[Music] Have you felt different about technology lately? Have you noticed the attitude change? I'm guessing you have.
I don't mean the big shift from the techno optimism of the 2010s to the tech fatigue of the 2020s. I mean the smaller change within the 2020s, from tech fatigue to tech fed up. Maybe you've seen the wave of videos exploring why the internet isn't fun anymore, or why so much tech feels like a soulless cash grab, or the modern horror of needing a verified account and a monthly subscription just to use your own dishwasher.
And this slide from tech cynical to tech completely exhausted. It's not just YouTube is jumping on a trend. Documentaries like Laura Greenfield's Social Studies and Tristan Harris's The Social Dilemma both make you question whether or not we even need social media.
One of the biggest books of last year was The Anxious Generation. One of the biggest shows of this year so far is adolescence. Two wildly popular texts about the same theme, the harm that the internet is having on young minds.
Subreddits like No Surf and Dumb Phone are gaining traction, as ironic as that might seem to you. And physical media and offline tech once considered clunky, obsolete, and inconvenient is suddenly making an undeniable comeback. What's going on?
Well, in this video, I want to answer that question by breaking it up into three questions. The first, why does online technology feel so repulsive these days? The second, what's going on with the physical media resurgence?
Is it hype? Is it real? Is it just nostalgia?
What's what's up there? And the third, what does this all mean for you, for us, for the future? All right, let's uh do it.
Part one, the X factor. Why does online technology feel so repulsive these days? To me, this is the easiest question on the menu, and you probably already know the answer to it intuitively, but it's always good to put words to those feelings, cuz then you can do more with them.
Broadly speaking, I see this question in four answers and then one big overarching answer. So, we'll go through them. First, the reason that technology feels so repulsive these days is inshitification.
This term was coined by the writer Cory Dotoro a couple years back. Conitation is a funny word that's fun to say and it's used to describe the life cycle when tech goes from good to uh yeah [ __ ] Basically initification sees the life cycle in three phases. So in phase one the platform is offering you something really high quality and it's doing it for a loss and this is to gain customers.
It's Netflix saying we have a million movies for like 10 bucks a month and saying that it's okay to share passwords. It's an offer that feels too good to be true. And that's because it is.
Now, here's how platform dies. First, it's good to its users. Then, it abuses those users to make things better for business customers.
Finally, it abuses the business customers to claw back all the value that had once been allocated to those end users and then to those business customers, allocates it to themselves, and then there's no value left. It turns into a pile of [ __ ] and it dies. In the case of Netflix, this might look like you paying twice as much as you did when you started.
You've got a quarter of the options, half of them are made for second screening. And instead of your password working for you and three cousins, now it doesn't even work for you. But it's okay cuz they still have is it cake and we are living through mass endstage platform decay.
We are in the great inshittening. So that's the first answer in shitification. The second one that I want to explore is the death of ownership.
I saw this Reddit post a little while back that said, "What has quietly disappeared without us noticing? " And the top answer was ownership. Ownership.
You pay a subscription. You can't fix what you own because it's proprietary. You can't buy outright.
Our ownership of things has become a rental service where they can break or completely remove what we purchased without consent at any time because it was in the terms of service. I don't know if you saw this in the news maybe like a month ago, but Kindle, Amazon, I should say Amazon, uh they have decided that when you buy books, you don't actually buy them. You just rent them.
Man, that sucks. You used to be able to download a copy of the book that you purchase. You had a permanent copy.
Starting February 26, 2025, the download and transfer via USB option will no longer be available. This is from a raisins speech from the digital activist Lewis Rossman delivered at the FO Don't Be Evil conference. And if there's anything I've learned about through it, you know, about 10 years of activism is you can't tell people to give a [ __ ] about something.
If you tell them you should care about this because of all these features, they don't care. If you tell them you should care about this because you're bad, that just that doesn't work. For context, FO is his organization and their mission is to fix the kind of problems we're talking about right now.
Telling people they're bad doesn't work. What actually works is showing them the ways in which they're being screwed. Uh not shoving it down their throats, but just showing them the hundreds of thousands of little cuts that eventually get them to care.
As you can imagine, Lewis can be polarizing. Even his fan subreddit starts with love him or hate him. But his insights into tech are a breath of fresh air.
See, Lewis is the kind of guy who reads the terms and conditions. Go to page 21 of the terms of service. That's where Sony decides to redefine a word that has meant something for seven centuries.
Ownership. Whatever you think it is, it doesn't matter cuz this is what Sony says it's not. Use of the terms own.
ownership, purchase, sale, sold, sell, rent, or buy in this agreement does not mean or imply any transfer of ownership. In Louis's speech here, he highlights cases like paying $400 for a baby monitor. Some people may think $400 is steep, but to get access to all these features on your device is pretty cool, except uh you don't, only to realize you have to keep paying.
