Washing your hands is performative, everyone online is a bot & I fixed Instagram

Hey f-slurs it's another episode. This week I'm giving you my hottest current takes about sanitation and the internet. Then I lay out my platform on how we're gonna get instagram to feel like 2012 again. Don't ever miss an episode, I'll find you. Please subscribe to the show wherever you get the show and follow me on all platforms @cremebrulee2d 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

It's me. Uh it's me. Uh that's cool. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Uh uh.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

It's crime fucking brulee. Welcome to the crime world podcast. I'm your host, the one, the only creme brulee. Y'all, I'm trying. She gave me brain. You could always only see this on the video, but I'm trying to grow a mustache, okay? Once a year for the past couple years, I say maybe this is the year I can grow a mustache. Because the way my facial hair is set up, um, I don't have any. So uh again, we're on mustache watch. I'm gonna keep updating y'all. It's it's something. This is like uh I look like a like a 16-year-old Latino Latino boy right now, but hopefully, I keep leaning into the to the camera, so sorry for audio, but hopefully within a month we'll be at something respectable. If not, I'm trying to get in 2027. Um, also fresh off a retwist. I didn't got my hair uh touched in probably six months. Went to this uh Congolese woman for the first time. She was very nice. Uh I wouldn't, I mean she was very we vibed, but she was like, man, what what's going on with your hair? And uh it made me feel bad. We're getting back on track. Uh thank you for listening. Please subscribe on whatever platform you listen to this on. Uh YouTube, leave a like, whatever else, leave a like, review the show. We appreciate all that. We're growing every week. I'm really excited about uh what we have coming on the horizon. I don't have anything planned. I just like it's gonna be fun to continue doing this. Um, like I said, uh I didn't I haven't said this yet. Um what is it, Sunday night? Out of three, it's a it was a fruitful weekend. Uh I had shows Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I just got back from my last one. Um comedy is very like that. I think this is probably not the first time. It's like the third episode where I've been like long weekend of shows. Uh so it happens, as you could probably tell, like once once a quarter for me. Um it's very feature famine. But uh yeah, so I'm a little zonked. I got my Red Bull here, and I gotta go to work in the morning. Uh that's just a transition. I haven't talked to y'all at all about what I do for work at all. And partially that's because I'm I'm not embarrassed by what I do, but as a creative person, I'm embarrassed by my employer. And also my employer is as such that I'm like, I'm gonna need to never tie they need to never know what I got going on here between us and between me and you, my boss could never know. Uh, cause my my boss is my boss is actually a group or a company called Compass One. Yeah, I think that's what Compass One Inc. Um, and their boss, at least for me, is the Amazon company, uh Big Jeff Bezos, Yada Yada. I work in I'm not gonna tell you too much about it, but I live in Seattle. This is obviously where the headquarters of Amazon is. I work in one of the buildings downtown. Uh, what I do is nothing involving computers. I am a cook. I've been a cook my whole life. Not my whole life, my whole adult life. My first job was being a pizza, it was delivering pizzas, and I've had a very minimal. I'm not too many steps above that on the uh on the on the call sheet at this point. But uh I do love cooking. I think I don't know when I fell in love with it. I think what made me fall in love with the idea of cooking was reading Anthony Bourdain's book, Kitchen Confidential. If you've never read that book, I highly recommend it. Anthony Bourdain, I don't think I have to explain to you, is just one of the was one of the rest in peace, most fascinating um and really just like I don't know, fascinating might be the best word, but just I don't not an enigma, just like uh uh a mysterious, I don't know, just cool. I think maybe cool is the right word. He's one of the coolest people ever. I don't know. There's not really people who are like, yeah, fuck that guy. He's like now the the like travel, the like food pirate, essentially. Uh yeah, he's cool. Uh in every hood across the globe, uh was whatever. But if you've ever read Kitchen Confidential, it really makes being a chef seem really, really cool and dignified in cooking and just the it the myth mythos, I think is the right word, around it based on that book and a lot of other stuff. Like uh, I don't know, I'm not gonna get too into the bear because I definitely watched the bear when I was cooking and I was like, yeah, cooking's sick, but then I started to not like that show, so we're not gonna talk about it too much. But yeah, I think I don't know at what point that was. I think that was probably at a point where I because you know the thing about working in America and just in general is once you get into uh a job that's kind of like you kind of like not stuck with that career path, but the best options for you are generally to stay within that career path and like keep advancing rather than starting over somewhere else. So not to say like I've never had other passions, like clearly I do, but I don't know if cooking was ever like uh I don't know. It's it there was never been a moment where I've been like, yeah, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Um I've always had other pursuits, it's just something I think is is beautiful and fun and uh a different type of art form. And you know, I talked about it before, but I am a quote unquote vegan most of the time. Um I don't know. I'm always like, what's the best way to lay it? Well, should I just not say it? Because it's really like I cheat almost all the time, but 90% of what I eat is vegan, and then 10% is you know, me just being a little scavenging gremlin. Um but the reason, but one reason I had that 10% is because I understand food is like the ultimate expression of like culture and community, and just like sh someone as a person cooking you a meal is to me like one of the most beautiful and like vulnerable and passionate ways they could like show you, tell tell you who they are and tell you their story. And I always want to be open for those kind of experiences. Like if someone invites me over and your mom cooks, like I'm gonna try it and you know, try and get to know her and you and whatever it is you're into. I was just in Alaska, uh ate a lot of fish because we were catching a lot of fish. I caught a fish. And I tell you, I don't know, I mean I don't have much more to say about Alaska, but I did catch a fish um and watched some jazz bands and camped. Anyway, uh but yeah, I cook for I work for I work for the big uh Bezos essentially. My company is a company that contracts for them and they have kitchens, and basically we feed the employees of Amazon. Um, it's very glamorous and makes me as I say it, I feel your respect for me dwindling, or at least the level of like cool you think I am dwindling, and it's already like not cool that I'm thinking about that. So double G check. Um, yeah, basically, I think it's the perfect job for me right now because um I only have to do about three hours of work, and then I spend a lot of time uh going to the restroom and doing stuff on my phone and walking around because we are so well