Social Media, Algorithms & The Connection We're Losing

Dylan · 0:01
Reggie, what was your favorite thing from the episode?

Reggie · 0:03
My favorite thing was that we pulled the topic that was perfect for our guest.

Dylan · 0:07
Ooh, okay, okay.

Tim · 0:09
My favorite thing was what our guest said in the very end of the episode. It was powerful.

Dylan · 0:14
Lauren, you're getting some love.

Speaker · 0:15
I'm also gonna send Lauren some love. I really liked her perspective this week.

Lauren · 0:19
Ooh, my favorite thing was when Tim was cynical the whole episode, but then brought it back to hope at the end.

Speaker · 0:27
That's just how it goes.

Dylan · 0:29
I liked our Black Mirror references and how they're correlating with real life right now. Cool. Tim Scroggs That was a 0:45

Reggie · 0:50
vigorous clack. I love clacks like that. Will is the best clacker. He really is.

Lauren · 0:56
Do you all take turns clacking?

Reggie · 0:58
No, Will is. Oh, Will is the clock. He's the master clacker. He's

Lauren · 1:03
got to do it.

Reggie · 1:05
Well, hey guys, welcome to Age. I am your host today, and we have a wonderful guest, Miss Lauren Moody, who's sitting in for our beloved Mary Green, who is on her way to Japan. Miss Tim Scroggs you, Mary. 1:17

Reggie · 1:18
Yeah, envious. We should all be in Japan with her recording from there.

Tim · 1:24
Why didn't we think of that? Reggie Tidwell I know, right? 1:25

Lauren · 1:26
You got. You've got a couple of weeks to make it happen, right? Reggie Tidwell We do. 1:30

Lauren · 1:31
Just surprise Mary on her time off. Yeah,

Reggie · 1:34
right. We're here. That would be the best surprise. You're like, you thought you were off the hook for recording this episode, but they're on.

Lauren · 1:41
I think she'd kind of love it. She

Reggie · 1:42
might. I'm Reggie Tidwell, Dylan Garcia, Tim Scroggs, and of course Lauren Moody. As you know, we pull a topic from this really just regal trash can, and I'm gonna go ahead and get started and kick us off.

Tim · 2:00
Boom! Here it goes. Hoping for a good one. I'm

Reggie · 2:03
hoping for a good one. Oh, what? This is a perfect one, especially given the host that we have. Lauren Moody Oh God! 2:13

Tim · 2:14
You're gonna be on the spot.

Reggie · 2:18
It's social media. Lauren Moody Oh! Was I 2:19

Reggie · 2:21
right or was I right?

Lauren · 2:23
And now wasn't staged at all.

Reggie · 2:26
Not even a little bit.

Lauren · 2:27
Every single one in there never say social media. A little cruise

Tim · 2:31
that pulling out of the trash can is like a destiny move. It is like you pull it out. You don't know who and why, but it's gonna be right. That

Reggie · 2:38
is so perfect. We had another guest, and the host pulled remote that day, and I thought it really played well into the conversation.

Lauren · 2:46
Yeah. Okay. There's something going on here. Yeah. Yeah.

Reggie · 2:51
I told you mess around with this. This is magic. Lauren Moody Trash can. 2:54

Reggie · 2:55
Yeah. And it's perfect because

Tim · 2:57
Lauren does social media and social marketing for a very cool company in Asheville, North Carolina, called Cultivate Climbing.

Reggie · 3:04
Yes, where Tim and I work out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Tim · 3:06
Yeah, it's in our building where we have our studio, and it just so happens that we pulled it out of the trash can with Lauren here.

Lauren · 3:13
Exactly. Who would have thought? Perfect. Who would have thought? So yeah, I work for Cultivate Management Group.

Tim · 3:18
Oh yeah, right.

Lauren · 3:19
I know it's it's a little bit of nuance. So Cultivate Management Group, Cultivate Climbing is one of the brands of Cultivate Management Group. We also have a rafting company in Asheville.

Reggie · 3:29
Oh, that's awesome!

Lauren · 3:30
Asheville Adventure Company.

Reggie · 3:31
We need to do that, son. We need to stay out on the water. Is

Tim · 3:34
the river clean after our flood? And I don't know what the.

Lauren · 3:37
It's clean enough. Okay, clean enough. I shouldn't say that. Cut that out. It's clean. Cut that out. It's clean and it's ready for you to be there.

Tim · 3:48
Okay. Yeah. I mean, clean enough is good for me. Ready for you.

Lauren · 3:51
I've. Oh, you're not going

Reggie · 3:53
down with your mouth open. Yeah.

Lauren · 3:54
No, you. I've been in the river and I've lived to tell the tale. So get out there, and we also, if you ever want to take a team trip to Colorado, we've got a rafting company in Colorado too. One

Reggie · 4:07
of the few states I have left to visit. Colorado are in my map.

Lauren · 4:11
That's Colorado,

Reggie · 4:12
Wyoming. There's a few small, the big states up

Lauren · 4:17
there. I feel like Colorado is knocked off the books usually pretty quickly. Yeah,

Tim · 4:22
yeah. We have family that lives there. I went to Wyoming.

Reggie · 4:26
I went to Jackson Hole, but

Lauren · 4:29
amazing place.

Reggie · 4:30
Yes, it's namesake

Lauren · 4:31
of my brother.

Reggie · 4:32
You know what's really funny? I actually your brother's name's Jackson.

Lauren · 4:36
Yeah, for Jackson. I'm

Reggie · 4:37
glad it's not Hole. I

Tim · 4:38
was wondering if it's a Hole.

Lauren · 4:39
Well, my my parents always joke, or I think it was actually serious. My dad wanted his middle name to be Wyoming. Reggie Tidwell Oh, really? 4:46

Tim · 4:47
But cool name, actually. Yeah.

Reggie · 4:50
Interesting story. When I was out there, I was with Mike, one of my good buddies and neighbor. His wife's grandfather is. The guy on the license plate. There's like a cowboy on the Wyoming license plate. Yeah. So her family is like multiple generations settlers. Like he he helps settle the state, and so they have a house they were grandfathered in to be in where the Tetons are in Grand Teton National Park. So their house, the living room has a picture window that has a perfectly framed view of the Tetons. It was crazy. I got some crazy photos. It's an insane

Lauren · 5:31
place. It's super special.

Reggie · 5:33
Really, it really is. I saw Grizzly. Yeah. But anyway, social media. What what what drives you crazy about it? What What's your first thought about

Lauren · 5:41
social media is a very complex topic in my mind because I work in it. Yeah, I work in different places in marketing, but social media is kind of my stronghold and social strategy, in particular, brand voice through social media is kind of my particular interest, and at the same time, a lot of things about social media really scare me. Reggie Tidwell Oh, yeah! I 6:10

Lauren · 6:12
have a lot of complex feelings about social media. Just, I think it's done a lot of really beautiful things for us, and will continue to do a lot of really beautiful things for us. And it's also radically shaped the way we live in so many different aspects to the point that I don't know.

Reggie · 6:37
Like a double-edged sword. It's

Lauren · 6:38
a double-edged sword. It absolutely is a double-edged sword, and I think it's so important for how businesses do work and do marketing today. And it's just kind of figuring out how to leverage it within ourselves to set boundaries around it. But then at the same time, it's like the algorithm is built to break those boundaries. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm giving you something. The last

Tim · 7:07
last winded him up. Yeah, I was all wound up. What was it about? About the algorithm. About the algorithm, vlogs. Yes, vlogs. It was similar in that this. Well, you said it's like a. It's a. You know, it's in a way the way we work in business. Yeah, I would say it's a forced thing. You know, like it's more Lauren Moody about that. 7:26

Tim · 7:27
You know, it starts. Social media started with this like sharing of personal life. You know, that was the thing. Well, actually, I think Facebook started with judging people's faces.

