Episode 246: Existential Poker-Face (David Foster Wallace's "E Unibus Pluram")

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad and psychologist Dave Pizarro having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say and knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:01:08] Anybody can have a brain? I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, a new study suggests that pornography might serve as a means of existential escape from boredom.

[00:01:30] How are we not doing a segment on this study? Because it's so obviously true. Right. The Pope is Catholic. The sun rises in the east. Yeah, we could have. This paper contributes on pornography consumption by highlighting how it

[00:01:52] may be used for emotional avoidance, excitement seeking and sexual pleasure in response to boredom. It's just so obvious. Mild, mild introspection. Yep. It's funny because it's obviously true. It's not necessarily that people think of it that way,

[00:02:12] but when you think about it for 10 seconds, it's like, oh, sure, exactly. No, yeah. I mean, it's right up the alley. It's right there with like a denial of death, those views of sex as an escape from the existential certainty of meaninglessness

[00:02:28] and death. So if anybody ever asks me, I will be... I suffer from the deeply human existential... It's not just that I want to wank. You wouldn't understand, mom. I think you were the person to first say, but I thought you were right, that sometimes your

[00:02:53] life is such that when you jerk off, it feels like you were productive. That you got something done at least. Sounds like something I'd say. And I think that's absolutely right too. There are days... Well, at least I jerked off.

[00:03:09] I spent the rest of the fucking day on Twitter or whatever, going down some rabbit hole. Twitter makes jerking off seem like a productive thing. I cleaned the gutters. I jerked off. I went for a walk. It wasn't a terrible thing.

[00:03:26] For a brief three minutes, I escaped the pain of knowing about my own death. All right. In the first segment, we have to talk about your society. The society of... Personality and social psychology. Personality. Are requiring Stalinist, Maoist kind of submission to a very particular ideology.

[00:03:53] I guess the question is, are you going to stay silent? You know... Okay. So as you hinted, what's going on is that the society of personality and social psychology, the biggest society that represents the people who do what I do,

[00:04:10] are requiring now for conference submissions that you, along with the description of your talk, like whatever I'm studying, masturbation and existentialism, you include a statement about how what you're doing contributes to anti-racism and equality. And equity, inclusion and anti-racism.

[00:04:38] Two psychologists, four beers actually tackled this a few weeks ago on one of their episodes. And it's worth a listen. I was listening to it as I was on a walk, because I hadn't actually heard about these requirements.

[00:04:52] And I was actually genuinely upset. So I was on the side that this should not be a requirement. Guys, I feel like the details probably matter. They actually do. So what are the exact requirements?

[00:05:08] So when you submit an abstract, the reviewers are given the instruction to read and evaluate each abstract I'm reading here now verbatim. With an eye toward the strength and rigor, contribution, interest value of the submission in light of the general SPSP audience.

[00:05:23] Separately please evaluate the extent to which the submission advances SPSP's goal of promoting diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racism. And so it says under the equity and anti-racism category, it says evaluate the extent to which the submission advances SPSP's

[00:05:41] goal of promoting equity, inclusion and anti-racism. To do so, please consider the equity statement which you're supposed to submit as well as the submission as a whole. Submissions advancing equity, inclusion and anti-racist goals may include but are not

[00:05:54] limited to diverse research participants, e.g. under studied or under served populations, diverse research methods, e.g. methodology that promotes equity or engages underserved communities of scholars, diverse members of the research teams, those from underrepresented socio-demographic backgrounds, from an array of career stages from outside the United States

[00:06:13] or with professional affiliations that are not typical at SPSP and presentation content, prejudice and discrimination critical theories cross-cultural research. So then the reviewer is instructed to rate the abstract and the diversity statement on a three-point scale. Three is exceptional, the submission clearly and strongly advances

[00:06:32] SPSP's goal of promoting equity, inclusion and anti-racism. Two satisfactory and one not applicable. The submission does not advance SPSP's goal. And that scale will be combined with whatever look whatever other rating scale they use to evaluate like the merits of the work,

[00:06:51] like the scientific. Oh, they do quantify them. So they actually make you give a number. But does that number then determine is it combined with other numbers about rigor to then just figure out whether it makes it or not?

[00:07:04] Yes. Okay. And what's not clear is how much like we don't know how much of those three points. I have no idea whether the reviewers like whether the other scientific merit ratings are three points as well, or if they're like 97 points. But do they definitely have number scales?

[00:07:20] Knowing them, yes. Like I would think if this is on a number scale, then the others would be on number scale because to be fair, they do get like thousands of poster applications. So they need some way of like ranking them once they get all the ratings in.

[00:07:33] The thing is like this is what pissed me off. And I just sort of calmed down and actually when you all was here and we had to abandon the segment that we recorded with him. Yeah. Speaking of like being chilled by a woke mob,

[00:07:49] I blame, you know, you know, Al puts himself forward as this champion of free speech, but not that down. Yeah. So we talked a little bit about it with you all because I was really heated

[00:08:02] like I think personally all of the things that SPSP says about the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion is they're all great. We should really work hard toward improving diversity of all sorts. There's a problem about like quantifying like whether or not something,

[00:08:23] you know, does it if I use like a researcher from Eastern Europe who's not well represented in the organization, does that count? That might be the biggest reason why it's kind of silly.

[00:08:34] But in principle, I think what bothers me the most is that the scientific work would be evaluated based on whether or not it meets these like diversity goals. Like I feel like those two

[00:08:49] really should be separate and there's like a weird, weird like for half of the people, it's obviously the case that this was a good idea. Well, not half, but like everybody I talked to

[00:09:01] like some people they're like, yeah, what's wrong with that? Like that's and then there's people like me who are just like, what the fuck is this doing in like the evaluation of whether my poster

[00:09:11] should be accepted? So like I'm like, what am I like? It's like new comes problem. It's like everyone thinks the answer is obvious. Exactly. They just disagree about what the answer is.

[00:09:18] Yeah. Exactly. So, uh, so you know, I kept my mouth shut because I'm not a political guy, as you know. Yeah, that's the problem is people like you keeping silent. You know who else stayed silent? SPSP's willing executioners. Yeah, exactly.

[00:09:39] Jonathan Haidt posted on his Heterodox blog, an article entitled The Two Fiduciary Duties of Professors in which he said basically like the goal of a professor to the students should be to

[00:09:54] like teach them well and to science it should be truth, like or just a dedication to truth. And we can't serve two masters. And like if you're making me put social justice in my work, then like I feel like you're violating the sanctity of my dedication to truth.

[00:10:09] You corrupt and subvert the fiduciary's ability to carry out their duty. Yeah. And he had an exchange with Laura King who is the social ecologist, the president of SPSP, and they didn't see eye to eye. So, John Haidt says he's, he's probably gonna quit the association.

[00:10:28] And here's what gets, well let's tell, I want to know what you thought of the essay like Is that the question? Yeah. Okay. Because there's the issues and then there's the essay.

[00:10:42] So there's the issue which honestly I think I'm probably on your side that I find this kind of posturing and especially in association with like the anti-racism, anti-racism seems like it has a more specific ideological strategy for grappling with the problems that we have.

[00:11:05] It's too specific to try to make everybody in a freaking university society like a society that is supposed to be about science. I'm probably with you about issue, but this, oh man, is this like, if like this would send me in the other direction. Like what the fuck

[00:11:25] happened to John Haidt? Like I feel like he used to be have like a sense of humor and I don't know, some sort of self-awareness. Like who is this fucking thing for? So it is the most tedious,

[00:11:36] plotting, sanctimonious piece of writing that like I, the idea that this is going to convince somebody who's kind of on the fence about this particular issue, that's there's no way. Like it's just like in the rest of this essay, I'd like to introduce the concept of

[00:11:53] fiduciary duty which I believe complements the concept of telos and can help explain the moral incoherence that has overtaken the academy since 2015 as well as give us a moral foundation upon which to stand when we resist pressures to violate our duties. This is just like dead,

[00:12:14] like deadly dull and it feels like this is the last thing people need in order to actually address this problem. Like we need like, we don't need like another fucking Atlantic article about this. Like, I think the Chronicle might have republished, like posted this.

