Nerds & Non/Sense - Why I Left Social Media And What I Found

We honor Labor Day’s history, reflect on a year off Facebook and Twitter, and unpack how persuasive technology steers attention and behavior. Between a heartfelt check-in and some comic relief, we look for better ways to connect, create, and protect our time.

• origins of Labor Day and what it honors
• why Wikipedia earns our support
• reasons for leaving Facebook and Twitter
• persuasive tech and asymmetric power
• infinite scroll, social validation, and algorithms
• personal updates on family, mood, and making time
• light banter with mom and a satirical news riff
• motorcycle ride, orchard stop, and small hacks
• experimenting with YouTube Live and comedy
• closing credits, sharing, and support links

1. The new podcast is called "The Seven Five - Part 2". 
2. I was hoping to launch in January, 2026. (May be delayed to accommodate homelessness.)
3. I have no f'ing idea what I'll be doing, how often, or any of that sthi. Get over it.

OPEN INVITATION TO KICK YOUR ASS

Please know, I'm happy to be that guy now. I didn't want to be that guy, but I am in fact that guy. I suspect The Man In Black felt the same way. Never spoke with him. Anyway...

You pick 'em. Bring them to Larrykickassistan. It's a double lot. Plenty of space. Plenty of cameras. Half-assed security.

No weapons. None.

You pick 'em, but they have to be a world leader. I suggest up-to three (3). Also, Jared Kushner. 

Do not expect them to come home, at least not that night.

Keep being great & doing great things, my friends.

Chapters

• 0:00 Labor Day Opening And Vibes
• 1:16 What Labor Day Honors
• 2:26 Wikipedia’s Value And Donations
• 3:02 Leaving Facebook And Twitter
• 4:24 Persuasive Tech And Asymmetric Power
• 6:02 Infinite Scroll And Social Validation
• 7:00 Algorithms, Avatars, And Extremes
• 8:40 Societal Costs And Duty Of Care
• 10:19 Personal Check‑In And Finding The Funny
• 11:25 Mom’s Call And Light Banter
• 18:59 Satirical News Break On Politics
• 20:02 Studio Vs Phone And Cigar Chat
• 22:05 Long Ride, Orchard, And Heat Hacks
• 24:05 Helmet Mishap And Safe Finish
• 25:06 Quiet Neighborhood And Holiday Plans
• 26:25 YouTube Live Experiments And Comedy

Transcript

SPEAKER_07: 0:00

Nerds and Nonsense was recorded to hard drive in front of a previously recorded studio audience. Welcome to the show, everybody. I am your host, Larry Thompson, and this is episode 15 of Nerds and Nonsense, releasing this episode on Monday, September 7th, also known as Labor Day 2020. Hopefully it's a beautiful day outdoors for you and your loved ones, maybe near a grill full of food and a cooler full of ice, chilling your favorite beverages. Wherever you are and whatever you're doing, I hope that at some point you get to put your feet up and turn your brain off for a few today. To put any worry aside, at least for a little bit, surrounded by those you love. With that said, if you're listening to this on Labor Day, I am likely either in the office working, out mowing the lawn, or possibly doing yoga with the wife, actual yoga, not the naked kind. Labor Day is more than just a long weekend we get to spend together each September, though. Here's a brief history of it straight from Wikipedia. Labor Day is a federal holiday in the United States celebrated on the first Monday in September to honor and recognize the American labor movement and the works and contributions of laborers to the development and achievements of the United States. Beginning in the nineteenth century, as the trade union and labor movements grew, trade unionists proposed that a day be set aside to celebrate labor. Labor Day was promoted by the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor, which organized the first parade in New York City. And by the time it became an official federal holiday in 1894, 30 states in the United States officially celebrated Labor Day. Canada's Labor Day is also celebrated on the first Monday of September. You probably knew an awful lot of that, but I sure do love plugging Wikipedia. I mean what a great concept and implementation of social networking designed to improve our collective knowledge. Without advertising, without the use of persuasive technologies that are exclusively designed to get us to stay longer, watch more, click more, or buy more. It's about sharing information and validating information. I highly encourage participating and donating to Wikipedia for all of those reasons. On the flip side, it's been nearly an entire year since I left Facebook and Twitter, and of course, during that time, an awful lot has changed for both me personally and frankly our entire world. Originally, my thoughts for this show were simply to get away from social media as much as possible and start a new hobby that would involve spending more time with my inner circle. More time with the people I care about most, and in that regard, it has been a huge win. I've been just so very fortunate to have so many incredible people in my life, both personally and professionally. And in the 10 plus years of being on social media, I had reconnected with hundreds of them. Although my departure on Facebook and Twitter may have seemed abrupt to some, at least for those who've realized it, it was actually something I spent months considering as I was creating this show. Not having that virtual connection with so many of you that I truly care about, and of course, the validation of our friendship that comes with it periodically as we randomly read and maybe comment on each other's posts, has made this pandemic lockdown even more weird for me personally. I do miss it, but as of yet, not enough to go back to Facebook. Here's one of the many reasons why. The following is an excerpt from Tristan Harris' testimony at a Senate subcommittee meeting last year on persuasive technologies. Tristan is a former design ethicist at Google. Let that job title sink in for a minute. He is now the director and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, a guy who studies the ethics of human persuasion through technology. From inside one of the world's largest platforms designed to do just that. Persuade visitors, modify behavior.

