatekeeper. I'm sorry.
When you were gatekeeping the memes to others- [chuckles]... was, were you using the Richard Dawkins canonical memes are the genes of culture definition or more the like, "This is my meme.
Stop sharing Tay Zonday and Rickroll. That's my thing"? I, well, I had like, by that point I'm pretty sure I had like, you know, looked up what, what is a meme, um, when I was in high school.
Imagine this happening in Portland, Oregon. I think that's important as well- Okay. No, no, no... to picture all of this happening in Portland. I wasn't even there yet. I was, I was still in rural northern California.
Um, so I was really isolated, so it's really like the internet culture, [chuckles] internet culture is my culture. Um, but uh,
yeah, no, I, I, I knew of that one, but I was very strict on like, well, yes, like the, the Dawkins definition is the definition. But, uh- Mm-hmm...
but um, no, I was like a meme is like this specific kind of image with, uh, you know, top text, bottom text, impact font. Like that to me- Mm... was the definition of a meme in like twenty ten still.
Which it had gone beyond that, but like that was at least my tunnel vision. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of like the, uh, canonical reference format- Mm... uh, for like that image macro impact font thing at the time.
Uh, to your point around like what is, uh, the standard media that it comes to mind when you say meme in twenty twenty-five, December twenty twenty-five is, is probably like, you know, to your point, it's a vertical short form video of some kind.
Um, and I ask this question really just to calibrate around the idea of like and what meme means in like the...
There is this sort of technical definition sense, and then there is the like popular culture definition sense on like the opposite end of the spectrum. Um,
and I mean, for me too now, so like, you know, to your point, seventeen years later, like, uh, I have two kids that are teenagers that, um, their perception of this
phenomenon is so different than, than mine, like a full, you know, two generations removed. Um- Six Seven is almost like a really old school meme. Like I was trying in my head to think like- Totally...
how basic can you go? Like what is the sort of four minutes thirty-three seconds John Cage, right? Like what is that, what is that for a meme?
Like if you could have a period of silence and have that be sort of the minimum viable piece of music, what is the meme equivalent? Like I feel like Charli XCX came pretty close 'cause it's like a green square. Mm.
You really can't get more basic than that. Like Barbenheimer around the same time, a black square next to a pink square, which of course wouldn't be a meme if we didn't have the context of those films. Mm-hmm.
But like Six Seven is old school 'cause it's like, wow, like- That's playground meme... you could, you could have it be one number.
Maybe that's, if it was just one number, that would be even more basic than like two numbers. But the fact that you, it's unexplainable, it does feel a bit like a return to form.
Uh, I think a really critical detail with it too is that it's non-commercial. Mm. And the other two things that you mentioned were manufactured marketing campaigns. Mm. Yeah. And so now that's sort of like,
as I ask these questions, it's really in the interest of sort of like delineating what we're talking about as what is culture exactly and who owns culture, who creates culture, who propagates the culture.
Like when you're talking about sort of the remixing, diluting it, it's like that's actually to me the thing that-Is regular people exercising influence and participation in this kind of media and in this culture in a way that is, like,
exciting and fun, as long as it's not to the ends of some corporate master. Mm.
That, I think, is a pervasive phenomenon that, uh, in 2025, that I don't think existed anywhere n- close to what we see now on the internet in 2008. And yes, you did, like, with music. Like, I, like I, like I...
When I was growing up, I was very used to the idea that, you know, a major label creates musicians. Mm. Um, in the same way that today, like,
I, I d- I don't follow the blow-by-blow enough to say, but a lot of the things that you see
get put in front of you or that, like, go big, like, some staffer on that social media platform, which is controlled by, like, four companies,
pressed boost, and now we all see it, which is so different than the six, seven absurdist kids rebelling against grownups, culture jamming. Like, that's where it's at, and so I agree.
Well, that kinda makes me think of the Pitchfork profile of Dijon that came out yesterday.
He had a section where he talked about how he purposely wanted to make an album that was embarrassing to listen to in public to run interference on some of this, um,
some of these behaviors and mechanics that have caused viral music, um, in the past few years, where it's like, it's almost like, you know, somebody who put something in their site to prevent it from being scraped.
Like- Mm. He's saying, like, you know, there's some weird instruments in here. There's not always a melody. You know, it's really earnest.
Like, if you wanna listen to it, you have to really wanna listen to it, and you need to have a private relationship with it. You can't just throw it on your Instagram story and ride the brat wave.
And I think that that's really cool, and it makes a ton of sense as a, like, a pin in the sort of like you are here in the arc of reintroducing context to viral information or remixed information. Mm-hmm.
Um, and I wonder if we'll see more artists doing this. [smacks lips] Yeah, I like that a lot.
I mean, or it just reminds me of the kids d- you know, in- getting dumb phones and music players and rejecting of the, of their parents' internet, which is my internet in a lot of ways. Right.
What is your- How do your kids... Oh, go ahead, Francis. No, I w- I think we're about to ask the same question. I was just curious, like, what h- what are, what are your kids' main interface with the internet?
Like, what's their- Yeah, I was gonna ask that... are they, like, on Instagram, on TikTok? Like, what's the main thing? Not on any social media, um, officially, at least. And, um, a lot of it is essentially through...
