Zombie Book Club

Meta Grief Tech Zombies - Casual Dead | Zombie Book Club Ep. 139

• Zombie Book Club • Season 4 • Episode 139

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Meta just patented an AI that keeps your social media account posting, liking, and DMing after you die, and we have questions. A lot of them. We dig into the Necro Feed™ and what it really means when a corporation trains a language model on your entire digital life, then deploys it to simulate you indefinitely; with your family, your followers, and anyone willing to engage. We trace the booming grief tech industry (death bots, ghost bots, etc) from its more sincere corner cases to the obvious business incentive hiding in plain sight: more engagement, more data, more 'active users', and who exactly profits when your grief never gets to reach its conclusion.

Then we get real. Why are we still on Facebook, and what would it actually take to leave? We walk through our own tangled reasons for staying; local groups, family, the diner that only updates its hours on its page — and map out realistic exit strategies: Patreon, newsletters, owning your own corner of the internet. We share hard-won lessons from moving audiences across platforms, why it's always harder than it looks, and why your voice (in life and in death) should belong to you, not an algorithm designed to monetize your memory.



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Welcome And Zuck Recap

SPEAKER_01

Welcome to the Zombie Book Club, the only book club where the book is Meta! I'm Dan, and when I'm not spiraling into a social media algorithm designed to kill me so they can take my place on Facebook, I'm writing a book about survivors of a zombie apocalypse living in a safe zone where they still have social media. Because what better way to control and spy on a large group of people?

SPEAKER_00

They're perfecting that right now. Yeah, love it. And I'm Leah, and this is our third episode dedicated to our very favorite zombie. Everybody take your guess who that might be. Yeah, who is it? Mark Zuckerberg. Whoa. I did not know that Mark Zuckerberg was a fan. Mark Zuckerberg has been an unofficial guest, a ghostly presence in the background. For now, this is our third episode about him. The first was about how billionaire bunkers exist. Yeah. Mark Zuckerberg's being one of them.

SPEAKER_01

Got a good a mention in that episode.

SPEAKER_00

Episode 13. Go check it out. It's actually one of my favorites, even though it's an oldie.

SPEAKER_01

I I think uh I also had a rant about the uh the Titan submersible at the beginning.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, that was great.

SPEAKER_01

I roasted the dead billionaires.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, the orcas were also doing great stuff.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, they were doing great work.

SPEAKER_00

There was, yeah, then the submarines with rich people dying at the bottom of the ocean. Beautiful.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, the ocean was reclaiming the billionaires for a while.

SPEAKER_00

Uh and then the second episode was episode 27, where we took it a step further and each made plans on how to take over Mark Zuckerberg's bunker in Hawaii. Dan, just briefly, could you remind folks what your plan was? Um, well, I think we should tell them what your plan was first. Uh I was just gonna show up with apple pie. Yeah. I think that's a solid plan. Knock on the door. Solid plan. I was going to infiltrate um using my charms.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And then you know, let you in the back and kill them all in the middle of the night. Just kidding.

SPEAKER_01

My hypothetical plan was to uh um build Mad Max construction equipment and use an excavator to tear apart the bunker and get inside. Yeah, but then we wouldn't have a bunker. Well, it there'd still be a lot of a bunker left. You just need to get past the reinforced door. Like that's true. People try to take the reinforced door out. Like they're like, you gotta go through the door. How do we get through this like in a foot and a half of steel? Well, the concrete right behind it is actually pretty porous and brittle.

SPEAKER_00

This is you know, a couple years later, after recording that, do you feel more or less strongly about the need to take over a Zuck's bunker? More. Yeah.

Hawaii Bunker And Property Power

SPEAKER_01

You know, it's it's kind of funny, like, cause you know, there's there's so many ways that we look at things in terms of property. And Mark Zuckerberg spent$260 million on a bunker. Um, a bunker that, if he ever needed to use it, would not be protected by the laws that make it his bunker. So what I feel is that the people of Hawaii have a really great bunker to go to. I would agree with that. In the event of an emergency. I would agree with that.

SPEAKER_00

Anyways, check that episode out if you want to hear all of the dirty deeds about um his very colonizer vibe bunker in Hawaii.

SPEAKER_01

The colonizer bunker.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Um, but today we're talking about Zuck's latest, greatest thing that makes it even more my zombie. It's Zuck's zombie Facebook patent. Trademark. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Trademark. It's my it's my it's my word. If Mark Zuckerberg starts using it, he owes me money. Five dollars every time it's every time. That's my licensing fee. It's reasonable. Everybody that says Necrofeed, it's only gonna cost you five dollars.

SPEAKER_00

Trademark. Yeah. TM Mark. In case you're listening, we release episodes every Sunday. So please subjugate us all, living or dead. You're our corporate overlord. We know you want to colonize Mars and go hang out there with Elon. So just just do it. Yeah. We support you. Yeah. In colonizing Mars. Yeah, you know, you you you deserve to exert control over everyone's likeness, voice, and memory after death. You've earned it. Yeah. It's because you work so hard, really. Yeah. You know. Yeah. You should absolutely exploit the human feeling of grief and make it a marketplace.

SPEAKER_01

You want to know what's really funny is that like Mark Zuckerberg has never had a job.

SPEAKER_02

Hmm.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, he created Facebook and is the CEO of that, but he never applied. Never applied for that job. He never had a job that made him qualified to be a CEO.

SPEAKER_00

Maybe that's the impulse to be a billionaire is to be your own boss. Yeah, to jump the to be a sociopath boss, though, specifically.

SPEAKER_01

The jump from the very bottom all the way to the top because you paid for the building.

Introducing The Necrofeed Idea

SPEAKER_00

Let us never forget that this man shows up also in the Epstein Files and that the origin of Facebook is rating people. Yeah. Women. Mostly women. Yeah. It was about objectifying women, and he was a friend of Epstein. So fuck that guy. We're gonna just hate on him this entire episode. But you know, in the meantime, in all seriousness, please subscribe. We love getting ratings and reviews on the platforms wherever you listen. Uh, it helps us find more people. And frankly, my ego needs a boost. So give me those five stars, please. It'll make me feel better about my life. Help our egos. Yes. Help our egos, help people find this podcast and learn more about the 101 of how to hate on Mark Zuckerberg. Because I think it's an important skill in this time.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think it's something that all of us need to get on board with. Yeah. Um, I think that we also need to get on board with saying goodbye to meta forever. That's another conversation. But I know a lot of people like depend on these platforms. There's other platforms, and they would be great too if everybody just left these shitholes to burn in a pile somewhere.

SPEAKER_00

You know, and like people I know have done it. Our good friend Eric has been on the show a few times, an actual zombie has divested completely from meta. Um and if we want to dream of a world, uh what Sarah Wollerman wants and what I want, which is a general strike, I think a start is to get us all on board with leaving meta products. It's just, it really is. It's like that's where you find your people, that's where you can promote your shit.

SPEAKER_01

Um that's who's tracking you and selling your data.

SPEAKER_00

Every single thing and reporting us very happily to the corrupt fascist government that's also label anybody, especially us, not especially us, that's a little bit egotistical, but people like us, and probably you if you're listening, as uh terrorists and anti-fascists, which apparently is uh terrorist it it makes you a terrorist to not like fascism. Yeah. Because then Mark might not be so rich anymore.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and that's terrorism.

