The guys, @mrbenja and @the_real_theo_harvey, discuss social media: is it hurting our future? The online world (Social Media) is kicking the traditional way of doing things, AI Watch: Corpos are using AI, Celebrities that are marketing their books are JUICY, and Pocket watches for Gurus on Black Friday.
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Show vs. Business is your weekly take on Pop Culture from two very different perspectives. Your hosts Theo and Mr. Benja provide all the relevant info to get your week started right.
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Follow us on Instagram - https://instagram.com/show_vs_business
Follow us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/showvsbusiness
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Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuwni8la5WRGj25uqjbRwdQ/featured
Follow Theo on YouTube:
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Follow Mr.Benja on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BenjaminJohnsonakaMrBenja
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#DigitalDilemma #AIWatch #BookMarketingSecrets #BlackFridayGuru #TechVsTradition
The guys, @mrbenja and @the_real_theo_harvey, discuss social media: is it hurting our future? The online world (Social Media) is kicking the traditional way of doing things, AI Watch: Corpos are using AI, Celebrities that are marketing their books are JUICY, and Pocket watches for Gurus on Black Friday.
----------
Show vs. Business is your weekly take on Pop Culture from two very different perspectives. Your hosts Theo and Mr. Benja provide all the relevant info to get your week started right.
----------
Follow us on Instagram - https://instagram.com/show_vs_business
Follow us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/showvsbusiness
Like us on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ShowVsBusiness
Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuwni8la5WRGj25uqjbRwdQ/featured
Follow Theo on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@therealtheoharvey
Follow Mr.Benja on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BenjaminJohnsonakaMrBenja
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#DigitalDilemma #AIWatch #BookMarketingSecrets #BlackFridayGuru #TechVsTradition
Theo Harvey: Hey everyone, this is Show vs. Business, your weekly take on pop culture from two very different perspectives with your host, the real Theo Harvey and Mr. Benja coming with all the relevant info from your week in pop culture. So Mr. Benja, what are we covering today?
Mr.Benja: As always, we got five beautiful gems for you to put under your pillow and sleep well at night after you listen to this with.
We got social media, obviously. It's hurting our future. I say, obviously, because it's everywhere. We're, it's not even a thing we discussed anymore. It's just everywhere. But is it too pervasive? Is it taking up too much of our time? And more importantly, is it hurting our children? Children are the future.
That's going to be a good one. So also we've got the online world is kicking traditional media's arse. Just knocking it all over the place. YouTube is beating up on traditional TV and these podcasts are taking our radio. We've known this. But now we have some sad numbers here and we're just going to talk about what it really means because things are changing.
Also, we've got our AI watch. I don't know if these corporations are using AI and they don't care. They just seem to be doing it. Everybody's talking about, Hey, I don't want my job to be taken away. I don't want my livelihood too bad. Corporations care and they're making this, they're making this use AI.
Also celebrity book releases. I don't know if you've noticed, but they've gotten real good at releasing these juicy tidbits and getting all salacious in the media. Jada Pinkett Smith, John Stamos, Britney Spears. It's crazy. If something crazy happens to me, don't worry. I got a book coming.
That's what it is now. And also we've got our good little rant that we postponed last week. We didn't really get into it, but now we're going to get into a deep pocket watching some of these gurus because within the guru space, you gotta watch these dudes and black Friday's coming up.
So we just want to start talking it out a little bit before we start buying into all these deals. Theo, how did those stories sound to you?
Theo Harvey: Man, I'm super excited to cover every one of these stories, man. Look, Mr. Benja, this is interesting, man. Just I had a story, there was, we talked about these books, celebrity book marketing and all that.
And last year actor he came out with a salacious book and talked about his addiction struggles and how he almost died. And unfortunately, man, we just found out, prior to his recording that the actor Matthew Perry had passed away. And if you don't know Matthew Perry is, he was Chandler on Friends.
That was like his big, release opportunity as an actor. But before that, he had a lot of guest acting roles in tons of shows you probably watched in the 80s and 90s. Just, but just a really funny guy and just, he had a couple. One of the movies I really loved about him was Fool's Rush Inn with him and Selma Hayek.
I don't know if you ever saw that. movie, but he was really good in that. And man, just, he had a book that came out that just talked about his struggles with addiction and how he came out of that. And, when I found out, right before his pod that he passed away, I just want to say a few things about that, but, I want to see, more actors, hopefully these books that they release.
They release demons and so they can get beyond that and get the help they need. In the case of Matthew Perry, I think that helped him a lot. And hopefully, he died in a situation where he was able to get a lot of stuff off his chest, and move on.
So yeah, man, when you say about those. Book marketing releases is definitely interesting and how that works out. Yeah, rest in peace,
Mr.Benja: magic Aaron. I'm a stand. I am a comic. Part of me is a comic at heart and I really want to. Put together, I'm just gonna let you know how I think here, because it's bugging me. I was about to say, wait a minute, I wasn't trying to be humorous, but my humorous part of me came out and was like, wait a minute, he died. Is he trying to release a book?
And that would, that probably makes more sense reading into what we've got coming up later in the story, but No it's so phenomenal that thought popped in my mind, seeing how crazy the internet is, I don't know if you remember that one, were you ever on vine?
Theo Harvey: Not really, not at
Mr.Benja: all.
Okay. There's this one vine star that that he started posting as if he was dead. So it was like all in black and white and it's like they put up the Nate's he's yeah and his whole thing became as if he was dead and people were like, Oh my gosh, he recorded all this stuff before he died.
He was so prophetic and he was just alive and well, but it was really weird how he killed himself online. That was, yeah, it was just not killed himself online, killed his online persona. I suspect Spotify is gonna flag this one now.