I'm sorry, not on any, like, public social media, I should say. Mm-hmm. Because they definitely have group chats, and I'd say group chats are their primary, uh- What age range are they?
Like, you don't have to, like, say names. It is, uh, uh, te- young teens- Okay... let's call them. Mm-hmm. Um, and yeah, it's group chats. And the older one has a phone, uh, a restricted phone. Younger one does not.
Um, and but the group chats, I mean, it's this kind of, like, dark social that I think is actually, like- Mm...
especially in my opinion, since COVID, has become, like, a, a very pervasive force in, like, the spreading of information, where I know, at least for me, I'm also no longer, like, particularly active on, like, public social media networks.
Mm. And but boy, am I in plenty of group chats. You and I met- Yeah... in a Discord server, I believe. Yeah, exactly. [chuckles] Discord, I think, is a really interesting one, and we...
On, on a Discord server I recently had a v- we had a very interesting discussion about is this social media? Mm. Are we doing social media right now?
And people kind of tried to bring in, I don't know, everybody, like, got their Dawkins off the shelf and was like, "Well, technically it's not an infinite feed. It's non-algorithmic.
I- is that, are these the defining qualities of social media?" I was like, "It's social, dude. It's social media." [laughs] Like- I, this, um, uh, sort of a tangent, not really.
Uh, I brought this up once before on the podcast.
So I have, I don't have kids, but I have a couple young nieces, and the older one, pre-teen, they, like, my, um, my sister and her husband had, like, blocked YouTube off on the iPad, so they couldn't do Shorts, right?
But then they ran into a problem where for class she needed to access YouTube videos, so they had to, they couldn't keep YouTube blocked. [smacks lips] Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a major problem, too.
It's also, like, you can't really lock down the web browser for the same reasons or, like, email. And if you can't lock down the web browser, you can't really stop YouTube.
But the web, the mobile web experience for these apps, these companies are, like, intentionally handicapping it to drive you to download the app, which is more addictive.
Um, so it's at least, like, that difference in conversion is sort of working in the parents' favor, where, like, the mobile web is, like, not as engaging. Um, but yeah, it's a, it's a real problem.
And the other one that I've run into is, like, um, sports teams where Instagram DMs are the primary way to communicate. Like, well, this isn't available to us.
Or, uh, uh, at one of my kids' schools, they use Facebook groups for a lot of the official things- Wow... and she's like...
And she didn't have a Facebook account, and I would prefer if she did not, too, but, um, here we are. You know? Mm-hmm. And so, and it, I think it's very interesting, too, that we're, like, not
really talking about that or worried about that. Most of the parents I talk to are not worried about that. And it reminds me of this whole, like, Steve Jobs didn't allow his kids to use technology thing. Mm. Mm-hmm.
Where I'm like, oh, the more you know about these things, the more concerned you tend to be about them. I'm the one allowing myself to use technology at this point. [chuckles] I'm ready to dumb phone, personally.
I, I have been enumerating lately sort of, like, the apps that are important. Mm. I was like, what is important to me? Um-Yeah, it's like BlackBerry.
I actually do a lot of outreach and text messages to people, and work-- coordinate work and texting. If I could do my email on the same phone I text on and not have any other connectivity, I would be pretty happy.
I recently set a screen time limit on my phone to one hour total for, um, for Instagram and Twitter, my biggest culprits. It was, like, after some day where I'd, I'd spent, like, three hours on Instagram and was...
You know, I just, like, wanted to- Mm... like, throw my phone into a lake. What am I doing with my life? Um, I've stuck to it most days, and it's like even if I do the thing where...
'Cause it's just the, the basic iPhone one, so if you, if you run into time and then you try to open the app, you can either do ignore for today, give me one more minute, or remind me in 15 minutes, um, or click out and, and listen to it.
And, like, it's a good day where it's like, you know, 8:00 PM, we're getting to the evening and I run into, like, the, like, five minutes left notification and I listen to it.
But it's a bad day where it's like, "Oh, I'm just gonna keep 15 minuting it" and, oh, I've done that like three times now. Oh, okay, I'm just gonna ignore it for today and I'm gonna, you know, go into the DMs, whatever.
The other one that a friend of mine showed me recently was the app that, like, makes you solve a puzzle in order to open other apps and just trying to, like, get in the way of the, the lifting and compulsion thing.
We love friction. Yeah. It's, it's very interesting too, and then I've even... My, my latest one is like, um, you know, I could use this stuff on my computer or like, like- Mm...
and, and, and it's sort of like do I need to have this available to me at all times? Like, what do I actually really need at my fingertips all the time?
And, um, like, a new thing that my wife and I have been doing is just leaving the phones at home when we go out to dinner. Love that. And you know what is an amazing feeling?
When somebody says, "Oh yeah, w- what year was that thing in?" And you just go, "Well, we'll never know." [laughs] I, I- Yeah...
a couple, like a year or two ago, we, my fiancée and I went out to dinner without our phones and it was a QR code menu, [laughs] so we had to use the server's phone to look at it. Wow.