SPEAKER_00

Yep.

SPEAKER_01

Um, I was gonna say something, but I don't remember what we were talking about.

SPEAKER_00

Sorry, we went on a rant. Uh so what what are we talking about today, Dan? Because we've kind of gone a little off topic, but also on topic. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Why are we here? Uh we're here because of a new idea that the brilliant Mark had.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I you know, I want to not give Mark credit. I doubt he came up with this.

SPEAKER_01

I want to give him credit because it's a dumb fucking idea, and I want him to own it. Okay. I don't I don't want to believe that Jared in the in in whatever RD department was like, I've got a great idea, guys. And Mark Mark Zuckerberg's like, you know what, Jared? You are right. This is what the people need. This is who this is what they've been asking for. And the thing is, imagine a world where you're dead, but your Facebook profile lives on and posts for you, pretending to be you.

How AI Would Imitate You

SPEAKER_00

And your Instagram. And your Instagram and your WhatsApp. And yep, probably other ones, threads. Yep. And not just posting on your behalf, but responding to other people's posts in ways that the algorithm have having evaluated every single thing you've ever put on the internet, would presume you would.

SPEAKER_01

Oh my god, actually, I've gone full circle on this and I want this now because could you imagine what my threads account is going to look like after I'm dead?

SPEAKER_00

Just trolling MAGA people forever?

SPEAKER_01

Like somebody's just gonna come along and be like, Yeah, so uh I know it's I know it's 2050 now and things are different, but you know, I just don't think that we need to be researching flying cars. And then along comes me, and I'm like, I'm like, shut the fuck up, you stupid idiot. I'm here to wreck your whole shit. And uh and that's and that's the response. My dead Facebook account.

SPEAKER_00

I feel like your dead Facebook account, or that'd be your threads account, would really be a much dumber version of you because that's not actually what you say. Your reac your responses are hilarious.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, actually, what I just said would probably be the like the imitation of it.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, yeah, a poor imitation.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's the Kirkland brand.

SPEAKER_00

Hey, Kirkland then. Wait, no, we're not, we're not dissing Kirkland. Shout out to Costco. Good point. Okay, good point. It's a moment here. Costco, one of those corporations that might be doing shit right. There's a cap on how much the I think the CEO makes like$500,000 or something like that. Everybody gets paid a fair wage. Kirkland brand's tasty. Don't you be dissing Kirkland brand?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I'm but I'm not going to sit here and say that Kirkland brand jeans are as good as other jeans.

SPEAKER_00

I bet you they're made in the same factory by the same exploited people.

SPEAKER_01

They got that Kirkland fit, you know? The the square body fit.

SPEAKER_00

This is gonna be an unhinged episode, I can already tell. And you know why? Secret. This episode we just made up five minutes before we started recording. But it was because we saw this news article and I was like, oh my fucking god, Meta's created a zombie. We have to talk about it. Yeah. So, in all seriousness, would you be open to keeping your Instagram page alive after you died?

SPEAKER_01

Me?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

No. I mean, my threads account we discussed, but now not my Instagram. What's it gonna like? Is it gonna make AI versions of my images and be like, hey, here's me in my 2003 era full battle rattle, but I'm on the beach now.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, probably because I regularly on Facebook it'll show me a AI cartoon version of a picture I have of you on there and be like, and it's like it they're fucking evil because like for half a second, I'm like, oh, he's so cute because you're my dan and you're in your nice little orange vest and you're looking handsome, and then I'm like, fuck you, AI. No, I don't want an AI dan. Um, but I think there are some people who would want this, and I'm curious if you can think of anybody in your life that'd be like, yeah, I'm down. Oh, probably my mom.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. My mom my mom would be like, I mean, she'd I don't think she really posts anything on social media, anyways. She just uh takes in all the conspiracy theories.

SPEAKER_00

But she'd want a version of you after you died, I feel like.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, of me, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe.

SPEAKER_00

And isn't that scary?

SPEAKER_01

Like, imagine look at my my social media now.

SPEAKER_00

Like, if you if I like what's scary is a world where it's not just you consenting to this in advance of your death, but like a loved one being like, yes, give me AI Dan.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I did we did we explain what this is? No. I don't know if I I don't know if we did. I thought I talked around it.

Consent, Grief, And Mental Health

SPEAKER_00

Meta has granted a patent that would use AI to train a bot to keep post-mortem accounts alive and active. I did already say that it would post, it would post as you, it would also respond to people like you. Yeah, I remember that. Um, and just briefly, it's a large language model that can quote unquote simulate a person's social media activity. Uh and the idea of it is not just for people who are dead, but it would also be like, you know what, Dan, you and I just are fucking tired of posting on Instagram. Like it's a good example. I just haven't had time or mental space to do like anything interesting on Instagram in a while. And so I could just press a button and it would simulate me and reply to all of our zombie's as if it is me, being like, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I feel like that's the next thing that's coming, is like, is is that this would just be a thing that you could toggle on your account if you just you you want to be active on social media, but don't want to spend the time.

SPEAKER_00

That is such a degree of like to me, that's deceit. And it's also dangerous because like, what if what if, like, okay, real me comments on Rebecca Cuthbertson's posts all the time. Love them, right? Yeah. What if fake me comments on something that I never saw? And then like six months later, Rebecca and I are talking, and she's like, Oh, I really love that you like that thing. And I'm like, Oh god, what are you talking about? That wasn't me, that was the fake me.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And also, I don't know what thing you've been working on because I haven't been on social media in six months.

SPEAKER_00

Like, these tools are really just making us more and more abstracted from the basic aspects of humanity, which is connection.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Ugh. Um, I have some questions. Okay. They're not questions that you can answer, Leah, but these are just I'm just throwing these questions out there. And I think they're questions that people that go through people's heads when they hear things like this. Um, question number one, who asked for this? Well, I can tell you that. Okay, tell me later. Okay. Number two, why? I can tell you that too. Okay. Um, if your account posts AI generated trash using your name after you die, does this get you more followers in the afterlife?

SPEAKER_00

Is that what we're is that what heaven is now?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, you gotta you're not getting in if you got less than 25,000 followers.

SPEAKER_00

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01

Um question four. Does Meta not have enough soulless bot accounts posting trash?

SPEAKER_00

I mean, those ones often cost some degree of money, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So um, and and you know, when when you find out that there's like X amount of bots on a social network that devalues it, like they they like to keep their numbers up because that makes it more valuable. But you know, in the case of like tw uh Twitter X or shitter, however you pronounce it, um Jitter. When when it came out that like three quarters of the activity on on on Twitter is bot activity, there's serious questions as to whether or not people should even advertise there or support it in any way. It's it's it's a it's an empty place where only the most racist people are trying to impress bots. Uh last question. Is this just a scam to normalize bot accounts so that Meta can artificially boost its usage?

SPEAKER_00

Interesting. I mean, that could be one of the whys.

Who Asked For This And Why

SPEAKER_01

You know, like right now, bot accounts are run by people. Like, you know, all the bots that are on Twitter, maybe Elon owns those bots, but it's more likely that it's just people running server server farms. Actually, I've seen these these places, they'll have giant vertical racks of phones. Like there'll be just like a hundred phones on a wall, and just somebody going through and like using chat GPT to auto-generate replies and then just sending them.

