The Luddite Club is For Everyone w/ Amanda Hanna-McLeer & Lucy Jackson

Paris Marx is joined by Amanda Hanna-McLeer and Lucy Jackson to discuss the story of The Luddite Club, from its beginnings as a high school organization to its pivot into a non-profit and growth into an international movement.

Amanda Hanna-McLeer is a writer, educator, and director of The Luddite Club documentary. Lucy Jackson is an early member of the Luddite Club.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson.

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Also mentioned in this episode:

• The original New York Times article featuring the club
• Amanda shouts out Brian Merchant’s book The One Device and Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing
• The film discussed was John Carpenter’s 1988 sci-fi horror film They Live

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So it is frustrating, and I totally understand why people feel like you can, or that these companies are trying to force us to use the tech in the way they want, because yes, they are. They have a lot of control, but we have we also don't understand our own agency most of the time.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Lucy is an early member of the Luddite Club itself. Maybe you've heard of the Luddite Club, or maybe you haven't. It came on my radar in, I believe, 2022 when news stories started to be published about this group of teenagers at a high school in Brooklyn who had created a group called, obviously, the Luddite Club. This was a space where they got rid of their phones. Some of the members even went to flip phones instead of using smartphones and just kind of like got together to read, to discuss things, to, you know, explore the city. It was really about getting out of the digital world and back into the physical world among people and, you know, kind of enjoying each other's company, getting off of social media in particular. And obviously, this caught a lot of people's attention, not just mine. And now there are light clubs in many different states, many different schools, even outside of the United States, as other teenagers have taken up this idea and made it their own. And to me, this is really fascinating and also really hopeful to see people, especially younger people, pushing back on these technologies that have become so dominant over the past number of decades, but which also have a lot of drawbacks to them, right? A lot of things that we don't generally like about how they work, a lot of areas where we recognize that they have moved society in a negative direction. And, you know, I think there's a growing movement about trying to take that back, right? Trying to reverse course on some of those negative aspects of the digital revolution, transition, you know, whatever you want to call it, right? And so when you see these young people not just creating a club around just that, but also taking back this name of the Luddite, right? Calling themselves openly explicitly Luddites, obviously this is fascinating to a Luddite like me. So of course, I had to have some of these folks on the podcast. And I thought it was a good mix to have Amanda, who has been kind of following the club, obviously involved as well, but also trying to tell the story of what the Luddite Club is, as well as Lucy, who is one of the early members and so, you know, was there from early on, knows about the motivations, and can fill us in a bit about that. And I will just give you a heads up. Some of the audio in this episode might be a bit lower quality than we usually have. There's a fair bit of echo in Lucy's audio, for example. So apologies about that. But hopefully you'll still enjoy the conversation and of course learn about the Vladite Club, maybe even go check it out. So, with that said, if you do enjoy this conversation, make sure to leave a five-star view on your podcast platform of choice. You can share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. And if you do want to support the work that goes into making Tech Won's Save Us every single week, so we can keep having these critical, in-depth conversations about so many different aspects of the world that the tech industry has created for us and what it means to live in it and push back against it. You can join supporters like Lucy from Argentina, V in Denver, Colorado, and Whitney from South Bend, Indiana by going to patreon.com slash TechWon't Save Us, where you can become a supporter as well. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Amanda, welcome to Tech Won't Save Us.

SPEAKER_00 3:49

Thank you. Thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

And Lucy, great to have you on the show as well.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Thank you. Thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

I'm really excited to speak with you both because I think for a lot of listeners of the show, they will be pretty familiar with the Luddite Club. They will have heard about it. They will have read some of the articles about it, maybe even listened to some interviews, right? And, you know, I think it's long past time that we had a discussion about it on the show. And so I feel like for me, the initial thing I want to know is where did the Luddite Club come from? How did this actually start? And how did you both get involved with it?

SPEAKER_02 4:21

Well, it started with Logan and Jameson, two girls in high school. And Logan was a junior, Jameson was a Frenchman, and they came together and they were like, you know, we've got a problem. I think I'm pretty sure they had flip phones at the time, and they decided to start a club and they invited their friends, they invited people from school. Uh, they hung up posters at Murrow, which Amanda saw. And yeah, they kind of it it just sprung off from there.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Yeah, and there are periods from what I understand before I met them where Logan didn't have a phone, she threw her smartphone into the Guanes Canal here in Brooklyn. They had different uses of their of their dumb phones. You know, I'm like Lucy said, pretty sure Jameson had the flip phone, but I'm not quite sure if if Logan at that point even had a phone because she went for periods of time without a cell phone.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

Which is really great, really fascinating. And so was the initial kind of conception of the Luddite Club then really around phones and getting rid of smartphones in particular, or or was it something broader, or did that part come later?

SPEAKER_02 5:23

To my understanding, a large facet of what they were focused on was the phone. And then later, I remember we were we were making posters for a Brooklyn Tech Luddite Club, and Jameson was like, oh, like let's put a flip phone on the front. And I was like, it's really cool, it's really great, but also nobody's gonna come if we do that. You know, so I was like, I kind of like it helped steer a little bit. I mean, she was totally on the same page too. Uh but we were like, what if we kind of steer it more towards anti-social media and like anti-big tech rather than the entire idea of a phone, just so it can be a little more all-encompassing for anybody who wants to join.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Yeah. And in terms of, you know, the Luddite Club, from what I've come to understand over the last few years is that there is a true spectrum of Luddism, where you have on one side of things, you have people who don't have social media, don't have a smartphone. On the other side, it's people that have social media that have smartphones, but are deeply critical of technology and the outsize role that it plays in their lives. That's what I respect Lucy Jameson and Logan and others and what they were doing so much because knowing at a pretty young age in high school that you have to create this big tent movement in order to get your point across, that's tricky. And especially a club. You know, clubs can be clicky, but they really did such a good job about like opening it up and being approachable.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

Absolutely. I feel like it's something I wouldn't have been able to do in high school. So, like a ton of respect for that, right? And I wonder, you know, how you both actually got involved with it. You mentioned, of course, the high school where this started, Lucy. And of course, you weren't a co-founder, but you were an early member. And and Amanda, you were a teacher at the school. So, how did you both get involved with this and what kind of piqued your interest when you started hearing about it?