Theo Harvey: It's all good. We're used to it, guys. We sometimes we get canceled here and there from time to time. So it is what it is. But, I think definitely it is one of those things that you just hate to see. Actors die. He's only 54, passed away. So young. But to your point, Mr.
Binge, I think people use that there was actually a storyline in this TV show. I watched you have a little Dickies TV show. Dickie.
Mr.Benja: Have you heard of that? I've heard of it. Yeah.
Theo Harvey: Oh, Dave, it's called Dave. Sorry. That's his real name. Dave bird. And one of the storylines was he faked, his own death to get more celebrity and it worked.
And he. The third season had so many guest stars on it, Mr. Benja. I think I told you about this on one of our podcast. We talked about it. Yeah, it was so many folks. And then at the end, Drake shows up. It was just like, what? Yeah, man, it's this world. Social media is bad and we'll talk about it later.
But. It does tend to bring out interesting conversations from people from time to time. But yeah, so that's like my story as far as me personally, what's going on. Yeah. Just to grind brother, just in the middle of October, we're just grinding man, trying to make some things happen.
And enjoying that. And wanted to see what the next steps are as we near the curve to the end of the year, Mr. Benjamin, can you believe we have probably less than almost 60 days to the end of the year. Yeah, it's getting close. Got a plan for 2024. 2024, we're in the future. So yeah, so that's in the back of my mind right now.
What about you, man? What are you up to and what have you been up to?
Mr.Benja: I'm going to carry on this this sad and somber death train right here. Because Suzanne Summers recently passed away from a 3's company. Oh, yeah,
Theo Harvey: that's right. I forgot about that. Yep.
Mr.Benja: And the Shaft actor, Richard Roundtree, passed away.
That's true. At 81 with the battling of battling cancer
Theo Harvey: yeah, man, life is short. Rest in peace to all those actors, man. And yeah, , I had to I never forget Mr. Ben. I watched Shaft with a girlfriend at the time. I don't think I watched. What is it of shaft, man? I don't remember nothing about that movie.
What happened in that situation? And to this day, I was just like, I always think about yeah, I was thinking about that ex girlfriend, whatever, shaft is mentioned. It's, I don't, I think that's some respect to him, because if you know anything about Shaft, he was a lazy man.
He was out there in the world, man, doing his thing. I think I respected, I think I respected him well, man, by not fully watching his movie due to a ex girlfriend. Yeah, kudos to him.
Mr.Benja: Over on my end You know what? You were talking about a little bit and I was talking about a little bit, so we'll bridge this here.
Yeah, Loki's still doing his thing, man. It's doing a weird thing, and we talked about it. We've been following the MCU and how they're telling stories with Disney, and I decided that Loki was my favorite show Back when they first came out two years ago. Now they're doing, I decided, you know what? I'd like that weekly drift for the first season of Loki.
Let me buy into another weekly drip of, cause usually I'm not about that weekly drip and I'm like, come on, man, unless you really good, give it to me.
Theo Harvey: Just give it to me raw,
Mr.Benja: be about my business. You know how when they ask you at a restaurant, it's like, Oh, do you want me to heat it up for you?
It's nah, man, ain't that good. Just give it to me. Just, I don't care if it's even hot. Just give me that cold bacon thing that's been sitting in the display
Theo Harvey: cabinet. Give me that duck that's in tin foil, right? That you take home with you.
Mr.Benja: I don't think we need it to be heated up.
It's not that good. But yes, with Loki, I was like, give me that weekly drip. I want it hot. I want it done right. And it's an interesting show, man.
Theo Harvey: Okay, I haven't watched the last episode. I know I watched the last three. The first we're not
Mr.Benja: spoiling here. I'm just saying it's interesting stuff. You
Theo Harvey: caught up on it.
Is that what you're
Mr.Benja: saying? Yeah, I'm caught up. And what I noticed was, I want to say it's interesting show because anybody who hasn't seen it, it might be good to get in and watch this while everybody else is watching it just because It's interesting, not because you'll think it's good. A lot of people think it's good, but it and I think it is from a certain light, but it's not what I wanted out of low key.
But that's another story. The interesting thing is the way they're telling the story. There's a lot of negative space. In the story, which is weird. And I don't see this too much in pop shows. And what I mean by negative space is where a lot of it is defined by what's not there, as opposed to what is you're watching stuff happening.
Wait a minute, how did this happen? And then I go to the message boards and everybody's dude, did you think about it, if this happened and that happened, they didn't even show it. What happened? That's the such and such. And you're like, oh, shoot, you're right. That is weird. That's too glaring of a plot hole.
It's not a plot hole. It's negative space in the story, and they're going to do something with it, right? Or how did they know this thing was here? How did she know that thing was there? And they just went along the story, and they don't mention how they knew this thing. And, casual watchers are just oh, yeah, she knew it.
It's no. How did that Knowledge get to her and then there's this whole story that's not being told and come on now We're talking about Loki in the MCU. I'm just like man just say that stuff. Just come on Superhero show on Disney Plus. I'm not trying to do too much thing to say tenant. That's what I'm saying
Theo Harvey: Yeah, there's not a lot of stuff tenant so well, like I said, we're gonna watch the whole Season and we'll probably talk to the Our listeners and get their perspective on it.
Because definitely interesting show. I had, I got to watch this fourth episode myself. So let's see what happens, but Mr. Benjamin, you ready to get into it
Mr.Benja: today? Yeah, by the way I would say you can catch me on Mr. Benja and all that. You can also catch me on threads, by the way.
I just want to throw that in there. Oh, man. I'm going all in on
Theo Harvey: threads. Yes, Mr. Benja. Me too. Check me out on threads too, guys.
Mr.Benja: I got a spreadsheet tracking my progress. All right let's do this thing. It's get us started with story number one. Is social media hurting our future? Social media is all around us. We've got Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat.
