Blaming the Internet Is Like Blaming the Mirror | Shimmy Says Ep. 46

All right. You know, I'm gonna say something that maybe might this, some of you off make others, um, others of you uncomfortable. It's not politically correct, but I'm gonna say it anyway.

Blaming the internet for what's wrong with us as a society. It's like blaming the mirror when you look at it and you look fat. Yeah, I said it fat.

I was fat most of my life. I still, I'm still not skinny. I'm not here to shame anyone.

But if you don't write the reflection in the mirror, don't blame the mirror. Put down the freaking cannoli. Blaming the internet for what's wrong with us is like blaming the mirror because you don't like what you see.

The algorithm didn't ruin society. It amplified what we rewarded. Now, a ai enters the same incentives.

The question isn't about the tool, it's about us. All right? So obviously you've listened and read the law, but I like to read along and listen to a podcast.

If it has that option, I find it more soaks in. But this was up on the New York Times podcast that featured Ezra Klein interviewing really smart guys. Uh, Corey Dro and Tim Rule, both of them smart guys, all three of them are Azule.

Serious conversation. The podcast was, we didn't ask for this internet. And then, you know, they were talking about how the internet stopped being about connection and turned into really something else entirely.

Something we're not really comfortable and happy with, happy with. It's a place where outrage beats truth. Engagement beats sanity.

As Tin Ru says, extraction beats trust. You know, Cory Doctor sums it up. He calls it in ification.

I actually, I love that word. I think it captures what's gone wrong with the internet perfectly in ification. Of course, when I hear in ification, I think of the song Ation and that read to a whole nother kind of rabbit hole we've got down here at Tech Truck.

We actually did a music video, a parody, our California case, using completely synthetic music and ai. I'll tell you about it at the end. But the world premier of it is at the end of today's show.

So stick around when I've done for our world premier video of the, of the, uh, song in ification. But honestly, another way of looking at it is this whole internet thing seems to have gone to hell in the hand basket as we used to stay on the street where I grew up and listen on the diagnosis about it being even S****d and used for extraction. I think Corey and Tim were right.

But here's where I have the problem. And, and you know what, frankly, it p****s me off a little too. Everybody keeps saying the internet did this.

The internet did this. The internet did this. The algorithm did that.

Social media did this. AI did that. You know what this reminds you of?

It's like Frankie Angelo and the Godfather part two testifying to Congress. And then he says, yeah, sure, but guys, let's stop the blame game. No, full stop.

The internet didn't do this. Hell though we did this. We did it to ourselves.

The internet didn't wake up one morning, stretch, crack its knuckles and say, Hey, today I feel like rooting society. No, we did this. The Internet's a tool.

AI is a tool. They're all tools. And tools don't have morals.

People do. It is like you have a hammer. You could build a house where there you could crack a skull, but don't blame the hammer.

And that's what I'm saying here. That's what I mean. Co tro laid it out.

Cleanly platforms start off treating users like royalty. Then they pivot to treating advertisers like royalty. And then they pivot again and treat their shareholders like royalty.

And everybody else, man, we're just livestock. We're not even pets. We're the cattle.

That's the acidification cycle right there, guys. You feel it Every time a product gets worse, more adds more friction, more junk recommendations, more paywalls, more tears, less value. Tim Ru calls this extraction.

Same movie, different angle Platforms don't just connect people anymore. They conquer the space. They rig the toll booth, they siphon value upwards, hollowing out the ecosystems below.

It's, this is all true, but there's a part of this. We need to acknowledge 'em. We need to own it.

It's not the internet. The internet's a mirror. If you look in the mirror and the refre reflection's ugly, you can scream at the mirror, but you really should be screaming at yourself.

The internet reflects us. And if that, as I said, if that re reflection is ugly, don't get, you don't get up and you don't punch the glass. You know the mirror.

If you've looked in mirrors and you know God for therapy, the mirror shows us everything. It's our curiosity, our creativity, our generosity sometimes. But it's also our cruelty.

It's our greed. It's our mob instinct instincts. It's our most base instincts.

This last decade or so, maybe 15 years, that re reflection has been brutal and getting more brutal. People say things online that they would never say in person or out loud, at least they used to. Now because of it, Bruce saying it online, we're starting to say it out loud in person too.

At school board meetings, on airplanes, in restaurants, workplaces, even among families. The screen didn't invent this behavior though. It rewarded it and it legitimized it.

And now it's walking around in public among us, like it pays rent and it's allowed. And that's the real problem. Blaming the internet is like blaming a gun for having a trigger.

The trigger's just part of the gun. The bullet goes in the gun. The question is not even who pulled the trigger or who used the gun.

The question is, why'd we give him the gun? And why did we let 'em keep alerting? Why did we hand them the whole damn ammo factory?

You know? Yeah, we could say without the, the internet, without the platform, the bad actors don't scale as fast. And that's true.

But guys, that that genie left the bottle decades ago, the train left the station, the network exists. The infrastructure exists. I don't think you could pull, pull the plug on it.

The question now among us is what are we willing to do about it? Let's talk about another thing though, that also is kind of freaking people out. And that's ai, right?

This week. Open ai. Now they're running ra running ads.

People say, you see same, same stuff there for a day. It's over. And this one's even worse 'cause think about the intimate details that AI may have of that'll woo against us in putting ads.

But this isn't a betrayal, my friends. It's confirmation. AI doesn't float above economics.

It's not, it isn't immune to incentive. It's not magically virtuous or good because it's not about the in acidification of ai. The dangerous thing is pretending that this in acidification isn't happening.