SPEAKER_00 7:12

So I got rid of my smartphone and social media in 2021. I had tried everything I possibly could to have a healthier relationship with my smartphone and social media. I did time limits, I did black and white mode, I took social media off my smartphone, only had it on desktop. And this is when it wasn't working well on desktop, and nothing was working. I felt this compulsion to just pick it up all the time, to pick up the smartphone, to check social media. And so finally, especially after the pandemic, you know, I mean, we're still in it. This is 2021, but the peak of the pandemic, I thought, well, this is the time to do it. I'm just gonna get rid of all of it. And so my friends had called me a Luddite. And like I said, it was in a derogatory way. It was not defined in the way that we've come to define it in the club. And I did my research and I'm like, the Luddites are cool as hell. I don't know what people are talking about. Uh, they're super principled. Whatever. If you're gonna call me a Luddite, call me a Luddite. So I go back to my old high school, Edward R. Murrow high school. One of my former teachers asked me to found a film department. So 2021, students are masked, it's kind of chaotic. And I see these Luddite club posters uh in the hallways, and I thought, man, that is so great. I hope this is what I think it is. And it and it was. It was a group of students who were technocritical. Uh, fast forward a year, and one of the club members, Ava de la Cruz, is in my class and she's taking these camcorder videos of club meetings, and she's like, I wanted to show you because I know you've got the flip phone. You know, the kids in my class called it a burner phone. They were like, yo, Miss McClear, why you got a burner?

SPEAKER_01 8:57

They're already recognizing that like you're one of them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And V kind of had to harass me. I was a new teacher, super overwhelmed, and was like, look at this footage, look at this footage. And so then the New York Times article comes out, and she runs into my room and is like, We're in the New York Times. And I was like, That's sick. That's absolutely insane. I can't believe it, but I also can, you know, this hasn't been represented before in the media. And then, as I mentioned earlier, all these networks start reaching out, but they're looking at the kids like their curiosities. And that disappointed me because I knew that they were principled young people, that this wasn't just a fad, it wasn't just an aesthetic. And so after they turned down the networks, I went to V and I said, you know, I'd love to direct a documentary, but only if you guys would have me and only if it's with you. And she said, Let me talk to the club. And they said yes.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

Cool. And and I want to come back to talking about the documentary a little bit later and also like both of your relationships to social media and technology. But Lucy, how did you get involved with it?

SPEAKER_02 9:57

I met Jameson in early of my freshman year of high school, and it was cool because we we met at this like Halloween party show thing, and we just talked for a couple hours, and then I kind of just left. Like I didn't say bye or anything, which I felt really bad about. I was like, I hope I see this person again. Like, and then we ran into each other again, and then we started running into each other continuously at the band steps in Brooklyn outside school, because either I or her would be sitting there reading, and we would just sit down next to the other when we got there, and it was really cute, and like we just never got each other's phone numbers, nothing. We just like had this silent agreement to meet there. And then when they were like talking about all this stuff, she was like, Oh, I started this club with Logan, like my friend Logan, really cool. It's called the Lud Eye Club. We're just like trying to be off our phones. I was like, What? This is awesome! Like, I I had had an iPhone for a while, but I had never been big on social media, like a lot of people in the club were. So I felt a little bit like impostery because of that, because it was like kind of a wellness group for kids who had been really into social media and were trying to get off it. And I wasn't one of those kids that just wasn't really ever on it. It was nice, and I came and I didn't leave.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

That's awesome. When you talk about how, okay, you had an iPhone, you weren't very into social media, regardless. Before the Luddite Club, was that like an intentional decision, or was it just not really interesting you, or why that approach, I guess?

SPEAKER_02 11:23

I got a flip phone a year and a half ago. So I still had it well into my time at the Luddite Club. I didn't see it personally as a necessity because I wasn't on it to a degree that was problematic. I think it all comes down to like this root. I have a twin sister, her name is Sasha. She's also one of the Luddites, and we were very set on being different. So she was always really into social media, and I always wasn't as much, partially because of her, partially because I wasn't like as social and I was like the bookish type that you see in the club a lot. Like it was very like traditional to that cookie cutter. And especially for her, she got a flip phone almost immediately after joining the club, two years before I did. And that was a byproduct of needing to step away from that social media in that way, which I really genuinely respect a lot. And I didn't do that early enough, I feel, especially since it's such a symbol. But it was that, yeah, I I was that kid.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

That's great, though. You know, you you didn't have as much to pull yourself back from, which is good in a sense, I think. Probably better for you. Amanda, you know, you were talking about your relationship with this as well, right? And you mentioned how you already had a flip phone before this, you had given up social media a lot. I wonder what it was like, one, to kind of make that decision, right? I feel like I'm in the process of going through a lot of what you actually described, you know, taking a lot of this stuff off my phone, trying to get control of it, trying to not use it so much on desktop either, but still like having issues with that focus. And so I wonder, on the one hand, what drove you to make that shift, but also it feels like it must have been a difficult thing to do in the middle of the pandemic when it was harder to connect with people in person as well.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the way I think about it is that I had been on social media since I was 14. So 14 to 28. I'm now 32. And that's 14 years of basically being programmed how to respond to an app, how to respond to uh notifications, respond to these design cues and this persuasive design. And I noticed it when I was young. I I luckily had a mom who she would see that I'd spent a lot of time on MySpace, right? Like I went from MySpace to Facebook to Instagram to Twitter.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

