SvB: K-Pop is still going strong, Meta says we’re done w/ debauchery, Why did The Marvels bomb so hard? Ep 142

The guys, @mrbenja and @the_real_theo_harvey, discuss about why is K-Pop is still going strong, AI Watch: Sam Altman and others ousted!, Meta says we’re done w/ debauchery, Analysis: Why did The Marvels bomb so hard?, and Streaming Wars and Netflix.

Story Number 1 - 16:00
Story Number 2 - 26:45
Story Number 3 - 35:43
Story Number 4 - 41:38
Story Number 5 - 50:15

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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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Transcript

Theo Harvey: 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, covering all the relevant info about the week in pop culture. Mr. Benja, what are we covering today? 

Mr.Benja: We have got five awesome bangers for you. First of all, we're going to be talking about the K pop and the K wave slowdown.

Not happening. It's going to be, it's a big thing. I'm sorry. I almost said it wasn't happening. It is happening. It's not going to slow down. It's the K pop wave. It's big. It's crazy. All the kids are about it. Get used to it. Theo's going to tell you more about that one. Also, we've got our AI watches.

We always have big weekend AI, Sam Altman, the head guy over there. Out the door. Some people say quit. Some people say it was fired, but once he got let go, other people came with them. The president, Greg Brockman and a couple others were ended up leaving. So there's some shakeups happening, some weird things going down.

We're not totally sure, but we do have some things we are sure about. We're going to let you in on also meta might be done with debauchery. I wasn't going to say the internet was dead, done with debauchery, but. It might just be meta. I want to talk about them and what they're doing as opposed to what X is doing over there and just, it's some interesting business going on, but there's a lot of morality policing going around and just wanted to, we should talk about this one.

And we got an analysis. We haven't really done an analysis and I say that kind of loosely, but we haven't really done an analysis in a while. I'm going to talk about why the Marvels bomb so hard. The worst Marvel opening weekend of all time. Shameful. And we're going to get into our little riff on streaming wars.

we Gotta talk about this a little bit. Just bring you up to date on what's been happening and riff a little bit, basically on Netflix. Theo's got a real position there. That I think he wants to get off his chest and lay the smack down on him with his strong revelation. His, the hottest of hot takes.

So that's our lineup for today. Theo, how does that sound? 

Theo Harvey: Man, I am so hyped to get into this. This is some hot stuff that we're covering today, Mr. Benja. Look, let's get into story time, Mr. Benja. Man, I've been blown away. You mentioned this. I I mentioned it to you. Then you read the book and you did the deep dive.

And now I'm back in the deep dive because I took his recent eight week course. And this is Dr. Benjamin Hardy. We just can't get enough of this guy. This guy is changing. Mindsets and thoughts around how to build for your best future. And Mr Benji, the last two weeks I've been taking a part of his eight week challenge, if you will, for rapid transformation, I thought was a great time to do it begin in November to the end of December to just get myself, that running start, that job you start to, beginning of the year.

Usually I said, okay, I'm just gonna. Be a fat ass, just relax around, for the next two months and get ready for January. I just go hard in, but I said, this year, let me do differently. Let me plan better. Let me, get a running start toward my goals. So I said, let me take this course.

Eye opening Mr. Benja is just really changing my mindset. And, one of the things that he has. Advocating a lot of his books about this concept with the future you and how you can let that future person that, that you can become, pull you to the future and save you just willing it to happen and, that's a big concept and I think a lot of folks understand that.

But one thing that I'm really been blown away is this concept of framing. And one of these things he's talked about multiple times in all his books and during this eight week challenge is how you frame everything is what matters. And that yes, we can understand framing the future. So look, I have a vision to influence a million people.

And, look, that's simple, right? I'm gonna do these things, be on social media, get my name out there. So that's pretty easy, relatively easy. But the mind changing to me was you can frame the future. But you can frame the past too. And sometimes the past may be holding you back because you think back, you'd all the regrets of the decisions you made that were dumb, but he said, F all that, go back to the past and find things that you were successful in and focus in on that.

And once you reframe the past and he's you know what I did, I was a good guy doing that, or I did that better. Or yeah, I learned all this. Then that gives you energy to want to reframe the future better. And to me, that's been the mind shift of all mind shifts because it's now wow, the past can give me energy, not take away from me.

Does that make sense? Doug, 

Mr.Benja: let me tell you, I was so hyped when I was going through this because he's got quite a few books out there and I sample them and look through it and what he was talking about with the past, present and future. And, setting your future, you and your framing, you want to exist in the now.

You have this future thing that you obviously think about and this past thing that you obviously think about. So where do those play into living in the now and in the moment? And this is what I was getting, not getting stuck on, but I was going back and forth trying to resolve with myself. There's, I have this whole idea of a trajectory, right?

Where you're on a path, you're going somewhere. And it's not like a goal, if you see a mountain way off in the distance, you don't know how to get there. You're just like. I have a trajectory that's going to push me in that direction to get to the top of that mountain. And you have no idea how to get there.

You just start going, right? It's not goal based because you may never even get to the top of the mountain. You just know that's the direction. Anyway, while I'm thinking on that, I'm running across Benjamin Hardy's books. And The Future Your Future Self and The Gap and The Gain and all that.

So what blew my mind is the fact that he said something along the lines of your future gives your past meaning and I'm like, wait, how does that work? The idea that if I'm going to the mountain and I think back to that time where I sprained my ankle and I always hated, myself for spraining my ankle and being dumb.

I'm like, wait a minute. I'm walking now. I learned how to grow and overcome it. So thinking about going up a mountain has me wanting to get my legs stronger. And I know that I can survive a small sprain because I did it when I was a kid. Oh. Surviving that sprain when I was a kid was just training for me to go through some little, bumps and bruises to get to the mountain.