SPEAKER_00

That's the future of jobs.

SPEAKER_01

That's their job. Uh that that's how troll farms work. And like those people make money because somebody buys their service as a bot.

SPEAKER_00

This conversation is only making me want to go to the garden even more.

SPEAKER_01

We're watching the show called The Garden.

SPEAKER_00

It's a call to a commune on HBO Max.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Um and it's a it's about people who live off grid in in a in a com in a commune and uh called the garden. Called the garden.

SPEAKER_00

Which is part of the rainbow gatherings, or at least is like a has been seeded from the rainbow gatherings.

SPEAKER_01

One of the one of the founders was like raised in the the rainbow collective.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Was it the rainbow collective or I think that's right.

SPEAKER_00

Which should not be confused with the rainbow coalition, which was which was uh a thing out of the black no no no he was that's what I was trying not to do.

SPEAKER_01

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Rainbow coalition is something that came out of the Black Panther Party that allowed people across races to unite and fight back. Huh. I wonder what happened to all those things because those were also supposedly terrorists, uh, or are still, I'm pretty sure. Yeah. Which obviously is not true. Um, but yeah, the Rainbow Collective is basically a bunch of hippies who have parties in the woods, and then some of them end up staying there and like creating off-grid communes, and then the garden is a spin-off from that, somebody who was essentially raised in that world.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um, named Patrick. But that's a sidebar. We could talk more about that as you know, maybe that is the alternate. Maybe we get off meta and we get into the garden, literally and figuratively.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I I can't lie that like the past few months have made me really question whether or not I even want a phone. You know, like the things that I know about cybersecurity, if you don't already know these things, uh I'm assuming that many people don't. The things that I know about just the shit that's in your house would would make you hyperventilate until you emptied out your house.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, like our Roku TV listening to us.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, our TV listens to us.

SPEAKER_00

Literally 1984.

SPEAKER_01

Did you know that if you have a Windows computer, that Windows uh Windows takes a screenshot of your screen every 10 seconds?

SPEAKER_00

Are you fucking kidding me?

SPEAKER_01

And then sends that screenshot to Microsoft. That's fucked up. Did you know that if you have a Windows computer, you are acting as a server for every other Windows computer. Whenever they push out updates, instead of spending the money on the infrastructure for a server to boost an update to everybody with a Windows device, they've partitioned a small amount of your resources to make you a server and push updates to other people. Which is why, even if you have really fast internet, sometimes you're like, why is it so slow? Why can't I load fucking Google? Because it's using And the reason is because somebody in Pakistan is updating their Windows computer and you are their server.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and they're not doing anything wrong. It's just how the system's designed. We should get back on the phone. The system is what's wrong. Well, yes. Yeah. Let's let's narrow our focus for a moment.

SPEAKER_01

My point is, is I if I've been thinking a lot about getting off of these things. Like a lot, a lot. A lot, a lot, a lot.

SPEAKER_00

All right, I take it back. I think we should discuss this because you were if you weren't writing a zombie novel, what kind of novel would you be writing right now?

SPEAKER_01

Oh, I mean I Cyberpunk. Yeah. Funny, funny that you mentioned that. We were gonna talk to somebody uh about something that's cyberpunk. Uh my other love is cyberpunk.

Bot Farms, Trolls, And Engagement

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. When I first met you, again, time to whatever version that was, um, before we got back together and it actually, we've been together for seven years, everybody. Yay, yes. Yay. Um, but anyways, when we first got back together, you told me you would happily upload your consciousness into the cloud. And so for you to say, I want to divest from all of this shit is a very strong that is a literal 180.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a it we we are a different world just from the last five years.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Last five years, so much has changed. Um, not that things were great before, but uh technologically speaking, we're in the we're in the future. 2019 was like was like technology present. We're not in now in technology future, and it's impossible to know exactly to the extent that technology is controlling your life right now. It is literally impossible because we're so we're so connected through the internet. We're four-dimensional beings right now, which sounds like some woo-woo shit. But uh the fourth dimension is being able to uh see and interact with another place in your three-dimensional world without crossing the distance of that space. A window, if you would, maybe a screen where you can see somebody else's life and interact with them without traveling the distance.

SPEAKER_00

It is amazing. And like I think that you were really a a techno-optimist when we first got back together. Yeah. And I think again, it's an example of like technology is uh not necessarily the thing that has the moral morality to it. It's how we use it, it's how we create it, right? It's how we source it. But I just had this revelation where I was like, wait a second, you were looking at a much more souped-up version than this essentially like AI chat bot that impersonates you. You wanted to live forever and personally troll the internet as your uploaded cloud self. Um, and would you do that in 2020?

SPEAKER_01

Like if you know the this internet is sick. Like so, yeah, I I've I've lived a perpetually online life before. Um and the idea of being able to access all of human knowledge and to exist in this space that's separate from the world but still interacts with it, it sounded like a cool thing. Um, but the the place that we have now is it's it's like a polluted landscape. It's like if you were building a house. So, like if you're building your house in the internet, but the internet is like a the uh an old PFAS chemical plant. Uh you know, the ground is laced with. the the Teflon and the the groundwater is undrinkable. I don't want to be inside this fucking internet. This place is this this internet sucks. I want it to go away. I want to I want to find every server in the world and just like burn it to the ground.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. It's um it is a testament to the state of our society that you have shifted to this intense degree because you're someone who has thought a lot about this. You're not, you know, the boomer mom of which we both have who sends us AI stuff and is like, look at how cute this is and we're like, please don't. We by the way, we know we owe you an AI episode. Dan has to work on that because I don't have the mental capacity to um do a lot of prep for it right now.

SPEAKER_01

I feel like this is a this is a good segue.

SPEAKER_00

This is like a side quest before we get there. And just side speaking of a side quest to a side quest hasn't happened because as you all know I have a job now. Job new jobs take a lot of creative and mental energy and so I don't have a lot afterwards um to use. So I like to use it by watching reality TV like the garden commune or qualt.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So we were talking about uh the garden. Let's move there. Oh well yeah the garden is the exact opposite of this the garden is you're you're you're digging a trench and you're shitting in it.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And then you're putting ash over top of it so that your the flies don't land on the shit and then land on your food. The garden is everybody shares everything. It's all communal decision making. It's based on consensus. I don't really love their their model of consensus at least that I can see. I mean we're getting probably the like fast forwarded version on TV, but it is consensus. Everybody has to agree to do anything. There's no formal leader, although there is informal leadership I would say there are people who have more influence than others. It's actually a lot like how we lived in our Paleolithic ancestral days.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Although I don't know if we were digging trenches because then we were more nomadic whereas this is like some folks on about 60 acres of land in Missouri.

SPEAKER_01

We should talk to Andy about the garden.

SPEAKER_00

Oh maybe I'll leave it in. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01

We'll see.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Um where were we? Well you were asking some existential questions of why and I have answers for you. Oh yeah. Would you would you like the innocent answer of why first or the not innocent answers?

SPEAKER_01

I mean I guess we gotta hear we gotta hear the propaganda first before we can hear the the cold hard reality.

SPEAKER_00

This is a quote from Mark Zuckerberg if someone has lost a loved one and is grieving there may be ways in which being able to interact or relive certain memories could be helpful.