staffed, and um my boss really loves me. I think I am someone who like I ultimately probably mostly graduated high school because of charisma, and then once college hit and it was like, hey, charisma and being a likable person aren't gonna get you much further. That's when I was like, I think this is as far as I'm gonna go educationally. So at this job, and many I've had before, but this one more than any, um making my boss laugh once or twice a day is really he's really made him think I am so much better at my job than I am. Because like I said, I truly I work so well a day in my life. I I I work at the salad bar at this place, I go in, I cut a bunch of lettuce, and then I uh put some edamame and some corn into different containers, and hmm, then I make one salad dressing, maybe, maybe make a salad dressing, and then uh what else do I do? And I'm telling you, this is all in the span of four hours. That's like two hours of work, maybe, maybe. Um I go help uh a guy make sandwiches for like 20 minutes, and then I take I only get 30 minutes for break. I'm taking easily 45 minutes to an hour every day on my break just because I'm not clocking in and out on break. Now I'm really spilling the beans too much. Maybe I don't do this. If you ever I I really can't tell my boss to follow me on Instagram now. I was like, maybe one day we'll get there. It can't be until I quit now because of this. Oh well. Um, he's a good guy. Um, and then what do I do? I really I come back and I help clean up, man. And that's eight-hour day. I do like four things, it is awesome. Um, I don't know if this is interesting. So I'm gonna move on. But that's what I do for work if you are curious. Um, it pays pretty well. It's my first job uh with PTO. Uh, what else? I hurt my back. The out great place to hurt your back. Absolutely marvelous place to hurt your back. I got like two weeks off paid, came back, they were like, just do work if you want, because we you we have enough money in insurance, like you're good. So whatever. I I work by the Amazon spheres if you don't know. The Amazon, the Amazon spheres of these big ass balls downtown made of glass. There's like three or four of them. Um, and they're pretty, they're pretty sick, not gonna lie. And they're full of like cool trees and like uh it's like a greenhouse, and there's like a cafe in it, whatever. The joke I wrote about it, because I walk by it every day, had to write a joke about it. It is actually across the street, weirdly enough, like diagonal across the street from this beautiful multi-million project dollar project by Jeff Bezos. Across the street, there's a strip club, and I think it'd be funny if they also renamed Amazon bought the strip club and also renamed it the Amazon Spheres. Hardy Harha. Um, so yeah, the three shows I did three shows this week, and the last one uh tonight was like a different kind of comedy show. It uh it was called I'm I'm deeply upset. I can't remember what it's called right now, but it was produced by uh Ryle Smith and Bernice Larson, two Seattle comedians who I like a lot. I was just I just I don't know people's last names. Um Ryle and Bernice. Um it was like a multimedia presentation type of show, so it wasn't just regular stand-up comedy. They're like, hey, what is something you're passionate about that you could like make a slideshow about and it could be funny? And so initially I'm gonna take you through. I eventually ended up going with doing a slideshow about what was it, about how I would fix Instagram, and we'll close with that, and I'll talk about the the slideshow I gave. Um, spoiler alert, it's a little bit if you listen to the the only fancification of Instagram episode, there's a little bit of that in there, there's a decent bit of that in there. Um, but yeah, so I did a presentation about fixing Instagram ultimately, but initially I didn't realize it was supposed to be strictly a uh it was like a multimedia show, but all the topics people were doing were supposed to be about, like the internet at large. So that's how I ended up on how to fix Instagram. But before I knew that, I wanted to do a presentation, because the thing I'm most passionate about as a hot take that I haven't dropped is a hot take. But to me, washing your hands is performative. Okay, guys, it's time to talk about it. The pandemic's over. I'm gonna get jumped by the lefties for for saying the pandemic is over. Can we say the pandemic's over? Will the pandemic ever be over? Or no? Is it PC to say the pandemic is over six years later? Or because I don't know. Anyways, washing your hands, I think is performative. Now, what's interesting is I started doing a joke about this, and like, because I've had this opinion forever. And speaking of the pandemic, I started doing like a version of this as a joke in like 2019, and then the pandemic hit, and I was like, I'm definitely gotta retire. Washing your hands is performative. But looking back on it now, the the edgier thing to do would have been to stick with it. So kind of upset I didn't stick with it. But so I have like I don't know. I'm gonna be real with you. I'm not an expert on germs. You didn't think I was good. I'm not an expert on germs. But my number one argument to the idea that washing your hands is performative is it essentially is this everybody, the most disgusting thing in all of our lives is our phone. We all touch our phone a million billion times. Uh it goes everywhere in your car, on the bus, in your kitchen, near wherever outside, on the table, you know, it just be everywhere by your dog, by your baby. Strange other people touch it, you know. Our phones are uh, I think the word is vectors, probably the most uh insane vectors for germs that have ever existed. And we all 99% of people who are going to the bathroom and washing their hands, I won't say immediately, but I would say over 50% of people after washing their hands or touching their phone within one minute, one to five minutes, like be honest with yourself. You come out of the bathroom, you have a moment, you're by yourself, you almost always check your phone. Fuck washing your hands at that point. Why'd you you know what I mean? So that is like to me the best example, and even beyond your phone, I think like there's myriad other things that are similar, like your computer, whatever book you're reading, like whatever thing you're doing whilst washing your hands in betwixt in betwixt, but that you're you know, washing your hands in between. I just feel like we're touching everything around us, we're touching all the time. Every whenever uh I'm with someone in a relationship or with my kid and they're like, oh, don't cough like someone's sick, let's try not to get the per other person sick. Why what are we who are we fooling? Who are we fooling? Let's we're all getting if one person in your cohort of living gets sick, you're all getting sick. I like don't fight it, just get sick. I don't know. I don't maybe it's because I have a different relationship with getting sick. My immune system is is my immune system. I'm just built different from an immune system standpoint. A regular, a regular thing that might have you out for a week, bro. I'm not even that's about to be a little cough for me, and I'm about to smoke it out. You know what I mean? So I don't have any like I don't have a lot of concrete evidence. I don't have any concrete evidence that washing hand is performative. I just even and that's this is honestly, I get it. After saying I work in food service, coming out anti-washing your hands, it's it's a bad look. But I will let you know that I do at my job wash my hands because I understand that it's a performance that I have to do in order to keep my job. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm not saying I'm not washing my hands at work, I am, but it's with the understanding that excuse me, this is just psychological, man. Germs is just psychological, man. Um, and the the other the other thing, after so I I maybe like three or four years after the pandemic, at one point, I just I'll just say I started dating some these two people who we started hanging out. I'm like, wow, they're real free spirits, so cool. And then one day they were like, Can we be honest with you? We never wash our hands. And I was like, Wait, tell me more. And they were just like, We think it's bullshit. And I was I I don't know if it was it was a perfect match, it was a match made in heaven. I didn't know if other people thought like this, but because of of that relationship, I know there's other people out here who think like that, and maybe we could spin this as like a washing your hands is a waste of water, so actually not washing your hands is better for the earth. Maybe that's how I'll spin it. Stop washing your hands. It is killing the rainforest.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

I don't know. So washing your hands is formative. I wanted to do that, uh, and they were like, yeah, that's great, but that's not real what really what we're going for, which is too, it's a shame. It's a shame. If I had more time to build out that as a platform, um I don't know. I think we could have we could have got a political party started, maybe. Uh the next thing, sorry, let me drink some Red Bull. After deciding that uh I couldn't that they wanted it to be online specific, like yeah, internet specific as a show, I I came up with the topic of I've wanted to talk about this on the podcast for a while, and so that's kind of why it c it came to me. But basically the idea that everything online is fake, uh, and I know that's a very provocative uh headline, but uh what I mean by everything online is fake is like basically two things happened recently that like codified this in my head, and I can't remember where I heard the first study, but or I guess the first time I heard about this was in uh a a Twitter S a Twitter essay, nope, a YouTube essay about black Twitter. Uh I can't remember who it's by, and um I apologize for that. I'll try to link it. But it basically talked about the the fact that like so much of discourse on Twitter specifically that is kind of there's like classic gender wars discourse that happens on like black Twitter that's kind of been it's kind of been rampant for like the entire course of Twitter. The like uh how much should men pay for a date? Uh would you, you know, would you date a man who's makes this amount of money, yada yada yada, all that type of online gender wars bullshit that kind of pops up and has been endemic of black Twitter and kind of Twitter at large forever. More recently, especially with like the the thing Twitter did uh probably over a year ago at this point where it like started showing where accounts were based, that mixed with some just informate other data came out, paints the picture of like because so many Twitter users, I wish I could find the number on it, but so many Twitter users, I think it's roughly uh let me see, Twitter users, something between like 10 and 20 percent of independent independent researches have estimated anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of daily active users on Twitter are fake. So 10 to 20, let's just say 10% of users are bots generating traffic. And the other important thing is activity. Uh bots often post far more frequently than human studies have found that during major political events, financial discussions, or viral news stories, 20 to 50 percent or more of the posts on a topic may come for automatic or coordinated accounts, uh, even if bots represent a much smaller share of all accounts. So that Mixed with the you know now seeing that so many of even the like non-bot pages uh uh are based overseas. We've had the Russian bots, uh Russian and Chinese bots we've seen that have been uh you know promoting this kind of rhetoric that I'm talking about, uh the like gender wars, culture wars in America at large, bullshit. Just I just all that together just makes me think of like so much of online discourse. Just it's just not real. You know what I mean? Not that it's not fully real, not just fully real. It's just I don't know, for the past couple of months, the reason I wanted to talk about this is it's just so much of online discourse, comments, trending topics, whatever. There's they're all like at this point engineered to get a rise out of people, to make people scared, to make to so you know, discontent within the American political system and things of that nature. It's just I don't know. I just think about I just feel like now when I go online, it's just I just have the feeling that nothing I'm seeing from a discourse standpoint is real. Like I'm even someone who like the thing I use the most is Reddit. And I didn't realize until recently how much of even a place like Reddit is Astroturfed, and for whatever reason it seemed like just because of the way the website functions, it it feels inherently as someone who like started on Reddit when I was like a teenager and like was like 16, so has been there for over a decade, and I'm sure it's similar to people who were early Twitter users who was like the idea the the the way we used it at first felt so real and personable and like a genuine experience of community building online. Like I I used to be on like the R Teenagers, it was like a summer. There's a Reddit for teenagers called Our Teenagers, and one of I don't even know. I want to write into right, right. I want to write a book about this or something one day, but just like one day, like me and this click of like random kids from across the country, we just like ran our teenagers. We were like the cool kids of the teenager subreddit, and there was like drama, and we like bullied people, and there was like a lot, obviously a lot of uh sexting on kick. Uh but all that to say, like I was like as a teenager using that website in a way that felt so like old school for me, like so many of the people that you're engaging with online were also in these like group chats on the side, and we're making like little friend groups, and you know, it it even reminds me of like before college. I wonder if this it's probably still like this. I wonder what it was like before, because I was in like one of the first generations that once uh that like once you got into college, and because we're a lot of us were on social media, and you started being like uh I went to Mizzou, so it was like what was my graduating class? Like Mizzou 18. There was like a hashtag on all the on all the social medias. You typed it in, you could find other people. That's how I ended up finding my roommate. I think it was through Twitter. I can't remember. It was it was Twitter or Instagram, it's probably Twitter. But yeah, me and like a bunch of kids, we made like a whole ass friend group like a half a year before either any of us like were actually going to start going to the college, and it was really cool, and it was a fun way to like you know, as as like overwhelming as the prospect of making friends is going to college, especially when you're like me, who's not from a place like Missouri, who's going across the country with no one else from like my high school or like no one else that I knew