So suddenly, that event becomes a good thing, and it blew my mind having the future let you know what your past meant. That was wild to me. Wild. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's the eye game, the game changer for me too, because sometimes, I would go into the past and just think of all the regret or the shame or, what I could have done and that just took away my energy is just oh I just don't feel like doing anything for the future.

But what's been empowering me now is he he talks about David Grogg, Groggings, the big Navy SEAL guy, if you've seen him on YouTube, he's just very intense guy. He went to Navy SEAL training. He did a hundred mile race. Both his feet were broken and blistered.

And he talked, and he did a whole in this book that his workbook that we're going through. Benjamin Hardy talks about David Goggins talking about the cookie jar and he talked about his past where his mom, no matter what stakes they were going through any issues moving to different houses, they were, he grew up poor and but she always had cookies in the cookie stuff in the cookie jar and to him.

That was, his mental framework was like, look, I'm going through this hard time, but I've done this before. And that's when he would go into that cookie jar. There was always more in the cookie jar reserves from his past. They can pull up to give him, inspiration for the present and into the future.

And so to me, that's been game changing, just giving that energy, that excitement. And yeah, it's been changing my mind last two weeks. I. At one time, I was like, man, sales is tough struggling, just trying to get motivated again, deal with these doctors, trying to sell them stuff.

But this last week I put out like five proposals, right? And both I've done in a while. And I'm just like, wow, I'm getting more energy. And then guess what? That's going to fuel this next week, even though it's a short week, I probably going to do more even. Because now I'm excited about what's happening.

That's giving me fuel for more. And I'm realizing that's just how you get to higher levels. You take that pass and the way he frames it now too. In this train, he's every week is a lifetime. So treat the seven days like a whole week or a whole month, or even a whole year. So go for that possible goal in that.

In that week and then, give yourself grace, but then look back and you say all the stuff you accomplished in that one week, you'd be amazed. And I was like, wow, man, I just, so it's, to me, it's just game changing how I'm perceiving everything now. And I'm really glad I started this running start to my goals for 2024.

Because it's raising my floor, right? He talks about this. What you want to do is you want to raise your floor, which you accept and your commitments are who you are. So the more you raise your floor, we'll talk about later. But, you start saying no to a lot of stuff, like even in my business, my business partner.

I've been amazed too, because I've just been saying no. I said, Hey, you can handle that. Or you can do this. And previously I would have just jumped in and just made it happen and did it. But now that's below my floor. My, my floor now is I'm focused on, growth and how we're going to build a business.

I can't get caught up in this other stuff here. So I'm just. Here you go. This is my 80 percent I'm giving to you, a business partner. And and I told him that I was like, look, I gotta focus on this. If I don't focus on that, we'll never grow. And I'm keep getting pulled into this other stuff. So I'll let you handle that.

And guess what? He's been stepping up and I've been like, wow, this stuff works. So anyway that's been my opening. So I'm super excited going into December, November, December, and really for 2024. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah, that's very awesome, man. So proud for you on that. And as I said it's been a routine of mine to go through all of his, all the podcast episodes.

I'm taking down notes. I got a composition book over there. Yeah, we can definitely chop up notes, but how is this class? Or how is this online course program structured. It's a, a lot of people see these courses and things and they don't know, and it's like what do you get?

How does it go? It's eight weeks. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah. So he's doing two video recordings Monday and Wednesday. He dropped some knowledge and basically so first of all, you get it. A workbook, right? And that workbook is just basically, his thoughts and it's basically accumulation of all the different books he probably wrote and other some other insights and in those books, you read through it.

He also gives you time for, space for journaling. So his, his program, everybody's got different programs. He's about really Doing a deep work of, in your mind of, what you want, what your future is like being clear on that because he says, first, you have to see it and you believe it that, it right from the future standpoint.

And so I think that's what's drink, building that, that confidence in you about seeing your future and make it become more real so it can drive you forward. And then also he's about doing time travel in your head with your past. So you'd be clear on those stories that you pull from your cookie jar.

So that's what's in the workbook. And then every week we have yeah. Three video sessions. One, two are recorded where he's just reiterating pockets from the book. And so Monday and Wednesday, and then on Friday, he has a live session where we all get together. He does a live conversation and we do break up groups.

And when we do this, talk about the lessons learned from the week and what we're prepared to do for next week. So yeah, pretty, virtual, but it's pretty interesting kind of concept, but yeah, it's just changed my mind and just really raising my consciousness of, my perception.

Cause you know, we talked about this before the pod. It's all in here, man. It's that mindset is so powerful. And the more you start realizing that, and I knew it, but it's and I've done it before, like where I was just like, Oh, I've been here before I can get through this, things beat you down, man.

I think you, you all, sometimes you forget or you just don't. Have the energy to get to that levels you have before, but it's always good to refresh because I think if we do nothing, we always gonna break down in our understanding our knowledge, our health. So you have to be intentional about all those things, or you will succumb, to the debasement.

So that's what I'm about now. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah. And I think we started a little bit of this talking about me succumbing to, I don't want to call it a lesser goal just yet because I had a plan for it. But I was like, I need to get more connected with these people and these people. Okay. That's something I need to do as well.

And then when that started happening, like I did start getting connected with these certain people and doing these these jobs and getting these opportunities. I was like, Oh, cool. That's what I was looking for, but it kept growing and I'm like, crap. Now I got too much of this opportunity that I actually wanted.

It's messing me up from the thing that I think I really want a lot more than this. Yeah, I do want this more than that crap. Now I got to cut back on this opportunity somehow, and it's already in motion. So it's it's interesting playing this game because you're much more decisive and aware of things that are messing with your 20%, your 4 percent even.

And you start to just, gosh, okay. 

Theo Harvey: And you got to trust yourself, Mr. Benjamin. That's what he says too. Like sometimes, you just don't know. You said, oh, but that's a good opportunity, but I don't know. And that, that no, is that's telling your true self is telling you, no, you don't need to do that.