SPEAKER_00: 5:04

Thank you, uh Senator Thune and Senator Schatz. Everything you said, uh I it's bad to me because it's happening not by accident but by design. Because the business model is to keep people engaged, which in other words, this hearing is about persuasive technology. And persuasion is about an invisible asymmetry of power. When I was a kid, I was a magician. And magic teaches you that you know you can have asymmetric power without the other person realizing it. You can masquerade to have asymmetric power while looking like you have an equal relationship, you'd say pick a card, any card, while meanwhile you know exactly how to get that person to pick the card that you want. And essentially what we're experiencing with technology is an increasing asymmetry of power that's been masquerading itself as an equal or contractual relationship where the responsibility is on us. So let's walk through why that's happening. In the race for attention, because there's only so much attention, companies have to get uh more of it by being more and more aggressive. I call it the race to the bottom of the brainstem. So it starts with techniques like pull to refresh. So you pull to refresh your news feed that operates like a slot machine, it has the same kind of addictive qualities that keep people in Las Vegas hooked uh to the slot machine. Other examples are uh removing stopping cues. So if I take the bottom out of this glass and I keep refilling the water or the wine, you won't know when to stop drinking. So that's what happens with infinitely scrolling feeds. We naturally remove the stopping cues, and this is what keeps people scrolling. Uh but the rates for attention has to get more and more aggressive. And so it's not enough just to get your behavior and predict what will take your behavior. We have to predict how to keep you hooked in a different way. And so it crawled deeper down the brainstem into our social validation. So that was the introduction of likes and followers. How many followers do I have? And that got every it was much cheaper to instead of getting your attention, to get you addicted to getting attention from other people. And this has created the kind of mass narcissism and mass cultural thing that's happening with with young people, especially today. And after two decades in decline, the mental health of 10 to 14-year-old girls has actually shot up 170% in the last eight years. And this has been very characteristically uh the cause of social media. And in the race for attention, it's not enough just to get people addicted to attention. The race has to migrate to AI. Who can build a better predictive model of your behavior? And so if you give an example of YouTube, so there you are, you're about to hit play on a YouTube video, and you hit play, and then you think you're gonna watch this one video, and then you wake up two hours later and say, Oh my god, what just happened? And the answer is because you had a supercomputer pointed at your brain. And at the moment you hit play, it wakes up an avatar voodoo doll-like version of you inside of a Google server. And that avatar, based on all the clicks and likes and everything you've ever made, those are like your hair clippings and toenail clippings and nail filings that make the avatar look and act more and more like you. So that inside of a Google server, they can simulate more and more uh possibilities. If I prick you with this video, if I prick you with this video, how long would you stay? And the business model is simply what maximizes watch time. This leads to the kind of algorithmic extremism that you've pointed out, uh, and this is what's caused 70% of YouTube's traffic now to be driven by recommendations, not by human choice, but by the machines. And it's a race between Facebook's voodoo doll, where you flick your finger, can they predict what to show you next, and Google's voodoo doll. And these are abstract metaphors that apply to the whole tech industry, where it's a race between who can better predict your behavior. Facebook has something called loyalty prediction, where they can actually predict to an advertiser when you're about to become disloyal to a brand. So if you're a mother and you you take Pampers diapers, they can tell Pampers, hey, this user is about to become disloyal to this brand. So in other words, they can predict things about us that we don't know about our own selves. And that's a new level of asymmetric power. And we have a name for this asymmetric relationship, which is a fiduciary relationship or a duty of care relationship, the same standard we apply to doctors, to priests, to lawyers. Imagine a world in which priests only make their money by selling access to the confession booth to someone else. Except in this case, Facebook listens to two billion people's confessions, has a has a supercomputer next to them, and it's calculating and predicting confessions you're gonna make before you know you're gonna make them, and that's what's causing all this havoc. So I'd love to talk about more of these things later. I just want to finish up by saying this affects everyone, even if you don't use these products. Uh you still send your kids to a school where other people believing that anti-vaccine conspiracy theories causes impact for your life or other people voting in your elections. And when Mark Andreessen said at the you know in 2011 that the quote was software is going to eat the world. And what he meant by that, Mark Andreessen was the founder of Netscape. What he meant by that was that software can do every part of society more efficiently than non-software, right? Because it's just adding efficiencies. And so we're going to allow software to eat up our elections, we're going to allow it to eat up our media, our taxi, our transportation. And the problem was that software was eating the world without taking responsibility for it. We used to have rules and standards around Saturday morning cartoons, and when YouTube gobbles up that part of society, it just takes away all of those protections. And I just want to finish up by saying that I know Mr. Rogers, Fred Rogers testified before this committee 50 years ago, concerned about the animated bombardment that we were showing children. I think he would be horrified today about what we're doing now. And at that same time he was able to talk to the committee, and that committee made a choice differently, so I'm hoping we can talk more about that today. Thank you.

