Bad things happen when we let robots decide what’s good
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What is the 'crisis of taste' and how did tech flip media on its head?
What we're trying to unpack today, which is what we've been calling the crisis of taste. Tech companies kind of like flipped media on its head about 15 years ago, where instead of the commercial sort of being what everything was based around, that's now kind of incidental. So it's like, okay, how do we make culture now?
When you're outsourcing taste, that feels weird because that's the thrill of doing anything. The thrill of doing anything is these are my tastes. I like this. I hope someone else likes it too.
All right, so I did not say anything at the live show about why you were not able to attend. I just said, hey, he can't be here, I'm really sorry. I would love to hear what happened because you sent me an email that I don't think I've ever received before.
I reached out to you because I had what I thought was poison ivy on my face.
Well, we had a whole plan for today, but I think we should just sort of explore this medical mystery for the next hour.
Yeah, let's WebMD this shit.
You've always wanted to be House. I have always wanted to be house. I'm extremely unpleasant to be around just like him. So I, yeah.
I had a terrible time with Poison Ivy as a kid because I was convinced I couldn't get it because I played in a patch of Poison Ivy without any problems. So for years, I thought, I can't get it. I'm fine. And then I got it, and I spread it all over my entire body, which was not fun. Were you bragging? Were you like, look at me running this field? I was bragging, yeah.
Oh, no.
I was bragging. Yeah, I was hoisted by my own petard. Absolutely.
That now reminds me, though, that as so I ran into a friend and I said, yeah, I think I've got poison ivy on my face. And then he proceeded to tell me about a friend of his who has adult age children and that kid and a bunch of their friends. I think they were probably like college age. They had recently gone camping. And so while they were camping, they decided to have a bonfire. They just grabbed whatever wood and sticks and things. They light this giant bonfire, not realizing that some of the stuff that they had lit on fire was poison ivy.
That's like so dangerous. Oh, my God.
They all breathe it in. No. And so then they've got poison ivy on the inside and are all having to medicate. And I don't know if you're just drinking calamine lotion at that point.
I literally heard that as a story, like, years ago, and it's haunted me ever since, that you could just, like, have Poison Ivy inside of you. That's like a Widow's Gate bit. That's like... Yeah, that's brutal. That's unreal. Poison Ivy is actually kind of a fantastic metaphor for what we are going to be talking about today, but... which is AI and the colonization of taste. But first, let me set up the show. My name is Ryan Broderick. With me, as always, is Grant Irving, my producer. And this is Panic World, a show about how the internet warps our minds, our culture, and eventually reality. And joining us today is Wyatt Cenac. Wyatt, thank you so much for doing this. When we reached out to you pre-HealthScare about being on our live show, we asked you a question that we've been asking all of our guests recently, which is, you know, what do you do online?
you know, what, what, what do you enjoy about, you know, the internet? Uh, and one example is a podcaster, PJ vote. He was on a show of ours and he said he likes the smoking meats subreddit. And so we ended up doing like a 10 minute segment on stage where we just sort of had him talk through why he likes smoking watching people smoke meat like briskets on the internet. And you told us that you really enjoyed super clips or compilations of 1970s and 80s and 90s advertisements. Is that right?
Yes, that is the thing that either I found it or the algorithm found me but that is the that is the thing that if i'm on youtube i will i will get pushed a lot of those videos and at the right time of the day i'll say yeah sure and next thing i know i've watched an hour of commercials from 1986.
My girlfriend is the same way. She got me hooked on this.
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