Hey, humans. How's it going?
Susan Ruth here. Thanks for listening to another
episode of Hey Human Podcast.
This is episode 426,
and my guest is Matthew Creighton. Matthew's episode
is quite timely
as he's a political strategist,
digital age expert,
and founder of Publicix,
which builds campaigns at the local, state, and
federal levels
in both private and public sectors.
We discuss the weird and wild ride of
American politics,
the complications of social media and trying to
connect to a populace who feel adrift and
are as easily swayed by untruths as there
are truths.
Incredibly fascinating conversation.
It went on for a while. I took
up so much of his time, and he
was so gracious about it because I know
he is incredibly busy right now,
and it was really, really fascinating. We actually
had this conversation
pre
both assassination attempts at this point,
and so,
we don't discuss that at all because it
had not yet happened.
My intent was to save this episode,
to closer to the election time, and
I was going to have Matthew come back
on and talk a little bit about
how what happened might be shaping things or
even
up to date as what's going on now
just in general with the election.
And he's just so busy, so we didn't
get a chance to reconnect.
But I think this is a really
interesting, great episode, and I I think you
will
learn a lot. I know I did.
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Here we go.
Matthew Creighton, welcome to Hey Human.
Thank you for having me. It's lovely to
see you.
Great to see you as well. Where are
you hailing from?
So I am sitting in New Jersey right
now. From New Jersey as well. So Okay.
The Garden State? North Jersey. Yep. Yeah. We're
bred. Proud of it. Proud of New Jersey.
And I've been to Jersey on a lake
boating around, and I thought, yeah, I get
it. It was it was gorgeous.
Well, yeah. For for those listening, who have
not yet had the opportunity to visit New
Jersey, we do have lakes, and and they
are beautiful. We also have mountains and beautiful
beaches. So I recommend
definitely visit. It's not all the turnpike. And
that's something that I've always said about about
Jersey in particular is that, unfortunately, if you
fly into Jersey, you're flying into the Newark
Airport, which is, like, right down the turnpike.
You see
all the, all the stuff going on at
the port down there, which is is, you
know, absolutely essential, but I think that's the
impression people get of our state. So we
do have lakes, I promise, and and nature
and, and and beautiful little downtowns and things
like that. So worth a visit. So this
is my, little pitch for Jersey tourism.
Absolutely. And my audience can't see you, but
the muscle shirt you're wearing is awesome.
Just
kidding.
Exactly.
I've got,
got my hair slicked back. Yeah. The pump
going. Yeah.
That's the that's the look. It is. You
don't you don't have a Jersey accent at
all, to my to my ear at least.
Oh, that's funny. Yeah. I had a few
years ago, an Uber driver in, Washington DC
when I was down there for a couple
of meetings and, and she was able to
pick it out. So she was like, oh,
you must be from New Jersey. I'm like,
oh, I didn't think that's sick of an
accent, but it does run run the spectrum.
Actually, I should say there is no single
Jersey accent in the southern half of the
state. It's it's very much, sort of a
Philadelphia
sounding accent, you know, south of, I don't
know,
1195.
North of that, you know, you get the
the spectrum of of sort of New York
or
a lot of people sound like me. Central
Jersey. I mean, now we're getting into, like,
hot debate territory here about, like, whether or
not Central Jersey exists, but it's, you know,
more of a neutral type thing. But that
Uber driver did she picked me picked me
out. She was like, oh, you sound like
you're from Jersey. I'm like, well That's probably
because the Uber driver was East Coast. I
feel like you're I can tell people because
I grew up in the Pacific Northwest,
I can tell people Canadian
or even if it's a slight Canadian accent
or Oregon, it's a little different, you know,
that it it's weird. I think if you're
from the region, you pick up stuff a
little bit more. Yeah. You definitely are attuned
to, to it. I mean, accents are fascinating
to me. I know I know we could
I could go on for, like, hours, but
it is it is fascinating. Even within, like,
certain communities or neighborhoods in in certain parts
of Jersey, you get some very interesting,
sort of linguistic things that that you hear
from from people. So it's like, you know,
like Hudson County, for example, which is very
close to New York City. Like, if you're,
like, old Hudson County, like, there are certain
little verbal quirks that you hear, like adding
an r on the end of, of,
words that have an a at the end.
So, like, idea turns into idea or pizza
or, like, it's it's very and you only
hear that in very specific areas. So it's
not like a total it's it's really interesting
to to hear, whereas, like, if you go
a mile, you know, a different direction, it's
it's, it's more of a a standard sound.
So it's kind of, like, cool cool to
see the spectrum of things and how
how language is, developed.
Absolutely.
And I I myself, when I go to
I lived in the South for 13 years.
And when I go there, I find that
it doesn't take very long
before
my lilt
comes in. I mean, I wasn't born there
or anything, but I'd start to adapt to
what's around me.
Oh, yeah. You definitely do hear that,
quite a bit where where people start to
to mirror the, the accent. So, in college,
I had I had a roommate actually from
South Jersey, and he had a very thick
sort of Philadelphia
kind of accent.
And, and and you start to hear yourself
say like, you spend enough time and you
start hearing yourself saying, like, things like home,
you know, phone, like, the the o sound,
which is very, like, Philly kind of,
Philly kind of thing. So it's it's it's
definitely an interesting interesting thing. I've I've seen
that happen happen before. People come up here
and their accents, you know, fade a little
bit from the south. You know, I have
a neighbor, she's from Alabama.
You could hear it a little bit, but
it's not super thick. Right? Like, I think
it's it's definitely,
tamped down. But then, you know, you go
home for a week, like you said, and
you really start to hear it again. So
What's so interesting about it is that on
a on a brain level that
it just shows how
much human beings
want to
connect to another, that we will go into
that sort of a mirroring and
and try to match up our intonations
and
our vocal
pitches and things like that. I just think
that's so fascinating. It just says how tribal
we are.
Oh, for sure. Yeah. It's it's definitely a
whole
area of study that I I think I
I would be interested actually in going back
into, you know, if I had a lot
of free time, I I think, you know,
linguistics and and patterns of speech and things
like that would be very interesting. I mean,
like peripherally,
and, you know, I'm sure we'll talk a
little bit about it, but peripherally, you know,
we think a lot about how to communicate,
in certain situations and how to connect with
people.
Linguistics is a very, very deep well, and
I would certainly be interested in exploring it,
you know, if I have some free time.
So maybe that'll be my, my next act
is, going in and studying some of that
stuff. Yeah. I love it. Follow follow your
bliss, for sure. Well, let's talk about where
so you we know where you grew up.
I'm assuming you did grow up there. Tell
me about what shaped you as a person
as you were growing up and and started
you down
the funnel of what you do now? That's
a really fascinating question. So it it was
sort of a
pretty standard, like, suburban New Jersey upbringing.
Nothing
exceptional.
I I would say, you know, went to
went to public schools, had the benefit
of living
in a place that had a really great
education system,
a place that provides
a lot of opportunities,
even if you don't know it at the
time, you know, when you're a little kid,
student in high school, middle school. I will
say that, I was not
the best student
in, in high school, middle school, you know.
So I definitely had my my challenges with
traditional
school. Things that I was interested in, obviously,
I excelled at. Things that I wasn't particularly
interested in, I struggled or kind of shrugged
off or didn't pay too much attention to,
didn't, you know, put a whole lot of
effort in. So I had a lot of
advantages, though, obviously,
growing up where I did and having the
sort of winning the lottery of just having
been born again into a place on the
globe, which in the grand scheme of things
is really just like a little pinpoint on
a map, you know? So I just, you
know, I went through school,
never
really had a sense of what I wanted
to do necessarily.