[00:12:32] Yeah, like all but Chronicle, I'll post like these kinds of essays like once every like four days right? Like it's got to be somebody, I don't know like somebody from within that gets mad

[00:12:43] about this you know like a Vlad. Yeah, yeah. Nobody's going to listen to this like, like I actually was mad and also wondering like because I've like hung out with John height,

[00:12:55] like I don't like this isn't the person I hung out with the person that wrote this essay. It's just too self important and serious and whatever this is, it is not this battle of

[00:13:07] fucking good and evil and truth and that right there is like for me nail on the head. It's not a battle between good and evil and and you know what? It's not like my

[00:13:18] disagreements with SPSP don't require a metaphor and like the notion of T los to like aid it. Like I it's the simplest of objections, which is if I'm doing research say on like, I don't know,

[00:13:32] like whether or not discussed as two emotions or one right? Like what or how physiologically like we can distinguish between disgust and contempt. I think that doing a mandatory statement tell saying like how this meets the goals of diversity, equity and anti-racism,

[00:13:53] like sure I could cobble something together but we know that that's not like the point of my research and there's a ton of social psychology that has to do with equality and it has to

[00:14:05] do with prejudice and discrimination and that's great. We should have symposium on that like symposium that we should have. We should encourage people to submit, we should even bump those up like whatever but to actually put a score and essentially punish the science

[00:14:23] because that's no matter what they say that's what this is doing, what putting a scale and a score and rating me low because it doesn't meet anti-racism goals is what that's what it's

[00:14:33] doing is essentially driving all research to be not only of one topic but of one conclusion. You know maybe not a one conclusion but certainly of one topic and I think that that's actually

[00:14:44] bad for the science and that's like you know call me a positivist if you want but I want like a lot of these things don't belong in the science. So all that said

[00:14:54] just to get to what you're saying about John Hite. I like John Hite, I consider my friend, I'm not going to bad mouth him, you can go ahead but this I completely agree that this

[00:15:06] actually under the guise of trying to seem dispassionate and rational it comes across as moralistic and pompous and sufferable. Yeah in a way that I think directly violates his own like dedication to sort of like crossing these you know like like building bridges.

[00:15:31] So it's become now this moralistic fight where I see some of my good friends on Twitter like mocking John Hite for like even insinuating that he's racist for saying this stuff and I'm like that's

[00:15:47] not fair but also there's just simpler ways to do this like now it's just a culture worth I said that universities can have many goals such as fiscal health and successful sports teams and many values such as social justice national service or Christian humility but they can have

[00:16:06] only one telos because a telos is like a north star it is the end purpose or goal around which the institution is structured an institution can rotate on one axis only like this is what

[00:16:19] I think that somebody like kidnapped him and like put something in his brain or something like that. He used to have slide shows about baby Jesus but plugs. Exactly right and like brothers

[00:16:30] and sisters fucking and now it's like the telos is a north star that can only rotate on one access but this you know what like we need to add the concept of a fiduciary duty to this like look

[00:16:44] at some point it can't be just cranky old white guys or like professional anti-woke people John Hite and like Heterodoc like of course the fucking Heterodocs Academy is going to be against

[00:16:56] this right yeah and Kulat and all those people in the chronicle the people who are in charge of this and making this decision won't listen to them rightly so in a lot of ways and they probably

[00:17:06] won't listen to us and rightly so too but like that's why I say the criticism has got to come from the people who are very sympathetic to a lot of their aims but this crosses a line and they need

[00:17:21] to and that's the thing I guess that's a little discouraging by the people who are just saying well it's stupid but we do want more diversity. And in some ways like so we have something

[00:17:32] like this for jobs right when somebody applies for a job they say like in what way they can address you know we have the third most diverse student body in the whole nation you know how

[00:17:44] will they what they bring to the university like take that into account or something like that. And like we don't give a rating about that and like but but we do look at it I guess so maybe

[00:17:56] it's just a way of signaling like this is the best case you could make for it it's a way of signaling that you are broadly sympathetic to increasing diversity and decreasing bias and

[00:18:08] letting new voices be heard that haven't been able to be heard before because of like structural and systemic like reasons like it's just a way of signaling that you're trying to like address that but it's not really like affecting the science you know except being more open to

[00:18:28] a wider range of approaches or something like that yeah that would be okay. Yeah I mean this is why I do I do personally think that this crosses a line and I am

[00:18:40] you know like I consider just like not even attending the conference for this reason I don't know whether or not that's going to make a difference in my decision but that's the concern

[00:18:51] exactly as you lay it out and here's the crazy thing so if you listen to the episode of Two Psychologists Four Beers with Uelle and Alexa Uelle lays out the issue as he sees it and Alexa

[00:19:03] who's very reasonable is like I don't see a problem you know I did the same to Nikki like I was pretty upset and she's like I don't see a problem it's like we're seeing two completely

[00:19:15] different parts of a necker cube one is the very real concern which I have which is like we lack diversity in some real important ways and there's so much about these statements that I believe

[00:19:25] and endorse it I should be allowed to say however at that stage at which you're telling me that I'm getting a score on whether my scientific submission meets these goals like I think there's

[00:19:37] something deeply wrong with that like I don't think that's the way things ought to be done at the very least it should be a decision that was reached by the group as a whole and you know

[00:19:48] if people say like if you don't like it then why don't you just leave the society well that's what's going to happen like instead of having like a real discussion around it and yeah it's

[00:19:57] people like Lee Jussam and John Hite who are in the collet crowd who are the ones speaking out against this so it's very easy to to come up with these basile critiques and call them like

[00:20:08] well they're just like I saw a tweet that said John just wants us like his secret excuse to be racist which I think is completely unfair yeah it's that he's been kidnapped and is being

[00:20:21] to be fair he was always weirdly more serious than his his publications and talks would yeah and more realistic that's true yeah but still this just takes it to another like

[00:20:34] cranky old guy but not even like cranky old like grandpa simpson it's like worse than that kind of because of how self-serious it is it's like there's not a tiny little hint of sense of humor or like

[00:20:47] a way of trying to uh note the irony of kind of the like none of that it's like like like like like you're writing like a papal decree or like a pat like an objection to a papal decree or

[00:20:59] something like that this is a huge problem with this particular crowd like a huge problem a complete lack of irony just humor ability to laugh at themselves and like take themselves they're all like that

[00:21:14] it's the yasha monk like if I can oh yeah yeah it's it's weird it's like like you can't just can you think about just having a beer and just maybe being like ah you know what that was a little

[00:21:28] bit pompous the way that I phrased that right like you know like paul is a good example of someone who probably believes a lot of the things they believe but he's he would never write this

[00:21:39] like in a million years would he write something like that column that height yeah exactly I yeah there just needs to be a way like I want to register my disagreement about that very specific

[00:21:50] policy decision that was made without without seeming like I'm a curmudgeonly old white guy who doesn't care about diversity because it feels like that's possible like I want it to be and that's

[00:22:01] why like you know hopefully like we've said many a time like you in a podcast like this you get to know us and know our our opinions and hopefully people know where I stand with all that stuff

[00:22:10] like in fact more radical than many of our listeners want me to be when it comes to shit like race but not class interesting but not fuck the poor whites

[00:22:26] so yeah I don't know it's just a bit yeah you're right with with uh huge there are just some people you don't want writing essays on your side I mean exactly but it seems like it's all of them

[00:22:38] you know and that's I guess one of their complaints about people like us who like are too cool to even like or you know pretend to be too cool to even participate in this debate is

[00:22:50] you know we're the ones that are staying you know allowing this creep to happen and you know people has been saying that does forever and it's not that there's nothing to that but like what they're doing isn't helping either and in fact like it's actually making it entrenching

[00:23:07] the two sides even like more than they are because it's a it's a boy who cried wolf thing with with John height and with like a lot of these people is they've been bitching about like the tiniest

[00:23:19] most bullshit things for the last like seven years fucking some like the Oberlin you know Asian thing that turns out not even to be true or like as if this is like the end of civilization

[00:23:31] you're gonna get it now it's like this is like fucking apop you know the apocalypse uh of like intellectual inquiry and and none of that has been true like none of that has been an accurate

[00:23:41] in any way like accurate representation of what's going on at even like the university is like Yale and Cornell never mind like the university is in the rest of the country so like now you write

[00:23:55] something here which seems more legitimate it comes from a more like it's at least the target is more legitimate and it's like how are you supposed to take this seriously yeah

[00:24:05] I you know I think that they've been you know chicken little for a while too but I do I do want to hear register that I think that the university universities have changed in this

[00:24:16] regard like that those stories that you you mentioned like some of them are trumped up and some of them are used to to like cry out about this you know great conspiracy of liberals

[00:24:32] but it is a very different environment than it was 15 years ago for better or for worse yeah and and I think that they they see that change and they vote hyper focus on certain changes

[00:24:46] that are so threatening to them that that becomes their central the central agenda of their discourse meanwhile nobody ever says like hey you know what's great is that like you can't really tell racist jokes in class anymore like that's a good thing that's happened