Lauren · 7:36
That is that is actually how it started. So

Tim · 7:39
that's not great, but at some point, I remember my wife sharing pictures of our son. Yeah, it was like sharing it with friends. It was very close, and it was like sharing a photo album or a digital way of sharing your the pictures you're taking, your life. Reggie Tidwell Right, 7:53

Tim · 7:53
and now it is this forced mechanism of marketing, and right, like we're trying to do this podcast, in all honesty, out of a need to market and create content. That's everyone's requirement. If you own a business, you got to create content, and it is so much work to do this. Reggie Tidwell Yeah, it is, 8:14

Tim · 8:15
and to require every company. Yeah, you know, to require every company to have to do this. That just seems crazy to me. Lauren Moody 8:22 Are you calling this forced? What you're doing right here, right now? It

Tim · 8:27
is a little bit forced, yeah. Because I mean, we Reggie and I were in Asheville, where there was the big hurricane, as you were here as well. Oh, I Lauren Moody was too. 8:33

Tim · 8:33
And cultivate climbing had to go through it as well. And after that, we had some support to help us rebuild what we had lost, and in that support, we're like, "How do we build our company? How do we market? And so we went through all the options, you know, traditional marketing, what they have now called growth specialists. Went through all of them, and the the consistent thing kept coming back. You got to create content. Reggie Tidwell Yeah. Lauren Moody Okay. 8:56 8:57

Tim · 8:58
And so we're like, "Fine, we have to create content. So we're gonna do it our way, and we're gonna make it feel like us. It's not gonna be overly polished. It's not gonna be the thing that marketing or that social marketing usually is. But still, it requires a lot of us as a team to put this on, to record it, to edit it, to post it, to share it. And so it's like half of our job is just creating content, yeah, and not even doing the work. Not even

Lauren · 9:23
doing the work, Tim Scroggs yeah. 9:24 Reggie Tidwell It's like Speaker 2 I 9:24 9:25

Lauren · 9:25
don't. You think half of your hours are creating content? It is

Tim · 9:29
so. Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess Tim's

Dylan · 9:32
personal hours.

Tim · 9:33
My personal hours, maybe more than half. But I think if you Mary puts in a lot of time, Dylan is putting in some time.

Lauren · 9:40
That's a lot. Tim Scroggs Yeah. So 9:41

Lauren · 9:41
and maybe too much.

Tim · 9:43
Well, it's when you have a small company, and this is most small companies are also forced to share content. Lauren Moody It's true. 9:48

Tim · 9:49
And I've actually bucked the system. Like I don't have a Facebook, and I don't have an Instagram. I've actually never been on Instagram myself with my own account, and I always send

Reggie · 9:58
him links. I've never downloaded.

Tim · 10:00
TikTok, I have no desire, and I have no capacity to do it. So I think that it

Reggie · 10:09
can suck you in. That's for sure.

Lauren · 10:10
It really can. Like

Tim · 10:11
I have three kids. I don't have time to learn about what a billion people are. Yeah,

Lauren · 10:17
I think I want to get back into this idea of it being forced, and almost I don't know if I want to change your mind. No, but I maybe want to change your mind. I know, right?

Reggie · 10:27
I I like wish that he was you know sending. Check this thing out I saw on Instagram. Like we do this. It's on. It's one way. It's nice to do some cool things on there though. How do you

Tim · 10:38
even know it's true? That's the thing. Is most of this garbage is made up. It's all fronts.

Reggie · 10:41
Some of it is, but I got a pretty good bullshit detector. Yeah, like I think when you've been on it for long enough, you actually start to understand what's AI generated. Most people do though. What's yeah, I don't think most people

Tim · 10:53
baby bear cub. I know in the car and driving. You're like that is AI. Yeah, that's not real. It is

Reggie · 11:00
crazy what people are thinking is actually real, and is not. It's definitely AI, and I think that every

Tim · 11:08
every movie where there's a dystopian culture, it has to do with media being falsified.

Reggie · 11:14
Yeah, yeah, falsified. Watch Tim Scroggs 11:15 every futuristic movie where there's like some kind of regime or oppression. Yeah, yeah, it has something to do with using some kind of fake media

Reggie · 11:21
to like control them, and who

Tim · 11:23
controls social media? The algorithms, what's shown, what's not shown,

Reggie · 11:26
billionaires, what's

Tim · 11:27
pushed to create war and strife, what's pushed to create communities or niches that movements, stylistic fashion, like all of that is owned by these buildings. That's what gets me

Reggie · 11:37
hot about social media is that. So for one, so Facebook, I used to use Facebook more for business when it was just me. When I was a solopreneur and I was mainly to promote my photography stuff. I post videos and and photography, and then people it kind of kept me and fresh in people's mind. When someone thinks I want to hire a high end photographer, oh Reggie, because I'm constantly putting out content. Now it's really just like social. It's just like personal social. I'm not really doing any business stuff with it. Instagram. I used to do more. I used to do the same thing with Instagram. I really curated feed of just beautiful landscape images, and that's it. I did learn a long time ago: is if when I had like portraits and landscape and all kinds of other things, you don't really get good traction because people want to come. Like if they see one of your landscapes, and that's the thing that brings them to your feed, they want to see more of that. When they come there, and there's a picture of your cat and your you know your family in the backyard, they're just like this isn't what I want. So when I curated it, where it was just all beautiful, high touch, like high end landscape shots, my following shot up a lot. So I'm like, all right, this is what I have to do. The thing that gets me hot about it is that now it really is just an echo chamber politically. So whatever it is that you like, they just continue to feed you more of the exact same thing. So what I'm seeing a lot of is people that have very skewed political beliefs. It just constantly gets reinforced. They don't get to see any opposing views from any credible content creators that will help shift their mind and give them food for thought. They just keep getting fed the same exact notions, and so because of that, they stay in this like stuck place. And it's unfortunate.

Tim · 13:31
Yeah, we think it's bringing us together, but I think it's actually doing the opposite. Reggie Tidwell Yeah. 13:35

Tim · 13:35
Not only is it it it's doing the opposite in a worse way because when you think you're close to somebody, but you're actually further from them. Reggie Tidwell Yeah, 13:42

Tim · 13:43
and you don't even know you're further from them. You don't know your silo. That is even worse than actually being distant from someone and knowing and feeling the distance.

Reggie · 13:50
Yeah, because then you can at least work on it effectively in life. Yeah, but when you don't actually know and you have this false sense of security that you your relationship or your closeness is actually a thing.

Lauren · 14:02
Yeah, I think I agree with all of that on a macro scale, but I maybe want to bring it back to what about social media for small businesses?

Reggie · 14:14
Yeah, no, because

Lauren · 14:15
I think like that's what I wanted to come to with it being force. Is I was interested in that framing of it because it's maybe in this marketing world we live in now. Content is king, or content's kind of the game you have to play. But we're what is content? I guess it's why does that feel like a big task to create content? Because if we all are naturally creators, it's like we're just kind of. I think social media can be a tool for displaying those creations to people that are trying to find you or people that may be in alignment. So it's like all of your saying of the political. Aspects, yes, absolutely, and I think we could probably spend five podcasts talking about how social media has influenced us in those ways. And it's the thing I wrestle with is I'm like social media, at least for now, is here to stay. Why do you

Tim · 15:21
think we're doing this? Yeah, Reggie Tidwell how many 15:22

Tim · 15:23
years did it take me to realize Speaker 3 that? 15:24

Lauren · 15:25
It's not going anywhere, and so how can we have conversations of how can we interact with social media in a way that's in alignment with us and what we're trying to do?

Reggie · 15:37
You know, it's I'm pretty sure it's not too far off, and if somebody takes this idea and makes a billion dollars worth it, I want in. But before you know it, there's going to be a little orb that is like a little drone that just follows you around and captures little moments of your life and creates these edits for you to review at the end of the day, and you get to choose what content you wanted to post. But that's I know that's gonna happen. Eventually,

Tim · 16:02
you're gonna

Reggie · 16:03
have your little like personal thing following you around. Oh, we did something cool, and so I'm gonna mark this, log this timestamp, and then you'll have these little cuts at the end of the day. I think those

Lauren · 16:12
Ray-Ban glasses. Yeah, that's how it's

Dylan · 16:14
gonna be sold, but it's gonna be tracking you and what you're doing.