Lucy, you you missed out on MySpace. That was uh, I think a bit of a better one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

I don't know if Lucy missed out on anything.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

No, fair enough.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

But yeah, I mean, it just like I noticed this shift, and I noticed, you know, family members would be on MySpace or uh for hours. And I thought like they're in a different zone right now. So I was always really observant of that. And what I was about to say earlier is, you know, my mom would see me on MySpace and be like, you've been on for a little while. Do you want to get off soon? And I was like, Yeah, you know what? You're right. 15 more minutes. And she'd be like, Yeah, it was a conversation. So she didn't outright ban it, which I think was really important, even though she was concerned about it, and she really left it up to me, which is why I related so much to the Luddite Club members, because it was all, you know, on their own volition, right? They decided I don't want this. It wasn't top-down from parents. So I had been thinking about these things for a while. My also my background, once I was a working professional in the film and television industry, I just saw how tech adult everybody was. And especially in a job where you're watching TV all day. To some people, that sounds amazing. To me, it was torturous sometimes because you'd watch the same thing over and over and over again. And you quite literally were just glued to your screen. I was critical of it that whole time. I would try and get, you know, my coworkers just to come out for lunch at Bryant Park for 20 minutes and they couldn't do it. And instead, they would eat lunch at their desk and then they would be scrolling on their phones while also half watching something on their screen. And it wasn't until I read Jenny Odell's How to Do Nothing and Resisting the Attention Economy that I truly felt seen and empowered to change something.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And I feel like Jenny Odell was one of those people who's long overdue for me to have on the show as well, to be quite honest, hearing you say that. It's interesting to hear about both of your journeys, right? And coming at it from different angles, of course, you know, because technology was in different places as you were growing up and you had different approaches to it, all that. I really relate, obviously, to what you're saying, Amanda, being that we're of similar ages and we're around for as a lot of this was happening, right? And using a lot of these platforms and things. But I wonder when I think of the Luddite, I think as you're saying, we have a lot of these articles talking about the kind of the philosophy that goes into it, as you were talking about, Lucy, around on the one hand, the phones, but also the social media as you were talking about in terms of the way to approach it. But it also feels like there's a big community element to this, you know, coming out of the fact that it's a club, right? Can you talk to me about that part? Like what it is like bringing these people together and how you have felt about kind of the response that it has received and the number of young people who have been interested in it.

SPEAKER_02 16:28

This is something funny. I've been thinking about I think the community aspect is the most important part. People constantly ask, like, oh, you have a flip phone, big deal. Why do you have a club? And it's like the main, also in addition to that, one of the main like, I guess, arguments against Ludites generally is that it's like a classist movement, all this stuff. I think the idea of creating a community in order to not gatekeep a lifestyle is the opposite of classes. You're enabling people to see a different kind of place. And I think that's the real value, right? Like you have this club, okay, great. But in having this club, you're creating an idea in anybody who sees your posters, who hears about your club from a friend, you have this idea, this seedling of, oh, I actually don't have to be on all these devices because look at this like human proof that I don't have to be, right? And so that community really fosters that really just hope and the the idea of possibility for others. And I think that that's like the greatest thing because it's open to anybody. You know, you don't have to pay to be in it. It's not crazy time consuming. It's once a week for an hour, however many you have, and that's it. And it just keeps you accountable and you have these people and you're able to spread a positive message.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

It sounds really cool. And I wonder either of you, if you can talk to me about what actually goes on at a Luddite Club meeting. What how does it work? I guess.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

I've gone to a bunch of different meetings and they change from meeting to meeting, especially because the members started when they were in high school and now they're in college, right? And Logan's older than Jamison. So Logan went on to college while Jamison and Lucy were still in high school. But the first meeting that I went to, they met on the steps of the Grand Army Central Library, Brooklyn Public Library. Everyone's talking, everyone's engaged. People are late because, you know, they're not really confined to that kind of exactitude, right? Of like, oh, you have to be there at two o'clock or whatever. Uh, there's a general meeting time, and then they, you know, mosey on over to the park. And at the park, people could be doing a number of things, reading on their own, even, but just in the group setting, playing chess. Lucy taught me how to play chess, playing frisbee, debating something from school. There's so many just different activities, but nobody's on their phone. And then sometimes club meetings are a trip to the thrift store without Google Maps. I I have that in the documentary. It's really great because you have a couple of club members in the back being like, Jameson, Jameson, Jameson, I think we're gonna get lost. Like, I don't do you really know where you're going, and she's like, Yes, yes, I know. And you know, sometimes they make mistakes navigating the city, sans smartphone, but they stumble upon beautiful things because of it, and it makes it all the more interesting. And this is something I know Lucy can speak to and is very passionate about, but you can see during these meetings how they are reskilling and retooling. They are learning New York City and creating different memories of places and how to get different places and how to commune with one another, how to debate, how you know, it's it's really beautiful to see that reskilling.