As I kind of went through high school,
you go through phases, you know, thinking, oh,
maybe I'll do this, do that. But, I
thought at the end of high school, you
know what? I'm gonna go to college. I'm
gonna try to get into teaching,
which was interesting. So, like, because I wasn't
particularly
as focused as I perhaps should have been
in school, I thought, you know, why don't
I become a teacher? Because then people like
me, you know, I can try to
recreate things or or, teach in a way
that's that's engaging to people like me. You
don't really
find all that much interest in certain topics
or or relevance. So,
ended up getting into, you know, a couple
of colleges. Went to, a school in Jersey
called Fairleigh Dickinson, which is,
not very well known except for the fact
that, we made
a a really brief run at the NCAA,
basketball tournament. I think it was it was
last year,
and had a little bit of a Cinderella
run. It didn't go very go on for
very long, but there were some exciting games
in there, and and that was cool. So
that sort of, raised, you know, the profile
of the school, which is which is always
fun, because we're not a sports school.
So I went there, studied history, political science,
thought I was gonna be a teacher the
whole time. And then 2,008
came around, economy collapsed. So I like to
say it's sort of a very millennial story
from from here, from this point till present.
Economy collapsed. I ended up graduating in 2010
with my bachelor's, 2011 with a master's degree
in education, did my student teaching, did all
of that, but there still
weren't that many jobs, out there. So in
in New Jersey,
the public education budgets were gutted
under under the governor at the time, you
know, due to some of the financial hardships,
and also there's some, like, political stuff that
led to, you know, the cutting of education
budgets. So, what ended up happening was, you
know, I was applying for jobs. There were
hundreds of other applicants in some cases. Many
of them had
7 years of experience. Why would they hire
some kid, especially with a master's degree because
that makes you a little bit more expensive.
So why would you hire some kid out
of college that's more expensive, less experience than
if you could hire someone who's got 7
years of or 5, 7 years of, classroom
experience? So that kind of triggered
the, what do I do,
with with my life? So I always thought
I liked, I was interested in politics. That
was always something that was that was interesting
to me. During my graduate school years, I
actually did a graduate assistantship at a public
opinion polling institute called Public Mind Poll. I
learned a lot of really cool things about,
public opinion, how people think about specific issues,
specific elected officials, politicians, policies. So,
that was a lot of fun but didn't
really do much with of anything with that
for for a couple years. So I naturally
just took the first job that came my
way, which happened to be doing some fundraising
and alumni relations at the school that I
was at and specifically geared toward
young alums. As you can imagine,
they hired me and then, one other person
from a second case. There were 2 campuses
in New Jersey. They wanted to have representation
from both, so they hired 2 of us.
And our our charge was sort of to
connect with young alums, you know, call through
the phone book essentially, and
ask for
money. As you can imagine, you know, in
in that economic climate, people were not thrilled
to hear from me, and had a lot
of creative ways of rebuffing my ask. So,
you know, and certainly many of those those,
responses are not appropriate to to repeat here
or anywhere for that matter. And I understood
it. Right? Like, and I'd asked myself, well,
if someone called me and, and and asked
for money at this point, you know, there
people have student loans, the job prospects were
a little dicey at at the moment. So
it was,
you know, I I I got it. Like,
I understood it. And but needless to say,
the expectations were completely
mismatched. So, you know, the we ended up
getting laid off 10 months later, and I
was like, uh-oh. We're right back in the
mix again. So I figured, you know, why
don't I try to start my own thing?
I've always liked the politics, so let let
me try to work on a couple of
campaigns.
So I went out and found
2 campaigns. 1 was a local campaign. 1
was a campaign for congress. And, I I
purposely looked for at least
a a campaign that wouldn't have a very
good chance of winning
because the ones that do are pretty much
spoken for in terms of who does what
on on those campaigns. The ones that have
nothing to lose,
are more likely to take a risk on
someone that doesn't have any experience
and maybe would be willing to experiment a
little bit with the, you know, different methods
of communication.
So at the time, I was like, well,
I'm young. You know, what would what are
they gonna trust me to do? So I
was like, I'll tell them I do social
media. Like, I will do their social media,
their digital. So I did the pitch. They're
like, you're young.
You must know how to use Facebook. I'm
like,
yep. I definitely do. So then, you know,
I had to teach myself all this. Are
you friends with Tom
from Myspace?
Yes. Yep. Yep. Yep. That was that was,
like, that was so funny because that was
sort of, like, we were moving just beyond
the Myspace era at that point and, but,
like, know knowing Tom or who Tom was,
being able to identify that, I think, was
was very useful in in my,
in my endeavors. And then, you know, in
in 2012 right. So, like, Facebook became a
huge thing in the in the Obama, reelection
campaign. So, like, social media started to kind
of take root in some of the digital
media stuff in the 2008 campaign. But 2012
really came
into its own as a sort of a
medium for communication,
took,
kind of center stage. So I had the
opportunity to kind of get in and say,
like, well, you know, we like, I grew
up with this stuff. Like, as I was
graduating high school, that's when Facebook was starting
to get rolled out to people who had,
who had
access to a university email address. So this
is before Facebook was available to everyone. It
was just you had to have a college
email address. Now, prior to that, I think
it was only like Ivy League Schools, you
know, you could get in. So but then,
you know, it was sort of like in
that expansion era
of Facebook. So so yeah, that's that's sort
of how I ended up where I am
today is, you know, just kept doing it
and and have been fortunate to to learn
a lot,
and to
have, people in my life who have been,
extraordinarily
helpful mentors and and generous mentors with their
time and and, knowledge and kept going. And
now I have had the opportunity to do
a lot of cool stuff in my career.
Was that the founding of your company or
did that come a little later? It was.
So in 2011,
I I technically, incorporated, and I was like,
alright, I'm gonna give this a shot. And
and, 2012 were the first two races that
I ended up doing. And we actually ended
up winning one of them, which is what
the local race, which is a little bit
of a surprise. I didn't think we were
going to. We ended up winning, and then
that created a situation where I was able
to network a bit and and meet different
people and,
you know, just kinda kept
kept going, meeting new people. I met my
business partner in 2014 a few years later
when we were working on a campaign together.
And and, you know, we've been growing ever
since. So it's been,
a little bit of luck, a little bit
of, you know, just determination and and, you
know, not letting, you know, a couple close
calls, I guess, knock knock us down in
terms of, like, mistakes that you make along
the way, but,
learned a lot of lessons the hard way
for sure. What's an example of a close
call? One of the one of the first
things that we ever did or I ever
did at that point was that was sort
of just a solo act. We produced a
television ad.
Looking back, kind of an insane
thing to do.
So the idea was to air a single
ad. So one 32nd spot. That's all the
campaign could afford
on a very obscure,
local act access TV station that didn't even
cover the area that we were running in.
But the candidate happened to know someone at
the network, and they were gonna carry a
debate between him and his opponent.
So they were like, let's just run this
one ad during the debate. It's gonna crack
this whole thing open, and we're gonna we're
gonna move numbers and and move people to
vote. Like, well, they don't no one in
New Jersey actually watches this this television station
because it covers, like, sort of Westchester County,
Rockland County in New York. Like, no one
around here watches it. So, we ended up,
producing this ad
and,
spent our own money out of pocket with
the production crew to
to produce produce the ad, then the campaign
just refused to pay. So this was like
sort of a it's a wake up call,
in in business. You always get paid up
upfront, you know, for for stuff that you're
out of pocket on. But, instead of, you
know, telling, our our production partners that, they
would also be out the money. I went
into my savings and paid them for their
services because I just think it's wrong with
stiff people. And it was my responsibility. I
brought them in and,
they had the understanding that they were gonna
get paid. So I had to go into
my savings and pretty much took it to
0, to pay them. From that moment on,
it was like, okay. We're not gonna do
that again. So we will have safeguards in
place and, and things. So that was that
was a close call. You know, you just
make other minor mistakes along along the way
as well, and you just learn things about
business. If you've never run one, you know,
that's unfortunately the the hardest way to learn,
but I think probably one of the better
ways. So, I mean, you can
tell someone all day in a classroom,
you know, how to run a business. But,
you know, once you're in the room and
you're responsible for for all of the operations
and then everything, it
it it takes on a totally different form.