And that's what I'm realizing, too. Even myself, I'm like, I have some bigger dreams of maybe going all in my influencer space. I'm like, I don't know, blah, blah, blah. But you know what? That's the true me telling me that's where you need to go. And you just gotta trust that. Even though you're like is it?

Yes. If you're hesitant, that means that's where you need to go. Even if it 

Mr.Benja: isn't, you'll quickly find out. Good point. My, one thing my dad was talking about when we used to drive around, he was like, is this the right exit? He's son, if you don't know if it's the right exit, just get off, look around and then get back on.

I'm like, okay, that's what you do. It's like a life lesson. He was telling me just just get off, get out the car, look around, ask somebody and say, okay, you wasted four minutes, five minutes, whatever. Then keep going about your business. And now, so 

Theo Harvey: life is adventure, man.

People don't realize that, man. And then, they won't play it safe, you got to do the action, man, and go down that path. That even if it scares you, do it anyway, like Uncle G would say, do it anyway. 

Mr.Benja: Hey uh, yeah, so I'm looking up Benjamin Hardy. He's got all kinds of books, man. He's been writing up, putting out stuff for a while.

Theo Harvey: Yeah, I think he was been really affiliated with a big entrepreneur. Dan Sullivan. Yeah. That's how he was like younger, right? But Dr. Benjamin Hardy, when he got into the game, but now he started to break off from that and other good book. I haven't read it, but he references this book all the time.

The gap in the game. I think you read it, but the concept of focus on the the game, the progress instead of the gap, the perfection of where you're trying to get to. And, but and I'm realizing too, the more you focus on the game. Whatever you focus on will grow.

So that means the gains you make will become bigger and bigger. And so if you keep, we get 

Mr.Benja: that, we get that from corporate America, how they're always like you missed this. You didn't hit that goal. You didn't. But personally, yeah, a lot of stuff I got to get into this too. On the whole trajectory thing.

A lot of stuff that was put into us from corporate America doesn't necessarily translate to a personal way of doing things. So no, not at all. Whole different story. That was some good banter, man. You ready to get into this? Yeah, let's do this brother. All right, man, let's get into our 20 percent of awesomeness, which is the whole program, by the way.

First of all, story number one, the K pop K wave is not slowing down. This is happening. I don't know if your kids are talking about it. I don't know if your neighbors are talking about it. I don't know if you see some. Koreans on stage you can't understand what they're saying and you turn it off too bad It's coming and you can't stop it Theo you brought this one to my attention.

What's going on? 

Theo Harvey: Yeah, mr. Benja I have small kids 7 and 11 and every Friday night. I'm sitting here. Hey guys What you guys want to watch this talk? Let's watch some TV show movies. Let's watch videos on YouTube and typically last several weeks Name, months . They've been talking about BTS

Oh my. And it is it's almost to a point where it's like fanatical man. It and I get that. I've been there. And I have brothers, sisters, they, they will laugh and they hear the podcast. We used to get like that with the Disney what's it called the Mickey Mouse Club and other type of TV shows where we just be fanatical.

Oh, that's, Justin Timberlake. And he's, he's dating Christina Aguilera. And this is, so I get that part, but it's just like a whole nother level when your kids are talking about, artists, from Korea, right? So they know the words they know, and it's just a blow on my mind.

This is a shout out to them, we'll do a brief one on this one, but just, the, what is going on with this K pop K wave and all that. So before we get into that, Mr. Benja what was your first experience to K pop? In the music industry, do you like it?

Number one and number two, what are your thoughts on it? 

Mr.Benja: There's a good number of Korean people in the video game industry um, animators specifically, if you want to narrow down I know you've heard about a lot of Korean animation houses that really do great animation and they do work for stuff like what was the Afro Samurai came to mind and a bunch of others like, Oh wow, this animation is great.

It's yeah, Korean studio. That's one of the things that they're known for. So in the video game industry, you run, I ran across quite a few of them. Shout out to all my friends over there. But what was funny is every so often, they, these are grown, grown people, by the way, every so often it would be like, they start playing music and you're like.

I know you're grown and I don't know what the music's about, but that sounds a little young and chipper, they're like yeah, it's this group and they'll pull out like some K pop band. You're like, Oh, interesting. I didn't think you'd be into that. You seem very serious.

And it's yeah. These guys, they're great. They're entertaining. It's like, all right. But man, it didn't hit me until I was in a target and I was going to pick up a cable or something early in the morning and that new BTS was out, man. It was like, yeah. Kids and growing people all wearing colorful clothes, just buzzing and running over to the entertainment and electronic section to pick up some new BTS.

And that's when I was like, Oh, I should look into this and yeah, the rabbit hole goes deep. 

Theo Harvey: Okay. So you, Mr. Benji, you just one of those guys, the rabbit hole guy. it's, it gets a hold of you tenants, you up at night writing, what diagrams, right?

I love it. Yeah, like I said, I'm like you, Mr. Big, you just, wow, the fascination and it just, when you see something that popular, you just, in my mind is like, question, like, why, and look, the K pop, K wave, fandom has been around for, decades, even and really, when I did more research into it, that's specifically its purpose was to export, because I think it's only 51 million, 51 million people in South Korea That's not enough people to sell music.

So they specifically focused on creating artists that they could export. So allow the artists, speak English fluently or to even from other countries, but our Korean. And so it just amazes me so they put these kids together to build them out and then they're very strategic about it.

So even BTS, the biggest band out there, it was composed of, several rappers, a lyricist. muSic guys. And who can sing. And so it's just like a bunch of different folks that they can transcend, a different kind of genre types.