SPEAKER_02 19:47

Yeah, Amanda put it a lot more poetically than I would have. It has changed a lot, as she said. It's it's in high school, it was a lot more structured and routine, and like, you know, we'd meet at the library steps at like two or three, whatever the time was at that phase, and then we'd go to the park. And so I guess some of the like stuff I've done at college was like beginning of the year when it was a little warmer out, we'd like build these forts in the woods, and we'd have like a team. Some people would collect sticks, some people would structure it, some people would paint it, you know. So it was everyone had a different task, and then you could just switch, like nothing was assigned. It was just whatever you wanted to do at that moment. And then we've done this like mystic course, this drawing activity where you hand off to a bunch of different people. I've tried to get people to bring like excerpts of books or things that they've written, which has worked out sometimes. Yeah, and yeah, just being in that space together without that exterior distraction, and like, you know, if someone's reading over there, like they'll come across some passage they really like. So they'll like get up and be like, look at this, I just read this. Like, this is so cool. And nobody's like, Yeah, okay. Like, like there's none of that. Like, you are genuinely there, and like you're living in that third dimension you're supposed to live in. It's so beautiful to me and to all of us. And I it's very special. And people are always asked that question of what do you guys do? It's like, what don't you do? Like, what can you not do?

SPEAKER_01 21:12

It sounds awesome, right? It sounds like a great way to get together to like not just learn about the other people in the club, but to have these experiences together and to actually like have discussions, to actually have these in-person ways of relating to culture, the world around you, exploring. It sounds great. And as you were talking about, like, even just like reading with a group and finding something in your book and getting up and wanting to share it with them. I remembered recently I was reading something in a book and I found it hilarious. And I was like, how am I gonna share this with people? I was just at home by myself, right? And like took a photo of the pages and like sent it to a few people. It was like, this is really funny. You should see it. Just like at least some way of connecting. But you mentioned, obviously, Lucy, you're in college now, right? A number of the other kind of early members were in college. And I remember reading some articles about how shorts started at this 100%. High school, but then other people were involved. It grew to others. What have you made of the growth of it? How has that changed the Laudite Club? How has it changed in particular with that kind of movement from high school into college as well?

SPEAKER_02 22:13

Right now we have like 30 Luddite clubs around the country. And there's a few, there's one in Australia, one or two in Australia, Canada, France, Amsterdam, places like that, just around. And that that's been kind of the spread. But I don't think it's lost any of like the genuine feeling that you have with a small group of people in like a very kind of like undisclosed location. Like we still have that. It's just that you're spread out now. It's a little different now because it's like it's less of like this little thing that you're a part of and like nobody else really knows about. Now it's like you say something, and sometimes people actually know what you're talking about, and you're like, what? How do you know about this like almost secret society that you've had, you know? But it's it's cute in that way because it's like we are genuinely reaching people, and it's really just lovely to see. But into college, I think people are a lot more open-minded, a lot less hecklers. Well, some people have stared at my phone and been like, What is that? What is what are you using? Is that an iPod? Like, is that an MP3 player? But generally a lot more open-minded, I found, which is very, I'm very grateful for.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

It's cool to see how dedicated all the members are from high school to college, because that's the one question I got all the time. It's like, sure, these kids can do this in high school, that's cute. But what happens when they enter the real world? Which I thought was such a condescending question. One, but two, I was like, they're gonna stick to their guns. They're really principled. It's this isn't gonna change anything. I'm just super humbled to have been able to track that and see that progression. And this is a bit of a divergence from what we're talking about, but you know, we find this often where it's like, yeah, these ideas are great, but in reality. And as an artist, I think that's one of the most limiting things that you can tell anybody. You know, I've been told that like you can't be a filmmaker, you can't be an artist without social media. So this film that we're doing is an attempt to disprove that. There's just so much of that. Like, you know, in the film industry, you can't have any agency in how you interact with technology, and it's just not true. I mean, I try and talk to club members about this all the time so they know what to expect in the workplace. Because when Slack came out, I was in the office, I was working in television, and I was working on like Broad City, the Americans, high maintenance, these bigger shows. And I saw what Slack was, and one, I was offended by the name, and then two, I was like, I'm not doing this. I told my boss, I'm I'm like, I'm sorry, this is adding more work. We all work in the same place. I understand it's different when it's remote, but no. And there's a way to do it. Like, yes, depending on where you work, that's not always feasible, but like express your feelings about technology. Don't accept what's given to you. You have some agency, it's your life.

SPEAKER_01 25:06

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SPEAKER_00 27:16

I really don't think it's as hard as people make it out to be. You know, one of the first things that people always say is like restaurants, QR codes. And I always say there's a thing where you can ask the server what they like on the menu and ask them for a recommendation. And if you don't like it, they can also tell you another thing that's on the menu, you know, if you're really pressed. When it comes to maps, that's always the hardest thing for people. How do you navigate without maps? And I understand that's that's a huge consideration. But that's another situation where I do have a computer at home, I can look it up before I leave. And then if I do get lost, I ask somebody on the street. More often than not, like I'll make fun of myself a little bit, be like, hey, look, this is my phone. I don't have directions. Can you help me out? And people do, they're they're so friendly more often than people would give them credit for.

SPEAKER_02 28:07

Yeah, I I agree with Amanda. I I think people are like, they view it as this like unattainable thing where you're like, oh my god, I could never do that. And it's like, first off, you could try it. Nobody's saying if you go to a flip phone, you can never go back. It's like you put your SIM card in it, you try it, you don't like it, you take your SIM card out, you put it back in your phone. Like it's like you can literally do it for a day. But I I don't think it's as hard. I mean, quite genuinely, I've found myself reaching out to more people because I actually have to make that concerted effort, and I can't just like text them and pretend that we're having a real conversation when we're not really, at least for me, plenty of people have real conversations, I'm sure, but I just can't really do it when I'm not looking at someone in the eyes. And my my friendships have really flourished because of this, I think, and I've found who I value the most because I'll reach out and I'll make time and I'll see those people or I'll call those people, whatever it is. Navigation, as Amanda said, I completely agree with everything she said. Social media, people like are like, oh my god, I'll miss it so much. It's like not really, you know. You have an extra few hours in your day, and you can do anything you want. You can actually see the people that you're looking at in scrolling past, like, go see them, you know, or call them or do anything, like get genuine time. There's certain like utility nitpicky things, like I don't have a flashlight, I don't have as good of a camera. But if I genuinely care about those things, I'll just go get them. You know, I'll get a flashlight for $2.99 if I want to go exploring caves or something, you know, and like like if I actually want to do it, I will do it. Like you're just able to do whatever you want to do. You just actually have to like take action and you have to take accountability.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