SPEAKER_07: 10:27

That excerpt was taken from C-SPAN, and a link to the full YouTube clip posted by C SPAN is in the episode's description. The great news is that my inner circle is happy and healthy for the most part. We all have our days and moments, of course, but we've been working through them together. Now more than ever. Although it has been challenging for me to find the funny this summer, and also to make time to produce and share it, this too shall pass. In the meantime, I'll continue sharing what I can when I can, while hopefully finding the funny together with those I love most. Making people smile makes me smile. It's a vicious circle, it's contagious even. By the way, it seems my mom is on to the Hollywood phone number I occasionally use for the show. Yes, yes, uh the Hollywood show, yes.

SPEAKER_04: 11:27

Did I get it?

SPEAKER_07: 11:28

You got it. You are it. You're the star. Congratulations. Oh, top dollars. I'm good, I'm good. How about you? Oh wow. Yeah. I took another nap today too. Yeah. It was only about uh half hour forty-five minutes, but yeah, second day in a row. Yeah, outside of our place too. I'm kind of surprised. Nobody's outside in the yards and stuff. It's a beautiful day outside. Yeah. Just quiet everywhere, I think. I don't know. It's I told you, it gets eerie here. Stacey and I went for our walk last night and it was so quiet. So yeah, yeah, very, very eerie. And then when you're not going out and interacting with people face to face, you know, on top of all of that. Oh my gosh. It just gets really strange. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 13:31

Somebody's out moving their yards or something.

SPEAKER_08: 13:34

Right, right.

SPEAKER_04: 13:35

I thought about going out and doing the ditch and then I thought again.

SPEAKER_07: 13:44

Yeah, you know, that's what I did as well. I thought, well, I can finish up the yard today. I wanted to work on the podcast and uh get that done today, and then, you know, t tomorrow's a holiday, so I can you know do the yard and see if tomorrow. So that's my plan. I'm gonna do the yard and see if tomorrow tomorrow because nobody else can be around. It's it's so strange.

SPEAKER_04: 14:15

It looks really nice.

SPEAKER_08: 14:17

Oh god.

SPEAKER_07: 14:31

Yeah, I'm um I had Stacy just left to go to the grocery because I I was gonna go to the grocery store. I've been doing most of the grocery shopping and all of it, ex with the exception of the last two trips, because I don't like her out and about and but I just didn't have it in me today. And I asked her when would you mind going to the stores? She's like, No, of course not, you know. But yeah. Yeah, just in one of those I'm like, ah, I just want to stay you know stay focused on what I'm doing. Well, we you know what you eat a lot.

SPEAKER_04: 15:05

Every time every time we talk one of us going to this grocery store. Or else Ryan's burning in some kind of sandwich or something.