Tim · 16:16
Oh yeah, that is literally the government. As soon as

Reggie · 16:19
you do something sketchy. It's gonna be like, hey, government. They made

Dylan · 16:23
a movie about this. They made that movie with Chris Pratt, where like a artificial intelligence, like

Reggie · 16:28
oh yeah, it's the one where he was like guilty. Yeah, I started that and never finished it, so no spoilers. Hey,

Dylan · 16:33
well, it's foreshadowing. Reggie Tidwell Yeah, 16:36

Tim · 16:36
but how does? But that works. This idea works. It's like, yeah, follow you around and Reggie Tidwell yeah, yeah, 16:40

Tim · 16:41
cut your life out of your life. Yeah. Who's thinking in the background? How could we use this? Reggie Tidwell Oh yeah. 16:46

Tim · 16:46
How can we weaponize this? How could we control through this? So here's what I'm saying about small businesses. They even they they even have less capacity to do other work. So small businesses are pushed to the max in their what they have to do for their business. So now they also have to be creators and create content that does well on the market. So we're not talking like just show us whatever you do, share your heart with the world, do your thing. It's not that it's like perform, do the part, hit the right points, do the right, whatever the thumbnail. You're you're literally doing someone's business. It's like everyone has to learn how to sing music. Lauren Moody Yeah. 17:29

Tim · 17:29
And now for marketing, you have to sing and write a song every day. Lauren Moody Yeah. 17:32

Tim · 17:33
That's what we're going to require everyone to do to succeed. Reggie Tidwell Yeah. 17:35

Tim · 17:35
You can't just be good at your work anymore. You have to be actually nonstop pounding this platform. Yum.

Lauren · 17:40
Yeah. What are your thoughts? Would like there? I'd like to believe there's somewhere in between that.

Tim · 17:49
No, I'm an extremist. Yeah, it's funny because

Reggie · 17:51
you're on one end and he's on the other, and I want to see where's the middle ground. Where can we? Dylan might be the

Speaker · 17:56
middle ground. I'm like, let's sit over here, right here. Right between us. I say

Tim · 18:01
Dylan is one of the reasons I've developed us a love for social media because the way she, I wouldn't say

Reggie · 18:06
I wouldn't call her love. No, but unless it's not loathing, it's like

Dylan · 18:10
somebody walking past an art museum and he's like, "Oh, that's okay.

Reggie · 18:14
Yeah, yeah. I get it. I

Lauren · 18:15
don't hate it. He

Reggie · 18:17
no longer loathes

Dylan · 18:18
it. He's like this. So not quite to

Reggie · 18:20
love. He's somewhere between loathing and loving. Because

Tim · 18:22
I think Dylan, from the way she talks about it, it feels like what you're saying. Like it's coming out of a more natural place, and it isn't forced, and she doesn't have a chip on her shoulder about it.

Reggie · 18:31
And the way she uses it, I think, is really refreshing. I love your photo dumps. Those are like so cool because it gives me this whole snapshot of your life outside of the studio, and so I'm like, oh, that's what she's up to. Yeah, yeah.

Dylan · 18:44
We, I say we. I, I like making like little digital archives of the month. It has been get. It's been growing each month now that I'm like, all right, let me think about it. But I like portraying. Yeah, I like portraying my life that way. It's like in these little snapshots of like what has been going on, and it feels more of like feels more candid to me instead of like getting ready to curate from one moment. It's like the month, and it's like a little recap. And I like when I get really bored. Sometimes I go back and I'm like, what was I doing in January? And I look, so it's like a cool little digital archive for me.

Tim · 19:23
I just noticed it because you're using it the way it originally started. Like you're actually sharing moments of your life, and I and I appreciate that window into your life. Like it's it's uh it feels refreshing to see this. Speaker 1 19:35 Yeah,

Tim · 19:36
these parts of your life that I don't know. Reggie Tidwell Same. 19:37

Tim · 19:38
Now imagine being forced to do it as your business, like you're an athlete. Dylan is an athlete, but imagine you're now a pro athlete, and your social feed is like your success is wrapped up in your social feed. Who you're posting about, what partners you have, brands, what you're saying, who you support, what you don't support, and the consequences of all those. Decisions are your success. Now that social media, not the way you're using, which I love, but the other aspects of it. We were recently talking with a good friend who is high up in the ranks of brand, and he said that the consequences of social media are so intense right now that you're starting to see a mass exodus from social media. People are starting to leave platforms of 1000s to enter little tiny micro communities where there are Substack, Discord. There's a there's the big one anyway, and they're creating these little communities of like 10 or 15 people, and social media influencers can't get into those groups. So companies are trying to figure out how are they going to reach people when they've gone off and created their own little groups where you can be trust the people that are in it? Reggie Tidwell Right. 20:46

Tim · 20:46
You can actually develop close relationships instead of this mass communications platform that is now a little bit unruly in how how you get your things shown. Like always changing the formula. Reggie Tidwell Right. 20:58

Lauren · 20:59
I guess my question is: small businesses have always had to market?

Tim · 21:04
No, you just put a yellow page ad out.

Lauren · 21:06
Genuinely, like marketing used to not. I remember. Yeah,

Tim · 21:09
you're not old enough to remember that. I know. Yeah, there was the day where if you wanted to start an insurance agency, let's just go to like a normal business. Speaker 4 Yeah, be 21:15

Tim · 21:16
a creative business. Yeah, Reggie Tidwell yeah. 21:17

Tim · 21:17
You would just, and I know this from personal experience because my wife's family have had a couple insurance agencies, and her uncle talked me through his process. So he moved to Asheville, wanted to start an insurance agency. He took an ad out in the Yellow Pages, and it was a business. It literally became a business. Yeah, he got calls. He was successful. He had this long career. That isn't. That doesn't. doesn't exist now,

Reggie · 21:44
and you also have word of mouth. So I think between yellow page ads because they weren't all in social media. Yeah. So was this

Lauren · 21:49
so what was between

Reggie · 21:51
word of mouth and social media? What what what was the?

Lauren · 21:55
I mean, I think word of mouth is still quite relevant. I mean,

Reggie · 21:59
no, it's dying. Lauren Moody Not for 22:00

Reggie · 22:02
no, just because everybody is getting most of what they believe in from social media.

Tim · 22:07
No, it's it's not only that. It's it it is kind of that, but it's that there's so much content coming in on a daily basis, and with COVID, people were pushed into their devices so hard that we lost our day daily murder mouth connection.

Lauren · 22:20
Murder mouth.

Tim · 22:21
So we weren't our murder of mouth, murder of wow, we we used to have a habit of being with people of sharing what we know. Yeah. Now we all know what we know because we're all looking at the same feed, so no one really talks about what they know anymore. Because remember that era where it was like, did you see that thing? Yeah, I already saw it.

Reggie · 22:37
Yeah, yeah, right. Did

Tim · 22:37
you see that? I

Reggie · 22:38
saw it already. I saw it. Well, I

Tim · 22:40
guess we have nothing. People are

Reggie · 22:41
sending you things, and it's like, yeah, I saw this already.

Tim · 22:44
And so, when someone goes to like, so who who did you use for your social media? And they're like, ah, and then they just think of a name that comes from the. I will

Reggie · 22:52
say this though, word of mouth is now word of media because yeah, I saw a friend post it the other day. Who's the best Thai massage therapist in town? And all the people were like chiming in, and one of my friends' name, who I threw in the hat as well, came up a bunch of times, and I was like,

Lauren · 23:11
people still value actual people. That's kind of word. That's like a new word. I'm

Tim · 23:15
not saying that people won't, and I and I think it will break down back to word of mouth. Yeah, I think once people start not trusting, there's a there's a lot of predictions about what what amount of trust people will have in social media in the next 24 months because of the AI generative stuff. Lauren Moody Yes. 23:30

Tim · 23:30
So I think it will come back, but and I only know this from personal experience because our company died because of this transition into into strong digital only environment. That's

Reggie · 23:41
why he had such a chip on his

Lauren · 23:42
shoulder. Such a

Tim · 23:43
no, I had it before this. I was in a band, and I had to be on MySpace. Back.

Lauren · 23:49
Too much thought. We are back. We're back.

Reggie · 23:53
We're back. And we're back. We had a little. We had a little.

Lauren · 24:00
Okay. Oh yeah. So

Tim · 24:01
MySpace. I mean, guys.

Lauren · 24:02
Guys. What about MySpace? I was just saying goodbye

Tim · 24:05
to Tom. Remember, Tom used to be the one profile. Oh yeah. Everybody

Reggie · 24:08
had every account had Tom. I was thinking it was

Lauren · 24:12
Dave, but it was Tom. It was Tom. I believe Dave. He was a

Tim · 24:15
really normal looking dude. Yeah. Well, Dave was in the sense he was a white guy with brown. The

Reggie · 24:20
dog. What was the show? The Blue's Clues. Wasn't that Dave? No. No, that Steve. I thought that's maybe who you were thinking about. Lauren Moody 24:29 No, I don't know why. I was just. I can like see the picture you're talking. Yeah, it's a picture of him, Tom.

