Ep. 241: The Myths Trapping You On Twitter

00:00:00.000 | So the deep question I want to tackle today that will uncover this point is given all of the advantages of controlling your own

00:00:07.140 | digital press

00:00:09.880 | Why does so many creatives?

00:00:11.880 | rely on Twitter

00:00:14.780 | Communicate with their audience

00:00:17.820 | I

00:00:19.820 | I'm Cal Newport and this is deep questions the show about living and working deeply in an increasingly

00:00:36.740 | distracted world

00:00:39.420 | I'm here in my deep work HQ joined as always by my producer

00:00:46.460 | Jesse Jesse I found a way

00:00:49.000 | To against all the promises I've made to our listeners to work baseball back into the show

00:00:55.720 | Opening day next week opening day next week. We will be a podcasting live from that spark

00:01:01.680 | No, we're not we should though we could possibly podcast live from the bullpen. It's still my yeah, that's right

00:01:07.100 | You have the connection there

00:01:07.780 | It's still my dream that Mike Rizzo at some point is going to get connected to this general manager of the Nationals to this podcast

00:01:13.460 | and say what we need is like Cal to come talk to our front office and

00:01:17.060 | I just come in there talk about role without email talk about deep work next season world series

00:01:23.360 | And there they are the trophies being handed out and I'm kind of sort of on the field, you know

00:01:28.080 | But I'm not up there on the dais and Rizzo just gives me the finger point and I just give him like the thumbs up

00:01:33.040 | it's like a real emotional and he's sort of acknowledging that the front offices embrace of

00:01:37.660 | Deep work and non context switching collaboration process processes was really kind of at the foundation of the next World Series run. I

00:01:45.180 | Think the reasonable dream, but anyways what I wanted to what I wanted to show you I'm working baseball in here subtly

00:01:52.200 | I want to show you something that

00:01:54.600 | The Washington Post did in their coverage of a spring training game national spring training

00:02:02.620 | Spring training game from earlier this last week actually, so if this is airing on Monday, it was early last week

00:02:07.720 | the Nationals were playing the Yankees with actually most of the Yankees lined up - Aaron judge and

00:02:13.700 | Well Kinsey Gore pitch six innings two hits pretty good. But here's what I wanted to talk about

00:02:18.120 | So I have this up on the screen now

00:02:20.120 | So for those who are watching at youtube.com slash Cal Newport media, this is episode 241

00:02:26.980 | You can also find this at the deep life comm so here's the Washington Post is up on the screen

00:02:32.780 | What they did

00:02:35.500 | Was they switch to a live blog format to cover the game now what they would normally do up until this point

00:02:42.480 | This is considered an experiment up until this point

00:02:45.360 | Coverage of the games as they unfolded happened on Twitter

00:02:49.940 | So the two beat reporters Jesse Doherty and Andrew Golden would just tweet

00:02:55.620 | Throughout the game to give their updates about what's going on or what they've what they've heard and they were experimenting this time with well

00:03:01.180 | Why don't we live blog it? That's what's on the screen now so you can see Jesse

00:03:03.980 | Jesse Doherty not producer Jesse

00:03:07.140 | Having various length updates on this page at the Washington Post about what's happening some of them longer than others

00:03:15.740 | So they were considering this to be an experiment

00:03:19.000 | So here's the thing

00:03:21.660 | It makes so much sense to cover

00:03:25.380 | Your games this way as compared to on Twitter. Here are the advantages. It's a nicer format

00:03:31.980 | Tweets are short and you have to do tweet threads with these one out of n where you have multiple different threads that go together

00:03:39.220 | it's

00:03:41.100 | cumbersome

00:03:42.340 | unrelated tweets intersperse

00:03:44.340 | Between the tweets you're doing about the game

00:03:47.460 | It's not a great

00:03:49.940 | Visual or reading format on a live blog they can spend as much time as they want

00:03:54.140 | so I have up here one post is a few paragraphs too long for a particular tweet all of the

00:03:59.260 | Live blog updates disappear all on the same page one after another formatted nicely

00:04:04.580 | No distraction doing it this way also creates new permanent content for your site

00:04:10.400 | So this now is an article right with a strong start for McKenzie Gore

00:04:14.860 | Nationals top Yankees at spring training where you have some summary at the top and all the live blog below

00:04:19.640 | So this actually becomes a permanent piece of content that actually has quite a bit of information in it

00:04:25.140 | So you get new content for your site?

00:04:27.140 | You also control the eyeballs right when Jesse

00:04:30.820 | Dorothy is tweeting about the game on Twitter the Washington Post does not control the eyeballs of people who are keeping up with these game

00:04:38.780 | Updates Twitter controls the eyeballs Twitter can show them its own ads Twitter can push them towards other tweet threads

00:04:45.220 | When you're on the Washington Post now we can

00:04:49.340 | Show you other content

00:04:51.340 | Related to the Nationals now we can show you our own ads now

00:04:54.700 | We have the ability to funnel you towards subscription or towards email

00:04:58.520 | newsletter products

00:05:00.260 | I mean it just makes so much more sense for a

00:05:02.260 | company that produces content for a living to have full control over the eyeballs that's reading their content and

00:05:08.580 | Perhaps most importantly for the reporters like Jesse Doherty

00:05:12.220 | To be able to do this work on your own site and not on Twitter

00:05:18.500 | Saves you from the anxiety distraction machine that is Twitter

00:05:22.340 | Because when you are on there, and I'm posted on Twitter. You're getting the reactions. You're getting the weirdness

00:05:28.140 | You're feeling the pressure to comment on other things that are going on you get obsessed with well

00:05:33.640 | Is this thing spreading how many people are reading this I see a lot of baseball reporters in particular

00:05:38.100 | This is a microcosm of the broader issue that Twitter creates for

00:05:41.580 | Journalists getting obsessed about being first on various types of scoops and and can I get John Heiman to?

00:05:48.020 | Quote tweet me and say I was first on it

00:05:50.900 | And there's all these weird incentives in it and none of this work is actually directly helping your home

00:05:55.240 | publication build up an audience or build up eyeballs want to tackle today that will uncover this point is

00:06:00.220 | Given all of the advantages of controlling your own

00:06:03.500 | digital press

00:06:06.260 | Why does so many creatives?

00:06:08.260 | rely on Twitter

00:06:11.340 | to communicate with their audience

00:06:13.340 | Now I want to dive deep into this question today because I think in answering this question. We're gonna find out that the

00:06:20.540 | Incentives that are drawing us to these platform monopolies like Twitter are actually not as strong as we think so we can get an

00:06:26.860 | intimation of a more healthy relationship

00:06:29.180 | with the digital world

00:06:31.580 | After we do that deep dive on this question

00:06:34.300 | I have a collection of questions from you my listeners that all orbit around this general issue of grappling with social media and its role

00:06:41.220 | And you being a creative professional and how important it actually is

00:06:44.660 | And then we will switch gears at the end to do something interesting

00:06:49.660 | Alright, so that's our goal. So let's dive deeper on this question. Why are people especially creatives using Twitter?

00:06:57.340 | The obvious answer is going to be virality

00:07:01.020 | There's this idea that Twitter has this virality engine because of their retweet mechanism

00:07:07.700 | It is possible for things you write if it catches the attention properly of the cybernetic curation

00:07:14.500 | Organism, which is the combination of individual people making retweet decisions

00:07:18.220 | Plus the fact that the follower graph is has power law expansion the cybernetic curation algorithm has the capability of

00:07:25.540 | Spreading your tweet to a massive audience all at once perhaps even unexpectedly so their sense is I want to harness this potential virality to very quickly

00:07:34.500 | Grow a large audience this large audience is then something I can monetize or will give me a lot of influence

00:07:39.260 | That's the promise of Twitter

00:07:40.980 | Its virality can build you an audience much faster than any other method

00:07:46.760 | But is this supposed benefit of Twitter worth giving up all of the other advantages of controlling your own

00:07:55.020 | Platform the type of advantages we talked about with the Washington Post examples

00:07:59.380 | I want to give four reasons why I think the answer to that question is no

00:08:03.460 | Four reasons why I think the supposed benefits of Twitter virality are not as strong as many creative professionals who rely on that

00:08:11.420 | platform actually believe

00:08:13.420 | So here's my first reason

00:08:16.580 | Most people don't end up building a Twitter audience of any notable size

00:08:21.700 | The average creative professional who is tweeting never builds up a big follower account

00:08:27.820 | But you do not need a big follower account to reap the full

00:08:33.060 | negative impact of being on Twitter

00:08:34.940 | So you reap that full negativity of the distraction and the anxiety of even without a lot of followers if you say the wrong thing

00:08:41.540 | That could spread you have negative virality that hangs over your head

00:08:45.100 | Then there's also the the addictive distraction of what's catching on what's not am I getting retweets?