We've got all these different channels into our social landscape. And as we talked about before, many of our podcasts, we're coming at this now from a. Interest base as opposed to a relational base. And what that basically means is these companies are pushing us to be involved in certain interest as opposed to connecting with people, which is the relationship side.
And that's what makes this dangerous because we're getting into a situation where we're. More and more involved in the social media thing and less involved with other people and a study came out by this one group. That's interesting digital natives. It is titled from digital natives to digital captives, and it actually shined a pretty interesting light on what's going on with Gen Z in particular, but.
It can be applied to many of us who are invested in this thing. And it's gotten even to the point where the government's getting involved. And states, 41 states are suing Meta claiming that Facebook's addictive and it's harming our kids. Theo, this is a nuanced piece where we're just talking about technology in general, taking us over, pulling us into the matrix.
What's what are your thoughts on this? I know you have kids and you've seen this thing. Translate. So just give me some thoughts on it. Yeah.
Theo Harvey: It's a part of the bigger trend that we've been talking about with social media. Is it, basically hijacking attention and becoming people becoming addictive to these type of things, right?
Tick tock. We see the numbers rising on that more and those are the folks that are born. I think it's like, what? 2000 and above. The ones who are preteens to just after college level, they're the ones who are going to be driving, our future and they're addicted to the internet.
This is crazy. Mr. Benja is driving their dignity. This article, maybe we'll link to it in Instagram and all that stuff, but it just really highlights how at first it's one thing to be like something that, you have to highlight having connections on social media and those connections being more real than your actual connections outside of the digital world.
But it's also part of the identity because if you're not up to the latest, nugget of what's happening on social media that you miss out on real life conversations, right? Because people are talking about hey, did you see that tip top? Or did you know this dance? Or you do that in person that you feel outside the loop, outsider, if you will, if you don't even have that.
Knowledge of it. And and then these kids are starting so young to your point. My daughter has a phone. We don't put her, she's not on TikTok, but I guarantee she's finding ways to look at stuff. And not just that, but just on YouTube because YouTube, a lot of YouTube shorts are repurposed TikToks.
So yeah, she's seeing some of that content. And so I think that's changing, her behavior as well and how she's perceiving herself as a young woman growing up and changing her identity. So It's definitely scary, man. I always try to put things in perspective, right? Mr.
Benjamin, we were growing up, people were, that rap music, that's gonna warp the young minds of, folks, young folks. And, they're talking about this and that and, cussing all the time. How's that gonna? We're just going to raise a bunch of hooligans, right? Because of what they listen to rap lyrics, right?
And that, that didn't happen for the most part, most of us know the lyrics and stuff, but we're not living that life. So are we just maybe overreacting because this is a new way of people communicating. We don't fully understand it yet. So that's going to that's that. Is a part of what I'm thinking, too, right?
That's what the suing of Facebook is about. It's is it calling me more harm? Now they do have numbers in here, right? I think there was some numbers in here to show. Yeah. What was it? 100 was 145 percent the percentage increase in US teen girls of major depression since 2010.
It's 2023. So that means that was up 145 percent from, just what, 13 years ago. And then they said of Gen Z, 73 percent of the reports sometimes are always feeling alone. So maybe there's some validity there because they have the numbers to showcase. People feel alone, they feel isolated, they feel like.
They're going to, silent depression that we don't even know about. And, yeah, so I think there's some, some issues there, but I also think with any new technology, new communication form, there's going to be some learning curves and we may have to think through it over time.
What do you think?
Mr.Benja: I I think we're dealing with in this era, something fundamentally different than other technologies and maybe. Every era thought about that, that it was fundamentally different. But when you're getting to a level where corporations are taking more and more of the power from you in order to do whatever they think is necessary.
They're just, Oh yeah, here's an auto suggestion. No, here's an auto correct. Oh, here's what you like. And you mentioned somewhere in the article that. I can't find it exactly, but where were the kids were like, yeah, I know my influences are based on all this stuff that I'm consuming, but it's okay.
And I was like okay, take back to our last our last podcast, where we talked about free will, it's like, how do we lose this free will in a very obvious way? It's we start listening to the corporations. Let's start listening to the algorithm and it just burns itself into the social construct.
I do think we're dealing with something fundamentally different here.
Theo Harvey: Like I said as a parent, definitely something that I'm concerned about and, Because what people put their attention to, what they focus in, that's what's going to grow. And so you're comparing yourself on social media, constantly, consistently, then you're going to try to emulate that.
If you can't achieve the success they have, then that's, what they say, comparison is thief of joy. And so over time, that's going to cause them to feel more and more depressed. And so I do feel as a parent, I am concerned about that more and so I want to figure out how to restrict that or how to build up the self esteem that so they don't fall succumb to that.
But yeah, it's definitely one of those things that we're going to keep an eye on and see what happens over the next couple of years. So yeah, Mr. Benji, it's scary.
Mr.Benja: Yeah. To your point, we were talking about attention. They do have numbers here. Let me quote from this digital natives to digital captives report that got published, Gen Zers are spending nearly half their waking hours scrolling and swiping in 2022, the average daily screen time was six hours and 41 minutes on cell phones alone.
Yeah. And I'll stop right there. That's enough to the six hours and 41 minutes I've been there. You know what I mean? I've been there, but once I recognized it, I was like, Oh, and pulled myself out kids these days, or not even kids, but we're talking about young people. Twenties, early thirties, a lot of them just don't, they don't understand.
They don't want to understand. They don't have a connection outside of this device, this ether called, the internet, this new metaverse that we're creating. And I don't mean that in terms of going into like Zuckerberg's metaphors or anything. Like there's other universe on top of our own, that's developing.
Something I don't even want to call it communities because we're not connecting with people. We're connecting with these concepts and ideas. And it's really weird.