SPEAKER_01

Sure Zuck. Yeah I love that this also answers my question of who asked for this which is clearly Mark Zuckerberg and no one else.

SPEAKER_00

Well that's not true. So it was the a similar thing the first of its kind was patented by Microsoft Microsoft, so that's so weird. In 2021 patented an AI chatbot that could simulate a deceased person, a fictional character or celebrities. So this is actually not the first time that there have been things like this. There are other platforms out there. I think this is the first time that it's moving into the mainstream although meta currently says they have no plans to use this thing they've patented. They just have it. And basically it's a broader category of tech. They call them death bots, ghost bots. I call them zombie bots. That's why we're talking about them on this show. Yeah. Grief tech and it's about helping people face the loss of loved ones by having eternally memorialized digital versions of them. And you know I want to say for a moment here that's I kind of get it. You know like every once in a while Facebook will be like here's this memory of this time that your deceased sister commented on your post. And that's nice to see. But I think I'd be creeped out if my deceased sister commented on my current post. Yeah. That's because it's not her and it actually reminds me of Pluribus in that it's like again it's this mass consciousness that is imitating people but isn't actually the person. It feels inauthentic.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But that's their rationale is that it helps people with their grief.

Divesting From Tech Optimism

SPEAKER_01

And if if this was just like a function of Facebook where Facebook comes up as Facebook and it's like I've got some suggestions for you. Remember your relative that died recently here's a bunch of pics you look happy in them you know like you know like a like a Facebook rewind but for dead people.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah and like that again should also have consent. Yeah because like not every day do I want to think I mean when was last time I cried my sister like two weeks ago it's been eight years. It's hard. It doesn't get easier.

SPEAKER_01

And if she was just popping up in your DMs. Yeah that's just like I could see this being a a real public mental health crisis.

SPEAKER_00

Yes because like think about what AI has already done in terms of convincing people to do horrible things. Yeah. And now I have my dead sister talking to me who's not actually my dead sister. So this is different. Like hey if you believe you can talk to the dead literally not through AI, cool, but that's not what this is is very disturbing. But again their other rationale is the more quote unquote innocent one which is like we put a little auto button and like it likes things for us. It goes through and likes all of our author besties account comments and stuff like that. That's the innocent version is like oh you need a break from social media or you're dead and somebody misses you and they just really need to talk to you. The business case is that it's more engagement, more content, more data.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And what do they use that for? To feed AI.

SPEAKER_01

That's what I was just thinking is like this just sounds like a really good way to excuse and normalize some really invasive um data harvesting to train their AI model. Like it's basically giving AI full access to your entire profile um which you know they they can do that but that comes like if if they did it without this as being like the normalization process the thing that you opt into um if they did it without opting in it could cause blowback and under a different government would probably require a congressional hearing because that's bad. But if you if you normalize it first if you create this product that you say yes to then you know if if enough people are just like yes we all love this then you can just auto auto-authorize for everyone who didn't say so and they're like oh well you didn't opt out to it which is how like all the things that I mentioned earlier about windows these are things that you can opt out of but you have to know that they exist and you don't and that you can opt out yeah there's we're really intentionally being kept in the dark about the ways that we're being tracked.

SPEAKER_00

And that's why I'll give a shout out to YK Hong again. They're one of my favorite like um anti-surveillance state accounts and they have a lot of really also a really great substack they have a lot of good advice well that'd be a dream to have YK Hong on our thing. Anyways sidebar I would be that'd be incredible if they are willing to come on. But anyways they talk a lot about like for example they have manufactured consent that they use facial recognition at the airport. Yeah um you can opt out but most people don't know you can opt out.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah same thing with flock cameras you can you can go to their website and opt out of there's three places that you have to opt out um of because they use three different three different types of technology and flock cameras and if you opt out of those things technically they can't track your face anymore they don't have the consent to track your face or anything else you you still show up in the feed though you're still being recorded and it identifies you just enough to say don't track this person because we can't that that they're still identical I mean like that's just not enough you know even the opting out and that's not what consent is yeah that's not like okay let's let's make it an actual physical thing you push me and then you say hey is it okay if I keep pushing you that's not consent.

Death Bots, Patents, And “Grief Tech”

SPEAKER_00

Like when all of a sudden this stuff shows up um on our feeds that's not consent if you have to even know that you can opt out it's very disturbing. Yeah um and it's also like really disturbing when we think about what it means to grieve we had a whole episode about this with uh Sarah from Bury Me in New Jersey about grief. And like essentially this quote unquote solution this is another thing this the the document about this uh patent says is that the impact on users who miss you, right? They miss you and you're gone, whether you're gone because you're dead or whatever. But they miss you, right? We when we stop posting people notice and they miss us it's much more severe and permanent if they're deceased and they can never return to the social networking platform. So essentially they're trying to solve the feeling of missing people which is what grief is yeah and the task of grief is to face loss it's to understand that some it's to understand that things are impermanent.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah yeah to to normalize the idea that it's that death isn't permanent would be kind of crazy on a societal level. You know to to leave somebody's funeral and then be like I'll just talk with grandma when I get home on Facebook like I I really think that there'd be a new kind of psychosis that would come from that.

SPEAKER_00

Definitely and again like these bots are aiming to please they can be trained by us. So like at what point does your grandma become some really weird version that you want your grandma to be or like how upsetting is it if your quote unquote grandma says something that you know your grandma would never say yeah or doesn't feel quite real because the algorithm's controlled by the interests of Facebook uh corporation so suddenly your your dead grandma is talking all about how uh Israel has a right to exist and it's like grandma you're Palestinian and it's also like it's just taking this whole thing that's happened because of social media. Social media is supposed to be about connecting people. Yeah um and it does that but the dark side of it is that it can it can give you the illusion of being connected with people that you never actually talked to. Yeah. So like when Eric chose to get off of Meta, I don't see what he's up to as much. And so like now we have to text each other to stay connected. Oh the worst. You know and that's not even like it's not like we're having a phone call but he'll like send me some pictures and I'll send him some pictures but then there might be weeks where I forget because I'm not getting the privilege of seeing him in his my feed and like then therefore thinking that I have a relationship with him. I have to I have to do the work of having a relationship. And this is like the next level of just a bunch of people actually very sad and alone filling that hole with an artificial source of connection. Because studies have shown even introverts like most people will say you know do you want to go out to that potluck thing? A lot of people be like no I don't want to but then they've done studies where in terms of like people's mood and sense of wellbeing is like after the potluck, after the gathering, they're actually really happy they went. That's usually how it goes. So we just we're so far away from who we are as a species and this would be yeah a death knell even further to accepting the basic facts of life. Everybody dies.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah uh could you imagine if this existed um when Charlie Kirk was killed oh my god so like Charlie Kirk responding to his own murder I mean like they they could make it so that you know he could still command his followers for any reason like you know AI postmortem Charlie Kirk might be like guys I'm really pissed about getting shot in the neck here's a a a a 10-step um course of of action that I want my followers to do uh to avenge my death else is disturbing about that is like not that I think Charlie Kirk had a ton of potential to grow as an individual in a way that I would find admirable but when you're alive there's potential for growth and change but for we will just forever have the worst version of a person.