00:08:51.220 | When we had the comedian Jamie Kilstein on the show

00:08:53.900 | He really talked about that from the perspective of a comedian this experience of you're obsessively

00:08:59.300 | Checking after you tweet to see if someone famous retweeted it

00:09:02.540 | So you have all of those negatives even if your audience is small and most people have small audiences

00:09:07.980 | So this idea that Twitter is going to spread your genius to the world and build you this audience. It's actually very rare

00:09:13.340 | The second reason why I think this virality explanation is not so strong is that Twitter followers are

00:09:21.100 | much less valuable

00:09:24.140 | than an

00:09:26.180 | organically acquired

00:09:27.860 | follower

00:09:29.100 | So let's compare a Twitter follower to let's say

00:09:31.900 | someone who is

00:09:33.980 | Interacting with you on your own site or through your own podcast who say subscribes to your podcast or signs up for your email newsletter

00:09:41.060 | Because they have over time come to really trust you or appreciate you and your point of view that organic follower is

00:09:47.180 | significantly more valuable

00:09:49.780 | Than each digit that clicks up on your Twitter follower account

00:09:53.420 | Twitter followers are not that powerful

00:09:57.740 | Writers have known this for a long time Twitter followers do not convert well

00:10:02.260 | for example to book sales and I think this is a great natural experiment because how else did

00:10:06.540 | How else is better to test the loyalty of a follower than actually asking them to invest $15 on your behalf?

00:10:13.260 | book authors know this

00:10:15.540 | email newsletter subscribers

00:10:17.540 | They will buy books

00:10:18.980 | You can get up to a 10% even plus conversion rate on number of subscribers in your email list because those are organically acquired

00:10:25.380 | Followers who over time grew to trust you Twitter followers convert at a miniscule rate

00:10:31.220 | You can have hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers and when you start tweeting about your new book coming out it might generate

00:10:37.700 | Minuscule relatively speaking sales whereas a 10,000 person mailing list can actually make a dent in getting your book

00:10:45.700 | Noted so even if you can build up this large Twitter follower count

00:10:51.900 | it doesn't actually mean that you have a powerful audience a

00:10:55.700 | 30,000 person mailing list I would argue is

00:10:59.460 | As useful as a high six-figure maybe even million Twitter follower count on Twitter

00:11:06.340 | So even if you do get the followers due to virality

00:11:09.180 | It's not necessarily that valuable

00:11:11.900 | The third objection I want to bring up here is that when you look at specific examples of

00:11:20.100 | People who have grown large Twitter followings

00:11:23.260 | Typically the forces that drove that audience growth were not internal to Twitter

00:11:29.840 | external exposure

00:11:32.740 | external fame is

00:11:34.700 | What actually brought them to the attention of a lot of people and people came to follow them on Twitter because that's where they happen

00:11:41.340 | To be producing so it's not that Twitter virality is for a lot of people how they got discovered

00:11:48.300 | It's that Twitter is where the people who discovered them elsewhere

00:11:52.220 | Came to follow them because that's where they happen to be. Let me make this more concrete with a specific example

00:11:57.700 | I think Conan O'Brien is a great example here

00:12:00.260 | So after Conan O'Brien took the tonight show as fired from the tonight show sort of was in the wilderness

00:12:05.740 | One of the things he started doing was tweeting and he did one tweet every day

00:12:12.300 | and it's this document there's a good documentary about this called Conan O'Brien can't stop and

00:12:18.100 | For a while the conventional wisdom was this is what got Conan relevant again

00:12:23.700 | he was interacting with people directly without TV and

00:12:27.900 | Doing these funny tweets and people were retweeting and following them and it kept him on everyone's mind and it kept him relevant, right?

00:12:34.820 | So sort of a case study of of Twitter being this great creative platform

00:12:38.860 | But here's the thing

00:12:41.380 | Conan realized

00:12:43.780 | What was valuable here was his pre-existing?

00:12:46.660 | fame his pre-existing talent as a comedy writer and on-screen comedic presence and his

00:12:53.500 | massive national exposure that he's had on TV and on radio and he's on Stern all the time and on

00:12:59.580 | Going on other people's shows. He's an incredibly well exposed person

00:13:04.180 | So yes when he went and said I'm gonna put my attention in the tweeting every day people went over there and said we'll follow

00:13:09.060 | Your tweets, but it wasn't that Twitter built of his audience. He had a big audience

00:13:13.540 | He just said this we're gonna hang out so they came over there

00:13:16.140 | Now speaking of our last point that Twitter followers are not that valuable Conan eventually figured out

00:13:21.380 | Having my audience follow me to Twitter is not useful to me. I

00:13:25.660 | Can't do much with Twitter followers

00:13:28.380 | So he stopped the tweeting every day and instead put his energy into making his own home

00:13:34.880 | online a home he owned which was his podcast and

00:13:40.140 | Now again his pre-existing fame and talent and massive exposure, which is what's generating all this attention

00:13:44.780 | That could now aim this attention to a home he owned

00:13:48.340 | Which was his podcast?

00:13:51.140 | Now what's the difference in value between these two things?

00:13:53.780 | well tweeting every day on Twitter got him a couple million followers and

00:13:57.380 | Maybe it helped some ticket sales when he was touring or maybe not

00:14:01.020 | The bringing that attention to his podcast they signed a I don't know the whole magnitude of it

00:14:06.820 | But it was tens of millions of dollars deal for his production company

00:14:11.300 | So taking this pre-existing fame and aiming it towards a platform

00:14:15.420 | He owned forget about the raw number like how many people download your podcast versus how many Twitter followers you have?

00:14:20.440 | No, he turned his pre-existing attention to a platform

00:14:23.500 | He owned that was worth tens of millions of dollars when he put that attention instead towards someone else's platforms Twitter

00:14:28.580 | Maybe he got 20% higher ticket sales when he did live shows

00:14:31.740 | so the reality of many large Twitter audiences is

00:14:37.140 | Those audiences are there not because Twitter went out and found them but because the person was already famous and that's where they're hanging out

00:14:42.500 | Barack Obama doesn't have a large Twitter account because he's good at Twitter

00:14:46.260 | It's because he's Barack Obama

00:14:49.020 | All right. The final objection I want to bring up here

00:14:51.820 | to the idea that Twitter virality is so critical to any creative professional is that

00:14:56.860 | Twitter virality is best harnessed on your behalf as

00:15:01.220 | opposed to on your bequest

00:15:04.740 | So there's really two broad categories of information going viral on Twitter

00:15:09.260 | One type is that you know

00:15:10.900 | You actually tweeted something yourself that was smart or funny or outrageous

00:15:14.020 | And it caught the attention of the cybernet curation algorithm and spread really far. That's actually not that valuable

00:15:19.580 | I mean it can help attract more people to want to follow you

00:15:22.340 | But that does not actually directly translate necessarily to you being more successful at what it is

00:15:27.500 | You do the second type of virality on Twitter is where something is really good

00:15:32.640 | Something has been constructed or done that is very good

00:15:35.620 | a book is excellent an article is excellent a movie is excellent a video game is excellent and

00:15:40.740 | Twitter is spreading the word. This thing is great. You got to see this thing. You got to read this thing

00:15:45.740 | Let's debate about this thing that type of virality is incredibly valuable for a creative professional because it's not just raw attention

00:15:52.940 | It is attention on you and your skill and what you can produce

00:15:55.740 | It's the type of virality that will allow you to actually grow and cultivate new loyal organic audience members

00:16:02.300 | Now here's the thing

00:16:03.980 | That virality does not require you to be on Twitter

00:16:06.240 | In fact that virality is actually impeded if you were the person trying to tell people look at my article

00:16:12.360 | Look at my my movie I made that's a really bad way to kick off

00:16:16.820 | That isn't this great virality that type of virality is much more effective when it's third-party