Theo Harvey: Yeah. More to come, man. I think it's one of those things that we want to keep continuing to monitor social media and what it's doing to the society in general, something we've been talking about in this pod for quite a while, so I'm sure we can continue talking about it, but yeah, keep watching.
Okay.
Mr.Benja: Real quick, I know you wanna go on, do you use social media before bid or when you wake up?
Theo Harvey: No. Mr. Bid, I'm on social media, but I don't consume it. . Okay. And I, you know how I do it, right? I have a team, and so I just let them do everything they know more about my content than I do.
And because, now, every now and then I'll go, watch the folks that I like to watch. Every now and then, this is a podcast. Go watch Mr. Benja. But other than that, no, I really try to stay away from just, going down those deep dives. I'm very rarely on TikTok.
YouTube is my go to mostly. Instagram, I'm not on that at all. Yeah. It's funny. So now that I've been doing Social media pretty regularly for the last year. It's so funny, man. It's I literally have saw people. It's Oh, you're the man on Tik TOK. Like people I know now, it's starting to start to bubble up and it's interesting.
And I always forget. Oh yeah, I am. I had two people listen. And then of course my wife, and it goes to show you that man, these platforms, there's a lot of people on them. You just forget. And it's, the people always watching, so you just don't even think about it. And that's how I, but yeah, it's, if that's part of your life as a young person, I get it.
That's your identity. That's how you connect with people. That's how you probably get dates. How do how you do all kinds of stuff, but it's yeah, I'm not, are you a consumer a lot? Are you are on a lot? I just, you said you've been there, but. Where are you at now with your consumption? Now I'm talking about your production.
How about your consumption of
Mr.Benja: social media? I'm at a much healthier place with the consumption, but I was listening to your boy, Dr. Benjamin Hardy. I just finished reading the gap in the game and they started talking about sleep patterns and. This whole thing mentioned sleep patterns.
This study mentioned sleep patterns. So I was like, you know what, I need to make sure I adjust that a little bit because sometimes I'm like in the back of my head, man, let me get off this one message. That person needs to know what I'm about. Drop that message real quick, but then I'm on there right before I sleep.
So not good. All right. That's all I got for this one.
Theo Harvey: You good. Yeah, keep it moving, bro.
Mr.Benja: All right, let's get on to story number two. Apparently the online world is kicking traditional media's arse. If you don't know what arse means, it means your backside, your rump, your A. The online world is kicking it.
YouTube is beating traditional TV. Streamers are taking on these, traditional sports broadcasters and things we've got celebrities showing up in. Random online streams that people actually watch instead of worrying about whether they showed up at the Grammys or whether they showed up at some event, it's like they still do those things, but where they're getting the eyeballs, the numbers for views, it's happening online.
In fact, this whole thing came up. I couldn't find all the data for it, but SNL is basically formatting their show for YouTube now, and it's yeah, who's up late at night on a Saturday watching Saturday night live. No, everyone is watching the cliffs and it's crazy. And just to give you a little heads up, they still.
I looked into some of this and found out about CNN's numbers from Joe Rogan actually posted this. So CNN made primetime ratings history, but not in a good way. A couple weekends ago, CNN garnered just 55, 000 viewers for its coveted weekend lineup, which includes Theta Union and Fareed, Zakira, GPS.
Sunday primetime shows, which include the whole story with Anderson Cooper fared a lot worse, bringing in just 43, 000 watchers. 43, 000. And 55, 000 barely hitting a hundred thousand watchers three times a week. Joe Rogan's podcast release and gets 11 million downloads per episode. And that's a heavy chunk of listening to.
So his hours, his podcasts are like two to four hours. So Theo, these numbers are insane. Just across the board in no matter what media you look at. So what's going on
Theo Harvey: here. Yeah, man. This is crazy. I think we're seeing more and more, these folks doing standing out above and beyond traditional media, right?
Because we just talked about majority of people on online communities, right? Build identities, building platforms. And these Online fluence is becoming more connect. We're feeling more connected to them than we ever have before. And there's a there's actually studies on this, Mr.
Benja. It's if you watch someone for 11 hours and they say four different locations and seven different time periods, then you feel like, those psychologically and the video a video or, or basically a video with them talking and doing stuff is almost. In your mind, the same as if you met him in person.
And so that people have what they call what pair of social, I think that's in term of relationships with, it's what we've had with celebrities for a long time, right? We saw him so much felt like we know them, Denzel Washington, that's my bra, man. That's my, I'm going to hang with Denzel.
It's you just build up these celebrities as if you know them. And, you really don't. And so now we have folks who are not, but, known for their talent, but just people who are known to talk and build a relationship, build an audience. Now we're having these pair of social relationships with these other folks, right?
And in essence, you feel like you have a bigger bond to them than maybe. These celebrities. And so when you look at social media influences compared to traditional TV, it's almost like celebrities. I'd like taking a step down because that platform they're using is not prolific enough. It's not getting enough content and not talking to me specifically.
Whereas these celebrities is like they have to be so broad where it's hard for the niche down and talk to me so they'll never be able to build a big audience like a Joe Rogan. Because Joe Rogan, before he got to 11 million, he was very nice, right? He probably talked to us about, he's still nice.
Now, let's be honest. If you don't, if you don't like UFC, you don't talk about aliens. You don't like talking about smoking weed, you don't like talking about stand up comedy. Those four things that he's now, I don't listen to him. I like some of those things, but I'm not like a super fan.
So yes, he's got 11 million people, look, 11 million people worldwide is really not a lot, in the grand scheme of things. But anyway, so that I, hopefully my point was made is that these pair of social relationships are building a big, strong, and fluent content. Audiences and communities.