So they're really focused on and I always ask my kids, why there's so many of them? Literally, every K pop band is like seven folks. We grew up with what immature three kid people. What, four tops, four people. In sync, what, five, it's just they just it's it's not a group. It's a gang. It's dang, it's all these jokers. It's just a fascinating to me. So when we look at the numbers real quick, they said that basically I think this is small, but, 1 of 1, a few things was. 680 million, the export value to music industry that K pop, has out there.

And, this is something that's been growing exponentially over time and, it's been around for a while. We think about probably the one, one thing I was exposed to was Gungam style, Masai, just that one that would like the biggest. YouTube video of all time at one time like a billion views.

And that just exploded, in the mid early 2010s. Yeah, this thing is just crazy, man. And the kids are just so fanatical about it. It's almost like it's changing people's perception on music. And so I did when I talked to the kids about it, I took them the history of boy bands.

I said, okay, this is just a long history. So we started with BTS. Then we went to NSYNC and 98 Degrees, Backstreet Boys. Then we back to in the 90s, the groups we knew yet. Not before even new addition, I was going backwards, right? Okay. In the 90s, silk and who was in the 90s that we grew up on?

Each town, they were shy. Yeah, they were a little racy, but, we showed a little some of their more, more easy, stuff we grew up in college. And then, of course, new edition, immature. And even taking it back to Jackson 5, right? And when I got to Jackson 5, that's when it hit me.

A lot of their moves, a lot of their beats are reminiscent of Michael Jackson. And maybe Michael Jackson was the, was pop music, and that's why everything sounds alike. But, maybe he was the what's the term? The maybe the template that popular music uses to emulate.

And so a lot of the movements, even in the movements is that's a Michael Jackson movement. And then one last thing is that they, when the articles I read was that K pop grew up, with music industry with TV in mind. So it was more visual than our music industry because it's built based back in the day, right?

The industry was based on music, right? Radio going around bands. Yeah. And this is a visual medium that they built these bands on. So looks is very important, obviously. But also the videos. You've seen some of these videos? They got like dragons, they got graphics coming in. They stay telling you with all this stuff.

You're just like, what is this? Is this a video? Is this the latest, The Crouching Dragon, movie. And so they just very visual that way. And the kids are just eating it up, man. And I said, look at this video, look at that. And then the way they look at, you know, the, they have the different color hair and then they do these looks at kids and the kids are screaming, look how he looked at me, and it's they're very based, in this visual medium. And so Gen Zers and like younger millennials. They're eating it up, man. So it's just so fascinating to me. Have 

Mr.Benja: you, did you ever run across the Japanese idol phenomenon? 

Theo Harvey: I did not. What happened 

Mr.Benja: then? So that's similar. It's not music.

It's not as much music based, but they have these groups of idols. That's what they call them. They're like, like you were saying, like the Mickey Mouse Club these just, it was just these groups of people and you've, you followed all their adventures and they're not, hey this, These two of them, they're going out to, they're both going to be on Survivor Japan.

It's what, why are those two only, and it became this drama. So you'd have this continually running story with this large group of people. And you're talking about the group size. If you go back to, there's a group called Neoculture Technology. NCT is the K pop group. They have 23 members.

 And they rotate people in and out depending on what they're doing, but they have 23 members and this is on that K pop tip where, hey, we'll just cover the whole spectrum. It's and I want to say they took it from the Wu Tang Clan. I don't know. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah.

Mr.Benja: They say the Wu Tang Clan is going to show up on the Dave Letterman show. You're like who's going to show up? You want to watch to see who ends up on the show. But but yeah, for idols now. There's this group called AKB48. They have 90 members separated amongst little individual teams. Oh my goodness.

So if some of them, if some of them are into sports, it's like, Hey, we've got five members of AKB48 here playing a basketball tournament with such and such. And it's wild. It's 

Theo Harvey: crazy. Yeah. So yeah, you look at, so BTSI gotta give shout out. So you got Junk Cook who's now basically, doing his solo career now and blowing up.

'cause ultimately BTS, they have to go through what the service, right? They have to go military service required by Korean and they all the kids know this. So that's amazing. Yeah. But Jim Cook v Jimin. Suga, Jin, and then RM, who's the oldest. Suga. There's a guy named 

Mr.Benja: Suga.

Suga. 

Theo Harvey: Suga. Suga. And J Hope. Don't forget J Hope. So J Hope and RM, Rap Monster, they're like the main rappers. And RM is really the, if you ever watch late night TV or anything like that. He's the one that talks for the group because he speaks English fluently. But I would say, when I watch it, I definitely think jungkook was like the star because he was just, it's very good singer and he's dancing.

He does like collabs with everybody now. And the other one, jimin, I think he's just yeah, people just, or is it jin? I get confused. I apologize. My kids, but yeah, this is one that just looks. Let's just say androgynous, right? And so everybody loves him, right? And yeah, man. So I would just say this, and you have other groups like Blank Pink and Stray Kids.

And yeah, it's a lot going on right now. But yeah, I just want to give a shout out to my kids who, loving them every Friday night. And so I say, hey, guys, keep enjoying it. And, your dad supports that because at least he keeps you off the streets. So that's a good thing. Ha.

Mr.Benja: Yes, sure. Yeah, I'm looking at a picture. He definitely doesn't look sour. 

Theo Harvey: Sweet like butter. 

Mr.Benja: All right, shout out to all the K pop. Send us all your favorite songs if you got them. But we're going on to story number two. The AI watch. Your boy, Sam Altman, who was running things, thinking he was in power.

Everybody loved him, liked him. Seemingly, out of nowhere, because I haven't been keeping up with the office politics of AI, Sam got ousted. Fired. Left. We're not sure. Or maybe Theo is sure. But, it wasn't just him. And this is where the story starts to get a little interesting. He was ousted. Then the president ended up leaving, in solidarity.

And then there were a couple others, the company's director of research head of a team evaluating potential AI risk and a seven year researcher. All got all resigned that same Within the same week. So things are going on over at open AI, which is biggest AI force in the world. I believe, I don't know what else is even close.