00:16:21.160 | Look at this article Cal wrote is gonna do much better than me saying look at this article

00:16:27.220 | I wrote and you see this with creative professionals on Twitter

00:16:31.260 | They have this huge elaborate dance of self-deprecation to try to kick off the second category of virality and they'll be they'll say, you know

00:16:38.780 | I'm so blessed just to have such great editors and just to be noticed like this to have this article out

00:16:45.540 | So they're trying to find a way to make it palatable that they're the ones talking about it

00:16:48.880 | But in the end actually the best type of virality is people talking about you

00:16:53.360 | so you being on Twitter and

00:16:57.020 | Having to pay those prices of anxiety and addiction and distraction at the same time losing out on all the advantages of owning your own

00:17:03.420 | Platform controlling the eyeballs building up your own organic audience having that nicer format all these advantages

00:17:08.740 | To give all of that up

00:17:11.460 | to try to create this much weaker form of virality when

00:17:14.900 | Twitter can do this on your behalf if you're producing something good the trade-off really doesn't make really doesn't make a lot of sense

00:17:23.780 | All right, so what I'm trying to say here is there's a lot of advantages to releasing content on your own platform

00:17:28.260 | The main reason people do this instead on Twitter is virality

00:17:31.900 | But as those four virality myths I just talked about emphasize that reason really is not that attractive anymore

00:17:37.900 | So what is the alternative if you're a creative professional who wants to embrace the online world?

00:17:42.380 | Create the absolute best stuff you can

00:17:44.980 | released on your own platform

00:17:47.580 | Be this a web-based text platform or an audio based podcast

00:17:53.540 | Build a fiercely loyal audience slowly

00:17:55.900 | But steadily when you get a new member of your audience is because they've heard your stuff enough. They love it

00:18:00.980 | They really want to read it. It's not just a Twitter follower

00:18:03.940 | When your work occasionally goes viral on your behalf, which it will if it's good

00:18:09.100 | Enjoy the fact that you're now going to capture some more

00:18:12.540 | Listeners or readers or audience members in your own ecosystem and then get back

00:18:16.940 | The producing work too good to be ignored

00:18:20.580 | That I think is the right way to approach content production on the internet not to get

00:18:26.820 | Lured by the siren sound of these platform monopolies that basically just chew you up chew up your attention chew up your vanity and

00:18:35.180 | Make you into grist for their attention economy money-making mill. I

00:18:40.980 | Think this type of discussion is important for a broader reason as well. Let's move beyond just Twitter and content producers

00:18:47.460 | I think it's really easy when we think about the

00:18:50.860 | downsides or the excesses of the internet

00:18:53.060 | To get stuck in a hopeless feeling

00:18:55.900 | They get stuck in this hopeless place where you say well, of course, I have to use these platforms

00:19:00.180 | But I'm not liking the way what they're doing in the way they make me feel

00:19:03.020 | So if we can only just have the right laws passed

00:19:06.380 | Maybe we can fix this or if we can only have the right person by the platform

00:19:09.660 | And then they can fix it and make it better and these type of discussions show. There's another alternative

00:19:13.820 | You don't have to be that involved with these platforms in the first place. You can be cutting-edge online

00:19:19.940 | Growing your audience in 21st century ways

00:19:22.480 | without having to worry about

00:19:25.300 | What's happening with Twitter? What's happening on Instagram is tick-tock is going to be banned or not?

00:19:30.940 | I just hope we're moving past this age where we feel like platform monopolies are somehow a

00:19:35.700 | Critical piece of being a creative professional and if you somehow avoid those you're in trouble. You're not those advantages are overblown

00:19:42.720 | It's okay to move on

00:19:47.260 | So, there you go, I don't know that Connor O'Brien had such a big audience

00:19:51.660 | Yeah, so that's what I mean the tweeting every day was supposedly how he sort of

00:19:57.180 | Reengaged, you know refound relevance and regained his audience, but my argument is like actually that didn't lead to much

00:20:04.300 | What was important is when he started the podcast, right?

00:20:07.260 | Because then he had an actual thing he was creating that was very high quality and the audience he attracted there was actually valuable

00:20:12.980 | I don't know what the size maybe could look it up look up

00:20:17.020 | team Coco co co

00:20:19.340 | podcast deal

00:20:22.580 | So he has a couple other podcasts it produces but Conan O'Brien needs a friend as the main podcast

00:20:27.620 | And I know they just bought a big building in Los Angeles

00:20:30.460 | So there was some deal one of the network says like a the headline says 150 million dollar deal. So this is the verge

00:20:37.340 | Yeah, so Conan O'Brien's fame aimed at something he owns

00:20:43.220 | Generated 150 million dollars his fame instead generate aimed at Twitter generated a

00:20:49.100 | Lot of likes and maybe you know slightly more attention when he was trying to sell tickets. I think serious XM bought it

00:20:57.100 | And I think we can just explains why he's on

00:20:59.700 | Stern

00:21:01.380 | But he's all but that's true

00:21:03.100 | But he's been he went on Stern a lot like in that period right after he left a tonight show

00:21:07.500 | He was on he goes on Stern a lot. So I think I think he's done that for a long time

00:21:11.980 | But you can just scale that down. Okay, so most people are not as famous as Conan O'Brien so you can scale it down

00:21:16.660 | But the key thing is there's this that difference like let's say your notoriety is

00:21:20.780 | a tenth of Conan O'Brien's but like whatever you're still out there you're you're

00:21:25.780 | You're known you're on like some big podcast a lot. You had some big books or something

00:21:29.780 | You get to scale down those numbers. It's like Twitter will give you you know, an extra hundred people showing up at a show

00:21:37.460 | Only putting that attention towards the thing you own the scale it down by a factor of ten is maybe worth

00:21:41.780 | You know 1.5 million dollars a year in revenue. It's it's aiming

00:21:44.900 | Audiences come from you earn audiences by doing things notably Twitter this idea that I mean there are some viral influencers

00:21:51.820 | But it's a dark Faustian world. You don't want to be a your whole world is just being viral on Twitter

00:21:56.500 | No one really wants that these audiences are coming from other things you're doing

00:22:01.060 | So why take all that juice and basically give it the Twitter in exchange for peanuts?

00:22:06.300 | Alright, so I want to do some questions that all roughly orbit this topic before we do first

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00:24:28.780 | Zoc Doc Zoc Doc is the only free app that lets you find and book doctors who are patient reviewed

00:24:34.780 | Take your insurance and are available when you need them to treat almost any condition under the Sun

00:24:39.940 | Jesse I want you to I'm taking out my phone here. I want you to be the arbiter for our audience

00:24:45.800 | You got to confirm this. I'm showing Jesse now a text message on my phone

00:24:51.820 | from

00:24:53.940 | 11 a.m. Today so from 30 minutes ago. So what what do you see on this text message here from my dentist?

00:25:00.140 | What is the URL Zoc Doc baby? There we go. Nice just 30 minutes ago. I have a

00:25:05.820 | Encounter with Zoc Doc my dentist uses Zoc Doc my primary care doctor uses Zoc Doc

00:25:11.940 | And I love it

00:25:13.540 | So it's a app you can use first of all to find doctors who are near your area take your insurance see reviews from real people

00:25:20.620 | Once you sign up for a doctor if they use Zoc Doc, they handle your paperwork through there

00:25:26.340 | You can do the paperwork in advance. They do

00:25:28.340 | Reminders about your appointment you can confirm what's going on

00:25:31.780 | You don't have to sit there with a clipboard and fill out all the same information every time it just makes a lot of sense

00:25:37.980 | Why just randomly look up a local doctor on Google or ask a friend using Zoc Doc makes it more

00:25:45.100 | consistent

00:25:47.100 | The other thing we like about Zoc Doc is we like saying the name Zoc Doc comm

00:25:52.060 | So sometimes Jesse and I joke about other products that could have an even longer

00:25:58.740 | sequence of those rhymes well, I want to briefly read a

00:26:03.700 | submission along these lines from Elliot

00:26:08.060 | So here is Elliot doing his

00:26:10.940 | His attempt to get an even better URL than Zoc Doc comm. Alright, so here's Elliot's ad

00:26:16.980 | World War two generals are unanimous

00:26:18.980 | Keep your feet dry

00:26:19.780 | Our product protects your most important piece of clothing from all forms of damp and it secures it with a unique code known only to you

00:26:25.660 | Set up your enclosed series of taps on the outside of the box to lock it for your access head to knock knock sock lock box

00:26:32.060 | calm for more information

00:26:34.060 | Elliot well done with that parody, but the real URL you need to know is

00:26:39.580 | Zoc Doc comm slash deep so go to Zoc Doc comm slash deep and download the Zoc Doc app for free

00:26:46.660 | Then find a book a top rated doctor today many are available within 24 hours

00:26:51.300 | Then ZOC do c.com slash deep Zoc Doc comm slash deep

00:26:57.500 | all of our ads today Jesse or feels like

00:27:00.940 | People that are deeply products that are deeply integrated my life at the moment. That's good. Yeah

00:27:06.660 | What we need is a a Poland spring

00:27:10.380 | Sponsorship Jesse keeps me my seltzer water addiction well served with our Poland spring

00:27:17.220 | Let's do some questions. What do we got? I sounds good

00:27:21.200 | First questions from will a 55 year old economist

00:27:25.060 | What do you think about Twitter's decision to put the number of views on tweets?