Whereas, like a CNN or a TV show, they just can't build up such a big presence because they have to say so broad. And when you're, when you stand for everything, you stand for nothing. So because CNN has to be so broad, they can't really, build a bigger audience because the audience is this is not for me and they're done.
Mr.Benja: Yeah, definitely. It's so strange to me how, not how it's transpired, but how, once again these big companies didn't see it coming. It's just they're so slow to move. It's dude just get online. And I remember it was like a big deal. Anderson Cooper would be on TV. And now you can follow me on Twitter, Anderson Cooper live.
And everybody was like Whoa, what's this Twitter thing? And I'm like, Oh God, and it's taken them a while to catch up. And then you get on Twitter and there's some journalists from random place, Arkansas, and he's nah, man, I actually lived out there. And dah, let me show you all the pictures.
And this guy's getting more views than Anderson Cooper talking about this subject. So let's. It's fun. It's interesting. I actually think it's good for humanity to have had these I'll just call it everybody in this ilk. Influencers, but I think it's actually a good thing, man. Giving more power to, I, I was about to say the people, but the platforms are making this power happen, like YouTube and Facebook and all that, but yeah.
Power to the people. Hopefully.
Theo Harvey: I wonder, we talk about this, right? I was talking to somebody about this, but it's like the people who are becoming super popular on the platforms are, is it. Is there a hidden agenda behind it? When you think about how easy these platforms is easily platforms on these folks, right?
Yeah. I'll push a button and make them go viral. So I'm just curious. Yeah. Or go away. Good point. There's people who were very popular and suddenly they're gone. And yeah, so that's something also in the back of my mind is that it's who's really running the show, right? Is it these influencers who have connections?
And a lot of these influencers are getting smart, right? They build their audiences, but they're probably building up a newsletter, the email list. So just in case they get... Deplatformed. They still have that, that email list of, 50, 000 100, 000 people. Yeah. Hey guys, I'm still over here. This crazy little new outfit, I'm going to be in Topeka, Kansas.
Come visit me. Yeah. So anyway, I think that We're seeing the evolution of where everybody's attention is going to, and unfortunately it's not going to TV. It's probably not going to go to the movies anytime soon. Yeah, so that's my opinion on that.
Mr.Benja: Yeah, it's going to be it's wild seeing people with their PR teams, their makeup teams, their stylists, their videographers.
And they just show up at their house. Maybe you know about this. They show up at your house. Take some video for a little while and then go on and build your persona out there online and it's going out doing its thing and CNN's all mad because I'm right here in the streets dog. I'm in these streets with my camera doing my thing You can't stop me.
I like it.
Theo Harvey: And, it just blew my mind, Mr. Benjamin, but why couldn't this all be done with AI eventually, right? So you build up enough content, you can just feed it to the AI algorithm. You don't even have to do all that. It's still beating, and it's a Cooper. So it's all, so in my mind, I think Everybody should have a platform, video platform, build up that content.
So when the AI bots are ready, you go, here's my data, create the avatar, Theo boop. And this is the tapas I talk about, send it out to the world that's coming. And I think now you have all these different shows, millions of shows that, you know. Can attract maybe a thousand people. We talked, man, Mr.
Benes, this is one of the early things we talked about. Remember we had thou, there was that theme of having a thousand Raven fans a VC came up a new term. It's like, all you need is a hundred . Yeah. A hundred people that just buy whatever you sell and you're good. And so I think that's the path of what we're going down in the traditional ways of, tv, the way that we grew up, TV, movies.
Yeah, getting people hooked on a celebrity brand to sell you like, shoes or TV dinners or whatever. That's gone, man. This is the new world, the influencer world. So yeah, I'm excited.
Mr.Benja: Yeah, definitely. No, it's a weird, strange, fun times, man, but I'm excited too, because I'm blowing up on threads.
I'm about to be a threads influencer. Sorry, I had to throw that in there. All right. Story number three, we got our AI watch. Speaking of Meta, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and all these corporations doing whatever the. Microsoft doing whatever they think they want to do. Corporations are here in this landscape and they're using AI and they don't care.
We we thought. We thought that we might be able to, Hey guys, slow down a little bit. We're not sure we want this technology. The corporations were like sure. Keep using the technology.
Theo Harvey: I'm not gonna be able to do that. Son, ,
Mr.Benja: keep using the technology. Tell the PR team whatever you need to calm the people down.
But engineers keep working. We're going to do this thing. Yeah. And Theo, you sent me this one from Microsoft there. This is what started this conversation. What's Microsoft up to with open AI?
Theo Harvey: Yeah Microsoft is really basically bundling the software inside their products.
And. The challenge is for OpenAI, which has got billions of dollars of funding, millions, multi millions of dollars of funding and valued at billions of dollars. They're just not going to make as much revenue when these big corporations start to bundle stuff in. And so it's going to be interesting to see.
We already see a lot of corporations like Google, Facebook are building their own algorithms. It's going to be interesting to see if ChatGPT still stays. top of the heap over time because of this. But yeah, I think, we're seeing a lot of corporations really Pause and how they want to be very intentional about what they want to do with AI.
The two things I'm seeing, there's one, someone research is saying that, yes, they're doing it. They're trying to play with it, but they, still very intentional before they talk about it. But I don't see a lot of action, right? Just a lot of, corporate America. You work in corporate America you work in game industry.
They're both the same. If I sit around. Talk about what they're going to do for an hour and nothing ever gets done So some VP can check that off their list this quarter I get a bonus if I talk about AI There it is. So I think I see a lot at but the other thing is too There was a article that came out that talked about how people corporations are scared to get, put it in corporately.
And and they're also preventing individual people to use AI. And also the individuals, the individual workers are scared to tell their bosses that they're using AI, right? Because it gives them somewhat of an unfair advantage. They use the technology to, for help with writing or help with some of their algorithms, some of the things they're trying to set up.