Yeah, and you have to be more creative. Like one of the things that I'm thinking, like as Lucy's describing this, is creativity. And I don't think it's any surprise that so many of the Lud Eye Club members are artistic and have multiple ways of expressing themselves, whether that's music or drawing, writing. What's incredible too is that none of the members fit into any kind of box. Jameson's a physics major. And I always found that incredible because she also had this amazing art portfolio as well, and that extends to so many other club members. But that's my kind of best example of that kind of range. And there are a few things that Lucy said that I wanted to briefly comment on as well. It's like the SIM card, it is that easy, but to your point, Paris, they are making it more difficult because some of these phones now don't have SIM cards that you can pop out anymore.

SPEAKER_01 30:39

Totally. Don't switch over to that eSIM. It's the worst.

SPEAKER_00 30:42

Yeah, the e-sim is no good. And again, it's like we're taking the control away from you. Like that classic story I think that like, you know, boomers have of like taking radios apart and learning how they work, and it's not as accessible and it's designed that way. That's one of the things that I learned from Brian Merchant's one device, is how considerate that design was, not only in the persuasive design of the apps and things like that, but also like the physical device. So it is frustrating, and I totally understand why people feel like you can't, or that these companies are trying to force us to use the tech in the way they want, because yes, they are. They have a lot of control, but we have we also don't understand our own agency most of the time.

SPEAKER_01 31:26

I think you're totally spot on, right? And I think what both of you are saying makes a ton of sense. At the end of last year, I was finding I was using Instagram a lot, just stuck in like the loops of reels. You know, how people talk about getting stuck on TikTok and like, you know, the algorithm keeps you going. That was like me on Instagram by the end of last year. And I deleted it from my phone, like the last day of last year or January 1st or whatever. And I was shocked at like how I never thought about it after like it was something that I was wasting so much time on, and I deleted it and it was like, it didn't matter. My brain did not miss it. It was totally fine. And I feel like, Lucy, with what you're saying on like friendships and stuff like that, I feel like one of the things that I found or or that I find like so frustrating is how so many things need to default to text. And it feels like you almost need an appointment to call somebody these days. And it feels like we really need to change that, you know?

SPEAKER_02 32:17

Yes, 100% agree.

SPEAKER_01 32:19

Hopefully it can change, you know, and more people get off the phones. But I I wonder, you know, I was asking you what it's what it's like to live without a smartphone in 2026. But I'm also wondering, does the fact that you're using a flip phone or you know, even Lucy, you mentioned like an iPod or an MP3 player, does that prompt interesting conversations when people see you not having this kind of device? That people make note of it and like ask you about it or anything like that?

SPEAKER_02 32:43

Sometimes, but not as much as you'd think. It's more people are like, oh, oh, what is that? And then that's it. You know, that you're like, oh, it's a book on they're like, oh, okay. And that's that's the end. But I've I've definitely had a few interesting conversations on like I don't know, like on public transit, especially because you have time and like people aren't like, um, gotta go, like this is awkward. So they're sitting next to you, so it's not like they're gonna get up and move two seats away. So occasionally, but not as much as you'd think, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

Yeah, when I had the light phone, I have just a Motorola looking flip right now, but when I had the light phone, I got a lot of questions because people hadn't seen it. This was a few years ago, this is 2021. So they were like, is that a Kindle? It's so small. What's happening there? You know, they the people did get really curious about it. I mean, inevitably, people are they always say, Oh, I wish I could, like Lucy said. And how do you manage? It's always the question about maps, which is like that tells me something like that we need to have these utility tools available to people who use dunk phones, but not everything else. Like nobody needs any of that other stuff.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

No, definitely. And and you see phones like the light phone. I don't know if the light phone specifically does it, but other ones that are like trying to figure out that like balance, right? Without giving you everything, but having some of the things that you might need. And I feel like for me as well, that's one of the reasons why I feel like I can't give up the smartphone at the moment, even though I'm trying to like rein it in, especially where I travel a lot for work, is like I'm in different places where I'm not familiar with, and yeah, I need to be able to find my my way around, right? Which is, you know, just one reason. Uh I have many excuses, don't worry. Not just that one. But but I'm wondering as well, you were talking about kind of the bigger kind of structural issues here, right? That I feel like a lot of this is responding to, right? Whether it's giving up phones, giving up social media. And one of the big discussions over the past few years has been really the mental health effects of dependence on devices, but also on social media. I guess I wonder what you make of those debates, whether you've experienced things like that, or or whether you see your peers, especially for you, Lucy, kind of dealing with the mental health effects of using these platforms of the expectations of social media and how you relate to that and how you think about it.