So,
yeah. So that that was, you know, our
my first big sort of shock and,
didn't didn't kill us, which was good. And
we were able to, we've been able to,
you know, continue on from from there. So
Unfortunately, it's not an uncommon
story that
people get taken advantage of and lose a
shit ton of money in the process. I
think that's happened to pretty much everyone I
know, including myself
while trying to make your business fly.
It it is. Yeah. I mean, I I
really hate that behavior. Right? The the I
mean, because you if you contract with someone
and you have an understanding, like, I understand
I understand that things happen
along the way that may might make it
so, you know, paying a vendor or paying
a, a service provider
would be difficult. But I think you would
need to have those, you know, transparent conversations
up front. But you do see it too
often, especially with, like, a lot of small
businesses. You hear about horror stories where they
just get abused by
much larger businesses or, you know, someone will
come back and try to go back to
the well and say, you know what? Why
don't you cut your cut your bill in
half, and that's as good as you're gonna
do,
or sue me and you'll be in court
forever. Like, you see that too often. It's
really it's it's sad. It's sad to see,
but it does it does happen. And I
think there's this this sort of
misconception in in business that you have to
be that kind of like, that sort of
smart behavior. It's not unethical. It's just smart
business. And and that couldn't be further from
the truth. I think relationships are very important
and you're not gonna maintain,
any any sort of meaningful relationship by
doing that sort of thing to another human
being. So anyway, that's, Also, word gets out.
It it does. You run out of places
to turn eventually.
You know, you're just you just can't, you
just can't do that sort of. I mean,
you can, but it, you know, it all
it all catches up. So in the short
term, it might work out for you, but
in the long term, I I just don't
think. So it is, to your point, like,
all too prevalent and very hard to watch,
but,
you know, we just do the best we
can. Yeah. For sure. And we have not
yet mentioned your company, Publicix.
Am I saying it right? You got it.
Nailed it. First time. It was good. Excellent.
Excellent.
It's interesting
how much everything
I mean, actually, it's not just interesting. I
think it's slightly devastating
how much is done online
in terms of politic
because
as much as the truth can be told,
the lies can be told, and the lies
tend to be louder. And it's very hard
to fight that,
and
there are powers that be that are
spending
god knows how much money
to flood our social media with
bullshit, basically.
So
how does one
fight that?
I'm really glad that you you said that.
So
there are a lot of issues. Right? So
a lot of
what is built into these platforms from an
algorithmic perspective,
it
rewards
what, you know, what I call, like, activating
emotions. So, like, anger is an activating emotion.
So if you see something that makes you
angry, you're much more likely to share it.
Same thing with surprise. If you're surprised by
something, you're much more likely to share it
with with your friends. So those things spread.
So, you know, the algorithms and each of
the platforms are a little bit different depending
upon, you know, which which which platform you're
talking about. But, like, likes, shares, all of
those things, comments, for example,
the more of those things that happen organically,
the more it gets boosted up in the
algorithm, then the more people that see it,
then the more people that interact. So it's
sort of like a a cycle that that,
self perpetuates after, you know, the first interaction.
So that so that's the unfortunate part is
that,
things that tend to make you
just happy or content,
they don't they're not really activating emotions. Right?
So you might be happy in seeing it,
but you're never really likely to share it.
But you are
much more likely to sort of rage share.
Right? Like, oh, this makes me feel angry,
so I'm gonna smash the share button and
and, and and share it to my friends,
and it's gonna
generate all sorts of comments.
Now the things that tend to make us
angry,
unfortunately,
a lot of those things are disinformation,
which which are crafted intentionally to tap into
that very cycle, the the algorithm it games
the algorithm,
and and it's it's it's a scary thing
because you you are,
so much, information that that's false or or
even misframing
of information
or, expectation setting
is furnished to people who,
and and by people I mean, like, we
as a society,
you know, the evolution of social media took
place,
so quickly, and it's still evolving so quickly,
that
the sort of public education
with how to engage
with these platforms and how to evaluate the
information that that you see on there didn't
it wasn't able to keep up. Right? Like,
there just isn't, there I mean, when I
was growing up,
when when I was in high school, for
example, you know, Myspace is a big thing.
Though not as algorithmically driven as, like, a
Facebook, but, you know, once we all got
in Facebook, that was a big you know,
once they introduced the news feed and the
like buttons and different colors and things like
that,
to to promote sharing and engagement,
you know, that that became very algorithmically
algorithmically
driven. We never had like a media literacy
class. You know, you did your history, social
studies, you did your math, you did your,
you know, language classes, English, literature, all of
those things. You did type it, you know,
you've learned how to type. I remember,
you know,
the learning to,
you know, to type and and get off
this sort of hunt and peck, you know,
method.
So that was the extent of it, though.
That was the extent of the education that
we have. Nothing prepared us for how to
evaluate information that we were presented with on
the Internet and, how to,
other than, like, a couple stern warnings about
Wikipedia. Right? That that was like, oh, you
can't source this paper from Wikipedia because, like,
you just never know what's on there. That
was it. That was it. That was the
only thing that you ever heard.
And, you know, the the sort of social
media
was was able to,
you know, catch momentum in a way that
that, you know, the rest of the you
we just didn't have context for how to
evaluate some of this stuff. Now I think
we're starting to realize, like, what what happens
when you don't have the context for evaluating
certain information.
And and I think you're seeing an increased
conversation about the potential harms that social media
can do in in a number of ways.
It's not just politically, but but also from
a mental health perspective.
I mean, I don't think it was very
well understood at all what what sort of
impact you would be faced with. But, you
know, even now, I see certain
content that, you know, the algorithm
wants me to see.
I'm lucky in that. Like, I work in
this space. Like, I have a little bit
of context for how to evaluate certain things
that that I'm seeing. But for someone who
doesn't have that context, you're seeing some of
these things. And
it's it's scary because it sets an expectation
for life that is oftentimes completely
unattainable,
all in service of of selling you something,
whatever it is, like a course or selling
some sort of
kind of, like, expertise or, like, mastermind or
or whatever. Like, you see a lot of
these business guru for example,
something actually I've been thinking a lot. I
know this is kind of taking it down
a little bit of a tangent, but something
I've been thinking a lot about too is
is,
like, how young men in particular consume social
media. So, like, I know young young women
have a lot of challenges, as as they
look through social media.
That should be absolutely, like, 100% top of
mind. But young men also are being presented
with things that are are harmful in a
in a slightly different way. So, like, I'll
give you a good example of this. So
if you're a young man and, and this
is actually, like, real content that I've seen,
so hopefully I don't get, like, hate for,
you know, what what I'm what I'm about
to say. Maybe I will. I don't know.
That'll drive some engagement for you. How's that?
So we'll get the engagement up
by, by driving some hate. But,
I saw a clip, unironically,
you know, I I don't even know who
it was. It was some, you know, person
on on a podcast much much like I'm
talking to you right now and and with
the straight face said, you know, if you're
25 years old and you haven't purchased a
Lamborghini yet
I saw that guy. You that guy? Yeah.
Unbelievable.
Like, do you know how many Lamborghinis are
sold in the US every year? I mean,
it's just so I I thought, is this
a joke? I couldn't tell if he was
being ironic if, you know, if it was
satire or what was happening.
I don't think it was. I, like, I
don't think it No. I don't think it
was. It's it's scary, though. Like, in the
fact that we have to wonder if it
was satire is is is kind of that's
the point. Right?