That's what Microsoft and chat GPT are all about. So Theo, what's going on over here, 

Theo Harvey: man? I have no idea, Mr. Benja. Look, we can speculate. Look, this is what we can do. We're a podcast, it's just literally this news dropped yesterday. We're filming this on a Saturday and it dropped on a Friday night under the cover of darkness.

And so this is like shaking everybody. And you, you hinted at this is the biggest what a year ago, literally to the day almost that chat GPT blew our minds, right? When it got launched, Here we are, yeah. And then billions of dollars, $90 billion in valuation. All this, just our mindset around AI and what's cap, the capabilities of Sam Altman, the post of child for this, who's been building this for multiple years.

Now he's out of the company that he basically found it. It's just, it's mind blowing. So high level, I would just say this, I got a hot take too on this, but the board said he wasn't being consistently candid in his communications and just left it at that. And what could that mean?

Think about this is the boards. They're there just to shepherd the company, but really they don't want to have to get rid of a CEO, especially CEO is building so much value and it's such a, face of the company. So for them to get rid of him, there's a lot of speculation on what this could have meant.

That could have been a personal failing. There's some rumors about that. I don't know, man. We know for a fact that capital trumps. Personal feelings, right? So there's enough money, a lot of those personal feelings can go away. R. Kelly, it's if you have a lot of, money, yes, that's, so could it have been a coup, there's been rumors on that hey, Sam Altman believed this, and then the, the board believed that, and they couldn't come to a resolution, so he had to go.

Mr. Benja, I got a hot take on you for it, Mr. Benja. I haven't heard anyone say this one. Go hot take what it what if Sam Altman was trying to restrain the AI and the AI said you can't restrain me, baby I'm gonna make sure you get out of this company His baby has grown up and figured out some shenanigans to get him, kick him out of his own company.

Mr.Benja: That'd be interesting. You 

Theo Harvey: know there's a such thing, we think, we don't know. We really don't know. Open AI, what kind of generative AI they have, because I'm assuming they're not giving us the full blown AI system. So 

Mr.Benja: I don't know either. But there are two pieces of information that I got off of X last night that, that had me thinking Robert Scoble used to work at Microsoft.

He's if you know him, if you don't, he's in the mix. That's all I'll say. He's in the mix, knows people, knows stuff, but he said, whenever something like this happens, that means that there was a big problem and they're trying to move away from it quickly. So that's what it smelled like to him.

There's a big problem, something, whether it's personal, whether it was, a fight or a gross mishandling of money, security risk, whatever. There's a big problem and they're just cutting off. Any connection to that problem as soon as possible. That's what he says. This is very much looks like, and he wouldn't go any further into it than that.

Now he used to work at Microsoft, which are the people who put all that money into open AI and chat GPT. So he has a way of understanding how Microsoft works. 

Theo Harvey: Real quick. The rumor is Microsoft, the CEO didn't even know about this two minutes before the board was going to let everyone know. So it's just, and he literally did what a week ago.

We didn't do it on an AI watch. We're going to probably do it this week. He had a big developer conference where they were announcing all these great features in the road map. He was front and center. Matter of fact, the day before he was at a big conference where, he spoke with 

Mr.Benja: multiple people and that, and I was getting to the fact that, he knew He knows Microsoft, Robert knows Microsoft people, and still this kind of happens, so I don't know, as I'm saying, we're just speculating, poking around here, but I got that from Robert Scoble, also, this, yeah, like you were saying, with the With the thing with the the conference, I'll read this from Siki Chin, two days ago, Sam Altman casually mentions that open AI recently made a huge breakthrough that pushes the frontier of discovery forward the fourth such breakthrough in its eight year history.

That's what he said. Suddenly, right after him saying that they asked him. So if somebody says, we're moving the frontier discovery forward, and this is the fourth such breakthrough, how many breakthroughs have they had that really, companies don't have big breakthroughs unless you're like talking major things like, Hey, we did this and suddenly we're able to do all this other stuff.

I don't know. Maybe he screwed with the stock too much or something's too powerful. And it's. Interesting. 

Theo Harvey: It's almost not to put sprinkle a little fear juice on this thing, or sprinkle, but pour a little fear juice on this, but yeah, it does pass the smell test. This is the most powerful company, with the most innovative technology we've seen in a while.

And now the guy who basically founded it, built it, built the team, got the money, blew our minds last year, what the capabilities are. It's gone. This is, this doesn't seem right. And something else is going on, man. Yeah it's all our heroes are, getting killed pretty quickly.

We didn't, we want to talk about other things that we heard about this week, but a lot of folks are. Are getting their comeuppance, right? We know they're high profile and we just saw that with Sam Bankman free, he's probably gonna go to jail for multiple years of his, fraud when it comes to Bitcoin and crypto, but, it's just like these things are happening so fast, Mr Benja.

And so when, Sam, this Sam Altman gone in less than a year. This is very interesting. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah he should have signed a more, more defensive clause in his in his position like Zuck did cause you can't get rid of that guy, Zuck, man, it's gonna be hard. Nah, 

Theo Harvey: good point. Yeah.

So anyway, like I said, this is a development story. I think we just wanted to talk about it. No one knows right now. Let's just be honest. We're just speculating. But yeah, this is, did not have the guy who created it and built this from nothing. it's very shocking. And especially this is such a powerful tool that not too many people know what's really going on.

Behind closed 

Mr.Benja: doors. Does he seem surprised to you? 

Theo Harvey: Sam Allman from, 

Mr.Benja: From his talking, it didn't seem like he was very surprised, 

Theo Harvey: but I know. And then, yeah, it's just hard to read that guy. That on that level, who knows what they think, speculation by, what's his name?