SPEAKER_02 34:58

I think the weirdest yet most telling, I guess, example of all this is like the internet humor, which I know is like, oh ha ha. But I like this is kind of embarrassing, but I like quite genuinely sometimes do not get the joke. And everybody around me is laughing, and I'm like, guys, what's funny? Like, literally, what is funny? And somebody will pull it up and show me, and I'll watch it with a straight face, and I'll be like, why is it funny? And then people are like, oh god, like it's not. And then it's like sometimes it's occasionally funny, but it's like if you are not in it, you're out of it, right? Like it's it's either you're in or you're out. And so I see that a lot, and people are so scared of being out that they have to just go all the way in and like to the max, to the point where like like you can't even find a way out. But mental health-wise, whenever I tell people, like, oh, you know, taking 20 credits at school, I'm doing a lot of club stuff, I'm doing an internship, I'm writing for this blog, like all this stuff at once. They're like, How the hell do you have the time? And I'm like, Well, if I take your scroll time and I delete it from your day, you would also have the time. And people are like, huh, that's not true, that's not true. And it's like, then how do I do it? You know, like it's I'm not bionic, I'm not like supernatural. It's just like, I can do it, probably so can you, you know.

SPEAKER_00 36:16

Yeah, the opposite of bionic.

SPEAKER_02 36:17

Yeah, it's I'm the most mortal, you know. It's like, I'm gonna be the last one with the chip in my brain. So, but yeah, uh you you see it everywhere, right? You just you have to look and you have to have that more critical lens than people normally do. But once you have it, it's it's like uh Amanda showed us this movie, They Live. It's like the glasses. Yeah, you can speak more on that, but that it reminds me of that.

SPEAKER_01 36:40

Instead of the the they live glasses, now we just get the meta glasses to like give us an AI sheen on the world.

SPEAKER_00 36:46

Well, that's why it was so fun to smash those glasses at the Luddite tribunal.

SPEAKER_01 36:51

That was fun, yeah. Even while I was wearing a pair recording us smashing them.

SPEAKER_00 36:55

Yeah, that was so good. That was so good to like capture it on a pair of glasses through video and then just watch another pair of glasses get smashed to bits.

unknown 37:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:06

So the I'll go back to they live. The question was about mental health. And I remember this is very specific memory I have when it's probably 2018, and I was feeling just really anxious and depressed. And and I was looking at social media, and even if I knew that I I felt bad because of comparison online, and I knew that it wasn't real, and all of these things, I felt like that gnawing feeling in my stomach that something was off. And I remember during my lunch break looking up, like, is social media addictive? Can your iPhone be addictive? And the research, it was there wasn't enough research out there. It was really hard to find. I want to say it's non-existent. There's, I'm sure there are plenty of papers that, you know, existed previously. I know that there were studies done as early as 2011, 2012, but they just weren't coming up in my search engine. And I felt crazy. And then I started to hear from peers, right? And then all these stories started to come out about anxiety and depression and and its relation to social media. And then there's this debate about correlation, causation, all of those things. That's what gave me hope, you know, that there that conversation actually was starting to happen because it was very lonely before that. In terms of they live, yeah. I it's something I showed my students and then showed the club. But uh, it was a graphic design course. And I really hoped that they would notice how much they were on their phones or how much, and this is in the film, but I hope they would notice how much everybody else on the trains would were on their phones, and that the advertising was really intense, like all these tech ads that were up, and then what became AI ads later on. I was like, you know, take those they live glasses, put them on, and tell me what you see. And most of my class, this is before I had any Luddites in my class, they came back just scrolling on their phones. And I was like, oh no, that lesson did not go over the way I had hoped. But then once I found the Luddite Club, they were like, oh, hell yeah, this is exactly like what we're trying to get people to do. We're trying to get them to put on these glasses and see what's happening.

SPEAKER_01 39:17

Lucy, I have to admit this is a social media admission I need to make. But uh I enjoy when I see that meme come up as well. And it's like, what is kind of the world as it really is instead of the world as it's being shown to you, right? Just for me, like one of the things I have found is that it saps your focus so much, right? It just makes it so easy to get distracted, to kind of fall down a rabbit hole in these apps. And that's part of the reason that I was finally like, I really need to change my relationship with this stuff because not only am I losing all this time that I can see on the screen time thing, but also like I just feel like I can't focus on anything when, you know, I'm around it and not trying to block it in some like very explicit way. And I know that there are a lot of people who will both, you know, have those issues with focus, but also relate to the things that that you were both saying in terms of kind of using these technologies and the effect that it has on them, right?

SPEAKER_00 40:06

Yeah, absolutely. And that's the thing is that I I think I wanted to mention this earlier, is that a lot of people blame themselves for not being able to stop themselves or from being so distracted. There's a lot of blame, self-blame. It's not about your level of self-control. It's again, these things are designed to be picked up again and again and again.

SPEAKER_01 40:26

On that subject then, and I think Amanda, you you brought it up, I wonder what you both make of kind of like the AI moment that we're all in now. I'm sure this must kind of like accelerate the very things that you're both quite against when it comes to these tech companies and everything that they're doing. But I'm interested to hear your thoughts on it. And I'm also interested, Lucy, like what you see as someone who's in college now, you know, recently left high school in terms of your peers and and how they're relating to generative AI as well.

SPEAKER_02 40:54

Contrary to popular belief and also what a lot of people say, I guess, about us, I do think AI is generally bad. I think there are good uses, um, which I've been coming around to more lately, because at first I was like, no, this is like the worst thing to ever happen. Like, and it probably is in the top bunch, but there are certain good uses that will probably make quality of life for people better. Stealing jobs is not one of them. To your point, a lot of my peers, I actively watch them. We're sitting in lecture in class, and the professor writes something on the chalkboard, and it's like, if you've been following the lesson, it makes sense. And they'll just type it into Chat GPT and have it explain them. As they have a living, breathing professor in front of them who they pay hundreds of dollars for that class, if not more, and they're asking ChatGPT to teach them. I will never understand it. I will never understand it. Yeah, way too many of my peers, I know for certain that they use all the AI platforms to re-explain, to write, whatever it is. You're doing yourself a disservice if you do that. To a certain degree, AI in and of itself is bad. To another degree, if you are actively choosing to participate and use it, at a certain point it's on you. Like you are giving up your rights to education in pursuit of an easy life. So to some degree, there has to be a sense of accountability. Obviously, it's thrust in your face. And if you're younger, less accountability to be taken because you're impressionable and all that. But like college kids who are using ChatGT, like, what are you doing? Like, you know you're paying for this. You're aware of the impact. Like you're old enough to cognizantly like make these decisions.