[00:25:01] like yeah university feels some pressure to like no no that's true too but I would also say that the things they exaggerate are like you can't say that like men and women are different anymore like you

[00:25:13] can't say there are biological differences in between the sexes you like if you if you commit a microaggression you'll be before like a title nine tribunal like and just none of that

[00:25:22] is true at all like at all like there are definitely uh ways that things have changed and I would say probably more for the better than for worse in terms of like the norms but like not in the way

[00:25:36] that they're describing yeah well that's why like I think that the inability to focus on the fact that say for students of color like this is actually uh many academic environments are better places now

[00:25:50] than they were 15 years ago for young women right yes the fact that it's like actually against policy to fuck your profess like for your professor to to grab ass at you all of these things

[00:26:02] like betray a real that one you're not you're not all of these betray a a sort of lack of perspective ticking about what these changes have entailed yeah and so that's why I feel actually

[00:26:18] like I don't feel like speaking about most of this stuff because it turns out to be red socks Yankees once it gets into the public discourse and reality like let's pick our battles

[00:26:30] like and you and I maybe people would accuse us of being on the sideline but the truth of the matter is like I we've seen the consequences of of of saying certain things like the reaction

[00:26:43] that it gets which is never very positive once you start speaking on hot button issues and so we tend to avoid it but that doesn't mean that we haven't actually come out and say exactly how

[00:26:51] we feel about this stuff yeah don't say it for every fucking episode because that's not what our podcast if you want that go to the jessie single block and reported yeah and also deconstructing

[00:27:07] the gurus so yeah no I one of the things that you inspired me to say which is philosophy now the number of women are rising within you know we had this shameful thing where it was all

[00:27:21] men and definitely almost entirely white men one of the things like like so when I did the first very bad wizard book I had all guys and and I remember Vendal Evita who is editing it was like

[00:27:36] you know this is great it is all guys I hadn't even noticed that you know that's right and and then like I added Josh Green and Lee and young but that was like and then with the next

[00:27:47] edition like it was in my head holy shit I need to have more women so then I have like Susan Wolfe and Valerie Tiberius and and Nancy Sherman and like those are some like my some of my favorite

[00:27:56] interviews and it's like it's good for us to be thinking like this now I'm reading more like now I actually think in my head like if this syllabus is too it's like all men and all maybe

[00:28:06] white men like I want to diversify that and when I do that it's like good it's good for the course it's like makes the course better it makes me more excited about teaching some of these things

[00:28:16] it's like a lot of that stuff that was definitely like I'm sure inspired in part by oh god they're get like I don't want everybody to ask why is this all white men or whatever yeah like maybe

[00:28:27] that's part of the initial motivation but it's like it gets me to do something that's actually good for the philosophy good for the course good for the my fiduciary duty to truth it's good

[00:28:37] for all of that exactly exactly and that that that phenomenology of being like a regular old white guy and not noticing like is hard to get out of like it takes some real perspective taking

[00:28:52] and and it's so often framed in terms of like oh now we have the pressure to add women to it's like wait we like you like it's completely betraying the fact that they never thought of

[00:29:04] like what the young woman was experiencing when they were in class you know like it's yeah it's crazy and and it's going to be it's a slow heavy task like the changing your syllabus is difficult

[00:29:17] because of the history of philosophy right like yeah it's actually requires some work that's a good thing like we are blinkered we have been blinkered by the way we were raised and brought

[00:29:30] up and it's good to try to expand that and sometimes you need an extra little push that's what's hard about this is because it's like sometimes the push does come in the way of these expectations that you're going to be more diverse yeah your approach right and

[00:29:46] that's a good example for where I draw where I would draw a line like being being asked to diversify a syllabus versus having somebody look over your syllabus and tell you you need to add

[00:30:00] like at least four more women to it or else like you you know you're in danger of losing sure but no but that's but nobody's doing that nobody's doing that that's where the SPSP thing

[00:30:10] though is is crossing a line to me where it's like you might not get in now they haven't said so maybe it won't matter at all but if it doesn't matter at all then why why do the whole

[00:30:18] coding thing right presumably it won't matter yeah but but the number thing is weird because you know that's what makes it not like some of these diversity statements that people can feel

[00:30:29] free to use or ignore as they fit like it's uh it's more like the just like oh I got to give a number to this and that could affect whether it gets into this prestigious there's just another

[00:30:43] misunderstanding that's clearly happening here between height and Laura King where height reads the word anti-racism and immediately thinks that this is the endorsement of a particular view like Robin D. Angelo yeah really from candy and I think for someone like Laura King and for many

[00:31:03] people I know that's just saying like you're against racism and so it's almost just trivially true that you would be like is if you're a modern human being in an educated environment like just

[00:31:15] no no no we just meant like you're you're like you're anti-racist yeah you're opposed to racism but then you shouldn't use that word because it is associated like that is like Ibrahim Kendi's book

[00:31:26] how to be an anti-racist people who are very much opposed to and working to address racism who aren't part of that school they don't use that word they don't say I'm an anti-racist you know

[00:31:38] so like I think that's I actually think it's kind of legitimate to object to that word because it is implying a very specific approach to like the massive like problems of structural racism yeah

[00:31:53] yeah I think you're probably right I think that they're so in that world that they don't even think twice about it that's that's the part that's surprising to me the sort of like shock like what wait you're against like this seemingly innocuous thing um as somebody else pointed

[00:32:06] out too you know what values like of course SPSB has values when it comes to diversity equity inclusion um and we probably have values about a whole lot of other things like why not say that

[00:32:19] your abstraction includes something about how we care about the environment or something like that you got a ton of moral values that we could choose to highlight that most certainly most of us would endorse but picking this one out seems like an extra political

[00:32:35] what about like animal welfare yeah exactly yeah so yeah well be like us don't actually do anything but somehow be better than the whole discourse that's uh that's very good segue into our next to our

[00:32:52] next yeah all right we'll be right back to talk about e unibus plurum this episode of very bad wizards is brought to you once again by our longtime sponsor better help online therapy you know

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[00:38:17] there's been a bunch there's a bunch of stuff going on right now we just did the vote for the episode topic by the way i don't know if you've looked at it like no i thought long termism

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[00:38:45] wow i just looked at it wow stoicism is winning yeah i think it looks looking like it's going to be stoicism the only other like possibility is probably the dispossessed the dispossessed

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[00:41:25] because we want to show our gratitude route we really appreciate um all the support that we get from all of you so thank you very much thank you all right let's talk about the david foster

[00:41:37] wallace essay e unibus plurum uh essay that i guess was seems like it was written in 1990 but was first published in 1993 and also in his collection a supposedly fun thing that i'll never

[00:41:54] do again it's very hard we were just talking about this it's very hard to just like say what this essay is to give a concise summary because it's so sprawling but it's ostensibly about television you know about the role that television has played in combating alienation

[00:42:11] and loneliness and it's about the prevalence of irony in television and the way that has permeated into larger society the way it affects the current younger generation who grew up on television of fiction writers especially like the overeducated mfa select of the kind that david

[00:42:34] foster wallace was maybe irony has run its course as a way of addressing the ills that we face and we need something new or something different and then all the obstacles to actually doing that

[00:42:48] that's that there's my there's my yeah that's a pretty damn good job i remember i'd never read this but i do remember either reading part of it or maybe hearing a discussion of it

[00:42:59] and i knew that discussed irony um and i was excited to read it for that reason and then as i was reading it i was like wow this hasn't even mentioned irony and we're like two-thirds of the way yeah i

[00:43:12] mean it is about irony but that is the thing that people take from it i think like if you had to come up with one takeaway is like uh maybe we need to return to a kind of sincerity that that would

[00:43:24] be at this point the bravest and i don't know most iconoclastic thing that you could do what so one of the interesting things about this essay is it's very much of its time we were talking

[00:43:37] about this television completely changes in the time between now and when he wrote this yeah prestige tv is obviously like at least like eight or nine years away but even the bridge to prestige tv

[00:43:50] era and then the explosion of streaming like so what he's saying about the television landscape it doesn't apply today um for reasons we'll talk about but number one uh it's a very fascinating look into

[00:44:03] television at that time and you know in the history of it but number two so much of what he says could just apply to now the internet you know so it's like if you you could substitute

[00:44:15] what he says about television for our kind of new television um which is these forms of media and podcasts and uh and things like that and it's then like it has brilliant insights about that i

[00:44:29] think yeah well there's lots to talk about there because i think like the differences between internet culture and tv culture are that in some ways the internet is so disjointed

[00:44:40] that it cannot be talked about as one thing anymore and that's one huge difference that that he gets to sort of in toward the end he starts foreshadowing or quoting somebody who's who's foreshadowing how