It was- Yeah, usually they'll have a menu if you ask, but they'll be like, "Oh, this is out of date." And I'm like, "That's fine." Jamie, uh, do you know who the author Ben Lerner is? Just the name.
I'm not familiar with his work. Really big plot point in his new book that hasn't come out yet is, uh, inability to use your phone, sudden inability to use your phone.
Um, and at first I was like, "Where is he going with this?" But it actually... He, he sticks the landing really well.
Um, something I've been percolating on, and I would love your take, is something that came up on our episode with Zane Kind, who's the founder or co-founder of Silk, which is how do you reconcile the fact that software subcultures are increasingly becoming, I guess you could say, scenes where interesting things are happening, but that
a- any technology at scale will kill a subculture. Um, I'm just like how do you reconcile these two things? Because there's been some great writing, you know, W. David Marx's book came, came out.
He doesn't go into software as much, but Sean Monahan, who writes the newsletter 8ball, sort of went into this this week o- about meritocracy and culture, where it's like you have parts of the internet that are moving very fast and it's more like the slop internet.
And then you have parts of culture that are dying out or moving very slowly, and that's the sort of like slow culture that we recognize as the originator of new art movements, new literary movements, new, um, things that become part of people's education and lasts for a long time.
And so these two things are moving at a very different pace, and- Mm...
if there's a way to reconcile them, I feel like it's software subcultures where people come into it very literate in the history of art and technology and literature, bringing really informed perspectives about, um, where we've been as a culture and then they use tech products as a playground to create new things.
The problem is once those things start to scale, all of the context is lost and whatever was created, if it lasts, gets tilted into the superhighway of slop. Um, and I've just... I don't know.
I, this is really is more of a comment than a question, but I'm wondering if this is something that you've thought about, especially from the position of what Glyph is doing and- Mm-hmm...
how do you, how do you reconcile that in your mind? Yeah. Uh, actually I first had a question which was what is a software cul- subculture? Well, I, an example that I would come up with is, like, an Arena user. Mm-hmm.
If I say Arena user, you probably have an image that pops to mind. They're probably wearing an Arena hat. [laughs] Maybe even our friend, um, Cab [laughs] comes to mind. Um, that's one. Um,
I mean, you could call the, the world around Discord as, uh, maybe a social media network, maybe not a software subculture.
Well, I would say too, the, specifically the example you gave with, with Silk, um, like it's very engineered, right? Mm-hmm. Like it's... They're, they're, one of their lines is like Gen Z Facebook, right? And so you...
It's, it's hard to get in. There's a wait list and they're very specific about, like, you can sign up for the, like, secret second Instagram account to get on the wait list and they'll DM you by hand.
No, no ManyChat usage, right? No automated DMs. Um, and they're like, it's... Y- maybe you could say it's like a Tumblr for Gen Z. It's kind of like Arena for Gen Z.
Whatever, but there's all these specific things, right, and they're keeping it specific. They're keeping it small, and they're trying to keep it like a community that engages with each other.
So this is an example of a software subculture that is being, like, cultivated very intentionally. Something like Arena is that on, like, a little bit larger scale. And then I think- Mm...
Discord, Daisy, right, like what you're saying. Like, there is, like, that sub- subculture there, but then Discord is really- They're individual servers- Yeah, exactly... is its own- There's so many subcultures. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. It's interesting. It's a culture of subcultures [laughs] on Discord. Right. Right. Yeah, and it's like the subredditTheory in, in many ways too.
And I, I suppose, like, one of the key qualities is sort of like private, public, semi, semi-private to some extent, um- Partyful versus Luma. Those are two [chuckles] maybe two subcultures. I don't know. Interesting.
Um, okay. That, uh, that's really helpful. Thank you. Um, to your question, yes, um, I think about this all the time.
I mean, both in the context of my life professionally as well as my life personally, as we've kind of now, like, been talking about it. And a quality that I think about a lot with these things, like the, the...
like a delineation to your point is this, the, the, the durability of the, the creation.
And, and even in some ways, like, how much effort and thought went into the creating of the thing and how so much of, like, our consumption now, at least, like, the consumption that we're supposed to be doing is geared towards these things where it is, like, increasingly low effort, increasingly transient.
To your point, Francis, around, like, how many times has someone used something for three hours and you can remember nothing about what happened?
And I've had that experience personally so many times, and really I think that it begets something where I think a lot about how, you know, we try to in-spend our time and how you invest your time. And
how that relates to my work with generative AI in particular, um, is that one of our theories with Glyph from the very beginning has actually been about that
we talk about creation is entertainment and that the act of creating something is actually very fun and enjoyable. And the analogy that we use a lot of times, and
I think this holds, like, even more true than it did a few years ago when we started with this, is that when someone decides to learn to play guitar,
their goal is not necessarily to become, like, a famous musician and to, like, be seen by millions or whatever.
Like, it's fun to play the guitar, and it's fun to make music if only for yourself, and it's fun to make music and just share it with just your friends perhaps even. Yeah.
And AI is so incredible with that too, and I actually think that a lot of the most interesting applications of AI are in creating, uh, like, things for yourself rather than creating, like, things for the mass market.