Live breathing and sleep tracking are available with a Meiku membership, activate membership, a lifetime textbook purchase. Another word that's been redefined recently, the word lifetime that lasts 5 years typically. Not even five.
Some of these have been revoked after a year and a half. And the Roku television update that didn't give you a choice. Can anybody tell me what word is missing on the screen over here?
Disagree. Disagree. What is ownership?
And it's not just owning media. It's things like owning your own taste. Algorithmic discovery has been completely outsourced.
and even owning yourself privacy. Which brings us to the third answer that I have as to why tech feels so repulsive. The erosion of privacy and trust.
Privacy and trust are two separate things, but they are related. When I talk about privacy, I mean the very tangible, definable idea of privacy, internet privacy, the data points that Google has on you to build you a profile where they serve ads at you. the type of privacy that has Facebook group people into politically impressionable or not and then just persuades them to do one thing or the other, which more or less was the basis of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
In 2014, you may have taken a quiz online, something that looked like this. And if you did, you probably shared your personal data and your friend's personal data with a company that worked for President Trump's 2016 campaign, the TLDDR for Cambridge Analytica. In around 2016, Facebook was facilitating a nauseating amount of illegal targeted political ads that basically led to Brexit and Trump's first term.
The amount of people who were politically influenced by these ads is estimated to be about 87 million. We know all this thanks to the whistleblower Christopher Wy and the journalist Carol Cadwala. Multiple crimes took place during the referendum and they took place on Facebook.
We also know that Carol Cadwala was later the victim of a smear campaign and a whole lot of legal intimidation. And we also know that a lot of this came after her first TED talk where she brought attention to the issue. This company that had worked for both Trump and Brexit had profiled people politically in order to understand their individual fears to better target them with Facebook ads.
And it did this by illicitly harvesting the profiles of 87 million people from Facebook. This is what makes her second TED talk so inspiring. The last time that I stood on this stage, it led to a three-year legal battle culminated in London's High Court in which it felt like I was on trial for my life because I was.
My career, my reputation, my finances, even my home was on the line. All because I came here to warn you that I didn't think democracy was going to survive the technology that you're building, however incredible it is. In fact, I was the person who almost didn't survive.
And pretty much everything I was warning about is now coming true. A few weeks ago, she got back on that stage to say these words. It's always the data.
It's the crack cocaine of Silicon Valley. You You know, the first thing that Elon Musk did was to send his cyber troops into the US Treasury to get access to the data. That is not a coincidence.
It's a hack. That data is now feeding AIs that are choosing who to sack and who to replace. Sorry, eliminate fraud and waste.
Trust, however, is a bit more intangible. is the trust that any of this stuff is even for us. You know, it's the trust that when you buy something, you actually own it.
The trust that digital wellbeing as a concept, you know, when Instagram's like, "Nope, you're out of content. Time to get off. " That that isn't just so Meta can one day exonerate themselves in court.
We tried. No, you didn't. Back to Cambridge Analytica.
You know what they said about that? Sorry, we didn't do more. Having a digital well-being pop-up is so condescending.
If you actually cared about people exiting the app, you would be as psychologically manipulative about it as you are about everything else, you would AB test it as rigorously as you do when you drip feed people notifications. But you don't, do you? You just stick it there because people leaving the app is the last thing you want.
How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible? And then the fourth answer that I have is the wealth gap that all of this technology naturally fosters. Uh this happens on two levels.
Firstly, you got the massive apex predator levels. The fact that these companies are worth more than most of the world. This list is comparing the GDPs of entire countries with the market caps of individual companies.
There you got Apple sneaking in at number eight, right in between France and Italy. But then there's the wealth gap that happens on the parasite class. It's how well a lot of this tech seems to facilitate junk fees and scams.
It's things like subscription services being so damn easy to sign up for. But if you want to cancel, you have to email the company in order to get the phone number to call then answer riddles 3 before you can even think about canceling sometime next year. Actually, I have I guess you'd call it a feelgood story for this.
About a year and a half ago, I was curious about this product, Vid IQ. It was meant to help me with YouTube. So, I sign up for what I think is a free trial.
I check it out. It's not for me. But then the next day, I noticed that they've charged me.
So, I ask for a refund, and they said no. They told me they weren't able to issue a refund on a charge that has already been collected, as all of our plans are not refundable, whether it's been a day or longer. So, I let it rest.
Then, about a month ago, when I was starting research for this video, I remembered it. And so, I decided to shoot them another email. Hi, thought I'd pick this thread back up.
Any chance that I could get a refund on this? I'm making a documentary on predatory subscription payment models, and it reminded me to pick back up this request to see if your stance had changed. Thanks, Cam.
And the strangest thing happened. Their stance did change. Talk about good luck.
So, those are four big separate answers to that question. And together, they paint a picture. What is that picture?