Yeah. Life is so insane at this point
that
you think it's the whole of of humanity
is being written by The Onion.
Oh, yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. It's like one
one big onion headline after another.
But it's real. I
think the writer's room is is actually may
maybe they're running the, running the show. Right?
The onion writer's room. They've got the whole
thing, like, feeding into a machine or something.
Exactly.
But you see stuff like that. Right? And
and if you're if you're a young man
who feels
like, you know, he cannot get traction
in life
and or or perhaps, like, you are getting
some traction, but it's not Lamborghini
level traction. Again, like, how many Lamborghinis? A
Honda Civic.
Yeah. God forbid. Right? Like, I mean, like,
I I drove, like, a Ford Fusion, you
know, that didn't have air conditioning for a
couple years, you know,
after college. You know what I mean? It's
like, that's life. Right? And That is life.
Yeah. You know, would would a Lamborghini that
had air conditioning have been nice? Sure. If
someone wanted to give it to me, but
there's no way that, like, any any person
could afford it. But, I mean, for perspective,
I mean, I think it's, like, something like
a 100 or so are sold every year.
And and the number that are sold to
25 year olds
is probably vanishingly small, if not 0. It
may be the influencers
who are tend to be younger, but yeah.
I mean, I totally
am right there with you. It creates
a false
narrative that then in turn creates a toxicity
that's probably pretty hard
to override in a society
across the board in general that struggles with
self worth and self loathing
and all of
that. Yeah. I mean, if someone tells you,
like, you can have this thing if you
just try hard enough and then you try
hard and then you can't have that thing
because it's it's actually insane,
you're gonna start to develop a sense of
resentment. And that resentment doesn't oftentimes
or you're not pointing it inward, then you
start to point it outward. You start to
ask yourself, well,
I should be able to get ahead. I've
been told
that I should be able to get these
things
without
much effort or extraordinary,
sort of effort, to do so.
It can't be me. What's wrong with society?
Right. What's wrong with this system?
It it, you know, and then you start
pointing fingers at at at other things. So
then you hear about, programs
and initiatives that are meant to
level the playing field after,
you know,
the history full of inequities,
in, in our society, right? Like it's, it's
all a process toward developing a more level
playing field. And and you start to see
those things, and you start to go, well,
that's not fair. All these people are getting
help
that I'm not.
And I should be able to do these
things. So, like, I'm just I'm gonna get
really mad, and I'm going to,
you know, vote in a particular way or
act out in a violent way in the
worst cases, which is which is very scary.
Like, the amount of of sort of politically
driven,
or socially driven sort of violent
pronouncements and and ultimately behavior in some ways
is Yeah. Doxing. I can't even imagine
how much that has increased over the years,
but it's gotta be
by large percentages.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. That and and and physical
violence in the world where,
you know, people are,
you know,
showing up to protests with with guns
and firing on people. Violence against women because
your woman is supposed to be a pure
clean slate and she can't have, you know,
what they call a body count.
You gotta wonder too, the mastermind behind it
all, or or are we just undoing ourselves
for the sake of
the fact that our brains react to hate
and violence now
in the same way as the little cocaine
pellet does for the mice in the maze?
I mean, that's
I like, some of this is just tapping
into sort of, like, deep seated,
evolutionary,
leftovers, you know, in our brain. Stuff that
we, like, don't even necessarily need anymore,
but but just exists because, you know, we
had to defend ourselves against,
you know, warfare. I mean, like, you know,
human beings are tribal by nature. Right? Like,
you you
group into
into tribes
and identify out groups
and threats and, you know,
going all the way back to when, you
know, you used to have to run away
from, you know, saber toothed tigers while you're
trying to, like, hunt and and and gather
berries, like, in in saber toothed tigers while
you're trying to, like, hunt and and and
gather berries, like, in in, you know, the,
in the forest. So it's like I mean,
that's obviously like a Yeah. Little anachronistic there.
But,
but the the point being is, like, you
know, there there are a lot of, sort
of areas that evolutionarily, like, we sort of
developed these mechanisms because it led to our
survival as a species. But, like, now, you
know, we have an increasingly connected, for better
for worse world, and there's some reasons why
it's better because we're connected and and able
to learn more and and,
connect more with people in different parts of
the world and,
you know, get information out there. But there's
there's also a downside to that too because
we haven't totally shed those sort of bad
sort of habits that that exist within us.
So it's,
I mean, again, which is why anger is
such an activating emotion because if anger doesn't
activate you to do something,
then
there is no evolutionary purpose for being angry.
Right? There's no reason to,
to have that around anymore. So it's, it's
sort of an interesting, interesting thing. Like, I
mean, you know, if, again, I think, you
know, you're sort of part of a hunter
gatherer society
and,
you needed anxiety,
for example, or anger. Like, all of those
things function to get you to move, to
do something
in the face of a a profound threat
to your life or your tribe tribal or
your group's life, whatever, you know,
whatever sort of group, you were in. So
it's definitely an interesting interesting thing how that
translates to a world where we are very
connected. We do have access to social media.
Any a lot of people have
a platform
now that they I mean, if you have
a microphone like the one I'm sitting in
front of and pair of headphones and a
computer and a webcam, you can
do you you have a platform essentially in
a way that you wouldn't have had before.
You used to have to go
there used to be some some filter. Right?
Like, if you think about,
the news, right, and and the and the
role that journalism played in in certain,
circumstances. Like, you know, Cronkite, for example. Right?
Like, it was all filtered through that, and
some random person wouldn't just go on Cronkite
because they're just a random person who had
some ID thing. It was usually, there were
some
vetting that went on,
related to the information that was gonna be
relayed in in whatever interview. So so that
so now we we all have, you know,
a phone if you have a phone, right,
you can jump on TikTok
and
do something and go viral and all of
a sudden become fame. I mean, you see
it with, like, viral, like, celebrity, you know,
people who have just, like, a random moment
on an interview somewhere in someone else's channel,
and then all of a sudden they become
Yeah. They get signed to agencies, and they
go on talk shows. And Yeah. And it's
it's interesting. It's a Black Mirror episode. And
I wonder I mean, certainly,
there are powerful people that love to see
the chaos because it's pretty easy to control
people when they're being chaotic.
But I'm wondering if the pendulum will swing
back and
we will get placated somehow. The only way
I can see it now logically is if
something were to destroy
the Internet.
But
again, to your point,
it's hard because thanks to the Internet, we've
been able to see injustices
or bring down regimes that were horrific
or just get the word out about important
issues or fundraise for the Smiths whose house
burned down. Whatever it is, obviously, it can
be used for good
As much as we are
horrifying to each other at times,
our sense of altruism and goodness
also rises to the occasion. I'm not sure
me, personally, Susan, I'm not sure why
it feels like
the negativity
is so much more popular. Like, people just
love to be pissed.
And I don't know if there's an antidote
to that or if it's just that loud
people who are angry or louder.
Yeah. I I don't know. Some element of
that,
where where you do have,
I would say the majority of people are
not tuned in
enough
for
for them to be that angry about whatever
given thing. Like, so this is interesting because
it does filter down to even, like, the
local level. So, like, we we have, you
know, every town I feel like in America
has, like, a dedicated Facebook group,
you know, that, that people sort of or
or, Nextiva. Store,
which is insane.
I stay out in the store.
My god. It's so crazy.
It's hard it's hard to watch with even
the Facebook groups. Right? So we have one,
in
in town, and and there was a restaurant,
you know, down on on the main drag,
a little bit, a few miles from where
we are. And
their landscaper just
didn't show up, you know, for a week,
and the grass was getting a little long
in front. And the the
someone decided to take to this Facebook group
to absolutely,
you know,
lecture this this business owner on the fact
that their grass was getting so long. It
was, you know, an abomination, you know, to
the town. You would you would have thought
that this person, the business owner, the restaurant
owner, committed some sort of atrocity,
But I've you know, you feel terrible, and
it was it was probably 300 comments deep,
most of them very negative. And, you know,
eventually at the end, I guess, someone let
him know that this was happening.