And with Glyph, we, we cater to all kinds of different use cases, and lots of people are using us to create things that they're then distributing in many other places. But
I don't think, like, the final boss form of generative AI is to create completely automated systems that are, like, filling our, our, our matrix battery mines with content twenty-four hours a day.
Like, where it's actually... Like, I get the most joy out of it is like, um, gosh, I just did this yesterday. I'm a big fan of The Lot radio in Greenpoint. Mm-hmm. Their iOS app is not that great.
It doesn't support Chromecast. I was able to create a new iOS app that streams The Lot radio, including Chromecast support, in, like, an hour. Hmm. And I'll send a... I, I, I don't know.
If you're listening, I'm a huge fan of The Lot. Please use my app. It's better than the current one out there. I'll just make it open source. I'm not trying to make money off of this.
But it's something where it's like, um, that ability to, like, create something for yourself and solve your own problem is really, really special and magical. And, like, I make stuff with Glyph all the time.
I don't think you've probably ever seen me post it online publicly, but I send it to my family all the time. I send it to my friends all the time.
And I think that there is, um, a component of that where it's like I'm not trying to create something durable that I put into the zeitgeist. Like, I'm not trying to become a New York Times bestseller.
I'm not trying to become s-Spotify Top 100 musician when I pick up the guitar. Like, I am sort of just creating for the joy of creating. And, uh,
yeah, I'm not su- Yeah, I don't know where I'm going with this, but [chuckles]- I think I, I'm following definitely. I don't know. I can't remember if it was Paul Graham.
There's, like, that famous essay about technology as toys or technology-- software as a toy. Um, this toy and play model does make sense to me.
I think one place where it could fall apart as a public narrative, and I'm not saying this is what you're saying, but there was a viral thread by somebody who works at Suno a couple weeks ago people had very strong opinions about.
And sh- This is the music, the music generative AI Yeah. She was basically saying, like, "When I was younger, I wanted to be a musician. I wasn't good enough, but that was my dream, and now anyone can be a musician."
And it was a lot of people being like, "Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa." Um, it wasn't exactly like now you can make music for yourself.
It was the way that it was presented in the context of her personal narrative was like this is a replacement for the fact that I didn't go to music school, practice, try, fail, give it a go, do empty sets in bars in the, the Midwest.
I didn't do any of that. So it's like the desire to create, um, you know, that she was representing as almost like a failure. It's like she didn't really get far enough to, to have those setbacks.
It's like me being like I wasn't a professional ballerina.
Well, I did it as a hobby for 18 years, and I correctly assessed that I either wasn't good enough or what it would take for me to be good enough I wasn't interested in.
Um, so if somebody gave me the tools to be a ballerina now, it would mean something very different to me than somebody who did go through that training.
Um, and I think that's why people responded so strongly to it other than... Like, it would've been different, I think, if she had just said, "You can make music for yourself. You can make songs for your friends."
Um, I think- But she was saying basically, "I made a, I made a set of bionic exoskeleton legs, and now everybody can buy them and now everybody can be a famous ballerina," and then that's- That's right.
We're all in the, we're all in the Olympics now. Yeah. We're all Olympic runners now. Precisely. And you're like, the Olympics is not gonna be fun if everybody in the world is trying to compete with their bionic legs.
And-Yeah, that's kind of, that's kind of my point to it as well, is sort of that there is like-- And even when I think about, like, my friends who do fine art, um, and kind of the conversation of aesthetics and what is art.
Uh, s- I'm not gonna try to answer the question directly, but the- [clears throat]... a dimension of it that I've always thought was important was, did you intend for it to be art? Mm. Um, like, is it, uh...
Was that your, was that your intention when you created this thing?
And in the same way, it's like when you made this song, is it because it's really-- It's pretty, it's pretty sweet to be like, "Hey, can you make a Weezer song?" And then is your goal to be Weezer? Like,
uh, what, what is, what is, what is the place that you're going to be sharing this thing or putting this thing? Like, what are you planning to do with it?
Like, was this a doodle you made on a piece of paper in a restaurant and now you're gonna throw away, or was this, like, a doodle you made on a piece of paper in a restaurant and now you wanna go sell it [chuckles] in a, in a gallery?
Yeah. And, and what's so interesting, I think, with most of the generative AI folks that I meet with, the founders and the companies too, is... And Silicon Valley loves this narrative of X is going to replace Y.
And I, yeah, I think it's, I think it's like, is this, um... Are you talking about, like, replace-- Are you talking about, like, streamlining and replacing something that already exists and driving down costs?
Or the thing that, like, gets me up in the morning and that I'm much more excited about is, what does this allow us to do that we couldn't do before, that we couldn't do easily before?
Like, what do we have access to now that, uh, we didn't before?
And, you know, I think of-- Like, with the musician-- the music example that I always kinda come back to with this stuff too is, is like, uh, you can, you can record music in your home now so easily and so cheaply, um, whereas previously, yeah, it was like the million dollars of studio thing.
And then the fact that that's now down to, like, you can just type something into Suno and get something out of it, I don't think that replaces the home studio exactly. Mm.