[00:44:52] things like eerily for sure yeah yeah so this was written in 1990 so you said this is an essay that's that's um in some ways outdated just in how it describes like the television landscape

[00:45:05] yeah you know tv and especially the sitcom which i think is is a lot of what he discusses that form was largely unchanged through the 80s i think you know it got a little bit more like

[00:45:19] there was some uh uh some more diversity in there it was less it was a lot a lot of the same stuff and and if you if you were raised i think in the aughts it's kind of a different world

[00:45:32] i don't know for sure there's one huge difference between tv and anything today including tv which is that it just doesn't have to as appeal to uh a mass audience in israel like um and because

[00:45:46] nothing does except like the nfl and so it's just different strategies but those strategies can include niche shows that will appeal to artistic sensibilities people like you know that are

[00:45:59] consciously alienating of the audience you know like i which a show that i love but that is uh like atlanta is and it's like these season three and season four it's in a very lynchian way kind of

[00:46:12] infuriating a lot of the audience too and then and making it smaller and that's okay now it's like it just wasn't okay at the time right you had to get like bring you had to be the biggest

[00:46:23] tent to bring the most people in or you were done you couldn't have a show well yeah that's just not true it right at all and part of that was because of the structure of the networks where there were

[00:46:35] you know when i was a kid there were three networks and then there was a fourth that fox came along and you look at the ratings like nielson ratings uh are basically a number that records how many

[00:46:45] million households view a show and when you look at the ratings back say like when cheers in the cosby show were on you had like literally a third of the entire nation would watch a show

[00:46:58] and now the most successful shows are an order of magnitude lower than that like just there is no one thing that everybody was like even game of thrones or you know like whatever reality show

[00:47:09] that people like if people's if those are still big or whatever it's it's such a fraction of what it used to be for the big time shows right and if uh Dave Foster Wallace starts he starts

[00:47:24] seeing that cable might change the landscape but it hasn't really yet it hasn't like majorly changed the landscape at the time i was trying to think in what way is what he's saying true

[00:47:36] of television today and i think a lot of the stuff that he says about what we turn to television for so he sets up this guy joe briefcase who is just kind of a normal guy who works you

[00:47:50] know one of these jobs that you know it's it's a job it's not something where you feel like you get to express yourself and it's not something where you're necessarily spending your time

[00:48:02] around a lot of people that you have stuff in common with you're not having deep conversations and so you start to feel lonely you start to feel isolated and what television does is give you

[00:48:13] companionship right it gives you it's like a simulation of uh something that can either distract you but not just distract you like actually address your loneliness but in the end it is still

[00:48:29] uh a television and as he says it's these pixelated things that are coming out of your furniture and like so it's not it's not real companionship it gives you some of those like

[00:48:40] companionship uh vibes but it's not real companionship and i think this is the interesting thing that i think still applies it's like when you're watching a lot when you're watching tv joe six pack but

[00:48:52] also i think this is true of everybody like for some tv that they watch it's like it's satisfying a need but you also have deep down this nagging worry that you're wasting your life

[00:49:05] and that you're a lonely and isolated and alienated and this isn't helping like this is actually like making it worse and you're building up habits that it's they're going to be hard to overcome

[00:49:15] so you have this nagging suspicion that this is kind of hollow and what i've the and then this is where irony comes in irony is a way of like calling attention to that flattering you

[00:49:29] for noticing that and now making it like okay because we're all making fun of it in this really self-aware way and we're uh engaged in this at the meta level so it's almost another just

[00:49:42] way of thinking okay now i really have companions and we're the smart ones and we're the ones who get it and we're the ones who uh we're in on the joke but but essentially it's still doing

[00:49:53] the same thing that it was doing before we started to be suspicious of you know of it it's like it's giving us that companionship that we essentially lack and that me that sense of i don't know

[00:50:03] like purpose or richness that we feel like our life lacks yeah that comes from normal interaction so yeah one of the things that he starts out with is the statistic that the average american family

[00:50:18] at the average american watches six hours of tv a day which is a pretty staggering number given that you know people get home from work at five six yeah i never fully understood it's

[00:50:29] it's crazy i guess it's just on like people would come home turn on the tv you know my childhood left to my own devices that would be yeah i would come home from school turn the tv on

[00:50:41] and it might not go off until until like definitely but like we weren't left to our own devices and parents weren't doing that and no you know what i mean like they could like we weren't my parents

[00:50:53] weren't anti tv but like you know even when i was watching what they would think was a lot it would be like three hours a day yeah i just looked it up actually that's three hours a day is the

[00:51:03] estimate nowadays but now we have the the internet and stuff yeah um and that's way bigger than you know do you get those weekly reports of how much you're on your phone yeah yeah but it's

[00:51:15] because i work on my ipad too so it's completely like um excuse it but keep telling yourself that but one of the things that that wall's points out is that you you could imagine

[00:51:32] that tv is voyeurism that we're scratching this itch by watching others like we're watching others and others lives and that this is somehow fulfilling but it points out that tv is really not like voyeurism because tv people are people who are who know they're being watched they are

[00:51:52] skilled at portraying and displaying their persona their character the situations they're in in a way that is deeply unnatural right it's like actually not what life is it's this it's a

[00:52:05] veneer it's like it's tricking you into thinking that's what life is so you know it says look at the difference between when when a real person gets in front of a camera and how like hard it is for

[00:52:15] them to look at all natural these are people who know they're being watched and that's their whole job i think that that he's making this point to say this is a very artificial situation where

[00:52:26] we are watching other human beings um thinking that we're watching you know and you know it's very parasocial we're thinking that we're we're engaging in this social activity but really really

[00:52:37] were not and like exactly what you said there is this he says look a lot of people especially at this time i remember people used to just make fun of tv they would say like critics anybody

[00:52:50] hoity toydy thought that tv was a complete waste of time and that it was dumb and that people who watched a lot of tv were dumb and he's that you know they could make up all sorts of reasons

[00:53:00] but i what i like about what walla says here is he says look we watch it because it's fun like at the end of the day we watch this stuff because it's entertaining it's just that when you

[00:53:11] watch something whether or not it's fun and entertaining when you watch it for six hours a day something is going to happen right there is going to be some some downstream effect

[00:53:24] that what you're watching will have on and he talks about a few of these but you know one of them is that like people get picked to be on tv because they're beautiful they're pretty

[00:53:32] they're fun to look at and you start thinking that you need to be pretty and you're you also have a mirror and you're not pretty so like you start feeling shitty about yourself this has its

[00:53:42] contemporary analogs this is instagram this is yeah yeah but that it's that that irony is the was the sort of solution to that is i think just such a good point it's it's and it's not an

[00:53:58] obvious one to me at all i think it's just deeply insightful it's deeply and i want to talk about the extent to which that's true today but i think it is absolutely right you know in

[00:54:10] the context of what he's talking about i think the best example of it is is advertisements right like tv ads at a certain point it became clear that you couldn't do some really sincere

[00:54:23] our product is the best product i mean it's not that you couldn't do it but that people were just primed to make fun of that and so commercials started just taking that into account being very self-aware that they're commercials now like there's no insurance company that would

[00:54:41] ever do like a straightforward commercial like you know like they all have their little progressive you know or the geico or you know flow and like it's like everything is a meta meta meta joke

[00:54:54] now with ads and i think what he points out is that this was happening at kind of every level of tv and and you know then that is the way that tv was changing even at that time

[00:55:07] compared to what it was in the 60s and 70s yeah um he has i think a good example of of these ads like the joe i don't think it's his example he's citing he's citing another essay that talks

[00:55:21] about the joe isuzu ads which i remember vividly which is you know it really was like the thing about being sincere is that you can get mocked like you are very vulnerable to mockery and so

[00:55:34] the minute that people started um realizing that you know of course you're a fucking insurance company you're gonna say your insurance company is the best and you need us like right like of

[00:55:48] course that's what you're gonna do so what's the point of doing that like at least flatter people into seeing that you'd already know that totally there's and then i don't know if he's speaking

[00:56:00] of this this as the same sort of force of medaness or is a parallel one but he talks about um saint elsewhere and the mary tyler more show and the mary tyler more production company he's talking about

[00:56:13] tv getting increasingly self-referential where there was some episode of saint elsewhere where there was a person who who was like a mental patient who believed he was mary tyler more and um and then you know you realize betty white was a betty white who was in the very

[00:56:29] culture the character that betty white was playing on yeah tyler more which is a very you know it's actually before its time in terms of that level of self-reference um and they was all produced by the mary tyler more production company so that's why they had like