00:27:28.780 | I hate this change it adds an extra layer of stress before you can get that

00:27:32.580 | dopamine hit or like or

00:27:35.100 | reply

00:27:36.740 | Well, well I wrote something about this dynamic in my book digital minimalism where I was talking about

00:27:43.420 | Facebook and this is a very important

00:27:46.580 | Technological moment that explains a lot about our current relationship to social media

00:27:52.860 | especially the more compulsive use and the way the story unfolds with Facebook is that

00:27:57.980 | engineers at Facebook last decade

00:28:02.380 | Wanted to put the like button into the Facebook product for a very pragmatic

00:28:08.100 | Sort of nerd optimization reason they were seeing that under a lot of Facebook posts

00:28:13.020 | Many of the comments were very similar and low information. There's a lot of like great exclamation points good

00:28:19.700 | Congratulations, and you had to scroll through all of these low information single-word

00:28:25.220 | Exclamatory content comments to get to the interesting comments where people are actually adding information

00:28:30.220 | So the engineer said let's just add a like button

00:28:32.300 | This way if all you want to do is like yeah great. I love it

00:28:35.900 | You can just click that and there'll be a count of how many people liked it

00:28:38.340 | And then we won't have comments clogging it up. So the actual comments on the post would be more informative

00:28:42.340 | It's an engineering thing. They saw an inefficiency. They wanted to fix it

00:28:45.220 | It turned out however as an unintentional side effect of adding that like button to the Facebook platform

00:28:53.860 | engagement time went up and

00:28:57.060 | What was going on is that this like button though? This was not its original intent this like button was adding in an intermittently

00:29:04.300 | reinforcing indicator of attention

00:29:06.900 | You could now after you posted something on Facebook go back and check

00:29:11.980 | Are there likes how many likes and then you can come back and check an hour later?

00:29:15.820 | Has it jumped up or is it really as it really?

00:29:18.460 | Plateaued and different posts would generate different likes

00:29:22.500 | There is a slot machine aspect to it that maybe something about this post would break out to a wider spread and you might have

00:29:28.820 | A massive jump of likes on the post and this was very exciting and you never knew if that was going to happen

00:29:33.460 | We are wired to love that type of reinforcement. We are going to pull that virtual slot machine lever again and again and again

00:29:40.260 | So once Facebook stumbled into this innovation other platforms did the same thing

00:29:44.660 | So Instagram which at the time had not yet been bought by Facebook

00:29:47.860 | They came next and this became integrated into many other platforms

00:29:52.220 | There's an accidental mechanism of moderate behavioral addiction these type of stories by the way

00:29:58.340 | They fall into the wayside because I think a lot of the media narrative on social media right now is from

00:30:04.820 | Journalists who are obsessed with social media. They just want it to be

00:30:09.060 | More focused on what they like and fixing it. They want to fix it

00:30:13.300 | But they don't want to fix the issue of using all the time

00:30:15.120 | They don't want to fix the use it the issue of being addicted to it

00:30:17.820 | They just want to make sure there's not bad things on it

00:30:20.180 | Or if you're on the right, you want to make sure that people aren't being kicked off, but but we've lost track of this original thread

00:30:24.860 | But just not wanting to be on these things so much in the first place and these type of addictive intermittent reinforcement

00:30:29.700 | Mechanisms is a big driver of that engagement. So back to your question will

00:30:34.720 | By adding a view count to Twitter. You're adding a more highly dynamic highly salient

00:30:41.980 | intermittent reinforcement indicator

00:30:44.740 | Replies are a little bit slower on Twitter

00:30:47.420 | Retweets happen, but again, not that often for most posts. So this is an engagement issue for Twitter

00:30:54.480 | Most people most tweets didn't have a big audience get no replies and very few retweets

00:30:59.340 | By putting in the views though. You have a finer-grained number that can rack up higher even for relatively small accounts

00:31:07.260 | Now you have a more salient feedback mechanism

00:31:09.820 | You're gonna get people who are minor Twitter users and producers to come back and check more often to see what's going on

00:31:16.320 | There's other reasons that I've been given for why the view feature was added

00:31:20.240 | But I think this is one of the key implicit reasons why you want to add these type of feedback into it

00:31:26.880 | One of the reasons why tick-tock is so successful, by the way is

00:31:30.780 | They just go straight for the jugular on these mechanisms

00:31:34.580 | Right. So the the likes on Facebook the favorites on Instagram the views on Twitter is still

00:31:40.060 | Driven by actual humans and actual human interest it gives you intermittent

00:31:45.380 | Reinforcement because some stuff you post is better than others. Tick-tock doesn't really trust people

00:31:50.840 | I mean we already see this with their recommendation algorithm. They say I don't need someone to

00:31:55.640 | Favorite something. I don't need someone to spread something

00:31:59.540 | I don't even need someone to tell me who their friends are our algorithm will just tell you what you should look at

00:32:04.360 | Well, they do the same thing with views. So tick-tock will

00:32:08.600 | Artificially make your view counts go up and down

00:32:12.480 | Specifically to create the slot machine effect of you never know

00:32:16.280 | Which your tick-tocks might take off and because everything is just algorithmically recommended

00:32:21.560 | There's no human in the loop tick-tock can do this with incredible precision. They their algorithm can basically say, you know

00:32:27.440 | Jesse hasn't had a tick-tock get a lot of attention in a while

00:32:31.760 | We're worried that you know, people are gonna stop watching

00:32:34.760 | Jesse's tick-tocks

00:32:36.160 | so let's just take one of his tick-tocks and we can just show it to 10,000 people and

00:32:40.600 | Now if you count on that jumps to 10,000 now, Jesse is like, you know

00:32:44.700 | I wasn't gonna quit tick-tock but this last thing I did got 10,000 views like maybe I'm on the cusp of

00:32:51.560 | Emerging as a tick-tock influencer. And so they just cynically and

00:32:56.640 | Cynically directly manipulate your attention with the exact same precision as someone putting in win-rate tables to a Las Vegas style slot machine

00:33:04.440 | That's part of the reason why they're so popular

00:33:05.760 | If you don't believe this talk to any young person who uses tick-tock I overhear these conversations on a regular basis

00:33:11.240 | And they will talk about their one big hit or their two big hits. That's all you need

00:33:17.420 | That's all you need to use it all the time. You know, I had this one thing and it got a hundred thousand views

00:33:23.220 | You know, I bet if I just tweak things a little bit, you know, Jesse's thinking like if my dance moves were a little bit sharper

00:33:30.140 | I'm gonna get that more regularly

00:33:32.800 | And so it's if they're just cynical about it. So anyways, it's it's a good question

00:33:36.840 | No, I don't like any of those features. But again, the answer to all this stuff is guys get off these platforms

00:33:41.020 | Get off these platforms do whatever your equivalent is of

00:33:45.680 | The Washington Post's live blogging instead of live tweeting

00:33:50.220 | baseball games

00:33:53.540 | I heard a conversation at Bevco Jesse the other day

00:33:55.800 | Or it's like I think was a date

00:33:58.460 | Young people first date you're in line or you're sitting at a table sitting at a table. Okay. It's trying to write

00:34:03.380 | and it was a two young people and they're on a date and

00:34:07.220 | He was getting see he was seriously getting points by talking about his one viral tick-tock