And, you know, he got in there and
he's like, I am so sorry. My landscaper,
you know, just couldn't make it this week.
I'm gonna go out and buy a lawnmower
and take care of it myself. We've just
been really busy. And it's like, you know,
you don't know what's going on in that
person's life. Like, why are you what is
it's not near your I promise you. There's
no one live lives, like, across the street
from this this restaurant. It's not even like
you have to look at it. You drive
by it. Like,
just let it go. But there is, like,
this
instinct to
say something negative. Even at that level, it's
not I mean, we're not talking about issues
of national importance now. We're talking Right. Grass.
Grass a little bit too long. And the
fact that someone would be compelled or 300
people would be compelled to complain about it
and not one of those people thought, you
know what? I have a lawnmower.
I'm just gonna go spend an hour and
cut this grass because,
you know, it's a nice thing to do
that our
proclivities
don't lead in that direction is a real
freaking bummer to me. And I worry because
as we get more and more humans on
this planet
who have not the skill set
to fight that urge.
I I mean, I understand that reptilian brains,
I I get that,
but we have evolved as a species
mostly
that
you would think that we would not it
it's speaking to a bigger problem. I think
that we're using this, as you said, as
this outlet
for a rage or discontent that we don't
even know how to touch,
and all we can do is aim it
outward
and attack
because it's the easiest thing in the world
to do.
It it is. And and I think part
of it too is it just simplifies
everything.
You know, there there's good and there's bad,
and that's
it. And,
you know, there's a lot of gray area.
Now I do do I think that there
are things that are mostly good
and mostly bad? Absolutely.
And and there are objectively,
in my opinion, objectively things that are good
and bad. Right? But but for most
issues, there is a lot of nuance, a
lot of
imperfection
in
how
one might deal with a particular issue,
but that's not very satisfying. Right? Nuance is
hard. Nuance takes work. And anger,
and and creating sort of this black and
white, you know, sort of binary
of, you know, yes or no. I think
that
that just simplifies things very the the things
things that don't need to be simplified. And
again, I think there are
simple
choices and simple contrast in certain circumstances, but
most things in life, there is there is
a vast gulf of
of gray area nuance of
understanding that needs to happen,
you know, before before you jump in. So
I do think there is there is some
element of that. I'd be like, okay. How
can we just, like, simplify this and, like,
figure out how to manage this issue? It's
like, okay. I'm gonna be angry at this.
And then that's it. That's simple. Easy.
Yeah. Well, it seems like in politics that
there is one
one side who definitely understands
the
inclination
to to
inflame
and that that can be an advantage.
And then there's another side that doesn't seem
to want to engage that under that
obvious thing,
and
I'm curious to see what your thoughts are
of how that would play out.
When you go high, if they're just always
going low,
what do you what do you do in
that scenario, especially for somebody like you whose
job it is to help
elect someone?
Sure. Absolutely.
So I I think and you're gonna get
a,
a real sense of of where my political
leanings are. It's a tricky thing to ask,
right? Because I know I have a feeling
we're both on the same page politically.
But
this question this is what frustrates me about
this country.
The question I'm asking isn't really it's not
about party. It's about
it's just the convulsions
that people have towards something and the the
the way they operate in general. Like, we
talked about in the beginning, the people who
decide they're gonna pay for something or not
pay for something.
Now do you know what I mean? Like,
it it's it's hard to ask a question
like this because immediately someone's like, oh, that's
a political thing. You just hate all blah.
I don't hate all anybody,
but I can see what's happening.
Absolutely. So this this is a conversation
that I've, interestingly enough, have been having more
in my
personal life because you're able to have those
sort of nuanced conversations about about things. So
I think that
whether you agree or disagree
with
or or or I should say in the
past tense, agreed or disagreed
with how, for example, the Republican party was
handling things,
at least most of the time, you could
have a pretty good sense that
the people running for president in that party
running for office, not all of them, but
most,
had,
would would adhere to
the norms
and standards
and,
sort of democratic
guardrails that exist in this country,
that enable us to have conversations,
difficult political conversations,
and allow us to change direction
if the voters choose to change direction. Within
with integrity.
With integrity. Yes. With integrity. I mean, but,
you know, relative in that way. Relatively. Yeah.
Politics has always been ugly. Right? Like, if
you look back at the Nixon years, right,
they were all up to dirty bricks and,
you know, they had, you know, whole, sort
of little little teams dedicated to doing nasty
thing. And then, unfortunately, a lot of those
people are still
kicking around, Republican politics today. You know, the
Roger Stones of the world. I mean, you
know, he's got that big old Nixon
tattoo on back tat, you know, shoulder blade
to shoulder blade. But,
you know so, like, it's always been a
little bit like that. But at the end
of the day, you know, you could always
have some some degree of of confidence that
the person in the White House, after their
8 years was up or if they lost
after 4 years, that they would move on
and the next person would come in and
that they would,
out of a love for this country and
a hope
that they would
that the country succeeds genuinely may not agree
with how the other side wants to get
there,
but at least a shared agreement that they
want to see this country succeed would help
the next person
transition into office.
And I think what we've seen since 2016
is a complete shattering
of that basic
norm. So we're not having this conversation anymore
about
from a a policy perspective. Right? And
and I I think
that if we cannot start so this is
this is where where I I get to
is, like, if we cannot start from a
place where
both sides agree
that elections matter, the results of the election
should be adhered to, that,
fundamentally,
that we should strive to have as many
people,
many,
Americans as many American citizens as possible participate
in that political process. Not silence voices, not
make it harder for those people to participate,
but
expand
and do whatever we can to get the
the most voices into the political process.
Like, if we fundamentally cannot agree on that,
then
the one side the one side that doesn't
believe that people should have a voice,
that doesn't believe that we should adhere to
elections,
that that I I think we're having a
completely different conversation now. We're not talking about
politics anymore. We are talking about the existential
threat to
the fundamental fabric of this country. And and
I I think
the
way that we talk about democracy in general
is
maybe a little flawed. Right? Because I think
there is a fair case to make that
when when you say, well, we have to
protect democracy.
That there are a lot of people
in this country, a lot of groups of
people
who have not been well served
by our institutions historically. Right? Our institutions
are imperfect. Right? That there have been a
lot of injustices in this country.
So when you say we wanna protect democracy,
just as sort of a blanket statement, they
they feel as if
you're protecting a system that fundamentally doesn't work
for them and hasn't ever worked for them.
But really what it is,
in my mind, what democracy is, is protecting
our ability
to continue to improve the system
that we have, to continue to make the
changes that we need to make,
to continue to level the playing field, to
continue to create an economy that works for
for a greater number of people in this
country. Right? It's like the capacity. Democracy when
we when I think that's what we have
to talk about when we talk about democracy
is protecting that capacity
for people,
every day,
you know, working hardworking Americans to have
their voice heard in that process. And if
you get rid of elections and you get
rid of the guardrails and you make it
okay to fundamentally
influence our political process
by brute force and violence, you are taking
away those voices. And then who wins in
that case? Right? Whose voices are heard in
that system?
It's not gonna be the hardworking Americans. It's
not gonna be people who
want to see more progress on, you know,
affordability and housing. It's not gonna be people
who,
have benefited,
from recent investments in cleaning up drinking water.
It's not gonna be the people who rely
on insulin and have had those those prices
capped in this past administration, in the current
administration, the Biden administration. So, like, you're you're
just not gonna have the capacity
to fundamentally improve the system.