[00:56:43] the rights to the name you know rhoda or whatever um and it ends with the guy throwing up his hat like she did at the end of the thing right yeah yeah and so so maybe because tv was uh

[00:56:57] an industry that was dominated by by production a handful of production companies and networks maybe that's why it was easy to be self-referential but but um that level of medaness started really

[00:57:13] um uh taking hold and so he talks about murphy brown and max headroom right being shows about shows um or shows about tv and it did snowball and you said this earlier yeah the reason it makes you

[00:57:28] feel good is because you're in the know like yeah exactly you being in the know you knowing that like we're all like yeah wink wink is a better feeling i guess than that feeling of like my

[00:57:41] you know what my family isn't like the cleavers on leave it to be right you know exactly so i mean like but you know you still had these sitcoms that are about working-class households who have flawed

[00:57:52] people have the same problems that we all do and even the simpsons you know has Homer at the center of it you know but the simpsons was very aware that it was an animated television show and would

[00:58:05] go out of its way to like do meta jokes about that and they're funny and i loved them and like i'm a sucker for that and like i think larry sanders show is like a a prime example of this

[00:58:15] and i guess that's kind of mid 90s mid to late 90s or you know this is like the docu the mockumentary kind of thing but not exactly it's more just like a behind the scenes of a talk show but with

[00:58:28] real celebrities playing themselves the humor of those episodes would be based on you're knowing what the persona of the celebrity was compared to how they're acting on the larry sanders

[00:58:39] show yeah and it was like it's really fun but it was so steeped in this kind of cynical irony about you know celebrity and vanity and all of that absolutely where you where it's just like

[00:58:55] it's fun trying to figure out how much of this person is that them really or them portraying their character good good good good good good good hey larry uh sell that tape a hank man

[00:59:09] some kind of hoggy's got on him huh i'm glad to find this thing here between us i feel kind of safe you look really good hank very centered life must be good huh i'm drunk i just heard that

[00:59:26] that you are coming out with some kind of a tape an exercise tape congratulations what was that a joke what are you trying to be funny you know you can't just bang a jukebox and go hey you know your

[00:59:40] problems disappear fancy you work for me i got fucking a son of a man hey you're his dear friend of mine he bought everybody banana bread he'd marry his sweaters no pick on him you want to pick on

[00:59:54] somebody pick on normie donnell he didn't bring anything i'm just kidding me you're very funny you know it's true you're very funny really i just want to say that my children love the

[01:00:06] news update you do on saturday night live hey if you see an hank's tape and it's unbelievable that's got a huge cock on him then why is he so upset and this very feels like generation x to me

[01:00:21] i know that he he's technically not that but it's not a boomer thing it feels like that the level of irony slash sarcasm slash meta ness that emerged in tv shows in the 90s was

[01:00:34] like i feel like i came up with it and yeah but i think yeah what he's describing is gen X absolutely and then what would then turn into like the disaffected like grungy 90s yeah which is what he's

[01:00:47] he's saying right now already like he he finds it like appalling this just kind of apathetic you know blank cynicism i mean i refuse all the take anything seriously you know yeah i um it it's

[01:01:03] exhaust it got exhausting and to me the peak exhausting of like the sarcastic humor that put down humor was for me matt parry on friends who was supposed to be the funny guy but all

[01:01:18] of his jokes were just nothing but sarcastic and they were only funny because they were sarcasm like they weren't even really that funny that's what that's the point that i first realized

[01:01:28] oh like a lot of humor is just people kind of being sarcastic dicks to each other you know yeah it's it's and it's not it's low effort you know all you have to say is like oh really you know and

[01:01:42] that would get a laugh well you know it's interesting that friends and some of those kind of shows that are that friends pioneered you know leading into maybe like the american office or something like that teenagers like our girls age they loved those shows and we're just that's

[01:02:03] all they would watch because they still provide this kind of companionship in in year this like increasingly like alienated uh society and they're like it is this kind of comfort it's like keeping you company when you're bored and lonely yeah there's porn and then there's these

[01:02:21] shows yeah and it's good at it yeah we've talked about gen z like i'm not sure if they're not on this like you know three three meta levels up in their enjoyment of it but whatever it is

[01:02:31] i think i just enjoyed it like they i mean they enjoyed it like we well i i never watched friends but like uh like i think people enjoyed it at the time with that same like this isn't

[01:02:42] good but it's fun to be around well they thought it was good but but yeah i know what you mean yeah they they were mistaken but they thought it was fun to be around too it was fun to be around

[01:02:53] but i think like it is like it does serve that purpose like it didn't friends didn't for me but other stuff did like that i think but then tv just completely changed there's nothing that

[01:03:04] david fuster well says that would apply to what happened and i think especially like in the tooth it started in 2000 to 2010 you know like between that period that you know it's like a

[01:03:17] gold a new golden age and you have shows that are not ironic yeah that's not the like deadwood is not ironic it's not self-aware it's just fucking great it's just art and the sopranos

[01:03:31] the wire sometimes they have like a social purpose but they are not you know they'll make little meta jokes like mcnulty pretending to do a british accent you know in uh so they'll

[01:03:43] make little jokes like that but that's not at all the point of the show right you know like it has a serious like artistic moral purpose a lot of these shows and that's just not like covered in

[01:03:54] no yeah yeah it was it was can i can i read this i'm just gonna read this paragraph that that sort of encapsulates i think the view of tv that was common and probably justified

[01:04:06] but because at the end is where david fuster well says something that i think is actually really interesting and i don't know if it's true but i wanted to see what you thought so he says it's undeniable that television is an example of quote unquote low art the

[01:04:20] sort of art that tries too hard to please because of the economics of nationally broadcast advertiser subsidized entertainment televisions one goal never denied by anybody in or around tv since rca first authorized field test in 1936 is to ensure as much watching as possible tv is the

[01:04:37] epitome of low art and its desired appeal to and enjoy the attention of unprecedented numbers of people but tv is not low because it is vulgar or prurient or stupid it is often all these

[01:04:48] things but this is a logical function of its need to please audience with a capital a and i'm not saying that television is vulgar and dumb because the people who compose audience of

[01:04:57] vulgar and dumb and this is the claim here television is the way it is simply because people tend to be really similar in their vulgar and prurient and stupid interests and wildly different in their refined and moral and intelligent interests it's all about

[01:05:11] syncretic diversity neither medium nor viewers are responsible for quality so i mean that's interesting and like that would it would give a very clean explanation for what's changed which is that now you can appeal to different refined noble interests exactly that's exactly right and

[01:05:28] the economics have changed so that it still is all about keeping you watching as much as possible but it's like netflix keeping you watching as much as possible so here's like eight million shows please keep watching netflix it's not about like will you watch cheers and and frasier

[01:05:48] so i was thinking about this with hulu or something like that like you know hulu has atlanta and it has like this new show the bear you know and these shows are their art you know they are for a very

[01:06:03] specific taste and i am those tastes and i guarantee that that's not like the majority of what makes hulu their money but what it does do is get people like me to be like oh i gotta

[01:06:15] and you know so all these other things that have more mass appeal you know they can have but it's it doesn't hurt them at all to just also put up the put these really these things that for a niche

[01:06:28] maybe kind of pretentious art more artsy inclined you know we're looking for something different we're looking to be challenged in tv and not like just kept company they can do that now and they couldn't before there was no economic way to it wasn't feasible right you know

[01:06:44] and people you know some people aren't old enough to to know that tv really was considered low art in that if you were a movie star you and you went on a tv show like that meant you had your star had

[01:06:59] fallen um and that that started to change i think in the 90s um yeah and then like sure and now yeah and now it's like man now you have julia roberts just doing like season one of home

[01:07:11] coming like a show that almost nobody has heard of and you know like directed by sam s mail is good it was really good but like nobody probably knows about it you know yeah now at the time like there's

[01:07:21] no way that that that's something like so here's what i was thinking here's what's changed like you have this great this really good tv that can be more particularized tailor made to certain tastes

[01:07:33] and some of it can be just really really good in a way that television couldn't be before like a uh take artistic risks that you couldn't take um in that time but ultimately here's a question i want to

[01:07:48] ask is it still doing the thing that he's talking about which is keeping us company and trying to you know assuage the nagging feeling that we're wasting our life and we are you know not making

[01:08:03] the meaningful social connections that we ought to be and that there's a kind of emptiness in our lives like and i was thinking that maybe it is doing that still but just in a much greater diversity

[01:08:17] of ways than it used to like now irony doesn't solve the whole problem anymore but it doesn't need to there's you don't need a single solution to all these problems you just need multiple