It's, it's a different, it's a different category. [inhales] And, in your direct experience with Glyph, is there a market for people paying to make things for themselves and their friends?
I mean, me and my investors both think so. So- That's the bet. Yeah. That's, that's the bet. And it is, it's a hypothesis. Can you, can you describe... For our listeners who don't know, can you describe what Glyph is?
Like, the credit system and stuff, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's Glyph... So we, we sometimes call it kind of like an AI sandbox or like a multimedia sandbox.
We, we really sort of focus on using all different kinds of generative AI models for, like, images and video and text and all these things and, uh, combining it into, like...
Now we, we talk about them as agents, which is sort of the n- the, the nom de guerre or whatever we wanna call them. [chuckles] The, the lingua franca for- [chuckles]... AI stuff that you don't really understand.
I assume you two wanna do the rest of the podcast in French? We could do that. [chuckles] Yeah, seriously. Um, yeah, agents, I, I don't think you'll find two people who have the same definition of that exactly.
But w- we talk about kind of creative agents, which are like, you can come in. We have all kinds of sort of, like, templates or meme generators or very serious video generators, things that can make music.
You can come in and say like, "Hey, I've got a bunch of images. Can you make me a presentation, and then also add some music to it and make it into video?"
And so, uh, our niche is one of focusing around sort of creative production, media production, um, using generative AI.
And my hope with it is that we're, like, unlocking things where it's, like, stuff that you can now kinda create pretty really easily and on your phone.
But I dislike the idea that it's replacing, that, that the intention is to replace something that someone really thoughtfully and intentionally created- Mm... thoughtfully edited.
And I think that anybody who has typed into ChatGPT, like, "Give me a rap song," or, like, "Write me a quick essay," you look at it and you're like, "Oh, right. This is an averaging machine." Yeah.
It's produced something that is totally average, um, really fast. Don't get me wrong, really, really fast.
But, like, whenever I read, like, an amazing article, or I read a great book, or I listen to great music, challenging music, it's because it is going against the average and going against the norms.
And everything I've ever learned about art says that that is the way that... That's, like, the quality that really defines great art.
So- It seems like you're giving people tools to develop their taste without the expectation that they will monetize it, um, which is, I think is a value proposition of Suno as well.
I think the messy middle in the music example is that s- there's a specific thing about the mu- and this is getting away from Glyph, but there's specific things about the economic reality of being a musician. Mm-hmm.
We listen to this podcast called How Long Gone. They have this segment they do called Sync Talk when they have musicians on. They ask them what's the most they ever made off of one of their, their songs being synced.
And so many of these bands, like these early indie bands, um, they all inevitably have a story about the $50,000 or $100,000 check they got from the car commercial.
And so I think where it gets messy- Or that they turned down and regretted later on- [chuckles]... 20 years later. Right.
And it-- Where it gets messy is when Audi says, "Give us a song that sounds like Weezer, doesn't have to be Weezer," and takes that,
that money, that, that kind of piece of being a musician cobbling a life together off the table.
I think that's where all of this fear and the really emotional response comes from and it, and it feels valid, but, um, you know, everyone agrees, like, it's, it's valuable to put your kid in violin lessons even if you don't expect them to be a violinist.
It's valuable to k- put your kid in soccer even if you don't expect them to be a soccer player.
So of course, it's valuable to give people tools to try out creating music, creating art, um, that are evolved a little bit beyond the fundamentals. Mm. Um, [lip smack] I guess it's a question of whether at scale
people will be happy just developing their taste or do we need to open new markets for them to be rewarded for it? Mm.I think it's a very good question. I, I, I, I wanna-- I, I don't have any answer for that.
It is in a way the fundamental question of this podcast, Tesland. [chuckles] Yeah. Okay, well wait. I do think it is.
Like, you think of the disruption that's happened in the creative industries for, for decades now- Mm-hmm...and it feels like it's accelerating to your point that Audi can now just,
you know, the, the VP of marketing at-- the executive VP of marketing, comma, uh, America at Audi can just type, "Give me a Weezer-esque song," and now... And not even Weezer-esque. They could pick some cool
Brooklyn band that is, you know, sleeping three people to a room in order to try to make their career happen. Uh, they'll say, "Make me something that sounds like that really cool band that I saw last week." Mm.
Uh, that-- those stories are really painful, and I know that there's plenty of examples you can pick on from the past as well about, like, situations like this.
But, uh, I, I never try to deny the feeling that the pace of what is happening right now is far beyond anything that I've ever seen personally in my life.
Like, and you know, we're, we're talking about products that I worked on seventeen years ago right now.
Those things felt at the time like they were moving really fast, but I can say, like, in hindsight and with, with confidence that it feels like nothing compared with what we're seeing right now, where every twelve months this technology has absolutely leapfrogged- Yeah...what it was capable of twelve months before, so.
With Know Your Meme, like, I was [chuckles] when I was preparing for this and thinking about this,
I thought to go try Grokopedia for the first time, which, you know, I'd heard a little about, a little bit about and heard that it's this, like, ridiculous thing and like, you know, picking up these
Nazi references and et cetera, this kinda thing. Um, but it's like, you know, now maybe you wouldn't make Know Your Meme.