Risks Of Simulated Loved Ones

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah AI trying to emulate Charlie Kirk's uh greatest hits oh my god yeah like let's just say more racist horrifying things and like incite violence yeah against people who are different from you like it's just it's terrifying I have some fun Reddit quotes for you so this is a Reddit thread about this this whole thing which is from 13 days ago and my favorite one I've read so far is this person says we need to normalize people looking at their bosses and asking what the fuck is wrong with you when they propose the shit. I agree. I love that one. Um here's another one this terrifies me someone in my family passed away recently and I miss them so much I would just lose it if someone made an AI version of them to keep posting and that bot tried to reconnect with me. Oh wow this person says I received a Facebook message from my dead grandma. Turns out someone had copied her name and profile pick and was trying to scam me but could have been a bot.

SPEAKER_01

Like this is just fucked up Black Mirror Be Right Back aired 13 years ago sad to see that the reality's finally catching up. Oh I don't remember that episode do you no I um I I have not seen very many Black Mirrors I've only seen like the most latest seasons and the first episode.

SPEAKER_00

Black mirror is I don't know if I can handle it in this current reality. Yeah. Because unlike zombie fiction which does draw upon many of the you know realities and challenges of our era, Black Mirror is like a direct it's just too direct.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah it's like this is where you're going.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um whereas zombie media is more like this is what was behind you.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah it's like why you know in 2020 late 2024 after Trump was elected I was like we should read Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. And now I'm like you know what folks read it if you haven't read it but I don't I shouldn't I I don't want to read it right now. It's too close. I've already read it I've gained what I can from it the big one being that change is constant and we have to be adaptive um in order to survive and not get too attached to anything. But like I can't read that right now. It is literally set in 2025. It's just way too close to reality.

SPEAKER_01

Uh here's here's a a comment and this sums up how I feel about this idea. Just a reminder that these people would monetize your corpse if they could. Yep.

SPEAKER_00

And that's literally what this is shout out to the non-essentials by Z Martin Brown monetizing corpses. Uh this one's great. Is their user base dying off that much?

SPEAKER_01

You know I imagine them sitting around in a boardroom and they're like Meta's having a really big problem these days. As you know a lot of our users are very elderly our users keep dying which loses us money. How can we not lose money when our users die?

SPEAKER_00

Any ideas okay here's another great one somebody just says Jesus Christ then this person responds they'll resurrect his account after three days oh God yeah could you imagine if Jesus had a Facebook account? I mean maybe he does because somebody after that says like he's got a lot of followers I mean he does but also are they I think feel like finding a true follower of Jesus is challenging.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah I feel like Jesus is uh in in you know doing the the selfie video and he's like hit like and subscribe to Christianity yeah here's another one AI bots posting grandma's political bullshit to other AI bots I mean that's what it's gonna become I mean that's basically Twitter is just bots talking to each other.

Black Mirror, Monetizing Corpses

SPEAKER_00

Yeah we're gonna have to watch Be Right Back by Black Mirror. In fact hold on I'm gonna look up a description of it okay you ready to hear what Be Right Back is about? Yeah. This was aired on the 11th of February 2013 so 13 years ago almost exactly to when we're recording this which is March 1st. So the episode tells the story of Martha a young woman whose boyfriend Ash is killed in a car accident as she mourns him she discovers that technology now allows her to communicate with an artificial intelligence imitating Ash and reluctantly decides to try it. The episode has two sources of inspiration the question of whether to delete a dead friend's phone number from one's contact account like a list of contacts and the idea that Twitter posts could be made by software mimicking dead people.

SPEAKER_01

So yeah this has been a long time coming unfortunately um I like I like a follow-up to this which is that torment nexus is right around the corner um for people who don't know there's this book called don't build the torment nexus oh and the book is about how they build the torment torment nexus what the fuck is the torment nexus yeah it's something you don't want to build I mean it's a it's uh it's kind of like what it sounds like it's uh it's this machine that's only purpose and it's promise is torment and I feel like that really encompasses social media in a nutshell like we all do it we're all we're all I don't think there's a single person listening right now that's not like yeah I'm on social media at least a couple times a day you know yeah and we're we're all we're all just like signing up for the torment nexus we're like we heard that there's torment around here where do we sign up yeah Facebook is the worst in my opinion it really of all the meta platforms it is the most horrible like anytime I've been on there mostly I follow our um state representative Becca Ballant who is amazing by the way yeah and she'll post these really great videos and then the comment section is just sex pool.

SPEAKER_00

I'm like I can't look I don't even know why you're posting on Facebook because most people responding to you are probably bots or just like not your base of people.

SPEAKER_01

Facebook is especially bad because it harvests it harvests data from your phone from other apps that you use on your phone. Even if you don't use Facebook if you just have it have the app installed on your phone it's harvesting from everything that you're doing. So if you're if you go to a website to buy socks Facebook knows you want socks. If you're if you go to Instagram and you and you like somebody's image they're like maybe you want to be friends on Facebook.

Why Facebook Feels Uniquely Toxic

SPEAKER_00

You know if you're uh if you're if you're on like your um super secret uh hashtag terrorists um forum that uh that nobody knows about well Facebook knows about it let's talk let's use the last part of this episode to talk about um our alternatives like why are we on meta and what could we do differently so I'm gonna start with Facebook I'm on Facebook because uh in this community especially a lot of um stores restaurants do not have websites they have Facebook accounts and there's been a few times recently I actually deleted the Facebook app from my phone because I didn't want the tracking that you just described and I was like I'll just look at it on my computer but then we're out and I'm like is this restaurant open you can't tell on Google Maps which also don't love to have on my phone for very similar reasons. Uh you can't tell on there because it could be anything like trust me it's changing all the time in Vermont when people are open or not. And so you you gotta go there and then I couldn't see anything that was actually accurate and up to date unless I had the app. So that's like one reason I have Facebook on my phone. Yeah. Another white reason why I still keep it is some of my family. It's the only way I have connection with them. And then the third reason I keep it is Facebook groups in this community like there's the buy buy nothing Facebook group there's a lot of Facebook groups that are just talking about what's going on in the community. So those are the things that keep me there. Also I we made a Facebook group for Zombie Book Club because Gen Xers were like I need me a Facebook group and there's a lot of folks actually who are on Facebook who love zombies I'm not sure what that's about. Why are we on there?

SPEAKER_01

Can we get off yeah we need a zombie centric social media is what we need.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah maybe that's what we should do next Dan you heard it here first zombie wait zombie necrofeed necro yeah trademarked Leah you owe me five dollars okay um but yeah what what what are our options Dan to change from that? Oh I think Necrofeed is a great uh a great option no I mean literally like how am I gonna know if the Heartland Diner show also oh another reason I'm on Facebook Heartland Diner the owner of it Nicole fabulous rants on Facebook she posts the most amazing rants um against the current political state that we're in she's pretty left leaning I adore her yeah so like again these are things I won't have if it's an antifascist diner. Yeah the problem is that they have made us dependent so how the fuck do I how do I stop using Facebook?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah that's rough I'm I'm lucky in that I don't want to talk to anybody on Facebook um I do go there to look at rusted piles of junk on marketplace that I have no business buying and need to stay away from so both a reason to do it and a reason to stop in the same same uh same breath. Yeah um I I think that if if you're gonna get rid of one social media get rid of Facebook. Facebook is Facebook is uh where the term and shidification came from. Enchidification is an industry term in tech if you've never heard of it. It's you know it's like um planned obsolescence only way worse because they don't want it to become an obsolete they want it to become a fucking cluster fuck. Um they just keep on adding adding features but not fixing old bugs. And then sometimes they'll get around to fixing a bug but it creates two more bugs and then they add more features on top of that so that you're always just getting these features until the point where Facebook is all encompassing. It's everything that you want in one place.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, like Walmart.