What do you get? Well, as I get to X in my alphabet superset, I'd like to use this letter to highlight exactly what has happened to technology as of late. It has become X.
I don't mean Elon's Twitter X. I mean X as in UX without you. User experience without the user in mind at all.
When it comes to tech, UX is the overall experience you have when using that product. It's a field I used to work in and a field that I have watched fall off a cliff. It's a blanket term for every aspect of your interaction with the platform.
By and large, it should be focused on creating some sort of positive and meaningful feeling within you. But god damn, look around you. That is just not the case.
Instead, what we are seeing is that user experience is no longer about the user. It's still an experience. Don't get me wrong.
It's just not for you, is it? It no longer feels like it's for you. It's for somebody else.
When you scroll through short form content, you know that the real winner isn't you, it's the platform. It feels undeniable. Whenever you sign up to some service, you know that the deal is not in your favor.
And even if it looks like it is, you know that it won't be eventually. Even the most fundamental of internet activities, Google search. When you Google search something, you just brace yourself.
Even if you add Reddit on the end, you brace yourself for scams, ads, and chat GPT SEO optimized [ __ ] So my big answer as to why technology feels so repulsive these days is because we all now know that we are no longer the user. We are the thing that is getting used. Honestly, with that definition, maybe I kind of do mean Elon's Twitter.
So now it's time for part two of the video. What happens when people are fed up? Woohoo.
When enough people are fed up with something, historically that something doesn't tend to last. I kind of see reactions to being fed up like this. You've got big and small and then you've got overt and covert.
Big and small refers to the number of people impacted by the change. Overt and covert refers to how visible that change is. I'll give you an example for each quadrant.
So big and overt. Go French Revolution. Small and overt.
A pirate ship mutiny. Everyone's sick of the captain. They make it known.
Small and covert. Ah, it's a new group chat without you. pretty rude.
And then big and covert. This is where we get the idea of a vibe shift. Mhm.
Yeah. Trends, culture, moving on, stuff like that. And it's in this quadrant that I think this sits.
What's tricky is that changes on the covert side are not as immediately obvious as say a king in a guillotine. But the thing about a big covert vibe shift is there are always clues. the two that excite me the most.
Uh, one I'll save for another video and for when I'm a lot more informed on the subject is the idea of a decentralized internet. But the second one is the one that I really want to talk about and that is the move towards offline and physical media. The analog renaissance.
Let's talk about it. What's going on with the physical media resurgence? On the surface, it looks like nostalgia, and some of it is, but I do think something deeper is going on.
A book won't leave your shelves because you stop paying a monthly subscription. An analog camera won't demand that you make an account before loading it with film. And a record player won't track your listening data and send it back to some parent company, making you feel that you're constantly being surveiled.
It'll just play the music. Last year in the UK, CDs saw their first ever sales increase in 20 years. CDs.
Let's look at the stats. This won't be that boring. This data comes from the UK.
says that vinyl sales increased by 17. 8% and all of physical music like 10. 9%.
Now, this might be explained by category growth because streaming is also increasing, but digital downloads are not. Couple this data with a renewed interest in DVDs, the surge in physical books, the secondhand market for physical gaming consoles, and USA consumer behavior data that shows that people still regularly use their offline tech. Of course, it is worth taking a minute to contextualize all of this.
The physical media stats are nothing compared to their online counterparts. There is a resurgence, don't get me wrong. It's just not mainstream, but it's not nothing.
So, what is it? Part three. What does this all mean?
The rise of the company Letterboxed. To me, that indicates that we do want a deeper relationship to our media. We don't want it all to be content, all to be slop.
We want to revere it. We want to admire it. We want to breathe in that freaking creativity.
And I think that's the crux of all of this. Best analogy that I can make is to fuel. By the way, this is not an ad.
That'll become pretty clear pretty soon. Fuel is human fuel. In a nutshell, here's how it goes.
There are no nutshells. You need to eat to survive. You need a certain amount of nutrients and vitamins and other things that I will not pretend to understand.
That all goes into a supplement. You drink the supplement and now you're good to go. You are like a car.
Enjoy your human fuel. This frees up those pesky hours of eating with more time to produce. Now, I understand that there is a time and a place for a product like that in some people's lives.
But I can't quite ignore the dystopian implication. Hey, get rid of all of the joy out of your life because it's not efficient. If all you need is sustenance, why why bother with anything else?
That just gets in the way of being productive. Spending an hour to cook? Yuck.
Spending an hour to contribute to the GDP? Cool. Cool.
Not an ad. Essentially what it feels like is the role that media and online technology plays has been stripped of its joy and boiled down to its bare essence. Like hum.
Yes, humans want to connect. Absolutely. Yes, humans want to be entertained.