Like and I think,
it gets this this idea of, like, burning
it down. Like, if we burn it down,
well, that
sort of cuts both ways. Right? Like,
people
that are likely to rebuild the system are
gonna rebuild it in in an image that
you do not like. Like, not you. I've
been No. I know what you mean. The
Royalty. We the People. Right. And and so
that's what I mean when I say, like,
protecting democracy. It's protecting our capacity to continue
to make progress while acknowledging that these institutions,
they're not perfect by any stretch of the
imagination, but they do serve
a purpose of making sure that one
particular person's ambitions cannot override the entire
will of of the people. That is the
position that we're in now, unfortunately, is is
that we have a stark contrast between
the
two sides where
you have one side that fundamentally does not
believe in preserving that capacity. In fact, they
believe in completely
tearing it apart and ripping it up
and walling it
off and creating a system where only a
few have an actual voice in the system.
And again, I'm not saying it's perfect right
now,
but it's way better than than
what you would have in a system where
again, you're eliminating
people's right to vote
in this country. No. That's not good. I
know. I saw something on Facebook yesterday, a
person
in Tennessee that posted
about ballot box that went in their neighborhood
and, or maybe was it Tennessee? I think
it was Tennessee. But they were all up
in arms about it and all I could
think of is, why would you if you
were a patriot truly, as people like to
throw that word around,
why would you not want to ensure that
all citizens
in our democracy
make it easier for all citizens to vote?
Why would you not want that?
Now, I know why. It's because
historically
disenfranchised people tend to vote for a particular
party over another,
and
therefore,
that that they're not a voice that they
want to lift up. But I can't help
but keep going back to that
saying that until all of us are free,
none of us are free. And I don't
know why so many of us work toward
our own demise, and I can't see the
writing on the wall of what it means
to destroy
democracy.
It's it's
it's like what you said about the guy
me talking about how if you don't have
a Lamborghini by 25.
Democracy takes work.
Yeah. And most people don't even could don't
even know anything about civics. They don't know
who their representatives are for all the way
down to the city level, all the way
up the tree. And they don't really care.
They just like yelling about it. And don't
know how some of these people are actively
voting against
their best interest no matter which side of
the political spectrum you're on,
you know. And that's how do you
what do you do with that?
Yeah. I mean, it's it's really interesting. It's
it kind of like brings those the images
up of of, you know, some of these,
sort of, like, Republican members of congress that
would show up to the ribbon cuttings for,
the big infrastructure projects that were funded by
a law that they did not vote for.
They, like, voted against it. Right? And they
show up for the ribbon cutting going, oh,
look at this brand new bridge that we
are building that's gonna, you know, connect, you
know, 2 parts of the state or the
city and is gonna create the, you know,
x amount of of economic value and
improve the quality of life. Or we're gonna
be fixing the rails or or, again, you
know, lead pipes, all that stuff. Like, they'll
show up to these things
and continue to get voted in by the
people in those communities while simultaneously
the folks in those communities are very grateful
for the the new bridge, the new roads,
the the clean drinking water, the clean air,
the new manufacturing jobs. I just saw a
report. I I didn't I need to read
it more thoroughly, so, I'm not gonna, you
know, throw numbers around, but sort of America
is, like, left behind counties. Right? The forgotten
counties in America have done better in the
last 4 years. Jobs, economic improvement, wage growth
in these communities
has been better in the last 4 years
than they have been in the past several
decades.
And there is there is very real progress.
If you look at the the real wage
growth and I understand people are hurting, people
are having a hard time with affordability,
but
the the reality is
wage growth among working class and middle class
Americans
has
been greater under this presidency than it had
ever has before.
The ability,
and desire to unionize,
in the last 4 years
has been stronger than ever before. That means
people have a voice in their workplace. They
can get protection, basic protections,
and negotiate with their employers.
And,
you know, you have an administration that's very
supportive of all of that. And yet, and
yet, if you ask people about all of
those things, right, the majority of Americans, they
like clean drinking water. They like the fact
that, drug companies cannot charge quite as much
for insulin. They like the fact that we
are trying to transition to,
clean energy. For the most part, there's a
little bit of, you know, polarization in there
too. But, you know, there are jobs that
are associated with that as well. They like
the fact that we are bringing manufacturing back
to the United States, high-tech manufacturing that's going
to provide jobs for people in in these
in these sort of left behind counties and
in other areas of the country as well.
The problem is once you attach a partisan
label to it, they don't want anything to
do with it. They don't care. It doesn't
matter who did it. It's it's it's sort
of that weird cognitive dissonance.
And
and again, it kinda goes back, I think,
to some of the externalization
of of of personal,
you know,
frustration
with
with circumstances, and people do have challenges. Right?
And I and I think it would be
tone deaf to say, like, well, look at
all these things that are happening. You should
be happy.
That's not what anyone's saying. Right? It's saying,
we are working together to make progress on
these things. And the thing that enabled that
was because people showed up and voted in
2020,
and they then they voted again in 2022.
You know, we have a Democratic senate, and
again, you're getting a a view of sort
of political leanings, but we have a Democratic
senate and a very closely divided house, Democratic
president. Stuff is still getting done. It's still
being done because of those votes.
We're we're able to accomplish those things. Now
imagine a world where you don't get a
vote. Right? Or where your vote you can
vote,
but then simply they just go, I don't
like that vote, so we're gonna toss that
one out and count another one. Or we're
gonna find, I don't know, 12,000 votes in
in Atlanta somewhere, in Georgia somewhere. Right? Like,
how does that make any sense? It's Yeah.
So it's it's a tough problem,
and and I think a lot of smart
people are really trying to figure out what
what the answer
to to that is,
because I think a lot of the conversations
that we need to have do not lend
themselves to
mass media. So as a practitioner of of
politics, right, like the
these campaigns, they they take place on on
a short timeline, like, comparatively speaking. Now I
know this presidential cycle feels like it's longer
than others, because it is. It's it's gonna
be the longest general election cycle
I think we've ever had.
But still, that's not a super long time.
There were several years preceding that where it
was just the work of governing. And
the work of governing doesn't really get a
whole lot of clicks. It doesn't really get,
I mean, our media landscape is totally fractured.
So, you know, local papers are not what
they used to be. In fact, a lot
of communities are what they call news deserts.
Right? They just don't have access to local
news of any kind. Yeah. And some of
the major newspapers have now been compromised, unfortunately.
So You're
gutted,
sold off for parts. You know they have
what used to be very robust, like state
house bureaus in some of these places. They
have maybe one one reporter. They borrow the
AP's stuff which I mean it's better than
nothing but you're not really you know, penetrating.
So then by the time you get to
to a campaign,
it's like you gotta figure out how to
get the word out quickly
and in a broad way. So it's like
you have TV ads, you have direct mail,
you do all the digital, you do videos,
you do all these things. But, like, it
I think it requires a much more nuanced
conversation with people because
the the inclination,
you know, if you go up to someone
who identifies as a Republican, you say, well,
I'm a Democrat.
The immediate the wall goes up immediately. You're
not with me. I don't know. You you
believe stuff that I don't believe an enemy.
Right? You were you were the wrong type
of person.
You were ruining this country, all all that
stuff. And I I don't I don't think
that's the case. And, again, we could go
back to, I think, at some point, like,
to your point about pendulum swinging back. Like,
I think we could get back to a
place where we have a robust, hearty,
two party system where we have legitimate debates
about policy and how to implement that policy
and how best to serve the country without
having to worry about whether or not our
entire
ability again to have a voice in these
conversations
will will will disintegrate. Right? Wouldn't it be
great if we could just do that? But
right now we have one party that's interested
in the policy and the debate and I
would argue, like, the Democratic Party covers a
very broad spectrum
of policy beliefs at this point,
where there is robust debate going on within
the Democratic Party itself. The Republicans, though, by
and large, not every one of them. There's
some like Liz Cheney. Again, I've never thought,
like, if if you talk to young people,
you know, like, Liz a Cheney. Right? But
you know what? She put country before before
her political career and spoke out. Adam Kinzinger
is another one. Right? Put his his, country
before,
his own political career. So you do see
some ex Mitt Romney, for example,
same thing, you know, spoke out and said,
you know what? This is not good, but
that is vanishingly small. There's a small number
of people that are willing to do that.