[01:08:27] solutions to it yeah it's a good question here is the way that i i think i was interpreting the argument that uh wallace was presenting which is something like this um tv was you know

[01:08:46] rather homogenous and you know pretty monolithic or at least controlled by by some small group of people so that everybody was watching the same stuff the stuff was uh low art it was

[01:08:59] scratching this itch but people started to feel shitty um about spending six hours a day watching this bullshit irony comes along sort of dominates us feel better and that irony i think uh dfw

[01:09:16] wants to say that started eating at the core of of the american psyche because that cynicism that comes with the irony that unwillingness to be sincere and the uh invulnerability that it brings you like takes away the rewards of sincerity and it makes you feel bulletproof against criticism

[01:09:39] in a way that i think he thinks is very unhealthy no no no but my point is that like that just is not true of a lot of the like great television of the 2000s that it is infused with this kind of

[01:09:54] cynical that's what yeah that's the point i'm making which is that i think that he would say that it's not doing this tv that we're watching now is doesn't have that pernicious

[01:10:07] rotting effect that the tv that he was talking about has one because irony was at the center of it and two because it was such a cultural force that it was doing it to all americans

[01:10:17] like it took over the tv waves and that was like the primary emotional way of like reacting to art and i think that he thought that that was bad so whether or not watching too much deadwood is

[01:10:31] like a waste of life i think it would be a very different waste of life than what what um dfw was trying to say was going on yeah so i think i have a slightly darker interpretation of what's

[01:10:43] going on i think he thinks that irony is the latest in the ever evolving ways like that tv is able to keep our attention you know and we didn't need it in the fifties and sixties we

[01:10:58] needed like an ordinary guy an ordinary family and then we started to you know that started to bug us it started to seem too uh buttoned up so we started making fun of it and um and you know

[01:11:11] that's where we were that's where we are now when he's writing it but i guess i take that you know that's going to run its course too but then there'll be something else now i agree with you of

[01:11:21] course like if we have to be wasting our life like i'd rather be doing it with deadwood than with murder she wrote or uh you know dallas or something but but i do think i was trying

[01:11:36] i was thinking that you know like i was thinking of the shows that i love like veet maybe my favorite comedy of all time yeah it is a it's not like self-aware exactly and ironic i actually think

[01:11:49] it's very sincere but it is so deeply cynical about the political institutions um that we live under and and i think almost to the point of like nastiness like i really don't think they're being

[01:12:01] ironic it's just like that's what they think like this is and and i think they're right in like a lot of these counts like they're capturing something now part of me thinks you know and so

[01:12:12] in addition to just being like the funniest one of the funniest shows of all time like that's good part of me thinks oh it's flattering my own skepticism about in contemporary institutions and in that way allowing me to be like friends with people who

[01:12:30] in the same way that you know somebody listening to like choppo or someone it's like oh here are these people that are believing things that i believe and they're doing it in an entertaining way

[01:12:39] and that's like the cure for loneliness right now you know and even though these things are great like succession is like this where it just it feels like you get to be with these other people who are

[01:12:56] you know exposing the venality and corruption at the heart of like all these things that we hold dear and it's like maybe that's like the new way like figure out different ways of getting us all to

[01:13:09] still do the same thing that we're doing which is not engage with the real world yeah maybe like i that's it's a good it's a good question and i don't like i admit i hadn't thought of it the

[01:13:21] way that you're thinking of it um because i was so focused on the specific damage that the irony part does and i was yeah and i think at least in this essay i mean i don't think they

[01:13:35] boss roles would disagree with you that that's everything you said could be just as gross but i think that here he was so concerned that there's no way out of the irony trap

[01:13:44] like that that the only cure for irony is sincerity and that just gets easily mocked and so it's so it's sort of like a cancer um so i there is a part that i wanted to read he says so then how

[01:13:56] have irony this is right after he points out that irony originally was intended to point out hypocrisy um and it was it did this job of like exposing the phoniness and he says so then

[01:14:08] how have irony irreverence and rebellion come to be not liberating but enfeebling in the culture today's avant garde tries to write about one clues to be found in the fact that irony is still around

[01:14:18] bigger than ever after 30 years 30 long years as the dominant mode of hip expression it's not a mode that wears especially well as hide puts it irony has only emergency use carried over time

[01:14:29] it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage this this is because irony entertaining as it is serves an exclusively negative function it's critical and destructive a ground clearing surely this is the way our postmodern father saw it but irony is singularly

[01:14:45] unuseful when it comes to constructing anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks yes yeah yeah and i'd say i was a little bit convinced by video essay i watched today i think that

[01:14:58] there has been a rise in sincerity that uh wallace didn't quite see didn't get to see and so i watched a video essay which i can track down if i remember i'll put a link to

[01:15:10] that had a bunch of examples from shows from the aughts where sincerity started to creep back in so the american office um parks and rec where you still have like characters who are the

[01:15:24] sarcastic ones and who are the dicks but there is a heart to it and there's people who every once in a while truly sort of like expose their feelings and they're the good people on the show and

[01:15:36] and i think sincerity has come back a bit but and that's what by the way like the 18 year olds gravitate towards 15 year olds you know it's exactly that kind of warmth and and sincerity with you know enough self-awareness that you're not talking about fiduciary duties so

[01:15:57] i can imagine john writing a tv there is a phrase to revolve around a single axis there's a phrase by that i love here a couple paragraphs down he says make no mistake irony terrorizes us the reason why our pervasive

[01:16:18] cultural irony is it once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down all irony is a variation on a sort of existential poker face and i just i thought

[01:16:30] that was just like the perfect way of describing it um so now to get to your your point though about cynicism is one that i hadn't really thought about because like i don't think that cynicism

[01:16:42] and sincerity are necessarily conflicting and in some ways it's better to be cynical and sincere than to be just a sarcastic kind of the wire is cynical with but also yeah so there's two questions one is how has that that just the nature of like the the tv

[01:17:02] shows changed and the other one is whether or not this has made it better or worse or is it different for us like is yeah yeah what you say makes me realize that i've like conflated two

[01:17:14] things and i think that it's definitely worth separating them so the first is what television like as a medium does for us right and the second is the like the the effects of taking this ironic

[01:17:31] attitude that has become uh or at least that was dominant and and and still certainly exists like twitter is like you could like anything he says about the irony and the attitude and all the

[01:17:44] like corrosive effects just applies to twitter and the posters and everything is like this kind of meta level of uh you know and with that same kind of like impotence like there's nothing we

[01:17:56] can do about it so we can at least make fun of it yeah and i'm i'm not no one can really mock me if i'm always just ironic about things exactly and like it's not going to do you any good

[01:18:05] to be sincere so it's you know that's just inescapable and i think he's right about a lot of that stuff but i i think that where i think things have changed is that attitude is not primarily

[01:18:17] associated with television anymore if anything like that attitude is migrated to part uh big parts of the internet and television has gotten significantly more sincere probably you know

[01:18:29] like in the same way that he was calling for just as a reaction to you do parks and rec because not everything has to be like a bummer and talk about like just how people suck right you know like you

[01:18:41] can actually also have a show about uh flawed but ultimately good people you know and bobs burgers is like that too kind of you know this is what i liked about the first season at ed lasso

[01:18:54] it was sincerity in a world of you know people who were trying to tear down one person's character and he refused to let go of his sincerity but think about what that show was like it got released in

[01:19:09] the pandemic where everybody is desperate to like connect with something and it did it gave off the first season like you know it's in retrospect it was evil and it's like demonic but of ted lasso

[01:19:24] yeah there's only one season that's right uh but uh it gave people like like i don't even know i haven't gone back and watched it but like maybe like i was just also craving uh like i although yeah i don't

[01:19:38] know but uh but but i guess my point is they're they're still doing the even if it's sincere it's it's like we're back to the 60s then but where like we are craving the same thing from television

[01:19:52] and just manifests in different forms and it's like psychos through the kinds of forms that it'll be when we get too sincere it'll go back to being ironic and when you know yeah you know they're the

[01:20:03] not like i was around in the 50s and 60s but i did watch a lot of nick at night that would show all of those old shows like leave to beaver donna reed uh honey the honeymoon yeah all that

[01:20:13] and i think that the the sincerity also just had this thick layer of positivity you know which was just which sometimes yeah you know like the world leave it to be yeah the world of the 50s sitcom was pretty like pretty uh positive like post-war optimism um

[01:20:33] was not exceptionally diverse no exactly they didn't they didn't feel them in Detroit um they didn't have they didn't have to like explain what they were doing to combat anti-racism