Maybe you still would actually make Know Your Meme, but like now there's probably people who instead of going to knowyourmeme.com, they're going to Grokopedia or they're just saying on, on, on the X app, they're replying to a meme and saying, "Grok, tell me what th-this is."
Or the one I keep seeing underneath thing is like, it's like this, it's like a wojak of a guy wearing the, the "I require context" hat. I don't-- I'm getting a little off track here. Um, but, uh- I hate that guy.
You hate the context guy? You don't- Yeah, no. I would- You don't like context? Me and my friends would've killed him with hats. [laughs] Tell you that much. Um, okay.
I, I did wanna make one more comment though, uh, before we get too far off it, on, on Glif.
So like, look, loading it up and looking at the agents tab, which is like the agents- Mm-hmm...are what you make with Glif, right? So a-at the top, just a little d- quick description for, for the listener.
Um, at the top there's the featured video and image, social media, com-companion, design, or games, and then some of the... I'll read like the four at the top.
There's a YouTube Thumbnail Pro one, which has thirty-two point two thousand messages registered. Slide Guru, generate instantly compelling slide decks, thirteen point eight k messages.
A few more, um, but these may-- I don't know if this is accurate, but in the kinda music metaphor world we've been swimming in, these are like guitar pedals to me and I'm not like a musician. Mm.
But I understand like there's this culture around guitar pedals where people make so many of them and like some of them are like so prized and expensive 'cause there was only two or three made, and all this thing, all this, you know, j- you just collect them and you can have like hundreds of guitar pedals that do this one very specific thing and nobody else is gonna care about it, uh, except like, you know, 10 people who know about this one guy who makes guitar pedals.
But this is like... That's kind of...
Uh, let me know if you think that's accurate, but that's kind of how I'm seeing this, is it's kind of like guitar pedals for like some of them might be wider appeal and become mass produced, but a bunch of them are just for like somebody messing around in their apartment.
Yeah, that's our, our goal is to, is to make it easy for everyday people to make these kinds of agents as well, and they have all the building blocks to assemble it together, where if you like really like that guitar pedal, but you want it to be,
you know, more guitar-y or less guitar-y, you can go in and help create that yourself a-and making it as easy as possible too.
And it's something where like I test this stuff on my kids all the time as well to sort of see like, is this easy? Does this sort of make sense?
And the stuff they come up with is really, uh, fascinating and something that it's like not something I would make. I don't think it's something that a,
you know, a hundred person firm would come up with necessarily either. But like two kids w-and with their friends, they might find something like this kind of interesting and useful and maybe would pay for that,
uh, privilege as well.
That's, that's the, that's the part that I think is also still very much to be seen is sort of like, uh, is there a space for this kind of more like creator marketplace style model, this sort of like more user generated content style model for this?
Or does ChatGPT just kind of subsume everything and Gemini can do everything and peop- it's kind of like we're back to more of a, the media production model that we're more familiar with in twenty twenty five.
Well, you talked about the speed at which things are moving. Part of that is the ability to vibe code now, and wondering like where do you think we are on vibe coding as a trend? Are we climbing the peak?
Are we at a minor peak? Um, obviously not all of these tools are effective and it's changing in real time, like you mentioned.
Um, ChatGPT, Gemini, there was like a really big kind of code red moment where Gemini pushed their new model 'cause it was like so much better, where it's like you can have a Skype and Zoom situation, um, or a Google Maps or Apple Maps situation where all of a sudden the incumbent, um, is no longer the incumbent because somebody has simply just produced, shipped a better tool.
Um, I think, I don't know how agnostic vibe coders are.
I think true programmers that are using it as like a copilot probably have the strongest opinions from what I've seen, and like for a while it was Cursor, now it's probably Gemini.
So I guess like do you see an arc happening as this space becomes more evolved? Yeah, and I think we're still kind of pretty early with it actually. Like it's, um, if you think about how
the, the quality of the tools twelve months ago were, were, were pretty basic. Uh, and twelve months before that it was-... kind of bad. It was a better, better than nothing, but kind of bad. Mm.
And that was 24 months ago. So 24 months from now, um, I, I can't even pretend to guess at how good it's gonna be because the pace of investment in the foundations of this technology is still accelerating. Mm-hmm.
And if you just kind of go off of like amount of money in to hypothetical value out, that means that it's going to continue accelerating.
Um, and for, for vibe coding, I mean, I think like the final boss form of that that I always imagined is you could just be like, "Hey, Siri, can you make me an app that does whatever?" And, uh, Apple will probably...
It's been kind of a slow mover with all this AI stuff specifically, but, um, like maybe with Chrome, maybe it'll be built into the Chrome browser instead. You'll just be like, "Hey, make me a website that does whatever.
Edit this website," you can already do all that. It's wor- and it works very, very well. I mean, my experience like with this Lot Radio app that I, that I literally whipped up, I haven't...
Uh, I mean, I am a professional programmer. I did not look at a single line of code of this. This was full- [chuckles]... Karpathy voice control, sunglasses on.
[laughs] I am like a creative director of this project, um, that did not work six months ago. Mm-hmm. And it works today. Mm-hmm. So I, yeah, it's-- I can only see it accelerating.