It's happening before us and we've gotta do something. I'd rather see the mi mirror clearly and the reflection in the mirror clearly than live in a fantasy, some rear and mirror on the wall, on the raw thing where it just blows smoke up my butt. 'cause here's something else to square over.

If you're a bider, a founder, a leader, an operator, you don't get to pretend that you are just an innocent bystander user this time. We know how this movie ends. We know an incentives drift unchecked.

The question, is it were I and Tify, the question is, who says no to it? And when are they gonna say no? Who chooses paid over free constraints, over paid, over free constraints, over, uh, growth at all costs?

Trust over optimization. Friction where friction protects people. Hey guys, that's not vibes, that's backbone and it costs money.

And quite frankly, to make decisions like that, that may cost you money, you either gotta have a really big set or you gotta have crazy conviction, guys. It takes being bold and being bold doesn't mean yelling here on X or LinkedIn or wherever I am watching me now. It means changing based on what things actually cost.

Talk about nothing is free. Be honest and open about what you're going to do with people's information and their, and their time and their data. Refusing dark pat patterns, even when they convert.

Building products that don't need surveillance to survive. It means being bold is Teller uses the truth instead of seducing them, telling them, you didn't fail the internet because we weren't smart, we were too smart, we failed it because we weren't brave. If you were in bold, AI gives us one more run at this.

It's, and I'm not throwing you hype and I'm not trying to nonsense you. It's about responsibility more. Some of us say ai, I'll fix all of it.

We AI can help us, sure, but it doesn't fix it if we don't fix it. Moderation at scale, surfacing better info, detecting, spam, all of that. But remember the a, uh, the end of the day ai, AI is just another tool and it's how we use it.

If the valves behind it are extraction domination and ification, AI will just make this mess faster and more efficiently and make the in acidification deeper. You know what others say? It's generational that digital natives will develop antibodies and they won't be in acidified, if you will.

Maybe. I hope so. But waiting for the next generation to clean up the mess that we've made over the last 25, 30 years here, especially over the last 10 15, is the moral equivalent of leaving your garbage on the sidewalk and saying, Hey, don't worry, someone else will get it.

Ultimate kick the can down the road a bit. You know what? When you get to my age, you realize we kicked too many cans now too many roads and all you get at the end is a bigger mess to clean up.

That's not the answer. It just means for more of this in ification, there is that word again. And you know, another word that comes in my mind when I hear in, in ification, everybody hates it.

Regulation. When a handful of companies get to shape what billions of people see, believe by fear and fight over, that's not just the market, my friends. That's power.

And it's concentrated power. And concentrated power is almost never good for the public. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

It's always been true and it still is true. That is as true now as it ever was. Know we regulated the railroads, we regulated due utilities, we regulated banks.

Tech has kind of been an exception. We've always skirted around, not because it's special, but because it's been untouchable till now. And this is what we round up with neighbors.

Social media platforms and hyperscalers and AI need to be treated like public utilities, at least in part, yeah, different obligations, different standards, different accountability. But I know how that sounds. I know I'm a boomer or I'm actual a Jones, Jones generation in between boomer and X.

But it's very, it says very much to me like, you know, you've heard this before. Let's, we're on the blue ribbon committee and maybe we can look into it. But here's the truth.

The stakes this time are too high for vibes based government and good in tech intentions. So let start wrapping up here with Shimmy's. Take until we're ready to go behind this mirror and admit that what's staring back at us is our own doing, our own reflection.

Nothing is gonna change. We can blame the algorithm, we can blame the platforms. We can blame ai.

We can blame the whole internet. Or we can rep recognize that these are tools that just amplify our own intent, our own instincts. And the internet problem is ours.

The mirror is at the enemy. Here we are. The reflection is the warning.

So stop screaming at the mirror about the internet. Decide what we're ready to change in this reflection. Because if you're going to fix this and save ourselves, it's time to be bold.

It's time to be bold. And if you don't like what you see, don't l the grass. Be bold.

Be bold. Now I got something special for you. I mentioned it in the beginning, right?

This is a music video de be debut music video from Textron. It's from a o Brian Culker, our Grammy Award winning sound editor. He conjured this up.

It's Sunday ai. It's all ai. It's all pathetic.

I think you're gonna like it, it take it for what it is. Hate on it if you want to, but it's pretty cool. I think I'm shimmy.

I'm out and I'll see you next week. Welcome to the feed where the truth gets thin. And scroll your soul down.

Let the algorithm win. Started with a promise and it would've told every click cost more than you thought it would. Caught your soul free as in speech.

Now it's free as bath sign here. Agree there, it's already too late. Use the term product.

Product. Turn trap, smile for the camera while they sell you back your map. They said, connect the world in extraction on attention.

Then monetize distractions in. Everything gets worse by liberation to just ads in your dreams, metrics in your head. Every platform rides the moment it's fed.

Start preaching. Don't be evil in slides into squeezing every dollar out the uses day. Ride Blue, check Tru Rage for Rent.

Outrage boosted nuance bench. You thought the app work for you. Turns out you're working for the app Power Love Scale score.

Love Recommended is just another way to look around. It's not just you started as connection turned into traction with the better you Fix didn't crack itself. We just stopped liking what?

Yeah, don't blame the screen. Don't blame the feed. Don't blame the code for human greed.

Tools don't lie. People do. And platforms just amplify what we already knew.

The same nostalgia. It's the bill. You don't pay with money, you pay with attention, time and will in acidification say it slow.

Say and allow. The internet didn't lose its way we showed it who we're Proud. So Look in the glass before you curse the machine.

The ride didn't start online, it just went wide screen and acidification.