SPEAKER_07: 15:14

Yeah. No, we actually don't eat that much, and it's kind of funny because most of the stuff that we get from the grocery store is like the only thing that we really need today were eggs. Uh because we eat so many dang eggs. We cook fried eggs, scrambled eggs all times of day. We use it for dinner, for breakfast, eggs with French fries, which I never even had before until Stacy made it a couple weeks ago. She's goes, I'm gonna make some French fries, and I think I'm gonna put some eggs on them. She you know, just did over medium eggs on top of French fries, and I was like, Oh my gosh, why have I never done this? Oh, I know.

SPEAKER_04: 15:59

I've never had them on French fries.

SPEAKER_07: 16:01

Oh, I just love you know, breakfast, period. I love eggs and sausage. And so I eat it for dinner quite regularly.

SPEAKER_08: 16:18

Right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 16:28

Walk around. Yeah. Yeah, I I've got to get out too. And so that that's that's gonna be my tomorrow thing is is getting the yard done. I did order a couple sprinkler heads for to replace a few of the sprinklers in the yard that seem to be sporadic and whether or not they'll work. They pop up and but they don't always turn and the little plastic gear inside of them gets messed up, I think. So I gotta replace a couple of them. I'm gonna try and work on those this week when they come in. That'll be better. I know. I was surprised some of mine came back. I mean, I I had let some pretty big areas of it get browned, you know, from the hundred degree weather, and I just hate to use that much water to keep it green. So I cut the water back so much, these big areas got brown, which uh happens every summer. And I've got less and less I'm using less and less water to keep it green, but then I'm getting these brown areas more and more too. So it's uh it's a balanced type of thing. But it's that time of year, you know. The weather should start cooling, you know, and the grass turning green again. Yeah. Well the nineties here, it's been nineties the last couple of days, high eighties and then the nineties. Tomorrow the high is supposed to be seventies and the low like forty.

SPEAKER_04: 18:08

I think it's supposed to be eighty-four or something like that tomorrow.

SPEAKER_07: 18:11

So it's supposed to be really cool here. Absolutely. And sunshine year round. I would like that year round. All right. Well, enjoy the scallops. And um I will have a great day.

SPEAKER_04: 18:37

Thank you very much. I love them.

SPEAKER_07: 18:39

I will miss them. I will. And we'll catch up with you tomorrow. Tomorrow. Well, I'll be I'll be giving you a call.

SPEAKER_04: 18:53

Okay, hon. Love you.

SPEAKER_07: 18:55

Love you too. Okay. Bye-bye.

unknown: 18:59

Miss Justin.

SPEAKER_07: 19:00

Earlier today in Washington, D.C., another career politician said something really, really stupid. Officials are concerned that ignorance and stupidity has blatantly crossed party lines and unfortunately has made its way to those appointed by elected officials as well. We spoke with a high-profile former politician who recently left office and asked to remain anonymous.

SPEAKER_01: 19:22

I don't know what happened. I remember when I announced my campaign for this position, but after that, it's all a blur. I began babbling like an idiot, making promises I couldn't keep, attacking my political opposition, and generally always feeling like I was full of shit. Literally, my doctor said it's a chronic case of political constipation. I knew I should have stepped down right then and there, but they said they'd stop paying me if I did.

SPEAKER_07: 19:44

Do not be alarmed if you recognize these symptoms in your elected or appointed officials. There is hope, according to health experts.

SPEAKER_05: 19:52

Many of these babbling idiots turn normal as soon as their sorry ass is voted or kicked out of office. You don't say.

SPEAKER_07: 20:00

Regularly scheduled programming. I was gonna I'm all set up up in the studio, but I'm like, nope, I wanna try this so I can have a little cigar and just reach out to him and see if I can get a decent recording from the phone while I'm having some cigar, you know?

SPEAKER_06: 20:16

Why can't we do two things at once? Right? Knock out two birds with one stone. Well, smoking and joking. Exactly. Smoking and joking.

SPEAKER_03: 20:26

So did you get some rest last night? You know, it's kind of funny. No, the rest didn't kick in until eight this morning when I had to get up. That's when I felt it. I'm like, oh my god, now I do oh no, I wasn't tired all the way till I went to bed last night. It's when I woke up this morning, I'm like, oh, I don't want to do nothing. But see, Shane and Grace's man, they never get nowhere quick. We didn't get started riding until after one o'clock. They had to come over here. And we went out to the Ochikos. That was a great ride, man. Beautiful scenery. It was hot as crap, but it was I was ventilating, so I was cool.