SPEAKER_00 42:34

Yeah, my biggest concern with AI is the cognitive offloading. So, you know, you are not learning how to do XYZ. You're not learning these very valuable skills. You are offloading it to a machine. And I think those skills are invaluable that you're you're missing out on. I always say that, you know, New York City, I grew up born and raised, but New York, when I had a smartphone, felt like patchwork. Now it feels like a quilt, like a quilt that is beautifully stitched together because I know where neighborhoods connect because I've had I've gotten lost. I've gotten lost. And even like I'm ashamed to say that I had gone to West 4th Street so many times, which is a popular stop on the on the D line, but I had never connected Washington Square Park, which is just like three blocks away from that stop. And when I got my dumb phone, I was like, wait, these are really close to each other. I can't believe I didn't realize. Because I had explored those parts of the city separately, you know? So things like that. You know, I I I just get concerned that like when you defer to a machine so often that you're losing out on something. I think cognitive offload is just my the the biggest concern to me.

SPEAKER_01 43:49

It's one of mine as well, right? You know, you see these studies around the impact on critical thinking and and all these sorts of issues, like, you know, it it seems like a real problem. And that's not even to mention the stories about The mental health effects of a small number of users who get really hooked to these chatbots and things, right? I wanted to ask, you know, as we start to pivot and kind of close off our conversation, Amanda, you've mentioned the documentary a few times. And I know that there's like a Luddite Club nonprofit. And so I wanted to start with the documentary. Like you kind of mentioned how this got started, how the idea got going, but what has it been like putting that together? And what do you hope that people learn when they're able to see this once it's put together?

SPEAKER_00 44:27

So it's been the challenge of a lifetime, but uh it's so enjoyable. It's really wonderful. It's like writing an extended thesis. Um, and the thing about film too, it's you know, if you're writing a book, it's one thing. But with film, you it's so many artistic mediums in one. So, you know, you are considering your composition, the image that you have, you're considering the sound, the music, pacing. So it's been really incredible to have something, two things that I'm very passionate about, luddism, right? And then film, and have those two marry together. One of the things that I'm aiming to do with the film is to counteract these narratives of doom and gloom, right? Because a lot of the stuff out there is about these extreme cases, which deserve attention, right? The suicide epidemic among teenagers, mental health crisis. We talk about these things, right? But when there's such a focus on the negatives and there's no exploration of what you gain when you opt out of these things, it just makes people feel even more depressed. So I want them to see like what you gain, right? The skills that you gain. I have it on my whiteboard when I get lost in the sauce in my edit about what I want to do with the documentary. And I have written at the top like, disprove the inevitability of tech, because that is the biggest thing. It's this idea that it's inevitable, that there's no way to stop it. I think that if anyone can take a message away from the doc, that's what I'm I'm hoping for, that we can claim our own agency and autonomy, even when it seems impossible.

SPEAKER_01 46:01

And Lucy, I wonder what it's been like to kind of participate in the making of that documentary, you know, as as a Luddite Club member, and and what, you know, members of the Luddite Club think about putting something like this together and you know what it might mean for getting more people involved with it.

SPEAKER_02 46:16

Yeah, I mean, it's been really fun, I think. That's the big thing. At first, I know a lot of us were like a little bit shy because it was like, you know, there's a camera and you're like, ah, but you know, it quickly fades into the background and it's like it's just kind of it's just Amanda, you know, and it's like Amanda, you know, who has a camera, but it's still Amanda. So it's like, okay, like we're fine. It's funny because when new people come and they see the camera, they immediately pivot and like look a little more like cinematic, like correctly positioned. So that their good side can be shot and all this stuff. And then when they do that, I'm like, holy shit, like Amanda caught my double fin. Like, I'm interested in this, I'm into seeing that. Like, but it's not, it's it's been fun, other than the over self-consciousness. But that's very occasional, it's almost completely eradicated. And it'll be it'll be funny to see the final product and be like, whoa. I love it. I know Amanda's put so much work into it. It's been this has been what she's done doing. Like, it's a lot of work. I don't know. I mean, I was just with her for like one summer trying to help work on it, and I was like, holy crap! Like, so it's it's definitely a beautiful thing, especially to like be able to see into the inner workings of such a huge project like that, and like to like see her artistic vision and be able to like kind of like understand it more because I'm like seeing what she's trying to do. I know what she's like, I know her brain to a certain degree. It's really fun, especially as a kid. You don't really you get you don't get the opportunity to be up close and personal with like real professional work in more of a sense than like talking to your parents. And this is really an opportunity to get to do so. So it's been it's been beautiful and it's been an experience I would not trade.