Tim · 24:34
I I think to me, and I'm trying to remember why I got burned down on it with the band because Tom never did it was. It's this. It's this. A performance that you're being forced to play. Reggie Tidwell Yeah. 24:45

Tim · 24:46
In the old, I I was there before social media, so I know what it was like before. Did you know what it was like before? Oh, I don't even know how you are. You don't have to say if you don't want. I

Lauren · 24:54
can say well, because I wanted to ask Dylan as well. I know how old Dylan is, but I was going to ask. How her age has played into it. I'm 27, and so I think I remember Instagram becoming a thing at some point in middle school. Tim Scroggs Okay, 25:13

Lauren · 25:13
and so I had a childhood without social media, and was like very, which every child should Tim Scroggs have. 25:21

Lauren · 25:21
Yes, but that's very not the case these days. And I was gonna. And children

Tim · 25:26
are allowed on social media, generally speaking.

Lauren · 25:28
I would say because I know it's not the advice Tim Scroggs of 25:30

Lauren · 25:31
generally speaking, not even social media, but like on media, right? Like have iPads and whatever, like TikTok games, where I didn't-I had a laptop really young, which was like my mom and dad will watch this, and I don't know-we can talk about that moment. Do you think it was a Tim Scroggs bad thing? 25:52

Lauren · 25:54
I think I had access to too much information when I-that's my whole

Tim · 25:58
point. I think social media is that in a nutshell. I think that's the problem. Yeah,

Reggie · 26:02
it desensitizes people to life because they're just too

Lauren · 26:07
much information and it's short form content. Yeah. So it's like I was reading like Wikipedia pages, which is a little bit different than like watching six second TikToks. Like I think that is far worse for brain development, whereas like I was actually educating myself to some degree, but also like developing really irrational fears because I had too much access to information. Oh man, I

Reggie · 26:33
think that's a big part of it too, right? Like yeah, because

Tim · 26:36
you're always bringing me this bullshit from social media. Like, look what's happening. He shows me the video. I'm like, what the hell? The world's falling apart. And you know what happens? The world just keeps going on.

Reggie · 26:45
World keeps going. It's

Tim · 26:46
it's a clickbait thing. It's like all of the you can you can trace what's going to happen with social media or anything by an incentive. If you can lock in what the incentive is, then you can trace what the action is going to be. If the incentive is for clicks, yeah, and you're gonna get things that give clicks. Fear gets going to get normal stuff because that doesn't get clicks.

Lauren · 27:06
What do you think about? A lot of people use social media for news these days. That's Tim Scroggs even 27:12

Reggie · 27:12
that's unfortunate. I Tim Scroggs mean, I my 27:14

Dylan · 27:15
generation does. I will say, Lauren Moody yeah. 27:17

Tim · 27:17
And I'm and I'm. How would you feel about it? Because I don't think it's bad at that level. Dylan Garcia I. 27:20

Reggie · 27:22
I think it depends on who you're following.

Dylan · 27:24
I think there's Reggie Tidwell motivation. 27:24

Dylan · 27:25
I don't think social media is the only people that are like berating us with information all the time. I feel like the news is berate like that's the news's job is to keep you informed about everything that's going on. So I feel like you got to pick your poison, which whatever. That's Tim Scroggs true. 27:39

Dylan · 27:39
For me, it's like if I'm gonna get my news from social media, I can at least swipe away if I'm not interested, or if I'm irrationally like, or if I have fear about it, like I'm gonna swipe away. But that's kind of.

Reggie · 27:53
I also think initial

Tim · 27:54
concept. You could just get rid of it. Dylan Garcia Yeah, 27:56

Reggie · 27:56
I think you know. I kind of take back my initial reaction to that comment because I think maybe social media might be a better source depending on who you're following. Because there's certain there are certain people out there. I mean, get to your point, Tim. Like you never know what's like real. But I follow at least politically. There's like a few accounts that I follow and trust because the people actually are out on the front lines bringing back stories from what they're seeing, they're in the courtrooms. They are actually delivering information, and I cross-check that information across those other accounts with the same people that are, you know, what's their take? What was their like? How did what was their perception of the same thing that happened? I actually think that the news might be probably not the best source for news these days because a lot of these, I mean, you think about Fox News and you think about you know the big the big news stations or news houses they are all politically motivated because they are because the people that they're financially Tim Scroggs motivated. 29:01

Reggie · 29:01
That's what I mean. They're politically politics

Tim · 29:04
only influences finances. They're

Reggie · 29:06
financially motivated to be politically exactly biased. Now

Tim · 29:11
it's the right order. Reggie Tidwell That's yeah. 29:12

Tim · 29:12
Here's the thing: news started out as a public service. Reggie Tidwell Yes. 29:15

Tim · 29:15
Channels that were creating media for media's sake for people who and this this actually came up with vlogs. I am not opposed to someone who is a creator and wants to create content creating content at all. Reggie Tidwell 29:26 Right.

Tim · 29:27
Like I think the platform should only be creators who their heart is to create. This is what

Reggie · 29:31
they want to do. I just don't

Tim · 29:32
want everyone to be forced to create content as a way of survival. So what I'm saying about this mom Reggie Tidwell and pop shop. 29:36

Tim · 29:36
The there used to be media and entertainment channels that used to have to post a public service news segment. They know how I feel about segments. We talk. We talk about trying to design

Reggie · 29:52
our show a segment, and he and now the

Tim · 29:54
dance segment, and now the Reggie segment.

Lauren · 29:57
Okay, we hid the

Tim · 29:58
segments. We called them something else. Whatever. Secret segments. They actually did this public service, and they would just do the daily news. Reggie Tidwell Yeah, 30:06

Tim · 30:06
and it was this little short thing where you would do tell what happened here and what happened there, just to spread the word. And then they started realizing the the possibilities. And then Turner, I think, I think it was Turner that started doing the 24-hour news cycle that did never existed, and it never prevented humans from having a good life. You know, it wasn't like that sold everything. Now humans are so much better for it. It literally is money. It's all about the money. So when you have a

Reggie · 30:35
life, sadly, are about money.

Lauren · 30:36
Well, I was gonna say let's get even more. It wasn't. You go back

Tim · 30:41
to ancient times when the the native people of the American continent they weren't like about the money. There was no money.

Lauren · 30:48
Okay, but how did we get here though?

Tim · 30:50
Yeah, let's go through that.

Reggie · 30:52
How did we get to this

Tim · 30:53
years of white oppression and and colonization?

Lauren · 30:56
Yeah, 100 money.

Tim · 30:57
How do you how do you think like

Lauren · 30:59
who created money?

Tim · 31:02
Actually, that's a cool story. I'm not going to bring it up now because I don't know it fully. But

Dylan · 31:05
I don't either.

Tim · 31:06
They used to trade tea. Reggie Tidwell I was kind of 31:07

Tim · 31:08
know that dried tea, and

Reggie · 31:11
yeah, you are. The

Tim · 31:13
tea and the gold is too heavy to carry, and so they started creating paper notes to say this is worth this much gold because I can't carry a trailer full of gold with me, Reggie Tidwell right? 31:24

Tim · 31:24
And so they started trading paper, and then it was a trust thing. It's this whole. Lauren Moody But I guess. 31:29

Reggie · 31:29
What if we go back to gold?

Tim · 31:31
Oh, it is already. You see how many people be

Reggie · 31:33
like, you know what? I'm gonna have to give so much of stuff away because it's too freaking. You

Lauren · 31:36
can buy gold at Costco now. Really? Yeah, but more my question. That's a

Tim · 31:41
cool thing. I didn't know that. I want some gold. Gold is all the rage right now. It's like Reggie Tidwell I know 31:45

Tim · 31:45
really high people are value Reggie Tidwell still. People 31:47

Tim · 31:48
are piling it on. Yeah, I think that there is worry that this money situation is going to get some gold

Reggie · 31:53
bars and high. It's going to

Lauren · 31:54
become a problem. But even gold, because really, my question is if we're saying all of this is inhuman or inhumane. Really inhuman feels different than inhumane. It's non-human. But we are the ones that created all of this. We

Tim · 32:09
weren't though. We didn't create this. We were like we were tempted. Lauren Moody Humans. No 32:13

Tim · 32:14
billionaires created this. I mean, humans. Are they? Are they? Are they? I want a billionaire to come out. Prove to me they're human. Reggie Tidwell Yes. 32:22

Tim · 32:22
We don't know what billionaires are. They hide behind all

Lauren · 32:25
the and a lizard.