SPEAKER_01

Exactly. It's the Walmart of of social medias. Like you can go there and you can buy um a 1988 Winnebago and talk to grandma, assuming she's alive, but they're f they're working on that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um you they they have a they have dating now. There's a dating tab. It's not it's not a separate app. It's on Facebook, and it's like, you want to be dating? It gives me updates all the time. It's like it's like you've got three notifications from the dating thing. I'm like, I'm not on the dating thing. And they're like, yeah, that's one of the notifications.

SPEAKER_00

That's really fucked up because we are listed as married on Facebook. So like clearly it's not paying attention to your status.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Well, you know, Facebook is like, you know, take on your spouse. Sometimes people date other people even when they're married. I mean, that's true.

SPEAKER_00

I guess that's true, but I feel like then there should be a status that's like open marriage.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it should be something that you have to opt into, not get notifications from. Because what it's doing is it's like, who's trying to talk to me on the dating side of I mean, who's trying to date me over here? So I gotta click on it and be like, who are these people? And then it's just like, are you ready to set up your dating profile? And I'm like, no, no, why do I have a little red two where it shows that I have notifications? Because you clicked on a how do I make it go away? And you can't make it go away unless you make a dating profile.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I don't have it. You don't? No. Oh. And I'm on Facebook way more than you. Wait, is this of one of your other accounts that's not married? Oh, that might be it. I'm Randy Watson. Yeah. Now everybody knows.

SPEAKER_01

So I deleted my real name account because it wouldn't let me change it to a Facebook.

SPEAKER_00

Do I have to put I'm married to Randy Watson to make it away? I'm not doing it.

Dependence And Real‑World Alternatives

SPEAKER_01

So if you're on Facebook and you want to friend me, I'm I'm Randy Watson. I'm also Philip Butts.

SPEAKER_00

Oh my God. Which is one of the ways I found you again, actually, in 2018, because it was your snake fist explosion. Like I think that's still your profile picture was a Facebook explosion. Facebook explosion. Jesus, I'm so sorry. Snake fist explosion uh logo, but with a rainbow overlay for pride. And I was like, oh, okay. I think I could still, I think Dan and I could talk and I won't hate him.

SPEAKER_01

Wow. That profile image is doing work for me.

SPEAKER_00

It did. It actually did. I was like, okay, he's friendly to the gays and the they's. So the gays and the they's. And then here we are.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Now I'm in a hetero-facing relationship according to the world.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks, Dan. Thanks for being my beard.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, and to go back to like, I would love to delete Randy Watson. But Randy Watson is tied to my VR goggles. They become useless if I delete my account.

SPEAKER_00

So your VR is also tied to Meta, as are your sunglasses.

SPEAKER_01

And my sunglasses that record everything in front of my eyes and listen to me while I sleep.

SPEAKER_00

I think we're gonna have to get you know what I hear when I hear you speak, because you have different reasons to be tied to meta than me, um, at least with Facebook, is that we're gonna have to get used to being inconvenienced again.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

We're gonna have to get used to not having things at our fingertips in every possible way. Like instead of me going to the Facebook to see if the Heartland Diner is open that day, I'm probably gonna have to call them. Yeah. And that inconveniences them too. I mean, yeah, it's close enough. Yeah. Um we've done it before. Yeah. Everybody go to the if you're in Vermont, go to the Heartland Diner. You might see us. You'll also see Bernie. Yeah. And Barack. And Barack Obama. Yeah. And sometimes Dr. Fauci. Dr. Fauci's usually there. And just so people know, we're talking about cardboard cutouts.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, and isn't there one of Tina Turner right now? There no, I think that's a poster. It's a poster. Yeah. But there used to be Tim Walls and Kamala Harris there too.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. It's a great place. Highly recommend it. Uh, but yeah, that would be, I think like if I was gonna get rid of Facebook, I just have to accept that. I think you have to accept the loss. You have to grieve. Yeah. Oh my God. I'm gonna have to grieve all the things that Facebook gave me and then accept that some of those things are gonna be harder to do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

It's it's it is really hard because um, I mean, for me, Facebook is easy except for how it's tied to my VR glasses and and my my sunglasses, um, which I am desperate to jailbreak those things because I hate that they're connected, but nobody is as far as I can tell, nobody's done it in a meaningful way. I'm getting off topic. Um, you know, I could delete my threads, and I've I've I've locked down that for months at a time and not even used it.

SPEAKER_00

Same. I'm only back on there to follow your hate threads.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and I don't I only made it public again so that I could hate MAGA trolls. That's the only reason. I would troll the trolls. I'd see something that infuriated me and I'd craft a crazy response, and then I'd hit enter and it's like uh failed to upload because your profile's private. And I'm like, fuck, I gotta come out of retirement. Um, the one that's really hard for the both of us is Instagram because everything that we've built with so uh with Zombie Book Club is is has been tied to Instagram, um, which is a huge bummer because I hate Instagram.

SPEAKER_00

This reminds me of when you broke up with YouTube and like you tried to convert people over to Twitch.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And were you successful?

Platform Hopping Pains And Patreon

SPEAKER_01

Kinda, sorta. Um, so I was a a streamer on YouTube. Snake fist explosion. We we mentioned that earlier. And I'd I'd managed to get to about 50,000 subscribers. And like, you know, my my streams were doing really good. You know, it it wasn't uncommon to have 300 people watching at any given time. Uh like a a total of like 15 to 20,000 after the stream was was done and uploaded, and then thousands more watching the replay after, and that's how I was paying my bills. Um, and then then the adpocalypse happened. Also, there's talk about it and f and shitification. YouTube keeps on making things. So they made YouTube gaming back then, which you might notice doesn't fucking exist anymore. And that's because they gave up on it. Wow. And me and a few other people were were dedicated YouTube gaming streamers. We didn't do it anywhere else because we wanted to can consolidate our viewership in one spot. It was a lot less work, and then the the payoff and rewards, especially for a thing that was new that they were pushing, like it it got us a lot of attention at the time because we were the ones using it. Like the day that they announced it, we'd already been using it for two years. But when they announced it in the news, like my friend who I streamed with regularly was the stream that they were playing on the news when they announced YouTube gaming. Wow. Um, and then they it was less than a year, they just stopped, gave up, and then it went away entirely. Um, not that you can't still stream, but they're not helping you, they're not promoting it. Um, and then the same thing happened, you know, a few a year or two ago. Um YouTube was announcing the launch of a music and podcast streaming uh app that was basically you could upload something to YouTube with an RSS feed, which is how podcasts get to you, like how we're talking to you right now, that's an RSS feed. Um, and YouTube would grab that episode and re-upload it as a podcast, specifically tag it as a podcast so that on this platform it would be able to differentiate is this music, is this podcast, or is this a video that exists somewhere else? And it was the only place that there would be um searchability because YouTube is the biggest uh search engine in the world. I didn't know that um because it's owned by uh Google. So Google, well, Google and YouTube are the two biggest search engines. Um so we for the first time ever, we'd be able to find new listeners through YouTube. The problem is that they abandoned it as soon as they launched it. Nobody knew about it. It wasn't a separate app, but you could still upload podcast episodes as an RSS feed. You just they just weren't helping in any way.