from around my area, it was really cool to be able to like go in being like I already have some people, like I already had a roommate who I ended up you know being really good friends with for most of the year, and we like did everything together. Um but like just being like, yeah, I get to go in not feeling like uh you know I don't know anyone here and like scared and intimidated by that. And you know, I would I wonder what the consequences of that are because I'm like I'm not saying that's like inherently there's any inherently anything wrong with that. It just makes me question if like you know, I missed out on the experience of not knowing anyone, and like that could have been a more holistic, wholesome, pure uh that doesn't sound right, but like a better, potentially a a better way to like grow uh without the being able to like you know having the crutch of knowing people already. Who knows? It's impossible to know. All that to say is the the the idea of a website like Reddit or even like Twitter, just to to those of us who are like super early and native on them when they felt like like no one was astroturfing it back then. You know what I'm saying? I don't know about Twitter or and I know like I'm sure that people were gaming any platform where people can like where you can gain a lot of vis visibility by you know getting a bunch of likes or retweets or upvotes or whatever the metric is. I'm confident there are people trying to game it on every level, even from like the inception of some of these platforms, but it didn't feel like I mean I don't I don't I just don't think it was happening uh at like the corporate level in terms of people like coming in and making up uh posts about XYZ celebrity or XYZ band and trying to like be like this is really you know what I mean just like clearly trying to start conversations about certain things because that seems to be from you know the research I've done a lot uh that seems to be how a lot of the companies like promote their stuff online is trying to generate or quote unquote organic um discussions about it, and we'll get to that piece of it a little bit later, I think. Um have a sip real quick and insert mm excuse me, and by a little bit later, I think I mean now. So the one thing uh the first thing I talked about was the the bots of it all being what made me feel like everything online is fake. And then the second thing was there was an article that came out about the ban Geese a couple of months ago about their uh the agent this agency Chaotic Good that I guess was like a marketing promotional agency for them. And basically what this company reportedly did for geese was created it in or to promote them, uh created a network of themed social accounts. Uh the agency Chaotic Good operated thousands of TikTok pages that looked like normal user accounts rather than all being obvious fan pages for geese. Many were accounts that posted memes, fashion music recommendations, or niche culture. Step two, they would seed the band's music everywhere. Those accounts would use geese songs as backup audio, post concert clips, share interview snippets, mention the band in comments, make it seem like unrelated people were independently discovering them. Step three would be manufacture social proof. Some discussion was intentionally created through burner accounts and coordinated interactions. If someone encountered geese repeatedly across different accounts, it created the impression that everyone is suddenly talking about the band. And number four was trigger algorithm trigger recommendation algorithms. TikTok and similar platforms reward content that gets engagement from many different accounts. The campaign's goal wasn't to convince every viewer, it was to generate enough distributed engagement that platforms themselves would begin recommending geese to real users once that happened. Genuine listeners could take over. So, all this to say, I don't know if people, everyone knows the band Geese. I assumed uh most people who are listening to this are like, I don't want to say hip. Geese is like, you know, my boss, like I said, my boss uh really like thinks I'm cool. So he's the other day, he's like, What are the bands now, Krim? And I was like uh geese and turn style, because from someone who doesn't really seek out bands music, like I listen to a lot of uh Fallout Boys still, but in terms of new bands, I'm generally not checking for them. But I'm online enough and like tapped into music enough to know that a lot of people like geese and a lot of people like turnstyle. Um, I'm hoping to do a festival that turnstyles at in September. We'll see. Uh I'd love to see them. I don't really listen to their music, it sounds cool and the concerts look cool, but it's not my cup of tea. And geese, like geese, because of what so overall, I'll just say this article came out that basically exposed what I just talked about in terms of how geese or this more specifically, this company, Chaotic Good, was marketing geese. Um, like I was saying, Geese is a super popular band, and this article came out, and a lot of people it kind of created like a a a bigger discourse, I think, from the like a lot of the more you know measured uh music critics, whatever at large that I've seen talk about it, uh have kind of made the point that this is kind of how everyone does everything now. Um and you know, a lot of people uh there's one person at one point in the article, this wired article, uh the the journalist cites a streamer that like kind of talked about this, and the streamer with who they cited was like, yeah, but I don't like the what way you guys are like using what I said to make your point. So basically, a lot of people uh in the music space, music critic space have kind of panned this article as being kind of uh I don't know what the right word is. Uh uh what is it? Uh not propaganda, that's not the right word. Uh overly provocative, you know, is trying to paint this. The idea is the I think that I will I excuse I think the article was titled Geese is a Psyop. So I think they were being provocative uh intentionally, and and you know, in the age we live in, I think that's like I called this thing, and I'm probably gonna call this thing like no no one online is real. Obviously, I don't think that, but that's the way you gotta market in 2026. So I don't really blame them for that, but a lot of people, and I kind of agree, are like, yeah, this isn't really crazy. This is just like the way a good marketing agency would act in 2026. They understand the landscape of algorithms and uh social the idea of social proof. This thing that they said, like the third thing was you know, the understanding that seeing other people talk about something makes it seem like that thing is important, or like it makes it seem like it's a thing people are talking about. Even if it's just like a faceless account, or even if it's an account that's being paid to talk about it, you go, oh wow, everyone's talking about this. And this kind of this struck a nerve for me when I saw it because I was it it just made it make sense because I was like I was someone who felt like geese was a psyop before this article came out. Um, that's why I'm probably being generous, uh more generous than a lot of people. Uh a lot of people's reaction to this. Mine is a little bit more like, yeah, you know, they were just trying to make a point in a provocative way. Because I I definitely remember one day going on the internet and then like a month later being like, so I guess everyone likes geese now. Like, I don't I I've never heard of this