Tim · 32:26
All the yeah. I don't know about that. But I'm just saying they they hide behind so many facades. Money is the protection in this culture. You have enough money, then no one gets in. Speaker 1 Yeah. You 32:35

Tim · 32:36
you spend the news. You spend the stories. You spend the styles and the brands. You spend the commercials, you spend everything. If you have billions of dollars, you don't have to be a human. You just watch the measly humans down here.

Lauren · 32:48
What's the antidote then? The

Tim · 32:50
antidote. I think there is a systematic change that we could. Lauren Moody Yeah. 32:52 Tim Scroggs 32:53 If we had control of the algorithms, like we can't control what's shown. I think

Reggie · 32:57
the algorithm needs to take a hike. I think.

Tim · 33:01
No, but that's the money maker. They're not going to give that away, and

Reggie · 33:04
that's the sad truth, though. Because it's motivated by money. But here's the thing, and I said this on another show. It would be awesome if if the algorithm was something you could opt out of. That if you could have your, you could have a chronological

Lauren · 33:16
timeline. Yeah, you can have

Tim · 33:18
that. Remember when they first just

Reggie · 33:19
whatever showed up is just what showed up. It could be content you liked and or content you didn't like, but you were at least getting everything that was available, as opposed to being channeled down this very you know down this echo curated silo curated path. Yeah, that's the most bullshit. That would be a really cool thing if you could just say, "I want the raw version of Instagram and Facebook. And I think

Lauren · 33:41
that'll ever come. No, because it's motivated by money. It is motivated motivated by money because

Reggie · 33:46
they it is it they benefit from you seeing the content that reinforces all your ideals and the ads that reinforce your ideals. So you click on the right ad, or and it's just all about the money. If you take money out of the equation, and

Tim · 34:02
that's what I want to do. I think

Reggie · 34:03
money is. How does

Tim · 34:04
that change?

Reggie · 34:05
Money is an evil. Like honestly, even with like, I will go on record as saying I think, and I'm sure I'm I'm not. I'm probably preaching to the choir. Politics should not be monetized. As long as you have money and motivation for money in politics. I don't think you're ever going to have an honest, a fully honest politician because they're going to have to play dirty in order to get even their own policies passed. They're going to have to do some dirty things, and that's just in nature. Everybody thought Bernie was going to get in and be the super clean. I'm like, even Bernie, as much as you can love them,

Tim · 34:41
don't hate on Bernie.

Lauren · 34:41
I know he's gonna protect him, but

Reggie · 34:44
it's not Bernie. It's the system of which. So, for instance,

Lauren · 34:47
well, but again, what's the antidote? So let's say you come

Reggie · 34:50
into just a and quicker

Tim · 34:53
an antidote. We just end this in depression and just just. I know. I'm like I gotta I

Lauren · 34:56
gotta bring it back.

Tim · 34:57
We we pass the. To Dylan because she brings the hope. Yeah, Dylan does. I mean, calls us out. Yeah, like you know,

Reggie · 35:05
like you can't you can't show up at a gun party with a knife. You're just it's not going to work. So if you're if you show a gun party

Tim · 35:12
with no gun,

Reggie · 35:13
they're definitely not going to work. You're going to be dead. Yes, you get shot up. Like that's the thing. And how do we change it? We we actually have to, as a people, rise up and demand nothing less than pulling all the money out of politics, pulling the money out of media. What if you get in? Yeah, what if you get the

Tim · 35:32
money out of everything? Yes. So Kate Rayworth wrote this book called Donut Economics. You should read this. It's killer. She talks about money as it was created, is a flow of resources. Reggie Tidwell Yes, 35:43

Tim · 35:43
that's what it was for. Reggie Tidwell Right. 35:44

Tim · 35:45
When you created the ability to make money on money, and people started hoarding it, it changed, and it ruined the efficiency and the usage of money. So one of the things she pitches, and it's a very cool way to look at economics. It's we still work on like 100-year-old framed economics. All the economists right now are taught in school from things we learned 100 years ago, which is ridiculous in our world. So when you when you read about the way that things actually work and the way that the flow of money is what it's for, so imagine if billionaires had to spend their money, they couldn't hoard it in a bank account or in all their assets all over the world. They had to spend it. What if it devalued over time? What if the longer they held their money, it became worth less? You brought this

Reggie · 36:30
up before. I love that idea. She presents

Tim · 36:32
this idea: if every bill has a date on it, a good buy date, and what and you had

Reggie · 36:37
to keep it in circulation, couldn't hoard it. It

Tim · 36:39
has to stay in circulation. It has to be spent and used to move resources around because they there is amount of to hold money the supply and demand issue to hold it to make money on money interest and all this like the billionaires are loaning us money

Reggie · 36:56
yeah they're not like their their principal they don't even pay

Tim · 37:01
taxes because they're using the growth to like right. They're using loans on top of the money. Reggie Tidwell Yeah. 37:05

Tim · 37:06
So if the money devalued as they held it, and by the time if they held it for tribulation, potatoing it over to somebody else, right? They'd be moving it around, and the economy would start flowing.

Lauren · 37:15
See, I like it, but Tim has put me in my cynical mindset. Dubo, bring it. What are the guys? Well, I'm just gonna say that that will never happen.

Reggie · 37:23
Right, right. I'm telling you the same

Tim · 37:25
thing. Social media will never change because of this. Because even though when when they try to start like a people's social media or like a employed or like owned by the people type thing, it just doesn't work.

Lauren · 37:36
Yes, but that's this is what I've been trying to bring us back to. So we're coming back. Social media is always going to have these bad things about it because it's run by billionaires and you know the controllers of society Reggie Tidwell influence 37:51

Lauren · 37:52
influence, and it's here to stay, and it's doing us no good to sit around hating Tim Scroggs it. 38:00 Lauren Moody So 38:01

Reggie · 38:01
how can social media be used to changed change the world for the better?

Lauren · 38:07
Yes, that's what I want to bring it back to. Yeah,

Reggie · 38:09
what do you think? Lauren Moody 38:10 I think

Tim · 38:13
big moment. A big big moment.

Lauren · 38:16
I am really on the spot. Everyone wait on Tim Scroggs it. No, 38:19

Lauren · 38:20
I think that social media. Oh

Reggie · 38:23
well, you have to put the Jeopardy, like

Lauren · 38:27
really. I'm hoping for a mic drop moment.

Tim · 38:30
You take your mic off and just drop it on the ground.

Lauren · 38:32
Drop it on the ground. Social media. It's like anything else that I really think is going to be how things change, and unfortunately, I don't think it will be for everyone. But I hope it can be for as many people as possible. Like you were saying earlier, it has to come back to smaller groups. So it's using social media, and that's why I brought up small businesses and like how I see cultivates social media presence, how it's grown, and how that's played into what we're doing over there. Is social media has really been used as a vehicle at Cultivate to bring that community closer together and be kind of this like visual or digital tapster was. wasn't the word I was looking for, but like a community board where it's like I'm able to know what's happening, and so then I can come to these cool events, or it's like I feel closer to this community because I'm in on what's going on. It's just a show;

Tim · 39:37
it's like a interactive.

Lauren · 39:38
Yeah, and I think more and more social media hopefully can become that, but it won't become that across the board. There's always going to be these big time influencers, these big time accounts that are kind of feeding this algorithm and like this make money, get rich quick scheme. Because that's what it's what Tim Scroggs works. 40:02

Lauren · 40:02
It's what works, or what people want. And I do think there's enough of a common humanity left within most of us. I hope all of Reggie Tidwell us that 40:15

Lauren · 40:15
we're still searching for human connection in everything and something to bring us closer together, and so how I see social media as us being able to look at the positive spots of it is we're using it for that. It's like I don't think it's something that we can just ignore because we won't get anywhere without ignoring it or using those tools. But how can we interact with it in a way that still brings us joy and makes it feel like it's something in alignment for us, rather than just like burying our heads in the sand and saying like, I hate that and it's evil and I'm not going to touch it because no change comes from that.