00:34:14.660 | he's like yeah, I was uh, you know, like

00:34:18.020 | It was a you know complicated hat on and all the young person stuff

00:34:21.900 | He's like, yeah, I got it. You got like a million views on that and she was impressed like he was definitely

00:34:26.180 | Sort of peacocking his tick-tock numbers, but you know how effective that is like that guy is

00:34:32.580 | Going to tick-tock now

00:34:35.740 | Constantly, I mean think about this feedback. He's a man

00:34:38.260 | sometimes things go big and it's like impressing the ladies and and

00:34:41.740 | Like I don't know why that guy over there sighing so loudly all the time. I wonder what's wrong with them, but I

00:34:47.740 | Don't know to be like depressed or intrigued or I mean my main issue was I was trying to write and they were right next

00:34:53.260 | To me and when you're on a date you're talking all the time and I was kind of frustrated by that but

00:34:57.260 | That's really funny. Yeah, I was gonna we're talking about is getting mad credit. Well because and also oh man

00:35:02.420 | So the dynamic of this conversation

00:35:04.620 | She opened it by being like, you know, one of my tick-tock Scott

00:35:08.800 | I forgot the number was but five thousand views and you could see he was

00:35:13.020 | Dusting off his glove like ready to throw his fastball. I was like, well, you know, I had one they got a million views

00:35:17.460 | It's so good, yeah the tick-tock knows what it's doing. I'll see what we got next year

00:35:24.940 | All right. Next questions from Adam a 43 year old furniture maker

00:35:29.780 | I find it sad that along with tweens teens and average adults some of our world's thought and business leaders are

00:35:37.460 | Similarly more concerned with playing in the attention economy than focusing on a deep life. I

00:35:43.220 | Mean, I agree with you Adam

00:35:45.820 | There is a sort of vanity

00:35:47.860 | Run amok thing going on here

00:35:50.840 | crossed with a insidious addictiveness

00:35:54.100 | Multiple people I've talked to for example who personally know Elon Musk are

00:36:00.700 | Baffled by the way that Twitter just took over his life. It makes no sense

00:36:05.620 | For him and what he's working on in his companies and his goals in life for him to spend so much time on Twitter is

00:36:11.900 | some weird combination of addiction fueled vanity

00:36:16.340 | no, I think there's a there's a a

00:36:19.020 | Key point to make here that distinguishes Twitter from other platforms

00:36:22.800 | So most of these platforms do play in part one of the many things they play on to win in the attention economy game

00:36:29.460 | One of the many things they play on is

00:36:32.140 | Personal vanity Twitter does it in a different way than the other platforms?

00:36:36.380 | So in deep work, I again I looked at Facebook. I

00:36:40.680 | Said Facebook in circa 2014 to 15 when I was writing deep work

00:36:45.540 | Had a collectivist attention model. So back then Facebook was still pretty heavenly driven by

00:36:51.620 | Friends, you know, I post things on my friends walls. They will check me

00:36:56.800 | They'll post thing on my post things on my walls and I argued that look Facebook was in part a response

00:37:03.540 | to the hostile

00:37:06.580 | Attention landscape of the web so early web 2.0 allowed almost anyone to post information online. You could have a blog

00:37:14.040 | Where you could just post whatever you wanted to post

00:37:16.800 | But it was a hostile attention regime because let's be honest most things that most people have to say is boring. It was rough

00:37:23.220 | You would start a blog you put things on there and no one would read it

00:37:27.500 | Because it was just your random stuff and no one cared. I had my very first blog. I started in college. It was called inspiring moniker

00:37:34.900 | zero readers

00:37:37.580 | Because why would people care so that was a very hostile?

00:37:40.500 | Attention environment and people said why am I just gonna keep putting stuff out there?

00:37:45.500 | And that's actually like a completely reasonable reactions like yeah, like most people actually shouldn't just be putting stuff out there

00:37:50.040 | But people who really have you know something to say it's like a young Ezra Klein doing his

00:37:54.000 | Political blog where he was posting nine times a day in 2004 like there's people who emerged they took advantage

00:38:00.920 | They had something to say they were skilled. They did the work and it was a great but for most people it's like yeah

00:38:05.640 | This you know, you don't have anything interesting to say Facebook said no. No, I have something for you attention collectivism

00:38:10.400 | You will have these friends. These will be people, you know, you will befriend them digitally

00:38:15.000 | They will befriend you digitally and the agreement will be I

00:38:17.520 | Will pay attention to whatever junk you put up there if you pay attention to whatever junk I put up here

00:38:22.160 | I'll put up some random photo

00:38:23.780 | You'll say oh so cute and you'll post some thought about something

00:38:27.320 | I'll be I'll come over and say ah, you got it right and we'll just give each other attention

00:38:31.100 | It's nice to feel it. You know, it's nice to get attention. Most people don't get attention and

00:38:34.960 | In most parts of their life, you know, people aren't paying positive attention to them

00:38:39.400 | So it monetized in some sense this desire to have people pay attention to us

00:38:43.960 | It reacted to the the hostile attention landscape of just the bare-bones web 2.0 and said no

00:38:49.840 | No, we'll just all agree to talk to people. We know and pat each other on the back

00:38:52.960 | And I thought this was a little bit shallow, but whatever it worked pretty well

00:38:56.400 | Twitter is doing something different here. It's offering sort of a similar dynamic but for actual what I would think of as

00:39:05.120 | higher tier

00:39:07.680 | thinkers

00:39:09.040 | And leaders, right? So it actually is its model is not focused on

00:39:14.080 | Anyone will post something and other people will come and comment on it. It's actually brutal like that

00:39:18.120 | It's brutal like web 2.0 for the average average user if I tweet something nothing happens

00:39:23.660 | People don't come and like it because they know you that's just not the dynamics of how Twitter works. It spreads virality

00:39:29.420 | It doesn't connect people to their friends anymore

00:39:31.640 | but if you have some sort of actual expertise if you're a journalist if you're a creative of some type if you're a

00:39:38.440 | politician of some type

00:39:40.800 | Twitter is offering you much more access to attention that you then you could get before through traditional media channels because they were just way

00:39:48.560 | more narrow and way less

00:39:50.560 | numerous and

00:39:52.120 | so Twitter is playing on the attention vanity not of the average user but of the above average user and

00:39:59.560 | That's their whole business model. So if you're a professor with some expertise

00:40:05.080 | You're drawn you're saying man

00:40:07.080 | I could I could

00:40:08.160 | Wait until I get citations on a paper or I could go on Twitter and I have something to say here if I'd everything

00:40:14.400 | To say no one cares

00:40:15.600 | My tweets will just go and disappear

00:40:17.000 | But I actually have something to say if I make the right takes I could get on a day-to-day basis

00:40:22.240 | This retweet and share and like and reply attention every once in a while

00:40:26.000 | Someone really famous might retweet my thing and I feel like I'm a part of this and so Twitter says we're gonna play on the attention

00:40:30.920 | Vanity of above-average users and by doing that they attracted a lot of above-average users people who actually were unusually creative or had a

00:40:37.840 | specific expertise is to share

00:40:40.240 | That is the whole core of what makes Twitter a compelling place for everyone else just to sit and read what's going on

00:40:45.760 | Because you have interesting people

00:40:47.960 | Since spending all their time

00:40:51.240 | Writing on there and so we talked about before earlier in the episode is one of the things that attracts content producers is I want

00:40:57.440 | To build an audience virality. This is the other thing that attracts especially these sort of no notable personalities. They're attracted

00:41:03.400 | it's it's attention and vanity and

00:41:05.400 | It's really good at that. And I think was a really smart move by Twitter to say

00:41:09.200 | Forget making the average user feel like people care about them

00:41:13.200 | What we need to get is the unusually clever comedian

00:41:18.480 | We need to get when there's a pandemic a bunch of credentialed virologist. What we need to get is

00:41:25.640 | You know contrarian political thinkers who have a funny streak like we need these type of people who actually have some talent

00:41:32.800 | Do not focus that talent into

00:41:35.480 | Articles and books and occasional TV appearances and lectures put it into our platform

00:41:41.160 | so by focusing on the attention vanity of above-average users, they created a

00:41:45.320 | Constantly refreshed pool of above-average quality information that then the cybernetic curation algorithm could play with and now as the average user

00:41:55.160 | You're seeing all these things going by that is very engaging and very compelling

00:41:59.560 | It's why Twitter clones have not done nearly as well, even though the

00:42:04.240 | algorithmic and digital

00:42:07.000 | Architecture is the same then on the same pool of people so Twitter did very well there

00:42:12.200 | So anyways, Adam, I think that's what's going on

00:42:13.800 | Is Twitter very consciously said?