thing, and now they're on SNL and Cameron Winter is dating Olivia Rodrigo, and it's like, I don't I didn't consent to any of this, you know what I mean? Um, and I will say, like, there was because of this, there was no album last year that I gave more chances than the Geese album. Uh, I don't remember what it's called. I don't really feel strongly about them either way. I feel really strongly about the way they were marketed because I was like, I found it to be overwhelming to the point where it felt like a psyop. Um, and that's what I think the nerve this article is scratching on. Um yeah, I I don't know. It's just weird. It doesn't sound his voice isn't great, and I think, you know, I think they're trying to sound weird and like discordant and anti-melodic on purpose. Uh the instrumentation's cool, whatever. Um, so all that to say, like there was a similar, I wouldn't say like controversy, but it basically came out after Drake's latest album that there's another website where I don't remember what it's called, but it's basically a website that's like a marketplace for kind of a similar thing that Geese's Marketing Agency was doing. Um it's called Clip Something, but basically any uh artist, whatever your your game is that you're trying to sell online, you can go on there and pay a certain amount of money, and people will basically all make you a bunch of TikToks, excuse me, and like clips, and uh it's interesting uh because uh after the release of Drake's latest album, three albums, Iceman, he basically got quote unquote caught using one of these websites that just pays people to make clips for you that you post online, and I say it was like a minor drama. It was like, you know, some people were like this is whack, and then like I said about the geese thing, it's like yeah, this is just this is just how the game works. Um I'm sorry, I'm fixing my I got one hair that looks crazy. This is just how the game works, but the because of so you have the idea that like all the content or all the discussion online, as we talked about earlier with like the Twitter and the bots of it all, so much of what you see online in terms of discussion is bots because of like bots trying to market, and I mean this geese thing is marketing too, but bots trying to market in a more like cynical, like buy product way. I don't is marketing for I don't whatever marketing you're doing, I don't know if it's there's any ethic to like what you're marketing as like up you know, is a pineapple more ethical or less ethical than geese? You know what I'm saying? So I guess just the idea that so much of what is online discourse is bots, and then you see like I guess I guess the best way to frame it is like I think the first part lays out like how so much of the words you see are online are fake, and this geese thing kind of paints the picture that like everything, at least a lot of what you see online, even visually in videos, is fake. Not to say that it's like fake in a way that it's AI generated content, but most of what you see on TikTok and Reels or whatever your scrolling video app of choices, even YouTube, so much of it is someone, some type of marketing being veiled as someone's original ideas, or like, yeah, I just made I just make clips because I like clips, or I'm just making this dance because I I don't know if people are people still dancing for I mean, people are still dancing on TikTok, but like is that I bet they're probably still the same amount of emotion. It's just there's other stuff on there now too. But uh people are just dancing uh to a song they like. It's like it's never they're just dancing to a song they like, they're dancing to a song someone paid them to dance to, uh, and they're never just making fun of like even making fun of TikToks, like a TikTok that's making a joke about something, I'm pretty sure it qualifies for some of these things. You know, TikTok in itself, in the app itself. I don't know if this is I don't have a lot of followers, so I imagine like even people with not a lot of follow like I'm at like 2900, right? Yeah, so it even offers me and my lowly account the opportunity to like, hey, we have so-and-so game coming out. If you just play it for a little while or post a screenshot about you know what I mean, uh it you could win XYZ amount of money. So the apps, the platforms themselves are even incentivizing you to make content for other people and like be an advertisement ultimately. Uh yeah, I just everything is as um algorithms determine what we see, so it's like even what you're being shown, not to say it's not real, but even what you're being shown isn't up to you. Uh recommendation systems uh uh shape your attention, engagement can be purchased, all the comments, likes, whatever you see under a video, the analytics of it all, because people know that you know it's really weird how it works, but psychologically, and you can see this when you're using the scrollers, at least I can. Psychologically, you'll just watch a video for longer if it already has a bunch of likes, and you're less likely to watch a video that has less likes. I see a video that has like four or five likes, I'm like, you got you got two seconds to get me in. But if I see a video with a couple million likes, I'm like, okay, clearly something's about to happen. So uh people are buying that. Artists are getting millions of streams taken down, like the metrics you see, the comments you see, the videos you see, all of it. I just think that's why that's why I chose this as uh my first one because I do think a lot about it. Um, was there another point I wanted to make about it? Uh I don't think so. Let me think. That's gotta be it. Yeah. Uh so maybe I'll have other thoughts about it. But everything online is fake. I was like, let me do that. But as you could tell, uh, I don't know how much of that was funny. I was like, this is gonna be a humorous thing. I gotta find a more humorous topic. Um, and that's how I landed on the idea that I would fix Instagram. Now, if you'll hold with me for a second, I will pull up my slideshow. Um now visually you won't be able to see this, and I'm sorry. Um, but welcome. My name is Demarcus Zuckerberg. This is my uh how many 57 57 slide presentation on how to fix Instagram. So, what can we all agree is the biggest problem with Instagram in 2026? It is too horny. We also have it forces you to compare yourself to people better than you. Uh, it doesn't show the posts of people you f you are following because those posts are boring, and the comment section is full of bots sowing seeds of discord. Um, also it is too horny. Now, again, I made this for comedy. I think as I again, as I pointed out in the uh Only Fans evocation of Instagram episode, go back to it for a deeper dive. I've talked to you guys about it before. Let me can I show you'll see it in the video. Uh this will be video only, but this was can we see a picture, a screenshot, uh, a screenshot of my what is that? That's the search page? Search page. If you go, if you're me and you get on Instagram, your search page, it's just trying to sell you boobs, and I I don't like that. Um, you know, where am I at with Instagram? I actu I absolutely do think my biggest problem with Instagram just being vulnerable is it does force me to compare myself to people uh more popular than me. Uh so much, so much of my Instagram experience is being like, damn, they got that. I want to do that. And it's cause and I like comedians and I follow comedians, and we're all meeting. We're like, yes, we're friends, let's support each other online. And then you start supporting