So it's interesting to see where this all goes for the future, Mr. Benja, but it definitely is, tells me that, we're definitely a new world when it comes to how folks are realizing what AI can do for them. And, we have to be mindful of that.
Mr.Benja: Yeah, definitely. Let me I definitely want to send you this.
This wasn't in our show notes, but it reminded me of, oh, crap. That's the wrong link. I put the wrong link in the thing. Oh, no. Oh,
Theo Harvey: no. Oh,
Mr.Benja: my goodness. While this. I was going to send you the actual link, but I'm going to send it to you via my threads account.
No, check this out. So I was looking at, we were talking in one of my groups about companies using AI and Disney on the fly, who's been talking about, Hey, we protect artists and we protect creation and all this blah, blah, blah, blah. They've posted on their job board that they had in.
A senior, an R and D imagineer. They've got a job posting. I'm sorry for R and D imagineer, senior generative artificial intelligence. So the research and development imagineers, the people who put together the parks and they combine a lot of the experiences that you get at Disney. They want a senior person in there working on generative artificial intelligence.
This is a coding position basically. And it's interesting because. It's yeah the first thing they say with this, the first thing they put in their job post is a quote from Arthur C. Clark. Any sufficiently complex technology is indistinguishable from magic. They're like, Hey dawg, come work on AI.
It'll be magical. Disney, come on, man. What you doing? That's just funny to
Theo Harvey: me. They even said it again. It quotes at Walt Disney imaginary research and development. This magic emerges from the application of world class technology and everything from this to that. So it's definitely. That basic question, Mr Benji, you talk about corporations are using AI don't care.
It does seem like there's still a lot of research to be done with these algorithms that we don't fully. Understand some of the implications of what we're doing with it. And I think corporations by nature reveal work for corporation or in my instance, send for sold to the corporations, man. Dude, this is like a death by PowerPoint.
And deaf by means, it's because everybody is scared to get a no, right? Because the no, means slow down your trajectory in your business, excuse me, in your career. And so you got to be careful what you bring. You only want to bring winners and AI is just a trend, is a trend. But then I do feel like there's still a lot of things about it that people don't fully understand.
And Yeah, so this is some of those things that we have to constantly be focused on when it comes to AI tools and technologies in corporate America.
Mr.Benja: I need to read it's going to be a strange new world. I wasn't trying to make a connection with that quote, but literally. Strange new world coming along, and it's going to change the whole landscape of what we think of is work.
Just to give you a little report here. Apple is bringing up, they're coming in bringing their own AI systems. They've got obviously tons of data on us and people that use their products in an extremely focused way. If you were Samsung, it'd be hard to talk to Microsoft and get their Like, Hey, people are using our products with your software.
How is the data it's, it'd be hard to get that information. But with Apple, they've got their own ecosystem. I expect their AI is going to be pretty powerful unless they screw it up. You heard,
Theo Harvey: You heard that they canceled John Stewart's. He had a TV show on Apple. It's called the problem with John Stewart.
And he would go deep dive in some of these big issues. And one of the stories he was going to do this year before it got canceled was AI. And because, Apple don't play man, because AI was something they're going to invest in. And said, Jon Stewart, is it you or the AI? And Jon said, I'm going to talk about, I'm going to talk my talk, I don't care.
Okay, bye Jon Stewart. And so he got canceled. And and then, there's rumors, which is true, that they never iPhone.
So if you watch an Apple TV show, yeah, the villain, but in fact, one, one show they had, the villain said he had an iPhone. He said, yes, over there, go pick it up for me. But you never actually saw him touch the iPhone
Mr.Benja: crazy. I love it. Yeah.
Theo Harvey: So that just goes to show you, Apple is all in on AI. Because they're firing folks and, I wouldn't be surprised. That's why they probably invest so much in all these sci fi shows, man. They got they got, Seals 1. They got the For All Mankind. All their TV, a lot of their TV shows are very sci fi heavy.
I guarantee they're gonna be sympathetic to AI. Cause they're trying to win the hearts and minds of the Apple users as they develop the AI, I'm going to be supporting that long
Mr.Benja: game. Apple slick, man. Apple slick as hell. I've read a few books about Apple design and people that work for them and everything slick as hell, man.
Theo Harvey: Yeah. Put that, you gotta put that in the show notes, man. We got that. That's going to be the title. Apple is slick as hell.
Mr.Benja: Yeah. Intel's in on the race. Adobe. Adobe is kicking artists in the nuts, man. They're like, Hey, artists, we love you. We would never do anything to hurt you. We hear your complaints about AI engineers. Get back in there and fix that AI. What were we saying? Yes. We love you. Artists. We love you.
Creators. And yeah, in fact, I don't even like Adobe. I might buy into their new system just so I could make some fake images.
Theo Harvey: Yeah, so hey everyone, I just want to take this time for you guys to go check out our Spotify podcast. If you like the audio version of what you're seeing here, go listen to the podcast. because it will blow your mind as you're working out and you're driving a long trips. So go check us out on Spotify, guys, or iTunes, or if you listen to podcasts, because we definitely want more folks to check out the audio experience, which is as powerful as the in person experience.
So thank you for the time to talk about that. Mr. Benjamin, what else we got on the docket?
Mr.Benja: We got story number four, celebrity book marketing. It's juicy as hell, boy, juicy. I don't know. I don't even know what happened, but after we talked about Jada Pinkett Smith and her worthy book, it got us talking about just.
Book marketing. It didn't get me talking so much. I was I was stupid to it. I was like, Oh, of course, book marketing. Theo, what's going on in the book world and why is celebrity marketing getting all salacious and juicy? What's, I don't understand. Oh, I think
Theo Harvey: it's always been juicy and salacious, right?