Reggie · 40:55
I've been seeing some reels that have been doing; they've been hijacking the algorithm and just saying we are only going to show you good things, positive things, and they'll have a whole reel of things you might have missed in the news because they didn't get the clickbait. They weren't like the there wasn't it wasn't the the item that's going to get everybody keep everybody afraid and upset and angry and and you know fighting against you know picking sides and fighting against sides, like you know it'll be something like some person received some really high honor for creating something for humanity, or somebody did some kind of thing with animals, like really positive stories. And so there's a couple accounts I follow like that specifically because they hijack, and one I don't think it's good for our nervous system to be constantly getting bad news and be constantly at odds. And I mean, I think it raises your blood pressure when you're constantly like in this state of like, I can't fix this. This is all jacked. And so,

Tim · 41:54
so what if this is an interesting idea, and it came out of what you were saying? What if you could decide or vow not to follow anyone that's not directly connected with someone you know that can vouch for them. Ooh, Reggie Tidwell I like that. 42:10

Tim · 42:10
Like literally everyone who's disconnected from us, because what you're saying is true. In our communities, there is good, and we can see it with each other. It's these accounts that are coming from outside, who are just trying to get the clicks and are trying to get us get us like all worked up, Reggie Tidwell riled up, 42:26

Tim · 42:26
have nothing to do with Reggie Tidwell us, right? 42:28

Tim · 42:28
That are getting us distracted and just off center. So what if there's like I know Dylan and Dylan knows this person, so I can be connected to this person and trust through Dylan that this is a trusted network, Reggie Tidwell yeah. And 42:42

Tim · 42:43
so every and what if it was a setting on your on your network or whatever you're on where you could just say trusted network, and it literally muted everyone that wasn't directly connected with someone that you set as a direct. The

Reggie · 42:57
only content you got was from trusted. That's how

Lauren · 43:00
Hinge was created. Hinge used to be only people you had. Yeah, used to have like mutual connections with.

Reggie · 43:07
Oh, interesting.

Tim · 43:08
You know what? We talked about online dating on this podcast. Yeah. And it's interesting to think, or the similarities between branding and online dating, and

Lauren · 43:16
how you like brand yourself. Just

Tim · 43:18
kind of like how you present a person, girl, and how you try and get a date.

Reggie · 43:24
What what about so LinkedIn kind of is like that a little bit Dylan Garcia mutual, 43:28

Reggie · 43:28
but it's not that you you don't black out anything else. But the content you get usually is from like multiple degrees of connection. Why do

Tim · 43:35
you think LinkedIn is one of the strongest? It's the strongest. It died out for a long time. Instagram's like Instagram, and then Zuckerberg bought Instagram, and it tanked it, and and LinkedIn rose.

Reggie · 43:45
Yeah, LinkedIn is definitely on the up for sure. Yeah.

Lauren · 43:48
Okay, but I'm gonna push back.

Reggie · 43:49
Oh, I'm coming around.

Lauren · 43:51
I'm pushing back.

Reggie · 43:52
Oh, she's pushing. I'm pushing Lauren Moody back. Reggie Tidwell All right. 43:53 43:54

Lauren · 43:54
Because I do think one of the other positives of social media is people that were born into a family, into a culture, into a community that they don't feel any alignment with. So I'm thinking like a queer teenager in small town Alabama. They're unlikely to have anyone in their community.

Tim · 44:21
That's why one can be a setting you can choose. You know, if you're truly there, you go.

Lauren · 44:24
Yeah, that's the fail.

Tim · 44:25
I don't think you. So for me, I don't think you can create mass media based on a few sources. So that's like someone saying it's easy to make a million dollars if lightning strikes. You know, like it's easy to this person. So like if one person needs not to have gluten, do you make everyone live non-gluten?

Lauren · 44:46
Well, I'm not saying one. This is one example, but I'm not saying social media largely has done that for a lot of people. Do you

Tim · 44:53
think? I think that's the narrative, but I don't. I'm trying to think of people that I know that use social media like that, and this gets back to our local communities. We can know from the people we know. I mean, not. I'm not expecting me to know because I'm a white man. I know that's what you're thinking. But I, I did tell a story on the podcast once where I was in a youth group because I grew up as a Christian in a church, and I was in a youth group, and we kept calling things gay. And a friend of mine who was in the youth group of us told us he was gay, and that it really hurt his feelings. That opened our eyes. Lauren Moody It was 45:19

Tim · 45:20
such a moving, yeah. It was a beautiful experience. So I'm not saying I know everything. I'm just saying if you took a poll of all the people in your life, in your life, in your life who have used social media in this way, what percentage is it? And maybe there's another solution that could solve it for the hurting community or the the shut out community. Lauren Moody Yeah. 45:40

Tim · 45:41
But to open a gateway for the the mass media Lauren Moody and the and 45:45

Tim · 45:45
the the the controllers of the narrative. That's what we're we're talking about narrative here. Lauren Moody Yeah, 45:50

Tim · 45:51
there are ways of creating micro communities for those people where you really have connection and you're not seeing someone charading around as I'm transgender. Like maybe they are, maybe they aren't, and maybe they're pushing some narrative that someone who is actually transgender needs to be connected with someone in their surroundings to feel seen, not like follow this weird, over characterized or caricaturized version of that, but someone in their life somehow connected. Lauren Moody Yeah, 46:20

Tim · 46:21
you know, like a connection is a connection because you feel connected by it. And I'm, I'm speaking too much on this subject because I am a white man, and I know that that's a problem in my experience. But with all of our communities, there is a connection that needs to happen. Like we all need more connection. Lauren Moody 100% Reggie Tidwell 46:39 46:40 I wish social media was at a place where, just by using it, it made you feel and crave human connection more, and so you maybe used it to find your clan, and then you got together in person with your clan, with your people. I was going to

Tim · 46:56
talk with my good friend last night, and he says, "I'm just a creeper. Did he say creeper? I'm a lurker. He says I'm a lurker. I just he says he's a

Reggie · 47:05
creeper. You know the reporter creeper's the wrong word. You said jeeper

Tim · 47:09
creepers before we came on, and that stuck in my brain. He's a lurker. He's like he's a lurker, and and he just thoughts his friends, people he can get together with. He just wants to see what everyone's doing. Yeah. And if you study, I did a project in college about voyeurism, which is an insanely deep-seated thing in our culture.

Reggie · 47:29
And social media really does allow people to social media

Tim · 47:31
is all voyeuristic. If you don't

Reggie · 47:33
have your content locked down and you have your content only for friends, you can somebody could effectively go on and just kind of follow what you're doing in life, and just not only that,

Tim · 47:42
but AI can follow along and know a lot about you and profile you. AI

Reggie · 47:46
is the ultimate voyeur.

Tim · 47:47
So voyeuristically, everyone is you. We used to get villainized peeping toms, but everyone right now is a peeping tom. Everyone is voyeuristically looking at everyone else's life. People are not. It's not a gateway to like some kind of physical connection. Reggie Tidwell No, 48:02

Tim · 48:02
you are creating one, which I think is fantastic. Like if you're creating a community board, which localized, Reggie Tidwell yeah, 48:07

Tim · 48:08
it has a community. People see what each other are doing. They get together. That is the most killer implementation of social media I've ever heard of.

Reggie · 48:16
Yeah, I was gonna say that's that's how I like to see social media being used. But think about it. When you learn of someone, what's the first thing you do? You probably don't do this, but if you know somebody put in a job application or you're going to go look them up on social media, have they said anything Tim Scroggs stupid? 48:32

Reggie · 48:32
You're going to look them up on social. Do they believe?

Tim · 48:34
What what politics do they subscribe to? Sure. Yeah.

Lauren · 48:37
Yeah. No. They can trust what people. Given us, yeah, a whole other layer of human connection, and it's pretty crazy.

Tim · 48:45
And then you add onto that some Black Mirror shit with like raiding someone's social capital, someone's social abilities, and like what they can access and what they can't. I

Reggie · 48:54
remember that episode where everybody had like a rating. Yeah, every time they did something in public, their rating would come down, and I've heard this actually

Tim · 49:01
is in practice in China right now.

Reggie · 49:03
Oh my gosh, where if you get

Tim · 49:05
rated down, you can't go in a certain place. You

Reggie · 49:08
can't go get on a flight. You can't like go into certain stores. Have you seen? Do you watch Black Mirror?