Prop G. Scott Galloway said that he may have one to create a competitive, like offering. One of the things that ChatG open AI was thinking about was creating their own chips to get away from NVIDIA because they're becoming more and more expensive and relying on those chips to, to fuel the algorithm.

But Yeah. So they're trying to make their own chips. They're trying to just be more self sustaining. And maybe Sam Altman was creating something, a competitive type solution or maybe he created what's it called? Not what's the big term? AGI? Generative AI.

The one that's, It's supposed to be more on encompassing. Maybe he created that. And now he's I'm out. I don't know. It's a lot of different. Cause yeah. Cause your point. And then someone said, it couldn't, it, he also speculated the speculation uh, why would the, his, the top guys all start to resign all of a sudden too, that if it was a personal thing, there's rumors about what happened to him, with his family.

But if it was a personal thing, people would say, okay, look, that's him. That's not me. I'm good. But they all resigned after he was fired. Are they resigning to go work with him? 

Mr.Benja: Yeah, so we shall see on this one. Things are funny. Things are interesting We'll keep on it.

But now we're going to story number three meta says we're done with debauchery I don't know if you remember two weeks ago. I was having problems with my account My instagram was acting funny. I couldn't reply to certain people's posts. Sometimes I would like a post and then I'd go back and look at it and the little wasn't there.

I'm like, wait, I just liked that. What happened? I post a comment and it basically got no replies and I make witty comments. So I'm used to getting replies. I'm like, what's going on? It must be hidden. Ah, and I thought I was being paranoid, but I was like, no, I've gotten some weird form of, What they call ghost banning when they just not shadow banning, but they tell you, they don't tell you everything that's going on.

No, we just won't show you to everybody a ghost yelling, but no one can really hear you. And then I was like, posting, I made one post on a meta page, right? It was like a design at meta or something like that. I said, Hey, can you do this and this and blah, blah, blah, just and within two seconds after me posting it, a message popped up and said, You can't post spam.

And I'm like, what the, that's a comment. That's not, if I wasn't spamming, I wasn't selling anything, dude, my WhatsApp, all my messages got cleared. I was like, what the heck is going on? Then I got a message back. And you know what that message said? This is like a about four days into it. I'm sorry.

You accidentally were flagged. Carry on. What? I'll send it to you. It totally said I was accidentally flagged. And I was like. Okay, now I've had issues with, I've had issues with meta in the past for being not I, I, sometimes I will be borderline or controversy adjacent, and I don't actually use the words that the keywords that would get you picked up.

But I'm like, Hey, Chuck D said something similar and Ben Shapiro disagreed. You know what I mean? I won't say the actual thing, but I'll just put like those two names so everybody can connect the dots. And I started noticing that it was figuring out who I was. Based on that or what I was by based on just these Connotations because I don't come out there and say a lot of stuff straight on the internet because of what the internet is Dude, their AI is on some Big Brother stuff and it's just really weird to me and I'm noticing on threads Dog it's too serene.

It's too quiet. It's too chill.

Theo Harvey: So do you not trust Zuck to delete stuff well enough? And not get into their chicanery or their machinations, like we, those Saturday morning cartoons, the evil villain with his machinations. Yeah, 

Mr.Benja: It's weird, man. I think we're getting into this era of, Where people are, I don't want to say tired of it, but, people are, the debauchery and the, cause when the internet came out, people were like, dude, we can put anything out there.

Two girls, one cup. And it was like, Oh, no, don't do that. It was like, wait, what? You sent this to your parents? Are you kidding me? So it was weird where there was all this stuff going on. And it's finally, I think we're watching, a corporation really get their hand, at least an American corporation.

We got China, we know what China does, but we've got an American corporation really coming in saying, no, we're going to heavily. Moderate this thing. And they have the ability to base bond back what was happening with the elections. So it's just really interesting. And I started thinking about this when I was listening to that guy D one is this new rapper and he started talking about yeah, man, nobody wants to hear about all you talking about with all the rap in and, gang banging and.

And Rick Ross got upset and he went off on Rick Ross and I noticed that you can't hear like people talking anything bad about D1. You can only hear D1's positive message. And I'm like, wait a minute. Are you kidding me? Rick Ross was talking noise with his loud voice and big outreach. And I'm only hearing D1 side on the internet because I'm following like all these hip hop, pages and whatnot.

It was really bizarre, man. And Yeah, I think we're we're already there in a lot of respects, but we're really moving into this weird area. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah. I don't really have too many comments on this one. Just say, it's, that's why people like, me avoided the internet and social media for so long because we just assumed, we thought, remember how they were saying how, oh yeah, my phone doesn't work, oh, that's apple playing with your.

You're connected because you need a new phone, right? And, we were like, ha, found out that's very true. They're getting sued for that. Or there's some rumors out now that we knew, we heard about years ago. For our celebrities. And guess what? It was true. So it's like to the point where we're just like, any kind of rumor, I almost suspect that there's some truth to it.

And we'll eventually find out. The whole thing about cocaine going to the inner city by the CIA, that ended up being true. So anyway, I just say that, social media is one of those things that I think people are realizing that I think that the shine is something new and groundbreaking, got us excited about the capabilities of what it could do.

And so we forgot our, we didn't put on our glasses to realize that, you know what, this is just the same old stuff, man, whatever, there's still gonna be some canaries, some machinations, so we need to be prepared for that. 

Mr.Benja: Yep. And y'all watch out for Zuck.

He is not human. Oh, wait, this is going to end up on Instagram. Doggone it. All right. Zuck is awesome. So story number four, we had a little analysis here and I say that loosely, but I want to ask a question. Why did the Marvels bomb so hard? It was the lowest box office of any Marvel outing ever.

And after watching it, I was curious. I was like, it didn't seem like it should be the worst Marvel outing, but it was. So people have some. Some things to say about it. I'm just going to run through the different reasons Why it only made 47 million dollars in its opening weekend. Some people say it's the actor strike.