Celebrities have to sell books. They put little tidbits out there in the entertainment media and get people excited about it. But I guess what makes this crazy is that? The stuff they're talking about is definitely a little bit more salacious and also it is leveraging social media so heavily that it's almost taking over social media, right?
And so they get a story going, and I guarantee you, Mr. Benja, there's been we talked about Jada. Pickett Smith last week because of her story about saying her and Will Smith have never been married before and other things. I guarantee that people needed content and there was so much content out there just related to just that topic that she put out there for publicists and stuff, it goes to show you that drives conversation and attention for at least 20, at least 24 hours. And if she found another way to drive it a little bit longer, she probably would have. But the other big thing was. We have more celebrities dropping books here soon. We saw Britney Spears out there in the streets talking about her relationship with Justin Timberlake.
And just pretty much, justifiably, of course, with some of the things he said and did, but throwing him under the bus. And he's still relevant. He's got a movie coming out with Trolls. He's got some music out. They just did an NSYNC concert.
Why not? Why not throw it on the bus, right? And bring some more buzz and ultimately dollars to Brittany's pocket because she's selling the book right now. One of the things that came out of this was the fact that, yeah, she claimed Justin Timberlake was trying to be Black, which, if you were grew up in the 2000s, that's what we thought all these boy bands were trying to be, right?
And he was so detailed where he basically would sound like a Black person anytime he was around a Black person. So when the book came out, the audio version of the book came out. You have, the written words of Britney, right? Emulating Justin Timberlake and how he's talking to a Black person, read by another White person the great actress, Academy Award winning actress, Michelle Williams.
Not the Michelle Williams that you know from Destiny's Child, but the other Michelle Williams from Dawson's Creek, basically saying things like, What's up my nids? What's up for shiz? How you doing? And it's hilarious. I don't know, did you listen to that, Mr. Benjamin, that Twitter thread I sent your way?
I
Mr.Benja: started to, and then I was like, I'm about to get sucked into this. I don't need to deep dive. I had to jump out. I had to jump out.
Theo Harvey: It is the funniest thing you're going to hear all year, Mr. Benja.
Mr.Benja: You're going to hear
Theo Harvey: three different... It's like the levels of appropriation is just on another level. You have a white guy emulating black folks.
And his girlfriend's emulating him, and then she wrote a book that's being read by an actress that's emulating her. Just hilarious. Gold.
Mr.Benja: Yeah, so I went to my trusty Bing GPT, the Bing AI chat experience. I'm gonna get a, I'm gonna get a check from Microsoft one day, don't worry. About other people who have done...
Dude, this is fascinating, because I was sitting here trying to find out about book launches, and I was just like, let me just make a long ass prompt to Bing and see if it can parse through all these book launches and tell me what it comes up with. So here's what I got. We're doing this real time, folks, this, that's why this podcast is awesome. Kylie Jenner kept her pregnancy a secret and revealed it in a video on Instagram at the same time she was promoting her book. Quincy Jones started getting outrageous talking about he's getting old and he just starts releasing all these wild facts and people were wondering if he was getting senile or something, but no, he had a book coming out too.
And what's funny is Will Smith and people are still wondering about this when he slapped Chris Rock, it was around the same time he was releasing his will book. Was he just amped up to do something crazy and decided that was going to be the thing, or, people still don't know Gina Carano started going nuts on Twitter and that may have led to her getting off of a Disney plus, I don't know if it was worth it, but it brought attention to her book and yeah, Oh, Lady Gaga and the infamous meat dress.
I didn't know that the meat dress. Was like right in line with her releasing a book.
Theo Harvey: I didn't know either Mr. Benja. So yeah, man, and there's not so much salaciousness. So like Rich Paul, who's a basketball NBA basketball agent, he released a book. It was the same time as the NBA season, started the NBA season.
So it coincided. So it makes sense. I don't think there was anything salacious that came out of the book. So marketing one on one, man, you gotta get attention. Fill up interest, get the desire and then you get people to move to action. And so attention is always first. So if you gotta do something crazy, matter of fact, I was one of the groups I was listening to Dan Henry.
He talked about that. He's like, when he was first starting out, he was just struggling and trying to get people to get his orders, courses and stuff. And so he was on Facebook, a lot, Facebook groups. One of the first things he did was, he said, look, I'm going to do something crazy. So he got on this Facebook group.
He was part of. And then ran by another person. And he basically said, yeah, he put his underwear on and he had a little fake, to block up his underwear and just basically said, I'm sitting here naked and I'm trying to send you guys a course and it's going to change your life. And that one little crazy incident allowed him people, they got kicked out of Facebook group.
Let's just put that out there. But he did, he got enough attention when he left. Some people came and followed him. I think all entrepreneurs, you get to a point like that. I'm right here, Mr. Benjamin, you might see me. So some crazy stuff, you might see me out here in my skivvies about does he's blood pressures.
Mr.Benja: Amen. Coachella is calling. Coachella is calling. I might do
Theo Harvey: some crazy stuff, man. Cause you get those points. Like I got, it don't matter. Even if it's bad attention, it don't matter. It's attention. If you can't make money with attention, you're not an entrepreneur. And I think that's the whole point now. And that's what these books are about.
How do you drive the most attention to get people to to come on board so you can have the possibility of talking to them about your offer.
Mr.Benja: That's a bomb drop. You have to get attention to be an entrepreneur. Just the way, all right, we're going to think about that one. But it rolls right.
It rolls very well into our next story. So we're going to get into story number five. The internet gurus are coming for you on black Friday. What you going to do? Have you seen, have you started seeing little ads and little promotions come up yet, Theo? Because I know I have.
Theo Harvey: Yeah, man. This is part of our rant, right?