00:42:15.800 | We need to make above-average users feel like they're getting more attention than they could otherwise get and then we're gonna get a lot of

00:42:20.840 | Above-average content pushed into our system and that's different than almost any other platform

00:42:24.840 | Most other platforms they play more on your own personal attention vanity people, you know paying attention to what you do

00:42:32.080 | I mean, that's not completely true Instagram has some Twitter vibes to it, but it also has some Facebook vibes to it

00:42:36.680 | TikTok really doesn't lean heavily into we need above-average users

00:42:40.180 | It's just we need a giant pool of content and we'll use algorithms to figure out what's going to just press your

00:42:45.160 | Reptilian brain buttons and make you keep looking Twitter is doing this almost uniquely and said part of what makes it so sticky

00:42:51.720 | All right, this is great a lot of Twitter bashing and discussion, yeah, I wasn't Twitter bashing

00:42:59.200 | I'm just that's just actually explaining. Yeah, this is why Twitter is effective. Yeah, I'm not I'm not just

00:43:04.000 | You know put it on my Twitter is bad hat. I mean, there's a reason why this is an effective platform

00:43:08.880 | All right. What do we got next?

00:43:11.040 | All right. Next questions from Bo a 38 year old teacher

00:43:14.800 | I'm not big on social media, but as an independent researcher in the humanities

00:43:18.940 | I use academia dot edu and research gate mainly to get access to papers

00:43:23.500 | I also have a Twitter and a LinkedIn account mainly to share my blog posts and see if I can find an audience

00:43:29.000 | Is this the right balance?

00:43:31.480 | Right. There's a good case study of our discussion from the deep dive earlier in the show

00:43:35.920 | So not knowing too much about specifically what type of research you do or your career. Let's just give some

00:43:43.000 | random recommendations here

00:43:44.920 | Paying for access to academic articles is a no-brainer if you are an academic who's not associated with an institution

00:43:51.600 | That gives you that access. So of course

00:43:53.760 | Twitter I don't think you need to be there

00:43:56.560 | We just talked about this

00:43:59.080 | Twitter gives you this illusion that it's going to grant you a

00:44:03.680 | Virality that will grow your audience bigger than if you hadn't had Twitter. I would say forget it just produce really good work

00:44:09.560 | Twitter may work on your behalf

00:44:12.280 | People may share your work on there and you need to have a platform you own to capture that attention

00:44:16.440 | but putting your attention in the content production on Twitter is

00:44:19.840 | going to

00:44:22.120 | Open you up to all these negatives and dilute the positives you get from your own platform LinkedIn

00:44:27.600 | I guess it just depends what you're doing on it

00:44:29.600 | So for LinkedIn to be effective a you have to ignore

00:44:33.480 | The sort of increasing social features streaming distraction features and just focus on the core original

00:44:41.080 | Ability to use it to look at tertiary network connections. I mean the value of LinkedIn the unique value proposition of LinkedIn is

00:44:47.840 | I can look at people who are in the network of people I know

00:44:51.800 | It's not secondary but tertiary connections. That's really useful

00:44:56.360 | Right. So you say okay. I need a

00:44:59.520 | Connection to the movie industry. I don't know anyone in the movie industry

00:45:04.440 | but I probably know someone who knows someone in the movie industry that person can make a

00:45:09.200 | recommendation on my behalf and

00:45:11.920 | So it opens up contacts and because you have an intermediary who knows both ends of this link

00:45:18.560 | That's actually a high quality contact if you go out

00:45:21.400 | One more layer it doesn't work anymore

00:45:24.040 | So if it's I know someone who knows someone who knows someone in the movie industry

00:45:27.680 | That connection doesn't work because there's no person in common between you and the ultimate person you want to talk to

00:45:33.920 | So remember my longtime friend Ben Casanova who used to be Reed Hoffman's chief of staff

00:45:40.120 | I remember him at the time when LinkedIn was really taking off

00:45:43.660 | Explaining this network theory to me. It's it's all about this sweet spot of your friends friends is

00:45:50.520 | the sweet spot of opening yourself up to a huge amount of

00:45:54.920 | Potential connections while still having the ability to make those connections strong

00:45:59.000 | So if your work is such that as an independent researcher

00:46:03.040 | You need contracts or engagements with clients and various type of industries and you need

00:46:07.960 | Connections to people in those industries that aspect of LinkedIn could be very valuable

00:46:12.040 | So I would summarize this I guess as saying

00:46:15.520 | Yes to paying money to gain access to articles. No to Twitter. Maybe yes to LinkedIn if you really need it

00:46:23.120 | Now there's a bigger point here that I made in a New York Times op-ed that came out in

00:46:29.080 | 2016 and it actually generated a lot of fewer at the time

00:46:32.320 | but I wrote this New York Times op-ed where I said we

00:46:37.340 | overestimate the value of

00:46:40.240 | social media presence in

00:46:42.840 | Getting noticed and succeeding in your career

00:46:45.280 | And I say we are forgetting the fact that these platforms are very new and most industries have been around for a very long time

00:46:52.280 | Twitter was not used at a high rate until

00:46:55.280 | 2012 to 2014

00:46:58.400 | So I was writing it up at is like this is a few years ago

00:47:00.440 | Before that all these industries still existed people still got noticed got hired grew reputations

00:47:07.640 | Grew really big careers and they did this all without Twitter followers and they did this all without being an influencer on Instagram

00:47:15.920 | so presumably

00:47:17.760 | These bespoke methods by which your work is noticed and rewarded

00:47:21.440 | Still exist in most fields that have been around for more than just a handful of years

00:47:25.360 | So don't ignore those

00:47:27.360 | in fact

00:47:27.880 | If you ignore those and say I'm going to invent my own way to get noticed and succeed in my field based on social media

00:47:33.000 | You're taking a huge risk

00:47:35.000 | You need to pay less attention to your Twitter followers and say in my particular field

00:47:39.280 | I'm this independent researcher and humanities who makes my money this way

00:47:42.720 | How do people traditionally get noticed and succeed almost all those channels are still there

00:47:47.880 | Social media's rise

00:47:50.640 | Which is only still just a decade old at this point of any sort of widespread adoption has not gotten rid of

00:47:56.280 | Existing channels of getting noticed and succeeding and so I keep coming back to that with people

00:48:01.080 | What how do people traditionally get noticed and succeed in your field and usually it involves?

00:48:07.640 | Producing really good stuff and it's really hard and has nothing to do with virality or having large follower counts

00:48:13.520 | And it's almost always that's going to be the answer

00:48:15.960 | And so until you have a really good answer that question forget about like new tools are gonna somehow give you a shortcut

00:48:22.960 | Now when I wrote that op-ed in 2016 that caused a lot of problems. This was right before

00:48:28.920 | the

00:48:31.200 | Mainstream had turned against social media

00:48:34.380 | So the the political right in America had turned against social media at this point because they were worried about being censored

00:48:40.020 | But the political center and left in America was still very laudatory

00:48:43.520 | Towards social media at this point when that came out and so me standing up and saying

00:48:48.680 | Social media is not as important as you think for your career. You should maybe ignore that and focus on the fundamentals. It was considered a

00:48:56.440 | heretical almost

00:48:59.560 | Certifiable thing to say it really upset people

00:49:03.000 | It was whoa. No, no social media is the key. It's how you get noticed. It's how you circumvent all of these gatekeepers

00:49:09.360 | It's how you build up movements. I mean there was so much

00:49:12.600 | Push back really really surprised me and I've talked about this on the show before but the New York Times

00:49:18.000 | Commissioned the next week a response op-ed. They got the social media manager of monster.com

00:49:24.100 | Patrick someone Patrick Gilroy to write a response op-ed to mine and say this is crazy. Don't listen to this

00:49:30.700 | A lot of articles were written in response to mine. This is crazy. Don't listen to this

00:49:34.780 | I had hostile radio interviews like how can you believe this now? I understand this mechanism because we see it all the time in

00:49:40.780 | 2022 2023 we see this all the time. Where is the fiercest pushback?