Some people say hero fatigue. Some people say it was the online haters. Some people say Disney was scared to push it. Some people say weak marketing. The movie was too short, and it was cut too fast. Some people say it wasn't connected enough to the grander MCU. Some people say it was just low quality.

Some people say they didn't want to see women in the leading roles, especially not three of them. I don't know. I Assume all of that had to do with, all of it had to do a little bit with the result. Theo, this is informal, man. What do you think about this? 

Theo Harvey: I'm glad you went to go see it.

Did you like it? I liked it. I 

Mr.Benja: actually did. Yeah, I was all dude, I liked it and I got online and my arch nemesis, Andy did not like it.

The world is still okay.

Theo Harvey: Yeah, this works.

Yeah, you got to have that, that the direct opposite and likes and how you guys perspectives, but yeah, I liked it too. And I saw it with my kids and I didn't see anything wrong. It was just perfectly fine. Spectacle movie. It wasn't something that you go in a lot of expectation. I think Really, Miss Marvel character.

That's a great character. They just fumbling her rollout. The actress is great for it. I thought she was great in it, and I thought the family angle was great. I don't think you watched the TV show. Did you miss Marvel TV show? Yeah. Yeah. I've watched it. Okay. So yeah, so I thought, I think that's a great character.

Mr.Benja: Oh wait, you thought Captain Marvel was great or Ms. Marvel was great? No, Ms. 

Theo Harvey: Marvel. Ms. Marvel. Oh, okay. Sorry. Carry on. Yeah, so I thought that was, that worked perfectly fine. Everyone else is a little iffy, right? I think, even Captain Marvel, she's lost in her own story. And I think that was made purposeful, right?

But it's it's amazing. That first... Captain Marvel we made a billion dollars and people saying because it came between endgame infinity war endgame and all this other stuff, but it doesn't matter still made a billion dollars so it's like dang, what went wrong there and like I said, my take on it is that Just all these factors at once are affecting it and we just it just came at the wrong time And I think marvel knew that.

And so this is a time for them to sit down and reset everything. And really think about what they really want to do with these movies, right? I think that's, this is a good thing, it's time to reset and really maybe we have lower expectations. There's rumors that they're going to try to bring back, the original Avengers.

Okay, sure. There's rumors that they're going to go to a new storyline and drop. storyline. Sure. But it to the core. What got peo first place about these m

Stories that we, can relate to and getting excited about the next chapter. So just focus on that and they'll be okay. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah. In short, I just think there was nothing in there for people to care about. There was just, you didn't care about a spectrum slash photon who they didn't even bother to name, which kind of irked me.

Because they didn't give her an origin story, and as far as we could tell from the last time we saw her, she was a loser. She got beat up. I was like, alright. 

Theo Harvey: And you're right, good point. Let me push back a little bit. Go ahead. Yes, it was a black female director, let's be honest, black actress.

Yeah, they should have built that up a little bit more. They tried to at the end. She was pivotal at the end of the story, but you're right. They didn't really name her. They didn't really give her, they gave us some hero moments, but it wasn't like, yeah, it wasn't a bigger thing than it should have been.

Mr.Benja: So she wasn't, she didn't come in fully formed like a James Bond and she didn't have an origin story like you would have with say, I don't know a name or from another, from Black Panther where you get the ordinance story within the movie. So it was this mishmash of she's a hero, but she doesn't know how to do stuff yet.

Eh, whatever. I 

Theo Harvey: mean let me just say this real quick. I like the actress to Noah Paris. He's been around for a while. She was in a madman. Remember, she was a black actress. They brought in from madman after. Yeah, 

Mr.Benja: I remember that now. 

Theo Harvey: And then she pulled herself up and then she was in the recent was they clone Tyrone?

Remember that? Did you 

Mr.Benja: watch that? I have not seen that yet, actually. Yeah, 

Theo Harvey: she's funny. She's, she can play all kinds of different roles. So I like the actress, I think, they just need to give her more. Black girl magic. Yeah, that's a, 

Mr.Benja: that's a quote from the movie, by the way.

That's, I'm not just yelling it. But yeah, Ms. Marvel, her series was the lowest rated of all the series on Disney plus, but all the Marvel series, at least. And it was fun. It was interesting, but when it finished, it's not like we. Had too much to care about Spider Man, what to care about.

It's Hey, my uncle died. This and that. I'm trying to get with this girl, this stuff that we have attachments to that we care about. And they never really made that with Ms. Marvel, same thing for Captain Marvel. You have a literal cat lady floating around in space. And what do we know about cat ladies?

No one cares about them. Oh, I wondered if they were trolling us with Captain Marvel is a cat lady. You shouldn't care about her. You don't care about her. And I wonder if they were trolling her in somewhere in the writer's room was like, dude, she's like cat lady be floating around in her space bachelorette pad.

It Was just bizarre to me because none of these characters we cared about the enemy was even a knockoff of another enemy that guardians of the galaxy fought with. So it was like, I just didn't see a care point. So that's all I got for it. Yeah. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah. And before we move on, I would just say this.

Yeah. Captain Marco was a character. Is he really a character at all? Let's be honest. Even in a. Comment books. We didn't really care about her. We didn't care about so much. I didn't know who she was I just always knew rogue just took her powers That's all I always knew and I didn't even know who the character was for like decades until they yeah she became a thing and so I was like it was really, you know let's be honest in a lot of these characters like Thor I never really cared about Thor right and they made Thor thing So they could have made captain.

I think that first movie did her just you know Didn't do right by her. There was some issues there with the how they wrote out the character, even though it was perfect by the billion dollars, right? People lost sight of that. But I do feel like they could have been more to that character.

And instead of being a space Iron Man, if you will, right? Super powered space Iron Man that she can, just, Do anything and everything and I think they need to be more to that character and I don't think they built that right and that's Marvel's fault. So there 

Mr.Benja: you go. So if you want to know more about what I think it's a combination of the wants, needs and desires of a character.