Are we going to just go hard and paint on this? This is the rant stuff, right? Let's rant on it. Let's rant on these jokers, man. Let's stu on them, man. I don't like Black Friday. Oh, Sam, I am, I never liked it, Sam. I am just very I'm a Cyber Monday guy. I'll just go on the internet and buy all my clothes for the year on one.
Done. Yeah. So it's, barking ploy and, it is what it is. But, the thing that's egregious is, just these gurus are starting to, they try to get in the black, they got some old offers and courses they can get out the books. And so we're seeing more and more of this stuff online starting to proliferate.
And yeah, I'm, I don't know. I'm at the point where it's I know what I want. And so if I see it, I'll go ahead and get it. Maybe you can persuade me. Like I had a conversation with this guy named Ben Heath and his team. He does a lot of Facebook marketing on YouTube. You look them up.
And yeah, I talked to their guys, their sales guys, just to see what they were talking about. Wasn't bad. The pricing was not bad, something that's horrible, but it's okay, I'm good. I'll talk to you later when I'm ready. But I loved how you sold it. I loved how he sold it. I saw how they sell it and the whole process, very similar process, so if you, if we did X and Y and Z, do you see any reason why you would not buy, the same, same stores and maybe you have some stories about joining some social media
Mr.Benja: webinars about, Hey man, you laughed at me for my webinar, man.
I, I had to let you know in, in confidence. I was like, Theo, I'm sending you this in confidence. And you laughed at me. I
Theo Harvey: did not laugh. Look, did I laugh? Let me look. You gave a
Mr.Benja: laugh. It might have been a laugh and cry emoji if I'm not mistaken.
Theo Harvey: Oh yeah, it was pretty bad. I didn't mean to be that.
No,
Mr.Benja: you should have. Okay can I show the picture though? Can I show the air? It's Jesus, help me. That's a conundrum. I'll give a shout out to her, man. She does good stuff online, but yeah, it's the it's help. I hate selling frustrating with selling gimmicks, ready to throw your hands up.
This webinar is for you. Coming from
Theo Harvey: let me just show this and they can see this. You can, she literally puts her hands in the air.
Attention. There it is. Attention. Go ahead.
Mr.Benja: Yeah. Basically she has a thing. Help. I hate selling. And I was online and I follow Econundrum. She's she's worth following. I think she was talking some noise about. Selling and making things happen. And she's Hey, listen, we're doing a, we're doing a free webinar and some of these webinars are stupid, but she's been she's been solid with the contents.
I was like, all right, let me check out this webinar. I jumped on and she's Hey, listen what are your problems with selling and dah. And it was one of those information gathering seminars where she's like doing it on a small end. So I was like, Oh, okay. This is her prepping it up and she's building up the whole thing.
So I might be able to get some good information. So while we're talking, she's what's your problem with this? What's your problem with that? How can you like this? And don't like that. Some people were shy. Some people were, they just didn't know how to talk correctly and in a webinar format or a sales format, whatever, but we were talking.
And she starts asking us questions. And one of the things she does, says she's like, all right, who can answer this question? What are the three, I forgot how she phrased the question, but she was like, what are the three things you need to. Establish with your, with your customer, your audience, your marketing base, what are the three things you need to establish to, to make it the sale or to have sales to have the appropriate sales funnel?
I think it was her way of putting it and people were like, oh, you need to have a, a good website. You need to have a strong relationships. And she's good answer, but not right. And I was like, oh, wait a minute. She's talking about no and trust. So I sent that in and she was like, boom, Mr.
Bench has got it. I need you to call in. And I'm like, oh, okay. So I called in, we chatted it up for a while in this webinar and she's getting information and I'm like, huh, all and it was such good information. She was like, I'm going to give you a, 50, prize. And I was like, okay, it was store credit.
So don't trip on that, not just giving 50 to people in a webinar. But yeah, it was fun. And I see that she was prepping this whole webinar. That's why she didn't really pump it very big. She just threw it out in one of her things. Get a few people to show up, and then she's gonna keep working this message, and by Black Friday there's gonna be a bigger thing with an actual price tag on it.
So I was like okay.
Theo Harvey: So I got pulled, I got
Mr.Benja: game, I got pulled into a. Study group almost. So what did they call those? The focus groups? Where you preview something, I don't know what the webinar world calls it. Yeah.
Theo Harvey: She definitely prepped you up for some stuff. And that's what they do, so man, I'm super excited, about learning a lot from these guys, but I do feel like all these gurus, even the guru that we watch, who we call the pocket watchers supposed to protect our back. He got a course now, Mr. Benji, that's free. And it's just funny. JT, the pocket watcher, we talked about him before, where he goes hard against all these other gurus, man, just saying how to end your pocket.
The earlier leisure guys, right? All these other folks. And JT out here got a course now. So I'm just like, man. So is he just slow rolling to your point? To see what the market is talking about before he got Black Friday sale. I don't know, Mr. Benja. It's, yeah, that's our rant, man. That's my rant.
It's just, what are these guys really selling, which is fine. I'm learning from them. I want to learn from them. But, keep your eyes open as you're thinking about what you want to do.
Mr.Benja: Yeah, a lot of it's very scammalicious. That's our, that's my word I like to use. Be warned.
Black Friday's coming. It's about to get real scammalicious.
Theo Harvey: They don't do it. So anyway Hey everyone. Oh man, it's been an awesome show. It's always Mr. Benji. I think we went hard in the paint on a lot of folks. So go check us out guys. Please like subscribe and comment. It's over some business on X formerly known as Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.
Listen to us at Spotify, iTunes, or every listen podcast. Go visit us at our website. It's over some business and go check that out, but definitely give us some comments, likes, Subscribe all that good stuff and all the different social media Demos so that we can give you the best content always. All right, Mr.
Benja. Have a good one. Peace