SPEAKER_00

So like we had so few listeners on there.

SPEAKER_01

I've I've still got 40,000 subscribers on YouTube, and each episode would get 15 listens.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, if we're lucky. By the way, shout out to the person who was one of those 15 listens who found us on Discord, um, being like, Hey, you've disappeared. I don't like this.

SPEAKER_01

I do owe an explanation to those 15 people.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, I think you just gave it if they're still listening.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Um I hope so, but I I I owe it in other avenues as well.

SPEAKER_00

So I'm gonna try to maybe on YouTube and be like, hi, sorry. Yeah. But thanks for finding us, human. Um, I don't have permission to say your name, but you know who you are. Thank you for coming and finding us. It was one of those things that, you know, I think Dan, you kind of were just like, fuck this, and you deleted it and didn't and really we honestly didn't think anybody was actually watching or listening there since we are an audio platform. Um but it again, like all of those things beg the question of like, can we afford to divest from Instagram? The only option we have right now that we're building on is Patreon.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Which is kind of the reason why we tried, you know, we're going to Patreon is because it's at least a place that people can go without being influenced by an algorithm or a search engine or being tracked. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I don't know if Patreon's tracking. They probably are. But you know, it's it's this place that we could gat we could gather all of those things into one location and hopefully also get uh support from people who want to give support, give them the option, you know, as opposed to having like five other social media accounts that we now have to pay attention to and also wonder if they're trying to murder us.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah, I think one thing we could do is just post more frequently on Patreon, and then I could, instead of like deleting my Facebook entirely, use it as a vehicle to get folks on Facebook over to the Patreon so they can be a part of the community. So, but I I think that like we're just if we make the choice to post less on Meta uh and more on Patreon or like keep funneling people to Patreon, I think we are going to lose some people along the way. And I say that because like YK Hong is an example. I know that they would really love to love nothing less than to get off meta. A lot of activists that I follow have like attempted to move completely to Substack or somewhere else.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

YouTube Burnout And Lessons

SPEAKER_00

Um, I can't remember her name right now. I'm thinking of another one that's really awesome. And what they've the compromise that I've seen them come to is they will use short clips from things that they've done elsewhere on Meta to get people's attention because they've realized that it's a vehicle that if they don't do that, people will not see their stuff. And that includes me. I would not see so much of YK Hong's stuff or remember to go to their Substack if I was not um being reminded on Instagram right now.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So I don't think we're really in a place where we can't like if if accounts like that that are much better followed than us are struggling and still using it, I think that that's probably the our like, I'm not saying we can't make a different choice, but I think that we could follow their lead.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah, that kind of brings me back to um what I was saying about YouTube. Cause like I, you know, I was I was streaming on YouTube, YouTube kind of let me down. Uh to the point where they it was um it was around the time that they were doing a soft rollout of a subscription service, which every other streaming service already had. Like you could subscribe to a channel and give them like five dollars a month. And that was the only way I could see things working out for me, is if all these people who watched me, if like you know, a few hundred of them decided to click that button. You know, that's what that's what Twitch streamers work towards so hard. They're like, you know, they're not making a lot of ad revenue, they're getting subscription revenue. Um so YouTube was rolling something like that out at the time. But every time I asked about it, they said that uh, you know, it's it's rolled out to people on a you know, on a first come, first served basis, or like they're choosing accounts um that they think are more qualified for it, like pretty much anything, but saying, Yeah, you can just have it, we'll just turn it on for you. Um and meanwhile, I was talking to people who made a uh an account like a week earlier and had a subscription button and I didn't. So I was like, fuck that. I'm going to Twitch. And of the almost 50,000 people who subscribed to me, I was able to convert about 4,500 of them, which is a really high conversion rate.

SPEAKER_00

But is also 10% of what you had. Yeah. Wait, God, math is so I hate math. I'm gonna do the math, and you can leave in how bad I am at math right now. 4,500? Yeah. Oh my god, I was almost close. 9%. I had a moment when I was close enough, Leah. Scared myself. That 1% means everything. Look at wait, hey dad, I know you don't listen to this podcast because you don't know it exists, but all those times you bullied me into answering random math questions, look at me now. Look at me now. Yeah. My dad was a uh uh teacher and would look at me randomly and ask me math questions, and it it gave me math trauma.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. My point though, is that um is that's like a perfect example of how hard it is to shift between platforms, you know, like to to to not only to communicate to people that you're making a shift, but also to like convince them to go with you. Um it's very difficult. And I feel like I I probably had a really good conversion rate just because of how involved my community was at the time.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um, most people would not be able to achieve that. Like, you know, I I I managed to uh to convert 10 nine, nine percent. Um, whereas like a more reasonable expectation is like one.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Which is pretty close. Like we have around 2,500 followers on Instagram right now. And I would say that we're, I think, close to like 30-ish people on Patreon, which by the shout out, Patreon folks. Love you. Hi, Patreon. Uh, which is way less than 10%. Also, we haven't done a lot of work promoting it. So I think that's the other thing is we could probably do a better job, all of us, of just like regularly reminding people that there are alternatives and like why we are using them. Because Patreon, in some people's brains, is synonymous with something you have to pay for.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um, the majority, the vast majority of people following us on Patreon right now are not giving us any money. And that's great.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. We just want them there.

SPEAKER_00

We want you there because it's a place where we can actually have conversations. You will get reminders of things that are going on. Um, we have a live podcast discussion for our first book club read of the year, Zone One, by Colson Whitehead. That's actually going to be taking place on March 6th, which I think will be after you hear this. Yeah. Yeah, we better get reading that book. Yeah. I I've been reading it, but I am not very far along. Yeah, you bet you gotta fix that because we're talking about it on March 6th with people who have finished the book. I got six days. Um, shout out Ollie, shout out Megan. Pretty sure that you two have both finished it and uh keep asking us what we think. And um, I think I'm like two hours in. I think that's where I'm at too. Um, you know, welcome to a podcast and book club that is run by two people with ADHD. We will always be last minute, but we will read it and have thoughts.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Even if we read it like the day of at uh two and a half times speed on Audible.