them online, and suddenly they get booked for cool stuff, and you're like, hey. Fuck this nigga. Is that relatable? I hope so. Um, don't see the posts of people you follow because they are boring. It is crazy. This is more of a TikTok problem for me, but it is crazy how sometimes you'll follow someone, really enjoy their content, and then like wake up six months later and be like, I haven't seen another thing that posted. Did I just skip one video and they were like, Instagram was like, nah, you you hate them actually. Anyway, and comment section full of bots. I already talked about that. So, solution number one, I want to de-horny the main Instagram feed. That's banning thirst traps, banning cleavage, banning abs, de-ranking people algorithmically if they're hot. I don't know how the technology on this would work, but I know that the technology exists because Instagram clearly knows who I think is hot because it shows them to me every chance it gets. So less of that. Up rank ugly people. I don't know if this is ethical to say, but I actually it is ethical because it accounts, you know, the Halo effect is a real thing. The idea that people uh, you know, are liked more, trusted more, given more things in life if they're attractive. So social media, you have a real chance to balance the scales and ubring ugly people, and maybe we'll have some sort of like I don't know, that could fix momdani hit my line. A solution to uh make a dating tab, basically push all the horny content into the dating tab and ban sliding to DMs on the main tab. I just this idea is mostly just my confusion that Instagram has never developed a dating app. It seems like something I would have tried at one point, right? Every other first of all, they've tried to be every type of social media at one point already, and they've tried to they are Snapchat and they are TikTok and they you know what I mean? So the only the only other like area of like social media they haven't gotten into is dating and Facebook is dating, and Instagram's already the like I don't want to say the best dating app, but like for me it's been the best dating app. So I'll you know take that for what you will. Solution number three to fixing Instagram. I call it boring mode, basically a feed with no videos, no boobs, no suggested posts, pretty much just make the own OG Instagram, original Instagram filters, uh Paris, Valencia, etc. And then you just Obama make the Obama still president. I think if Obama was still the president, that would also improve TikTok. Solution four is what I call coward mode. Uh no posts from people with more followers, no posts from people from your childhood that you were only kind of friends with, and no posts from successful family members. I would love to just unfollow all those people. And you know, I don't even think you can see who unfollows you on Instagram. I I fight every day with like, do I wanna do do I just wanna unfollow everyone and be that person that only follows one person? But at this point, it really doesn't even matter if you do that because Instagram is populating your feed either way. So I I just I I was talking to another comic about it after the show where we were both kind of being like, Yeah, man, it's so hard to just hate going on these platforms all the time, but still feel like we need to. And you know, I basically from the moment I was like, I realized that like as an adult that like Instagram is probably not something I wanted to like spend a lot of time doing, or like I got to the point where I could probably like walk away from it from like a maturity standpoint, uh not a maturity standpoint, but just like a spiritually, I don't want that in my life. Is pretty but the moment I discovered that is like when I was like, man, maybe I'll be a a like comedian and try and like you know get you know be f not famous, but build a big enough platform that I could like you know have a tour and have fans and quit my job at Amazon. Um so you know, a lot of us, especially, you know, a lot of us are like more prone to like anxiety and depression and certainly being like overcompetitive, jealous fucks. At least I can I'll cop to that. Um it's hard. It's hard posting on the Gramma. Uh so uh yeah, I would coward mode would be what I I rocked most of the time is what I'm saying. Uh a version of Instagram where I just didn't see have to see anything that would like make me feel small or even challenge my beliefs in any way. Anything that I I think again, not again, I should say, and it's pretty obvious, Instagram would go for almost none of these, because all these ways that I'm like, this is bad and hurts my attention or hurts my you know ego or spirit or whatever, these are all like the main ways they capitalize on our attention spans, and like you know what I mean, like they they don't they coward mode would destroy them uh because people would be like, Yeah, let me just let me just do that. I mean, I guess then people would say I don't know. Um solution five, I call this like I don't really know which problem this is aiming to quell. I think it's just because I want to put guardrails on myself for not stalking people and like wasting a lot of time just like looking at you know ex-girlfriends from seven years ago. I want bring back the activity feed. If you remember the old Instagram activity feed basically just told you what everyone was doing, like-wise and follow-wise, in a really messy way that I think once we got away from is when we got away from accountability as a country. Um bring bring in profile viewers like TikTok has. Someone comes in your profile, you'll know. And again, I think this is a guard roll for me. I I don't know if I have the bravery. I'm not that brave a lot of the time. I think this would keep me, this would keep me all this like I'm saying, Instagram wouldn't go for this because this key this is a third of the reason I'm on there. Um and this again, this one's super for me. Every time you open your story viewers, it notifies everyone who's viewed it. So uh I I would say like the most embarrassing thing. To me, one of the most embarrassing things about myself to me personally is how much time I spend looking at who who's viewed my story. I don't know when. I don't know. I think it's probably like uh once I started having like you know, a couple thousand followers, it starts to just become really interesting just because uh like for example this week I had a story that you know I talked about this on my story, but I put up a story on like Wednesday advertising the shows I had Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and it got like all the stories got like you know, maybe a hundred views at best each. And then the next day I went on because I kind of wanted to test this theory a little bit. Next day I went on and I was just like, uh, is it gross to poop while you roll a joint? And like a thousand views, like ten times the amount of people viewed it, and it's always interesting on like the a thousand views ones, because you just go through them, and again, I it's it's a long list to go through as much as I'm going through it. But it's just crazy because you're like, damn, I haven't you just at least for me, you're looking through it, and you're just like, damn, I haven't thought about this person in you know what, I'm 30 like 18 years. Like, wow, this person who I went to like third grade with is looking at my Instagram story. I wonder what they're doing. If you went to third grade with me and you looked at my Instagram story, I know, and I was like, and that's just a weird relationship