Dylan · 49:14
I do a little bit.

Reggie · 49:14
That episode is definitely worth watching because it kind of freaks you out a little bit when you think about the potential. All of it freaks you out, and all of it does, but some of it. But it

Tim · 49:23
comes true. Even the weirdest the

Reggie · 49:25
dogs, the like robotic dog episode when they had like machine guns. Like I actually have already seen a reel of one of those robotic dogs that somebody had like Tim Scroggs and 49:34

Reggie · 49:35
it had a gun on it, and it was like shooting targets. I had

Lauren · 49:38
seen this one. Yeah,

Reggie · 49:39
they had this robotic drones you were

Tim · 49:41
talking about will actually be weaponized as well. Little guns on it. They already Lauren Moody are. 49:45

Tim · 49:45
Wasn't this a Marvel movie where they took that little thing up in the air and they shot different people of power? Yeah,

Reggie · 49:50
absolutely. But

Dylan · 49:51
this is like what's happening in like Iran and Ukraine right now. Yes, it's like all this stuff that like gets washed down into our media. Some of it's got. Be truth. Imagination can only take you so far.

Tim · 50:02
It's the truth. Yeah.

Dylan · 50:04
And when you're in a lot of big rooms and you got a lot of people, secrets come up because it's already happening. My TikTok feed. I got off a TikTok about a month ago. Reggie Tidwell Wow. 50:15

Dylan · 50:16
Just because I got on like

Reggie · 50:17
going through withdrawals.

Dylan · 50:18
Kind of. I'm itching a little bit. You can see in the back feet. I'm like scratching everything. I got off of TikTok. Me and my partner did because we were getting just like Iran drone footage that was like we were on the dark, dark side of TikTok. Oh my Speaker 5 gosh! 50:35

Dylan · 50:35
We were talking like it was Reggie Tidwell hard. Yeah. 50:36

Dylan · 50:37
So it's all it's all coming real. The thing for me when I watch Black Mirror and stuff like that, is like people are imaginative, yes, but there has got to be a source of truth on some things that are being told.

Reggie · 50:48
Yeah, I was gonna say, sadly, when I look at Black Mirror, it used to be like, wow, this is far fetched, this is crazy, this. But now, I was like, this could happen.

Lauren · 50:58
This could happen.

Reggie · 50:58
This is probably gonna happen. But it's okay. This is probably already in prototype right now, and

Tim · 51:03
with the billions they're putting into AI and now quantum, you should see this thing that Mike is it Microsoft? Someone just put a billion dollars of their own money to fund this quantum computing chip factory. Oh, Lauren Moody interesting. 51:19

Tim · 51:20
So quantum computing, it's okay. So normal, normal digital technology that we experience today is based on a zero and a Lauren Moody one, one 51:27

Tim · 51:28
being off and on. You can think of it off and on, and literally that is how bits work, off and on, and that's how you control the computer. Quantum computing computing is a is based on quantum theory and quantum physics, where the zero and one can both be zero and

Reggie · 51:46
one. Oh, so they can they can choose,

Tim · 51:48
and I can't even explain this with any justice. Just watch a quantum computer, quantum computing video, and they will and try to can try to hold this information in your brain. It almost doesn't actually work in your mind to think this, but it will open up the like 100x computing power. So something can be solved in instantaneously. Reggie Tidwell Wow! The 52:09

Tim · 52:10
biggest equations ever. You know, blockchain technology is one of the most secure technologies that's ever been created. Quantum computing can break it in like a few minutes, so everyone. So you know how everyone's on this AI chase. They're like, AI is going to solve everything. That's why there's billions of dollars being poured into it, and there's no return on it. There's literally that no AI company has had a return that's that's profitable, Speaker 1 which is 52:36

Tim · 52:36
literally all debt. I watched

Reggie · 52:38
a clip yesterday where they were talking about in Florida, where they're putting all these data centers, and the data centers are actually sucking up so much of the fresh water because they use their fresh water to cool. They use this evaporative cooling method to keep the chips cool. Otherwise, they would just burn up instantaneously because the amount of data that they're processing, and so they were saying that it's not sustainable. No, that a data center uses up the same amount of water per year as like 60,000 to 100,000 homes, and now the people that live in these homes are having to do things like they can't water their cars at certain times, they can't water their lawns.

Tim · 53:19
This is only the beginning. You've not heard of this. Like when you use one prompt, they say it's like throwing a bottle of water out the window.

Reggie · 53:25
Yeah. So or more. It could

Tim · 53:26
be more. I think I'm just. So now

Reggie · 53:28
they have data centers going in all over the place, and yet it's for a technology that isn't even profitable. That's really sad. People are losing.

Tim · 53:35
But they see the values

Reggie · 53:37
of their homes are going down in Florida specifically because of these data centers. Why do you think

Tim · 53:42
Elon wants to put a data center in space?

Reggie · 53:44
Oh my God! Which other one will buy space

Tim · 53:46
air? Or it's not air, but do we

Lauren · 53:49
think this is what the industrial revolution felt like?

Tim · 53:52
Yes, definitely. Yeah, because it was amped up energy levels. But

Lauren · 53:55
maybe even worse.

Tim · 53:57
Worse conditions of work. Well, I don't know. Maybe I don't know actually. Or like

Lauren · 54:00
scarier than the industrial. It's way more scarier

Reggie · 54:04
because of the scale.

Lauren · 54:05
But we weren't alive, so how do we know?

Tim · 54:07
Yeah, I wasn't. But all the people. I'm not that old.

Lauren · 54:10
I was about to be like. I I was thinking. I was like, Tim Scroggs don't 54:14

Reggie · 54:14
you dare look at me. How

Tim · 54:17
was the industrial revolution, Reggie? Dylan Garcia 54:19 They still had black and white pictures.

Tim · 54:20
Well, I saw Sherlock Holmes, and it looked really cool. Oh,

Reggie · 54:23
was it when Jesus walked the earth, Reggie? Were you guys on Facebook together?

Tim · 54:30
I would say I would say that it seems from the movies, it didn't seem like it was great. I mean, people got pulled out of the suburban, or not even suburban. It was just the countryside to work in these factories. Yeah. Now imagine you have a. In a couple years, they're like they're predicting the job market will be at like a 80 to 90% job unemployment rate. So now imagine. Yes.

Lauren · 54:53
What are we? How

Tim · 54:54
exactly? What are we going to do? They're going to put us humans in the place that AI can't. Do it, which is anywhere there's not screen.

Tim · 55:04
Yeah, until they get robots. Physical labor is the thing. Like if you do something that is

Reggie · 55:08
construction workers,

Tim · 55:09
right? If anything that can be done in the real world, which is like factory work, until they get the robots, I think the robots are going to be here before we're put into that kind of place.

Reggie · 55:16
Robots can do factory, but can they do construction?

Tim · 55:20
I mean, there are some that are getting there. I think in years to come they will be, but I think the most instant result is going to be what happens. What is the what is the the solution? Is there an income that everyone gets because now our information is what it was trained on? Like social media is what's training a lot of these?

Lauren · 55:41
Yeah, I imagine if we

Reggie · 55:42
all just got like a stipend every month that would sustain us, and so we didn't really care as much,

Tim · 55:47
right? So money, I think money is going to be a hot topic because how do you value life when you no longer have a job?

Reggie · 55:54
The value of money is going to go down if nobody can spend it, and no one can

Tim · 55:57
spend it or make it.

Reggie · 55:59
Yeah, if you can't make it and you don't have it, but there

Tim · 56:01
has to be a way. Like even billionaires need a populace. Lauren Moody Yeah. 56:05

Tim · 56:05
Or what's the point? What's the point? I'm just gonna sit in this tower and just live in.

Reggie · 56:10
I don't know, man. This is giving me like Wall-E vibes, man. Remember all the people just around. Lauren Moody Uh huh. 56:16

Reggie · 56:17
They lost their bone structure. So what is the value?

Tim · 56:20
What is the value of life? And I think that this is where capitalism bites us in the ass: is that we have made the value of life what you do, instead of the value of who you are.

Speaker · 56:30
Yeah, when you're paid and valued,

Tim · 56:32
like you were, you said this earlier about social media. I was posting pictures that I liked, and I realized that people didn't like those, and so I started posting really beautiful pictures because people started liking those. So when people start teaching you through capitalism and incentive that what you do, we brought this topic up, but there there are people who have been trained to do things that are not good for them, like mukbang videos and some weird stuff, because people like it, and so it like trains them to do this stuff that's not them.