And so what we have is a party
apparatus. When I say the Republican party, I'm
not talking about Republican voters because they
are consuming the stuff that that is coming
to them from from the leaders. But the
leaders should know better. Right? The leaders should
make that commitment.
I think they do know better. That's the
rub. Some do. Some, I don't think, actually.
Like, now we're getting, like, a system where
you'd actually have
people getting into especially some of these house
seats that do actually, I don't think know
better. That's terrifying.
Yeah. Really scary stuff. So, like, you have
the cynics, like, the I'm gonna keep my
seat. I'm gonna, like, you know, lure charge
to the right and and do the whole,
you know, Trump worship thing, you know, for
my political career, and it's all very calculated.
And then you have some that are just
simply like, I I think they believe it,
genuinely. Or they see it as a vehicle
for for getting done whatever, like, super unpopular
the thing is they don't like their own
agenda too. Like, if you read through the
project 2025 stuff, everyone's running away from that
because they know it's super unpopular. But guess
what? That's what they wanna do. That is
what they wanna do. I don't know. It's
it's it's a tough thing. I mean, because
they know I mean, I think they do
know that it's unpopular. Right? So that's why
they're trying not to talk about that. They're
trying to, you know Right. They were hoping
that would stay under the radar.
And I think true to your point, it's
not about Republicans.
It's about people who are in that political
power Right.
Who I don't think are actually Republicans.
I've I find it very I very hard
to to tag those
that name because it means something different to
me, I suppose, over the years. I'm older.
You know, what it means to me versus
what it is is 2 totally different things.
It really it really is. Like, I mean,
I I, like, know a lot of people
who were Republicans. Right? Like, who true like,
voters, like, truly believed in
in the Republican
party, believed in certain elements of of the
platform when there still was, like, an actual
platform that people could get behind.
But since 2016,
have
taken a look at the party that they
once felt like they belong to and just
said,
what? I don't know what this is anymore.
Like, this is not a thing. I'm gonna
I'm gonna have to vote Democratic. Or some
of them enthusiastically
will say, like, I am gonna vote Democrat.
And interestingly enough too, like, some Republicans that
you talk to,
former Republicans that you talk to, are more
enthusiastic about voting
this year than the avowed Democrats and sir,
or independent voter. Like, you would expect the
opposite to be true, but they like, some
of those people are most vociferously,
opposed to
this,
sort of attempted dismantling of the system. The,
you know, the American system, the American experiment.
Like, they are the ones that are most
offended by this, and I think maybe there's
a sense betrayal there too. It's like I
gave them you know, I've I've spent my
life
maybe even donating to this party,
knocking doors for this party. I'm talking to
my neighbors about various candidates who ran as
Republicans at one point, and I feel betrayed
by this because this is fundamentally un American,
what's going on right now. So, like, you
do actually hear that, which is really interesting,
and and they wouldn't recognize. I mean, a
lot of these people don't recognize it as
what you would what you would consider, you
are or I would consider, like, a Republican
party of
like, John McCain or Sure. Remember that clip
of him, at at the town hall? And,
that woman was like, oh, Obama's not American.
He was like,
yes, ma'am. And he loves he loves this
country, and we just disagree on stuff. I
totally misquoted it, but that's sort of No.
I just watched that the other day. In
fact, yeah, a woman said, oh, Obama is,
not even born here, and he's not American,
and he
he's a terror you know, basically, she was
saying the bigoted
stuff. And McCain said, ma'am, that's not true.
I you know, we don't agree on some
policies and and it's politics, but he's a
good person, and his family is a good
family.
Yeah. I what happened to that? I feel
like it's just all being run by bullies
now. It's just
that bully energy,
don't like it at all. I mean, I
I understand it. I know. It's hard it's
hard to swallow those, isn't it? It's hard
to wrap my head around even though I'm
watching it play out in real time.
And,
I mean, I've had people who I've known
for a very long time,
who
completely
I mean, I hate to say drank the
Kool Aid, but that's kinda what it is.
And
the things that they had said to me,
it's about my beliefs or my wanting to
lift up people who are historically unheard or
disenfranchised.
And I think, wow,
if we can disagree politically,
that's okay. But now you're calling me names
and saying all the it's so bizarre. And
that was, of course,
4 years ago. It's fascinating.
It's so fascinating. And I wonder, so you
teach kids or, I guess, college kids. Yes.
You're an instructor at the an adjunct Yeah.
For, several semester days. I took a couple
semesters off things. Things are getting busy now.
But I am curious what the young people
think about it all. And if you're noticing
whether or not they are starting to turn
their back a little bit on social media
and what it all means.
So I can I can kind of answer
this from from 2 different perspectives? So, both
both, you know, just anecdotal having having taught
social media
courses
and
and then also
having,
you know, done done polling and research in
the area of like what young voters are
paying attention to, what sort of things actually
not just young voters, but young people in
general are are paying attention to online.
You know, how they feel about social media.
And,
it's it's sort of interesting because you do
see a little bit of, like, a love
hate relationship
with social media where it's like I'm like,
there I think
some have this intuitive sense of, like, this
isn't great,
but I also like it too. Like, I
like
some of it's it because it does trigger,
like, an actual,
like, chemical reaction in your brain when you're
when when you're doing these. I mean, that's
why it all works. Right? Otherwise, like, it
wouldn't it wouldn't work. That's why people, you
know, get hooked on on different different things,
you know. It's it's it's sort of this,
sort of, neurological
process that happens. So,
so I think, like, in in some ways,
it's it's a little bit of love hate.
Like, if you really start digging into it,
and and I think there's an initial, just
anecdotally, hesitancy in that environment to
really talk about
how
social media impacts
you on a personal level. Right? Like, the
student on the personal. Like, you try to
I tried to get into that because, like,
what the what I was teaching was, like,
social media strategy,
and, like, in a business context really is
is, you know, how do you use social
media to communicate with customers, to brand,
your
business, all of those different things. But, you
know, I made sure that I really wanted
to cover
a sort of the ethics
of social media as as well and the
ethics of of using it.
And and just so, like, you know, they
had a context walking out of there. Like,
here are all the tips and tricks to,
like, get people's attention and to,
sell products and to brand and to do
do what you're gonna do successfully.
It's all boobs. Yeah.
That's right. That's right. But, like, also to
have, like, an ethical perspective and to consider
that before you go down certain paths, like,
to not essentially prey on people's, like, insecurities
or prey on people's,
you know, fears or or whatever.
So I think there's, like, a little bit
of a hesitancy to talk about it sometimes.
Like and then when you start, like, digging
or pushing on it, it's like,
yeah. You know,
I actually
do feel
a sense of anxiety when I consume
certain types of content or social media, or
I do feel
a certain sense of inadequacy
when I consume social media. And sometimes I
feel
like I do know that what I'm seeing
isn't necessarily real,
but it's hard in that moment to, like,
put put that aside, like to to center
yourself in that thought versus what you're seeing
on the screen. Like, I think it's interesting,
you know, when when you talk to talk
to students like that and really kind of
dig and push, but you have to push.
You have to dig to get there because
it's not something that comes to top of
mind. Like, it's like, okay, take a minute
and actually really reflect
on how this is making making you feel
and how you engage with
with this content that you're engaging with. And
once you start to, like, kinda scrape away
at the layers,
it's like they start to admit
I mean, I think we all know. Like,
I know that
I probably spend more time on my phone
than I should.