There was also some very interesting data released by OpenRouter recently, which is like a very popular language model proxy router service, and some overwhelming percentage of the usage was for programming specifically.
And, and that kind of jives with my experience personally of sort of seeing me and my colleagues only increasing the amount that we use these things.
And it's re- super interesting, and I was, I was just talking with my wife about it because, um, a lot of the value that I've provided the world professionally for the last, you know, couple decades has been my, uh, my human, my ability to use my human hands to like execute on someone else's vision, and they pay me for that service, you know, and I am, um...
But, you know, the, the, the, the value of that seems to be going down, and there was always far more demand for it than supply, and that's why, like programmers get the freshest of avocados every day. [laughs] And
it's kind of like- No more avocados for you, Jamie... no, no more avocados. It, maybe those big wet ones that nobody really wants. [laughs] No. And- We'll send you one of those Flamingo Estate boxes.
I was watching TikTok, and I heard hot girls are really into sending each other Flamingo Estate avocados, you know? What's... Is that like one of those rare fruit websites?
Flamingo Estate is like the people that make those candles, but apparently they've done a sort of a Harry and David type thing where you can send avocados. I've been sending pears. Mm, Harry and David avocados.
I have free Harry and David shipping if anyone needs some. [laughs] You should do a, uh, memorial avocado shipment to all of the- [laughs] All the programmers...
technology workers in your life because, because I actually think it's very interesting, like the two of you working in media or Daisy, you working like in, like what you've worked on it for so long.
Yeah, what do I work? I think the people in- Where do I work?... people in, in media, in investigative journalism have been having this conversation for a while- Mm-hmm....
in a way that like technology workers have not. Um, and I think probably still aren't really exactly. Yeah, you guys are having your you-are-the-media-now moment. But- Mm-hmm...
it's interesting, like I, I read Hacker News almost every day right now because it's part of my blog role for curating Clone, and when I was first reading it, like sometimes it's just like vibes.
I'm like, "I don't know what this means. Sounds important."
Um, you know, but there's this culture, talking about software subcultures, there's a culture of programmers blogging, and that has existed for a long time, of adding context to the work, talking about the work, um, talking about
language, the way that language manifests in code. I'm really interested in this as somebody who like cares about the humanities. Even when I don't understand every single technicality, I'm like, "This is very cool."
I can see that there's a relationship to things that I care about, like language and architecture.
Um, so I read it, and it's been interesting to see like how much of that front page and second page of Hacker News, I usually don't get to page three to be honest, like, um, has now been taken up
by people ruminating on these questions.
Um, it would be interesting to see like a quantitative sentiment chart of what, what people are spending most of their mind share on over time, um, as it manifests in this like forum because I can see people grappling with this, and I'm interested in, in what they have to say.
Yeah, there's much smarter than people, much, much smarter people than me that you could- Oh... talk to about this. Jamie, come on. [laughs] Um, where... No, I, I'm, no, I'm serious, people who really like, who are, are,
you know, both looking at the numbers as well as sort of like practicing it day to day and sort of the idea that it is, um, in the same way, like yes, p- th-this is a cr- th-there is a craft to it.
There's both kind of like a technical track craft to it- Mm-hmm... as well as like a long-running like business track craft to it as well.
I feel like you actually see that on Hacker News every day, where like some chunk of the posts are about like, "I've created a faster alg- a more efficient algorithm for this thing."
It's a, you know, technical excellence. Yeah. Um, and then there is sort of the like B2B SaaS, like what's your MRR, ARR, uh, how many Rs can you count?
Yeah, but there's a third category of personal writing about the emotional craft of coding that I don't think gets enough attention, and it certainly doesn't get enough attention from people in my world.
And I've thought about how to bring more of those perspectives into Dirt because when people hear like, "Oh, we, we write about technology, we publish about technology"- Mm-hmm...
they expect a very specific thing, and there's really- Which is like criticism? Yeah, criticism, reporting, um, "Hey, look at this trend."
It doesn't-Uh, it doesn't totally align with the conversations that programmers are having among themselves. Um- I, I totally agree with you. There's, um,
a gentleman here in Brooklyn, Steve Kraus, he's the founder of Val Town.
He's connected with kind of I would say this, this group of folks like, uh, Simon Willison and Andy Matuschak, and even, like, uh, Andrej Karpathy is, like, a big name in the AI world, who I think have, like, a true commitment to the craft in a way that, um, I think doesn't- Yeah, did he come up with the word slop?
He didn't invent slop. [laughs] He invented vibe coding. Vibe coding. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um- Yeah... slop was, uh, I don't even know the real name. Uh, but, um, yeah, and I, I, I don't know.
I, I, I, I, I, I think it's very cool that you've noticed that because there is actually... It's a pretty small percentage of the crowd, and I think even if you...
Hacker News is maybe, like, a little over-representative of some of this kind of, like, the art of software. Um,
but there, there is a very thoughtful cohort of folks, and they're, they're the ones who are like- But the art of software is the most AI-proof piece. Yes.