00:49:47.540 | Generated this sort of when you get these type of big pylons generated. It's not when someone comes from left field

00:49:54.820 | From the completely other team and throw some rocks. You're used to that

00:49:58.860 | It's when someone who you feel like is in or close to your tribe

00:50:02.780 | Pushes a little bit to the edge

00:50:05.820 | Then it's seen a little bit more like heresy and that has to be policed

00:50:09.540 | so if you know 2016 Jaron Lanier stands up and says

00:50:15.160 | Social media is nonsense people like that's Jaron Lanier

00:50:18.240 | I mean, he's like kind of crazy and brilliant and this is what he's been saying for a long time and we know it

00:50:21.820 | It's not a big deal

00:50:22.940 | But if a computer scientist

00:50:24.820 | Comes out and says that someone who is in sort of mainstream thought someone who has some influence with an audience someone who's sort of

00:50:31.140 | A part of that sort of mainstream centrist or leftist inner tribe comes out and says I don't think that's that important

00:50:36.620 | You have to fiercely

00:50:37.980 | At the time you have to fiercely police that to prevent the Overton window from shifting away from the direction you wanted the ship

00:50:43.620 | so it was a it was an interesting example of what became much more prevalent in the years that followed the sort of

00:50:49.680 | policing of views and

00:50:52.180 | This became a increasingly political after a while

00:50:54.560 | So the left and the right would do this on political hot topics, but this was less political

00:50:58.500 | but it was just more there's this mainstream intellectual thought that social media was this

00:51:02.900 | Powerful force that toppled dictators and helped Barack Obama get elected and it was very meaningful important

00:51:10.200 | And so if you're involved in this sort of mainstream intellectual life

00:51:13.080 | They did not like someone starting to veer off the reservation now. Everyone's like a course

00:51:20.220 | Yeah, everyone agrees with it now, but it was interesting

00:51:22.940 | So there's like an early mild pile on but it showed a general internet dynamic that I think has really strengthened ever since then

00:51:30.260 | So you wrote that before the like button got introduced, right?

00:51:33.300 | Like now the like button actually got introduced earlier. Okay. Yes the like button got introduced

00:51:38.780 | Like 2007 or eight or something like that. All right, right. Yeah. Yeah

00:51:43.940 | the interesting thing was when I wrote that it was right this at the turning point in the

00:51:48.460 | mainstream intellectual

00:51:50.220 | Thought on social media was Donald Trump getting elected and that's ultimately what turned it is the shift from

00:51:57.420 | Facebook helping Barack Obama to Facebook helping Trump

00:52:02.020 | Shifted I think the reception of social media and it opened up like a lot more skepticism

00:52:07.260 | Hostility towards a platform from the center and left the the hostility from the right was already there. I started hearing that like

00:52:13.400 | 2015 so that was already there

00:52:16.140 | But from the center and the left that was after the Trump election, but it wasn't

00:52:20.780 | immediate because that op-ed

00:52:23.540 | That op-ed came out the in the Sunday in the New York Times in the week in review the Sunday after Donald Trump was elected

00:52:31.020 | Mmm, so it wasn't an immediate response. I mean it was a week in review section. That was

00:52:36.340 | That and like a bunch of political stuff and then the next week they had the follow-up

00:52:41.980 | Right. So in the first the last months of 2016 early months of 2017

00:52:47.900 | There still was a general positive

00:52:50.420 | Consensus on social media. It wasn't really told the Cambridge Analytica and the Russian disinformation stories when those really took off

00:52:57.640 | Which was more to thought after Trump was in office in 2017. That's when he began to see the shift

00:53:03.260 | So I know it's an interesting time point

00:53:05.500 | So really the shift towards universal negativity towards social media was probably first or second quarter

00:53:11.100 | 2017. Mm-hmm

00:53:13.620 | If not all the way around it, you had to get all the way to like 2018 really before

00:53:17.800 | Yeah, but then by the time I was promoting digital minimalism in 2019 the pushback

00:53:23.460 | I was getting from reporters is like why aren't you pushing for even harder, you know?

00:53:27.420 | Regulations and shutting down these companies. So yeah, man that thing flipped nothing flipped hard

00:53:33.740 | All right, let's uh, we have time. Let's do one more question here. All right

00:53:37.300 | Next questions from Alta a 22 year old software engineer

00:53:41.460 | Do federated social media networks such as Mastodon stand a chance against centralized ones such as Twitter?

00:53:48.300 | We don't we don't need Mastodon. I mean, I'm fine for Mastodon to exist, but the

00:53:53.340 | part of the premise of Mastodon is

00:53:55.900 | We want Twitter, but just without stuff. We don't like I mean, it's the it's the same interface as Twitter. It's the same

00:54:02.900 | Paradigm of Twitter these short tweets that go to people who?

00:54:06.460 | Follow you and my bigger argument is this Twitter format is not that fundamental. I

00:54:12.500 | Mean we have websites. We have blogs. We have WordPress we have

00:54:16.600 | Podcasts we have the ability to independently produce and post video and host and have it be watched on all these devices

00:54:24.100 | we have all these other means of

00:54:26.220 | producing

00:54:28.660 | Content independently without it having to live in a massive ecosystem where we don't control it anymore

00:54:33.500 | So we don't actually need a Twitter clone

00:54:36.620 | That's fine. If like there is a Twitter clone of Mastodon takes off, but we don't need it to I

00:54:40.340 | Think we became so myopic in

00:54:43.340 | Recent years because we got so used to the dominance of these platform monopolies that our vision of what the internet mean

00:54:49.780 | Means became confined to it means Instagram and it means Twitter

00:54:53.700 | The Internet was a lot more than that

00:54:57.260 | So getting away from these platform monopolies, it's not just let's just have Twitter but not have it be owned by one person

00:55:02.580 | It's we don't need a Twitter clone at all. We we are already

00:55:06.540 | Developing independent alternatives to this that are way more successful than the Mastodon. That's why I mentioned podcasting

00:55:12.440 | That's why I mentioned individual WordPress. I think email newsletters

00:55:15.700 | all of these are examples of

00:55:18.340 | independently produced

00:55:20.500 | Media content being produced where you control much more of the eyeballs you control your audience

00:55:25.260 | And this is all working a lot better Mastodon. It's not working that well because you know Twitter turns out that why does that format work?

00:55:31.860 | It works if you have a massive retweet network

00:55:36.060 | That can be very good at

00:55:38.980 | Virally spreading information in the cybernetic curation paradigm that we've been talking about and you have a really huge amount of above-average users

00:55:45.860 | Constantly pumping information to be evaluated by the cybernetic curation algorithm. That's what makes Twitter interesting

00:55:51.420 | Not that you can post short things and see it on a timeline

00:55:54.740 | And so this is why a Mastodon federated server doesn't really do so well. It's because you don't have that massive

00:56:00.220 | Network that does the really effective curation

00:56:02.700 | You don't have all the best comedians and thinkers and politicians outrageous people all these people putting all this attention into it to generate really good

00:56:09.260 | Content so you end up with 70 guys on a Mastodon server saying boring things and then they get bored and just ban each other

00:56:15.220 | So we have alternatives to the platform monopolies

00:56:20.780 | But they don't look like the platforms and I think that's actually I think that's actually good

00:56:24.880 | All right, well what I want to do is

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01:00:26.860 | I'm thinking Jesse about you know, I wrote this whole talk for my kids school, but I'm thinking I put a lot of work in

01:00:31.940 | These slides maybe we'll record a version of the talk right here in the studio

01:00:35.540 | Yeah, just put it up on you know YouTube for because people care about this

01:00:39.520 | What should I do with my kids and?