Is that stopping me from spending time on
my phone? I mean, not all the time.
Like, I really do try to take a
step back because it's it it does get
a little, you know, overwhelming sometimes, right, when
you're just bombarded with stuff. But, I mean,
it's it's interesting. So you see this actually
in in different ways too. So,
like, if you ask people about, like, their
trust in
different social media platforms in in managing their
data or privacy or any other sort of,
or their mental health, for example.
There's a discrepancy
between what they say, which is it's fairly
low trust. Like, they don't actually trust these
platforms very much, but they still use them.
Right? So it's not enough to
to push people off. Like, the the the
behavior does not the the view does not
translate to behavior,
when when it comes to social media. So
that's a really interesting thing that you see
in, like, a lot of public opinion research
and polls that we've done. You see a
huge discrepancy between
between those two things. Like, will, you know,
will do you still use it? It's like,
well, yeah. Like, I I don't trust it,
but I use it. Like, I mean, I
know that they're probably doing something with my
data that, like, I wouldn't necessarily like. Like,
if you lay out that's another interesting thing
too is, like, you walk,
the students through how how data is being
used or how ads are being targeted. Like,
before you get into a college class about
that, you just you see the ads. Right?
Like, unless you're, like, digging into it yourself,
that's all you're seeing. You're seeing the ads,
and they're kind of creepily
relevant for you know, it's like, oh, well.
I've thought things and not said them out
loud and then seen an ad for it
because I know I know how it works.
I know that whatever I that led me
to have that thought
has been tracked. And so it anticipates
even before I
that I'm gonna want to see that or
that I've been thinking about it.
Terrifying.
Yeah. So I mean, it's like they you
know, so until you actually, like, dig into,
like, how does this all work, it's you
know, you just don't have a frame of
reference for it. So then,
you know, then they start thinking in that
frame, and it's like, oh, no. That's I
don't love that. Like, I don't love the
fact that my data is used this way
or that there is, like, you know, for
all intents and purposes, sort of like a
facsimile of a person like me that they
create in order to target these things and
figure out who responds to what
and all of that. And it's that's all
part of the business, obviously. And, like, again,
like, I'm a practitioner of of, you know,
communication. Social media is an important place to
to communicate, and you have to play by
the rules or in the in the environment
that you're given. But, again, you don't see
that that behavior or that view of some
of the practices or or algorithmic sort of
things, translate into actual behavior. So that's that's
another really interesting thing too. You know, you
see a lot of, you know, people consuming
influencer content as well. Like, that you know,
those those people are becoming more important than,
you know, your run-in the middle celebrities in
some cases. Sometimes there's some overlap too. I
think that at this point, influencers may in
fact be more famous than celebrity.
And also
AI
influencers that where people don't even know what
they're looking at is an avatar.
The prevalence of that is fascinating.
So that was, that was, some polling. Actually,
we're gonna, release the results, shortly. So I
I had the opportunity to present some of
this at a conference in Washington DC a
few weeks ago, but, we did we did
some,
survey work on on AI and and people's
views of of different AI tools and and
whether or not they would have greater or
or less
trust in a particular politician or platform if
they use an AI tool to convey things
or if or whether or not labeling,
things matters. And,
so, I mean, the the big takeaway is,
like, you know, people, hope,
and trust things more when you when you
are transparent about labeling something that's AI. So,
like, instead of trying to pass off, like,
a chatbot, for example, or, an AI avatar
as, like, a real person, human being, and
then you're found out, like, people are not
gonna like that deception.
So labeling, I think, does help build trust
in in that, in that space. Transparent was
like, this is an AI chatbot or this
is an AI avatar of whatever,
you know, person, public figure. That being said,
also, people don't have a lot of confidence
in their own ability to
identify AI generated content. Like, they know that
it's it's very hard to spot some of
this stuff because of the split second judgments
that we're making, you know, when we're looking
at it. And right now
yeah. Sure. There's some telltale things if you
look really closely,
you know, especially at, like, the generative video
or or photos. Right? Like, you know, extra
fingers on a hand or, like, I guess,
hands are really hard for for AI to
kind of craft in in that way. But
Ironically, hands are very hard for artists to
paint. I think that's very interesting.
Oh, well, you know, maybe maybe it's just
like us then. It's as people. Right? It's
it's sort of adopted,
a lot of our own,
you know, quirks. But I mean, I think,
like, people just don't have faith, and I
think rightly so, in their ability to identify
these things because, like, why why would you?
I mean, the voice related, AI generative AI
is is pretty scary because there's nothing to
look at. I mean, you can hear
intonations that are a little bit different or
or off. Like, if you really know someone
and have heard their voice before,
you could probably tell. But if if you
only hear their voice occasionally and then you
hear some AI clone of of their voice,
it's gonna be very hard to figure out
exactly which which thing is which. It's an
interesting
space to be in now because I think
that everything that we've been struggling with over
the last,
you
know, decade or so with with social media
is
is going to accelerate
exponentially, potentially. I mean, and again, there's a
scenario where things don't go wrong and, like,
we do get proper safeguards in place for
AI. And there's there is
regulation that
balances innovation
with safety,
which I think is very important. But,
I I don't again, I couldn't predict whether
or not that happens
at at this point, but it but it
is it is interesting to see how people
are are viewing these things, especially younger people
who, you know, they know it's coming. They
know it's here. They don't have, like, super
strong opinions about one thing or the other.
There is some some skepticism,
I think, about
about AI in general and and social media.
It's just, like, how does that translate then
into into behavior? And if it doesn't translate
into behavior, then, you know, we kind of
maintain the status quo, which is it's you
know, these things are gonna continue to grow
and and go where where the users and
the attention
are,
unfortunately or unfortunately. So that's kind of an
interesting interesting thing, you know, that we're
we're looking at. So, I mean, it's
great future, but also kind of a scary
future. I mean, who knows? Like, it's
all the possible the possibilities are endless. They
sure are. Do you have any books that
you might recommend for the listeners
to dig in a little bit on these
topics?
There's one I don't remember the author. I
believe
it's called Surveillance Capitalism. It's a pretty dense
I have that book. That's a good book.
Very good book. I mean, that that kinda
just gets into the whole
like, what makes this economy, you know, this
sort of attention economy tick. How might people
find you?
Sure. So, we're we're on LinkedIn primarily.
So, LinkedIn, you could just type in, Publitic,
so that's publitic
s, and and you'll find us there.
On Twitter as well, probably a little bit
less active there, Facebook, Instagram. So we're on
all the major,
platforms there. And then, additionally, we're we're starting
to populate our,
our sort of newsletter blog a little bit
more called Influence IQ,
which is influenceiq.publicics.com.
We're we're gonna be posting that AI data
shortly. We've done a a bunch of research
in in the clean energy space as well.
So, like, we post, you know, ideas, research,
strategy, all of those interesting things. Well, what
I hope what are interesting to me, I'm
not sure what you're talking to anyone else,
but, like, I'm I'm a complete nerd about
it. So,
it's that that's that's what makes me tick
anyway. So And that's exactly how I run
Hey Human. These conversations I have may not
be for everyone, but they certainly fascinate me,
and I'm the one sitting here. So
that's the way it's good. That's great. Matthew,
I've really, really enjoyed this conversation. It's fascinating.
I there's so much to talk about, and
I would happily eat up your entire day
talking about it. You have an open door
if you ever wanna come back and be
on the show. I welcome that for sure.
Thank you. I've really enjoyed the conversation and
absolutely will take you back up on that.
Yeah. And thank you for listening, everybody.
Bye. This is great. Thank you. Thank you.
Have a good one. Bye bye. Bye.
Rate and review and subscribe to Hey Human
podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your
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Thanks. Bye.