SPEAKER_06: 21:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 21:10

And plus, when we got through, we rode our destination, it was the Kimberly Orchard. It's world famous. They got a cool vibe going on there too. It's uh it's right there by the river and stuff. People swim in the side of the river, and it's uh real shady and just all kinds of fruit orchards, and yeah, it's famous. You can pick your own, or you can buy what they got. And so we got some peaches. Then we drove down by the John Day River in this shady spot because yeah, it was like 99 degrees, and they ate fruit, and we had our lunch. And then after we were about to take off, I got this idea. I'm like, ha ha. I got these little frozen pouches in my backpack, you know, which you freeze to keep, you know, use them in place of ice.

SPEAKER_08: 21:57

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 21:59

Well, I took two of those and stuck them in the pockets of my jacket, the breast pockets. It was wonderful. Nice rest in town.

SPEAKER_06: 22:11

Listen to you, man. Just innovate.

SPEAKER_03: 22:15

Yes, that's me. But yeah, he kept us out late. We didn't get home till after dark, which I've got this dark face mask on my helmet. Oh, right. It's black, black. And and um, so we're almost almost home. This is real stupid. I'm at the end of my long road, the Juniper Canyon Road, you know. Yeah, and I want to look under my helmet, so I kind of pulled it up with the visor to kind of raise it up and look underneath, you know. Pulling it up on your head. But as I did that, the visor came off and it flew off. And I didn't have just barefaced to the wind now. Damn! That lasted for like one mile because your eyes tear out. You can't you can't ride like that.

SPEAKER_06: 23:03

Yeah, you can't, you gotta have something covering your eyes.

SPEAKER_03: 23:06

Yes, and I'm like, nah, but fortunately, I had the foresight to keep some clear glasses rolled up in my bag. So I pulled over and put on my clear glasses. Disaster was averted. I made it home safe. Another ride complete. Another ride complete.

SPEAKER_07: 23:25

Good for you, man. It has been like eerily quiet around here today. I don't understand it. It was beautiful weather. I mean, it's always quiet in our neighborhood, which you know is a blessing and at times kind of eerie. Right when you're expecting to see people out in the nice weather and and stuff, but I guess most people probably went away for the weekend, you know. Yeah, did something somewhere else, I guess, you know, like rode their Harleys or I don't know.

SPEAKER_03: 23:54

Well, normally they gotta go home on Sundays. And now you're off tomorrow, so they'll come home tomorrow.

SPEAKER_05: 24:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 24:02

So if you stand out in your yard tomorrow, they'll come in. You can wave at them as they come back.

SPEAKER_06: 24:06

Wave at them as they welcome your neighbors home. Welcome back, everybody. I'll just go out, stand in front of the yeah. Happy Labor Day.

SPEAKER_03: 24:19

Who's this asshole? I don't know, just wave at him.

SPEAKER_07: 24:25

Yeah, I I was inking around with uh YouTube Live. And we could do live live, you know, broadcasts through through YouTube Live for free. So I'm thinking, well, jeez, maybe I'll just do something live, you know, for Labor Day.

SPEAKER_05: 24:43

But I'm not getting nothing.

SPEAKER_03: 24:46

Wait, you trying to be like David Blaine or something? What what's going on? Live YouTube. You're not a live YouTuber. You stay dead. You stay dead. We are recording people.

SPEAKER_05: 25:01

I gotta find a happy medium. That's what it is. Happy medium, like as in middle, not medium as you know, means.

SPEAKER_03: 25:10

Oh, I was gonna say comedy's a good medium to look into, but it's a pretty happy medium.

SPEAKER_07: 25:16

It is. That's whatever art you're into. But it's probably only funny to you and I most of the time. That's entirely okay with me.

SPEAKER_03: 25:25

Well, who else is there, Larry?

SPEAKER_06: 25:27

Exactly.

SPEAKER_07: 25:51

Copyright 2020 nerdsandnonsense.com. All rights reserved. Well, except that I don't really mind if you share this, so maybe feel free to do that. You know, share and share alike, that sort of thing. Speaking of copyrights, though, special thanks to Joe Daniels, copyright owner, co-writer, and original drummer from LocalH for permission to use Bound for the Floor by LocalH as our show's theme song. Check out our Patreon community at patreon.com forward slash nerds and nonsense for more information on getting involved or supporting the show. If you're listening via nerdsandnonsense.com, simply click on the Support the Show link to learn more. Be great and do great things, my friends.