01:00:42.140 | Smartphones and I've gone deep into this research and have a lot of thoughts on I know some of these researchers who are involved in

01:00:46.780 | It and I have this sort of big slide that goes all these slides to go through it all

01:00:49.860 | So if that's of interest let us know

01:00:52.540 | I think I might at some point record a version of that talk and just put it out there in the world for anyone to

01:00:57.780 | See yeah, that'd be cool. It's interesting topic

01:01:00.580 | Alright, so let's switch to something interesting

01:01:03.740 | This is where we take interesting things that people sent to my interesting at Cal Newport comm address

01:01:09.660 | We like to just look at these two in the show on something cool. So I actually have two things. I want to mention today

01:01:14.980 | The first thing is a new podcast

01:01:18.700 | That just launched it's a pushkin industries podcast that's hosted by

01:01:23.420 | podcaster extraordinaire Justin Richmond

01:01:27.060 | Justin Richmond is one of these

01:01:29.980 | Super pros in the industry. He came out. He came up through the NPR system working on some of their major shows and

01:01:37.060 | NPR podcast and came over the pushkin where he's a producer

01:01:41.180 | he also co-hosted a music podcast on pushkin with Malcolm Gladwell and

01:01:45.780 | Rick Rubin anyways, he has a new podcast out called

01:01:49.300 | Started from the bottom and I thought it was a really cool idea. So I just wanted to mention it here

01:01:55.340 | So what he does on this show Justin interviews people with humble origins

01:02:00.240 | Who managed to scale the summit of success people who are outsiders?

01:02:05.080 | People not part of the old boys network people who grew up in a world where almost nobody went to college and he asked how

01:02:11.140 | Did they beat the odds?

01:02:12.900 | Lets you to hear their stories in their own words

01:02:15.660 | I'm fascinated as you know about this topic about how people

01:02:19.340 | Succeed in various endeavors and I think by focusing on people who had very few advantages

01:02:23.460 | You're distilling in some sense some of the necessary core drives that goes behind success. So it's a really cool show

01:02:30.760 | some of the early episodes feature people such as Charlemagne the God

01:02:35.640 | Susie Orman and the MFA champion Francis and Gano

01:02:41.540 | You know, I've actually crossed paths with Charlemagne a couple times

01:02:44.940 | I've been on his radio show the breakfast club

01:02:48.460 | Or I think I still hold the record for the whitest geekiest person to ever be on that show

01:02:54.380 | But Charlemagne worries a lot about the impact of social media on young people. So there's a cool interview

01:02:59.980 | I also went on his comedy central show. He had a TV show

01:03:02.180 | I've been a guest on that show as before very thoughtful really interesting guys

01:03:06.120 | Francis and Gano, I don't know but I just know he's terrifying

01:03:10.820 | A terrifying MFA fighter. So Francis all I can say is I incredibly respect you. Please don't kill me

01:03:16.340 | You know, it's sound like a cool show started from the bottom. You can find that wherever you get your podcast

01:03:23.020 | The other cool thing I wanted to talk about

01:03:26.100 | It's something that's happening in Australia

01:03:28.740 | But I think it's reflecting

01:03:31.460 | More a broader trend. So I'm gonna pull up an article here on the screen. It's just loading. Okay, Jesse

01:03:39.100 | Yep. All right. This is an article from the Guardian

01:03:41.900 | Labor and Greens senators back four-day

01:03:48.340 | Work week, so I have it on the screen if you're watching at youtube.com slash Caliper media episode

01:03:54.460 | 241 so what's happening here is you have

01:03:57.820 | Australian senators

01:04:00.580 | Beginning to back legislation that would make a four-day workweek at full pay something like a standard

01:04:08.660 | This topic is coming up a lot in a lot of different places all throughout Europe. For example similar discussions are

01:04:14.700 | Happening and I just think the four-day workweek in general is something to keep an eye on

01:04:20.860 | And it's interesting. I think that Australia is starting to get more serious about this. It's something to keep an eye on

01:04:26.980 | My feelings about it are mixed

01:04:29.300 | They're they're mixed, you know

01:04:32.240 | I just did an interview with reporter on the four-day workweek and I was relatively actually negative because I was the mood I was in

01:04:38.020 | I did that interview, but I think mixed is the right way to describe how I'm thinking about it. So pros and cons on

01:04:43.900 | the con side, I think it is

01:04:47.340 | Stepping aside because you don't want to deal with complexity the real issues

01:04:51.180 | And the real issues is not that people think that there's too many days during the week in which they're going to work

01:04:56.680 | It's the nature of their work itself and for knowledge workers in particular it is overload

01:05:03.060 | Overload is creating all these problems

01:05:04.860 | There's a lot of psychic damage that's done by having too much work on your plate and just saying Friday is no longer

01:05:09.900 | Officially a workday doesn't get rid of that overload doesn't get rid of that psychic damage

01:05:13.380 | You end up still working that day

01:05:14.900 | Anyways, you still are paying that tax of all the overhead of all these all these different tasks on your plate

01:05:19.900 | That means you can spend less time on the actual work itself and it piles up more and all these negative things

01:05:23.780 | Don't go away by just turning the knob on the number of days in the week that you work

01:05:29.140 | This is different. Of course the industrial sector where the main knob you had

01:05:32.940 | Was the number amount of time you work if I am putting steering wheels on a car in a Ford plant?

01:05:38.660 | the only variable that is going to now affect that experience is just how many hours am I doing that and

01:05:45.580 | So in the early 20th century when we get something like the Fair Labor Standards Act

01:05:49.860 | From the 1930s that put in place to five day workweek. It made a lot of sense. This is the knob we need to turn

01:05:56.540 | What is the reasonable amount of days in the knowledge sector in the 21st century?

01:05:59.900 | It's not the not the issue the issue some it's not so much how many hours is your workday?

01:06:04.380 | It's how much work is on your plate. So that's my that's my trepidation

01:06:07.780 | Around the four-day workweek is it's kicking the can to the side. It's not actually tackling with what matters on

01:06:13.620 | The other hand we have an interesting data point

01:06:17.780 | That comes from the company base camp who switches to a four-day workweek for part of the year every year

01:06:24.980 | And it's an interesting data point and what they found is

01:06:27.540 | Reducing the total number of days at least temporarily

01:06:31.500 | Creates a scarcity mindset that does actually reduce time wasting it reduces long meetings

01:06:38.300 | People are less likely to call a meeting people get a little bit more focused on what's important because it creates a sense of scarcity

01:06:44.700 | We don't have as much time. So, you know what? Let's not do this. Let's remain more focused. So actually

01:06:49.380 | It created a better working environment

01:06:52.180 | There was a lot of negative feedback when base camp first did this experiment

01:06:55.820 | And I document this and I think this is maybe in deep work

01:06:59.500 | I talked about this or potentially world without email there was pushback at first. It said oh you're just gonna make people

01:07:04.260 | take five days of work and squeeze it into four and

01:07:08.140 | The co-founder CEO Jason Fried responded. That's not what's happening. People are actually reducing their work when there's less days, so it's possible

01:07:16.500 | that the four-day workweek will

01:07:20.380 | Directly improve things it will be an indirect side effect because of a sense of scarcity

01:07:25.260 | People will actually pull back what they think is a reasonable amount of work to assign

01:07:29.780 | there's also some other obvious benefits such as if Friday is not a workday, even though you still might be answering emails all day and

01:07:37.180 | Feel like you have too much to do. It'll become socially acceptable not to have meetings. That's another day without meetings. That's useful

01:07:43.860 | There's a flexibility benefit

01:07:45.500 | Of course any day you have off in an official sense is a day where you're more flexible to do things like go to the doctor

01:07:51.620 | Take your car to the shop go to your kids school. So there's these sort of smaller

01:07:55.700 | direct benefits and perhaps a larger indirect benefit on

01:07:59.660 | work

01:08:01.300 | But I still think the conversation we have to have is about the details of the nature of knowledge work

01:08:08.820 | The what makes knowledge work hard what's burning out knowledge workers today is not as

01:08:14.100 | Simple as a question as it was a hundred years ago

01:08:16.700 | Where you had two things to make sure the conditions were safe and the hours were reasonable

01:08:21.820 | Knowledge work is different and we have to introduce more knobs to turn but it's really hard and we don't want to do it

01:08:29.060 | So we focus on the simple things. So I'm just mixed on this. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing

01:08:34.660 | There might be some benefits. There might be some drawbacks

01:08:37.780 | But it's not getting at the heart of what I think is actually causing problems in the knowledge sector today, but it's interesting

01:08:43.700 | So I want to show you that article

01:08:45.700 | These links of course are in the show notes. You can also find a summary of all the questions and everything else in there

01:08:51.660 | But let's wrap it up. So thank you everyone who sent in your questions. Thank you for listening

01:08:58.020 | We'll be back next week with a new episode of the podcast and until then as always

01:09:03.860 | Stay deep

01:09:06.700 | (upbeat music)

Ep. 241: The Myths Trapping You On Twitter

Chapters