Totally. Does that mean that we should connect and be entertained in the single most efficient way possible? Or are there maybe intangible benefits like the benefits to enjoying a nice meal with friends that we have perhaps optimized out of?
I found some stuff from a marketing analytics professor guy called Bodto Lang. He says the books, CDs and vinyl records, they form part of our extended self which then provides benefits to us. It makes us feel good about ourselves because it provides nostalgia, control, ownership and slow media.
When a metric is visible, we are so comfortable to optimize for it. When we can see a dollar go up, we know that the money is rising. We have certainty that things are going well for us theoretically.
or when we can see social media metrics when you get all those likes you're like ah this number is bigger than that number therefore I'm happy or therefore I'm sad blah and sure these are two things that can measure how you're doing but they are not the only two things these aren't the only two ways you measure life there are things like how happy you are your relationships your self-respect your sense of joy your sense of wonder curiosity all of these brilliant things that if they also had a visible metric maybe might see the other things just take a backseat for a while and until we can quant Quantify joy. I found myself defaulting to a simple huristic when it comes to media. After I consume something, a book, an album, 4 hours of Tik Tok, do I feel more or less inspired?
And the same thing goes for the tools I use. When I take home movies of my kids, I really enjoy using a 20-year-old handheld video camera. Not only do I not put a phone in their face, but the feeling of an old camera, it makes me feel like their childhood is connected to my own.
When I fall in love with an album, I really enjoy buying it on vinyl because committing to something like that, it has this magical way of making listening feel even more special. And nothing will ever be able to synthesize the joy that I get out of reading and collecting neglected weird opshop books. These intangible benefits of the tangible are what I am calling the escape from the chugger verse.
So what does that mean? In Australia, we have this term chugger. And a chugger is shorthand for charity mugger.
It's somebody that a charity hires to stand on the street and interrupt people as they walk past. But usually the charity isn't that reputable. And usually the person is just a backpacker trying to make a few dollars.
It is the most disingenuous thing. And what they do instead of asking for a donation is they desperately try and get your details and sign you up. Chuggers.
Charity muggers. Now what I think has happened to technology as this UX has dropped the U is the whole thing just feels like the chuggerverse. It's as if everything that you do you are doing with somebody who is constantly trying to recruit you for a pyramids game.
That energy where they're just like hey saw you like that. How about part two? How about I take your money?
What about that? What about that? Oh the donation.
No no no no no. I want you to sign up forever. I want your soul.
Chugger. Man, nobody wants that all the time. Freaking exhausting.
Buy my book. Haha. Buy my book.
It's called Doom and Bloom. It's out in like 3 weeks. It's about all of these subjects, by the way.
And also about the case for creativity in a world hooked on panic. You like where I stuck this message, dear? I thought it'd be funny to put the ad here.
You might hate it. I mean, there are even accessibility benefits. One of my best friends growing up, she was blind.
And something that stuck with me was how much innovation seems to be innovation for some but completely locks other people out. Have you ever been frustrated by a touchcreen or capacitive button that doesn't register your finger or a complex computer interface where a simple button or dial used to make do? As a blind person, this has made my life hell.
Almost all new appliances have glass touchcreens whereas older models could be adapted with some simple bumpers or stickers. Cars, man. The silence of an electric car is incredibly dangerous if you cannot see that car.
There's a whole group of people who are measuring how safe they are on the roads by noise. But you know what's cool about being fed up is that this didn't go unnoticed. And it was followed by a move to give electric cars a synthetic sound.
Something to make the roads safer and more accessible. There is hope. Of course, you can't bring up electric cars without mentioning, you know, the Tesla in the room.
Inshitification can even take the promise of accessibilityfriendly zero emissions and somehow turn it into a bloated spying expensive cringe signaling death trap instigated ostensibly by a guy who just loves efficiency. It's funny, isn't it? That that's kind of what this whole thing is about.
The fact that efficiency is often shortsighted. Often the quest to make something as efficient as possible forgets the fact that we are the things within that system, humans. inefficient, slowmoving, flawed, emotional humans.
We are the end, not the means to the end. Efficiency is only as good as the goal it serves. Because sprinting might be fast, but speed isn't going to help you if you're headed straight toward a cliff.
Sometimes the best thing you can do is stop and change direction. Charlie Chaplan was silent for most of his career. But when he felt the world sprint towards that cliff edge, he finally spoke, reminding us in more ways than one, that we always have a choice.
Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness hard and unkind.
We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness.
Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men.
Cries out for universal brotherhood, for the unity of us all. Even now, my voice is reaching millions throughout the world. Millions of despairing men, women, and little children.
Victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed.
The bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. Men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think, and what to feel. Who drill you, diet you, treat you like kettle, use you as cannon f.
Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men. Machine men with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines.
You are not kettle. You are men. You the people have the power.
The power to create machines. The power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful.
To make this life a wonderful adventure. Let us all unite.