[01:20:48] or no to combat uh to to further the interviews yeah um and uh and so the sincerity that's come back around is a sincerity that it is at least more sophisticated about re the reality of the world

[01:21:04] you know like so so it's cyclical maybe but but i think cyclical and maybe maybe it's an upward spiral um so i think like what he says about irony is is 100 true and it's uh and it's a very

[01:21:19] tough problem because it uh you know ultimately i think you know the most pessimistic reading of what he's saying is our society is set up in really deep ways to make us desperate for social

[01:21:35] connection and meaning and purpose and some kind of uh sense that we're not just biding our sorry that we're not just biding our time until we die and and like that's the deal television offers

[01:21:51] a way he's like of addressing that but it but in doing so it becomes like addictive it becomes it becomes like i like what he says about uh you know television both is a problem because now the

[01:22:05] more you watch tell television the more you withdraw from society yeah you know this could be video games now this could be you know like the uh the internet um or it could still be

[01:22:15] television but like the people who just watch fox news or CNN all day um but whatever it is it's further isolating you from people and so it both is like a cause of your problems and offers

[01:22:27] itself as a solution yeah he said that he said that is the when he was talking about addiction i thought it was a really elegant way it is great like it's like uh the Homer Simpson like

[01:22:38] to be here the cause of and solution all of our problems you know but that's what television offered then and like i i kind of wonder if like that's one thing that hasn't changed you know

[01:22:53] certainly if you broaden television to include you know uh maybe more of the visual internet youtube things like that well this is a thing you know you talked about the rise of prestige tv

[01:23:06] and how how you know these there are these amazing shows so it's not just all low base art um but the the rise of the the proliferation of production of of all kinds of tv shows that fill

[01:23:22] a niche means that there are a ton of really stupid things out there now and like i don't want to judge anybody because people i very much love watch a lot of reality tv but to me reality tv

[01:23:36] is is like the lowest common denominator of of this stuff right it's not the the wires and the deadwoods and the sopranos which i don't feel shitty after watching three hours of those i just

[01:23:49] don't like i don't like i don't know i used to have the reality shows like the sopranos or of it oh yeah of course no you feel like it's like not if you feel productive but i do i do remember

[01:24:00] that feeling of like having the tv on all like i realized wow this tv's been on all day like on a sunday and i haven't done and i did feel like shit um yeah uh and that reality like whatever or whatever

[01:24:14] you want to put in there i'm sure that there is a ton of stuff that now like scratches the edge of people who have no interest in in like the higher art of prestige tv but but i

[01:24:25] guess the point is like okay like here's a more cynical way of viewing what you're saying right your tastes aren't for the bachelor your tastes aren't for you know like um the big bang theory or whatever

[01:24:41] you want to be flattered by deadwood and madman i don't know if you like madman and not really dark and like these things so like um so that's your way of like withdrawing from society but

[01:24:58] feeling like you're not whereas with other people it's uh these reality shows but in the end it's having the same effect and i agree like i there are times where i can binge watch something and i

[01:25:12] feel terrible about it like like i start like yeah you know figuring out a way to not let myself do that again and then there are other times where i'm like that was a great day you know like i watched

[01:25:21] like four of the but it's but the fact that we feel better about it doesn't mean that it's not having the like bad effects that he's talking about because i think joe briefcase sometimes feels

[01:25:31] like he's had a good day watching his shows too um but what he doesn't realize and what we may not realize is it is still uh eating away at like our ability to bond with others yeah and

[01:25:45] and our soul yeah that like that i'm very open to the possibility that in that specific way that um isolation uh of that that tv can bring by by full by inter g even much by entertaining you

[01:26:00] for that many hours might prevent you from actually going out and like meeting up with people but i want to resist a little bit like lumping them all together and i'm gonna appeal well i

[01:26:11] wasn't lumping them all together i was just saying that it might have might have similar effects it still might have the same effect that on you that it does on joe briefcase who watches the

[01:26:21] low the lower brow stuff yeah it's and it's already kind of arrogant to be to be categorizing low and high brow but i'm gonna keep doing it but i'm gonna appeal to your fiduciary i'm gonna

[01:26:33] appeal to a conversation that i know we had and i don't remember which episode it was but it was about the very like about whether art can be you know like you can say that some art is

[01:26:44] better than other art because of what it does to you and i think that there is something that is of real value that i get in some of these tv shows that is not unlike what i get in reading

[01:26:55] like whatever good war history or whatever that that actually does leave me with something that other lower common denominator stuff doesn't leave me with like i will admit i i've been watching

[01:27:07] shark tank it's like the only reality tv show that i watch and it's oh mr oh you know i am above all this reality show bullshit so i i admit it um uh and i it reminds well um and but i do feel

[01:27:29] like i wasted a night when i watch it but in the moment i'm totally entertained um but i don't feel the same as if like i watch it like i did have this weird thing where i was in a hotel one night

[01:27:41] and saw like the last half of a big brother and this was a long time ago this was when like it was like the second reality show or something like that uh it was either a big brother or like

[01:27:52] the bachelor i think it was the bachelor or the bachelor at and um i just started seeing myself invested in this and i was like i want to see the next one and then i was like nope you're not doing

[01:28:03] this like and then like i really never watched another react like i i just kind of knew that i could right you know it was like with lost i was the same way i was like i could get

[01:28:12] like really invested with this but it's not worth my time and so like for that one for that single genre like i was able to prevent myself good job good job thank you um you know can we

[01:28:24] talk a little bit about the end of of this essay did foster wallace talks about this guy um gilder who before i want to say one other thing about what you're saying because i agree with you that

[01:28:40] um the you know like that there is like this stuff is better like you know it's not just like oh like deadwood tailors to my taste yeah but uh you know whatever the fuck you're you're a

[01:28:54] list about the ncis is uh tailors to uh this person's taste and you can't compare one or the other but they're both doing the same thing they're definitely not um but like i think that

[01:29:14] wait actually had something good to say about this um what the fuck it's just vanished from my mind well this is oh okay now i remember okay so uh there's this one interaction that i had as a kid

[01:29:32] when i was um when i was trying to convince my parents to get cable you know and it was like she was coming out and uh but you know not everybody had it and so i was trying to convince

[01:29:44] my parents and there's this old lady like from the time i was probably 12 or something she seemed like an old lady to me i don't know how old she was but i remember like talking to them and

[01:29:56] she happened to be at our house and i said to her she was a very nice old lady very really genial warm old lady and i said to her you know like what i'm trying to tell them is that it's not

[01:30:06] more tv it's better tv and she says right i like i she was like i don't dispute that it's better tv but the point is when the tv is not good you do something else you read a book or you

[01:30:22] play outside or you um you know but uh so like i think maybe one concern is it's not that these things aren't better it's actually almost a problem that it's better because if it were

[01:30:36] if it wasn't better like we would be actually doing other stuff that um yeah that so and so maybe that's like the most worrisome part of like what tv does is it just keeps proliferating

[01:30:51] to the point where there's always something that good that you can watch but then you're not doing these other things that you would otherwise do like you know when you have a power out of it

[01:31:00] and all of a sudden you're like talking to your neighbors and um yeah going for like long bike rides or something right you know right there there is um uh what's the right metaphor right it's just

[01:31:14] like you can be the best thing of like something that's not good and right and i wanted to say the world's tallest midget but i don't think that that's allowed the title of the episode

[01:31:31] the world's tallest little person um and we're gonna get a bad score from sbs um uh yeah me that it's hard to argue with that we're like that if if it's the case

[01:31:50] that i really would be doing other like more valuable things i'm not convinced that i would be like i might well that's the question is like are we gonna find some bullshit to do anyway and

[01:32:02] if that's true like then then like again that's consistent with like we're broken like society is set up wrong for us to be doing meaningful things so we might as well at least get better

[01:32:15] at doing the stuff that is compatible with living in our society i was gonna i was gonna flippantly say like what do you want me to do play board games like how is that any better

[01:32:26] but right but that's actually that is better yeah that's like you're interacting with other human beings in a way like that there is just an an enemy that comes from from the that complete

[01:32:38] solitary individualist nature even if you're what i mean i i find it rewarding to watch like with nicky so that we can talk about the stuff but it's still not like sitting and talking yeah well yeah yeah i mean like 90 percent of my relationship with my daughter

[01:32:55] follows us like watching some kind of screen but like like but but it's also talking about it and like it's just yeah and that's what um pause the not pause the no i'm pausing my drop box because

[01:33:12] the child it started getting choppy i started losing you and i saw that it was in kick some um i will say this for better or for worse uh there is something that i deeply miss