Lauren · 57:00
I actually listened to that part of that episode,

Tim · 57:02
and it's so dark that that is how we're being moved because of this incentive trying to make money. Lauren Moody Yeah. 57:09

Tim · 57:09
So now, how do you teach and revalue life?

Lauren · 57:11
I mean, but that's

Tim · 57:12
about what you do.

Lauren · 57:13
That's human nature, though. That's not just capital. Yeah, they feed on human nature. They're not doing this. That's human nature. They've exploited this. They've

Tim · 57:20
exploited it. Exploited the nature

Reggie · 57:22
of the human nature to be liked and to want to be liked, especially when you see reels of people doing ridiculously embarrassing things because they think they're going to get likes from it. It's

Lauren · 57:32
exploitation of human nature. Yeah, it's exactly.

Reggie · 57:34
Yeah, I mean, it's the middle school ideology is like if I do something, they're going to like me. I want to fit in, or they're gonna make fun of me. Or they're gonna make fun of me if I don't do. Yeah. So it's

Tim · 57:47
and it's exploitation all around. I mean, the the if the system is built to where you punish someone for doing something wrong, like get them canceled, Reggie Tidwell right? 57:55

Tim · 57:56
Or you give them benefits if you do something right,

Reggie · 57:59
and they get and they go viral in the right

Tim · 58:02
direction. How do you like them in the right world?

Reggie · 58:04
And now that's who they become, which is interesting. Yeah, I think I saw a post the other day of this woman who was a ballet dancer, but apparently she didn't have a massive following in ballet, and she had in her caption she was doing this like kind of she was doing the Dougie, she was doing this hip hop dance, and the caption says, "This is who I am now, and she's doing this like hip hop dance instead of her ballet. But it was actually really beautiful because she was she had found a way to like mix ballet in with this hip hop dance. And what about who she was? Pretty badass, and maybe it's it's not about whether it is or not who she is. It's whether it is or not who she wants to be. Lauren Moody Yes, 58:45

Reggie · 58:46
and I think that is the question. But if it is, more power to her. But she obviously had to make a shift because she wanted to pivot into something that more people would find joy in. But I love ballet too. Well, I'm gonna.

Tim · 59:00
I'm gonna say this. I do believe in the resilience of humanity, and I believe in the good, and I believe in truth. So nice. I'm gonna say this. I'm gonna say this because I come at things with a little bit of

Reggie · 59:16
with a pitchfork.

Tim · 59:18
That's not a pitchfork. It's just I don't easily just take things on. I really Reggie Tidwell digest, push Tim Scroggs 59:22 59:24 it. But it's not because I want to be a hater. It's because I think there's a better way. Lauren Moody Yeah. 59:29

Tim · 59:29
But what you just said about like maybe that is who they are. There is a place where we are pushed through suffering and pain to become. Reggie Tidwell Yeah. 59:38

Tim · 59:38
To like evolve to change. Reggie Tidwell Right. 59:41

Tim · 59:41
And the things that we're enduring now, though we want them to stop, and we want things to get easier, life keeps giving us this nudge into the truth within usnot like some weird religious thing, but the truth that's built in us. Like, how do we be more ourselves? How do we see more who we are through others and through ourselves? So I think that the suffering we're experiencing is not accidental, and it's not. I don't even think it's controlled by them, even though I've said that blatantly. I'm trying to like. I think when you just process verbally, you do say things, and then you're like, wait a minute, I don't really

Lauren · 1:00:18
about it. Yeah, you're allowed to change your mind,

Tim · 1:00:21
yeah. So I don't think they are having their heyday right now, making a ton of money on us. But I think we will rise.

Reggie · 1:00:27
What if, in the on our path to that, the way we get there is that we as people take inventory of who we are in the moment and test that against who we are at our core, like what feels good. Like I think if we all just took inventory of, just look in the mirror and like this is who I am. This is who I'm presenting myself as. How does that feel? Does this feel authentic? Does this feel like me? What resonates? What doesn't? And then throw away what doesn't and hold on to what does. And then maybe we start to live more authentically into our true selves.

Lauren · 1:01:01
I think we need time. We need time to do that. That again to get back into capitalism is you don't have time. Takes away our time.

Reggie · 1:01:10
Money. Don't need to get these.

Tim · 1:01:12
Okay, set the timer. Another hour. We need to talk about Reggie Tidwell talker. 1:01:14

Tim · 1:01:16
Right. You're right. We're pushed for time. We're pushed for money. We're pushed for resources. We're pushed for energy drain, like we just feel so drained. Yeah, but it's all part of the the thing that's happening to us.

Lauren · 1:01:28
Something I'm working on in my personal life, and I don't think it's unique, is like the idea of rebuilding a village and relying on other people again in your community. It's the whole thing of like you used to ask your friends to drive you to the airport or watch your dog for you, and now it's like oh I'll take an Uber, like I have to pay my friend like all this money to watch my animal. But it's like we used to just do those things for each other.

Tim · 1:01:55
wasn't monetized. It wasn't monetized,

Lauren · 1:01:57
and it's like you were inconvenienced. But that I saw on Instagram this thing the other day that it was like inconvenience is the price you pay for community. So it's like that's a way that I think we all could ultimately have more time is building more community.

Reggie · 1:02:16
What if we just go back to the barter system? We can't do it all ourselves. Cash. We just like, hey, I need my deck repainted, and looks like you need some plumbing. How about we just clear it off? No, but the thing about you know

Tim · 1:02:28
why that changed small business optimizing and monetizing every little thing. When you want to start a business, or like just think about something you do on a daily basis, and then charge someone for that. So like that is the mentality now. Charge for everything, and I will even say love

Reggie · 1:02:44
and the money will come.

Tim · 1:02:44
I would even say don't tell your kids when they're doing something. We'll sometimes jump to oh you could make a business out of that. Don't do that because when you take when you take intrinsic value and make it extrinsically valuable, it loses your intrinsic value. Yeah, so we used to take care about the money. We used to watch each other's kids, watch each other's pets, get the mail, drop it off. Like there were things we didn't have to actually pay someone do every single little thing. For Speaker 5 sure. 1:03:11 Reggie Tidwell Yeah, 1:03:11

Tim · 1:03:11
I love that. Rebuild the village. Let's

Reggie · 1:03:13
go back to that.

Tim · 1:03:14
Rebuild the village.

Reggie · 1:03:15
Yeah. Yeah. I think

Lauren · 1:03:16
there's like people are starting to talk about it because I think it's becoming necessitated. Reggie Tidwell 1:03:20 It's gonna have to require AI takes all the jobs. We're gonna have to. We're gonna have to grow our own food. Yeah, we'll be using them to grow our own food, which we should be doing anyway Lauren Moody in the 1:03:34

Reggie · 1:03:34
grand scheme. I would Tim Scroggs love that. 1:03:35

Reggie · 1:03:37
Well, this was an interesting conversation. I think it went some places that I thought it was going to go, and some places that I didn't. Tim Scroggs Yeah, 1:03:43

Reggie · 1:03:44
but thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. It was awesome. Really nice

Tim · 1:03:48
having your point of view in this conversation. It was great

Lauren · 1:03:50
to be here. It was a perfect topic.

Reggie · 1:03:52
Thanks for joining us. And if you have any ideas about social media and stuff that you don't think we talked about on it, we'd love to see you plug our comments, like to put some stuff down there that.

Tim · 1:04:03
And if you're mad at anything we said, tell us that too, because we.

Reggie · 1:04:06
If you're mad at anything Tim said, tell us in the comments. And with that, we bid you adieu. Bye, guys. Speaker 6 Bye. Hey. 1:04:14

Tim · 1:04:18
And we're off.

Lauren · 1:04:19
And we're off.

Speaker · 1:04:25
Thanks for listening. This podcast was created and developed by our hosts Reggie Tidwell, Tim Scroggs, Mary Green, and Dylan Garcia. Special thanks to our guest host Lauren Moody. Produced by Mary Green. Live production and editing by me, Will Kennedy. Graphic design by Dylan Garcia, and set design by Megan Scroggs. Today's episode is presented lovingly by 40 Hearts, creators of enduring value.