Yes, if you think that, like, people care about how the food was made and not just that the food is making you money. Mm. You know, and I think- Well, for some, yeah. I mean, it's- It becomes a luxury...
think about every restaurant that you hear about opening up, and it's sort of like the idea that it's like, it's, it's the, the enshittification cycle applied to, like, you choose your, choose your industry, and it's like the food,
the prices stay the same, and the food gets worse over time. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
And it's that, like, the, the, those trends that work against the success of people who do have, like, a true commitment to the craft in a lot of ways.
And I think that's actually, like, why a lot of them find themselves in positions where they're predominantly writing, um, and talking about these things because at the end of the day, like, what people wanna pay for is not necessarily, like, the best-made version of the thing or, like, the most handcrafted version of the thing.
Like, they'll very often go for just... I don't know, I don't know what is driving those decisions necessarily.
I mean, I would rather read, like, 30 essays about farm-to-table software production than listen to another podcast from a VC because the VCs are going obsolete at the same time, and they truly have nothing to say.
[laughs] Well, it's the last, uh, AI-proof, uh, profession, though, is what- You know, that's what I said too... is what Jason said. But, but, well, the VCs, uh, uh, the VCs in my life have said otherwise too.
I think it's so interesting that they, they think that the, uh, the allocate...
I thought, I was, 'cause I was gonna say I, I would've guessed the same thing too, that I'm like, "Oh, the allocation of capital is the highest form of- [laughs]... intellectual, uh, combat." Mm-hmm.
And, um, but no, many of them think that e- especially because, uh, there's so much data around these things. Mm. There's so much, like, um, signal that you can kind of try to mine. Mm-hmm. And a lot of...
Like, like, I think any smart VC will tell you too that especially with early-stage venture that it's really hard to know which ones are gonna work or not. Yeah. And they don't, they don't have, like, a,
necessarily, like, anything they'll point at except for, like, you know, they work really hard. Pattern matching. Yeah. Well, wait, wait. So- They were successful before, and they work really hard. Yeah. Yeah.
Uh, on this topic of, like, the art of software, et cetera, we, we, we brushed over the FAT Lab, Free Art and Technology Lab.
I don't know if there's something in there that, like, we can take back to this of, like- Mm...
like, I, I read a little bit about it in preparation for this, but I'd love if you could tell us a little about, about, like, what that was and, like, what the, the spirit and ideas of that were in the context of what we've just been talking about the last few minutes.
I mean, FAT Lab is one of the projects that I'm the most proud of. Most, uh, one of my most creatively satisfying periods was working with this group of 20-plus
artists and hackers and designers and lawyers and musicians, and the, the thing that really tied all of us together was we all really liked open-source software or at least sort of the ethos and the aesthetic of open-source software.
Even if you weren't o- like a, a developer, people kind of appreciated the, the relationship between sort of giving things back to the commons and free, and, like, free culture, and this kind of creative commons was sort of, uh, really blowing up around that same time, that sort of that 2007 period we were talking about.
And the, the core group of us worked together at this, uh, art,
uh, institution called Eyebeam in Chelsea, and, um, there were the artists who had been given these commissions where it was a very exciting residency to get because you got I think it was, uh, $30,000 in health insurance, and health insurance is- Damn...
game changing. It's worth more than $30,000. [laughs] Unbelievable. After, so like universally- [laughs]... people were like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get, like, a, a really fancy laser cutter.
We get a place to work in, but we also get health insurance." And, um, I worked there as, like, the webmaster and the IT guy. Mm. And I would end up helping the artists with their projects. And, um,
with FAT Lab, I mean, we were really trying to... We were having fun with it first and foremost, but we also had, uh,
this kind of anti-corporate, this pro open-source software, this pro-people position for everything. And there was a critic who wrote this amazing piece about it where they talked about sort of like the,
the medicine and the sugar pill- Mm-hmm... vibe to it because, like, if you... The website's a, you know, total hot mess, like net... We're really into, like, bright pink. Um, we really kind of like... We weren't, um,
trying to be professional. We were trying to be the opposite- Mm... of being professional- Fledgling... and really riding- Yeah.
Yeah, and, and really, and really riding this wave that I, like, to this day really try to ride of, like, nobody knows it's just you in your bedroom- Hmm... on the internet.
You know, like, if your website looks flashy enough or your, like, your video looks polished enough, like, nobody knows that you're, like, a, a dog or- [laughs]... like a 13-year-old in- Mm...
Finland or whatever, and that's a superpower. That's, like, what got me excited about the internet as a kid too was, was, you know, you can be, uh, you can, you can punch way above your weight on, on the internet. Um,
and with FAT Lab, I mean, it's really funny because whenever I've revisited it too, like the last post we made, we talked about... It's called We Lost. Mm-hmm. Mm. And
it is a lot of the values that we tried to espouse about, um, openness and sharing and about, um, you know, free speech and about privacy and anti-surveillance was all completely smoked by convenience and low cost. Mm.
And that's that. I don't know. Rest in peace, FAT Lab. For... If you can find a 40, you should pour one out. [laughs] I don't know where the 40s went. On that note, [laughs] on that note- This is Statesland.
This is Statesland. [outro music]