[01:33:26] and i think i've said it on this podcast before about the days when tv was shitty as it was we all watched it together and we could talk about the same tv and and i remember excitedly

[01:33:40] you know on friday morning talking to my friends about the cosby show in a different world because like we all watched it and and i missed that and and tv just plays a such a big role in my

[01:33:53] psyche like i feel like i grew up in the 80s just 80s cartoons and 80s sitcoms and something that my whole generation shares and letterman like the biggest like that's like such a phenomenon that

[01:34:07] like if you were like if you were of the demographic that we were like you just loved fucking letterman and he and it was exactly encapsulated the kind of ironic stance that he's talking

[01:34:20] about but in the best way yeah absolutely yeah he's like one of the best examples of that yeah no totally uh i and there is like a common we we have like a lingua franca of stupid references

[01:34:38] that we can make to each other that we just can't anymore to our kids and and you know this is why we're like gen ways it this is why gen x is like the laughing stock of gen z when

[01:34:48] we're teaching them and we try to make references like the world is in the entertainment and internet world is in shambles like you you can make a reference that maybe three out of like 50 kids

[01:34:59] will get and maybe you know it's not like it used to be no but that's true like when you're teaching you notice this um you know there's certain holdovers like uh the simpsons and young south

[01:35:13] park and they also watch the same sim like they like they're watching their early simpsons not the later simpsons and um but still you're right like it's so fractured right now but at the same time

[01:35:25] like probably more than ever like if there's some show say like severance or something like that that catches on all of a sudden now you have not a not the whole country and not your students

[01:35:39] and not but you have a whole group of people that you can talk to about that and something that exciting now you know used to come out like once every five years and now it comes out like

[01:35:49] like five times a year you know like there's there's a lot of shows that I really like that I'd never heard of before in the beginning of 2022 there's no way that would happen you know

[01:36:01] like no absolutely tv was I find it very hard to describe to the same my daughter how bad tv was like you would literally turn on the tv like what I had 13 channels as a kid right and

[01:36:15] and three networks and you chose the least bad of the things that was on the tv man I'd watch fucking alice yeah I watched alice man male designer male kiss my grits I was like all

[01:36:30] over that and you knew it was like it's exactly what he describes where you knew even as a kid you knew oh you know I know I knew I shouldn't be spending my time watching small wonder after school

[01:36:43] well that one that one was that one we actually like we've we had this like ping pong tournament and the loser had to watch two small wonders like and they like they had to provide evidence

[01:36:58] that they watched two whole small ones so you might have been more like well I I joke about our age difference all the time but but our age difference actually does mean a lot in terms of

[01:37:12] like how old we were in the 80s to watch right I was up in high school you were like I was like beginning of high school yeah ggi punky bruser you know silver spoons so I can difference

[01:37:28] silver spoons like when I was young I think I non ironically enjoyed it oh for sure but but the point is maybe what we've done is not address the problem we've just like figured out a better way of being

[01:37:43] fucked by the problem right have we polished the problem really is that we're like we yearn for something that we can't have yeah we've polished the turd but the turd is a turd

[01:37:55] and that's why I pre-commit to talking to you for three hours at least once every other week well that's the other thing like you know not only are there these like like five or six probably per

[01:38:08] year of just really interesting cool shows that you that you can watch but you can also just like read about like read really smart people say interesting things about them and listen to

[01:38:18] podcasts about them and again all of this is satisfying I think this need that we get sometimes doing this right of just being excited about something meaningful in a pretty sincere way like being excited about something that you think is great and sharing that with somebody else

[01:38:36] and now there's way more ways of having that experience and I don't even think it's unhealthy in all cases or even most cases like it's really like I love if I've

[01:38:47] just saw a cool movie knowing that I have like a great podcast about it and like four good articles and analyses and reviews of it like that's awesome I'm like a pick and shit but

[01:38:59] maybe that's just polishing the turd like you said yeah I don't know all I know is uh I fucking enjoy TV can't wait to talk about dead wood again yes I know well nothing bad about TV applies to it yeah nothing bad period applies to

[01:39:20] yeah so I don't know if we have time or if it's worth it to talk about the end oh yeah you wanted to go to yeah so this guy gilder um Foster Wallace sort of takes him on and he says like

[01:39:32] this guy gilder thinks that with the advent of computers and um with the decentral kind of like decentralization of of TV production and he says that with the transistor will you know everybody

[01:39:44] will be able to play like the producer like the guy with the clipboard and we won't have the same issues that we have with TV now and David Foster Wallace sort of dismisses it um not just

[01:39:58] technical I mean he doesn't think it's going to solve the problem but he seems to dismiss that that's what's going to happen anyway but really I maybe maybe not maybe not he definitely doesn't

[01:40:08] think that it's going to resolve the problem but he seems to be a little skeptical of the the the big companies whatever relinquish power over what was on on TV no matter how small

[01:40:20] transistors got but I think now when you look at YouTube you really can't like anybody can put something up on YouTube and everybody has access to it and it's just another example of like the

[01:40:33] everything we've been talking about which is the fragmentation of everything but also just the real niche uh that that is created like you could watch like I've been watching stuff about wrist watches because I've been like loving wrist watches lately I just spend so much time watching

[01:40:47] shit you know some guy made in his basement to be talking about the latest whatever wrist watch it's incredible yeah yeah like there's certain stuff like like I love watching video essays

[01:40:57] about movies on YouTube and it's like I feel good like it's like I'm really learning more stuff it's it's it's like enriching my ability to appreciate a lot of that stuff it's and but it's very fragmented and it is probably you know keeping us maybe from doing something

[01:41:18] that you know we haven't been political about this but you certainly could be and say this is all a way of kind of numbing us and making us just either accepting of the status quo or in the case

[01:41:33] of like all these very high you know these shows that are so cynical about capitalism and political structures that support it it makes us feel like well yeah we get this you know there's

[01:41:45] nothing we can do because they're too powerful so it's still kind of instills this fatalism in us but it makes us feel like well you know we're not the ones that are you know like we get it and

[01:41:55] we're opposed to it and you know like shows the world will change I mean you know like there are shows that make you feel not that but like we get it yeah you know like yeah we get how

[01:42:09] corrupt everybody is but it but it's you know like it almost re these things can reinforce that sense of just pure fatalism and kind of nihilism about it and it's not it's I mean they're bad they're bad

[01:42:22] shows or that they're destructive they're good they really uncovering stuff but I wonder if it has this also kind of maintaining the status right that's the question would I be doing something if it weren't for that yeah I don't know there is this part where in speaking of

[01:42:38] Gilder's view that pretty soon everybody like there will be so many people producing different kinds of entertainment it's a really it's super on gatti um Dave Foster Wallace says something that I

[01:42:50] I think is insightful I don't know if it's true but but it's definitely made me think he said the passivity and schizoid decay still endure for Lainer and his character's reception of images and waves of data he's referring to somebody who had uh envisioned a Gilder-esque

[01:43:07] dystopia where there is all this choice he says the ability to combine them only adds a layer of disorientation when all experience can be deconstructed and reconfigured there become simply too many choices and in the absence of any credible non-commercial guides for living the freedom

[01:43:23] to choose is about as liberating quote unquote as a bad acid trip each quantum is as good as the next and the only standard of an assembly's quality is its weirdness and congruity its ability to stand

[01:43:34] out from a crowd of other image constructs and wow some audience which could describe the state of affairs now there is so much that it might be daunting to try to choose um yeah it's pick

[01:43:47] can be parallel yeah for sure and but you know this is where algorithms actually make a difference like oh my god they the youtube algorithm tells me stuff it was going to tells me what to watch

[01:44:01] an algorithm prop propaganda I love the algorithms for that yeah but yeah do you worry that it's a problem that it's not just informing you of stuff that is to your taste but shaping your

[01:44:15] tastes yes absolutely it's absolutely shaping my taste like it but but in a way that I feel like I have I have agency over it so so suppose that I'm watching a bunch of like uh you know videos about

[01:44:32] sound right mix mixing it will show me maybe something about video production and if I click on that then it'll start showing me a bunch of stuff about video production and I might get

[01:44:42] really into that so in that sense it can really shape my interests but in a way that I actually enjoy like it doesn't feel nefarious but it I think it very well can be nefarious in the political

[01:44:54] sphere where it starts shaping opinions that aren't just about like what stupid nerd shit you like the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people that he didn't exist your youtube like wristwatch rabbit hole it's funny today I just today I watched a youtube

[01:45:16] video suggested to me about 20 facts about the usual suspects that you might not have known all right all right are you immensely pleased I am join us next time on very bad

[01:46:07] body can have a break I'm a very good man just a very bad wizard