to have to people, and I it's a relationship I have unfortunately with a lot of people now where I'm just like, yeah, we haven't talked in a cool decade, but I know you're tapped in, and maybe you know I know I'm tapped in, and what is that relationship? Like, are they like I had one person maybe like once or twice a year, someone will like someone from that group of like I say like between like 30 and even like it's sometimes not even that people from like my childhood will be like like oh someone I dated like 10 years ago randomly is dropping in. Uh I haven't thought talked to you in X amount of years. Um, so it's just like this amorphous group of like 20 to like 50 people who I'm like it's so weird that really just so weird that you're still here. Not weird in a negative way, but it's just odd to think about. Like I was one of the things I made a story about, uh, which was I got on Instagram uh whatever Friday and just like the first thing it showed me was a post from a girl I literally kissed one time like eight years ago, but I just I think she hadn't posted in like a couple years or something, and I was just like the earnestly, the first feeling I had was like, what the fuck? Like no, what about us? Um and as just like uh like twenty years ago, if you if you just like you know kiss someone once at a bar and then like exchange numbers, you never saw them again. You were like, huh, I remember her, and then maybe over time you stopped. But now it's just like you have like a catalog of all of them and you just check in from time to time. Is that good? I think we all know too many people now, and maybe that's leading to the decline in our society. Anyway, I just I will I don't wanna I don't want to do it, but I do it and I'll keep doing it. Um solution number six comment reform. Basically, I I think Instagram could be better if everyone only had three comments they could use a day. Because I just feel like you would be less likely. I wouldn't I won't say people won't use their comments still for like hate, but I think it'll be less arguing about petty bullshit that you don't really need to be spending your time on. That's what I'm trying to stop. I'm not trying to I mean I would love to stop just the outright like bigotry and racism that happened on the platform. This would definitely limit it, but it would also for the person who isn't doesn't want to make like a bitchy uh or like you know rude or whatever comment who doesn't want to well actually now they don't have to. Now they'll be like, you know, I could get into this thing I only half care about and only care about in the moment that I'll think about three that I won't think about in two minutes, but I actually only have two three comments today. I'm not gonna waste my comment on that. That's some common sense reform. I it would it would it would mess up everyone's uh everyone's analytics because comments overall on the platform would go down exponentially, and that's probably not good, you know. I don't I could just so many people's livelihoods depends on the algorithm now. I'm like anything I say that's like don't don't use it. I'm like, well, I don't want people to stop getting money. Uh you know, we're all trapped in this. Um steps solution six, oh, and also no comment mode. It would be nice. I feel like uh we as a country are losing, we as a society are losing critical thinking skills and are losing the ability to like formulate our own opinions on stuff. And I think going back to the article about geese where they were talking about how like basically they would like go into comment sections or even the idea of astroturfing, like going in and posting a bunch of positive comments uh from bots about you can see this under a lot of famous artists on Instagram, quite frankly. If you just go in and look at how many of the comments are just like the three hands, just like making the I guess like field goal emoji, like you'll see so many of those that are just like bots, because psychologically, I I think so many of us, me included, are programmed now to you start watching a video, and before you even really decide how you feel about it, you open up the comments, and however the comments are going. I'm not saying you would you aren't you or I aren't don't possess the capability to like resist that, but I do think it's hard to resist that, and especially if you're kind of ambivalent to it initially seeing so many people say it's trash or fire will kind of make you go, well, I guess I guess this is fire, I guess this is trash. Um, so because of that, I think like again, not to say we should get rid of comments, but we should at least have an option where you can just go on there and look without comments. And I know that's kind of like comments low-key be half the fun of videos sometimes, but also especially on Instagram, a lot of comment sections, uh especially under like posts that are intentionally made or written to be inflammatory and like make people argue. A lot of the comments are just like, I I would prefer if this I didn't even see any of these. I would prefer, I would prefer uh just just photos, please. Um so that's it. Step still the solution six, customizable content warnings. Like at least warn me before I'm about to get thirst trapped, before I'm about to see some devastating information. It's not that I don't want to ever see boobs, it's just that I especially like as someone who's like your your my profile. Sometimes I open it and it's some some gazongas. Sometimes I open it on the train and I don't want like show me a trick off. So say, hey, just in case you're on the train, these are some titties. Do you consent to see? Let me say no. Let me opt out. I'm not gonna do it every time. I might I do it a small percentage of times, uh uh a minuscule, almost nothing percentage of times. But on occasion that I'm on the train or in the grocery store and I want to open the internet, I don't want it to immediately look like I was just looking at some gazongas. Is that too much to ask? Uh I think other examples of content warnings, you could have like a sad warning, uh, you're gonna be jealous of this warning, again, a horny warning, a delicious-looking food warning. So in case you're like super hungry, be like, hey, I'm gonna need you to not show me a bunch of because I'd be on food TikTok. And sometimes, like yesterday, I was like, man, I kind of want some ice cream, and I saw this nigga that does the roll for ice cream videos, and I was like, man, I wish I didn't see these because now ice cream is an imperative, and I don't know if I ultimately went and got ice cream. I might have stayed out too late, or it might have been too late for me to get ice cream. Um is that without all the solutions? Oh, no, no, no, I didn't even get to the miscellaneous miscellaneous solutions for fix fixing Instagram. Let me just watch one sorry, let me just watch one five-minute ad of the beginning at the beginning of the day, and for the rest of the day, let me just raw dog Instagram. No, no advertisements, maybe even no suggested posts. I understand you have to sell ad space. I understand I have to be advertised too. Whatever. Uh, sometimes YouTube lets you do this where it's like, hey, watch this. I don't think they do it anymore. Maybe it's Hulu. Remember, I think it was like when Hulu dropped, they're like, yo, if you just watch this one three-minute one, you could watch the whole video, this whole episode of community for free. I want something else like that. Like, it just, you know, I didn't get to it this fully, and this won't be the idea that closes