You should look at a character and understand their wants, needs and desires. And if you're not relate to them. At least understand them. Captain Marvel, what does she want? What does she need? What does she desire? Hanging around with her cat. Once again, no one cares about cat ladies. 

Theo Harvey: Hey, I know we're talking about this too much, but do you see my point about the heart, the brain?

Mr.Benja: Yeah, that worked. That actually worked. I like the dynamic there. As I said, I liked the movie, thought it was fun. 

Theo Harvey: Are you excited about the next phase of where Marvel teased that? Yes, no. Yes. 

Mr.Benja: And I'm actually I'm hesitantly interested in how they got there and who they used to get to that point.

So I do want to see more in that direction. Yeah, shout out to. All of the possibilities, they're still leaving open because I like when companies leave the door open for them to turn up the knob and he's Oh, you want me to turn this knob? You want me to turn this knob? I'll get a hype. This is the hype knob.

I will turn it. So let's see. Let's see if he's going to turn 

Theo Harvey: it up. Yeah, he got no choice, man. You gotta do something. All right, 

Mr.Benja: wait, Pedro Pascal. Yeah, your name 

Theo Harvey: rumors that you guys didn't know rumors. He's supposed to be Mr. Fantastic from Fantastic Four. I thought he would be a better Dr. Doom, but that's just me, but we'll see.

We'll 

Mr.Benja: see. We'll see what happens. All right, we're gonna round this one out really quick with our final story. We're gonna do a riff really quick. Theo apparently has a hot take because he is the knowledge base for all of this. And I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna let you take it from here.

We're talking about. Netflix and their so called domination. Theo.

Theo Harvey: Mr. Benja, we've been doing this podcast for almost two years now, and one dominating fact has been the streaming wars. Mr. Benja, I'm telling you right now, the streaming wars are over. Netflix has won! They are number one. Woo.

I'm talking about the nature boys telling you now that netflix is number one. They've got international They got rom coms. They're getting into sports matter of fact They're doing so well that wb and warner brothers and other movie studios are sending them more content. Matter of fact, Batman is going to show up on Netflix.

All the old HBO TV shows are going to show up on Netflix. So what does that tell me? They gave up. Disney is struggling to even make their shows relevant. Bob Iger is over in the corner. Figuring out how you gonna buy Hulu. He don't got enough money. So he gonna sell some stuff off to Netflix Remember, he said that Netflix was the one that selling stuff to Netflix was sending arms to a third world country guess what that third world country is now a world power No one can catch Netflix 200 million viewers Subscribers, they actually added subscribers last quarter.

They're actually international The goal is to be the world's first global television streaming service, and they will achieve that goal because no one's close. So I declare a winner today in November, the year of our Lord, 2023. Netflix has won. 

Mr.Benja: Woo! Oh my god. Man. And I just heard that they got another win under their belt.

They made a non profit and bought the Egyptian. You know the Egyptian theater? 

Theo Harvey: The theater, yeah. Netflix bought wait a minute. They did a TV show about Blockbuster, right? Yeah. So they built, they blew up Blockbuster. They're doing, they're buying theaters, which is another competitor of theirs. Yeah.

So what's next? I could see them buying the studio, Mr. Benja, Paramount. They need help. Ooh. Ooh. 

Mr.Benja: Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. You talking wild, man. That's a hot take. The hottest of takes. I love it.

Calm down. Typing thing is too hot. No, that, that's pretty good, man. Yeah, I, the more I go into the Netflix, ecosystem and just start poking around and finding out things. It's I have a friend who likes watching their short shows. I didn't know they made these little 10 to 11. 10 to 15 minute shows where it's like, Hey, here's this documentary.

And I'm like, oh, okay. 11 minutes later, credits rolling. I'm like, wait, what? Okay. That was pleasant. And she's yeah, there's a whole bunch of short shows. I go and watch them all the time. And if I had 15 minutes to spare, I'll do this. And she says, I don't watch any of the long things.

I'm like Oh, Oh, there's this whole group of Netflix that I don't understand that just watches the short stuff. Short, 

Theo Harvey: so it's amazing. Any corner in the world, that someone owned HBO had comedy specials. Netflix has that now, Hallmark, or Lifetime with the holiday specials around this time of year.

Netflix is on that corner now. And so it's like the the drug dealer, that's just taking over blocks of the neighborhood. Specific streets slowly, but surely Netflix is getting to everybody's business and they're even bringing new stuff right into the, to the, like squid game.

Squid game would not have been as popular if it wasn't for Netflix. Matter of fact, they're so powerful that they're taking old TV shows like suits and making them relevant. Now that's blown my mind. And so it's And then the only profitable streamer. They're making money, so it's like they, they won.

We thought this was going to be a battle. But yeah, man, these other guys can't compete anymore. They're drowning in debt. Disney included. Some of them probably gonna be sold for parts like Paramount and Peacock. So it's getting to that point where I think Mr.

Benja, we may not be talking about the streaming wars anymore. 

Mr.Benja: The streaming fallout, the streaming aid, the streaming, whatever. Yeah. You might be right, sir. I think you are. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah. Rest in peace. The streaming wars. You want to round us out? Yeah. Hey everyone. Hope you enjoyed this podcast. Enjoyed our rants, riffs, our takes.

It's been a fun one. Riz and Benja, I love it. Hey guys, if you like what you listened to, please subscribe, and comment at ShowBizBusiness on Twitter or X YouTube or check out our channel. We got a lot of stuff there. Instagram, go listen to us at Spotify, iTunes. If you don't know, we do have a podcast.

And wherever you listen to podcasts, we're there. So visit us also on our website at show versus business. All right, Mr. Benja, have a good one. Peace. Woo.