Can We Leave Instagram

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I mean, we're not gonna, I mean, maybe you're gonna do that, but I'm not gonna do that. The other things we have going on there is live discussions just on the platform. So, like in text-based, not everybody's gonna want to be on Google Meets with us hanging out this Friday. Although those of you who have RSVP'd, yay. I think it's gonna be super fun to hang out. Um, but some people just want to be there to like text back and forth about a book. Or um, if you do choose to come to one of our live events one day, which you have to be a member of Patreon to be invited, but they are free, you can absolutely lurk. You can be creepy AF. You can change your name so we don't even know who you are, and we'll just be like, who is this person? Um, it will never be recorded. So it's really meant to be a community-based conversation. We've also done a few lives, like live reactions to watching um We Bury the Dead and Bone Temple. And we vote together on what to read next. So actually, I'm about to post uh today a post. It'll be up still by the time you're listening to this about what should be the next book club read. So we can make a decision on that. Yeah. Uh, but essentially it's just meant to be a place that Zuckerberg can't take from us. Although now I'm like, who owns Patreon? And do I trust that? I also don't know who owns Patreon. But it's like it's not Zuckerberg. It's our place. Oh my god, let's look it up right now. Let's have a live come to Jesus moment, as they say. Um, who owns Patreon? If it says Meta, it's a private entity. Oh, good. I wonder how long it will be a private entity. Um, it's owned by somebody named Jack Conte and CTO. Oh, he he's the CEO, Sam Yam. Um Sam Yam? Sam Yam. It's valued at approximately four billion dollars. I mean, good for them that they've stayed a private company.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I I really have to applaud uh companies out there that don't give in to like the big the big paycheck of selling out to to Meta or Google or Microsoft or who else?

SPEAKER_00

OpenAI Yeah, like this is um I think that's it's better than a lot of the other platforms, so we're gonna stick with Patreon at least for now.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Who knows what will exist. I was just saying to Dan the other day, we could be married for 47 years if we get lucky. Yeah. Let's do it. 50 years. Gotta be really old to get there.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So who knows what will be there in the future.

SPEAKER_01

R uh real quick, I just wanted to go back to um, you know, where other other social medias that people could go to. I really would like it if blue sky became a bigger thing. I've had a hard time with blue sky. I've I've got so many followers on blue sky, but like the algorithm just does not want to work with me. So like I I give up on it because I'm I'm like, you know, talk talking to a wall sometimes.

SPEAKER_00

Dia Van Gunton from Pink Zombie Rose loves Blue Sky and is primarily on Blue Sky. You should ask her her secrets.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Let me know, let me know about your sauce is. Give me your sauce. Um, I mean, I've I've spent a lot of time on there and I feel like I've I've learned a lot in that time. Um, but you know, it's the these these things are constantly changing. And uh I don't know. I probably fucked up at some point. I probably followed all the wrong people, and now if I say anything that's not uh specific to what those people are into, then it probably just doesn't show up in their feed because it's uh it's a self-training algorithm that's like designed to work with the individual as opposed to like a blanket algorithm for all the people. So yeah, you actually end up training it yourself. And I think I just probably interacted it with it in like a wrong way. And now it's just like, no, this is all you do now.

Building Community Off‑Algorithm

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I gotta give it a try. I mean, there are alternatives. It is hard. I think the medium that we're landing on, or at least that I'm landing on, is I'm going to like more actively redirect people to Patreon when I have the time. It's still like an issue of like time to post. I still need to post today's episode that came out on Instagram and and Facebook. That's the other thing, it's fucking exhausting. I gotta post it on Instagram, I gotta post it on Facebook, I gotta post it on Discord, I gotta post about it on Patreon. It's too many places. If I just maybe wrote one Patreon post and then just linked it everywhere, maybe that's the way to do it and just see if we can start getting people hanging with us at Patreon.

SPEAKER_01

I I feel like I feel like we could I could rant just endlessly about all of these topics, but I don't I don't think I don't think hearing me spiral out of out of control is um is what we need right now. Maybe it is.

SPEAKER_00

Spiral. Give me your best spiral right now off the cuff.

SPEAKER_01

I don't want to spiral. I've had way too much coffee today.

SPEAKER_00

I have not had enough coffee.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I am in a place where I have both had too much and not enough coffee.

SPEAKER_00

Well, in the meantime, everybody, I guess if we have not made it clear, come find us on Patreon. Come say hi. Come help us choose our next book club read.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Also let us know if you would let Facebook uh post for you after you died.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's gonna be a poll on our Patreon. We wanna know. Our book club read of the year right now is Zone One by Colson Whitehead. While we, by the time this drops, we'll have already had the live discussion with our Zomb Besties on Patreon. Uh, there is lots of time for you to still read it, to chat with us on Patreon about it in the Patreon thread that we have going on, um, or any of the other platforms that you know that we're on. But that episode's coming out on March 22nd. And we also give folks a preview of the episodes coming up. So um, while we do book club reads where we are all reading something together, we usually try to are trying to do like four to five books a year that are available at your library and also via audiobooks, since some people really need that. We are continuing to do author spotlights. So you're gonna hear from other amazing authors and get a head a heads up on who we're talking to there. So if you want to read their book in advance of that conversation, you can. Um, and like we said at the beginning, subjugate.

SPEAKER_01

Subjugate me, Daddy.

SPEAKER_00

Wasn't accepting that. Uh, but please support us by leaving a rating or a review. I think most importantly, come hang out on Patreon. But we do have Have one more platform that is old school that I do endorse, which is ICQ. Well, yes, but I want you to send us a voicemail. You know, I'm missing hearing your sweet voices in our ears at 614-699-30006. Tell us how you feel about the Necrofeed.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Should Necrofeed be real?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Should we make the Necrofeed? Or should tell us if you want to join us in the garden commune? Yeah. Because I'm seriously considering going visiting. I d I feel like they probably have an influx of visitors because of this show, though. I don't know if they're if they're actually welcoming others.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, they're kind of paranoid. They probably like completely closed their gates.

Other Platforms And BlueSky Woes

SPEAKER_00

Rightfully so. They've received death threats. Yeah. They ate we have to say this before we end. They ate a cat. And this caused a lot of outrage on the internet. Um, sorry, cat lovers. The cat was getting into their chicken coop and it was killing all of their chickens repeatedly, and they weren't able to get rid of it any other way. So they chose to kill it. Uh, it was a stray cat, and then they, because they have like a no-waste philosophy, including they go and pick up roadkill and eat that, uh, they chose to eat the hat and then make a hat out of the cat's fur. And this is why people think they're a cult. I don't think that's a cult. Yeah. That's just maybe a little strange compared to most how most people live and relate to cats. But if you're eating any meat right now, I want to call tell you if you're disgusted and freaked out and think that they're a cult, you're a hypocrite. Love you. But like, why is a cat different than a cow? Just saying. It's not any different. This is an animal. Oh, there's a size difference. There is a size difference. There's more meat on a cow, I guess. Also, um, eat cat is not good. Yeah, they said it didn't taste very good. And to be clear, I wouldn't eat either. I wouldn't eat a cow or a cat. Yeah. My point is, is that the people who are like, this is a cult, these people are terrible because they ate a cat. I guarantee you that they were eating a hot dog while posting about that. Or like eating some kind of animal. I don't eat cats. I eat other animals, lips and assholes. Yeah, who lived in horrible, uh, basically like what's the word I'm looking for? Horrible conditions, all smooshed together, filled with disease, and then put into a gas chamber where they scream to death. That's how they kill pigs. Yeah. You're welcome for telling you that. Um, wow, didn't know this would end in a slightly vegan rant, but there you have it. That's what you get when you listen to us. Yeah, you asked for this. Yeah. The end is nigh. Bye bye. Stay human. Love you. Bye bye.

SPEAKER_01

Don't die.

SPEAKER_00

Don't die. Ba da ba da ba da ba da ba

Contributor

Dan

Host
Contributor

Leah

Host