SPEAKER_00 47:54

It's just so wonderful. And again, I've said this before, but I'm so humbled that the club let me in, that Lucy let me in because it is vulnerable, it's a very vulnerable experience. And, you know, this work by nature, you're anti-spectacle, right? If you're anti-social media, you don't want to make, you know, a reality TV show or a drama-filled documentary. I mean, I had producers ask me, like, oh, you know, is there drama amongst the teens with dating? Like, you should totally cover that. And I was like, hell no. I that's not, I'm not interested in that. That's ridiculous. But, you know, they had to trust me and I had to build trust with them in order to establish that and make sure that they felt more comfortable. I'm just, again, really grateful. And also that they've had faith in me to do it this long, right? I think the thing is that when we're working on the stuff that we're working on, the idea is that good things take time. It's not on this treadmill of social media, uh fast-paced content, right? So as the years have gone on, the story has changed because they sparked a movement. These teens in Brooklyn sparked an entire movement. And that's what we're covering in the doc as well. Things like the School of Radical Attention, the Lamp Club, all of these clubs across the country, across the globe. I went to Europe for the documentary as well, and people had heard about the Luddite Club. And everyone I've talked to has said, like, yeah, I've always felt this way, but I saw that Times article and it inspired me to do something about it. They've given me the time to shape this story and not just make it just about the club, but about this grand movement.

SPEAKER_01 49:38

I can't wait to see it. I'm really looking forward to it, to learning more about the Luddite Club even beyond uh our conversation. And I wonder as we wrap up, you know, you've mentioned obviously the the idea of being a Luddite. Obviously, the you know, the club itself is named after the Luddites. I I wonder what you what you think it means to be a Luddite in 2026, and how you think people should be reassessing their relationship to technology in this moment, if you have any thoughts on that.

SPEAKER_02 50:05

It just depends on you, right? Like you have your limits, you have the things that you enjoy, and you have, you know, like it's all about the individual, right? So I can't go around preaching and saying everybody should get a flip phone. This is the way I am like essentially I'm Messiah. Listen to me. Like, I can't be doing that. Like that is that is just objectively wrong. What I can say is please, if you want to, take the time of day to rethink, oh, am I doing things that are unnecessary making me unhappy? And most of the time, people are, even I am to this day. Like, I'm not all too happy with like Spotify. So I'm trying to, you know, buy digital music or buy physical music and just own what I listen to rather than give money to people who I may not agree with. It's that kind of thing where you you you're you're constantly taking more and more accountability and allowing yourself the time of day to critique yourself in a way that will make you love yourself more. Like it's not about, oh, these are my flaws, this is everything wrong with me. It's like this is something I wish to improve on. And here are the steps I take to do it. That's what I think it is, with a tech-centric viewpoint. But then again, that is kind of the sum to a lot of people's existence, if you will.

SPEAKER_01 51:18

Totally. I I love that. And I love the focus on like it's about understanding your own limits, what makes sense for you. And there's not like one kind of prescription that that is for everybody. Amanda, I wonder how I wonder how you think about it.

SPEAKER_00 51:29

Yeah, I love Lucy's framing there because I think it's it's key that it's not about what's wrong with you, because that's a lot of where this conversation is rooted, but rather how can I improve this part of my life? How can I get more out of life? And for me, you know, a lot of people they'll say, oh, neo Luddite or Luddite. I feel no need to put Neo before it because one, my goal is to rehabilitate the word Luddite and restore it to its original definition, and that Luddites were against the abuse, not the use of technology. They were skilled artisans, wildly intelligent. They did everything they possibly could to work with the machines, work with their bosses, and they were forced to smash the machines because there were combination laws that outlawed unionizing. They wrote letters, they sang songs even, they wrote letters to parliament, to their representatives. They did everything. So I really want people to know that, you know, that this is a term that needs to be rehabilitated, redefined. The struggle is the same. That's why I feel no need to put Neo before it. The struggle is exactly the same. It's about technology that rips agency and autonomy from us. And we need to find solidarity trans historically, right? Learn what people have done in the past in order to help us now.

SPEAKER_01 53:00

I think that's great. And a great addition to what Lucy said as well. And I wonder, just to close off our conversation, where can people find out more about the documentary? When might they expect it? And of course, where can they find out more about the Luddite Club itself? And I know you mentioned to me that there's a there's a nonprofit, so maybe you can tell me a bit about that.

SPEAKER_00 53:17

Yeah, great. I'm so glad you mentioned that again because I was like, Lucy has to mention the nonprofit because the Luddite Club started the nonprofit on their own as teens. So it's super impressive. The documentary, we have a website, LudditeClub Doc Doc.com. Again, it's the abuse, not the use. So yes, we have a website, and you can watch our two trailers there. We still have like a fundraising campaign going on to for finishing funds for the doc. You can check that out, and we have a mailing list so that people can stay updated about when there are screenings.

SPEAKER_02 53:50

Yeah. Uh the nonprofit, simply put, is just a chain of uh Letite clubs around the country and the world. And we send out a free newsletter. So subscribe. It's really cool. We get people to do art, right? And it's the Lidite Club.org. Feel free to give money to the doc or us because we would love it. And it's like Robin Hood type of thing, because we'll just use your money to, you know, give people the doc slash give people free newsletters. We make no money, so feel free.

SPEAKER_01 54:20

And we'll put links in the show notes for people to find the doc and the nonprofit so they can go check it out, see the trailers, you know, maybe subscribe to the newsletter that you mentioned. I appreciate you both taking the time to give us some more insight on the Luddite Club and to let them know that this documentary is coming and they should certainly keep their eyes open for it. And of course, you know, when it's closer to coming out, uh I can certainly update people as well. But Amanda, Lucy, thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. Amanda Hannah McClear is a writer, director, and educator, and Lucy Jackson is an early member of the Lud Eye Club. Tech Won't Save Us is made in partnership with The Nation magazine and it's hosted by me, Paris Marks. Production is by Kyla Houston. Tech Won's Save Us relies on the support of listeners like you to keep providing critical perspectives on the tech industry. You can join hundreds of other supporters by going to patreon.comslash tech won't save us and making a pledge of your own. Thanks for listening and make sure to come back next week.