out. But hand in hand with my everything online is fake idea, I do think everything online is also an ad. What I mean is like, not only are so much of what you see in your literal feed or on whatever website you're reading, not only what you're seeing so much of your literal phone space or your screen space rather, so much of it consistently actual ads. Even the stuff that's in between that's not purporting to be an ad. Excuse me, is usually also an ad. What do I mean? Uh so suggested posts online, that those are an ad, but you know, not in the most traditional sense of ad. I get that. Um, you know, I talked about the astro turfing that Geese and Drake do, uh, and a lot of, you know, other bands and every type of entertainer and every type of anyone selling anything online is now paying influencers and using clip pages, whatever, to push their thing. What that means is even on your social pages, so much of what you see, like we're talking about with the geese thing, is uh like someone dancing, someone reviewing something, someone just doing a concert review, someone doing like a oh, let's isn't it crazy how viral this band is? You know, think peace, you know, uh a funny video making fun of Drake's song shebang, all this stuff is advertisements for those artists, and usually somehow they're slipping couchy ads in everything, also. So I'm just gonna say that. But even uh uh besides just the clearly sponsored posts, so much of what you see is also like, and I'm mostly talking about like vertical video-based apps, reels, uh, Facebook, TikTok, etc. So much of what you see, even I guess where it gets to where like the this almost becomes too meta, and but is the point I'm trying to make, is like even my posts of my clips from my show that I'll post online are an advertisement for this. And like my post and my videos of me doing stand-up, like it is content and it is entertainment, and I'm not denying that advertisements can be extremely well done and creative and beautiful, and ideally, I ideally this is all those things, but what I'm saying is like even the indie cool stuff that you like from like smaller artists is them ultimately advertising, like an artist posting, uh them making I mean, a music video is an advertisement for a song, uh, uh trailer is an advertisement for a movie, uh, a movie review is an advertisement for a movie, you know what I mean? Like all these things. Uh, a critical, like a negative review is still an advertisement for that thing. You know what I mean? Negative press is still press. People being like, this movie flopped, it's still an ad. So that's why I said it starts to get too meta, because like once you start to ask the question, what is an ad? The umbrella, at least from the way I'm arguing, the umbrella of things can get pretty wide. Um, so without getting too meta and zooming out and being like, Does non-advertisement does is any form of posting not an ad? You know, when when you ultimately have a like page you can come back to and ultimately monetize in some way, whether that be from the on-platform monetization features or the potential of being able to sell merch or go on tour or you know, create a sub stack that people pay for. You could really argue that most content is an ad, even for people who are like, I just post to be random. You know what? Like no one's posting just to be random. Like you do want to blow up, and you know, it is kind of crazy. You know, I can't remember what book I heard it in, but social media has made it so like we all exist on like a credit, like a social credit spectrum from like you know, a three year old or a let's say a 10 year old opening a YouTube account to Kim Kardashian. Like it's all a spectrum that we are all somewhere along. The lines of and well, I'm sure there are a lot of you who are like, I just I'm just like uh I don't know, what are your jobs? What do you guys do? I'm just a barista. Respectfully, I'm just a barista, and I just post to my spam page whatever pictures of me and my friends. I'll give you that. That's probably I mean, but is it not advertising you as this is what it gets annoying. So I'm not gonna do that. But you're advertising a lifestyle, you're projecting, okay. I'm gonna I'm gonna pull out of it. Um aspirational algorithm, basically the uh this is uh another s miscellaneous solution, an aspirational algorithm, like don't show me what I like and what I look at, show me things that a person better than myself would be watching, like that's a f that is a feature. So like instead of seeing a lot of like boobs and NBA content uh TikTok or whatever, Instagram would show me, you know, bell hook speeches or like I don't know, uh black radical theory TikToks type shit. Um so again, they're never gonna do that. I want a black, I want a chat roulette style feature back, uh profile songs, any of my space like filter or customization features and a titty slider, just so you can just so like it's not you can't not that I don't want titties, I just want to be able to just just tweak the levels. So some days, you know, it's a Friday, send them in. Sometimes it's a Monday. I gotta lock in. I'm putting the titty slider down to 10% on the old Instagram. Yeah, this one was a little bit delirious. Um I I try to I'd be trying to to eh, I don't know, man. I'm tired. I have to do I had to do a lot of performing this week. Did I land all the plans I took off? I hope so. If you listen to this point, you a real one. Uh thank you for listening. I am your host, crime brulee. Uh like the show. Uh follow me on all the platforms at Crime2D. Subscribe. Uh uh what's the call to action this week? Yeah, you can like eat some mud. Yes, Crumfle. Yeah, you can like or you can't wait. Yes, Crim fucking burlet. I'm with your bag, cause you look great. Yes, crap fucking brulee, and watch your bangs, and watch your way. We're not the same, stay on my lane. She gave me brain, less my green. I don't do breaks, I don't do games, I don't do change, but you're a freak. I'm fucking dang, I don't feel pain. And that's your stink, I make it rain. All in a day, all in a face. She won't bring, all in a cake. I don't do text, I don't do pics. I had a bitch, I had a lake. Curry, I switch, look at the wrist, tryna have kids, tryna eat crisp. She wanna pick, come get your bitch. She wanna kiss, not on my lips. Cool as a fridge, I don't have bitch, baby. I'm rich, wait my luck. Yeah, it's cram, fuckin' brulette. Yeah, you can like or you can hate. Yeah, it's cram, fuckin' brilliant. Yeah, you can like or you can white. Yeah, it's cram, fuckin' black. I'm with your bed, cause you look great. Yeah, it's cram, fuckin' black. And with your picks, and with your wet. Driving on the highway, roaches on the driveway, ballin' like LeBron James. You niggas is Kyrie. White bitches like Miley, like me cause I'm wifey. Why chat on a glass tray? Blackness of a spiky, whiskey in my chai tea, septim ring on her knees. Ask you nissy top me. I buy her some her means. Baby, it's your birthday. Won't you have some brulee? Come and sit on my face, even if it's two days. Yes, crown, fucking role. Yeah, you can like or you can hate. Yes, crown, fucking relax. Yeah, you can like or you can wait. Yes, cram, fucking relax. I want your bag, cause you look great. Yes, cram, fucking relax. And my shit banks, and my shit white. Yes, cram, fucking roulette. Yes, cram for roulette. Yay can like or you can wait. Yes, cram, fucking relay. I want you to bag, cushion a great. Yes, cram, relay. And my bank, and my shit way.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:14

We have besides the eye.